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Monday, January 2, 2017

Re: [mukto-mona] Re: {PFC-Friends} ?



This is a general statement from an afaithic state. Which tries to propogate the superior state of own coviction than fairhfulls. But its civic. 



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: "Shah Deeldar shahdeeldar@yahoo.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 3/01/2017 3:34 AM (GMT+08:00)
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Re: {PFC-Friends} ?

 

Even calling faith as a stupid thing non-randomly would not change its definition or hollowness. Faith is based on what rationale and reasoning? Nothing! Some people believe that their faiths are superior to others because their prophet(s) got the last revelation? Surprisingly, nobody gets God's new revelation anymore but if he/she gets it, he/she would be treated as a downright fraud. Why so? Because the days of con-artists and lies are over. Some people believe that people with certain beliefs and faith should be exterminated because they do not pray to the same superior God/s? Are they right to have such dangerous faith? Think carefully about your blind faith, which could be totally contradictory to another man's faith! 


On Monday, January 2, 2017 10:25 AM, "Mohammad Mushrafi mushrafi@hotmail.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


 
Randomly calling faiths as STUPID including the faith of own forefather's, one wonders is the caller Ok? Does it need professional help?



Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.


-------- Original message --------
From: "Sukhamaya Bain subain1@yahoo.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
Date: 31/12/2016 10:37 PM (GMT+08:00)
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Subject: Re: [mukto-mona] Re: {PFC-Friends} ?

 
I have stopped calling myself a Hindu, because much of the religion is stupid and because of its injustice such as the Caste System and the inferior status of women. I wonder why there are so few ex-Muslims. All Abrahamic religions, including Islam, are fundamentally more stupid. Their God forces them to believe in him; if you do not believe in him, he has hellfire for you after life! So, you do not have a choice to think before believing! And of course, there are raw hatred such as murdering apostates and injustice such as the inferior status of women and the deplorable status of non-Abrahamic peoples.

SuBain

========================================


On Friday, December 30, 2016 7:14 PM, "Jiten Roy jnrsr53@yahoo.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com> wrote:


 
These are social terrorists, who are neighbors for generations, preying on their religious minority neighbors. It seems unthinkable; isn't it? But, it's not, and what's even more absurd is that, these terrorists never face any consequence for their heinous crimes, which only encourages others to commit more of such crimes. On top of that, government is tacitly approving these crimes by remaining indifferent of these crimes, thereby sending a message to the religious minorities about their fate in Bangladesh. Yes, I understand, minorities are facing all sorts of discriminations all over the world, but this is not discrimination. This is a government sponsored pogrom and persecution of religious minorities in the country.
On the broader point, one may ask, why religious minorities in most Muslim majority countries are victims of religious persecution, and why governments in those countries always fail so miserably to protect them.
In the above context, I would say, Bangladesh is not out of the norm, and, maybe, you are expecting too much from the government of Bangladesh.
Thanks.
Jiten Roy



From: "ANISUR RAHMAN anisur.rahman1@btinternet.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Friday, December 30, 2016 12:52 PM
Subject: [mukto-mona] Re: {PFC-Friends} ?

 
This is a damning indictment to Bangladesh and Bangladeshi government. If Bangladesh wants to be called a civilised country, the government must take immediate steps to stop such barbarity. Just ask the prime minister that how would she feel if her daughter who lives in America is subjected to same type of torture, insult, rape and barbarity? Of course, in a civilised country such things cannot happen. But then wouldn't Bangladesh try to learn ever how to be civilised?

- AR


On Friday, 30 December 2016, 16:31, Sitangshu Guha <guhasb@gmail.com> wrote:


