The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Last AfD was 7 years ago and ended in no consensus. No embassies, no agreements (just a MOU on rugby union which is hardly a sport in Bangladesh), no visits by leaders or ministers, no real trade.
LibStar (
talk)
00:44, 16 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep Lack of update on the article doesn't justify deletion. No embassies but they have consulate general on each respective countries and both country also have high commission office in "nearby" country for diplomatic mission. And both countries have conducted export-import activity (details on the article)
Ckfasdf (
talk)
00:26, 17 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep - The relations may not be the strongest but that's not a criterion for
WP:GNG. I can see several reliable sources in this article with non-trivial discussions on Bangladesh-Fiji relations. --Zayeem(talk)08:06, 19 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Delete Of the cited sources: the book is one line, "Fiji 31-1-72", in a table, not
signficant coverage that addresses the topic in detail. Five of the remaining eight sources are government press releases (MINFO News is the Fijian Ministry of Information). BBC Monitoring says Fijilive credits Fiji Daily Post. The text appears to originate from a press release. Whatever the case, it's a primary source, and at a mere 76 words, not significant coverage. The Dhaka Tribune also reads suspiciously like a press release. It's a primary source, and just 110 words. The Observatory of Economic Complexity is indiscriminate, covering all nations whether there is a notable bilateral relationship between them or not.
Relations are the same as Bangladesh has with most countries: no resident ambassadors, no state visits, no bilateral agreements, and negligible economic ties. The Atlas of Economic Complexity shows 2019 bilateral exports from Bangladesh at $2.1M (0.005% of total), and from Fiji at $1.0M (0.1% of total).
[1][2] We do our readers a disservice when we club together passing mentions, non-independent press releases, and other primary sources, and dress up the result as "bilateral relations" worthy of an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is
not an indiscriminate collection of information.
I can understand why you, the author, still want to keep it. But the new sources don't demonstrate notability. Global Prayer Digest has none of the characteristics of a
reliable source, and in any case is about Bengalis who came to Fiji between 1879 and 1916, generations before Bangladesh came into existence. Prothom Alo and the Fiji Sun are primary source reports about labor disputes in which 4 or 5 Bangladeshis are involved. The piece in The Financial Express is almost entirely man-on-the-street opinions. There are only four sentences of secondary content in it: two from the World Bank about Fiji's economy, and two of unspecified origin about the number of Bangladeshis in Fiji and where they work. 3000 is not significant in this context. That's 0.002% of Bangladesh's population, 0.024% of the Bangladeshi diaspora, or 0.34% of the population of Fiji. There isn't a single mention of Fiji in any academic secondary source about Bangladesh's foreign relations, such as Harun ur Rashid's Foreign Relations of Bangladesh, Muhammad Tajuddin's Foreign Policy of Bangladesh, or
Craig Baxter's chapter "Bangladesh's Foreign Relations" in Devin T. Hagerty's South Asia in World Politics. Manufacturing bilateral relations by combining primary sources is
synthesis, a type of
original research. --
Worldbruce (
talk)
14:47, 28 February 2022 (UTC)reply
@Worldbruce: No, it does not matter if I created the article or not. The point you are missing is that bilateral relations include all kinds of activities between two countries, not just diplomatic relations, so labor disputes involving Bangladeshis in Fiji is part of the bilateral relations between these two countries. I am not sure how you are claiming Prothom Alo and Fiji Sun to be primary sources, they are private media agencies with no relation to the government or with the people involved in the dispute which suggest these are purely secondary sources. I am also not sure what you meant by "man-on-the-street opinions", The Financial Express sent a reporter to Fiji and he prepared a report covering the status of Bangladeshi expatriates in Fiji, which also constitutes another significant coverage on the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji. These three sources with significant coverage are enough to satisfy the
general notability guidelines. The books you have mentioned were written decades before Bangladesh and Fiji started their relations, I am not surprised they don't discuss Fiji. And the Bengali-speaking people who went to Fiji are people of Bangladeshi descent (which the source mentions), practicing Bangladeshi culture in Fiji. This is a major aspect of bilateral relations.
