A top UN official said that Bangladesh’s plan to build the world’s biggest refugee camp for 800,000-plus Rohingya Muslims was dangerous because overcrowding could heighten the risks of deadly diseases spreading quickly. The arrival of more than half a million Rohingya refugees who have fled an army crackdown in Myanmar’s troubled Rakhine state since August…
Read moreLOOKEAST EXCLUSIVE Bangladesh’s military intelligence agency DGFI has started backing jihadis of Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) without taking the country’s political executive into confidence. Even as the country’s detective branch and counter-terrorism officials hunt for ARSA who are said to enjoy close links to Bangladesh’s own Islamist terror group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen (Bangladesh) or JMB, the…
Read moreDHAKA Finance Minister Arun Jaitley encouraged developing countries to emulate India’s initiatives towards a less cash-based economy, saying excessive cash harms the poor, supports corruption and leads to terror activities. Jaitley, who is on a three-day visit to Bangladesh, inaugurated a cashless service at India’s visa application centres in Dhaka’s Shyamoli and Sylhet localities before…
Read moreDHAKA Awami League General Secretary Obaidul Quader called for an investigation to unearth the conspiracies of BNP Chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia and her son Tarique Rahman that they are hatching in London. “The nation wants to know that what plots Begum Zia and her son Tarique Zia are orchestrating in London and it should be…
Read moreSUBIR BHAUMIK Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi have much in common beyond the spiraling Rohingya refugee crisis now plaguing both of their elected governments. Both leaders are the daughters of fathers who spearheaded their countries’ respective struggles for sovereign freedom. And both lost those national founding…
Read moreTAJ HASHMI I believe “genocide” is the right word to describe the ongoing mass killing, rape, and expropriation of Rohingyas in Myanmar. Polish Jewish lawyer Raphael Lemkin (1900-1959) first used the expression in 1943, to denote the mass killings, rapes, torture, extortions, and marginalization of Jews and others in Axis-occupied Europe in the 1930s and…
Read moreTo The Editor bdnews24.com Dhaka Sir, Apropos your news item Amar Desh’s Mahmudur questions Subir Bhaumik’s motive for reporting ‘PM murder plot ‘ and the Bengali version, I wish to make three things clear. R&AW AGENT For those who make this allegation that I am a R&AW agent, I advise them to read…
Read moreLOOKEAST EXCLUSIVE The story goes that BNP chairperson Begum Khaleda Zia refused to join her husband in Meghalaya in 1971 where Major (later general) Ziaur Rahman was commanding the Z force of the Mukti Bahini. Then strikingly beautiful, Khaleda decided of her own to stay behind in Dhaka and live together with Colonel Asif Nawaz…
Read moreLOOKEAST EXCLUSIVE Bangladesh chief justice Surendra Kumar Sinha has told friends and admirers in Tokyo that he is determined to ‘restore democracy’ in Bangladesh — something that has send a chill down the spine of those in power in Dhaka. At a party hosted by Bangladeshi expatriates on Saturday, Justice Sinha said there were ‘many severe…
Read moreLOOKEAST REPORT The DGFI has gone berserk over the expose on the failed assassination bid on Bangladesh prime minister Sheikh Hasina. They have forced the PMO to issue a press release, using one of their assets there, against the wishes of many senior people like Media Adviser to PM. By blocking LOOKEAST story on the…
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