epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Monday, February 26, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
The Taliban release an 84-year-old Austrian man who was detained in Afghanistan last year (AP)
AP [2/25/2024 1:32 PM, Stephanie Liechtenstein, 223K, Negative]
An 84-year-old Austrian man who traveled to Afghanistan last year and was arrested there was released by the country’s Taliban rulers, the Austrian government said Sunday.

The Austrian Foreign Ministry in a statement identified the man as Herbert Fritz and said he arrived in Doha, Qatar from Afghanistan on Sunday afternoon. If necessary, he will be given medical treatment before continuing on to Austria, it said.

A spokeswoman for the Austrian Foreign Ministry told the Associated Press that Fritz had been held in a prison in Kabul. He was not immediately available for comment.

Writing on X, formerly Twitter, Austrian Chancellor Karl Nehammer thanked the Emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani and his team for their “strong support in releasing one of our citizens from prison in Afghanistan.”

“It is only due to our trusted collaboration that this Austrian citizen will be able to return home to his daughter and grandchildren,” Nehammer said.

Qatar’s Foreign Affairs ministry released a statement on X expressing gratitude to the “caretaker government in Afghanistan” for releasing the Austrian.

“The State of Qatar has proven, regionally and globally, that it is a trusted international partner in various important issues, and it spares no effort in harnessing its energy and ability in the areas of mediation, preventive diplomacy, and settling disputes through peaceful means ... ,” it said.

Austrian newspaper Der Standard reported last year that an Austrian man had been arrested in Afghanistan and that he was a veteran far-right extremist and co-founder of a minor far-right party that was banned in 1988, the National Democratic Party.

It said he had been in custody for a few weeks, since shortly after a far-right magazine published an article he wrote titled “Vacation with the Taliban” in which he gave a positive view of life in Afghanistan under Taliban rule. According to the report, he was accused of spying and Austrian neo-Nazis made his case public via Telegram channels.

The Taliban have barred women from most areas of public life and stopped girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade as part of harsh measures they imposed after taking control of the country in 2021, despite initially promising more moderate rule. The Taliban seized Afghanistan as U.S. and NATO troops were in the final weeks of their pullout from the country after 20 years of war.

According to Der Standard, the Austrian has been a keen traveler to dangerous locations, visiting Afghanistan in the 1980s and, a few years ago, visiting Kurds fighting against the Islamic State group in northern Syria.

Austrian officials said Fritz arrived in Afghanistan last May.
Austrian extremist released after months held in Afghanistan (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/25/2024 1:20 PM, Staff, 11975K, Neutral]
An Austrian far-right extremist who visited Afghanistan reportedly to prove it was a safe country was released on Sunday after nine months in detention there.

Herbert Fritz, 84, who according to Austrian media has close links to the far-right extremist scene, arrived in the Qatari capital Doha after being freed by Taliban authorities.

Fritz was arrested in May after defying Austria’s long-standing warning against travel to Afghanistan, which in 2021 returned to the rule of the Taliban who imposed a strict interpretation of Islam.

"I think it was bad luck but I want to visit again," he told reporters on arrival in Doha, when asked about his ordeal.

"There were some nice people but there were some foolish people also, I’m sorry," Fritz added, describing his captors.

Austrian authorities thanked Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate, for aiding Fritz’s release and said he may receive medical care in Doha before flying home.

The Taliban government’s interior and foreign ministries did not respond to a request for comment.

According to Austrian newspaper Der Standard, one of Fritz’s passions was visiting "dangerous" places, including Afghanistan in the 1980s and eastern Ukraine in recent years.

Trying to prove that Taliban-ruled Afghanistan is safe, he travelled there last year and published an article titled "Vacations with the Taliban" via a far-right media outlet.

He was arrested shortly afterwards on suspicion of espionage, Der Standard said. Such travel reports might have been a bid to portray Afghanistan as a safe country to return Afghan refugees to, the newspaper added.

In the past, according to Austrian media, Fritz has met Kurdish leader Abdullah Ocalan -- currently jailed in Turkey.

He also reportedly visited fighters of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), the main component of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the de facto army of the Kurdish semi-autonomous administration in Syria’s northeast.

Turkey views the YPG as an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) -- a group designated by Ankara and many of its Western allies as a terrorist organisation.
Afghan Girls Banned From Contacting Media In Eastern Province (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/25/2024 9:46 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
The Afghanistan Journalists Center (AFJC) has reported that Taliban police authorities in the eastern Khost Province have banned girls from contacting local radio and television channels and warned local media outlets not to accept phone calls from girls.

Regional security head Abdul Rashid Omari cited the potential for spreading immorality as the reason for giving the order in a letter he sent to the Taliban’s provincial Information and Culture department.

In the letter, published by the media watchdog AFJC’s website on February 25, Omari alleged that some private media outlets were spreading corruption by way of "illegitimate contacts" with girls through their social and educational programs.

The letter alleged that such contacts led to "inappropriate behavior" that was in violation of the hard-line Taliban’s strict interpretation of Islamic law.

It said that local media, some of which allegedly lacked the required permission to broadcast educational content, had been warned they could be summoned and prosecuted for violating the order.

Representatives of two media outlets in the province confirmed to RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi that they had received warnings but declined to reveal their identities or to have the names of their outlets published out of fear of retribution by the Taliban.

Taliban officials in Khost Province did not respond to requests by Radio Azadi for comment.

Educational and social programs have emerged as a crucial outlet following the Taliban’s banishment of education for girls past sixth grade.

AFJC communications head Samia Walizadeh told Radio Azadi that the order was in clear violation of media laws and the right for citizens to have free access to information and said the nongovernmental watchdog was demanding the order be rescinded so that "freedom of expression can be saved."

One woman from Khost Province who spoke to Radio Azadi on condition that her voice be altered for her protection said prohibiting girls from contacting the media shows that "women are slowly being removed from society as a whole."

According to the AFJC, which operates independently across Afghanistan under the country’s mass media law, 15 private radio stations and three private television outlets are broadcasting in Khost Province, along with National Radio and Television under the control of the Taliban.

In August, women’s voices were banned from being broadcast by media in the southern Helmand Province. That order warned that media outlets would face punishment and possibly be shut down if any women’s voices were broadcast on air, including advertisements.

The Taliban has used its interpretation of Shari’a law to justify its consistent degradation of women’s rights, including barring women from public spaces and education, and jailing women’s rights activists who dare protest.

Despite promises to allow press freedom after returning to power, the Taliban has also shut down independent radio stations, television studios, and newspapers. Some media outlets have closed after losing funding.

The Taliban-led government has banned some international broadcasters while some foreign correspondents have been denied visas.
Families Demand Release Of 39 Afghans Detained In Turkey (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/23/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
The families of 39 Afghan citizens detained in Turkey after they reportedly tried to reach Europe on a migrant route have called for the release and the safe return of their relatives.

