Editorial Assistant, The Daily Star
“Surveillance is the business model of the internet”—Bruce Schneier, security expert and privacy specialist
"Ultimately, in the long run, whether we win or lose, we are not going to be on their side. So we might as well do what we have to do as well as we can."
On April 14, 2016, the European Union adopted the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) with the aim of giving control to people over their personal data, recognising certain “digital” rights that individuals are entitled to regarding how their personal data is collected and used.
Dr Md Shahjahan Mian, Professor of the Department of Bengali, Dhaka University talks to Shamsuddoza Sajen and Moyukh Mahtab about the importance of studying and preserving old Bengali manuscripts to write a comprehensive history of the Bengali speaking region.
Liz Chater, a family history researcher based in the UK, has been working on the Armenian communities in South Asia since 2010. Currently, she is working with the Armenian Church of the Holy Resurrection in Armanitola on the Bangladesh Armenian Heritage Project, which aims to "build the stories, starting from the ground up" of the Armenian communities of Bangladesh and India. In an interview over email with Moyukh Mahtab, she talks of her own heritage, which led her to her research interest, and of her past and present projects.
Sabrina Zarin, Barrister-at-Law, (Hon'ble Society or Lincoln's Inn, UK) and Advocate of the Supreme Court of Bangladesh, Partner in FM Associates, talks to The Daily Star's Moyukh Mahtab about needed reforms in sexual violence and harassment laws in Bangladesh and the importance of raising awareness, especially among children.
Apparently “inspired” by last year's safe road movement, the DMP has come up with yet another action plan to deal with Dhaka's anarchic—to put it mildly— traffic situation.
Naomi Burke-Shyne, Executive Director of Harm Reduction International, and international NGO “dedicated to reducing the negative health, social and legal impacts of drug use and drug policy”, talks to The Daily Star's Moyukh Mahtab (over e-mail) about the global failure of wars on drugs, and how a health-based approach to drug policy could save lives and promote the well-being of citizens.
Beginning October 1965 to mid-1966, at least half a million (over a million by some accounts) Indonesians were killed by the army and army-backed local civilian militias. Another million were incarcerated without charge.
PUBLISHED in 1748, Montesquieu's The Spirit of the Laws remains, after over 250 years, one of the seminal works of political theory. Among this Age of Enlightenment philosopher's preoccupations was the relationship between power and freedom, and how the distribution of power in a government can be the crucial factor between a state of liberty and one of despotism.
In the past week, a few interesting things happened. For one, a report by a New York-based research firm was published, which found that Bangladesh topped the list of countries with the quickest growth of ultra-wealthy individuals.
The theme for this year's International Literacy Day, “Literacy and Skills Development”, speaks of a pressing issue of our time, as the rate of job creation in the country struggles to keep pace with the number of people joining the workforce every year.
"These women are carrying on with their lives. The injury of what happened is coming up in different ways—it need not be something sensational like the understanding we have of the birangona. Otherwise we would never understand what happened to the birangonas in terms of their experiences of the war."
The enormous support that school and college students who had taken to the streets received,
Hopefully, the mass agitation will bring change. Hopefully, our leaders will feel the irony of the situation in which students have to take to the streets to ensure drivers have valid licences while law enforcers are seen going around vehicles driven by kids.
The irony of peaceful protesters being beaten up by thugs claiming to uphold the spirit of our liberation war, at a spot which commemorates our language movement protesters who were brutalised by the powers that were, cannot be lost on anyone.
On June 16, 1756, a young Siraj ud-Daulah led a force of some thirty thousand soldiers to attack Fort William in Calcutta, unhappy that despite his directives, the British were heavily reinforcing the fort and at the company's interference in internal politics of his province.
"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.”