Tatas pull out of $3-billion projects in Bangladesh

Tata Group today shelved its plans to invest $3 billion in assorted projects in Bangladesh after struggling for nearly four years to secure the neighbouring nation's nod on assured gas supply.

The investments promised by the salt-to-steel-to-software giant would have been the single biggest foreign direct investment in the history of Bangladesh. The Tata Group had in 2005 announced a 2.4 million tonne steel plant, a one million tonne urea plant and a 1,000 MW thermal power plant entailing a cumulative investment of $ 2.5 billion.

The group had entered into a 15-year gas-and-coal supply agreement with the government, but Dhaka continued to dither on the commitment owing to fluid political situation. This had irked Tatas' to a point that the group was forced to suspend work on the projects. "The (Bangladesh) government will not be in a position, in the foreseeable future, to grant the projects the natural gas commitment they would require. Consequently, there is no prospect in taking these projects further," the group said in a statement. It had also handed over a letter to the executive chairman, Board of Investment, of the Bangladesh government to this effect, the statement added. The group, however, clarified that it has other interests in Bangladesh, and it would continue to develop them.

The Tatas said they had proposed four large projects in 2004 and had intensive discussions with the government until 2006. "At that point, the group suspended further work on the projects, as an agreement on key issues with the government was not possible," the statement said.

Bangladesh: Catholic schools popular with Muslims

Muslims are apparently attracted to Catholic schools because of the quality
of education. About 90 percent of students in Catholic schools are not
Christian.

The good scores that students of Catholic schools posted in the secondary
school examinations this year back claims by parents and guardians of
students who are not Catholics that the schools offer some of the
best-quality education in Bangladesh.

Pratibeshi, the national Bangla-language weekly published by the Catholic
bishops' Christian Communications Centre, conducted a survey in 20
Catholic-run schools in Dhaka diocese on the results of the Secondary School
Certificate (SSC) exam. All students throughout the country take this exam
when they finish 10th grade.

According to the survey, which Pratibeshi published its July 6-12 edition,
1,961 students in the 20 Catholic-run schools took the exam this year in
June. Of these, only 71 failed, giving a pass rate of 96 percent.

"In the context of Bangladesh, this is an excellent result," said Sumon
Corraya, the Pratibeshi reporter who conducted the survey.

"This was a very simple survey to know how many students took the SSC exam
and how many passed," he explained to UCA News. He pointed out that it did
not take into account the religion of the students, but added that the
number of Catholics could be "counted on one's fingers."

Corraya said the weekly carried out a similar survey last year, but the
results were not as impressive.

This year 1 million students took the SSC exam under nine educational boards
in the country and 70.81 percent passed.

The Catholic Church in Bangladesh runs 287 schools and colleges with close
to 143,500 students. About 90 percent of the students at the 227 primary
schools, 56 high schools and four colleges are not Christians.

UCA News spoke to several students, parents and guardians about their views
on Catholic education.

Mohammad Tawhidul Islam, 17, from Holy Cross Brothers-run St. Gregory's High
School said he was "proud" of being a "Gregorian." Islam passed the SSC exam
with an A-plus, the highest rating category.

"Mission schools are not only good for delivering quality education. They
also provide ideal formation for students by nurturing them through
extracurricular activities such as inter-school debates, quizzes on general
knowledge and cultural activities," he said. The youth added that he dreams
of becoming an engineer.

Shamsul Alam, now a medical doctor, similarly lauded the quality of Catholic
schooling and said he is aiming to get his nephew, Belalur Rahman, into
Notre Dame College, run by Holy Cross priests in Dhaka, after he passes the
SSC.

Syeduzzaman Rowshan, who works for the Bangla daily Prothom Alo (first
light) in Dhaka, already has his nephew studying at Notre Dame.

"The Christian college provides true education through a systematic and
disciplined way," he commented, saying it is politics-free, has strict rules
on students' attendance and offers "true formation to be an ideal person."

Holy Cross Sister Shopna Gomes, who assists in the administration of Holy
Cross Girls' College, told UCA News: "Our college will take a maximum of
1,200-1,400 girl students who passed this year's SSC. But already 5,500
girls have applied for college admission."

