Main Page «
Metro «
Business «
International «
Sports «
National «
Editorial «
Op-Ed «
Home «
Timeout «
Letters «

Archive «
Launch Supplement «
Special Supplements «

Members of the cabinet appear to be divided over the issue of extra-judicial killings, which are on the rise despite widespread criticism at home and abroad and repeated promises by the government that it will not be allowed.
   Although the Awami League in its election manifesto pledged to stop such killings, at least 28 people have been killed by the law enforcers in ‘crossfire’ since the present government assumed office in early January.
   Admitting that extra-judicial killings have not stopped, foreign minister Dipu Moni on Friday told reporters, ‘We cannot change the culture of extra-judicial killing overnight as it has developed over a period of time.’
   ‘We are trying to stop it and will henceforth not let the perpetrators enjoy impunity,’ she told a press briefing at the ministry when she was asked whether the government had control over the law enforcing agencies who continued to kill people in ‘crossfire’ despite her commitment to show zero tolerance to extra-judicial killing at the review meeting on human rights in the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva on February 4.
   ‘If we can bring the perpetrators to book and ensure exemplary punishment for them, the situation will change,’ she said.
   The state minister for foreign affairs, Hasan Mahmud, added that the government had already instructed the law enforcers to stop extra-judicial killings.
   If any extra-judicial killing takes place, it must be investigated and the perpetrators put on trial, he said.
   The foreign minister’s admission came after the home minister, Sahara Khatun, on May 16 said the government was always against extra-judicial killing, ‘but the law enforcers should have the right to save their lives when they come under attack.’
   ‘Incidents of extra-judicial killing occur only when members of the law-enforcing agencies come under attack,’ claimed Sahara while talking with reporters after attending a discussion and prayer session seeking divine blessings for the departed soul of prime minister Sheikh Hasina’s husband, M Wazed Miah, who died on May 9.
   On May 6 the state minister for home affairs, Tanjim Ahmad Sohel Taj, also told reporters that the government would not allow any extra-judicial killings, but the law enforcers had the right to self-defence as per the constitution.
   Tanjim Ahmed made the remarks only a day after the ruling party’s spokesman, Syed Ashraful Islam, also the LGRD and cooperatives minister, said no more extra-judicial killing would be allowed.
   After a meeting organised by the Bangladesh Garment Manufacturers and Exporters’ Association on May 6, Ashraf said, ‘The government will no longer allow the law enforcement agencies to use “crossfire” killing without trial as a tool.’
   However the law minister, Shafique Ahmed, on Saturday claimed that the number of deaths in the so-called crossfire incidents had shrunk in comparison with that in the tenure of the BNP.
   At the Bangladesh Sanglap organised by BBC Bangla, Shafique also said the home affairs ministry had formed a committee for inquiry into the deaths in the crossfire incidents.
   Legal experts and rights activists observed that extra-judicial killing was going on as the ministers continued making contradictory statements on the one hand, and the government initiated no investigation of such killings to bring the perpetrators to book on the other.
   Rights organisation Ain-o-Salish Kendro’s executive director Sultana Kamal, also a former adviser to the caretaker government, Supreme Court lawyer Shah Deen Malik, also a rights activist, and Odhikar’s general secretary Adilur Rahman Khan, also a Supreme Court lawyer, demanded probes into all incidents of extra-judicial killing and making the investigation reports public.
   According to the law, any custodial death and extra-judicial killing needs to be investigated by a magistrate, Shah Deen and Adil told New Age on Friday.
   As no news of any such investigation has yet been reported, the law enforcers continue killing people in so-called crossfire with impunity, they said.
   Continuous impunity, contradictory statements of the ministers and the government’s use of the word ‘crossfire’ to defend the perpetrators are encouraging the law enforcers to continue extra-judicial killings, they observed.

