another neat hashtag I found, which pops up alot in Bangladesh, i #lovearmyforrohingya. Again, another pro Rohingya hashtag, this one is similar to #iamrohingya, however seems to be a bit smaller. Aditionally, this particular tweet and all the associated ones with this hashtag date back to 2017. however, the general gist of all of them was to extend sympathy to the Rohingya people. This tweet contains a statistic on how many rohingya people have fled myanmar to Bangladesh in 100 days, thus appealing to pathos of the twitter audience. This tweet included a short video, within footage of rohingya in exodus, crossing fields, as well as a testimonial from a rohingya women discussing her fear throughout the crisis. Additionally it contains some other pro rohingya spokespersons, statistics, and calls for change.

In just 100 days more than 600,000 people have fled violence in #Myanmar to reach safety in #Bangladesh . We look back at some key moments in this #Rohingya crisis:#LoveArmyforRohingya
pic.twitter.com/70QJ6Zgpts

— Abu Marwan Rahoom (@rah2005oom) December 3, 2017

Picking out a tweet is easy when studying Bangladesh, as the #iamrohingya hashtag and movement encompasses Burma, Bangladesh, and the Rohingya Nation as a whole. The Tweet here is only a small sample, this one by Amnesty International Nigeria’s twitter account. The majority are a call to arms, call for sympathy, pledges, and change in Burma. Every single one of the tweets provided context for the oppressed Rohingya’s plight, however none of them provided anything substantial for why the rohingya are being persecuted, simply that they are and that it is bad. This particular tweet is bringing awareness to the crisis and the ethnic cleansing, as well as sort of advertising the “i am rohingya” virtual experience film which was developed in Canada. The film is fourteen victim’s stories, as they tell it, portrayed by actors.

What is happening to the Rohingya in Myanmar right now is planned, deliberate and targeted. It is ethnic cleansing. #IamRohingya pic.twitter.com/2ksd8hpQ4g

— Amnesty Int. Nigeria (@AmnestyNigeria) September 29, 2017

Another incredible tweet I find contained actual footage of a young boy who had been used by the media in exploitative fashion. The tweet linked to a video of a reporter interviewing the boy who had been pulled into a hospital when the attack was alleged to have occurred, and had water poured all over him. The resulting footage of dozens of children, confused, scared, and having water poured over them is extremely easy to misconstrue and mislead and evoke pathos in audiences. The interview included the boy and his father, who was notified that his family had been caught in the attack and had rushed to the hospital to find the bizarre scene. He was confused and angry. The tweet present this story in a surprisingly non partisan manner, without making any assumptions or claims as the the reality or fiction of the chemical attack in Syria. However, it is a powerful thought evoker, clearly witnessed by the thousand or so favorites and retweets. Again, self reporting or social media witness provides a valuable check and balance to what in the past was just the loud shouting of conventional news. As the public taps into twitter accounts which provide more detail and description of events as they unfold, opinion shifts in potential more rational directions. Instead of the mob crying for ‘bomb this, bomb that’, we see a shift towards skepticism; the Buddha was once famously quoted as saying “question everything”, social media’s independent reporting can make for more rational public opinion which in turn will keep nation’s (hopefully) out of many conflicts they would have rushed blindly into in the past.

Boy ‘victim’ in video of alleged chemical attack in Douma says he was asked to go to the hospital, where people “grabbed” him and started “pouring water” over his head.#Syria pic.twitter.com/5sMreg2CFZ

— In the NOW (@IntheNow_tweet) April 19, 2018

The tweet I found was at the top of when I searched #Syria on twitter. The twitter user, Sarah Abdallah, is listed in her bio as an “independent Lebanese geopolitical commentator”. Her tweets covering Syria had discussed the lack of clear evidence of the recent chemical attack. What was interesting to me was how quickly the BBC picked up her speculative tweets, and tried to start a smear campaign against her. Her tweets were starkly realistic, in comparison to what a comment called the BBC’s “parrots terrorist and interventionist narratives in Syria”. Tweets like Abdallah’s have popped up all over the web, questioning how verifiable the so called chemical attack was. This is of course significant, because if these tweets questioning said attack have any merit, than they call into question what grounds the U.S., French, and British launched air strikes against Syria. Abdallah’s last tweet “they call us conspiracy theorists because we pose questions that most western journalists fail to ask and refuse to investigate #Syria” highlights one of the great strengths which social media provides: a different medium of truth seeking, potentially unsullied by the partisan biases of conventional new networks, like the aforementioned BBC. The tweet proceeding that discusses how reports by conventional big media networks are putting forth a “shoddy and deceptive narratives of mainstream platform”, which social media gurus like herself have set out to expose, again highlighting the positive aspect of the checks and balances effect that social media can

