The 19-year prison term for Duch, one of the most reviled officials in Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge regime, has infuriated millions of Cambodians. The verdict, for Duch’s role in as many as 14,000 deaths, was supposed to meet international standards of justice but clearly fell short. Among the outraged is an otherwise calm and composed Canadian author whose latest novel is set in Cambodia and is a haunting testament to the nation’s collective pain.
Ajay Singh
Ajay Singh is a writer, former tea planter and chicken farmer who began his career in journalism at the New Delhi bureau of the Asian Wall Street Journal in 1988. Since then, he has worked as a reporter for the Associated Press, Time Inc.’s Hong Kong-based newsweekly Asiaweek, and India’s leading newsweekly India Today. Singh is also the author of “Give ’Em Hell, Hari,” a postcolonial East-West comedy that was Waterstone Book of the Month in Britain in March 1996 and on the bestseller lists in Hong Kong, Ireland and Scotland.
Who Flu Over Cuckoo’s Nest?
Every few decades, a flu pandemic spreads westward from Asia. The last one, in 1968, was relatively mild - and we have yet to see the full damage caused by the swine flu outbreak. But the next pandemic is inevitable - and it’s likely to come from China.
Kashmir Ambush
The Kashmir conflict between India and Pakistan has long transcended regional boundaries. But since 9/11, and especially since the 2008 Pakistan-sponsored terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Kashmiri ‘Paradise on Earth’ has become much less geopolitically important than the West’s war against Islamic extremism. To win that battle, Pakistan must not no longer be allowed to use Kashmir as a weapon of regional terrorism.
India Shining?
What does Louisiana’s Republican governor, Bobby Jindal, have in common with the Democratic U.S. Surgeon General-designate Sanjay Gupta? They’re both Americans of Indian descent.
Tibetan Blunder
Tibetans and their supporters worldwide have taken to the streets in record numbers lately to protest human rights abuses in China and the 58-year-old Chinese occupation of Tibet. Over the years, a lot of things have stood between Beijing’s dictatorial rule and Tibet’s freedom — but you’d never guess the most formidable barrier: The Dalai Lama himself.
Belief Above All
Long before Europe’s enlightenment and centuries before Gautama Buddha renounced his princely life and set out to solve the riddle of human suffering, a band of ascetics in India offered hope and redemption to the masses.
