BetweenTheLines

Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook A t the 2014 Bangalore Literature Festival, I got the first real sense of the bursting of the bubble of spaces one could relatively speak one's mind freely in. The event ended on a bit of a disappointing note when a hostile crowd surrounded us over the inconvenient perspective on Kashmir. Overall, the festival was a memorable experience. I moderated a session and got to meet some interesting people with the highlight being the meeting with Chinese writer Lijia Zhang and getting to know her fascinating story. Over coffee at the festival's writers' lounge, Lijia told me how she was pulled out of school at 16 to work at a factory to make ends meet in the impoverished China of the 1980s. But she did not give up. Lijia would struggle to go on and learn English, circumvent control in China, overcome the trauma of its manifestations such as period policing to realise her dream of becoming an author and journalist. Also Read | Why India Su

  Sameer Arshad Khatlani Follow  on Facebook D ozens of Rohingya fleeing ethnic cleansing in Myanmar drowned when their boat hit a rock and capsized in heavy seas off the Bangladesh coast in September 2017. Among the dead were children as young as three, who had somehow evaded murderous mobs and the Myanmar military to flee. The visuals of dead babies and their grieving parents cradling, kissing them final goodbyes before lowering them in a mass grave fuelled outrage. The tragedy was the latest in the burgeoning humanitarian crisis that prompted the US to call out Myanmar authorities' actions against the Rohingya. At a UN Security Council (UNSC) meeting, it called them “a brutal, sustained campaign to cleanse the country of an ethnic minority”. But despite an untenable situation, China continued to defend Myanmar amid mounting global pressure on Naypyidaw to end the cleansing. ALSO READ: How Assad Weathered Storm In Arab Spring Aftermath China’s Rohingya stand was the latest in its