Malmö 2022–08–24

Netra News takes note of reports in the Bangladeshi press about a case filed under the Digital Security Act in Rangpur, Bangladesh. The case names Netra News and one of the survivors of enforced disappearance in Bangladesh who appeared in our latest investigation (আয়নাঘরের বন্দী, Secret prisoners of Dhaka) into a secret prison run by the Directorate General of Forces Intelligence (DGFI). As a public interest journalism platform, registered with the Swedish Press and Broadcasting Authority, we follow the highest standards in journalism and fully stand by our reporting. We are also offering our full support to the survivors, for any legal challenges they may face for their participation in our investigation.

/Tasneem Khalil

Editor-in-Chief (ansvarig utgivare)
Netra News
netra@netra.news

Netra News statement re: DSA/Rangpur was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Brac University’s Institute for Governance and Development (BIGD) has done a deep dive into the government’s handling of the Covid-19 crisis. Netra News has already published a column relating to a survey which formed part of the report — but there is much more of interest within the report.

Its analysis of the government’s “stimulus packages” is particularly fascinating.

These were measures designed to mitigate the economic impact of certain business enterprises and to provide relief to those who were losing their livelihoods because of the lockdown. Although they were called “stimulus packages”, as the report points, many of the 20 items were in the nature of ‘relief and rescue’ rather than stimulus.

Failure to use funds

The first point made in the report is that over half of the promised funds were not even utilised. So instead of the Tk 1,107 billion, only Tk 484 billion was spent. The report states:

Taking the package as a whole, it may be seen that less than half (43.7 percent) of the allocated fund was disbursed by the end of October, 2020. It may be noted that the vast majority of the programmes were announced in April 2020 or early May, and with a few exceptions, all of them were supposed to have been implemented in full within a few months. Yet, after 6 months, only two programmes were implemented in full — viz. Salary Support to Export-oriented Manufacturing Industry Workers and Sale of Rice at BDT 10 per kg to Affected Poor People — which together accounted for only 5.2 percent of the total fund. For the rest of the programmes, the rate of utilization was just over 40 percent. To utilize less than half of the allocated funds during a period when the country needed the support the most indicates a serious failure of implementation. (emphasis added)

This included all the money that was allotted for three of the programmes never being spent:
- Special Honorarium for Doctors, Nurses, Medical Workers;
- Expansion of Export Development Fund; and
- Additional Procurement of Paddy

In relation to the “Special Honorarium for Doctors, Nurses, Medical Workers’, the report stated:

“no fund was disbursed even after six months because the Health Ministry apparently failed to prepare a list of deserving beneficiaries!”

Apart from these three, less than half of the allocated money for eight other programmes was used including for example one titled, “Expansion of Allowance Programmes for the Poor “where only 3%” of the allocated Tk8.15 billion was spent.

Source of funds

The report states that the government’s impression that it is offering “4 percent of the GDP or more … is far from the truth.”

The support package had three distinct sources of financing.

The government budget, or the fiscal burden, is only one of them, and it is not the biggest one. The other two sources are (a) creation of new money by the Bangladesh Bank and (b) utilization of idle liquidity of the banking system.

The fiscal burden of the government is according to the report:

no more than 0.5 percent of GDP i.e., at most one-eighth of the total fund was supposed to come from the government budget.

A much bigger source of fund is the creation of new money which “amounts to about 1.5 percent of GDP.” The rest of the funds comes from the commercial banks’ own resources.

The beneficiaries

Which economic actors are the direct beneficiaries of this government package?

A close look at the list of programmes reveals that the support was aimed at two broad groups of actors — (1) economic enterprises which were badly affected by the economic collapse brought by the lockdown and (2) households or individuals who had lost their entitlements to food and other essentials of life as their livelihoods disappeared due to economic collapse. … We can thus identify two different orientations of the support programmes — namely, growth-orientation and protection-orientation.

The report goes onto state:

It is obvious that the economic support package is heavily biased towards growth-orientation as opposed to protection-orientation. In terms of funds allocated, nearly 80 percent went towards growth-orientation and only 20 percent for protection orientation. While growth-orientation funds accounted for 3.8 percent of GDP, the protection-oriented funds accounted for just 0.8 percent.

It is evident that the primary objective of economic support was not to provide direct protection to the millions who had lost their livelihoods due to the lockdown but to revive economic growth. To the extent that the support was to reach the poor people, it was to happen mostly indirectly as revival of growth was supposed to revive livelihoods as well.

Did it help the poor?

The report asks: how well did the strategy serve the poor? In particular, how well did the strategy of reaching the poor indirectly through livelihood revival, as distinct from direct protection, work in practice?

A survey carried out jointly by the Power and Participation Research Centre (PPRC) and the Brac Institute of Governance and Development (BIGD) on a sample of 7,638 households between June 20 and July 2 found that more than 60 percent of the poor and low-income population who suffered income losses because of the coronavirus-induced economic downturn did not receive any support from the public and private sectors. Only 39 per cent of households got some assistance between April and June, but it amounted to a paltry 4 percent of their lost income (PPRC-BIGD 2000b). In an earlier survey of the same set of households, it was found that they had lost up to 80 percent of their income immediately after the lockdown (PPRC-BIGD 2000a). If food and cash support provided by the government helped recover a meagre 4 percent of lost income, it is hard to imagine how the marginalized groups could have avoided shortage of food because of these programmes as claimed by the Ministry of Finance.

The report then goes onto state:

The inadequacy of livelihood restoration was no accident; it was an inevitable consequence of the nature of the strategy itself. While the government claimed that it was focussing on growth revival with the objective of restoring livelihoods, in reality it’s growth-orientation did not have a corresponding employment-orientation. This is because growth revival was sought by concentrating support mainly on large-scale enterprises, which offer far fewer employment opportunities compared to smaller enterprises, where the bulk of the employment comes from.

As to why the Government chose this particular strategy — this is discussed in the Netra News column, but is worth repeating. The report says this:

What has driven the policy choice is what the present government perceives to be its primary source of political legitimacy — namely, the ability to deliver robust economic growth. While the approach adopted by the government in designing the economic package might seem contrary to what a pandemic-induced crisis would normally demand, it is actually quite consistent with the government’s chosen strategy for achieving political legitimacy.

//DB

A “serious failure of implementation” in Bangladesh government’s Covid-19 financial package was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There are many British Bangladeshis seeking to travel back to the UK, annoyed at Bangladesh’s continuing inclusion on the UK government’s red list of countries which requires passengers, travelling there, to quarantine for ten days in nominated hotels at their own cost. The cost is £2,285 per person — which for most is unaffordable.

Many are querying why Bangladesh should continue to be on the list when the country’s Covid-19 case numbers appear to be significantly declining.

Another person who also holds strong views on the subject is AK Abdul Momen, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, who says he has raised this issue in two meetings with the UK government — a virtual meeting with the then Foreign Minister Dominic Rabb, and a few days later at the Bangladesh-UK’s fourth strategic dialogue.

At the first meeting, Bangladesh newspapers reported that the Bangladesh foreign minister had told his UK counterpart that:

“Given Bangladesh’s robust vaccine roll-out and significant reductions in coronavirus infection to 9.82% and the sufferings of more than 7,000 British-Bangladeshis currently stranded in Bangladesh, the UK should consider removing Bangladesh from the Covid-19 red-list countries.”

