Amidst all the commotion at Jahangirnagar University, this issue of the Star Weekend attempts to discern the trajectory of the disaster by sieving it through a chronological timeline, collated from reports published in The Daily Star and other major national newspapers. We start from the reappointment of the VC and take the reader through all that has happened till date, all that has brought this renowned academic institution to a standstill.This timeline is certainly not exhaustive. What it demands of the reader is discernment, analysis and conscious awareness of the ever-persistent, wider issues that these events represent. Where does it all begin, and where does it end? Why should a public university be in such a place to begin with?
Ashraful Islam, a retired government official, built a two-story house in Dhaka’s east Jurain neighbourhood in 1996. He spent his forty years of savings and even exhausted his wife’s fixed deposit to build this dwelling.
Burimari union, a border village nestling in a nook of the Indian district of Cooch Behar, is a village of stones and stone-crushing yards.
Along the banks of the Sitalakhya river in Narayanganj, some 20 villages in Sonargaon, Rupganj, and Siddhirganj in particular, women villagers starch yarn in lime and toasted rice to make warp yarn—the vertical, lengthwise weaves that make up a fabric.
The latest, but probably not the last, victim of this culture of impunity is Abrar Fahad, a second-year student of the electrical and electronic engineering department of Bangladesh University of Science and Technology (BUET).
For months, our public universities have been erupting in protests, with students demanding some very basic things: vice-chancellors who are not corrupt, teachers who cannot bribe their way into the university, student political wings who do not extort or oppress (or murder), effective sexual harassment policies, and freedom of expression.
The public universities, old and new, are in quite a sorry state. It seems that these institutions exist only to offer support for the government’s misrule.
The story of Teesta begins 23,386 ft above the sea-level at the Pahunri glacier nestled between the Tibet and India border.
“They thought I was dead,” Abdul tells Star Weekend. “I was stuck in a jail in Libya for over four months and I never had the chance to contact my family. They thought I had fallen from the boat [on the way to Italy from Libya] into the dangerous sea and disappeared forever,” he says.
Renu Begum* can remember little of the life she had before she moved to Dhaka and joined a garments factory at the age of 12. Her father, a fisherman, had moved to Dhaka with his family in the early 90s. But there was not much an unskilled fisherman from the village could do in a city teeming with unemployed labourers who, like him, had migrated to the capital, dreaming of untold opportunities.
According to a Global Innovation Index report published in July 2018, Bangladesh is ranked 116th out of 126 nations, the lowest score in Asia—below India ranked 57th and Pakistan ranked 109th.
More than 700,000 Rohingyas, who fled the genocidal military operations of Myanmar a year ago, are still living under constant threat of attack. Sheltered in 30 refugee camps in different parts of Cox's Bazar district, they are not vulnerable to Myanmar army's raid anymore. This time, they are being threatened by their own people.
The contract made between tea workers and tea garden owners expired last year. They spent the last two years fighting for their minimum wage to be increased from Tk 85 per day to Tk 230. This would have brought their monthly cash wages from Tk 2,550 to TK 6,900, which is approximately equivalent to the minimum wages of the ready-made garments sector.
Sitting inside her hut in Alipur char in lower Assam, India, 37-year-old Delowara Begum tries to explain where she is from. “I have always lived here,” she says in a dialect of Bangla. “Sometimes there, a few kilometres away, when the river floods and my hut sinks. But never too far from here.”
On the morning of July 26, 2018 the “bihari” camps in Mirpur sectors 10 and 11 were gripped by panic as they waited with bated breath for a bulldozer to drive up their alleyways and tear down their homes.
Manisha Chakma met Pinky for the first time at a tea stall located right outside her college. Like Manisha, Pinky too had left her hometown and arrived in Dhaka in search of a good job and decent life. After a brief chat, numbers were exchanged and over the next few days, Pinky, in Manisha's words, would go on to become a 'hi-hello' friend.
Mother, seek mercy for me from the Prime Minister. Tell her that I am a regular student and that I am not involved with any political party.
“Where is your warrant?” is the first question that people ask when the police knocks on the door. That is the question being asked by a daughter in a video that recently went viral on Facebook, when the police came to apprehend her father. The police did not heed her plea and pushed right past in.