২০১৬ সালের ১ জানুয়ারি থেকে ২৯ ডিসেম্বর পর্যন্ত সারা দেশে ৯৮ জন হিন্দুকে হত্যা করা হয়েছে। হত্যার হুমকি দেয়া হয়েছে এক হাজার ৯ জনকে। হত্যার চেষ্টা করা হয়েছে ১৮ জনকে। ধর্ষণের ঘটনা ঘটেছে ২৬টি। নিখোঁজ রয়েছেন ২২জন। প্রতিমা ভাঙচুর করা হয়েছে ২০৯টি। ৩৬৬টি মন্দিরে পূজা বন্ধ করা ও ৩৮ জনকে অপহরণ করা হয়েছে। সব মিলিয়ে চলতি বছর ১৫ হাজার ৫৪টি নির্যাতনের ঘটনা ঘটেছে।
শুক্রবার (৩০ ডিসেম্বর) সকালে ঢাকা রিপোর্টার্স ইউনিটি (ডিআরইউ) মিলনায়তনে এক সংবাদ সম্মেলনে চলতি বছরে ধর্মীয় সংখ্যালঘুদের উপর নির্যাতনের চিত্র তুলে ধরতে গিয়ে এমন তথ্য প্রকাশ করেছে বাংলাদেশ জাতীয় হিন্দু মহাজোট।
সম্মেলনে লিখিতভাবে সংখ্যালঘুদের উপর নির্যাতনের এ চিত্র তুলে ধরেন সংগঠনের মহাসচিব আনন্দ কুমার বিশ্বাস।
সংগঠনটির পক্ষ থেকে ধর্ষণ, হত্যা, প্রতিমা ভাঙচুরসহ ৩০টি ক্যাটাগরিতে নির্যাতনের চিত্র তুলে ধরা হয়। এতে আরও জানানো হয়- চলতি বছরের ১ জানুয়ারি থেকে ২৯ ডিসেম্বর পর্যন্ত সারা দেশে ৩৫৭ জনকে জখম, ৮ জনকে কারাগারে আটক, ৯৯জনকে চাঁদাবাজি-মারধর ও আটকে রেখে নির্যাতন, ১৬৫টি লুটপাটের ঘটনা ও বসতঘর-ব্যবসা প্রতিষ্ঠানে ১৩টি হামলা হয়েছে।
সংগঠনের মহাসচিব আনন্দ কুমার বিশ্বাস জানান, সম্পত্তি দখলের ঘটনা ঘটেছে ৮৬টি। এর মধ্যে ভূমি দখল ৬১টি, ঘরবাড়ি দখল ৫টি এবং দখলের তৎপরতার ঘটনা ঘটেছে ২০টি। উচ্ছেদে ঘটনা ঘটেছে ২১০টি, উচ্ছেদের তৎপরতার ঘটনা ঘটেছে ৩২৬টি, উচ্ছেদের হুমকি তিন হাজার ৪৩১টি, দেশ ত্যাগের হুমকি ৭১১টি।
তিনি আরও জানান, মন্দিরে হামলা, ভাঙচুর, চুরি ও অগ্নিসংযোগের ঘটনা ঘটেছে ১৪১টি। বাড়িতে হামলা, ভাঙচুর, চুরি ও ব্যবসা প্রতিষ্ঠানে অগ্নিসংযোগের ঘটনা ঘটেছে দুই হাজার ৩২৮টি। প্রতিমা ভাঙচুর ২০৯টি, প্রতিমা চুরি ২২টি, মন্দিরে পূজা বন্ধ করা হয়েছে ৩৬৬টি, অপহরণ ৩৮টি, অপহরণের চেষ্টা করা হয়েছে ৭টি। গণধর্ষণ হয়েছে ৪টি। জোরপূর্বক ধর্মান্তরিত বা ধর্মান্তরকরণের চেষ্টা এক হাজার ২৫১টি।
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__._,_.___

Posted by: Mohammad Mushrafi <mushrafi@hotmail.com>


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190





__,_._,___

Re: [mukto-mona] Our Task In 2017: Be Better Americans Than The Incoming President



Your resolutions are for the status quo, while Americans Republic just voted out the status quo candidate, and opted for a change. It seems like, you are walking backward…. Watch out for the road bumps.



From: "Farida Majid farida_majid@hotmail.com [mukto-mona]" <mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com>
To: mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Monday, January 2, 2017 4:47 PM
Subject: [mukto-mona] Our Task In 2017: Be Better Americans Than The Incoming President

 

Our Task In 2017: Be Better Americans Than The Incoming President

 
2016-12-31-1483218394-9983797-9c8r4quwzrqaaronburden.jpg
It's tough. We like our presidents admirable. We like them smart and shiny, with verifiable resumes, successful academic careers, a lack of ongoing lawsuits, demonstrably adult speech patterns, and character traits like integrity, honesty, intelligence and political gravitas.