The UK government statement given after the virtual meeting on Deptember 6th does not mention any discussion of the red list, but newspapers report Rabb as stating:

“Britain does appreciate politically the overall pressure on the government regarding red-listing and remains well aware of the decreasing covid infections in Bangladesh, however, such decisions are reviewed by the public health experts on a regular basis.

“I would like to assure that given the longstanding friendship between our two countries, and based on more frequent genomic sequencing data-uploading by Bangladesh, the British government will review the Bangladesh red list.”

However, after the bilateral security meeting three days later on September 9th, Momen’s criticisms have ratcheted up considerably and he has argued that the UK government’s decision not to remove Bangladesh from the red list was due to “political reasons” — though he does not explain exactly what those political reasons may be. He also claims that the UK government’s decision was “unfair” and “discriminat[ory]”, because India was earlier removed from the red list.

Bangladesh’s annoyance at Covid-19 travel bans or quarantine requirements is of course not unique. The ongoing 18-month-long US ban on European citizens travelling into the country has been described as “outdated” by one European ambassador, and as “Kafkaesque” by a UK newspaper. And the decision by the UK government to delay putting India on a red list of countries earlier in the year was criticised harshly for (in fact) being “political”, related allegedly to the UK Government’s desire to have a trading deal with India.

Quite why the UK government would unnecessarily keep Bangladesh on the red list for political (rather than for health/science) reasons remains a mystery. It is being suggested by some in Bangladesh that the UK government is punishing Bangladesh for criticising its recently published Human Rights Report that stated that the opposition leader, Khaleda Zia was under “house arrest”, and summoning the British High Commissioner to convey the government’s views. But such criticism is really small beer, and cannot be credibly believed to have any impact upon a UK government decision about the red list.

In fact, the UK government has set out in some detail the criteria which is taken into account before determining whether a country should be on or off the red list — and in part Bangladesh government only has itself to blame for its continued inclusion.

According to a recent statement by the UK Department of Transport Bangladesh was added to the red list on April 9th, 2021 “because there was evidence to suggest community transmission of variants of concern. UK Government took this decisive action to impose additional measures on Bangladesh to limit the importation of variants of concern and to protect the roll out of the COVID-19 vaccination programme.”

Decisions about whether or not a country should remain on the red list relies primarily on risk assessment by UK’s Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC). The Department of Transport statement says that:

“Country allocations to the traffic light system are reviewed every three weeks, unless concerning evidence means we need to act faster to protect public health. At the last review on 26 August, it was decided that Bangladesh should remain on the red list because Bangladesh has low testing and limited sequencing, and as such we cannot be confident what has driven the recent wave in Bangladesh. Without measures, there is a risk of high-risk variants with potential for high public health risk to enter the UK from Bangladesh.” (emphasis added)

As widely noted (and criticised) from early on in the epidemic, the Bangladesh government decided on a policy of low testing. First, it took a long time before allowing private laboratories to be involved in testing, and then in June 2020, the government imposed fees for testing by government laboratories (claiming it wanted to stop “unnecessary” testing). Whilst this could all be put down to poor governance (see BRAC Institute of Governance and Development’s recent report), there has always been a suspicion that the government deliberately sought to reduce testing, so it could minimise the impact of the epidemic in the country on record.

It seems that Bangladesh government’s inadequate testing regime has been a significant reason behind the UK government’s decision to continue to include Bangladesh in the red list — as the UK government does not have the data to understand the real extent of the disease spread in the country.

This may all change soon of course as the UK government will soon be re-assessing the Bangladesh situation (it does so every three weeks and there may well now be sufficient data available to tilt the UK government’s decision in favour of Bangladesh’s removal from the list) and there are also reports that that the number of countries on the red list will be halved.

Why is Bangladesh still on UK’s travel “red list”? was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

জেনারেল আজিজ আহমেদ আর সেনাপ্রধান থাকছেন না। এ খবরে আওয়ামী লীগের অনেক শুভাকাঙ্ক্ষীই স্বস্তির নিশ্বাস ফেলেছেন। সেনাপ্রধান হিসেবে জেনারেল আজিজের তিন বছরের মেয়াদ এই জুন মাসে শেষ হচ্ছে। গুজব শোনা যাচ্ছিল যে প্রধানমন্ত্রী হয়ত সেনাপ্রধান হিসেবে জেনারেল আজিজের মেয়াদ বাড়াতে যাচ্ছেন। কিন্তু শেষ পর্যন্ত তা হয়নি। গত সপ্তাহেই নতুন সেনাপ্রধান হিসেবে এস এম শফিউদ্দিন আহমেদের নাম ঘোষণা করা হয়েছে। আনুষ্ঠানিকভাবে পদ হস্তান্তর ঘটবে ২৪ জুন।

ক্ষমতার কেন্দ্রবিন্দুতে আজিজের উত্তরণ বাংলাদেশের রাজনীতির একটি অত্যন্ত বাজে নিদর্শন। যোগ্যতার ভিত্তিতে নয়; প্রধানমন্ত্রী শেখ হাসিনা সেনাপ্রধান পদে আজিজকে নিয়োগ দিতে আমলে নিয়েছিলেন ব্যক্তিগত ও রাজনৈতিক আনুগত্য। অবশ্য এ ধরনের নিয়োগ বাংলাদেশের রাজনীতিতে নিয়মিতই চর্চা হয়ে থাকে। তারপরও জেনারেল আজিজ আহমেদকে ঘিরে যেসব ঘটনা ঘটেছে এবং তিনি যেসব কাজে জড়িয়েছেন, সেগুলোর তুলনায় রাজনৈতিক নিয়োগের বিষয়টা যেন অনেকটাই মামুলি হয়ে যায়।

আজিজকে সেনাপ্রধান পদে নিয়োগ দিতে ২০১৮ সালের জুনে হাসিনা (এবং রাষ্ট্রপতি) বিরল এক রাষ্ট্রীয় ক্ষমার ঘোষণা দেন। এর মধ্যদিয়ে আজিজ আহমেদের এক ভাইয়ের যাবজ্জীবন কারাদণ্ড মওকুফ করা হয়। আজিজ আহমেদের এই আপন ভাই তখন খুনের দায়ে যাবজ্জীবন কারাভোগ করছিলেন। স্পষ্টতই, এমনকি হাসিনারও মনে হয়েছিল যে খুনের দণ্ডপ্রাপ্ত আসামির ভাইকে এভাবে সেনাপ্রধান হিসেবে নিয়োগ দেয়াটা চোখে পড়ার মতো বাড়াবাড়ি হয়ে যাবে! তাই এই রাষ্ট্রীয় ক্ষমা।

এরপর আজিজ যখন সেনাপ্রধান, তখন ২০১৯ এর মার্চে সরকার আরেকবার নজিরবিহীন এক নির্লজ্জ উদ্যোগ নেয়। এবার আরেকটি ফৌজদারি আইন প্রয়োগ করে আজিজের আরও দুই ভাইয়ের যাবজ্জীবন কারাদণ্ড মৌকুফ করে হাসিনা সরকার। এই দুই ভাই একই খুনের দায়ে দণ্ডিত ছিলেন। নিঃসন্দেহে শাস্তি মওকুফের ঘটনা হাসিনার জ্ঞাতসারেই ঘটেছে; ধারনা করা যায় যে শেখ হাসিনার হুকুমেই এসব হয়েছে।

