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Several hundred stranded Pakistanis on Saturday observed a hunger strike, demanding elimination of power and water crisis at the Sardar Bahadur Nagar Camp at Pahartoli in the Chittagong city.
   They observed the eight-hour strike from 8:00am on the Sardar Bahadur Nagar High School premises under the banner of Stranded Pakistanis General Repatriation Committee.
   ‘We, the members of 450 families, have been dwelling in the camp without any water and power supply,’ Ramij Ashif, secretary of committee’s Sardar Bahadur Nagar Camp unit, told the programme.
   He said the authorities had snapped power supply of the camp three months ago, violating the May 12, 2005 High Court directive to ensure power supply at 70 camps of the stranded Pakistanis across the country.
   He also said they had tried to set up a deep tube-well with the assistance of an American organisation, but the police foiled its installation ignoring the approval of the concerned authorities.
   ‘The situation will go beyond control if the power and water crisis is not solved immediately,’ he added.

Judges, physicians, journalists and right activists at a workshop in Dhaka on Saturday reiterated the need for establishing a human rights commission in the country.
   The Bangladesh Society for the Enforcement of Human Rights organised the workshop at the conference room of the LGED Bhaban at Agargaon, for sharing ideas on the role of law enforcing agency members and citizens to implement justice, good governance and human rights, says a press release.
   The speakers also underscored the need for coordination between the government and non-governmental organisations working on human rights, law enforcement and justice delivery.
   Justice M Fazlul Karim attended the workshop as the chief guest while the District and Sessions Judge of Dhaka, AKM Ishtiaq Hossain, and associate professor Syed Ahsanul Alam Parvez of Chittagong University attended as special guests.
   Justice Fazlul Karim said establishment of the human rights commission could not yet come true due to lack of cordiality of all concerned.
   Gias Kamal Chowdhury, president in-charge of BSEHR, presided over the workshop moderated by its executive director Elina Khan.
   Habibuzzaman Chowdhury of the forensic department at Salimullah Medical College and judicial magistrate
   of Dhaka Abdul Majid spoke on the workshop, among others.

The government should raise strong demand at the UN-sponsored Bali Climate Conference, scheduled for early December, for compensation to the victims of climate change in Bangladesh, participants in a roundtable discussion in Dhaka said on Saturday.
   The discussion, organised by the Equity and Justice Working Group and the Coast Trust ahead of the Bali conference, held the developed countries responsible for destroying the climate by reckless emission of green house effect.
   The participants said the poorer countries like Bangladesh were bearing the brunt of the climate change by way of cyclone, floods, erratic rainfall,
   draughts and other calamities, which were affecting the people’s livelihood.
   The developed countries should take up binding commitment to reduce carbon emission and other forms of air pollution to keep the earth habitable to life and nature, they said.
   Secretary general of the Equity and Justice Working Group Shamsuzzoha presented the keynote paper at the discussion moderated by its convenor and executive director of Coast Trust Rezaul Karim Chowdhury.
   Noted economist Quazi Kholiquazzaman, Hassan Mahmood, Shamsuzzaman Dudu, Farid Uddin, Mehdi Afsari, among others, spoke on the occasion.
   They said Bangladesh would lose 17 per cent of its coastal land to sea as its water level would rise due to growing green house affect.
   Bangladesh would need to replace about one and a half crore people and the November 15 cyclone is just a warning about how cruel the nature can become due to the man-made climate change, they added.
   Rezaul said the Bangladesh delegation to the Bali conference should take the issue very strongly as the country would require at least $13 billion to replace these people to new homes in the interior.
   He also demanded that the government should make its position public before leaving for Bali so that NGOs and the government can take a united stand.
   The discussants demanded the right to unimpeded development, right to migration to developed countries and the right to secure sustainable technology to achieve development.
   ‘The pollutants are in the driving seat and there is enough room for it to take the wrong course,’ he said and stressed the need for conducting negotiations and presentations on the country’s vulnerable case at the Bali Conference.

