Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières
, by HUSSAIN Delwar
The general election in Bangladesh scheduled for 22 January 2007, already surrounded by bitter political dispute, has been thrown further into doubt by the declaration of a state of national emergency on 11 January. The country’s president, Iajuddin Ahmed, prepares to address the nation after (…)
, by ANAM Mahfuz
Most regrettably, the newly formed caretaker government headed by Dr. Fakruddin Ahmed seems to be headed in the direction of a confrontation with the independent media, both electronic and print. For the first time in 16 years this writer received a call from the press information officer (…)
Exiled Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen’s extension of her permission to stay on in India is about to expire. She likens her position to standing at a bus stop all her life.
“Well-behaved women rarely make history,” says a sticker pasted on Taslima Nasreen’s refrigerator door. But (…)
, by ANAM Mahfuz
In a move reminiscent of the autocratic era of General Ershad, Bangabhaban yesterday issues a verbal instruction through an unidentified official of the Press Information Department (PID) to the TV news channels and the press not to print any news, pictures and cartoons and editorials (…)
, by SEN Indrani
In a Muslim-majority country with more people than Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Lebanon, Israel and the Palestinian territories combined, democracy is dying a slow, tortured and obscure death.
Bangladesh, an impoverished South Asian nation that rarely breaks out of the “world briefs” sections (…)
, by SIDDIQUE Mohsin R.
Washington D.C.,
I think it was Lenin who had cautioned about the propensity of petty bourgeois political parties towards opportunism. Not that the progressives should avoid working with them, just that they should be alert! Awami League’s alliance with the Khilafat Majlish Party behind (…)
, by RAMAN J. Sri
January 10, 1972, was the day the founder of Bangladesh, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, returned from his exile abroad to his country after its liberation. January 10, 2007, is the day after a three-day “bundh” (blockade) of Dhaka, the country’s capital, by an opposition led by Mujib’s daughter, (…)
, by SOBHAN Rehman
The decision of the Grand Alliance to boycott and resist the holding of the January 22 elections to the Jatyo Sangshad has put the two alliances directly on the path of confrontation. This denouement conjures up images of two scorpions who when they fight precede their battle by a ritual (…)
, by SADIQUE Mahfuz
Mahfuz Sadique reports from Bangladesh, where the land can become a sea and the sea a wave.
‘There was something wrong with the pubali batash (north-easterly wind).’
Rustam Howlader tries to recreate in words and gestures exactly what went wrong on the evening of 19 September 2006. The (…)
, by KABIR Nurul
The way the Awami League defines secularism is misleading in the first place, which poses a major impediment to secular growth of the society, state and political culture. The party claims that ’secularism is not non-religion’Š Secularism is definitely non-religion when it comes to running (…)
, by ANAM Mahfuz, MOHAIEMEN Naeem, SALEH Asif
AL SHOOTS ITSELF IN THE FOOT
The Daily Star, December 27, 2006
by Mahfuz Anam
What a tribute the Awami League has paid to the martyrs of the Liberation War in the very month of our victory. There was perhaps no better way to ’honour’ the intellectuals who were brutally killed on 13th of (…)
, by New Age (Bangladesh), The Daily Star
Editorial
WHAT A PACT WITH KHELAFAT-E-MAJLISH!
How credible is AL’s denial
The Daily Star, December 25, 2006
We are dumbfounded by the once-anointed secular party the Awami League’s U-turn into an inexplicable marriage of expediency signed up with Khelafat-e-Majlish, the ultra (…)
, by New Age (Bangladesh)
Staff Correspondent
Women leaders and right activists have blasted and condemned the reported agreement signed by Awami League with Khelafat Majlish on legalising fatwa if voted to power.
They said such a move is a suicidal one and a big assault on the ongoing movement against (…)
, by New Age (Bangladesh), The Daily Star
Editorial
THE CURSE OF ILLEGAL FATWA: WHERE IS THE RULE OF LAW?
The Daily Star
December 19, 2006
According to a press report, for a so-called ’fatwa’ issued by a local mufti in a village in Sunamganj of Sylhet, a girl was to be caned until she bled. This was a punishment to be meted (…)
, by BRADUL AHSAN Syed
The rise of Bengali nationalism throughout the decade of the 1960s, precipitated as it had been by the language movement of 1952 and again by the clear attempts to strip away at the majority status of Bengalis in the Pakistan state structure, was clearly based on the principle of (…)
, by HOSSAIN Maneeza
Located in a hidden corner of South Asia, poised to become either a thriving democracy or a failed state, Bangladesh has the potential of becoming a major front in the global confrontation with radical Islamism. If democracy is preserved and enhanced, Bangladesh can serve as a model of how (…)
, by MOHAIEMEN Naeem
“Why can small numbers excite rage? They represent a tiny obstacle between majority and totality or total purity. The smaller the number and the weaker the minority, the deeper the rage about its capacity to make a majority feel like a mere majority.” [Arjun Appadurai, Fear of Small (…)
, by SRI RAMAN J.
It is incredible, the way the world’s sole superpower can dictate election issues everywhere. Post-9/11, “terrorism” has become a major if not the most important political issue, not only in the US but in several countries, including in South Asia. Bangladesh provides an immediate (…)
, by CPI (ML) Liberation
Not a few eyebrows were raised when the 2006 Nobel Prize for peace went to microcredit messiah Muhammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank (GB) rather than to the more likely candidates like the parties to the agreement between the Indonesian government and rebels in the Aceh region. But the choice (…)
, by BELLO Walden
The awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize to Muhammad Yunus, regarded as the father of microcredit, comes at a time when microcredit has become something like a religion to many of the powerful, rich and famous. Hillary Clinton regularly speaks about going to Bangladesh, Yunus’s homeland, and being (…)
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