-----Original Message-----
Dr.Faizul Islam
Overseas Bangladeshis Strongly Condemn and Immediately Demand Probe into
Mahbub-Nipa's Physical Abuse and Death Threat
As Bangladeshis residing aboard, we strongly condemn and immediately
demand that the authorities concerned should immediately probe into an
egregious and uncouth incidence where Dr. Mahbub-ul-Islam, an economics
professor of St. Francis University, Loreto, Pennsylvania was physically
injured and his wife Nipa verbally abused. Dr. Islam has received a
death threat too. The details of the incidence and events leading up to
it have already been published in the October 26, 2007, issue of the Din
Kal.
Dr. Islam is a very polite, soft-spoken, gentle, honest, taciturn,
innocuous and simple person. After completing his Ph.D. in Economics
from Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, he joined as a
faculty member at St. Francis University. He received tenure in 1994
there. (A tenured professor is guaranteed a lifetime teaching job!). It
was always his dream to leave his permanent and comfortable job and to
return to Bangladesh to serve his native country. He sent his wife and
their two children to Bangladesh in 1996. For ten long and dreary years
-from July 1996 through August 2006 - he visited to see his family for
less than two months during his summer and winter break. He led an
extremely simple life here, saved every dollar to buy property in
Bangladesh out of his honest income. He was supposed to return to St.
Francis University to resume teaching last month, but didn't.
The news of the couple's physical abuse and death threat is sending
shock waves throughout the Bangladeshi communities abroad. How can the
current caretaker government expect to attract people, experts and money
from abroad to develop Bangladesh in light of this dreadful incidence?
One of the three pillars of capitalism/market system is that its
citizens should have the right to own private property. On the other
hand, it is the dire responsibility of the government in a
market/capitalist economy to ensure that the private property (and
lives) of its citizens is well protected.
Dr. Islam was indeed truthful! He severed all the amenities and comforts
that the United States could offer him, and returned to Bangladesh only
to serve his motherland. This couple may be now wondering whether their
patriotic responsibility at the cost of huge personal sacrifice was
worth it! Isn't this incidence setting a bad precedent for other
overseas Bangladeshis who want to follow in the couple's footsteps?
We demand that the caretaker government should immediately probe into
this deplorable and despicable incidence to ensure that the justice is
well served! This government should unequivocally prove that "might is
right" is wrong as it seeks to establish impartiality in its governance,
and to show to all Bangladeshis living at home and abroad that no one
including Adviser Giti Ara Shafia, her spouse and her relatives is above
the law of the land.
(Writer's acknowledgment: I have known Mahbub very closely since 1976.
We first met at Jahangirnagar University during our undergraduate
program in economics. We were roommates in Boston when we were working
on our doctoral program. We have maintained regular contacts by phone or
visits even to this day).
Dr. Faizul Islam
Southeastern University
Washington DC
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