minority report

NO AMNESTY | It’s official now. India is one hell of a place for the minorities. After miles of reporting by correspondents like us from India on the persecution of the ‘lesser’ people, the Amnesty has put it on the paper.

The group has at last alleged that the right of minorities to live in India “as equals was being increasingly undermined by both state and non-state actors”. Actors? That’s a curious phrase to creep into its bureaucratic lingo. Anyway, in its latest annual report, referring to the Gujarat riots of February-March 2002, the human rights body stated that religious minorities, particularly Muslims, were “being increasingly targeted for abuse”.

The number of such abuses are growing. Riots happen less often. But beatings, rape, and other forms of abuse of Christian activists and Muslim masses do take place in pockets of small towns and villages. The ruling regime is overseeing it.

Hey, does prime minister Vajpayee still write poems?

blogging big

IRAQ BLOGGER | So Salam Pax is for real.

The blogging that began in the routine “I had the flu” stuff,” began to touch more often on the unspoken hardships of life in Iraq under the regime of Saddam Hussein. According to The Guardian, Pax was taking a big risk. More than 200,000 people went missing under Saddam, many for far lesser crimes than the open criticism of the regime that Salam voiced in his writings.

And now the blogger has been rewarded. With a column in The Guardian. He has signed up to write a fortnightly column for the paper.

There, one more quick theme for journalism professors to harp on the ‘blog-journalism’ relationship.