Flood Deluge Worsens in Bangladesh with Millions Affected

Volunteers rescue people on a boat after several districts flooded at Chhagalnaiya in Feni, Bangladesh, August 23, 2024. REUTERS/Abdul Goni
Volunteers rescue people on a boat after several districts flooded at Chhagalnaiya in Feni, Bangladesh, August 23, 2024. REUTERS/Abdul Goni
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Flood Deluge Worsens in Bangladesh with Millions Affected

Volunteers rescue people on a boat after several districts flooded at Chhagalnaiya in Feni, Bangladesh, August 23, 2024. REUTERS/Abdul Goni
Volunteers rescue people on a boat after several districts flooded at Chhagalnaiya in Feni, Bangladesh, August 23, 2024. REUTERS/Abdul Goni

Flash floods wrought havoc in Bangladesh on Friday as the country recovers from weeks of political upheaval, with the death toll rising to 13 and millions more caught in the deluge.
The South Asian nation of 170 million people, crisscrossed by hundreds of rivers, has seen frequent floods in recent decades, AFP said.
The annual monsoon rains cause widespread destruction every year, but climate change is shifting weather patterns and increasing the number of extreme weather events.
"It's a catastrophic situation here," rescue volunteer Zahed Hossain Bhuiya, 35, told AFP from the worst-hit city of Feni. "We are trying to rescue as many people as we can."
Much of Bangladesh is made up of deltas where the Himalayan rivers, the Ganges and the Brahmaputra, wind towards the sea after coursing through India.
All the major tributaries of the two transnational rivers were overflowing, according to local media reports.
Nur Islam, a shopkeeper in Feni, said his home had been completely submerged.
"Everything is underwater," the 60-year-old said.
Bangladesh's disaster management ministry said in a bulletin that the latest toll of 13 deaths included fatalities in cities along the country's southeastern coast.
That included the main port city of Chittagong and Cox's Bazar, a district home to around a million Rohingya refugees from neighboring Myanmar.
Areas east of the capital Dhaka were also badly hit including the city of Comilla, near the border with Tripura state in India.
Nearly 190,000 others were taken to emergency relief shelters, according to the bulletin, while altogether 4.5 million people had been affected in some way.
Altogether 11 of the country's 64 districts were affected by the flooding, the ministry said.
Diplomatic tensions
The floods come less than three weeks after the ouster of ex-premier Sheikh Hasina, who was forced to flee by helicopter to India, her government's biggest political patron, during a student-led uprising.
Hasina's 15-year rule saw widespread human rights abuses, including the mass detention and extrajudicial killings of her political opponents.
She was replaced by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, who is heading an interim government facing the monumental task of charting democratic reforms ahead of expected new elections.
Asif Mahmud, a leader of the student protests that ousted Hasina who is now in Yunus' caretaker cabinet, had earlier accused India of "creating a flood" by deliberately releasing water from dams.
India's foreign ministry rejected the charge, saying its own catchment area had experienced the "heaviest rains of this year" this week, and that the flow of water downstream was due to "automatic releases".
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Hindu-nationalist government backed Hasina's rule over her rivals from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, which it saw as closer to conservative Islamist groups.
Modi has offered his support to the Yunus administration.



Brazil’s Ex-President Bolsonaro Charged in Alleged Coup Plot 

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives for a luncheon with senators from his support base, at the National Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives for a luncheon with senators from his support base, at the National Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
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Brazil’s Ex-President Bolsonaro Charged in Alleged Coup Plot 

Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives for a luncheon with senators from his support base, at the National Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)
Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro arrives for a luncheon with senators from his support base, at the National Congress building in Brasilia, Brazil, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP)

Former Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro was charged on Tuesday with overseeing a plot to overturn his 2022 election loss with a coup, further complicating the far-right firebrand's already narrow hopes of pulling off a political comeback.

Prosecutor General Paulo Gonet charged Bolsonaro and his running mate, General Walter Braga Netto, with leading a "criminal organization" that aimed to overthrow Brazil's 40-year-old democracy.

