Women Hurting Women

ARE female leaders better for the world’s women? 

It would be nice to think that women who achieve power would want to help women at the bottom. But one continuing global drama underscores that women in power can be every bit as contemptible as men. 

Sheikh Hasina, prime minister of Bangladesh, is mounting a scorched-earth offensive against Muhammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank and champion of the economic empowerment of women around the world. Yunus, 72, won a Nobel Peace Prize for his pioneering work in microfinance, focused on helping women lift their families out of poverty. 

Yet Sheikh Hasina’s government has already driven Yunus from his job as managing director of Grameen Bank. Worse, since last month, her government has tried to seize control of the bank from its 5.5 million small-time shareholders, almost all of them women, who collectively own more than 95 percent of the bank. 

What a topsy-turvy picture: We see a woman who has benefited from evolving gender norms using her government powers to destroy the life’s work of a man who has done as much for the world’s most vulnerable women as anybody on earth. 

The government has also started various investigations of Yunus and his finances and taxes, and his supporters fear that he might be arrested on some pretext or another. 

“It’s an insane situation,” Yunus told me a few days ago at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, sounding subdued instead of his normally exuberant self. “I just don’t know how to deal with it.” 

If the government succeeds in turning Grameen Bank into a government bank, Yunus said, “it is finished.” 

Sheikh Hasina, in New York for the United Nations General Assembly, initially agreed to be interviewed by me in a suite at the Grand Hyatt. At the last minute she canceled and refused to reschedule. 

Perhaps none of this should be surprising. Metrics like girls’ education and maternal mortality don’t improve more when a nation is led by a woman. There is evidence that women matter as local leaders and on corporate boards, but that doesn’t seem to have been true at the national level, at least not for the first cohort of female leaders around the world. 

Bangladesh is actually a prime example of the returns from investing in women. When it separated from Pakistan in 1971, it was a wreck. But it invested in girls’ education, and today more than half of its high school students are female — an astonishing achievement for an impoverished Muslim country. 

All those educated women formed the basis for Bangladesh’s garment industry. They also had fewer births: the average Bangladeshi woman now has 2.2 children, down from 6 in 1980. Bringing women into the mainstream also seems to have soothed extremism, which is much less of a concern than in Pakistan (where female literacy in the tribal areas is only 3 percent). 

To her credit, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has spoken up for Yunus: “I highly respect Muhammad Yunus, and I highly respect the work that he has done, and I am hoping to see it continue without being in any way undermined or affected by any government action,” she said earlier this year. Two former secretaries of state, George Shultz and Madeleine Albright, have also called on Sheikh Hasina to back off. 

She shows no sign of doing so. One theory is that she is paranoid and sees Yunus as a threat, especially since he made an abortive effort to enter politics in 2007. Another theory is that she is envious of his Nobel Peace Prize and resentful of his global renown. 

Sheikh Hasina is disappointing in other ways. She has turned a blind eye to murders widely attributed to the security services. My Times colleague Jim Yardley wrote just this month about a labor leader, Aminul Islam, who had been threatened by security officers and whose tortured body was found in a pauper’s grave. 

Yunus fans are signing a Change.org petition on his behalf, but I’d like to see more American officials and politicians speak up for him. President Obama, how about another photo op with Yunus? 

I still strongly believe that we need more women in leadership posts at home and around the world, from presidential palaces to corporate boards. The evidence suggests that diverse leadership leads to better decision making, and I think future generations of female leaders may be more attentive to women’s issues than the first. 

In any case, this painful episode in Bangladesh is a reminder that the struggle to achieve gender equality isn’t simply a battle between the sexes. 

It is far more subtle. Misogyny and indifference remain obstacles for women globally, but those are values that can be absorbed and transmitted by women as well as by men. 

Source :

 

Will the long night of terror in Bangladesh end in 2013?

