Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Bangladesh garment factories reopen despite coronavirus threat to workers

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In an effort to revive the stricken industry plant owners restart production, but labour activists claim safety measures are illusory

Workers in garment factories in Bangladesh, which have reopened despite a nationwide coronavirus lockdown, have said their lives are being put at risk as they are forced to return to work in cramped conditions where mask-wearing and physical distancing are not enforced.

Directives by the Bangladesh government stated that garment factories, which supply some of the biggest brands in the world and produce 84% of the country’s total exports, would be allowed to resume operations, but only if they maintain physical distancing and the ban on public transportation.

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Indian and Chinese soldiers injured in cross-border fistfight, says Delhi

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Troops also threw stones in face-off involving 150 soldiers at remote crossing point near Tibet, says Indian army

Several Indian and Chinese soldiers have been injured in a cross-border clash involving fistfights and stone-throwing at a remote but strategically important mountain pass near Tibet, the Indian army said on Sunday.

There have been long-running border tensions between the nuclear-armed neighbours, with a bitter war fought over the Indian north-eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh in 1962.

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Rohingya refugees arrive on ‘de facto detention island’ in Bangladesh

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Rights groups decry relocation of people picked up at sea after fleeing camps in Cox’s Bazar

Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims, including children, have arrived on “a de facto detention island” in Bangladesh after being stranded at sea for weeks.

Rights groups had warned that the refugees, who had been turned away from other countries in the region, were at risk of starvation and abuse by traffickers. It is believed that other boats remain adrift.

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Bangladeshi journalist is jailed after mysterious 53-day disappearance

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Campaigners warn Shafiqul Islam Kajol faces a lengthy sentence as his family worries about his exposure to Covid-19 in prison

Fifty-three days after he disappeared, Bangladeshi journalist Shafiqul Islam Kajol turned up on Sunday in police custody at a border town 150 miles from where he had last been seen.

“I am alive,” he told his son by phone, the first time the family had heard his voice since his disappearance in early March, a day after a case was filed against him and 31 others under the country’s controversial new Digital Security Act.

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India chemical leak: more evacuations amid fears of second gas release

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Everyone within 5km of the plant in Andhra Pradesh told to leave over fear of repeat of accident that has left at least 11 dead

Indian officials have evacuated more people from the area around a chemical plant in the south of the country that leaked toxic gas, killing at least 11 people and sickening hundreds more.

There was confusion about whether the wider evacuation orders were sparked by a renewed leak at the LG Chem factory in Andhra Pradesh, or by the fear that rising temperatures at the plant could lead to another leak.

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India’s chemical plant disaster: another case of history repeating itself

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Decades after Bhopal, lack of law enforcement and political will plagues Indian industry

The gas leak at a chemical factory in Visakhapatnam will immediately remind many in India and beyond of the 1984 Bhopal disaster, widely considered the world’s worst industrial disaster.

So far, the scale of the tragedies are very different. Eleven people are confirmed to have died in Visakhapatnam – but with hundreds hospitalised and thousands affected, there are fears the toll will rise. In Bhopal, 4,000 people died within days of the toxic gas leak from a pesticide plant and thousands more in the following years.

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‘They’re fearless’: the women battling to free Myanmar from meth

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From jungle stakeouts to burning drug dealers’ property, a group of mothers is willing to do whatever it takes to free their community from addiction

Sister Ester keeps several small plastic bags of colourful methamphetamine – or meth – tablets beside her bed, along with a pistol and a plastic box of bullets.

“All of these items were seized by our group in raids on houses selling drugs over the past few weeks,” she says.

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Top rebel commander killed by Indian forces in Kashmir

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Riyaz Naikoo was member of region’s largest indigenous militant group, Hizbul Mujahideen

Indian government forces have killed a top rebel commander and his aide in disputed Kashmir, and shut down mobile phone and mobile internet services during subsequent anti-India protests.

Riyaz Naikoo, 35, was the chief of operations of the region’s largest indigenous rebel group, Hizbul Mujahideen, which has spearheaded an armed rebellion against Indian rule.

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How coronavirus is dividing India – video explainer

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The spread of Covid-19 in India has been catastrophic for millions of its poorest and marginalised residents who are bearing the brunt of the world's biggest shutdown. Hannah Ellis-Peterson tells us how coronavirus and the lockdown is further dividing the country along class and religious lines

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Where India’s government has failed in the pandemic, its people have stepped in

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Civil society has outperformed the state in helping to feed India’s poorest. It should be seen as ally not enemy

The highways connecting India’s overcrowded cities to the villages had not seen anything like it since the time of partition 73 years ago. Hundreds of thousands of workers were on the move, walking back to their villages with their possessions bundled on their heads.

On 24 March, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi ordered a nationwide 21-day lockdown to contain the coronavirus pandemic. States sealed their borders, and transport came to a halt. With no trains or buses to take them home, India’s rural-to-urban migrant population, estimated at a staggering 120 million, took to the roads. On 5 April a statement from the home ministry said 1.25 million people moving between states had been put up in camps and shelters.

