Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Myanmar junta facing biggest challenge yet after new offensive by armed groups, analysts say

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Junta struggling to counter offensive by armed ethnic groups, amid claims it has lost 100 outposts in the north

Myanmar’s military is facing its biggest military challenge since it seized power in a coup more than two years ago, after an alliance of opponents cut off key trading routes and seized towns and dozens of outposts near the Chinese border.

The offensive in northern Shan state, which was launched by an alliance of ethnic armed groups in coordination with newer anti-coup groups, is a significant blow for the military, analysts say, and could be exploited by the wider pro-democracy resistance movement.

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Senior lawyers criticise handling of case of Sikh activist held in India

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Peers express fears that Jagtar Singh Johal will not receive ‘due process’ in India amid torture claims

Assurances by a UK minister that a British man imprisoned in India will receive a fair trial fly in the face of evidence that he has been tortured and arbitrarily detained, three lawyers who held senior public roles have warned.

To coincide with the sixth anniversary of Jagtar Singh Johal’s detention, Ken MacDonald KC, Elish Angiolini KC and Jim Wallace KC have written to the UK Foreign Office minister Lord Ahmad asking him to retract his recent comments saying that the British citizen would receive “due process” in India.

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Search for survivors in western Nepal after earthquake kills at least 157 people

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Rescue workers reach area near epicentre of 5.8-magnitude quake in Karnali province in country’s worst earthquake since 2015

Rescue workers in Nepal began digging through the rubble of collapsed houses with their bare hands on Saturday, searching for survivors after the country’s worst earthquake in eight years killed 157 people and shook buildings as far away as Delhi.

The 5.6-magnitude quake hit the far west of the Himalayan country late on Friday and was measured by the US Geological Survey at just 11 miles (18km) deep.

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Delhi air pollution spikes to 100 times WHO health limit

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Season of smog begins with air quality index near worst possible level of 500 and little apparent progress in controlling annual poisonous blight on life

Air quality in Delhi hit severe levels on Friday and a thick toxic smog cloaked the city, marking the beginning of a pollution season that has become an annual catastrophe for India’s capital.

Schools were shut and non-essential construction was banned around Delhi as the air quality index in the city hit 500 – the highest the measurement will go and 100 times the limit deemed to be healthy by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

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Pakistan starts mass deportation of undocumented Afghans

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Authorities go ‘door to door’ to round up and return thousands – many who fled from the Taliban – on first day of nationwide crackdown

Pakistan has begun arresting and deporting Afghan refugees who missed Wednesday morning’s deadline for them to leave, a government minister has announced. At least 200,000 people have already returned to Afghanistan voluntarily, said Pakistan’s acting interior minister, Sarfraz Bugti.

The crackdown on unregistered foreigners, part of Pakistan’s new anti-immigrant policy, affects some 2 million Afghans thought to be in Pakistan without documentation.

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‘A titan of the climate movement’: tributes pour in for Saleemul Huq

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Huq, ‘a visionary and climate champion’, who was named one of the top 10 scientists in the world by Nature last year, has died at 71

Tributes have poured in from around for world for the renowned Bangladeshi scientist Prof Saleemul Huq, who died on 28 October.

Huq, 71, was an acclaimed academic, a relentless climate activist and the director of the International Centre for Climate Change & Development (ICCCAD), a research and capacity-building organisation in Bangladesh.

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‘Don’t ignore us’: Afghans awaiting UK relocation fear time is running out

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Some have waited years in Pakistan for Britain to fulfil its promises – and are now at risk of deportation

For a year after the fall of Kabul and the swift withdrawal of international allies from Afghanistan, Jawed* and his family were in hiding, evading the ruling Taliban as they counted the days waiting for relocation promises from the British government to be realised.

“But that didn’t happen. To this day, two years and two months [later], we’re still living in limbo,” Jawed, a former English teacher for the British Council, said from a hotel in Islamabad.

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Bangladesh: key opposition figure jailed after rally turns violent

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The opposition is demanding the resignation of prime minister Sheikh Hasina and the transfer of power to a non-partisan caretaker government

Authorities in Bangladesh have arrested a key opposition figure from the Bangladesh Nationalist Party and sent him to prison after a nationwide strike led to violent clashes with security forces.

Media reports said at least three civilians died in the violence, which included an arson attack in the nation’s capital, Dhaka, on Sunday. Dozens of others were injured during the strike.

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Kazakhstan mourns after ArcelorMittal mine disaster kills 45

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Fire at Kostenko mine is latest in series of deadly incidents, and has prompted nationalisation of global company’s local affiliate

Kazakhstan held nationwide mourning on Sunday after 45 people died in a fire at an ArcelorMittal mine, the worst accident in the central Asian country’s post-Soviet history.

The tragedy, which struck at the Kostenko coalmine in the Karaganda region on Saturday, came after a series of deadly incidents at ArcelorMittal mines and has prompted the nationalisation of the company’s local affiliate.

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India resumes visa services in Canada after row over killing of Sikh separatist

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Tensions between the two countries peaked after Hardeep Singh Nijjar was murdered in Canada earlier this year

India’s embassy in Ottawa has announced that it will reopen visa services for Canadians, a move that could reduce tensions in a bitter dispute over the killing of a Sikh separatist on Canadian soil.

Relations between India and Canada plunged after Justin Trudeau, the prime minister, last month publicly linked Indian intelligence to the killing of Canadian citizen Hardeep Singh Nijjar, allegations New Delhi called “absurd”.

