Tibetans Fought as Mukti Bahni in 1971 in East Pakistan

Tibetan Brigadier Ratuk  Brigadier Ratuk who is now 84 years old living in ‘Majno Cottila’ situated in “Tibet Colony” New Delhi, states that his secret gorilla force was not part of regular Indian army however they were under command of Indian army and Indian General Pabun was their Commander. The initial name of Ratuk’s army was ‘Voluntary Freedom Fighter Force’ but after 1962 Sino-Indian war it was renamed as ‘Tibetan Secret Regiment’. In order to avoid objection from Chinese side for armed interference into China this terrorist force of India was renamed as ‘Special Frontier Force’. Its Head Quarter was in ‘Dehradhun’ in Uttar Paradesh.

Brigadier Ratuk says that when he was ordered to send his force to Eastern Pakistan to fight against Pakistan he was shocked because his only target was freedom of Tibet from China and secret war/ terrorism against China , so he denied to wage secret war/terrorism in East Pakistan.

When Dalai Lama’s elder brother Gyalo Thondap ordered them to help India in this war he got ready because Gyalo deceived him that if he (Ratuk) helps India in war against Pakistan than Indian army would help them to defeat Chinese army in Tibet.

After this approximately 2000 Bengali were brought into the camp and he was told that these are men of Mukti Bahni and will support his force in Gorilla war against Pak-Army in Eastern Pakistan . When these Tibetan militants entered into the Bengal they learned that Bengali traitors were not trained enough to fight against Pak army however they proved to be worthy guides because Tibetan terrorists were not aware of ground routes and installations of Pakistan army.

Brigadier Ratuk further claims that they (his Tibetan terrorists) waged war against Pakistan disguised as Mukti Bahni and the world was being deceived that Mukti Bahni is a force of freedom fighters fighting for freedom against Pakistan . Ratuk says that this is the most clear lie of history; the actual war was fought by his men, Indian army was brought in when Indians were assured that Pakistan army has been badly hurt and Pakistan army was isolated on the international level through successful/influential propaganda even that Pakistanis themselves were feeling ashamed for the stories of war crimes of Pak Army.

The biggest proof of our (Brigadier Ratuk & his force) success against Pak Army is that when we (Tibetans) reinforced our control over Chitagong, Special Advisor for Indira Gandhi and most trusted officer of Indian Secret Agency ‘Mr. R.N. Kao’ specially visited and acknowledged that without your (Tibetan terrorists) support Indian army would never had been able to achieve such a big success in East Pakistan.

The confession of Brigadier Ratuk should be sufficient to open our eyes that East Pakistan was separated from us through a big conspiracy.

However if our Pro-Indian intellectuals and Aman Ki Asha brand Journalist beat their old triumphant even after discovery/ disclosure of reality of Mukti Bahni that Pakistan army gang raped Bengali women, and was involved in heinous crime of genocide than I would like to question them that in Tribal Areas from last ten years Pakistan army is fighting against terrorists and successful operations are being conducted than why in spite of slaughtering of kidnapped soldiers (by terrorists) and the number of casualties of armed forces in thousands why not a single incident of rape or intentional killing of innocents have been reported/proved?

And in Balochistan these operations are going even before our maturity than why no such incident has been brought forward except the case of Dr. Shazia employed in a hospital that was allegedly raped by a Captain but when army investigations were started all those (including the target of rape) who wrote this propaganda story to   defame Pakistan  army fled to London so that actual facts could not be revealed through investigations.

However, in spite of the disclosure of reality of Mukti Bahni, Hamid Mir wants that Pakistan should apologize from Bangladesh (for the crimes of Indian terrorists)?

If these pro-Indian elements are stuck to their demands that Pakistan should apologize from Bangladesh with regard to 1971 and Mujeeb is a hero for them than would they like to inform nation that why Mujeeb and his family was murdered by his own Bangladeshi army, not by one or two soldiers but by the whole Regiment; why did army murder their hero along with his family?

Eating in Bangladesh Can be Dangerous

Food can just as easily kill as it keeps people alive, experts have learned in Bangladesh, where excessive use of pesticide, unregulated street food and lack of awareness about food safety sicken millions annually [ http://www.iphn.gov.bd/english/food.html].

Every day people are eating dangerous foods, which are triggering deadly diseases http://www.consumerbd.org ].

Children younger than five in Bangladesh are at the greatest risk from eating unsafe food, which causes at least 18 percent of deaths in that age group and 10 percent of adults’ deaths, according to a 2006 study cited by the US-based University of Minnesota’s Centre for Animal Health and Food Safety [ http://www.cahfs.umn.edu/appliedresearch/globalohimplement/CompellingStories/bangladesh-food-safety/index.htm ].

This trend has continued, and may worsen as urbanization strains clean water supply [ http://www.irinnews.org/report/95331/BANGLADESH-Dhaka-s-worrying-water-supply ] in  Dhaka.

On average,  most patients visit hospitals and clinics because of diarrhoea or cholera, which are often traced back to food or drink.

Pesticides and poor planning

Experts say the farm is one starting point for how food can turn fatal.

Many farmers in the country use an excessive amount of pesticide in agricultural products hoping to boost output, while ignoring the serious health impacts on consumers.

Despite repeated warnings [ http://www.irinnews.org/report/96223/BANGLADESH-Farmers-not-heeding-pesticide-warnings ] from the government about this issue, lack of coordination among public agencies has hampered effective controls, said a FAO advisor on food safety policies.

