The conversations and debates centered on why these specialized drugs are so expensive, as well as what pharmaceutical companies’ rights and responsibilities are to make sure life-saving drugs are available in the developing world.

“Misterrespectful” wrote:

This isn't about Cipla being ‘nice'. This is about Cipla trying to earn a buck, exactly like every other company in the world. It just so happens that in India, the way for a cancer drug company to earn a buck is to make their drugs cheaper, so more people can afford them. That sounds good, right?

Strangely, the reason for this is not just that the population is so great, but that they don't have insurance, and the government doesn't have a lot of money to spend on drugs, either. When everybody is sufficiently poor, you have no choice but to cut prices and go after volume.

“Reserved for Handicapped and Cancer Patients” by Cory Doctorow in Mumbai, 2008, on Flickr Creative Commons

India’s system is different from most other countries in that it doesn’t recognize foreign pharmaceutical companies’ patents when drugs have been slightly altered for the purposes of patent renewal. The effect, as explained by the German newspaper Spiegel, is that Indian pharmaceutical companies can capitalize where others cannot, but also that Indian drugs have become very important to many parts of the developing world because of their affordability.

“_No_idea” commented on the issue of cost, patents and licensing in India:

The only reason some companies can slash prices on drugs like that is because they are usually not the one's spending millions in trying to develop it. Most likely the company that did develop it, no longer has a patent on it.

“mionendy” quipped:

in honor of this, i will cut prices on my ripped DVDs also by 63%.

“KING_UDYR” wrote:

Corporate social responsibility done right.

The cost of cancer treatment, however, is still out of reach for many Indians, commented “nummakayne,” whose mother was treated for ovarian cancer:

Each round of chemo (including overnight stay in the hospital) came out to about $480 (includes the chemo drugs, overnight admittance in a general ward, doctor's fee). That is not copay – that is what anybody would pay out-of-pocket.

It's still a decent chunk of change when you factor in that $480 would be considered a decent monthly salary for a fresh-out-of-college computer grad. But for a lot of folks here it's still out of reach.

My Dad died of cancer before my Mom was diagnosed – Stage III colon cancer. Five years – two surgeries (ileostomy, later followed by a reversal of the procedure), 12 rounds of chemo, 45 sessions of radiation, all kinds of experimental drugs and procedures that I can't even remember the names of…my Mom estimates it came up to around $50,000 in total medical expenses. May not seem like a lot of money to someone in the US but believe me when I say what we got him was nothing short of world class treatment, at least to my layman eyes.

Commenters discussed marketing campaigns as one potential reason these kinds of drugs are so expensive. “Jonnysunshine” wrote:

This is the sort of thing that should be commended. Time and time again we see adverts on television and in magazines telling us about this or that new miracle drug, but at what cost to the consumer?

To which “calibos” replied: “If you want the new miracle drug which presumably offers some benefits to you, then you pay for it.”

“Cocktails4,” who identified as a pharmaceutical researcher, explained that the process of drug design as lengthy and expensive:

Drug designers such as myself take the basic research done at universities and attempt to apply it towards the goal of curing a disease. I might, for example, find promising research pointing towards the importance of a specific protein kinase in a specific type of cancer. I can then attempt to find an existing drug compound that can inhibit that kinase using something like high-throughput screening assays using extensive corporate compound databases or I can use structure-based small molecule design methods using a protein kinase crystal structure if I am lucky and such a structure actually exists. At that point I've either discovered a promising compound or designed a compound and then begins the drug optimization process wherein one works with medicinal chemists and biologists to improve the drug while juggling a myriad of problems such as insolubility, organ toxicity, high serum binding, low oral bioavailability, lack of potency, etc. This process can take several years and has no guarantee of success. Most drugs are abandoned long before they ever are tested in man. Fewer still make it out of clinical trials.

“Cocktails4” continued in the thread:

Science is very expensive. I think a lot of people from the tech field don't realize what it's like to have a burn rate over a $1 million per month at a startup.

Conversations on Reddit about cancer have recently been dominated by discussions of the cost of cancer drugs. A thread of 917 comments on an article in The Hindu began last June when Cipla slashed prices on drugs that treat brain, kidney and lung cancer. Cipla’s chairman, Yusuf Hamied, said then that it was “a humanitarian move.”

