South Asia Citizens Web

Even as the government of Sri Lanka protests vociferously about “The Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” on grounds of state sovereignty, its protests are not having the desired effect. In fact, quite the opposite. The more the government tries to avert the international gaze, the more it is becoming embroiled in international controversy by inviting negative attention to its conduct from countries around the globe, including its allies. After nearly two years of a needlessly provocative campaign against the UN, and more recently the UN Secretary-General’s Panel of Advisors, the government is now dithering on its response to the UN Panel Report as international pressure around the war crimes controversy mounts.

The rainbow stickers had first arrived on secondhand cars imported from Canada. Afghans had simply assumed that the colour combination was the latest fashion fad in the west, and duly adopted it. The confusion that had allowed for the gay-pride car accessories to become coveted goods in Afghan garages is not restricted to the symbol itself. Judging by the way homosexuality is debated in the public sphere, the term itself is understood incorrectly.

. . . over the past decade, an ugly pattern of so-called honor killings and punitive rapes ordered by various community councils has emerged, as the Indian Supreme Court recently noted with alarm.

Selective abortion of girls, especially for pregnancies after a firstborn girl, has increased substantially in India. Most of India’s population now live in states where selective abortion of girls is common.

In a minor replay of 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Indian media have been gloating at the defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal especially and have repeatedly suggested that this signals the ’end of the Left in India’. Even at the best of times our news channels tend to avoid serious analyses of the underlying trends within the country, since they have transformed the news itself into a form of entertainment on models surpassed only by the U.S. news networks.