শাস্তি মওকুফের এ দুটি ঘটনাই আইনের শাসন ও যথাযথ আইনি প্রক্রিয়ার অবিশ্বাস্য লঙ্ঘন, যার পেছনে ছিল প্রধানমন্ত্রী এবং তার সরকার। নিজেদের স্বার্থ রক্ষার প্রয়োজনে রাষ্ট্রীয় ক্ষমতার যথেচ্ছ ব্যবহারের স্পষ্ট দৃষ্টান্ত এ ঘটনা।

এছাড়াও রয়েছে দুই পলাতক ভাই — হারিস ও আনিসকে সেনাপ্রধান আজিজের বেআইনি সহায়তা। শাস্তি মওকুফের আগে হারিস ও আনিসকে যেসব সহায়তা দেওয়া হয়েছে, তার সবই ফৌজদারি অপরাধ হিসেবেই গণ্য হবে এবং যিনি দিয়েছেন, তিনি ফৌজদারি অপরাধ করেছেন। আল জাজিরার ইনভেস্টিগেটিভ ইউনিটের তৈরি অল দ্যা প্রাইম মিনিস্টারস মেন তথ্যচিত্রে দেখা গিয়েছে, আজিজ তার ভাই হারিসকে মিথ্যা পরিচয়ের জাতীয় পরিচয়পত্র ও পাসপোর্ট পাইয়ে দেয়ার ব্যবস্থা করে দিয়েছেন। এর মাধ্যমে হারিসকে হাঙ্গেরিতে গিয়ে এবং সেখানে মিথ্যা পরিচয় দিয়ে ব্যবসা প্রতিষ্ঠান গড়ে তুলতে সহায়তাও করেছেন। আজিজের দ্বারা সংঘটিত এরকম ফৌজদারি অপরাধের সংখ্যা একাধিক এবং এর কিছু বাংলাদেশের সীমানার বাইরেও ঘটেছে।

শেখ হাসিনা এসব জানতেন না ভাবাটা প্রায় অবিশ্বাস্য। কিন্তু যদি ধরেও নেওয়া হয় যে শেখ হাসিনা জানতেন না, সেক্ষেত্রে আজিজের ভাইদের বিষয় ও অন্যান্য দুর্নীতির অভিযোগগুলো যখন আল-জাজিরা প্রকাশ করে দিলো, তখন তিনি কী করেছেন? কিছুই না। পৃথিবীর অন্য কোনো গণতান্ত্রিক দেশ হলে জেনারেল আজিজ সঙ্গে সঙ্গে ক্ষমতা হারাত। কিন্তু বাংলাদেশে তিনি এরপরও হাসিনা এবং হাসিনা সরকারের পূর্ণ সমর্থন পেয়ে গেছেন এবং এতো মারাত্মক অভিযোগের চাক্ষুষ প্রমাণ জনসমক্ষে প্রকাশের পরও চার মাস নিজের পদে দিব্বি অধিষ্ঠিত থেকেছেন।

এখন কী হবে আজিজের?

বাংলাদেশে অবসরপ্রাপ্ত সেনাপ্রধানও যথেষ্ট ক্ষমতাবান একজন ব্যক্তি হিসেবেই গণ্য হন। এখন প্রধানমন্ত্রী তার বিশ্বস্ত এই সহচরকে বিশ্বস্ততার জন্য আর কোনো পুরষ্কার দেবেন না, এমন কোনো লক্ষণও দেখা যায়নি। হয়ত এই সেনাপ্রধানকেই পরবর্তীতে শেখ হাসিনা গুরুত্বপূর্ণ কোনো কূটনীতিক পদ উপহার দেবেন! আজিজ প্রথমে বিজিবি প্রধান ও পরে সেনাপ্রধান থাকাকালীন তার পরিবার অনেক ব্যবসায়িক মুনাফা হাতিয়ে নিয়েছে। এখন দেখার বিষয় হবে, আজিজ ও তার ভাইদের বিরুদ্ধে এসব বিষয়ে শেখ হাসিনা কোনো ধরনের পদক্ষেপ নেন কিনা।

শেষ কথা হচ্ছে, আজিজের মতো মানুষের এত উঁচু পদে উন্নতি এবং তার সত্যিকার চেহারা ফাঁস হওয়ার পরও সেই অবস্থানে টিকে থাকাটা আসলে বাংলাদেশের রাজনীতির কদর্য রূপেরই প্রকাশ। এ ঘটনায় স্পষ্ট হয়ে ওঠে যে বাংলাদেশের রাজনীতিতে বিশ্বস্ত থাকাটাই সব; সততা আর নৈতিকতা অবিবেচ্য।

//ডেভিড বার্গম্যান

জেনারেল আজিজের বিদায় ও কিছু রয়ে যাওয়া প্রশ্ন was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Those wanting the best for the Awami League will be breathing a huge sigh of relief that General Aziz Ahmed is no longer the country’s Chief of Army Staff (CAS). There have been rumours flying around that the prime minister might extend Aziz’s three year contract beyond the middle of June this year, but last week it was announced that SM Shafiuddin Ahmed was replacing him as the next army chief. A formal handover will take place on June 24th.

Aziz’s presence at the centre of power reflected the very worst in Bangladesh politics.

The prime minister appointed him, not due to merit, but because of personal and political loyalty. However, that is par for the course in Bangladesh politics — and the least of the problems in the appointment of someone like Aziz Ahmed.

In order to facilitate Aziz’s posting, in June 2018, Hasina (along with the President) signed a highly unusual presidential pardon freeing one of his brothers from life imprisonment, who was convicted of murder. Presumably, even Hasina realised that it was just too much for the country to have a chief of the army whose brother is in prison for murder!

And then, once Aziz was CAS, the government in March 2019 secretly used another rarely used legal power in the country’s criminal law to remit the life imprisonment sentences of two others brothers who had been on the run for the same murder. This must have happened with full knowledge of Hasina, if not by her order.

Both of these represented extraordinary abuses of the rule of law and due process, employed by the prime minister and the government for self-interested political ends.

And then there was Aziz’s corrupt and criminal support for many years for his two fugitive brothers — Haris and Anis — before they received their remissions. As Al Jazeera Investigative Unit’s film, All the Prime Minister’s Men showed, Aziz helped his brother Haris obtain a fake National Identity Card and a fake passport and facilitated him to travel to Hungary to use these fake documents in order to set up a business under a false name. The number of criminal offences Aziz seems to have committed are multiple — and not just in Bangladesh.

It is difficult to believe that Sheikh Hasina did not know about all this, but even if she didn’t, what did she do once this — along with other claims of corrupt behaviour — was unearthed by Al Jazeera. She did nothing. In any other non-authoritarian country, Aziz would have been toast. But in Bangladesh, he retained the support of Hasina and the government and was able to continue in his position for another four months.

What will happen to Aziz now?

