Throughout its sordid history, Israel turned the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and especially Gaza into free-fire zones – killing, injuring, maiming, and otherwise brutalizing Palestinians with impunity. The world community doesn’t care about Palestinian lives and welfare – doing nothing to stop Israeli occupation harshness, nothing to hold its officials accountable for Nuremberg-level high crimes,…
One must marvel at the first few paragraphs of Amnesty International’s recent press release: “The international community’s catastrophic failure to take concrete action to protect the people of Syria has allowed parties to the conflict, most notably the Syrian government, to commit war crimes and crimes against humanity with complete impunity, often with assistance of…
Recent inter-communal riots in Sri Lanka have highlighted the problem of religious extremism, particularly among Asia’s Buddhist population. But the Buddhist nationalist point of view has been largely ignored in favour of a discourse which demonises Buddhists as aggressors and portrays Muslims as innocent victims. The reality is far more complex. Part I A state…
The Saudi military and state bureaucracy needs more than a shakeup. On 26 February King Salman issued a royal decree according to which several army generals, civil servants, royal court advisors, mayors, and local governors were either sacked, promoted or replaced by others. Such reshuffles are not unusual but the timing is questionable. Feel-good factor…
The history of modern India has several incidents of religious violence. In the 1947 Partition when both India and Pakistan achieved their independence from the British Raj there took place one of the greatest migrations in history when Muslims left India for Pakistan and Hindus and Sikhs left Pakistan for India. It is estimated that…
The Burmese military summarily executed several dozen Rohingya Muslims in Maung Nu village in Burma’s Rakhine State on August 27, 2017, Human Rights Watch said today. Witnesses said that Burmese soldiers had beaten, sexually assaulted, stabbed, and shot villagers who had gathered for safety in a residential compound, two days after Rohingya militants attacked a…
