Ramisa Rob

Tanjir Arafat Turjo, 17, hops on a bus every morning, at 6:30am from his home in Banastree, Rampura, and travels over an hour to BAF Shaheen College Kurmitola,

Apparel exporters in Bangladesh are feeling the pinch of a looming global recession, persisting higher inflation and dragging severe fallout of the Russia-Ukraine war as orders from international buyers have fallen. 

If there was any doubt that America has been encroaching fascism, it ended on Wednesday with the white nationalist coup in the US Capitol. The image of an American flag replaced with a Trump flag symbolises the “F-word” to its very core. At this point, America might as well wake up and prepare for another historically horrible political event infiltrated by Donald J. Trump, the most unhinged leader in the nation’s history.

Many have welcomed the government’s introduction of the death penalty, misconceiving Bangladesh’s rape problem as a quick-fix punishment problem.

When she first heard about the infamous extradition bill on March 31 this year, Adrienne, a 24-year-old Hong Kong national, had lost hope.

This year, on August 14 and 15, Independence Day of Pakistan and India, celebrations were tainted with the political tensions that followed the Bharatiya Janata Party led Indian Government’s decision on August 5, 2019 to abrogate Article 370 and Article 35a, that granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir, including the right to have its own constitution and its own flag, and residents’ rights and privileges, respectively.

In the summer of 1945, a jittery premonition marked the lives of the citizens of Hiroshima, as B-29 super fortresses—planes that the Japanese locals called B-San or Mr.B—had been stationed in the northeast corner of the fan-shaped city.

About a month back, a 20-year-old man—a university student—was accused of sexual harassment and assault by multiple girls who came forward on social media. Following the circulation of posts exposing his alleged behavior, he faced, at max, a blast of “angry” emojis and hateful comments.

We might commonly perceive cyber-security as a high-profile issue concerning governments and large corporations.

Four years ago, when I stepped onto American soil for college, I quickly learned, somewhere in small talk, the rhetorical question “Where are you originally from?” and the phrase “Go back to your country” were vintage stocks of an evil market called racism.

The truth is, we, as a society, have failed: we haven’t found a solution to the pervasive rape culture in Bangladesh—over 630 women have been raped in the last 6 months (Ain O Salish Kendra)—because we haven’t been addressing the problem in the first place.

For Bangladesh—one of the most densely populated nations in the world (1,252 people per square kilometre according to online publication Our World in Data, led by economist Max Roser)—overpopulation is one of the most fundamental concerns.

The Internet may, at first, seem like a safe haven as it makes it easier for all of us to share the most personal information.

Lately, it’s been nerve-shattering to follow American news outlets where the phrase—“detained child migrants”—is starting to mirror vicious buzzwords. Scareheads like “hundreds of migrant children held in internment camps” regularly precede a grim catalogue of

Aklima is the eldest daughter of a family in Mymensingh. Her father works as a vegetable vendor; her mother occasionally helps out, but during Aklima’s childhood, she mostly stayed at home, grooming her to impress prospective husbands.

Percep-tions of peacefulness can vary from person to person, nation to nation, depending on various factors such as the interplay of religious convictions, ethics, with real-life experiences. So logically, everyone’s views will not be reflected in, and can even be contradicted by the “Global Peace Index”—a measurement of “relative” position of peacefulness in 163 nations around the world,

Children born to affluent backgrounds grow up with the warning to never touch sharp objects, especially to never go near a boti, and oftentimes in the same household, another child from a less affluent background straddles the same protruding blades, because that’s their job. This disturbing illustration of class difference, however, is the least of the problems in this society where much worse is happening all around.

A 21-year-old woman grew up with an ambition of pursuing a career in law, but today, her future seems bleak. It all started two years ago, when she entered into a relationship with a 28-year-old man.

Many of us today interpret economic development to mean installation of a metro rail system, grand openings of franchise fast-food chains, a steadfast rise of GDP rates, and all such vantage points of corporate success.

Reports from legal aid and human rights organisation, Ain O Salish Kendra stated that at least 189 women were raped across the country in the first six months of this year, and 47 children were subjected to sexual assault or harassment in 15 days before April 2. Despite the pervasiveness of rape culture, conviction rates have ironically dropped from 0.5 percent in 2016 to 0.3 percent in 2018, according to the recent study by Naripokkho, a women’s rights organisation. The necessity for amendments in rape law becomes larger by the day, but a concerted action from the government remains surreptitiously missing.