Martyred Intellectuals’ Day’s resolve

ON THIS day, forty years back, just two days before the Pakistani occupation forces laid down their weapons, which marked the end of more than two decades of neo-colonial rule by the Islamabad-based ruling elite and the beginning of the journey by the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, their local cohorts, calling themselves Al-Badr, Al-Shams, etc but essentially offshoots of Jamaat-e-Islami, which was against an independent Bangladesh, perpetrated one of the most heinous crimes in human history. These pro-Pakistani militias picked up, and executed, one after another some of the greatest Bengali minds of the time. The objective of the killers was apparently to retard the fledgling nation intellectually; they had seemingly realised that these were the people who would provide the intellectual and ideological guidance to the reconstruction of the war-ravaged country and the building of the nation state. Suffice it to say, four decades later, the country and the nation have not yet overcome their loss.

Not surprisingly, most of these martyred intellectuals generally belonged to the left and progressive school of political thought, and were the driving intellectual force behind the popular struggle in the then East Bengal for political empowerment, economic emancipation, cultural freedom and social equity and equality. They correctly read the people’s aspiration — cultural, economic, political and social — and adeptly led the nationalist movement through the 1960s up to the military phase of the liberation struggle. In the void created by their killing, national politics in independent Bangladesh seemingly lost its ideological mooring, leading to an intractably divided body politic. In the resultant crude struggle for state power and concomitant equation, even the trial of war crimes and war criminals was crowded out, as it, too, apparently became part of partisan equation. Little wonder, it took almost four decades since independence for the trial of crimes against peace and crimes against humanity during the war of liberation by the Pakistani occupation forces and their local cohorts to begin.

While the war crimes trial has finally begun, it has to remain limited to prosecution of the local cohorts of the Pakistani military junta, since the post-independence Bangladesh government, of the Awami League, chose to let the officers and soldiers of the Pakistan army who had carried out war crimes in 1971. Moreover, ever since the trial process began, there has been a steady stream of irresponsible remarks from both sides of the partisan divide. While remarks by some BNP leaders apparently sought to undermine the war crimes trial, enthusiastic overkill by some ministers of the Awami League-led government raised questions about it in the people’s mind, at home and abroad. It is imperative that the perpetrators of war crimes should be punished. It is also imperative that the trial should remain above and beyond any controversy, and meet the international standards.

Along with the war crimes trial, there need also be prosecution of the masterminds and perpetrators of the targeted killing of intellectuals at the fag end of the war of independence. However, thus far, neither of the two major political parties has been forthcoming in this regard. Their indifference is, perhaps, not too difficult to understand. After all, most of the martyred intellectuals were left-leaning, whose ideology runs counter with these parties. Thus, it is incumbent on the left-leaning and progressive sections of society to mobilise public opinion and create pressure on the ruling quarters for trial of the killing of our intellectuals in 1971.

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Spate of disappearances : Stop this macabre crime

IT is with utmost concern that we notice the increasing incidences of mysterious disappearances. Some of these persons have remained untraceable for a long time while dead bodies of many have turned up at different places of the country. In fact only in the last eleven months there have been instances of 22 disappearances out of which 10 dead bodies have been found. Last year at least 18 people went missing. 

This is indeed a sad commentary on the state of the country's HR and law and order. There cannot be a more abysmal state of human security when the victims' relatives cry out agonizingly their preference for 'crossfire deaths' to disappearances. At least the bodies could be found. 

The most disconcerting aspect of it is that most of those who remain untraceable after being, allegedly, picked up by members of the law enforcing agencies are political figures belonging to various political parties. The accusatory fingers are being pointed at the law enforcing agencies, the police RAB, DB and Special Branch. 

And these agencies have dismissed out of hand allegations of arresting illegally or any connection with the deaths.

Even if we were to take the comments of the IGP, that it is difficult to link the disappearances to the agencies as true, then the only surmise is that there is a very well organised gang operating in the country that are able to kidnap people in broad daylight from homes and from the streets posing as members of law enforcing agencies. And this has been going on for a long time. That being the case, shouldn't the police have been more diligent and undertaken measures to apprehend this group?

