Eresh Omar Jamal

John Pilger, as foreign correspondent, covered Bangladesh's Liberation War. His front-page report 'Death of a Nation' alerted the world to the life-and-death struggle of the Bengali people. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Pilger talks about his coverage of Bangladesh's Liberation War, the state of journalism today, and the current political shifts happening in the West.

In its manifesto for the upcoming elections, the Awami League has pledged to strengthen the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC), the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC), mass media and the judiciary.

Since November 17, protesters who have since become known as the “Gillets Jaunes” (Yellow Vests) have been pouring onto the streets of France in huge numbers.

Besides taking up arms to directly fight in the war in 1971, many women also joined the war effort as nurses and doctors to provide medical care for injured freedom fighters. The following are the experiences of two such women who participated in the war as nurses, Sultana Kamal, lawyer and activist, and Minu Haque, dancer and choreographer.

Stefania Maurizi is an investigative journalist working for the Italian daily La Repubblica. She has worked on all WikiLeaks releases of secret documents and partnered with Glenn Greenwald to reveal the Snowden Files about Italy. She has authored two books—Dossier WikiLeaks: Segreti Italiani and Una Bomba, Dieci Storie. In an exclusive (electronic) interview with Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star, Maurizi talks about the continued arbitrary detention of Julian Assange, why powerful governments see WikiLeaks as an existential threat, and the implications for global press freedom if Assange is prosecuted for publishing secret government documents.

On November 18, the finance minister surprised almost everyone (not for the first time) by saying that those who highlight the sorry state of the banking sector are all “uninformed”.

History, more often than not, “is written by the victors”. But, what could perhaps be even more universally accurate is that, “the first casualty of war is truth.” Despite its great devastation and world-changing impact, the First World War is no exception to these age-old expressions; and neither is its commonly known history.

Sultana Kamal, lawyer and human rights activist, member of CPD board of trustees, former Executive Director of Ain o Salish Kendra, and former advisor to the caretaker government of Bangladesh, talks to Eresh Omar Jamal of The Daily Star about the upcoming national elections and the state of human rights in Bangladesh.

As one of the most talked about and, perhaps, controversial US Midterm Elections comes to an end, the US, as a nation, remains where it was before the election started.

During a national dialogue to foster the start-up ecosystem in Bangladesh, nine start-ups consisting of two members each were given

Today is the fifth anniversary of the UN recognising November 2 as the International Day to End Impunity for Crimes against Journalists. Incidentally, data shows that this year has been one of the deadliest for journalists out of the last five years, if not longer.

Much has been made of the death of Saudi Arabian journalist Jamal Khashoggi. And rightfully so. The story of his alleged gruesome murder at the hands of a Saudi hit-team inside the country's consulate in Istanbul is not something the average person has to hear and replay in their heads every day—with the help of some imagination.

This year marks the 45th Anniversary of the October War between Israel and a coalition of Arab States, a war that significantly contributed to the present, complex Arab-Israeli conflict.

The 21st century has broadly been characterised as the Information Age.

The United Nations International Day for the Total Elimination of Nuclear Weapons falls on the anniversary of an incident that happened in 1983, when the world was just inches away from accidentally entering what would most likely have been a nuclear holocaust.

The momentous growth in the digitalisation of the finance industry over the last decade(s) has transformed the sector to a point where an increasingly wide variety of financial services are now becoming available to more and more people, faster than ever before.

While the US Ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, warned the Syrian and Russian governments to stand down from attacking Idlib—the last stronghold of the armed Syrian opposition—as that may lead to a possible “bloodbath”, the term itself brought to mind chapter 10 of the book The WikiLeaks Files: The World According to US Empire.

At 11am on September 11, 2001 the Bush administration had already declared that al-Qaeda was responsible for the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

According to the Financial Times (US), the USD 3.7 billion Padma Rail link, for which Beijing has provided more than USD 3 billion, will serve as “a physical reminder of China's growing presence” in Bangladesh.

These words were written into the US Declaration of Independence in Congress on July 4, 1776.