South Asia Citizens Web

Violence against Africans in India is not reported as intensively as attacks on Indians in Australia

The rejection by the President of India of the commutation petitions in the case of these 4 convicts seems to be based on a wholly unacceptable, erroneous and unwarranted appreciation of the powers of commutation provided by Article 72 of the Indian Constitution. The commutation or pardoning’ power of President of India, is better described asunfettered power’ not subject to any constitutional or judicial restraints.

Xtra - New Age - February 15, 2013
A people’s movement
AKM Atikuzzaman and Iqbal Mahmud write about the Shahbagh protests
People across the ages kept pouring into the Shahbagh intersection in Dhaka for the ninth straight day on February 13. Demanding death penalty to the perpetrators of crimes against humanity during the 1971 liberation war, the Shahbagh rally has become home to the protestors, with the number increasing over the past week.
Before this, scores of thousands of people (…)

A 10-member group allegedly assaulted a staff member of Kannada daily Karavali Ale at Kulai here on Wednesday night.According to B.V. Seetaram, director and chairman of Chitra Publications, which publishes the paper, Harish Putran (36), office assistant, was attacked when he was waiting near Vishnumurthy temple to catch a bus back home.He was hit with iron rods and wickets and chased by the attackers, Mr. Seetaram said. Mr. Putran managed to save himself by hiding behind a shop.
Mr. (…)

All of us who live in the region know that 2014 is going to be a watershed year. There will be elections in Pakistan, in India and in the state of Jammu and Kashmir. We know that when the US withdraws its troops from Afghanistan, the chaos from an already seriously destabilised Pakistan will spill into Kashmir, as it has done before. By executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, the government of India has taken a decision to fuel that process of destabilisation, to actually invite it in. (As it did before, by rigging the 1987 elections in Kashmir.) After three consecutive years of mass protests in the Valley ended in 2010, the government invested a great deal in restoring its version of ‘norma­lcy’ (happy tourists, voting Kashmiris). The question is, why was it willing to reverse all its own efforts? Leaving aside issues of the legality, the morality and the venality of executing Afzal Guru in the way that it did, and looking at it just politically, tactically, it is a dangerous and irresponsible thing to have done. But it was done. Clearly, and knowingly. Why?