The police recovered the body of a female designer of television drama set from her rented house at Uttara in the city on Saturday.
   The body of Zobaida Kabir Swapna, 25, wife of Ahshanul Abid, commercial manager of Grameen Phone, was found hanging from a ceiling fan in her bedroom of House 35, Road 3 of Uttara Sector 5 around 1:45 pm. Uttara thana police said she might have died from strangulation.
   The body was sent to the Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue for post- mortem.
   The police suspected Swapna might have been strangled and hung from the ceiling fan sometime between 11:30 pm and 5:00 am. There were several injury marks in her hands, knee and nose.
   She was alone in the flat Friday night as her husband went to Chittagong the day before, the police said.
   Two mobile phone sets were seized from the spot. The police picked up eight people including the victim’s husband Abid, Mozammel Hossain Chowdhury Hira, Maruf Hasan, Kamrul Hasan, Ashikur Rahman, Nawshin Taslim Liza, Aleya Akhter and Amena Akhter for interrogation.
   Swapna and Abid were married in May this year.

INCIDIN Bangladesh, a social development and research organisation, has called for building safe shelter homes in cities and towns to prevent street children from being exploited and engaged in underworld activities.
   The government as well as social organisations, business groups and benevolent individuals can come forward to set up such safe homes to shelter underprivileged children and ensure social security in future, said Ratan Sarkar, executive director of INCIDIN.
   At a press conference at Dhaka Reporters’ Unity on Saturday, he elaborated on his roadmap for such homes, which, he felt, should involve local initiatives and have financial and infrastructure supports from local authorities, individuals, businesses and community groups.
   These houses can be built on unused government lands and should be maintained as sanctuaries for children for night with a healthy environment and strong monitoring, he suggested.
   Street children are exposed to moral, physical, sexual and psychological exploitations and easy prey for drug dealers, criminals and pimps, he pointed out.
   Though various initiatives and programmes are being taken by the government and non-government organisations, street children continue to be victims of disparity, assault, hunger and sexual exploitation, he said.
   Two executives of the organisation, Mustaque Ali and Masud Ali, were also present at the press conference.
   They called for forming local initiators’ committees in Dhaka and other cities and municipalities to initiate the process of setting up safe night shelters. These committees would carry out comprehensive awareness campaigns in their respective areas involving teachers, social activists and educational institutions.
   Poverty, family break-ups, natural calamities and river erosions drive the poor and marginalised children along with their families out of their homes and force them to migrate to big cities and towns for a living, the organisation’s executives said.
   The recent devastating cyclone Sidr may add to the problem, they feared.

The centenary of the first Swedish Nobel laureate writer Selma Lagerlöf’s novel for children ‘The wonderful adventures of Nils’ was celebrated in Dhaka on Saturday through launching its Bangla version by Bulbul Sarwar.
   The former chief adviser to the Caretaker Government, and also retired chief justice Muhammad Habibur Rahman chaired the function, attended by the Swedish ambassador to Bangladesh, Britt F Hagstrom as chief guest.
   Writers Abdush Shakoor, Rizia Rahman, translator Bulbul Sarwar and Oitijjhya chief executive Arifur Rahman Nayeem also attended the function.
   At the function, the National Council of Teachers underscored the need for a book that would familiarize school children with the geography of their country. They looked upon Selma Lagerlöf as an author who had fulfilled that need in the novel in that the novel covers history, geography and ecological studies through tales.
   ‘Selma’s literary works are rich in spiritual overtones and extraordinary imaginative approaches’, the Swedish envoy said.
   Muhammad Habibur Rahman said, ‘This is significant for us that Selma was a contemporary of the first Asian Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore.’
   Bulbul Sarwar, an Open University teacher, who has a number of translation works to his credit, informed that the book had been translated into 103 languages.
   Oitijjhya published the Bangla version of the novel, priced at Tk 125.
   Selma was born on 20 November 1858, at Mĺrbacka, her family’s estate at Värmland, in the mountainous west of Sweden. She won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1909, and she died in 1940.

