Surveillance state

“Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” — Benjamin Franklin.

At a personal level, it remains an irony of fate that exactly one year after I was granted political asylum in Sweden, the Riksdag has passed the draconian surveillance law, on June 18 [2008]. I was awarded the asylum along with my wife and my son, on June 18, 2007.

I am sure, people who have fled from police states around the globe and found refuge in Sweden will understand my emotions. Those 143 Riksdag members who have voted in favor of the bill, will never understand. Till date, Swedes do not have to watch their back while walking the streets, or invent a code-language for talking to their wives over telephone, or use cryptic sentences in their emails. Unlike them, I have suffered the pain of surveillance, at its worst.

Back in Bangladesh, my home country, I was under constant surveillance for months: I was being followed by operators, my phones were taped and my office computer was bugged. That surveillance was followed by my detention and torture at the hands of the Bangladeshi military intelligence agency, on May 11, 2007. I was arrested from my home after midnight, blindfolded and taken to a torture chamber inside Dhaka cantonment where my captors tortured and interrogated me for 22 hours.

One of the most unnerving aspects of those interrogation session was involving me sitting on a torture-bench, blindfolded, while someone described very private details of my life to me: how many cigarettes I smoked a day, how much I suffered from bronchial asthma, what were the places I have been to in the last 3-4 years, whom did I met. As if I was sitting naked in a room full of strangers. Then, a few days after I was released, my private emails started appearing in pro-military newspapers, since they were trying to prove that I was plotting to overthrow the government. To realize how a state-agency can gather so much private information about an individual, just by keeping him under surveillance, remains an utter shock.

Now, for me, after what I have been through, it is pathetic to see that Sweden has just joined the surveillance club. The country that gave me refuge, promised me dignity and security is now set to cross the line and spy on its own population. One Turkish journalist, now a political refugee in Sweden, summed up this development, “I feel violated, as if someone has broken a promise. What we hold so dear, sacred freedoms, are now being taken away. That is so painful to watch.” No, we never wanted to see this country become a surveillance state.

What then is the difference between Sweden and China, may I ask? Well, the answer may be that Sweden is a democracy, unlike China. That brings us to a more serious issue: shameless trampling of public opinion. It is a fact that every major newspaper condemned the bill, urged politicians to vote against it while a large number of activist groups came out on the streets to protest. As far as I could gather from my conversations with people, every single person opposed it.

If the governments of China, Zimbabwe or North Korea ignored such level of public opposition, I would have understood. The Riksdag is not the polit bureau of an authoritarian communist party that can pass such a black law, blatantly ignoring opposition from the public. By voting in favor of the bill, Riksdag members have not only sold out essential public liberty, but also betrayed the basic tenets of a democratic state.

If a state-agency turns its guns, cameras and radars at its own people, that is a disaster. If a democratically elected parliament empowers the agency to carry out mass-surveillance, that is a greater disaster.