Comment 238 – Five years after the Rohingya genocide: the persistent precariousness in...
For the last forty years Rohingyas have had to flee Myanmar and seek refuge in Bangladesh so as to protect their very lives (Uddin, 2021a). Even though Rohingyas first arrived in the late 1970s, the genocide of August 25, 2017 in the Rakhine State led to a massive refugee...
5 DAYS IN LIFE In the World’s Fifth Largest Democracy – F88
Abstract
This text describes Madalena Casaca’s (the writer) and Paulo Resendes’ (the photographer) stay in Bangladesh, the world’s fifth largest democracy, from 02 to 08.01.24, that is on the runup to the nation’s Twelfth National Elections and on election day. We travelled to Dhaka as Election Observers, with the mission...
Focus 79 – Sri Lanka looks back to India
Abstract
Geopolitical competition is increasing everywhere, and the Indian Ocean is no exception. One of the most significant causes of this phenomenon is the Chinese-driven Belt- and Road Initiative (BRI). In its quest to challenge the economic, political, and military supremacy of Western liberal democracies and their like-minded partners in...
Comment 242 – The West and Xi – South Asia’s blind spot
The masterpiece by Pierre Ryckmans (under the pen name of Simon Leys), originally written in French (1971) under the title ‘Chairman Mao’s new clothes’, was widely despised by the French intelligentsia in academia, press and politics at the time of its publication. This was so fundamentally because it contradicted...
COMMENT125-The Factors Driving Asia’s Sand Crisis
Newspaper articles around the world have issued a dramatic call to arms regarding what many consider a new global environmental crisis – a sand crisis. While it is true that commercially recoverable sand is outstripping demand in some areas of the Asia-Pacific, that hardly amounts to a global crisis of the world's most...
Comment 224 – Recognition and trial of the 1971 genocide against Bengalis
The United Nations declared 9 December as the International Genocide Day. Sixty-seven years after the 1948 UN Genocide Convention, in 2015 it was decided to globally observe the International Day of Genocide remembrance. It commemorates the victims of genocide in different parts of the world and suggests a global...
The Baloch rebellion at a turning point? – C264
On December 20th, 2023, Sarfraz Bangulzai alias Murid Baloch, a key ‘commander’ of the Baloch National Army (BNA), along with 70 other companions, announced his surrender during a press conference in Quetta, the provincial capital of Balochistan. The event is remarkable since it was ‘the first time a top-ranking...