The Afghan migrants were hiding inside a truck carrying boxes of tissue when they were arrested in the Çilimli district of the northwestern Duzce Province, Turkey’s state-run news agency reported on February 22.

All 39 Afghans were taken to the Immigration Department, and the truck driver was also arrested on charges of human trafficking, Anadolu reported.

Their relatives said they were attempting to reach Europe via Turkey to seek better opportunities.

The father of one of the Afghans detained in Turkey told Radio Azadi that he told his son he didn’t have money for the journey, but he left anyway and reached Turkey after staying in Iran for a month.

The man, who identified himself as Sediqullah, a resident of Nangarhar, said he now has sent his 18-year-old son money so he can return to Afghanistan.

His son is among a wave of migrants who are fleeing Taliban persecution and a country that is reeling from one of the world’s largest humanitarian crises.

Some Afghans who have been detained by the Turkish police in the past claim that they were tortured by the security forces during their detention.

“They electrocuted, tortured, and brutalized the Afghans,” said 23-year-old Rahman Heydari, an Afghan who was recently deported from Turkey.

Earlier this month, Abdul Rahman Rashid, the Taliban’s deputy minister of refugees, said some 1,600 Afghans currently languish in Turkish prisons. He said that Ankara has released more than 600 Afghans, who returned to their country.

Last year the number of Afghans deported by Turkey was in the thousands. In November alone the number was 4,000. The number of Afghans expelled by Turkey was even higher in 2022 when Ankara deported 50,000 back to their country.

According to the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, Turkey hosts one of the largest refugee communities worldwide, with some 3.6 million Syrians and more than 300,000 people from other countries, the majority of whom are Afghan.

In a 2022 report, global rights watchdog Human Rights Watch criticized Ankara for routinely pushing tens of thousands of Afghans -- many of whom are undocumented -- back to its border with Iran or deporting them directly to Afghanistan “with little or no examination of their claims for international protection.”

Neighboring Iran and Pakistan forced more than 1 million Afghans to return to their country in the past year.
Pakistan
Former Pakistani Premier Nawaz Sharif’s daughter and close aide takes over top provincial post (AP)
AP [2/26/2024 4:54 AM, Babar Dogar, 8967K, Neutral]
The eldest daughter and close aide of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif on Monday became the country’s first-ever female chief minister in eastern Punjab province.

Mariam Nawaz, 50, was elected chief minister in a 220-0 vote in her favor, beating out rival for the post, Rana Aftab, who was nominated by the Sunni Ittehad Council, an ally of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan.

Opposition lawmakers supporting Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022, boycotted the session of the 371-member Punjab Assembly.

Nawaz thanked God in televised remarks and promised she would equally serve those who voted for her and those who opposed her. “The doors of my heart and office will remain open for the opposition as well,” she said.

Nawaz’s appointment was largely expected following the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections in which her father’s Pakistan Muslim League party, or PML-N, emerged as the largest party in the National Assembly or lower house of the parliament and in the Punjab Assembly.

The PML-N, which was initially trailing candidates representing Khan’s supporters — the former cricket player turned Islamist politician was barred from running — emerged last Friday as the largest single winner in the election after receiving 24 additional seats — 20 from out of the 60 seats reserved for women, as well as four seats out of 10 reserved for minorities. Nine independent members have also joined the PML-N.

The PML-N is now heading into a coalition with the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, with Nawaz’s uncle, former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, on a firm path to becoming the next prime minister, his second term in office.

The Sharifs are one of the top two families that have dominated Pakistani politics for decades. Nawaz Sharif, who served three times as a premier, was ousted from power in 2017 in a graft case. Khan, who replaced Sharif in 2018, granted him permission to travel to London for medical treatment following a court order.

Sharif came back to Pakistan from self-imposed exile abroad and returned to politics ahead of the elections. In her father’s absence, Nawaz had led political campaigns and taken over his work.

However, many critics say Nawaz’s rise is yet another case of nepotism. Earlier, one of Shehbaz Sharif’s sons, Hamza Shehbaz, had also served as the chief minister in Punjab.
Pakistani ex-Prime Minister Khan wants the IMF to link talks to an independent audit of the election (AP)
AP [2/23/2024 4:01 PM, Munir Ahmed, 8967K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan is writing a letter to the International Monetary Fund urging it to link any talks with Islamabad to an audit of the country’s recent election, which his party alleges was rigged, an official from his party said Friday.

Senator Ali Zafar, a top leader from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, made his televised remarks after meeting with Khan at the Adiala prison, where he’s serving multiple prison sentences.

The latest development came days before the IMF releases a key installment of a bailout loan to Pakistan.

It also comes a day after IMF spokesperson Julie Kozack said the global lender was ready to work with Pakistan’s new government “on policies to ensure macroeconomic stability and prosperity for all of Pakistan’s citizens.”

The Washington-based IMF hasn’t commented on Khan’s much-publicized move to write the financial agency a letter.

Khan has come under severe criticism at home from his rivals who claim Khan tried to block a tranche of $1 billion from the IMF to Pakistan to harm the country’s economy.

Pakistan narrowly averted a default on foreign payments last summer when the IMF approved the much-awaited $3 billion bailout for it following monthslong talks with former Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who replaced Khan after his ouster in a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022.

Sharif is in talks with his allies to form a coalition government because no party could get a majority in the Feb. 8 vote.

On Friday, Sharif’s Pakistan Muslim League or PML-N has emerged as the largest party after it got 20 seats out of the 60 reserved for women, and four seats out of 10 reserved for minorities, officials said. Nine independent members have also joined Sharif’s party.

Now, PML-N enjoys the support of a total of 108 lawmakers in the parliament, according to state-run media. It said Sharif’s ally, the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, received 14 seats out of the 70 seats reserved for women and minorities, and now PPP enjoys the support of 68 members in the National Assembly.

Khan’s party has yet to receive seats from the quota reserved for women and minorities.

Though Khan’s candidates won 93 out of 265 National Assembly seats in the election, it wasn’t enough to form a government. Khan’s party says it has evidence that officials changed the election results in dozens of constituencies to convert the victories of its candidates into defeat, a charge the Election Commission of Pakistan denies.

“The PTI candidates who were winning (in the election) were defeated” because of rigging the vote, Zafar said, adding that Khan wants the IMF to call for an independent audit of the election before it continues talks on the release of loans for Pakistan.

The IMF and Khan’s former government have been at odds since the former premier didn’t fully comply with a 2019 agreement under which he got a $6 billion bailout. The release of a key tranche from that bailout remained on hold, causing a sudden increase in inflation and a devaluation of Pakistani’s currency against the U.S. dollar.