This situation is unacceptable in a democratic dispensation where the administration never hesitates to paint the obtaining law and order as very satisfactory and better than any time in the past. One would have hoped that by now the government would have been more proactive in arresting the situation. Notwithstanding the remonstrations of the administration the popular perception is quite different. And the government must act immediately to stop the heinous practice.

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A Brief History Of Accessing Information Worldwide

The Earth is not just an ordinary planet!’

IN BANGLADESH, the increasing use of the internet for social media, surfing, etc is significant. According to Facebook, by August 31, 2010, the number of Facebook users in Bangladesh was 995,560. Within the next one year, it went up to 1,735,020. Whereas eleven years back, in 2000, the number of internet users was only 100,000. Since the introduction of the internet in our country in 1996, it has brought changes in our social life (urban life in particular) giving a new dimension to media, commerce and education. However, all these would not have been possible if the world wide web, commonly known as W3, was not introduced 20 years back.

So, aren’t ‘internet’ and ‘W3’ the same thing? Definitely they are not. Internet is a pool of smaller networks. In other words, internet uses a group of protocols called TCP/IP to instruct the network where to go, and exchange data accordingly. On the other hand, the worldwide web is a tool to access information with the help of ‘hyperlinks’, which allow collaborators in remote sites to share their ideas.

The past

IT ALL began when Tim Berners-Lee, a British physicist and computer scientist working at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research in Geneva, wanted to find an advanced way to link up all his colleagues to share documents without much hassle. In March 1989, Tim Berners-Lee proposed the WWW, which would allow ‘all links to be made to any information anywhere’ — so he explained in his posted summary of the software project that he had built in 1980, on alt.hypertext usenet group. Thus, on August 6, 1991, the first website was created as <http://info.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html>, and was hosted with a set of hyperlinks and texts. He named the project ‘World Wide Web’, or W3. In December 1991, Professor Tim Berners-Lee presented a paper at a Hypertext’91 conference in San Diego, Texas, which was accepted as a poster session. However, the internet revolution took yet another three years to grow. It was in December 1992 that the first web server outside Europe was set up at Stanford University, USA, and in the beginning of 1993 people came to know about the web when Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols, a science and technology writer, wrote on it.

Berners-Lee wanted to expand the scope of the web. To have gateway servers for other data, he welcomed collaborators. Initially, Berners-Lee set up the website info.cern.ch, where he created a page with information about how people could create their own web pages, and how the web could be used for searching information. As a result, by 1992, fifty web servers with 19.68 billion pages were born around the world. The number happened to be more than three times the world’s population at that time, according to sources. By December 2010, the internet monitoring company Netcraft reported that around 266,848,493 websites were available on World Wide Web, with an increase of 47 million hostnames and 7 million active websites, from previous months. According to worldwidewebsize.com, on Wednesday, August 24, the indexed web contained at least 13.31 billion pages. In Bangladesh, there are 5,234 sites under 212 categories (Bangladeshwebdirectory.com, November 23, 2007).

What began as a simple communication platform for scientists has grown into a phenomenon. But how? In Berners-Lee’s own words, he ‘just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas.’ ‘What are TCP and DNS?’ one might ask. TCP (transmission control protocol) is the networking protocol or internet protocol suit used by messages as they zip across the internet, and is responsible for providing reliable, systematic delivery of a stream of bytes. Whereas, DNS (domain name system) is the system that transforms ‘.com’ domain names into numerical identifiers for computer and other networking devices.

W3 became more popular and accommodating with the emergence of Web 2.0, a term that was proposed by Tim O’Reilly, a supporter of free software and open source, and the founder CEO of O’Reilly Media Inc. Based on the web as a platform , it is ‘ a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles . . .’ It allows animated images and user-generated content involving interactivity and collaboration using scripting and programming languages like Ajax, Flash and Javascript,. Under this category are the social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video-sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mash-ups and folksonomies. Proposed in the first Web 2.0 conference by O’Reilly in 2004, the term was dismissed as jargon by Berners-Lee as the W3 was created on the same principle.

