South Asia Citizens Web

DECLARATION by WOMEN’S COALITION TURKEY WE ARE CALLING UPON THE GOVERNMENT: IMMEDIATELY STOP POLICE VIOLENCE AND THE AGGRESSIVE, THREATENING AND CONDENSCENDING ATTITUDE AGAINST THE PEOPLE
The peaceful sit-in began to counter planned construction at the Taksim Gezi park, which would replace one of downtown Istanbul’s few green spaces with a shopping mall, has evolved into nationwide demonstrations and people’s resistance as a result of the brutal police violence and firing with tear gas (…)

Let me say what a great honour it is for me to be here to deliver the First A.K. Ramanujan Memorial Lecture. He was a distinguished poet, both in Kannada and English, a folklorist, an ethnographer. He was among the first of Indian thinkers to take a serious look at oral tales, lullabies, proverbs, songs, in fact, at the richness of the world of women. He was a much acclaimed translator from Tamil and Kannada. I have no expertise in any of these fields. My claim to fame ---and certainly the reason why I have accepted the invitation to deliver this lecture---is that I knew him closely from the days when he was still unknown. He worked as a Junior Lecturer in a town called Belgaum when he was 27 years old

We write as a coalition of civil society organizations from around the world to express our serious alarm regarding revelations of Internet and telephone communications surveillance of US and non-US citizens by the US government. We also wish to express our grave concern that US authorities may have made the data resulting from those surveillance activities available to other States, including the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Canada, Belgium, Australia and New Zealand. Many US-based Internet companies with global reach also seem to be participating in these practices.

The political battle is now an economic one. Millions are forcibly displaced across the country for "development" and for the profit of others. An ostensibly democratic polity may use authoritarianism and violence on those on the margins but expands its repertoire to repress dissent in the mainstream.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s appointment of a weakly qualified human rights commission with little public consultation raises concerns about the country’s most important rights body.