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Bangladesh Blog buzz

Rezwan · 14:09 · South Asia

1) The liberation war of Bangladesh: The blogosphere came alive on the occasion of the Victory Day of Bangladesh (former East Pakistan).

On December 16, 1971, the Pakistani occupation forces surrendered to the joint command of Indian Army and Bangladeshi freedom fighters in Dhaka after a nine-month bloody war for independence of the country. Bangladesh boldly said no to Pakistan, which was formed on the basis of religion and still is married to it. Bangladeshis gave their blood to the cause of democracy and secularism, to be free from oppression and to have a separate identity for the Bengali culture that is thousands of years old.

But the victory against the Pakistanis did come with a price. The Bangladeshis will not forget that between March 25 and December 16, 1971 estimated 3 million Bengalis were killed by the Pakistani Army and their collaborators, 200000 women raped and 10 million were displaced. This was the worst genocide after the second world war.

Subhan is furious because thirty-four years later, the victims of the genocide are yet to see one single individual of the occupation forces or their associates brought to justice. Many new generation Pakistanis do not know about their forefathers crimes. Some of the collaborators in Bangladesh took advantage of a general amnesty and even become lawmakers of the present ruling qualition. The ‘Golmal Press' thinks that Bangladesh is in the midst of a second war of Independence, trying to fight the Islamic extremists as they look no different than the Razakars (collaborators) of the Pakistani Army.

Mezba however thinks that today there is no reason to go Pakistan bashing and ‘Forgive But Not Forget' should be the motto of Bangladesh.

Razib discusses the misconceptions among some of the new generation Bangladeshis about India's involvement in the 1971 liberation war and he thinks that the Bangladeshis have failed to pay the due respect to the Indians.

2) Bangladesh is the best: Adda posts an inspirational interactive sketch on why “Bangladesh is the Best” to him. It is sad that Bangladesh is portrayed in the international arena only by the headlines of flood, poverty and other such catchy stories. The bests of Bangladesh are hardly promulgated in the media.

3) Blogging in Bangla: ‘Somewhere in blog', an affiliation of a software company ‘ Somewhere in' launches the first ever Bangla blogging tool “Bandh Bhanger Awaj“. Hopefully this will help the advent of more Bangladeshi bloggers, who will be more comfortable blogging in their mother tongue.

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News From Chinese Blogosphere

Frank Dai · 01:14 · East Asia

1 Buzzwords in 2005: As the end of year 2005 approaches, Baidu, the largest search engine in Chinese released its hottest words in (in ZH)Chinese internet; the top ten was as followed: “Mp3″(Baidu provided a controversial mp3 search and download service), “Super Girls“, “Fairy Tale”(a popular Chinese lovesong), QQ(instant message software), LiYuchun(Winner of Super Girls). “Preserving the Progressiveness”, a term created by Communist Party of China to initiate a movement among its memebers was also one of the buzzwords. Xiaoqiang of China Digital Times explained the meaning of the term and why it was so popular. According to Fangxingdong, CEO of Bokee.com, this blog is the most visited blog on Bokee, which provides “analytical material of progressiveness” required by the Party leaders. Keso, an IT blogger sneered at this (in ZH) that “it will put the comedy of our time under the limelight”.

2 Shanwei Protest: In Shanwei, a fishing village near HongKong, police fired at the residents who were having a large-scaled protest due to land ownership dispute with the local government. Howard French of NYT has an article reminding that it's the first time that military force was taken against civilian since 1989. Xinhua, the official news agency declared that it was “Incited villagers attack power plant in Guangdong“(The original article was deleted for unknown reasons. For Google Cache here). Here and Here has some photos.

3 WTO protest in HongKong: The WTO conference was holding in HongKong. Residents and anti-globalization figures are protesting for the unfair trade and its damage to the environment as well as local economy, especially for the agricultural industry. Simon World has set up a blog category tracing the daily valuable links and stories. Inertia is also doing his citizen report (in ZH)on the conference. He suggested a tag “2005hkwto” tag to accumulate photos and posts on the internet. There is also a Flickr group.

4 English Douban: Douban, a social networking website based on book information and review has released its English version.(A review of Douban on China Web2.0 Review). Its Chinese edition has attracted ten of millions of users , mainly bloggers, to find books, and share views and information. Sinosplice has a comment after he tried the service.

5 Blogger Award: Sina has issued its award of Best Blogger on Sina Blog (in ZH). As the leader in Chinese online portal service and largest website, Sina released its blog hosting service late this year in a hope to catch the blogging boom in 2005. However there are some rumors on it for Sina had invited many celebrities to write blog in order to attract netizens.

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Cambodia: Voices from Cambodian blogosphere

Tharum Bun · 00:44 · East Asia

Ministry of Information has ordered all radio and television stations to stop reading news article of print newspapers. This move is considered as an attempt to maintain professional journalism in the country. News readers read some selected press articles and make personal comments for their radio and television broadcasting. Since most people find it difficult to buy and read newspapers, airing of news reading is popular in the country where large population is illiterate and living under poverty line.

And in response to the arrest of border critics and a radio journalist, about 30 human rights groups have just formed an Alliance of Freedom of Expression to launch a nation-wide campaign. The campaign aims to promote freedom of expression in the country. So far some 60,000 ribbons has been distributed in the city and some provinces. Apart from traditional media, access to online news and resources is also popular among college students in Phnom Penh, the business and cultural center of the country. The worldwide network opens windows to young people to access to useful online materials, mostly for their life-long learning as well as participation in online discussion groups to share their opinions on particular topics. However, a knife is just a knife; some users enjoy only chatting, accessing to inappropriate Web sites such as pornography and violence.

In 15 years, struggling film industry comes to life again. The country organized its second national film festival , featured 22 Cambodian movies, at Chaktomuk Theatre on November 28, 2005. Vampire and ghost stories make the most in the competition list. In this last decade, popularity of foreign movies have made life difficult for national filmmakers. Local people find Thai, Chinese, American, and even Korean movie a taste of entertainment when local film productions have to do more to compete with quality foreign film company. Horror stories are not only in the film, in countryside, sorcery also makes news headlines. Witchcraft or sorcery, Arb-Thmob in Khmer, is what people have ever heard of, but never actually seen this scary creature, half-ghost and half-human.

Living with her father in Phnom Penh, she was just 5 years old, and was evacuated from the city when the Khmer Rouge came to power. She does not understand why she had to leave from her home in the city to the countryside. An educated person like her father is a target of execution and killing of the regime to revolutionize the society. First They Killed My Father: a daughter of Cambodia remembers by Loung Ung is beautiful and so clearly captures the voice of a child survived from the genocide.

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