One hopeful Muslim mother, Hafiza Khanam Shudha, was standing in a queue to
submit admissions papers for her younger daughter to this college.

She said her elder daughter was studying science at the college with the
hope of becoming a doctor. "I want my younger daughter to study commerce at
this college, too," she said.

According to Shudha, the college not only provides good formal education,
but also teaches discipline and moral education, which she called essential
for true human formation.

Robi Dores, a Catholic, said her son had passed the SSC and had just got
into Notre Dame College. She praised the Church for doing "great work" in
the field of education.

Bangladesh RAB cracks down on 'genie-powered godmen'

DHAKA - Five men who claimed they could solve any problem through
supernatural powers and genies they had "domesticated" have been arrested by
Bangladesh's elite security force, an official said Wednesday.

The Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) took the five into custody in a day-long
operation on Tuesday after they were accused of swindling people out of
large sums of money, captain Rezaul Karim said.

"Every day, these genie-powered godmen place ads in the newspapers claiming
they can solve any problem on earth through supernatural powers and genies
that they have captured and 'domesticated,'" Karim said.

Email to a friend

"They took large amounts of money from jilted lovers promising they would
bring back the ones they love. They claim to have power to reunite separated
couples in just 72 hours, win lotteries as far away as in Germany or boost
sexual powers," he said.

The RAB, the country's top security force, which is normally assigned to
fight Islamic terrorists or top Maoist outlaws, stormed dens of other
alleged godmen, but many had gone into hiding, Karim said.

The so-called godmen have been flourishing in impoverished Bangladesh, and
some of them have millions of followers. The arrests marked the first time
the government has sought to rein in their activities.

The emergency government ruling Bangladesh has vowed to stamp out corruption
before it holds national elections by the end of the year.

Bangladesh gaining land, not losing: scientists

New data shows that Bangladesh's landmass is increasing, contradicting
forecasts that the South Asian nation will be under the waves by the end of
the century, experts say.

Scientists from the Dhaka-based Center for Environment and Geographic
Information Services (CEGIS) have studied 32 years of satellite images and
say Bangladesh's landmass has increased by 20 square kilometres (eight
square miles) annually.

Maminul Haque Sarker, head of the department at the government-owned centre
that looks at boundary changes, told AFP sediment which travelled down the
big Himalayan rivers -- the Ganges and the Brahmaputra -- had caused the
landmass to increase.

The rivers, which meet in the centre of Bangladesh, carry more than a
billion tonnes of sediment every year and most of it comes to rest on the
southern coastline of the country in the Bay of Bengal where new territory
is forming, he said in an interview on Tuesday.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has
predicted that impoverished Bangladesh, criss-crossed by a network of more
than 200 rivers, will lose 17 percent of its land by 2050 because of rising
sea levels due to global warming.

The Nobel Peace Prize-winning panel says 20 million Bangladeshis will become
environmental refugees by 2050 and the country will lose some 30 percent of
its food production.

Director of the US-based NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, professor
James Hansen, paints an even grimmer picture, predicting the entire country
could be under water by the end of the century.

But Sarker said that while rising sea levels and river erosion were both
claiming land in Bangladesh, many climate experts had failed to take into
account new land being formed from the river sediment.

"Satellite images dating back to 1973 and old maps earlier than that show
some 1,000 square kilometres of land have risen from the sea," Sarker said.

"A rise in sea level will offset this and slow the gains made by new
territories, but there will still be an increase in land. We think that in
the next 50 years we may get another 1,000 square kilometres of land."

Mahfuzur Rahman, head of Bangladesh Water Development Board's Coastal Study
and Survey Department, has also been analysing the buildup of land on the
coast.

He told AFP findings by the IPCC and other climate change scientists were
too general and did not explore the benefits of land accretion.

"For almost a decade we have heard experts saying Bangladesh will be under
water, but so far our data has shown nothing like this," he said.

"Natural accretion has been going on here for hundreds of years along the
estuaries and all our models show it will go on for decades or centuries
into the future."

Dams built along the country's southern coast in the 1950s and 1960s had
helped reclaim a lot of land and he believed with the use of new technology,
Bangladesh could speed up the accretion process, he said.

"The land Bangladesh has lost so far has been caused by river erosion, which
has always happened in this country. Natural accretion due to sedimentation
and dams have more than compensated this loss," Rahman said.