We've had a few of those. We've also had a few who were less so — less shiny, less honest; occasionally less elected (Bush v. Gore still rankles). But even in those lesser cases there was still the sheen of presidential distinction and stateliness; still the expected standards of respect, decorum, and good manners (even when spun homey by Carter, Bush or Clinton); still the aura of loftiness surrounding not only the office, but the man (yes, still just the man) who held the office.
Then Election 2016 happened.
On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, over half the country woke to the realization that America and its noble assignation of "President of the United States" had been crassly modified — dumbed-down, diminished, slapped with cheap faux gilt and the bluster of mob mentality. With a hearty blend of lies and innuendo, hackery and foreign intervention, ingrained and relentless sexism, and the low-bar appeal of Trump's thuggish vision of "greatness," the painful blink of an electoral college eye dismissed the popular vote winner (by almost three million) to award our "country 'tis of thee" to a reality-show huckster best known for grabbing women's private parts, tap-dancing past the tax collector, stiffing his students and small biz vendors, and firing hapless B-list celebrities on air.
Heads exploded worldwide as we'd ushered in the "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" of a Donald J. Trump America.
Dramatic, perhaps, but sometimes life actually is as histrionic as purple prose. It allows inane plot twists to proceed despite their being unhinged and unimaginable; it follows story arcs that so clearly lack foundation, sense or substance that we can't believe where the damn things are going or that we're actually being taken there against our will.
But while we liberals, progressives, and other left-leaning folk were busy pulse-checking Nate Silver and following Rachel Maddow like frantic groupies, convinced the sheer lunacy and daily drip of disqualifying factors surrounding the GOP candidate were sure to keep him from the White House, the poison of a campaign corrupted by myriad influences, including our former Cold War opponents, had already been administered; we just didn't know until it was too late for the antidote.
So now we stand with our families, our children, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and the question becomes: WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?
We want to look away, ignore the insanity; shut the spigot of endless sensationalism, the idiotic prattling, the tedious, terrifying political posturing, to simply get on with our lives, rebuild our sense of civic stability; focus on the positive activism of people of conscience and compassion. But we can't look away; we can't afford to ignore the large, lumbering elephant soon to be sitting in the middle of the Oval Office. In fact, we must not only keep paying attention; we must keep paying attention with vigilance.
I see the daily posts of outraged citizens, politicians, pundits, cable talkshow hosts, opinion writers, and investigative journalists, all sharing and shouting not only about the latest malfeasance, but asking why NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT. How many times have you heard someone remark: "If Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, or — fill in the blank with any name you can possibly think of — did that, they'd be impeached, arrested, banished, imprisoned, drawn and quartered; charged with treason, but NOTHING HAPPENS TO DONALD TRUMP... WHY?" It's a fair question which I, too, would like answered.
Because how we can teach our children, our growing teens and young adults, to become civically active, to aspire to greatness and reach for the highest ideals, while daily they're bombarded by the murk and corruption of our incoming leadership?
WE CAN'T. Because we will not have that kind of leadership after January 20th. The moment Trump is sworn into office we will lose the perk of having a president, a leader, a representative who is admirable, sharp, dignified, and inspiring. We will, instead, have a man in the Oval Office who is generally the opposite of what we want our children, our teens, our young adults — hell, our damn peers — to aspire to. And while that is a tragic and dispiriting legacy of Election 2016, we are each and every one of us capable of transcending and resisting it. How?
By being better Americans than the incoming president:
  • By being better people, better leaders; better teachers, mentors, inspirers, and creators, embodying exactly the kind of people we want our children to be.
  • By being industry leaders and innovators who conduct business with respect, integrity, and unassailable ethics.
  • By opening our minds and hearts to learn and absorb new facts and verified truths — not propaganda, not biased misinformation — about people, cultures, ethnicities, religions, and orientations that are "different" and unfamiliar.
  • By extending the compassion and understanding garnered from the above to treat people better, to seek new ways to help, find effective steps toward tangible solutions.
  • By shaking off fixed notions about what sexism is, gaining greater understanding of how it pervades and influences; adjusting our thinking to realize and implement respectful, honorable, and gender-equality behaviors and attitudes towards women.
  • By teaching and exemplifying decorous, respectful, civil, and productive discussion skills, for both virtual and tangible conversation and debate. Trollism has had a deleterious effect on our culture and, unfortunately, the new president is the King of Trolls. Let's change the trend and raise the bar.
  • By realizing that "politically correct" actually means being sensitive and aware of evolving culture, mores, ideas, and attitudes, and adjusting according. That rejecting the notion of "politically correct" is most often the tool of those who traffick in bigotry, hate, racism, sexism, trollism, and verbal abuse.
  • By understanding that loyalty and patriotism do not require blind acceptance of the words, actions, and policies of any one person, including the new president, nor do they preempt one's right to free speech and civil liberty. They do, however, suggest one not aggrandize the dictator of an antagonistic foreign government over one's own.
  • And, lastly, and in an umbrella overview: by acknowledging and staying vigilant to the new president's long and growing list of negatives, using those as bullet-points of what not to be, do, and emulate. That almost makes it easy, doesn't it?
We are a deeply divided country, but there is nothing new in that. We've been divided from the moment the Mayflower landed and Manifest Destiny pushed some to destroy our native population while others fought for peaceful coexistence; since brothers fought brothers in the Civil War; since World War II convinced some Americans to imprison our Japanese citizens; since the civil rights era made our racial sin a bloody and still-unhealed tear; since Vietnam made us realize not all wars were justified; since Watergate made clear our presidents could be criminals, and since 9/11 gave us a new kind of fear that metastasized into ethnic bigotry and xenophobia.
We have also survived, evolved, and grown. Marriage equality was achieved, healthcare was passed; new environmental measures were implemented. Harriet Tubman got the $20 bill, unemployment hit a new low, and enough women of color were elected on November 8th to make history. We can cross our fingers and hope the new administration doesn't destroy all that forward progress and more, or we can embrace, like it's a mission from God, the task of maintaining and raising the level of integrity, ethics, and honor in our lives and in this country, despite having leadership bereft of those qualities.
The beginning of a new year — the ending of what was and the dawning of what will be — seems a perfect time for such pledges. So let's do it. Let's take the task on: no matter what happens with the day-to-day drama of our impertinent, impermanent new occupant of the White House, let's be the kind of Americans we want to be, need to be, to keep our country, our citizens, our "brand" of progress and compassion moving forward.
Remember: his "reign" is temporary. Ours, as American, is not.
Photo by Aaron Burden @ Unsplash
___________________________________________________________
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105 Comments





