South Asia Citizens Web

Baloch was terminated based on findings of both the police and the University inquiries. These findings have not been overturned, only his termination has been quashed. No such pervert should have a place in a Pakistani educational institute. Whatever ‘special inquiry’ has been undertaken to return Iftikhar Baloch to his post must be immediately reviewed. Why the LHC had to give the final authority to overturn the legal University decision to the Governor also needs to be assessed. The Punjab CM said in a cabinet meeting today that “the culture of nepotism, corruption and favouritism needed to end, the rule of law must prevail.” We need to see the CM take charge of this case and show his support for a dignified environment in the educational institutions.

In the past 30 years, the continual expansion of the population deeper into the hills has already left a passive trail of devastation - tourist hotels some as high as six-eight storey perch on cliffs, empty summer houses of the Delhi rich; an expanding road network on unstable hillsides, commercial activity along new tourist routes, loss of tree cover, expansion of agriculture into forests, and a rain of garbage along hillsides. It is a wonder that environmental disasters don’t happen more often. The river’s force within minutes can alter the topography of an area, as it did along the Kedarnath Gangotri belt last week. A sudden deluge engulfed religious sites at Kedarnath, Govindghat and Pandukeshwar, the tragedy occurring at peak tourist season, leaving hundreds dead, washing away cars and people.

Comrade Rohit Prajapati, member of Radical Socialist, and veteran trade unionist and environmental activist, associated with Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti (Environmentalist organisation), Peoples Union for Civil Liberties, Jyoti Karmachari Mandal and Vadodara Kamdar Union (independent trade unions), and Paryavaran Suraksha Samiti, as well as connected intimately to the anti-fascist militants of Gujarat from before the 2002 pogroms, has been under various kinds of political harassment, both from the Narendra Modi government, and from the big business companies that have been making huge profits under Modi’s regime.

This is a time when moderation, commonsense and basic decency have been cast to the four winds in Sri Lanka. It is a time when hatred against different communities is hailed and felicitated. And President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s appeal to the media this week not to give publicity to rampaging monks of the Bodu Bala Sena (BBS) certainly does not solve this problem. Rather, it exacerbates the issue.

PAKISTAN:
Afghan refugees in Pakistan fear deportation More than 1.6 million people who fled Afghan conflict have been given a June 30 deadline to leave Pakistan. http://www.aljazeera.com/video/asia/2013/06/2013610114913232746.html
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The Express Tribune
Home is where the documents say: Afghan refugees repatriation deadline likely to get further extension
By Umer Farooq
Published: June 4, 2013
PESHAWAR: The Government of Pakistan (GoP) is likely to extend the deadline for (…)