Moyukh Mahtab

The background to the ethno-religious violence against the Rohingyas and the combined effort of all communities in helping the refugees should be an antidote to the hate Myanmar preaches. We must remember that what we are doing to help the Rohingyas and speak up for them stems from a shared humanity, it rises above the communal politics of Myanmar.

In all likelihood these [the rings] are fragments of a former moon that was too close to the planet and was destroyed by its [Saturn's] tidal effect...

These are questions which should have been answered. Shaon's death and his parents' allegations point towards torture in custody of someone who seems to have been as much a victim of the attack as the others. After a year, it should have been resolved and communicated if Chowkidar's death was an accident or part of the raid to kill the militants.

The critics of Rampal include environmentalists, scientists and experts. Yet, the defence for the power plant has remained the same. But, under scrutiny, how do these claims, meant to relieve us of our fears about the potential risks of the power plant, hold?

From the outdated legal concepts under which cases of rape are tried in court, the “medical” tests that are required for proving rape, to the institutions which are supposed to stand by the survivor, it is not surprising that many women are scared or traumatised to even report incidents of sexual violence.

That a man such as Professor Abdur Razzaq can give rise to contention is no surprise. He had been a teacher in some way or another to almost every brilliant mind in this country since independence.

For those, who feel compelled to point out that for now, we should put the word “alleged” before the word rapist, or question why the women waited more than a month before going to the police, please remember the society we live in.

“How many governments have fallen,” the prince had gone on, “And how many kingdoms have been swept from the face of the earth, and Orosh is still standing.”

Earlier this month, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced that the government will take steps to recognise the Dawrah-e-Hadith of Qwami madrasah education as equivalent to a Masters degree. The Daily Star talks to Professor Ali Riaz and Professor Salimullah Khan about the controversy surrounding the issue.

The Daily Star talks to three experts - a researcher, a labour activist and a development professional - about the progress Bangladesh has made and the challenges it still faces.

In school, we were made to memorise definitions of culture and civilisation, marking a relationship between the two.

“I see, these books are probably law books, and it is an essential part of the justice dispensed here that you should be condemned not only in innocence but also in ignorance.”

The questions the government should be asking is how the use of the internet can be made safer, the private data of the users be protected, and what infrastructural and policy reforms may be made to ensure that access to the internet can translate to its radical goals.

It would be superfluous to repeat here the details of the mass killings and systematic sexual violence committed by the Pakistani military on Bangladeshis in 1971.

I visited the Sundarbans about four years ago, with a touring company. We lived on the boat, anchored at safe places during the night...

Yesterday was the International Holocaust Remembrance Day. But what does it mean to remember the Holocaust? It cannot be only to speak of the details of the gruesome barbarity that engulfed a continent in the last century through voyeuristic descriptions of horror. Neither should one speak of the death of six million in the contextual realms of history; it cannot be a matter of numbers. Does one, as the student from Alan Bennet's History Boys, simply gloss over the matter with a pithy “Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.”?

Police’s brutal assault on the activists and journalists begs the question, what called for this extreme use of force? From when does it take a group of fully armoured policemen to restrain one unarmed civilian?

Over the recent backlash of the erroneous content and apparently mysterious changes to the curriculum, the education minister on January 10 stated during a press briefing, “I'm not avoiding my responsibility, but I'm leaving the matter to you whether handing over such a volume of textbooks is a bigger thing than these errors,” to which, the answer is an obvious yes.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) Chairman Kazi Reazul Hoque’s statement that the commission is powerless to take action against human rights violations is an understatement.

A couple of years ago, three female computer scientists from MIT decided to do a live Ask Me Anything (AMA) session on the popular internet platform Reddit.