Category Archives: South and Central Asia

BJP claims election victory in four states including Uttar Pradesh

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Win secures status of chief minister Yogi Adityanath, a Hindu monk known for his hardline views

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata party has claimed victory in four significant state elections, in a sign of the power of Hindu nationalist politics across the country.

The BJP defied historical precedent and retained power in Uttar Pradesh, India’s most populous and politically significant state with more than 180 million voters. Early results on Thursday showed the party had won at least 266 out of 403 seats, giving it a clear majority.

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Narendra Modi walks diplomacy tightrope with Vladimir Putin on Ukraine

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Analysis: Indian PM is reliant on Putin’s nation for arms and is conscious of shifting relations between Russia and its foe, China

As the Indian prime minister, Narendra Modi, picked up the phone to Vladimir Putin this week – the latest in several phone calls between the two leaders since Russia invaded Ukraine – he put forward a suggestion.

Modi’s push, according to an Indian government statement, was that Putin should have a “direct conversation” with the Ukrainian prime minister, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, in order to “greatly assist ongoing peace efforts”.

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‘Hijab marches’ compete with Pakistan’s International Women’s Day rallies

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Minister says women’s march violates Islamic values, prompting counter-events organised by religious groups

More than 1,000 veiled women attended marches to promote Islamic values in cities across Pakistan on International Women’s Day in an attempt to counter pro-gender equality rallies.

In Islamabad and Karachi, well-attended “hijab marches”, organised by religious groups, competed with those participating in aurat – Urdu for women – rallies, which call for an end to systemic discrimination in the country.

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‘Women of the wild’: the platform giving India’s nature experts a voice

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Frustrated by a lack of female representation, film-maker Akanksha Sood Singh set up an Instagram account to showcase ‘the untold stories of women working for science and nature’

“I wish these things wouldn’t happen to anyone,” says Akanksha Sood Singh, a wildlife film-maker based in Delhi. “But if it has happened, this is a safe space for women to come and to share their experiences.”

The safe space Sood Singh is referring to is the Instagram account Women of the Wild – India, which showcases “the untold stories of women working for science and nature”. The platform gives them a chance to promote their expertise, but also somewhere to share their experiences of working in what are often male-dominated fields where sexual harassment can often feature.

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Sri Lanka to hold state funeral for beloved sacred elephant Raja

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Raja, who will be stuffed for posterity, was considered so important that when he travelled he had his own security detail

Sri Lanka is in mourning after the death of the country’s most sacred elephant, who is to be given a state funeral and his remains to be preserved and stuffed “for future generations” on orders of the president.

Nadungamuwa Vijaya Raja, popularly known as Raja, was considered to be the largest tamed elephant in Asia and as a young calf he had been among those “chosen” as the elite elephants who carried sacred Buddhist relics during an annual parade in Sri Lanka.

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Afghan journalist Zahra Joya among Time’s women of the year

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Now a refugee in the UK, Joya and the Rukhshana Media agency defied threats to report on life for women under the Taliban

The Afghan journalist Zahra Joya has been named as one of Time’s women of the year 2022 for her reporting of women’s lives in Afghanistan through her news agency, Rukhshana Media.

Now living as a refugee in the UK, Joya continues to run Rukhshana Media from exile, publishing the reporting of her team of female journalists across Afghanistan on life for women under Taliban rule.

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‘When I surf I feel so strong’: Sri Lankan women’s quiet surfing revolution

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Women and girls have challenged conservative attitudes in the hallowed surf spot of Arugam Bay

Growing up in a small fishing village along the east coast of Sri Lanka, Shamali Sanjaya would often sit on the beach and look out at the boisterous waves. She would watch in envy as others, including her father and brother, grabbed surfboards, paddled out into the sea and then rode those waves smoothly back to shore. “I longed for it in my heart,” she said.

But as a local woman, surfing was strictly out of bounds for her. In Sri Lanka’s conservative society, the place for women was at the home and it was only the men, or female tourists, who were allowed to ride the hallowed waves in Arugam Bay, considered Sri Lanka’s best surf spot.

