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 Sri Lanka Police released the names of thousands of people being held under that country’s anti-terror laws. The release comes three years after the end of the country’s 26-year civil war with the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
The International Crimes Tribunal in Bangladesh indicted veteran opposition leader Ghulam Azam, 89, for alleged human rights atrocities committed during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War against Pakistan.
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.
A court in the west Indian state of Gujarat convicted 23 people of participating in the "Ode massacre" committed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. Muslim families were locked in their homes and burned alive in the massacre.
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.
Molajula Koteswar Rao AKA “Kishenji,” most-wanted leader of India’s Naxalite guerillas, was killed in a gun battle with security forces, authorities said. Sympathizers of the Maoist rebel movement charged that Kishenji had been illegally executed.
After years of delay protested by survivors groups, a court in the Indian state of Gujarat convicted 31 people of crimes committed during the 2002 Gujarat riots. The guilty were convicted of murder, arson, rioting and criminal conspiracy.
