Gita Sahgal

Gita Sahgal is a founder of the Centre for Secular Space, opposing fundamentalism, amplifying secular voices and promoting universality in human rights.

[Gita Sahgal @GitaSahgal]

Vote - for Zum. We made a video about the suicide of my son, who was failed by slashed services which could have helped him get better. If you've also lost someone due to government cuts, please spread this message! ❤️

https://t.co/ZJdpxIrvpo

#VoteforZum #NHS #Labour

[UN Special Rapporteur Richard Bennett @SR_Afghanistan]

I am deeply alarmed that for a 3rd consecutive day scores of women in #Herat continue to be arbitrarily arrested & detained for violating the Taliban’s dress code. It is illegal and unacceptable. The arrests must stop and the women must be released immediately. #Afghanistan

[Mariam Solaimankhil @Mariamistan]

The Hazaras gave Afghanistan art, scholarship, music, courage, and endurance. Hazara Culture Day is not only about celebration. It is also about remembrance.

Remembering every life lost to sectarian hatred, extremism, and silence.

A strong Afghanistan protects all its cultures equally. Happy #HazaraCultureDay ❤️🇦🇫

[Gita Sahgal @GitaSahgal]

@roshendalal Oh dear

[Dr. Priyam Bordoloi @DocPriyamMD]

Saw a patient today with a hemoglobin of 1.9 g/dL. For context, a level that low is almost incompatible with normal consciousness, but she walked right into the clinic on her own feet.

For three long years, she lived with crushing weakness and since last 6 months breathlessness from just walking across a room. Why didn’t she get help sooner? At first, it was because the kids had crucial school exams and later her husband was reluctant to deal with the hassle of a hospital admission.

Her health was treated as a background inconvenience.
When we dug deeper, it got worse. A year ago, her Hb was 6.4 g/dL. A doctor explicitly told them she needed immediate admission. The family refused, walked out with a basic strip of iron tablets, she took them for two weeks, forgot about them, and nobody in the house ever bothered to check on her or remind her.

She didn't even come to the hospital today because of the air hunger. She came because her periods had completely stopped for months. Her body was so profoundly starved of iron and oxygen that it literally shut down her reproductive axis just to divert what little blood she had left to her heart and brain.

It’s completely heartbreaking. A woman will literally bleed her body dry, gasp for air for years and keep working silently, only to be brought to a doctor when her normal functioning stops.

Please check on the women in your homes. Stop letting them normalize chronic exhaustion.

[Gita Sahgal @GitaSahgal]

@_sabanaqvi Undoubtedly news as is the sari / gown of some actress and influencer who also turned up at Cannes. I listened to a long tv interview as part of international news right after listening to China news. It was news x with a blond presenter. They seem to be attempting to go global.

[Ziauddin Yousafzai @ZiauddinY]

“If I was born in another household where my parents were poor, couldn't afford my education, I could have also become easily radicalised and indoctrinated by the Taliban.” ⁦@KhushalYusafzai⁩ https://t.co/SRtCzV7sSB

[Sujit Nair @sujitnair90]

What does it really mean to stay committed to your craft… when everything around you is designed to break you?

There is something deeply inspiring about watching @PrannoyRoy7749 today. A man who helped shape modern Indian television news, who co founded NDTV, who brought credibility, data driven election analysis, and intellectual depth into our living rooms, now travelling across Kerala, Tamil Nadu, West Bengal, recording interviews on his own mobile phone for his digital channel Dekoder.

No studio lights. No prime time debates. No corporate backing.

Just a man, a phone, and an undying commitment to journalism.

If passion ever needed a face, it would look like Prannoy Roy.

But his legacy is not just what he built. It is also, who he built.

NDTV, at its peak, was not just a news channel. It was a school. A culture. A standard. He mentored a generation of journalists and introduced them to a simple but powerful idea, journalism without fear or favour. Many carried that torch forward. Some did not. But the ecosystem he created shaped Indian media in ways we often forget.

And let us be honest, Prannoy Roy did not lose NDTV. India lost Prannoy Roy’s NDTV.

At a time when narratives were convenient and pressures were real, he and his organisation faced investigations, raids, and relentless scrutiny. Yet, through all of it, there was one thing they did not do.

They did not bend.

Not once did they turn into cheerleaders for power. Not once did they barter credibility for comfort. Not once did they dilute their editorial spine to survive.

That is not just journalism. That is character.
… And maybe that is exactly what journalism still needs.

[Gita Sahgal @GitaSahgal]

The great Tony Benn

[Tribune @tribunemagazine]

‘From the beginning of time, there have been two flames burning in the human heart. The flame of anger against injustice, and the flame of hope you can build a better world.’

Tony Benn was born on this day in 1925.

[Reza Younesi رضا يونسى @RezaYounesi]

Nasrin Sotoudeh, a prominent human rights lawyer and Sakharov Prize laureate, has been arrested in Iran. Over the past two decades, she has been repeatedly imprisoned because of her human rights work.

Her husband, Reza Khandan, has been held in Evin Prison in Tehran since December 2024.

