Category Archives: South and Central Asia

‘I miss school’: 800m children still not fully back in classes

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Rights groups warn that children across the world are being pushed into abusive situations, from early marriage to child labour

Across the world 800 million children are still not fully back in school, Unicef is warning, with many at risk of never returning to the classroom the longer closures go on. There are at least 90 countries where schools are either closed or offering a mix of remote and in-person learning.

The UN agency’s chief of education, Robert Jenkins, told the Guardian that the closures are part of “unimaginable” disruption to children’s education.

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‘Every year we dig mass graves’: the slaughter of Pakistan’s Hazara

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Decades of persecution has left the Shia minority with little space left in its graveyards but prime minister Imran Khan is in no hurry to listen

Ahmed Shah had always dreamed of bigger things. Though just 17, the high school pupil had taken a job in the coalmines of Balochistan, Pakistan’s south-western province, one of the harshest, most dangerous working environments in the world. Shah was determined to earn enough to educate himself, so he could escape the tough life of the Hazara Shia community, the most persecuted minority in Pakistan.

Related: In Pakistan, tolerant Islamic voices are being silenced | William Dalrymple

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‘Incredibly relieved’: Australian couple freed from house arrest in Myanmar

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Christa Avery and Matthew O’Kane are on their way home home after being released without charge

An Australian couple have been freed from house arrest in Myanmar and allowed to leave the country without charge, one of the two business consultants said on Sunday.

Christa Avery and her husband, Matthew O’Kane, were refused permission to leave Myanmar last month when they were about to board a flight home.

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Is Myanmar the new Syria? Rising violence threatens a repeat tragedy

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As ethnic militias back the popular uprising and refugees flee the country, the similarities with Syria are deeply disturbing

In August 2011, Ahmet Davutoglu, Turkey’s then foreign minister, made a “mercy dash” to Damascus. He appealed in person to Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, to stop killing his people and talk to his opponents after five months of anti-regime protests.

Davutoglu spoke for Turkey but also, indirectly, for the US and the west. He had conferred with Hillary Clinton, then secretary of state, before making the trip. His message: it’s not too late to call a halt; the alternative is civil war. But Assad turned him down flat.

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Desperate Burmese refugees flee to Thailand and India to escape crisis

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Tensions rise on borders as thousands seek safe haven from military crackdown

Myanmar’s escalating crisis is spilling across its borders, as thousands of refugees seek safe haven in India and Thailand in the wake of the military coup and bloody crackdowns on anti-coup protesters.

Authorities in both countries have tried to block new arrivals, fearing that a steady flow may become a flood, if unrest spreading through Myanmar worsens. A top UN official warned last week that the country is “on the verge of spiralling into a failed state” if action is not taken soon to stem the bloodshed.

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Myanmar security forces open fire on anti-coup protesters

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Reports say 550 people dead, including 46 children, and almost 3,000 detained since February coup

Security forces in central Myanmar opened fire on anti-coup protesters on Saturday in violence that a human rights group said has left 550 civilians dead since the military takeover.

Of those, 46 were children, according to Myanmar’s Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. Some 2,751 people have been detained or sentenced, the group said.

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Anti-LGBTQ laws in Uzbekistan fuel hostility and violence

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Campaigners say widespread homophobia in the conservative Islamic country is being inflamed by calls to decriminalise same-sex unions

Uzbekistan’s LGBTQ+ community says it is facing increasing threats and repression after anti-LGBTQ+ protests turned violent and new laws were passed this week banning the publication of content deemed to show disrespect for society and the state.

Human rights groups say that the legislation, passed on Tuesday, will prevent media or online commentators arguing for the decriminalisation of sexual conduct between men, which is illegal and punishable by up to three years in prison. Uzbekistan – along with Turkmenistan – are the only post-Soviet states that prohibit sexual relations between men.

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UN security council must act to stop ‘bloodbath’ in Myanmar, says envoy

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Alternative civilian government proposes ‘federal democracy charter’, amid fears of civil war

Myanmar protesters have burned a copy of the country’s military-drafted constitution as the UN envoy monitoring the crisis warned the security council of the risk of civil war and an imminent “bloodbath” if the junta is allowed to continue violently repressing a pro-democracy movement.

“I appeal to this council to consider all available tools to take collective action and do what is right, what the people of Myanmar deserve, and prevent a multidimensional catastrophe in the heart of Asia,” the special envoy on Myanmar, Christine Schraner Burgener, told the closed-door session.

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Net gains: how India trawlers’ plastic catch is helping to rebuild roads

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The waste caught by fishing boats used to be thrown back into the sea but in Kerala it is now turned into black gold

For years, plastic caught by fishing communities on the Kollam coast in India’s southern state of Kerala was thrown back into the water, damaging aquatic ecosystems and killing fish.

But fishers are spearheading an innovative initiative to clean up the ocean – along with their daily hauls of fish, they pull in and collect the waste that gets enmeshed in their nets.

