Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Myanmar military atrocities may amount to war crimes, says rights group

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A report by Fortify Rights claims soldiers have carried out massacres and used civilians as human shields

The Myanmar military kidnapped civilians and forced them to work as human shields, attacked homes, churches and carried out massacres, according to a report that warns recent atrocities in eastern Myanmar may amount to war crimes.

The report, by the Myanmar-founded human rights group Fortify Rights, documents abuses by the country’s military in Karenni state, also known as Kayah state, an area that has seen intense fighting between the army and groups opposed to last year’s military coup.

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Pakistan court acquits man who killed sister after parents’ pardon

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Waseem Azeem acquitted of murdering Qandeel Baloch after his parents pardoned him under Islamic law, lawyer says

A Pakistani man sentenced to life in prison in 2019 for strangling his sister, a model on social media, has been acquitted of murder after his parents pardoned him under Islamic law.

Waseem Azeem was arrested in 2016 after he confessed to killing Qandeel Baloch, 26, for posting what he called “shameful” pictures on Facebook. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison but his parents had sought his release, said Sardar Mahboob, a lawyer who represents Azeem and his family.

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Myanmar’s first literary work since coup reveals ‘courage and altruism’ of writers

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Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring was born from a desire to preserve online expressions of outrage, grief and dissent, say editors

The first literary work to emerge from Myanmar since the military seized control of the country a year ago reveals the altruism and courage of a new generation of writers, its editor has said.

Picking Off New Shoots Will Not Stop the Spring is an anthology of poems and essays, many of which were written during the military crackdown after last February’s coup. Others date from 1988 to 2020.

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The rap star of Karachi: ‘My veil cannot take away the talent I have’

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Eva B, who was brought up in a notorious slum, has become Pakistan’s latest music sensation

Her phone has been buzzing with non-stop messages and calls. Eva B, once a little-known rapper from the Karachi urban-slum settlement of Lyari, has become Pakistan’s newest music sensation, racking up millions of views on YouTube.

She is not just the first female rapper from Pakistan, she is the first veil-wearing female rapper from Pakistan’s Baloch minority. She says her brother had told her if she wanted to rap she had to wear a veil, but that it is now a part of her identity and personality as a musician.

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Exiled Chagos Islanders bask in return ‘as pilgrims to abandoned place’

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Fifty years after the UK forcibly deported them, five Chagossians have visited the disputed archipelago with Mauritius’s help

Returning to their birthplace after decades of enforced exile, five Chagossians leapt from a motor launch on to the palm-shaded beach of Peros Banhos atoll on Saturday afternoon, kissed the sand and stood – hands joined together – in prayer.

For Olivier Bancoult, Lisbey Elyse, Marie Suzelle Baptiste, Rosemonde Bertin and Marcel Humbert, it was the moment they had long anticipated – the first time they could step ashore without close close monitoring by British officials. It is 50 years since they were forcibly deported to Mauritius by the UK, which cleared the archipelago of its entire population to make way for a US military base on the island of Diego Garcia.

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Indian supplier to UK fashion brands agrees to pay £3m in unpaid wages

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Shahi Exports, which makes clothes for the UK high street, has agreed to pay staff minimum wage and arrears

India’s largest garment company has paid out an estimated £3m in unpaid wages to tens of thousands of workers, after two years of refusing to pay the legal minimum wage.

Last month Shahi Exports, which supplies dozens of international brands, agreed to pay nine months of back pay to about 80,000 workers, with further payments expected in the coming months that will increase the total paid back to workers to £7m.

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The rise in global inflation – the hit to living standards across the world

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Analysis: From Pakistan to the US, Australia to Germany, the cost of living is rising to new highs and causing new hardships

After decades lurking in the shadows, inflation is back. On Amazon, you can find fridge magnets printed with words spoken 40 years ago by Ronald Reagan, before the election that swept him into the White House.

“Inflation is as violent as a mugger, as frightening as an armed robber and as deadly as a hit man.”

