South Asia Citizens Web

The recent case filed against the editor of The Daily Star together with two staff for publishing a photograph of a poster circulated by the banned group is

PUDR has just released a fact finding report on villages in Bijapur, Chhattisgarh. It confirms insecurities and hardships of daily life in the war-zone—the low key, but ever present forms of repression routinized by the state through its forces and security camps.

The shooting of Govind Pansare has sent fear rippling through the hearts of prominent writers in Marathi. They fear that the attack on progressive-minded Pansare was a message to rationalist people, writers and their supporters that if they continue to propagate their rationalist thinkings, then they, too, will be attacked like Pansare was.

We, the undersigned, strongly criticize the concerted attempts by police in the Indian state of Gujarat to falsely implicate and arrest Indian social activists Ms. Teesta Setalvad and her husband, Mr. Javed Anand, who have been engaged in a 12-year struggle to secure justice and accountability for victims and survivors of the pogrom against Muslim in Gujarat in 2002. Ms. Setalvad and Ms. Anand, activists with the Citizens for Justice and Peace (CJP) and the Sabrang Trust, are being persecuted over alleged charges of misuse of funds associated with attempts to convert Gulbarg Housing Society in Ahmedabad, where 69 people were killed in the 2002 violence, into a museum. The case is based on a complaint by 12 members of the Gulbarg Society but the Secretary and Chairman of the Society have said the case was false and noted that the complainants had misused office stationery.

India is no stranger to cracking down on foreign funding to civil society. Now, the new government has trained its guns on environmental activists.