Bangladesh, a country of 140 million people, has built a series of dykes to
prevent flooding.

"If we build more dams using superior technology, we may be able to reclaim
4,000 to 5,000 square kilometres in the near future," Rahman said.

Bangladesh to send 900,000 workers abroad

The Bangladeshi caretaker government Sunday said it has set the target of
sending a record number of 900,000 manpower abroad this fiscal year (from
July 2008 to June 2009).

In the last fiscal year (from July 2007 to June 2008), the country sent
832,000 workers mainly to Malaysia and oil-rich Middle Eastern countries,
making record remittance of over 6.6 billion US dollars.

This amount was more than seven percent of the country's GDP, five times the
overseas aid, and ten times the foreign direct investment.

In this fiscal year the remittance is expected to exceed nine billion US
dollars, caretaker government Foreign Adviser Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, who
is also in charge of the Ministry of Overseas Employment, said Sunday while
briefing Chief Adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed.

The export of manpower is Bangladesh's second largest foreign exchange
earning sector after the apparel sector that used to fetch around nine
billion US dollars a year.

Of the targeted 900,000 workforce to be sent this fiscal year, the number of
skilled and semi-skilled would be 400,000.

The foreign adviser said the upgrade of skill is being done by 38 Technical
Training Centres whose programs are now being designed in line with demand.
This fiscal year the Technical Training Centres will produce 49,000
trainees, a record, as compared to last fiscal year's 26,000.

Iftekhar said diplomatic efforts are constantly underway with countries
where the Bangladeshi workers were facing problems, and many of these issues
have been resolved.

5.6 magnitude earthquake jolts most parts of Bangladesh

An earthquake measuring 5.6 magnitude on the Richter scale jolted most parts
of Bangladesh early Sunday with some students from Dhaka University were
injured.

According to Weather Office of the Bangladeshi government, the earthquake
took place at 00:50 local time (19:50 GMT) with the center in Sylhet
district, 238 km northest of capital Dhaka.

The earthquake lasted for around a dozen of seconds in capital Dhaka. Local
television channel ATN reported in its morning bulletin that about 60 Dhaka
University students jumped out from their dormitory and 25 of out of them
were injured and taken to Dhaka Medical College University.

When Barguna district, 247 km south of Dhaka, was contacted after the
earthquake, the people there also felt the earthquake.

Bangladesh trade gap with India-China rises 57 pct

Bangladesh's trade deficit with neighbouring India and China rose 57 percent
to $4.35 billion in July-April of 2007/08 financial year from the same
period of previous year, a central bank official said on Sunday.

Economists and business leaders said impoverished Bangladesh should try to
penetrate markets in those two countries more to narrow the yawning trade
gap.

"They are also very big importers in international markets and we must try
to access them by diversifying and improving the quality of our exportable
products," said Mustafizur Rahman, executive director of the Centre for
Policy Dialogue, a private thinktank.

He said the import bill from those countries had risen sharply in recent
years because of both rising prices and growing volumes.

"Earlier Bangladesh used to import machinery and industrial raw materials
mainly from Japan, the USA, European countries and South Korea, and now
those are being imported principally from India and China for the cheaper
prices," he told Reuters.

As a least developed country Bangladesh enjoys duty-free market access in
India, Pakistan, Japan, Thailand, Korea and European countries for a number
of products.

"Though there is a huge trade gap with India and China, we are also enjoying
a healthy and comfortable trade surplus with the USA and European countries
by using raw materials imported from our giant neighbours," Mustafizur said.

Bangladesh enjoys a $2.4 billion annual trade surplus with the U.S., while
annual export earnings from Europe are more than $5 billion, with a
"handsome" surplus in favour of Bangladesh, he said.

Bangladesh mainly imports cotton, machinery, mechanical appliances, fabrics,
fertiliser, vehicles and organic chemicals from China.

China imports jute and jute goods, leather, frozen foods and chemicals from
Bangladesh.

Bangladesh exports garments to India duty free for first time

DHAKA (AFP) - Bangladesh has exported garments to India for the first time under a duty-free access deal seen as a breakthrough for the country's fast-growing textile industry, an official said on Monday.

