Shahbagh news on International Media

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A huge protest in the capital against an Islamist party and its leaders
Feb 16th 2013 | DHAKA

THEY are the biggest rallies in Bangladesh for at least two decades. Hundreds of thousands of protesters gather peacefully each day in Dhaka, the capital, demanding vengeance against a bearded political figure, Abdul Quader Mollah. Their numbers swell daily: ordinary people furious that, despite his conviction for dreadful crimes during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, Mr Mollah faces only a life sentence.

• Read More: Economist >>

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Bangladesh: Resist pressure to push for death sentences at war crimes tribunal

Mass protests have taken place across Bangladesh calling for the death penalty for a man convicted of war crimes.© MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images

The Bangladesh government must not let a proposed new legal amendment lead to a push for death sentences for those convicted in its ongoing war crimes tribunal, Amnesty International said.

Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) was set up in 2010 to try people suspected of crimes under international law, including genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, committed during the country’s 1971 war of independence.

On Sunday, parliament is likely to pass an amendment to the law governing the proceedings of the ICT, which will enable prosecutors to appeal for the death penalty for those sentenced to imprisonment in the tribunal.

“Given the extremely tense situation in Bangladesh, there is a real risk that the government will use this amendment to push for those tried in the ICTto be sentenced to death,” said Abbas Faiz, Amnesty International’s Bangladesh researcher.

“We urge the government to resist this. The death penalty is the ultimate cruel and inhuman form of punishment, and the government should abolish it altogether, not call for it. .”

Read more from Amnesty International >>

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Mass Protests in Bangladesh Expose 40-year Rifts
By SYED ZAIN AL-MAHMOOD

DHAKA—Bangladesh's largest public protests in over two decades swelled, as tens of thousands of demonstrators took to the street Friday to demand the death penalty for people convicted of war crimes in the country's 1971 war of independence.

Meanwhile, clashes have intensified between security forces and Islamist protesters who claim Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government is using a war crimes tribunal it set up in 2010 to unfairly hound religious conservatives. On Thursday, two bystanders died when police fired rubber bullets on demonstrators, who were lobbing homemade bombs and vandalizing vehicles, police said.

Both sets of protests illustrate how the country remains polarized over the events 40 years ago, despite pledges from Ms. Hasina's secular-leaning administration the war crimes tribunal would be a model to the world and heal wounds of the civil war era.

A steady stream of people including middle-class families with children have flowed into Shahbag, a leafy boulevard in the heart of Dhaka, the capital, calling for those on trial for war crimes to be hanged. These protests, which so far have not come into contact with the Islamist-led demonstrations, have remained peaceful.

Read more from Wall Street Journal >>

[cricket_pagol]

Originally Posted by reverse_swing
Read More >>

I am not gonna read this economist article because the blogger propaganda machine told me that this is a jamaat-shibir outlet. Sorry, i had to make this snarky comment. I don't like it when people blindly eat up propaganda.

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The agonies of Bangladesh come to London
Shahbag protests in Dhaka are reflected in the demonstrations in London

Nick Cohen
The Observer, Sunday 17 February 2013

Three men stand in Bangladeshi national colours in Shahbag square. Photograph: Kazi Sudipto/ Demotix/Corbis

The Shahbag junction in Dhaka has become Bangladesh's Tahrir Square. Hundreds of thousands of young protesters are occupying it and raging against radical Islamists. Even sympathetic politicians cannot control the movement. The protesters damn them as appeasers, who have compromised with unconscionable men.

Theirs is a grassroots uprising for the most essential and neglected values of our age: secularism, the protection of minorities from persecution and the removal of theocratic thugs from the private lives and public arguments of 21st-century citizens

Naturally, the western media show little interest in covering the protest. The indifference is all the more telling because the Shahbag movement is a response to a crime westerners once deplored, but have almost forgotten.

Read More: Guardian>>

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Vast Throng in Bangladesh Protests Killing of Activist

Mourners in Bangladesh on Saturday carried the coffin containing the body of Rajib Haider, an organizer who was killed.

