https://mobiletwitter.com/narendramodi/status/1204788395613966336

“Glad that the #CAB2019 has been passed in the #Rajyasabha.

This tweet was made by the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi. In relation to this tweet, the man in-charge of the BJP’s national information and technology, Amit Malviya retweeted it. This is a great example of the social media activity that Prime Minister Modi has that can be compared to the article that we read about his journey to obtaining the Prime Minister position. In essence, he was one of the first big politicians to utilize social media as a tool to help spread his name and what he stands for so that he could connect with his voters and the people of India. To contextualize this tweet, the Prime Minister was sharing a recent law that just passed in India that made it easier for people to obtain an Indian citizenship. The reason that this tweet is so important is because of all of the refugees that are still fleeing Myanmar by the thousands. By passing this legislature, it helps for India to provide an easy transition for Myanmars that have fled the genocide in their home country and hope to find a more welcoming home. After understanding more about the Myanmar refugee situation, it is interesting to see India so accepting of migrants. Within other countries in Southeast Asia, it is almost obvious that they do not want the refugees because of the possible terrorist activity that may come with the insurgent groups within the larger migrating group. An example of this is Bangladesh and how they seem to be mistreating the refugees by turning off their wifi and supplying poor living conditions within the camp. I wonder as more refugees enter India, if there will be an increase in terrorist related activity. By retweeting the tweet posted by Modi, Malviya helps to bring even more awareness to the topic and this may result in even more countries helping in the same way that India is. It will be interesting to see where this goes but for now it is good that many of these refugees seem to be finding a place that is finally welcoming them. 

 

https://twitter.com/albd1971/status/1199945965718904832

“#France to continue its support for #Bangladesh on #Rohingya issue.”

This tweet was made by the Awami League and features a picture of Sheikh Hasina, the current Bangladesh Prime Minister. When contextualizing the tweet, it is important that viewers understand the current refugee issue in Bangladesh. Within recent months, a huge flood of refugees migrated from Burma/Myanmar to Bangladesh in order to escape the genocide that was occurring in their own country. After Bangladesh took in the massive amounts of refugees, they experienced slight issues with drug trafficking, and now an overpopulated Rohingya camp that hosts them. Within the camp, there have been other news posts about how the Bangladesh government temporarily shut off the internet in the camp from 5pm to 5am. This act from the government makes me concerned whether or not France has said anything about this to Bangladesh because of their involvement. The reason why France is important to the post is because of their cooperation with Bangladesh to host refugees. This is important to the relationship between Southeast Asian and European countries, and the Awami League did a great job using the tweet to represent the growing relationship that is being molded between the two regions. It will be interesting to see what happens in the future due to France being much further away from Burma/Myanmar, and how they may feel that they are having less of an impact because of their distance. Whereas Bangladesh is so close, they can have a much larger impact because of the shorter migrating distance between the two countries. If more Twitter users of varying countries continue to make this event more popular by tweeting about it, we should see more countries from around the world become aware of the issue and contribute more resources to the cause. 

 

The blog that I found was about how rubber corporations became greedy by prioritizing profits,  instead of caring more about the people and land of Bangladesh. The site that I found my blog from is actually a rather famous site in Bangladesh. It is called Mukto-Mona, and was founded by Avijit Roy. Roy was one of the founders of the blog, who was sadly killed in recent years due to speaking out over the internet. After speaking out, he was attacked by a conflicting radical group that opposed his blogging. The main  bloggers that make up the site try to bring to light conflicting issues that are occurring in the country of Bangladesh.

In the specific blog that I found, Tony Emroz spoke out against large corporations that were seeking to take over villages that contained rubber. Their goal was to obtain the rubber in order to make a profit after production of their main products. He notes that in the 1970’s, people treated land in Bangladesh as a free-for-all reserve of natural goods. Emroz notes that in the Constitution of Bangladesh, Article 23A explains that the land is supposed to be under the protection of the  State. Although this piece of legislation is failing the people, the Chittagong Hill Tracts Peace Accord has helped to protect the land. 

The village of Natun-Parra was recently attacked not too long ago, and at the time of the blog they were facing new conflicts between the villagers and Meridian Agro Industries Limited and Lama Rubber Industries Limited. These two firms were interested in the rubber that was located in the village. The firms were threatening the villagers and were clearly more concerned with rubber more than they cared about the people of Natun-Parra. 

Due to networking bloggers, a local army group came to the rescue and helped to protect the villagers from the aggressive rubber corporations. Within the blog, Emroz mentions a human rights leader’s perception of what a true State stands for. The human rights leader’s quote that was included explained how in order for a State to be truly just, they must have the support and backing from the people. This points to the fact that Bangladesh has done a poor job of carrying out Article 23A that can be found in their Constitution, therefore the people do not have as much confidence in their own government. This is because the State is not protecting the land that they said they would help to conserve. 

In conclusion, the blogger notes how the village was indeed rescued by the local army group. He continues to go on about how the State needs to analyze their past failures and use what they’ve learned from their mistakes to their advantage. If issues like this continue to occur in Bangladesh, the citizens of the State may begin to rebel against the current government due to their lack of following their own established Constitution.

