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Saturday, June 26, 2010

[ALOCHONA] Indians keep tilling Bangladesh land amid BDR protests




 
 
Indians tilled cropland inside Bangladesh at Shreepur near the Jaintapur border in Sylhet for the second consecutive day on Saturday amid protests by the Bangladesh Rifles.
   
A teenaged Bangladeshi boy, who cannot speak, was, meanwhile, injured as an Indian in the afternoon fired at him at Dibir Haor in the Jaintapur border.he injured was Suman, 15, a resident of Dibir Haor at Jaintapur in the district.Local people said an Indian Khasia tribesman fired at Suman about 5:30pm when he went to look for his cow at Kendribil. As he groaned, villagers reached the place and rescued him.The Jaintapur BDR outpost in-charge in the evening said the injured boy had been sent to Sylhet Osmani Medical College Hospital.
   
Shreepur villagers also vandalised the Kathalbari checkpoint under the BDR outpost at the place in the afternoon as the Bangladesh border guards did not allow them to put up resistance against the Indians who were tilling cropland 100 to 150 metres inside the Bangladesh territory, sources said.
   
The 21 Rifles Battalion second-in-command, Major Abdulla Al-Mamun, told New Age in the afternoon the villagers had rallied against the Bangaldesh border guards as they did not fire gunshots to stop the Indians or allow the local people to put up resistance.'We are observing the situation and trying to avoid any incident that could create unrest in the border,' he said, adding that the Bangladesh Rifles authorities had been informed of the situation.
   
Local sources said two groups of Indian Khasia tribesmen, each of about 15, trespassed into Bangladesh through Mianrtila and Kathalbari near the Shreepur BDR outpost between 9:30am and 10:30am and started tilling cropland ignoring BDR protests.'We warned the Indians by blowing whistles and hanging red flags for not till the land inside Bangladesh and to get back to their country but they did not heed our requests and continued tilling in two places till noon,' a Shreepur BDR outpost solider said.Local sources said some 50 Indians came again to Kathalbari about 1:30pm and resumed tilling the cropland.
   
At least 250 villagers of Asampara, Shreepur, Minartila and Kathalbari along the Shreepur border gathered at Kathalbari about 3:00pm and tried to stop the Indians from tilling land inside Bangladesh.But the Bangladesh border guards of the Kathalbari checkpoint stopped the villagers, villagers said.
   
After BDR obstruction, the villagers vandalised the Kathalbari BDR checkpoint, the sources said.The 21 Rifles Battalion's commandant officer Khandakar Zahirul Alam in the afternoon told New Age the BDR soldiers had stopped the villagers from picking up any quarrel with the Indians as they were armed. 'If unarmed Bangladeshis had picked up a quarrel with the Indians, this could have resulted in casualties as the Indians had firearms,' the BDR official said. Zahirul said he had talked with his Indian counterpart, Shekhar Gupta, commandant officer of the BSF 1, over telephone at noon but he had not made any positive response to the request for asking the Indians to stop tilling inside Bangladesh. 'India's Border Security Force official said they had no right to stop his countrymen from tilling as they were tilling their own land,' Zahirul said.
   
Indian tribesmen started tilling cropland inside the Bangladesh territory at the Shreepur border of Jaintapur in Sylhet on Friday morning, 17 hours after a high-level flag meeting between the border guards of both the countries where they agreed to keep peace in the border.
Earlier on June 19, two Bangladeshis — Nasir Uddin, 30, and Lilu Miah, 28 — were injured as an Indian fired into the Bisnakandi stone quarry along the Gowainghat border in the district.On June 15, the BSF fired into the BDR when the Bangladesh border guards tried to stop Indians from tilling cropland, 300 to 400 metres inside Bangladesh near the Shreepur BDR outpost.
   
The BDR soldiers also fired back in several points along the Jaintapur and the Gowainghat border. At least a Bangladeshi was injured in BSF firing. High BDR and BSF officials sat at a flag meeting at the BSF's Dauki camp at Tamabil border on Thursday afternoon and the officials of border guards of both the countries agreed to continue with their efforts to keep peace in the border, BDR sources said.
 


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[ALOCHONA] Digital Bangladesh !



Digital Bangladesh !
 
 


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[ALOCHONA] Triple murder in India highlights increase in 'honour killings'



Triple murder in India highlights increase in 'honour killings'

Shobha and Monica were cousins. They walked to school together through the narrow, fly-ridden alleys of Wazirpur, a once rural village now overtaken by the sprawling suburbs of northern Delhi. They were often in each other's homes, narrow apartments with little privacy.