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Dozens of worshippers killed in Pakistan suicide bomb attack

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At least 56 people die in attack on Shia Muslim mosque in Peshawar during Friday prayers

A suicide bomber has struck inside a Shia Muslim mosque in Pakistan’s north-western city of Peshawar during Friday prayers, killing at least 56 worshippers and wounding 194 people.

The Islamic State group claimed the attack and threatened more violence against Pakistan’s Shia minority. Both IS and the Pakistani Taliban – a militant group separate from the Taliban in Afghanistan – have carried out similar attacks in the past in the area, located near the border with neighbouring Afghanistan.

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Afghanistan six months on from the Taliban takeover – photo essay

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The photojournalist Stefanie Glinski reports on a country traumatised and tired, with an uncertain future as unemployment and poverty spread and memories of freedoms fade

August’s adrenaline may have worn off but the harrowing memories have not faded. It’s been six months since the Taliban took Kabul, the country’s then president and his cabinet fled and thousands of people flooded the airport in panic, so desperate for a way out that several men tried to hold on to a departing plane and fell to their deaths.

Food distribution in the northern Jowzjan province. Due to the economic crisis, many people cannot afford food, even though it’s widely available in the market.

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People of colour fleeing Ukraine attacked by Polish nationalists

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Non-white refugees face violence and racist abuse in Przemyśl, as police warn of fake reports of ‘migrants committing crimes’

Police in Poland have warned that fake reports of violent crimes being committed by people fleeing Ukraine are circulating on social media after Polish nationalists attacked and abused groups of African, south Asian and Middle Eastern people who had crossed the border last night.

Attackers dressed in black sought out groups of non-white refugees, mainly students who had just arrived in Poland at Przemyśl train station from cities in Ukraine after the Russian invasion. According to the police, three Indians were beaten up by a group of five men, leaving one of them hospitalised.

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Reviled, harassed, abused: Narenda Modi’s most trenchant critic speaks out

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The Indian journalist Rana Ayyub speaks about the campaign to silence her that has led to charges of sedition and ‘defaming Hindus’

When I talked to the journalist Rana Ayyub in her Mumbai home last Wednesday she was calmer than she was when I had spoken to her three days earlier. But that is not saying much. Last Sunday her words were jumbled, her voice on edge. She said she had not slept. That she could not eat or keep food down. That she had had thoughts of self-harm.

“I was on a plane yesterday and I said to my brother, ‘Can you feel me sitting next to me?’ And he said, ‘Have you completely lost it?’ And I said, ‘No, I’m just not sure I’m sitting next to you. I feel like I’m in a dream.’ And afterwards, I spoke to my psychiatrist and she said, ‘You’re dissociating. You’ve had a traumatic experience –that’s your brain shutting down.’”

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Tycoon’s son sentenced to death in Pakistan in high-profile rape and murder case

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Zahir Jaffer tortured and beheaded Noor Mukadam, in July last year, in case that sparked outrage over violence against women

A court in Islamabad has sentenced to death the tycoon’s son who raped and murdered Noor Mukadam, a case that sparked outrage in Pakistan.

Mukadam, 27, the daughter of a former Pakistani diplomat, was held captive, tortured and beheaded in July last year by Zahir Jaffer, a member of a well-known industrialist family.

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‘House of love’: the calm, creative space changing young lives in Karachi

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In Lyari, a slum notorious for violence in Pakistan’s most populous city, Mehr Ghar offers young people a safe place to hang out and study – and, for many, an alternative path to gang life

Living in Lyari was like living on the frontlines of a war, says Nauroz Ghani, who grew up in the Karachi slum notorious for its bloody gang battles. So used to the constant gunfire, he says he would “become restless if a day passed by without hearing the sound of a firing”.

“My teenage years were lost to violence,” says Ghani, 24. “I had no interest in getting an education. Instead, I was attracted by their guns and activities.” He saw dead bodies on the street and one boy was killed in front of him. “All of us who lived during those days have such memories. We lived in terror, but it had become habitual.”

