The Ministry of Liberation War Affairs has canceled the video interviews of nearly 15,000 freedom fighters conducted under a project, citing non-fulfillment of conditions.
It has been decided that the contractor involved in this work will not be paid. These videos of the interview will also not be saved.
Ministry officials said that after reviewing the videos, they found that the interview videos did not present the ‘correct history’ of the Liberation War. There are various inconsistencies in the videos. The experiences of the freedom fighters were not properly reflected in the videos. These videos have been discarded as they may create a negative perception about the Liberation War if they reach future generations.
Not only the interviews, but the entire project worth about 50 crore taka undertaken during the previous government to preserve the history of the Liberation War has been canceled.
What was the project?
This project was undertaken in 2022 during the Awami League government to spread the experiences of the brave freedom fighters who participated in the Liberation War who are still alive to the next generation. The cost of implementing the project, titled ‘Virer Kantho Bir Gatha’, is estimated at 495.7 million taka.
The project was supposed to produce 80,000 interviews with freedom fighters, 80,000 YouTube content, and 16 documentaries. The project was scheduled to be completed in December 2024, five months before the Awami League was ousted from power in a coup.
A review of the documents shows that a company named Management and Training International Limited (MTI) was awarded the task of producing a documentary based on interviews with freedom fighters. The company signed an agreement with the Ministry of Liberation War on May 16, 2023.
The agreement states that 19 questions will be asked when interviewing freedom fighters. In the video-based interview, 19 criteria are set, such as which sector a freedom fighter fought in, under whose command he participated in the war, where and how he was during the 9 months of the liberation war, whether he had any experience of frontline combat, whether he had received weapons training, and whether he was injured in the war.
According to project officials, MTI has so far produced and submitted 27,428 videos. Of these, 12,788 were submitted during the previous government. They have been preserved in the Bangladesh Film Archive. 14,640 submitted later were discarded during the interim government.
Why cancel?
Project officials say that the videos that were rejected did not meet these criteria.
Afrazur Rahman, project director of the ‘Veer Kanthe Birgatha’ project, told Prothom Alo that the contractor did not follow the standards that were asked to be followed in making videos of freedom fighters.
He said that the interim government took responsibility and asked the contractor to stop making videos, but the contractor did not comply, adding, “That is why their bill has not been paid. The project has been canceled.”
The Awami League government fell on August 5, 2024, in a student uprising. The interim government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus took office three days later, on August 8. Taking charge as the advisor to the Ministry of Liberation War, Faruq-e-Azam ordered the formation of a 10-member committee to scrutinize and select videos based on interviews of brave freedom fighters. The committee was chaired by Ziauddin Ahmed, Additional Secretary of the Ministry of Liberation War.
There is a tomboy named Tinon. Most of the time she dresses like a boy though she is a cute & pretty young woman . She has attractive dimples & refreshing smile. By the way, She ‘s an woman with big heart . She looks after to the under privileged children like us . We love her immensely.
As a feminist and ex-tomboy, she often thinks about how her expression of gender has evolved over the course of her life. She is still unsure whether her childhood identity as a tomboy, and her later decision to spurn this identity, arose from a desire to conform or from a genuine shift in her sense of self. Her attempt to make sense of this change involves a lot of self-reflection and some crucial realizations about the limitations of the tomboy label.
According to Oxford Dictionary, a tomboy is “a girl who enjoys rough, noisy activities traditionally associated with boys.” While this definition is based on harmful and unnecessary gender stereotypes, the tomboy label often validates and provides community for those who deviate from the norm. However, problems arise when young people are taught to hate everything associated with femininity, leading to internalized misogyny and body image issues from a young age. It’s also no coincidence that the archetypal tomboy, especially in 20th century literature and pop culture, is white, straight and middle class.
Tomboy was, for her, an identity. It was a label for girls who were independent, curious, and maybe a bit too adventurous at times. Before embracing the tomboy identity, I had been a quiet and cynical loner. Afterwards, all of her friends were tomboys, and they bonded over their mutual disgust for princesses, fairies and all things pink. We played rough, spoke rudely and stayed out after dark. Basically, they were rule-breakers, reveling in the independence and solidarity of tomboy-hood.
A part of me misses the young her that had the courage to stray from the norm when it came to the behavior expected from young girls. However, her experience was also one that involved not wanting to be ‘like other girls,’ an issue that still plagues many adolescents and adults. I viewed anything ‘girly’ and pink as weak and felt guilty when she did enjoy these things.