The current government of Hasina Mujib will complete its tenure in December 2013. Most Bangaldeshis are hoping that this will end the long night of terror which promised a digital Bangladesh. Digital Bangladesh under this Mujib remained as eslusive as Sonar Bangla under the first Mujib. Mujibur Rehamn when he came to power abolished all political parties, and declared himself president for life under Baksal. So much for the quest for democracy. On 14th August 1974, patriotic Benglais murdered him and his entire family. However a counter coup against Khondakar Mushtaque led to General Zia ruling Bangladesh for a decade.

The battle of the begums has begun.

Hasina Wajib (Mujib) came to power through a havey handed judicial coup. It then began a pogram against the BNP and the Jamat e Islami on fake charges stemming from 1971. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina wants to hold that the next general election under the existing President Zillur Rahman a veteran Bangladesh Awami Leaguer.

The International Crisis Group’s (ICG) Asia report no. 226 dated June 13, 2012 titled “Bangladesh: Back to the Future” describes the situaion in Bangladesh as explosive:

”Bangladesh could face a protracted political crisis in the lead-up to the 2013 elections unless Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government changes course and makes a more conciliatory approach towards political opposition and the military.

The hope, both at home and abroad, was that Sheikh Hasina would use her mandate to revitalise democratic institutions and pursue national reconciliation, ending the pernicious cycle of zero-sum politics between her AL and Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP).

Three and a half years on hope has been replaced by deep disillusionment, as two familiar threats to Bangladesh’s Democracy have returned: the prospected of election-related violence and risks stemming from an unstable and hostile military. Instead of changing old pattern of politics, the AL government has systematically used parliament, the executive and courts to reinforce it, including by filing corruption cases against Khaleda Zia, the BNP Chairperson, and employing security agencies to curb opposition activities.

Most worrying, however, is the AL-dominated parliament’s adoption of the fifteenth amendment to the constitution, which scraps a provision mandating the formation of neutral caretaker administration to oversee general elections.

The caretaker system was a major practical and psychological barrier to election-rigging by the party in power. Removing it has undermined opposition parties’ confidence in the electoral system.

According to an intelligence reports, theAwami League, which won through a jdical coup in the December 2008 is destined to face a massive electoral catastrophe losing at least 150 seats. In the last contrevercial elections in 2008, the Awami League got 266. The tables seem to have turned, but Delhi will not allow the BNP and its alliance partner the JeI come to power. The BNP and the Jamaat are considered pro-Pakistani parties in Bharat.

The ALs draconian laws have been promulgated to ensure that the AL wins the election for Joy Mujim. “The fifteenth amendment carries other dangers as well. For example, anyone who criticises the constitution may now be prosecuted for sedition; new procedures have rendered further amendments virtually impossible; and death penalty is prescribed for plotting to overthrow an elected government – a thinly veiled warning to the military which has done so four times in as many decades.

“The fallout from these changes is already clear. The BNP gave an ultimatum to the government to re-instate the caretaker system by June 10, 2012 or face battles on the street.

A BNP-led boycott of 2013 general elections may be in the offing.

“Meanwhile, the military is visibly restive. On 19 January, it announced it had foiled a coup by mid-level and retired officers who sought to install an Islamist government. This followed an assassination attempt on an AL member of parliament in October 2009 by mid-level officers seething over the deaths of 57 officers in a mutiny by their sub-ordinate paramilitary border guards the previous February.

Large-scale dismissals, forced retirements deepening politicisation and a heavy-handed approach to curb dissent and root out militants have created an unstable and undisciplined force. While top-level coup is unlikely, prospect of mid-level officers resorting to violence to express their suppressed anger is increasingly high.

“Should the situation deteriorate to the point that the army again decides to intervene, it is unlikely to be content to prop up civilian caretakers and map a course to fresh election as it did in 2007.

This time the generals could be expected to have more staying power, not to mention less reluctance to carry out “minus-two” their previous plan to remove Sheikh Hasina and Khaleda Zia from politics. Even if such a worst-case scenario seems remote, it is clear that a new electoral stalemate threatens to erode Bangladesh democratic foundations.”

