Media enjoying full freedom: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina,Bangladesh

BANGLADESH NEWS

Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina accused the media on Saturday of carrying 'false stories' and claimed the media are now enjoying full freedom in the country.

“We (Awami League government) don’t prevent them (media), and they are enjoying full freedom,” she said referring oppression carried on journalists during the past BNP-Jamaat alliance rule.

Hasina, also the president of the Awami League, was exchanging views with the grassroots level leaders and workers of Kurigram of her party at her official residence Gono Bhaban.

AL General Secretary and LGRD Minister Syed Ashraful Islam, presidium members Sheikh Fazlul Karim Selim, Mohiuddin Khan Alamgir, Yusuf Hossain Humayun, Textiles and Jute Minister Abdul Latif Siddiqui, AL Joint General Secretary Mahbub-ul-Alam Hanif were also present.

Mentioning the oppression carried out by BNP on the country’s people, including numerous AL leaders and activists, Hasina said 14 journalists were killed and some 1,800 injured during the BNP regime, UNB adds.

She, however, observed that the media often run stories against the government and in some cases carry false ones.

Hasina alleged that those who emerged from the pocket of military dictatorship could not work for the country as well as its people and said AL has much more passion and affection for the country’s people than any other parties.

Taking a shot at those who termed the country’s condition as bad despite various successes, the prime minister said they do not want the people of Bangladesh to lead a good and comfortable life.

The premier said there are also some people who do not want the country’s people live in peace in a democratic process. “They were busy taking different undue facilities from different governments and now there’s no end to their criticism.”

Mentioning that there had been no addition of power to the national grid during the seven-year tenure of BNP and the caretaker governments, she said her government has been able to raise the power production to 5,400 MW by 2011, higher than what was mentioned in the party’s election manifesto.

She also hoped that the power production will increase in the later part of current year and in the upcoming years.

During the 2001-2006 regime of BNP, the premier alleged, Bangladesh had turned into a country of killing and bombing. “Not a single day passed without the incident of bombing at that time.”

She said they (opposition) now have no peace in their mind as there is no extremism, terrorism and ‘Bangla Bhai’ in the country.

“We’ve curbed terrorism and extremism in the country with an iron hand as well as freed the country from this stigma,” she said adding that Bangladesh is now considered as a model of potentialities in the world.

The prime minister mentioned that the country has been able to maintain its economic stability in South Asia and implement 93 percent of the Annual Development Programme (ADP), a success no government could achieve in the past.

Hasina said export earnings have increased so as the export of manpower and remittance earnings since this government assumed power. “The foreign currency reserves also increased to $10 billion dollars.”

The prime minister said her government has ensured the voting rights of people alongside their other basic rights, and restored the spirit of the Liberation War through the 15th amendment of the constitution.

Urging her party leaders and activists to project the development activities of the government among the common people, she said, “Whenever AL assumes power, the country’s people get something.”

Hasina reaffirmed her commitment to reach the benefits of independence to the common people and build a hunger- and poverty-free ‘Sonar Bangla’ by making it a middle-income country by 2021 when Bangladesh will be observing its golden jubilee of independence.

Listing various development activities taken by her government, Hasina mentioned that her government has been able to reduce the child and maternal mortality rates, ensure food security, establish the rule of law, gave subsidy to agriculture apart from doubling agricultural production, improving the standard of education and healthcare services, establishing union information centres with internet facilities.

US to put more warships in Asia: Panetta

BANGLADESH NEWS

The United States will shift a majority of its warships to the Asia-Pacific region by 2020, Defense Secretary Leon Panetta said on Saturday, giving the first details of a new US military strategy.

Fleshing out details of a strategic shift to Asia announced in January, Panetta said the United States would maintain six aircraft carriers in the region over the long run and rebalance its fleet so that 60 percent of its other warships would be assigned to the Pacific by 2020, compared to 50 percent now.

The US defense secretary, speaking at an annual security forum in Singapore, also sought to dispel the notion that the shift, after more than a decade of war in Afghanistan and Iraq, was designed to contain China's emergence as a global power.

He acknowledged differences between the world's two largest economies on a range of issues, including the South China Sea.

"We're not naive about the relationship and neither is China," Panetta told the Shangri-La Dialogue attended by senior civilian and military leaders from about 30 Asia-Pacific nations.

"We also both understand that there really is no other alternative but for both of us to engage and to improve our communications and to improve our (military-to-military) relationships," he said. "That's the kind of mature relationship that we ultimately have to have with China."

