Category Archives: South and Central Asia

Trivialising the Taliban is not the way to force New Zealand to change its Covid quarantine rules | Muzhgan Samarqandi

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My heart goes out to Charlotte Bellis but the treatment of women in Afghanistan is not comparable to the situation in New Zealand

My name is Muzhgan Samarqandi and I am from Baghlan, Afghanistan, but living in New Zealand with my Kiwi husband and our son. Like Charlotte Bellis, I too was a broadcaster in Afghanistan, back when this was possible for a woman without being a foreigner.

Bellis says that she was forced to leave her previous home in Qatar, where she was a journalist with Al Jazeera, after becoming pregnant, since it’s illegal for unmarried women to become pregnant there.

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Myanmar’s junta struggles to prevent protests planned for coup anniversary

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Junta warns public not to take part in planned ‘silent strike’ and arrests business owners who vowed to close on 1 February

Myanmar’s military junta has threatened sedition and terrorism charges against anyone who shuts their business, claps or bang pots on Tuesday, as it tries to stamp out any protests planned to mark the one-year anniversary of the coup.

The military, which ousted the democratically elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi on 1 February 2021, continues to face defiant opposition including peaceful protests and an armed resistance.

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Afghanistan: more than 100 believed killed despite Taliban amnesty offer, says UN

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Extrajudicial killings allegedly carried out despite Taliban assurances of safety for those linked to previous leadership or foreign forces

The United Nations says it has received “credible allegations” that more than 100 members of the ousted Afghan government, its security forces and those who worked with international troops have been killed since the Taliban took over on 15 August.

Secretary general Antonio Guterres said in a report that “more than two thirds” of the deaths were alleged to have resulted from extrajudicial killings by the Taliban or its affiliates, despite the Taliban’s announcement of “general amnesties” for those affiliated with the former government and US-led coalition forces.

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India homeless shiver through New Delhi cold snap as scores die from exposure

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City records coldest January day in nearly a decade while temperatures across month plummet 2-6C below normal

India’s capital, New Delhi, is shivering through an unusually harsh bout of winter cold, blamed for killing scores of homeless people and leaving other hard-up residents struggling to keep warm.

The sprawling city’s 20 million inhabitants are accustomed to year-round weather extremes, from blistering summer heat to torrential downpours and thick, toxic smog at the end of autumn.

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Joe Biden demands release of Mark Frerichs, US Afghanistan hostage

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  • President marks second anniversary of engineer’s capture
  • Family says safe return should be Biden priority

Joe Biden on Sunday called for the release of Mark Frerichs, a US Navy veteran taken hostage in Afghanistan nearly two years ago.

Frerichs, a civil engineer and contractor from Lombard, Illinois, was kidnapped in January 2020 in the Afghan capital, Kabul. He is believed to be held by the Taliban-linked Haqqani network.

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Fruit pickers lured to Portugal by the dream of a ‘raspberry passport’

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Farm workers from south Asia describe exploitative conditions at the heart of Europe’s soft fruits industry

Three days after Sagar* arrived as a worker in Portugal from Nepal, he began to worry he had made a terrible mistake. “I had expectations to get good work, good money,” he says. “But the reality was different.”

The only job Sagar, 21, could find was on one of the country’s berry farms in Odemira, a rural region on the south-west coast. Earning less than the legal minimum wage to work 16-hour days in 40C heat, he knows he is being exploited. But quitting could jeopardise his residency application – and that’s a risk he cannot afford to take.

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‘Felt like a bullet’: Bhutan prime minister mourns rare Covid death

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The remote Himalayan nation of around 800,000 people has recorded fewer Covid fatalities than almost any other country

Bhutan’s success in avoiding coronavirus is almost unrivalled but a rare patient death – just the kingdom’s fourth – shows more work was needed to fight the pandemic there, its leader says.

The remote Himalayan nation of around 800,000 people, sandwiched between China and India, has recorded fewer Covid fatalities than almost anywhere else in the world.

