Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Nusrat Jahan Rafi: 16 sentenced to death over Bangladesh murder

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Student set on fire after refusing to withdraw sexual harassment claim against headteacher

Sixteen Bangladeshis have been sentenced to death for the murder of a 19-year-old student, Nusrat Jahan Rafi, who was burned to death in April after complaining of being sexually harassed by her school principal.

Among those found guilty were former members of the school’s administration, teachers and pupils – 12 of the 16 having confessed to participating in the killing in which Rafi was lured on to the school’s roof, doused in paraffin and set alight.

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Sri Lanka spy chief blamed for failures over Easter bombings

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Parliamentary report says Nilantha Jayawardena had information on attacks 17 days before they happened

A Sri Lankan parliamentary committee that investigated the Easter suicide bombings has concluded the country’s spy chief was primarily responsible for the intelligence failure that led to the deaths of 269 people in the attacks.

In a report released on Wednesday the committee said Nilantha Jayawardena received information on possible attacks as early as 4 April – 17 days before the suicide bombings took place – but there were delays on his part in sharing the intelligence with other agencies.

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University vice-chancellor stands aside over blackmail claims in Pakistan

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Javed Iqbal denies involvement in scandal over alleged use of CCTV footage to extort money from students in Balochistan

The vice-chancellor of a university in the volatile region of Balochistan in Pakistan has temporarily stepped down from his role following the launch of an investigation into allegations of harassment and blackmail on campus.

Javed Iqbal said on Sunday that he was leaving his post at the University of Balochistan until the Federal Investigation Agency (FIA) concluded its inquiry into claims that CCTV footage of students was used by university officials to blackmail them. Most of the students allegedly affected were female.

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Lawyers challenge UK imports of ‘slavery-tainted’ Uzbek cotton

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Rights team argues preferential tariffs promote goods produced by hundreds of thousands of unpaid labourers in Uzbekistan

The government is facing legal action to try and stop the importation of cotton harvested with state-sponsored forced labour from Uzbekistan into the UK.

The Uzbek-German Forum for Human Rights and the Global Legal Action Network (Glan), a team of human rights lawyers, are launching a judicial review of preferential tariffs applied to Uzbek cotton, arguing that it is promoting the importation of goods tainted with modern slavery. The country has faced sustained criticism over the mass enforced mobilisation of hundreds of thousands of Uzbeks to work as unpaid labourers during harvest and planting seasons.

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Afghanistan mosque bombing: death toll rises

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State blames Taliban for blasts targeting worshippers during Friday prayers

Police and local residents were searching for bodies in the rubble of a mosque in the eastern Nangarhar province of Afghanistan, after bomb blaststhat killed at least 69 people during Friday prayers.

The explosives had been placed inside the mosque in the Jawdara area of Haska Mena district.

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How a glitch in India’s biometric welfare system can lead to starvation

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Claimants are given a 12-digit number linked to their data, and if something goes wrong they can be refused food

Motka Manjhi had been back and forth to the ration shop four or five times, his wife said, but on each occasion he returned empty-handed. His thumbprint, needed to prove his identity, wasn’t registering on the new system.

He was told to do an online update. But to do so he would need to get to a private centre – a four-mile journey from his village in Dumka, in the state of Jharkhand, north-east India. This would mean missing at least a day’s potential work, which he desperately needed to buy food. And even if he made the trek, there was no guarantee that the system, which often suffers from network outages, would be working properly. What was to be done?

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Kashmir families live in fear as loved ones are detained far from home

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Relatives tell of 1,000km bus journeys to Agra where prisoners are held after Modi crackdown

The last time he saw her, Mehraj-ud-din Wani assured his wife that he would soon be a free man.

Wani was speaking to his wife, Gulshan, from behind bars in Srinagar jail in Kashmir. “He was certain that he would be released,” she said. “He said that he will be home in a matter of days.”

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Man burying daughter finds newborn alive in Indian grave

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Newborn baby girl was heard crying after being buried alive in clay pot in Uttar Pradesh

A man digging a grave in northern India found a newborn girl buried alive, police have said, in the latest case to shine a spotlight on female infanticide in the country.

Hitesh Sirohi had gone to bury his own daughter, who died a few minutes after birth on Wednesday, when his spade hit an earthen pot, local police in Uttar Pradesh state told AFP.

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Hong Kong protests are at ‘life-threatening level’, say police

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Warning follows another night of violent skirmishes between police and protesters in city

Violent pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong have escalated to a “life-threatening level”, police have said, after a small bomb exploded and a police officer was stabbed in clashes overnight.

Peaceful rallies descended into chaos in the Chinese-ruled city on Sunday with running skirmishes between protesters and police in shopping malls and on streets. Black-clad activists threw 20 petrol bombs at one police station, while others trashed shops and metro stations.

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Workers making £88 Lululemon leggings claim they are beaten

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Exclusive: Upmarket brand, which has just launched UN partnership, opens investigation as female labourers in Bangladesh factory say they suffer regular abuse

Lululemon, an athleisure brand whose £88 leggings are worn by celebrities and Instagram influencers, are sourcing clothing from a factory where Bangladeshi female factory workers claim they are beaten and physically assaulted.

The Canadian brand recently launched a partnership with the United Nations to reduce stress levels and promote the mental health of aid workers.

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‘They were all killed in front of my eyes’: the brutal cost of war in Afghanistan

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In a country where decades of conflict have taken a profound toll on mental health, professional support is scarce

Human Rights Watch has raised alarms over the lack of mental health support in wartorn Afghanistan, where more than half of the population is experiencing psychological distress.