Present: the wave of change

WARDRIP-FRUIN, Noah and Nick Montfort, wrote in The New Media Reader in 2003 that ‘The World-Wide Web was developed to be a pool of human knowledge, and human culture.’ Now, starting from education to entertainment, the web has changed the entire outlook of life both on ground and in cyberspace, as the Web 2.0 now accommodates websites containing text with images, podcast and videos, help users transact business online, buy goods from sites like Amazon, eBay, or futurebazaar.com. Facebook, Twitter and Google+, and search engines like Google and Bing are bringing newer trends of online marketing, branding and rankings. Interestingly, this Eid, shopping activities on Facebook have been reported too. One can now have the three-dimensional experience of a product advertisement on the web, creating newer purchasing behaviours.

Perhaps the changes in politics and media are far more remarkable. The recent uprisings in the Arab region and how it spread through Facebook and Twitter is known to all. News today travels faster than light because of Web 2.0. Our newspapers would probably go half empty without the existence of W3. The more the information becomes accessible, the more it requires authenticity. Thus, William Dutton of the Oxford Internet Institute terms this vast ocean of information as the ‘Fifth Estate’ that would hold governments and media around the globe accountable (quotes in SPIEGEL interview).

Many a today’s adults remember reading Lewis Carrol’s ‘Alice in Wonderland’ in their childhood, and might have even wondered at Alice’s question, ‘What is the use of a book, without pictures or conversations?’ It is amazing that a childhood fascination from the past is a reality now. Today, children, even toddlers, have something to learn on the web. There are many YouTube videos on learning alphabets with pictures, music, and conversation. In geography class, teachers are using Google Maps to locate and find a place. In one click, a student can go to a place where they have never physically visited before. The scope is ample. 

Teachers are now being trained and instructed to educate students using the web, and to use social sites, smartboards, video streaming, YouTube and so on to teach both children and adult learners. Bangladesh is trying hard not to lag behind. In 2007, at Presidency University, a group of Bangladeshi teachers were trained on teaching methods using these available facilities in a classroom situation. Though small, the initiative was a welcome start.

There is the other side of the midnight too! The web has increasingly become the hub of cyber crimes and pornography. According to Google hit counts, there are about 1, 860,000,000 (0.24 seconds, Friday, 12:42 hr) results with the term ‘porn’ on it. This definitely has a negative impact on the society as a whole, as many today do not ‘love the sunset, when one is so sad.’ Instead they rely on web entertainment. How this behavioural pattern is going to be changed is another topic of discussion. Most importantly, human privacy is under threat. Recently W3 consortium announced a draft of online privacy, and the western world is devising new plans on how to resist online pornography; however, where do we stand on this note?

The future: the semantic web and evolving social system

THE web started as a social need, as Tim Berners-Lee said once in a lecture. Therefore, in the future, we can anticipate that the web would revolve around creating certain social systems, which may run by, what Berners termed, ‘social machines’. These machines will be like little devices that will understand the users’ requirements. In the future, one would not need to roam around the web looking for specific information. We already have meta search engines like ‘mamma.com,’ that bring us all the related web sites in one click. 

Likewise, in more advanced ways, the machines will directly read and process the meta data and automatically access information for the user, according to their needs, rather than the user looking for the information themselves. How is it possible? The answer is ‘semantic web’, an extended hyperlinked network. The term ‘semantic’ refers to the study of meaning- through the web of data the computer would access the exact information one requires. This might be done through ‘voice browsing’, reveals W3C (World Wide Web Consortium).

The web is likely to dissolve geographical boundaries. In the commerce sector, the geographical limitations of the world are already disappearing. People are choosing where to live, work, study or settle. Decision-making will be performed online. At present W3C’s focus is on developing technologies that would allow web access using devices like mobile phones, eBook readers, TV systems, voice response systems, music players, kiosks, digital picture frames, in-car navigation systems and even domestic appliances.

Certainly, the next phase of the web is going to affect many human lives. For example, unlike the situation in our part of the world, many global companies like Cisco, Pfizer and Boeing have already started to cut jobs, predicting that the prospects of the web will reduce the necessity of human work. In our neighbouring country India, the situation is completely the opposite. They are hiring more people in this sector.

