In a January 29, 2019 piece in the Daily Manabzamin—which was retweeted by democracy activist and noted physician Dr Pinaki Bhattachariya—a tale of sadism emerged that rivals in specificity, if not in scope, the depredations of the Iranian junta. Mary, a young woman activist in the pro-democracy Opposition movement, was blinded when the junta’s police …
Monthly Archives: January 2019
An election model to die for
In election observer parlance in Bangladesh–where telling blunt truths about government shenanigans can result in long residence behind bars as the internationally renowned photojournalist Shahidul Alam found out–it is known as the “Khulna model” of elections. Realizing that the brute manipulation of election results through blatant rigging alone is not considered polite these days, the …
Dictator vs. Prime Minister
One of the great myths–regularly perpetuated by most Western media and think-tank types who see peripheral South Asian countries through the organic lens of the British parliamentary system or its robust Indian counterpart–is that Bangladesh has independent institutions that are merely flawed. Junior reporters or freshman analysts or interns who are often starved of research …
When a 30 year old woman frightens a dictatorship
Five days ago, a young woman by the name of Dewan Mahmuda Akhtar Lita was picked up by the Bangladeshi junta’s police in the port city of Chittagong and jailed. No arrest warrant, no trial, no defense lawyer; no verdict; just picked up in a truck (where the brave 30 year old showed a clenched …
Continue reading “When a 30 year old woman frightens a dictatorship”
Better late than never, New York Times
Better late than never, though I am not sure Sheikh Hasina Wazed would have won a free vote either (https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/opinion/editorials/bangladesh-election-sheikh-hasina.html?fbclid=IwAR0WHcijPV-mdyyWil5ai0iY9MkvBgjqWQWm6llz408Ttjxk-9u5OmzXY_U) . But the NYT and it’s ilk share the blame too: time and again and again they have given space to the junta’s craven apologists (like K Anis Ahmed, a pro-regime publisher who, along with …
Pearls before swines
There is a saying in many South Asian languages that the wicked rarely listen to reason, let alone morality…kind of like the pearls before swines adage. Bangladesh’s one-party, one-family regime is no different. Messages, diplomatic notes, exhortations, and cautionary advice to these people is unlikely to do much. Short of Magnitsky type sanctions on key …
Only in Bong-land!
Awami League apologists like Gowher Rizvi and his ilk regularly regale us about how Bangladesh is the epitome of Westminster parliamentary democracy…..but shy away from the obvious truth that only in Bangladesh among such ‘democracies’ is the ruling party and the ‘official’ Opposition (Jatiya Party) elected as electoral coalition partners. It is the statecraft equivalent …
The torture prince of Virginia
One of the greater ironies of the Bangladeshi junta is that the ‘crown prince’ Sajib Wazed ‘Joy’ who is the son of the Bangladeshi dictator Sheikh Hasina and a cabinet level adviser on information technology to his mommy, lives in Virginia under the freedoms afforded by America’s Constitution while directing the surveillance, capture, and torture …
Second line enforcers of the Bangladeshi regime
The Bangladeshi regime’s grassroots terror squad “BCL” gets far less attention than its counterparts like the “Basij” in Iran, the “War Veterans” in Zimbabwe, or the “ANCYL” of South Africa do, for reasons ranging from its 1950s beginning as a student organization to the fact that most foreign journalists covering Bangladesh are too lazy to …
Continue reading “Second line enforcers of the Bangladeshi regime”
Selling the dream of a Stalinist state
Despite the oft-repeated ludicrous claims of its mandarins that the ruling Awami League party is the most liberal political outfit https://bdnews24.com/politics/2018/12/24/awami-league-briefs-diplomats-on-election-issues, the truth is uglier and compelling. In its first run at the helm of Bangladesh in the 1972-1973 period, the party abolished a Westminster multi-party democracy and installed a Stalinist one-party state under an …