Iran’s dictators have their shadowy militia Basij; Bangladesh’s dictators have their “BCL”
Author Archives: DocEsam
The One party, One family dynasty ruling Bangladesh
A great tragedy of the Bangladeshi people is that their own journalists have simply disappeared into sycophantic oblivion like the Pravda journalists of yore; the very idea that any newspaper or broadcast show would even ask where does the so-called Prime Minister’s uber-nationalistic son live, or who he is married to, or how he makes …
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And revolt we did! Happy Birthday Bangladesh!!
When the corrupt politicians dithered and tucked tail to the red-light district of Calcutta as the Pakistani military let loose its savagery on the night of March 25, 1971, a patriot, officer and gentleman stood up and fought the Occupation Forces, and led others from the front. http://southasiajournal.net/bangladesh-i-am-zia-speaking-in-that-case-we-revolt-major-ziaur-rahman-march-25-1971/ “In that case, we REVOLT”. ..he said. …
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Punitive sanctions are good; preventive ones are even better
The US sanctions on a few high level leaders of the Bangladeshi dictatorship’s brutal security establishment are not only welcome news but are already having a measurable impact: since the announcement of the sanctions until last night, not a single victim has died in staged encounters with the regime security forces, and no known cases …
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The middle-school apologia for dictatorship: predictable, uniform, unoriginal
Blame the “western media”, blame “conspiracy against us”, blame “lack of patriotism”, blame “colonialism”, blame “but what about..”…that’s in a nutshell the toolbox of every barbaric dictatorship–and its paid and unpaid interlocutors–which is criticized for the horrid treatment of its own citizens. That apologia is pathetically old and worn out; it may impress the usual …
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Democracy vs Development: the phony ‘debate’
Have you noticed that all those politicians, journalists, ‘experts’, and ‘civil society’ types who engage in ‘profound’ debate on “democracy vs development” have their own spouses, children, and investments safely abroad in capitalist, democratic societies? In fact in many cases they themselves either live in such free societies or have residency/citizenship in those countries? See, …
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Bangladesh’s real civil society faces the same assault, but you wouldn’t know
Kudos to WaPo for publishing this https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/08/kashmir-civil-society-khurram-parvez-democracy-summit-india/story. Such a frontal assault is also what’s happening in Bangladesh, albeit sans the religious angle. But Bangladesh being a much ‘smaller’ and perhaps ‘backwater’ country, the journalists who cover her, as I mentioned in my previous post, are simply too incompetent or compromised to be this bold. Or …
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The second stringers who ‘cover’ Bangladesh
In the first 20 years of her existence, neatly coinciding with the last 20 years of the Cold War, Bangladesh was decidedly a backwater in the global scheme of things; as such the “Bangladesh beat”–at foreign offices, major Western media, university research centers–was the place where ambitious late 20 somethings went to dabble in things …
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Finally….sanctions by the US on the Bangladeshi dictatorship’s chief henchmen
About time…but more needs to be done The sanctions imposed on 5 of the regime’s security leaders and human rights violators by the United States this month https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0526 is a case of better too little and late, than never. Years of engagement by thoughtful individuals in the diaspora has helped move this effort to this …
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What NYT, Economist, WaPo won’t admit
It’s a decided surprise when occasionally the once respected Prothom Alo newspaper in Dhaka (a sister concern of the Daily Star of regime pet ‘critic’ Mahfuz Anam) spills out the beans on the nature of the ‘democracy’ that that the graduate interns at the Bangladesh beat at the New York Times or Washington Post or …