Maybe the future web will have lot more contributions. It would definitely change the entire social structure, starting from the individual. Scientists believe that human belief, concept, culture, literacy, politics -every aspect of society -would face a new dimension, and new definitions. Would people take collective decisions on reducing crime, solving problems, developing infrastructure, over the web? That is yet to be decided. 

Whatever future lies ahead, it is certain that what began as a simple hyperlink tool, will necessarily play a great role in shaping the future society and directing us towards a new world order!

Nevertheless, the wave of technology and the wave of transformation always travel parallel. It will certainly touch this corner of the world without delay. But, the huge wave of world transformation will just stop at the deep sea shores of Cox’s Bazaar, where the optical fibre cables end. The rest of the country has wired connection to the internet which provides merely minimum speeds. On a single day, the urban citizens face power surges several times a day, while most rural areas are still in primitive condition. Under these circumstances, are we ready? ‘Ask yourselves: is it yes or no? …no grown-up will ever understand that this is a matter of so much importance!’(The Little Prince, Antoine de Saint Exepury, chapter 27).

BY : Mehjabeen Rahman

An Open Letter To World Leaders

WE, THE citizens of Bangladesh and expatriate Bangladeshis, are urging you to stop India from constructing dams on upstream rivers that flow through Bangladesh. India’s unilateral action to dam and withdraw water is against international conventions. It violates the spirit of the Millennium Declaration by 191 member states of the United Nations, which pledges: ‘To stop the unsustainable exploitation of water resources by developing water management strategies at the regional, national and local levels, which promote both equitable access and adequate supplies’ (Chapter IV, para 23).

You may already be aware that the Indian government has recently announced its decision to go ahead with the project of constructing a dam (hydroelectricity plant) on a river which feeds two major river systems in Bangladesh. This will have dire consequences on the economy and ecology of Bangladesh.

The proposed Tipaimukh dam is to be located 500 metres downstream from the confluence of Barak and Tuivai rivers, and lies on the south-western corner of Manipur state. It is a huge earth dam (rock-fill with central impervious core) having an altitude of about 180m above the sea level with a maximum reservoir level of 178m and 136m as the minimum drawdown level. It will have an installation capacity of 1,500MW with only a firm generation of 412MW (less than 30 per cent of installed capacity).

The proposed dam is located among six major seismically active zones of the world. Analysis of earthquake epicentres and magnitudes of 5M and above within 100-200km radii of the Tipaimukh dam site reveals hundreds of earthquakes in the last 100-200 years. It is found that within 100-kilometre radius of Tipaimukh, 2 earthquakes of +7M magnitude have taken place in the last 150 years and the last one being in 1957 at an aerial distance of about 75km from the dam site in the ENE direction. This poses a serious threat of dam’s failure.

Bangladesh gets 7 to 8 per cent of its total water from the Barak in India’s north-eastern states. The dam will choke up the Surma and the Kushiyara rivers, and ultimately dry up the Meghna, the biggest river of the country.

We fear that this project will start desertification in Bangladesh. It will also change the ecosystem of the Sylhet region. It will affect the production of rice — the staple food, fish — the major source of protein. It will also immensely affect the flora and fauna and the entire biodiversity of the region.

We have seen the adverse environmental impacts of India’s Farakka dam/barrage project at the upstream of the mighty Ganges which flows into Bangladesh as Padma. The Farakka project made the northern districts of Bangladesh almost a desert and contributed to the arsenic contamination of ground water.

Millions of people are dependent on hundreds of water bodies, fed by the Barak, in the Sylhet region for fishing and agricultural activities. This dam will have serious impact on poverty and security in the region.

The Tipaimukh dam could play a role for Bangladesh if it was a joint project and managed in line with Bangladesh’s requirements. However, neither the construction plan nor the management plan was shared with Bangladesh. There was no exchange of information or data regarding the impact of the dam on ecology, environment, fishery, wildlife, and most spectacularly on the life and living of the people living upstream and downstream of the dam.

