South Asia Citizens Web

Maheshwar Hydro Power Corporation Ltd. and the [Madhya Pradesh] State Government have completely failed to provide agricultural land and rehabilitation to the thousands of farmers, workers, kevats and kahars affected by the Maheshwar dam.

Pakistan’s government should immediately introduce legislation to repeal the country’s blasphemy law and other discriminatory legislation, Human Rights Watch said today. The government should also take legal action against Islamist militant groups responsible for threats and violence against minorities and other vulnerable groups, Human Rights Watch said.

22nd November 2010, New Delhi - The week-long national action against displacement and land acquisition organized by Sangharsh[1] started in the national capital today. The Dharna and demonstration by thousands of people who have gathered in front of the parliament started at 11 am with lighting of a ‘Mashal’ (traditional torch) amidst songs sung by Narmada Bachao Andolan and Krishak Mukti Sangram Samiti representatives. The main focus of the Sangharsh process is the participation of more than one thousand people from Assam, who are struggling against the dams in Assam and North East India and the forest communities from central India.

THE Government of India has treated different refugee and migrant groups differently. Tibetan and Sri Lankan Tamils are recognised as refugees by India directly while the cases of Burmese, Afghans, Iranians, Somalis are determined by the UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees). India, being a non-signatory to the Refugee Convention and not having any policy/law of its own, creates conditions for this arbitrariness. Additionally it makes the existence of the UNHCR tenuous. The agency is not allowed to document and protect refugees in the North-Eastern States, nor is it permitted to entertain claims of any Bangladeshi or even a Sri Lankan.
The numbers of Bangladeshi migrants has been a contentious issue. The then Union Home Minister, L.K. Advani, put out in 2002 an astronomical number of 20 million6 in the whole of India. Before the NDA Government the Union Home Minister of the UF Government, Indrajit Gupta, had claimed in Parliament in 1997 that there were four million of them in Assam and 10 million7 in the rest of India.
Suspected Bangladeshis are treated in the most inhuman way.

Junctures of civil unrest in Kashmir invariably call forth the reflexive attitude of blaming the messenger, making any form of restraint on the working of the valley’s journalists – which often stretch all the way to active repression — a perfectly permissible stratagem for restoring order.
Since the upsurge in civil unrest in Kashmir in June 2010, media practitioners claim, their situation in terms of daily work routines, has deteriorated sharply. Accessing news sites has now become an ordeal and gaining authentic information on the disturbances that break out with alarming regularity, virtually impossible.