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Indian schoolboy invents affordable smart spoon for trembling hands

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A 17-year-old with a passion for robotics has produced a cheaper utensil that uses sensors to cancel out hand tremors

The motivation for his invention came to Aarrav Anil last year when he saw his uncle Arjun, who has Parkinson’s disease, struggle to eat. Some food spilled out of his mouth, the rest splattered on his clothes. Arjun attempted to keep his dignity but the frustration forced the retired civil servant, who is in his 70s, to give up and call his helper to feed him.

The sight of his uncle’s tremors shaking the spoon so violently inspired Aarrav, 17, from Bengaluru, south India, to turn to robotics. He locked himself in his room with microcontrollers, sensors, motors, and a 3D printer. What emerged was a prototype of a smart spoon that is now undergoing trials at the RV College of Physiotherapy in Bengaluru.

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‘The fight will continue’ for India’s LGBTQ+ campaigners for equal marriage

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Homosexuality was decriminalised in 2018 but the supreme court has declined to change marriage laws

Utkarsh Saxena had been secretly planning the proposal for weeks. He had secretly measured his boyfriend’s finger while he was sleeping and bought a pair of matching steel rings from a Delhi market. They had been together for 15 years, having fallen in love on the university debating team, and Saxena felt optimistic that this would be an auspicious moment to ask the love of his life to marry him – the same day that India’s supreme court ruled on whether same-sex couples would be allowed to get married.

Yet when the verdict came out on Tuesday, Saxena’s heart broke. Even as India’s chief justice, DY Chandrachud, spoke of India’s long history of LGBTQ+ people and their right to equality, he ruled that changing marriage laws was beyond the scope of the court and that marriage was not a fundamental right. It was the job of parliament, not judges, to make such decisions, Chandrachud said.

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Pakistan’s ex-PM Nawaz Sharif returns from exile ‘completely ready’ for election

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Return of Sharif, who has conviction for graft, is likely to have been smoothed by deal with country’s powerful military, expert says

Nawaz Sharif, the three-time prime minister of Pakistan, arrived back in the country on Saturday after four years of self-imposed exile, poised to make a political comeback before the general election in January.

Sharif spent the past few days in Dubai and left on a chartered flight packed with journalists, touching down in the capital, Islamabad, at about 1.30pm (0830 GMT), according to local media.

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‘I was helpless’: Nepali survivors of Hamas attack in Israel haunted by trauma

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Ten Nepali students died at kibbutz, leaving families for whom they were breadwinners bereft

Dhanbahadur Chaudhari now dreams of rivers of blood. Although he returned home to Nepal this week, flashes of the scenes he left behind in Israel won’t leave him alone, and for days he has barely been able to sleep.

Chaudhari, 25, was among almost 50 students from Nepal who were staying on a kibbutz in Alumim, the border area between Israel and Gaza, when it came under attack from Hamas militants on 7 October. Since the current conflict broke out that day, at least 4,200 people have died in Israel and Palestine.

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Canada withdraws 41 diplomats from India embassy amid murder dispute

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Country forced to reduce diplomatic presence amid tensions over Sikh separatist killing and says it will not take retaliatory steps

Canada has withdrawn 41 diplomats from India amid a dispute over the murder of a Sikh separatist, announced foreign minister Melanie Joly, adding that Ottawa would not take retaliatory steps.

New Delhi last month asked Ottawa to reduce its diplomatic presence after prime minister Justin Trudeau said there was credible evidence of a potential link between Indian agents and the murder in June of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, 45, who was shot outside a Sikh temple in British Columbia.

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India’s supreme court declines to legally recognise same-sex marriage

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Judges say decision should be made by parliament but stress that such unions should not face discrimination

India’s top court has declined to grant legal recognition to same-sex marriages, saying it is beyond its scope and should be decided by parliament, but emphasising that queer relationships should not face discrimination by the state.

The marriage ruling will be a disappointment for LGBTQ+ people in India, who had hoped the supreme court judges would recognise their constitutional right to marriage equality.

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SAS had ‘gone too far’ in Afghanistan, inquiry into claims of unlawful killings told

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Memo by military police chief said there was ‘no shortage of detractors’ in Whitehall of elite unit’s conduct

Senior figures in Downing Street were calling in 2016 for the SAS to have its “wings clipped” as it emerged that a growing number of suspected murders of Afghan civilians were being investigated by military police.

Critics of the elite unit’s behaviour were led by Jeremy Heywood, who at the time was cabinet secretary to the then prime minister, Theresa May, according to a memo cited last week during a public inquiry into allegations of unlawful SAS killings in Afghanistan.

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Earthquake strikes Afghanistan region still reeling from week of devastation

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Another 6.3-magnitude quake strikes outside Herat in western area where thousands were killed last week

A powerful 6.3-magnitude earthquake has struck western Afghanistan, just over a week after strong quakes and aftershocks killed thousands of people and flattened entire villages in the same region.

The US Geological Survey said the latest quake’s epicentre was about 21 miles (34km) outside Herat, the provincial capital, and the focus was 5 miles below the surface.

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Fears of more casualties as further earthquakes hit Afghanistan

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Hospitals are at capacity since the quakes occurred around the city of Herat, and the Taliban are ill-equipped to respond effectively

Another powerful earthquake struck western Afghanistan on Wednesday morning, days after a series of quakes in the same region killed thousands of people.

The 6.3 magnitude earthquake hit an area 28km (17 miles) south of Herat’s regional capital at 5.11am local time, killing one person and injuring at least 150 people.

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Four British men freed by Taliban after being held in Afghanistan

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The men were all detained over allegedly breaking the country’s laws earlier this year

Four British nationals who were held in Taliban custody in Afghanistan have been released and are to return to the UK on Tuesday.

The Presidium Network, a British not-for-profit organisation that works in conflict zones and has assisted the men, named three of them as Kevin Cornwell, a charity medic; Miles Routledge and Ian Purchase. The other cannot be named for legal reasons.

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