A comprehensive global plan is needed to tackle the high cost of food that threatens the lives of the world's poorest and most vulnerable people
THE GLOBAL food crisis is a dire reality for millions of the world's poor and a major test for the international community. Sustained, generous, wise leadership and broad-based cooperation is required to overcome the crisis and save lives.
THE SPECTRE of instability haunting Pakistan will not go away. On May 13th the fledgling governing coalition of the Pakistan People's Party (PPP) led by Asif Zardari, widower of a former prime minister, Benazir Bhutto, and the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz), or PML-N, headed by another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, fell apart. Mr Sharif pulled out of the federal cabinet over “fundamental disagreements” on how to restore 60 senior judges sacked by President Pervez Musharraf during martial law last year. Not surprisingly, this raised fears of a yet another round of confrontation and instability. But all may not yet be lost.
Too little, too late for democratic roadmap for Bangladesh
SALEEM SAMAD
ONE THE eve of the military installed interim government’s chief adviser Fakhruddin Ahmed’s crucial address to the nation was interpreted in a first-page commentary by Nayeemul Islam Khan in a Bangladesh newspaper Amader Shomoy, that it would be a “landmark speech” and hopes it would be a “magna carta” for the Bangalee nation.
Life Is Not Ours: Attacks on hill forest ethnic minorities of Bangladesh
ON 20TH April 2008 as the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues gathered in New York to hold its seventh session, hundreds of illegal plain settlers attacked seven indigenous Jumma villages in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHTs) of Bangladesh. These villages - Nursery Para, Baibachara, Purba Para, Nangal Mura, Retkaba, Simana Para and Gangaram Mukh of Sajek union under Baghaichari upazila (sub-district) in Rangamati district were attacked for 4 hours from 9.30 pm to 1.30 am on 20 April 2008.
Photo: A young Jumma recently joins protesters in front of United Nations Plaza, New York
ONE HAS been hearing a lot about the conversion activities of Christian missionaries. That there is a threat to Hindu nation due to Adivasis converting to a 'foreign religion' is becoming part of social common sense. The real face of the conversion came to fore when after the attack on nuns in Alibaug (March 2008) was followed by a massive conversion to Hinduism, Shuddhi ritual (April 27, 2008) in nearby Mumbai. The person involved in both these has been the same. In the attack on the Adivasis, the followers of Sadguru Narendra Maharaj of Ramanandcharya Peeth were involved and in the elaborate Shuddhi ritual the Guru himself led the conversion. Talking on the occasion he said the Hindus are being reduced to a pitiable minority because of the activities of Christian missionaries. He also came down heavily on the central Government for not pushing through the anti conversion bill and criticized the Maharashtra Government for passing the anti Superstition bill, according to him both these steps are anti Hindu.
