UN incited Bangladesh's army take over

The UN warned the Bangladesh Army chief that if it supported the forthcoming elections, which the UN feared would be violent, it might lose several peacekeeping contracts. UN peacekeeping contracts bring in $300 million a year to Bangladesh which is significant for the poverty ridden country. The next day, the Army chief walked into the office of Bangladesh's president and ordered him to declare a state of emergency, cancel the election, and install a military-backed caretaker government.

Novartis throttling AIDS relief operations in developing countries

Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis is challenging the Indian Governments decision to put peoples health before patents and profits. Until 2005, India was able to produce affordable versions of medicines which was pateneted elsewhere, since the country did not grant pharmaceutical patents.

Indian drugs constitute one quarter of the drugs brought by over 30 developing countries worldwide. 80% of medicines used for the treatment of AIDS in the developing countries come from India. Novartis is effectively trying to shut down the pharmacy of the developing world.

India has 5.7 million people living with HIV/AIDS, according to the United Nations, which is the world's highest caseload. But the prevalence rate is much lower than in most of Africa.

India complied to the The World Trade Organization's (WTO) Trade-related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) agreement in 2005. But this agreement includes provisions to safeguard public health and India has included only these in its patent laws.

The Doha Declaration on TRIPS and Public Health signed in 2001 reinforced the right of individual countries to implement these safeguards.

Challenging the public health safeguards in the Indian Law by Novartis will affect the access to medicines in developing countries when the TRIPS agreement by itself has made it difficult for India to produce affordable medicines.

The Indian Network for People with HIV/AIDS (INP+), the People's Health Movement, the Centre for Trade and Development (Centad), the international medical humanitarian organisation Mèdecins Sans Frontiéres (MSF) have all expressed their protest on the lawsuit. They have opposed patent applications for crucial AIDS drugs that they need to be able to access at affordable prices. The survival of these organizations and their effort to fight AIDS all depend greatly on winning these patent oppositions.

Widespread protests forced the Novartis to abandon a similar legal action agains the South African government in 2001.

Please join these efforts to get Novartis to back off from India.

Killing innocents for promotion and rewards

In the 17 year old insurgency in Kashmir, more than 60,000 people have been killed. Recently a new trend has been observed in these killings. Police officers have been conducting "false encounters" and killing innocent people to claim rewards and promotions.

The word "encounter" has until now been used principally to mean skirmishes between militants and the police or the military. For each new murder, the police invoke self-defence and insist that the miscreants opened fire first. Not surprisingly, since the law allows the police to use arms against anyone charged with an offence for which the punishment is death. In their affidavits, the police always say that the criminals had sophisticated weapons, imported or smuggled into the country.

It is said that the stand of human rights activists is demoralising for the police: The government says that it has neither ordered the encounters nor will it ask the police to stop the same. In fact, this isn’t an action taken against criminals, it’s a fight between two groups of criminals.

In the eyes of the public, law and order are breaking down. The prestige of the police is damaged and it needs to do something to limit the damage. "Encounters" are part of that damage control strategy. Police depend on informers to discover who pulled the trigger, not who instigated the murder. These known criminals are then tracked down and shot. The police version is that the criminals opened fire on them and they were killed in self-defence. There are no witnesses to corroborate the story. But public opinion is satisfied and police prestige is restored.

Police and politicians create an impermeable web of corruption and concealment..

In effect, there is a sustained effort by politicians and police to discredit the judiciary. Their story is that the judiciary is too liberal, too inefficient, cases take too long to come to court and too many criminals are released on bail on technicalities. The campaign to tarnish the judiciary is part of the apologia for the extra-judicial killings.

Rape and ye shall marry? In India, Yes.

Rapists in India has an option now - Marry and you may get away scot free.

Last year, a Delhi court asked a rape victim to consider a marriage proposal from her rapist in a bid to escape conviction. Women's groups, including the National Commission for Women had criticised the court for even entertaining such a proposal.