Pick of the week
Brazen Violations, Bizarre Charges
It was quite a sight. Viewers of television channels and readers of the dailies that carried the images of incarcerated journalist Rozina Islam were baffled at the scale of security measures taken by the state.
Your land is my land: Environmental injustice in Bandarban
Land is the closest thing that we know. We cultivate it, build on it, transform it to meet our needs, commercialise it to maximise economic gain, and derive our identities from its widely varying geographic characters.
The myth of martial race: Seared into a schoolboy's memory!
The years 1968-1969, were a tumultuous period in the political history of the state of Pakistan. My father a Bengali civil servant from East Pakistan, was an official in the then central government in Islamabad.
Hefajat’s Mayhem / Commentary by Mahfuz Anam: A wake-up call for AL, for us all
The ostensible reason for the recent protests was Indian PM Narendra Modi’s latest visit. The real reason was to signal that Hefajat-e-Islam (HI) under its new leadership was not the same party as it was under its former chief Shah Ahmad Shafi and his immediate followers and to announce that HI was ready to emerge as a new political force under the guise of protecting the majority faith.
The journey towards fighting corruption
Debates on any global index and ranking where a country does not perform well are common almost everywhere.
Land grab and resistance in the Chimbuk hills
The Mro community of the Chimbuk hills is passing days in great uncertainty.
The burning man, and our national addiction to violence
Barely a month had passed since one of us wrote about rape, scopophilia and collective rage, and barely a day since we began an intergenerational dialogue on gender, rage and violence, full of hope at the emergence of passionate and resourceful young allies, when the world dutifully punched back.
Contra capital punishment even in this ‘rapedemic’
The demand was predictable. Given the outrage that has been generated by the vicious acts of assault and dehumanisation that have been inflicted on women over some time, it even appears justifiable.
Pratik's death and irregularities in the university recruitment process
The recent case of suicide of Taifur Rahman Pratik, a student of Genetics Engineering and Biotechnology Department at Shahjalal University of Science and Technology (SUST), because of the alleged injustices done to him by his teachers,
Loan default increases because of bad management
The new finance minister, Mustafa Kamal, has vowed to address the longstanding concerns regarding increasing non-performing loans in banks. Khondkar Ibrahim Khaled, a noted banker and former deputy governor of Bangladesh Bank, talks to The Daily Star's Nazmul Ahasan about the issue.
'Real journalists act as agents of people, not power'
John Pilger, as foreign correspondent, covered Bangladesh's Liberation War. His front-page report 'Death of a Nation' alerted the world to the life-and-death struggle of the Bengali people. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Pilger talks about his coverage of Bangladesh's Liberation War, the state of journalism today, and the current political shifts happening in the West.
Hefazat leader's plea: More than just a statement
Shah Ahmed Shafi, head of the Hefazat-e-Islam (HI), is in the news again. In a sermon delivered to the parents of the Darul-Ulum
'Strengthening democratic norms and culture is of vital importance'
Prof Syed Manzoorul Islam, retired professor of Dhaka University, who currently teaches at ULAB, shares his impressions about the election with The Daily Star's Aasha Mehreen Amin.
What do the manifestos contain?
Barring any last-minute glitch, in less than a week the nation goes to the polls. As an integral part of the electoral process political parties and alliances that entered the foray have issued their manifestos.
Manifestos in the era of alt-facts—the case of education
In his famous novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel García Márquez, the Nobel Prize winning Colombian writer, writes about
Routine gesture or is there more to it?
The statement of the heads of the diplomatic missions of the European Union, Norway and Sweden in Dhaka on Monday calling to “ensure a genuine, credible, inclusive and transparent electoral process” in the upcoming parliamentary election warrants our attention.
Is housing for the urban poor a mere dream?
One of the most iconic public housing projects of the 20th-century was built in St Louis, Missouri, in the early 1950s, during a time of post-war optimism and construction boom in America. The Pruitt-Igoe housing project consisted of 33-housing blocks, each 11-storey high, and was arranged across a 57-acre site in the poverty-stricken DeSoto-Carr neighbourhood. Upon completion, the project was seen as an answer to the urgent problem of housing the urban poor.
Are enforcers of law and dispensers of justice beyond accountability?
Rule of law as a principle of governance involves that all persons, institutions and entities, public or private, including the state itself is
