South Asia Citizens Web

On 10 February 2021 the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) did the unthinkable and demanded a UN investigation into alleged corruption in the country’s military. The call followed an Al Jazeera documentary alleging that the army’s chief secretly provided illegal support to his two fugitive brothers, with the tacit approval of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina. It also claimed that the army acquired Israeli-made spying equipment that can be used against the opposition and critics of the government.

En octobre dernier [2020], 80.000 personnes se sont rassemblées à Dacca, la capitale, pour protester contre les caricatures de Mahomet et brûler des photos du président français, Emmanuel Macron. Ces événements ne sont en fait que la partie visible de l’iceberg.

Editors Guild of India demands withdrawal of Kashmir Police’s advisory forbidding journalists from reporting live encounters with militants on the specious plea that it is “likely to incite violence” or that it can promote “anti-national sentiment”. Nothing can be further from the truth. Visibly, the police is giving an impression of trying to maintain peace by attempting to control the fallout of violence in a high strung environment, but what is being instead done is an attempt by the security forces to escape from any kind of media scrutiny about the flow of events behind the violence.

The Concerned Citizens’ Group visited Kashmir from March 30 to April 2, 2021. This was its third visit after the Narendra Modi government revoked the special status of the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir and the eighth since violence erupted in the Valley following the gunning down of a militant leader Burhan Wani in July 2016.
The first visit of the CCG had taken place amidst the strikes, deaths and pellet injuries to citizens young and old, in October 2016. Since then the CCG has visited Kashmir at fairly regular intervals to ascertain the public mood by meeting with a cross-section of public intellectuals, business leaders, human rights groups, civil society representatives, politicians, journalists and common folk.

A book release discussion on April 8, 2021 on a recent book by Dr K R Shyam Sundar on COVID-19, Reforms and Poor Governance on Labor Rights in India