In that thread, “TheGreatEnt” wrote:

As a person, it makes me happy to see that more people can afford medication.

As a chemist, it makes me sad to see people not understand the R&D costs of these drugs.

I think that the government needs to spend more of its money on supporting R&D costs and supplementing the cost of drugs (universal healthcare, public option) which will lead to both drug developers and consumers to benefit.

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Tom Swiss at Unreasonable.org writes, “If you're asking, ‘Who's Fred Korematsu?’ then take that as evidence of the way that this nation still has not dealt with one of its most shameful acts, the internment of 110,000 innocent people of Japanese ancestry during WWII.”

During World War II, the United States government moved more than 100,000 Japanese-Americans and immigrants from the Pacific coast to internment camps inland. Korematsu, who refused to go, was arrested and convicted for his defiance. His conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court in 1944. Although the exclusion order was rescinded in 1945, it wasn't until the 1980s, when Korematsu reopened his case, that the courts overturned his conviction. In 1988, the United States declared Japanese-American internment unjust and paid retribution to its victims and their heirs.

On the web, Fred Korematsu Day garnered support from diverse places. A blogger who describes himself as a “West-coastie college lecturer” at The Other Two Fifths explains his resistance to white-washing history and support of Fred Korematsu Day:

People who encounter me elsewhere … know I retain a certain cynicism over ‘diversity efforts’ writ large. I dislike those that try to leave our collective checkered past unexamined. I like those with an atonement factor, in which government openly acknowledges past wrongdoing. This is one of the latter.

Until his death in 2005, Korematsu himself advocated on behalf of prisoners held in Guantánamo Bay and Middle-Eastern Americans persecuted after 9/11. Affad Shaikh at This American Muslim discusses leadership, both Korematsu's and the kind enshrined in Islam.

In the Prophetic example Muslims learn that any act by which someone is hurt, or his person or possession or dignity are subjected to any loss is absolutely forbidden and the corollary is that a Muslim is enjoined to be benevolent towards others, to serve them and to fulfill the needs of others when in their power to, regardless of their race, religion or nationality. However, history provides many other archetypes of this model of leadership as well.

Shaikh goes on to write that:

To learn about leadership and to be a leader one only needs to look at the contemporary example set my Korematsu. Like the Prophet, such a leader challenges us to reconsider our beliefs and our conduct so as to be a benefit to others. Leadership cannot just simply be about representing a group; such leadership is limited narrowly to identity politics and immediate self-preservation. I believe that the circumstances of the time and the tenets of our faith demand that we not just represent a community but also lead in society; working to organize the civic infrastructure needed for active citizenship that engages diverse constituents, cultivates leadership and develops potential solutions to complex issues faced by a globalizing society. In celebrating the first Korematsu day, Muslims should make the intention to strive harder to apply the Prophetic example of being benevolent towards others, to serve them and to fulfill the needs of others, regardless of their race, religion or nationality.

Teacher Brian T. Carroll at Capers With Carroll remembers Korematsu's impact on his own life:

While I was growing up, each of my parents spoke of the pain and confusion they felt in 1942 when their Nisei classmates were sent away to government ‘Relocation Camps.’ Later, while I was taking a year of Japanese language at Pasadena City College, the school offered ‘Sociology of the Asian in America.’ The course might qualify among the ethnic studies courses that have just been outlawed by the state of Arizona, but I look back upon it as one of the most fruitful classes I ever took. Three hours one night a week, with a 20 minute break, I quickly began spending those twenty minutes—and the walk to the parking lot after class—with Jiro Morita. At 80, he told me he was taking the class ‘to stay young.’

Caroll wrote that he will post more about the people instrumental to helping heal the injustice of internment, but ends his post with a word of encouragement: “In the meantime, enjoy a civil Fred Korematsu Day. Pick an injustice, and ponder how to alleviate it.”

For more on Fred Korematsu, here's the trailer for a 2007 documentary film, Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story.

Of Civil Wrongs and Rights – trailer from Asian Law Caucus on Vimeo.

You can also get information about various events and history at the Korematsu Insitute.

