South Asia Citizens Web

London Review of Books, Vol. 20 No. 12 · 18 June 1998 pages 18-21 | 5886 words
‘I am the destiny’
Eqbal Ahmad
The Terrorist Prince: Life and Death of Murtaza Bhutto by Raja Anwar, translated by Khalid Hasan Verso, 254 pp, £16.00, January 1997, ISBN 1 85984 886 9 Memoirs of a Bystander: A Life in Diplomacy by Iqbal Akhund Oxford, 500 pp, £15.99, June 1998, ISBN 0 19 577736 0 Zulfikar Ali Bhutto and Pakistan by Rafi Raza Oxford, 420 pp, £15.95, April 1998, ISBN 0 (…)

The United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) will have its annual review in March. Many countries are likely to face the review of their internal rights situations. The United States has taken the decision to place a procedural resolution against Sri Lanka on the situation of Tamils, post the conflict. The country had after all faced 37 years of ethnic conflict and bloodshed. The end of the war was particularly gruesome since many civilians and surrendering militia were allegedly killed and women raped. Instead of using their victory to reassure and reconcile with the Tamil ethnic minorities, the Sri Lankan government pursues triumphalism and is increasingly intolerant towards any dissent. President Rajapaksa’s latest volte face is his statement that the Tamils will not get autonomy. Will India support the US resolution or will it give in to Sri Lankan pressure

Instead of sanitizing the Muslim right as a way of fighting racism in the North, Meredith Tax argues that the left should develop a strategy of solidarity with democrats, trade unionists, religious and sexual minorities, and feminists struggling in the Global South against both neo-liberalism and fundamentalism.

Greetings! We are writing on behalf of several millions of people in Tamil Nadu and Kerala who have been waging a peaceful and nonviolent struggle for almost a quarter century against the Koodankulam nuclear power project (KKNPP). We have intensified our struggle since August 2011 with indefinite hunger strikes, relay fasts, massive marches, siege protests and so on. And the Tamil Nadu police have registered more than 325 cases including ‘sedition,’ ‘waging war on the Indian State’ and on other such serious sections with 5,296 named accused and 2,21,483 unnamed accused at the Koodankulam police station alone. This is a history of sorts in our independent India.

The government has largely disregarded the focus on rights, and used the establishment of a security regime to further regulate sexual conduct, rather than liberate women.