A retired chief of army staff in Bangladesh remains a powerful figure within the country, and there is nothing to think that the prime minister won’t continue her loyal support to her loyal ally — perhaps by giving him some diplomatic posting. His family has already done well in gaining business opportunities whilst Aziz was first the head of the country’s border force and then the army. So, it will be interesting to see if these corrupt perks continue — or if, Hasina feels able to take some kind of action against him and his brothers.

Aziz’s rise to such a high position within Bangladesh, and his continued support from the government even after his true self was revealed so spectacularly to the public, exemplifies what so is troubling about the country’s politics. Loyalty is key, and integrity counts for very little.

// David Bergman

The end of General Aziz? was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Many will remember the attempt by cyber-hackers in February 2016 to drain all the money from an account held by the central bank of Bangladesh (the “Bangladesh Bank”) at the Federal Reserve Bank (FRB) in the USA. Hackers had managed to access Bangladesh Bank’s computers which host the interbank communication system, known as SWIFT, and request the US bank to transfer, through 35 separate bank orders, a total of $951 million into accounts set up primarily at a bank in the Philippines.

In the end, the hack was only partially successful with the FRB transferring $101 million from the account before it became suspicious — though this amount of course is far from being an inconsiderable sum of money and remains the largest successful cyber-theft from a financial institution to date.

Why report it now? A new BBC podcast investigating North Korean’s elite cyber-hacking group known as Lazerus, provides new details on how the hack into the Bangladesh Bank took place. And it is quite fascinating.

Job “phishing”

Episode 4 of the podcast focuses on the Bangladesh Bank hack and includes an interview with Eric Chen, a technical director at Broadcom Symantec, a leading cyber security firm, who was given access to the digital evidence in the Bangladesh Bank hack.

The Lazarus Heist - 4. Billion dollar hack - BBC Sounds

Chen explains that the hackers could not access the Government’s SWIFT computers directly as they were relatively well protected. So the hackers had to find a way to access the bank’s general computer network first.

“They were doing things like using Linked-in and Facebook to find employees of the bank that they could basically trick into opening an email, just random back office employees. …

In this particular case the kind of person they were looking for was someone who would be willing to hire a new candidate. In the end they had sent maybe a couple of dozen emails to a variety of Bangladesh Bank employees with a supposed resume. They made up a resume, a guy called Rasel Aslam. “

The email Aslam sent to Bangladesh Bank employees stated:

“I am extremely excited about the idea of becoming a part of your company and I am hoping that you will give me an opportunity to present my case and further detail in a personal interview. Here is my resume and cover letter. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.”

Chen said that along with the email, there was a link to a zip file.

“And in that zip file it contained a document. But when you opened up that zip file and that document it actually contained [malware] that would run on these peoples’ machines. In the end, at least three Bangladesh Bank employees had attempted to open and download that malicious file.”

Moving through Bangladesh Bank

So the hackers were in the Central Bank’s computer system — but from here they needed to find a way to get to the SWIFT computers. Chen went on to say in the podcast:

“What they need to do it is to move from these computers to what is ultimately their target, the SWIFT terminals. They spend a better part of that year basically just jumping from one machine to another. So they have access to a machine, they basically dig into that machine for other credentials, other users, other usernames, other usernames’ passwords, and they then use those credentials to say, “What machines are connected to this machine”. And then they try those credentials and try to jump from one machine to another and then they repeat and replay that over and over again.”

This is how they moved from one computer to another within Bangladesh Bank to try and get as close to the SWIFT computers. And as they went along, the hackers tried to clean up the evidence of their intrusion, so although they might have had access to hundreds of computers in total, at any one time they only had access to one or two. After a year, they reached their target. Chen states:

“First time they got to actually the terminals was in January 2016. And once [they] got onto these SWIFT terminals, their goal was to make multiple international billion dollar transfers.”

The printer problem

But the hackers then faced two further problems. The first was that Bangladesh Bank recorded all transfers on the computer system — which could allow Bangladesh Bank officials to identify that these illegal transfers were taking place and allowing then to block them.

“To [delete the digital records] they needed to hijack the software. And while understanding how to do that would have been difficult and took them weeks — reverse engineering that software to figure it out — ultimately in the end they had to basically change [just] four characters.”

The second problem was that the software also printed out a hard copy of all the SWIFT transactions.

“The swift terminal software would actually send to the printer a hard copy print out of every transaction that occurred. So the attackers basically needed to bypass all the printed out copies of the transactions.”

So the hackers took the printer out of action:

“Every time the printer tried to send a printout to the printer, they would simply overwrite those print jobs, or those files which contained content to print with zeros so nothing would print, instead there was all these black paper in the printer.”

The heist

Once the printer was taken care of, the hackers were ready to steal the money. At 8pm on Thursday, 4th February 2016, the hackers got the SWIFT computers to send their first bank transfer request to the US bank. Over the next eight hours they sent a total of 35 transfer requests seeking a total of $951 million be sent primarily to a bank, RCBC, in the Philippines.

Bangladesh Bank officials had no idea that this was happening.

At 8:45 am on Friday, the next morning — nearly five hours after all the transfer requests had been sent — the central bank’s duty manager entered the room on the 8th floor where the SWIFT computers were based and noticed that the printer was not working — and that the printer tray was empty. He couldn’t fix it, tried the printer again a few hours later, went off to Friday prayers and decided that he would sort it out the following day. In Bangladesh, Friday is a holiday, so the bank only had very limited staff present.

But the next morning, Saturday, the printer was still not working, so the duty manager sought permission to find another way to reboot it. As the printer came back to life, it printed out both the details of the transfers that the hackers had made through the SWIFT computers along with the queries from officials at the US Federal Reserve Bank asking whether the Bangladesh Bank really intended to deplete all its fund from the account. The Bangladesh officials panicked and then phoned, faxed and emailed the FRB. But it was now Saturday — the weekend in the US — and there was no one to respond.

How the heist was de-railed

The hackers may well have got away with a billion dollars but for a total fluke.

The podcast reports that most of the bank transfers requested that the money be sent to the RCBC bank in Manilla, the capital city of the Philippines, which was located on “Jupiter Street”. It was the name of the street that saved Bangladesh — as “Jupiter” was the same name of a US sanctioned Iranian shipping vessel. This made officials suspicious, and after having cleared four transfer requests to RCBC bank totalling $81 million, the remaining transfer requests were flagged and blocked. (An additional $20 million sent to a Sri Lankan bank was stopped when a Deutsche Bank official noticed a misspelling in the name of the putative recipient. See this Reuters article)

Who did it?

Episode one of the BBC podcast begins with detailed descriptions of the hack of Sony Pictures in 2014 and the responsibility of North Korea’s hacking team, Lazarus. In the episode on Bangladesh, the podcast details how after the Bangladesh Bank heist the FBI investigated to see if there was a link between the two hacks.

The Sony film hackers had used emails, Twitter and Facebook in order to attack the film studio, and the FBI got search warrants to access these accounts used for hacking purposes — about 1,000 of them. This allowed the FBI to see the content of the messages that had been sent. Tony Lewis, Assistant US Attorney for the Central District of California at that time, helping FBI assemble a criminal case against the hackers, said:

“There were some accounts that were used to both target Sony Pictures and conduct reconnaissance and target Bangladesh Bank.

There were connections between accounts used for each of those things but there was also some accounts that themselves were used to target both of those victims.”