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Obituaries of Prabhakaran note that he was a hero to some and a ruthless killer to others. The BBC writes, “To his followers, Vellupillai Prabhakaran was a freedom fighter struggling for Tamil emancipation. To his adversaries he was a secretive megalomaniac with a complete disregard for human life.” The Hindu in India says, “A ‘freedom fighter’ for his supporters and a dreaded terrorist for others, Prabhakaran was wanted by Interpol and many other organisations since 1990 for terrorism, murder and organised crime.” Long before the world was aware of Osama Bin Laden or Al-Qaeda, Prabhakaran started to use a new method of guerrilla warfare, suicide bombing. This cover story on Tehelka magazine reveals a lot about this war lord.

The Blogger of Beyond Skin explains it this way:

First reaction: WHAAA! [goosebumps and jaw-drop and an overwhelmingly contradictory feeling of both dread and relief.]

Second reaction: Now what? After 26 years of fighting, after displacing and killing hundreds of thousands, after silencing those who dissent against both the government and the LTTE through assassinations, torture and disappearance, what now of the Tamil people?

United National Party organizer Ajith P. Perera wrote in his own obituary for Prabhakaran in his blog, Dare to be different: “He was a terrorist, no doubt, but Prabhakaran deserves an obituary, even in a language he barely understood,” Perera wrote.

Did he achieve anything worthwhile for his community? The answer is a big NO. Ethnic (Jaffna) Tamils are worse off than they were in 1970s. More than half of the Tamil population has already left for good. Thousands of Tamil families had to live with eternal grief of losing one or more family members. Ethnic Tamils, the largest minority in Sri Lanka then, has now reduced to the pathetic third place after Muslims and Indian Tamils. Jaffna, the second most advanced city in Sri Lanka, with its famous education system, is now far behind. As a community Tamils, at least the unfortunate ones to still remain, have moved ten or twenty years backward. They were termed as terrorists across the world. North and East have become more and more economically dependent on Colombo. At least for the next few years, till a UNP government implements a political solution, they will be remotely controlled from Colombo. All thanks to Prabhakaran.

Sri Lankan Tamil activist and former LTTE member Nirmala Rajasingam explains in an opinion piece in The Independent that her sister was murdered by the LTTE 20 years ago.

For that reason, the news of the demise of the LTTE's top leadership – which ordered her killing and the killings of many other Tamil dissenters – brings overwhelming relief. The war and carnage has at last stopped and the insistent bloodletting of Tamil dissent is now over.

But she cautions:

The continued refusal of full access to humanitarian agencies does not allay suspicions about the government's intentions toward the refugees and the LTTE cadres who have surrendered. The last three years have seen a large number of abductions, extrajudicial killings and disappearances, almost exclusively targeting the Tamil community as the government of Sri Lanka relentlessly pursued its military campaign. The militarisation of state and society has been able to suppress dissent in the south, even mounting attacks on journalists. We wait to see whether the government will reverse this downward spiral in democratic governance.

Blogger and columnist Indi Samarajiva used Twitter to discuss the death of Prabhakaran while he was traveling. He posted messages to his Twitter page on Monday afternoon:

is in Hambantota. Fire crackers. Seems Prabhakaran is dead. No glory in death, but, well, good. May Sri Lanka rebuild #fb

they're lighting firecrackers literally meters from the gas cylinder depot. The fishmongers are yelling to get back to work.

Hambantota town is mostly Muslim, back to business. Flag convoys thru Ambalantota. War's over, Prabha's dead. Long live Sri Lanka #fb

Prahalathan KK, a blogger in Chennai, India, says that rejoicing in Prabhakaran's death is a diservice to the civilians killed in order to make the LTTE's defeat possible.

“So Prabhakaran the Terrorist has been killed. Happy? Rejoicing? Ever thought of the thousands of innocent Tamils who were slaughtered by the indiscriminate use of artillery and chemical weapons by the Sri Lankan army during the Genocidal war?”

According to the Ministry of Defence website, the almost 150,000 civilians who have fled the war zone in less than a month are being cared for by the army. But The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the only independent organization that has had access to civilians in the conflict zone, called the situation “nothing short of catastrophic.” Today, they in a news release that the they have not had access to civilians in the north-east for nine days. “This is all the more urgent since no humanitarian aid has reached those who need it for over a week,” said director of operations, Pierre Krähenbühl. Selvarasa Pathmanathan, head of the LTTE’s International Diplomatic Relations, released a statement on Sunday announcing that the Tigers will “silence our guns to save our people.” He said that 3,000 civilians have died and 25,000 are injured.

