Mass animal sacrifice at Nepal’s Gadhimai Festival

The Asia for Animals coalition is deeply concerned about the forthcoming Gadhimai Festival, held in honour of the Hindu Goddess Gadhimai, due to take place in Nepal on 28th and 29th November 2014. The festival is scheduled once every five years, will see the slaughter of many thousands of animals.

Despite campaigning by Nepalese, Indian and international animal-welfare organisations, the organisers of the festival and the Nepalese government allowed the 2009 slaughter to take place, where it was estimated that a quarter of a million animals were brutally slaughtered without stunning, resulting in extreme fear and pain.

Campaigners continue to lobby the organisers to cancel the slaughter, but despite worldwide protests, they have not introduced a single measure to alleviate the tremendous suffering. Animals are transported in appalling conditions, often with no food or water for two to three days before the sacrifice, before being forced to witness the killing of countless others before they are slaughtered themselves, including the killing of mother animals in front of their offspring.

Asia for Animals Coalition - The Gadhimal Festival: Why it must never happen Again (Think Differently About Sheep)

Qatar World Cup: 400 Nepalese die on nation's building sites since bid won

More than 400 Nepalese migrant workers have died on Qatar's building sites as the Gulf state prepares to host the World Cup in 2022, a report will reveal this week.

The grim statistic comes from the Pravasi Nepali Co-ordination Committee, a respected human rights organisation which compiles lists of the dead using official sources in Doha. It will pile new pressure on the Qatari authorities – and on football's world governing body, Fifa – to curb a mounting death toll that some are warning could hit 4,000 by the time the 2022 finals take place.

It also raises the question of how many migrant workers in total have died on construction sites since Qatar won the bid in 2010. Nepalese workers comprise 20% of Qatar's migrant workforce, and many others are drafted in from countries such as India, Bangladesh, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

A focus on the Nepalese deaths has seen Fifa and Qatar battling a PR crisis that threatens to cast a long shadow over the event. Last week, appearing before EU officials, Theo Zwanziger, a senior Fifa executive who has publicly criticised the decision to award the tournament to Qatar, pledged that his organisation would be carrying out "on-the-spot visits" to ensure that workers' rights were being respected.

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Nepal Gay Rights Rally Draws Hundreds

Hundreds of gay, lesbian, transgender people marched with supporters in a southern Nepal town Sunday to demand equal rights under a new constitution the country is in the process of writing.

The estimated 500 demonstrators danced, chanted slogans and marched around Narayanghat, a town about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of the capital of Katmandu on Sunday, which is also Nepal's traditional festival of Gaijatra honoring the dead. The gay community has been holding demonstrations on the festival day in the capital, but it was the first time that activists have organized a rally outside the capital. Gay rights activists and parliament member Sunil Pant said their main aim was to spread their campaign outside the capital city.

Nepal, a traditionally conservative, mostly Hindu nation, has only recently begun accepting homosexuality. The country is also in the process of writing a new constitution which could include provisions to guarantee rights for the sexual minorities.

huffingtonpost.com