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‘People were going crazy’: Myanmar detainees recount military’s cruelty

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Freed protesters and a journalist detained by the junta describe beatings and squalid conditions

Released from detention in Myanmar, protesters and journalists have described beatings, squalid conditions and cruelty under the military dictatorship that is opposed by most of the population.

Hnin, 23, was arrested along with 400 other young people in a haze of stun grenades and teargas in the commercial capital Yangon on 3 March for protesting against the military coup.

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Taliban denies killing three female Afghan polio workers

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Murders of two volunteers and a nurse come one day after relaunch of national vaccination campaign

Two female volunteers and a nurse working door to door to vaccinate children against polio were shot dead by gunmen in two separate incidents in the Afghan city of Jalalabad on Tuesday.

On the same day, government officials confirmed that an explosion had rocked Jalalabad’s health ministry headquarters but no casualties were reported.

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Pakistani government accused of ‘sabotaging’ rights watchdog

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Islamabad high court orders government to fill vacant post at head of National Commission for Human Rights

The prime minister of Pakistan, Imran Khan, and his government have been accused of trying to “sabotage” the country’s independent human rights watchdog to prevent accountability for mounting abuses and oppression.

Legislators, activists and lawyers told the Guardian that Khan’s government “punished” and immobilised Pakistan’s National Commission for Human Rights (NCHR) over reports that it had produced into human rights abuses and torture carried out by the military, which plays a powerful role in running the country.

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Myanmar airstrikes cause thousands to flee across Thailand border

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About 3,000 estimated to have crossed over after junta attacks areas mostly populated by Karen people

A series of airstrikes by Myanmar’s military has driven thousands of people across the country’s border with Thailand, adding a new dimension to an already volatile and deadly crisis.

The strikes in areas populated predominantly by ethnic Karen people began on Saturday. Since then an estimated 3,000 villagers have fled across the Salween River into Thailand and an unknown number have become internally displaced in the jungles on the Myanmar side of the river.

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Biden and EU condemn Myanmar bloodshed as ‘outrageous’ and ‘a day of shame’

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Criticism of the junta’s deadly crackdown mounts after military fires on funeral following killing of 100

Joe Biden has led global condemnation of an “absolutely outrageous” crackdown by Myanmar’s junta that left more than 100 people – including several children – dead in the bloodiest day since the coup two months ago.

Soldiers and police have killed hundreds in brutal suppression against weeks of mass protests demanding a restoration of democracy and the release of detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

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Defiant Myanmar protesters return to streets after bloodiest day since coup – video

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Protesters returned to the streets of Yangon and Dawei as small-scale rallies were held following the bloodiest crackdown since the military takeover on 1 February. At least 114 people were killed by security forces on Saturday, including at least six children, in scenes described as 'mass murder' by the UN

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Fear turns to fury in Myanmar as children shot by military

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Bloody crackdowns and massacres initiate anger and stronger desire for a future without the Tatmadaw

From soldiers randomly shooting passersby in the street to imminent economic collapse, anxieties have been plentiful in Myanmar since its military seized power on 1 February.

But unease was surging ahead of Armed Forces Day on Saturday when the military was expected to meet protesters with a brutal crackdown.

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Global calls to tackle Myanmar military’s ‘reign of terror’ after worst mass killing

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US secretary of state says Washington ‘horrified’ after bloodiest day since February coup

The killing by Myanmar’s military of more than 100 pro-democracy protesters in the single deadliest day since February’s coup has drawn outrage from across the world, and calls for a stronger global response.

The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, strongly condemned the junta, saying Washington was “horrified” by the deaths on Saturday, and that the violence shows “that the junta will sacrifice the lives of the people to serve the few”.

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‘Reclaim These Streets’ and rubber duck rallies: human rights roundup – in pictures

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Coverage on recent struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Cardiff Bay to Thailand

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‘Vaccine prince’: the Indian billionaire set to make Covid jabs for the UK

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Serum Institute boss Adar Poonawalla has rented a Mayfair mansion for £50,000 a week

The AstraZeneca vaccine has made Prof Sarah Gilbert – who led the Oxford team that created it – one of the UK’s most famous modern scientists and turned the Anglo-Swedish pharmaceutical company into a household name.

But almost half of all the AstraZeneca shots, destined for the arms of hundreds of millions of people around the world, are being produced by a 40-year-old Indian billionaire with a penchant for private jets and Picassos.

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Myanmar: Dozens reported killed after military says protesters could be ‘shot in the head’

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Demonstrators defy threats from the military to turn out on Saturday as the country’s generals mark Armed Forces Day

Myanmar’s security forces have shot and killed at least 50 people across the country, local media reported, as the leader of the ruling junta said the military would protect the people and strive for democracy.

Protesters against the 1 February military coup came out on the streets of Yangon, Mandalay and other towns on Saturday, defying a warning that they could be shot “in the head and back” as the country’s generals celebrated Armed Forces Day.

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