Nomian (
talk)
17:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Bangladeshis going to work in Fiji and getting into a dispute with their employer does not create bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji because you say so. That's your interpretation of primary source news reports, it is
original research. Two countries have bilateral relations suitable for a stand alone encyclopedia article when reliable, independent, secondary sources write about their bilateral relations in depth. Searches of De Gruyter, EBSCO, JSTOR, the various Oxford databases, Taylor & Francis, and Google Books found zero mentions of bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji.
In determining whether a source is
primary or secondary, it is immaterial who the publisher is. You appear to be confusing the concept of primary/secondary with the unrelated, although also important, concept of
independent, or third-party.
The books I mentioned, published 2001-2005, are recent scholarship. Feel free to cite even more recent books, if any cover Bangladesh-Fiji bilateral relations in depth.
I can't make sense of your last point. To what source are you referring? My reference to Bengali-speaking people was to those who settled in Fiji over a hundred years ago. Bangladesh is barely 50 years old, so they are not of Bangladeshi descent. The literature uniformly refers to them as Indo-Fijians.
Please refer to
Bilateral relations to understand what I mean. Bangladeshis working in Fiji creates economic ties between these two countries, a labor dispute involving them is a disruption to these ties, which has prompted Fijian government to intervene. This is a very good example of a coverage on bilateral relations which, again, is not only limited to diplomacy or politics.
WP:PRIMARY is something which "are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved.", while Prothom Alo's report quoted FBC News as a source, which itself seems to be another third party source, how could you claim Prothom Alo to be primary? Books may be published in 2001 but they were written decades back and Bangladesh's relations with Fiji only started in 2003. Bangladesh itself could be a young country but the culture practiced there is centuries old, those Bengali-speaking people practicing the same Bangladeshi culture in Fiji creates cultural ties between the two countries, which, again, is a part of bilateral relations. The
source cited there mentions that Bengali-speaking people are native to West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Nomian (
talk)
04:44, 2 March 2022 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Additional discussion regarding sources presented in this discussion would be helpful in achieving a more clear consensus. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —
Mhawk10 (
talk)
06:16, 5 March 2022 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.
Last AfD was 7 years ago and ended in no consensus. No embassies, no agreements (just a MOU on rugby union which is hardly a sport in Bangladesh), no visits by leaders or ministers, no real trade.
LibStar (
talk)
00:44, 16 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep Lack of update on the article doesn't justify deletion. No embassies but they have consulate general on each respective countries and both country also have high commission office in "nearby" country for diplomatic mission. And both countries have conducted export-import activity (details on the article)
Ckfasdf (
talk)
00:26, 17 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Keep - The relations may not be the strongest but that's not a criterion for
WP:GNG. I can see several reliable sources in this article with non-trivial discussions on Bangladesh-Fiji relations. --Zayeem(talk)08:06, 19 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Delete Of the cited sources: the book is one line, "Fiji 31-1-72", in a table, not
signficant coverage that addresses the topic in detail. Five of the remaining eight sources are government press releases (MINFO News is the Fijian Ministry of Information). BBC Monitoring says Fijilive credits Fiji Daily Post. The text appears to originate from a press release. Whatever the case, it's a primary source, and at a mere 76 words, not significant coverage. The Dhaka Tribune also reads suspiciously like a press release. It's a primary source, and just 110 words. The Observatory of Economic Complexity is indiscriminate, covering all nations whether there is a notable bilateral relationship between them or not.
Relations are the same as Bangladesh has with most countries: no resident ambassadors, no state visits, no bilateral agreements, and negligible economic ties. The Atlas of Economic Complexity shows 2019 bilateral exports from Bangladesh at $2.1M (0.005% of total), and from Fiji at $1.0M (0.1% of total).
[1][2] We do our readers a disservice when we club together passing mentions, non-independent press releases, and other primary sources, and dress up the result as "bilateral relations" worthy of an encyclopedia article. Wikipedia is
not an indiscriminate collection of information.