Prominent South Asian diaspora blog Sepia Mutiny reports on continuing protests in Canada. In a post about a gathering in Winnipeg. Melvin writes:

They held candles, signs, black flags and pictures of children whom they see as victims of the Sri Lankan government’s assault on civilians. While people in Colombo and elsewhere celebrated the apparent end of the 25-year civil war, those at the vigil mourned the deaths of innocent people and wondered what, if anything, had been solved. “It doesn’t solve anything,” Singarajah said. “People’s grievances aren’t going to be over. This government is so ruthless. They don’t want to give us our rights. As long as that is the case, the problems will go on.”

Protests have been ongoing in London, many parts of Canada and more recently in Australia. But activist Rajasingam cautioned in Foreign Policy magazine that the Tamil diaspora has taken a misguided approach to its message:

As Sri Lanka's humanitarian crisis unfolds, the international community must make its message clear and forthright. The Tigers and the diaspora that supports them have no claim as the “sole representation” of the Tamil people. Nor is secession a reasonable option. Anything more superficial than this firm engagement will play into the hands of the LTTE lobby in the West — and inflame Sinhala nationalists in Sri Lanka. Only this firm message will serve the cause of peace and democracy.

At Moving Images, Moving People! blogger Nalaka Gunawardene says that he wants to believe that the war is truly over:

Sure, there is no independent verification – it has been a war without witnesses for the last few years. But I am willing to take an unusual leap of faith if that’s what it takes to usher in the long-elusive peace. I will go to the ends of the earth, and suspend disbelief if I have to, in return for lasting and meaningful peace.

President Mahinda Rajapaksa is scheduled to address Parliament and the nation on Tuesday morning.

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A Call For Intervention – Tamil protests in Ottawa. Image by Mikey G Ottawa and used under a Creative Commons License

But many bloggers are questioning the information people abroad are getting about the island's long war. The international media reports have been inadequate or inaccurate, while the Sri Lankan government is blocking access of journalists to the north where civilians are in danger.

Prominent Sri Lankan blogger and Sunday Leader columnist Indi Samarajiva of indi.ca calls for the LTTE to release the civilians they are holding and offers a critique of international reporting on the war:

Frankly, I think the ‘International Community’ and international media are far too quick to offer solutions without looking at the situation. And they are, frankly, largely impotent and irrelevant. Note that Al Jazeera is doing real reporting. They have an actual guy on the ground in Palmudai, the anchors ask real questions and so they report that the LTTE is firing on people and holding them hostage.

The other media seems to be like, ‘We don’t understand so, just, er, stop’. Seriously, on CNN I often see the anchor being like ‘I don’t know what’s going on’ and the reporter being like ‘Yeah me neither’ and I’m like, ‘congratulations on publicly sucking at your jobs’. But Al Jazeera does well.

Serendipity adds to the critique, calling out the media for dropping in on the Sri Lanka story too late:

Once again we have been reminded in Sri Lanka of the world of sound bites. The sudden intensity with which the world media have closed in on the last stages of the LTTE is an indication of the short-lived nature of much of journalism, which is in a business to sell or draw an audience in the case of TV. Their intentions therefore are more about sensationalism as opposed to genuine concern for the news they are reporting.

Jeremy Page, South Asia correspondent for The Times in London, offers some explanation why the international media has been hamstrung in its coverage of Sri Lanka. He was turned back at the airport in Colombo after trying to enter on a tourist visa. After being taken into a side room, he was held overnight and then sent out of the country:

A message flashed up on his screen: “DO NOT ALLOW TO ENTER THE COUNTRY.” With that, my passport was confiscated, I was escorted to a detention room, locked up for the night, and deported the next day. I can’t say that I was surprised, though it was my first deportation in 12 years of reporting from China, the former Soviet Union and South Asia.

Despite multiple applications, I’ve been denied a journalist’s visa for Sri Lanka since August. For almost two years, the Sri Lankan Government has prevented most independent reporters from getting anywhere near the military campaign against the Tamil Tigers. So I was trying to enter as a tourist to write about the 150,000 civilians that the UN estimates are trapped in a no-fire zone with the remnants of the Tigers. The only other countries that I can think of where foreign journalists have to pose as tourists are Zimbabwe, Turkmenistan and North Korea.