FAO is advocating a “farm to table” approach [ http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/2003/sag124.doc.htm ] that addresses how food is grown or raised, to how it is collected, processed, packaged, sold and consumed.

Urban poor

In 2009, Bangladesh’s parliament passed the country’s first consumer protection law covering food safety and security. New standards included requiring food labels, creating safety testing standards, monitoring products for chemical and microbial hazards, and holding producers accountable by levying fines for violations.

This law joined several others aimed at regulating food quality: Bangladesh Pure Food Ordinance (1959), Fish and Fish Product Rules (1997) and the Radiation Protection Act (1987).

Safe and nutritious food for all is also guaranteed in the constitution – but on the streets, it is a different matter.

Street vendors operating small, unregulated carts feed millions of people daily, offering no guarantee of safety, with approximately one in six people becoming ill after eating out [ http://www.eminence-bd.org ].

This risk makes life even harder for slum dwellers who rely on street food for its ease and affordability. Health care is already a challenge for the slum population. This disease burden from unsafe food consumption adds up to their misery.

At least 5 percent of Bangladesh’s 170 million people live in illegal housing settlements [ http://www.unicef.org/sowc/files/SOWC_2012-Main_Report_EN_21Dec2011.pdf ]. According to a 2008 Asian Development Bank study, poor people in Bangladesh, particularly those in cities, find it difficult to prepare food at home as they spend so much time outside the home earning a living.

Many of them end up eating cheap ready-made meals of low quality purchased from small shops or street vendors.

Even though street food sales are illegal, and therefore unregulated, unofficial estimates hold that authorities tolerate about 200,000 food carts selling everything from samuchas – deep fried minced meat or vegetables wrapped in flour – to yogurt “lassi” drinks.

Profit at any cost

Vendors’ “philosophy of making profit at any cost” puts consumers at risk.

A common practice among food vendors is to spray fish, fruits and vegetables with chemical preservatives including formalin – a commercial solution of formaldehyde and water – to boost food’s lifespan and appearance.

Formaldehyde is typically used to preserve human corpses, as well as leather and textile products, said a medical doctor in the capital who has treated food poisoning.

The chemical’s short-term effects include: a burning sensation in the eyes, nose and throat; coughing; wheezing; nausea; and skin irritation. As for potential long-term health consequences, formaldehyde has been identified as a human carcinogen [ http://monographs.iarc.fr/ENG/Monographs/vol88/index.php].

A senior adviser at FAO in Bangladesh, said renal failure, cancer and liver damage – all potentially fatal – can be linked to the consumption of unsafe food, but the “extent of food-borne illness is yet unknown”. He predicted the situation will improve with more oversight.

But the private sector is hitting back.

It is using a special preservative detector machine to check food for formalin at its sourcing in order to make sure that its customers receive safe food [http://www.shwapno.com/about.php].

Customers can even check foods in some stores through a machine in order to detect formalin”.

Meanwhile, the local NGO Citizens Solidarity [ http://www.solidarity-bd.org ] recently sent a notice to the government requesting legal steps to force vendors to cease and desist unethical vending practices.

But even when vendors do not knowingly engage in unsafe food handling, their lack of knowledge, coupled with long work hours and their own precarious health, can sicken customers, according to a 2010 FAO-government initiative [ http://www.nfpcsp.org/agridrupal/sites/default/files/pR_7_of_04_Final_Techncial_Report_-_Approved.pdf ] to boost healthy street food.

The projects’ researchers tested 426 food samples from Dhaka vendors who had not undergone any food hygiene training and 135 from those who had. Samples from untrained vendors had almost uniformly “overwhelming” high bacteria counts, while results from trained vendors largely fell within international safety standards.

The researchers called on the government to develop a policy to “assist, maintain and control” street food vending.

Government efforts

The government is set to create the Bangladesh Food Safety and Quality Control Authority to boost control of street food and to criminalize unsafe food handling.

Under the National Food Safety and Quality Act 2013, this authority will be created within the next two months, said Ahmed Hossain Khan, director-general of the Directorate General of Food in the same ministry [ http://www.dgfood.gov.bd/index.php].

The draft act addresses weaknesses in the existing food safety regulatory system, including the scant enforcement of food control laws along the entire supply chain. It also introduces a national food-borne disease surveillance system and outlines an emergency response plan in case of a disease outbreak linked to food.

It has identified existing loopholes in our food safety system, and this act will help us radically improve our approach in food safety regulation.

But an associate professor at the Dhaka School of Economics, said regulatory policies alone have failed to solve the food safety problem, and that the government needs to examine the economic roots of unsafe food: the underclass of farmers responsible for feeding the country. One start, he suggested, is guaranteeing farmers fair prices, a longstanding grievance of producers who accuse middlemen traders and end consumers of profit gouging.

This may encourage farmers not to go for unethical practices up to a certain extent. But better agricultural extension services, easier access to information for farmers and strict regulatory measures are equally important.

The Asian Development Bank is supporting private agribusiness production facilities [ http://www.adb.org/projects/46904-014/details ] that will pay guaranteed prices to 50,000 contracted farmers.

But more is needed. The biggest challenge the country is facing in ensuring a meaningful food security for its.people is food safety.

The 2012 Global Hunger Index [ http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2012-global-hunger-index ] places the country’s hunger situation in an “alarming” range, with too few people being able to eat nutritious, life-sustaining food.

Bengalis Have a Violent Streak

Recent civil unrest on the streets of Bangladesh has left experts questioning how to move past the country’s violent birth – without incurring more deaths.