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Myanmar’s junta torching ‘village after village’ in bid to quell opposition

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After a year in power, evidence is growing of regime scorched-earth tactics to terrorise the civilian population

On the morning of 6 January, Boi Van Thang set out on a motorbike across the mountainous terrain of Chin state in western Myanmar. He would travel to a nearby village, he told his wife, and bring back meat for her and their seven children.

He never returned. Three days later his wife, Thida Htwe, received a call. Boi Van Thang’s body had been found. The bodies of eight other men and one boy had also been discovered.

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Boris Johnson accused of lying as emails suggest he approved Afghan dog rescue

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PM called claims he intervened to help evacuation of animal charity ‘complete nonsense’

Foreign Office emails appear to contradict Downing Street’s insistence that Boris Johnson did not personally authorise the controversial rescue of cats and dogs from a British animal charity in Afghanistan.

The release of two emails on Wednesday prompted claims that the prime minister lied, while he faces separate accusations about misleading parliament over the Downing Street parties scandal.

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Cut the cussing: the Indian man on a mission to end sexist swearing

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Many swear words in India, as elsewhere, have one thing in common – they target and shame women. Sunil Jaglan wants to empower women and end the culture of profanities

On a cold January afternoon, women gather on the veranda of a government-run nursery in Sarmathla village in the north Indian state of Haryana. Sitting cross-legged on the floor, they are eager to hear the visiting speaker.

The men and boys of the village mill about, reluctant to join the women, until Satyaprakash, a social worker, encourages them to sit on the chairs provided. “Please, join us tauji [uncle], today’s programme is about gaali [swear words],” he says.

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Lives of LGBTQ+ Afghans ‘dramatically worse’ under Taliban rule, finds survey

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Human Rights Watch reports cases of mob attacks, gang-rape and death threats, with LGBTQ+ people living in fear and unable to flee

The lives of LGBTQ+ people in Afghanistan have “dramatically worsened” under Taliban rule, according to a new survey, which highlights cases of violence, gang-rape and death threats since the group seized power last year.

The report, by Human Rights Watch (HRW), recorded nearly 60 cases of targeted violence against LGBTQ+ people since August 2021, many of whom described how Taliban rule has destroyed their lives.

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Workers paid less than minimum wage to pick berries destined for UK supermarkets

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Exclusive: Workers in Portugal picking berries ending up on the shelves of Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco allege exploitative conditions

  • Photographs by Francesco Brembati for the Guardian

Farm workers in Portugal appear to have been working illegally long hours picking berries destined for Marks & Spencer, Tesco and Waitrose for less than the minimum wage, according to a Guardian investigation.

Speaking anonymously, for fear of retribution from their employers, workers claimed the hours listed on their payslips were often fewer than the hours they had actually worked.

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Reparations to the Caribbean could break the cycle of corruption – and China’s grip | Kenneth Mohammed

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The belt and road initiative is ensnaring vulnerable countries in debt via corrupt infrastructure projects. Slavery reparations from former colonial powers could help turn the tide

As Transparency International (TI) publishes their annual Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) this week, it will be interesting to see where certain countries land: 2021 has been a bumper year for corruption.

In Britain, corruption has been on the minds of journalists, academics and practitioners alike, as Boris Johnson tries to get himself run out, the only hope of him continuing his innings lying with Sue Gray.

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There Will Be No More Night review – chilling meditation on modern warfare

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Éléonore Weber’s documentary, air-strike footage of pilots on night missions, could work well in a gallery

This hypnotic meditation on modern warfare from Éléonore Weber is an experimental cine-essay that feels closer to a gallery installation than a documentary. Watching it is a bit of a test of concentration: 75 minutes of helicopter airstrike footage from American and French missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Clip after clip of pilots following what’s on the ground hundreds of metres below. Who is that in their crosshairs: a Taliban fighter holding a Kalashnikov or a farmer with a rake? Farmers know that they get mistaken for fighters, so run and hide their tools when they hear helicopters. Which of course makes them look suspicious.

