Author: Priya Saha

By Yusuf Ali Mohammed @YusufAliHarar and Harari People in a History GlanceAddis Abeba, June 03/2021 – According to Article 47 of the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia (FDRE) Constitution, among the nine (now ten) semi-autonomous regional states of Ethiopia, the ‘State of Harari People’ Region is the one. This region is comparatively the smallest, but the second oldest – after Axum, full of historical artefacts and more than 1000 years of tremendous history. The region has one metropolitan city called ‘Harar’, which once was a vast territory but shrunk to its present size in the 19th Century. The name of the…

China doesn’t take kindly to criticism about its human rights abuses, but one city has found a novel way of shaming the country accused of crushing democratic freedoms and committing genocide on a religious minority. The mayor of Budapest has announced he will rename the streets in an unusual protest against plans to build a Chinese university in the city.The planned street names appear innocuous enough, but they would no doubt rankle Beijing. China has come under increasing international pressure over its human rights record. Source: GettyThe Hungarian capital plans to rename the streets around the proposed Chinese institution to commemorate alleged human…

Felipe Martinez recalls his father, a lifetime farmer, was never told about federal aid that white farmers enjoyed.Ignoring ethnic minorities who work the land is part of the racism that was long embedded in the U.S. Department of Agriculture until recent years, said Martinez, a grower and former Rio Arriba County commissioner.“In my dad’s situation, I think that the agency did a very poor job at communicating to rural Hispanic and Native American communities about these programs,” Martinez said.Some of the farm assistance was created under President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, so it has been around nearly 100 years,…

Bangladesh (MNN) – Funerals help families grieve and honor loved ones who pass on.  In Bangladesh, tradition outlaws some believers from the burial process. “Sometimes, we have to take the body to [a] different city far from there and ask somebody to bury them in their personal backyard, or something like that,” Pastor William* explains. Pastor William works with FARMS International and a church network in Bangladesh. People from majority religions turn to Christ, he says, but that doesn’t mean their body will rest with fellow believers when they die. Bangladesh allocates cemetery land by religion, and the separation is austere.…

The latest round of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has seen an unusual surge in violence between Palestinian Arabs and Jewish communities living in Israel, drawing attention to the status and future of the 1.9 million Palestinian Arab Israeli citizens, who make up around 21% of the population. Palestinian Arabs of Israel – also referred to as “48 Arabs,” “Palestinian Israelis,” or “Arab-Israelis” – are descendants of the 150,000 Palestinians who remained inside the so-called Green Line drawn between Israel and Jordan after the 1948 Palestinian exodus or nakba, which occurred when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians were forced to flee during…

Young people, people with disabilities, Travellers, and Eastern European migrants are at much higher risk of disadvantage around employment and have less access to decent work, new research shows. The report, Monitoring Decent Work in Ireland, published by the Economic and Social Research Institute and the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, sets out how these groups have seen consistent inequalities in access to employment, job security and seniority. Regarding security and stability of work, one third of younger workers (18-24) had a temporary contract, compared to 6 per cent of 25-64 year olds in 2019. “We found that younger…

The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML), the Congress party’s ally in Kerala, has moved the Supreme Court challenging the decision of the Modi government to grant citizenship to persecuted minority refugees from Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Bangladesh. According to the reports, the Islamic political outfit IUML has filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a stay on the recent notification issued by the centre that had invited applications from persecuted Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Jains, and Buddhists belonging to Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. In its petition, IUML termed the order an attempt by the Centre to implement its “mala fide…

What is the thought-process behind the naming of children in Bangladesh? In William Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet, we come across the saying: “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”  Writing about names, the early 20th-century Austrian-British philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein, famous for his works on language, has argued that a name is the result of a consensus among people. In other words, because the term “book” signifies its meaning, we agree to call it by this name. Instead, if we had forged a consensus to call it a “pen’…

The topic of this year’s Shurden Lectures back in April tackled an essential subject for people of faith who seek to promote racial and social justice. “Religious Liberty Has Been White Too Long: Voices of Black Scholars” explored the intersection of Black freedom and religious liberty through the insight and research of four scholars: Dr. Nicole Myers Turner of Yale University, Dr. Teresa L. Smallwood of Vanderbilt Divinity School, Dr. Anthony Pinn of Rice University, and Dr. David Goately of Duke Divinity School. The event featured a presentation by each scholar followed by a panel discussion with all four, moderated…

An Indian court has ruled that a local government administration in Uttar Pradesh filed a “false and unfounded” police report against eight Muslim leaders who had opposed the “illegal” demolition of their mosque. The bulldozing of the Masjid Gareeb Nawaz Al Maroof last month, carried out on the orders of the local administration of Barabanki district, caused an outcry and sent many local Muslims into hiding. In the days following the demolition, the Barabanki administration filed a police case against eight local Muslim leaders who had opposed the demolition, accusing them of forging documents that had led to the mosque…

Anti-CAA protest at Jamia Millia University| File image | Photo: Suraj Singh Bisht | ThePrint Text Size: A- A+ New Delhi: The Indian Union Muslim League (IUML) has moved the Supreme Court challenging the Centre’s notification inviting non-Muslims belonging to Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Pakistan and residing in 13 districts in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh, Haryana and Punjab to apply for Indian citizenship. The interim application argued that the Centre is trying to circumvent the assurance given to the apex court in this regard in the pending petition filed by the IUML challenging the constitutional validity of the provisions…