Neighbours Bangladesh and India signed the deal last September, allowing Dhaka to annually export eight million garments duty-free across the border, an agreement hailed by New Delhi as a "milestone" in trade relations.

"Our companies have for the first time in history shipped garments to India this month under a duty-free access deal," said Anwar-ul Alam Chowdhury Parvez, president of Bangladesh Garments Manufacturers and Exporters Association.

"We've exported a small quantity, but it's a giant leap for the industry. It is projected that India's ready-made garments market would top 100 billion dollars by 2012. Our target is to get a slice of this huge market," he added.

Bangladesh, which has a two-billion-dollar trade gap with India, last year exported more than nine billion dollars of textiles, mainly to the United States and the European Union.

The country's textile export market is growing rapidly, spurred by a weak Bangladeshi currency and a sharp increase in production costs in China and Vietnam, its main global rivals.

The improvement in trade relations comes against a backdrop of sometimes tense relations between the neighbours.

India helped Bangladesh win independence from Pakistan in 1971 but ties in recent years have often been soured by border skirmishes for which both sides blame the other.

Indian officials regularly accuse Bangladesh of harbouring militants fighting New Delhi's rule in India's far-flung northeast.

Dhaka denies the charge and says New Delhi allows Bangladeshi criminals to take refuge on its soil.

Bangladesh: The New Frontier for Banks

[Citi's chief country officer for Bangladesh, Mamun Rashid, talks about what opportunities lie ahead for the bank]

by Lara Wozniak

Bangladesh remains one of the few remaining outposts in investment banking in Asia. But banks are steadily investing in the country and last year Citi established an investment banking presence in Bangladesh. The bank's chief country officer for the country, Mamun Rashid, explains what opportunities lay ahead for Citi in Bangladesh.

What investment banking opportunities are there in Bangladesh?
There is a wide range of opportunities to help clients in Bangladesh raise capital to support their growth or advise them on opportunities to grow either domestically or internationally. We are also seeing an increased interest from companies looking to invest in Bangladesh.

A recent example of this would be the announcement in mid-June where AK Khan & Co signed a definitive agreement for the sale of its 30% stake in TMIB to NTT DoCoMo for a purchase consideration of $350 million. [TMIB is the third largest mobile operator in Bangladesh, with around 7.1 million subscribers as of December 2007: AKK is one of the largest and oldest private sector corporations in Bangladesh.]

The acquisition by NTT DoCoMo will serve to increase its footprint in the fast growing Asian wireless market. What better example of the increasing international investment appetite into Bangladesh than an investment by one of the world's leading corporations?

On the capital markets front, the pace of privatisation is increasing and the government has started floating state-owned enterprises. Last year alone 14 companies were listed on the Dhaka Stock Exchange through IPOs. The pace of reform has been impressive and the government and regulators have done a good job in promoting development. Over the past five years the Asian Development Bank along with the Securities Exchange Commission have developed new trading rules, public issue rules, settlement systems and bond issuance rules to govern the market and create more transparency in the marketplace.

More and more companies in Bangladesh are also increasingly using risk management products and hedging in today's volatile global markets. This is also something where we can play a role via our equities, fixed income, currencies and commodities teams to help clients navigate these volatile markets, including hedging against future rises in commodities prices.

What is Citi's history in Bangladesh?
Citibank established its presence in Bangladesh through a representative office in 1987. The bank opened its first full-service branch in Dhaka in 1995 and the second branch in Chittagong in 2000. At present, Citibank Bangladesh has four branches, and two offshore banking units in the export processing zones in both Dhaka and Chittagong.

Our operations include the major business units of Citi's Institutional Clients Group, such as corporate and commercial banking, global transaction services. We also received a license for investment banking operations earlier this year.

How sophisticated are some of Bangladesh's leading companies? What products and services do they use?
There is a noticeable increase in sophistication, the dialogue we are having with some of our clients in the country is evolving fast: 'What are my opportunities in the international capital markets?' or 'Give me some local and regional ideas to help me grow our business...' are now regular discussions that were not so common just a few years ago.