This is unprecedented violence of a shocking nature. The nation never experienced such violence in post-independent Bangladesh.

Violence broke out after supporters of Bangladesh’s largest Islamist political party, Jamaat-e-Islami, took to the streets in early March after Delawar Hossain Sayede, a top party leader, was sentenced to death for crimes against humanity during the country’s liberation war with Pakistan in 1971.

The unrest has killed at least 98 people, including civilians, according to civil society estimates [ http://www.odhikar.org/documents/2013/Statement_2013/Statement_Odhikar%20_%20Eng.pdf ]. Analysts say it is among the worst violence since independence, when some three million died, according to the government [ http://www.mofa.gov.bd/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=692&Itemid=177 ]; independent estimates [ http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16207201 ] put the total at under half a million deaths.

With at least seven more verdicts, appeals and hangings due, calls are mounting to minimize violence while addressing the country’s violent past.

Whose truth?

The problem with any war crimes tribunal, according to Morten Bergsmo, director of the Brussels-based Centre for International Law Research and Policy, is that the tribunal, alone, cannot reconcile a divided country still grieving from massive human rights abuses.

Criminal trials are never perfect… When all remedies are exhausted – national and international – we are left with a judicial truth, which may or may not reconcile society… War crimes justice hits a few defendants, while the crimes of the latter may have crushed thousands.

To help find “historical truth” making a state-run national archive on the independence war publicly available, and increasing its collection is one possibility.

Bina D’Costa, an expert on security and human rights at the Australian National University, who is a Bangladeshi, said that while growing up in the capital, Dhaka, in the 1980s under the military dictatorship of Hussain Muhammad Ershad, she was exposed to conflicting versions of the war from schoolbooks. It was only when she left the country to pursue academic research that she learned, in detail, about the atrocities of the war.

“The revisionist history, particularly through the school curriculum, succeeded in strengthening some narratives and marginalizing others. As a result we see the generation is now divided over the official history of the war,” said Costa, who called for “a commission for healing that would uncover these various narratives of historical truth”.

“There is no credible and generally acceptable view of what exactly happened, why [it] happened, the extent of what happened, who did what, who were the criminals and who were the victims,” added Muhammad Ahmedullah, secretary of a London-based Bangladesh diaspora group [ http://www.bricklanecircle.org/Brick_Lane_Circle.html ].

Arriving at a common memory is one start to reconciliation; without that consensus, people cannot explain, justify or apologize for what they did or supported – at times under force or threat – he added.

But a collective understanding of the past is not what Mojibur Rahman – a 74-year-old who lost 17 family members, including his parents, in a Pakistani military assault – seeks. Rather, he wants convictions.

Altogether, he estimates more than 100 unarmed civilians died in the attack on his village in Barisal District.

“There is an absolute need to bring the war criminals [to justice]. I feel it is an outright necessity for us to get some sort of justice for our loss [and] that the trial of war criminals is impartial and free of politicization.”

War tribunal

The state-appointed International Crimes Tribunal, set up in 2010, has to date charged 12 people of committing war crimes.

Since the 1970s, of the 90 countries worldwide that have systematically addressed gross human rights violations within their borders, about 40 have set up truth commissions, while another 50 have used criminal proceedings.

All these processes, almost all the time, face some sort of reaction from either members of the previous regimes or their ardent supporters who try to thwart the process.

Leaders from Jamaat-e-Islami, to which eight of the charged belong, and leaders of the Bangladesh National Party, to which two of the charged belong, have accused the trial of being politicized by the ruling Awami League to undermine opposition ahead of January 2014 general election.

The Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) [ http://www.icj.org/bangladesh-international-crimes-tribunal-should-pursue-justice-not-vengeance ] condemned the death sentence handed down to Jamaat’s leader, Sayede, calling for “justice, not vengeance”. ICJ has said the tribunal has had “serious procedure flaws at all stages”, including accusations of witness abduction and intimidation, as well as collusion between the government, prosecutors and judges, all of which the government denies.

“It is not a politicized trial. It is an open court full of transparency that manifests government commitment to democratic rule,” Minister for Law, Justice and Parliamentary Affairs Shafique Ahmed says. “The tribunal has been made fully independent of the executive. Its prosecution and investigative agencies are separate entities. The government has no scope for interfering with the tribunal,” he added.

Reconciliation still far off

Following violent street protests, the police have adopted a zero-tolerance policy, opening fire on protesters and killing indiscriminately. Local media have reported between 67 and 185 deaths, including eight police.

While politics in Bangladesh has always had a violent streak, “never before have protesters targeted police forces and local administration infrastructure… This raised a major concern about internal security and the government’s ability to deliver services.

Many recommend clemency for the convicted: The fact that more than 40 years have transpired and that Bangladesh remains a largely divided society invites clemency in the interest of reconciliation and unity.

But for Ali Riaz, the chair of politics at the US-based Illinois State University, reconciliation is “irrelevant” if perpetrators of the 1971 violence have not admitted guilt.

“In Bangladesh the ‘truth’ was never addressed. Never ever [was] there an admission from the part of the perpetrators that they, as a collective entity and as individuals, have committed crimes against a nation, against humanity,” Riaz says. “Until such [an] admission is made, the question of reconciliation remains irrelevant.”

Minister Ahmed confirmed the government is not considering any plan for reconciliation while criminal proceedings are ongoing.

