Shah AMS Kibria: Asking for Justice

addabaj — Wed, 1 Feb 2006 06:23:28 EST

It happened very sadly and suddenly. No one knew that it would happen like this. It was an ordinary day for a 73 year old Shah AMS Kibria, a parliamentarian, a politician, a former bureaucrat, a diplomat, a former finance minister, and a cultural person who went out to his constituency in Habiganj to address his supporters. On January 27, 2005, he finished his political meeting and was coming out from the school where his meeting took place. Suddenly, a grenade was thrown towards him. He was fatally injured and died in few hours. We have just silently passed the first anniversary of the assassination of the former Bangladeshi Finance Minister Shah AMS Kibria. A happy family lost their beloved person, a nation lost one of the best and the brightest sons, an opposition party lost its star. Nothing happened in last one year. No one was brought to justice. The current BNP-Jamat Government tragically failed to bring the criminals to justice and played a dirty partisan politics to expedite the judicial process.

Shah AMS Kibria has now turned to be a powerful voice in our hearts and national spirit. His family and friends have successfully modeled a wonderful and peaceful way to protest his assassination and to demand justice for his killing. Bangladesh has unbeatable reputation in South Asia for political and partisan killing. Peoples and groups across the globes including Amnesty International, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, European Parliament, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have already condemned Mr. Kibria's killing and demanded an expeditious justice to the killing of Mr. Kibria. We may loose great leaders in turmoil but we will never loose our conscience and resiliency. That is why; people wake up through political activism to reach to a national consensus to bring political criminals to justice. Mr. Kibria's assassination is not the end of an era; it is a unique beginning of a new day to raise national and international consciousness to stop terrorism and political killing in Bangladesh. Kibria family demands international probe and UN led investigation. Why don't you join with the grieving Kibria family and the people of Bangladesh to ask for justice?

(Cross posted in Adda's Bangla Blog)

Winds of Change In South Asia

addabaj — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 00:44:04 EST

We live in a world of rapid change. Things are changing faster than we can imagine. I remember when we were young we used to tune in to news on the radio. We used to listen and think. All the news sources were unidirectional to the listeners. Now, suddenly everything is getting changed. We are no longer listening or watching; now we are speaking out loudly, forcefully, and courageously. We are witnessing the unimaginable rise of the information revolution where we can write independently in the virtual world. We are blogging to express our own ideas and to share our joys and pains with the rest of the world.

The most amazing thing happened in Bangladesh on December 16, 2005 when somewhere in..., a Norwegian company in Bangladesh, inaugurated a blogging platform in Bangla. It named it Badh Bhangar Awaz, as it implies the sound of breaking off the dam to unlock the free expression of motions, emotions, and interactions in Bangla blogs. Their site has already received over one hundred thousand hits within a month. All the would-be and real thinkers, writers, critics, and singers are now flocking at the Bangla site to express themselves.

When people are looking for enlightenment, this is the beginning of a new era where bloggers express themselves to bring out the most unseen and the most hidden treasures of unexpressed minds in the obscure corners of South Asia. The beginning of Desicritics is another victory for all of us, where all the South Asian people will join the rest of the world in telling their side of story. It is really the beginning of the end of the digital divide. Indeed, Noble Laureate poet Rabindranath Tagore imagined that real awakening of human minds in a fearless and undivided world (that we still have a long way to reach) when he says,

"Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has no been broken into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth...
Into the heaven of freedom, my Father,
let my country awake."

Desicritics Author: addabaj

Shah AMS Kibria: Asking for Justice

Winds of Change In South Asia