Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Bangladeshi labour leader beaten to death while trying to resolve dispute

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Shahidul Islam died in an assault on Sunday in Dhaka after meeting garment factory employees fighting for unpaid salaries

Police in Bangladesh are investigating the murder of a prominent trade union leader who was fatally beaten while trying to settle a dispute between a garment factory owner and workers over unpaid wages.

Shahidul Islam, 45, a top labour organiser for the Bangladesh Garment and Industrial Workers Federation (BGIWF), was attacked on Sunday evening in Gazipur, a major garment industry hub on the outskirts of Dhaka, after intervening on behalf of workers who had gathered to demand back pay.

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Keir Starmer promises to ease tensions between Labour and India

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Party leader seeks to win back British Indian voters after anger over party’s perceived support for Pakistan in Kashmir dispute

Keir Starmer has promised to reset relations between the Labour party and India after years of tension between the two.

The Labour leader said on Monday that his party had made mistakes in its approach to relations with the world’s most populous country, and that it would seek closer ties if elected to power next year.

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Obama remarks on India’s treatment of Muslims ‘hypocritical’ – minister

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Indian finance minister hits out after former US president said Modi government should protect rights of Muslims

India’s finance minister has derided comments by the former US president Barack Obama that Narendra Modi’s government should protect the rights of minority Muslims, accusing Obama of being hypocritical.

During the Indian prime minister’s state visit to the US last week, Obama told CNN that the issue of the “protection of the Muslim minority in a majority-Hindu India” would be worth raising in Modi’s meeting with the US president, Joe Biden.

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Disbelief and anger among Greek shipwreck victims’ relatives as millions spent on Titan rescue effort

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Disparity between rescue responses has sparked debate in Pakistan about double standards

Anees Majeed, who lost five relatives in the boat that sank off Greece on 14 June, watched in disbelief and growing anger as a frantic, multimillion-dollar rescue effort played out for five other men lost at sea last week.

Like thousands of others across Pakistan, Majeed, a law student from Pakistan-administered Kashmir, grieved at funeral prayers without a body to bury. At least 350 Pakistani citizens were on the overcrowded craft, the interior minister, Rana Sanaullah, confirmed on Friday.

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India secretly works to preserve reputation after ‘flawed democracy’ rating

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Exclusive: Democracy Index downgrades country amid backsliding under nationalist rule of Narendra Modi

The Indian government has been secretly working to keep its reputation as the “world’s largest democracy” alive after being called out by researchers for serious democratic backsliding under the nationalist rule of Narendra Modi, according to internal reports seen by the Guardian.

Despite publicly dismissing several global rankings that suggest the country is on a dangerous downward trajectory, officials from government ministries have been quietly assigned to monitor India’s performance, minutes from meetings show.

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Guest spends 603 nights at five-star Indian hotel ‘without paying’

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Ankush Dutta was meant to check out after one night but reportedly stayed for nearly two years

Indian police are investigating a suspected fraudster who spent nearly two years in a five-star hotel without paying, local media have said.

Ankush Dutta booked a room at Roseate House hotel in Delhi on 30 May 2019 and was supposed to check out the next day. But he extended his stay for 603 nights until 22 January 2021, leaving behind unpaid bills of $70,000 (£55,000).

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Indian minister invites opposition for talks over ‘dire’ Manipur situation

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Ethnic violence in north-eastern state has led to more than 100 deaths since breaking out in early May

India’s home affairs minister, Amit Shah, has called opposition parties for talks on Saturday to discuss an outbreak of ethnic violence in Manipur state in the north-east, in a sign that the government has acknowledged the situation has spun out of its control.

More than 100 people have died and 50,000 have been displaced since clashes broke out in early May between members of the Kuki ethnic group, who mostly live in the hills, and the Meitei people, the dominant community in the lowlands. Churches, temples, shops and businesses have been destroyed.

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‘India is now a linchpin’: US looks to Narendra Modi’s visit to counter China

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The Biden administration will try to strengthen US-India ties while the Indian leader looks to shore up votes for next year’s election

The symbolism of the visit will be hard to avoid. As Narendra Modi arrives in Washington DC on Wednesday – the capital of a country he was once prohibited from visiting for almost 10 years – he will join the ranks of Winston Churchill, Nelson Mandela and Volodymyr Zelenskiy as one of the few leaders to address a joint session of Congress more than once.

Statements from US officials ahead of the visit have been rapturous on the subject of US-India relations, praising the “significant defence partnership” and describing it as “a unique connection between the world’s oldest and largest democracies”. Before his departure from India, Modi said: “This special invitation is a reflection of the vigour and vitality of the partnership between our democracies.”

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Advocate for separate Sikh state in India shot dead in Canada

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Hardeep Singh Nijjar, president of temple in British Columbia, found fatally injured in car park

A campaigner for a Sikh nation to be carved out of India’s Punjab state who was wanted by Indian authorities has been shot dead in Canada, police have said.

Federal police said a man was found in his pickup truck in the car park of the Guru Nanak Sikh Gurdwara temple in Surrey, British Columbia, at about 8.30pm on Sunday, with apparent gunshot wounds.

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‘He suffered’: Pakistani relatives mourn sons on Greek shipwreck

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Poverty drove young men from small Kashmir town to board ill-fated fishing trawler, say families

The last time Mohammed Yousaf talked to his son, Sajid Yousaf, on 8 June, the son was waiting anxiously in Libya for smugglers to pack him and hundreds of others on to a boat bound for the other side of the Mediterranean.

