Sharing an email below from my friend and fellow peacemonger Dr. Ramu Kharel, an emergency physician at Brown University who loves Urdu poetry, and founded Health Advancement Programs to Serve All (HAPSA), Nepal, after the 2015 earthquake:
Filed under: Environment, Floods, Southasia | Tagged: climate change, disaster relief, Earthquake, emergency medicine, Environment, floods, Nepal, News, preventive care | Leave a comment »
Why the regimes ushered in through the democratic political process need to collaborate for a better future for the peoples of the region
By Dr Serena Hussain, Vishal Sharma and Beena Sarwar
The recent elections in Britain, France, and India are a reminder of the power of the people – and also of the importance of regional cooperation.
The Indian elections were the third electoral exercise in South Asia this year, after Bangladesh in January and Pakistan in February. Sri Lanka is also required to hold presidential elections before October.
As part of the democratic political process, elections determine the leadership that will shape not only a nation’s destiny, but also in closely connected regions.
The governments may choose to be isolationist, or follow the will of foreign powers, or cooperate and collaborate with neighbouring nations. Can and will South Asia’s regimes cooperate to promote regional peace, prosperity and progress as they have done in previous decades such as, during the 1950s, 1980s, and 2000s?
Such collaboration is essential for the sake of the peoples of the region.
Continue readingFiled under: Pakistan-India, Southasia | Tagged: Bangladesh, Benazir Bhutto, China, India, kathmandu handshake, musharraf, Nepal, News, Pakistan, rajiv gandhi, saarc, south asia, Southasia, Sri Lanka, vajpayee | Leave a comment »
Top row (L-R): Sima Samar, Kanak Mani Dixit, Hamida Hossain. Bottom row (L-R): Uma Chakravarti, Shahidul Alam, Pamela Philipose, Beena Sarwar. Collage: TheWire.In
Thanks to friends who initiated this statement in solidarity with the artists, thinkers and people of Sri Lanka, that I have signed along with over 250 other activists, academics and journalists from across South Asia. Please feel free to endorse and share. Signatories include human rights activists from Afghanistan and Bangladesh, journalists from Nepal, Pakistan and India, and historians and feminists from India and Pakistan, among others who have been at the forefront of facing similar realities in their respective nation-states for decades. Full text below, updated from the version published earlier in TheWire.in.
May 2, 2019: Continue reading
Filed under: 'War on terror', enforced disappearances, Freedom of expression, Human rights, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: Afghanistan, fundamental rights, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Southasia, Sri Lanka, Sri Lanka bombings | Leave a comment »
Dr Govinda KC: fighting for pro-poor medical reforms
UPDATE: Sign the online petition
“If South Asia has a viable public health icon after the passing of Edhi in Pakistan, this man is it,” says a Nepali friend.
Dr. Govinda KC is a man who is considered a saint in Nepal – a middle-class doctor who on his own expense offers medical help wherever there is a disaster: Haiti, the Kashmir earthquake in Pakistan, Bangladesh floods.
By all accounts an incredible human being, he is entering the third week of his hunger strike, a fast unto the death for reforms in the medical education sector. His demands: lower the cost of medical education and create a public health system that allows access of all to quality care, in the place of Nepal’s present highly privatised and centralised system. Continue reading
Filed under: Education, Health, Human rights | Tagged: corruption, democracy, Dr Govinda KC, Dr KC, health care, health reforms, Lok Man Singh Karki, medical education, Nepal | 1 Comment »
Fact sheet on Kanak Dixit’s arrest – used as the basis for an online petition to CIAA Nepal Lok Man Singh Karki
Opposition to the current investigation by the CIAA into alleged corruption by Mr Kanak Mani Dixit is based on the grounds that the process has been flawed as demonstrated by facts:
1. Mr Kanak Mani Dixit had opposed the appointment of Lokman Singh Karki as the head of the CIAA (Commission for Investigation of Abuse of Authority) at the time of the appointment in 2013 on the grounds that Mr Karki had been indicted by the Rayamajhi Commission for suppressing the people’s movement: Under well-established principles of jurisprudence a judge or investigator with a personal bias or interest in a case should not be carrying out an investigation or pronouncing on a case, and in fact should recuse himself or herself from such a case to prevent prejudice. However though Mr Karki himself was the individual criticised by Mr Dixit, in a public campaign, Mr Karki continues to drive the investigations. Continue reading
Filed under: Human rights, Media, Southasia | Tagged: democracy, Free Kanak online petition, Kanak Dixit, Media, Nepal, vendetta | Leave a comment »
Kanak being arrested at a pro-democracy rally in Nepal, 2006. Photo by Shehab Uddin
Press Statement: media figures call for release of Himal Editor Kanak Mani Dixit
New Delhi, April 23 — Editors and media figures as well as intellectuals and scholars from India, Nepal, Bangladesh, UK, US, Australia and Sri Lanka have called for the release of Himal editor and prominent Nepali journalist Kanak Mani Dixit who was arrested yesterday in Katmandu by anti-graft officials.
