slap the weakling as you wish

some emergency repair work is going on at meghna gomti bridge on dhaka chittagong highway, and so this bridge is now a one way street. the work which started on may 15 is planned to last 44 days. and that means we, the frequent travelers between dhaka and chittagong, have to face untold sufferings and long hours in queue to get across. newspaper reports say the queue itself was as long as 18 hours couple of days back.

bus owners took this opportunity slap us, the helpless passengers, with yet another blow - an unauthorized 10% fare hike. a timely slap when we are most vulnerable.

so now a bus trip between dhaka and chittagong is not only going to take longer, but also cost more. what a way to treat one's customers!!!

p.s. i heard even flight operators took benefit of this long jam, and hiked up their fares.

now you know how all those mercedes and bmw's plying the posh streets of bangladesh are financed.

Bangladeshi potographer wins yet again

G.M.B. Akash a student from Pathshala's first batch wins first prize for his photo titled "passenger without ticket" in the prestigious gordon parks photography competition.

more of his work

lets talk about human rights

along with most of the civilized world, I protested much about the world-touring olypmic torch over concern for china's human rights violation in tibet and elsewhere.

pondering back, i wonder whether my conscience is similarly pricked when scores of civilians, men, women and children, are killed everyday and thousands more deprived of their basic rights in palestine. or when the recently released aljazeera cameraman sami al haj was detained in the u.s.-run guantanamo bay detention center since 2001. needless to say without trial and on the vague allegation that he was a courier for an unspecified militant muslim organization.

almost every single person in the world have their basic human rights violated in one way or another. for some it is in direct form, as in tibet, palestine, cuba, africa and many other places.

but for most others its in a form altogether different. are most people in the west presented with the right information? or are they fed with information someone wants them to hear, with opinions and understanding tactically engineered? isnt that a form of human rights violation too?

how would you term depriving millions of people from food so that we can a have a guzzling supply of bio-fuel for our suvs and hummers? or supporting autocratic, authoritarian and anti-people regime just to ensure the interest of elite few is served?

i just wish my children will not have to be blogging about this topic in the same way. let our actions direct toward that.