Category Archives: Bangladesh

Act now to prevent oxygen shortage in Covid-hit countries, say campaigners

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Focus on vaccines and tests has been obscuring the need for oxygen in low- and middle-income countries

The scenes in India of families desperately searching for oxygen for critically ill Covid patients will be repeated in Bangladesh, Ethiopia and other countries in Africa and around the world unless a significant international effort is made to ensure all countries have good oxygen supplies, campaigners have said.

The focus on vaccines and tests, while important, has been obscuring the need for oxygen, which is cheap and readily available in high-income countries but in short supply elsewhere, they say. Before India, there was similarly shocking footage from Manaus in Brazil where distressed relatives pleaded for oxygen to keep a family member alive.

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Rape victims in south Asia still face vaginal tests, report finds

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Unscientific ‘morality’ examination linked to low conviction rates and violates women’s rights, says Equality Now

Physical vaginal tests are still used to determine whether women and girls have been raped in India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, according to a new report.

The practice remains widespread in all three countries and some courts refer to the test in judgments, despite it having no scientific basis and being banned in India.

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UK south-Asian diaspora despairs as India joins Covid red list

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With travel from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh banned, some UK families are stuck abroad, while others cannot visit frail relatives

For the past 17 months, Saurav Dutt has had to watch from afar as relatives were lost to Covid, ancestral homes were damaged by a typhoon, and the mental toll of isolation, grief and illness led elders to question their very existence.

He had flights booked for May, but with cases soaring and India on the UK’s travel red list from 23 April, that is no longer an option. “It’s a very worrying time,” Dutt said. “You would think there are a million ways to help from over here, but we’re handcuffed. To deal with these things we need to be there.”

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Five people killed as police fire at protesting workers in Bangladesh

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Employees were demanding unpaid wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant, officials and police said

At least five people were killed and dozens injured in Bangladesh after police opened fire on a crowd of workers protesting to demand unpaid wages and a pay rise at a Chinese-backed power plant, officials and police said.

Police opened fire after about 2,000 of the protesters began hurling bricks and stones at officers at the construction site of the coal-fired plant in the south-eastern city of Chittagong, local police official Azizul Islam told Reuters.

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‘Out of Trump playbook’: UK accused of ‘abandoning’ women with cuts to aid

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Charity warns of 22,000 additional deaths in poorest countries if Wish reproductive health programme ends

The director of a leading sexual and reproductive health charity has accused the government of “abandoning” women and girls it promised to help, as aid cuts derail a leading Tory programme to reduce maternal deaths and prevent unsafe abortions in poor countries.

The threat to the women’s integrated sexual health (Wish) programme could mean 7.5m additional unintended pregnancies, 2.7m unsafe abortions and 22,000 maternal deaths over the next year, said Dr Alvaro Bermejo, director general of International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF).

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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‘Bangladesh has come a long way’: people of Dhaka on half a century of independence

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A rickshaw rider, a domestic worker, a student and a photographer on how their lives have changed

Habibur Rahman, 48, rickshaw rider

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The making of a megacity: how Dhaka transformed in 50 years of Bangladesh

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In the half century since independence, the capital has grown from peaceful town to economic hub. But does it live up to the dreams of those still flocking to work there?

On the banks of the Buriganga, Old Dhaka’s boatmen only ever rest a moment before making their return journey, endlessly ferrying passengers back and forth across the river.

They pick them up at the Sadarghat docks, the historical trading hub that helped build the city, and row them towards the sprawling suburbs that have crept across what used to be open farmland two decades ago.

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‘I’ve lost everything once again’: Rohingya recount horror of Cox’s Bazar blaze

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Refugees caught up in the deadly blaze describe panic and despair after fire tore through the Balukhali area on Monday

Marium Khatun, 40, was feeding her 10-month-old son at home when she first saw the fire and smoke nearby. Realising a huge blaze was ripping through the Cox’s Bazar refugee camp just metres from her two-room shack, she panicked.

“I suddenly noticed people were running, scattered on the road in front of my house. I came to the door and saw this huge fire around 30 metres (100ft) away from my house. I couldn’t think straight.

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Hundreds of people missing after Rohingya refugee camp fire

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At least 15 people killed as blaze spread across Bangladesh camp of about 124,000 refugees from Myanmar

Hundreds of people are missing with at least 15 confirmed dead, including three children, after a fire tore through a camp for Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh.

The toll was exacerbated by barbed wire fencing that caged refuges into areas of the sprawling Balukhali camp that were going up in flames, aid workers said.

