Lightning kills 21 and millions of homes submerged while armed forces asked to help amid continuing storms
At least 59 people died as floods cut a swatch across north-eastern India and Bangladesh, leaving millions of homes underwater, authorities said on Saturday.
In India’s Assam state, 18 people died in the floods or landslides and 2 million others had seen their homes submerged in flood waters since Thursday, the state disaster management agency said.
Continue reading...Liza Begum said confusion with Apsana Begum who was acquitted of fraud charges ‘reflects notion all people of colour look the same’
The BBC has agreed to pay £30,000 in damages to a British Bangladeshi Labour councillor after it mixed her up with Apsana Begum in a news item about the MP facing housing fraud charges.
Pictures of Liza Begum at an event to launch Labour’s 2019 race and faith manifesto were broadcast on BBC London News during an exchange on 29 October 2020, in which the BBC London political correspondent said: “This is Apsana Begum … she faces three charges of dishonesty.”
Continue reading...Huge blaze breaks out at container storage facility 40km from country’s main sea port, Chittagong, with toll expected to rise further
At least 49 people died and hundreds have been injured after a fire tore through a shipping container depot in Bangladesh, sparking a huge chemical explosion that engulfed many of those who had rushed to the scene to help. The death toll is expected to rise.
More than 300 people were injured in the incident, many of whom sustained life-threatening burns, and many bodies remain unrecovered as the fire continued to blaze for a second night in Sitakunda, near the busy southern port of Chittagong.
Continue reading...Rains inundate thousands of villages and trigger landslides in north-east Bangladesh’s worst flooding in nearly two decades
Heavy rains have caused widespread flooding in parts of Bangladesh and India, leaving millions stranded and at least 57 dead, officials say.
In Bangladesh, about 2 million people have been marooned by the worst floods in the country’s north-east for nearly two decades.
Continue reading...Support slashed despite warnings about impact, with offices told not to discuss plans with local partners, says National Audit Office report
The British government forced through £4.2bn in aid cuts so quickly it had little time to plan the impact they would have, or consult partners, according to an official audit.
The National Audit Office (NAO) said bilateral spending – aid given directly to another government – faced some of the harshest cuts by the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) – 53% compared with less than a third of the overall aid budget – because of political and legal commitments to multilateral spending.
Continue reading...Guardian investigation finds labourers – including those on World Cup-related projects – were left with huge debts
Low-wage migrant workers have been forced to pay billions of dollars in recruitment fees to secure their jobs in World Cup host nation Qatar over the past decade, a Guardian investigation has found.
Bangladeshi men migrating to Qatar are likely to have paid about $1.5bn (£1.14bn) in fees, and possibly as high as $2bn, between 2011 and 2020. Nepali men are estimated to have paid around $320m, and possibly more than $400m, in the four years between mid-2015 to mid-2019.
Continue reading...Refugees ‘very happy’ with declaration, while experts say ‘concrete steps’ must follow
Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh have welcomed the announcement by the US that it considers the violent repression of their largely Muslim ethnic group in Myanmar a genocide.
“We are very happy on the declaration of the genocide; many many thanks,” said 60-year-old Sala Uddin, who lives at Kutupalong camp, one of the many in Cox’s Bazar district that are now home to about 1 million Rohingya.
Continue reading...Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and beyond are using poetry to come to terms with atrocities – and as a form of resistance
It has now been a year since the military coup, and the breeze of democracy has become a dead wind in Myanmar. People breathe the air of fear and pass nights of rage and despair as men and women are shot or burnt alive at the hands of the Myanmar military. Villagers leave their loved ones at home and take refuge in the forest. Once-vibrant city streets have become rows of haunted houses. The whole country is trapped in a shadowland.
As Rohingya refugees, we are all too familiar with the military’s capacity for violence and destruction. Over the past year, Rohingya people have watched with terror and anguish as the same military forces that perpetrated genocide against us now unleash their atrocities across the country.
Continue reading...The river town of Mongla is leading the way in a project to resettle people in a region decimated by extreme weather
By the time the rising sun breaks through the morning mist over the Mongla River, the rhythmic chug of motors strapped to wooden canoes is already audible as thousands of workers are hurriedly ferried across the waterway.
They jump on to the small landing dock, pick up a potato-stuffed shingara pastry for pennies and rush towards the factories in Mongla’s export processing zone (EPZ), which has transformed the small town into an employment hub in a part of Bangladesh ravaged by the climate crisis.
Continue reading...Villagers rely more on the forest’s resources, threatening its ecosystem – and leaving them more vulnerable to cyclones
As he steps out of the mosque on the banks of the Kholpetua River, Mohammed Sabud Ali looks out at a view he has seen several times a day for most of his life. But never before has the sprawling Sundarbans mangrove forest felt so important to him.
The vast Sundarbans has always protected Bangladeshi coastal communities from the violent cyclones that regularly crash in from the Bay of Bengal, and they have always harvested its resources. But now, as the climate crisis encroaches, people are becoming even more dependent on the forest.