Still, Andrew Stroehlin writes on Alertnet that just because journalists do not have direct access to the warzone, they do have access to information:

Just because journalists are not allowed into the Sri Lankan conflict zone doesn't mean we don't know what's going on there. We have satellite imagery showing large concentrations of people caught in the fighting, and we have information from reliable sources on the ground. Recent reports that significant numbers of civilians have escaped have not changed the overall figures: independent sources on the ground continue to report 100,000 people or more remain trapped, exhausted, with limited access to food and medicines, and many under fire.

On the Committee to Protect Journalists blog, Asia Program Director Bob Dietz highlights both lack of access and lack of coverage of the war. He posted the comments he made to a U.S. Congressional hearing on Sri Lanka. In his preamble he wrote:

When asked about the lack of access, I told the Lantos Commission yesterday that I still have a question hanging in my head from a meeting with some Sri Lankan students in Ottawa in March. They had made the trip from Toronto to interview me about media issues. One questioned why there is so little international coverage of the fighting in Sri Lanka. “Why,” she asked, “aren't Anderson Cooper and the rest of them standing as close as they can get to the war, just like they did when journalists weren't allowed to enter Gaza?”

I didn't have a good answer for her then, and to tell you the truth, I still don't have a good answer. The two sides are indeed keeping the press out of the conflict zone, but news media worldwide could do more to report what they can and to highlight the restrictions. This is a major human catastrophe taking place in the heart of the Indian Ocean, and it is going virtually unreported save for official statements from both sides to the conflict. That's a sure recipe for misinformation.

The New York Times blog The Lede has been weighing in on journalists’ access in Sri Lanka as well. Robert Mackey's post “Is the World Ignoring Sri Lanka’s Srebrenica?” drew, as of this writing, 398 comments. Many comments call for greater international attention, but also decry the comparison between Sri Lanka and 1995 genocide in Bosnia and Herzegovina. Mackey writes:

A video report from Channel 4 News in London on Thursday (embedded below), showing scores of civilian victims killed last week in the crossfire between Sri Lanka’s government and the rebel Tamil Tigers (officially known as t is clear that the L.T.T.E.), in a part of the country off-limits to journalists, is difficult to watch. The images are as disturbing as those that filled television screens during the conflicts in Bosnia in the 1990s but, as Channel 4’s Lindsey Hilsum points out in her report, this bloody war, now possibly in its last throes, has been taking place largely out of sight of the international media.

As in the final months of the war in Bosnia, the failure of the combatants to refrain from shelling encircled, densely-populated civilian pockets is producing shocking results. Channel 4’s Alex Thomson wrote on Thursday in an email newsletter, “You have to ask: is Sri Lanka becoming another Srebrenica?”

Commenter DJ critiques the comparison:

As a photographer who has shot the war in Sri Lanka, I find it frightening that you associate the situation there with Srebrenica. The war in Sri Lanka is horrific and there is plenty of blame to go around for both sides. The tens of thousands of civilians held by the Tigers and shelled by the government are innocent victims. But Srebrenica was genocide planned and executed by Bosnian Serbs to murder innocent Bosnian muslims. They were lined up and shot, a la the Eisengruppen. The Sri Lankan government has no desire to murder the Tamil civilians trapped on the beaches of Mullaitivu. It has a reckless disregard for their lives. This is bad. But it is not the same, not even close.

Mackey updated his post the next day to clarify that the comparison was using Srebrenica as “a symbol of a massive failure of the international community to protect civilians in a war zone” and not as “shorthand for the horrific massacre that took place there after the enclave fell.”

Darini Rajasingham Senanayake makes observations about international attention to conflict zones in his Groundviews review of a biography of Dharmaratnam Sivaram (know by his pen name Taraki), a prominent Sri Lankan journalist who was murdered in 2005. Mark Whitaker’s Learning Politics from Sivaram: The Life and Death of a Revolutionary Tamil Journalist (Pluto Press, 2006), Senanayake says, is a good lesson for those who fly into warzones:

A corrective to dominant representations of conflict zones, and dedicated to: “Sri Lankan journalists who like Sivaram risked their lives everyday or have already lost them to keep the stories coming”, this book should be mandatory reading for international development and peace building consultants who fly into conflict-torn countries confident of the superiority and objectivity of their international “tool-kits” of and for knowledge production and the concomitant “lack of local capacity”, imagining conflict affected countries as peopled by noble savages, victims and brutes in need of aid and psycho-social interventions aside from a thin layer of ‘civil society’- a founding and funding myth of the international aid industry.