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Hundreds of people missing after fire in Rohingya refugee camp in Bangladesh – video

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At least 15 people have been killed and another 400 are missing after a fire tore through Balukhali camp near Cox’s Bazar late on Monday. More than 17,000 shelters were destroyed, leaving 45,000 people displaced. Emergency services, volunteers and Red Cross staff worked for several hours to control the blaze. The camp houses about 124,000 people, although the surrounding area shelters approximately 1 million Rohingya refugees

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Bangladesh: ‘massive’ fire in Rohingya refugee camps forces 20,000 to flee

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  • 1 million who fled Myanmar live in camps in Cox’s Bazar
  • No reports of deaths or injuries so far

At least 20,000 Rohingya have fled a huge blaze engulfing shanty homes at refugee camps in south-eastern Bangladesh, officials said on Monday, in the third fire to hit the settlements in four days.

Nearly 1 million of the Muslim minority from Myanmar live in cramped and squalid conditions at the camps in the Cox’s Bazar district, with many fleeing a military crackdown in their homeland in 2017.

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Bangladesh shipbreakers win right to sue UK owners in landmark ruling

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Appeal court clears wife to sue company in London over husband’s death while helping to scrap tanker in Chittagong

British shipping companies that sell old vessels to be scrapped cheaply in dangerous, low-paid conditions in Bangladesh, India or Pakistan may now be sued in London for workers’ deaths or injuries.

In the first ruling of its kind by any higher court anywhere in the world, the court of appeal of England and Wales has held that a shipping company in London selling a vessel in south Asia could owe a legal “duty of care” to shipbreaking workers in Bangladesh even where there are multiple third parties involved in the transaction.

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Hong Kong activists and plight of the Uighurs: human rights this week in photos

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A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to the Sahara

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Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar as it gears up for World Cup

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Guardian analysis indicates shocking figure likely to be an underestimate, as preparations for 2022 tournament continue

More than 6,500 migrant workers from India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have died in Qatar since it won the right to host the World Cup 10 years ago, the Guardian can reveal.

The findings, compiled from government sources, mean an average of 12 migrant workers from these five south Asian nations have died each week since the night in December 2010 when the streets of Doha were filled with ecstatic crowds celebrating Qatar’s victory.

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‘Fighting for life’: Bangladesh shrimp farmers destitute in wake of cyclone

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Natural disaster compounded by the collapse of a lucrative export during the pandemic has thrust people into poverty

This time last year the west coast of Bangladesh was a thriving place for shrimp farmers. It was a decent enough living and there was a healthy export market.

Majnu Sardar, who lives in Koyra upazila (administrative region) in Khulna district, used to earn enough to feed, clothe and educate his family of six. Now they are living in a small mud hut, with a canopy of leaves as a roof, on the banks of the Kapotaksha River after Cyclone Amphan buried his house and land in May.

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‘Back empty-handed’: Bangladeshis cut off from jobs abroad face rising poverty

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Whole communities supported by overseas work are at risk of extreme poverty after the pandemic forced thousands home

When the pandemic forced Firoza Begum back to Bangladesh after six months trapped in her employer’s house without pay, her husband was so angry she had returned empty-handed that he would not let her move back in to the family home.

All her savings after 14 years working in the Middle East had been spent escaping her abusive employer.

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Air pollution will lead to mass migration, say experts after landmark ruling

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Call for world leaders to act in wake of French extradition case that turned on environmental concerns

Air pollution does not respect national boundaries and environmental degradation will lead to mass migration in the future, said a leading barrister in the wake of a landmark migration ruling, as experts warned that government action must be taken as a matter of urgency.

Sailesh Mehta, a barrister specialising in environmental cases, said: “The link between migration and environmental degradation is clear. As global warming makes parts of our planet uninhabitable, mass migration will become the norm. Air and water pollution do not respect national boundaries. We can stop a humanitarian and political crisis from becoming an existential one. But our leaders must act now.”

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Man saved from deportation after pollution plea in French legal ‘first’

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Court says man would face ‘worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution’ in country of origin

A Bangladeshi man with asthma has avoided deportation from France after his lawyer argued that he risked a severe deterioration in his condition, and possibly premature death, due to the dangerous levels of pollution in his homeland.

In a ruling believed to be the first of its kind in France, the appeals court in Bordeaux overturned an expulsion order against the 40-year-old man because he would face “a worsening of his respiratory pathology due to air pollution” in his country of origin.

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‘There is no noise’: inside the controversial Bhasan Char refugee camp – a photo essay

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Amid concern from charities and NGOs, Bangladesh is relocating Rohinghya refugees to a remote island. One resident describes his new life there

I wanted to come here. No one forced me, and my wife also agreed in a snap.

To be honest, though, I didn’t tell my brother. He lives where I used to live – Kutupalong camp. He is very against this island for some reason. He might have tried to stop me coming if I dared to discuss the topic. So I didn’t. I only told him after I arrived. I was amazed that he didn’t yell at me.

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