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Banned by the Taliban: the Afghan girls fighting to go to school – video

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After the recent Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, millions of teenage girls have been forbidden from receiving a high school education. Taliban officials have claimed the ban is temporary, but said the same thing the last time they were in power more than two decades ago. Back then, girls of all ages never returned to school. Today, much has changed in the country, and a new generation of girls and women possess radically different aspirations than they were previously allowed to hold. An anxious population waits to see to what extent the Taliban has changed, too

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‘We have never given up’: how Afghan women are demanding their education under the Taliban

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Since recapturing Afghanistan, the Taliban have largely if inconsistently closed down girls’ schooling – but have found a new generation ready to fight for the right to study

When the Taliban reached Parveen Tokhi’s home province of Zabul in mid-August and asked to use her school as a temporary barracks, the headteacher was frightened but clear about what she had to do.

She spent the bleak years of the first Taliban government in the 1990s stuck at home like almost all Afghan women, barred from education and work. She was determined that the same shadow wouldn’t engulf another generation.

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Myanmar watches a mother’s grief as junta soldiers claim another victim

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Kyi says she begged soldiers to release her son, but they refused. Footage of her mourning beside his body has been viewed widely, just one of many similar stories

Kyi kneels on the ground, pleading for her son to wake up. Crouched beside a riverbank, she rocks back and forth, shaken with grief. Her son’s body, which has washed ashore, is motionless in the shallow water. One of his wrists is tied with rope. “My boy, I know it would be nice if you respond to me,” she cries.

It’s a video that has been seen widely within Myanmar – one Facebook video has been viewed more than a million times – but is also a scene that is tragically common. Videos and evidence of military killings are continually shared online – adding to the vast files of evidence being collected by rights groups, but also to the daily trauma that people are faced with.

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Hungry for war: my journey from peaceful poet to revolutionary soldier

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Formerly an anti-war poet, Maung Saungkha has endured a harsh training regime to prepare for armed struggle against Myanmar’s military junta

Days after the military coup in February 2021, demonstrations erupted across Myanmar. The military responded by shooting unarmed protesters with live rounds. People were beaten, arbitrarily detained and imprisoned.

On the frontlines of protests in Yangon in February and early March, I witnessed soldiers and police firing live rounds into crowds, and on 8 March, I was one of hundreds of protesters who were barricaded overnight on Kyun Taw Road in Yangon’s Sanchaung township, where soldiers and police went from house to house searching for people to arrest.

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‘A bad dream’: Nepalis who made UK’s PPE speak out on claims of abusive working conditions

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Glove manufacturer Supermax has repeatedly won NHS contracts during the pandemic, despite claims of forced labour. Now, a group of former workers are seeking justice

“I don’t have any dreams for the future because every dream depends on money,” says Resham, a 45-year-old from Banke, a district in Nepal bordering the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh. “Time is passing and I’m getting older. Whatever comes my way, I will face it and go ahead with life.”

Last year, Resham returned to Nepal after spending 10 years working at Supermax, a company producing medical gloves in Malaysia. In October, the US banned imports from Supermax based on evidence “that indicates the use of forced labour”, and the month after, Canada terminated its contracts. The UK, meanwhile, has named the British subsidiary of Supermax as an approved supplier in a new £6bn contract for gloves for NHS workers.

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‘We are happy to fight you’: tensions rise on Afghan-Pakistani border

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Five Pakistani soldiers killed as Taliban-led Afghanistan resists cooperation with Islamabad

The Pakistani-Afghan border, running along Britain’s colonial-era Durand Line, is a centre of the increasing tensions between Islamabad and the Taliban, with a rise in attacks since the group came to power in Kabul.

Five Pakistani soldiers were killed on Sunday at a north-western border post in Khurram district by militants inside Afghanistan in an attack claimed by the Pakistani Taliban, Tehreek-e-Taliban-Pakistan (TTP).

