Determined to prevent security forces from entering their community, people in the suburb of Anchar, in the disputed region of Kashmir, stand united in their desire to achieve freedom from India. Defying teargas and pellets, they are the last remaining pocket of resistance in the country's only Muslim-majority state
Category Archives: India
Pakistan PM to accuse Modi of complicity in Kashmir ‘terrorism’
Imran Khan will use UN address to highlight alleged atrocities carried out by Indian army
Pakistan’s prime minister, Imran Khan, is to follow a speech by his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, at the United Nations general assembly by accusing him of being complicit in the torture and mass detention of protesters in India-administered Kashmir.
Khan will use his address in New York next week to highlight alleged atrocities being carried out by the Indian army in the Jammu and Kashmir state since Modi’s government revoked the region’s autonomy by abrogating article 370 of the constitution.
Continue reading...The world has a third pole – and it’s melting quickly
An IPCC report says two-thirds of glaciers on the largest ice sheet after the Arctic and Antarctic are set to disappear in 80 years
Many moons ago in Tibet, the Second Buddha transformed a fierce nyen (a malevolent mountain demon) into a neri (the holiest protective warrior god) called Khawa Karpo, who took up residence in the sacred mountain bearing his name. Khawa Karpo is the tallest of the Meili mountain range, piercing the sky at 6,740 metres (22,112ft) above sea level. Local Tibetan communities believe that conquering Khawa Karpo is an act of sacrilege and would cause the deity to abandon his mountain home. Nevertheless, there have been several failed attempts by outsiders – the best known by an international team of 17, all of whom died in an avalanche during their ascent on 3 January 1991. After much local petitioning, in 2001 Beijing passed a law banning mountaineering there.
However, Khawa Karpo continues to be affronted more insidiously. Over the past two decades, the Mingyong glacier at the foot of the mountain has dramatically receded. Villagers blame disrespectful human behaviour, including an inadequacy of prayer, greater material greed and an increase in pollution from tourism. People have started to avoid eating garlic and onions, burning meat, breaking vows or fighting for fear of unleashing the wrath of the deity. Mingyong is one of the world’s fastest shrinking glaciers, but locals cannot believe it will die because their own existence is intertwined with it. Yet its disappearance is almost inevitable.
Continue reading...The last rickshaws of Kolkata – in pictures
Kolkata, one of Asia’s great melting pots, is the last place on Earth where rickshaw wallahs still haul people and goods through narrow lanes. With just hundreds left, Palani Mohan’s images capture them as they disappear.
Almost all of the pullers originate from the state of Bihar, one of India’s poorest. They come here looking for work, leaving their families behind in the villages. It’s a hard and lonely existence, and one that is slowly dying out. The government of West Bengal state has described the jobs of the rickshaw pullers as ‘barbaric’, ‘despicable’ and ‘inhuman’. There is no place in the world today, it says, for ‘human horses’. Men with bare feet pulling others for 18 hours a day in the heat and the rain, for just a few rupees. But the city’s residents disagree
Continue reading...‘Tone deaf’ ads use slave ship images to promote UK sea-going sector
Campaign accused of ignoring colonial abuses when setting out maritime industries’ future
Historians and academics have labelled a new government campaign “tone deaf” and “historically illiterate” for using images of ships used for slavery and colonisation to promote Britain’s maritime sector.
The UK has a long history with commercial shipping, reaching as far back as 1700 ⚓️
Our #Maritime2050 plan maps out the next 30 years of innovation. Find out more https://t.co/VqYPNw300C #LISW19 pic.twitter.com/0Olw3gk2F8
Justin Welby prostrates himself in apology for British massacre at Amritsar
Archbishop says sorry ‘in the name of Christ’ over killing of 379 unarmed protesters in 1919
The archbishop of Canterbury has apologised “in the name of Christ” for the 1919 massacre at Amritsar in India, when hundreds of people were shot dead by British forces.
Prostrating himself at the memorial to the Jallianwala Bagh killings, Justin Welby said: “The souls of those who were killed or wounded, of the bereaved, cry out to us from these stones and warn us about power and the misuse of power.
Continue reading...#MeToo Bangladesh: the textile workers uniting against harassment
Women routinely face sexual assault and exploitation in factories, many of which supply western brands. A grassroots movement is helping victims to seek justice
Dolly Akhtar was only 16 when she started work in a garment factory in Dhaka, Bangladesh, stitching clothing destined for shop floors in western countries thousands of miles away. She accepted the long hours and low pay, but what she wasn’t expecting was the sexual advances of her older, married line manager.
“When the line manager at the very first factory I worked at tried to get me to sleep with him, I was terrified,” she says. She left her job and found another but encountered similar problems there. “At the other factory, the management would curse and hit us. The men leered at us,” she says.
Continue reading...The psychiatrist helping mentally ill people left to wander India’s streets | Anne Pinto-Rodrigues
Dr Vatwani has spent three decades reuniting patients with mental health problems with their families
To the horror of the watching doctors, a young man on a Mumbai street picked up a broken coconut shell, scooped up dirty gutter water with it, and drank.
“I still recall the scene vividly,” says 61-year-old Mumbai psychiatrist Dr Bharat Vatwani. “My wife, Smitha – also a psychiatrist – and I, watched from across the street.”