Continue reading...A fire swept through a Rohingya refugee camp in south-eastern Bangladesh on Sunday, destroying hundreds of homes, according to officials and witnesses, though there were no immediate reports of casualties.
The blaze hit Camp 16 in Cox’s Bazar, a border district home to more than a million Rohingya refugees, most of whom fled a military-led crackdown in Myanmar in 2017.
Mohammed Shamsud Douza, a Bangladeshi government official in charge of refugees, said emergency workers had brought the fire under control. The cause of the blaze has not been established, he added
Continue reading...About 1,200 homes destroyed by blaze in area that is home to nearly a million people who fled military crackdown in Myanmar
Thousands of people have been left homeless after a fire gutted parts of a Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh, police say.
About 850,000 of the persecuted Muslim minority – many of whom escaped a 2017 military crackdown in Myanmar that UN investigators concluded was executed with “genocidal intent” – live in a network of camps in Bangladesh’s border district of Cox’s Bazar.
Continue reading...Bangladesh praised for taking in nearly a million Rohingya refugees, but destruction of shops that serve communities has attracted criticism
Bangladesh authorities have bulldozed more than 3,000 Rohingya-run shops since last month, a government official confirmed on Tuesday, as struggling refugee families voiced their dismay at the demolitions.
About 850,000 members of the stateless Muslim minority are packed into overcrowded displacement camps in Bangladesh, most having fled neighbouring Myanmar after a 2017 military clampdown that prompted an international genocide investigation.
Continue reading...Coastal communities in Mexico, Bangladesh and Somalia are struggling to adapt to the climate crisis. Many people have already lost livelihoods and homes to rising waters
Continue reading...From a Somali love story to a deep dive into Congolese rumba, Guardian writers pick their favourite recent world cinema releases
The Great Indian Kitchen
Continue reading...At least 39 people have been killed and 70 injured after a fire ripped through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh.
The blaze began in the engine room of the ferry in the early hours of Friday morning, officials said, but the cause was not immediately clear. It took 15 fire engines two hours to get it under control.
People were forced to jump from the vessel, which was carrying about 800 passengers, into the freezing river water to escape
Continue reading...Passengers jumped off vessel carrying 800 passengers and tried to swim ashore, officials say
A massive fire has swept through a crowded river ferry in Bangladesh, leaving at least 39 people dead and 70 injured, officials have said.
Many passengers leaped from the vessel into cold waters to escape the fire. It took 15 fire engines two hours to control the blaze and another eight to cool down the vessel, according to Kamal Uddin Bhuiyan, the fire officer who led the rescue operation.
Continue reading...Anne de Henning travelled through Bangladesh between 1971 and 1972, during the war of independence, photographing freedom fighters, families, refugee trains, and women fleeing villages
To mark the 50th anniversary of Bangladesh’s independence, her images are on display at the National Art Gallery in Dhaka, 10–31 December
Continue reading...From a mosque that breathes to innovative bamboo houses, Marina Tabassum has won the prestigious Soane medal for her humanitarian buildings
For the people of coastal Bangladesh, the monsoon can bring untold torment – and, occasionally, unexpected joy. Every year from June to October, in the Ganges delta region where the country’s three major rivers converge, the waterways swell and riverbanks burst, causing catastrophic flooding. The torrential rainfall is joined by heavy glacial runoff from the Himalayas, exacerbated in recent years by global heating. Homes and livelihoods are lost overnight. But the meltwater also brings cascades of sediment that, a few months later, leave unpredictable gifts – new strips of land, known as “chars”, rising from the riverbed.
“You can’t really call it land,” says Marina Tabassum, who has been awarded the Soane medal, the first architect from the global south to win the prestigious gong. “It is wetness. It belongs to the river. But for the landless, the chars offer some years of relief. They provide a place to fish, cultivate and settle with their families.”
Tabassum turned her attentions to the delta region last year when the pandemic struck and work in her Dhaka office, MTA, slowed down. It gave her time to pause and reflect, and reassess where the skills of an architect can make the most difference. The national lockdown had caused many to lose their jobs, increasing homelessness in the region, with countless delta-dwellers forced to live under makeshift tarpaulin shelters.
Footage shared on social media blamed for igniting violence between communities that left seven dead, buildings torched and many living in fear
It was early morning when Achintya Das, a 55-year-old teacher in the city of Cumilla in Bangladesh, was woken by the ringing of his mobile phone. On the other end of the line was a fearful, stricken voice. Come quickly, the local told him, something very grave had happened. A Qur’an had been found in the shrine they had recently erected for the upcoming Hindu festival of Durga Puja. The Islamic holy book had been placed on a statue of the Hindu god Hanuman.
Das, a Hindu who organised the festival in Cumilla, felt dread rise up in him at the news of the desecration of Muslim holy scripture in their shrine. “It didn’t even take me a second to understand the gravity of the situation. I rushed there immediately,” he said.
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