The very first guerrilla operation carried out in the heart of Dhaka city by the Mukti Bahini was on the 9th of June, 1971. The place of action was Hotel Inter-Continental (now Hotel Sheraton), and the time was around 7.45…
POOR Oscar Fernandez Taranco, he thought our political leaders were like those everywhere in the democratic world, sensitive to what the people want. He was unaware of our political culture of ‘party before the country, and of course, leader before…
US Secretary of State John Kerry called Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina yesterday to warn her that if convicted war criminal Abdul Quader Mollah goes to the gallows, Bangladesh’s parliamentary elections might be derailed. Decades ago, in 1977, one of Kerry’s…
THERE was humility in him, the kind that comes to men whose greatness has been engendered by experience and empathy for the sufferings of others. It did not matter that he suffered for years, for close to three decades in…
THIS December is not that December. That winter is not this winter. This country is not that country. That generation is not this generation. But that dream, that old dream of an egalitarian society taking all Bengalis in its fold,…
The sights are raw and unthinkable. Over a million square feet of factory space lay charred. Truck after truck of brand apparels just to be exported turned to ashes. The sights also send out a chilling anxiety over the future…
Today we write about a picture that we couldn’t publish and about 500 passengers of a train who could have died or been severely injured. We couldn’t publish the picture. It was just too heart rending, too vivid and too…
KAZI Zafar Ahmed is an angry man these days. His ire has been directed at General Ershad, who he believes has betrayed the nation by opting for elections and deciding to stay beside Sheikh Hasina and her government. One certainly…
THE CEC’s announcement of the election schedule has, regrettably, dealt a body-blow to whatever little chance there was of a resolution of the current impasse revolving on the issue of poll-time government. Whatever may be the motives behind this, overlooking…
DRAMATIC things have been happening in the country. Minus the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, the prime minister has decided to go ahead with the formation of a multi-party government to oversee the next general election. To what extent her gamble will…
We have seen an inordinate rise of violence in opposition politics — injuring, burning and killing of ordinary people during hartal. We have also noticed with disgust that no leader of the opposition either condemned such brutality or expressed regret…
Given the political turmoil hogging the headlines, this particular news did not get the importance it deserves but it has great national significance — four prosecutors of the International Crimes Tribunal and two investigators of such crimes have sought tickets…
Politicians in our country love to speak of the past whenever they find something to feel proud about it and also as a weapon to castigate opponents. Whenever they are in power, they hate to take lesson from history to…
With due respect for our High Court and Appellate Division judges, we humbly draw their kind attention to our front page picture of 14-year old Monir and urge them to read his story and that of the 8-year old Shumi.…
General Niazi’s strategy of “stretched out fingers rolling back into an iron fist” to hammer the enemy was falling apart as the Indian army and Muktibahini were racing fast towards Dhaka in December, bypassing his army outposts. The Pakistan general…
Thirty-eight years ago, in the early hours of today, Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, M Mansur Ali and AHM Quamruzzaman were murdered by renegade soldiers in the supposedly secure confines of Dhaka Central Jail. The assassination of the four men,…
ONE of my colleagues drew my attention to a contrasting television image of our youth that deserves to be brought to the attention of our readers. In one we see young boys and girls neatly attired in uniform trying to…
KZ: Hello SH: Hello. How are you? KZ: I’m fine. How are you? SH: Yes I’m fine. I called you before but couldn’t reach you. KZ: Look, what you are saying is not completely correct. SH: What I want to…
AS we write we are deeply worried how the events of today, Friday, will play out. So are our readers and the people of the country. We, the voters, do not deserve this. We have been good citizens, we have…
While most of the media focus of Khaleda Zia’s press statement on Monday has been on her interim government formula, there were other parts of her speech which deserve close scrutiny. Her statement was a refreshing departure from her past…
SADEK Hossain Khoka’s use of incendiary language reasserts once more the distortion politics has of late been going through in our part of the world. His call for his party workers and supporters to be armed with axes and machetes…
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s invitation to the opposition last evening to join an interim all-party government had all the elements of sincerity in it. An all-party interim government, in a trouble-free democracy, would be a good idea. The trouble, though,…
WE are a severe critic of this government on many issues. But on the issue of holding war crimes trial we have no hesitation in saying that without the AL in power, and without Sheikh Hasina’s determined leadership, it would…
When he was a judge of the High Court Division, Justice ABM Khairul Haque in a verdict on contempt of court ordinance in 2008 said the power to punish anybody for contempt of court was created to ensure litigants the…
TIMES of India Group’s senior editor, foreign affairs, Indrani Bagchi, literally took the words from our mouths. In an interactive session between a 12-member Bangladesh media delegation and a distinguished panel of interlocutors in the Indian capital on September 17,…
