KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – The worst disaster to hit Bangladesh’s garment industry happened on Wednesday, April 24th with a death toll of 344 and counting. The media regarding Bangladesh is dominated by this story and rightly so. With unapproved construction of parts of the garment factory and ignored warnings of…
Tag: Bangladesh
BANGLADESH: Full Court Press Is Next?
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – A top editor at Bangladesh’s Amar Desh newspaper has been arrested and at least one human rights group says he’s being tortured in police custody. The international Committee to Protect Journalists, meanwhile, has called on the government to stop its official harassment of the Dhaka daily.…
BANGLADESH: Blasphemy No Longer Allowed
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – Rest easy, readers. The Bangladeshi government has been busy clearing the cyberworld of blasphemous content. The Daily Star reports a group of “Muslim Clerics” submitted a list of bloggers they believe are responsible for alleged insults to Islam made online. The list was handed to a…
BANGLADESH: Poverty Decrease Gets ‘Daily Star’
KIARA BRAMASCO WRITES – One of Bangladesh’s leading newspapers, The Daily Star, has reported that poverty levels are decreasing. The United Nations’ latest development report stated that there are 40 poor countries that are helping to reduce poverty levels and that “Never in history have the living conditions and prospects…
BANGLADESH: Face(book) on the Moon
An amateurishly doctored picture of convicted war criminal Delwar Hossain Sayedee’s face superimposed on the moon has sparked violence by his supporters who apparently saw it as a divine omen. The photo, which was posted to the Jamaat-Shibir Facebook page Saturday night, quickly went viral, and was spread by supporters via…
BANGLADESH: Persistent Outrage Over Crusading Blogger’s Death
Bangladesh news coverage this month has been dominated by demonstrations in Dakha demanding stiffer sentences for war criminals from the country’s 1971 Liberation War. Now, hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshis have been gathering as they also seek justice for the killing of Ahmed Rajib Haider, a blogger who helped organize…
BANGLADESH: Money On The Go
Mobile Money has been making its way through Bangladesh. bKash Limited company is a subsidiary of BRAC Bank (a private commercial bank in Bangladesh) that has helped launch a new service that allows Bangladeshis to transfer money through their mobile phones. According to a report in The Economist,…
BANGLADESH: Death Penalty Kills a Deal
A new proposal from Bangladesh to make counterfeiting money punishable by the death penalty has alarmed the German Bundensbank (German Central Bank) who originally offered to assist Bangladesh in detecting counterfeit money. The Economist reports that Bangladesh, plagued with more than 5,000 pending cases regarding currency counterfeiting, is scheduled to…
MALAYSIA: Building a Bridge Between Christianity and Islam
A bridge is being built between the Christian and Islamic worlds to bring more unity between the two. And what better place to start this process than Malaysia, one of the most Islamic, and also peaceful, nations in the world? Pope Benedict XVI has recently appointed American Archbishop Joseph Marino,…
BANGLADESH: Fire Sparks Questions About Safety in Bangladesh
Breaking news of a garment factory fire that broke out on November 24 in Bangladesh has rightly dominated the Bangladeshi media. The next day, the Daily Star assessed the death toll at 109 people. The fire started on Saturday night in an eight-story garment factory located in Ashulia, an industrial…
BANGLADESH: Mortal Danger for Journalists Continues
It took a serious Spanish media outlet to shine light on the latest anti-media atrocity in this country Recently Eurasia Review: News and Analysis, an independent news outlet based in Spain, has reported that yet another Bangladeshi journalist has been killed. Talhad Ahmed Kabid was a reporter with the Bangladeshi…
BANGLADESH: Accurate or Bologna? Survey Reveals a Corrupt Parliamentary
So how much corruption can people handle before they call for a change? Transparency International Bangladesh (TIB) is an independent, non-partisan, and non-profit organization whose mission is to create social movements that will lead to the reduction and eradication of corruption in Bangladesh. Recently, TIB conducted a survey among Bangladesh’s…
BANGLADESH: Asia Foundation Study Raises Key Issue for Development
Despite Bangladesh’s relatively weak international recognition as a major garment manufacturer and exporter, it is in fact one of the world’s largest garment manufacturers, being only second to China. As a result, Bangladesh’s economy has been consistently improving. The economic growth, however, has come with many sacrifices and hardships for…
BANGLADESH: Govt. Accuses Economist Magazine of ‘Poor Journalism’
The Bangladesh government is unhappy with The Economist, the famed international weekly published out of London. More specifically, Bangladesh’s government seems to believe that The Economist has not practiced accurate or impartial reporting on two recent feature articles on Bangladesh, titled “Banged about” and “Hello, Delhi”. On June 14th, 2012,…
BANGLADESH: Throwing the (Face)Book at the Prime Minister!
Posting unflattering Facebook messages about Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has landed another person in hot water. On July 12, The Daily Star: Lebanon reported that Bangladesh police jailed Shariful Islam after he posted to his Facebook page an edited picture of the female prime minister’s face superimposed on a partially-naked…
BANGLADESH: Media Brawl Spotlights a Murder
It remains a dangerous time for journalists in Bangladesh, as violence against them continues. Only in the latest chapter, it was not a fight between police and journalists, but rather, amongst the journalists themselves. The Daily Star reported on Monday, June 25th, 2012 that newsmen from ATN Bangla, a private TV channel, attacked Jahangir Alam Prodhan, a journalist for the…