Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Mosquitoes bring ‘mystery illness’ to the mountain villages of Nepal

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Rising temperatures linked to outbreaks of dengue fever high in the Kathmandu Valley, experts say

•Global heating behind record number of cases of the disease

Lilawati Awasthi is used to the risks that come from living in a remote mountainous district in the far west of Nepal. Floods, landslides and treacherous roads are a part of daily life. But this year she faced a new hazard: mosquitoes carrying a mystery illness.

When she began to feel sick in September she was not overly concerned at first. “I thought it was a simple fever, but it wouldn’t go away,” says the 50-year-old. “We went to the hospital and it turned out I was suffering from dengue.”

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World’s largest ritual animal slaughter goes ahead despite ban

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Thousands of Hindus head to southern Nepal for festival honouring goddess of power

Thousands of Hindus have gathered in southern Nepal before a festival believed to be the world’s largest ritual animal slaughter, despite court orders and calls by animal activists to end the event.

The sacrifices, set to begin on Tuesday, take place every five years in the village of Bariyarpur close to the Indian border, in honour of the Hindu goddess of power.

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Protests escalate in India over gang-rape and murder of woman

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MPs speak out in parliament and demonstrators take to streets over killing of 27-year-old vet

Outrage has continued to grow in India over the gang-rape and murder of a 27-year-old woman, with protesters taking to the streets and politicians calling for the offenders to be “lynched”.

Demonstrations spread to cities including Delhi, Bengaluru and Kolkata and MPs spoke out in parliament following the discovery last week of the woman’s burned body in Hyderabad.

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Protests in India after woman gang raped and burned to death

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Four men arrested over murder of veterinary doctor, which has left country in shock

The gang rape of a veterinary doctor whose body was set on fire and dumped under a bridge has sent shockwaves through India, with hundreds of women taking to the streets in protest.

The charred body of the 26-year-old woman was found on the outskirts of the southern city of Hyderabad on Wednesday night.

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Global heating driving spread of mosquito-borne dengue fever

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Record numbers across Asia and Americas infected as rising temperatures extend disease to places once seen as safe

Rising temperatures across Asia and the Americas have contributed to multiple severe outbreaks of dengue fever globally over the past six months, making 2019 the worst year on record for the disease.

In 1970 only nine countries faced severe dengue outbreaks. But the disease, which is spread by mosquitoes that can only survive in warm temperatures, is now seen in more than 100 countries. There are thought to be 390 million infections each year.

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Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope

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Australian teacher thanks those who helped free him and says he formed tight bonds with some of his captors

Freed Taliban hostage Timothy Weeks says he never gave up hope he would be rescued during three “long and tortuous” years in captivity in Afghanistan.

Speaking publicly for the first time since his release as part of a complex prisoner swap almost two weeks ago, the Australian teacher thanked all those who helped secure his freedom, and said he had formed extraordinarily tight bonds with some of his Taliban captors.

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Afghanistan’s road to peace still full of obstacles

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Trump claims US-Taliban talks are back on but it is unclear if key disputes have been settled

Donald Trump says talks with the Taliban are back on but it is unclear if the disputes that hobbled the last attempt to reach a peace deal – cancelled by a presidential tweet in September – have been resolved.

The insurgent group responded to Trump by telling Agence France-Presse it was “way too early” to discuss resuming direct talks.

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Donald Trump says Taliban talks back on in surprise Afghanistan visit

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  • President makes Thanksgiving visit to airbase near Kabul
  • Confirms talks with extremists have resumed

Donald Trump made an unannounced visit to US troops in Afghanistan on Thursday, his first visit to the country where the US has been at war since late 2001.

Related: Fired navy secretary blasts Trump over 'shocking' handling of Navy seal case

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Indian states must provide clean air and water or pay damages, supreme court rules

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Judges give state governments six weeks to explain why they should not be held accountable for pollution failures

The Indian supreme court has declared that state governments will have to pay their citizens compensation if they fail to provide clean air and water.

The judges, who have been vocal in their condemnation of state governments who have repeatedly failed to address the issue, said people had the constitutional right to live free of pollution.

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Whistleblowers on school paedophile ring in Afghanistan arrested

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Human rights defenders alleged that teachers and social workers were involved in abuse of more than 500 boys

Two people have been detained by Afghanistan’s intelligence services after they exposed a paedophile ring operating in some of the country’s schools.

Human rights organisations and the former president Hamid Karzai have called for the immediate release of Mohammed Mussa and Ehsanullah Hamidi, both well-known human rights defenders from Logar province, who were picked up by the National Directorate of Security last week when they were on their way to meet with the EU ambassador in Kabul.

