Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Kazakh police arrest activist who campaigned for human rights in Xinjiang

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Serikjan Bilash, who has fought for victims of China’s Muslim internment camps, detained in Almaty

Kazakh police have arrested an activist who has campaigned for victims of China’s internment camps in Xinjiang, sealing his group’s office and taking its computers.

Serikjan Bilash, who has led a high-profile awareness drive centred on ethnic Kazakh victims of China’s crackdown in the region, was arrested in Kazakhstan’s largest city Almaty and flown to the capital Astana, his partner told AFP.

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India to begin voting in election in April, says electoral commission

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Up to 900 million voters to cast ballots, as PM Narendra Modi seeks to replicate 2014 victory

Voting in the world’s largest democratic contest will begin on 11 April and continue for the next six weeks, India’s electoral commission has said in an announcement that signals the formal start of campaigning.

Polling booths will be shuttled around the country – by camel across the Rajasthan desert, on foot in the Himalayas and by speedboat in the Andaman Islands – for an election held in seven phases ending on 19 May. The ballots of up to 900 million eligible voters will be counted four days later.

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Fugitive Taliban leader lived short walk from US base, book reveals

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Exclusive: account exposes failures of US intelligence, which put $10m bounty on Mullah Omar

The Taliban’s elusive one-eyed leader Mullah Omar lived within walking distance of US bases in Afghanistan for years, and American troops once even searched the house where he was hiding but failed to find a secret room built for him, a new biography claims.

The account exposes an embarrassing failure of US intelligence, which put a $10m bounty on Omar’s head after the 9/11 attacks in the US. Officials repeatedly suggested that, like the al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, he was hiding in Pakistan and died there.

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Bodies of Tom Ballard and Daniele Nardi found in Himalayas

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Men went missing almost a fortnight ago while ascending mountain in Pakistan

The bodies of Tom Ballard and Daniele Nardi, the British and Italian climbers who went missing a fortnight ago, have been found on the mountain Nanga Parbat in Pakistan.

Italy’s ambassador to Pakistan, Stefano Pontecorvo, said on Saturday that the search team had confirmed that silhouettes spotted on the mountain “through telescope and pics beyond reasonable doubt” were the bodies of the two men.

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Women take to the streets of Pakistan to rewrite their place in society

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Campaigners will march on International Women’s Day to protest against harassment, child marriage and ‘honour killings’

During Jalwat Ali’s school days in Lahore, there were limited spaces to gather with other women, never mind flood the streets with punchy placards.

Public spaces often feel constricted in Pakistan, as though under critical male scrutiny. But over the past few days, Ali has been recruiting dozens of women, from garment workers to domestic helpers who barely get a day off. “To solve any problem, we need to make a collective effort,” she says.

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Search called off for missing Himalayan climbers

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Briton Tom Ballard and Italian Daniele Nardi disappeared on Nanga Parbat

A search for the missing British climber Tom Ballard and his Italian climbing partner, Daniele Nardi, who disappeared on the Himalayan peak Nanga Parbat, has been called off.

The decision involved Pakistani and Spanish climbers from nearby K2, a Pakistani mountaineering official told the Associated Press.

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‘Chilling reality’: Afghanistan suffers worst floods in seven years

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Thousands of homes swept away as rains follow devastating drought, with UN ‘shocked’ by lack of crisis funding support

Afghanistan has been hit with the worst flooding in seven years, with 20 dead, thousands of homes swept away and many families, already displaced by drought, forced to leave their homes for the second time.

The latest climate shock, which affected eight provinces including Kandahar, came as the UN’s humanitarian coordinator in Afghanistan criticised the European Commission for its “wholly insufficient” response to hunger and suffering in a country already in the grip of what analysts describe as the world’s deadliest conflict.

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22 of world’s 30 most polluted cities are in India, Greenpeace says

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Analysis of air pollution data finds that 64% of cities globally exceed WHO guidelines

Twenty-two of the world’s 30 worst cities for air pollution are in India, according to a new report, with Delhi again ranked the world’s most polluted capital.

The Greenpeace and AirVisual analysis of air pollution readings from 3,000 cities around the world found that 64% exceed the World Health Organization’s annual exposure guideline for PM2.5 fine particulate matter – tiny airborne particles, about a 40th of the width of a human hair, that are linked to a wide range of health problems.

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Kashmir’s fog of war: how conflicting accounts benefit both sides

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India and Pakistan’s differing narratives are not unusual in the social media age, say experts

India struck Pakistan. Pakistan hit back, capturing an Indian pilot. Those are the established facts. Virtually everything else about the clashes between south Asia’s two arch-enemies last week is bitterly contested.

Did India hit a militant training camp in Pakistan? Did it cross the ceasefire line between the two countries in disputed Kashmir? How many people did the strikes kill? Was a Pakistani jet shot down while bombing Indian territory the next day?

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Pakistan denies Indian claims it used US F-16 jets to down warplane

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US embassy looks into reports incident violated military sale agreements with Islamabad

The US has said it is trying to find out whether Pakistan used US-built F-16 jets to down an Indian warplane, potentially in violation of trade agreements, as the standoff between the nuclear-armed Asian neighbours showed signs of easing.