It is a Myth That 300,000 Were Raped in East Pakistan

By Asif Haroon Raja

“Roman Catholic Relief Agency put the figure of rapes to as low as 4000. In fact, only ten cases of rapes had been reported till August 31, 1971, and the culprits tried and punished. These few cases were swollen to the exasperating figure of 300,000. The falsity of Sheikh Mujib’s repeated allegation of rape of 300,000 Bengali women was exposed when the abortion team he had commissioned from United Kingdom in early 1972 found that there were no more than a hundred or so pregnancy cases they could deal with throughout their stay in Bangladesh.”-Brig. Asif Haroon Raja exposes the lies behind the propaganda.

It has been alleged that Pakistani troops raped 300,000 women on and after March 25, 1971 in former East Pakistan. This allegation has generally been accepted by the world at large and even by some Pakistani secular pseudo intellectuals like Tahira Abdullah, Asma Jehangir and others. Sheikh Mujib was the inventor of this themes fed to him by India.

This was phenomenal exaggeration which has no parallel in history. Rather than blindly buying the bloated figures, it should have been coolly analyzed by saner elements whether it was humanly possible to perform those unholy acts at such a gigantic scale.

No one questioned as to how the Indians had gathered the data since the Army had gained total control over the province from May 1971 onwards. Direct linkage between the people and rebels housed in India had been broken.

The version of refugees who had fled to India after the military operation couldn’t be relied upon, being entirely at the mercy of Indian Army and BSF living in unsavory conditions.

Foreign journalists based in Dacca had been asked by Lt Gen Tikka Khan to leave because of their biased reporting. Jilted journalists moved to Calcutta where they were lavishly entertained by Indians. Nursing ill-feelings, they went out of the way to magnify the stories fed to them by Indian media and broadcasted exaggerated news the world over.

Even if the entire Army and paramilitary forces numbering 12,000 on 25 March 1971, later increased to 45,000 had only one objective in mind of raping any female coming their way day in and day out, even at the cost of sleep and other essential daily rituals, it was still impossible to reach anywhere near the stated figure.

It can now be safely concluded that the rapes committed by Awami League (AL) urchins in March-April 1971, and again in November- December 1971, as well as by Indian staff supervising refugee camps from March 1971 till February 1972 were all lumped in the account of Pak Army.

Indian Army soldiers and officers had also indulged in daily sex for the entire period of their stay in Bangladesh after 16 December 1971.

Roman Catholic Relief Agency put the figure of rapes to as low as 4000. (New York Times, January 30, 1972). In fact, only ten cases of rapes had been reported till August 31, 1971, and the culprits tried and punished. These few cases were swollen to the exasperating figure of 300,000. The falsity of Sheikh Mujib’s repeated allegation of rape of 300,000 Bengali women was exposed when the abortion team he had commissioned from United Kingdom in early 1972 found that there were no more than a hundred or so pregnancy cases they could deal with throughout their stay in Bangladesh. (Bangladesh Papers, Vanguard, Lahore, page 287).

The AL government opened many centres in Bangladesh and gave wide calls to the rape victims named as ‘heroines’ to come forward and register their names so that they could be rehabilitated. Not more than one hundred or so who reported to the centres were given into marriages and perforce the centres had to be closed down. These cases were also in all probability the victims of rapists in Indian refugee camps.

Dr. M. Abdul Mumin Chowdhry, a Bengali nationalist who actively participated in the separatist cause, writes in his book ‘Behind the Myth of Three Million’, writes:

‘It was reported that on arrival in Dhaka on 10 January 1972, the lobby behind the fabrication of the absolutely impossible figure promptly briefed the returning Bangladesh leader Sheikh Mujib with added ‘fact’, of 300,000 women raped, who in turn immediately went on parroting it. Thus the fiction of three million killed and 300,000 women raped was created’. 

He gives research-based details of each major incident that was blamed on Pakistan; and the rapes of 300,000, now enhanced to 400,000 women, resulting in 200,000 pregnancies.

One of Pakistani PoW Maj (now retired Brig) M. Azad on his way to India after the surrender had stayed a night in transit along with others at Krishanagar in West Bengal. The camp in which they were housed was well laid out and didn’t like a hurriedly made make-shift arrangement. The in-charge of the camp, a Sikh major, in usual Sikh style of light-heartedness and frankness, got chummy with Azad and told him that the camp had not been prepared for Pak PoWs but was meant to keep rebellious Bengalis who refused to participate in guerrilla war. He added that sissies were taken to task and made to perform allotted tasks, while their womenfolk were kept as hostages to serve their carnal needs. He boasted that he and his colleagues had thoroughly enjoyed raping thousands of Bengali women during their nine-month confinement. Laughingly he added that many virgins were impregnated. He divulged that many more suchlike camps for unwilling Bengalis had been established in other areas. This inadvertent disclosure would give an idea to independent readers that who were the actual rapists of Bengali women.

Besides resorting to series of atrocities, Indian security forces are using rape as a weapon of war to subjugate the Kashmiris demanding their birth right of self-determination. Kashmiris want independence from India at all cost. Incidents of rapes and gang rapes in Indian occupied Kashmir are on the increase, but no Indian soldier or policeman has ever been punished. While there was lot of hue and cry over gang rape of an Indian woman in New Delhi, no voice has ever been raised in India over rapes of thousands of Kashmiri women, as if they are not human beings. It is puzzling as to why the ever vigilant western media has never mentioned a word about thousands of rapes committed in IOK? Or is it that it has different yardstick for Muslims and non-Muslims?

(The writer is a retired Brig, author of several books and a defence analyst. Email:asifharoonraja@gmail.com)

Why the Bangladeshis Insist Upon an Apology from Pakistan?