After reading the blog, I thought it was interesting to see that even though it was just a village that was involved in the incident, bloggers still brought it to the attention of the internet. I guess they need every inch that they can get if they are trying to really make a difference by using the internet to help change their country for the better. Even though this corporation was most likely quite large, the people that made up the village were likely poor and couldn’t use the technique of boycotting. If the village population was large enough, they could possibly stop purchasing the products and really have an impact no the two companies. With this in mind, it probably made it much easier for the rubber corporations to try and infiltrate the village because there was basically no-one that could pull their economic foundation from underneath of them. Also, it makes me wonder whether or not the two corporations paid someone within the government to go against their own Constitution just so they could get by with out any government enforcement. Luckily the local army force noticed the networkers blog and was there to help defend the helpless villagers.

Following my analyzation of the blog post by Tony Emroz, it makes me wonder whether or not political and organizational corruption was involved with this case. And if it were, why wouldn’t the local army have been notified of the bribe? Was this a slip up in communication? Also, could the networking bloggers have reached out to other influential people with a higher economic status than the villagers so that they could boycott the rubber corporations? I think this would have been a useful technique due to its common peaceful and positive outcomes that can be found in other examples of boycotts. After local armies had to step in to help small villages with land issues, could the people of Bangladesh use the spark from the blog to ignite the fire that could end up changing the accountability of the government and its officials for the better?

http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2019/08/10/save-tribal-homes-from-corporate-greed/

Over the past few days, controversy has risen over a negative Facebook post that was targeted towards the large population of Muslims within Bangladesh. Protests broke out after a discriminating comment about the Islam Prophet Muhammad. With a total population of 168 million, over 90% of Bangladesh’s population is comprised of Muslims. Due to social medias quick transfer of information, the Islam community discovered the Facebook post and took matters into their own hands.

After the post surfaced, protesters immediately took to the streets and began to  accumulate a large mass. Authorities were notified of the protest and they quickly began to question the best way to handle the situation. Following the meeting, the decision was made to send security guards to the protest area in order to calm down those that were involved.

Unfortunately the attempt to calm the masses only sparked the flame to ignite even larger and the protesters began to attack the on-site security guards. The attack spurred a defensive reaction by the guards and shots were fired. After the protesters were finally extinguished, four people were killed and over 100 others were injured including police officers and protesters.

Days after the event, three possible suspects are in holding areas to figure out who hacked the mans account and made the comment. The original man who was accused claims that his account was hacked by an unknown user and the discriminative comment was then posted. Minority groups within Bangladesh claim to be targeted in the heavily populated Islamic country. With the complaint by minorities of being targeted, it will be interesting to see if Bangladesh adopts harsher laws that are more strictly pointed towards the Islamic community.

https://nypost.com/2019/10/21/several-killed-in-bangladesh-protest-over-anti-muslim-facebook-post/

Over the past couple of months tensions in Bangladesh have been rising. In the past, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina had mentioned that she supported the allowance of refugees entering the country in order to escape the threats and violence that was occurring in the neighboring country of Myanmar. With the past acceptance of hundreds of thousands of refugees, Prime Minister Hasina seems to be withdrawing her previous statement. 

 

To rival her previous acceptance of refugees, the state of Bangladesh is in the process of building a wall around the perimeter of the refugee camp. The main job of the wall is to prevent the refugee camp from being expanded by the many Myanmar citizens that are flooding the country. Not only are walls being emplaced around the Rohingya camp, but they are also being fortified in over 30 other camps within Bangladesh. 

 

With tons of people flowing in the country officials are worried about drug smuggling by the Myanmar refugees. With accusations being made on some of the refugees, violence has surged in some camps and Bangladesh law enforcement has taken action to flush out the drug smugglers. Not only does this look bad on both Myanmar and Bangladesh, but to top it off the Bangladesh government has halted internet access for those within the refugee camps. 

 

Bangladesh is familiar with the tactic of internet censorship so it will be interesting to see what is in store for the offline refugees. Will they obey the internet shutdown from the government, or will they find more creative ways to become activists by bypassing the standard use of internet mobilization?

 

References:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/bangladesh-to-install-fences-around-rohingya-refugee-camps/2019/09/26/eff2f268-e073-11e9-be7f-4cc85017c36f_story.html 

It had been calm in Bangladesh for the most part. Throughout history Bangladesh has suffered from many monsoons. These monsoons have sometimes been beneficial, but long ago they came from further across the ocean and seemed to last forever. This monsoon set the tempo for much of what would follow in the years to come. After that monsoon left the lands of Bangladesh, things improved. 

 

Years later, a new monsoon came, but this time it helped the people and assisted in the growth of crops because of the water it provided. This monsoon had shifted from Pakistan to Bangladesh to help different areas of the region. The monsoon had begun to rage and seek destruction within Bangladesh. After some time had passed, the people of Bangladesh got tired of the monsoon hanging around over their land. They wanted to get rid of the rain because the monsoon began to wash away their resources. Soon after the people became independent, Bangladesh began to thrive on its own. 

 

In recent years, a new monsoon has made its mark on Bangladesh. This monsoon has been filled with violence. It has wiped out government officials and drowned out electrical services. Though the electricity has been on and off for a while now, it seems to be getting worse and worse. The people of Bangladesh are working to overcome the setbacks that the monsoon has enforced on the people. Maybe in the near future the monstrous monsoon of Bangladesh will be depleted of its resources like many that have caused disaster in the past.