Pakistan and India both carried out aerial bombing missions last week, and on Wednesday an Indian pilot was shot down over the disputed region of Kashmir in an incident that sparked fears of a full-blown war.

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British child raised in Pakistan jail returned to UK without mother

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Khadija Shah gave birth to daughter Malaika, now 6, while serving a life sentence for smuggling heroin

A six-year-old girl who has spent her entire life inside a Pakistani prison after her British mother was convicted of drug trafficking has been released and returned to the UK.

Khadija Shah, 32, gave birth to her daughter Malaika while serving a life sentence inside the notorious Adiala prison in Rawalpindi, in the Punjab province.

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Bad weather delays search for missing climber Tom Ballard

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British mountaineer and his climbing partner are missing on Nanga Parbat in Pakistan

The search for a British climber who went missing on the world’s ninth-highest mountain in Pakistan is facing further delays due to bad weather.

Tom Ballard, who is originally from Derbyshire but lives in Scotland, was reported missing on Nanga Parbat mountain in the western Himalayas earlier this week with his Italian climbing partner Daniele Nardi after losing contact last Sunday as they went above 6,300 metres. They had been climbing the 8,126 metre (26,660ft) peak, also known as Killer Mountain.

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Kashmir: at least eight killed as Pakistan and India resume hostilities

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At least six civilians and two Pakistani troops killed as clashes along frontier continue

Indian and Pakistani soldiers have targeted each other’s posts and villages along the volatile frontier in disputed Kashmir, killing at least six civilians and two Pakistani troops, officials said.

Tensions have been running high since Indian aircraft crossed into Pakistan on Tuesday, carrying out what India called a pre-emptive strike against militants blamed for a 14 February suicide bombing that killed 40 Indian troops. Pakistan retaliated, shooting down a fighter jet on Wednesday and detaining its pilot, who was returned to India on Friday in what Islamabad described as a peace gesture.

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Pakistan returns captured Indian pilot – video

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The Indian pilot who survived being shot down in Kashmir on Wednesday is returned by Pakistan in a 'peace gesture' it is hoped will de-escalate military tensions between the two nuclear states. Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman was involved in the worst military crisis in decades between the countries over the disputed territory of Kashmir

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‘Girl power’ charity T-shirts made at exploitative Bangladeshi factory

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Over 100 workers claim to have been sacked after protesting about low wages at factory that makes ‘girl power’ T-shirts

Charity “girl power” T-shirts sold in the UK are made at a Bangladeshi factory where more than 100 impoverished workers claim to have been sacked after striking in protest at low wages, it can be revealed.

The £28 garments are sold online by F=, which claims to be “all about inspiring and empowering girls”, with £10 from each T-shirt donated to Worldreader, a charity that supplies digital books to poverty-stricken children in Africa. Television presenter Holly Willoughby recently reposted a 2017 picture of her and Spice Girl Emma Bunton wearing the T-shirts.

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Pakistan to release Indian pilot captured in Kashmir attacks

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Imran Khan says pilot to be freed as ‘peace gesture’ amid rising tensions between nuclear neighbours

Pakistan says it will release a captured Indian pilot as a “peace gesture” between the neighbours amid the gravest military crisis in the subcontinent in two decades.

Imran Khan, the country’s prime minister, told a joint sitting of parliament that the Indian wing commander, Abhinandan Varthaman, who was shot down over the heavily guarded ceasefire line in disputed Kashmir on Wednesday, would be released on Friday.

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India calls for immediate return of pilot shot down by Pakistan over Kashmir

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Delhi angered by ‘vulgar display’ of wing commander in bloodied uniform by Islamabad

India has called for the safe and immediate return of a fighter pilot seized by Pakistan after being shot down during tit-for-tat incursions over Kashmir that have edged the pair closer to war than at any point in the past 20 years.

Its pilot, a wing commander identified as Abhi Nandan, appeared in a bloodied uniform as he gave his name and rank in a video released by the Pakistani armed forces. Asked by his interrogator to say more, he replied: “I am sorry, sir, that’s all I’m supposed to tell you.”

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Who will pull India and Pakistan back from the edge this time?

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The US has usually been the decisive voice of calm, but its influence has waned under Trump

During previous bouts of militarised aggression between India and Pakistan, US presidents used personal diplomacy to convince both sides to pull back from the brink.

Such was the case in 1999 during the Kargil war and then again in 2002. Similarly in December 2008 Condoleezza Rice, then US secretary of state, travelled to India to persuade the government to pull back from a planned severe response after the Mumbai attacks, putting the onus on Pakistan to cooperate transparently.

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Pakistan says it has shot down Indian jets after Kashmir cross-border attack

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Indian news agency reports Pakistani jet may have been shot down on day of skirmishes

Pakistan has conducted airstrikes over the ceasefire line in disputed Kashmir and claims to have shot down two Indian jets that responded by entering Pakistani airspace, capturing both of the pilots.

India confirmed that one of its pilots is missing in action and said it shot down one of the Pakistani jets as it escaped over the heavily militarised border separating the two nuclear powers.

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