Shakhawat Liton

For months and years, George Bush and Tony Blair built the case with certainty that Iraq is an evil power that possessed Weapons

The above quote is a strong and clear manifestation of the Indian Supreme Court's endeavour to protect rights of the media as it recently announced that freedom of speech and expression of the media must be allowed to the fullest and the press may not be hauled up for defamation for “some errors” in its reporting.

Opposition Leader Raushan Ershad's appeal on Tuesday (February 27) to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, to relieve three of her party MPs from the council of ministers to help the Jatiya Party emerge as the “real opposition” in parliament, sounds ridiculous. But in the present political context it is not something that would leave anyone dumbfounded. Her husband JP Chairman Ershad, who has remained the special

It has been exactly six months when the Rohingyas started streaming into Bangladesh to escape the ethnic cleansing in Myanmar and it took exactly the same many months for the world to forget them, to make them truly nobody's children.

President Abdul Hamid is a lucky president for many reasons. He is set to complete a five-year term next April without being mired in any controversy. And he is likely to get re-elected in a month for another term setting a record in the history of Bangladesh. None of his predecessors in the past have had such luck.

The saga of the Osman family reminds us of a basic universal rule: No one can undermine you until you undermine yourself. The controversial activities of the Osman brothers have continued to bring the family ill repute.

It appears the mayoral by-polls to the DNCC have become uncertain following yesterday's High Court stay order. But the legal complexity can be removed and the LGRD ministry holds the key.

The situation was unique when Awami League unveiled its electoral manifesto four years ago seeking people's support ahead of the

Forty-five years ago, our constitution announced emphatically that the state shall ensure the separation of the judiciary from the executive "as soon as practicable".

Year 2017 may go down in our political history for unusual calm. We never witnessed such a situation in politics since restoration of democracy in 1990.

The resolution passed by UN General Assembly on Sunday asking Myanmar to end a military campaign against Rohingyas and ensure the return of all refugees and grant full citizenship rights to them offered afresh some flowery words for the world's most persecuted community.

Nine years ago when a former judge and two prosecutors at the international criminal tribunals for Rwanda and former Yugoslavia were examining the documents on human rights abuses in Myanmar, they were astonished by the UN inaction even though the global body knew for years the severe, widespread, and systematic violations of human rights there.

As women narrate their stories of shame– of how they were raped repeatedly by Myanmar army to the media, the case becomes even more convincing for UN special representative of secretary general to put soldiers on dock at the ICC in Hague, as she promised. Only one problem, and not a small one at that, may throw the spanner in the wheel – that Myanmar is not a signatory to the Rome Statute to the ICC.

The latest agreement on repatriation of the Rohingyas may not be as effective as the two previous deals signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar in 1978 and 1992 respectively.

The Chinese recipe for resolving the Rohingya crisis is not working. Yet, Beijing is insisting on it.

Myanmar's promise to take back the Rohingyas, who fled to Bangladesh to escape a brutal military crackdown, looks hollow, as it is still showing an unbending attitude towards them.

When Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said during her Dhaka visit that Bangladesh-India relation “goes far beyond a strategic partnership”, that certainly created a ripple across many fronts – from global politics, to the Myanmar generals to the hapless Rohingyas.

Rohingyas have been telling the world numerous stories of horror, loss, murder, rape and villages burned to the ground over the last two months. The world's media have been flooded with their harrowing tales.

The Myanmar army has now accused the world media of “exaggerating” the number of Rohingya refugees fleeing its brutal crackdown

After the shame of Bosnia, there should not have been a Myanmar. Yet, Myanmar happened because the big nations on both sides of the East-West divide have rendered the UN an ineffective organisation, a platform to talk and not to take actions.