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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...‘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.
Continue reading...A roundup of the coverage of the struggle for human rights and freedoms, from Myanmar to Mexico
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.”
Continue reading...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
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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.
Continue reading...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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