A total of 34 people were charged in the plot, including several military officials, such as Bolsonaro's former national security adviser, retired General Augusto Heleno, and former Navy Commander Almir Garnier Santos, according to the charge sheet.

"The responsibility for acts harmful to the democratic order falls upon a criminal organization led by Jair Messias Bolsonaro, based on an authoritarian project of power," it added.

Analysts consider it unlikely Bolsonaro will be arrested before his trial, unless Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, who is overseeing the case, deems him a flight risk.

The case echoes the criminal charges faced by US President Donald Trump that accused him of seeking to overturn his own re-election loss in 2020. That case was repeatedly delayed and ultimately dropped after Trump was returned to power in last November's US election.

The charges against Bolsonaro come just months after Brazil's federal police concluded a two-year investigation into his role in the election-denying movement that culminated in the riots by his supporters that swept the capital, Brasilia, in early 2023, a week after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva took office.

At the time, many protesters admitted that they wanted to create chaos to justify a military coup that they considered imminent. Late last year, police arrested five alleged conspirators suspected of planning to assassinate the leftist Lula before he took office.

Prosecutors have said the Bolsonaro-led plot included plans to poison Lula, a one-time union leader who previously served two terms as president.

Lula narrowly defeated the right-wing standard-bearer in the late 2022 presidential election.

A PLOT TO TAKE CONTROL

"They sought total control over the three branches of government; they outlined a central office that would serve the purpose of organizing the new order they intended to establish," the charging document noted, referring to those who allegedly pushed the coup plot.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain, has repeatedly denied breaking any laws, and calls allegations against him a witch hunt by his political opponents.

Lawyers representing Bolsonaro said in a Tuesday statement that he never supported any movement aimed at dismantling Brazil's democratic rule of law or the institutions that uphold it.

Meanwhile, Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, a son of the former president, in a post on X on Tuesday night derided the charges as an "unconstitutional and immoral mission to attend to Alexandre de Moraes' whims and Lula's nefarious interest."

Tuesday's indictment marks the first time Bolsonaro has been charged with a crime, though he has faced several legal challenges to his conduct as president since he lost his reelection bid.

Two previous decisions by Brazil's Federal Electoral Court have already blocked him from running for president until 2030.

Bolsonaro's lawyers have two weeks to respond to the charges before the Supreme Court decides whether it will accept the charges and potentially hold a dramatic, televised trial.

If convicted, Bolsonaro faces at least a dozen years behind bars.

DIMMING COMEBACK HOPES

"There's a 99% chance that the Supreme Court will accept the charges," said Vera Chemim, a constitutional lawyer in Sao Paulo. "But to convict Bolsonaro, the Supreme Court will need robust evidence."

Bolsonaro's former running mate, General Braga Netto, was arrested two months ago after police accused him of interfering in the investigations. In a statement late Tuesday, his lawyers called the charges a "fantasy" that will not erase his "unblemished history" over four decades of service in the Brazilian Army.

A lawyer for former Navy chief Garnier Santos said he will comment once he had fully reviewed the charges, while a lawyer for General Heleno, Bolsonaro's national security adviser, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A Supreme Court conviction could mark an insurmountable obstacle to Bolsonaro's hopes to run in the 2026 presidential election, in a potential rematch against Lula.

A 2010 law that Bolsonaro himself voted to pass when he was a member of Congress bars anyone convicted by an appeals court from running for office.

Two sources close to Bolsonaro said the former president has little hope the courts will rule in his favor. Instead, his allies hope to mobilize political support to increase the pressure on courts and lawmakers to clear a path for a comeback.

On Tuesday, hours before prosecutors presented the charges against him, Bolsonaro met with opposition senators to discuss a bill that would lower the length of time politicians are barred from elections if they commit irregularities.

While its prospects for passage are unclear, some conservatives are emboldened by Lula's unpopularity, according to recent polls.

A February survey released by Datafolha showed that only 24% of Brazilians approve of Lula's government, his lowest-ever rating in any of his three terms as president.