__._,_.___

Posted by: Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@yahoo.com>


****************************************************
Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

http://mukto-mona.com/wordpress/?p=68

http://mukto-mona.com/banga_blog/?p=585

****************************************************

VISIT MUKTO-MONA WEB-SITE : http://www.mukto-mona.com/

****************************************************

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190





__,_._,___

[mukto-mona] Our Task In 2017: Be Better Americans Than The Incoming President



Our Task In 2017: Be Better Americans Than The Incoming President

 

2016-12-31-1483218394-9983797-9c8r4quwzrqaaronburden.jpg

It's tough. We like our presidents admirable. We like them smart and shiny, with verifiable resumes, successful academic careers, a lack of ongoing lawsuits, demonstrably adult speech patterns, and character traits like integrity, honesty, intelligence and political gravitas.


We've had a few of those. We've also had a few who were less so — less shiny, less honest; occasionally less elected (Bush v. Gore still rankles). But even in those lesser cases there was still the sheen of presidential distinction and stateliness; still the expected standards of respect, decorum, and good manners (even when spun homey by Carter, Bush or Clinton); still the aura of loftiness surrounding not only the office, but the man (yes, still just the man) who held the office.

Then Election 2016 happened.

On Wednesday, November 9, 2016, over half the country woke to the realization that America and its noble assignation of "President of the United States" had been crassly modified — dumbed-down, diminished, slapped with cheap faux gilt and the bluster of mob mentality. With a hearty blend of lies and innuendo, hackery and foreign intervention, ingrained and relentless sexism, and the low-bar appeal of Trump's thuggish vision of "greatness," the painful blink of an electoral college eye dismissed the popular vote winner (by almost three million) to award our "country 'tis of thee" to a reality-show huckster best known for grabbing women's private parts, tap-dancing past the tax collector, stiffing his students and small biz vendors, and firing hapless B-list celebrities on air.