The Awami League ruling party is accused of a number of high-profile corruptions and irregularities:

• The high handedness of Joy Mujib.
• The infamous Padma Bridge bribe scandal
• Corruption centering quick rental power plants,
• Exorbitant rise in the prices of fuel and electricity bills,
• Looting of millions of dollars from the state-owned Sonali Bank by some unscrupulous connivance of the influential advisor to the Prime Minister
• Mass fraud with the public by a number of fraudulent multilevel marketing companies namely Destiny Group,
• Unipay2U and share market scam, wherefrom,
• The ruling party siphoned billions of dollars from the small investors.
• The ruling party also is accused of extra-judicial killings and enforced disappearances of hundreds of people, including some political heavy-weights.
• International human rights organizations have harshly criticized such extra-judicial murders and enforced disappearances in Bangladesh.
• According to figures released by local and international rights groups, few hundred people became victims of extra judicial murder while dozens of people became victim of enforced disappearances only during past twelve months.

The Awami League remains intolerant of any criticism or even negative opinion from the citizen or the members of the civil society. It has been the AL legacy since 1971.

• The naked exhibition of ruling party’s intolerance of opposition opinion was during the recent press conference of the leader of the opposition Begum Khaleda Zia.
• During the forty-minute press conference of the leader of the opposition asked Hasina to clarify their stand on the future election in Bangladesh
• Electricity connections at the office of the former Prime Minister were disconnected eight times.

Delhi interferes in Bangladesh and it interferes very heavily. Begum Khaleda Zia wil decide about her political plans after her upcoming visits to India, the US and China.

Begum Khaleda Zia’s party is seeking “cooperation” from Nobel laureate Dr. Mohammad Yunus. Her media aides are also preparing fact sheet about repression of Hindus, demolition of temples and illegal occupation of Hindu properties in Bangladesh during the current AL government–the government that is supposedly pro-Indian.

Source :

 

Bangladesh to be a secular nation?

Bangladesh may soon cease to be an Islamic nation. According to Sayeda Sajeda Chowdhury, MP and deputy leader of Bangladesh Parliament, efforts are on to embrace the basic tenets of the 1972 constitution of the country which advocated secularism, democracy and socialism. More importantly, the constitutional amendment will ensure that religion keeps away from politics.

"Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had given us secularism. We still believe in Bengali nationalism, secularism, democracy and socialism which were the basic tenets of the country's constitution that was adopted in 1972. Later, this constitution was amended and Bangladesh was converted into an Islamic nation. We are trying to ensure that Islam, or for that matter any other religion, ceases to be a state religion. Those who kill in the name of religion and torture women do little else but drag a nation backward. The military junta had promoted fundamentalism in the country to suit its own needs. We can't allow a military junta to return. We shall stop the involvement of religion in politics and discrimination against people of other faiths," Chowdhury, who was in Kolkata for a seminar on 'Role of Women in the Movement of Human Secularism in South Asia' said. The seminar was organised by the Bharat Bangladesh Maitri Samiti to mark the birth centenary of poet Sufia Kamal.

Journalist and human rights activist Sahariar Kabir noted how Sufia led the secular and democratic forces in Bangladesh even during Gen Ayub Khan's regime. During her stay in Kolkata, she was commended by Rabindranath Tagore for her writings. According to him, if Sufia is to be shown respect, Islam should not remain the state religion of Bangladesh.