Sharif, who is set to become the country’s new prime minister, has said he will negotiate another bailout with the IMF in an effort to combat inflation and improve the country’s ailing economy, which is the biggest challenge he faces.
Pakistan’s election chaos casts shadow on next IMF deal (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [2/23/2024 4:14 PM, Abid Hussain, 2.1M, Neutral]
As Pakistan grapples with the aftermath of controversial elections, political chaos is threatening to cloud its $3bn deal with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which analysts say is key to the country’s economic stability.

On Thursday, the global lender said Pakistan’s interim government had “maintained” economic stability. The IMF’s communications chief, Julie Kozack, said the interim government had managed to achieve fiscal targets while also “protecting” the social safety net.

“We look forward to working with the new government on policies to ensure macroeconomic stability and prosperity for all of Pakistan’s citizens,” Kozack said.

But the comments from the IMF come at a time when Pakistan is about to swear in a new government after this month’s general election, which has been marred by widespread allegations of rigging and manipulation.

Former Prime Minister Imran Khan, the founder of his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party, drew a link between these allegations and the IMF loan in a statement from prison, asking the international body to carry out an audit of the elections before proceeding with the deal.

“Imran Khan will issue a letter to IMF. The charter of IMF, EU and other organisations stipulates that they can function or provide loan to a country only if there’s good governance,” Khan’s lawyer and Senator Ali Zafar told journalists after meeting the ex-premier at Rawalpindi’s Adiala Jail on Thursday. Khan is in jail over a series of convictions in cases involving a range of charges — from corruption to leaking secret documents.

Pakistan signed a nine-month standby agreement with the IMF last year. It will expire early next month, and securing another long-term plan is seen as a priority for the next government.

The February 8 elections in Pakistan saw a split mandate with PTI-backed candidates winning 93 seats in the National Assembly while the party’s main rivals, the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PMLN) and Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP), secured 75 and 54 seats, respectively.

The PMLN, PPP and smaller allies have agreed to form a coalition government, whose members are expected to take oaths next week.

The PTI was denied its electoral symbol — a cricket bat — weeks before the elections and was forced to field candidates as independents. The party also faced a nationwide crackdown that impeded its campaign but still beat the odds when its candidates won the highest number of seats. Khan was removed from office in 2022 after a no-confidence motion. Many analysts believe he came to power in 2018 with the support of Pakistan’s powerful military establishment, but they eventually fell out.

The PTI has alleged widespread manipulation in the counting and results and has said it will continue both street protests and legal cases to reclaim what it insists is a stolen mandate.

Lahore-based economist Hina Shaikh, however, said this political uncertainty wouldn’t affect the IMF’s approach. With the IMF already signalling its willingness to work with the new government, “any effort by Khan would not bear any fruit,” she said.

“Firstly, it would have no official ramifications, and secondly, it would not be in the interest of Pakistan nor IMF to end financial support. Pakistan has several payments due in the next two months and needs IMF support to stay afloat and continue leveraging other sources of revenue,” the economist told Al Jazeera.

Extending the IMF deal is critical for Pakistan, economists said. A failure on the part of the government to tackle the country’s massive economic challenges could send the nation of 241 million people into a default.

Pakistan’s foreign reserves currently stand at about $8bn, just enough to cover eight weeks of imports. The Pakistani rupee has lost more than 50 percent of its value against the US dollar over the past two years.

Inflation, which hit a record high of almost 38 percent last year, is currently nearly 30 percent, and high tariffs for electricity and gas along with other essential commodities are draining household incomes.

The looming debt obligations mean that Pakistan must be able to negotiate a new plan with the IMF as soon as the new government comes in. A recent report by Tabadlab, an Islamabad-based think tank, called Pakistan’s debt obligations “unsustainable”, saying its total external and internal debt totals up to $271bn.

A United States Institute of Peace report from last year concluded that the country needs to “repay $77.5 billion in external debt” by June 2026. “For a $350 billion economy, this is a hefty burden,” the report stated.

Pakistan’s central bank says it needs more than $6bn to service its debt obligations by June 30, the end of current fiscal year.

Emphasising the need for a continuation of the IMF loan programme, Uzair Younus, principal at the US-based advisory firm The Asia Group, said Pakistan’s economy cannot afford politics when it comes to the next IMF deal.

“Any delays due to politics or a staring contest between the next finance minister and the IMF is likely to rapidly fuel economic uncertainty, pressure on the currency and heightened default risk,” he told Al Jazeera.
Pakistani Police Detain Dozens At Postelection Protest In Karachi (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/24/2024 6:41 AM, Staff, 223K, Negative]
Pakistani police on February 24 detained dozens of political workers in Karachi who staged protests outside the provincial assembly in the southern Sindh Province against alleged fraud in February’s general elections.

Protesters had gathered in front of the assembly building ahead of the swearing-in of newly elected members.

The police also baton-charged the protesters.

Out of 168 members of the Sindh provincial assembly, 148 took their oath.

The Grand Democratic Alliance (GDA), Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam-Fazl (JUI-F), Jamaat-e-Islami (JI), PTI and Muhajir Qaumi Movement (MQM-Haqiqi) had announced plans for a joint protest outside the Sindh assembly.

Sindh’s provincial government on February 23 invoked Section 144 of the criminal code in anticipation of the protest, citing concerns about security and order. That section prohibits gatherings of five or more people and bans public assemblies, gatherings, protests, processions, or demonstrations.

The Sindh showdown comes against a backdrop of national political tension following a power-sharing agreement to allow rivals of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan to pick a candidate for prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, and president.

The Pakistan Muslim League, the Pakistan People’s Party, and smaller parties after the February 8 vote announced on February 20 that they had secured a majority to support a coalition government.
X Remains Restricted in Pakistan a Week After Suspension (VOA)
VOA [2/23/2024 4:47 PM, Sarah Zaman, 761K, Negative]
Access to social media platform X, formerly Twitter, remained restricted in Pakistan late Friday, a week after services were suspended following a high-level official’s declaration that he was involved in election rigging.

Netblocks, a cybersecurity watchdog, recorded the seventh day of service suspension. The platform was accessible intermittently during the week.

Since the beginning of the year, Pakistan’s nearly 128 million internet users have experienced service interruptions five times, according to Lithuania-based internet shutdown tracker Surfshark. The tracker recorded four restrictions last year and three in 2022.

“Pakistan’s internet censorship efforts have been alarmingly increasing, and 2024 may be a record year for the country regarding internet restrictions,” the statement said, quoting Surfshark spokeswoman Lina Survila.

Two of 2024’s five restrictions, targeting several major social media platforms like YouTube, X, Facebook and Instagram, came in January. The disruptions occurred as the PTI party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan, facing a state-backed crackdown, started online election events.

The other three restrictions were put in place as Pakistan held elections on February 8.

