I HAVE stood on a deck headed towards Gaza. I know what that feels like — the sea ahead of you, and the knowledge, sitting heavy in your chest, that on the other side people are being killed while the world carefully arranges its indifference. The brutality of the genocide, the horror of forced starvation. the hypocrisy of western media, were plain for the world to see.
Ours was a vessel of journalists and health workers, from all across the globe. All races, many religions. These were the professionals that Israel had specifically targeted. Journalists as they provided the truth. Medics because they kept people alive. Inconvenient, when the intention is to obliterate a people. The need to commit genocide.
When words had failed, when international law had been torn asunder, when diplomacy had bowed in the face of brute power, when governments and the UN had clearly failed, we knew the only option left was to put our bodies on the line. For the starving child in Gaza to know that she had not been forgotten. That someone still cared.
Predictably, the Israeli pirates hijacked our vessel in international waters. Helicopters descended in the early hours of the morning. Around fifty IDF soldiers armed to the teeth, some with balaclavas, cameras, tasers, and handcuffs, stormed our vessel and took all 92 of us captive. The hijacked vessel was taken to the Port of Ashdod.
The need to ziplock unarmed journalists and medics, frog march them and have them kneel in stress positions on the tarmac, might ordinarily sound strange but for the IDF it was normal. As it was normal to kick away the prosthetic of an amputee, set dogs on some prisoners, and relish depriving the ailing of essential medicines. The sadistic pleasure the ‘most moral army in the world’ derived from humiliating prisoners they had pirated at sea, did not break us. Unable to resist with our bodies, we sang out in defiance. Bella Ciao reverberated across the galley of the Conscience and between the bars of Ketziot Prison. Yes, we had been strip searched and put into grey prison suits and placed in cages, but we were strong.
As International pressure mounted our jailers were rattled. We turned around their attempt to starve us by going on hunger strike. In the prison van, as we were taken to Eilat Prison, we found a metal pin, one of us had smuggled out, and I carved out in the interior of the bus ‘Bangladesh’ in Bangla. Our defiance was on record.
While I was the only Bangladeshi on the Conscience, there were many who were with me in spirit. Rahnuma, the love of my life. Saydia, our closest comrade, friends, colleagues, students at Drik and Pathshala, our fellow activists, in Bangladesh and across the globe. Others who prayed for us, in mosques across the country, or quietly in their own home. People like Sadek Ali, the CNG driver, who upon recognising me, as he overtook my bicycle on his CNG, near Paribagh, stopped and begged me to take him with me if I ever went again. Students, the elderly, the poor the wealthy, people I know well, total strangers all want to be part of this resistance. To fight for justice.
This time, Bangladesh will have its own vessel.
A Thousand Madleens to Gaza is not charity. It is refusal. A refusal by ordinary citizens to accept that an illegal blockade can simply continue because powerful governments find it convenient. We do not sail to substitute for aid organisations. We sail because those governments — and the institutions they control — have looked the other way long enough. This time, crucially, the Bangladesh government has not.
Joining is far from automatic. There is a strict vetting process. There are security issues, but we also need to select carefully based on the flotilla needs. We need captains and crew, journalists, doctors, cooks, IT experts and others who have a role to play on the vessel. We also need people on the ground. Fund raisers, communicators, influencers, lawyers. Collectively we shall break this siege.
When I sailed on the Conscience flotilla, I carried this country in my heart without an official mandate to do so. What moved us deeply, all 92 of us on board, was when Tarique Rahman — then in exile in London — sent a warm note of solidarity. It was followed swiftly by a strong statement from chief adviser professor Muhammad Yunus. Words, at the time, were what they could offer.
As I cycled through the relatively empty streets, as people saved on fuel, I was stopped on the road by a student easy bike rider and a retired doctor who congratulated me on having represented Bangladesh in the flotilla. I was heading to a meeting at the secretariat, where Tarique Rahman, now the prime minister had invited me to. The police couldn’t quite work out how to respond to a lone cyclist pedaling up to Building 1, the smart new building on the Western edge of the secretariat. I hadn’t met Tarique Rahman, since he’d returned to Bangladesh and certainly not after he became prime minister. His hug was warm, but he was direct. Oblivious to what Israel and its allies would read into it, or perhaps because of it, he told me directly where his government stands. That changes everything. Solidarity must now move from words to water.
They stopped the Conscience. They stopped the Sumud. They will not stop a fleet of this scale.
We had planned to depart from a European port towards the end of March. Then Israel and the United States invaded Iran, and the calculus shifted. Even the revised date of 12th April no longer feels right. We will wait. Timing matters. So does arriving.
We have the Bangladeshi people behind us. We have the chief of army staff behind us. We now have the prime minister behind us. And the people of Gaza — who have not stopped resisting despite everything — deserve no less than our full commitment.
Show up. Bangladesh must be on the right side of history.
And on the right side of the sea.
Shahidul Alam is a photographer and activist.