The Amnesty International, in its annual report, claimed that at least 54 people died in suspected extra-judicial executions by the police and the Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) in the first six months of this regime, but no police or RAB personnel were prosecuted for the killings.
   AI’s secretary general Irene Khan on Thursday unveiled the report that pointed out that thousands of slum-dwellers were forcibly evicted in the capital and other major cities, and their homes were demolished without any provision of compensation or alternative accommodation.
   The report said that according to the government, mandatory judicial inquiries into all fatal shootings by police and RAB were carried out, and found them to be justified. The number of judicial inquiries conducted and the findings of such inquiries were not made public.
   The report also mentioned that the police used excessive force against peaceful demonstrators on several occasions.
   It also pointed out that Bengali settlers continue to grab the land belonging to the indigenous inhabitants of the Chittagong Hill Tracts.
   ‘Three UN Special Rapporteurs — on the situation of human rights and fundamental freedoms of indigenous people, on adequate housing and on the right to food — expressed concern that there may be a systematic campaign to support the relocation of non-indigenous people to the Chittagong Hill Tracts in order to outnumber the local indigenous community,’ said the AI annual report.
   In March the government announced amendments to the National Women Development Policy in order to further promote equality for women but they were not implemented because the policy faced fierce resistance from Islamist groups who rallied in protest, saying the amendments defied the Islamic laws on inheritance.
   The report said women continue to be discriminated against in law and in practice, and violence against women, including beating, acid attacks and dowry deaths, is still widespread.
   The AI’s report pointed out that restrictions on freedom of expression were not strictly enforced and were eventually lifted in November, and although some restrictions on freedom of assembly and association were lifted in May and November, many restrictions remained under the state of emergency until it was lifted on December 17.
   ‘The ban on indoor political meetings was lifted in May but some 30,000 political activists from various parties were arrested, reportedly as they gathered in their party offices soon after the announcement. The police detained them for periods between several days and two months before releasing them, either without charge or on bail after charging them with apparently unrelated criminal offences,’ said the report, adding that though the government announced the partial withdrawal of the ban on political rallies on November 3, it was not implemented until 12 December.
   The right to fair trials continued to be undermined and was further exacerbated by the emergency regulations, as defendants’ access to due process of law was limited, mentioned the report.
   The report pointed out that the government continued to use the army, alongside the police, the RAB and other security forces, to maintain law and order.
   ‘The army, which had been deployed to maintain law and order since January 2007, was temporarily withdrawn in early November but redeployed on December 18 until after the elections,’ observed the AI’s report.
   It pointed out that the political struggle between the military-backed caretaker government and veteran political leaders dominated the headlines in 2008.
   The report also said that hundreds of millions of people of the countries in the Asia-Pacific region are suffering due to government policies.

The family of Mohsin Sheikh, one of the two students of the Dhaka Polytechnic Institute, who were killed in a Rapid Action Battalion ‘crossfire’ in the capital early Thursday, will file a case against the RAB on charge of murder.
   ‘We have decided to file a murder a case against RAB as they committed the extra-judicial killing being instigated by some expelled activists of Chhatra League,’ Mohsin’s brother Farhad Sheikh told New Age.
   Mohsin Sheikh, a fourth-year student of electrical engineering department and Mohammad Ali Jinnah, a third-year student of mechanical engineering department of the institute, were killed in what Rapid Action Battalion described as a ‘shootout’ at Manik Mia Avenue near Asad Gate early Thursday.
   The bodies of the slain students were handed over to their families after post-mortem examination at Dhaka Medical College Hospital morgue on Thursday afternoon and they were buried in family graveyards at their village homes in Bhola and Faridpur.
   The director general of RAB, Hasan Mahmud Khandakar, told New Age, ‘Two students were killed in a “shootout” when they were engaged in “snatching”.’
   ‘Two separate cases were filed in this connection and we are investigating the incident,’ he said.
   To a query about continued extra-judicial killings by the law enforcers, the RAB chief said, ‘If lawmen come under attack from miscreants, they can return fire in self-defence and it may result in loss of lives which cannot be called extra-judicial killing.’
   RAB claimed that the two slain students were ‘criminals’ and ‘muggers’ but the teachers and students of the institute insisted that the two boys had no criminal records.
   Students of the institute said Mohsin and Jinnah were activists of the Bangladesh Chhatra League and linked to ‘Zakir group’ ousted by their rivals from the campus.
   Students of the institute alleged that RAB men in plainclothes picked up Mohsin and Jinnah when they came out of the hall for having tea on the campus in the night.
   A classmate of Mohsin told New Age, ‘After hearing the news of their [Mohsin and Jinnah] being picked up by RAB, we tried to contact them over mobile phone but some people identifying themselves as members of RAB-2, received the calls and even said who they were.’
   Tension was simmering on the campus following the killing of the two students. General students alleged that two groups of BCL, led by Shahin and Shaon and with the blessing of a local ward commissioner, had unleashed terror on the campus and forcibly occupied several rooms of Latif Hall.