Pakistan shut down mobile internet services across the country on Election Day and for several hours beyond.

Authorities defended the highly controversial action as necessary to ensure election security.

Suspension of X

Facing the longest-running suspension of a social media platform in Pakistan this year, X became inaccessible across much of the country on February 17.

This came soon after Liaqat Ali Chatha, the commissioner of the Rawalpindi region, announced he had overseen large-scale election rigging. Pakistan’s elections commission quickly rejected his assertion and the official later walked back his confession in court.

Pakistan’s vote was marred by allegations of massive fraud. PTI, which won a plurality of parliament seats but fell well short of a majority, contends that its election mandate was stolen. Most other parties have also protested the results.

The caretaker government has rejected calls by the United States, United Kingdom and United Nations to probe reported election irregularities.

A pattern of restrictions

Freedom House, a global civil liberties observer, ranks Pakistan as “not free” in terms of internet freedom.

While X has only a few million users in Pakistan, the base is seen as politically active.

The power to censor or control free expression always lay with governments until about 10 years ago, said Saroop Ejaz, senior counsel in the Asia Division at Human Rights Watch. “I think we are looking at an amplified version of that [public debate]. Twitter [now X] is an amplified version of that … it seems those in power are troubled by this.”

Many are skirting the restriction through virtual private networks that allow users to hide their identities and locations online.

“In this day and age, the concept of blocking something is almost gone, because there are VPNs and other platforms that allow users to access content. Restriction just becomes a source of embarrassment. ... It creates a very negative image of Pakistan around the world,” said Asad Baig, founder of Islamabad-based watchdog Media Matters for Democracy.

Expressing concern about restrictions on freedom of expression, U.S. State Department spokesperson Mathew Miller called on Pakistan on Wednesday to restore access to any restricted social media.

The provincial court in Pakistan’s Sindh province also ordered the government to restore access to X, during a hearing on the Election Day internet outage.

Surfshark, which also is a VPN provider, said that since February 18, new users of its circumvention services in Pakistan have increased up to four times compared with last month.

Investigating online speech

So far this year, Pakistani authorities have twice set up investigation teams to probe online speech.

A joint investigation team, or JIT, that was formed this week, comprising intelligence officials among others, will probe the “malicious social media campaign attempting to malign the image of civil servants/government officials in connection with Elections 2024,” according to a government notice.

Speaking at a press briefing Thursday, Information Minister Murtaza Solangi said freedom of expression has limits.

The constitution “does not allow making insulting remarks against judiciary, military and brother countries,” he said, adding that those inciting illegal activities will be dealt with according to the country’s law.

Authorities arrested prominent Pakistani commentator Imran Riaz Khan late Thursday. Police sources told VOA’s Urdu Service that Khan was arrested for spreading religious hate. He was later charged with corruption.

In the run-up to the elections, authorities formed a JIT in January to probe a “malicious campaign” against top judiciary on social media.

The Federal Investigation Agency sent notices to more than 100 journalists, commentators, politicians and activists accused of “spreading defamatory and false information against state institutions” and called them in for questioning.

The Supreme Court later stopped authorities from taking any action.
Pakistan Supreme Court Defends Ruling On Minorities After Backlash (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [2/23/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 304K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s Supreme Court has defended its top judge after a ruling he issued related to blasphemy that sparked an online backlash and led to thinly veiled death threats.

The campaign targeting Supreme Court Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa began after he ordered the release of a man from the Ahmadi religious sect, considered heretical by hardline Muslim scholars.

The man had been accused of disseminating a forbidden Ahmadi text, which firebrand clerics consider tantamount to blasphemy –- a hot-button issue in Muslim-majority Pakistan where even unproven allegations of offending Islam have sparked violence.

The Supreme Court issued a statement on Thursday evening defending the ruling, denying that it went against the Islamic constitution.

"This impression is absolutely wrong," it said. "The organised campaign against judiciary and judges is unfortunate."

Isa’s ruling first went unnoticed two weeks ago, before it was highlighted by social media accounts linked to the Tehreek-e-Labbaik Pakistan party behind violent anti-blasphemy protests.

The Pakistani chapter of the Taliban militant group -- known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) -- called Isa "an enemy of Islam" and "a damned man".

But the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan said his ruling "protects the constitutional right of all religious minorities to freedom of religion or belief".

"Those political leaders and sections of the media that are responsible for this campaign must be restrained," the organisation said on social media platform X.

Ahmadis have been discriminated against and persecuted for decades in Pakistan, because of their belief in a 19th century prophet after Muhammad.

The second amendment of Pakistan’s constitution, made in 1974, declares Ahmadis non-Muslims.

The law also prohibits them from professing to be Muslims or spreading their faith, and allows the death penalty for those found guilty of insulting Islam.

In his judgement, Isa ruled that according to the constitution, "every citizen shall have the right to profess, practice and propagate his religion".

"Freedom of faith is one of the fundamental tenets of Islam. But sadly, in matters of religion, tempers flare up and the Qur’anic mandate is forsaken," he added.

He also said the book allegedly disseminated by the accused had not been outlawed at the time of the alleged crime in 2019.

Cleric Fazlur Rehman, the influential leader of the conservative religious party Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, said Isa’s reasoning was "false and based on bad intentions".

In 2011, the governor of eastern Punjab province was killed by his bodyguard after calling for reforms to the stringent blasphemy laws that Ahmadis frequently fall foul of.
India
Billionaire Press Barons Are Squeezing Media Freedom in India (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [2/25/2024 8:00 PM, Advait Palepu and Chris Kay, 5.5M, Negative]
An exodus of star anchors. Fawning coverage of India’s political leaders. Newsroom censoring of reporters who ask the government tough questions on the economy, public policy and conflict.

These are some of the changes journalists attribute to a management shakeup at New Delhi Television Ltd., which billionaire Gautam Adani acquired more than a year ago through a hostile takeover. Ahead of India’s national elections, NDTV has morphed into a government mouthpiece, according to current and former employees. They say the channel — akin to India’s CNN — has shed its reputation as one of the country’s most fearlessly independent news outlets.

“Journalism is dead,” said Ravish Kumar, a popular anchor who resigned from NDTV ahead of Adani’s takeover. These days, he said in an interview with Bloomberg News, “the only use of newspapers and channels is to create propaganda for Narendra Modi.”

On the face of it, India still has a vibrant media. With more than 20,000 newspapers and 300 TV channels, the industry reflects the vast diversity of a democracy with 1.4 billion people. But to many journalists, leadership changes at NDTV and diluted coverage across India illustrate how Prime Minister Modi has effectively brought to heel a once-riotous media. Newsrooms are being reshaped, they say, by India’s richest press barons, many of whom are close to the ruling party and depend on millions of advertising dollars from the government.