Six days later, the overcrowded fishing trawler sank off the coast of Greece. Sajid, 28, a shopkeeper and father of two from the small town of Khuiratta in Pakistan-administered Kashmir, is among the hundreds missing, presumed dead.

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India heatwave: 96 people dead reportedly from heat-aggravated conditions

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Questions raised about death toll after more than half of the fatalities reported in a single district in Uttar Pradesh

At least 96 people are reported to have died from heat-aggravated conditions during a blistering heatwave across two of India’s most populous states over the past several days, although questions have been raised after more than half of the deaths were reported in a single district.

The deaths happened in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar in the east, where 45C (113F) temperatures were recorded over the past few days, coupled with humidity.

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Indian court halts airing of documentary on Muslim minority

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Ruling dismays free speech activists who accuse Modi government of systematically shrinking space for dissent

An Indian court has blocked the screening of an Al Jazeera documentary about the country’s Muslim minority, fuelling fears that the right to criticise the government is being eroded.

The Allahabad high court was acting on a public interest petition filed by Sudhir Kumar, an activist, who said he had learned from media reports that the documentary Who Lit the Fuse? portrayed India’s 172-million Muslims as living in fear of the Narendra Modi government. He also alleged that it showed state agencies acting against the interests of Muslims.

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Weather tracker: extreme rainfall and heat hit China amid Asian heatwave

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‘Dragon boat water’ is breaking records in Guangxi region, as air conditioner use in Xinjiang puts strain on grid

Many people in China have experienced a variety of weather extremes in recent days. Parts of southern and eastern China experienced prolonged periods of torrential rainfall, as the summer rains known as “dragon boat water” got off to a remarkable start.

The city of Yulin in the Guangxi region experienced 35 hours of non-stop rain on 8-9 June, while the nearby city of Beihai was flooded after 614.7mm of rainfall over 24 hours in the same period. This is approximately a third of the city’s average yearly precipitation, and a June record for the Guangxi region. It is in stark contrast to May, when Guangxi experienced its lowest rainfall in 60 years.

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Indian wrestling federation chief charged with sexual harassment

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Charges follow months of complaints against BJP MP Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh by country’s top wrestlers

Police in India have filed charges of sexual harassment and criminal intimidation against the chief of the country’s wrestling federation, a member of parliament with Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata party (BJP), following complaints by female wrestlers.

The public prosecutor Atul Srivastav read out the charges against Brij Bhushan Sharan Singh at a court hearing in Delhi. If convicted he faces up to three years in jail.

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Cyclone Biparjoy: more than 100,000 evacuated in India and Pakistan as storm nears

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Cyclone Biparjoy, which means ‘disaster’ in Bengali, is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening

More than 100,000 people have been evacuated in India and Pakistan ahead of the expected landfall on Thursday of a “very severe cyclonic storm”.

Biparjoy, a cyclone whose name means “disaster” in Bengali, is making its way across the Arabian Sea and is expected to make landfall on Thursday evening, government weather monitors said.

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Nine killed as ethnic clashes continue in India’s Manipur state

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Gunmen stormed a village close to the capital of the remote north-eastern state on Tuesday

At least nine people have been shot dead in the remote north-eastern Indian state of Manipur in the latest incident in weeks of violence that has claimed more than 100 lives.

Clashes between members of the Kuki ethnic group, who mostly live in the hills, and Meiteis, the dominant community in the lowlands, erupted on 3 May, sparked by resentment over economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education reserved for hill people.

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Pakistan media decry de facto ban on giving airtime to Imran Khan

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Journalists say directive on hate speech issued by regulator indirectly affects coverage of former PM

Broadcast journalists in Pakistan have decried a de facto ban on mentioning Imran Khan by name or showing his image after a series of directives issued by the country’s media regulator.

Pakistan’s parliament ousted Khan from parliament in April last year. Since then he has been making nearly daily headlines with fiery speeches and tweets directed at the government and army.

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Thousands of Afghan refugees in UK set to be made homeless

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Downing Street crisis meeting hears that about 8,000 who arrived under Operation Warm Welcome will be evicted this summer with nowhere to go

Thousands of Afghan refugees in the UK face homelessness this summer, the government was warned last week at a secret crisis meeting in Downing Street.

Council officials told No 10 and Home Office civil servants that about 8,000 Afghan refugees, allowed into the country in 2021 under the slogan Operation Warm Welcome, are due to be evicted from hotels as early as August because of a government deadline, yet have nowhere to go.

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Ukraine and Myanmar make 2022 most violent year in a decade for medical staff

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Report demands accountability for war crimes and singles out Russia for ‘mind-boggling’ targeting of hospitals in Ukraine

Russian attacks on medical facilities in Ukraine made 2022 the most violent year in a decade for hospitals and health workers operating in conflict zones, according to a new report by a coalition of humanitarian organisations.

With 750 reported attacks in 2022, Russia set a 10-year record, according to the Safeguarding Health in Conflict Coalition, which includes Human Rights Watch and the Johns Hopkins Center for Humanitarian Health.

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Indian train crash: police open criminal negligence case

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Ministers accused of trying to shift blame for Friday’s disaster in which 275 people died

Police in the Indian state of Odisha have registered a criminal case of “death by negligence” relating to the train crash on Friday that killed 275 people, as critics accused the government of trying to shift blame for the disaster.

The report filed by police did not name any specific person as being responsible but stated that “culpability of specific railway employees has not been ascertained, which will be unearthed during the investigation”.

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