Our main business though remains in the global transaction services space. Many companies in Bangladesh are looking for-cost effective and flexible transaction management services. In April, Citi signed a network arrangement which will allow our clients to use the more than 10,000 post offices in Bangladesh for their regular banking services. Also this year we signed an agreement with Dhaka Electric Supply Authority to offer our CitiConnect services to help them facilitate online bill collections and payment services. We are also active in the corporate and commercial banking space, providing corporate loans and other products to small- and medium-sized companies and multinationals in the country.

Bangladesh is also a pioneer in the field of microfinance services and we were honoured to have led the world's first micro credit securitisation for BRAC in 2007, allowing BRAC to diversify its funding sources and help develop the microfinance sector in Bangladesh.

What are some of the challenges?
Let me give you a vision. It is the year 2021, the golden jubilee of independence. Bangladesh has just become a poverty-free, middle-income nation with a per capita income exceeding $3,000. Bangladesh is well on its way to become the 22nd largest economy in the world and a globally integrated regional economic and commercial hub. Economists around the world are at awe at the overwhelming success of this South-Asian nation. It seems just a few years ago in fact, that it used to be called the poorest of the poor. The recent track record of the country certainly gives us hope that we will indeed be able to see this vision materialise.

The World Bank calls the phenomenon the Bangladesh Paradox. The Bangladesh economy has steadily accelerated in recent years, with growth reaching almost 7% in fiscal 2006-2007. In spite of the country's troubled political environment and poverty, it has scored particularly well on socioeconomic indicators. Global banks and multilateral institutions present a highly optimistic outlook. Points they highlight: This impressive growth has occurred in a climate of political restructuring. The government is implementing reforms toward privatising many state-owned enterprises. The Dhaka Stock Exchange Index is at a 10-year high, up 66% this year, making it Asia's top performer after China. And the stock market is expected to double in size in 2008.

However, Bangladesh has failed to realise the full potential of its development prospects. Despite the major socioeconomic progress made in recent years, obstacles like political instability, poor resource mobilisation and a weak capital market are impeding the attainment of economic emancipation. Government revenues, at only 10.7% of gross domestic product, remain far too low to meet growing demand for infrastructure and social services. The country's primary foreign exchange earner-the garment industry-is now more constrained by poor infrastructure, including ports, roads, rail, and power supply, than by inadequate trade access.

Some of these issues need to be addressed in the coming years if Bangladesh is to reach its full potential.

How easy is it to convince some of your seniors to visit Bangladesh when they come to Asia?
Most of my colleagues in Asia realise that Bangladesh has always had potential and this potential is now turning into reality so it is certainly getting easier. In the last 12 months, we have had more than 20 visits from our Asian senior management team and once they have come once, they want to come back-we do also have some excellent restaurants in the country, which helps. Global management is the next challenge and I am confident as our business grows and develops in Bangladesh, it will not be too long before Dhaka will be on the agenda of senior visits as the likes of Mumbai and Shanghai are now.

What is the outlook for the Bangladesh economy and what plans do you have to grow in Bangladesh?
We expect GDP to moderate in the coming year to 6% on the back of lower agricultural growth, rising inflation and political uncertainty. 2007 was a difficult year for Bangladesh with rising food prices, the floods and the devastating cyclone. Double digit inflation persists and remains a danger but the central bank has stated that growth is also a priority which should leave in place an accommodative monetary stance. On the external front, we expect the trade balance to widen further on the back of rising food imports and lower exports given the US slowdown.

But Bangladesh's endurance in the face of growing adversity is well known. In spite of all the recent history, the economy maintained a growth rate of well over 6% in 2007. Similar to most developing economies, consumption continues to be a key driver for growth, comprising as much as 80% of GDP. I am confident that while the next 12 months will not be smooth, there is certainly every reason to be optimistic. As such, we will continue to invest and grow our business in the country to help Bangladesh and its companies develop further.

Wozniak is an editor at FinanceAsia.com.

BNP-led four party group decides to boycott local govt polls

Dhaka, Jun 30 -- A four party alliance led by detained former premier Khaleda Zia's Bangladesh Nationalist Party has decided to boycott the upcoming local polls, saying contesting would legitimise the "illegal activities" of the current regime.
"There is no question of legitimising the government by taking part in a farcical election," BNP secretary general Khandaker Delwar Hussain told reporters last night, after a meeting of the alliance, which includes the fundamentalist Jamaat-e-Islami.