Bangladesh is right in demanding an apology from Pakistan

 by Pervez Hoodbhoy

A bunch of university students in Islamabad, with whom I was informally conversing the other day, had not heard of protests in Dhaka. Of course, they knew of Tahrir Square and Afzal Guru‘s recent execution. But they showed little interest upon learning that Shahbag Square was in Dhaka and that, as we spoke, the city was seething with protest.

Between 100,000 to 500,000 Bengalis had converged to Shahbag to sing patriotic songs, recite poems and read out episodes from Bangladesh’s history of the Liberation War. At the centre of the protesters’ demands was Abdul Kader Mullah’s fate.

On February 5, the Bangladesh International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) found Mullah guilty in five out of the six charges against him. Known as Mirpurer Koshai (Butcher of Mirpur) because of his atrocities against citizens in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, he was charged with beheading a poet, raping an 11-year-old girl and murdering 344 people. The ICT sentenced Mullah, presently assistant secretary general of the Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, to life in prison. For the protesters in Shahbag Square, this isn’t enough — they want Mullah hanged. On the other side, the Jamaat-e-Islami protested violently and also took out demonstrations. But its efforts to influence global opinion foundered in spite of a well-funded effort.

Curiously enough, Mullah’s case has been taken up by the government of Turkey. President Abdullah Gül sent a letter last month to the president of Bangladesh requesting clemency for all those accused of mass murder. Fortunately, Turkey’s president appears to be an exception and much of the world has shown little regard for genocidal killers.

Pakistan has shown zero interest in Mullah’s fate. The media is silent and the Foreign Office has not issued any statement. This is quite ironical because, like the forgotten Biharis of East Pakistan, Mullah has been abandoned although he subscribed to the Two-Nation Theory and had fought alongside the Pakistan Army for a united Pakistan. In 1971, local political and religious militia groups like Razakar, Al-Badr and Al-Shams assisted Pakistani soldiers in the mass killings of Bengalis, often singling out Hindus. Many militia members were also members of the Jamaat-e-Islami.

The disinterest in Shahbag Square epitomises the enormous gulf that separates Bangladesh from Pakistan. The period of our national history — where 54 per cent of the country’s population chose to secede from the other 46 per cent — remains supremely inconsequential to Pakistanis. For them, Bangladesh could well be on the other side of the moon. The question is: why?

Searching for an answer, I browsed through textbooks currently used in Pakistani schools. The class-five Social Studies text (English), taught to 12-year olds, begins with citing the differences between Hindus and Muslims (e.g. Hindus burn the wife after her husband dies but Muslims don’t), the need to be aware of the hidden enemies of Pakistan (religious extremists are not mentioned) and the importance of unceasing jihad. It devotes a total of three sentences to a united Pakistan, the last of which reads: “With the help of India, East Pakistan separated.”

The class-eight Pakistan Studies textbook (English) is still briefer and simply states that, “Some leaders of former East Pakistan with the active help of India managed to break away from Pakistan and established Bangladesh.” The class nine-10 (Urdu) book — by far the most detailed — devotes nearly three pages to explaining the disintegration. The listed subtitles include: a) Incompetent government of Yahya Khan; b) Hindu domination of trade; c) Nefarious role of Hindu teachers; d) Language problems; e) Indian interference; f) The elections of 1970.

Having seen only grotesque caricatures of history, it is impossible for Pakistan’s youth to understand 1971. But how can I blame them? Those of us who grew up in the 1950s and 1960s knew in our hearts that East and West Pakistan were one country but not one nation. Young people today cannot imagine the rampant anti-Bengali racism among West Pakistanis then. With great shame, I must admit that, as a thoughtless young boy, I, too, felt embarrassed about small and dark people being among my compatriots. Victims of a delusion, we thought that good Muslims and Pakistanis were tall, fair and spoke chaste Urdu. Some schoolmates would laugh at the strange sounding Bengali news broadcasts from Radio Pakistan.

Even as they agonise about ‘losing’ the East, many Pakistanis still believe that 1971 was a military defeat rather than a political one. Dr AQ Khan, who met with Jamaat-e-Islami chief Syed Munawar Hasan this week, writes that nuclear bombs could have kept Pakistan intact: “If we had had nuclear capability before 1971, we would not have lost half of our country — present-day Bangladesh — after disgraceful defeat.”

But would this have really worked? Even with a bomb, the Pakistan Army would be surrounded by a hostile population and peppered by the Mukti Bahini’s guerilla attacks. Though armed with tanks and aircraft, the weakness of West Pakistan’s position was irreversible. With a hostile India in between, the logistics of supplying 90,000 troops from a thousand miles away were simply horrendous. India had, of course, refused permission for over-flights, leaving only the sea route. A long war would have left Pakistan bankrupt. More importantly, all occupying forces — including the Indian Army in Kashmir and the Americans in Afghanistan — typically exact disproportionate retribution when attacked. The atrocities of occupiers heighten local resentment and add hugely to the insurgency.

I am still trying to understand our good doctor’s suggestion. Could the bomb have been used on the raging pro-independence mobs in Dhaka? Or used to incinerate Calcutta and Delhi, and have the favour duly returned to Lahore and Karachi? Threatening India with a nuclear attack may have kept it out of the war, but then East Pakistanis would have been massacred wholesale.

History cannot be undone but it’s time to move on. Bangladesh is right in demanding an apology from Pakistan — one which we have so far refused to give. Let us do so now and start a new chapter in the relationship between our two states. If we have the honesty and courage to take this step, as a bonus, the problem of Balochistan might become a tad easier to understand — and perhaps, solve.