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Rohingya refugees sent to remote Bangladeshi island after weeks at sea

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Hundreds more refugees still stranded on boats after being turned away by Malaysia

Rohingya refugees believed to have spent weeks stranded on cramped boats at sea have been sent to a remote, uninhabited island by Bangladesh, while hundreds more remain adrift.

Dozens of Rohingya landed on the coast of southern Bangladesh on Saturday, an official said, with some sent to Bhasan Char, a silt island in the estuary of Bangladesh’s Meghna river.

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US warns Taliban to curb attacks after exit deal calls for 80% cut to violence

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Previously secret agreement emerges as spokesmen for US military and Taliban clash on Twitter

The US military has warned the Taliban it must curb attacks inside Afghanistan and revealed that a US troop withdrawal agreement signed in February included an informal commitment for both sides to cut violence by 80%.

The previously secret arrangement was revealed in a Twitter spat between the US military spokesman Col Sonny Leggett and his Taliban counterpart Zabihullah Mujahid. It comes after a sharp escalation in militant attacks since the agreement was sealed.

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‘Let the boats in’: Rohingya refugees plead for stranded relatives to be saved

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Two boats still stranded at sea as Malaysia accused of using Covid-19 as an excuse to turn them back

Rohingya refugees whose relatives, including children, have been stranded for weeks on cramped boats have urged international governments to act before they perish at sea.

Two boats carrying around 500 people were last spotted off Bangladesh about a week ago, but are believed to have returned to the high seas. The refugees on board, who were fleeing desperate conditions in camps in Bangladesh, had attempted to reach Malaysia but appear to have been turned away. Bangladesh has also said it will not allow the boats to dock.

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Exiled Pakistani journalist found dead in Sweden

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Sajid Hussain, who wrote about human rights violations, went missing in March

A Pakistani journalist living in exile in Sweden and who had been missing since March has been found dead in a river.

Sajid Hussain, who was granted political asylum in Sweden in 2019 after fleeing Pakistan, had been missing since 2 March. He was last seen boarding a train to Uppsala, a city 35 miles (56km) north of Stockholm.

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Rishi Kapoor, Bollywood star, dies of leukaemia aged 67

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Family urges fans not to publicly mourn leading man of numerous musical romances

The Indian actor Rishi Kapoor, who built a career as one of Bollywood’s romantic heroes, has died of leukaemia at the age of 67.

Kapoor, part of a famous Bollywood family, was admitted to hospital in Mumbai on Wednesday and died on Thursday, according to a family statement.

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Spain and Germany deal blow to hopes of tourism revival

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Minister rules out imminent reopening in Spain as Germany extends travel warning

Spain has ruled out any early reopening of its tourism sector and Germany is set to extend a travel warning for all leisure trips outside the country until mid-June, casting further doubt on when would-be holidaymakers will be able to venture abroad again.

With airline fleets mostly grounded, cross-border train traffic slashed and many EU countries, including France, requiring all arrivals bar their own citizens to formally justify their journey, leisure travel within Europe is at a near standstill.

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Bollywood star Irrfan Khan dies aged 53

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Khan, who had a string of Anglo-American successes under his belt, including Slumdog Millionaire, Life of Pi and Jurassic World, has died in Mumbai

• A life in pictures

Irrfan Khan, the Indian-born actor who achieved considerable success in both Bollywood and the west, has died aged 53. He had been admitted to the intensive care unit of Mumbai’s Kokilaben hospital on Tuesday with a colon infection.

In March 2018, he revealed he had been diagnosed with a neuroendocrine tumour, but after extensive treatment he recovered well enough to shoot Angrezi Medium, the film which would turn out to be his last, and whose release this March was cut short because of the coronavirus pandemic.

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‘They are starving’: women in India’s sex industry struggle for survival

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Exclusion from government Covid-19 relief has left many reliant on private food donations, as fears raised over protection from transmission after lockdown

Rasheeda Bibi has five rupees to her name. A worker in India’s sex industry, she lives in the narrow lanes of Kolkata’s Kalighat red light area with her three children in a room she rents for 620 rupees (£6) a month.

As a thunderstorm rages through the city, Bibi worries about the leaky roof of her small room.

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Myanmar military may be repeating crimes against humanity, UN rapporteur warns

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Yanghee Lee says the army is ‘maximising suffering’ on Rohingya and other people in attacks reminiscent of the 2017 assault in Rakhine state

Myanmar’s military may once again be committing crimes against humanity in Rakhine state, the UN special rapporteur on human rights has warned, urging the international community to prevent further atrocities.

In a damning statement issued on Wednesday, Yanghee Lee said the military was inflicting immense suffering on communities living in conflict-affected states, and called for increased efforts to “ensure that there is not another systemic failure like in 2017”. The military had also expanded its campaign against minorities from Rakhine to neighbouring Chin state, she said.

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Bangladesh urged to open ports to allow in Rohingya refugee boats

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More than 500 stranded on trawlers in what UN calls ‘human tragedy of terrible proportions’

The Bangladeshi government has been urged to open its ports and allow two boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya refugees to come ashore so they can be given urgent medical care, food and water.

It is believed more than 500 people, including children, are onboard the stranded trawlers, which were recently seen in the Bay of Bengal but have reportedly returned to the high seas.

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