Family members of six out of nine detained Dhaka University students came to meet the vice-chancellor at his office on Saturday to request him to take steps for the release the students, but the VC could not give them time for his busy schedule.
   The vice-chancellor, SMA Faiz, who went to attend a meeting outside the campus immediately after the guardians came to meet him in the afternoon, however, asked them to meet him this noon.
   The guardians came to meet Faiz without any appointment. They said they would urge the VC to take necessary steps for releasing the students, detained in connection with the August 19-22 unrest at Dhaka University, considering their academic career.
   Naznin Akhter, elder sister of one of the detained student Deen Islam Angel, said they had come to request the VC to take initiatives to release Angel and others.

The Rapid Action Battalion arrested a suspected dealer of porn CDs and seized a large number of pirated CDs at Bangabandhu Stadium Market in Dhaka on Saturday.
   A team of RAB-2 raided Bangabandhu Stadium Market area at around 11:30am and arrested Younus Ali Swpan, 30, of 36/2 East Goran under Khigaon police station, in possession of 500 compact discs.
   Swapan was marketing the porn CDs in the market, RAB said. Based on his statement, the team raided his house and seized 8,000 porn CDs, three computers and 52 CD writers.

Weather is likely to remain mainly dry with partly cloudy sky over the country having chances of light rain or thunder showers at one or two places over Chittagong division during the 24-hour period till 6:00pm today, the Met Office said.
   The night temperature may remain nearly unchanged over the country, it said.
   The country’s highest temperature on Saturday, 31.4 degrees Celsius, was recorded at Sitakunda and the lowest, 14.5 degrees Celsius, at Ishwardi and Rajshahi.
   The sun sets in the capital today at 5:11pm and rises tomorrow at 6:20am.
   The Met office predicted a little change in the outlook for subsequent two days and fall in the night temperature in the extended outlook for another five days.

The ‘socially-excluded’ people become the prime victims of natural disasters as has been proved once again following cyclone Sidr, which left a great many people down and out, said speakers at a seminar in Dhaka Saturday.
   They urged all, especially the conscious sections and social activists, to come forward and work together for empowering the socially-excluded people economically, socially and politically to free them from appalling conditions.
   ‘The socially-excluded people must be freed from their subservient conditions and abject poverty…Economic, social and political empowerment would enable them to articulate their demands and mount efforts for those to be fulfilled, and then move forward in terms of further empowerment and greater freedom’, Quazi Kholiquzzaman Ahmad, chairman of Imagine a New South Asia regional steering committee, said at a seminar on ‘social exclusion in South Asia and the INSA process’.
   Bangladesh Unnayan Parishad organised the seminar under the auspices of INSA and in association with ActionAid Bangladesh.
   Kholiquzzaman, also president of Bangladesh Economic Association, said the socially excluded people were practically deprived of every opportunity including access to resources, access to institutions and participation in socio-political processes.
   He warned that the target of the Millennium Development Goals of halving the poor by 2015 [compared to 1990] was sure to remain unfulfilled to a significant extent in South Asia.
   He said a small minority consisting of elites of various pursuits usurped most of the fruits of the developments taking place, while a vast majority was deprived in various ways and degrees, and all this was happening within the framework the neo-liberal free markets and globalisation. ‘Each hierarchical group also tend to exploit those below them in different ways and to different degrees. It is a vicious hierarchical exclusion process.’
   He lamented that a section of non-government organisations were pressing the cyclone-affected people to repay the money they had taken as micro-credit. ‘Only giving loans to the poor will not help them get rid of poverty.’
   ‘The kinds of politics and governance in the South Asian, which are mostly extra-democratic in nature, in fact cause social exclusion’, he said adding that in South Asia, about 79 per cent of the population, who earned equivalent of 32 Bangladeshi taka, suffered indignities of various kinds.
   Professor Anisuzzaman, chairman of INSA national steering committee, said INSA would put emphasis on cultural diversity as well as participatory democracy among the grassroots people for a qualitative change in South Asia.
   Rashed Al Mahmud Titumir of INSA, an initiative of the citizens of SAARC countries, said INSA was a ‘political process’ aimed at making the region an inclusive society rather than an exclusive society.
   ‘This process will continue until and unless the governments and all concerned in the region take measures to ensure shared prosperity maintaining diversity in unity across South Asia,’ he said.
   Shirin Akhter, a Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal joint secretary, said ensuring social inclusion would be difficult if the people remained unaware of the adverse impacts of social exclusion.
   The speakers also said that a strong local government system would help, to a great extent, to reduce influence of the bureaucracy in the development processes.