They sometimes met at the dairy, an ill-lit room stacked with steel churns and basins of curd where a friend, Deepak, 18, remembered Shobha as "pretty, fun, outgoing".

Shobha, 20, had a rebellious streak. Sometimes, she even took the bus to McDonald's or the mall in the upmarket neighbourhood just a mile or so away. Friends said she wanted to be a model.

Monica, 24, was more serious. She had married a local boy, Kuldeep, four years ago and was, relatives said, happy with her new life.

Shobha, Monica and Kuldeep were each shot twice in the head last Sunday evening. They had no reason to suspect their murderers. One was Shobha's brother, Mandeep. The other was Monica's brother, Ankit. The third was a local boy known to them both.

There are 1,000 "honour killings" a year in India, according to one recent study, but few reveal the underlying causes as the triple murder of Wazipur. Significantly, the Indian capital itself has seen an unprecedented spate of such incidents in recent weeks.

All six of those involved in last weekend's murders were living on frontiers: between Wazirpur, their working-class neighbourhood, and Ashok Vihar, the adjacent upmarket suburb; between the increasingly cosmopolitan Indian capital and its deeply conservative hinterland; between the crushing poverty of their parent's childhoods and the relative wealth of their own.

It is a world in which caste, traditional authority and arranged marriage clashed with aspirations to Bollywood-style romance. The age of all those involved is significant, according to Professor Surinder Jodhka of Delhi's Jawaharlal Nehru University.

All were born around the time of the major changes that liberalised India's economy in the early 1990s, sparking rapid growth.

"They grew up in post-reform India.This is a new generation reaching the age of marriage," Jodhjka told the Guardian.

Monica and Kuldeep were on the point of crossing the gulf between the old India and the new. They lived in a rented flat and Kuldeep commuted to his job in a call centre.

They had eloped too – the first from Wazirpur ever to do so. They had also ignored India's system of prejudice and hierarchy as they came from different castes. Yet, their parents had accepted the match. "We were not against it," said Jai Singh Naggar.

Unlike in many "honour killings" – such as that of a girl and her lower caste boyfriend beaten to death with iron rods in another Delhi neighbourhood earlier this month – older family members were not involved.

Nor was there any direct sanction given by community elders. "We cannot stop them. What has to happen will happen. But we do not think it was a good thing to do," said Mahinder Kahri, 64, head of the local council.

The murderers acted alone, albeit having grown up steeped in a culture of honour, patriarchal authority and violent retribution for transgression.

The spark for the killing appears to have been the disappearance of Shobha's sister with her own "boyfriend". Shobha herself had previously run away with a man. She had come back home alone but the damage had been done.

"For years her brother had got no respect round here. Even his friends were taunting him. When Shobha did the same thing, he just felt he had to act," Saurav, 18, told the Guardian.

Shobha's brother thus sought out Ankit, the brother of Monica. He too was being taunted for the shame his sister's unauthorised marriage brought the family. The two enlisted a mutual friend.

Prem Chowdhry, a respected historian and researcher, said it was unsurprising that young men had taken the lead role. In the neighbouring state of Haryana, foeticide of girls has led to a ratio of 800 women to every 1,000 men. Women also "marry up" – Monica's husband came from the higher rajput class – leaving more than a third of lower caste men without wives, she said.

"The social situation is very volatile. The marriage market is very tight and that causes huge problems. Youngsters react very strongly. If a woman makes an independent choice she has to pay the penalty," Chowdhry said.

In Wazirpur yesterday, teenage boys were backing the murderers. "Whatever happened is for the best. There's a limit to how much you can take. I'd do the same to my sister," said Rohit, 17.

After the killings, the three Wazirpur men fled in a borrowed car, first to Ghaziabad and then to the spiritual centre of Rishikesh, where they threw the home-made murder weapon into the waters of the Ganges. Hours later they were arrested.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/jun/25/triple-murder-india-honour-killings



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[ALOCHONA] Dhaka must ask Delhi to stop BSF instigations in the border



Editorial
Dhaka must ask Delhi to stop BSF instigations in the border

The latest intrusion of Indian nationals into Bangladesh territory, and that too to till the crops land of Bangladesh at the Shreepur border of Jaintapur in Sylhet Friday morning is really ominous. The incident took place 17 hours after a high-level flag meeting between the Bangladesh Rifles and the Border Security Force (BSF) of India where they agreed to keep peace in the border. The repeated intrusion tends to indicate that the Indian guards are out to instigate the BDR and consequently the Bangladeshi civilians are concerned about confrontation.
   