Hussain also warned of stern actions against grassroot leaders of the grouping if they contested the polls defying the alliance's stand.

He, however, said the alliance could reconsider its decision only if Zia and detained JI chief Motiur Rehman Nizami were released, the ex-premier's two detained sons were allowed to undergo medical treatment abroad and the current state of emergency was completely lifted immediately.

"We will consider contesting the polls only if our demands are met and the time has not yet run out," he said.

The four-party decision came two days after Zia's arch rival ex-premier Sheikh Hasina's Awami League (AL) eventually decided to take part in the city corporation and municipal elections slated for August 4, reviewing an earlier stand, in a meeting of the party's working committee.

"After weighing the pros and cons, we have unanimously decided to participate in the local government polls in the interest of democracy, peace and stability in the country," AL acting President Zillur Rahman had said earlier after the working committee meeting.

Bangladesh's forex reserve hits all-time high

DHAKA, July 1 -- Bangladesh's foreign exchange reserve rose to 6.16 billion U.S. dollars Monday which is the highest ever in the history of Bangladesh, local newspaper reported Tuesday.

"The foreign exchange reserve reached the ever-highest level mainly due to significant inflow of remittances and disbursement of soft loans by multilateral donor agencies," a senior central bank official was quoted by English daily The Financial Express assaying.

The reserve went up as the World Bank recently released 315 million U.S. dollars and the Asian Development Bank 32 million U.S. dollars as soft loans, the Bangladesh Bank official said.

Besides, the country received around 50 million U.S. dollars recently from the United Nations for participating in the peacekeeping missions.

Bangladesh received 7.163 billion U.S. dollars in remittance during the period of July-May of the fiscal 2007-08 ending on June30, marking a 31.14 percent growth over the corresponding period in last fiscal, according to the central bank statistics.

Bangladesh war crimes stir tension

By Mark Dummett, BBC News, Dhaka

As Bangladesh's bloody war of independence from Pakistan came to its end, Dr MA Hassan went in search of his brother.

He was afraid that Selim, who like him was an officer in the pro-liberation forces, had been killed in one of the last battles of the conflict, and he wanted to recover his corpse.

He didn't find it, but as he stumbled through a marsh at the northern edge of Dhaka, he came across a horrific scene.

"That day, 31 January 1972, I saw a few hundred bodies, mutilated dead bodies, littered all around that place," he recalled. "There were marks of torture on every body; nails turned out, eyes gouged out, hearts taken out."

He added: "Some were female, their breasts were amputated, private parts mutilated. I had to push the bodies one by one to make my way. Mostly they were the innocent public."

We did not take part in any of the crimes that has been alleged against us
Abdur Razzak, Jamaat-e-Islami lawyer

At that time, hundreds of other mass graves were also being discovered across the newly independent country. This followed a nine-month war when the Pakistani army tried to bludgeon the citizens of its eastern province into renouncing their dreams of self-rule.

The crisis was precipitated when East Pakistanis (who later became Bangladeshis) voted overwhelmingly in favour of autonomy and West Pakistan responded by sending in its army.

Hundreds of thousands of people were killed, including Hindus, political activists, intellectuals and students. The Pakistani army carried out "collective punishment" where they suspected villagers of helping the freedom fighters.

Thousands of women were raped, millions fled into India. Bangladeshis say the killings amounted to a genocide and that three million people died.

'Notorious'

Thirty-six years later, Dr Hassan took me back to the place where he had come across the corpses, an area called "Black Water". It is one of the wet wastelands that ring the Bangladeshi capital and life there is now perfectly normal, if bleak. When we visited, men were smashing bricks into chips to help build a new road, and women and children were washing in a pond.

There is no memorial to the hundreds of people killed there and none of the killers has ever been brought to justice. But what he witnessed has inspired Dr Hassan to do something about that.

He is a leading member of the War Crimes Fact Finding Committee which is dedicated to investigating the massacres and putting pressure on the government to hold war crime trials.

Although most killings were carried out by the Pakistan army, many locals helped them.

These collaborators became members of so-called peace committees, or armed militia of razakars (volunteers).