In the cockpit, we hear American voices: “Request permission to engage.” “We got a guy with an RPG.” This is the notorious video WikiLeaks dubbed Collateral Murder, a US airstrike filmed from an Apache helicopter in 2007. The rocket-propelled grenade launcher turned out to be a camera tripod belonging to a Reuters photographer, who was one of a dozen civilians killed in the attack. It’s impossible to watch and not think of computer games. “Kill! Kill! Kill” we hear in another video – you can almost feel the itch to shoot everything that moves.

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Port in a storm: the trailblazing town welcoming climate refugees in Bangladesh

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The river town of Mongla is leading the way in a project to resettle people in a region decimated by extreme weather

By the time the rising sun breaks through the morning mist over the Mongla River, the rhythmic chug of motors strapped to wooden canoes is already audible as thousands of workers are hurriedly ferried across the waterway.

They jump on to the small landing dock, pick up a potato-stuffed shingara pastry for pennies and rush towards the factories in Mongla’s export processing zone (EPZ), which has transformed the small town into an employment hub in a part of Bangladesh ravaged by the climate crisis.

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Change to aid rules needed to prevent famine in Afghanistan, say UK experts

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Former security and diplomatic chiefs warn that country is at risk of economic collapse as Taliban begin talks in Norway

Afghanistan can only be saved from state collapse and widespread starvation if the definition of legitimate humanitarian aid to the country is broadened, some of Britain’s most senior former security and diplomatic chiefs have said.

The group, including two former national security advisers, a former chief of defence staff and a former ambassador to Afghanistan, write in a letter published in the Guardian that the aid that can be sent to the Taliban-controlled country without fear of sanctions is too restricted.

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‘I’ve already sold my daughters; now, my kidney’: winter in Afghanistan’s slums

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Crushing poverty is forcing starving displaced people to make desperate choices

The temperature is dropping to below zero in western Afghanistan and Delaram Rahmati is struggling to find food for her eight children.

Since leaving the family home in the country’s Badghis province four years ago, the Rahmatis have been living in a mud hut with a plastic roof in one of Herat city’s slums. Drought made their village unliveable and the land unworkable. Like an estimated 3.5 million Afghans who have been forced to leave their homes, the Rahmatis now live in a neighbourhood for internally displaced people (IDP).

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Kerala nun who lost rape case against bishop deluged by letters of support

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Activists, artists, film-makers and nuns across India write to 50-year-old after court clears Franco Mulakkal

Hundreds of letters of support have poured in for a nun in Kerala after a court acquitted a bishop accused of raping and abusing her over two years, in the first case of its kind to hit the Indian Catholic church.

The handwritten letters from activists, artists, journalists, film-makers and fellow nuns across India have expressed outrage at last week’s court verdict that cleared Bishop Franco Mulakkal of all charges of sexual abuse after the judge said the victim, a 50-year-old nun, was not a “sterling witness”.

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Female leadership is good for the world. Just look at Barbados

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Mia Mottley is just one of a raft of strong women across the Caribbean and South America tackling society’s most pressing issues. The world could learn a lot from them

There is a common misconception that the developing world is full of archaic values and that women struggle to have their voices heard. The more countries I visit and the more female leaders I speak to, the more I am convinced the contrary is true.

In fact, those in positions of power worldwide could learn important lessons from these strong women when it comes to tackling some of society’s most pressing issues, including pandemics, the climate crisis, education and infrastructure.

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Love jihad: India’s lethal religious conspiracy theory – video

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The mutilated body of a 24-year-old Muslim, Arbaaz Aftab Mullah, was discovered on a railway track near his home. His family believe he was murdered because of his interfaith relationship with a Hindu woman and that he is one of the latest victims of the 'love jihad' conspiracy theory, which has swept across groups of Hindu nationalists in India. The theory claims that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women and luring them into marriage in order to convert them to Islam. The claims are baseless, yet the consequences are real

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