Dedicated to the restoration of pluralist, representative, democracy in Bangladesh. I write because they can't speak anymore.
After the brutal murder of Abrar by the ruling party’s vigilante terror group BCL, the administration at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology (BUET) showed an iota of spine and banned party-linked politics on campus. Given that BCL is a terror organization like Iran’s Basij whose main task is to use murder, rape, and mayhem …
Continue reading “Bangladesh’s public universities controlled by regime terror outfit”
Iran’s dictators have their shadowy militia Basij; Bangladesh’s dictators have their “BCL”
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 …
Continue reading “Punitive sanctions are good; preventive ones are even better”
No surprise in the drama called “Dhaka City elections’ where the usual Awami League tactics of a subservient election commission, a silent police, fearful mainstream journos, and pre-poll violence by the inhouse terror squad BCL made sure that there was no doubt how the results will turn out…as they always have at every election at …
Continue reading “Rape…a veritable weapon of intimidation by the Awami League”
The de facto prohibition in Bangladesh of any peaceful protests against India’s unfortunate actions in Kashmir remove one more figment of doubt that Bangladesh–under the current unelected one party, one family dictatorship–is little more than a vassal state of India. Kind of like Hungary, Poland, and the former East Germany were of the USSR back …
Continue reading “A vassal state like Hungary and (former) DDR”
After the chilling end of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi in his country’s consulate in Istanbul, one would think that other dictatorships would pause. But leave it to the Bangladeshi regime to make sure that diplomatic immunity can be used to harass and intimidate the large diaspora, especially in West, which keeps dissenting from the …
Continue reading “Thugs with diplomatic immunity..what could go wrong!”
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 …
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”
The Awami League and its in-house vigilante group BCL have long used the threat and perpetration of sexual assault to keep dissenters in Bangladesh in line. In a conservative society where the issue continues to be taboo, the sheer terror of being victim of rape and being shamed for being that victim is a prospect …
Unfortunately, these stories are a legion not only in this recently concluded ‘general election’, but throughout the reign of the Awami League since 2009. Or even before. In fact, the late Sheikh Kamal, the brother of the current dictator Sheikh Hasina, was well known for abducting co-eds from Dhaka University (in true style of the …