One example was the email address that sent the email job application to Bangladesh Bank. This was from yardgen@gmail.com which was the same email address that had been used to hack into Sony. (Read more about this in the criminal complaint against Park Jin Hyok.)

There are another six episodes of the podcast — so there could well be more about the Bangladesh heist!

//David Bergman

How Bangladesh Bank was hacked was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

On March 1st, a week before International Women’s Day, the Commonwealth posted a video of its Secretary General asking the following question:

“#CommonwealthDay takes place on 8 March, the same day as International Women’s Day. So we want to know which woman has inspired YOU in your life or during COVID-19?”

She then answered it by stating that she:

“would like to name three phenomenal leaders in our Commonwealth”

These were Jacinda Arden, the prime minister of New Zealand, Mia Mottley, the prime minister of Barbados and Sheikh Hasina, the prime minister of Bangladesh.

Why?

Well it should be noted that these are the only three women leaders in the commonwealth, and so it would have been rather undiplomatic to have left any one of them out of praise on international women’s day!

But that, of course, was not what the Secretary General said. She stated:

“For their leadership during Covid-19, in their roles in their respective countries. All three, alongside so many other women, have given me hope for a world that delivers a common future for women and men and serves all of our common good.”

In a subsequent statement made on International Women’s Day itself, the Secretary General again mentioned the three women leaders:

“Notably, throughout this crisis, I have been impressed by the leadership demonstrated by female heads of government in the Commonwealth. Prime Ministers Mia Mottley of Barbados, Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh and Jacinda Ardern of New Zealand have all been rightly lauded for their able handling of the crisis, marked by coordinated action as well as compassion.”

Human Right Watch (HRW)| has today released a letter which it wrote to the Commonwealth Secretary General asking her to explain why she termed Sheikh Hasina “phenomenal” or indeed praised her at all as a leader. The letter opens by saying:

We write to you with deep concern over your recent statements praising Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. Prime Minister Hasina has presided over an increasingly authoritarian, near- one-party state where the state authorities have carried out extrajudicial killings, disappearances, and torture with impunity, while threatening and arresting critics in the media, civil society and opposition for peaceful speech.

It then went onto refer to the particular timing of the comments — just days after death of the writer Mushtaq Ahmed in jail:

Your praise came just days after the 25 February death of dissident writer Mushtaq Ahmed in custody. Ahmed was arrested in May 2020 for posting on Facebook that healthcare workers needed more personal protective equipment. He had been held in pre-trial detention for nine months during which it has been credibly alleged he was subjected to torture. After a public outcry, cartoonist Ahmed Kabir Kishore was granted bail soon after Ahmed’s death. He described suffering severe torture after he was taken into custody and also said that Ahmed had been brutally beaten.

It remains particularly unclear why Sheikh Hasina should be praised for her performance over Covid-19. It is the case that Bangladesh has (it appears) fared better in terms of rates of death — particularly compared to what was expected — but this has nothing to do with decisions made by the prime minister. The low death rates appear to be a South Asian phenomenon; Bangladesh’s rates are about the same as Pakistan, twice the level of Sri-Lanka and half the level of India — but all these countries have rates of death far lower than Europe and the USA. It is quite possible that people in South Asian may have had immunological advantage or there could be some other factor as set out in this excellent article in the New Yorker. Basically, the government of Bangladesh took a relatively laissez faire attitude to the virus — apart from schools being closed, most people have been living pretty normal lives for quite some months. This could have been disastrous — but Bangladesh was lucky.

And Bangladesh is fortunate again to have been given large quantities of the vaccine by India. By all accounts, its distribution to the urban middle class is efficient. But that is about all that can be lauded.

Moreover, the government did everything it could to minimise the reporting of cases and the level of deaths. Testing was restricted, and deaths were only reported as Covid deaths if they tested positive for the virus before they died. Most people, who died from Covid would have died at home. So we have no idea about the real level of Covid-19 deaths in Bangladesh.

The HRW letter makes a separate point about the inappropriateness of praising the Bangladesh prime minister in relation to Covid.

The Bangladesh government’s response to Covid-19 has been to use the pandemic as a pretext to further censor free speech and the media, threaten academic freedom, and arrest artists, students, doctors, political opposition members, and activists for speaking out about the government’s handling of the pandemic. This is neither compassionate nor inspiring.

The HRW ends its letter by asking the Commonwealth Secretary General to clarify the criteria she used in making her remarks — and noting how harmful such unmerited comments are:

We are therefore puzzled about the criteria you used to conclude that Prime Minister Hasina should be lauded for her leadership and singled out as an inspiring figure. As you know, this kind of notoriety has the effect of providing individuals such as Hasina with undeserved status, which is then used to increase domestic legitimacy and to ignore or even silence critics.

It will be interesting to see how the Commonwealth responds.

But, I think we can put it down to Hasina currently being one of the three Woman leaders of the commonwealth — and the secretary general not wanting to leave any one of them out of her praise.

For Hasina, being one of only three Commonwealth female leaders has distinct advantages. was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

(২৮ ফেব্রুয়ারী ইংরেজিতে প্রথম প্রকাশিত।)

বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতির ক্রমাবনতি ঘটছে কেন? এর অন্যতম প্রধান কারণ খুঁজে পাওয়া যাবে ফেব্রুয়ারির শেষে অনুষ্ঠিত ইউরোপীয় ইউনিয়ন সংসদের মানবাধিকার বিষয়ক উপ-কমিটির আলোচনা পর্যবেক্ষণ করলে। এই আলোচনায় বক্তব্য রাখেন রেনশে তিরিঙ্ক। তিনি ইউরোপীয় ইউনিয়নের বাংলাদেশ প্রতিনিধি দলের প্রধান।

আলোচনায় তিরিঙ্ক বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকার বিষয়ে বক্তব্য রেখেছেন। তার এই বক্তব্যটি হবার কথা ছিল ২০১৮ সালের ইউরোপীয় ইউনিয়নের রেজলিউশনের আলোকে। ওই রেজলিউশনে (সিদ্ধান্ত/প্রস্তাব) বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতির তীব্র সমালোচনা করা হয়েছিল।

কিন্তু এখানে লক্ষ্যনিয় বিষয় হলো, তিরিঙ্ক তার বক্তব্যে বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘনে যে বিষয়গুলো সবচে বেশি কাজ করেছে, সে সব বিষয়ে আক্ষরিক অর্থে একটি শব্দও বলেননি। তিরিঙ্কের এড়িয়ে যাওয়া শব্দগুলো হলো:

- গুম

- বিচারবহিৰ্ভূত হত্যা

- যথেচ্ছ গ্রেফতার

- রাষ্ট্র পরিচালিত টর্চার (নির্যাতন)

- গণমাধ্যমের উপর সেন্সরশিপ

- বাকস্বাধীনতা

- নির্বাচনে কারচুপি

অথচ এগুলো প্রত্যেকটি বাংলাদেশে অত্যন্ত মারাত্মক মাত্রায় ঘটে চলেছে এবং ক্রমবর্ধমান সমস্যা। তিরিঙ্কের বক্তব্যের ঠিক আগে হিউম্যান রাইটস্ ওয়াচের বক্তাও এ কথা পরিষ্কারভাবে উল্লেখ করেছেন (১১:১০:৫০-১১:২০:৩০)।