The writer retired as professor of physics from Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad.

Who Will Save the Bangladeshis From Hunger?

Some in Bangladesh are pushing for a constitutional amendment to guarantee the legal right to access food, or a food security “framework law” that will hold the state liable for any scarcity.

Despite the government laying out its commitment in 2012 to food security “for all people of the country at all times” [ http://www.nfpcsp.org/agridrupal/sites/default/files/Monitoring%20report%202012%20rev.pdf ] at least 31 percent of the population still lack nutritious life-sustaining food [ http://scalingupnutrition.org/country/Bangladesh ].

According to the most recently published National Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) from 2011 [ http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/PR15/PR15.pdf ], 40 percent of children are too short for their age (known medically as “stunting”), a harbinger of lifelong development delays and one of the leading causes globally of brain damage. Some 36 percent of the surveyed children in Bangladesh under five were underweight for their age (showing signs of stunting, and/or “wasting” – weighing too little for their height).

“The constitution of Bangladesh must endorse [the] right to food [ http://www.fao.org/righttofood/news-and-events/news-detail/en/c/166353/ ] or right to be free from hunger,” chairman of the independent National Human Rights Commission said.

The country’s goal of halving the rate of people who suffer from hunger “needs more attention [ http://www.undp.org.bd/mdgs/goals/MDG%20Goal1.pdf ].

Even though Article 15 of the constitution recognizes the state’s responsibility to secure the “basic necessities of life” for its citizens [ http://www1.umn.edu/humanrts/research/bangladesh-constitution.pdf ], – including food, it does not recognize a person’s right to food.

As of December 2010 13 countries worldwide recognized the right to food [ http://www.webcitation.org/69IfZvFdH ] or provided for state obligations relating to food and nutrition as state policy – Bangladesh, Brazil, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Malawi, Nigeria, Panama, Papua New Guinea, Sierra Leone, Sri Lanka, and Uganda.

Constitutional recognition of such a right, or a “legislative framework ensuring people’s right to food security” can be a tool to hold the state accountable for its pledges.

Framework laws cover cross-cutting issues, and lay down general principles and obligations, leaving it to legislation and authorities to decide the specifics of implementation.

International commitments

The 1996 World Food Summit defined food security [ http://foodsecurityatlas.org/bgd/country/food-security-at-a-glance ] as “when all people, at all times, have physical and economic access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food which meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life”.

Bangladesh has pledged to implement the UN Declaration on the Right to Development [ http://www.un.org/documents/ga/res/41/a41r128.htm ], which in 1986 made it the state’s responsibility to create “conditions favourable to the development of peoples and individuals”.

It also signed the Vienna Declaration and Programme of Action [ http://www.unhchr.ch/huridocda/huridoca.nsf/%28symbol%29/a.conf.157.23.en ] adopted by the World Conference on Human Rights (which said everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for their health and well-being, including food) in 1993.

The country is legally bound to implement the right to development after it ratified the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in 1998 [ http://www.bdresearch.org.bd/home/attachments/article/270/The%20Right%20to%20Food.pdf ].

But in order for states to implement the treaties [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96456/Briefing-New-food-treaty-thin-on-substance ], according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), ideally they need appropriate legislation, constitutional provisions and a framework law that clearly support the treaty – none of which exist in Bangladesh.

While the 2012 Global Hunger Index [ http://www.ifpri.org/publication/2012-global-hunger-index ] noted Bangladesh was one of seven countries that made the most “absolute progress” among 120 evaluated countries in slashing rates of hunger from 1990-2012, its level was still in the “alarming” range.

Falling short

Despite the government’s commitment to fight malnutrition through the Sixth Five Year Plan 2011-2015 [ http://www.irinnews.org/documents/Sixth_Five_Year_Plan_of_Bangladesh.ppt ], its policies are ineffective due to limited distribution of nutritional supplements, inadequate growth monitoring and lack of skilled personnel.

Bangladesh’s food safety-net programmes poorly target the neediest who miss out on safety-net programmes, including “vulnerable group development” and “vulnerable group feeding”.

Until the country’s overall governance improves, including tackling what he said is corruption in safety-net programmes [ http://www.irinnews.org/report/96902/Analysis-What-s-happening-with-aid-to-Bangladesh ], it is difficult to see any food security law making a difference.

A food security law could help vulnerable people in his natural-disaster prone area survive increasingly frequent and intense weather extremes.

Multiple international indices [ https://www.ifrc.org/PageFiles/99703/1216800-WDR%202012-EN-LR.pdf ] rank Bangladesh one of the world’s most natural-disaster prone countries.

Zero hunger goals

Bangladesh joins a growing number of countries [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/80549/GLOBAL-Govts-urged-to-recognise-the-right-to-affordable-food ] trying to endorse food as a legally binding right. As of December 2010 there were 56 countries whose constitutions recognized the right to food, implicitly or explicitly, according to FAO.

In 2010 Brazil endorsed food as a right through constitutional amendment, an extension of its near decade-long campaign to wipe out hunger through a “Zero Hunger” Policy (Fome Zero) [ http://hungercenter.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/Zero-Hunger_Evaluating-Brazilian-Food-Security-Policy-Margolies1.pdf ] launched in 2003.

In 2001, the Indian Supreme Court tried to address food insecurity by ordering eight national food and nutrition programmes to ensure the poor had a right to food. The problem was irregularities in how the government identified the poor. The National Food Security Bill now before parliament, which was formulated as a human rights law to protect the right to access food [ http://blogs.wsj.com/indiarealtime/2012/10/18/the-big-letdown-of-the-food-security-bill/ ], is already under intense public debate over its feasibility.