They call us “conspiracy theorists” because we pose the questions that most Western journalists fail to ask and refuse to investigate. #Syria

— Sarah Abdallah (@sahouraxo) April 19, 2018

Nastikya.com

অনাগত পুত্রের প্রতি

The opening at the top of the Nastikya.com blog reads thusly: “avoid this website if your beliefs and feelings are too sensitive. Where knowledge is limited, where the argument is free. The liberation is impossible.” Now although certainly a bit was lost in translation as the blog is entirely written in the language of Bangladesh, the phrase’s meaning shines through: knowledge will not be suppressed, and that the truth and facts are more valuable than gold. It is provocative in the sense that, as the lyrical master Jay Z was known to say, “it gets the people going.”, certainly the people in the Bengali government who are not big fans of Blogger Asif Mohiuddin, the Bengali blogger who runs nastikya. Although much is lost in translation as I mentioned before, three articles really caught my eye.

 

অনাগত পুত্রের প্রতি

The first is a letter to “the unborn son.” In it Mohuiddin discusses his dream to his child, his sorry at the evils of the world, yet also outlines the strong moral man or woman the child will grow into, how he will not take his luck to be born a human for granted, nor if he should be born a man will he treat women as less than himself. He says that “we are bringing you into a world that the world is destroyed by the people of the world.” I can only imagine by the content in the rest of the paragraph, which is a feel good “we all are the world’s biosphere” one spirit type of deal, that he is fore warning his son: treat others, every being as you wish to be treated. Clearly this blogger feels that these things, these values are lackin in Bengali society today, and certainly in the government as he goes onto outline that the fair treatment of all “women, third party human beings, rights of homosexuals, tribal minorities” is not an option, it is a demand of those who would call themselves people of moral character. He ends with a solemn warning that ,  “religion, nationalism, racism, sexism, these are barbaric and clever tricks of some old times.” Must be avoided, and also acknowledges that “you have a very big responsibility on your shoulders. To take the world forward, to keep it alive.” Clearly, from this article, we might glean that Mohuiddin has dedicated his life to changing the world for the better, and expects his son (or daughter) to carry the torch.

 

পরিপ্রেক্ষিত, প্রেক্ষাপট এবং অন্যান্য

Another article, he discusses the ins and out of war crimes and genocides, outlines what they are truly defined as. He then goes on to add in what is racism, and uses that to jump into the Rohingya crisis. He goes into how Muslims ought not be persecuting the Rohingya peoples, and goes on to site a multitude of Koranic verses which make clear that the treatment of the Rohingya is in fact, unfair warfare. All thisis done in an almost socratic method of him presenting neutral facts and definitions, and then connecting those facts and definitions logically pattern, so that the reader essentially answers their own questions in their head. A lot of suppositions and then logic and fact based resolutions which show that the treatment of the Rohingya people’s is in fact, unjust and unwarranted.

 

 

 

https://www.nastikya.com/archives/5791

ইসলাম এবং আমার অবিশ্বাস (পর্ব দুই)

The final pair of articles which I read are a two part series on “islam and my disbelief”. Here he discusses how it is taboo to question one’s religion, however that even so religion must be questioned if justice and truth are to be practiced within them. He warns against blind pride in one’s own religion, which may blind one to the beauty of others’ beliefs, and bring with it arrogance and prejudice. These warning are purveyed through discussions of holes in Islam, things that do not line up. The idea is to get the reader to consider the possibility that others religions may not be so evil or wicked, ” . If a person thinks that the sun’s orbit is centered on the earth, then he will be able to see the journey from the sun till the time of the sun.”

The undertone throughout all Mohuiddin’s posts is one of rational thought over hysterical action, and of acceptance over blind pride based prejudice. All beings are equal on this earth, and all deserving of fair treatment. I believe Mohuiddin hopes to change the hearts of the people, soften them if you will, so that the future of Bangladesh will be one of tolerance and acceptance, as it’s government evolves and casts aside it’s current trappings of an unequal third world.