Musings by Shahidul Alam
While Bangladesh, rightly prides itself in sheltering refugees from Myanmar, its human record towards its own citizens remains deeply troubling.
Photographs by Shahidul Alam, text by Lyndall Stein
As Bangladeshi individuals and organisations engaged in seeking justice for those subjected to violations of rights, we welcome the request of the International Criminal Court (ICC) Prosecutor for a ruling by ICC judges on whether the ICC has jurisdiction to investigate the deportation of Rohingya people from Myanmar from 25 August 2017 onwards. We call on the Government to respond to the invitation from ICC Pre-Trial Chamber I to Bangladesh authorities to submit, by 11 June 2018, observations on the question and to support the Prosecutor’s request.
The ICC Pre-Trial Chamber’s decision of 7 May has been made in response to the 9 April Request by the ICC Prosecutor, seeking a ruling on whether the Court has jurisdiction over the deportations of Rohingya people from Myanmar as a crime against humanity. Continue reading “CITIZENS CALL FOR BANGLADESH TO RESPOND IN SUPPORT OF ICC PROSECUTOR’S SUBMISSION ON ROHINGYA DEPORTATION”
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The Amnesty International?s Dutch magazine, ‘Wordt Vervolgd? invited six world recognised experts to look back at human rights issue?s of 2012.
It is a special feature of 6 images which represent 6 human rights issue?s from 2012. Last year AI had a similar successful feature by 6 international respected photographers about the arab spring.
The following photograph by Pathshala alumni Munir uz Zaman was selected by Shahidul Alam.
What is remarkable about this photograph is the absence of a gaze. Except for the woman who appears to look straight past the photographer it is as if the refugees have withdrawn from the world itself. Hounded by one nation, rejected by another, they are forced to return to their persecutors. Being returned to the jaws of death by the people they had considered their saviours. Land is the only material possession of an agrarian community. Farmers leave only when no other option exists. Their only hope is the belief that someone will shelter them from harm. Respond to their helplessness.
It is only at times like these that women and children venture out on their own. Facing strangers, men, in lands unknown, they willingly face probable dangers to flee certain ones. Bangladesh is not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention or its 1967 protocol, but as a predominantly Muslim nation it theoretically offers a less hostile environment relative to the largely Buddhist Myanmar state which accuses Rohingyas of instigating violence. Given that millions of Bangladeshis were sheltered by neighbouring India during Bangladesh?s own civil war, sending back persecuted Rohingya refugees is callous in religious, historical and humanitarian grounds.
Pages from WV_NR12
Read more:?http://world.time.com/2012/06/11/sectarian-unrest-in-burma/?xid=rss-photoessays#rohingya-refugees-from-myanmar-sit-on-a-boat-as-they-try-to-get-into-bangladesh-in-teknaf#ixzz1xgxD1VUL
Photos by K M Asad
She was witty, connected, caring and sharp. Seamlessly moving between colloquial Bangla, bhodrolok Bangla and English, Spivak mesmerised, but did a few ticking offs too. All in her charming style so it took you a while to work out that a steam roller had gone over you. It was standing room only in packed seminar room at Dhaka University. Spivak was one of five visiting speakers, but clearly the one they had all come to see.
I was lucky as I had just returned from Tehran, when Rahnuma told me of the event, and Chulie and Yan managed to get my 100mm macro lens to me in time and I pedalled off to Dhaka University.
A couple of days back, I had made my way to Chiraz Square in Tehran to meet up with my old friend, the brilliant film maker and photographer Abbas Kiarostami. I returned with an arm load of books, including his early masterpiece, Snow White. Here are a couple of pictures from the book:
The meeting earlier with Aung San Suu Kyi, in Myanmar was opportunistic. But hey with people like that, one doesn’t care how it works out 🙂
An old student Zin Myoe Sett had set up a meeting with the big wigs of the Myanmar Photographic Society. Christophe Loviny had briefly dropped in to give me an invitation to thier opening at the France Institute of the show?”Aung San Suu Kyi, The Burmese Way to Democracy”. They say the rains in Yangon start on the 20th May. The clouds had obviously not read the script.
Jul 30th 2011 | from the print edition of the Economist
NO ONE loves a huge neighbour. For all that, India?s relations with the countries that ring it are abysmal. Of the eight with which it shares a land or maritime boundary, only two can be said to be happy with India: tiny Maldives, where India has the only foreign embassy and dispenses much largesse, and Bhutan, which has a policy of being happy about everything. Among its other South Asian neighbours, the world?s biggest democracy is incredible mainly because of its amazing ability to generate wariness and resentment.
Until recently it operated a shoot-to-kill policy towards migrant workers and cattle rustlers along its long border with Bangladesh. Over the years it has meddled madly in Nepal?s internal affairs. In Myanmar India snuggles up to the country?s thuggish dictators, leaving the beleaguered opposition to wonder what happened to India?s championing of democracy. Relations with Sri Lanka are conflicted. It treats China with more respect, but feuds with it about its border.
As for Pakistan, relations are defined by their animosity. One former Indian diplomat likened reconciling the two nuclear-tipped powers to treating two patients whose only disease is an allergy to each other. The observation underscores the fact that it takes two to have bad relations, and to be fair to India plenty of problems press in on it?many of them with their roots in India?s bloody partition in 1947. Pakistan has used a long-running territorial dispute over Kashmir as a reason to launch wars. It also exports terrorism to India, sometimes with the connivance of parts of the Pakistani state. India thinks Bangladesh also harbours India-hating terrorists.
With the notable exception of India?s prime minister, Manmohan Singh, who has heroically persisted in dialogue with Pakistan in the face of provocations and domestic resistance, India?s dealings with its neighbours are mostly driven by arrogance and neglect. It has shared shockingly little of its economic dynamism and new-found prosperity with those around it. Just 5% of South Asia?s trade is within the region.
Too little and too late, the neglect is starting to be replaced by engagement (see?article). This week Sonia Gandhi, dynastic leader of India?s ruling Congress Party, visited Bangladesh?a first. And on July 27th India?s foreign minister hosted his Pakistani counterpart, the first such meeting in a year. He promised a ?comprehensive, serious and sustained? dialogue.
A new regional engagement is prodded by two things. China?s rapid and increasingly assertive rise challenges India?s own regional dominance. As a foundation for its rise, China pursued a vigorous ?smile diplomacy? towards its neighbours that stands in contrast to slothful Indian energies. The smile has sometimes turned to snarl of late (see?Banyan). Even so, China?s engagement with its neighbours has allowed it both to prosper and to spread influence.
interactive map displays the various territorial claims of India, Pakistan and China from each country’s perspectiveSecond, dynamic India can hardly soar globally while mired in its own backyard. Promoting regional prosperity is surely the best way to persuade neighbours that its own rise is more of an opportunity than a threat. Yet India lacks any kind of vision. A region-wide energy market using northern neighbours? hydropower would transform South Asian economies. Vision, too, could go a long way to restoring ties that history has cut asunder, such as those between Karachi and Mumbai, once sister commercial cities but now as good as on different planets; and Kolkata and its huge former hinterland in Bangladesh. Without development and deeper integration, other resentments will be hard to soothe. It falls on the huge unloved neighbour to make the running.
BBC Documentary on Sino-Indian Rivalry and Bangladesh
http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/worldservice/docarchive/docarchive_20100630-1227a.mp3