by Andy Heintz, CounterVortex

Shireen Huq has never shied away from taking a stand. Huq, founder of the women’s activist organization Naripokkho (meaning Pro-Women or For Women), has been on the front line of feminist causes in Bangladesh since the organization was founded in 1983. Today, however, she not only faces the continuing struggle for equal rights and gender equality in Bangladesh, but a host of related crises that are roiling the country. In a telephone interview from Dhaka, she discusses issues ranging from the plight of more than a million Rohingya refugees living in the Cox's Bazar district, impacts of the military coup in neighboring Burma (also known as Myanmar), and the crackdown on freedom of speech and expression in Bangladesh.

Razia Sultana Speaks

by Andy Heintz, CounterVortex

Razia Sultana has seen and heard things that have once again revealed human beings' disturbing capacity for sadism and cruelty that mere words fail to describe. While much of the world has read and heard reports of the brutal repression of the Rohingya Muslim ethnic minority in Burma, Sultana has heard these stories first-hand while working with female survivors in Kutupalong, the world's largest refugee camp.

"I try to overcome the memories I have from when I talked with rape victims," she tells CounterVortex via telephone from Bangladesh. "I see their bodies and marks with my eyes. I provide psycho-social programs of resiliency for women, and some of them have started to talk with me after three years. This is good, that they are trusting me so we can give them more support. It's not about the financial benefits, it's only about mental therapy to help them overcome their situation. They are now openly sharing their stories and their experiences. This helps them have confidence and talk with other people about their problems. They initially were not talking to anyone."

How they Exacerbate Ethnic Tension

by Samir Pasha and Naga Kandiah, Jurist

Much controversy surrounds the use of the flags associated with the Sri Lankan peoples, mainly because they are loaded with ethnic symbolism in a country recovering from a generation-long civil war along ethno-nationalist lines. The flags of concern here all feature big cats as central to their designs.

Big cats, wherever they occur, have been objects of reverence. Even where they are not native, their sheer power, grace, agility, ferocity and strength have enabled them to establish a place in the mythos and heraldry of many nations. Of interest to the Sri Lankan story are three species of big cat: the leopard, the lion and the tiger. We will briefly examine them in that order.

Of the three species, only one is currently resident in Sri Lanka—the Sri Lankan leopard (Panthera pardus kotiya). Strangely, it does not feature in the ethnic heraldry of the country anywhere near as much as its relatives do. As the subspecies name suggests, the Sinhala word for leopard is kotiya, a word which is also commonly (although not entirely accurately) used to denote the tiger—especially as a derogatory term directed at Tamils. The leopard is significant in Hinduism, however, as the animal from which the god Shiva's garments are made, and the god is frequently depicted meditating upon a leopard's skin.