On June 21, the former Indian high commissioner Pinak Ranjan Chakrabarty claimed that there did not exist any international law that could prevent India from constructing the Tipaimukh dam. However, this is misleading and erroneous in view of the status of the 1996 Ganges Water Treaty between Bangladesh and India as well the relevance of the applicable international customary laws.

According to Article 38 of the Statute of the International Court of Justice, bilateral or multilateral treaties are the primary expression of international law. The 1996 thirty-year Ganges Water Sharing Treaty was signed by the heads of states of Bangladesh and India and thus, according to the 1969 Vienna Convention on The Law of Treaties, it has the full backing of international law. Both Bangladesh and India are bound to abide by this treaty until 2026.

Article IX of the treaty stipulates: ‘Guided by the principles of equity, fairness and no harm to either party both the governments agree to conclude water sharing Treaties/Agreements with regard to other common rivers.’

Furthermore, according to the International Laws Commission’s Commentaries on the Draft of 1997 Watercourse Convention which contains pledges to apply the principle of equitable utilisation and no-harm essentially presupposes obligations of conducting prior consultation and conclusion of agreement with co-basin states before undertaking any planned measures on a shared river like the Barak.

Therefore, construction of the Tipaimukh dam by India on the upstream of the Barak, which, after entering Bangladesh, continues to flow as Kushiara and Surma, will be illegal unless it is preceded by prior consensus with Bangladesh. Although India has not yet ratified the 1997 Watercourse, there is every reason to argue that the Convention, being adopted by a vote of 103-3 in the UN General Assembly, is applicable as ‘evidence of international customary law’ to Tipaimukh or any such project on shared rivers.

This convention was drafted by the International Law Commission, which was constituted under Article 13(1) of the United Nations Charter. The draft law produced by this commission represents either existing or emerging rules of international law (ILC Statute, Article 15); various verdicts of the International Court of Justice have already expressed such a view (for example, the 1997 ICJ verdict regarding the River Danube dispute between Hungary and Slovakia).

The 1997 convention is supported by recent state practices in different parts of the world. By the terms of 1992 Trans-boundary Watercourses Convention, adopted under the auspices of the UN Economic Union for Europe, there is no scope to undertake planned measures on shared rivers without conducting a comprehensive environmental impact assessment, providing full information to all the concerned basin states and ensuring that there are no serious harmful effects on the ecology as well as the co-riparian states.

In the last two decades, various countries in Africa (e.g. 1995 Zambezi River Protocol, 1997 Lake Victoria Program), South East Asia (e.g. 1995 Mekong River Agreement), and South America (e.g. 2004 Program for the Pantanal and Upper Paraguay River) have emphasised basin-wide cooperation for ensuring sustainable utilisation and management of international watercourses.

The cooperation and no-harm principles are more emphatically endorsed in a number of international environmental instruments to which both Bangladesh and India are parties. Among them, Article 5 of the 1972 Ramsar Convention requires the contracting parties to consult each other about implementing obligations arising under the Convention in respect of trans-boundary wetlands, shared watercourses and coordinated conservation of wetland flora and fauna, and Article 3 of Biodiversity Convention provides that ‘states have the responsibility to ensure that activities within their jurisdiction or control do not cause damage to the environment of other states or of areas beyond the limits of national jurisdiction.’

Provisions for preventing and mitigating harm related with the utilisation of shared water systems are also found in other conventions, including the 1992 Framework Convention on Climate change and the 1994 Convention on Desertification.

This is no wonder that India does not want to ratify the 1997 Convention. It has been continuing to construct dams on 53 common rivers that flow through Bangladesh. Among the common rivers, the most rivers affected by Indian barrages and their networks of canals, reservoirs and irrigation schemes are the Ganges, the Meghna and the Teesta.

As the World Commission on Dam observed in its report, the hazards of dam construction outstrip the benefits. The World Commission on Dams analysed the environmental, economic and social impact of the world’s 45,000 large dams, and the result unveiled by Nelson Mandela, Chairman of the Commission, in the later part of 2000 is quite bleak. Overall costs of dams, to both man and nature, are mostly negative. They are notorious for creating great environmental change. They force massive human resettlements, mostly of people who live where the lake is due to appear. It concluded, ‘an unacceptable and unnecessary price has been paid to secure … benefits.’ The World Bank estimated in 1994 that 300 large dams forced some four million people to leave their homes.