Adani, one of Asia’s richest tycoons and a longtime friend of Modi, is a high-profile case study. After his conglomerate acquired NDTV, the channel commissioned an adulatory nine-part documentary about Modi and now lands exclusive interviews with senior officials in the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. Just a few years ago, sit-downs with top cabinet members were rare and managers fretted about federal agencies raiding NDTV’s offices.

Pressure to avoid sensitive topics extends beyond Modi, according to nearly a dozen current and former employees, who asked not to be identified to protect their jobs in the industry. After a US short seller accused the Adani Group of “brazen fraud” in January of last year, the conglomerate shed $150 billion in market value at one point. NDTV’s new leaders ordered journalists not to cover the story, according to three employees, even as Adani-related shares plunged on the stock market and local and foreign media outlets published reports. Over the next 48 hours, reporters pushed back, eventually convincing senior editors to publish an article from a newswire.

There’s much at stake for Adani. NDTV recently launched two new regional channels and several more are in the works. In December, Adani also purchased Indo-Asian News Service, one of India’s oldest newswires.

“The owners of key media houses are known to have close relations with the ruling BJP party and the current prime minister,” said Somdeep Sen, an associate professor at Denmark’s Roskilde University. That “close alliance,” he added, “has been an important means of shaping and controlling India’s media.”

The Adani Group’s media operation “is politically neutral and is deeply committed to supporting professional and independent journalism and NDTV will be no exception,” said a spokesperson in a written reply to Bloomberg’s queries.

The “insinuation” that there was deliberate delay in NDTV’s coverage of the Hindenburg incident is “misinformed and based on biased information,” the spokesperson said.

With elections expected in April, many Indian journalists across the board predict deferential coverage of Modi as he seeks a third term in office. Over the past year, more than a dozen senior staff have resigned from NDTV over directives to avoid storylines that entangle government allies, current and former employees say. Fear of eroding press freedom runs alongside a broader concern about a democratic backslide in India. Human rights watchers accuse the BJP of weakening minority rights, fueling religious intolerance, and undermining independent institutions, including the media.

In a country accustomed to major corporate scandals and questions around the quality of economic data, increasing restrictions on the press could add to investor risks in India. Hasnain Malik, a Dubai-based strategist at emerging-market research outfit Tellimer, said “infringements of rights” become a problem when there’s a high risk of sanctions, in particular.

But for now, at least, Modi’s India remains a hot investment destination. Last month, the prime minister greeted hundreds of local and global business houses at a biennale summit in his home state of Gujarat. Many lavished him with praise.

Ahead of the NDTV takeover in 2022, Adani called his investment in media a “responsibility” rather than a business undertaking.

“Independence means if government has done something wrong, you say it’s wrong,” he told the Financial Times. “But at the same time, you should have courage when the government is doing the right thing every day. You have to also say that.”

For years, NDTV cultivated a reputation as an aggressive and anti-establishment voice.

Founded in the 1980s by husband-and-wife team Prannoy and Radhika Roy, the company steadily built out its content as India’s economy liberalized. In 1995, NDTV became the first private producer of national news and soon after launched India’s first 24-hour channel.

“We had a very clear mission that we would question and we would hold power to account,” said Maya Mirchandani, a former NDTV foreign affairs editor and now an associate professor at Ashoka University. “I loved the place.”

Previous governments have also been harsh on the press. During the 21-month Emergency rule imposed by former Prime Minister Indira Gandhi from the Indian National Congress party, members of Modi’s BJP famously said India’s press “crawled” when they were asked to “bend.” Following the 2014 election of Modi, many reporters and commentators, including from the political opposition, have said an “undeclared Emergency” is in place and India’s fourth estate has less scope to push back against censorship. The country’s constitution doesn’t grant ironclad media freedom like in the US. Instead, ill-defined amendments have provided plenty of leeway for federal and local governments to muzzle journalists.

Under Modi, state agencies have increasingly used money laundering laws and tax inspections to pressure editors and media owners perceived as antagonistic or “anti-national.” By one estimate, 15 journalists are currently facing charges under India’s anti-terror laws.

Intolerance towards reporters isn’t limited to the BJP. This month, journalists in West Bengal accused the police and the ruling Trinamool Congress party of blocking access to report on civil unrest in the Sundarbans. In 2022, a journalist in the central state of Chhattisgarh was arrested for writing satirical stories about the Congress-led government.

In turn, India’s media freedom ranking has steadily declined, falling to 161 out of 180 countries in the latest survey from the World Press Freedom Index.

After the ranking was released, S. Jaishankar, India’s foreign minister, rejected the report, saying something was “fundamentally wrong” with the methodology. Modi, too, has pushed back. During a June visit to the US, the prime minister said in a rare press conference that he was “really surprised” to hear India’s commitment to democratic values questioned.

Yet many of the most successful channels today publish reliably pro-government content, including Rajat Sharma’s India TV and Arnab Goswami’s Republic TV. Others, including Aroon Purie’s Aaj Tak and India Today, are frequently laudatory of Modi. “He has the Midas touch,” read a tweet from India Today’s official handle on X, formerly Twitter.

India TV, Republic TV and India Today didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Concerns about dwindling avenues for dissent are further complicated by changes to the media business. Like in many parts of the world, a subscription model hasn’t taken off in India, forcing outlets to rely on government and corporate advertising to stay afloat, said Kalyani Chadha, a journalism professor at Northwestern University.

“That’s a really significant problem,” she said.

Adani is not the only India billionaire buying up media operations. Mukesh Ambani, a tycoon whose corporate interests are often aligned with the government, acquired Network18 Group — giving him access to more than 70 media outlets followed by at least 800 million Indians.

Of course, many media organizations, including Bloomberg News, are owned by wealthy entrepreneurs. In that respect, India is no different. But what does set the nation apart is that figures like Ambani and Adani are chief executors of the government’s development goals in industries as varied as renewable energy and digital commerce.

Ambani’s Reliance Group didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The Adani Group’s takeover of NDTV was achieved through complex corporate maneuvering, buying out the channel’s biggest creditor and other shareholders, and boosting the conglomerate’s ownership stake to nearly 65%. One estimate pegged the cost of the deal at more than $100 million.

During a broadcasting break in August 2022, Kumar, who anchored shows in Hindi, picked up his phone and scrolled through a barrage of messages about the leadership change. A few months later, Kumar announced his departure, calculating that his editorial independence would be curtailed.

“NDTV will never remain the same,” he remembered thinking.

At first, the Adani Group vowed to turn the channel into an international media group. Sanjay Pugalia, the head of Adani’s media arm and a veteran journalist, was appointed executive director. He told senior staff that he didn’t want to get involved in journalistic decisions or even sit in the New Delhi newsroom, according to people familiar with the matter.

