Bangladesh and the One China Policy

When Students For Free Tibet- Bangladesh’s pro-Tibet movement in Dhaka was blogged in the Unheard Voice, a number of comments were posted for and against such movement. While the opponents argued that Bangladesh should mind its own business, others argued that Tibet issue is not that unrelated to Bangladesh’s interest.

I think Bangladesh can respond to Tibet issue in two ways- informal public campaigns in solidarity of international human rights, and through formal policy stance.

Though Bangladesh’s formal (foreign) policy stance can be influential to or separate from the public campaign, it needs to take into account a number of critical issues (when there are two elephants -China and India- in the room, one better be careful while dancing around them).

In search of an opposition

Former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s eleventh-hour u-turn from the launching of national anti-poverty drive has once again renewed the recurrent concern – where is the opposition in Bangladesh politics?

At first instance, it may seem normal since such refusal is nothing new in Bangladesh. The incumbent leaders also boycotted many such calls for negotiation and cooperation when they were in opposition. But the real concern is elsewhere.

The less important issue here is the “way” BNP backtracked from the promised involvement. Khaleda Zia blamed the “events over the past few days” for this which includes deteriorating law and order, high prices of commodities and politicization of administration. There is no denying of her accusations. But the perplexing thing is that the situation was the same when her Chief Whip Zainul Abdin Farroque confirmed her presence even two days earlier (on 16 Oct). Have the alleged politicization or the worsening of law and order just started “over the past few days”?

Blue night blue as I can be

Blue night blue as I can be- 1, originally uploaded by Syeed’s Photo.

Today, I went to the St Kilda beach (Melbourne) to photograph the rise of the full moon. By the time I got to the beach, cloud was all over the sky and moon was nowhere to be seen. While I was roaming around the dark beach, disappointed, the sky turned blue (probably to make it up for me). Didn’t have to use any filter or digital post-processing for the color.

I know, the thumb-rule says, I shouldn’t have put the horizon in the middle of the picture…. but for some unknown reason, I chose to ignore the rule 🙂