South Asia Citizens Web

increasingly a level of tolerance is being accorded to the most toxic purveyors of Sinhala-Buddhist racism which bodes ill for the dream of a pluralist, tolerant and humane Sri Lanka

In March, five people were killed in police firing as Madhesi cadres disrupted the East-West election campaign of the UML. The mob that attacked the rally in Siraha was led by Dinesh Yadav, a defector from the UML and once protected by the party’s Suman Pyakurel. Many saw him as being almost his foster son.

This paper is focused on a Futures Report of the Southern Initiative on Globalisation and Trade Union Rights (Sigtur), raising major challenges as to its authorship and contents. It is at the same time a challenge to the Sigtur project as a whole. As to the Futures Report, the challenges have to do with the subject positionality of the authors (mostly White, Northern, Male professors/promoters of Sigtur), their overwhelming dependence on Northern sources, and the relevance of their essays to the challenges facing Sigtur.

Prominent human rights lawyer Sultana Kamal was threatened by Hefazat-e-Islam with physical violence after making hypothetical comments on a television talk show. In the meantime, a legal notice was served demanding the arrest of veteran journalist Afsan Chowhdury, who has been accused under the ICT Act of defamation in a Facebook post.

The recent death of sanitary worker Irfan Masih in Umerkot [Pakistan] raises questions about unsafe working conditions and religious disharmony in the region