South Asia Citizens Wire - 31 May 2011 - No. 2715 -------------------------- Contents: 1. Meet the World’s Largest Weapons Importer (Yasmin Qureshi) 2. What if Pakistan did not have the bomb? (Pervez Hoodbhoy) 3. Pakistan: National Conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen Rights: Realising Constitutional Reforms’ - Press release 4. The Mukhtar Mai case will silence many women in Pakistan (Razeshta Sethna) 5. India: Hindutva offensive against the proposed communal violence bill (John Dayal) 6. Afghanistan: Dialogue with the Taliban will be fruitless (Dr Hussain Yasa) 7. Accidental gay pride in homophobic Afghanistan (Nushin Arbabzadah) 8. End of the Left in India? - A statement (Jairus Banaji, Dilip Simeon, et.al) 9. Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh - Guernica, May 2011 10. India: Formation of Committee for the Defence of Teesta Setalvad and Justice in Gujarat - Press Release 11. India: Prominent human rights activist Gautam Navlakha denied entry in Kashmir 12. Illegal and outrageous: Gautam Navlakha’s arrest, debarring his entry [into Kashmir] 13. Book Review: 'Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts by Anuradha M. Chenoy and Kamal A. Mitra Chenoy' (review by Achin Vanaik) 14. Sri Lanka: Two years after the war: justice, reconciliation and the UN Panel Report (Editorial, Dissenting Dialogues) 15. The Tragic Situation of Sri Lanka (Rajindar Sachar) 16. India: People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost Efficiency of Nuclear Energy (19 - 21 May 2011, Mumbai) - Tribunal Blurb and Media reports 17. To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity (Vandana Shiva) 18. India: Challenging the community councils that order honour killings and punitive rapes (Nilanjana S. Roy) 19. The Lancet: Trends in selective abortions of girls in India 20. Regressive custom of dowry in Tamil Nadu in service of global garment industry (Kalpana Sharma) 21. India’s growth rate cannot be made a national objective (Prabhat Patnaik) 22. Mending the Food Security Act (Jean Dreze) 23. Karamat Ali speaking at a tribute to Faiz and Majaaz on Feb 24, 2011, New Delhi [excerpt from video recordings by Harsh Kapoor]
----------------------------- Meet the World’s Largest Weapons Importer India is today the world’s largest importer of arms. These include fighter jet planes, missiles and radar systems for strategic partnerships and geo-political power. India is also investing in security and surveillance to combat foreign threats and resistance from its own people in places like (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2121.html What if Pakistan did not have the bomb? Given that 30,000 nuclear weapons failed to save the Soviet Union from decay, defeat and collapse, could the Bomb really have saved Pakistan in 1971? Can it do so now? http://www.sacw.net/article2110.html Pakistan: National Conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen Rights: Realising Constitutional Reforms’ 28 May, 2011: The two-day conference on ’Labour Rights as Citizen Rights: Realising Constitutional Reforms’ concluded here in Islamabad. The Conference was organised by the Pakistan Institute of Labour Education and Research, Sungi Development Foundation, and Muttahida Labour Federation. The (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2120.html The Mukhtar Mai case will silence many women in Pakistan Going by the charged reaction to the Mukhtar Mai verdict, it is clear that loopholes in the investigation mechanism and the law need to be fixed. Women victims of violence in Pakistan do not find redress whether through the courts or the country’s policing and investigation (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2117.html India: Hindutva offensive against the proposed communal violence bill The Bharatiya Janata Party, the political wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, has held formal press conferences, and its spokesmen have dominated the TV channels in tailor-made debates attacking the proposed bill against communal violence. Sangh think tanks have called for consultations on (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2118.html Afghanistan: Dialogue with the Taliban will be fruitless Classifying the Taliban between Pakistani and Afghan or that of moderate, innocent and hardliner will only be followed by confusion and disappointment. http://www.sacw.net/article2111.html Accidental gay pride in homophobic Afghanistan The rainbow stickers had first arrived on secondhand cars imported from Canada. Afghans had simply assumed that the colour combination was the latest fashion fad in the west, and duly adopted it. The confusion that had allowed for the gay-pride car accessories to become coveted goods in Afghan (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2107.html End of the Left in India? In a minor replay of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Indian media have been gloating at the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal especially and have repeatedly suggested that this signals the ’end of the Left in India’. Even at the best of times our news channels tend to avoid (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2095.html Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh - Guernica, May 2011 Excavation Lila Azam Zanganeh interviews Amitav Ghosh May 2011 The author Amitav Ghosh discusses the link between anthropology and