brad brace contemporary culture scrapbook

Syed Kamal—President, Stateless People of Bangladesh, an organization that assists stateless Biharis in Pakistan trying to get citizenship in Pakistan or Bangladesh

When Bangladesh gained independence from Pakistan, the Bihari minority group wanted Pakistani citizenship. There are as many as 500,000 stateless Biharis. More than thirty years later, neither Pakistan nor Bangladesh will recognize them as citizens. This often means they can’t get jobs, travel, or access education. Syed Kamal is working to get citizenship and legal recognition for this community.

As many as 80,000 people have been evacuated to cyclone shelters in Bangladesh as the tropical storm blew in towards the low-lying South Asian country. About 100 fisherman and up to 20 boats have been reported missing as rain and strong winds swept Bangladesh’s coast. The body of one man had already been washed ashore. Tropical storms and cyclones kill hundreds of Bangladeshis every year. One of the worst cyclones to hit the country killed 138,000 people in 1991.

(London, May 11, 2007) – Bangladesh’s military-backed care-taker government should immediately release Tasneem Khalil, an investigative journalist and part-time Human Rights Watch consultant, who was detained by security forces late last night, Human Rights Watch said today.

Khalil, 26, is a journalist for the Dhaka-based Daily Star newspaper who conducts research for Human Rights Watch. According to his wife, four men in plainclothes who identified themselves as from the “joint task force”came to the door after midnight on May 11 in Dhaka, demanding to take Khalil away. They said they were placing Khalil “under arrest” and taking him to the Sangsad Bhavan army camp, outside the parliament building in Dhaka.  
 
“We are extremely concerned about Tasneem Khalil’s safety,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “He has been a prominent voice in Bangladesh for human rights and the rule of law, and has been threatened because of that.”  
 
The men did not offer a warrant or any charges, Khalil’s wife said. Using threatening language, they searched the house and confiscated Khalil’s passport, two computers, documents, and two mobile phones.  
 
“It is an emergency; we can arrest anyone,” one of the men said. Another asked if Khalil suffered from any particular physical ailments. They drove Khalil off in a Pajero jeep.  
 
Khalil is a noted investigative journalist who has published several controversial exposes of official corruption and abuse, particularly by security forces. He assisted Human Rights Watch in research for a 2006 report about torture and extrajudicial killings by Bangladesh security forces.  
 
According to Bangladeshi human rights groups, the army has detained tens of thousands of people since a state of emergency was declared on January 11, 2007. A number of those detained are picked up in the middle of the night, as Khalil was, and then tortured.  
 
In Bangladesh, security forces have long been implicated in torture and extrajudicial killings. The killings have been attributed to members of the army, the police, and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism force. The Human Rights Watch report Khalil worked on, “Judge, Jury, and Executioner: Torture and Extrajudicial Killings by Bangladesh’s Elite Security Force,” focused on abuses by the RAB.  
 
Killings in custody remain a persistent problem in Bangladesh. To date, no military personnel are known to have been held criminally responsible for any of the deaths.  
 
Khalil was called in for questioning by military intelligence last week, apparently as part of the military’s campaign to intimidate independent journalists ahead of May 10, 2007, when the army’s three-month legal mandate for ruling under a state of emergency came to an end.  
 
“The Bangladeshi military should be on notice that its actions are being closely watched by the outside world,” Adams said. “Any harm to Tasneem Khalil will seriously undermine the army’s claims to legitimacy and upholding the rule of law.”

Dhaka, Bangladesh – The United Arab Emirates (UAE) government has decided to compensate the Bangladeshi children used as camel jockeys in their country. The children, some as young as 4-years-old were taken from Bangladesh, Pakistan and other countries to serve as riders on camels during races. It was a sport suited for adult riders but dangerous for the often terrified youngsters who were forced to ride atop galloping camels.

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was singed to this effect between Bangladesh and the UAE governments on April 25, according to an official statement distributed in the capital, Dhaka on Saturday.

Bangladesh Home Secretary Abdul Karim and the Home Secretary of UAE signed the MoU on behalf of their respective sides.

Under the MoU, Bangladeshi children who were used as camel jockeys and who were injured from Jan. 1, 1993 to the subsequent period will be compensated $1,000 each.

The amount of compensation may be extended up to $5,000 for the injured children used as camel jockeys, the statement adds.

A total of 200 such children have already returned to Bangladesh and the UAE government provided around $1,500 to each of them for their rehabilitation.

Several small bombs have exploded at three railway stations in Bangladesh slightly injuring one person.
 
The bombs detonated at stations in Dhaka, the capital, in Sylhet, the country’s northern city and in Chittagong, the southeastern port, at about 7.30am local time (0130 GMT) on Tuesday.

Officials found metal plates, signed by “Zadid [new] al-Qaeda,” at two of the stations.
 
“The bombs were kept in cotton sacks, along with the metal sheets. They exploded before anyone detected them,” Abu Zafar Alam, a police inspector at Kamalapur, Bangladesh’s largest railway terminal, said.

