António Vieira da Cruz

Hizb ut-Tahrir poster inciting to violence in Dhaka, Bangladesh The streets of Dhaka are filled with orange and black posters from Hizb ut-Tahrir . The main purpose of this poster is to call Military to take the power in Bangladesh and establish "Khilafat" (the caliphate). This pan-Islamic political organisation is legally banned in Bangladesh since 2009, yet they continue to spend fortunes in promoting extremism throughout propaganda and schemes to take over the elected powers, as it occurred for example in 2011 . In their most recent press release, Hizb ut-Tahrir states that during current strike 25 people were killed and then they conclude that "Democracy = Death to People". Of course what they do not understand is that democracy is not causing these deaths: extremism is. With their hate speeches and incite to violence, Hizb ut-Tharir and other powerful extremist organisations like Jamaat-e-Islami are contributing to the confrontational climate in Bangl...

Bangladesh is in an extremely sensitive pre-electoral situation. I arrived today to Dhaka and despite the impressive reports we receive every day in our countries, they are not being completely able to picture how the climate is tense over here. People are afraid. The Police and the Military are on the streets. National strikes are being organized by the opposition parties. In the streets of Dhaka small bombs and explosives like “cocktail molotov” are being dropped. Different neighborhoods of the city are being affected and from while to while we can hear gun shots in places  that used to be safe and secure. In 2012 I was in Bangladesh for 11 days and now this is my 2 nd time here. Since I arrived I noticed that some things have changed. Some infrastructures are new since then and many roads and buildings are being built. In what concerns to construction we can see real progress. I first thought that the lack of the usually omnipresent traffic jams were the consequence of the ...

Bangladesh is the 8 th most populated country in the world with around 160 million inhabitants and its capital Dhaka is a megacity with more than 15 million people. Today I had a direct flight from Istanbul to Dhaka, which was complete, but even in Istanbul Atatürk Airport we can see the lack of importance given to Bangladesh, reserving for it the very last gate of the airport. This could be a trivial example of how Bangladesh is forgotten internationally, too trivial perhaps. But did you know that in 1971, during 9 months of terror, in Bangladesh 3 million people were killed and around 4 hundred thousand women were raped? “Operation Searchlight” was planned and carried out by the Pakistani Army, with the help of local agents, and besides many indiscriminate killing it systematically targeted Bengali dissidents and religious and ethnic minorities. These hideous genocide and genocidal rape were part of a plan to subjugate people with a different language, culture and who were will...