Continue reading...India moon mission: Vikram lunar lander found on surface
Efforts are underway to establish contact, days after communications were lost during failed landing
The lander module from India’s moon mission has been located on the lunar surface, the day after it lost contact with the space station, and efforts are underway to try to establish contact with it, the head of the nation’s space agency said.
The cameras from the moon mission’s orbiter had located the lander, said K. Sivan, the chairman of the Indian Space and Research Organisation (ISRO) according to the Press Trust of India news agency. He added: “It must have been a hard landing.”
Continue reading...Family demand justice for Kashmiri teenager killed in ‘unprovoked attack’
Death of Asrar Ahmad Khan in Indian-administered Kashmir has intensified scrutiny of authorities
The father of a teenager killed in Kashmir has demanded justice for his son, after witnesses said he was fired at with pellets and teargas in an unprovoked attack by Indian security forces.
Asrar Ahmad Khan, described as a shy and studious teenager, died last week 11 days before his 18th birthday. He had spent almost a month in hospital, where he was being treated for injuries sustained during the incident on 6 August.
Continue reading...India’s moon landing suffers last-minute communications loss
Prime minister Narendra Modi consoles scientists distraught as complex mission goes awry
India’s attempt to land an unmanned craft on the moon’s uncharted south polar region appears to have gone awry, when communication with the landing vehicle was lost moments before touchdown.
“Communications from lander to ground station was lost,” said Kailasavadivoo Sivan, chairman of the Indian Space Research Organisation early on Saturday. Data was still being analysed, he told a room full of distraught scientists at the agency’s tracking centre in Bengaluru.
Continue reading...73-year-old woman gives birth to twin girls in India – video
A 73-year-old woman in southern India who has given birth to healthy twin girls may be the oldest woman to conceive. Mangayamma Yaramati started the menopause 25 years ago and so an egg was taken from a donor and fertilised with her 82-year-old husband Sitarama Rajarao’s sperm through IVF. She conceived in the first cycle and was found to be pregnant in January
Continue reading...Indian woman, 73 gives birth to twin girls
Mangayamma Yaramati and babies in good health, say doctors in Andhra Pradesh
A 73-year-old woman in southern India who has given birth to healthy twin girls described motherhood as “the happiest time of my life”.
The babies were delivered through caesarean section on Thursday. Uma Shankar, the woman’s doctor, told the Guardian the mother and her children were in good health.
Continue reading...Blast at India fireworks factory kills more than 20
Residents and politicians say authorities failed to close illegal factory that caused a fatal explosion in 2017
An explosion at a fireworks factory in northern India has killed at least 22 people and caused the building to catch fire and collapse, officials have said.
Police officer Mukhtiar Singh said 15 other people were injured in Wednesday’s blast in Batala, a town in Punjab state about 460km (285 miles) north of New Delhi. Singh said rescue work was continuing at the site.
Continue reading...Five civilians killed in Kashmir since crackdown, says army
Deaths over past 30 days follow Indian government’s decision to strip region of autonomy
Five civilians have died in Indian Kashmir, including an 18-year-old man, officials confirmed, one month after Delhi’s decision to revoke the region’s special status.
Residents across Kashmir faced a 31st day living under a heightened military presence, without phone or internet access. A communications blackout was imposed when the Indian government stripped the region of any autonomy on 5 August.
Continue reading...From Delhi street child to acclaimed photographer: Vicky Roy – in pictures
Vicky Roy has gone from surviving in a railway station on food scrounged from a train to an award-winning career in photography. But he has often returned to take pictures of India’s most marginalised children and today also uses his photography to find solutions to social problems
• All photographs by Vicky Roy
Walking on the moon? Indian actor walks on crater-like potholes – video
Poornachandra Mysore was inspired by artist Baadal Nanjundaswamy to document the conditions of the roads in Bengaluru, India. Wearing a spacesuit, Mysore decided to walk on these crater-like potholes as if he was walking on the moon
Continue reading...India: almost 2m people left off Assam register of citizens
Rights groups warn of possible humanitarian crisis as those left off list face statelessness and detention
Almost 2 million people in north-east India face the threat of statelessness and detention after they were excluded from an official list designed to root out illegal immigrants.
Security was heightened in the border state of Assam on Saturday, as millions of people waited for the final release of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) – a major bureaucratic exercise that rights groups warn could create a humanitarian crisis.
Continue reading...‘A nightmarish mess’: millions in Assam brace for loss of citizenship
People who cannot prove links to region from before 1971 face being sent to detention camps
Millions of people in north-eastern India could lose their citizenship on Saturday in what could become the biggest exercise in forced statelessness in living memory.
Human rights experts have raised serious concern over the drive against suspected illegal immigrants in the border state of Assam, warning it could create a humanitarian crisis that disproportionately affects Muslims and the region’s poorest communities.
Continue reading...Opioids addiction rising in India as US drugmakers push painkillers
As the Indian government loosens its prescription opioid laws after decades of lobbying by palliative care advocates, the cash-fed healthcare system is ripe for misuse
In the crowded waiting room of Dr Sunil Sagar’s clinic, in the working-class neighborhood of Bhagwanpur Khera, a toddler breathes from a nebulizer. The patients sit, motionless, but there is somehow tremendous noise. The clinic is a squat cement building draped in wires, a red cross on the door. Sagar sits behind a desk in a small, open room, as a squad of assistants escort patients to him.
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