Economist
In Burichang, Comilla, a young man accused of stealing copper wire from Sakura Steel Mill was caught and tortured by setting two German Shepherd dogs upon him. The victim’s name is Shri Joy Chandra Sarkar, a scrap trader. In the viral video, two hunting dogs are seen biting the young man while several men beat him mercilessly with sticks. Helpless from dog bites and blows, the youth screamed in agony.
Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, has won a landslide victory in the Dhaka University Central Students’ Union (DUCSU) election. For the first time, Shibir got the chance to do politics openly at Dhaka University, and with that chance, it crushed all the other student organisations in the election. The main rival was the BNP’s student wing, Chhatra Dal. But it would not be right to call Chhatra Dal a rival; they were sure of winning, just as the Awami League had expected in the 1991 general election.
Election-oriented people believe that once an election is held inflation will fall, GDP will rise, a flood of investment will come, factories will not close, there will be no shortage of gas supply, electricity prices will fall, load-shedding will end, there will be no traffic jams on the roads, and students will not lose concentration due to the sounds of sermons and band music. On the other hand, some believe that even if an election is held none of these will happen; instead, new thieves will appear, robbers in different guises, corruption-hungry officials, bribe-takers in religious attire, and newly styled money launderers. The current ACC Commissioner Miah Muhammad Ali Akbar Azizi has recounted at a public hearing how he himself paid bribes; he described the harassment he faced in obtaining approvals or no-objection certificates from numerous institutions for a multi-storey building design, and mentioned how he had to pay one lakh taka in bribes the very day before going on Hajj. Since giving bribes is a crime, no one admits to it, but even honest people have to pay them; proving it is difficult. Even if proof is found, fighting the administration is foolish, because the bribe-takers know the countless sections of law, and which ones are non-bailable. These things do not happen only under dictatorships; they happen under the democratic systems of elected governments too.
The Judiciary Reform Commission has recommended that the judiciary have a separate secretariat and financial autonomy, which would reduce its dependence on the executive branch of the government.
Journalist and columnist Bibhuranjan Sarkar went missing on Thursday (21 August). The following day, police recovered his body from the Meghna River at Gazaria in Munshiganj. I first learnt of his disappearance from writer Linu Haque’s Facebook post, and shortly afterwards saw the news of his disappearance spread across Facebook. I called his classmate at Dhaka University and political fellow traveller Jiban Krishna Saha, but he could not say where Bibhuranjan Sarkar’s residence was. I realised then that society had long ceased to have any use for Bibhuranjan Sarkar.
With the fall of the Awami League government on 5 August last year, the looting of stones began and continued relentlessly in mass scale over the past year. Although stories of this looting spread on social and other media, the government and local administration remained in a deep slumber like Kumbhakarna. They only woke up after the looting was over. On 13 August, the joint forces launched an operation to recover the looted white stones and seized 130 stone-laden trucks. According to the Sylhet district commissioner, the confiscated stones will be returned to the areas from where they were looted, and there is also a court order regarding this. Stone is a mineral resource, and therefore its authority lies with the Ministry of Mineral Resources. The power to permit or stop extraction lies with that ministry. However, if stone extraction causes environmental damage, the Ministry of Environment can raise objections.