Bangladesh in world media this week

Bangladesh popped up a lot in internationally recognised media outlets over this week. The mentions were not always positive, but they were not all negative either.   

Here are our top 10 picks for this week:

Shakib Al Hasan getting death threats and an armed bodyguard

Being the second-best all-rounder in both T20 and ODI formats, Shakib Al Hasan is well recognised in many countries that have a soft corner for cricket. So, when the news of him getting death threats on social media went viral and he was given an armed bodyguard from Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), it caught the eyes of international outlets as well. 

“Ace Bangladesh all-rounder Shakib Al Hasan has been provided armed bodyguards by security agencies, a day after Bangladesh Police arrested a man for allegedly issuing Islamist threats to Shakib for taking part attending a Hindu festival in India,” wrote WION, an international English language based in India. 

Yahoo cricket also reported on the topic, terming the person giving Shakib death threats a “fundamentalist.”

Bangladeshi teen Sadat Rahman wins International Peace Prize for anti-bullying app

While Shakib’s news might have created some negative publicity in the international community, the news of Bangladeshi teen Sadat Rahman bagging the International Peace Prize for creating an anti-bullying app surely levelled it up. 

Sadat Rahman, who was deeply moved by the suicide of a 15-year-old girl, created the mobile app to help combat bullying in Bangladesh. 

“Deeply impacted by the girl’s suicide, the increasing cases of cyberbullying in his country, and the callous response of society toward such incidents, Rahman built a mobile application in 2019 called Cyber Teens to help youngsters in the fight against online bullying,” the Tennessee Tribune wrote. 

Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai presented Sadat with the prize that comes with $118,000 to invest in the project. Sadat already confirmed that he wants to invest all the money to expand the connectivity of the Cyber Teens app across the entire country. 

Islamic school (madrasa) for transgender students in Bangladesh

The discussion about the first-ever transgender madrasa of the country that opened in Dhaka’s Kamrangirchar area earlier this month is still hot for some international media outlets. 

Canada’s CBC News, for example, published an article on November 17 in this regard titled, “LGBTQ advocates call 1st Islamic school for transgender students in Bangladesh a ‘positive step,’ but not enough.”

“It was a first not only in the country, but across South Asia, and experts and rights advocates say it could help a marginalized community feel more welcome, while also challenging perceptions of madrassas in the region,” it wrote. 

The article further argued that it is the lack of antidiscrimination laws in Bangladesh that makes it easy for schools to exclude people from the hijra community.

It quoted Dr Ali Riaz, a politics professor at Illinois State University, who termed the initiative as a positive step, but not a sufficient one.

Bangladesh launching all-female police team to fight online abuse

The news of Bangladesh launching an all-female police team to fight online abuse got a pretty good coverage in internal media outlets. 

“Police hope the unit will encourage more women to come forward to report digital abuse, including so-called revenge porn, hacking of their social media accounts and online threats from blackmailers,” reports Al-Jazeera. 

Mumbai-based independent media company Swaddle also reported on the topic quoting Al-Jazeera. 

Bangladeshi denim factory named in WEF awards

The news of Bangladeshi denim factory “Denim Expert” getting named for the World Economic Forum (WEF) awards received quite some attention internationally. 

“Bangladesh’s Denim Expert received an ‘honourable mention’ in the ‘Excellence in Sustainability’ category,” just-style, an online news and research portal for the apparel and textile industry, 

It also mentioned Denim Expert as a niche denim manufacturing plant in Bangladesh that is actively working to promote sustainability and inclusivity of the country’s apparel industry. 

Green Climate Fund approving $256.5m for Bangladesh

In the first-ever concessional credit line and the first private sector financing from the global Green Climate Fund (GCF) in the country, Bangladesh on Saturday received $256.5 million.

Xinhua, the official state-run press of China, reported on the issue. 

GCF is a fund established within the framework of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change as an operating entity of the financial mechanism to assist developing countries in adaptation and mitigation practices to counter climate change.

Bangladeshi MP blaming feminists for rape

Now that’s the kind of news none of us wants to see in global media. 

But this particular news, based on a remark made by Bangladeshi MP Rezaul Karim Bablu went a little bit beyond the national border of the country. 

“A Bangladeshi parliamentarian has triggered a public backlash after blaming feminists for a surge in rape cases in the country and for supporting the controversial remarks of a late radical Islamist who compared women to ‘mouth-watering tamarind’,” wrote UCAnews, a news agency that covers issues and matters of interest for the Catholic Church on the Asian continent.

In 2013, Hefajat-e-Islam Head late Shah Ahmad Shafi compared women to "mouth-watering fruit like tamarind." He also said that women should stay at home and their primary duty is to take care of the family and children.

Bangladesh imports over 2,000 tons of seed-potato from the Netherlands

Bangladesh imported 2,055 tons of seed-potatoes from the Netherlands on the first and second week of November. 

PotatoPro, a website with the single mission of covering the news on the potato industry across the globe reported on this. 

“With the onset of the potato cultivation season, Bangladesh has begun to import quality potato seeds from the Netherlands,” it wrote. 

The seed potatoes arrived in Chittagong port on reefer containers. Reefer containers are big fridges used to transport temperature-sensitive cargoes like fruits, meat, frozen fish, vegetable, and dairy products.

Drastic impacts of Covid-19 on Bangladeshi students

There have been countless write-ups on how students in Bangladesh are suffering from the pandemic in the country’s local media. But this might well be the first time this was mentioned by an international media. 

World Socialist Web Site (WSWS), an international Trotskyist news site based in the US, recently reported on a webinar in Bangladesh that points out the social crisis students are facing amid the pandemic. 

The webinar titled “COVID-19 and Bangladesh: A Youth Agenda for Recovery”, organised by the Citizen's Platform for SDGs included the results of a survey. 

More than two-thirds of the respondents of the survey were from the rural areas of Bangladesh. 

The survey revealed that 28 percent of the participating had abandoned their studies to support their families amid the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Mro villagers oppose hotel project

Mro villages in Chimbuk Hill area of Bandarban have been protesting against building a five-star hotel and leisure park in the area that can displace hundreds of indigenous Mro villagers. 

The news caught the attention of UCAnews after a senior Catholic official joined the protest. 

UCA News quoted Holy Cross Father Liton H Gomes, who is also the secretary of the Catholic bishops’ Justice and Peace Commission, saying that development cannot take place by harming and evicting local people. 

“We continue to criticize other countries for environmental degradation, but we too are destroying forests for development. The government should move away from this project,” he added. 

The project, named Marriott Hotels and Resorts in a joint venture by R&R Holdings, a subsidiary of the controversial Sikder Group.

Sikder Group has been in discussion since two directors of Sikder Group, Dipu Haque Sikder and Ron Haque Sikder, allegedly tried to kill Exim Bank's Managing Director Mohammad Haider Ali Khan and Additional MD Mohammad Firoz Hossain