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‘Is the world listening?’: the poets challenging Myanmar’s military

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Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh and beyond are using poetry to come to terms with atrocities – and as a form of resistance

It has now been a year since the military coup, and the breeze of democracy has become a dead wind in Myanmar. People breathe the air of fear and pass nights of rage and despair as men and women are shot or burnt alive at the hands of the Myanmar military. Villagers leave their loved ones at home and take refuge in the forest. Once-vibrant city streets have become rows of haunted houses. The whole country is trapped in a shadowland.

As Rohingya refugees, we are all too familiar with the military’s capacity for violence and destruction. Over the past year, Rohingya people have watched with terror and anguish as the same military forces that perpetrated genocide against us now unleash their atrocities across the country.

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‘Shoot them’: Indian state police accused of murdering Muslims and Dalits

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Ahead of key Uttar Pradesh elections, state police accused of being ‘mercenaries’ of hardline Hindu nationalist government

According to police in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, it was suicide. The young Muslim man they had brought into their custody had, out of despair, killed himself in the police station toilets. But, as photos of the scene emerged, so too did suspicions.

The 22-year-old man, Altaf, was 165cm (5ft 5in) tall and weighed 60kg (9.5 stone), but the toilet tap he had supposedly hanged himself from was just 76cm off the ground and made of flimsy plastic. And why, as the police later claimed in court, was the CCTV in the police station mysteriously not working that day?

Family and friends tell a very different story: that Altaf, a Muslim man living in the town of Kasganj, was in love with and planned to marry a Hindu girl. That powerful local Hindu vigilante groups opposed to interfaith unions found out and reported him to the police. And that on 9 November 2021, Altaf was arrested and tortured to death in police custody and his family pressured to keep quiet.

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Kabul to California: how the ‘hip-hop family’ mobilised for young Afghans

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With breakdancers, artists and parkourists facing a bleak future under the Taliban, a global network stepped in to help, drawing on the activist spirit of rap culture

A veteran of the hip-hop scene and internationally celebrated breakdancer, Nancy Yu – AKA Asia One – has her fair share of people contacting her looking for advice. But the message she received in 2019 from a young Afghan was a little different.

Frustrated by his breakdancing crew’s inability to get visas to perform internationally, Moshtagh* was wondering if Asia could help. “He felt they were really good, but they felt, like, invisible to the world,” she says. “I liked him. He wasn’t trying to bug me or say ‘we need this right now’ … He seemed rather humble and honest.”

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Myanmar junta takes place of Aung San Suu Kyi at Rohingya hearing

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Military, which seized power in February 2021, seeks to throw out UN case alleging it committed genocide

Myanmar’s military junta has appeared in place of the detained Aung San Suu Kyi at the UN’s top court, where it sought to throw out a case alleging that it committed genocide against the country’s Rohingya minority.

The decision to allow the junta to represent the country in court, after it seized power in a coup last year, was strongly criticised by advocacy groups and a former UN special rapporteur, who warned that it risked delaying justice.

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West has inflicted catastrophic damage on Afghanistan, says David Miliband

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‘We are not punishing the Taliban, we are making it worse for the people,’ says former UK foreign secretary

The west has inflicted catastrophic damage on Afghanistan and its own reputation by imposing a policy of starvation on the country, according to David Miliband, the former UK foreign secretary and chief executive of the International Rescue Committee.

“If we wanted to create a failed state we could not have a more effective policy mix than the one we have at the moment,” he told the Guardian.

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Greta stands with Sami and Navalny on trial again: human rights this fortnight – in pictures

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A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico

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Long-term refugee targets ‘would help west regain moral purpose’

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Under former Tory MP Rory Stewart’s plans, countries would take in an agreed number of refugees annually

Liberal democracies can regain their lost sense of shared moral purpose by agreeing to set a long-term internationally agreed target for the number of refugees they are each prepared to take each year, Rory Stewart, a former Conservative cabinet minister, has proposed.

Unveiling his plan to the Guardian, Stewart said: “Reforming the international resettlement coalition around the Afghan crisis presents a rare opportunity for key liberal democracies to restore their moral authority, form a workable international coalition, and deliver rapid, concrete, ethical results.”

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