South Asia

Riots rock Bangladesh after factory fire

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. 

South Asia

India: strange bedfellows in Bharat Bandh

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.

South Asia

India: police fire on anti-nuclear protesters

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.

South Asia

India: more convictions in Gujarat riots

An court in Ahmedabad, Gujarat's main city, convicted 32 individuals for their roles in the deaths of 95 people during the 2002 anti-Muslim pogroms in the northwest Indian state.

South Asia

Bangladesh indigenous peoples: We exist!

Tribal peoples marched in the conflicted Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh to demand their constitutional recognition as “indigenous people” with territorial rights.

South Asia

India’s new president: GWOT is World War 4

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. 

South Asia

India: demand probe of massacre in Naxalite zone

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.

South Asia

Buddhist fascism in Sri Lanka?

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.