The Singapore-based Premier Minerals, that holds licences for exploration of minerals in two blocks in the Cox’s Bazar beach and islands, has applied to the government for mining licences, but experts have expressed concern over mining in the sea beach, the most attractive tourist spot in Bangladesh.
   The company, which conducted exploration work last year, recently submitted applications for mining minerals like zircon, rutile and magnetite in the blocks that have an area of around 7,000 hectares, said sources in the energy division.
   ‘The government is now reviewing the company’s applications. A number of issues including environmental concerns will be considered before the government decides to allow the company to mine in the beach,’ said a source.
   Sources in the energy division said that they had found that the government would earn revenue of only $20,00,000 per year although it had been perceived over the years that these minerals, popularly called ‘black gold’, would bring the country hundreds of millions of dollars.
   These minerals are used in industrial products, ranging from ceramic tiles to pigment of paint, but the company is likely to export the minerals as there are no industries in Bangladesh that can use these minerals.
   A six-member committee headed by Petrobangla’s former director (mines and minerals), Maqbul-E-Elahi, reviewed the company’s report on exploration and recommended awarding of mining licences on condition that the company would have to test further the minerals and that there would have to be an environmental assessment to ascertain whether mining would be safe for the coastal areas.
   ‘The major concern is the environment. We recommended an environmental assessment, especially by the engineers who are experts on coastal areas, before granting the company the mining licences,’ said one of the members of the committee.
   He said that the experts would look into whether any erosion of the coastal areas would take place after extraction of thousands of tonnes of minerals and sand.
   Another member of the committee said, ‘When the company starts mining, millions of tonnes of heavy sand will have to be dug up. We do not know whether the sea waves will wash away the light sand and give rise to erosion.’
   He said that the company would extract thousands of tonnes of minerals from the heavy sand, and the remaining sand would be piled back again on the beach. ‘But it is uncertain how the vacuum created by the extraction of minerals will be filled up.’
   The committee recommended that the Department of Environment should look into the matter.
   The committee also found that the company’s preparatory work seemed to be ‘incomplete’ as its application for taking around 10 tonnes of sand to Australia was not granted by the government because of difference of opinion among the members of the committee.
   The company in 2008 sought permission to take 9.5 tonnes of sand to Australia for testing [to find out how much sand contained how much minerals] but the existing rules on mines and minerals allow only 50kg of raw material to be taken to a foreign country.
   Some of the committee’s experts said that the company could be allowed to take 9.5 tonnes of sand after paying royalty but others differed and asked the company to test the sand at the laboratory of the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission.
   The company then claimed that as it was listed with the stock market in a foreign country, it needed recognition of the minerals by an accredited laboratory.
   The committee, in its recommendations, asked the company to set up a laboratory of international standard if it was given a licence for carrying out tests.
   One of the committee’s members told New Age that the mining project would not be much beneficial for the country because minerals would be exported as there was still no scope in Bangladesh to use them.
   Besides, the low royalty rate of around 8 per cent will not be of financially reasonable benefit to the government, he said.
   Premier Minerals, meanwhile, has applied for exploration licences for two other blocks in Cox’s Bazar. ‘The energy division has sent a proposal to the prime minister for granting exploration licences to the company,’ said a source.
   Cox’s Bazar has been divided into six blocks for exploration of minerals.

Areas in the south and south-west lying lower than the sea-level may remain inundated for long, compounding the sufferings of the people, said experts and the organizations working with water related issues.
   The areas were submerged as tidal surges whipped up as high as 13 feet by cyclone Aila, which crossed over Sagar Island into India Monday evening, fell over the land crossing the embankment.
   Koyra, Dacope and part of Paikgachha and Dumuria in Khulna, Shyamnagar and part of Assassuni and Tala in Satkhira and part of Sarankhola, Morrelganj and Mongla in Bagerhat were worst affected. Many stretches of embankments also breached in the places, said sources in administration.
   Sources in the Water Development Board said 48.965km stretch of embankment had been fully destroyed and 218.15km of stretch had been damaged partially in Khulna.
   Water that collected during the tidal surges cannot recede as the Kapatakshi, Marichchap and Bhadra rivers, which have their beds silted over the years, were flowing above the low-lying areas in places such as Shyamnagar, Tala and Assassuni in Satkhira, Paikgachha, Koyra and Dumuria in Khulna, the Pani Odhikar Committee presidentm ABM Shafiqul Islam, said.
   He said the riverbeds are higher by one to three feet than low-lying areas in places and in other places the river bends are on a level with the low-lying areas. He said it was time the rivers were dredged lower than the low-lying areas.
   Khulna University environmental science professor Md Salequzzaman said water had entered even the villages which had never been submerged in such cases in about 100 years.
   He said if proper measures were not taken to flush out the water collected on the land lower than the riverbeds, a large area in the southwest, such as Bhabadaha Bil in Jessore, may remain dry permanently.
   Salequzzaman said for water collected on the land to recede, it is imperative to drain water out of the river first.
   In places where the river bends and the land are on a the same plane, the embankments need to be cut to allow water to be flushed out during ebb tide and then the embankments should be constructed properly, he said.
   Shankar Kumar Das, 38, a resident of Atghara at Tala in Satkhira, said the River Kapatakshi flowing by the village had been silted up and the water collected on the land could not be flushed out as the riverbed is higher than the land. People need to wait for the sun to dry up the water collected on the low-lying areas.
   Khulna division Water Development Board executive engineer Zulfikar Ali Hawlader said the department was taking measures to construct and repair the damaged or destroyed embankment stretchers and to flush out the water that collected on the land during the cyclone.

