Thursday, February 28, 2013

Thousands flock to Bangladesh’s Shahbag square to demand death penalty for war crimes



Oklahoma State University: In Solidarity with Shahbag Movement

http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-926443

How the #shahbag movement is gaining momentum in social media


http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-924604
By awalin  |  Posted February 9, 2013  |  Dhaka, Bangladesh

I have been collecting Twitter data about the #Shahbag movement in Bangladesh, the tweets clearly show how the Bangladeshis all over the world are coming forward to support the movement. It is not about politics, but their love for country making them stand together for the demand of capital punishment for the war criminals who are responsible for the genocide during the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971.

As the movement of Bangladeshis is gaining its momentum, more and more Bangladeshis are using social network services like Twitter and Facebook to organize the movement. The Bangladeshis living abroad are also trying their best to show their support, and not just mere moral support, they are uploading Youtube video and organizing solidarity events to stand together in this moment of national priority. We talk about technology mediated social participation, and yes, now we have the time to show what it actually means. It's time to show that the the love for our country is stronger than the hand of the war criminals.

For last three days I am collecting the Tweets and the Twitter networks of the people who are Twitting with the hashtag #Shahbag. And the amazing this that I noticed is that, many of the tweets are from very new users, those people joined Twitter with the spirit to share the words, to tell the world how they feel about this movement, I could see that they still do not have any profile picture, so Twitter used the default 'egg' icon for their profile pictures. So salute to those new users who cared enough to open an account for the cause, in fact Twitter should notice that how an event like this can increase their user base.

Feb 7, 2013 : At the end of the day in Feb7, I drew the Twitter network using the Social network analysis tool called NodeXL. Not that big, few people, and not many tweets, but let's see what happened the next day:

Feb 8, 2013: Now we have so many people that I had to use some encoding to keep all the people in the image, so I resized their profile icons: if they tweeted more, I made their icons bigger, and they are also in the middle. If they tweeted less, their profile icon in the image got smaller. And you also see the links between the people: these links indicate that they either retwewted, replied or mentioned each other. So, when I retweeted my friend Enam's tweet, it draws an arrow from my icon to Enam's icon. Also I used advanced layout so that the nodes (the icons of the people) do not overlap, so the more active people are placed at the center of the image and less active people (with fewer tweets) are placed at the edge of the image.

Feb 9, 2013: But, now as you already guessed, we have more participation, more tweets, more people. Today when I pulled the data of all these people, I noticed that the graph looked like a hairball, so I tried to organize the people and their Twitter activity by groups. How is that ? Some people know each other personally or follow each other on Twitter, they reply to their Twitter friends, mention them and retweets each others' tweets, so they are connected with links. For example, I retweet my friends' tweets, I reshare the URL they share in Twitter. And mt other followers also reshare or retweet the things I tweet or share. So now we all get connected this way. We will notice that now small clusters are formed within all those users. This is waht I got after making the groups of people who are more connected together (Fe 9th, 2013). And inside each group we can see one or two prominent people who are more active within their own group, so they are basically leading their group by creating more useful content that their friends are resharing or retweeting.
 Along with the #Shahbag hashtag, people are also using other hashtags in their tweets, here is the top hashtags used in those tweets:
 Top most hashtags:  Using Twitter, we can also mention another user in our tweets, in this case people mentioned mostly different news agencies in their tweets, that's mostly because they wanted those news agencies to pay attention to their tweets.
 Top 10 mentioned users: most of them are news agencies, BBC, CNN, AlJazeera, etc.

Blogger and Shahbag Movement Activist Slaughtered in Dhaka - Hitlist was posted on a Jamaat-e-Islami backed blog

By MamurHossain  |  Posted February 15, 2013  |  Dhaka, Bangladesh

Unknown assailants murdered Architect Ahmed Rajib Haider Shuvo (26) on Friday near his residence at Palashnagar, Lalmatia. According to a local newspaper bdnews24.com, Officer-in-Charge of Pallabi Police Station Abdul Latif Sheikh informed them that they recovered his body and a scarf was wrapped around his throat. According to Daily Prothom Alo, he was chopped to death.

Haider was an active supporter and participant of the 'Shahbag Movement 2013' in Bangladesh that demands capital punishment of the War Criminals of 1971 War of Independence of the country. He was a renowned blogger in 'somewhereinblog' with a nick 'Thaba Baba'. A major portion of his posts were targetted against the War Criminals of 1971 and the political party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami and their student wing Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir. The International Crimes Tribunal of Bangladesh is currently administering trials of the party's top leaders and sentenced death penalty to a former leader whereas life term to a current leader. The charges against the other leaders are in progress.

