António Vieira da Cruz

"My name is Paul Rusesabagina. I am a hotel manager. In April 1994, when a wave of mass murder broke out in my country, I was able to hide 1,268 people inside the hotel where I worked. When the militia and the Army came with orders to kill my guests, I took them into my office, treated them like friends, offered them beer and cognac, and then persuaded them to neglect their task that day. And when they came back, I poured more drinks and kept telling them they should leave in peace once again. It went on like this for seventy-six days." ~ Paul Rusesabagina, in “An Ordinary Man” (2007) — a autobiografia do homem interpretado por Don Cheadle no filme Hotel Rwanda (2004). O actor Don Cheadle com o herói ruandês Paul Rusesabagina. Após o genocídio ruandês em que morreram e foram violadas várias centenas de milhares de pessoas no ano de 1994, Paul Rusesabagina sofreu em 1996 uma tentativa falhada de assassinato. Por isso, exilou-se primeiro na Bélgica e depois nos EUA, trabalhando...

Author: Wali-ur Rahman Publisher: Bangladesh Heritage Foundation Place: Dhaka, Bangladesh Year: 2011 181 pages If someone ever asks me how to understand Bangladesh better, my advice is: start by studying its International Crimes Tribunal. I would say this is perhaps the best way to know about Bangladesh contemporary history and politics. That is what happened with me. The International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh tells us a lot about the country’s past and present; about its independence; about its cultural, ethnic and political tensions; and about its struggle to find justice, peace and prosperity. The book “Forgotten War: Forgotten Genocide” was written in 2011 by my good friend H.E. Ambassador Wali-ur Rahman and it is an ideal tool to understand everything about these issues. From 1947 to 1971 Bangladesh was part of Pakistan and before it was under the British Raj. Bangladesh, or East Pakistan, had a very different culture and language than West Pakistan, whic...

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...