"We are planning to go to court unless the present government takes steps to convert Bangladesh from an Islamic state to a secular one. When Tagore was baned in Bangladesh (East Pakistan), Sufia led the movement against this. In a meeting, Ayub Khan had called all Bengalis haywans(animals). None of those present dared protest save for Sufia. She told Ayub Khan to his face that if all Bengalis are haywans, he is the president of haywans. She strove to make the country secular, democratic and socialist. One must keep in mind that society in Bangladesh wasn't very advanced in 1972 but the constitution of a Muslim-dominated country adopted secularism. Before framing the constitution, our leaders had gone through the Constitution of India as well as other constitutions. What was important is that our leaders took a 'revolutionary' step by banning religion from politics. No other country had this in its constitution. This was very important as we had witnessed genocide and torture," Kabir said.

Referring to how Mujib was assasinated a few years after the liberation of Bangladesh, he admitted that it is extremely difficult to do away with fundamentalism. "Not only was the word secularism removed from the constitution, from 1975, efforts started to convert Bangladesh into another Pakistan and later into a Taliban-ruled state. The people were never in favour and this is where Sufia played an important role as a lighthouse. She even led the committee that identified the people involved in war crimes. These people are being tried in Bangladesh now," Kabir said.

Saugata Roy, MP and president of the Bharat Bangladesh Maitri Samiti said that Bangladesh has several impediments. "Fundamentalists are not only trying to spoil relations with India but also prevent women from progressing," he said.

Source :

Alarming decrease in Hindu population in Bangladesh

In past ten years, in comparing to the growth of the total population in Bangladesh, there is an alarming decrease of Hindu population in the country. According to statistics available with the government sources, the proportionate decrease in Hindu population is around nine hundred thousand. The statistics show almost elimination of Hindu population in fifteen districts in the country. Most of the Hindu families in those districts were forced to leave the country. In 2001, the total number of Hindu population in Bangladesh was 116.83 million, while the population was expected to be 132 million in 2011. But the latest statistics available with the government shows the total number of Hindu population at 123 million, which is nine hundred thousand less than the expected rate of growth. Currently 8.5 percent of the total population of Bangladesh is Hindus, while in 2001, it was 9.2 percent. The proportion of Christian, Buddhist and other religious minority population did not see any decline in the past. Currently the total number of Muslim population in Bangladesh is 90.4 percent. The district-wise statistics of population sees "huge decline" or "almost elimination" of Hindu population in fifteen districts, though the statistics terms the decline of Hindu population as "missing population".
 

He said, "Though some of the Hindu rights groups are falsely claiming that the forceful migration of Hindu families had decreased since Bangladesh Awami League came in power, the reality is actually just the opposite. Even during this present government, which came in power in 2009, there had been numerous attacks on Hindu families and temples in the country as well as alarming rise in the forceful abduction and religious conversion of Hindu girls and boys throughout the country."

Citing example of Gopalganj district in Bangladesh, which is considered to be the exclusive vote bank of Bangladesh Awami League and safe heaven for the Hindus, Gobinda Chandra Pramanik said, "In 2001, the total Hindu population at Gopalganj district was 371,000, while now it has gone down below fifty thousand. This statistics will prove the fact of repression on Hindu population even in the district, which is wrongly considered as 'safe heaven' for the Hindus in Bangladesh."

He said, "The burden of 'Enemy Property Act', which later was changed into 'Vested Property Act' has already caused hundreds and thousands of Hindu families in leaving Bangladesh either by selling their properties at token price or simply abandoning their ancestral properties into the grips of the greedy Muslim influential figures belonging to Bangladesh Awami League, Bangladesh Nationalist Party, Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and Jatiyo Party. Though a large proportion of the Hindu populations consider Bangladesh Awami League as their own party and almost as guardians of protecting the rights of Hindus, in the past, very unfortunately, Awami League never kept its promises in protecting the Hindus."

Seeking anonymity, a Hindu community leader in Gopalganj district said, "Bangladesh Awami League though proclaims to be a party totally committed to protecting rights of Hindus and religious minorities in Bangladesh, unfortunately their political behavior is no different than any other political party in Bangladesh. No Hindu has ever been placed into top most posts in the Central Committee or district level committees of Bangladesh Awami League. Though it is very unfortunate, but this is the ground reality."

