Yet AlamвЂ™s photographic images were of a different nature. Coming from Peru, which has sadly exhibited a similar reality in recent decades, Villacorta understood the central role that the technical image has in documenting human rights violations. Villacorta became the connection between two distant and disconnected southern realities. To actualise this situation through his photography and conceptual devices, Shahidul Alam asked Peruvian art critic Jorge Villacorta to act as the curator of the exhibition. In discussions between Kunda Dixit of Nepal, Marcelo Brodsky of Argentina and Shahidul Alam during Chobi Mela V, the South Asian festival of photography, the remarkable similarities between the political movements in Peru and South Asia were pointed out, particularly in terms of disappeared people murdered by paramilitary squads. As it turns out, вЂcrossfireвЂ™ is a euphemism that serves to uphold the killing strategies of the RAB.Д¬rossfire was the title of an installation on extraвЂђjudicial killings by Bengali photojournalist and activist Shahidul Alam, presented at Drik Gallery (Dhaka, Bangladesh) on 22 March 2010. These incidents are so frequent that it is common to find Bengali newspapers describing the RAB as engaged in nightly вЂcrossfireвЂ™ with presumed criminals. On average, two or three people are killed in incidents involving the RAB every week. The RAB has killed not only highвЂђranking terrorists but also innocent people. In Bangladesh the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) has been criticised as being responsible for many recent and not so recent deaths. These groups acted as a new sort of law enforcement that has become usual practice in many emerging economies where social problems are done away with by killing opponents of the regime.

If we put its reality in historical perspective by comparing it with what happened in Chile or Peru, during the times of Pinochet (1974вЂ“1990) and Fujimori (1990вЂ“2000) respectively, we will find a pronounced family air: these South American countries also performed outstandingly in terms of the economic agendas imposed multilaterally, while at the same time human rights abuses and violations were perpetrated by paramilitary groups funded by the State. But economic data do not take into account social and human rights issues which still prevail in this young South Asian country.

Bangladesh is today described by multilateral organisations as part of the вЂnextвЂђelevenвЂ™ (NвЂђ11), one of the emerging countries that have the potential to become one of the worldвЂ™s largest economies in the twentyвЂђfirst century along with the BRICs (Brazil, Russia, India and China).

Crossfire fantasy 2.0