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Wickrematunge and his paper were outspoken critics of the government's war against the LTTE and ran stories about corruption within the government. The Sunday Leader is also in the midst of a defamation suit brought forth by Defense Secretary Gotabaya Rajapaksa. The journalist's murder came only two days after an attack on the studios of Sirasa TV, a major broadcast network in Sri Lanka.

Funeral Procession for Lasantha Wickramatunga, Photo by Indi.ca, used under a Creative Commons license

Nalaka Gunawardene describes the mood of the funeral on Moving Images, Moving People!.

This afternoon, family, friends and many sorrowful admirers of Lasantha Wickramatunga, the courageous Sri Lankan newspaper editor who was brutally slain last week in broad daylight, took him there — and left him behind amidst the quiet company.

But not before making a solemn pledge. All thinking and freedom-loving people would continue to resist sinister attempts to turn the rest of Sri Lanka into a sterile zombieland where there is no discussion and debate.

Indi at indi.ca posted photos and comments from the funeral procession. On YouTube, the Vikalpasl channel has seen a surge in viewers since posting videos about the murder and subsequent protests.

The brazen murder has revived debates in Sri Lanka's English-language blogosphere about the role of the government in silencing its critics, the state of journalism on the island and the conflict itself.

An unsigned editorial in Wickrematunge's voice that ran in the Sunday Leader this weekend is being reproduced and cited across the Web. Former South Asia correspondent Peter Foster extols the editorial and the slain journalist's work in his Daily Telegraph blog.

His death – conveniently obscured in the news agenda abroad by events in Gaza and at home by Sri Lankan army's gains against the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) in the Elephant Pass – sounds the death knell for civil society in Sri Lanka.

Just like all the other state-sanctioned killings in Sri Lanka, the promised investigation will be an unholy sham. His killers won't be caught and ‘we'll never know', who did it.

However Mr Wickrematunge, writing from the grave (see below), is in no doubt who was behind his murder: the Rajapakse regime and its lawless proxies.

But bloggers are questioning if Wickrematunge actually wrote the piece before he succumbed to his injuries, or if it was written by someone else. In Mutiny calls the editorial “one of the best pieces of writings we have seen in a while in Sri Lanka” but also points out that it is “not immediately clear who wrote the article.” Jack Point on Court Jester calls the editorial's authenticity into question.

I am of course, open to correction – will someone in the know clarify the position? If indeed he wrote it, it would be truly prophetic and a fitting tribute to the man, otherwise it looks like a piece creative writing, a piece of theatre, something that defined that newspaper.

Moving Images blogger Nalaka Gunawardene writes in Himal South Asian:

I have no idea which one – or several – of his team members actually penned this ‘Last Editorial', but it reads authentic Lasantha all over: passionate and accommodating, liberal yet uncompromising on what he held dear. I can't discern the slightest difference in style.

And there lies our hope: while Lasantha at 51 lies fallen by bullets, his spirit and passion are out there, continuing his life's mission. That seems a good measure of the institutional legacy he leaves behind. If investigative journalism were a bug, the man has already infected at least a few of his team members…

Reporters Without Borders said in a press release that “President Mahinda Rajapaksa, his associates and the government media are directly to blame because they incited hatred against him and allowed an outrageous level of impunity to develop as regards violence against the press.” Comment areas are being quickly filled with debates about the merits of such allegations; on the citizen journnalism site Groundviews former President Chandrika Kumaratunga and Sri Lanka's ambassador to the United Nations, Dayan Jayatilleka, entered the fray.

Groundviews editor Sanjana Hattotuwa comments on the government's inaction and a forgotten committee that was formed to hear journalists’ grievances.

On both counts [the murder of Wickramatunge and attack on the MBC/MTV station], the Rajapakse administration points to some mysterious armed force hell bent on discrediting the government. It has done what it does best – expressed outrage, ordered a full investigation and appointed a committee to investigate the attacks.

Yet it conveniently forgets that the Cabinet subcommittee to look into the grievances of journalists set up in June 2008 is largely forgotten today. No one knows whether it exists, how to reach it, what it does, or came up with as recommendations to protect journalists.