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Royal claims of India’s fake queen exposed as a web of elaborate lies

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A widow claiming to be descended from royalty was believed, and even given a dilapidated palace to live in

For 40 years, stories about India’s most mysterious and reclusive royal family persisted among foreign correspondents in New Delhi. Few were granted an audience with them or were able to report on the tragic downfall of a dynasty said to have ruled a kingdom of five provinces in northern India until 1856.

The widowed Begum Wilayat and her children, Princess Sakina and Prince Ali Raza, also known as Cyrus, claimed to be the heirs of the Nawab of Oudh, descendants of Persian nobility. They reportedly regarded the Mughals, India’s imperial rulers from the 16th to the 19th century, as “common as dirt” and considered “ordinariness not just a crime [but] a sin!”.

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India: Muslim Sanskrit professor forced to flee by Hindu students

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Feroz Khan in hiding after nationalist group protested he ‘cannot teach us our religion’

A Muslim scholar of Sanskrit has gone into hiding after protests from some rightwing Hindu students claiming that, as a Muslim, he cannot teach Sanskrit, the ancient classical language of Hinduism.

Feroz Khan, 29, was the unanimous choice of a selection committee at Banaras Hindu University in Varanasi for the post of assistant professor of Sanskrit literature. The committee members were impressed with his erudition, which stems from a childhood passion for the language that continued into further education.

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Aung San Suu Kyi to defend Myanmar against genocide charge at The Hague

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Burmese leader will lead delegation to international court of justice next month

Aung San Suu Kyi will travel to The Hague to defend Myanmar against allegations of genocide, her office has announced.

The Burmese leader, once an icon of democracy but now tainted by her association with what UN investigators have described as crimes against humanity, will lead a delegation to the international court of justice (ICJ) next month.

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‘The clock is ticking’: race to save 2 million from statelessness in Assam

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A team of volunteer paralegals are fighting to stop Indians without proof of citizenship being sent to detention camps

When she was one, Suro Devi was rescued by a sewer cleaner from a rubbish dump in Assam, northeast India. When the state of Assam started a massive exercise to register its citizens in 2015, Suro Devi did not have a birth certificate, information about her parents, a voter list with her name on it, or anything to prove that she had lived in Assam before 25 March 1971. She seemed destined to be left off the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and become stateless, and perhaps spend the rest of her days in a detention camp.

But Zamser Ali, a citizenship rights activist based in Assam’s capital, Guwahati, heard about Devi’s case. He knew that documents were not the only thing that could prove your origins. He managed to track down five eyewitnesses to her rescue from the dump. And in August, when the draft NRC was published, Devi’s name appeared on it.

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Bangladesh flies in planeloads of onions amid national outcry over shortage

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Even the prime minister has chopped the vegetable out of her official menu after monsoon caused Indian crop failure

Bangladesh has been forced to import planeloads of onions as the price of the cooking staple soared to record highs, an official said, with even the prime minister chopping the bulb from her menu.

The price of onions – a sensitive subject in south Asia where shortages can trigger widespread discontent with political ramifications – has climbed to eye-watering levels in Bangladesh since neighbouring India banned exports in late September after heavy monsoon rains reduced the crop.

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British government and army accused of covering up war crimes

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Alleged evidence implicates UK troops in murder of children in Afghanistan and Iraq

The UK government and the British army have been accused of covering up the killing of children in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Leaked documents allegedly contain evidence implicating troops in killing children and the torture of civilians.

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Sri Lanka presidential election: Rajapaksa victorious as opponent concedes

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Former defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa claims victory in tightly fought contest

Sri Lanka’s former wartime defence minister Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who is part of the country’s most powerful political dynasty, has been elected president, raising fears about the future of human rights and religious harmony in the region.

On Sunday, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, the candidate for the SLPP, the Sinhalese-Buddhist nationalist party, claimed an easy victory in the presidential election held Saturday, which had been fought against the backdrop of some of the worst political instability and violence the country has seen since the end of the civil war a decade ago.

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What happens to Afghanistan’s left-behind women as the Taliban rises?

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Separated from her family after an attempt to flee failed, Tahira is among a growing number of women left struggling and vulnerable in a country where lone mothers are harshly judged

On a bitterly cold day, Tahira* sits in her rented room in Kabul. She has a husband and three young children, but the last time the family were all together was in 2018 – the day they tried to escape Afghanistan.

Insecurity in their town in Maidan Wardak province led Tahira, 27, to try to flee to Turkey, via Iran, with her family. But when the time came, only her husband, son and seven-year-old daughter made it.

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Afghanistan paedophile ring may be responsible for abuse of over 500 boys

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Social workers claim teachers and local officials are implicated, and believe thousands more children may have been targeted

A paedophile ring involved in the abuse of at least 546 boys from six schools has been discovered in Afghanistan’s Logar province.

Some of the victims of the abuse have since been murdered according to the campaigners who first discovered videos of abuse posted to a Facebook page.

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