Unheard Voices

Update: As HuT is again in the news today bringing out another big procession defying emergency for a ban on Prothom Alo related publications for the cartoongate issue, we I decided revisit this organization — the same group was instrumental against Dr. Yunus speaking in Dhaka University recently. New Age has brought out a timely editorial titled “Govt should restrain Islamists”. It says:

the military-driven government of Fakhruddin Ahmed, which promised the nation that it would create an environment for improving upon democratic practices, is faced with a serious test: It has to decide, and that too immediately, before Thursday, whether to stand by the Islamist political groups out to advance its undemocratic ideals or not. We only hope that the government would neither entertain the Islamist groups’ demand to shut down Prothom Alo nor allow them to attack its offices. The incumbents should restrain the Islamists not out of gratitude to Prothom Alo and its sister concerns for their collaboration with the government in most of its deeds and misdeeds since, and including, the promulgation of emergency, but on the basis of a major democratic principle that allows dissenting views to be expressed unhindered

Who are these folks and how are they recruiting so rapidly in universities? We explored it last March. Time to revisit it again. At the discussion in March, it came out that it was important to confront them on an intellectual level. Disenchanted with the status quo, as more and more young folks are looking for alternatives, they are an easy alternative as they represent aparently a more balanced and “polished” view on theocracy. But as the New Age editorial states that the root problem with these theocratic views is that they have no room for dissenting opinions as plainly is obvious from the way they are trying to get the prothom alo publications banned.

Take a look at the photos by Amirul Rajiv who has recently done a photoblog recently on e-bangladesh on the recent movement. These are not the typical faces you see in these protests. These are young folks wearing T-shirts that blazes “Khilafah” in English — clearly aiming to attract the young, educated bunch. Underestimating them would be a mistake.

Original entry published: March 2nd, 07
Since the issue of Hizbut Tahir, who was pivotal against Yunus in DU, was brought up, perhaps its time to visit the rise of HuT in Bangladeshi universities. The linked article below is worth reading to explore this rise.

What’s their approach?

Though, the political ideology they represent is radical in terms of its values and implementation, the approach they have taken is least to say modern, and even appealing to the moderate Muslim, university crowd. Engaging in dialogue with both general students and opposite camps on previously taboo issues among Islamists through numerous seminars, discussion sessions and study circles, they are tactfully using the same political tools that previously worked so well for leftist student bodies during their heydays. The topics covered include ‘Existence of God’, ‘Blind faith of Atheism’ and ‘Cloning’.

How
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thanks to shonpapri for providing this eye witness account of the evening at the Asia Society in New York.

About 50 AL activists outside shouting for SH’s release. They clench
their fists and shout Joy Bangla each time someone photographs them.

Interestingly no BNP. Mainly professional New York based
professional crowd inside event itself.

Asia Society President (Visakha Desai): “BD is lucky to have you at
this critical juncture. People don’t realize that BD is doing so much
better than other countries in its neighbourhood … Nepal, Myanmar
and Pakistan …They don’t realize that you came in legally as
permitted by the constitution”. She also points out that he is the
second VIP to visit in Asia Society in a couple of days, the other
being Thailand’s leader.
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I am actually feeling like being settled in this foreign land after living here for three and half years now just only from last weekend. i have started saying this to my friends as well. i always see my NRB friends thinking about how to do something more for the country they left years back, never know when they will go back or whether they will go back at all. they try to be part of bangladeshi charities, cultural organisations instead and they religously read bangladeshi newspapers, watch bangladeshi tv news and generally they do blogging, some in bangla some in english with the hope of having some positive impact (i know that’s a relative term, ofcourse!!!) on whatever is happening in their home country.

i never felt interested in doing all these as i always knew i just came here for few years. I know when i’ll go back , everything was very planned for me. actually i sometimes felt pitty for them thinking most of these people even do not know the current bangaldesh very well and they actually are living in a fantasy world thinking they can bring changes from thousands miles away when they even sometimes don’t realise the ground situation in bangladesh is actually not as grave as they are trying to portray in their weekly deshi addas or in their writings.