By JIM YARDLEY
Published: February 16, 2013

NEW DELHI — Tens of thousands of people resumed mass demonstrations in Bangladesh’s capital on Saturday, intensifying their demands for more severe punishment for war criminals from the country’s 1971 liberation war, while also demanding justice for the slaying of a blogger who had been a leading organizer of the protests.
The coffin bearing the body of Rajib Haider, an architect and blogger, was carried through the crowd in a public funeral at Shahbagh, a major intersection in Dhaka, the national capital. Bangladeshi television showed thousands of people kneeling in prayer, chanting slogans or waving banners bearing Mr. Haider’s image. The crowd were estimated at more than 100,000 people.

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina visited Mr. Haider’s family on Saturday to express her condolences. Mr. Haider’s body was discovered Friday night near his home, after he had been savagely stabbed. His family has told the Bangladeshi news media that they believed that he was killed for his role in the protests and his outspoken criticism of the fundamentalist Islamist political party Jamaat-e-Islami.

Read More: Nytimes >>

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Blogger's death rekindles anti-Islamist protests in Bangladesh
More than 100,000 Bangladeshi protesters, angered by the killing of one of their leaders, poured back onto the streets of the capital on Saturday to demand the death penalty for those found guilty of war crimes in the 1971 independence conflict.
The demonstrators, who denounced a life sentence handed down this month on an Islamist leader involved in the war, reversed a decision to scale back demonstrations, now in their 12th day.
Rajib Haider, an architect, was a key figure in organising the demonstrations and wrote a blog devoted to them under the pen name Thaba baba. He was attacked outside his home on Friday night after returning from a 100,000-strong rally in Shahbag Square.

On Saturday, an even larger crowd thronged the square to attend funeral prayers for Haider, many vowing to avenge his death or breaking down in tears as his coffin passed.

Haider's family told reporters they believed he was stabbed to death for standing up to the Islamist Jamaat-e-Islami party and drawing people to the protests. Police said they had detained five suspects.

"Haider's death has rekindled our spirits," said Nasiruddin Yusuf, a film-maker. "It will not go in vain."

Read More: Nbcnews(Reuters) >>

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Bangladesh’s memory politics
The country is yet to come to grips with its past and its history, and its rival interpretations, have played havoc with its present day politics

A file photo of Abdul Quader Mollah in Dhaka. Photo: Reuters

Bangladesh was born in violence, emerged in chaos and continues to live in tumult. The country is yet to come to grips with its past and its history, and its rival interpretations, have played havoc with its present day politics.
So it was not unusual that within hours of the country’s International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) delivering a guilty verdict against Abdul Quader Mollah on 5 February, protests broke out in Dhaka. Mollah, a leader of the Jamaat-e-Islami, an ally of the opposition party the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was handed a life sentence. A death sentence was widely expected given the nature of his crimes and the evidence against him. This did not go down well with a large number of citizens. Soon the city’s Shahbag Square was blocked by a huge mass protesting the decision. The protests have only become louder since.

• Read more: Livemint >>

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Media Blackout: Why Is the World Not Acknowledging Shahbagh?

Anushay Hossain Author, AnushaysPoint.com

When I was a little girl, I always wanted Bangladesh to be famous. I did not like that whenever people asked me where I was from I would have to explain, "Bangladesh, this tiny country on the East of India." Why could people not just know where my motherland was?

At the age of 18 years when I went abroad for college, I discovered that Bangladesh was famous, at least in Charlottesville, Virginia: Famous for floods, cyclones, crippling poverty and dying children.

Now as a long-time resident of the States, I have found that Bangladesh is upheld as an ideal when it comes to development indicators such as reducing maternal mortality ratios, and allowing women to enter the workforce en masse, particularly in our garment sector.

Speaking of the garments sector, there is apparently nothing the international media loves more, when it comes to Bangladesh, than factory fires that unfortunately almost regularly sweep through the country. Just look at the example of Tazreen Garments. Late last year when the story broke that major U.S. chains, such as Walmart, manufacture their clothes in cheap labor factories tucked away in the outskirts of Dhaka, the Western press could not get enough.

This story about lack, or absolute absence, of fire safety measures in Bangladeshi garment factories, killing thousands of poor Bangladeshi workers almost annually, was gobbled up by the media. Not a day could go by when the Tazreen garment factory story was not mentioned in the news, and even major American outlets such as ABC and NBC were providing wall to wall coverage on the incident.