তিরিঙ্ক তার বক্তব্যে একবারের জন্যও হিউম্যান রাইটস্ ওয়াচের বক্তব্যে আলোচিত বিষয়গুলো উল্লেখ করেননি। এই দুই বক্তার কথা শুনে মনে হবে, হিউম্যান রাইটস্ ওয়াচ এবং ইইউ ভিন্ন দুটি দেশ নিয়ে কথা বলেছে।

বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার আজকে এই শোচনীয় অবস্থায় আসার আংশিক কারণ ইইউ এবং অন্যান্য উদার-গণতান্ত্রিক (লিবারেল ডেমোক্রেটিক) দেশগুলোর নীরবতা। বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকারের অবনতির জন্য তারা দায়হীন হতে পারে না। তারা নিজেদের ক্ষমতা ও প্রভাব ব্যবহার করে আওয়ামী লীগ সরকারের মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘন করা পদক্ষেপগুলোকে সতর্ক করতে ব্যর্থ হয়েছে। যেহেতু তারা এ কাজে ব্যর্থ হয়েছে, তাই আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার কোনো চাপ অনুভব করেনি। এবং ফলস্বরূপ ভেবে নিয়েছে, এভাবে মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘন করে গেলেও তাদের কোনো ফল ভোগ করতে হবে না। একদিকে বাংলাদেশের মানুষ প্রতিবাদ করলেই বা নিজস্ব মত প্রকাশ করলেই আটক হওয়ার আতংকে ভুগছে, অপরদিকে উদার-গণতান্ত্রিক সব রাষ্ট্র মুখে কুলুপ দিয়ে আছে।

এ নিয়ে সন্দেহের কোনো অবকাশ নেই যে বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকারের বর্তমান পরিস্থিতির উল্লেখযোগ্য দায় বর্তায় ইইউ, ইউকে, কানাডা, অস্ট্রেলিয়া এবং অন্যান্য উদার-গণতান্ত্রিক রাষ্ট্রগুলোর উপর। তাদের মৌনতাকে আওয়ামী লীগ সরকার ‘গ্রিন সিগন্যাল’ হিসেবে নিয়ে অবাধে গুম, বিচারবহির্ভূত হত্যা, যথেচ্ছ গ্রেফতার ও অন্যান্য ভয়াবহ মানবাধিকার লঙ্ঘন চালিয়ে যাচ্ছে।

অবশেষে দেড় সপ্তাহ আগে কয়েকটি দেশের পক্ষ থেকে লেখক মুশতাক আহমেদের মৃত্যুর ঘটনায় যৌথ একটি বিবৃতি দেয়া হয়। এর আগে শেষ কবে আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায় বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতি বিষয়ে উদ্বেগ জানিয়ে এমন বিবৃতি দিয়েছিল? ঠিক এ কারণেই বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকারের এমন অবনতি হয়েছে। আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায় বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকারের চরম অবনতির কঠোর নিন্দা জানাতে ব্যর্থ হওয়াতেই এমন একটি অবস্থা সৃষ্টি হয়েছে যাতে মুশতাক আহমেদকে বিনা বিচারে ও বিনা অভিযোগ-গঠনে নয় মাস কারাগারে থাকতে হয়েছে, ছয়বার তার জামিন প্রত্যাখ্যান করা হয়েছে এবং শেষ পর্যন্ত মৃত্যুবরণ করতে হয়েছে।

বিবৃতিতে রাষ্ট্রদূতরা লিখেছেন: ‘ডিএসএর নিয়মনীতি ও এর প্রয়োগ নিয়ে আমাদের সরকারগুলো বাংলাদেশ সরকারের কাছে উদ্বেগ জানাবে। সেই সঙ্গে আন্তর্জাতিক মানবাধিকার আইন ও মানদণ্ডের আওতাধীনে থাকায় বাংলাদেশের মানবাধিকার রক্ষায় যে বাধ্যবাধকতা রয়েছে, তার সঙ্গে ডিএসএ সংগতিপূর্ণ কিনা সে বিষয়েও আমাদের সরকার সমূহ বাংলাদেশ সরকারের সঙ্গে আলোচনা চালিয়ে যাবে।’ কে জানে, এই ‘আলোচনা’ অব্যাহত রাখা মানে কী! যতক্ষণ না তারা প্রকাশ্যে উদ্বেগ জানায় এবং অবস্থার পরিবর্তন না আনতে পারলে সহযোগিতা বন্ধের হুমকি দেয়, তার আগ পর্যন্ত কিছুই বদলাবে না। লোকচক্ষুর আড়ালে কূটনৈতিকরা গোপনে নিজেদের উদ্বেগ বাংলাদেশ সরকারকে জানালে এর কোনো মানে হয় না। যতক্ষণ তারা প্রকাশ্যে বারবার প্রতিবাদ জানানো শুরু না করছে — ততক্ষণ কিছুই বদলাবে না। আর যদি তারা এ কাজে ব্যর্থ হন, সেক্ষেত্রে পরিবর্তন না হবার দায় (এবং পরিস্থিতির আরও অবনতি ঘটার দায়) তাদের উপর অনেকখানি বর্তাবে।

বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতি বিষয়ে ইইউ রাষ্ট্রদূত তিরিঙ্কের সম্পূর্ণ বক্তব্যের প্রতিলিপি নিচে সংযুক্ত করা হয়েছে। তার এই বক্তব্যের লক্ষণীয় দিকটি এই ছিল যে তিনি বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতির অবনতির নিন্দা জানানো দূরের কথা, উল্লেখও করেননি। এছাড়া তিরিঙ্কের বক্তব্যের আরও কয়েকটি দিক মনোযোগ দিয়ে দেখা দরকার:

• তিরিঙ্ক ২০১৯ সালের অক্টোবর মাসে অনুষ্ঠিত একটি ‘মানবাধিকার সংলাপ’-এর কথা উল্লেখ করেছেন। কিন্তু সেখানে কী আলোচনা হয়েছিল তা উল্লেখ না করে শুধু অস্পষ্টভাবে ‘ইউপিআরের সুপারিশ’-এর কথা বলেছেন। রাষ্ট্রদূত তিরিঙ্কের কথা অনুযায়ী এই সংলাপ থেকে যে ‘মহা সাফল্য’ অর্জন হয়েছে তা হলো, সরকার ‘ইউপিআর সুপারিশ বাস্তবায়ন বিষয়ক তিনটি কর্মশালা’ আয়োজন করেছে। সোজা কথায়, কিছুই অর্জন হয়নি। ইইউ কী সত্যি সত্যি বিশ্বাস করে, বাংলাদেশ সরকারের সঙ্গে যৌথভাবে তিনটি কর্মশালা আয়োজনের মাধ্যমে কিছু অর্জিত হবে? এসব কর্মশালার ফলাফল যে সম্পূর্ণ শূন্য তা নিয়ে কোনো সন্দেহ থাকার অবকাশ নেই — কিন্তু দেখা গেল, ইইউ রাষ্ট্রদূত এসব অর্থহীন বৈঠক নিয়ে অত্যন্ত গর্বিত!
• এরপর রাষ্ট্রদূত বলেছেন, ইইউ বাংলাদেশ সরকারের সঙ্গে ‘ডিজিটাল নিরাপত্তা আইন বিষয়ে আলোচনা’ করেছে। কিন্তু কীভাবে ও কী রকম সেই আলোচনা? এ বিষয়ে তার বক্তব্য থেকে যা জানা যায়, তা হলো: ‘আইনটির অপেক্ষাকৃত সমস্যাপূর্ণ ধারাগুলো পরিবর্তনের প্রয়োজনীয়তা নিয়ে আইনমন্ত্রীর সঙ্গে বেশ কিছু বৈঠক’-ই এই এসব আলোচনার সীমারেখা। এবং এসব আলোচনার ফলাফল শূন্য। তিরিঙ্ক জানান, ‘আলোচনা চালিয়ে যেতে শিগগিরই পরবর্তী মন্ত্রীর সঙ্গে আমরা আরেকটি বৈঠক করব বলে আশা করছি’। কিন্তু তাতেও যে অবস্থার তেমন কোনো হেরফের হবে না, তা সহজেই অনুমেয়। এদিকে, সংসদে দেয়া বক্তব্যে ইইউ রাষ্ট্রদূত বাংলাদেশে যথেচ্ছ গ্রেফতারের কথা একবারও তোলেননি বা এই আইনের ফলে বিরোধী মত কীভাবে দমিত হচ্ছে, তাও বলেননি। তিনি ছিলেন ভবিষ্যতে আইনমন্ত্রীর সঙ্গে কী কী নিষ্ফল বৈঠক করবেন, তা নিয়ে উচ্ছ্বসিত। বলা বাহুল্য, এ ধরনের ডজন ডজন অকেজো বৈঠকে আইনমন্ত্রী অতীতেও উপস্থিত থেকেছেন। বৈঠক শেষে খোশ মেজাজে পরবর্তী বৈঠকের তারিখ দিয়েছেন।
• তিরিঙ্ক বলেছেন, ‘বাংলাদেশের সঙ্গে ভবিষ্যতে পারষ্পরিক সহযোগিতার ক্ষেত্রে অন্তর্ভুক্তিমূলক গণতান্ত্রিক শাসনকে আমরা অগ্রাধিকার দেবো।’ কিন্তু বক্তব্যে তিনি বাংলাদেশের জাতীয় এবং পৌর নির্বাচনগুলোতে কারচুপির ব্যাপারে কিছু বলেননি। গত জাতীয় নির্বাচনে কারচুপির বিষয়টা আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায় যেভাবে স্রেফ চুপ করে মেনে নিয়েছে, তা অবিশ্বাস্য। নির্বাচনে কারচুপি বিষয়ে নির্বাচন কমিশন এবং রাষ্ট্রপতিকে গুরুত্বপূর্ণ যে চিঠি বিশিষ্ট নাগরিকদের পক্ষ থেকে সম্প্রতি দেয়া হয়েছে, তিরিঙ্ক তার বক্তব্যে সে বিষয়েও কিছু উল্লেখ করেননি। তবে তিনি গর্বিত হয়েছেন অন্য কারণে; তার ভাষায় ‘আমরা গোষ্ঠী ও নাগরিক সমাজ ভিত্তিক কয়েক ডজন সংগঠনের সক্ষমতা গঠনে কাজ করেছি এবং গণতান্ত্রিক শাসন বিষয়ে তাদের প্রশিক্ষণ দিয়েছি’-তার গর্বের জায়গা এটুকুতেই সীমাবদ্ধ। যদি ইইউ রাষ্ট্রদূত আসলেই ভেবে থাকেন, এর ফলে বাংলাদেশে ‘কিছু একটা’ অর্জিত হবে — বর্তমানে যে দেশে শাসকগোষ্ঠীই সব ক্ষমতার মালিক এবং গণতান্ত্রিক শাসন বিষয়ে যাদের বিন্দুমাত্র মাথাব্যথা নেই — তাহলে তিনি রূপকথার জগতে বাস করছেন।

বাংলাদেশে সংশ্লিষ্ট আন্তর্জাতিক সম্প্রদায়ের বর্তমান ভূমিকা লজ্জাজনক। বাংলাদেশ রাষ্ট্র হিসেবে মানবাধিকারকে পদদলিত করা একটি স্বৈরতন্ত্রে পরিণত হবার পেছনে যে তাদের ভূমিকা আছে, তা এখন স্বীকার করে নেবার সময় এসেছে।

///ডেভিড বার্গম্যান

EU AMBASSADOR STATEMENT (11:20:30–11:27:30)

“EU-Bangladesh relations are complex. We have a rich history of cooperation. Indeed we cooperate and partner for Bangladesh’s inclusive development. We have intensive trade relations and we work together to face challenges in the field of migration and climate change. And, as already as has been pointed out, the EU is also a staunch ally of Bangladesh in addressing the humanitarian Rohingya crisis.

So to recall, indeed, as was mentioned before, the EU is the first trading partner of Bangladesh. 20 billion euros of imports annually from Bangladesh to the EU. Over 60% of everything but arms trade, EBA, is attributed to Bangladesh, and many EU brands have factories in the country.

Also Bangladesh is considered one of the most climate change prone countries, with possibily millions of climate change refugees in the nearest decades, and therefore an urgent priority in the need for promoting of the European model green deal. As I said, the World’s biggest refugee camp is located in Bangladesh hosting the Rohingya, and the EU has been engaged and is supporting the Rohingya crisis since the beginning and we need of course Bangladesh’s engagement for the development and the humanitarian peace and development nexus.

We also strive for continued and deeper cooperation with Bangladesh on migration, especially on standard operating procedures on the return of irregular migrants from the EU. And of course, finally, geo-politically, Bangladesh is at a cross roads of Chinese and Indian influence, and therefore potentially a very important partner in out Indo-pacific strategy.

The economic situation in Bangladesh has been greatly affected by the covid 19 pandemic. The plight of garment workers has already been mentioned. Many ready garment orders from western brands were cancelled there were diminished remissions, impact of lockdown here. Here again the EU has stepped in by providing support and social protection, front-loading to some of hardest hit garment workers who lost their jobs, and this is in framework of our social protection programme. So unfortunately the pandemic has thrown back parts of the population to poverty or extreme poverty as elsewhere in the region. However there is also a consensus, that Bangladesh proven to be quite resilience to this shock and RMG orders are bouncing back. And Bangladesh, important to see as well, remains on track to graduate from LDC status as planned in 2024.

In terms of engagement, we are of course in the process of re-launching the EBA enhanced engagement with the government of Bangladesh. Discussions were paused by the covid-19 lockdowns in mid-march and here in the summer holidays, but as we speak, the labour rights road map is advancing well and we have had four intensive technical meetings since the beginning of this year. So there is good progress to be noted here.

I can say a bit more about Rohingya but let me just concentrate here on human right dialogue that we also have with the government of Bangladesh. The latest human rights dialogue took place in October 2019, this was in the margins of the European Bangladesh joint commission meeting. Subsequently, coming from the priorities identified in this EU rights dialogue the government of Bangladesh has organised three UPR workshops on implementing the UPR recommendations, with active involvement locally here of the UN and EU. More specifically, the EU here in Dhaka has engaged on the Digital Security Act, notably with a number of meetings with the honourable law minister on the need to change some of the more problematic sections of the act and we are expecting to have a follow up meeting with the minister soon to continue this discussion.

