• 75 Years in Exile: Dharamshala and the Global Struggle for Tibet’s Soul

    Seventy-five years ago, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) marched into Tibet under Mao Zedong’s orders. In the seven decades since, China has transformed the plateau into a heavily militarised zone, and the Tibetan people into subjects of a state that calls their conquest “liberation.” Yet, what Beijing failed to extinguish is the spirit of governance…

  • Inside China’s ‘Re-education’ of Tibetan Children: The System That Breaks Families and Identities

    Chinese government-run boarding schools in Tibet are systematically eroding the Tibetan identity by forcibly separating nearly one million children from their families and immersing them in a Mandarin-only curriculum that promotes assimilation with the Han Chinese majority. International human rights groups and UN experts have condemned the practice, calling it a form of cultural genocide.…

  • Pattern of Stonewalling: From Xinjiang Camps to Hong Kong Courts

    In October 2022, the chamber of the UN Human Rights Council erupted in applause. The occasion was not a human rights breakthrough but the defeat—by a single vote—of a motion to merely debate the UN’s own findings that China may have committed crimes against humanity in Xinjiang. For Uyghur families waiting for justice, the applause…

  • Turkey-Pakistan-China: Power Play at Sea with Somalia as Bait

    Somalia’s coastline is fast becoming the hinge on which bigger powers test ideas about influence in the western Indian Ocean. Taken together—Turkey’s entrenched training presence and new maritime guarantees, Pakistan’s fresh military-training pact, and China’s money and hard facilities next door—the pattern looks less like Somali empowerment and more like a trilateral gravity well pulling…

  • Democracy in Exile vs Authoritarianism in Tibet

    In 1959, as the Dalai Lama crossed the Himalayas into India, Tibet entered a new chapter — one marked by exile for its spiritual and political leadership and authoritarian control for those left behind. More than six decades later, this divergence is complete. In Dharamshala, a functioning democracy has taken root in exile. Inside Tibet,…

  • How Does China’s Salami-Slicing Tactics Deepen Instability?

    China’s relentless pursuit of territorial expansion through “salami slicing” represents one of the most insidious threats to stability in Asia today. This method of gradual encroachment—taking small slices of territory that individually seem trivial but collectively amount to sweeping gains—has become a defining feature of Beijing’s strategy against its neighbours. The term was first used…

  • Democracy Day as Advocacy Day: Tibet’s Call to the World

    Every year on 2 September, Tibetan communities in exile gather to mark a remarkable milestone: the birth of their democracy. In 1960, barely a year after the Dalai Lama’s flight across the Himalayas, Tibetan representatives took their oaths in Bodh Gaya, laying the foundation of self-rule in exile. What began as a modest act of…

  • Exile and Identity: How Tibet Lives On in India

    When the 14th Dalai Lama crossed into Arunachal Pradesh in March 1959, fleeing a crushed uprising in Lhasa, few could have imagined that the Himalayan foothills of India would become the heart of the Tibetan world in exile. More than six decades later, the story of Tibet in India is one of resilience, adaptation and…

  • Bangladesh’s Interim Government: From Democratic Promise to Authoritarian Drift

    When Muhammad Yunus assumed leadership of Bangladesh’s interim administration on August 8, 2024, following unprecedented student-led protests and the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, the nation cautiously anticipated a period of calm, reform, and rapid democratic transition. Mandated by the Supreme Court under the controversial “doctrine of necessity,” Yunus’s government initially presented itself as…

  • Pakistan’s Selective Diplomacy: Violating Ceasefire Agreements, Yet Demanding Compliance

    On July 27, 1949, military representatives from India and Pakistan gathered in Karachi, hopeful that the freshly inked ceasefire agreement would finally bring an enduring peace to Jammu and Kashmir, a region long caught between two newly formed, anxious nations. Supervised by the United Nations Commission for India and Pakistan, the so-called Karachi Agreement aimed…