But on Jan. 2, days after the Roys resigned from NDTV’s board citing a change in leadership, Pugalia took over the couple’s corner office. Journalists said the new managers’ initial reluctance to cover the short seller’s fraud allegations against Adani that month illustrated the complexity of juggling competing priorities. Though NDTV eventually republished articles from the Press Trust of India, Reuters and Bloomberg News, staffers said harder-hitting pieces on the saga were blocked.

Pugalia didn’t respond to requests for comment.

A standoff grew within NDTV. Pugalia hired two managing editors, sidelining more experienced staff who were part of the organization for over a decade. Several reporters said the new managers micromanaged coverage, dropped sensitive stories and instead opted for soft features.

Coverage of opposition politicians was also fraught. In October, when the BJP accused opposition lawmaker Mahua Moitra of graft and misconduct, NDTV ran multiple discussions on the topic. Employees said panelists were handpicked during the first few weeks, leveling personal attacks against Moitra that went unchallenged. It was only when the company brought in a new editor that balance was restored, the employees said, with senior politicians from Moitra’s party also participating in interviews and panel discussions.

The lawmaker was eventually expelled from Parliament. She attributed that decision to her criticism of the government and the Adani Group, including how NDTV covered the story. Government officials attributed Moitra’s expulsion to sharing the password to the parliamentary website with someone on the outside.

“Multiple reach outs were made to TMC to participate,” said the Adani Media Group spokesperson, referring to Moitra’s party. “We made sure there were independent voices and representation from other opposition parties.”

Key talent also left the company, though managers linked the attrition rate to restructuring. In May, Sarah Jacob, a journalist with over 20 years of experience at NDTV, anchored a segment called “How PM Shows Respect Towards Women.” The next day she resigned. In a statement, she thanked the Roys for “building what was one of India’s great media institutions.”

“Every management transition and transformation leads to employee churn,” said the Adani Media Group spokesperson, adding that NDTV has been on a post-takeover hiring spree with more than 200 staffers added and the attrition rate dropping by 58% from before the change in ownership.

For Kumar, leaving NDTV — and watching colleagues follow — signals the end of an era for Indian journalism. Since resigning, he’s struggled to find a place in another mainstream newsroom. Instead, he’s become something of a recluse, working from an apartment on the outskirts of India’s capital and filming YouTube videos covering topics traditional outlets will no longer touch.

Kumar’s following is still huge — 8.59 million subscribers — but he worries that the government could try to block his channel or arrest him. He hesitates to leave his apartment complex.

“This is the kind of environment where everybody thinks that they’re being monitored,” Kumar said.

For now, India remains a country where freedom of expression is often tolerated in larger doses than Asian nations like Thailand or Singapore. Unlike China, social media in India is still a relatively freewheeling space. Some opposition-controlled states also offer more varied coverage, according to Sadanand Dhume, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington.

“The government hasn’t been able to snuff out all criticism simply because of India’s size and federalism,” he said.

But that freedom is fragile even in vernacular or regional media.

A few years ago, India’s information ministry temporarily cut off the broadcast of a prominent news channel in the southern state of Kerala for covering a mob attack between Muslims and Hindus in India’s capital. The government justified their decision by saying the segment was “critical toward Delhi Police and R.S.S.,” using an acronym for a far-right Hindu group.

The fear remains, Dhume said, that India’s “little islands of free expression” could sink beneath “the rising tide of government repression.”
Anti-Muslim hate speech soars in India, research group says (Reuters)
Reuters [2/25/2024 10:10 PM, Kanishka Singh, 11975K, Negative]
Anti-Muslim hate speech in India rose by 62% in the second half of 2023 compared to the first six months of the year, a Washington-based research group said on Monday, adding the Israel-Gaza war played a key role in the last three months.

India Hate Lab documented 668 hate speech incidents targeting Muslims in 2023, 255 of which occurred in the first half of the year, opens new tab while 413 took place in the last six months of 2023, the research group said in a report released Monday.

About 75%, or 498, of those incidents took place in states governed by the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, according to the report. The states of Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh accounted for the most hate speech.

Between Oct. 7 - when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, sparking the conflict in the Gaza Strip as Israel retaliated - and Dec. 31, there were 41 incidents of hate speech against Indian Muslims that mentioned the war, the report added. It accounted for about 20% of hate speech in the last three months of 2023.

The research group said it used the United Nations’ definition of hate speech - prejudiced or discriminatory language towards an individual or group based on attributes including religion, ethnicity, nationality, race or gender.

Rights groups have alleged mistreatment of Muslims under Modi, who became prime minister in 2014 and is widely expected to retain power after the 2024 elections.

They point to a 2019 citizenship law that the U.N. human rights office called "fundamentally discriminatory, opens new tab;" an anti-conversion legislation, opens new tab that challenges the constitutionally protected right to freedom of belief; and the 2019 revoking, opens new tab of Muslim majority Kashmir’s special status.

There has also been demolition of Muslim properties, opens new tab in the name of removing illegal construction and a ban on wearing the hijab, opens new tab in classrooms in Karnataka when the BJP was in power in that state.

Modi’s government denies the presence, opens new tab of minority abuse and says its policies aim to benefit all Indians. The Indian embassy in Washington and India’s foreign ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

India Hate Lab said it tracked online activity of Hindu nationalist groups, verified videos of hate speech posted on social media and compiled data of isolated incidents reported by Indian media.
India’s Assam scraps colonial-era Muslim marriage law (Reuters)
Reuters [2/24/2024 11:11 AM, Tora Agarwala, 5239K, Neutral]
India’s Assam state has scrapped an 89-year-old law that allowed marriage involving underage Muslims, against opposition from leaders of the minority community who called the plan an attempt to polarise voters on religious lines ahead of elections.

Assam, which has the highest percentage of Muslims among Indian states at 34%, has previously said it wants to implement uniform civil laws for marriage, divorce, adoption and inheritance, as the state of Uttarakhand did earlier this month.

Nationwide, Hindus, Muslims, Christians and other groups follow their own laws and customs or a secular code for such matters. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has promised a Uniform Civil Code, opposed by Muslims.

Assam repealed the Assam Muslim Marriages and Divorces Registration Act, 1935, effective from Feb. 24, Assam Chief Minister Himanta Biswa Sarma wrote on X on Saturday.

"This act contained provisions allowing marriage registration even if the bride and groom had not reached the legal ages of 18 and 21... This move marks another significant step towards prohibiting child marriages in Assam."

Asked by Reuters on Sunday whether the northeastern state would implement a Uniform Civil Code before general elections due by May, Sarma said: "Not immediately".

Many Muslims in Assam trace their roots to the neighbouring Bengali-speaking and Muslim-majority country of Bangladesh. Tension often flares between the Muslims and ethnic Assamese, who are mostly Hindu.