Diarrhoea has broken out in remote coastal areas amid acute scarcity of drinking water and food as relief and health services efforts remain inadequate.
   Eight people died of diarrhoea in Patuakhali after Bangladesh’s south had been inundated by tidal surges and battered by storm associated with cyclone Aila, which ripped through India Monday evening.
   About 2,000 people have contracted diarrhoea in five southern districts, according to an unofficial estimate. No official figure of such patients was available with the control room of the Directorate General of Health Services.
   People in remote areas, who suffered worst, are yet get any relief even after four days of the submersion of the areas.
   Reports from Khulna, Satkhira, Patuakhali and Bhola said diarrhoea had broken out in coastal areas for want of drinking water.
   In the absence of proper healthcare services as needed in such cases, diarrhoea might become epidemic unless the affected people were provided with purification tablets and medicines, said a general physician at Shyamnagar in Satkhira.
   The official death toll, meanwhile, rose to 155 on Friday, said the disaster management ministry control room. The ministry allocated 9,000 tonnes of rice for the affected districts on Friday, the control room said.
   The New Age correspondent in Patuakhali reported death of eight people from diarrhoea.
   The civil surgeon in Satkhira, Ebadullah, said diarrhoea situation in district had taken an alarming shape and 1,000 patients were admitted to hospital with complaints of diarrhoea on Friday. No death from diarrhoea was reported in the district, he said.
   Reports from Patuakhali said 324 diarrhoea patients were admitted to seven upazila health complexes and Patuakhali General Hospital in three days. The patients are mostly children and aged women, according to the civil surgeon’s office.
   Local government representatives of the upazilas said 500 more had contracted diarrhoea, but they were yet to be admitted to hospital.
   The civil surgeon in Patuakhali, Humayun Kabir, said diarrhoea had broken out for want of drinking water.
   Reports from Bhola said diarrhoea had broken out in remote chars and shoals of Daulatkhan, Lalmohan, Charfasson and Monpura. The affected people said they were yet to receive any relief materials and medicines.
   Shipu Farazi, an NGO worker at Charfession, said diarrhoea had broken out in all the offshore islands of Bhola.
   Bidhu Narayan Sardar, the chairman of the Sutarkhali union council at Dacope in Khulna, said a number of people of his union had contracted diarrhoea.
   GM Abdul Mannan, a general physician of Dumuria at Shyamnagar, said a large number of people had contracted diarrhoea as they had no other option but to use polluted water.
   Physicians at Koyra health complex said they had treated about 75 people who went to them with complaints of diarrhoea.
   The Khulna civil surgeon, Md Lutfor Rahman, said they had deployed medical teams to control the diarrhoea situation.
   The correspondent in Khulna said relief operation at Shyamnagar was inadequate. Shamshu Dhali, 65, a resident of Sora, said they were yet to get any relief till Friday.
   ‘We are yet to get a single piece of clothe or a handful of rice even five days after the inundation. No one comes to this remote char. We are going without food,’ said Jahanara Begum, at Char Anda of Galachipa in Patuakhali.
   The Char Mantaj union council chairman, MA Matin, said, ‘I sought food for relief from the deputy commissioner through the upazila nirbahi officer. We are yet to receive anything.’

