Bangladesh

    The government of Saudi Arabia has lifted restrictions on issuing Umrah visas to Bangladeshi pilgrims. A high official of the foreign ministry confirmed the development to The Bangla Media in Dhaka. Earlier in March this year, Saudi authorities stopped issuing Umrah visas to the Bangladeshis on the allegation of smuggling of migrants into the Arab country.

    Bangladesh’s position remains unchanged in the Human Development Index, according to the 2015 Human Development Report launched by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Bangladesh ranked 142 out of 188 countries in the index, while neighbouring India ranked at 130, Nepal at 145 and Pakistan at 147, the report, published today, said. “Bangladesh has shown a positive trend in Human Development for the last couple of decades with an average annual increase of about 1.55 percent,” a press release in this regard reads. UNDP launched the report titled “Work for Human Development” at NEC Conference Room at the Planning Commission today. According to the report, despite extremely rapid technological adoption in recent years, as of 2014, 2.5 billion people in Asia and the Pa...

    Fire broke out at a room of Dhaka’s Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport this morning, however, there was no significant damage. The fire, suspected to have been sparked from an electrical short circuit around 8:30am, broke out on the immi-gration office at the second floor. It was quickly doused by the office staffs, Murshid Jahan, assistant superintendent of airport’s Armed Police Battalion (APBN), told The Daily Star. “No significant damage occurred in the fire,” she said.

Mozammel H. Khan: Despite history's numerous precedents, the word “genocide” did not exist until legal scholar Raphael Lemkin, a Polish Jew who found shelter in the United States, coined the term in 1943. On December 9, 1948, the UN unanimously adopted a convention on genocide, identifying it as a crime “committed with the intention to destroy in whole or part a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” Called The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, it was adopted by the General Assembly on December 9, 1948, and came into effect on January 12, 1951. The word “genocide” that gradually entered the lexicon of international law has been used to officially character-ise the mass slaughter of Armenians, Jews and Rwandans in the 20th century. The UN recogni...

Ishtiaq Ahmed: It's the middle of September, 1971. The location is Shonir Char, an inconspicuous fictional village under Barisal District, Sector 9 of independent Bangladesh. But Shonir Char is of great strategic importance to both the nefari-ous Pakistani Army, who are currently occupying it by force, and the Freedom Fighters who want to secure this crucial outpost. Surrounded by Madhumati River, the village has suddenly become critical because of the recent emerging char (river islets). The Pakistanis have also set up a watch-tower which gives them visibility of any enemy approaching their stronghold. At the break of midnight, a group of five Freedom Fighter commandos approach Shonir Char by first swimming through the dark waters of Madhumati and then crawling on the sand dunes of the bu...

Nicholas Carroll: On December 16, 1971, just a few hours after the surrender of the Pakistan army, then Prime Minister of In-dia, Indira Gandhi gave her first exclusive interview to journalist Nicholas Carroll, published in The Age on December 20, 1971. Here we publish the whole interview. In the first exclusive interview she has given since the Indo-Pakistan war began, Mrs. Gandhi told me yesterday that she has no doubt that India and Pakistan will establish a friendly relationship. She is convinced that there can be stability in the Indian sub-continent “if outsiders didn't interfere.” There were my questions and her replies: Carroll: You have carried out your declared objectives regarding Bangladesh. You have made it clear that India has no territorial ambitions. How long will it be bef...

    The nation celebrates the 45th Victory Day today, commemorating its glorious victory in a nine month war against Pakistan occupation forces in 1971. This year, Victory Day is going to be celebrated within one month into the executions of condemned war criminals Salauddin Quader Chowdhury and Ali Ahsan Muhammad Mojaheed who were hanged for their war crimes in the early hours of November 22. On this day in 1971, the chief of the Pakistani occupation forces, Gen AAK Niazi, along with his 93,000 Pakistani troops, surrendered at Ramna Racecourse, now Suhrawardy Udyan, in Dhaka following their miserable defeat to the joint forces of Mukti Bahini and Mitra Bahini. In one of the heinous acts of genocide in human history, the Pakistan army and their local collaborators had launched...

    Bangladesh has joined a Saudi Arabia-based 34-state Islamic military coalition to combat terrorism, according to a joint statement published on state news agency SPA. "The countries here mentioned have decided on the formation of a military alliance led by Saudi Arabia to fight terrorism, with a joint operations center based in Riyadh to coordinate and support military operations," the statement said today. A long list of Arab countries such as Egypt, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, together with Islamic countries Turkey, Malaysia, Pakistan and Gulf Arab and African states were mentioned. The announcement cited "a duty to protect the Islamic nation from the evils of all terrorist groups and organiza-tions whatever their sect and name which wreak death and corruption on ea...

    The High Court today questioned the legality of the government’s latest decision to hike gas and electricity prices. In response to a writ petition, the HC issued a rule upon the Energy Regulatory Commission to explain why the decision to hike the prices of gas and electricity would not be declared illegal. In the rule, the court also asked the commission to explain why it should not be directed to reconsider the price hike decision. The HC bench of Justice Naima Haider and Justice Mustafa Zaman Islam came up with the rule after hearing the writ petition filed by Consumers Association of Bangladesh. BANGLADESH RAISES POWER AND GAS PRICES FROM SEPTEMBER The organisation submitted the petition in September challenging the legality of the decision taken by Energy Regulatory C...