The only person injuried was a rickshaw-puller who tried to open one of the sacks, causing it to explode.
 
Motive unclear
 
The metal plates referred to an attack on the minority Ahmadiyas – a Muslim sect frequently targeted by radical groups within the majority Sunni Muslim community.
 
Ahmadiyas differ from mainstream Islam by not believing that Mohammad was the last prophet.
 
The messages also issued threats against Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) in Bangladesh.
 
“If Hazrat [Prophet] Mohammad is not declared the superman of the world by May 10, all non-governmental organisations will be blown up,” the slogans on the metal sheets read in the Bengali language.
 
Police did not immediately confirm who were behind the blasts and no arrests have been made.
 
“We are investigating whether it is a new group [responsible for the bomb attacks],” said Nur Mohammed, national police chief.

Police said security across the country had been tightened after the bomb blasts.
 
In August 2005, three people were killed in a series of bomb blasts in towns and cities across Bangladesh organised by Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, a banned group seeking the imposition of strict Islamic law.
 
Further bomb attacks by Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen and Jagrata Muslim Janata Bangladesh, another banned group, were staged through the rest of 2005, killing at least 30 people.
 
Six leaders from the two organisations were hanged in March after being convicted of the murder of two judges who died in the bomb attacks.
 
A state of emergency in Bangladesh has been in effect since January, when political violence forced the army-backed interim government to suspend a national election.

It’s raining money in Bangladesh as businessmen with political links and suspected of money laundering depositing an equivalent of $47 million with Bangladesh Bank (BB), the country’s central bank.

Amid a drive to nab those involved in illegal money transfers, the government hopes to recover Taka 30 billion (approximately $500 million), media reports said Saturday.

It has improved the foreign borrowing status of the impoverished nation, categorised as least developed country (LDC). The borrowings have come down from Taka 4.7 billion to Taka 4.3 billion as on last Monday, according to BB sources.

At least one of the seven businessmen involved has close links with former prime minister Khaleda Zia’s jailed politician son Tareq Rahman. The two are business partners, the Daily Star said.

The money deposited in two tranches of Taka 2.3 billion and Taka 40 million is, however, in local currency. But the government is confident of securing deposits in dollars, the newspaper said.

This is a ‘first’ for the nation that is rated high on the chart of corrupt nations by Transparency International and other watchdog bodies. Media reports say that the interim government’s drive against crime and corruption is bearing fruit.

Of the seven businessmen, who deposited the money through pay orders, names of three are known. They are Anis Ahmed Gorki of MGH Group, business partner of Tareq Rahman, Nader Khan, details about whom were not available, and Salman Ispahani of the Ispahani Group, who has been into tea cultivation and marketing before Bangladesh declared independence. However, Ispahani told The Daily Star that he had not deposited any money with the BB.

Gorki was earlier arrested and subsequently released upon his promise to cooperate in refunding the ill-gotten money.

A large portion of the money recovered is supposed to be from a single deal by a consortium of eight Bangladeshi businessmen purchasing 17 tea gardens from a British company for Taka 3.8 billion. The actual price was never disclosed and the payment was made through an unofficial channel illegally.

‘This recovery is almost nothing. But this proves the level of corruption in Bangladesh during the alliance government’s rule,’ the newspaper quoted an unnamed official as saying.

The money was coughed up after investigations and raids conducted by ‘joint forces’, a combination of the police, revenue authorities, army and the paramiltiary Rapid Action Battalion.

The Bangladesh government lacks personnel with expertise in unearthing economic crimes of this nature and dimension. When the joint forces launched the anti-corruption drive in February, the US and Britain offered expertise in investigating international financial crimes, said a source. The government has not yet taken that help and the anti-corruption drive has slowed down, the source added.

DHAKA, April 27 – Six people were killed and 50 injured in a storm that lashed Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, police and firefighters said on Friday.

“The victims died in a house collapse and also being hit by flying debris when a storm packing winds up to 85 kmh (53 mph) swept through the capital on Thursday night,” a fire service official said.

Several power, telecom poles and billboards collapsed and trees were uprooted blocking streets.

Storms kill many people, destroy hundreds of houses and damage crops in Bangladesh every year between March and May

Bangladesh’s army-backed interim government banned 10 foreign satellite television channels, saying they were violating laws governing public morality. The Information Ministry said in a statement that local cable operators had been told to stop airing the channels because their programmes were “contrary to clause 19 of the Cable TV Network Operation Act, 2006.” It didn’t give more details.

A cable TV operator said the law prohibited broadcasters from showing vulgar and obscene programmes or those seen as violating local customs and sensibilities. The banned channels are – Channel V, AXN, Fashion TV, Zoom, Ren TV, Gcop, Music India, Cine Max, The Music and Zee Trendz.

Bangladesh’s interim administration has launched a crackdown on corruption and vowed to improve law and order, since it took office after emergency was imposed in January, media reports said.