The government has invited bids to a tender for the purchase 11,500 tonnes of papers to print secondary textbooks which might frustrate the government’s move to check against fraudulence by private printers.
   The government usually buys papers for textbook printing from the Karnaphuli Paper Mills and such papers have a security sign for identification.
   Private printers are then supplied with the papers on contract and the government can easily detect fraudulence if the printers use papers other than what they are supplied with.
   ‘There is a risk of fraudulence by private printer, but we need to buy the papers on the open market to save time. We will need one more month, otherwise,’ the National Curriculum and Textbook Baord chairman, Professor Mostafa Kamaluddin, told New Age on Friday.
   ‘If we wait for papers with security signs from Karnaphuli, we will fail to supply the textbooks in time next year. As the government for the first time is going to supply secondary textbooks free, we take up the issue of timely supply of textbooks as a big challenge,’ he said.
   ‘A total of 7,62,68,109 copies of textbooks will be published for free distribution among secondary students next year. The textbook board will need 16,838 tonnes printing papers for the job,’ he said. ‘We have some papers reserved in our warehouse. And we will buy 3,500 more tonnes of papers from KPM having security sign,’ the chairman said.
   The government this year has found that most private printers use papers, of low quality, other than what they were supplied with to print textbooks in the absence of a proper monitoring system.
   The textbook board, which is under the education ministry, is responsible for renewal, modification and development of curriculum, and production and distribution of textbooks for primary, secondary and higher secondary students.
   Textbooks are printed by private publishing houses on contract under the supervision of the textbook board.
   When asked about the weak monitoring system, the board chairman said, ‘This year we will form separate monitoring teams and hold only them responsible if they fail in the task.’
   Another board official said, ‘A total of Tk 32 lakh has been kept reserved this year for monitoring teams. Textbooks will be published in six divisional headquarters this year.’

A bomb blast at a Shia mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday killed 25 worshippers.
   The attack during evening prayers at the Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan, the restive capital of Sistan-Baluchestan, wounded 125 others.
   Local Martyrs’ Foundation released a list of 24 male victims who had been identified of the 25 killed, the official IRNA news agency reported.
   Twenty-three were Iranians and one was an Afghan. One other victim had still not been identified.
   On Thursday, Iran was in mourning to commemorate the death of Fatima Zahra, the daughter of the Prophet Mohammed.
   ‘This catastrophe was a suicide terrorist attack,’ Zahedan MP Payman Foroozesh told ILNA news agency.
   Provincial justice chief Ebrahim Hamidi said the attacker ‘had stood in the last line of male worshippers during the evening prayer, carried out the bombing and died.’
   Iranian officials accused the United States on Friday of ‘hiring’ those behind the suicide bombing, linking the attack to next month’s presidential election.
   ‘Three people involved with the terrorist incident were arrested,’ said Jalal Sayah, deputy governor of Sistan-Baluchestan, the province bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan where the attack took place.
   ‘According to the information obtained they were hired by America and the agents of the arrogance,’ Sayah told the Fars news agency. Officials usually use the term ‘global arrogance’ to refer to Iran arch-foe the US.
   Interior minister Sadegh Mahsooli also pointed the finger towards the US and Israel.
   ‘Enemies try to influence the election by terror just as they did in Zahedan yesterday,’ the Mehr news agency quoted him as saying.
   ‘The terror agents are neither Sunni nor Shia but American and Israeli seeking a Sunni-Shia divide.’
   In an angry tirade Tehran Friday prayer speaker Ahmad Khatami repeated anti-US accusations and alleged the bombers were followers of Wahabism — the ultra-conservative version of Islam practised in Saudi Arabia — many of whose followers deride Shias as rejectionists.
   ‘One can undoubtedly trace the finger prints of America and Israel in this incident. Although the operators were Wahabis and non-believing evil Salafis, the direction comes from elsewhere,’ the hardline cleric said.
   Iran’s former premier and presidential hopeful Mir Hossein Mousavi also blamed ‘foreign forces’ for Thursday’s attack.
   ‘The fewer foreign forces in the region, the more security there is. They provoke extremism in the region such as the incident in Zahedan,’ said Mousavi, one of four candidates standing in the June 12 presidential election.
   Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.