In one of the most notorious incidents of the war, more than 150 academics and journalists (including BBC reporter Nizamuddin Ahmed) were rounded up in Dhaka on the eve of Pakistan's defeat and killed by members of a group call Al-Badr, which was allegedly made up of members of the religious party Jamaat-e-Islami.

At the end of the war hundreds of alleged collaborators were arrested, and many were executed by pro-liberation forces.

But Bangladesh's leader, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, then granted a general amnesty and subsequent governments shied away from confronting such a controversial issue.

The War Crimes Fact Finding Committee is now at the forefront of a campaign for justice, which has gathered momentum in Bangladesh since a military-backed interim government took over in January 2007. The campaigners have been encouraged by the government's promise of political reforms.

Accused

That is because this is now a deeply political issue. Many of the people accused of committing war crimes have gone on to become influential public figures. Jamaat-e-Islami has gone from being a fringe party in 1971, to a junior coalition partner in the last elected government.

The campaigners are demanding that the authorities block Jamaat from standing in the next elections to be held in December.

None of the accusations against them are new. Reporters covering the war for newspapers such as The Times of London, and the New York Times, wrote at that time that Al-Badr comprised Jamaat members.

The War Crimes Fact Finding Committee has spent the last 19 years gathering reams of documents and eyewitness accounts to back up their claims, and has handed them over to the government, along with the names of 1,150 alleged war criminals.

But Jamaat-e-Islami, which describes itself as a "moderate Islamic political party that believes in democracy and human rights" says it is the victim of a political vendetta. None of its leaders has ever been prosecuted for their alleged activities during the war and its lawyer Abdur Razzak says the accusations are baseless.

"In this country the law of defamation has become totally ineffective," he said. "If I say you are a war criminal there is nothing you can do about it. This is being used against Jamaat-e-Islami for a political purpose.

"We did not take part in any of the crimes that has been alleged against us.

"Had there been any specific allegations, there would have been prosecutions in the last 36 years."

But Dr Hassan, who has received death threats since publishing the list of alleged war criminals, denies he has a political agenda. He says he doesn't want to "take revenge, but to break the silence of impunity".

Some of the campaigners worry that that silence will never be broken, and that unless war crime trials establish the truth soon, then there is a danger that the history of Bangladesh's cruel birth will be rewritten.

In response, a group of bloggers has now started posting archives on the web so that anyone with an internet connection can discover for themselves what happened.

Bangladesh wants SAARC fund for climate change

Tue Jul 1, 2008

DHAKA, July 1 (Reuters) - Bangladesh has proposed the creation a fund to fight climate change in densely populated South Asia, which experts say is vulnerable to rising seas, melting glaciers and greater extremes of droughts and floods.

Regional experts on climate change began two days of talks in Dhaka on Tuesday, ahead of a meeting of environment ministers from countries of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC).

"We want to find a common stand among the South Asian countries and will raise our voice together against the perils of climate changes," said Raja Devasish Roy, head of the Environment and Forest Ministry of Bangladesh, after opening the experts' meeting.

SAARC, comprising Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, will adopt a common strategy at the Dhaka meeting, officials said.

Devasish said industrialised countries were the most to blame for global warming and should compensate poorer nations by providing them grants -- not loans -- to fight the effects of climate change.

"Bangladesh has already created a fund for climate change and allocated $44 million for this purpose in the current fiscal year's (July-June) budget," Devasish said.

"We call upon all development partners and relevant agencies to come forward to contribute to this fund," he said.

Britain will host a conference in London in September on climate change impacts on Bangladesh and officials expect donors will pledge contributions at the conference.

Experts say a third of Bangladesh's coastline could be flooded if the sea rises one metre (three feet) in the next 50 years, displacing 20 million Bangladeshis from their homes and farms. This is about the same as Australia's population.

Across the region, warmer weather could cause more intense and more frequent cyclones and storm surges, leading to more salt water fouling waterways and croplands, the experts said.

Corp yields in South Asia could decrease up to 30 percent by the mid-21st century, they added.

In 2007, two successive floods ravaged Bangladesh and parts of India. In November, Cyclone Sidr killed thousands in Bangladesh and damaged large areas of agricultural land. (Reporting by Masud Karim, Writing by Anis Ahmed; Editing by David Fogarty)