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Editorial

The WSN Human Rights Journey 

Community journals are generally inward looking and community forums for internal discussion and debate. They are a journal of the world of a particular community. So has been the case of journals and websites of the Sikh world too. Not many have attempted to go beyond the realm of the Sikh world. 

World Sikh News is not only the news of the Sikhs or the world of the Sikhs. World Sikh News carries news also of the kind of world that Sikhs desire to live in and the kind of world that the Sikh philosophy espouses. World Sikh News brings to you the news and views of the Sikh world and the viewpoint of the Sikhs about the world they live in. 

World Sikh News recognizes that we all live in an unequal world, where poverty is rampant, destitution at the global level is a malaise the UN is still fighting, the world as God made it, is under threat from humankind, leaders of nations resort to grand lies and undemocratic madness despite United Nations conventions and covenants and that fundamental human rights and humanitarian rights still exist only on paper in many of the developing as well as the advanced democracies of the world. 

Through objective reporting and analysis, World Sikh News strives to inform and educate enabling the reader to form his opinion based on facts and truth. While writing about Irom Chanu Sharmila in Manipur, Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, Charles Anthony in Sri Lanka, the abolition of death penalty for all crimes in all countries under all circumstances, the cries for freedom of the Kashmiri people, the decolonization of Nagas, we have merely done our duty as a community newspaper. 

We have a grand tradition to take inspiration from. Our ninth master Guru Tegh Bahadur had fought for the protection of the right to religion. Speaking out for the freedom of Kosovars or those of East Timor or the trial and tribulations of the Sikhs yearning for sui generic status, makes us only a more deserving world citizen. Today, we are living in difficult times. 

The very shape of the wars we have been thrown in did not exist till even a few decades earlier. Governments are throwing vast sections of humanity at the door of hunger, starvation and deprivation not by any overt dsicrimination against them but actually persuing an agenda of "development." 

As we write this and around the world human rights groups celebrate December 10 as the International Human Rights Day, thousands of Indian security forces' troops are marching to the new front lines that New Delhi has created by tagging someone as the "greatest internal security threat that India faces." Who is this someone? They are the activist groups fighting in myriad ways against the onslaught of massive capital and resources aimed at depriving the tribals of their life, life style and culture. 

At WSN, we aim to broaden the Sikh voice and connect it to the other struggles going on around the globe, ever striving to maintain high standards of human rights reporting coupled with the concerns, achievements and problems of the Sikh nation. 

On the occasion of this Human Rights day, we rededicate ourselves to our motto - because the truth needs to be told. In doing so, we will continue to highlight human rights violations across the globe and particularly from regions less reported, we will continue our campaign for Sikh rights and launch more vigorous online campaigns for redress and justice. 

On the eve of this Human Rights Day, let us recall all those who were killed extrajudicially on the streets of Delhi in India, twenty-five years ago and for whom we have to continue the struggle for justice unfailingly. 

Let us all brave facts and facts alone -because the truth needs to be told.

9 December 2009
 

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