South Asia Citizens Web

Police in Bangladesh say two people including a leading gay rights activist and editor at Bangladesh’s only LGBT magazine have been hacked to death.

SIXTY-SIX years after adopting one of the world’s most liberal constitutions, India is being convulsed by a searing debate over a colonial-era provision in its penal code, Section 377, which criminalises “whoever voluntarily has carnal intercourse against the order of nature with any man, woman, or animal.” Though not widely used – there were 578 arrests under Section 377 last year – the law is a tool for the harassment, persecution, and blackmail of sexual minorities within India. It must be changed.

Editorials from three daily newspapers in Bangladesh. Fanatics are pursuing a single minded campaign to target secular writers and intellectuals for cold blooded murder in Bangladesh. And the government is failing to stop them.

The killing is the latest in a series of lethal attacks on intellectuals and activists in the country. Police said unknown assailants with machetes attacked English professor Rezaul Karim Siddique, 58, as he walked to the bus station from his home, on his way to the city’s public university where he taught.

It is with deep concern that we have learned of the arrest today of Kanak Mani Dixit, the widely respected founder-editor of Himal Media and a courageous voice for transparency, freedom of expression and democratic rights in Nepal and across South Asia. The charges are related to alleged corruption but Kanak Dixit says it is part of a vendetta pursued against him by people in Government.