The 28th anniversary of the death of former president Ziaur Rahman, also founder of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, will be observed today.
   The BNP and its associate bodies have chalked up elaborate programmes on the occasion.
   The party’s chairperson, Khaleda Zia, in a statement on the occasion said the conspiracy against Bangladesh that had begun with the assassination of Ziaur Rahman was still continuing. ‘Local agents of the conspirators are now out to foil the country’s sovereignty, destroy democracy and restore the autocrating BKSAL,’ she said. ‘Today is the day we should take a fresh vow to thwart all such conspiracies.’
   Khaleda, also widow of Zia, is scheduled to place flowers at his grave at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar in Dhaka along with party leaders and activists.
   A prayer session will also be held at the graveside seeking eternal peace for the departed soul. Khaleda Zia is also scheduled to distribute food among the destitute at different locations in the capital.
   The party held a discussion meeting on Friday at the Institution of Engineers to mark the occasion. Khaleda attended the meeting. A seminar will be held at the Institution of Diploma Engineers on May 31.
   The BNP secretary general, Khandaker Delwar Hossain, has urged the party leaders and activists to observe the day in a befitting manner.
   Black flags will be hoisted atop all BNP offices across the country at dawn on the occasion. Party flags will be flown at half-mast to show respect to Ziaur Rahman.
   The party units and front organisations will hold prayer sessions and feed the poor as a part of its three-day special programmes on the occasion.
   Chittagong district unit of the party will place flowers at the first grave of Ziaur Rahman at Zia Nagar at Rangunia besides holding various programmes to mark the day.
   Ziaur Rahman was born on January 19, 1936 at Bagbari village of Gabtali upazila in Bogra district.
   A group of army officers killed Zia at the Chittagong Circuit House on May 30, 1981, five years after he had assumed state power.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party was urged on Friday to remodel its political strategy after taking the present global, regional and national realities into consideration.
   Professor Ibne Golam Samad, a former of teacher of the Rajshahi University, asked the BNP to pursue ‘politics of the people’ instead of ‘symbol-based politics’.
   ‘The BNP has become dependent on its [election] symbol. The debacle in the Rajshahi region in the last elections has proved that pursuing only symbol-based politics is a mistake,’ he said. ‘You [BNP] must go to the people to ascertain what they like or dislike before devising your political strategy.’
   Emajuddin Ahmed, former vice-chancellor of Dhaka University, called on the BNP leaders and activists to strictly follow Ziaur Rahman’s ideals and way of life.
   Shaukat Mahmud, president of the National Press Club, called on BNP members to follow the ‘politics of sacrifice’ that was the principle of Ziaur Rahman, founder of the party.
   ‘The BNP had faced trouble whenever it discarded its founder Zia’s principle of politics of sacrifice and pursued the politics of self-seeking,’ he said.
   Professor Mahbub Ullah, a teacher of Dhaka University, suggested that the party should remain alert in order to identify the foreign agents within and outside the party.
   These remarks were made at a discussion held to observe the 28th death anniversary of former president Ziaur Rahman, who founded the BNP, at the Institution of Engineers.
   The party’s chairperson, Khaleda Zia, attended the discussion but sat among the audience.
   The BNP organised the discussion that was presided over by its secretary general, Khandakar Delwar Hossain.
   He called on all nationalist forces to be united as, according to him, foreign quarters were preparing to ‘grab’ the country.
   ‘All nationalist forces and persons, wherever they are, must unite to stand firm against aggression,’ said Delwar. ‘It is a very difficult struggle. But we must win.’
   BNP’s standing committee member Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain stressed the need to forge people’s unity as, according to him, the country was facing a crisis.
   BNP’s vice-chairman MK Anwar, Khaleda’s adviser ASM Hannan Shah and former lawmaker Hamidullah Khan also participated in the discussion.
   They alleged that the Awami League-led government was implementing one after another foreign agenda instead of the national agenda.

Announcing various steps for professional development of the Armed Forces, the prime minister, Sheikh Hasina, has said National Defence Policy will be formulated to ensure security of the country and its people.
   She stressed the need for self-discipline and skill development of the military in keeping with the changed milieu of the new millennium.
   ‘Right to self-administration as per the constitution in internal discipline, administration and management of the Armed Forces will be ensured,’ she said while addressing a function in observance of International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers at the Bangladesh-China Friendship Conference Centre Friday.
   The prime minister told her audience that the present government would take all necessary steps to send more peacekeepers under the UN Peacekeeping Mission to work towards building a peaceful and prosperous world.
   She expressed the hope that the peacekeepers from the Armed Forces and police department would continue to give service in building a peaceful and prosperous world by working in various departments of the United Nations and in diplomatic activities.
   At the outset, one-minute silence was observed in honour of the Bangladesh peacekeepers who sacrificed their lives during their peacekeeping mission and the victims of last February’s BDR carnage.
   The prime minister further said efforts of the present government would be continued to build the Armed Forces as modern, strong forces capable of facing the challenges of the 21st century.
   She also reiterated Awami League’s election pledge to keep the Armed Forces above of all ‘controversies’.
   ‘Appointments, postings, promotions of the Armed Forces’ members will be decided on the basis of qualifications, merit, skill and seniority,’ said the premier, who holds the charge of the defence ministry.
   Hasina announced that the government would take welfare projects for the members of the Armed Forces.
   Mentioning the country’s foreign-policy motto ‘Friendship to all, malice to none’, the prime minister said the peacekeeping activities of the Armed Forces and police were an important tool in achieving foreign-policy adjectives.
   The UN resident coordinator, Renata Lok Dessallien, the state minister for foreign affairs, Hasan Mahmud, and the army chief, General Moeen U Ahmed, also spoke on the occasion.
   General Moeen in his address informed the gathering that more contingents of the peacekeepers are going to join the UN peace mission very soon. Later, the prime minister inaugurated a photo exhibition.