Imagine the world’s largest mangrove forest gasping for air. The once-green landscape is turning a dull gray, yellow and brown. In certain places where the rivers intertwined with the forest have turned black. The air is as harsh as the…
As a child SM Sultan’s nickname was Lal Mia, and he was an apprentice to the masonry work of his father, a mason, Sheikh Meser. With the help of a patron, he entered Calcutta Art School. He did not bother…
WE cannot support the vandalism that the workers of some garment factories of Bangladesh have indulged in, in the last few days. For several days now important highways have been blocked and hundreds of cars, buses and trucks have been…
BANGLADESH’S history is replete with ironies. If you have lately heard or read of Information Minister Hasanul Haq Inu’s invitation to General Ershad to broker a dialogue between the Awami League and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, you will get a…
The consultant was drawing a perfect picture. One could easily get swamped by the plan of how big vessels would offload coal at Akram Point off the Sundarbans, how dust would be controlled and how the community would soon prosper.…
There are two distinct aspects of the war crimes trial. One is of the role of individuals in committing crimes against humanity and how guilty one is, and the commensurate punishment that should be meted out. These are matters of…
While roaming around in the lanes of Chawk Bazar, Old Dhaka have you ever discovered an ancient, almost broken yet very majestic gateway? If you have, you know what I am talking about- it’s the Mughal Bara Katra. And if…
Fort Aurangabad, popularly known as Lalbagh Fort, is located on the banks of the Buriganga River in the northwest of Dhaka. Like other Mughal fortresses, such forts of riverine Bengal were mainly built on the intersections of river routes…
A year ago, the sight of the vandalised temples and monasteries in Ramu quite gave the lie to the notion of this land being home to followers of all faiths and creeds. A year on, you cannot quite suggest that…
WE are happy to learn that the EU delegation expressed satisfaction on Wednesday about the Election Commission’s preparation for holding the general election. However, recently we had seen some serious concerns expressed by the international community about our elections. The…
Five years ago, Shehnaz Alam, an ardent bookworm, left Bangladesh for higher studies. During her stay in New York she used to spend hours sitting in various book stores flipping through the ever-expanding stock of books. This year when…
The world has always been a pretty strange place. Life is quirky and people often do things which surprise and then shock and sometimes amuse us. Think of everything that is happening around Syria. Some western nations are busy these…
IN a major breakthrough in the history of the country’s people’s fundamental rights, the Indian parliament amended the constitution in 2002 to make education a fundamental right. The provision included in the constitution says the state shall provide free and…
FORTY years ago today, Chile passed into terrifying darkness. In the early hours of September 11, 1973, the country’s armed forces, led by General Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, went into action to overthrow the democratically elected government of President Salvador Allende…
WHAT should be a festival of expression of Public Will is being turned into, as we can foresee now, a destructive encounter between our two giant parties with voters becoming increasingly fearful of what is likely to happen. Theoretically, elections…
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is now urging people to vote Awami League again in the next general election for the sake of continuation of democracy and development. Also, she has been warning people of the return of militancy and unbridled…
There are four elements to Sheikh Hasina’s latest pronouncements on elections: 1) Elections within the tenure of the present parliament; 2) Parliament not to be dissolved during elections; 3) Present government to continue in power as interim. 4) A final…
It is clear that Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has further hardened the government’s stance on the polls by backtracking from her earlier announcement of holding the general election by dissolving the present parliament. Around a year ago, on September 19…
SHEIKH Hasina lives in perpetual danger, in that literal sense of the meaning. There are too many wolves out there baying for her blood. While her supporters run into the millions, there is little question that her enemies are legion…
“I write poetry, stories, novels, plays and essays. I do not consider them separate mediums. They all accomplish the same thing—expression through language. They all stem from the same source—language which is the only material I have like a painter…
Early in the morning on January 11 of 2007, the then chief of army staff General Moyeen U Ahmed received a phone call from an under secretary general, who was in charge of UN peace keeping mission. The UN official…
Political parties are supposed to be extremely sensitive to every turn and twist in public opinion. They are expected to keep a close watch on every expression of it in every public forum, both big and small. Most importantly, they…
The agitating teachers of Jahangirnagar University who have kept Vice Chancellor Anwar Hossain confined to his office room for the past four days have embarrassed all of us and our country before the rest of the world. It is one…
OUR leaders are so blinded by their ego that they don’t realise that a step back sometimes serves one’s self interest far getter than by mindless pushing towards, what is falsely thought to be, forward. The present political stalemate is…
BNP chief Khaleda Zia expects her party leaders and supporters to follow the footsteps of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) activists who are fighting the law enforcers and are dying for the release and reinstatement of their leader Mohamed Morsi in…