A few words on our future programming, as we are now in the programming of development cooperation with Bangladesh. Inclusive democratic governance will remain an important priority in our future cooperation with Bangladesh together with human capital development , decent work , and green inclusive development. I think, as one of most vulnerable countries to climate change, the green inclusive development will be key for this country.

Let me close with one example how we address inclusive democratic governance in our latest multi-annual indicative programne that ended in December of last year. We have done capacity building with dozens of community based and civil society organisations and trained them on participation in democratic governance. We have a programme on public finance management an action plan that is running to 2023. And I think most importantly is our access to justice to poor and marginalised people which has been improved by the nationwide roll out village court programme. Village courts are semi formal dispute resolution mechanisms that contribute to provide the poorest and marginalised people access to justice including of course woman and I think it is very important part of democratisation, and that is why we will be continuing with third phase in our future programme.

নেত্র নিউজের মূল ওয়েবসাইট দেখুন
বাংলাদেশের পাঠকদের জন্য
বাংলাদেশের বাইরের পাঠকদের জন্য
ইউটিউব চ্যানেল

কূটনৈতিকদের নীরবতা বাংলাদেশে মানবাধিকার পরিস্থিতি অবনতির অন্যতম কারণ was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Earlier this month, Netra News published a long story on how the Bangladesh government authorities were credibly suspected of making false copyright claims against websites and YouTube channels belonging to dissident Bangladeshis living abroad in order to close them down — something which they have been pretty successful at doing.

The way this is done, as the incidents reported in the Netra News story indicate, is that the Bangladesh government authorities — through their large number of sub-contractors — first set up dummy websites. Then they take content (videos or articles) already posted or published on targeted YouTube channels or websites, against which they want to launch the copyright strikes. They then republish the content on their dummy sites with an earlier date than the original published version, so that they can pretend they were the original publishers.

The dummy websites then complain to YouTube or the website’s internet hosts stating that they hold the copyright to the video or the article, and claim that the original publishers have committed an offence under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This is a US law established to control copyright infringement, requiring online service providers to promptly remove the offending material. YouTube or the relevant internet hosts seem to undertake no due diligence on these claims and immediately write to the channel or website (that is, in fact, the real publisher of the video/article) stating that they have to remove the article or they will otherwise take the channel or website offline.

It becomes an Alice in Wonderland world — where the original publisher is accused of copyright violation by a website which is the one actually guilty of copyright violation against the original publisher!

Since the original website owners know that they are the original publisher of the video/article, they are very reluctant to remove the content — and are placed in a quandary. Do they remove the video/article, or risk their site being taken down? This simple technique is surprisingly successful and has, as set out in the Netra News article, resulted in websites and YouTube channels being closing down.

In a strange quirk, Netra News has recently come across an example where the Bangladesh authorities (apparently) have set up a dummy website mimicking Netra News itself in order to try to close down another news website, hillvoice.net — an online news portal on issues relating to indigenous rights and the Chittagong Hill Tracts.

The dummy website that has been created is netranews.info — similar to our actual website, netra.news, with the imposter site using Netra News’s actual logo. A person called “Tasnim Khalil” — slightly differently spelled, but the same name as Netra News’s actual editor-in-chief, Tanseem Khalil — has written a number of complaints to the site host of hillvoice.net claiming that the website had infringed the copyright of netranews.info by republishing particular articles. Of course, the article in question was in fact originally published on hillvoice.net.

The most recent example involves an article titled “Attempt by army member to rape a Jumma woman in Bandarban’s Rajvila”. This article was dated as published on the hillvoice.net website on January 19, 2021. In its complaint to hillvoice’s hosting company Host Papa, however, the dummy website, netranews.info, claimed that the article was originally published on August 20, 2013. The date is notable as the alleged rape incident is reported (in both articles!) to have taken place on January 18, 2021 — seven years after netranews.info supposedly first reported on it. That is quite some level of clairvoyance! Indeed, netranews.info, the dummy website, could not have posted the report in 2013 at all as it only came into existence on October 7, 2020.

The absurdity of the claim could easily have been recognised by the host provider with less than five minutes of inquiry. In this case, the copyright claim failed and hillvoice.net continues to operate. This is because hillvoice.net has changed its website host to Host Papa, which considered the detailed responses to the copyright complaints . However in November last, when hillvoice.net used a different internet host, its website was closed down for a short period of time — the reason why the website changed its host.

There is no conclusive evidence at present to prove that the people involved in setting up these dummy websites and making these false copyright claims operate on behalf of the Bangladesh government authorities. However, we do know that Bangladesh authorities are involved in very similar activities in relation to Facebook.

Executive editor of the Hill Voice, Priti Bindu Chakma certainly thinks that the “Army and the DGFI may have [been] involved” in the copyright claims against his website. Who else could be involved in such a systematic copyright strike campaign?

//DB

A false copyright claim to take down indigenous rights group website — seeks to invoke Netra News was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

There is an interesting oped in the New York Times today, which favourably compares Bangladesh’s investment in children and women to the USA’s record. It is written by one of the paper’s most renown columnists and is titled: “What Can Biden’s Plan Do for Poverty? Look to Bangladesh.”

It is without doubt a pro-Bangladesh story.

It is, however, the kind of article that the current Bangladesh government is most likely to hate.

This is for the following reasons:

First, it clarifies that Bangladesh’s investment in education and girls has taken place over a thirty year period, and so the Awami League cannot take too much credit.

Secondly, it makes clear that much of the achievement is down to civil society, referring to the role of Grameen Bank and BRAC

Thirdly, it quotes Mohammad Yunus, the founder of Grameen Bank — who is the Awami League’s bogey man, ever since he won the Nobel Peace Prize and took some initial steps of setting up a new political party.

And finally, though the article does not refer at all to the wider Bangladesh governance and human rights record, it does state, “Bangladesh hasn’t had great political leaders.”

There is only one narrative that the Bangladesh Awami League government wants people to read and hear. It is one that states all of Bangladesh’s economic achievements are the party’s own achievements, and in particular the achievements of the prime minister Sheikh Hasina and one which omits mention of the country’s governance and human rights record.

Though the NYT article did not refer to Bangladesh’s politics — its reference to Bangladesh “not having great political leaders” is enough shade for people to recognise that there is a wider story to Bangladesh than of simple economic success. This the Awami League government will hate.

In general, there is far too much written by economic writers on Bangladesh’s positive economic story, as it reaches 50 years of age — an important story to be told, no doubt, though with caveats — where they fail to say anything about the country’s political story and in particular its return to authoritarianism and all that comes with it.

These are threads that both need to be discussed in any story about the country’s 50 year record.

Postscript
Just after finishing this blog, guess what article popped up on the Twitter feed, but one by Shah Ali Farhad, the Special Assistant to the prime minister Sheikh Hasina — supporting this very thesis. In it he states that the New York Time article “is based on flawed premises and more importantly, a questionable agenda.”

Let no one question the accuracy of Netra News’s analytical powers!

The positive NYT article on Bangladesh — which the government will hate was originally published in Netra News on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.