Sotoudeh’s daughter Mehraveh Khandan said to Guardian that her mother was taken from her home in Tehran late on Wednesday and that her whereabouts were unknown.

[Jahanzib Wesa @jahanzibwesa]

A heartbreaking scene: a young man, overwhelmed by despair, tries to end his life in the middle of the street in #Afghanistan. Lack of education, unemployment, and constant pressure have stripped hope from many. This is not just one person, it reflects the suffering of thousands.

[Decado @ItsDecado]

The gallows are prepared tonight for a Son of Iran.

Vahid Bani Amerian faces imminent execution.

Break the silence before the dawn takes him.

Be his voice.

#Vahid_Bani_Amerian

[TheLiverDoc™ @theliverdoc]

1/2
Dear Friends,
I never wanted to become a doctor. I always wanted to write and tell stories. And yet, over the years, medicine gave me the most extraordinary stories I could never have imagined - stories that lived in hospital corridors, outpatient rooms and inside terrifying ICUs; in the trembling hands of a father carrying his jaundiced daughter, in the silence between a prognosis spoken and a family's world shattered.

Today, I am proud and deeply moved to announce my first book, The Liver Doctor: Stories of Love, Loss and Regeneration, published by @HarperCollinsIN .

This book is where my two worlds finally collide.
My childhood love for writing and telling stories. And my adultdhood, as a medical doctor.

Through the lives of real patients and their families - their courage, their grief, their impossible choices - I tell the story of the most misunderstood, most indispensable, and only self-regenerating organ in the human body: the liver.

But this is not just a medical book. It is a journey through ancient myth and modern science, through Prometheus and Wilson's disease, through Mesopotamian clay tablets and liver transplant waiting lists, through the history of healing itself.

I wrote it for doctors, so they may remember why they chose this life. I wrote it for patients and families, so they may know when to fight and when to find peace. I wrote it for myself, to make peace with what I have lost and what I will lose.

This book shoulders that one truth I have learned in all my years at the clinical bedside: I did not become a doctor to help people cheat death, but to help them understand it.

This book is my offering - to medicine, to storytelling, and to you. Lose yourself in these pages, as I have.

Pre-orders are open now
The Liver Doctor : Stories of Love, Loss and Regeneration - https://t.co/MoTf7ZCiPG

[Ragged Trousered Philanderer @RaggedTP]

“None of us carries any weapons.
We carry nothing but kindness, goodness, love and prayer.”
Father Pierre El Rahi...
...murdered by Jewish soldiers after refusing to leave his flock in a Christian village in southern Lebanon.

[Drop Site @DropSiteNews]

⛑️🏥 Founded in 1920 in cooperation with the Paris-based Pasteur Institute, the facility targeted in today’s U.S.-Israeli strikes - the Pasteur Institute in Tehran - is one of the oldest public health centers in the Middle East. It is also a core pillar of Iran’s infectious disease control architecture.

➤ Since its establishment, it has played a major role in producing millions of doses of vaccines and combating infectious diseases including smallpox, cholera, rabies, tuberculosis, and hepatitis B.

➤ It operates dozens of research departments and laboratories focused on disease surveillance, diagnostics, and biotechnology, employing hundreds of scientists and specialists

➤ It has also served as a regional exporter of vaccines across the Middle East, South Asia, and Africa, making it a key node in global public health infrastructure

[Nobel Women @NobelWomen]

An airstrike hit a Kabul medical facility, killing at least 143 people. most of them patients
Human Rights Watch calls it unlawful and a possible war crime.

When civilians and hospitals aren’t protected, the foundations for peace begin to break down.
https://t.co/8EvC2AAvsm

[Ehsan Eghbal Eslami @Ehsaneghbale]

🚨The “Judge” Iman Afshari has issued death sentences for six political prisoners; four have been executed in just the last few days in Iran.
The remaining two, Vahid Bani-Amerian and Abolhassan Montazer, are at imminent risk.
#Save_Vahid
#Save_Abolhassan

[Gita Sahgal @GitaSahgal]

Destroying a life saving institute is hardly a way of ‘liberating’ Iraqis or bringing about regime change.

[Sanam Naraghi Anderlini, MBE now on Blue Sky @sanambna]

The #Pasteur Institute 💔😔
My grandfather donated the land to build the institute as part of the development of Iran’s public health infrastructure.
My uncle led it for many years.
As kids we would visit him & get our various vaccinations.
@Pasteur

This is not about the regime. Israel’s goal is to destroy ori past present and future as a nation.

One day we will try
@PahlaviReza for treason and for aiding & abetting war crimes.

[Samira Mohyeddin سمیرا @SMohyeddin]

This is a crime against humanity. Israel is diabolical. Bombing the Pasteur Institute in Tehran?!? The vaccines produced here eradicated small pox in the whole of the Middle East.

[Amanda🌍 #FreeThemAll @Amandalavan1]

Narges Mohammadi has unfortunately had a heart attack in prison.

Narges Mohammadi’s life is in imminent danger, and we call on Iranian authorities to heed our warning and provide the medical care that she urgently needs, by granting her an immediate medical furlough, please.