The Bangladesh Nationalist Party on Friday rejected the government’s probe report on the February 25-26 rebellion in the Bangladesh Rifles, and called for investigation of the ‘national tragedy’ by a high-powered all-party parliamentary committee to identify the perpetrators, planners and behind-the-scenes instigators.
   The party also called for releasing the findings of the probe conducted by the military, even in a camera session of the parliament if the government felt embarrassed to make it public.
   The party secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hossain at a news conference at the National Press Club, said, ‘The report the government has made public partially has frustrated us. This is not a report at all. The committee could expose nothing and has no success. [The exercise was] a waste of national resources and time.’
   ‘The report on such a grave national disaster is nothing but a farce. We reject the essay,’ Delwar said.
   Delwar said the military, the worst victim of the Pilkhana incidents, were not allowed to probe it independently. Officers were transferred on a massive scale and many were sent to retirement to hamper their probe, he said.
   Amid such adversity, the [military] had submitted its report and a portion of it, leaked out to the media, ‘brought to light very sensational information pointing the finger at the government and the ruling party,’ he said asked the government to make it public.
   Delwar said the government’s report failed to identify the planners and instigators of the bloody incident and that there was no mention of the meetings between the ministers and leaders of the ruling party and the mutineers.
   He said the report ‘invented a story’ of the involvement of former BNP lawmaker Nasiruddin Ahmed Pintu but said nothing about Awami League leader Torab Ali ‘who was one of the instigators’.
   ‘It was the government which made way for the mutineers to flee by not cordoning the BDR headquarters during the mutiny. Activists of their party entered Pilkhana in processions during the killing spree,’ Delwar said. ‘The “Pintu story” has been fabricated to hide the facts.’
   He also slammed the proposal for changing the name and uniform of the border guards. ‘Why so much focus on the name keeping aside other important things,’ he asked.
   Eighty-two people, including officers and soldiers of BDR and civilians were killed in the mutiny at the headquarters of the border guards on February 25 and 26.
   BNP standing committee member Khandakar Mosharraf Hossain, party chief’s adviser ASM Hannan Shah, joint secretary general Mirza Abbas, lawmaker Barkat Ullah Bulu and office secretary Rizvi Ahmed were among those present at the press conference.

Climate change is responsible for the deaths of 3,00,000 people every year and costs $125 billion annually, a new report said on Friday.
   The study, from the Global Humanitarian Forum, claims to be the first to measure the impact of climate change on people globally — and says it is 325 million of the poorest who suffer most.
   It highlights the plight of people in Bangladesh, where millions face regular flooding and cyclones, Uganda, where farmers are plagued by drought and some Caribbean and Pacific islands facing obliteration due to rising seas.
   This is despite the world’s 50 least developed countries contributing less than one per cent of global carbon emissions.
   Speaking at the report’s launch in London, former UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said it showed the need for a ‘bold, post-Kyoto agreement to protect the world’ at crunch international climate change talks in Copenhagen in December.
   ‘The alternative is mass starvation, mass migration, mass sickness and mass death,’ Annan, the forum’s president, said.
   ‘If political leaders cannot assume responsibility for Copenhagen, they choose instead responsibility for failing humanity.’
   Annan described climate change as ‘the greatest emerging humanitarian challenge of our time’ and said the world was ‘at a crossroads’ on how to tackle the issue.
   The report projects that by 2030, deaths worldwide due to climate change will rise to nearly half a million a year and the cost will hit $300 billion.
   It urges developing countries, which account for 99 per cent of climate change casualties, to scale up their efforts to adapt for climate change ‘by a factor of 100.’
   The vast majority of deaths are caused by gradual environmental degradation which causes problems like malnutrition rather than natural disasters, it said.