writing, The New Yorker’s edit of his essay on the Iraq war, and John Updike’s worst book. http://www.sacw.net/article2115.html Formation of Committee for the Defence of Teesta Setalvad and Justice in Gujarat - Press Release Over 200 citizens located all over the country and abroad have come forward to form a Committee forward to establish a Committee for the Defence of Teesta Setalvad and Justice in Gujarat (see Press Statement Below) http://www.sacw.net/article2113.html India: Prominent human rights activist Gautam Navlakha denied entry in Kashmir Mr. Gautam Navlakha, Convener, International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice in Kashmir (IPTK) and Editorial Consultant, Economic and Political Weekly, was stopped at Srinagar airport on his arrival from New Delhi, and asked to go back. Officials invoked Section 144 of the Code of (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2114.html Illegal and outrageous: Gautam Navlakha’s arrest, debarring his entry [into Kashmir] The arrest of the noted human rights and peace activist and senior journalist, Gautam Navlakha, at Srinagar airport, debarring his entry into Kashmir is not only outrageous and attack on the people’s human rights but also a lawless act that needs to be condemned unequivocally by all those who (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2119.html Book Review: Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts Anuradha M. Chenoy and Kamal A. Mitra Chenoy, Maoist and Other Armed Conflicts, Penguin Books, New Delhi, 2011. This is a high impact low fuss book. Within its covers the authors provide a remarkably comprehensive and lucidly written survey of the three geographical zones where armed conflicts (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2112.html The Tragic Situation of Sri Lanka The tragic situation of Sri Lankan Tamils continues to shock the nations on surface. But nothing concrete is being done by U.N.O or by India which has a special responsibility in the matter. http://www.sacw.net/article2109.html Two years after the war: justice, reconciliation and the UN Panel Report Even as the government of Sri Lanka protests vociferously about “The Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” on grounds of state sovereignty, its protests are not having the desired effect. In fact, quite the opposite. The more the government tries to (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2108.html India: People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost Efficiency of Nuclear Energy (19 - 21 May 2011, Mumbai) - Tribunal Blurb and News coverage People’s Tribunal on the Safety, Viability and Cost Efficiency of Nuclear Energy met for three days in Mumbai between May 19-21, 2011 and recorded depositions of experts, scientists, doctors and project affected persons from the Konkan and other regions of the country. Officials and senior (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2101.html To push nuclear plants after Fukushima is pure insanity The focus on fossil fuels, CO2 emissions and climate change suddenly allowed nuclear energy to be offered as “clean” and “safe”. But as a technology, nuclear power consumes more energy than it generates if the energy for cooling spent fuel for thousands of years is taken into account. In India, the (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2106.html Challenging the community councils that order honour killings and punitive rapes . . . over the past decade, an ugly pattern of so-called honor killings and punitive rapes ordered by various community councils has emerged, as the Indian Supreme Court recently noted with alarm. http://www.sacw.net/article2105.html The Lancet: Trends in selective abortions of girls in India Selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. Most of India’s population now live in states where selective abortion of girls is common. http://www.sacw.net/article2104.html Regressive custom of dowry in Tamil Nadu in service of global garment industry dowry is being used as a bait to tempt poor families to surrender their daughters in the belief that they will return with a dowry. Extraordinary as this might sound, this is precisely what has been happening in the readymade garment industry in Tamil Nadu for over a (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2116.html India’s growth rate cannot be made a national objective No less a person than the prime minister, while speaking to probationers of the Indian police service in the capital the other day, invoked a curious argument against the Maoists. He did not just make the usual criticism — that Maoists were attempting to overthrow the constitutional order by (...) http://www.sacw.net/article2103.html Mending the Food Security Act The National Advisory Council has proposed a framework for the National Food Security Act. But its potential could be wasted by a flawed approach to the PDS. http://www.sacw.net/article2102.html Karamat Ali speaking at a tribute to Faiz and Majaaz on Feb 24, 2011, New Delhi (Excerpted from video recordings by Harsh Kapoor) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wh-2xclODUM _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ South Asia Citizens Wire Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. An offshoot of South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list [email protected] http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net
