Photo: Kazi Tahsin Agaz Apurbo

The year 2015 was marked with many significant incidents that changed Bangladesh's course of history forever. It is very unfortunate that many of these incidents are quite negative and depressing, however, there are positive and inspiring stories too. Let's recall some of the incidents that happened this year and shook the entire nation, sometimes with fear and sometimes with celebration.      

The Tainted Pahela Boishakh
Several sexual assaults on women during the celebration of Pahela Boishakh and law enforcers' blatant indifference to arrest the miscreants shocked the whole nation. Organised miscreants assaulted women visitors indiscriminately at several places in Shahbag, Dhaka University campus and Suhrawardi Uddyan which are the prime locations of this merry celebration to welcome the Bengali New Year. The youths who came forward to save the women were also assaulted and got injured by those rowdy criminals. Despite many witness accounts, law enforcers completely denied the fact and even brutally thrashed the protesters who demanded arrest of the assaulters.  

Can We Remember the Weeping Children?
This year, 2015 was heavy with the cry of our innocent children. Rajon, a 13 year old boy was flogged to death, Raquib a 12 year old boy was tortured brutally and killed in a gruesome manner, a 10 year old boy who used to work in a hotel was shot in cold blood as he demanded an increment, a 10 year old boy was bludgeoned in the head repeatedly and killed after a neighbour accused him of stealing fish…and the list goes on. Repetitive incidents of child abuse and such brutal murders have saddened and outraged the whole nation.
No Vat on Education

One of the remarkable incidents of 2015 was the non-violent and completely peaceful movements of private university students against the government's decision to impose value added tax on their university tuition fee. Government imposed 7.5 percent value added tax on the tuition fee of private university students which made this already expensive stream of education even costlier and unbearable for many of the students. However, after sustained protests, the government finally withdrew its decision and for the first time in its history, the nation witnessed how an entirely peaceful protest can achieve its objective of altering government's thoughtless decision.  

A Step Towards Progress
Bangladesh's continuous economic growth despite of thousands of obstacles got its recognition this year. After the annual revision of world's economies, The World Bank declared Bangladesh a lower middle income country as the Gross National Income Per Capita of the country rose from 1190 US$ to 1314 US$. This improvement shows that Bangladesh, previously listed as a low income country, has made considerable progress to reach its goal to be a middle income country by 2021.

Muzzling the Social Media
Bangladesh government banned all types of social media due to security reasons and this time it was for the lengthiest period. For twenty one days, Bangladeshis could not use any type of social media platforms such as Facebook, Viber, Whatsapp etc. which created outcry among many Bangladeshis especially the young generation. After repeated requests from different quarters, the government finally decided to open all these social media platforms.