The BJP, the governing party in Assam - and Uttarakhand - calls itself the champion of ethnic communities.

Muslim opposition leaders said repealing the colonial-era law was discriminatory.

"They want to polarise their voters by provoking Muslims, which Muslims will not let happen," Badruddin Ajmal, a lawmaker from Assam who heads the All India United Democratic Front that mainly fights for Muslim causes, told reporters on Saturday.

"It’s a first step towards bringing a Uniform Civil Code, but this is how the BJP government will come to an end in Assam."
23 Hindu devotees die in northern India after a farm tractor overturns and falls into a pond (AP)
AP [2/24/2024 9:09 AM, Staff, 2565K, Negative]
A farm tractor pulling a wagon loaded with Hindu devotees overturned and fell into a pond in northern India on Saturday, killing at least 23 people, including eight children, officials said.

The wagon was carrying around 40 devotees on their way to take a ritual bath in the Ganges River when it veered off the road in Kasganj district of Uttar Pradesh state, police said. Officials said at least nine injured were being treated in hospitals, some of them in serious condition.

Authorities have banned tractor-pulled wagons from transporting passengers, but the order is generally flouted in rural India.

In 2022, 26 people were killed in a similar accident, also in Uttar Pradesh.

Police officer Aparna Kaushik said an initial investigation indicated that the tractor was traveling at a considerable speed before the driver lost control. It wasn’t clear if the driver had survived.

India has some of the highest road death rates in the world, with hundreds of thousands of people killed and injured annually. Most crashes are blamed on reckless driving, poorly maintained roads and aging vehicles.
After Initial Setback, India’s Opposition Alliance Starts Taking Shape (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [2/25/2024 10:19 AM, Snigdhendu Bhattacharya, 201K, Neutral]
In a significant political development ahead of parliamentary elections due in a few months, two of India’s major opposition parties, the Congress and the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP), sealed a seat adjustment deal involving four states and one union territory.

This came close on the heels of the Congress reaching a seat-sharing deal with the Samajwadi Party (SP) regarding Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh.

All these parties are part of the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance (INDIA), a bloc of over two dozen opposition parties formed last year, Currently, the Congress runs the state governments in south India’s Karnataka and Telangana, the AAP in north India’s Delhi and Punjab, and the SP is the main opposition party in BJP-ruled Uttar Pradesh in north India.

Together, the states of Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Delhi, and Goa, and the union territory of Chandigarh, account for 148 of the total 543 seats of the Lok Sabha, the lower house of the Indian parliament.

The move would help prevent the division of opposition votes and present a tough challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in many seats, the opposition hopes.

The Congress is also expected to reach seat-sharing deals with other INDIA bloc partners, Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) of Tamil Nadu, Shiv Sena-UBT and Nationalist Congress Party-SP of Maharashtra, and the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and leftist parties in Bihar. Together, these states have another 123 Lok Sabha seats.

The DMK, NCP-SP, RJD, and in recent years the Shiv Sena-UBT, are among the Congress’ steady allies.

Even though another major opposition party, the Trinamool Congress (TMC) that rules the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, which has 42 parliamentary seats, has decided to go it alone, the Congress is still hopeful of coming to an understanding with the party in West Bengal, Assam and Meghalaya.

“We hope finalization of the seat adjustment with AAP and SP would put the TMC under some pressure to contest as part of INDIA, in alliance with us,” a veteran Congress parliamentarian told The Diplomat.

These developments come about a month after the INDIA bloc suffered a series of setbacks, with Bihar Chief Minister and Janata Dal-United chief Nitish Kumar leaving INDIA and rejoining the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA), the TMC ruling out seat adjustments with the Congress and strains surfacing between the Congress and SP and the Congress and AAP.

However, the developments regarding the municipal election in Chandigarh may have helped AAP and Congress to come closer.

In February, the Congress-backed AAP candidate for the Chandigarh mayoral election won the poll but the presiding officer declared several ballots cast in favor of AAP to be invalid and declared the BJP the winner. However, the Supreme Court of India came down heavily on the presiding officer and declared the AAP candidate as the winner.

In Uttar Pradesh, SP’s long-term ally Rashtriya Lok Dal recently joined the NDA – a blow that may have helped the SP and the Congress to negotiate with more flexibility.

However, AAP and the Congress will contest on their own in all 14 seats of Punjab, where the BJP is the fourth force. Though the BJP is trying to win back the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD), its estranged ally in Punjab, SAD is in two minds over rejoining the NDA. The new round of agitation of farmers from Punjab and Haryana, seeking the federal government’s guarantees on crop prices, has started gaining momentum over the past couple of weeks and SAD is perhaps reluctant to join hands with the BJP at this point.

The Punjab equation is similar to that of the southern state of Kerala, which the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) rule, with the Congress as the main opposition. Even though the CPI-M and the Congress are friendly forces in the national political scene, they are contesting in Kerala separately.

“In states where anti-BJP parties make up the main two forces, an alliance would be counterproductive. It may increase the BJP’s vote share,” explained another veteran Congress leader.

In the 2019 Lok Sabha election in Kerala, the Congress-led alliance polled around 45 percent votes, while the Left alliance polled around 37 percent. The BJP secured 13 percent of polled votes. In the 2021 assembly election in the state, the Left alliance polled 41.5 percent and the Congress alliance polled around 38.4 percent votes, while the BJP polled 11.2 percent of polled votes.

Leaders of both Left and Congress believe it is the bipolar nature of the state’s political alignment that has kept the BJP as a distant third. Here, joining hands may lead to votes of some disgruntled supporters going to the BJP, leaders of the Left parties and the Congress feel.

It is not certain that putting up a single opposition candidate against the BJP would ensure the BJP’s defeat in many seats. In the 2019 Lok Sabha election, in a large number of seats in states like Delhi, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Haryana, the BJP alone polled more than 50 percent of votes.

Uniting opposition votes may become a factor only when the BJP’s vote share drops to around 40 percent, past trends have shown.

Nevertheless, there also were a significant number of seats that the BJP won due to a division in opposition votes. In the 2019 general election, the BJP won 62 of 80 seats in Uttar Pradesh and 15 of them came due to the division in opposition votes.

This time, too, there will be a third force in Uttar Pradesh, the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which won 10 Lok Sabha seats in 2019. However, the BSP has seen an erosion in its support base since then, as reflected in the 2022 state assembly election.

Despite the INDIA bloc starting to take shape, several other states would still see multi-corner contests as the main regional forces in Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and Telangana are neither with the NDA nor INDIA.
India’s plan to turn isles into own ‘Hong Kong’ riles environmentalists (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [2/26/2024 1:15 AM, Neeta Lal, 293K, Neutral]
A visit by India’s president to the largely unspoiled Andaman and Nicobar Islands has intensified a debate over how to manage the clashing objectives of economic development and environmental preservation.

