South Asia Citizens Web

Book by Mr. Narendra Modi - ‘CONVENIENT ACTION – Gujarat’s Response To Challenges of Climate Change’ has conveniently ignored the level of irreversible environmental degradation in the State of Gujarat.
Convenient omission of the inconvenient truth and reality in the book.

WE have buried another journalist. Syed Saleem Shahzad, an investigative reporter for Asia Times Online, has paid the ultimate price for telling truths that the authorities didn’t want people to hear. He disappeared a few days after writing an article alleging that Al Qaeda elements had penetrated Pakistan’s navy and that a military crackdown on them had precipitated the May 22 terrorist attack on a Karachi naval base. His death has left Pakistani journalists shaken and filled with despair.

By now, the macabre details of Syeed Sumon’s ferocious attack on Rumana Manjur is in many newspapers. The question is not, why did Rumana stay silent, the question is why did we? What is the monstrous society we created that a woman can be beaten for 10 years but does not find the social support to leave and file an assault case against the husband? Among many factors is this horrendous and murderous idea of izzat. Izzat of family, of marriage, of women; forcing hundreds of thousands of women to silently endure beatings at the hands of husbands. And when society sees those bruises at a wedding dawat, they avert their eyes politely.

More than five years have passed since the world’s largest employment programme was launched in India. The scale of employment generated was not the only reason that this is a path breaking legislation.

WHAT kind of rights should those accused of having committed international crimes during Bangladesh’s war of Independence be entitled to? Should the seven men now detained by the International Crimes Tribunal have fewer rights than those available to the men and woman accused of crimes prosecuted in the ordinary courts or the same rights as them?