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India LGBTQ Community Want Guidelines for Media Reporting

August 22, 2013

The LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgenders, queer) community in the country is about to approach the state human rights commission to set up guidelines about reporting issues related to them. This has come about in the wake of a newspaper in a small town in the state writing a story that equated their lifestyle to sex trade.
In the week following the said article being published, gay right activists from all over the state had assembled in the town for a dialogue with the editor of the newspaper. The meeting was arranged in the local police headquarters. However, after making the activists wait for a considerable time, the editor slipped out saying he had some urgent work outside the city. Numerous letters to the newspaper and the owners of the media group were answered by means of a follow up article, which also did not help the cause.
“It is difficult for most gay people to ‘come out’. With such discriminatory articles, not only would they be discouraged from revealing themselves but the society would never have a positive opinion of our community,” said Sonal Giani, advocacy officer of Mumbai-based NGO Humsafar Trust, one of the first organizations to promote gay rights in the country. She was among the activists waiting in the police commissioner’s office for a meeting that never happened. The activists also staged a sit-in protest later.


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India offers another investigation to calm Kashmir

July 24, 2013

The Indian government has lifted a curfew and an Internet shutdown imposed to keep a lid on protests after Indian soldiers killed four unarmed civilians last week in the Ramban district of Kashmir. India has also promised to investigate the Ramban shootings in a familiar effort to calm tensions.

On Thursday, during a protest over the alleged desecration of the Quran by Indian Border Security Forces, the soldiers opened fire on civilian protesters, killing four people and injuring 48. The BSF claimed that there were “terrorists” within the crowd and that the soldiers had shot only in self-defense. As protests spread in response, the Indian government raised the compensation for the dead from $3,400 to $8,400, and assured a job to a kin of each of the slain.

India has maintained over half a million soldiers in the Himalayan region of Kashmir and grew a 100,000-strong local police force to deal with a popular rebellion that cropped up in 1990 against Indian rule. Military shootings of civilians like those in Ramban are familiar to Kashmiris – as are the Indian government’s subsequent probes. Kashmiris, however, have learned to put little stock in the exercises, since they are never followed with prosecutions.

“All Indian probes in Kashmir are farcical. They are an end in itself,” says Hameeda Nayeem, a professor of English at the University of Kashmir.

Three weeks ago, two young men from Bandipore in north Kashmir were shot dead by the Indian Army. The Army later said it was “a mistake” and a similar probe was ordered.

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