South Asia Citizens Web

I submit that the ongoing deaths of migrant workers from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and Odisha on Alang beach, Bhavnagar, Gujarat came to light once again when officially six (now seven) workers were burnt to death on October 6, 2012. Sources have informed that the death toll is higher. These occupational deaths routinely happen. There has nothing been done to arrest these preventable deaths. I submit that in the year 2011, 27 workers died in the shipbreaking activities at Alang beach. These migrant casual workers live and work in a slave like condition.

Today, a sizable section of the European left has been reluctant to take a clear stand when anti-Zionism spills over into anti-Semitism. Beginning in the 1990s, many on the European left began to view the growing Muslim minorities in their countries as a new proletariat and the Palestinian cause as a recruiting mechanism. The issue of Palestine was particularly seductive for the children of immigrants, marooned between identities.

Is it possible for radical and progressive forces to find forms of public festivities which can rival the public religious festival? Is it possible to build a popular culture which does not rely on religion and communal identities? We will not know the answer till the battle is truly joined.

Islamic extremism is very real in the Maldives. It affects the daily lives of every Maldivian, and is gaining in scope, intensity and violence every day with the pseudo-democratic government that came to power on 7 February.

One of the major human rights issues if not the major one in Sri Lanka, relates to the rights of the Tamil and Muslim communities who constitute the principal minorities in the country to exercise devolution of powers. Post independence as well as post war, the Sri Lankan State has time and again failed to keep its promises of a political solution to the just grievances of the Tamil people and has unilaterally abrogated all agreements reached with the democratically elected representatives of the Tamil people of Sri Lanka.
At the last session of the UPR which was held on May 2008 the Government of Sri Lanka made a voluntary pledge to implement the 13th Amendment to the Constitution.