Bangladesh: Where is the Aid Going?

While Bangladesh has made significant efforts to boost aid effectiveness, questions remain over who is benefiting from the US$1.5 billion in foreign aid the country receives annually [ http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org ].

“The way foreign aid is spent here cannot reduce poverty,” a professor of economics at Jahangirnagar University in the capital, Dhaka said. “It seems the objective is not to reduce poverty but rather benefit a very small interest group of bureaucrats and consultants.”

While the rate of poverty fell by 8 percent from 2005-2010 [ http://www.measuredhs.com/pubs/pdf/PR15/PR15.pdf ] the UN estimated some 58 percent of the country’s 150 million people were still poor in 2011 as measured by access to health, education and safe living conditions [ http://hdrstats.undp.org/images/explanations/BGD.pdf ].

In 2010 Bangladesh was the 22nd largest recipient of humanitarian aid globally and received $1.4 billion in both development and humanitarian aid that year [ http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/bangladesh ].

A programme leader of global humanitarian assistance at the UK-based NGO Development Initiatives, put the aid figure into perspective.

“Official development assistance funding from international donors. to address chronic poverty and vulnerability to crises is relatively modest in relation to the scale of poverty and the numbers of people periodically affected by natural disasters.”  One of the aims of foreign aid is to prepare communities to withstand – and survive – disasters.

According to the Brussels-based Centre for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters [ http://www.emdat.be/ ], since 2000 nearly 100 natural disasters have killed an estimated 9,500 people in Bangladesh, ranked one of the 10 most vulnerable – but least prepared – countries worldwide to natural disasters, according to the UK-based global risk assessment company, Maplecroft [ http://maplecroft.com/about/news/nha_2012.html ].

Malnutrition

The country decreased the rates of under-nutrition among children under-five from 66 percent in 1990 to 41 percent two decades later. In 2011 the Paris-based NGO, Action Against Hunger (ACF), singled out Bangladesh as a “success” story for this achievement [ http://www.scribd.com/doc/47895726/Undernutrition-What-Works  ].

Yet without a national authority coordinating nutrition activities, monitoring of NGO nutrition work is “largely non-existent”, said ACF.

According to the country’s 2011 Demographic and Health Survey [ http://www.globalhumanitarianassistance.org/countryprofile/bangladesh ], some 40 percent of children under five are considered to be too short for their age – a sign of chronic malnutrition – and 16 percent had signs of wasting (also known as acute malnutrition, or they were too short for height), slightly over the 15 percent threshold that marks a nutrition emergency, according to international aid groups.

These stubbornly high figures are, in part, due to aid mismanagement. Roughly, 80-85 percent of foreign aid is spent on foreign tours for bureaucrats and consultancy fees rather than on the poor. Foreign aid does not address the real causes of our poverty or our vulnerability to disasters.

Corruption

In 2011 the Berlin-based NGO, Transparency International, ranked Bangladesh 120 among 183 surveyed countries for how corrupt their public sectors are perceived to be [ http://www.transparency.org/country#BGD_DataResearch_SurveysIndices ]. The NGO’s study on daily corruption calculated that 66 percent of the population paid officials bribes to access basic government services [ http://www.transparency.org/whatwedo/pub/daily_lives_and_corruption_public_opinion_in_south_asia ].

However, for Muhammad from Jahangirnagar University, fighting corruption is only part of the solution. “We should review the entire aid process and see what benefit we really get, as we have been taking foreign aid for quite a long time,” he said. “The whole process of the aid system is faulty. It’s time to learn to mobilize our internal sources.”

“It is a complex issue whether the foreign aid is helping the country or not,” said an economics and sociology professor at BRAC University in Dhaka. “People are getting very little of the total amount, with a corrupt group of NGOs and government officials benefiting. It is not possible to give evidence, but there are allegations of corruption in foreign-aid [funded] projects,” he added.

Management is an important step to whittling down the country’s aid dependency.

Only in the context of democratic values can transparency and accountability of the aid system be ensured. But a strong democratic and institutional framework to achieve real development is still a long way off.

Bangladesh’s humanitarian aid community is described by many as the world’s largest. On top of the 12 UN agencies and the 77 international NGOs, there are more than 2,000 officially registered local NGOs, and over 60,000 community-based organizations (CBOs) [ http://www.irinnews.org/Report/96706/BANGLADESH-Government-urges-stronger-aid-coordination ].

An international aid worker, who preferred to remain unnamed, told IRIN the real constraints are lack of good coordination of bilateral aid, poor governance and the excessive bureaucracy that surrounds aid. There is a need of a total revision of the aid system, more transparency and a strong will to tackle the priorities in aid.

And while the country may meet some of its Millennium Development Goals (MDG), the problem is how to maintain achievements.

To improve socioeconomic conditions in the world’s poorest countries, the UN established eight international development goals in 2000 [ http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals ], three of which Bangladesh is on track to meet (eradicate extreme poverty, reduce child mortality and improve maternal health) [ http://www.undp.org.bd/mdgs.php ].

Quality of project design

According to the Aid Effectiveness Unit within the Ministry of Finance, aid efficacy depends not only on the recipient, but also the donor. The quality of the project design and the efficiency of the project approval and implementation process are the key determinants for development effectiveness.

It appears that there is scope for enhancing development effectiveness in Bangladesh. At the same time, it is also evident that the economy has shown resilience in the midst of many different types of domestic and global socio-economic setbacks and political turbulence during the past decades.

