South Asia Citizens Web

We now have over one hundred signatories, including the pioneer of peace studies Johan Galtung, physician and anti-nuclear activist Helen Caldicott, biologist and science broadcaster David Suzuki, peace educator Betty Reardon, political scientist Karel van Wolferen, and Pulitzer-prize winning historian Martin Sherwin. Other signers are leading authors, scholars, and filmmakers, representatives of various peace organizations, and citizens who have been committed to ending military colonization of Okinawa.

With the January 5 ‘elections’ unable to provide the government with the requisite political or moral legitimacy to govern the country, Awami league politicians have focused on shoring up their right to govern by pointing to the need to deal with the violence committed by the opposition parties during the pre-election vehicle burning and post-election communal attacks.
This strategy has also had the added benefit of helping the government to justify the joint forces’ operation to remove ‘terrorism’ from the country, which has since the elections resulted in a spate of deaths of opposition leaders and activists.

Which political party in Pakistan has in the previous year presented itself as the one and only Pakistani political party, free from all dogmas like rightism and leftism, and lack of any ethnic, provincial or racial attachment? Which political party has been resorting to mob politics to achieve its political ambitions? Which political party has a leader who is looked at as a hero, a superman, and as the embodiment of an “ideal Pakistani”?

remembering Neelan Tiruchelvam and celebrating the sanctity of life on his 70th birth anniversary.