South Asia

Living under constant fear of being targeted with religious hate and hate speech is a shared experience of Sri Lanka’s Muslim community. In this podcast, journalist and researcher Sara Pathirana talks to Sheikh Arkam Nooramith – a Sri Lankan Islamic scholar, and Ms. Hafsah Muheed – an experienced professional working on gender-based violence and women’s health, about how the community deals…

People living with HIV and AIDs in India face greater risk of exposure in relation to their private health information and data, especially as the government, hospitals, insurance companies etc. collect data. COVID-19 crisis also raises concerns whether big data is a tool of prevention and health care or at the service of government repression.

All over the world, prisons are potentially ground for the spread of the COVID-19 contagion, but another factor at play is the role of repressive governments at this moment continuing to imprison activists. This article looks at what prisoners can still access from jail and the effectiveness of online "visits" for prisoners from their lawyer and families in India.

LGBTQIA+ people are often already isolated, invisibilised in their families and sometimes also facing abuse. In this article, mental health professionals speak about the vulnerability of these groups and people during the lockdown and how fragile links of community and support are still being built.

More than 45,000 people have registered to return to their home-state Manipur, and a large number of them are women nurses who faced discrimination and harassment while they were doing their jobs in mainland India. Returnees now face a precarious future regarding where they live, their jobs and their future.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. Shakespeare wrote most of his plays during the bubonic plague, and now women and queer artists use the internet and social media to open up spaces for marginalised communities and bodies.

In India protests against the discriminatory and unilateral law to determine citizenship have been going on since December of 2019. The protests across India against the current authoritarian government were growing in power, in spite of the enormous pressure they came under, the attacks and arrests of leaders and now from the spread of COVID-19 and lockdowns.

As part of the Feminist Internet Research Network, we are including a series of short pieces on reflections by researchers on the ground. Here the author reflects on whether domestic workers are sufficiently aware of their rights and of unions that they could be part of, regardless of whether they use online platforms or find work using more traditional routes.

A photo essay of a community network and the women working at the radio station and using the community network located just at the outskirts of Bangalore in India.

Availability and affordability of the internet have a major impact on whether women are able to access and use the internet. In this article we explore what happens when community networks bring the internet closer to women and the small and big ways in which this changes their lives.