Category: Law

Why do schools really stop parents taking photographs of their children?

Taking photographs of children in public has become a fraught issue, says Josie Appleton

 The Guardian, 

A photographer with a camera

A photographer with a camera. Photograph: David Levene for the Guardian
Sue Rice got a shock when she opened her daughter’s nursery yearbook to see the photograph of the smiling four-year-olds. Their eyes had been blacked out. Sue is one of a group of parents affected by a de facto photography ban at their primary school in a quiet area of Hertfordshire. It started with a notice in the school newsletter saying that no photography was permitted at the nativity play, but that parents could buy a DVD for ?12. Continue reading “Why do schools really stop parents taking photographs of their children?”

Bangladeshi Durga at Rijksmuseum

A Hindu goddess with ten arms prepares to kill a small figure emerging from a buffalo. It is the popular Durga portrayed at the moment when she defeats the demon Mahisasura; she is holding weapons in nine of her ten hands. The scene is portrayed on a lotus-shaped base. Beneath it we see a Hindu believer, hands clasped in worship. This stone relief was originally built into the wall of a temple. The piece was produced in Bangladesh in the eleventh century.

The website of the Rijksmuseum shows the statue of a late 11th or early 12th century Durga, a Hindu goddess, killing a buffalo demon (1). It is one of the thousand masterpieces of the museum, and comes from Bangladesh. At the bottom of the invoice of the Peter Marks Gallery in New York, where the museum purchased the statue in 1992 for USD 65,000, it says: ‘Ex Collection: David Nalin’. drs Jos van Beurden, interviewed here by Shahidul Alam, informed the museum that it was possible that the statue was exported illegally after 1970 from Bangladesh and they answered: ‘Nice to know,’. Jos says ‘I trust that the Rijksmuseum acted in good faith, when it purchased this masterpiece, although Bangladesh’s instability of the early 1970’s and its impact on provenances should be general knowledge for insiders. The question is, whether the museum should reinvestigate its acquisition with this new information.’

Getting in the way

Razia Haque was incensed. She was not a trendy environmentalist. Her sentences weren?t interspersed with English and she didn?t know any of the developmental jargon. She was a grandmother who lived in Elephant Road who walked through the park everyday to drop off her granddaughter at the university. But she knew this was wrong. ?Nature is for everyone. What do they think they are doing? How many years has it taken for these trees to grow? They?ve destroyed the beauty of this place. They?ve dulled our senses. It can only cause bitterness. About common people, about the government about everyone. They do as they please. How can you allow this? You should all give slogans. Who has authorised the cutting of these trees? Once the trees have gone there?s nothing you can do. Just because they?re in power they?ll cut down the trees, how can that be??
Continue reading “Getting in the way”

Extradition: Free Talha Ahsan

Talha Ahsan is a British-born poet and writer with Asperger syndrome facing extradition to America.?If convicted he will spend 70 years in ?supermax? solitary confinement in ADX Florence.


Talha Ahsan's window. ??Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Doorway in Talha Ahsan's house in Tooting Broadway. London. UK. ??Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Talha Ahsan's bed. ??Shahidul Alam/Drik/Majority World

Continue reading “Extradition: Free Talha Ahsan”

Nothing happens if you beat up journalists

Police beat up photojournalists in Dhaka. Agargaon. 11:00 am 26th May 2012.

?When you had taught us in class that we should be fighters, we had never anticipated this.? Said Shahadat Parvez Anchal, senior photojournalist of the Bangla Daily Prothom Alo and former student of Pathshala. We were standing by the bed of his colleague Sajid Hossain, who lay with his leg in a plaster in cabin 416 at the Trauma Centre in Shyamoli. True. I had told them to be fighters in the cause of justice. To resist oppression, to uphold peoples? rights. That in doing so they would become targets of the police, was something we hadn?t considered. We should have done.

