South Asia Citizens Web

The story is titled “Vanni: A Family’s Struggle through the Sri Lankan Conflict”, and is set between 2004 and 2009, from the Asian Tsunami to the war’s end when the state troops defeated the Liberation Tigers. Dix had been in Sri Lanka as an attaché of the United Nations before the UN was evacuated from Kilinochchi in 2008.

[Oct 14, 2020] There are a number of social media posts propagating the falsehood that the soldiers of a ’Muslim Regiment’ of our Indian army had refused to fight against the Pakistan Army during the 1965 India-Pakistan war, and that the ’Muslim Regiment’ was thereafter disbanded ( the word used in the tweets is ’dismantled’). Senior and decorated veterans have viewed these developments with utter dismay and have decided to write to The Supreme Commander of The Armed Forces, The President of India, requesting for immediate enquiry and punitive actions against the propagators of these posts and the platforms over which these posts are hosted.

On the 14th of September, a 19 year old woman of the Valmiki caste,was gang-raped and brutally assaulted by four Thakur men in Hathras, Uttar Pradesh. Her spine was broken, and her tongue cut out. Days later, she died in a hospital from the severe injuries sustained during the attack. The police and local administration have protected the accused upper caste men with characteristic alacrity. The police burnt her body in the middle of the night, without any of her family members present. Immense pressure is being brought to bear on her family members in the hope of silencing them. Yogi Adityanath’s regime claims that no rape has occurred, and has even hired a PR firm to push this disingenuous narrative. The Sangh Parivar’s disinformation machinery is working overtime to frame the victim’s death as an ‘honour killing’, and paint her family as the ‘real’ perpetrators. Upper caste groups and political figures have rallied around the accused, declaring them ‘innocent’ and openly threatening those calling for justice. BJP’s Rajveer Pahalwan, former MLA from Hathras, hosted one such gathering at his house, which was attended by members of the RSS, Bajrang Dal, Karni Sena, Rashtriya Savarna Sangathan, Kshatriya Mahasabha. The shifting of the case to the CBI, which has a notorious pro-BJP record, is further cause for alarm.

The All India Catholic Union has called for the immediate release of 83 year old Jesuit Fr Stan Swamy who was arrested from his Ranchi room in a night operation by the National Investigating Agency and is now in prison in Judicial Custody till 23 October 2020.