On March 26, Bangladesh will be celebrating the golden jubilee of its freedom. Few outside South Asia remember that Bangladesh was once part of Pakistan. From 1947 to 1971, modern-day Pakistan was West Pakistan and Bangladesh was East Pakistan. They were both incongruously part of the same new...
Last week, 53 days after his suspicious disappearance on March 10, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol was “found” by authorities in Benapole, 150 miles from Dhaka where he was last seen. On May 3, border guards apparently discovered Kajol, the editor of the daily...
The COVID-19 pandemic is a truly global crisis, challenging even the most advanced health systems and economies in the world. But more devastation looms as the novel coronavirus has not yet reached many of the world’s most vulnerable populations. Among them are more than 900,000 Rohingya...
Bangladesh and the UN must continue to work together to improve the conditions for nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees. The year 2018 was a dire and desperate year for the Rohingya minority from western Myanmar. Two-thirds of the population that had been living in western Rakhine State before the...
The terrorist attack on an upmarket bakery in Dhaka could herald a more intense phase of Islamist violence in Bangladesh. In the first-ever largescale attack on Dhaka’s diplomatic zone, gunmen stormed Holey Artisan Bakery, an upscale restaurant in the Gulshan neighborhood, on July 1 and held...
Doomsday ideologies like the Islamic State are creating fear, which can only be countered by increasing opportunity, equity and hope. Istanbul, Dhaka and Baghdad have dominated headlines this week. All three cities suffered spectacular terrorist attacks. In Istanbul, at least 43 people were...
Civil society organizations are ideal watchdogs to ensure climate change policies are implemented. Civil society organizations (CSO) have been the quintessential watchdogs of any society on any issue. In the fight against climate change, they represent the voices of the most vulnerable. CSOs...
Are images capable of moving policymakers to act? Three workers are pouring molten metal in a shipyard in Dhaka. One of them, his face and body covered in soot, is smiling. He seems no older than 10 years old, and this is not a place for him. Is the photographer just a silent witness to the...
The liberty of belief and expression is a fundamental right that is under increasing threat in countries like Bangladesh and Mexico. On St. Bartholomew’s Day in 1572, Catholics slaughtered Huguenots in Paris. Soon, the killings spread across France. Historians continue to debate as to who...
Maria Khwaja Bazi explores the systemic corruption hindering the effectiveness of educational investment at a Dhaka school. A city of 16 million people, Dhaka is an assault on the senses. In April 2014, we whizzed through traffic behind the caged door of a rickshaw to visit a small private...
Outspoken people in South Asia have been silenced by those who believe only one truth should exist. Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi writer and an acclaimed champion of “secularism” and freedom of expression, was killed on the streets of Dhaka on February 26. To deserve this brutal public...
Following the brutal murder of Avijit Roy, another writer has been killed in Bangladesh. Washiqur Rahman, a Bangladeshi blogger, was hacked to death on the streets of Dhaka on March 30. Two men were taken into custody and police are still looking for a third. Rahman, aged 27, used satire...
At what point does a person get to be a worthy human being rather than carrying “poor” as their label because they can’t afford to look “normal”? I once booked a connecting flight from Dhaka to Istanbul with a layover in Saudi Arabia. For some reason, it seemed like a good idea. At...
Can writers in Bangladesh depend on the government to protect them? The brutal murder of Avijit Roy, a Bangladeshi-born American writer, shocked many people in his home country. International human rights organizations condemned the killing, and the US government sent FBI agents to the capital...
With growing religious intolerance in Bangladesh, is the country heading for the same path as Pakistan, asks Raza Rumi? The brutal, cowardly murder of freethinker Avijit Roy on the streets of Dhaka is a reflection of embedded intolerance in many Muslim societies. Bangladesh, despite its secular...