The advocacy group said that, despite the high prevalence of psychological and mental health conditions, the Afghan government is failing to provide adequate help, with fewer than 10% of the country’s population receiving assistance.

HRW cited a 2018 EU survey that said the overwhelming majority of the country’s population (85%) have seen or been involved in at least one traumatic event in their lives.

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Five-year-old boy among 30 Rohingya arrested for travelling in Myanmar

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Nine children sent to juvenile detention centres as remainder of group face up to two years in prison for failure to produce ID cards

Myanmar faces calls to release 30 Rohingya men, women and children arrested in September while trying to travel from Rakhine state to the city of Yangon.

A total of 21 Rohingya face up to two years in jail under Myanmar’s Residents of Burma Registration Act, which stipulates that citizens must be in possession of “registration cards” to prove their identity.

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How the Bangladeshi women who make our clothes are edging towards a better life | Fiona Weber-Steinhaus

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The country has undergone an economic miracle in recent years, albeit at huge cost to its garment workers. But things are finally starting to improve for them

Tasnia Akter has come home. It’s a public holiday in Bangladesh, the one time of year the 25-year-old can leave the mayhem of the city behind and see her family: her mother, her aunt.

And her daughter.

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Escape to the country: India’s villagers open doors to city tourists | Anne Pinto-Rodrigues

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A scheme training people to host outsiders is creating alternative livelihoods that will help build resilience against climate crisis and stem migration for Indian families

Datta Kondar leads a group of tourists through his village in Maharashtra to view the firefly spectacle for which it is so famous. With the arrival of the monsoons in June, thousands of fireflies emerge at twilight and perform an elaborate courtship ritual, signalling to prospective mates with their glowing bodies in a mesmerising show.

Being a tour guide is not what Kondar, 36, had planned. In 2003, he took the typical route of many rural Indians, travelling to the city in search of work. But he found himself unable to cope with the gritty realities of life in Mumbai and returned to his village, Purushwadi, within a year.

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Sight of people fighting over water sends plumbers on to India’s streets | Amrit Dhillon

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With the country’s major cities set to run out of groundwater in 2020, volunteers are helping to conserve precious supplies

Drenched in perspiration on a muggy Sunday afternoon in New Delhi, Ashia Saifi climbs up and down the stairs of apartment buildings, ringing on doorbells and asking if residents have any leaking taps they want fixed.

Sometimes, the door is slammed shut in her face. People are scared of intruders and strangers, even though Saifi sports a little white cap that’s the emblem of the Aam Aadmi party (Common Man), or AAP, which rules the Indian capital.

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Woman in India admits poisoning six family members with cyanide

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Murders took place over 14-year period and each victim ate a meal prepared by the killer

A woman in the southern Indian state of Kerala has confessed to poisoning six members of her family over a 14-year period by adding cyanide to their food.

Police began investigating earlier this year when the brother-in-law of 47-year-old suspect Jolly Thomas became suspicious that she may have forged his parents’ will.

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It’s not just Greta Thunberg: why are we ignoring the developing world’s inspiring activists? | Chika Unigwe

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Young people in the global south have been tackling the climate crisis for years. They should be celebrated too

Ridhima Pandey was just nine years old in 2017 when she filed a lawsuit against the Indian government for failing to take action against climate change. Pandey’s fierce, astounding passion for the environment is not accidental. Her mother is a forestry guard and her father an environmental activist; and the whole family was displaced by the Uttarakhand floods of 2013, which claimed hundreds of lives.

In Kenya Kaluki Paul Mutuku has been actively involved in conservation since college, where he was a member of an environmental awareness club, and has been a member of the African Youth Initiative on Climate Change since 2015. Raised in rural Kenya by a single mother, Mutuku’s vigorous activism, like Pandey’s, was inspired by the direct challenges his family (and wider community) faced from the effects of climate change: “Growing up, I witnessed mothers cover kilometres to fetch water,” he says.

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Prosecutors say ex-Taliban hostage intentionally tried to mislead court

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Prosecutors say Joshua Boyle, Canadian man on trial for assaulting his wife, advanced a narrative that’s ‘incompatible with reality’

The testimony of Joshua Boyle, the former Afghanistan hostage on trial for assaulting his wife, was intentionally crafted to mislead the court, prosecutors have argued in closing arguments.

Crown lawyers once again took aim at Joshua Boyle’s credibility on Wednesday, suggesting he had manipulated his testimony for self-serving ends.

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Judge orders removal of #MeToo posts accusing Indian artist

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Google and Facebook told to take down sexual harassment claims against Subodh Gupta

The high court in Delhi has ordered Google and Facebook to remove all anonymous social media posts accusing the artist Subodh Gupta of sexual harassment and ordered Facebook, which owns Instagram, to reveal the identity of the person behind the account that first made the allegations.

Last year, many well-known Indian men, mostly in the film and media industries, had their names mentioned at the height of the #MeToo movement including Gupta, one of India’s leading artists.

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Dead at 24: did heat kill Doha World Cup worker Rupchandra Rumba? | Pete Pattisson

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The Nepali’s sudden death was attributed to ‘natural causes’ – but like hundreds of other young migrants who die in Qatar each year he worked in extreme temperatures

Revealed: hundreds of migrant workers dying of heat stress in Qatar each year

It is a grim place to die: a bunk bed in a filthy, crowded room, deep within Qatar’s largest labour camp, thousands of miles from home.

As Rupchandra Rumba lay there in the early hours of 23 June, his friends heard him struggle for breath.

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