Her tomboy-ness was about destroying all aspects of her perceived femininity. This internalized misogyny from a young age led to strong feelings of self-hatred as well as hatred towards other girls her age. There were unspoken rules at play, constantly affecting her behavior and self-esteem. She remember going to the library and nervously checking out the cheesy YA romance novels, worried that this threatened my ‘tomboy brand.’ Tomboys were not supposed to like books. And they definitely weren’t supposed to like girl books!
But she was always secretly jealous of the girls who were clean and small, the ones who did gymnastics on the lawn every recess and lunch. They never got in trouble with authority figures. They were invited to all the birthday parties. They got all the attention. I loved my world, but kind of wanted to explore the ‘dark side’ (or rather the pink side), as I saw it.
Eventually, she did. She finally learned how to put her hair up, wear trendy clothing, and apply makeup (albeit badly) to her face. It wasn’t an overnight transformation, but she suddenly began to regret her tomboy days. How could she have cared so little about how I looked? No wonder people thought I was weird and gross. I was.
The tomboy in me died away as she began to see that popularity and attractiveness were now of utmost importance. The neglected bangs were chopped off, the basketball shorts replaced by booty shorts, and the girls she had once been so jealous of were now within arm’s reach. Putting on makeup and painting nails were just what teen girls did, she thought. She even learned to like some of these traditionally feminine activities.
Her transition from tomboy to girly-girl was fueled by peer pressure and the bodily changes that She experienced as a teen. Social media, as well as new friends, made me see that by appearing more feminine, She could gain popularity, both online and in real life. One’s ability to appear feminine was deeply linked to social status.
So, she measured her self-worth with Instagram likes and by comparing myself to the prettiest and most popular girls She knew.
he also couldn’t ignore my body’s changes as she hit that wonderful age of puberty. The hormones were flowing, and so were her tears as She discovered the tiring and tedious procedures
We teach young girls to hate themselves in subtle but pervasive ways. Her fear of being weak and girly turned into a fear of not appearing feminine enough. We force labels like ‘tomboy’ onto young children, seldom allowing them to figure out their own personalities and identities. We tell children that everything they do and believe in is ‘just a phase,’ while at the same time sticking them with these labels that have tremendous life-long effects.
Many tomboys eventually come to identify as queer or trans, but many do not. Because of this, the tomboy experience is not simply one experience. Tomboys cannot all be characterized as confused girls, future lesbians, and/or wannabe boys. Why can’t adults let a child’s words and decisions speak for themselves? Why must we jump to labeling and psychoanalysis, as if we know exactly who a child is and will be just because of how they dress or who they play with?
Social and cultural norms are key in the construction of a rigid gender binary beginning early in life. Gender reveal parties, baby showers, and infant fashion are all displays of gender that associate and label preferences based solely on whether a child is designated male or female. Beyond the pink-blue stereotype, studies done in American preschools reveal that while little girls are often socialized to be polite, quiet and still, young boys are more often given the freedom to be loud, curious and even violent. The allocation of behavioral traits is not only a way of creating and maintaining order among children, it produces teens and adults who view the gender binary and behavioral sex differences as innate and natural. It allows us to start making claims about what’s normal and what’s not. It allows adults to start labeling ‘deviant’ children as tomboys, sissies, class clowns. These children are treated as inherently troubled youth, when gendered behavior and the binary are actually intensely and continually conditioned.
She doesn’t regret any so-called phase of her childhood. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with being a traditionally ‘girly’ child, and there’s also nothing wrong with ‘boyish’ or gender-nonconforming children. The enforcement of a strict divide between the two is what led to issues for her as a child who was compelled to constantly prove my girlhood (or lack of it). The idea that some girls are tomboys and some aren’t needs to be left in the past. On the whole, let’s teach kids to be respectful of gender diversity rather than reinforcing the binary with outdated and unnecessary labels.
Today, on the occasion of Vijay Diwas, the makers of the upcoming war-drama film, Border 2, dropped its most anticipated teaser. The clip was launched in the presence of fans in Mumbai at a grand event. While addressing the audience, lead actor Sunny Deol got emotional and shed tears as he delivered his iconic dialogue from the film. Check it out!
Sunny Deol gets emotional at Border 2 teaser launch event
Earlier today, December 16, 2025, Sunny Deol, Varun Dhawan, and Ahan Shetty arrived at the grand teaser launch of their upcoming war-drama film, Border 2. The teaser was dropped in the presence of excited fans and the media. During the event, Deol was requested to deliver his hair-raising dialogue, which was recently seen in the teaser.
Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney is en route to China for a pivotal visit aimed at resetting ties with Beijing and finding new economic opportunities for his country outside the US.
It will not be an easy task, with pressure on Canada to balance its goal of diversifying trade without risking damage to its relationship with Donald Trump or compromising national security and human rights commitments.
But with ongoing uncertainty over Canada’s trade future with the US – its largest customer – the country now finds itself seeking to repair strained relations to protect its economy.
Senior Canadian officials have described the trip, the first to China by a Canadian prime minister since 2017, as “consequential and historic” and part of a “bold” plan to double Canada’s non-US exports over the next decade.
Trade will be on the agenda, along with agriculture and international security, Carney’s office said. Beijing’s foreign ministry said the two countries have “shared interests” and should work to “increase people-to-people ties and cultural exchanges”.
On Thursday, Carney meets the Premier of China, Li Qiang, as well as the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress of China, Zhao Leji.
On Friday, the prime minister is scheduled to meet Chinese President Xi Jinping one-on-one, after the pair met last year on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea.
This official visit is a significant step in the rapprochement after Canada-China relations hit a low in 2018, following the arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou in Vancouver on a US warrant on fraud charges related to Iran sanctions violations.
The detention in Canada of the executive of a Chinese telecom giant angered Beijing, and China subsequently arrested two Canadians on espionage charges.
All three were released in 2021 after Meng cut a deal with US prosecutors.
More recently, China has been accused of meddling in Canada’s politics, though a public inquiry on foreign interference found its impact in recent federal elections to be minimal. China has repeatedly denied allegations of foreign meddling.
Canada and China have struggled to forge meaningful ties in the past.
The Carney government does not see this upcoming visit as a deviation from that view, senior Canadian government officials told reporters this week. But they added that Canada cannot achieve its objective of reducing economic reliance on the US without increasing trade with China.
Carney is said to be approaching talks with an eye on increasing collaboration in areas of mutual interest like energy and climate, and putting guardrails on areas where the two countries clash, like defence and critical minerals.
“I think we are approaching the relationship now with the realism that we haven’t seen for decades,” Colin Robertson, a former Canadian diplomat, told the BBC.
Robertson added that it could result in a “healthier relationship if both sides understand where they’re coming from and what the red lines are”.
It has already proven to be a careful line to walk. Ahead of Carney’s visit, two Liberal MPs cut a sponsored trip to Taiwan short, telling the Globe and Mail newspaper that while Canada’s position on Taiwan “has not changed”, the trip ended early to “avoid confusion with its foreign policy, given the overlap with the Prime Minister’s engagement in Beijing”.
One of Canada’s main objectives during this trip is to ease Chinese tariffs on Canadian canola that have hurt farmers in the country’s prairie provinces.
China last year imposed the agriculture tariffs in a move widely seen as retaliation for Canadian levies on Chinese electric vehicles announced in 2024, mirroring similar levies by the US.
In an editorial this week, state-run newspaper Global Times pointed to frustration expressed by Canadian farmers, suggesting “perhaps this was the heavy price (Canada) paid for blindly following the US”. China has made it clear it wants the tariffs on EVs lifted.
For China, Canada is seen as an important trading partner, with trade between the two countries valued at around $118bn in 2024. But crucially for Beijing, if President Xi manages to make a deal with Carney, it would give China more influence in a country that is on America’s doorstep.
The Global Times op-ed called on Ottawa to set a foreign policy path separate from that of the US and to exercise “strategic autonomy”.
One big unknown about this visit is how the US would react to any deals struck between Canada and China. Canada’s economy has been hit by US tariffs, especially those on its steel, aluminium and automotive sectors. Talks to ease those levies remain on pause.
Canada will soon, however, be engaged in consequential talks on renewing a long-standing North American free trade agreement with the US and Mexico that has shielded it from the bulk of Trump’s sweeping tariffs. That review is set to be completed later this year.
Robertson, the former diplomat, said it is likely that the Americans are watching the Canada-China relationship “very closely”, and that Canada is keeping the US “well informed” of its intentions.
But he added: “At the end of the day, there’s Canadian interests that we’re pursuing.”
With additional reporting from Jessica Murphy in Toronto.
More than 2,000 people have been killed during the violent crackdown by security forces on protests in Iran, a human rights group has said, as President Trump promised Iranians that help was “on its way”.
