Bangladeshi workers blocked streets in a Dhaka industrial zone, throwing stones at factories and smashing vehicles, to demand justice for 112 people killed in a garment factory fire.
Buddhists in Burma and Sri Lanka held anti-Muslim protests after Muslim rioters in Bangladesh torched Buddhist temples in response to a Facebook post denigrating the Koran.
A Bharat Bandh—all-India general strike—called to protest neoliberal economic measures shut down much of the country, supported by Hindu nationalist and Marxist parties alike.
A months-long civil disobedience campaign against the Koodankulam nuclear plant in southern India’s Tamil Nadu state turned violent as police opened fire on protesters.
Tribal peoples marched in the conflicted Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh to demand their constitutional recognition as “indigenous people” with territorial rights.
In his inaugural speech, India’s new president, Pranab Mukherjee, called the fight against terrorism the “fourth world war,” and portrayed his own country as a frontline state.
Rights advocates and left-wing political parties in India are demanding an inquiry into the massacre of 19 adivasi (tribal) villagers in a remote part of Chhattisgarh state by police hunting for Naxalite guerillas.
The demolition of a mosque near the Golden Temple of Dambulla—a Buddhist cave-temple in central Sri Lanka—bears echoes of the 1992 destruction of the Ayodhya mosque in India, which ultimately led to the Gujarat genocide.
Millions of workers walked off their jobs across India, with the telecoms, transport sector and postal service most affected. The “all-India” general strike was most universally observed in the southern state of Kerala, which remains virtually paralyzed.
Indian police detained two members of an Italian navy security team over the fatal shooting of two fishermen from an oil tanker off the coast of Kerala, sparking a diplomatic fracas. Italy says the naval guards mistook the fishermen for pirates.
The assassination of Kartam Surya, legendary leader of the Salwa Judum militia in Chhattisgarh state, raises question about the Indian government’s ongoing collaboration with the officially outlawed paramilitary network.
Deadly street clashes erupted in the Maldives, with protesters reported to be seizing police stations on some islands, after the archipelago nation’s first democratically elected president, Mohamed Nasheed, was removed in a coup d’etat.
