South Asia Citizens Web

We are extremely concerned that from 15 October 2012 the Australian Prime Minister will visit India to discuss selling Australian uranium. Our Prime Minister is breaking a long held policy by negotiating sales deals with your country which has nuclear weapons but refuses to be part of relevant international treaties. We commit to redoubling our efforts to stop uranium mining so that poison from our country will not contaminate your sea, your water, your food chain and your gene pool.

Rather than treat opposition to nuclear power for its hazards as natural, logical and an indication of citizens’ engagement with the world, [India’s] Department of Atomic Energy and its subsidiary Nuclear Power Corporation of India Ltd see dementia in it—a pathological condition to be cured by psychiatrists to be especially invited from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences, Bangalore. The government has all along demonised the Koodankulam project’s opponents. Prime Minister and the Home Minister, no less, vilified them as inspired by “foreign-funded” NGOs without an iota of evidence or taking action against them for such offences as they might have committed in diverting overseas funds meant for other uses.

Elections are a unique business, deciding the fate of some, reflecting, or denying the faith of hundreds of thousands of those who cast the ballot. In the absence of a better or more effective means to reflect popular sentiment, electoral democracy is the best system we have, we know of no better. Money power, paid news and election spending are some of the ’undemocratic’ factors that influence the ballot and though we try, we have not produced an effective remedy. As insidious if not worse is the creeping influence of hate sentiment and majoritarianism within our electoral framework; despite some legal restraints, political parties across the board have benefitted electorally from fielding men, and women indicted for leading mobs to violence against our own.

KARACI, Oct. 10: Pakistan Peace Coalition (PPC) and Pakistan
Institute of Labour Education and Research (PILER) have strongly condemned the terrorists attack on a girl students’ van, injuring three girls including Malala Yousufzai, a peace activist of Swat who has been struggling for girls education in Swat valley. They demanded the government to immediately arrest the culprits and bring them to books.

In mid-October Australia’s Prime Minister will visit India, in part to facilitate the sale of Australian uranium. The longstanding policy of Australia has been to not sell uranium to those countries standing outside the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. India has nuclear weapons and facilities not subjected to safeguards. India also has nuclear power plants with a very poor health and safety track record, against which a growing and courageous movement peacefully protests.