Repeated instances of mob beatings of political detainees expose govt's failure to provide their safety
A Human Rights Watch (HRW) report has detailed the damning state of immigration detention centres in Malaysia that house thousands of refugees and asylum seekers, listing claims of human rights violations and abuse
Human-Kind is under attack. People of all races, colours, countries, religions and social classes stand on a common platform to face the massive onslaught of the coronavirus.
In a situation where the covid-19 virus has overwhelmed some of the world’s best resourced healthcare systems, Bangladesh—like other developing countries—must brace for the worst.
Does anyone know what had happened to Utpal Das? If you cannot remember who Utpal is, no one would blame you.
The Covid-19 pandemic has opened our eyes to many vulnerabilities. With home quarantine proving to be a successful strategy, we are finally catching up and practicing it. Bangladeshi narratives about home quarantine now discuss how home is the safest place to ensure sanitisation, hygiene and disinfection.
The tea workers of Shamshernagar Tea Garden in Kamalganj upazila, Moulvibazar, took matters into their own hands in defiance of the garden management and stopped work from March 27.
All around the world, the numbers are climbing. Each day registers thousands of new cases and lives lost. In Europe, now the epicenter of the pandemic, governments know that the worst is yet to come and are implementing increasingly restrictive measures to enforce social distancing and isolation.
On May 18, 2008, the High Court granted citizenship to the Biharis who were brought over to Bangladesh as minors, or were born after independence. This brought an end to their statelessness, and opened up prospects of education, employment and travel to a community that had been cooped up in camps and refused repatriation.
Two parties are widely blamed for the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingyas: the Myanmar army and Aung San Suu Kyi. They stand amid the embers and ashes of torched Rohingya homes, objects of a furious global condemnation.
Driving south from Cox's Bazar along the marine drive, it is impossible not to be struck by the beauty of the sea on the right and the hills on the left. But before long a few lost and disoriented-looking faces appear until eventually the highway is lined with thousands of them.
Endless streams of Rohingyas have crossed the Naf River into Bangladesh. The deaths of children at sea stand out most vividly. Rohingyas have left behind everything they had once known in the face of the Myanmar military's brutalities against their own people.
Discrimination is often the transference of moral degradation to others. The Maldives presents many examples of it in its treatment of migrant workers. Take Malé's old Sultan Park, now upgraded and renamed Rasrani Bageecha.
Of the nearly half a million Rohingya refugees who've fled across the border and have sought refuge in Bangladesh, women and girls are the most at risk, sleeping under open skies, roadsides, and forest areas with little or no protection.
Don't the pundits who make the decisions know that acknowledging them as refugees will accord them rights; foremost among them is the right to return. It also obligates the international community for “burden sharing”.
The goal in genocidal rape is not simply to hurt people or to have sex. The goal is Group Destruction. Sexual violence is not simply an auxiliary tool employed to advance this goal, but given the nature of rape and sexual torture, it is the ultimate weapon.
Media reports about the abuse of children tell us a chilling story that we have suddenly become a nation which doesn't value its children, which takes cruelty against them as a matter of routine, and which doesn't feel ashamed when a 5-year-old girl is raped in front of her parents.
Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi's speech last Tuesday had the potential to change the scenario of the ongoing Rohingya crisis and end the misery of the more than 400,000 refugees in Bangladesh.