Heads exploded worldwide as we'd ushered in the "champagne wishes and caviar dreams" of a Donald J. Trump America.

Dramatic, perhaps, but sometimes life actually is as histrionic as purple prose. It allows inane plot twists to proceed despite their being unhinged and unimaginable; it follows story arcs that so clearly lack foundation, sense or substance that we can't believe where the damn things are going or that we're actually being taken there against our will.

But while we liberals, progressives, and other left-leaning folk were busy pulse-checking Nate Silver and following Rachel Maddow like frantic groupies, convinced the sheer lunacy and daily drip of disqualifying factors surrounding the GOP candidate were sure to keep him from the White House, the poison of a campaign corrupted by myriad influences, including our former Cold War opponents, had already been administered; we just didn't know until it was too late for the antidote.

So now we stand with our families, our children, the huddled masses yearning to breathe free, and the question becomes: WHAT DO WE DO ABOUT IT?

We want to look away, ignore the insanity; shut the spigot of endless sensationalism, the idiotic prattling, the tedious, terrifying political posturing, to simply get on with our lives, rebuild our sense of civic stability; focus on the positive activism of people of conscience and compassion. But we can't look away; we can't afford to ignore the large, lumbering elephant soon to be sitting in the middle of the Oval Office. In fact, we must not only keep paying attention; we must keep paying attention with vigilance.

I see the daily posts of outraged citizens, politicians, pundits, cable talkshow hosts, opinion writers, and investigative journalists, all sharing and shouting not only about the latest malfeasance, but asking why NOTHING IS BEING DONE ABOUT IT. How many times have you heard someone remark: "If Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, or — fill in the blank with any name you can possibly think of — did that, they'd be impeached, arrested, banished, imprisoned, drawn and quartered; charged with treason, but NOTHING HAPPENS TO DONALD TRUMP... WHY?" It's a fair question which I, too, would like answered.

Because how we can teach our children, our growing teens and young adults, to become civically active, to aspire to greatness and reach for the highest ideals, while daily they're bombarded by the murk and corruption of our incoming leadership?

WE CAN'T. Because we will not have that kind of leadership after January 20th. The moment Trump is sworn into office we will lose the perk of having a president, a leader, a representative who is admirable, sharp, dignified, and inspiring. We will, instead, have a man in the Oval Office who is generally the opposite of what we want our children, our teens, our young adults — hell, our damn peers — to aspire to. And while that is a tragic and dispiriting legacy of Election 2016, we are each and every one of us capable of transcending and resisting it. How?

By being better Americans than the incoming president:

  • By being better people, better leaders; better teachers, mentors, inspirers, and creators, embodying exactly the kind of people we want our children to be.
  • By being industry leaders and innovators who conduct business with respect, integrity, and unassailable ethics.
  • By opening our minds and hearts to learn and absorb new facts and verified truths — not propaganda, not biased misinformation — about people, cultures, ethnicities, religions, and orientations that are "different" and unfamiliar.
  • By extending the compassion and understanding garnered from the above to treat people better, to seek new ways to help, find effective steps toward tangible solutions.
  • By shaking off fixed notions about what sexism is, gaining greater understanding of how it pervades and influences; adjusting our thinking to realize and implement respectful, honorable, and gender-equality behaviors and attitudes towards women.
  • By teaching and exemplifying decorous, respectful, civil, and productive discussion skills, for both virtual and tangible conversation and debate. Trollism has had a deleterious effect on our culture and, unfortunately, the new president is the King of Trolls. Let's change the trend and raise the bar.
  • By realizing that "politically correct" actually means being sensitive and aware of evolving culture, mores, ideas, and attitudes, and adjusting according. That rejecting the notion of "politically correct" is most often the tool of those who traffick in bigotry, hate, racism, sexism, trollism, and verbal abuse.
  • By understanding that loyalty and patriotism do not require blind acceptance of the words, actions, and policies of any one person, including the new president, nor do they preempt one's right to free speech and civil liberty. They do, however, suggest one not aggrandize the dictator of an antagonistic foreign government over one's own.
  • And, lastly, and in an umbrella overview: by acknowledging and staying vigilant to the new president's long and growing list of negatives, using those as bullet-points of what not to be, do, and emulate. That almost makes it easy, doesn't it?

