Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Thousands of Afghans who helped British forces ‘remain stranded by UK’

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Damning report by MPs urges government to ensure safe passage for interpreters and contractors at risk from Taliban

Several thousand Afghans who helped British forces before the withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 remain stranded and at risk from the Taliban because of failures of the government’s settlement schemes, according to a damning report by MPs.

The defence select committee’s report urged the government to set out what action it is taking to ensure safe passage to the UK for at least 4,600 Afghans, including interpreters and contractors, who worked for UK forces.

A lack of preparedness for the number of potential applicants resulting in under-resourcing, backlogs in applications, and errors in decision making.

Poor communications with applicants causing stress to them and increasing correspondence to MPs and others.

Unclear and frequently changing eligibility criteria.

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India urges citizens to ‘hug a cow’ on Valentine’s Day

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Campaign seeks to boost traditional Indian values and offset ‘dazzle of western civilisation’

The Indian government has urged people to set aside the “western” traditions of Valentine’s Day and instead celebrate the occasion by cuddling up with the country’s sacred cows.

In a new appeal, 14 February has been declared Cow Hug Day, when people are encouraged to take the animals into an embrace. Cows are holy within Hinduism, the majority religion in India, and are considered sacred animals across the country.

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Crisis at Adani Group intensifies as Indian activists stage protests

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Opposition groups push Modi to investigate allegations by US short-seller as firm suffers market rout

The crisis engulfing the Adani Group has intensified as hundreds of members of India’s opposition parties took to the streets to press for an investigation into allegations by a US short-seller against India’s second-biggest business group which triggered its market rout.

The Adani Group said on Monday that its major investors, known in India as “promoters”, had pledged to prepay $1.1bn (£916m) in share-backed loans due for repayment by September 2024. The repayments include shares in Adani’s ports business, Adani Green Energy and Adani Transmission.

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Former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf dies after long illness

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Military ruler, one of country’s most divisive leaders after seizing power in coup, has died in exile in Dubai

Pervez Musharraf, the former army general and president of Pakistan who ruled for almost a decade after seizing power in a coup in 1999, has died in Dubai after a long illness.

The Pakistani military confirmed his death in a statement, expressing “heartfelt condolences on the sad demise of Gen Pervez Musharraf, former president, CJCSC and chief of army staff”.

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Pathaan and the king of cinema blast Bollywood out of the doldrums

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Millions flock to see return of actor Shah Rukh Khan, despite rightwing calls for a boycott

For Ganesh Lokhande, an usher at the Regal Cinema in Mumbai’s southern tip of Colaba, it’s been a quiet few years in the job. That was, until last week.

Pathaan, a new Bollywood action thriller starring Shah Rukh Khan – an actor whose superstardom has elevated him to be known in India as “the king” – has been released in cinemas, triggering excitement across the country. Long queues formed outside theatres as millions flocked to catch a glimpse of Khan’s return to the screen after four years away, now aged 57 but still playing the ravishing muscular hero.

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Jo Johnson resigns as director of firm linked to Adani allegations

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Former UK PM’s brother quits board of Elara Capital days after it was accused of using funds to manipulate share prices

Jo Johnson, the younger brother of the former prime minister Boris Johnson, has resigned as a director of a London-based investment bank allegedly linked to the Indian billionaire Gautam Adani’s crisis-ridden business empire.

Lord Johnson, a former Conservative minister who was given a peerage by his brother in 2020, resigned from the board of Elara Capital on Wednesday just days after Elara was accused of using Mauritius-based funds to manipulate the share price of Adani-linked companies and obscure their ultimate ownership.

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Indian journalist freed on bail after being jailed for two years without trial

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Muslim reporter Siddique Kappan had been charged under draconian anti-terrorism laws

Indian journalist Siddique Kappan, who was held in jail for two years without trial, has walked free after being granted bail in a case human rights groups alleged was politically motivated.

Kappan, a Muslim journalist from the southern state of Kerala, was arrested in October 2020 as he was on his way to the northern state of Uttar Pradesh to report on the high-profile case of a Dalit girl who was gang-raped and later died.

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Myanmar junta extends state of emergency, delaying promised elections

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Regime chief says military will always be country’s ‘guardian’ regardless of who is in power, as streets empty on anniversary of army takeover

Myanmar’s military regime has announced an extension to its state of emergency, effectively delaying elections the junta had pledged to hold by August, as it battles anti-coup fighters across the country.

The junta chief, Min Aung Hlaing, acknowledged that more than a third of townships were not under full military control, in comments reported by state media on Wednesday.

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Myanmar junta hit by western sanctions as ‘silent strikes’ mark coup anniversary

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The UK, US, Canada and Australia have announced a range of measures aimed at punishing Myanmar’s military

The UK, US and Canada have imposed fresh sanctions against Myanmar’s military, including some measures aimed at stopping the supply of aviation fuel to its air force, which is accused of indiscriminately bombing civilian areas.

The sanctions were announced two years on from the 2021 February coup, in which Myanmar’s military ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi, detaining her and plunging the country into turmoil.

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Revealed: how world’s biggest fossil fuel firms ‘profited in Myanmar after coup’

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Leaked tax records suggest subsidiaries of international gas field contractors continued to make millions after the coup

In the two years since a murderous junta launched a coup in Myanmar, some of the world’s biggest oil and gas service companies continued to make millions of dollars from operations that have helped prop up the military regime, tax documents seen by the Guardian suggest.

The Myanmar military seized power in February 2021 and according to the United Nations special rapporteur on Myanmar, it is “committing war crimes and crimes against humanity daily”. More than 2,940 people, including children, pro-democracy activists and other civilians have been killed, according to Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

US oil services giant Halliburton’s Singapore-based subsidiary Myanmar Energy Services reported pre-tax profits of $6.3m in Myanmar in the year to September 2021, which includes eight months while the junta was in power.