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From NiRbashito

Please check out the campaign “One Laptop Per Child — XO Giving” at www.laptop.org or www.xogiving.org

The possible issues for discussion are:

i) Can/should NRB’s join/support this campaign?

ii) I see the keyboard accommodates a number of languages, but maybe not Bangla: can our hackers take a shot and make it easily portable BD? After all, it’s based on open source.

iii) In BD, this laptop may serve not so affluent adults esp in remote areas just as well as their children — thus rendering Dr. M. Yunus’s so-called “pipedream” one step closer to reality!

Thank you for your kind attention.

Anyone championing military rule in Bangladesh should recognize that there is not a single example in the world of a country that has fared better in a military rule. Burma is a prime example of how a country with immense potential was ruined thanks to a few greedy generals

CHRONOLOGY-45 years of resistance and repression in Myanmar
Wed Sep 26, 2007 6:22am EDT
Sept 26 (Reuters) - Myanmar soldiers and police have cracked down hard on the biggest protests against military rule in 20 years, sealing off the Shwedagon Pagoda, firing tear gas and arresting up to 200 monks on Wednesday.

Here is a timeline of the military’s efforts to control the former Burma since it seized power in a coup 45 years ago.

* March 1962: Army commander General Ne Win seizes power, ousting three-time Prime Minister U Nu.

* March 1988: A fight between students and locals in a Yangon tea shop escalates into demonstrations in which dozens of students are killed by riot police and troops.
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Bangladesh has avoided the top 10 for the first time in 6 years and is not perceived to be one of the ten most corrupt countries in the world. Bangladesh’s ranking has improved and its better than 13 countries. However, the CPI score remained at 2.0 like last year. In effect, this means that the perception about Bangladesh’s corruption has not really improved. Only other countries have fared worse. Burma was ranked the worst.

Western governments have accused Burma’s junta — which seized power in 1988 — of turning what was once a jewel of Southeast Asia into one of its most miserable places through repression, mismanagement and corruption.

Burma’s business elite thrive by serving the generals, while many in the country go without regular food and electricity, the top U.S. diplomat in Burma, Shari Villarosa, told reporters earlier this year.

Details at BBC

the full list here

Fascinating article in today’s NYT, which can be summed up in a single line: India is outsourcing outsourcing.

Key quote:
One of the constants of the global economy has been companies moving their tasks — and jobs — to India. But rising wages and a stronger currency here, demands for workers who speak languages other than English, and competition from countries looking to emulate India’s success as a back office — including China, Morocco and Mexico — are challenging that model.

There are at least a dozen countries mentioned in this article - China, Morocco, Mexico, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Portugal, Romania, Saudi Arabia, Czech Republic, Thailand, Poland, Philippines. All of them are getting in on the back-office outsourcing game. And yet, there is no mention of Bangladesh. You would think that there would be the minimum IT/language competencies in Bangladesh to claim a slice of this outsourcing pie. But it doesn’t appear to be the case, at least from this article. This, in and of itself, deserves a post asking just where our political/economic leadership has failed that we must struggle to attract investment and jobs against the likes of Romania and Morocco. Where are they today, those cultural ‘leaders’ and political panderers who used to beat the jingoistic drum of Shorbo-starey bangla chai and who in the process denied entire generations of young Bangladeshis the access to English which would have allowed them to compete on a level playing field?

With the bottlenecks that India is running up against, any nation that shows initiative and provides the environment for the outsourcing business can expect to be richly rewarded. And yet, as ever our bosses are asleep at the wheel. 30 years after the garments industry took off, how far up the value ladder have we been able to climb?

Perhaps the rest of my days will be spent in this deep agony. Because, that time has come in my life— the time of old age when Shamsur Rahman began to regret everything. We will not live to see a good time. At the time of January 11, I dreamed that such a time would really come to this country. But, what was supposed to happen, and now what is happening? Why couldn’t I bring those words out of the deepest provinces of my heart: please don’t go, stay with us, this country will have its time as well.
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Via AFP

Clashes as Islamic protesters defy Bangladesh emergency

Street clashes broke out in Bangladesh Friday as Islamic activists defied emergency rule to protest over the publication in a major newspaper of a cartoon deemed offensive to Muslims.