We are a deeply divided country, but there is nothing new in that. We've been divided from the moment the Mayflower landed and Manifest Destiny pushed some to destroy our native population while others fought for peaceful coexistence; since brothers fought brothers in the Civil War; since World War II convinced some Americans to imprison our Japanese citizens; since the civil rights era made our racial sin a bloody and still-unhealed tear; since Vietnam made us realize not all wars were justified; since Watergate made clear our presidents could be criminals, and since 9/11 gave us a new kind of fear that metastasized into ethnic bigotry and xenophobia.

We have also survived, evolved, and grown. Marriage equality was achieved, healthcare was passed; new environmental measures were implemented. Harriet Tubman got the $20 bill, unemployment hit a new low, and enough women of color were elected on November 8th to make history. We can cross our fingers and hope the new administration doesn't destroy all that forward progress and more, or we can embrace, like it's a mission from God, the task of maintaining and raising the level of integrity, ethics, and honor in our lives and in this country, despite having leadership bereft of those qualities.

The beginning of a new year — the ending of what was and the dawning of what will be — seems a perfect time for such pledges. So let's do it. Let's take the task on: no matter what happens with the day-to-day drama of our impertinent, impermanent new occupant of the White House, let's be the kind of Americans we want to be, need to be, to keep our country, our citizens, our "brand" of progress and compassion moving forward.

Remember: his "reign" is temporary. Ours, as American, is not.

Photo by Aaron Burden @ Unsplash
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[mukto-mona] REPORT Bangladesh Is Vanishing The Opposition: Foreign Policy Magazine



Bangladesh Is Vanishing The Opposition
Bangladesh Is Vanishing The Opposition

When the plainclothes police came for Mir Ahmad bin Quasem, they didn't even give him time to put on his shoes. According to his wife, at around 11 p.m. on Aug. 9, the young lawyer was dragged down the steps of their first-floor apartment in Dhaka, Bangladesh's capital, and into an unmarked van. Their two young daughters ran behind, screaming.

Five days earlier, Humam Quader Chowdhury, a politician in his early 30s, had been driving to a court hearing with his mother when a group of men reportedly stopped the car at a traffic light. They ordered him out and bundled him into another vehicle.

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By the time a gang of 30 men in civilian dress reached the home of Amaan Azmi, a former army brigadier general, he had heard about the other two abductions and was hiding. They combed through the building, questioning an employee of the family at gunpoint before finding Azmi in an empty apartment, according to his brother, Salman al-Azami.

"They said that they had come from the detective branch of the police," he said.

The three men, all sons of senior opposition leaders, were abducted in the space of a few weeks in August. Despite numerous witnesses who say the security services picked them up, the authorities have denied involvement. None of them has been heard from since.

But it's not their own activities that resulted in them being sucked into the black hole of Bangladesh's growing security state. They were the sons of some of the most reviled men in the country, all politicians convicted in recent years of committing war crimes during Bangladesh's 1971 war of independence from Pakistan.

Two of those elder men — Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury and Mir Quasem Ali, the fathers of Chowdhury and bin Quasem, respectively — were recently hanged for brutalities including rape and murder. Amaan Azmi's father, Ghulam Azam, died of a heart attack in 2014 while serving a 90-year jail term for his part in establishing pro-Pakistan militias implicated in atrocities.

Originally a geographically noncontiguous part of Pakistan, after its bloody partition from India in 1947, Bangladesh, then-East Pakistan, emerged as a nation despite violent resistance from the Pakistani military authorities. Hundreds of thousands of people — as many as 3 million by Bangladeshi government figures — were killed as a result of Pakistan's "Operation Searchlight," an attempt to crush the independence movement. The families of the victims had spent a long time waiting for justice. The current Bangladeshi prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, whose father was a popular hero of the independence movement, owes her election victory in 2009 in part to her promise to prosecute those accused of war crimes.