Indi.ca calls for journalists to take a cue from the ministers and protect themselves by learning self defense seeking protection from the larger community.

Wickrematunge was not universally accepted as a journalist of record. Many prominent bloggers disagreed with much of his writing and called his reports salacious. Still, they often mourn his death and call for justice for the sake of free expression. On Groundviews, author Lionel Bopage writes:

My obvious political differences with Lasantha do not prevent me from appreciating his personal, political and journalistic qualities as a leader in the island’s media industry. He was fearless and was willing to boldly uncover and critically expose in no uncertain terms what he believed to be the truth. His assassination is a tragic loss to the people of Sri Lanka as a whole.

Significant military gains in recent weeks are a big story in Colombo; blogger Cerno says that this should trump news of the attacks on media.

The recent murder of the Sunday Leader editor and attack on Sirasa TV is taking up too much attention from the brave achievements of driving back the LTTE. That war isn’t over yet. There is a hard fight ahead. Then comes the harder part of making the peace happen, one second at a time so that our grand kids (should we have any) won’t have to deal with this shit. Aren’t we a lucky lot ?

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The Singapore Customs image (left) of what these marked cigarettes will look like is showing up on many blogs.

Tong’s Blog does the math:

This means that if anyone, ANYONE that is found in any corners of singapore buy,sell or smoke unpaid taxes cigarettes will be FINED $500. This is for first time offender.

For two or more, once you are charge on court and it's successful you will be fined 20 times.

$500×20= $10000

Carrot Asylum does more math:

I pay S$11.60 for a pack of Dunhill Frost in Singapore and MYR$6 (S$3 approx) in Malaysia, if I remember correctly.

I'm sure Malaysia would have also imposed a duty on the cigs and MYR$6 is definitely not the cost price. It has to be a lot cheaper. For the sake of argument, let's just say that the cost price of a pack is S$2 and the retailer marked each pack up by $1. That means S$8.60 are duty fees.

Memoirs of Bra (a Singapore blog who responds to the Interests section of his Blogger profile with, “As in real interest? Smoking.”) offers tips to the counterfeiters who give Singaporeans a cheaper alternative to hefty duties on cigarettes:

Contraband suppliers pls take note.
The words are 3mm in length.
Font is Arial. Remember to Caps Lock.
Pls manufacture accordingly.

James Soh of Living in Singapore Today takes the health-conscious perspective:

Well, if you happened to be a smoker, better clear your stock now and make sure those packs you buy from 1st January 2009 has the “SDPC” stamp.

Or better still, why not take this chance to quit smoking. It’s expansive, hurts your health and others around you and you need to follow a whole list of rules just to light up a stick anyway. So think about it, quitting smoking is not that difficult if you really want to do it.

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Minister of Foreign Affairs George Yeo recounts a dialogue session with  Seragoon Gardens residents on A Writer's Blog:

It was lucky that the dialogue session was already scheduled. Many  residents spoke up, some with great passion. As expected, the principal concern was security. The already difficult traffic flow would also be aggravated. It was good that everyone acknowledged the contributions of  foreign workers to our economy.

But Gerald Giam of Singapore Patriot describes the meeting in a different tone. He lists residents’ grievances as much more hostile.

• They don't want “half-naked men” hanging around their neighbourhood;
• The neighbourhood will become unsafe for old people;
• Parents will worry about leaving their young children and aged parents at home when they go to work;
• Traffic congestion by lorries ferrying workers;
• The estimated 1,400 properties worth over $1 million each would see a drop in asset value.

Giam continues:

Many of us fear that foreign workers will be a source of social problems. Let's put it this way: If you were earning $500 a month with an extended family of 12 back home depending on you, would you risk your livelihood by committing some silly crime and getting jailed, caned and deported? Foreign workers litter and dirty the place? Who are the ones who clear our rubbish, pick up our litter and sweep our roads?

Many bloggers write that this controversy speaks to the larger issue of Singapore's relationship to foreigners on the whole. A video post of the Serangoon Gardens neighborhood and vacant school that is to be converted by The Online Citizen sparked lively debate in comments. Podcasters at the mrbrownshow lampoon residents’ fear of “alien” Banglas.