The US-based Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA) reported that it had so far confirmed the killing of 1,850 protesters, 135 people affiliated with the government and nine uninvolved civilians as well as nine children over the last 17 days despite an internet blackout.
An Iranian official also told Reuters that 2,000 people had been killed but that “terrorists” were to blame.
Trump will attend a meeting about Iran on Tuesday evening, and has pledged to get “accurate ” death toll figures.
“The killing looks like it’s significant, but we don’t know yet for certain,” Trump told reporters while returning to the White House.
Once he has the numbers, he said, “we’ll act accordingly.”
Earlier on Tuesday, Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform that Iranian authorities would “pay a big price” for the killings, and urged people to “keep protesting”.
“I have cancelled all meetings with Iranian Officials until the senseless killing of protesters STOPS. HELP IS ON ITS WAY. MIGA!!!,” he added, using the acronym for a US-based Iranian opposition slogan, “Make Iran Great Again”.
Trump has been weighing military and other options in response to the crackdown, having already announced 25% tariffs on any country trading with Iran.
The protests, which have reportedly spread to 180 cities and towns in all 31 provinces, were sparked by anger over the collapse of the Iranian currency and soaring cost of living.
They quickly widened into demands for political change and became one of the most serious challenges to the clerical establishment since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
The protests escalated significantly last Thursday and were met with deadly force by authorities, masked by a near total shutdown of the internet and communication services.
HRANA said on Tuesday afternoon that, as well as confirming the killing of at least 2,003 people during the unrest, it was also reviewing reports of another 779 deaths.
“We’re horrified, but we still think the number is conservative,” Deputy Director Skylar Thompson told the Associated Press.
Another group, Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR), meanwhile said it had confirmed the killing of at least 734 protesters.
Its director, Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, told AFP news agency that the figures were “based on information received from fewer than half of the country’s provinces and fewer than 10% of Iran’s hospitals”, adding: “The real number of those killed is likely in the thousands.”
Reuters said the unnamed Iranian official who put the death toll at about 2,000 had not given a breakdown of the figure. However, it added, he said “terrorists” were behind the deaths of both protesters and security personnel.
It is difficult to gauge the true scale of bloodshed because, like other international news organisations, the BBC is not able to report from inside the country.
However, videos posted online on Sunday showed people searching for the bodies of their loved ones at the Kahrizak Forensic Centre in Tehran. The BBC counted at least 180 shrouded bodies and body bags in the footage.
Around 50 bodies were visible in another video from the facility shared on Monday.
“My friend went there [Kahrizak] to look for his brother, and he forgot his own sorrow,” an activist told BBC Persian on Monday.
“They piled up bodies from every neighbourhood, like Saadatabad, Naziabad, Sattarkhan. So you go to your address pile and search there. You don’t know a fraction of the level of violence that’s been used.”
Hospitals in the capital have also reportedly been overwhelmed by the number of casualties.
Prof Shahram Kordasti, an Iranian oncologist based in London, told the BBC’s Newsday programme on Tuesday that the last message he had received from a colleague in Tehran said: “In most hospitals, it’s like a warzone. We are short of supplies, short of blood.”
Other doctors at “two to three hospitals” had also said they had treated hundreds of injured or dead people, he added.
An Iranian living in Rasht, near the Caspian Sea coast, described the city as unrecognisable. “Everywhere is burnt with fire,” they said.
On Monday night, US defence officials told the BBC’s US partner, CBS news, that Trump had been briefed on a wide range of covert and military tools, including long-range missile strikes, cyber operations and psychological campaign responses.
At the same time, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi told Al Jazeera that Iran was ready for diplomacy but also for other options, including “if the US wanted to test the military option which it had tested in the past”. In June, the US carried out air strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities during a 12-day war between Iran and Israel.
Araghchi also said that Iranian government had been in dialogue with protesters, but that it had been forced to take action after “trained terrorist groups” run from abroad infiltrated the demonstrations and targeted security forces.
His comments echoed those of the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who told supporters at state-organised rallies across the country on Monday that they had “neutralised the plans by foreign enemies that were meant to be performed by domestic mercenaries”.
Also on Tuesday, UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper summoned the Iranian ambassador to protest in response at what she called “the horrendous and brutal killing of Iranian protesters”.
The UN human rights chief Volker Türk urged Iranian authorities to halt all forms of violence and repression against peaceful protesters immediately, his office said.