The following is the text of the statement:
Filed under: Freedom of expression, Human rights, Media, Southasia | Tagged: democracy, foe, journalists, Kanak arrested, Kanak Dixit, Media, Nepal | 2 Comments »
For the past few days, the row between those who stand for free speech and those who don’t has intensified in India. As a journalist from Pakistan, I stand unequivocally with the students and journalists in India who are being vilified and targeted by hyper-nationalists. In the process, I am getting more than my usual share of nasty comments from Indians – and Pakistanis – on social media. Continue reading
Filed under: Freedom of expression, Pakistan-India, Southasia, Violence in the name of religion | Tagged: #JNUrow #StandwithJNU #Kashmir #Balochistan #Nepal, blasphemy, Nepal, Sedition, Umar Daraz | 1 Comment »
Akhilesh Mishra: humanity and poetry. Photos: Farhat Sadaqa
A short piece I wrote about a South Asian event I was invited to speak at in Toronto; I focused on the speech by the Indian Consul General Akhilesh Mishra. Published in the Aman ki Asha page in The News, September 3, 2014.
Speaking at an informal discussion organised by the South Asian Peoples Forum in the Toronto area in Canada on Monday, Akhilesh Mishra, the unassuming Consul General of India won many hearts with his soul-touching poetry, couplets of which were interspersed throughout his brief speech.
This, coupled with his humane and compassionate outlook, comes as a refreshing change from the kind of talk and posturing one usually gets from diplomats. Continue reading
Filed under: Kashmir, Pakistan-India | Tagged: Akhilesh Mishra, Himal, India, Kanak Dixit, Kashmir, Nepal, Pakistan | 2 Comments »
Eve Ensler, founder of the One Billion Rising movement. Photograph: Martin Argles for the Guardian.
The well known feminist activist, playwright and actor Eve Ensler has given a call for One Billion Rising campaign that aims to mobilise and bring out one billion people on streets across the world on February 14th, 2013 against violence against women, and in celebration of women’s power (One Billion Rising on Facebook).
Noted women activists from all over South Asia, including Kamla Bhasin of Sangat, OBR’s South Asian coordinator, were at the launch in Nepal. (Photo: WFS)
This, writes Ensler, “is a call to the billion women who have been violated and the men who love them, to the women who have been beaten and raped and mutilated and burned and sold and who know the destruction of the female species heralds the end of human kind. A call to walk out of your homes, your jobs, your schools and find your friends, your group, your place and music and dance” (‘One Billion Rising: Together we can end violence against women’, op-ed in The Guardian). Continue reading
Filed under: Gender, Human rights | Tagged: Bangladesh, Eve Ensler, India, Kamla Bhasin, Nepal, OBR, One Billion Rising, Pakistan, VAW, Violence against women | Leave a comment »
My interview for Latitude News, April 25, 2012 (Note: Latitude News is now defunct; some pix missing in this post)
In Pakistan’s Hunza Valley in 1994, Perrault says, “I was amazed at the ethnic diversity of the people in this region. These women look like they are from Eastern Europe – and they have family living in New York City.” Because of a lack of health care, the mother had an untreated toothache. (Don Perrault)
Beena Sarwar
Tourists take photographs, but Don Perrault is the rare traveler who uses photography to give something back. I met Don Perrault at an Amnesty International get-together at an art gallery in South Boston. He fit the type of the optical engineer he is, unassuming, conservatively dressed and soft-spoken. But he spends his free time traveling and taking photographs, primarily in Africa and Asia.
He’s begun selling these to raise money for nonprofits working on health, education and gender empowerment. His highest-grossing photos, sold at a silent auction, went for a cool $5,000. Continue reading
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tagged: containers to clinics, don perrault, hunza, jagdish dhinra, ladakh, Medical Missions for Children, Nepal, photography, rwanda, uganda, yosemite | Leave a comment »
Journeys to democracy 