The Communist Party of Bangladesh’s president Monzurul Ahsan Khan, on Saturday stressed the need for coordination of relief operations in the Sidr-affected zones of the country.
   The cyclone-stricken people of some areas were getting relief twice and victims in other badly affected areas were getting nothing due to lack of coordination, said Monzur.
   Monzur, returning to the
   city after doing five days of relief work in affected areas in Khulna, Bagerhat and
   Mongla, at a press conference at CPB’s central office said that sufficient drinking water, food, children’s food and medicines were essential in the affected areas.
   The amount of relief goods distributed in the affected areas was insufficient, he said, and stressed the need for restoration of communications and electricity in those places.
   He criticised the arrival of the naval ships of the United States in Bangladesh on the plea of relief work.
   The CPB will continue its relief work in the affected areas, said the party chief.
   CPB’s general secretary Mujahidul Islam Selim, central coordinator of the relief committee Mahbubul Alam, leaders Morshed Ali and Jolly Talukdar were present at the press conference.

Politicians and academicians on Saturday at a discussion meeting said there is a crying need for an uncompromising national leader like Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani because the country is now under the heel of a voraciously imperialistic country like America.
   The presence of imperialists has increased in the country and the progressive political forces are being barred from staging any protest rallies in the streets, said Dhaka University’s Professor KAM Saad Uddin at the discussion meeting organised by the Maulana Abdul Hamid Khan Bhasani Parishad to observe his 31st death anniversary at RC Majumdar Hall.
   Now the progressive political forces have lost the organisational strength that is necessary to protest against the unbridled imperialism of the USA and its allies, added Saad Uddin.
   Maulana Bhasani was a mass leader who carried out a lifelong struggle against imperialism, said DU’s Professor Akmal Hossain while reading his keynote paper titled ‘Movements against imperialism and Maulana Bhasani’.
   Politician and prominnent polemicist Badruddin Umar and Sheikh Muhammad Shahidullah took part in the discussion which was chaired by language movement hero Abdul Matin.
   The Bhasani Parishad’s general secretary, T Ali, gave welcome address at the programme.
   One minute’s silence was observed at the beginning of the discussion to show respect to those who were killed by Sidr and the wife of Parishad leader Kamal Lohani’s wife, Dipti Lohani, who died on Saturday.

Dhaka University will send a letter to the government today urging it to release the teachers and students of the university earlier arrested.
   ‘The university syndicate at a meeting in the evening decided to send a letter to the government and the army chief urging them to immediately release the university teachers and students detained earlier,’ the vice-chancellor, SMA Faiz, told New Age on Saturday.
   Four teachers and at least nine students of the university were arrested after the clash and demonstrations on the DU campus between August 20 and 22.

Physicians at Sylhet Osmani Medical Hospital are yet to diagnose the disease of the two children referred by Baralekha health complex as polio patients.
   Suman Das, 7, and Shankari Das Trisha, 4, are given treatment of acute flaccid paralysis and they are improving, said the physicians attending the children.
   The samples of stools of the children have been collected by the divisional representative of the World Health Organisation to be sent for examination to India or Bangkok, the hospital’s paediatrics department said.
   The test report of the stool samples may establish if they are infected by polio, sources in the hospital said.
   The hospital’s paediatrician Ekhlasur Rahman requested an assistant professor of the physical medicine department to arrange physiotherapy for the children.
   Paediatrics ward assistant registrar Nazmul Haque said, ‘We have requested the physical medicine department to take necessary step in this regard.’
   Suman and Trisha were referred to the medical college hospital from Baralekha health complex on November 21, hospital sources said.
   Swapan Das, father of Suman and Trisha, of Shahbajpur at Baralekha in Moulvibazar, said the lower part of his children became paralysed after they had suffered from diarrhoea and fever from November 14.
   ‘The physical condition of my children has improved slightly after treatment in Osmani Medical College Hospital,’ he said.

