South Asia Citizens Web

by Lesbians and Bisexuals in Action (LABIA)
Issue No. 12 "Censorship"
This has been a year of Prides and Queer Azadi! These marches clearly mark a blow to the silence that state and society have imposed on all of us. With great energy and enthusiasm the marches were planned in different cities. With full regalia we were on the roads, shouting slogans, dancing, smiling, crying with happiness! Yet, how many of us decided, after much torment, not to go to the pride parade in Delhi, Calcutta (…)

Friends
Herewith I am forwarding an appeal by PUHR fo your kind consideration. It would help if you could join the campaign to find out Mr Vinod Yadav at your own level. I had the opportunity of being with Mr Vinod and his other comrades recently when they had organised a public meeting in Azamgarh to oppose the ’stigmatisation’ and ’criminalistation’ of the minority community . The police disrupted the meeting on some flimsy pretext.
It need be noted that Mr Vinod is elder brother of (…)

Kashmir Times, 26 October 2008
A simple logic tells us what is undemocratic cannot be justified in the name of pursuit of an exercise that is touted to be democratic. If road to democratic processes is to be littered by undemocratic and repressive means, then going by the Aristotelian principle of Law of Excluded Middle, what is deemed democratic may also be not democratic. So how does the democratic process of electioneering get strengthened by series of repressive measures in Kashmir in (…)

According to science, a citizen’s identity is determined by the Blood Group. Not by individual’s caste, race, region or religion. There is no specific blood group that separates Tamils from Sinhlas, Marathas and Biharis, Muslims and Hindus, Jews and the Palestinians. Concerned scientists in 21st Century Space Age Manifesto had, therefore, observed that no race, region, religion, or, caste, class or creed is free from wrong doings against humanity. To argue that ‘terrorism is the (…)

The Times of India, 21 Oct 2008
Missing In Action
Kandhamal is a failure on many fronts. But from the policing point of view, the performance of Orissa police is reminiscent of the wanton inaction as happened during the 1984 Sikh riots and tacit collusion in the 1993 Mumbai riots and the Gujarat riots of 2002. Despite worldwide condemnation of the police handling of these incidents and repeated indictments at the hands of various state-appointed commissions, the Indian police, it (…)