Ng E-Jay of Sgpolitics.net says it's not about prejudice, though. He criticizes the government for not planning ahead to properly house the workers they bring in:

If the Government wants to import a large number of foreign workers to build our casinos and all the mega projects that are supposed to spur our economy on, ample preparations first have to be made to house them properly. That means providing living quarters for foreign workers in locations that would inconvenience local residents the least.

According to the Straits Times (via AsiaOne), the government is asking for residents’ understanding that they will be living near workers from India, Thailand and Bangladesh. But George Yeo announced that the government is now considering separate townships for the overflow of foreign workers.

Flying Low — an anonymous writer who identifies herself as a government servant — balks at this idea:

Isn’t there some HDB [Housing Development Board] race quota implemented so that there will be no racial enclaves in Singapore? But it is ok to build a foreign worker enclave. Yes, isolate these foreign workers from Singaporeans. This is the obviously best way to encourage “Singaporeans [to] open their hearts to them“.

Written by Angilee Shah · comments (3)
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Police in the city closed roads and two train stations near the British High Commission in anticipation of the rally organized by the Hindu Rights Action Force (HINDRAF). They used tear gas and water cannons laced with chemicals to disperse the crowds, effectively splitting the protest into different parts of the city. Protesters were dispersed along Jalang Ampang, near the Batu Caves (the site of a large Hindu temple) and near the Kuala Lumpur City Centre (KLCC), an area around the famed Petronas Towers. Protestors began gathering at KLCC as early as 7:30am and reports say that police were trying to disperse a crowd at the gates of the Batu Caves as late as 11:00pm.

Photo from Flickr user lastham

Jelas.info blogger describes his first experience with tear gas on Jalan Ampang:

I was near the front, and inexperienced with tear gas, so it caught me a little unawares. Oh by God it hurt.
I thought I was going to suffocate.
It was all I could do to walk slowly away with the fleeing crowd. I wasnít sure if thereíd be FRU beating us from behind as we left.

Because the crowds were so dispersed, estimates of how many protesters attended the rally varies. The BBC, which reported from outside the British High Commission , said that more than 5,000 protesters rallied. The Associated Press (via The Telegraph in India) reported the crowd at over 10,000. Asia Times estimated that over 20,000 rallied, while the online news site Malaysiakini says 30,000 rallied.

The New Straits Times reports that 136 protesters now face charges. Three HINDRAF leaders were arrested on sedition charges on Friday before the protest, then released on Monday when the charges were dropped.

HINDRAF was denied a permit to march to the High Commission and submit a memo that calls on the British to pay US$4 trillion in reparations for bringing Indians to Malaysia as laborers before the country won its independence in 1967. Protesters said that Malaysia's laws are discriminatory to the country's large, mostly Tamil population. There are over 2 million Indians in Malaysia who are often denied business licenses, property and higher education due to quota systems which favor Malays, protesters said. Many in the crowd carried banners with images of Queen Elizabeth and Mahatma Gandhi.

Police near the British High Commission

But protesters also said that they were rallying to also get the attention of the Malaysian Indian Congress, whose president YB. Dato Seri S. Samy Vellu has led the party since 1979. Many protesters expressed disappointment in the party's longtime inaction to help raise the status of Indians in Malaysia.

Colour Blind blogger Ronnie Liu said protesters were calling for Samy Vellu to step down

MIC Leader S Samy Vellu must step down now. That seems to be the common sentiment of the 30,000 protesters today. Every single Indian brother and sister I met today wanted Samy to go. So Mr Samy Vellu, have you heard their voices?

Disquiet blogger and president of the National Human Rights Society Malik Imtiaz Sarwar compared the reaction by police to the HINDRAF protest to their reaction to a protest in June by UMNO Youth.

I do not necessarily agree with the manner in which HINDRAF has decided to espouse its cause. Though I recognize the point HINDRAF is making, I believe that we should be fighting for the cause of all underprivileged and marginalized Malaysians. Having said that, the apparently inconsistent stance of the Police and the Government where rallies are concerned can only lead one to a conclusion that there may be some truth to what HINDRAF is saying.

While many English-language bloggers and the international press, including AlJazeera and the BBC, focused on police methods of dispersing the crowd, Malaysian newspapers The Star and The New Straits Times highlighted injured police officers and protesters’ violent behavior.

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