Houston-headquartered oil services company Baker Hughes branch in Yangon reported pre-tax profits of $2.64m in the country in the six months to March 2022.

US firm Diamond Offshore Drilling reported $37m in fees to the Myanmar tax authority during the year to September 2021 and another $24.2m from then until March 2022.

Schlumberger Logelco (Yangon Branch), the Panama-based subsidiary of the US-listed world’s largest offshore drilling company, earned revenues of $51.7m in the year to September 2021 in Myanmar and as late as September 2022 was owed $200,000 in service fees from the junta’s energy ministry.

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Tory peer withdraws ‘racially charged’ comments

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Exclusive: Rami Ranger criticised over comments about Pakistani journalists

A Conservative peer has apologised and withdrawn comments that were criticised for being “racially charged”, as a second referral about his conduct was made to the House of Lords standards watchdog.

Rami Ranger, a major Conservative party donor, admitted that remarks unearthed by the Guardian that he made in a letter regarding Pakistani journalists and a later TV interview about grooming and drug dealing had “caused offence”.

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North-west Pakistan in grip of deadly Taliban resurgence

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Misguided government efforts to rehabilitate militants have helped fuel recent terrorist activity

The bomber struck shortly before afternoon prayers, when the mosque in Peshawar’s bustling Police Lines district would be at its busiest. Hundreds of people, including many police officers, were inside as the device detonated, creating a blast so strong the roof and wall collapsed and 100 people were killed.

The attack on Monday was among the worst in years to hit Peshawar, a city in north-west Pakistan that has been ravaged relentlessly by deadly terrorist violence over decades. Hours after the attack, responsibility was claimed by a low-level commander from one faction of the Pakistan Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), as revenge for the death of a fighter in Afghanistan.

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Pakistan: dozens killed in mosque blast in Peshawar

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At least 59 people dead and more than 150 wounded in suicide bombing that Pakistan Taliban says it is not responsible for, in contradiction of earlier admission

At least 59 people have been killed and more than 150 injured in a suicide bombing carried out at a mosque in the city of Peshawar, as the security situation in the country continues to deteriorate.

The blast struck as 300 worshippers were praying in the mosque, located in the Police Lines area of the Peshawar, in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, where the city’s police headquarters and counter-terrorism officers are based. Most of those inside the mosque were thought to be officers.

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Tory peer accused of ‘racially charged’ attack on BBC Modi documentary

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Exclusive: Rami Ranger faces criticism over ‘deplorable’ comments about Pakistani journalists at the corporation

A Conservative peer has been accused of using “deplorable” and “racially charged language” in a scathing attack on the BBC’s recent documentary about the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi.

Rami Ranger, who is already under investigation by the standards commissioners in the Lords, was criticised for comments made about Pakistani journalists at the corporation.

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Dozens die including children in Pakistan bus and boat crashes

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Multiple fatalities after bus plunges into ravine in Balochistan province and boating accident in north-west

At least 51 people have been killed in two separate transport crashes in western Pakistan, when a bus plunged off a bridge and a boat carrying a class of children capsized.

Forty-one people are so far confirmed dead after their bus crashed into a ravine in south-western Balochistan province on Sunday, while at least 10 students died in the boating accident in north-western Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, officials said.

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Myanmar opium production surges since coup, UN finds

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Conflict and economic hardship force farmers to rely on opium, with poppy cultivation rising by 33% in 2022

Production of opium has flourished in Myanmar since the military’s seizure of power, with the cultivation of poppies up by a third in the past year, according to a UN report.

In 2022, in the first full growing season since the military wrested control from the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in 2021, Myanmar saw a 33% increase in the cultivation area to 40,100 hectares, according to the report by the UN Office on Drugs and Crime released on Thursday.

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Adani Group firms lose $9bn in value amid short-seller claims

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Hindenburg Research says world’s third-richest person, Gautam Adani, is pulling ‘largest con in corporate history’

More than $9bn (£7.3bn) was wiped off the fortune of companies partly owned by the world’s third-richest person, after an activist investor accused him of “pulling the largest con in corporate history”.

Shares in listed companies tied to Adani’s empire Adani Group lost $9.4bn in market value on Wednesday after short seller investment firm Hindenburg Research published a detailed investigation into accusations of “brazen stock manipulation”, “accounting fraud” and “money laundering.”

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Rohingya and Myanmar coup survivors launch legal complaint in Germany against junta

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Survivors of alleged abuses at hands of military unite in universal jurisdiction case over atrocities they say amount to genocide

A criminal complaint against individuals linked to Myanmar’s military has been filed in Germany by survivors from ethnic groups across Myanmar, in what activists say is a show of unity that once seemed unthinkable.

Sixteen survivors and witnesses of military abuses joined NGO Fortify Rights to file a criminal complaint with the federal public prosecutor general of Germany under the principle of universal jurisdiction, which allows the prosecution of mass atrocities in one country, even if they happened elsewhere.

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WHO urges action after cough syrups linked to more than 300 child deaths

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Deaths in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan due to kidney injury associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said

The World Health Organization has called for “immediate and concerted action” to protect children from contaminated medicines after a spate of child deaths linked to cough syrups last year.

In 2022, more than 300 children - mainly aged under 5 - in the Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died of acute kidney injury, in deaths that were associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.

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Tens of millions without power in Pakistan as national grid fails

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Energy minister says outage was caused by voltage surge in south of grid

Pakistan’s national grid suffered a major breakdown, leaving millions of people without electricity for the second time in three months and highlighting the infrastructural weakness of the heavily indebted nation.

The energy minister, Khurram Dastgir, said the outage on Monday was caused by a large voltage surge in the south of the grid, which affected the entire network.

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