But the tribunal set up that year was quickly mired in allegations of incompetence and blatant political bias. The defendants were all prominent opposition figures, including a sitting parliament member, and their lawyers complained of numerous constrictions. In one case, 35 witnesses were allowed to speak for the prosecution and just three for the defense. Leaked transcripts revealed that a judge was privately consulting with the Bangladeshi director of a genocide studies institute in Brussels. In one conversation, the judge described the administration as "absolutely crazy for a judgment" before the 2014 polls. In Salahuddin Quader Chowdhury's case, the judgment appeared online before it was announced, prompting allegations that it had been written by a government ministry.

With opposition leaders in the dock — or dead — their family members were also kept under surveillance. In the days and weeks leading up to their disappearances, both Azmi and bin Quasem began to express fear for their own safety.

Interviews with lawyers, rights groups, and relatives of the missing men suggest they have likely been held in detention centers, possibly subject to torture, their families unaware of their location or if they now are alive or dead.

They have joined the growing ranks of Bangladesh's "disappeared."

Over the past five years, hundreds of Bangladeshis, many connected to the opposition, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances
Over the past five years, hundreds of Bangladeshis, many connected to the opposition, have gone missing under mysterious circumstances, their friends and families swearing they were picked up by law enforcement.

Bangladesh is ruled by Hasina's avowedly secular Awami League government, while the political opposition is dominated by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), headed by the prime minister's bitter rival, Khaleda Zia, and Jamaat-e-Islami, the largest Islamist party. The latter two have traditionally partnered in coalitions, and the war crimes defendants — and many of the missing people — have hailed from both.

Analysts place the abductions in the context of a wider crackdown on the opposition that the government has justified by a rising threat of militancy in the majority Muslim state. Although recent attacks, including a spate of killings of bloggers and activists, have been claimed by the Islamic State and al Qaeda, the Awami League has consistently sought to blame local militant groups they say are enabled by the BNP and Jamaat-e-Islami. "Part of [the government's] campaign against the opposition has been to equate them with militancy," said Tejshree Thapa, the South Asia researcher for Human Rights Watch.

David Bergman, a Dhaka-based journalist who has been tracking the abductions, says at least 80 people have been taken so far in 2016.

Some have eventually emerged and been formally arrested. The most high-profile case involved Hasnat Reza Karim, a 47-year-old engineer, and Tahmid Hasib Khan, a student at the University of Toronto, who were dining by chance at the Holey Artisan Bakery in Dhaka on July 1 when Islamic State-linked militants stormed the restaurant, taking hostages and killing 24 people. They had no known political links. Despite a dearth of evidence implicating the pair, they were secretly detained without charge for a month before being presented as "arrested" — as if they had been freshly picked up off the streets.

Others have turned up dead, some killed by the notorious Rapid Action Battalion, an elite anti-terrorism unit, in what the authorities claim are "crossfire" shootouts. There are many still missing, including 19 BNP members taken in November and December 2013. Human Rights Watch told Foreign Policy that it has heard from credible sources that at least five of those men are dead.

Michael Polak, the British barrister representing bin Quasem, believes his client is being held, with at least one of the other two missing men, in Dhaka's Minto Road detective branch.

"His family [is] very worried about his health and how he's being treated," he said.

Polak said a senior diplomatic source gave him a frightening insight into how the Minto Road prison works. "They have a book of torture methods and make the inmates choose how they're going to be tortured," he said.

Reportedly, some of those released were freed on the condition that they not talk about their treatment or participate in politics. Last year, Salahuddin Ahmed, the chief spokesman for the BNP, surfaced in India more than two months after he was allegedly picked up by plainclothes detectives. News reports described how he was discovered disorientated, wandering near the border, and put on trial by India for illegally entering the country.

"Yes, I am Salahuddin Ahmed, a BNP leader," he told bdnews24.com in a stilted interview at the time. "I was kidnapped by a group of unidentified people from Uttara [a suburb of Dhaka] in Bangladesh, and I do not know how I landed in this place. I can't remember anything after I was abducted."

"There are people who've died in custody, people who've miraculously jumped off fifth-floor balconies," said Thapa, the Human Rights Watch researcher. "The government just maintains such a silence on it that no one's paying attention." Azami said his brother, Azmi, had been tracked for a long time.

