The Sindhi Foundation organized a day-long poster campaign in front of the United Nations office in Geneva to make people aware of the plight of Sindhis in Pakistan’s Sindh province. The campaign was held during the 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland.  Besides slogans criticizing Pakistan and China for exploiting the resources of Sindh, the posters depicted the pictures of several Sindhi political activists, journalists and other intellectuals who were forcibly abducted, tortured and brutally killed by Pakistan’s secret agencies. Speaking to ANI, Executive Director of Sindhi Foundation, Manawar Laghari said, “The message is very very clear.  Pakistan is a hurdle and is really a curse on the earth. No one is happy. Neither the people living in Sindh, Balochistan or Pakhtunkhwa, Saraikis, Hazaras, Chitrals, Gilgit – all those oppressed people they want to get rid of this country”. He added, “They want freedom from Pakistan and my message to the United Nations is this – we want referendum under the supervision of the United Nations not what the data Pakistan has, especially with the ISI, we don’t believe in that. Under the supervision of the UN referendum to get our independence. This is our very clear message”. Laghari said that in these pictures – some of them have disappeared, some were brutally killed and tortured. Some of them are still in the torture cells of the ISI and there are some girls who are also forcefully converted. He added, “One of my friends Professor Notan Lal who is in prison under the blasphemy laws and he is facing wrong allegations against him. This is Pakistan’s strategy to suppress the Sindhis”. In a letter sent by the Sindhi Foundation to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, it explained the case of Sindh and highlighted several ongoing issues. It stated that Sindhi schools were closed in cities in Sindh and Urdu schools was opened. It also highlighted many issues like enforced disappearances of Sindhi political activists, forced conversion of Sindhi Hindu girls and agricultural land usurped by Pakistani army generals.

The International Forum for Secular Bangladesh, Switzerland chapter on Friday (local time) held a poster disposition at the Broken Chair square in front of the UN building in Geneva against Pakistan for the 1971 Bangladesh genocide. Bangladeshis living in Switzerland gathered in front of the United Nations office in Geneva to seek justice against the 1971 genocide by Pakistan and for its recognition by the international community. The protest marks the 51st anniversary of the conclusion of the worst genocide of the post-World War II era and its time to recognize the Bangladesh genocide. It is observed on December 16 which is also the Independence Day of Bangladesh. On this day, Pakistan generals surrendered to the Indian army and Bangladesh Liberation Force. On December 16, 1971, Pakistan Army surrendered to a joint India-Bangladesh force, formally making Bangladesh a new nation under the leadership of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman. The war began on March 26, 1971, and continued for 9 months – killing as many as three million people – before victory was declared in December. The slaughter, deliberate displacement, and systematic rape that Pakistani forces unleashed against ethnic Bengalis in East Pakistan over the course of eight months in 1971 killed an average of 375,000 persons per month. In the end, 3 million perished. Like so many genocides, the precursor to Pakistan’s slaughter was racism. Notably, Pakistan’s founding father Muhammad Ali Jinnah died after just a year, leaving the shape of the country unsettled, reported 1945. Ethnic Punjabis dominated the new state and sought to monopolize its institutions. Over subsequent years, West Pakistan systematically discriminated against East Pakistan, which lay more than a thousand miles away, on the other side of India’s breadth. Such systematic racism catalyzed the Bangladeshi independence movement. As the Pakistani army launched Operation Searchlight, unleashing death squads across East Pakistan to crush that province’s challenge to West Pakistan’s supremacy, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, founder of the Awami League, declared Bangladesh’s independence. Pakistani President Yahya Khan did not mince words. “Kill 3 million of them and the rest will eat out of our hands,” he declared, and that is exactly what he did. The Broken Chair sculpture symbolizes both fragility and strength, imbalance and stability, violence, and dignity. Broken Chair is the work of renowned sculptor Daniel Berset in 1997 at the request of Humanity & Inclusion (the new name of Handicap International). Made of Douglas fir wood, it stands 39 feet tall at the Place des Nations, in front of the United Nations headquarters in Geneva. Broken Chair stands in delicate balance on three legs–the fourth having been violently blown off as if by an explosive charge. The Broken Chair has a way of showing that even wounded victims of war are still standing tall with dignity.