Photojournalist Zahid Karim of the daily Bangla newspaper Prothom Alo, being beaten up by police when he was photographing a student protest. Dhaka. Bangladesh. 26th May 2012 ??Khaled Sarker/Prothom Alo

?Break the arms and legs of any journalist you see? had been the message of an Awami League minister in Satkhira way back in 2000. Even before he had made these inflammatory remarks in October, Awami League activists had brutally assaulted two journalists in the space of a week. Three other journalists had been murdered in the area. Not only had Sheikh Hasina failed to prosecute these violent attacks, she appeared to be actively encouraging the perpetrators. Continue reading “Nothing happens if you beat up journalists”

Bengali ?Crossfire? reaches U.S.

by?BEENA SARWAR?on?MAY 4, 2012 Latitude News


In ?Crossfire,? an exhibition of photographs at the Queens Museum of Art in New York that closes on Sunday the 6th, acclaimed Bangladeshi photographer and activist Shahidul Alam chronicles the extra-judicial killings allegedly committed by Bangladesh?s Rapid Action Battalion, or RAB.Over a thousand victims have been ?cross-fired,? or executed by police without trial, in the last four years in the South Asian country, human rights activists claim. Many more people, perhaps thousands in total, have suffered similar fates, they say.

Shahidul Alam in New York’s Central Park (Beena Sarwar) Continue reading “Bengali ?Crossfire? reaches U.S.”

Crossfire ? Photographs by Shahidul Alam

Opening Reception & Forum:?Sunday, April 15, 6:00 pm ? 9:30 pm, 2012
Queens Museum of Art, NYC Building, Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Queens, NY 11368? DIRECTIONS

Forum & Opening Reception for Partnership Gallery Exhibition in Collaboration with Drik Picture Library, Dhaka.
Bangladeshi photographer and human rights activist Shahidul Alam?s Crossfire exhibition will open in the Partnership Gallery at the Queens Museum of Art on 15th April, 2012 and run until May 6th, 2012. The exhibition aims to gather international support for a campaign to end extra-judicial killings in Bangladesh by state forces, usually called ?crossfire.? Continue reading “Crossfire ? Photographs by Shahidul Alam”

Hana Shalabi: The Bravest Form of Nonviolence

by Richard Falk (Foreign Policy Journal)

March 12, 2012

No sooner had Khader Adnan ended his 66-day life-threatening hunger strike than new urgent concerns are being voiced for Hana Shalabi, another West Bank hunger striker now without food for more than 24 days. Both strikes were directed by Palestinian activists against the abusive use of administrative detention by Israeli West Bank occupying military forces, protesting both the practice of internment without charges or trial and the degrading and physically harsh treatment administered during the arrest, interrogation, and detention process.
The case of Hana Shalabi should move even the most hardhearted. She seems a young tender and normal woman who is a member of Islamic Jihad, and is dedicated to her family, hopes for marriage, and simple pleasures of shopping. Continue reading “Hana Shalabi: The Bravest Form of Nonviolence”

Part VI Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?

by rahnuma ahmed

Yesterday, I had ended with the words, “there is still hope.”
But, of course, hoping doesn’t mean that one daydreams, or fantasises. Or, becomes cynical when things don’t turn out the way one had wished.
“Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will” — words attributed to Antonio Gramsci, the Italian Marxist, imprisoned by Mussolini. To see the world as it really is, underpinned by the will that humans have the courage to change it. One thus needs to dispassionately examine what occurred later. But before doing so, let me turn to the cat- out-of-the-bag story.
The ‘minus two plan’ was officially confirmed by the World Bank South Asia vice-president Praful C. Patel. While visiting Dhaka, at the end of 2007, he said, “What [had] looked possible before, like the minus-two approach, does not seem possible today, because the two ladies have [a] very strong and powerful power base.” Continue reading “Part VI Military-installed caretaker govt, or a 'consortium' govt?”

'Jai Bhim Comrade'

A film by Anand Patwardhan

The ongoing atrocity of caste.
Anand Patwardhan’s new film “Jai Bhim Comrade” took 14 years to?complete. Beginning with an incident at Ramabai Colony in Mumbai where?10 Dalits were shot dead by the police in 1997, the film goes on to?explore the music of protest of those who were treated as?”untouchables” by a caste hierarchy that has ruled the Indian?sub-continent for thousands of years.
Best film: Mumbai International Film Festival, India
Best film: Film South Asia Kathmandu, Nepal