The country is continuing to try to improve aid efficacy. Since signing the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness [ http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3746,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html ], it has signed the Accra Agenda for Action in 2008 [ http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3746,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html ] and the Busan Partnership for Effective Development Cooperation in 2011 [ http://www.oecd.org/document/18/0,3746,en_2649_3236398_35401554_1_1_1_1,00.html ], which both included further commitments to boosting aid effectiveness and accountability.

Dhaka is planning to draft the country’s first national aid policy in 2013, as well as roll out an aid information management system to make aid data publicly available.

Are Female Leaders Better For The World’s Women?

By Nicholas D. Kristof

It would be nice to think that women who achieve power would want to help women at the bottom. But one continuing global drama underscores that women in power can be every bit as contemptible as men.

Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh is mounting a scorched-earth offensive against Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bankand champion of the economic empowerment of women around the world. Yunus, 72, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microfinance, focused on helping women lift their families out of poverty.

Yet Sheikh Hasina’s government has already driven Yunus from his job as managing director of Grameen Bank. Worse, her government has tried to seize control of the bank from its 5.5 million small-time shareholders, almost all of them women, who collectively own more than 95 percent of the bank.

What a topsy-turvy picture: We see a woman who has benefited from evolving gender norms using her government powers to destroy the life’s work of a man who has done as much for the world’s most vulnerable women as anybody on earth.

The government has also started various investigations of Yunus and his finances and taxes, and his supporters fear that he might be arrested on some pretext or another.

“It’s an insane situation,” Yunus says. “I just don’t know how to deal with it.”

If the government succeeds in turning Grameen Bank into a government bank, Yunus said, “it is finished.”

Perhaps none of this should be surprising. Metrics like girls’ education and maternal mortality don’t improve more when a nation is led by a woman. There is evidence that women matter as local leaders and on corporate boards, but that doesn’t seem to have been true at the national level, at least not for the first cohort of female leaders around the world.

Bangladesh is actually a prime example of the returns from investing in women. When it separated from Pakistan in 1971, it was a wreck. But it invested in girls’ education, and today more than half of its high school students are female — an astonishing achievement for an impoverished Muslim country.

All those educated women formed the basis for Bangladesh’s garment industry. They also had fewer births: the average Bangladeshi woman now has 2.2 children, down from 6 in 1980. Bringing women into the mainstream also seems to have soothed extremism, which is much less of a concern than in Pakistan (where female literacy in the tribal areas is only 3 percent).

One theory is that Hasina is paranoid and sees Yunus as a threat, especially since he made an abortive effort to enter politics in 2007. Another theory is that she is envious of his Nobel Peace Prize and resentful of his global renown.

Sheikh Hasina is disappointing in other ways. She has turned a blind eye to murders widely attributed to the security services.

Yunus fans are signing a Change.org petition on his behalf, but I’d like to see more American officials and politicians speak up for him. President Obama, how about another photo op with Yunus?

I still strongly believe that we need more women in leadership posts at home and around the world, from presidential palaces to corporate boards. The evidence suggests that diverse leadership leads to better decision making, and I think future generations of female leaders may be more attentive to women’s issues than the first.

In any case, this painful episode in Bangladesh is a reminder that the struggle to achieve gender equality isn’t simply a battle between the sexes.

It is far more subtle. Misogyny and indifference remain obstacles for women globally, but those are values that can be absorbed and transmitted by women as well as by men.

 

Bangladesh Blocks williamgomes.org website

The so-called democratic government of Bangladesh has blocked the website of a Bangladeshi Christian journalist and human right activist on writing a poem against oppression and human right violation.

William Gomes has always been targeted by Bangladeshi administration on his campaign for social justice in society for which he had spent time in hiding on different occasion.

Blocking a website is against freedom of speech and negation to Universal Human Rights Declaration.

This is persecution of religious communities in Bangladesh.

William Gomes in a communique have said “Bangladesh government has blocked my website www.williamgomes.org for writing and publishing the poem Änti State”. I have taken the pen and they have taken the censorship tools. I have broken the silence. Please take your pen and break the silence”

“I believe that Censorship is a possible way for the powerful to terminate individualism; and promotes governmental coercion and totalitarianism. Some people urge that restrictions are valid only if they are for the sake of a greater good, a greater liberty. But I believe that Censorship is a restriction that is not for greater liberty, but for the deprivation of liberty” said Mr. Gomes

William Gomes is Salem-News.com’s Human Rights Ambassador and according to Salem News William Nicholas Gomes is a promising name, a poet, journalist and human rights activist. who is well known for his outspoken, impartial, uncompromising position on the issues of human rights violations.

Rapist Penis Cut-off by a Bangladeshi Woman

A 40-year-old Bangladeshi woman cut off a man’s genitalia during an attempted rape and took it to a police station as evidence, police in a remote part ofBangladeshsaid on May 30, 2011.

The woman, a married mother of three, was attacked while she was sleeping in her shanty in Jhalakathi district, some 200 kilometres south ofDhaka.

“As he tried to rape her, the lady cut his genitalia off with a knife. She then wrapped up the genitalia in a piece of polythene and brought it to the Jhalakathi police station as evidence of the crime,” police chief said.

The woman has filed a case accusing the man, who is also 40 and a married father of five, of attempted rape, saying that he had been harassing her for six months.

The severed genitalia has been kept at the police station and the rape suspect was undergoing treatment in hospital.

“We shall arrest him once his condition gets better,” police said.