I can understand why you, the author, still want to keep it. But the new sources don't demonstrate notability. Global Prayer Digest has none of the characteristics of a
reliable source, and in any case is about Bengalis who came to Fiji between 1879 and 1916, generations before Bangladesh came into existence. Prothom Alo and the Fiji Sun are primary source reports about labor disputes in which 4 or 5 Bangladeshis are involved. The piece in The Financial Express is almost entirely man-on-the-street opinions. There are only four sentences of secondary content in it: two from the World Bank about Fiji's economy, and two of unspecified origin about the number of Bangladeshis in Fiji and where they work. 3000 is not significant in this context. That's 0.002% of Bangladesh's population, 0.024% of the Bangladeshi diaspora, or 0.34% of the population of Fiji. There isn't a single mention of Fiji in any academic secondary source about Bangladesh's foreign relations, such as Harun ur Rashid's Foreign Relations of Bangladesh, Muhammad Tajuddin's Foreign Policy of Bangladesh, or
Craig Baxter's chapter "Bangladesh's Foreign Relations" in Devin T. Hagerty's South Asia in World Politics. Manufacturing bilateral relations by combining primary sources is
synthesis, a type of
original research. --
Worldbruce (
talk)
14:47, 28 February 2022 (UTC)reply
@Worldbruce: No, it does not matter if I created the article or not. The point you are missing is that bilateral relations include all kinds of activities between two countries, not just diplomatic relations, so labor disputes involving Bangladeshis in Fiji is part of the bilateral relations between these two countries. I am not sure how you are claiming Prothom Alo and Fiji Sun to be primary sources, they are private media agencies with no relation to the government or with the people involved in the dispute which suggest these are purely secondary sources. I am also not sure what you meant by "man-on-the-street opinions", The Financial Express sent a reporter to Fiji and he prepared a report covering the status of Bangladeshi expatriates in Fiji, which also constitutes another significant coverage on the bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji. These three sources with significant coverage are enough to satisfy the
general notability guidelines. The books you have mentioned were written decades before Bangladesh and Fiji started their relations, I am not surprised they don't discuss Fiji. And the Bengali-speaking people who went to Fiji are people of Bangladeshi descent (which the source mentions), practicing Bangladeshi culture in Fiji. This is a major aspect of bilateral relations.
Nomian (
talk)
17:48, 28 February 2022 (UTC)reply
Bangladeshis going to work in Fiji and getting into a dispute with their employer does not create bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji because you say so. That's your interpretation of primary source news reports, it is
original research. Two countries have bilateral relations suitable for a stand alone encyclopedia article when reliable, independent, secondary sources write about their bilateral relations in depth. Searches of De Gruyter, EBSCO, JSTOR, the various Oxford databases, Taylor & Francis, and Google Books found zero mentions of bilateral relations between Bangladesh and Fiji.
In determining whether a source is
primary or secondary, it is immaterial who the publisher is. You appear to be confusing the concept of primary/secondary with the unrelated, although also important, concept of
independent, or third-party.
The books I mentioned, published 2001-2005, are recent scholarship. Feel free to cite even more recent books, if any cover Bangladesh-Fiji bilateral relations in depth.
I can't make sense of your last point. To what source are you referring? My reference to Bengali-speaking people was to those who settled in Fiji over a hundred years ago. Bangladesh is barely 50 years old, so they are not of Bangladeshi descent. The literature uniformly refers to them as Indo-Fijians.
Please refer to
Bilateral relations to understand what I mean. Bangladeshis working in Fiji creates economic ties between these two countries, a labor dispute involving them is a disruption to these ties, which has prompted Fijian government to intervene. This is a very good example of a coverage on bilateral relations which, again, is not only limited to diplomacy or politics.
WP:PRIMARY is something which "are original materials that are close to an event, and are often accounts written by people who are directly involved.", while Prothom Alo's report quoted FBC News as a source, which itself seems to be another third party source, how could you claim Prothom Alo to be primary? Books may be published in 2001 but they were written decades back and Bangladesh's relations with Fiji only started in 2003. Bangladesh itself could be a young country but the culture practiced there is centuries old, those Bengali-speaking people practicing the same Bangladeshi culture in Fiji creates cultural ties between the two countries, which, again, is a part of bilateral relations. The
source cited there mentions that Bengali-speaking people are native to West Bengal and Bangladesh.
Nomian (
talk)
04:44, 2 March 2022 (UTC)reply
Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus. Relisting comment: Additional discussion regarding sources presented in this discussion would be helpful in achieving a more clear consensus. Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, —
Mhawk10 (
talk)
06:16, 5 March 2022 (UTC)reply
The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's
talk page or in a
deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.