Pakistan stepped up its offensive against the Taliban on Friday, slapping a 6,00,000-dollar price on the head of a firebrand rebel and claiming to have captured another militant stronghold.
   The government hopes the bounty will help it get — dead or alive — Maulana Fazlullah, a hardline Taliban cleric and commander who masterminded a two-year uprising in the northwest Swat valley to enforce Shariah.
   The interior ministry published names and mugshots of ‘miscreant-terrorists’ from the Taliban leadership in Swat, offering 50 million rupees [$6,16,500] for Fazlullah and 10 million rupees each for 15 of his aides.
   Fazlullah led thousands of supporters, a mixture of hardcore ideologues and disenfranchised young men, in a brutal campaign that beheaded opponents, burned scores of schools and fought against government troops since November 2007.
   He is a son-in-law of elderly pro-Taliban cleric Sufi Mohammad, who secured a government deal to put three million people in the northwest under Shariah in February — an agreement that failed to stem the fighting.
   After armed Taliban marched into the district of Buner in April, putting Fazlullah’s fighters within 100 kilometres of the national capital Islamabad, Pakistan unleashed a fresh military offensive.
   The military says more than 1,200 militants have been killed since the air and ground assault began on April 26 and about 2.4 million have people fled the fighting, the largest exodus in Pakistan since partition from India in 1947.
   The US has welcomed the offensive against the militants, whom it has branded the biggest terror threat to the West.
   Islamabad says around 15,000 soldiers are fighting up to 2,000 militants in Swat, where on Friday the military declared another militant stronghold had been cleared and 28 militants killed over the last 24 hours.

The government will send an expert team in addition to a parliamentary delegation to India’s Tipaimukh multi-purpose dam area for assessing its possible impacts on Bangladesh, foreign minister Dipu Moni said on Friday.
   ‘The government has decided to send a parliamentary delegation to the Tipaimukh dam area and it will be followed by a visit there by a team of experts to assess its [possible] impacts on Bangladesh,’ the foreign minister told reporters at her office when her attention was drawn to the BNP’s demand that an expert team should visit the project site.
   BNP vice-chairman M Hafizuddin Ahmed, also former water resources minister, on Thursday asked the government to send a team of experts to the Tipaimukh project site, instead of dispatching a parliamentary group, for field studies to assess its possible impacts on Bangladesh.
   The foreign minister said that during their recent visit here, former Indian external affairs minister Pranab Mukherjee and external affairs secretary Shiv Shankar Menon had invited Bangladesh to send an ‘expert team’ to the dam area.
   When asked whether she agreed with commerce minister Faruk Khan that Tipaimukh dam would not have any adverse impact on Bangladesh’s environment and economy, Dipu Moni said, ‘I do not want to make comments… until the delegations visit the area and come up with their assessment.’
   Experts here fear that the twin dams – one at Tipaimukh and the other at Phulertal – that India is going to construct on the cross-boundary river Barak, will dry up the rivers, including Meghna, and wetland in the north-eastern districts of Bangladesh, upsetting the ecological balance and destabilising livelihoods of millions.
   Tauhidul Anwar Khan, an expert on regional water resources, who also served as a member of the Indo-Bangla joint rivers commission, recently told New Age that India had started a multi-purpose intervention on the river Barak at the Tipaimukh and another at Phulertal, 100 kilometres downstream from Tipaimukh.
   ‘The twin interventions on the Barak will have multifarious adverse impacts on the nature and livelihoods in Bangladesh’s north-eastern districts,’ he said.

A Bangladeshi cattle trader was shot dead by the Border Security Force of India on Shapaher frontier in Naogaon Thursday.
   Local BDR personnel recovered the body of Shafiqul Islam, 45, son of Abul Hossain of Patari village under the same upazila from the adjacent River Punarbhaba at around 9:00am Friday.
   In-charge of Nadhatala BDR outpost under 6th Battalion Subeder Habibur Rahman said a BSF patrol party from Nayerkuri camp opened fire on Shafiqul Islam near the border without any provocation while he along with four other traders were going to a nearby hat for selling cattle. The BDR personnel recovered the body in the morning.

The police have launched a manhunt for other cohorts of detained Indian fugitive Abdur Rouf Merchant alias Daud Merchant, an official said.
   The official of Criminal Investigation Department told the news agency on Friday evening that they had taken along Daud Merchant and two other arrestees, Kamal Miah and Jahid, to apprehend the others.
   The official added that none had been arrested until evening. Daud Merchant’s motive to hide in Bangladesh was being investigated.
   The police on Thursday said they had detained the Indian criminal, convicted of the murder of Mumbai music magnate Gulshan Kumar.
   Merchant, who was serving his sentence in an Indian jail since 2002, was reported absconding by the Indian police after being released on parole in April to visit his family in Mumbra, a small town about 40 km from Mumbai.
   The Detective Branch picked up Merchant from the residence of Kamal Miah at Mourail in Brahmanbaria.
   The Brahmanbaria police superintendent, Mukhlesur Rahman, told reporters that Merchant had recently arrived in the district after crossing illegally into Bangladesh through the Akhaura border.
   Rahman said Merchant had also bought a Bangladeshi passport in order to pass himself off as a local.
   The police also arrested Kamal Miah for sheltering the Indian fugitive.