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Two suspected British Islamic State recruits seized by Taliban at border

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Exclusive: first reported case of attempted international recruitment to IS since US left Afghanistan

Two suspected Islamic State recruits, one of them carrying a British passport, were seized by the Taliban when they tried to slip into Afghanistan last autumn through its northern border, the Guardian can reveal.

The men, who were carrying more than £10,000 in cash, military fatigues and night-vision goggles in their bags, were arrested after a tipoff from Uzbekistan, according to a Taliban source with knowledge of the operation.

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Kicking back at the regime: artists open another front in Myanmar war

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With the military increasing its use of informants, rappers and artists must keep their identities secret, even from one another

Early one morning last February, a group of young people gathered on a street corner in Myanmar armed with brushes and buckets of paint. In the faint light of dawn, they quickly completed their task and dispersed.

“I felt excited and nervous. I was scared too, because I didn’t want to get caught,” says Tu Tu, a pseudonym for the group’s organiser.

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Scared, hungry and cold: child workers in Kabul – picture essay

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As temperatures fall below freezing, children as young as four trying to make a living on the Afghan capital’s streets are all that stand between their family and starvation

Amid the roadside restaurants and bustling crowds in one of Kabul’s busiest markets, a 10-year-old girl is trying to sell plastic bags to shoppers squeezing past her. “If I don’t work, we will go hungry,” Shaista says. Shops in the Afghan capital are stacked with food, but her family cannot afford any of it.

Each morning, Shaista buys a few shopping bags for 5 afghani (4p) each, then goes to the market to sell them for double that. As the UN predicts that 97% of Afghans could be living below the poverty line by June, the number of child labourers and beggars has tripled in Kabul, aid workers say. Many are fighting just to survive.

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Editor arrested in Kashmir as press crackdown escalates

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Journalist Fahad Shah detained on Friday under terrorism and sedition laws in disputed Indian region

A prominent journalist has been arrested under terrorism and sedition laws, as a crackdown on the press in Indian-administered Kashmir continues to escalate.

Fahad Shah, the founder and editor of the widely read local news website The Kashmir Walla, was arrested on Friday evening when he was summoned to a police station in the southern district of Pulwama.

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Revolutionary roads: how the army tried to crush Yangon’s most anti-coup district

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Hlaing Thayar was at the centre of Myanmar’s protests, but brutal crackdowns and the collapse of the local garment industry have taken their toll

As Thitsar* walked through her neighbourhood one December morning, she was struck by its emptiness. The bamboo shacks that line the streets of Hlaing Tharyar, an industrial township on the outskirts of Myanmar’s largest city, Yangon, lay in tatters, overgrown with weeds. The vendors who once weaved through traffic had vanished, as had many of the informal settlements where they lived and the roadside tea shops where they gathered.

Streets that had once resounded with chants for democracy were now eerily silent.

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Lata Mangeshkar, legendary Bollywood singer, dies at 92

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The singer who defined music and melody for generations in India has died in Mumbai

Lata Mangeshkar, one of India’s biggest cultural icons and considered one of the country’s most influential singers, has died in Mumbai aged 92.

Prime minister Narendra Modi lead tributes for the “nightingale of Bollywood”, saying: “She leaves a void in our nation that cannot be filled. The coming generations will remember her as a stalwart of Indian culture, whose melodious voice had an unparalleled ability to mesmerise people.”

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‘We want the truth’: families of ethnic Pamiris killed in Tajikistan call for justice as tensions rise

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Urgent protection for minority groups facing increased repression needed in crisis connected to escalating clashes across central Asian ex-Soviet region, say human rights groups

Parents of men killed by Tajikistan forces have called on the international community to step in and urgently protect ethnic groups being targeted by the Tajik regime.

In a rare interview, families from the Pamiri ethnic minority have demanded that soldiers who killed their sons be brought to justice and urged the UN to prevent a new phase of conflict in Tajikistan, a landlocked country in central Asia.

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