Her son Labuyat said the sheaf of this variety was much longer and broader compared to others.

“We have processed around 2,600kg ‘Fatemadhan’ this season. We preserved some for the next season and sold most of them for Tk400 per kg,” Labuyat said.

People from different parts of the country came to Fatema’s house to collect the seeds.

Deputy Assistant Agriculture Officer Solaiman Ali of Department of Agriculture Extension (DAE) told UNB that they felt encouraged seeing high yield potential of the rice.

Another DAE official Motahar Hossain said, “This variety is cultivated in the Boro season. The seedbed was prepared in November and planted at the end of December. This type of rice can be harvested within 150 to 155 days of planting.”

Motahar said the average length of each plant is from 115 to 130 centimetre, number of tiller is eight and the average height of each sheaf is 36 centimetres. The yield is above 11 metric tons per hectare.

“Rice samples have been sent to Bangladesh Agricultural Development Corporation and Soil Resource Development Institute for further research,” he added.

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune
 

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Claiming that Aung San Suu Kyi has chosen to turn a blind eye to the genocide taking place in her country to retain her political power, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Iran’s Shirin Ebadi said on Thursday that their fellow laureate has sold her soul to the devil.

The laureate came up with this remark at a program titled ‘Combating Violence Against Women and Advancing Women’s Rights’ arranged by Naripokkho and Nobel Women’s Initiatives in Dhaka where she and another Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Northern Ireland’s Mairead Maguire talked to female reporters of the country.

“When Aung San Suu Kyi was under house arrest, Mairead and I staged several campaigns in order to secure her release, we even staged demonstration outside the Myanmar Embassy in Washington,” she said adding, “However, unfortunately, when she was released from the house arrest she sold her soul to the devil.”

Shirin said she, as a Muslim laureate, has written several open letters to Suu Kyi saying that her silence is shameful. “I urged her to take a stance breaking her silence, but Suu Kyi didn’t reply to any of them.”

Suu Kyi appears to have forgotten how she suffered when she was under house arrest. Now the Rohingya Muslims are suffering at least ten times more than any of her sufferings but she wants to hold on her political power, she added.

Urging for a peaceful solution, Mairead Maguire said dialogue and diplomacy are very important to solve the Rohingya crisis and the role played by Bangladesh is a model for the world.

She and the two other laureates will hopefully further detect the genocide of Rohingya people to the ICC and encourage the other countries to support Bangladesh for their inspirational works in the crisis, added the laureate.

She said it is also important to focus on the need of having dialogue and listening to each other to bring peace, while everybody, including the governments, has a role to play here.

Claiming that they have the evidence that the Rohingya issue is genocide, Mairead said their next course of action is to identify interested states through the UN who can take the Myanmar government to the ICC. “We want to find states that have passion for human rights and justice,” she added.

The three Nobel laureates – Tawakkol Karman of Yemen, Shirin Ebadi of Iran and Mairead Maguire of Northern Ireland – came to Bangladesh on a week-long visit to see the Rohingya situation on the ground.

The Nobel Women’s Initiative in collaboration with its partner in Bangladesh, Naripokkho, led the delegation to Bangladesh to better understand the situation of the Rohingya refugees and the two laureates except Tawakkol Karman joined the program to share their experiences with some of the female journalists of the country.

Courtesy: UNB
 

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Yanghee Lee, a UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar, has lamented the decades long cycle of violence perpetuated by the authorities against ethnic minorities in Myanmar, including Rohingya Muslims, and said talk of repatriating hundreds of thousands of Rohingyas anytime soon was premature.

In an end of mission statement following visits to Thailand and Bangladesh last month, Lee said what the Myanmar government claims to be the conduct of military or security operations was actually an established pattern of domination, aggression and violations against ethnic groups.

“Recent reports of attacks against civilians; against homes and places of worship; forcible displacement and relocation; the burning of villages; land grabbing; sexual violence; arbitrary arrests and detention; torture and enforced disappearances; are acts that have been alleged against the military and security forces for generations,” she said.

“While reports from Rakhine State have rightly provoked international outrage; for many in Myanmar, they have elicited a tragic sense of déjà vu.”

She said the atrocities committed against the Rohingya in the aftermath of the 9 October 2016 and the 25 August 2017 attacks have been repeatedly witnessed before, albeit not on the same scale of the recent attacks against the Rohingya, according to a statement from Seoul on Thursday.

“I was told repeatedly by the other ethnic groups I spoke to – be they Kachin, Karen, Karenni, or Shan – that they have suffered the same horrific violations at the hands of the Tatmadaw over several decades and – in the case of some groups – continuing today,” Lee said.

“In Thailand, representatives from different ethnic groups that I met expressed their concern that as the world’s attention is focused on the atrocities in Rakhine State, potential war crimes are being committed in Shan and Kachin State without so much as a murmur of disapproval from the international community.”

Lee said that set against this background of violence in the ethnic areas of Myanmar, was a continuing erosion of democratic space. “The civilian government has failed to usher in a new era of openness and transparency and is instead persisting with repressive practices of the past.”

Lee, who was informed by the Myanmar authorities last year she would no longer be allowed to visit the country on the grounds her reporting was unfair and biased, called on the democratic government to break with the repressive practices of the past, and to allow people who have fled their country to return home – to where they belong.

But she added: “For returns to be ever realized in a way that is voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable they must be treated as equals – citizens of Myanmar with all the rights that that status affords.”

She said that while the government of Bangladesh had made it clear that no refugees would be forced back to Myanmar, the international community must pressure Myanmar to create conditions for their return before it is too late.

“This must be done in a principled way that prioritizes the need for these people to be recognized as Rohingya and as citizens of Myanmar,” she said.

Lee said that during her visit to a camp in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh, she saw great anxiety and fear when speaking to refugees about the prospect of returning to Myanmar. “One mother said to me, ‘Our beautiful children were slaughtered, how can we go back?’ Refugees have been entirely excluded from conversations about their fate, and going forward they must be involved in a meaningful way.

“Without equality, Myanmar will never be free from violence and the country’s tragic déjà vu will reverberate through the future as it has through the past. The cycle of violence must end, and Myanmar must be supported in implementing the profound and meaningful reforms that are so urgently needed.”

Lee said she hoped to regain access to Myanmar. “I remain ready to work with the Government and other stakeholders to promote and protect the human rights of all people in Myanmar,” she said.

This article was first published on Dhaka Tribune
 

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