According to a report front-paged in New Age on Saturday, some 40 Indians armed with bows and arrows and other sharp weapons trespassed into Bangladesh at about 9:45am and started tilling cropland at Minartila near the BDR outpost. Although the BDR soldiers asked the Indian Khasia tribesmen not to till the cropland, the Indians did not pay any heed to the request. The BSF soldiers not only did not ask their fellow countrymen to stop tilling the Bangladesh land, but in the afternoon they took position in the bankers they had dug along a 20km border stretch after a series of clashes with the Bangladesh border guards during June 4–15. The mysterious silence of the Indian border guards over the incident of trespass reinforces the suspicion that India, although a huge nation, aspires to grab land from its neighbouring countries on the one hand and intends to undermine the peaceful foreign policies of both the countries on the other.
   
Needless to say, India and its BSF have consistently defied all agreements and conventions, bilateral and multilateral, including the last joint communiqué signed between the prime ministers of two countries early this year that assured Bangladeshis of border peace. But the Indians carried on with all kinds of aggressive and intrusive activities over the past months and years. The BSF atrocities have reached such proportions that the government of Bangladesh has been forced to enforce a dusk-to-dawn ban on movement of Bangladeshi civilians within 150 metres of the zero point inside Bangladesh territory, to prevent loss of lives.
   
In the past four months or so, the BSF has appeared rather hell bent on instigating trouble on its border with Bangladesh. There have been several incidents of intrusion of Indian nationals into Bangladesh territory, apparently at the instigation of the BSF, one of which resulted in exchange of more than 1,000 gunshots between the border guards of the two countries. Moreover, the BSF even kidnapped a BDR soldier at gunpoint and detained him for more than 10 hours. Besides, in the first five months of the calendar year, at least 24 Bangladeshis have been killed by the BSF.
   
The Awami League-led government has repeatedly claimed that it has been successful in persuading its Indian counterpart to resolve all the outstanding problems through peaceful dialogues. But the ground reality tends to indicate otherwise. India has neither taken any steps to resolve the longstanding problems, nor has even shown any sign of resolving them in the near future. Rather, Indian nationals at the backing of its border forces have tried, more than once in a month, to till Bangladeshi crops land! But the government in Dhaka has not been seen/heard to have registered any serious protests with its counterpart in Delhi, leaving the issue of territorial sovereignty in the hands of poorly equipped BDR soldiers. The government must come up with an unequivocal statement on the BSF atrocities on the border and tell the people as to how it plans to redress the issue effectively. The Indian government, on the other hand, needs to realise that by way of repeated BSF intrusion and killing Bangladeshis, it is continuously fuelling an 'anti-India' sentiment across Bangladesh to the detriment of the interests of the people of both the countries.
  
 We, therefore, suggest that Dhaka takes up the issue seriously with Delhi and Delhi asks its border guards to stop killing of Bangladeshis and prevent its citizens from intrusion into Bangladesh territories – let alone tilling land for the sake of mutual interests.
 


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[ALOCHONA] BSF warns Bangladesh Rifles against violation of ceasefire agreement



BSF warns Bangladesh Rifles against violation of ceasefire agreement

Shillong: BSF today warned Bangladesh Rifles that it would not observe "restraint" shown earlier in the event of "misadventure" from their side."We have made it clear that we will not observe the same restraint as we maintained during the last firing by BDR (along the Indo-Bangladesh border in Meghalaya). Unilateral restraint is not possible," BSF (Assam and Meghalaya) chief RC Saxena, who met a BDR delegation led by Brig Gen Md Obaidul Haque at Dawki in Meghalaya, said.
 
The high-level meeting was held after the BDR on June 15 fired over 3,000 rounds at India in at least five places along the international border in Meghalaya, injuring a school teacher. Indian villagers had gone for cultivation on land held in 'adverse position' by India near Noljuri when the BDR fired at them. "The BSF had not fired a single shot on June 15. They (BDR) have been repeatedly been violating the status quo as well as the agreements reached between the two forces. But we will not tolerate this anymore," Saxena said referring to the last BSF-BDR DG level meeting where it was agreed that both the forces would not resort to firing along the border.

The BDR, during the meeting, alleged three Bangladeshis were injured when BSF opened fire on the same day, a charge rubbished by BSF.On BDR's reaction to BSF concerns, Saxena said, "The BDR delegation said they need to speak to their higher ups. They said they would come back to us in a few days."

The BSF said Indian villagers who cultivated land held in adverse possession by India would be provided security.The BSF also said it would ask the Union home ministry to take up the issue with Bangladesh at a higher level.

http://www.dnaindia.com/india/report_bsf-warns-bangladesh-rifles-against-violation-of-ceasefire-agreement_1400810



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