He added that the labelling of protesters as “terrorists” to justify violence was unacceptable and that it was “extremely worrying” to see statements from Iranian officials indicating the possibility of the death penalty being used against protesters through expedited trials.
Judiciary chief Gholamhossein Mohseni Ejei said on Monday that those involved in the unrest would be “dealt with seriously and severely”. And prosecutors have said some will be charged with “enmity against God”, a national security offence that carries the death penalty.
More than 16,780 protesters have been arrested during the unrest, according to HRANA.
A 26-year-old man detained last Thursday has already been sentenced to death, according to his family and Norway-based Kurdish human rights group Hengaw.
A relative of Erfan Soltani’s family told BBC Persian that “in an extremely rapid process, within just two days, the court issued a death sentence, and the family was told that he is due to be executed [this] Wednesday”.
“We have never witnessed a case move so quickly,” Awyar Shekhi of Hengaw told the BBC. “The government is using every tactic they know to suppress people and spread fear.”
Speaking to the BBC’s US news partner CBS later on Tuesday, Trump said the US would take “very strong action” if Iran’s authorities started hanging protesters.
“If they hang them, you’re going to see some things… We will take very strong action if they do such a thing,” he said.
Türk also demanded that Iranian authorities restore full access to the internet and other communication services.
Some international calls from Iran went through on Tuesday, but the internet shutdown has now passed 120 hours, according to monitor NetBlocks.
One person living near Tehran with access via the Starlink satellite service told BBC Persian that there were “checkpoints in every block”, where cars and the phones of their occupants were being inspected by security forces.
New videos of protests in recent days have also emerged, with BBC Persian verifying those filmed in the central city of Arak and the western cities of Tabriz, Urmia and Khorramabad.
The protesters chant slogans “Death to the dictator” – a reference to Ayatollah Khamenei – and “Reza Shah, may your soul rest in peace” – referring to the late monarch Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was overthrown in the 1979 revolution and whose son Reza lives in exile.
The US government has given chip giant Nvidia the green light to sell its advanced artificial intelligence (AI) processors in China, the Department of Commerce said on Tuesday.
The H200, Nvidia’s second-most-advanced semiconductor, had been restricted by Washington over concerns that it would give China’s technology industry and military an edge over the US.
The Commerce Department said the chips can be shipped to China granted that there is sufficient supply of the processors in the US.
President Donald Trump said last month that he would allow the chip sales to “approved customers” in China and collect a 25% fee.
Nvidia’s spokesperson told the BBC that the company welcomed the move, saying it will benefit manufacturing and jobs in the US.
The Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security said its revised export policy applies to Nvidia’s H200 chips, as well as less advanced processors. Chinese customers must also show “sufficient security procedures” and cannot use the chips for military uses.
The H200 chip is a generation behind Nvidia’s Blackwell processor, which is considered to be the world’s most advanced AI semiconductor and remains blocked from sale in China.
Chinese embassy spokesman Liu Pengyu told the BBC on Wednesday that Beijing has consistently opposed the “politicisation and weaponisation of tech and trade issues”.
“We oppose blocking and restricting China, which disrupts the stability of industrial and supply chains,” he said. “This approach does not serve the common interests of both sides.”
Nvidia has been caught in a geopolitical tug-of-war between the US and China – two sides of a global AI race.
Trump reversed the chip-selling restriction last July, but demanded that Nvidia pay a cut of its earnings from China to the US government.
Beijing then reportedly ordered its tech companies to boycott Nvidia’s China-bound chips and prioritise semiconductors made domestically. That move was designed to bolster China’s tech industry, though experts have consistently said that the country’s chips still lag behind the US.
Throughout 2025, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang continually lobbied Washington to allow the sale of the firm’s high-powered chips to China, arguing that global market excess is essential for America’s competitiveness.
Some officials in the US, however, have expressed concerns that the chips would benefit Beijing’s military and hurt America’s progress in AI development.
While Beijing is likely concerned about domestic firms becoming over-reliant on Nvidia, local firms will be eager to secure H200 chips – at least until homegrown alternatives get better, said semiconductor analyst Austin Lyons.
Nvidia will also be happy to get any revenue from China, even if it comes at a lower margin due to the US government taking a cut of the sales, Lyons added.
Trump’s “unique” proposal to collect a cut of Nvidia’s sales could also set a precedent for his negotiations in other trade tariffs, said Marc Einstein from Counterpoint Research.
“It will be interesting to see if this tariff model expands to other sectors.”