"We were aware that there were people outside the building — plainclothes policemen always there," he said over the phone from the U.K., where he works as a university lecturer. "We thought that it could happen anytime for quite a long time."

In 2009, the same year Hasina came to power, Azmi received a letter saying his position in the army had been terminated, his brother said. There was no explanation. He had spent 30 years in the service. "Everyone knew he was one of the best army officers Bangladesh ever produced — and, like this, he was dismissed," said Azami.

Some suggest that the convicted war criminals' sons, or at least bin Quasem, may have been taken in anticipation of the heavily politicized Sept. 3 execution of the latter's father, Mir Quasem Ali.

Previous executions after war crimes trials had brought waves of supporters for the condemned onto the streets, rustled up by Jamaat-e-Islami.

"In the case of Mir Quasem Ali's son, the speculation is that the government was trying to preempt any kind of mobilization around the execution," said Shehryar Fazli, the Crisis Group's senior analyst for South Asia.

But Fazli says these worries are largely groundless.

"In the more recent executions, Jamaat-e-Islami as well as the BNP were unable to get something really going on the streets, so the likelihood of them being able to mobilize around this last execution was probably limited," he said. "But you're talking about a government that has responded extremely heavy-handedly with respect to all sorts of perceived threats against its legitimacy and political stability."

Rights groups say the disappearances began in earnest after 2009, under the new president. But they spiked this year after the July attack on the Holey Artisan Bakery. Although the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the siege, the government has sought to pin it on local terrorist outfits it said were working hand in hand with the domestic political opposition.

The terrorist threat has served to justify a widening crackdown on dissent, Fazli said. The backlash has extended to shooting and "kneecapping" members and supporters of opposition parties, as detailed in a recent Human Rights Watch report. A new law governing nongovernmental organizations, meanwhile, allows the closure of nonprofits that make "derogatory" comments about any "constitutional bodies."

In recent months, dozens of online news operations have been shut down and several journalists arrested.

While stifling mainstream opposition, analysts say the heavy-handed response could serve as a recruitment tool for fringe elements.

"A lot of the motivation for joining a violent group is that the legitimate avenues of opposition and dissent are being closed off," said Fazli of the Crisis Group. "These organizations — whether they're jihadists or student wings of parties like Jamaat-e-Islami — they're becoming more attractive avenues of opposition."

Alienated by the crackdown, once staunch, secular support bases for the Awami League like the Dhaka Bar Association have swung toward parties like Jamaat, he said.

In a recent phone interview, Obaidul Quader, the minister for communication, would not comment directly on allegations of disappearances and extrajudicial killings but blamed the opposition for "violent policies."

"One of the successes of this government is combating terrorism," he added. "You see some terrorist acts before, but now the situation is relatively stable. No problem.… Militancy is now a global phenomenon."

The West, which sees Hasina as a useful ally against Islamist extremism, has stayed largely silent on allegations of rights abuses. "In the international community, people prefer Sheikh Hasina to the opposition," said Thapa, the Human Rights Watch researcher. "There's a lot of sympathy and leeway given to the government to conduct its anti-terror operation."

Besides, the country is making progress. Poverty has fallen dramatically since the 1990s. The country is one of the few developing nations on track to reach most of their Millennium Development Goals.

"We're all comparing it in our heads to what it was 20, 30 years ago," said Thapa. "The international community … is willing to believe the government's solution that economic growth is the answer to all this."

In the context of 156 million people, in the eighth-most populous country on the planet, what are a few score missing men?

"You always have that expectation that he might come back," said Azami. "If someone is killed, you know that person is killed, you move on. Here, you can't move on."

In an email, Tahmina Aktar, the wife of bin Quasem, said her daughters, aged 3 and 4, often ask why their father does not call or come home.

"Why do we have to suffer like this?" she asked. "Is being family of opposition [leaders] such a big crime?"

                                                                                           http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/12/16/bangladesh-is-vanishing-the-opposition/?utm_content=buffereca24&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer


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Posted by: rashed Anam <rashedanam1971@gmail.com>


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Mukto Mona plans for a Grand Darwin Day Celebration: 
Call For Articles:

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"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it".
               -Beatrice Hall [pseudonym: S.G. Tallentyre], 190





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