A year ago the world learnt of the horror of the deaths of clothing workers in Rana Plaza in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government recorded 1,100 deaths, and 2,500 people were rescued. Dangerous buildings collapsed, fire escapes were locked, there was no safety procedure and the survivors lost their jobs and faced destitution. The cheap clothes these workers were producing were destined for […]
Posts under ‘South Asia’
UK Consumers for an Ethical High-Street
Nov 22nd, 2013 by Grahame Morris.Many of us here in the UK pay little attention to where our clothes are made, who manufactures them and what sorts of conditions those workers are forced to endure. Shopping for clothes is a necessity and often a pastime, but rarely do we pause for thought and consider the impact of our habits and […]
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Time for a cross-Europe living wage
May 30th, 2013 by Lucy Anderson.The latest official research from the Greater London Authority (GLA) demonstrates that the gap between rich and poor in London is growing. For example, the tenth of the capital’s population with the highest income have weekly income of over £1,000 while people in the lowest tenth have under £94 per week. We also know that […]
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The massacre that “saved thousands of lives” – a response
Feb 25th, 2013 by David Osler.The brutal actions of Germany’s SS in a Czech mining village one day in 1942 have rightly entered the history books as an exemplar of collective punishment, enacted largely to invoke mass terror among the population of an occupied country. In deliberate planned revenge for the earlier assassination of a senior German official, ten truck […]
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You don’t win friends with salad, but curry’s a different matter
Jul 26th, 2012 by Conrad Landin.A warning to begin with: stop reading if you’re hoping for an exploration of the politics of ethical nutrition. And now for something completely different.
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Democracy crushed; elected President arrested; World wrings its hands
Feb 10th, 2012 by Mark Seddon.Bernard Savage, Head of the EU Delegation to Sri Lanka and the Maldives said: “At this stage, given our information, we would not say that there has been any legal infringement of constitutional forms. We are not taking sides but, as the High Representative Cathy Ashton has made clear, what we support is the constitutional […]
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‘Gay Gandhi’ book banned in India
Apr 7th, 2011 by Newsdesk.The Indian state of Gujarat has banned a new book about Mohandas ‘Mahatma’ Gandhi in protest against its revelation that the Indian independence leader left his wife to live with a man. In a similar direct threat to freedom of speech and freedom of the press, there are calls to ban the biography in other […]
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Where Land Crabs Have More Rights Than Humans
Sep 20th, 2010 by Mark Seddon.Just how committed is the new British Coalition Government to Human Rights – and in particular the much trampled human rights of the Chagossians who have spent the best part of forty years attempting to get back to their homeland in the Indian Ocean, from where they were so unceremoniously booted off by Harold Wilson’s […]
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The Maldives Prepare to Be Underwater
Aug 16th, 2010 by Mark Seddon.It is no wonder that the Government of the Maldives has been talking about buying up a tract of land elsewhere in South Asia to evacuate its people to if global sea levels keep rising. For the islands from the air look fragile enough. Only when one has landed does it become apparent how low […]
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The Danger That the Maldives Will Drift Back Into Dictatorship
Aug 9th, 2010 by Mark Seddon.When, after thirty years of authoritarian rule, a young dissident and perennial thorn in the side of the Establishment, Mohammed Nasheed won the first free and fair election in the Maldives in 2008, much of the World applauded. In the Maldives there was not so much polite applause, but out and out celebration. For the country had […]
