Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

31.03.2004

31.03.2004 WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 31 (OneWorld) - This week's outburst of apparently Islamist-related violence, which has killed more than 40 people in two major cities in Uzbekistan in the past three days, is spurring renewed attention to the strategically located Central Asian country's deplorable human rights record.

31.03.2004 Investing $100 per person over the next seven years in the rebuilding of Afghanistan could bring the country close to where it might have been without 20 years of conflict--which probably cost 10 times more than the $27.5 billion donors meeting today in Berlin are being asked to pledge for reconstruction, according to World Bank calculations.

31.03.2004 At the end of a two-day meeting in Berlin, Afghan civil society groups concluded that the key to building lasting peace lies in the acronym DDR: Disarmament, Demobilization, Reintegration. "Without DDR there will be no security, and hence no environment for sustainable democracy in the country," they said, defining the steps they view as fundamental.

31.03.2004 Kiran Keswani architect and consultant with a south Indian organisation, DakshinaChitra, articulates the need to include locally-available building materials and lay emphasis on having more vernacular architecture in Indian cities.

31.03.2004 Religious scholars in Pakistan are up in arms at the government's moves to reduce references to jihad (holy war) and exclude Quranic verses that could fuel religious intolerance from educational curricula.

31.03.2004 Around 800 tea garden workers have died of starvation, with several surviving on wild roots and rats in the Indian state of West Bengal, where the closure of uneconomic plantations has rendered a million laborers jobless, says a rights group.

31.03.2004 The Consumer Rights Commission of Pakistan says that poor access to safe drinking water has increased poverty because of the high cost of illnesses. Asserting that over half of the population lacks access to safe drinking water. the Secretary General advocates that water and sanitation should be top priority for development programmes in Pakistan.

31.03.2004 A consumer rights body in Pakistan has said poor access to safe drinking water has increased poverty because of the high cost of illnesses.

31.03.2004 U.S. engagement with the Central Asian states – key allies in the “war on terror” - is being misrepresented and exploited by regional governments, whose actions are fuelling instability in the region, local and international analysts believe.

31.03.2004 Amnesty International has criticised India for using excessive force during a protest march held by the Association of Parents of Disappeared Persons in the north Indian city of Srinagar, located in Jammu and Kashmir.

31.03.2004 An east India-based NGO, which works on social justice, human rights, food security, natural resource management, child rights and development alternatives seeks donations for these projects.

30.03.2004 Philip Zelikow, a longtime Bush insider and executive director of the 9-11 Commission, strongly suggested to an audience at the Univ. of Virginia in 2002 that the prime motivation behind the overthrow of Saddam Hussein was to protect Israel, not the United States, from potential aggression.

30.03.2004 Corpwatch has launched a new website tracking war profiteering in Iraq, covering all the various interests at play--from media to sweatshops; from banking to mercenaries in the security business. Anything goes in Occupied Iraq, it seems.

30.03.2004 'I share your dream of a Middle East replete with democracy and human rights for all,' writes a prominent Palestinian doctor to President Bush in Grassroots' Online Journal, 'but why not set a better example?'

30.03.2004 Children as young as 7 and 8 are going missing in large numbers throughout Afghanistan, and no one is sure how many or where they are going. Agencies concerned with children surmise that some are being abducted as slave laborers or beggars, while others are being used to ferry drugs across borders.

30.03.2004 The Uzbek government blamed the outbreak of suicide bombings in Tashkent on terrorism, but interviews with ordinary people suggest that they were a result of 'pent-up frustration' over the repressive political atmosphere prevailing in Uzbekistan and the overwhelming poverty of most of the population. Human Rights Watch today released a report on state religious persecution.

29.03.2004 The Grameen Bank, which pioneered the concept of lending small sums to poor people to help them survive and prosper (micro-credits) has come up with a new niche: lending to the poorest of the poor--those reduced to begging through misfortune or disability to help them get off the streets.

29.03.2004

Peace dove © Fundació per la Pau

The thoughts of 33 Nobel Peace Laureates and leading scholars--from the Dalai Lama to Joseph Stiglitz and Noam Chomsky--on the causes and consequences of the war in Iraq are featured in a new book. “We need to understand the war from a different perspective than what we read and hear from the news media," notes one of the authors.

29.03.2004 WASHINGTON, D.C., Mar 29 (OneWorld) - On the eve of a meeting this week of Afghanistan's major international donors, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) active in the war-battered country are calling on wealthy countries to devote more attention to human rights, security, and the growing threat posed by opium production.