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.
Well done, Sir!
There are iconic pictures that sometimes capture an age, define a moment in history, exemplify beauty, tragedy, or joy, in ways otherwise impossible to evoke. Who can forget the naked, screaming Vietnamese girl fleeing the napalm attack on her village in 1972; the Chinese man standing in lonely defiance in front of a column of tanks at the Tiananmen Square in 1989; the Times Square kiss; or the raising of the US flag at Iwo Jima, heralding the end of WWII?
The perils of a city divided
"We want to get into power—why? What are the problems we are going to solve? What we want to attack is inequality, violence and corruption.”
Prioritising effective social safety net projects
The idea of the universal pension scheme is new, but it's just a good idea. With our bureaucratic inefficiency, it's highly unlikely that we would be able to make headway in this regard in the near future.
Of Akram, accountability, Joseph and justice
The government of Bangladesh has declared a war on narcotics. It has proclaimed its intent to uproot the scourge of drugs from the land. “None will be spared”, came the stern warning from the authorities. Rapid Action Battalion, the elite law enforcement agency (LEA), swung into action from the first day of the holy month of Ramadan. Other agencies, including the police, were not to be left behind.
Why Dhaka may disappear one day, like Mohenjo Daro
This was Samayeen Cooper's maiden visit to the country of his grandparents, from his mother's side. He quickly glanced at his watch: 5:37 PM local time, December 14, 2044!
Palestine: The Great Betrayal
When it comes to Palestine and the plight of Palestinians, everything is generally inverted.
Time to talk about teenage suicide
The curse of growing up with literature is that you find something to romanticise about even in the saddest human experience.
An anatomy of 'jobless growth' in Bangladesh
According to the official statistics, between 2013 and 2016-17, on average, gross domestic product (GDP) in Bangladesh grew annually by 6.6 percent, and there has been a net increase of 2.8 million new jobs on top of the 60.7 million jobs that existed in the economy in 2013.
Surviving in a narrowing space
It is hardly a new phenomenon to see how governments, especially in South Asia, claiming to be democratic to suit their convenience, become anything but that when it comes to dissenting views. Curbing press freedom, in particular, will always become the target for governments that have succumbed to insecurities of their own creation. Corruption of leaders or their cronies seems to be the topmost reason for state paranoia of the media which is seen as a thorn in the flesh rather than an essential component of democratic maturity.