Earlier on February 11 (1:32 PM local time), on 'Sonar Bangladesh' blog, a hitlist was published listing the names and facebook profile links of some activists of the Shahbag Movement and the victim Rajib was the first one in it. The blog is backed by Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir and there are multiple posts that published such hitlists. The screenshot of this hitlist was saved by an activist of the movement although the original post was removed later on.

The namaz-e-Janaza of the victim will be held on Saturday local time after Asr prayer at Shahbag 'Projonmo Chattar'.

Thousands flock to Bangladesh’s Shahbag square to demand death penalty for war crimes

http://www.nzweek.com/world/thousands-flock-to-bangladeshs-shahbag-square-to-demand-death-penalty-for-war-crimes-47978/

Souce:Xinhua Publish By Thomas Whittle Updated 07/02/2013 2:32 am in World / 7 comments
by Naim-Ul-Karim
DHAKA, Jan. 6 — Frustrated at a war crimes verdict, thousands of people, mostly pro-ruling party men, flocked to Shahbag square, an iconic place in Bangladesh’s capital Dhaka, for the second consecutive day Wednesday demanding death penalty for crimes against humanity in 1971.
Under the banner of “Bloggers and Online Activist Network”, hundreds of people started to gather in the square since Tuesday afternoon after the International Crimes Tribunal-2 sentenced Abdul Quader Mollah, assistant secretary general of Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami party, to life term imprisonment for his war crimes.
Apart from ruling partymen including many ministers of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s cabinet, scores of noted personalities joined the sit-in program Wednesday morning to drum up their demand.
The sit-in program is being staged when Jamaat enforced countrywide dawn-to-dusk since Wednesday morning.
Rejecting the verdict, Jamaat called the countrywide dawn-to- dusk hartal for Wednesday after it enforced countrywide dawn-to- dusk hartal Tuesday when hundreds of Jamaat men fought pitched battles with the law enforcers in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country.
At least four people were reportedly killed while scores injured in fierce clashes between the pro-hartal activists and the law enforcers in Bangladesh’s southeastern Chittagong seaport city during Tuesday’s strike.
Scores of pro-hartal activists equipped with sticks and brick chips also fought pitched battles with the law enforcers in Dhaka and elsewhere in the country during the early hours of Wednesday’s hartal when they blasted cocktails and handmade bombs.
Jamaat, which has long been demonstrating against the government’s bid to try war criminals, last week also enforced a daylong hartal demanding the release of its top detained high- ups including its spiritual leader Ghulam Azam.
Apart from six Jamaat high-ups, a few leaders of ex-Prime Minister Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are also facing trials.
Both BNP and Jamaat, which allegedly collaborated with the Pakistani forces in 1971 to prevent an independent Bangladesh, have already dismissed the court as a government “show trial” and said it is a domestic set-up with no United Nations oversight or involvement.
Jamaat, which recently showed its huge muscle power against the law enforcement agencies, threatened to escalate the armed struggle if Hasina’s government does not immediately free its leaders who face charges of war crimes.
In such circumstances, the mass non-violent sit-in of the pro- ruling partymen looks to boost Hasina government’s energy to try war criminals.
Agitating Shahbagh protesters have been showing their dissatisfaction by rendering songs and staging dramas. Many were also seen to sing songs, play guitars and beat drums.
A symbolic trial was staged when effigy of Mollah was hanged to death. The protesters tagged a ring of shoes as symbol of their hate and they made a 25-feet long snake-shaped effigy of Azam, considered mastermind of war crimes and placed it at the square.
The protesters, who were seen to address one after another, expressed their determination that they would not return home until ICT awards life sentences to war criminals including, Abdul Quader Mollah.
“We expected death penalty. But unfortunately we haven’t got the desired verdict,” Bangladesh Attorney General Mahbub-e-Alam told reporters shortly after the verdict was pronounced. “We may consider to appeal against the verdict.”
AKM Nasiruddin Mahmud, tribunal registrar, Monday told reporters that there was ample evidence of genocide, murder, rape, arson, loot, abduction, deportation and persecution against Mollah.
Lawmakers from Workers Party and Jatiya Samajtantrik Dal, components of Hasina’s ruling alliance, Tuesday hinted in parliament that there might be a move behind the curtain to strike a deal with Jamaat, key ally of Khaleda’s main opposition alliance which is also gearing up its movement demanding restoration of a non-party caretaker government system to oversee next parliament election slated for early 2014.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)