Voicebox

"I was sold to a person known as Kohinur Majhi for Tk 1,000 and then packed into a boat with many others. After the night's journey, I landed in this Sundarbans island, a land I have never been to before and only read about in books."
SUJON
a forced slavery victim.
The Bangladesh navy last week rescued 106 people from Meher Ali Island in the Bay, 110km off Mongla. These people were forced into slavery in a fish firm.

"I have visited the Sundarbans twice after the cyclone. In my 29-year career, never before did I see the Sundarbans damaged like this."
AKM SHAMSUDDIN
Chief Forest Conservator.

"I just need something to eat. Something to fill my tummy. Anything. There is nothing edible left on this island."
ALI MIA
a fisherman in Alor Kol, Dublarchar.

"There's a discussion going on at the government level to decide how they will work in the affected areas."
Lt Col MAINULLAH CHOWDHURY
General Staff Officer-1
about US help for Bangladeshi cyclone victims.

"Jamaat leaders and activists were involved in war crimes. We saw how they tortured and killed people, raped many, and set thousands of houses ablaze during the Liberation War."
ANWAR HOSSAIN
a Freedom Fighter of Sector-9.

"It is our view that our friends will come forward to assist us at this hour of need. We are doing everything we can ourselves, but the magnitude of the calamity has been just too great."
IFTEKHAR AHMED CHOWDHURY
foreign adviser

"Such commercial signs are inconsistent with the essential academic atmosphere of the campus. It gives the academic campus the appearance of a commercial area."
Nurul Islam Nazem
professor
Department of Geography and Environment at Dhaka University
about putting up of billboards on the campus.

"We're going to -- we'll be sending a person on the ground there pretty soon to help implement the malaria initiative, and that initiative will mean spreading nets and insecticides throughout the country so that we can see a reduction in death of young children that -- a death that we can cure."
GEORGE W BUSH
president of the United States.

Quotations Are Taken From Different Local And International Newspapers.
Compiled by: AHMEDE HUSSAIN

Copyright (R) thedailystar.net 2007