Full Coverage: Asia and the Pacific

30.01.2009 Himal magazine assesses the prospects for Sri Lanka as the government closes in on the Tigers.

30.01.2009 Sri Lanka's president declares a safe zone for civilians as the UN's human rights chief voices concern over the rapidly deteriorating conditions - including human rights abuses - for some 250,000 civilians trapped in the country's war-torn north.
+ Sri Lankan Bishop on hunger strike
+ Humanitarian catastrophe unfolding
+ Civilians trapped
+ UK Foreign Office statement

28.01.2009 Controls on news and information are being tightened in Thailand, said an international media freedom group in the wake of a ban on a foreign magazine that criticised the three-year jail sentence imposed on an Australian writer on a lese majeste charge.

28.01.2009 More than 20,000 Indians marched through dense forest to create a 17-kilometre human wall across the holy mountain that provides their livelihood and is now under threat from British mining company Vedanta.

27.01.2009 Hundreds of people have been killed and scores of wounded are overwhelming understaffed and ill-equipped medical facilities in Sri Lanka's northern Vanni region, following intensified fighting between security forces and the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam.
+ OneWorld Guide to Sri Lanka

26.01.2009 Caryl Churchil says she wrote Seven Jewish Children – A Play for Gaza (Royal Court Theatre, London, 6-21 February) "as a small response to what has happened in Gaza in the last few weeks.”

23.01.2009 Leading UK aid agencies are appealing to the public for urgently needed funds in Gaza.

21.01.2009 A campaign to press the Pakistan government to prevent Islamic militants in the border region with Afghanistan from destroying girls' schools has been started by a leading Asian rights group.

21.01.2009 Efforts are continuing in The Philippines to secure the safe and unconditional return of three abducted staff members of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

21.01.2009 More than 7,000 people from all over India's Niyamgiri region marched at the weekend against British mining company Vedanta and their project on the unspoiled mountain range that is ancestral home and place of worship for local tribal people.
+ New Year card for Vedanta’s shareholders predicts Indian tribe’s destruction

20.01.2009 Sri Lanka's "culture of impunity and indifference" over attacks on journalists is condemned by international media groups.

19.01.2009 Setting the final scene of Slumdog Millionaire in Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus unwittingly links the film with the recent terrorism outrage. Can the "war on terror" hope to end as happily as the film?

18.01.2009 Your chance to petition the UN to appoint Martti Ahtisaari to mediate for an end to the bloodshed.

18.01.2009 David Miliband's speech at the Taj Hotel, Mumbai, in which he condemns the concept of the war on terror as "misleading and mistaken"

18.01.2009 The moving final testimony to press freedom by Lasanthe Wickrematunge, Editor of the Sunday Leader, written a few days before his murder in Sri Lanka.

18.01.2009 Timothy Garton Ash in the Guardian applauds the launch of BBC Persian TV, even though BBC cameras are banned from Iran.

18.01.2009 No journalists are allowed into Gaza and my colleagues at OneWorld US have done a great job in collating these disturbing accounts by aid workers inside the enclave.

18.01.2009 The Sri Lankan government may be winning a shooting war with the Tamil Tigers but its despicable elimination of those who wield the pen plumbed new depths this week. Time.com

16.01.2009 The European Commission should follow up its decision to suspend moves to upgrade political and trade links with Israel by stopping the upgrade process altogether, says a prominent anti-poverty group.
+ Ceasefire violations hampering aid deliveries

15.01.2009 The European Commission's decision to take “time-out” on its talks with Israel on upgrading relations is a missed opportunity to clearly condemn Israel, says Christian Aid.
+ Gaza hospitals under attack