Some Chinese officials have been critical of the US shift of military emphasis to Asia, seeing it as an attempt to fence in the country and frustrate Beijing's territorial claims.

China has downgraded its representation to the Shangri-La Dialogue from last year, when Defence Minister Liang Guanglie attended and met then-US Defense Secretary Robert Gates. This year the Chinese military was represented by the vice president of the Academy of Military Sciences.

Panetta, by contrast, was accompanied by General Martin Dempsey, the military's top officer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Admiral Samuel Locklear, the head of the US Pacific Command.

The US defense secretary held a series of bilateral and trilateral meetings with counterparts from several nations. Defense Minister Ng Eng Hen notified Panetta that Singapore had agreed in principle to a US request to forward deploy up to four Littoral Combat Ships to Singapore on a rotational basis.

A senior US defense official said later that the series of meetings "served the broader purpose to advance this overlapping network of mutually reinforcing relationships that the US is building in the region."

Panetta was at the start of a seven-day visit to the region to explain to allies and partners the practical meaning of the US military strategy unveiled in January that calls for rebalancing American forces to focus on the Pacific.

The trip includes stops in India and Vietnam, where he will visit a US Navy cargo ship in Cam Ranh Bay, becoming the most senior US official to visit the former American naval base since the end of the Vietnam war.

Panetta's Asia visit comes at a time of renewed tensions over competing sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, with the Philippines, a major US ally, and China in a standoff over the Scarborough Shoal near the Philippine coast.

FLASHPOINT

Panetta met Philippines Defense Secretary Voltaire Gazmin on the sidelines of the conference and discussed areas of future cooperation, including maritime awareness and cyberspace, and called for peaceful resolution of the South China Sea dispute.

The South China Sea is a flashpoint but, with about 90 percent of global trade moving by sea, protecting the teeming shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca is equally vital.

"Maritime freedoms cannot be the exclusive prerogative of a few," Indian Defence Minister AK Antony told the forum. "We must find the balance between the rights of nations and the freedoms of the world community."

Overlapping maritime claims - often fuelled by hunger for oil, gas, fish and other resources - are compounded by threats from pirates and militants, delegates said.

Panetta said he was committed to a "healthy, stable, reliable and continuous" military-to-military relationship with China but underscored the need for Beijing to support a system to clarify rights in the region and help to resolve disputes.

"China has a critical role to play in advancing security and prosperity by respecting the rules-based order that has served the region for six decades," he said.

Under the plans Panetta announced on Saturday, the Navy would maintain six aircraft carriers assigned to the Pacific. Six of its 11 carriers are now assigned to the Pacific but that will fall to five when the USS Enterprise retires this year.

The number will return to six when the new carrier USS Gerald R. Ford is completed in 2015.

The US Navy had a fleet of 282 ships, including support vessels, as of March. That is expected to slip to about 276 over the next two years before beginning to rise toward the goal of a 300-ship fleet, according to a 30-year Navy shipbuilding projection released in March.

But officials warned that fiscal constraints and problems with cost overruns could make it difficult to meet that goal. US Senator John McCain told a news conference he was concerned about the decline in the size of the US fleet.

"At some point - and I think we may be at that point - we are not going to be able to carry out the kinds of commitments to the region that the secretary outlined in his speech," said McCain, a top Republican senator on defense issues.

Panetta underscored the breadth of the US commitment to the Asia-Pacific region, noting treaty alliances with Japan, South Korea, Thailand, the Philippines and Australia as well as partnerships with India, Singapore, Indonesia and others.

He said the United States would attempt to build on those partnerships with cooperative arrangements like the rotational deployment agreement it has with Australia, and is working on with the Philippines.

Panetta said Washington would also work to increase the number and size of bilateral and multilateral military training exercises it conducts in the region. Officials said last year the United States carried out 172 such exercises in the region.

Whip's motorcade attacked in Jessore, 50 hurt 6 vehicles vandalised, six more torched,Bangladesh

BANGLADESH NEWS

At least 50 people were injured when locals attacked the motorcade of Jatiya Sangsad Whip Shaikh Abdul Wohab in Monirampur Upazila of Jessore on Saturday.

The whip, however, escaped unhurt, report our Benapole and Narail correspondents.

Nearly 100 people opposing the Tidal River Management (TRM) project, related to river management, also vandalised three vehicles and torched three human haulers and three motorcycles during the attack.

