South Asia Citizens Web

[Mail Today, 20 April 2009 >http://epaper.mailtoday.in/epaperhome.aspx?issue=2042009]
Uphold our laws which say that even Qasab has a right to fair trial
When it comes to terrorists, is the Indian legal system, an unrecognised Guantanamo? Consistent with aberrational practice, terrorists are tortured by the police, vilified by the media, threatened by fundamentalists and jingoists, denied legal and constitutional rights and pressurised into confessions.
Under Article 22( 1) of the (…)

Dear friends,
I am writing to share some extremely distressing information that has just now come to light. We now have clear proof that the police in Chhattisgarh are actively interfering with Binayak’s need for health care. I will just go over the facts with you.
Binayak, hypertensive for many years, was diagnosed on 2003 with angina upon stress after he underwent cardiac assessment tests with Dr Ashish Malhotra, Raipur’s only doctor with a DM in cardiology, who practices in a private (…)

The accession of Barack Obama to the presidency of the United States is an opportune time to revisit the issue of global and regional nuclear disarmament. What are the options open to civil society? The two routes to global and regional disarmament are obviously connected but not in a manner whereby movement along the latter is made conditional on forward movement along the former where the us has always been the biggest obstacle, the pace-setter in creating and deepening the global nuclear mess. This article is about where we stand today and what future directions in the cause of nuclear disarmament may be worth pursuing.

From: Sindhi Voices
These are times of bullets, so let’s use them, but peacefully. To fully understand today’s dilemma it is essential to go back to Jinnah’s time. Although a largely principled secularist he had invested too much of himself in the Pakistan project. He was therefore loathe to give it up for the nicety of achieving it without the support of the religious leaders and the landed elite of the Punjab. Without their support, he may indeed have failed. A modern parallel is the (…)

Dawn
Where were you, dear sisters?
Much has been said about the shameful performance of our parliament on April 13 when it approved the controversial Nizam-i-Adl Regulation without much of a murmur.
The two members who protested, MQM’s Farooq Sattar and the PML-N MNA from Chakwal, Ayaz Amir, have received much-deserved accolades — albeit given grudgingly to the MQM. But why did the others lose their voice? What happened to the women?
Why could not there be a full-fledged debate on an (…)