A suspected ultra-left operative was killed in a gunfight with the police at a village in Mirpur upazila of Kushtia district in early hours of Saturday.
   The police said the victim, Abdul Mazid, 32, son of Akkas Ali of Kalabaria village, was a regional leader of underground Biplabi Communist Party, often blamed for terrorism and extortionism in the south-western districts.
   Mazid and his associates were in a meeting on the bank of the Ganges-Kobadak irrigation canal at Kalabaria when a team of Mirpur thana police rushed to the spot at around 1:00 am Saturday.
   Sensing the police presence, the so-called leftists opened fire, prompting the police to fire back. At one stage, the activists fled the scene leaving Mazid dead in gunshot, according to police.
   A light gun, four rounds of rifle bullet and three used cartridges were recovered from the spot.
   His body was sent to Kushtia General Hospital morgue for autopsy.
   The police said Maziud was wanted in a number of criminal cases including murder.

Another Pakistan Army medical team reached Barisal Saturday noon to provide healthcare services to the Sidr-affected people while a team from the two US Navy ships anchored near the Bangladesh coast set up a base control room at the Barisal airport.
   Lt Col Abu Sayeed Md Ali, commander of Barisal district joint forces, received the 44-member Pakistan Army Medical Core team comprising surgeons, heart and child specialists, nurses, paramedics, and health assistants.
   A Bangladesh Army contingent offloaded 40 tonnes of medical equipment and medicines brought by the team from two C-130 cargo planes.
   The first Pakistan Army medical team of 77 members arrived in Barisal on Friday equipped with ambulance, field hospital and operation theatre facilities.
   The Pakistan medical teams will work at Sidr-affected areas of Barguna, Pirojpur and Bagerhat districts, Abu Sayeed said.
   Also on Saturday, two helicopters from the US Navy ships brought a team to the Barisal airport which opened a base control room there. The US troops plan to begin relief and rehabilitation activities in the cyclone-ravaged areas within a short time, after inspecting Mirzaganj of Patuakhali, Dublar Char of Bagerhat, and Patharghata of Barguna, sources concerned said.

The family members of an ailing freedom fighter Nayek Subedar Syed Aamiruzza-man (Bir Bikram) have urged the government and the affluent people to come forward to help him get his treatment abroad.
   Aamiruzzaman, an inhabitant of Sripur in Magura district, has been hospitalised with a heart attack. He is now in cabin No 224 at Holy Family Red Crescent Hospital, and passing a critical time.
   Physicians have advised Amiruzzaman to undergo further treatment abroad. Regia Begum, wife of Aamiruzzaman, is expecting support from the government and the philanthropic persons for a better treatment of her husband.
   He played an important role during the war of independence by collecting and circulating news among the freedom fighters and Bengali officers of the then East Pakistan Rifles as he was a senior radio mechanic Habildar at Betar division of the East Pakistan Rifles.
   He was the first person, who had disseminated the news of the armed revolution to the Bengali officers of the East Pakistan Rifles and others on 25th March 1971, said a press release.

Journal on criminal justice launched
The Bangladesh Institute of Law and International Affairs in collaboration with Canada’s Department of Justice launched a special issue of Bangladesh Journal of Law on criminal justice system on Saturday. The issue contains articles: Goals and Purposes of Criminal Law in Bangladesh, Criminal Law and the Constitution, Use and Abuse of Confessions, Sentencing Practises in Bangladesh, Special Criminal Legislation for Violence against Women and Children, and Arrest and Remand. The journal, published with assistance from CIDA’s Legal Reform Project: Part A, also examines perspectives on the Canadian criminal justice system. Former chief justice Muhammad Habibur Rahman was the chief guest at the launching programme, chaired by senior lawyer Amir-Ul Islam at Hotel Sonargaon. Former chief justice Mustafa Kamal, law secretary Kazi Habibul Awal, justice KM Sobhan, justice Imman Ali, head of development cooperation of CIDA Rajani Alexander, lawyer Shahdeen Malik and Sumiya Khair also
spoke.
— New Age