CULTURE VULTURE
Top Bangladeshi photographer faces 14 years in jail
Award-winning photographer Shahidul Alam (pictured) was jailed in Bangladesh on Monday, 10 days after being arrested following an interview with a TV network about massive student demonstrations, police said. Alam, 63, who accused police of assaulting him in custody and was earlier sent to a hospital for a checkup following an order from the high court, was taken to a magistrate’s court late on Sunday. “The court then sent him to jail,” police official Moshiur Rahman told AFP. Another police officer told the local Daily Star newspaper that Alam would be kept in prison until the completion of the probe into his charges. Alam was accused of making “false” and “provocative” statements on television and on Facebook Live as tens of thousands of students protested in Dhaka in late July and early August. He also published photos of the demonstrations. He is being investigated for allegedly violating Bangladesh’s internet laws, enacted in 2006 and sharpened in 2013, that critics say are used to snuff out dissent and harass journalists. Alam, whose work has appeared widely in western media and who founded the renowned Pathshala South Asian Media Institute, faces a maximum of 14 years in jail.
Developer of Dubai’s Waterfront Market launches mural painting competition
Ithra Dubai, the developer of the emirate’s Waterfront Market, the fresh fish market in Deira, has announced the launch of a muralpainting competition that illustrates the cultural and economic transformation of the Emirati community. The Waterfront Market is calling on young and up-and-coming artists across the UAE to submit their work for the chance to have their mural on one of the Waterfront Market’s main walls. The competition’s theme broadly covers the UAE’s rich heritage and achievements. Issam Galadari, chief executive of Ithra Dubai, said: “The mural competition is an initiative which we hope will bring together artists from the UAE’s creative community to capture in an art piece, the growth in our nation’s culture and heritage. We look forward to meeting artists that represent the country’s talents and make us proud to showcase their work to more than hundreds of thousands of visitors monthly and to the world.” Works of the top 10 shortlisted artists will be displayed in a gallery, while the winner of the competition will paint the artwork on the main wall of the Waterfront Market, and will be awarded Dh30,000. The submission deadline is September 16. A maximum of three highresolution original artworks can be submitted to murals@waterfrontmarket.ae. For more information on the competition guidelines, visit the Instagram page, @WFM.UAE.
Russia says health of filmmaker on hunger strike is satisfactory
Russia’s prison system is contradicting claims about the worsening condition of Oleg Sentsov (pictured below), a Ukrainian filmmaker imprisoned on a terrorism conviction and who has been on a hunger strike for 90 days. Sentsov is demanding that he and 64 other Ukrainians who he considers political prisoners be released. The case has attracted considerable international attention, with western nations campaigning for his release. His lawyer, Dmitry Dinze, said that Sentsov has become increasingly frail and now has a low haemoglobin level. The Federal Penitentiary Service said in a statement on Saturday that Sentsov is being given a nutritious formula daily and “as of today, no deficit in body mass or worsening of his health has been observed”. Sentsov, an opponent of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, was sentenced to 20 years in 2015.