Tyler J. Kelley, Journalist

THIS past Valentine’s Day many New Yorkers were rushing home from work, stopping at the deli to buy flowers, heading out to a romantic dinner with a loved one. But in the Jackson Heights section of Queens, the Bangladeshi community was concerned with another thing entirely.

Bangladeshis gather in Jackson Heights, Queens, to protest the February 5 verdict of a war crimes tribunal in Bangladesh.

At a busy pedestrian mall, near the intersection of Broadway and Roosevelt avenues, about 40 people were crowded together, chanting angrily in unison. They wore headbands and carried signs written in Bengali. After a while each member of the group lit a candle and laid their posters down on the street. Framed by candles, the tableau resembled an altar. One poster showed men’s faces on a red background framed with rope, a noose. The crowd continued to chant. Continue reading →

“We are demonstrating against war criminals of Bangladesh,” says Mumu Ansari, a small woman with intense eyes, who pulls away from the group to talk to me about the protest. “We want capital punishment!”

According to Reuters, on February 5 a Bangladeshi war crimes tribunal sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah, 64, a senior leader of the country’s biggest Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami, to life in prison. Mollah was found guilty of charges including murder, rape, torture and arson during Bangladesh’s war for independence from Pakistan in 1971. During the conflict about 3 million lives were lost and thousands of women were raped. For the protesters in Jackson Heights, Mollah and his party symbolize all of this violence and trauma.

“They are rapists—they murdered our Bangladeshi people—thousands of mothers and sisters, and now the court gave them life imprisonment. We don’t want that,” continued Ansari. The protest in Jackson Heights was in solidarity with other massive protests, also demanding the death of Mollah and other accused war criminals, around Bangladesh.

Bangladesh became part of Pakistan at the end of British rule in 1947, but in 1971, after a nine-month war between Bangladeshi nationalists, who were backed by India, and Pakistani forces, it became independent. Some factions in Bangladesh opposed the break with Pakistan, and numerous abuses were committed.

Mistrustful of the Bangladeshi justice system, protesters demand capital punishment for war criminals to prevent the possibility of further crimes.

Jamaat-e-Islami was accused of opposing the campaign for independence from Pakistan and helping the Pakistani army during the war. According to Reuters, Jamaat denies this. The party is still active and powerful in Bangladesh and has dismissed the tribunal as motivated by its political rivals. It has called for general strikes and protests of its own in the capital city Dhaka and around the country.

The tribunal delivered its first verdict in January, sentencing a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami and popular Islamic preacher, to death. A precedent therefore exists for capital punishment in these cases. It is unclear why Mollah was given a lesser punishment.

Capital punishment is frowned upon, if not banned, in much of the developed world; a nation can’t join the European Union if it has the death penalty. War criminals tried at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, including Charles Taylor of Liberia and Slobodan Milosevic of the former Yugoslavia, are not put to death.

Why isn’t life in prison sufficient in Bangladesh? Bulbul Hasham, another vocal protester in Jackson Heights, explains: “If the regime changes, if the government changes, there is always a fear in third-world countries that they can be freed and they can do the same killings and tortures again.” Hasham says that if there were laws and regulations in Bangladesh like there are in developed countries, as in the United States, he would be satisfied with life in prison. But, in Jackson Heights at least, Bangladeshis seem to have little faith in the government or legal system of their homeland. Many believe that they will be safe only if these war criminals are removed from the face of the earth. “We are Bangladeshis,” Ansari insists, “and as Bangladeshis, we want war criminals to hang.”

A front-end loader shakes a mouthful of uncleaned Christmas trees onto a field at Randall’s Island.

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PINE-SCENTED air fills your lungs from a hundred yards away. Where is this smell coming from three weeks after Christmas? Crossing the little bridge from Ward’s Island to Randall’s Island, it becomes immediately apparent: you have arrived at the Randall’s Island Christmas tree recycling site.

On a cold night in mid-January, a front-end loader works tirelessly between two huge piles of trees on either side of a large field. The height of a one-story building and half a block long, these piles of trees dwarf the loader and the attendant pickup trucks. One pile contains Christmas trees straight from your sidewalk, carried to Randall’s Island by specially appointed Department of Sanitation trucks. These trees come from all over the city to this island in the East River and are laden with the usual Christmas debris: tinsel, plastic, ties, ornaments, and a dash of regular street garbage.

The second mountain of trees is garbage free. To clean the dirty trees the front-end loader grabs a bucketful from the pile, drives into the middle of the field, raises its bucket in the air and rocks awkwardly back and forth until the entire load is strewn across the field. The loader repeats this step until the field is covered with a layer of debris and trees, trunks and all. Next a crew of pickers, still warm from waiting in the cabs of their trucks, descends on the field. All the foreign material is picked out by hand and thrown away. Finally, with a telephone pole clamped in its jaws, the front-end loader plows the cleaned trees into a giant mound at the edge of the field.

Randall’s Island is the central Christmas tree recycling site for the entire city of New York. According to the city’s Office of Public Affairs, approximately 135,000 trees are at Randall’s Island at any given time during the post-Christmas mulching season.

The cleaned trees are fed into a wood chipper. The mulch is then redistributed across the city to help trees, plants and flowers in the city’s parks. Mulch helps plants to retain moisture and insulates their roots. It also deters the growth of weeds, prevents soil compaction, and adds nutrients to the soil when it decomposes. Mulch is also given to community gardeners and volunteers to spread on street tree beds. Visitors to one of 35 Mulchfest sites (check the DSNY website or call 311 for details) can take home a biodegradable bag of mulch for his or her own tree or garden.

Little pine trees are grown on farms far from New York. They are transported to the city, hawked on the street by vendors, and bought by innumerable New Yorkers as Christmas trees. When the holidays are over, or the needles start to fall off, or you just want your living room back, Christmas trees are set out on the curb, more or less as trash. After all the collecting, cleaning, and mulching, the story’s real conclusion is much more elegant: little bits of pine trees in parks and tree beds all over the city.

Approximately 135,000 trees are at Randall’s Island during the season. These have yet to be cleaned.

A front-end loader, with a telephone pole clenched in its jaws, plows cleaned trees into a mountainous pile.

Mulched Christmas trees end up at city parks, like Brooklyn’s Prospect Park.

Tyler J. Kelley, Journalist

In Queens Bangladeshis Demand Capital Punishment

Where Do All the Christmas Trees Go?