The Contrapuntal magazine

26/02/2025

In Pakistan's Balochistan, mothers of sons who were forcibly disappeared continue to fight relentlessly for justice.

In Balochistan, mothers of sons who were forcibly disappeared by the Frontier Corps of Pakistan continue to fight relentlessly for justice.

26/02/2025

Transnational Repression in Southeast Asia | "The past few years have seen increasing cases of assassination, abduction, and arrest of exiled activists in their host countries. More importantly, countries like Thailand, with a track record of being havens for political refugees, have now started colluding with repressive regimes elsewhere in the region."

Southeast Asian activists increasingly face danger as countries collaborate to silence dissent across borders that include extradition and harassment of exiled critics.

07/01/2025

Interview | The Maasai have been displaced from their ancestral lands under the pretext of conservation and hunting reserves. The community also endures systemic violence & dispossession.

Activist Joseph Moses Oleshagay speaks on the Maasai's forceful evictions, green grabbing policies in Tanzania and its colonial history.

03/01/2025

’s Internet Blackouts Target | "Internet outages significantly impact people’s everyday lives by disrupting banking services and depriving people of access to lifesaving information related to troop movements or airstrikes. However, the effects of such internet restrictions are particularly severe for Rohingya people in Rakhine State."

Myanmar's regime-enforced internet restrictions have deepened the Rohingya's isolation and amplified their struggles.

19/12/2024

Dr Sabiha Baloch’s Resolute Strife For Justice in .

Dr. Sabiha Baloch, a fierce human rights defender, has risked everything to fight for the rights of the Baloch people in Pakistan.

19/12/2024

"The influence of the Shawarma Legend spread beyond digital screens. While tapping away frantically to serve delicious shawarma wraps to their virtual customers, Chinese netizens also began exploring and attempting to make shawarma, sharing videos of their cooking adventures and their first time trying shawarma during their travels abroad— transforming a mobile game into an unexpected cultural exchange."

A viral indie mobile game has captivated the Chinese online community showcasing the unifying power of digital media.

19/12/2024

Analysis | To extend the parallel between Savarna feminism and Imperial feminism is to find the harrowing reality of Muslim women, who become central to this global war on the ‘Lesser Woman’.

Within the fold of White and Brahminical patriarchy, the category of ‘liberated Muslim woman’ is forced to remain empty in a tug of war between oppressors and liberators.

13/09/2024

Iman Khelif’s case proves, if anything, that the politics of fear and hate is not only well and running, but it has developed for its benefit the entire infrastructure willing to destroy individuals for… well, nothing. The infrastructure benefits from the support, or perhaps ignorance, of public personas such as Elon Musk or J.K Rowling.

09/09/2024

Report | "Myanmar’s ethnic Muslim Rohingya minority are once again facing a brutal crackdown and violence, with recent reports detailing a horrifying surge in violence that is pushing the community to the brink of survival. Human rights organizations have raised alarms that Rohingya face their most severe threats since 2017, as the Myanmar military and the ethnic Arakan Army engage in mass killings, arson, and forced recruitment targeting the Muslim community in the country’s restive Rakhine State."

Increased armed conflicts in Myanmar's Rakhine, where the Arakan Army is waging a major offensive against the country’s junta has left the Rohingya vulnerable to violence, including killings, torture, r**e, and arson attacks.

09/09/2024

Review | "The work of artist Betül Aksu plays with, or, perhaps it could be argued, plays against, themes of border zones, restriction, regulation, individualization, and the impact of bureaucratic infrastructures on our relationship with movement, freedom, and, ultimately, language. Her work toils with how our words, what we choose to speak and to write, ultimately delineate the spaces in which bodies are able to move, and how this holds the potential to move us towards spaces of mutual support and collectivity."

Artist Betül Aksu's approach, characterized by free verse and fluid expression, challenges conventional linguistic norms, especially when language becomes politicized.

09/09/2024

Kashmir | Mapping an Occupied City

"Maps seek power from their ability to represent—retell a history, distort the present, and force dreams of an offensive, unwelcome, colonized future. But, the city that is made invisible on colonial maps can be read in the mundane architecture of the city. Colonial violence can be read in the mundane architecture of an occupied city."

@://thecontrapuntal.com/kashmir-mapping-an-occupied-city/

Kashmir's capital Srinagar is the political center for the Indian occupation that bends nature to serve itself and physically disrupts everything that refuses to serve it.

09/09/2024

Report | Locals in Salal are silent about the security situation but they are still living a life of uncertainty and fear. The threat of dislocation and migration looms large as and when the rare mineral is mined. They may not want the mining project killed but they expect the government to come clear and clean on their plans of relocation and rehabilitation. They want to make an informed decision about their future and don’t want to end up in less hospitable conditions, struggling even for basic survival. SSafeena Wani✍️

@://thecontrapuntal.com/the-dark-side-of-indias-lithium-discovery-in-kashmir/

The discovery of lithium resources in Jammu and Kashmir holds the potential to accelerate India's energy shift, but it comes as an uncertainty for locals in Salar.