The injured include Abhaynagar Upazila Chairman Abul Malik; Moshiur Rahman, executive engineer of Water Development Board; whip's body guard Monir Hossain and his Assistant Personal Secretary Dilip Kumar Goshwami, Noapara pouro BNP president Haji Rafiqul Islam; Former Paira Union Parishad chairman Bisnu Podo Dutta, Chhatra League leaders Nasir Hossain and Sharif Hossain.

The injured were admitted to different Khulna Medical College Hospital and other local clinics and hospitals.

In protest, the people who want the project to be implemented brought out a procession on Noapara link road leading to the Jessore-Khulna highway and ransacked three buses there.

Meanwhile, Abul Malik was rushed to Dhaka Medical College Hospital as his condition was stated critical.

The motorcade of the whip, also the MP of Jessore-6 constituency, came under attack around 10:00am at Bilkapalia in Bhabadaha area of the upazila near the TRM project while he was going there to inaugurate it.

Ahsan Habib, the officer-in-charge of Abhaynagar Police Station, said locals attacked the motorcade to prevent them from inaugurating the TRM project.

The whip alleged that a section of owners of fish enclosures along with some land grabbers and NGO owners conducted the attack as their businesses will be hampered if the project is implemented.

Additional police and Rapid Action Battalion (Rab) personnel have been deployed in the area to avert further untoward incident.

At least 35 houses of minority community people were vandalised, 10 vehicles and seven shops torched while three jewelry shops looted after the news of attack on whip spread.

Accept CG demand before mass upsurge: BNP leader Moudud Ahmed,Bangladesh

BANGLADESH NEWS

BNP front-ranking leader Moudud Ahmed asked the government on Saturday to accept their demand for a non-party caretaker government to avoid any mass upsurge.

He made the remark while addressing a discussion at Engineers Institution, Bangladesh organised by Jatiyatabadi Sramik Dal at noon, marking the 31st death anniversary of President Ziaur Rahman, the founder of BNP.

Moudud reiterated that BNP will join a dialogue if the government announces that the next general election will be held under a non-party administration and invites them for talks on amending the constitution in this regard.

Presided over by Sramik Dal President Nazrul Islam Khan, the discussion was addressed, among others, by Sramik Dal president Abul Kashem and general secretary Jafrul Hasan.

Girl's body found in city hotel ,Bangladesh

BANGLADESH NEWS

Police recovered the mutilated body of a teenage girl from a hotel room in Hatirpool area of the capital Saturday morning.

The identity of the victim was not known immediately.

Unidentified miscreants sliced the body into five pieces two or three days before and left those in the room No. 1206 of Hotel Sky Garden adjacent to Nahar Plaza, said Abdus Samad, a sub-inspector of Shahbagh Police Station.

Three to four staff of the hotel were picked up for questioning, the SI said.

On information, Shahbagh police rushed to the scene around 9:00am and broke open the padlocked room and found the parts of the body scattered at different corners of it.

Suranjit Sengupta asks Khaleda to quit JS,Bangladesh

BANGLADESH NEWS

Minister without portfolio Suranjit Sengupta asked BNP Chairperson Khaleda Zia on Saturday to relinquish her parliamentary post for not joining parliament sessions.

“Moudud Ahmed, you along with your party chief should set an example by stepping down from the posts you hold in the parliament,” remarked Suranjit.

He was replying to BNP leader Moudud Ahmed who on June 1 asked Home Minister Shahara Khatun to resign for failing to discharge her duty properly.

“Police went beyond their limits. The home minister has also regretted the recent incidents of police assault on journalists and still they want her to step down,” said Suranjit who has recently come back to the media after a weeks-long break.

The veteran parliamentarian stepped aside as railways minister following a financial scandal in April and became silent from the media for several weeks. He was later appointed a minister without portfolio.

Like the government, the opposition is also accountable to the people for their actions, so Khaleda should come forward taking all the responsibilities for not performing her duties as the leader of the opposition in the parliament as well, he added.

Suranjit Sengupta, a senior leader of the ruling party, was speaking at a discussion on ‘Educationist Prof Razia Matin’s contribution in materialising the ideology of Bangabandhu’ organised by Bangamata Parishad at the city’s Central Public Library seminar hall.

In a democracy, law enforcers and the media are also accountable likewise the government and the opposition, he also said.

“This couple was among those who dared to face danger in their effort to uphold the truth,” said Dr AAMS Arefin Siddique, vice chancellor of Dhaka University.

Prof Razia Matin and Prof Matin were the very first people who protested the killings and demanded trial of the killers of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family members immediately after their brutal murder in 1975, he said.