Trying to remember, refusing to forget

Tazreena Sajjad

Published in the Forum (November 2007)

“No one has the right to forgive those responsible for human rights violations other than the victims themselves … For any process of national reconciliation to succeed the suffering of victims must be acknowledged and impunity tackled.”
– 2007 Statement of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan

Do you want to remember or do you want to forget?” If only this question had an easy answer. Remembering is not easy, but forgetting may be impossible, especially when it comes to surviving the atrocities of war. Unresolved questions of how to address the past and deal with the horrific acts of brutality plague a nation: Are prosecutions possible? Should they be national or international? Should indigenous methods of justice and reconciliation take precedence over standardised punitive measures? Is the choice only between a silent peace and a risky justice? Should the nation bury the past, to not risk bringing painful memories back to life and further dividing a fledgling country?

On agflation

Jyoti Rahman

Published in the Forum (November 2007)

Rising food price inflation is a major, perhaps the most important, economic issue facing the country. But it’s not only in Bangladesh where food prices are rising. It’s a global phenomenon that the Economist has dubbed agflation.¹ There are macro and microeconomic reasons behind agflation, and policies to combat it will have to take these factors into account.

Let’s start with the global reasons. There are three reasons behind the global agflation. First, concerns about the effects of climate change have resulted in a rapid rise in the demand for bio-fuel whose production relies on corn. This has led to rises in the price of corn and its substitutes like wheat and other grains. Second, rapidly rising prosperity in poorer countries, particularly India and China, are raising global demand for food products, and are thus fuelling price rises.

Long summer nights

Rumi Ahmed

Published in the Forum (November 2007)

Two bedroom flat. Father, mother, four siblings, and an uncle; all live together in the 500 sq. foot residential unit. Father, mother, and the youngest of the kids live in one bedroom. Another room is shared by the two sisters, one goes to college and one is in high school. The other brother, also in high school, and the uncle, who is struggling with his small business after graduation, share the bed which occupies a part of the living room. There is a small balcony, which is occupied with household items like an extra chair, a broken table, a shelf.

If you somehow manage to stand in the balcony and try to look out through the clothes hung for drying, your vision will be obstructed at two feet distance by another multistory building that houses 24 more families.