Thousands of protesters joined the rally in the centre of the capital Dhaka, an AFP photographer at the scene said, even though demonstrations are strictly prohibited under the country’s eight-month-old state of emergency.

Police baton-charged some of the activists as they tried to break through barricades put up to prevent them reaching the offices of Prothom Alo, the newspaper that published the cartoon and Bangladesh’s biggest daily paper.

Demonstrators chanted slogans demanding the execution of newspaper editor Matiur Rahman and burned effigies of him and copies of the Bengali-language daily.

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Sent by RK

Given the furore raised by the Mullahs about the Muhammad Biral (Cat) joke and the subsequent arrest of the cartoonist by the bangladesh Govt and abject grovelling by the Prothom Alo (leading Bengali newspaper) Management by apologizing in writing and sacking the Magazine sub-editor responsible for publishing the joke!

It is interesting to see that the Mullahs and their student arm themselves published a similar joke a few years ago in one of their publications. the Prothom Alo joke is at the bottom

A joke published in Islami Chatra Shibir*’s Magazine

November 1998 Edition Page 87

Under Children’s Voices

Courtesy of Somewhere in Blog
See details:
http://www.somewhereinblog.net/blog/sujonmcblog/28732243

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I’m sure most readers of UV are already familiar with the events of the last few days involving expatriate Bangladeshi workers. A small recap:

15th September AFP:

Malaysian immigration authorities have established a makeshift camp in the car park of Kuala Lumpur’s airport for foreign workers waiting to be collected by their agents, a report said Sunday.

Immigration Department chief Wahid Don said that corralling the workers in the car park prevented them loitering in the main airport buildings and creating an “unpleasant” situation for other travellers.

“We can’t have them running around the airport and congesting the premises,” he told the Sunday Star newspaper.”

(Frankly I personally don’t like the “chief’s” tone, but am willing to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps his sympathy isn’t best conveyed in print.)
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Are we seeing a Bangladesh version of Dutch cartoon fiasco? Recently a cartoon at weekly Alpin magazine of Daily Prothom-Alo raised protests among the bigots and Muslim fundamentalists of Bangladesh.

Daily prothom Alo swiftly withdrew the issue and apologized for the cartoon. I am not sure whether that was needed, but this should have been enough for those who may have been offended.

However an alarming news just came . Bangladesh Government has arrested the cartoonist Mr Arifur Rahman.

This arrest raises serious concern about continued patronization of the religious zealots, fundamentalists and bigots by the successive governments in Bangladesh.

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New piece published in DS that actually documents a lot of the recent developments:

Jamaat is one of the shrewdest operators in our political space. They are true survivors. They joined hands with the Pakistan army in 1971, and they have given support to other autocratic, anti-people forces since then. But every time, when that force has fallen from power, Jamaat has come out unscathed and smelling like rose water. Even though they were the primary minority partner in the last regime, Jamaat once again stands untouched.

More here

(This is a reworked version of an earlier article)

The classic test of whether you’re an optimist or a pessimist is to look at a glass of water, and say whether you think it’s half full or half empty. But what do you call yourself when your natural reaction is to want to pour out the water, which is probably poisoned anyway, and hurl the glass against the wall?

When you survey the state of the world we’ve brought upon ourselves, it’s difficult to conceive of any other reaction. Switch on the news and what do you see? Iraq spinning out of control, and now mired in anarchy, Palestine bruised and beaten, while Iran is now under threat from a bunch of imperialist psychopaths disguised as world leaders, driven by a military-industrial complex gone berserk, and aided and abetted as ever by the supine international media. And all this against the backdrop of a planet slowly heating up around us, destined one day to throw its hands in the air and eject completely this impertinent species called the human race which has so abused its hospitality.

Depressed by this? Don’t change channels yet; don’t turn the page. There’s more: I’m just getting started. Indeed why look outward to the wider world when there is plenty to take in on our own doorstep?

Read more here.