Hydroelectric dams, once regarded as clean renewable energy source, turned out to be significant generators of greenhouse gases given off by decomposing vegetation in tropical reservoirs. The constant and reliable irrigation hydroelectric dams can waterlog the ground. The water brings underground salt to the surface, which is left behind when the water evaporates. Eventually, the soil becomes too salty for crops to survive. Even the prevention of flood is a mixed blessing. The salt which was once carried downstream by a swollen river replenishing the soil and nutrients, no longer makes its journey to the sea. Instead it clogs up the reservoir.

We appeal to you, in the name of humanity, for the sake of the environment and ultimately for regional and global security, to stop India from this act of vandalism. We also urge you to demand on India to agree to shared-management of all common rivers in the spirit of the Millennium Declaration. 

BY : Atiqur Rahman Khan Eusufzai and Syed Tipu Sultan.

Govt Should Convene Nat’l Convention On Tipaimukh And Other Issues

THE assertion of the Bangladesh prime minister’s adviser on international relations, Gowher Rizvi, upon his meeting with the Indian prime minister, Manmohan Singh, in New Delhi on Saturday, that the ‘notions about the adverse impacts of the Tipaimukh dam on Bangladesh are groundless’, seems to underline two sad truths. 

First, despite its repeated assurances otherwise, New Delhi would allow construction of the Tipaimukh hydroelectric project in the upstream of the river Barak, which, according to experts and environmentalists, could wreak havoc on the ecology and economy of north-eastern Bangladesh. Second, a section of the Awami League government, which apparently does not include the prime minister, is willing to put its faith in the Indian government’s assurance, notwithstanding the fact that New Delhi has more often than not chosen to not live up to its promises, that the Manmohan Singh administration has thus far not shared any data on the Tipaimukh project and that experts in Bangladesh and India have persisted with their opposition to it, pointing to its long-term adverse impact. According to a report front-paged in New Age on Sunday, Rizvi even suggested that the hydroelectric project could in fact benefit Bangladesh and that Bangladesh could also invest in the project. Such suggestion could be construed as the adviser’s naiveté at best and collaboration with the Indian plan at worst.

While the incumbent administration has time and again sought to have people believe that it has turned a new chapter in the Dhaka-Delhi relations, and that the ‘friendly’ Indian government would never do anything that may harm Bangladesh’s interest, the ground reality seems to suggest otherwise. Suffice it to say, the Indian government’s decision to go ahead with the Tipaimukh project, overriding the genuine and legitimate concern of the majority of the people in Bangladesh is just one instance of its apparent duplicity. Delhi has played the same ‘say something but do something else’ trick as regards sharing of the Teesta and other trans-boundary rivers, killing of Bangladeshis on the border by the Border Security Force, demarcation of land boundaries, exchange of enclaves and land in adverse possession, removal of non-tariff and para-tariff barriers to Bangladeshi products — the list could go on and on. One of the reasons why India has got away with such blatant disregard for Bangladesh’s concern and interest may be that the country’s political parties have failed to take a united stand against such behaviour, which is unacceptable in a modern comity of nations, and more often than not allowed their mutual mistrust and partisan bickering to prevail over national interest.

Thankfully, in recent times, the prime minister and the leader of the opposition have taken a similar stance on the Tipaimukh project, both insisting that there should be a joint and comprehensive survey of the construction site. The government needs to build on such rare convergence of opinion. To this end, it needs to convene a national convention, involving the democratic political parties, social organisations, rights groups, experts, academic, informed sections of the media and, for that matter, representatives of democratically oriented and rights-conscious sections of society. The focus of such a convention needs to be reaching a national consensus on not only Tipaimukh but also other issues that blight the country’s relations with India. If the government goes for such an initiative, the opposition political parties need to respond positively. It is imperative for all to realise that the nation must speak with one voice when national interests are ignored or trampled with by a so-called friendly neighbour.

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