Author: Asian Bangla

The latest incident of the Rohingya refugee influx into Bangladesh has produced a scenario which is different from earlier influxes in two aspects: one is humanitarian, which can be legally interpreted in various ways, from forced displacement to genocide. Killings, torture, rape, forced expulsion and starvation has driven nearly one million Rohingyas to take refuge in Bangladesh since August 2017. The second aspect is the extent of cruelty the Myanmar state has unleashed on a particular community by curtailing the minimum chances of their survival. This was evident when the Myanmar government blocked the activities of all United Nations (UN)…

 The council members sat grim faced in the chamber of the UN Security Council. On the screen in front of them was projected an image with the words: IRAQ: FAILING TO DISARM: Denial and Deception. Words like “accumulation of facts and disturbing patterns of behaviour” boomed in the chamber. The date was February 5, 2003. The speaker, US secretary of state General Colin Powell. Months before, the US had started to look for the casus belli, a justification of war, to invade Iraq and bring about a “regime change”, get rid of Saddam Hussein. Despite US efforts, western allies were…

Conversely, Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi, a former student of Sen at Delhi University, must have instructed her team of Burmese advisers on Rakhine, and their international allies, to treat genocide as a lack of development. There is, however, only one problem with Team Suu Kyi’s spin. The absence of (economic) development, or poverty, is not known to have led to either genocide or crimes against humanity. Typically, genocides are planned and carried out by well-fed and well-schooled individuals.  Hitler’s inner circle included Harvard or Hamburg-educated Nazis who wined and dined with the icons of Wall Street, for…

Access to drinking water and basic sanitation is a right and one of the sustainable development goals of the United Nations. It is a condition for human life. However, up totwo billion people on the planet do not have access to a safe source of water at home, and up to 2.3 billion people suffer from lack of sanitation. Approximately 260 million people-more than the entirepopulation of Brazil-must walk more than thirty minutes to gather water. Guaranteeing access to water is one of the main challenges of our time. Brazil has 12% of the planet’s fresh water-but, despite this fact,…

The national development discourse in Bangladesh often mistakenly considers graduating from the Least Developed Country (LDC) category and becoming a middle-income country (MIC) as interchangeable. Senior-level policymakers continue to express their aspiration for the country to join the middle-income group by 2021, which marks the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence. However, this status has been achieved when Bangladesh joined the lower-middle-income country category on July 1, 2015. Conversely, graduation from the LDC group is almost certain, but not until 2024, if the country meets all the technical requirements in the coming years. To strategise the country’s direction effectively, it is…

Twenty-nine years after serving jail, two convicts in a cattle smuggling case were declared innocent by the High Court today. Abdul Quader and Mofizur Rahman were freed from jail in 1989 after serving three years in jail for smuggling into cattle from India. Among them, Quader is still alive while Mofizur has already died. The duo hailed from Jessore. According to the case statement, the case was filed against the two with Sharsha Police Station in Jessore in 1986 on charge of illegally smuggling six cattleinto Bangladesh from India. The case was filed by Lance Nayekof the then Bangladesh Rifles (BDR) Amir…

Israel admitted for the first time Wednesday it was responsible for a top-secret 2007 air raid against a suspected Syrian nuclear reactor, a strike the intelligence minister says serves as a warning to Iran. Israel has long been assumed to have carried out the raid and had been named by other countries as being behind it, but it had never formally acknowledged the strike or divulged details. The admission along with the release of newly declassified material related to the raid comes as Israel intensifies its warnings over the presence of its main enemy Iran in neighbouring Syria. Israeli Prime…

Boko Haram militants freed scores of kidnapped Nigerian schoolgirls on Wednesday, but some of the released students said five of their schoolmates had died in captivity and another was still being held. The Islamist fighters, some of them shouting ‘God is greatest’, drove the students back into the northeast town of Dapchi in a line of trucks in the morning, dropped them off then left, witnesses told Reuters. “Five among us taken away were dead. One is still with them because she is a Christian,” one of the freed girls, Khadija Grema, told Reuters. Dapchi resident Muhammad Bursari said his…

A man being sought over the Austin parcel bombings blew himself up early Wednesday inside his car as authorities moved in to arrest him, police said. “The suspect is deceased,” Austin police chief Brian Manley told a news conference. Manley said the suspect is believed to be responsible for all five bomb explosions that have killed two and wounded several more and put people on edge in the Texas capital since 2 March. Police had traced the man’s car to a hotel outside Austin as authorities waited for tactical teams to arrive, the man started to drive away. As police…

A suicide bomber on Wednesday killed at least 26 people, many of them teenagers, in front of Kabul University, officials said, as Afghans took to the streets to celebrate the Persian new year holiday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the deadly attack — the fifth suicide bombing in the Afghan capital in recent weeks — but the Taliban denied involvement on Twitter. Another 18 people were wounded in the blast, interior ministry spokesman Nasrat Rahimi said, “all of them civilians”. A suicide attacker on foot detonated himself in front of a hospital, Rahimi said. The hospital is…