BY :   Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury.

Padma episode weakened our position: Economists

Though the World Bank has finally agreed to revive its funding for the much-hyped Padma Bridge project, economists say this Padma episode has weakened Bangladesh’s position and the accountability issue will apparently become more important for any future foreign-aided project.

They, however, said it needs to be ensured so that this mega project does not face further delay due to investigation into the so-called graft.

“We’ve made ourselves weak a bit with the Padma Bridge story. Question has been raised about public management, capability and capacity,” eminent economist and distinguished fellow of Centre for Policy Dialogue (CPD) Debapriya Bhattacharya told the media while making comments on the World Bank’s return to the important project.

He said: “The issue of accountability for any future project, not only the World Bank-ones, any project of Japan (Jica- Japan International Cooperation Agency) and the Asian Development Bank (ADB), will be more important.”

On the fresh conditions set by the World Bank, Debapriya said, “The international expert panel will work with the Anti Corruption Commission to look into the alleged graft, and will have to wait for the outcome. But it’s important that the investigation process should not hamper the implementation of the project.”

Noted economist and former caretaker government adviser AB Mirza Azizul Islam said it should be cleared who will be there in the external panel. “What will be the composition of the external panel?....it needs to be determined quickly to know who are from the country and who are from outside.”

About the WB’s return, Prof Anu Mohammad said the World Bank is always interested to provide loan to countries like Bangladesh. “If a country like Bangladesh stops taking loan from the World Bank, then it’ll collapse. Bangladesh will also face trouble in the future while negotiating on any project.”

Meanwhile, different quarters, including the main opposition BNP expressed happiness and welcomed the WB’s return to the Padma Bridge project.

“We had earlier said we want construction of the Padma Bridge. We had also said it’s not possible to build the bridge without the World Bank loan. We’ll be happy if the World Bank reviews its decision,” BNP spokesman Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said.

Fakhrul, also the BNP’s acting secretary general, said had the government taken measures as per the letters sent by the global lending agency the 10 months would not have wasted. “The government will have to answer why it had failed to take action 10 months ago.”

Awami League senior leader Tofail Ahmed said all should proceed with a positive attitude on national issues. “Padma Bridge is a bridge for all. No one should have negative attitude towards it.”

The government is expected to come up with its official reaction to the WB’s decision by Saturday or Sunday, sources at the Finance Ministry said.

Earlier, in a statement, the World Bank said, “The Bank has agreed that, upon satisfactory implementation of the agreed measures by the government, and with the support of the Bank's governing bodies, the Bank will engage anew in the Padma Multipurpose Bridge.”

The release said in its communication with the World Bank about the fulfillment of these measures, the government of Bangladesh requested the World Bank to consider again the financing of the Padma Multipurpose Bridge.

The World Bank, the lead co-financer of the Padma Bridge project, cancelled its committed $1.20 billion loan on June 29. Since then, the government has been trying to convince the global lender for revival of its fund it cancelled on the allegation of corruption in the selection process of consultant for building the 6.15-km-long bridge.

The government undertook the Padma Bridge project in August 2007 estimating the cost then at $1.40 billion (Tk 101.62 billion). The project cost was revised upward to $2.9 billion because of the rising costs of construction materials and foreign currency fluctuations.

Later, the lenders -- the WB, the Asian Development Bank (ADB) and the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) -- made separate commitments to provide an aggregate amount of $2.35 billion as credits to build the bridge.

Though the WB cancelled the loan, the ADB and the Jica extended the loan effectiveness for the first time on July 31 by one month to August 31. Later, the ADB and extended the loan effectuation timeline by a month for the second time while Jica by three weeks from September 1.

The two major lenders have also asked the government to settle the matter with the WB within the timeframe before getting their committed funds for the Padma Bridge project.

The Manila-based ADB had earlier committed $615 million, Jica $400 million and the Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank $140 million in loans for building the bridge.

Source :