From his shop overlooking a pier on this island near the border with Myanmar, Mohammad Hossain watched the human smuggling business swell.
Over the years, the trickle gradually grew into an unending stream. The late-night flashes of light on the water, signaling that the coast was clear to launch boats, multiplied until they looked like summer lightning. That the boats were not carrying fish was an open secret here: One day, when a trawler sank on its way out, the water was littered with floating human bodies.
The people of Shah Porir Dwip — fishermen, shopkeepers, police officers and shadowy bosses — were all drawn in, as participants or concerned observers, to a multimillion-dollar people smuggling business that sent roots deep into this impoverished corner of Bangladesh.
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International Justice Day, or International Criminal Justice Day, has been observed every year on July 17 since 1998, marking the day on which the international community adopted the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Odhikar and FIDH have been commemorating International Justice Day for several years, both on their own and as members of the International Coalition for the International Criminal Court (CICC). On this day, the Rome Statute of the ICC was adopted by the international community, with an aim to end impunity for international crimes, namely genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and the crime of aggression.
Myanmar’s navy has discovered more than 100 Bangladeshi migrants stranded for nearly a month on a southern island, state media said on Tuesday, following a regional migrant crisis in which people smugglers abandoned thousands at sea.
It was the first major rescue reported by Myanmar since May, when its navy found a boat packed with more than 700 migrants in the Andaman Sea at the height of Southeast Asia’s migrant boat crisis.
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Myanmar's navy discovers over ...
The Catholic Church in Bangladesh has launched a campaign to educate clergy, religious and laypeople into making its institutions safe and secure for children.
The campaign by the Catholic Bishops’ Episcopal Commission for Justice and Peace and Marist Brothers Bangladesh was launched at a national workshop titled “The Church is a safe and secure home” held in Dhaka July 7-11.
Participants came from seven Catholic dioceses across the country and included priests, nuns, brothers, schoolteachers, hostel directors and Holy ...
The United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) is ramping up relief efforts aimed at reaching tens of thousands of Bangladeshis stranded by a spate of flash floods which struck the South Asian country last week.
According to a WFP press release issued earlier this morning, the UN agency is now targeting over 150,000 people in the coastal village of Cox’s Bazar and surrounding areas with over 100
metric tons of emergency food supplies transported by boat and truck.
Among the food assistance being distributed are vitamin and mineral...
Four secular Bangladeshi writers have been killed since November of 2014: Rajshahi University professor AKM Shafiul Islam, and writers Avijit Roy, Oyasiqur Rahman Babu and Ananta Bijoy Das.
At least a dozen more have been killed and scores of others attacked or threatened with death for their progressive and secular views, since massive protests erupted in 2013 calling for
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