South Asia Citizens Web

There is indeed an urgent need for labour reforms, but not the dilution of the few labour protections which still survive on India’s statute books. Instead, what is essential is the rationalization and codification of all labour protections into a single law, and the commitment of employers and governments to adhere to this law and extend its coverage resolutely to every worker in the country.

As teachers and researchers, administrators, managers, students, policy analysts and practitioners, we take social justice as our political position towards the world around us.

In that world, the State of Israel is taking a particularly dire political stand. Today, the Israeli government and military are yet again engaged in a war against Palestinians in Gaza, the third since 2008. According to a number of international human rights organizations, Israel has been committing numerous war crimes against the civilian Palestinian population on all Palestinian territories, and especially during its wars against Gaza.

Activists, artists, intellectuals and human rights defenders belonging to over 60 organisations are coming together to organise a protest in Delhi on August 9, 2014

For almost a month, the state of Israel has attacked the Palestinian population in violation of international law and international human rights along with unacceptable support from the international community, whose silence is an accomplice to Israel’s war crimes in the eyes of the world.

To the Muslim religious leadership and the Urdu media in India I have a few questions to ask. Are you agonising over the pain and suffering of “fellow Muslims” or of “fellow humans”? Why the inflamed sentiments over ongoing atrocities in Gaza/Palestine but near silence over the virtually parallel mass crimes being committed in neighbouring Iraq by a rogue army that calls itself the Islamic State (formerly Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, ISIS)