Sept, 2007

Wasfia Nazreen tells us from Dharamsala, the exiled-capital of Tibet, what's going on and why we should care.

March 10. Another deja-vu scenario of the same old tradition of activities to be carried out for the National Uprising Day of Tibet. Since 1959, millions of refugees have crossed the mighty Himalayan ranges. And continue to do so today, fighting against mind altering conditions, in order to get away from the orders enforced by the Chinese government. The picturesque Shangri-La may not be found here on this side of the Himalayas, yet a certain amount of peace in just about the right quantity seems to prevail in our lives here. It is not easy for a tourist to truly comprehend right away the amount of suffering most of the inhabitants of this area have gone through and still go through to some extent.

Sept, 2011

WASFIA NAZREEN elaborates on the concept of indigenousness in the context of Bangladesh.

The recent debate on 'indigenousness' in the context of Bangladesh has thrown up many questions on the appropriateness of the 'indigenous' identity of the peoples of Bangladesh, particularly the Pahari (hill) peoples of the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT). The government line is that the Paharis are not indigenous to Bangladesh, while Bengalis are. On the other hand, the Jumma peoples and the Plains Adibashis insist that they are indigenous peoples.

Who is right? Who are the Indigenous -- the Adibashis or the Bengalis? Or are they both indigenous?

Nov, 2011

'Fallen' women are our fellow women, contemplates WASFIA NAZREEN, high up on Kilimanjaro.

For the longest time, I have had callings that often seemed too deep to steer. I was taught when I was a child, that “We are all soul. And then, we have a body that is only the chariot for it.” As we grow older, we get so caught up in our surrounding environments, and get attached to this body that those beliefs, somehow, somewhere down the line, disappeared into the ether. I have led, for the most part, an intensely struggling life. But if we don't falter our trust, the Universe has its own way of taking care of it at some point or another.

April 29, 2007

“What remains of us…?” A popular contemporary Tibetan saying, quite often accompanied with humor, sighs, exclamations, resentments, the like and the non-like. Beyond the exiled community’s despair remains a different set of unheard stories of Tibetans, who are stuck within the silent pain-realms of their own geographical homeland, continually being the direct subject of a far too long cultural genocide by foreign occupants.

Oct 13, 2010

On August, our Election Commission — in an announcement that sounded too good to be true — had recognised the title of sex workers to be added to our National ID cards. That is, along with journalists, nurses, tailors, priests and many other existing professions, sex workers were legally accepted in the central database of voters’ roll.

Election Commissioner Shakhawat Hossain was quoted by the AFP: “If anyone wants to put sex work as a profession, we will recognise that. There is nothing wrong with it. After all, it is one of the oldest professions on earth. We honour the human rights of all professionals.”

April 26, 2011

Water drenched, tropical sweat-soaked while celebrating Songkrant festival just north of Chiang Mai, Thailand, my phone started getting clogged with alarming news coming from the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

Another arson attack, another settler versus indigenous clash and henceforth more deaths, another authority-backed violent incident in our country, another media outcry that doesn’t tell all the stories.

June 21, 2011

On 19 June 2011 a national English daily reported that our honourable State Minister for Environment and Forests, Dr Hasan Mahmud, is planning to introduce hippopotami, imported from Africa, into the Kaptai Lake area of Rangamati, in the semi-autonomous region of Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The Minister, who got the idea during a recent visit to Kenya, was reported as saying, “if we can have hippos in the Kaptai Lake, it will draw many tourists and add a new species to our biodiversity.”