E-Bangladesh

Hossain Mohammad Ershad set a new standard in Bangladesh with his girlfriends, making even the international press with a full-page story about his wealth and his mistresses.

If you are wondering why we are dredging up this old muck, it is because a serving major general in the Bangladesh Army made a spectacle of himself a few weeks ago.

Major General Aminul Karim, the military secretary to the President of Bangladesh, was recently in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA, attending a conference.

He was incredulous and a little upset when an expatriate Bangladeshi told him that he did not know who he was. But that was totally eclipsed by the fact that he was trying to pick up female delegates to the conference. He asked for the phone number of at least one women, and almost insisted that a woman from Mexico go out to dinner with him. When that didn’t work, he went after another women.

This was in full view of other attendees to the conference, who were pretty sure that the intention was not to discuss the socio-economic situation in Bangladesh.

This was an academic conference, with mostly university faculty from across the USA, Canada and Mexico attending. This behavior did not do any good to the image of Bangladesh that the ruling junta is so concerned to protect.

Mr. Karim recently earned his Ph.D. in 2007. His thesis supervisor was Professor Ataur Rahman of Dhaka University: a man nominated by the government as a “preferred” guest on TV and radio talk-shows. The external reviewer of the the thesis was Dr. Zillur Rahman Khan of University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh.

Professors Rahman and Khan are considered the theoreticians behind the concept of a role of the Army in government, and are trusted advisers to the current government.

So this scholar-general, entrusted by the government to look after President Iajuddin (and keep him in line, of course), is steeped in the theory that is providing the framework of the current and future government of Bangladesh. Is it too much to ask that someone in such an important position not embarrass the country?

[J @ Shada Kalo, USA]

Mufti Fazlul Huq Amini, chairman of Islami Oikojote has proclaimed that by announcing the “National Women Development Policy, 2008″, the caretaker government has spoken against the Quoran, and are thus considered apostates. He has also asked President Iazuddin to disband the government, and asked Army chief of staff Gen. Moeen U. Ahmed to withdraw his support.

I believe there is a High court decision declaring all fatwas illegal. Even if there was not such case law against this idiocy, what happened to the zero tolerance showed by this government against students and university teachers? Instaed, we have the law adviser meekly declaring that the policy has been “misinterpreted.”

The worst part is, the policy actually does not have anything about changing existing laws of the land. The section that Mr. Amini is so vigorously protesting against? All it did was to declare that women will enjoy equal rights.

This policy was first developed by AL in 1997-98, finally published by BNP in 2004, and was even then crippled by Mr. Amini and his friends who were in the government with BNP.

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