Archive of South Asia Citizens Wire

  • Sri Lanka: Will a military victory really solve the Sinhalese-Tamil conflict?

    by Sumana Raychaudhuri, 8 February 2009

    The Nation, February 6, 2009
    Letter From Sri Lanka
    The port city of Mullaitivu, the last bastion of the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), has fallen. The army has captured the rebel chief Prabhakaran’s armored bunker and are looking to rout the LTTE. Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa’s gamble to end the country’s decades-old civil war through a military show of strength seems to be paying off. On January 2, after a long siege, the Sri Lankan Army captured the rebel capital of (…)

  • Communalism and the News Media in India

    by Jyoti Punwani, 8 February 2009

    InfoChange News & Features, February 2009
    Reporting communal conflict
    After 20 years of almost continuous communal violence, the basic principles of reportage—facts are sacred, comment free; get both sides of the story; check your facts before writing them—are not enough in reporting communal riots. The guiding rules for reporters should be: look for the background; don’t perpetuate the stereotype; find residents who deal with both communities; corroborate victims’ accounts as well (…)

  • Combating Contending Fundamentalisms

    by Javed Anand, 8 February 2009

    Seminar, January 2009
    Seize the moment
    Good can sometimes emerge from the ugly, evil moments; when all seems lost, a ray of light can emerge from the darkest corners. In her essay in response to the savage assault on Mumbai, ‘The Monster in the Mirror’ published by Outlook and The Guardian, UK, Arundhati Roy quite aptly places the stark options before us today and we all must choose. Only two choices, no third option: Justice or Civil War. Its difficult to disagree with what (…)

  • Political Decay and Ethnocentrism in Sri Lanka

    by Neil DeVotta, 8 February 2009

  • The gravity of the challenge in Pakistan

    by Abbas Rashid, 7 February 2009

    Daily Times
    Getting to here
    In an opinion piece in Dawn recently, Shahid Javed Burki has sought an explanation for Pakistan’s current travails in the past. He has emphasised that Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s early death and the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan soon after independence deprived Pakistan of much-needed leadership.
    Those that followed were too busy quarrelling among themselves to pay heed to the country’s many problems. The result was a failure to develop strong institutions, (…)

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