An innocent girl, eyes filled with dreams and untold stories and her face reflects the story of a Rickshaw Girl. Amitabh Reza Chowdhury has created a film based on such a story of a girl. The film is named ‘Rickshaw Girl’ and the poster of this film has been released on Sunday.  Not only did the poster make the film-lovers in Bangladesh excited about the film, but it has also created a huge buzz in the social media. The shooting of the film had taken place in various locations across the country including Pabna and Gazipur for the past four months. Also, for the first time in Bangladesh, more than 100 houses were built in Bangabandhu Film City, Gazipur to give a look of a slum which already became a major attraction for the industry to talk about. The film “Rickshaw Girl” is based on Mitali Perkins’s best-selling book of the same name. The lead character Naima, portrayed by Novera Rahman, is the capricious elder daughter of a rickshaw-puller. Naima was a free and independent girl who grew up in a village of Bangladesh with her life being as colorful as the ‘rangolis’ she used to make. The earnings Naima made by drawing ‘rangolis’ was never enough for her and her family. However, this never stopped Naima from making ‘rangolis’ of various mixtures and collaborations of colors which so beautifully complimented one another. One day she steps out of her house with her eyes filled with dreams.  She starts facing different twists and turns in her life while chasing her dream. These turns and twist gave Naima new experiences and gathering all these experiences a brave Rickshaw girl is born. The film ‘Rickshaw Girl’ maintains international standard and Eric James Adams has produced it.  Faridur Reza Sagor and Ziauddin Adil are the joint executive producers of the film.  Naseef Faruque Amin and Sharbari Zohra Ahmed are the screenplay writers of the film. Commenting on the film ‘Rickshaw Girl’, Amitabh Reza Chowdhury, the director said, “Rickshaw Girl was made with the vision to heighten the quality productions of Bangladesh film industry on the international platforms.  We have released the poster of the film today and it represents an independent and courageous woman. Hence, we will get to see such a character and her adventurous journey in the film.” AH

Indicating that Islamic State could be planning an attack in Bangladesh or India’s West Bengal, a pro-IS Telegram channel has released a poster in Bengali saying “Coming Soon”. Sources in an Indian intelligence agency confirmed that such a poster was in circulation and that it was being looked into. The poster, released on Thursday night, reads “Shighroi Aschhe (coming soon), Inshallah..” and has the logo of a group called al Mursalat. Indian agencies have taken the poster seriously as the IS has just carried out deadly serial blasts in Sri Lanka through local outfit Tawheed Jamaat. Bangladesh already has a strong Islamic State presence with a section of local terrorist organization named Jamatul Mujahideen (New-JMB) being affiliated to ISIS Central. However, JMB operatives have also been known to frequent Kolkata and others parts of West Bengal and neighboring states for recruitment and establishing hideouts. In February this year, a JMB operative, Ariful Islam, was arrested from the Babughat area in Kolkata. He was one of the accomplices in the Bodh Gaya blast, which took place in 2018. Earlier, JMB had set up a module in Assam as well and the arrested operatives had disclosed that the outfit was using Chirang area of Lower Assam district as a training centre, an officer recalled. Last July, US agency FBI had interrogated ISIS-JMB terrorist Mohammed Musiruddin a.k.a Musa arrested by the West Bengal CID from a train at Burdwan station. Musiruddin, who had been hiding for a long time in Tamil Nadu's Tirupur district, had revealed his links with Amjad Sheikh, a key member of the JMB, arrested in 2014 in connection with the Khagragarh twin blast case. Three years ago, local JMB sleeper cells had put up posters in several districts of West Bengal asking the youth to join the terrorist organization. Source: Times of India AH