Aasha Mehreen Amin

Even before we can catch our breath as we enter a new year, a new decade, rape continues to haunt us, reminding us of its presence...

So it has finally happened. Hard as it is to accept it, the Star Weekend magazine is about to close the curtain after an impressive run of 23 years.

You have to hand it to them—rain, hail or storm, Chhatra League manages to hog the headlines. The latest has been an attack on protesting students at JU who were demanding the

When we read how indivi-duals accused of a crime—drug peddling, terrorism or murder—get shot during a gun fight between their cohorts and the law enforcers we shrug it off without a bat of an eyelid. We know that these “gunfights”, “shootouts” or “encounters” are euphemisms for extrajudicial killing.

It is a common belief that only meritorious, above-average students can get into a university like Buet. It’s no joke when amongst thousands of applicants, only a handful are selected.

When things hit rock bottom humans have a tendency to find ways to laugh at them. It is related to that ambivalence of a bizarre event when you don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Since our leaders are behaving like children, we will have to take the responsibility they should have taken long ago,” – Greta Thunberg, United Nations COP24 Climate Summit, Poland 2019

The news story of police officials, including the OC, of a Pabna police station, forcing a gang-rape victim to marry one of the rapists is a perfect example of how perpetrators of a crime as heinous as rape, are allowed to go scot free with the help of

The recent tragic deaths of seven people at the hands of angry mobs on suspicion of being child abductors, in different parts of the country, are jolting reminders of the dangerous consequences of spreading rumours. Apparently, the latest series of mob killings were sparked off by a preposterous tale being circulated regarding human heads being collected for the building of Padma Bridge.

Adventurous is not the first word that pops into one’s mind when thinking of us Bangladeshis. Hospitable? Yes. Warm? Yes. Resilient? Definitely yes. And laidback? Yes. But “adventurous”?

The first thing that probably comes to a parent’s mind when their child is brutally taken from them is, “why couldn’t I protect her/him?” That is most likely what the parents of seven-year-old Samia, a nursery school student from Wari, were thinking when they

Every time we read the word “rape” and “gang rape”, we cringe with horror. Yet these two words keep coming up too often in our daily dose of nightmarish news.

As the country become a state of thieves?” Such a strong remark by a High Court judge was in reference to the strange reality of many policemen leading hard lives while others lived in expensive houses.

There could be nothing more symbolic of the utter absurdity of the state of our roads than a zebra crossing stained by the blood of a university student, a road safety campaigner who was crushed by a speeding bus racing with another speeding bus.

What do you call those who just refuse to see the writing on the wall? Delusional fools or compulsive optimists? Perhaps we are a bit of both.

The image is all too familiar, so much so that it is almost forgettable: A woman wailing amongst debris that once was what she called her home.

The gang-rape of a 35-year-old woman, a mother of four young children, because she insisted on exercising her right to vote for whoever she wanted to, has been the most devastating story for us ordinary citizens and especially for women of this country. It is hard to find words to describe the disillusionment and anguish I know I share with most of my fellow citizens that such horrendous violence should be inflicted as a twisted form of political revenge. While all the rapists have been arrested, even the man who “ordered” the 10 to 12 men to rape that woman “to teach her a lesson” for challenging him, what we cannot escape is the realisation of how far the culture of impunity of political elites and their cohorts has gone.

Prof Syed Manzoorul Islam, retired professor of Dhaka University, who currently teaches at ULAB, shares his impressions about the election with The Daily Star's Aasha Mehreen Amin.

Ever since it started existing, governments have had a love-hate relationship with social media. Predictably, the romance starts to sour when social media contains criticism of the

The passing away of Bir Protik Taramon Bibi quietly in her home in Rajipur Upazila, at age 61, only 16 days before the commemoration of Victory Day, is truly a tragedy for us.