Silver Lining in dark clouds
Bangladesh's political horizon is now dark and getting darker by the day. A bunch of self-aggrandised predacious people, surrounded by slavish cronies and sycophants, are making the lives of millions of hard-working, self-reliant people up and down the country a total misery.
Flagrant Violation of Human Rights
Human rights issues may be the despised terms to some prejudiced sections of the society or even to some despicable sovereign States of the world, but human rights epitomises what is good in human conscience, what constitutes inalienable rights of human beings and above all it highlights the sheer value of humanity. Without human rights, human beings would be no better than two-legged human animals, particularly in the modern society where money speaks louder than anything else and might is proclaimed to be the absolute right!
Happy Blasphemy Day, Happy Birthday 'Mukto Mona
I wrote a piece in Bengali on Blasphemy day, 2013. I could not find time earlier to post this in English blog. Here it is:
Masud - "I am a woman
For better or for worse, people think in boxes. They have boxes for things, and they have boxes for people: Bengali, westerner, Muslim, Hindu, atheist, Asian, White, Black… Curiously, one pair of boxes seems to play a particularly important role in people's lives: Think about it... What was the first-ever question that anybody has asked about you? Likely, the answer is: "Is it a boy or a girl?" And, likely, that question was asked before you were even born. But does it really matter whether you are a man or a woman? And should it matter?
When Freedom Emerges through Individuals
The Self I was born alone, and thus will I die. Am I a muslim, or a Bengali, or a member of proletariat? These are what others shape me into. But the identity that exists before all these constructs is my own self. The individual me.
The Savar Massacre
The latest number of casualty from the Savar Massacre of 2013 due to the collapse of a 9-story building known as Rana Plaza (owned by Sohel Rana, a stalwart of the local branch of the Jubo League, an affiliate of Awami League which heads the current ruling coalition) exceeds 700 as of this writing! It is likely to go up, as many still remain unaccounted, their relatives desperately hoping for miracles. List of injured had passed 1,000 mark soon after the collapse; not sure any one is keeping tabs on that any longer. The rising toll keeps pushing our sense towards numbness and our patience to breaking the point.
One Percent of the Price of a Shirt - May Day gift to Bangladeshi Garment Workers!
Horrible and deplorable social and working conditions are the reasons for the continuous tragedies of garment workers. Their less than subsistence level wage-rate is a revealing indicator of the bigger problem, often overlooked. The problem, absence of social justice, must be understood in the context of the sociopolitical condition in which they live.