Readers Pulse 02-Oct-22
World can’t be a Passive Spectator
This refers to the news published titled “Death toll from Pakistan floods reaches 1265” in Radiance of 17 September 2022. Pakistan has almost been devastated on two fronts. First of all, its economy is in tatters. Next, the country faces nature’s fury.
It is impossible for a country like Pakistan to withstand this double whammy. It direly needs international supports. The international community can’t be a passive spectator.
Bubul Sanyal
Kolkata, West Bengal
E.V. Ramasamy Periyar is a ‘global leader’
Erode Venkatappa Ramasamy Periyar, an Indian social activist, rationalist and politician, is known as the “Father of the Dravidar Kazhagam”. While paying tribute at the statue of Periyar in Chennai, on his 144th birth anniversary, the chief minister M.K. Stalin called the social reformer Periyar ‘a global leader’. He virtually laid the foundation stone for the facility to house various infrastructures such as a library, research centre, planetarium and a wax museum for leaders from the Dravidian Movement. At last, he saluted the great rationalist who destroyed the conservative ideas and strived for social justice.
Chowdhry Nisar Ahmed
Ambur (Tamil Nadu)
Politics against Minorities
The Varanasi District Court’s decision to hear a petition seeking the right to worship at the Shringar Gouri shrine within Gyanvapi Mosque Complex will set off another legal battle over an issue that has political implications. Judge Ajay Krishna Vishvesha dismissed the Mosque committee’s objections to the petition filed by five women seeking right to worship at the shrine.
But it is clear that the dispute is not legal but political and will vitiate politics and society. In June this year RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat had said there was no need to “look for a shivling in every mosque”. The BJP has also stated in the past that it would not raise any temple-mosque issue after the Ayodhya dispute was settled. Thus, it is clear that it is politics which the present Government wants to play against the minorities.
Nazeer Ahmed Kazi
Prof Secab, Vijaypur
Karnataka
EU’s call for War Crime Tribunal over Mass Graves in Ukraine is a Sane Voice
The EU presidency’s call for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes after new mass graves were found in Ukraine is in the fitness of things. Jan Lipavsky, foreign minister of the Czech Republic which holds the European Union’s rotating presidency, said, “In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent.”
“We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” he added in a message on Twitter. The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities of around 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izyum with most of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture. “Among the bodies that were exhumed today, 99 per cent showed signs of violent death,” Oleg Synegubov, head of Kharkiv regional administration, said on social media.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken also said that the graves likely provided more evidence that Russia is committing war crimes in its pro-Western neighbour, and French President Emmanuel Macron said what happened in Izyum were atrocities. The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said there were “probably more than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region”.
As the Russian army denies targeting civilian infrastructure or residential areas, only a war crime tribunal will decide on the allegations of torture.
Shaikh Rashid
New Delhi