• Read more: Huffingtonpost >>

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Rallying in Shahbagh Square, Young Bangladesh Finds Its Voice

A young girl’s call pierces through the din of the packed square. Like the macabre billboards that loom above featuring bearded old men in nooses, and the blood red headbands worn by scores of participants, her demands are direct and full-throated: “Hang the war criminals and long live Bangladesh!” The fact that she and most of her fellow protesters were not yet born when the crimes at issue were committed, more than four decades ago during the country’s bitter war for independence, is beside the point. “This is a shame on our nation,” says Nidhi Hossain, the 13-year-old girl holding the megaphone. “We must get rid of these criminals once and for all so we can move forward.”

Bangladeshis protest to demand the death penalty for Jamaat-e-Islami leader Abdul Kader Mullah in the Bangladeshi capital, Dhaka, on Feb. 11, 2013

Protests — even very, very large ones — are nothing new in the world’s most densely populated city. Tens of thousands are known to take to the streets to chant down rivals or the latest spike in petrol prices. The difference with the now two-week-old Shahbagh movement, say those old enough to know, is that it has managed to transcend Bangladesh’s stale party politics, religion and the age divide unlike any mass agitation in recent memory. While the ruling Awami League party has tried to co-opt some of the momentum and the opposition is crying foul, all have taken a backseat to a frustrated young generation that is finding its voice.

• Read more: Time >>

[ReZ_1]

Nice collection of news. i will be visiting this thread in future for updates...

[simon]

nice thread Reverse da

[Navo]

Nice thread Chief!

I predict the next Ekushey Boi Mela will have "An Omnibus of Essays/News Articles on Shahbagh" :p

[zsayeed]

French Radio in French for Simon Bhai!
http://www.rfi.fr/asie-pacifique/201...slami&ns_fee=0

Bangladesh: affrontements sanglants entre police et islamistes

[zsayeed]

Bangladesh : 4 morts dans des émeutes contre des blogueurs acccusés de blasphème

http://tempsreel.nouvelobs.com/monde...blaspheme.html

France on a roll - Simon Bhai!

[zsayeed]

Washington Post:

The nationwide protests were held separately by Jamaat-e-Islami, the country’s largest Islamic party, and an alliance of 12 other smaller Islamic parties. Jamaat called the demonstrations to denounce the war crimes trials of its top leaders.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/...a66_story.html
Times of India

Parts of the capital Dhaka were turned into a battlefield as thousands of protesters attacked police with bricks and sticks in front of the national mosque. Officers there retaliated with rubber bullets and tear gas.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/w...w/18630606.cms

[zsayeed]

Le Monde has a video of the unrest:
http://www.lemonde.fr/asie-pacifique...7491_3216.html

and a good photo story in french as well - but we can look at the pics (I do not know French)
http://www.citizenside.com/fr/photos...tml#f=0/667085

[zsayeed]

BBC

In the capital, Dhaka, thousands of protesters from an alliance of Islamic parties went on a protest rally soon after Friday prayers in the country's national mosque.

Police fired rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters who threw stones and vandalised buildings, the BBC's Anbarasan Ethirajan reports from Dhaka.

Similar violent clashes were reported across the country. In some places, there were clashes between supporters of the ruling Awami League and Islamist activists, our correspondent reports.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-21551603

[zsayeed]

ABC News on Violence
http://abcnews.go.com/International/...clash-18564986

[zsayeed]

Australia Channel 7 News
FOUR DEAD IN BANGLADESH CLASHES OVER 'ATHEIST BLOGGERS'

[zsayeed]

CNN
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/02/22/wo...amists-police/

[ReZ_1]

waiting for your collection of intl. news/links on sayedi judgement issue.

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• Wall Street Journal: Bangladesh Ruling Leads to Deadly Riots >>

• CNN: Deadly riots follow Bangladesh death sentence >>

• NYTimes: Islamist’s Death Sentence Sets Off Riots in Bangladesh >>

• Guardian: Bangladesh death sentence sparks deadly protests >>

• Huffingtonpost: Delwar Hossain Sayedee, Bangladesh Islamic Party Leader, Sentenced To Death Over War Crimes >>

• Time: Bangladesh Sentences Islamic Party Leader to Death >>

[SMHasan]

Major newspapers are biased and telling a different story on Shahbag protest. This mass protrest is for a good cause which is valid enough, but world media incuding bbc and cnn tend not to show the true picture. They did not cover the movement at all when we all went to projonmo chottor and raised our voice but when few people died in clash they started to call it a political unrest.

Positive and good news are ignored by them mostly, only negative news come through. They follow their agenda, nothing else.