South Asia Citizens Web

A wave of killings targeting secular bloggers in Bangladesh is a long way from real-estate agent Farid Ahmed’s suburban Toronto neighbourhood. But the murders could not feel closer.

The present standoff in India-Pakistan relations is at once unreal, wasteful and dangerous. Unreal, because it has far exceeded the reasonable limits of resentment that it was supposed to express when talks between the foreign secretaries were called off last year. Wasteful, because it does not serve any national interest. On the contrary, talking points are piling up relentlessly. And it is dangerous because a long impasse can precipitate developments that neither side expects or desires.

This paper is based on long ethnographic enquiries led in Ahmedabad, and mainly in Juhapura, between 2009 and 2014

WHO exactly targets and shoots Ahmadis dead we don’t know. Who targets and kills Shias, we kind of know, or their organisational association in any case. Who targets and kills women suspected of sexual transgressions we precisely know, right down to the address. It is usually the same as the victim’s. But the effect is the same. The entire system is tilted against them.

More than 150 writers, including Salman Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh, call on the Bangladeshi authorities to take urgent action for bloggers