The islands lie nearly 1,300 kilometers east of Sri Lanka, much closer to Southeast Asia. The Indian government is planning a $9 billion megaproject to transform part of the isles into what has been dubbed a South Asian "Hong Kong," complete with an international airport, a shipping terminal, tourism facilities, a power plant and an industrial park. New Delhi says this will help unleash the region’s potential as a shipping hub and travel destination, while environmentalists warn that untrammeled construction would threaten local ecology and indigenous tribes.

President Droupadi Murmu entered the fray last week with a five-day island visit. At a function in the islands’ capital, Port Blair, she stressed the need for "balance between developmental work and preservation of the environment." She also argued that in the past decade, development projects meant to stoke tourism on the islands had expanded the scope of job opportunities for young people.

The megaproject would be unlike anything the roughly 1,800-square-kilometer islands have seen before. A centerpiece would be the port, envisaged as a key project under India’s Amrit Kaal Vision 2047, a strategic blueprint for spurring maritime development in the period running up to the country’s 100th anniversary of independence. The terminal would have a natural water depth of over 20 meters, suitable for the largest containerships, which would catalyze economic growth in the region, government officials say.

Some have pointed out there could also be a security component to the initiative. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are situated along one of the world’s busiest sea routes. And India has been repeatedly alarmed by China’s growing presence in the Indian Ocean, with its port interests in Sri Lanka and a research ship’s visit last week to the increasingly Beijing-friendly Maldives.

A Delhi-based geopolitical expert who did not want to be named suggested China’s moves in an area India considers its backyard are likely a factor in the plans.

But activists in India and around the globe have been sounding the alarm over the risk to the environment as well as the Nicobarese and Shompen tribes, among the most isolated communities on Earth. Critics say the government has not clarified what could happen to the tribes, other than that indigenous people could be relocated, "if required."

The Constitutional Conduct Group, a lobby of nearly 100 former civil servants, wrote to Murmu ahead of her visit to protest the government’s push.

In an open letter to the president, who holds a largely ceremonial role but is India’s first tribal head of state, they warned that the islands’ tribes are already "almost on the brink of extinction" and that they "need to be handled with extreme care and sensitivity, not carelessly removed from their existing home territory and resettled elsewhere on the island to make room for the ‘development project.’"

In another letter to Murmu this month, a group of international genocide scholars expressed "utmost concern that the indigenous Shompen people of India’s Great Nicobar Island will face genocide if the plan to turn their island into the ‘Hong Kong of India’ goes ahead." The Shompen are thought to number a few hundred people, while Great Nicobar is home to only around 8,000 residents.

The scholars wrote, "Should the government of India’s proposal to create an international container transhipment terminal, associated port and harbour facilities, airport, power plant, defence base, industrial zones, as well as major urban development, proceed, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen."

Experts also fear that evergreen rainforests, which support rare flora and fauna and conserve fresh water, will be wiped out. "The project will have a terrible impact on the island’s ecology, destroying the last of such pristine rainforests that exist in the world," said Rajeev Suri, an environmentalist. "It will also wreck the island’s coastline that supports hundreds of endemic and endangered species including the leatherback and hawksbill turtles that come here to nest."

Suri emphasized that rainforest destruction would be at odds with emissions goals. "Rainforests are the carbon sinks of the world, critical to contain CO2 emissions causing global warming. Destroying them will not only destroy life but also hamper the transition from fossil fuels to clean energy," he said. "Given India’s commitment to curtailing carbon emissions, such deforestation must be halted."

The activist said the impact of the plan has not been properly studied. Government officials defend the plan with assurances that the worst fears are unfounded.

Arjun Munda, India’s tribal affairs minister, said the project would be executed with the "utmost precautions to maintain the sanctity of the place and its people" and "without disturbing its rich biodiversity."

Sarbananda Sonowal, the union minister for ports, shipping and waterways, stressed the importance of going ahead. "The project will be a major landmark in developing India to become a self-reliant nation and will support [the] economic development of the country."

Opponents are determined to keep up the fight.

Delhi-based environmental activist Bhavreen Kandhari, who has filed an online petition against the Nicobar project, states in her plea that the megaproject is "against nature, indigenous tribes, endangered and endemic flora and fauna and pursues a solely economic agenda, and therefore deserves to be scrapped."
One dead, one injured in blast in India’s Manipur state (Reuters)
Reuters [2/24/2024 1:13 AM, Tora Agarwala, 5239K, Negative]
One person died and another was injured in a bomb blast at a college in Imphal, the capital of India’s northeastern state of Manipur, on Friday night, security officials said.

No group has taken responsibility for the blast of the improvised explosive device (IED), the officials said.

“The IED exploded in the campus of a college [DM College campus] in the city. One person died, and the other is being treated in the hospital,” one of the officials said.

Manipur has been hit by fierce fighting since last May between members of the majority Meitei and minority Kuki communities over sharing economic benefits and quotas given to the tribes. Close to 200 people have been killed in the conflict.

Imphal, inhabited by the Meitei community, has seen several incidents of violence since the conflict first broke out.

The bomb on Friday exploded in the office of the All Manipur Students’ Union (AMSU), a student organisation, located inside the DM University campus in Imphal West district.

The two injured were immediately rushed to the hospital, where one succumbed to his injuries, the officials said.

Later at night, around 1 a.m. (1930 GMT), the office of the United Committee Manipur, a civil society organisation representing Meitei interests, was torched.

The superintendent of police, the top police official for the Imphal West district, was unavailable for comment.
India’s ‘No’ at WTO May Just Mean ‘Not Yet’ (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [2/25/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 5543K, Negative]
As trade ministers gather at the World Trade Organization summit in Abu Dhabi this week, one of the villains will, as usual, be India. And, certainly, there’s some justice to the complaint that Indian negotiators are far too ready to block consensus at such confabs unless granted concessions on their own priorities. Saying “no” often comes too easily to them.

But those priorities need to be viewed in the context of India’s fiendishly complicated domestic politics. This is a country the size of a continent, and achieving internal consensus on a drastic shift in policy is as hard — or harder — than getting agreement at the WTO.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the strongest, and most popular, leader India has had in decades. But he has always been particularly careful not to provoke widespread protests against his decisions. Although he hates to retract policies after investing political capital in them, he has twice in the past decade withdrawn legislation that enraged some of India’s farmers — a law early on in his tenure that would have made it easier to acquire agricultural land for industry, and a package of reforms in 2021 meant to liberalize India’s complicated farm subsidy system.

India’s welfare state, as so many others, is not set up for modern concerns and problems. It induces rent-seeking, and that can hold New Delhi back when it comes to making international commitments. Agriculture — one of India’s most unreformed, unproductive and politically sensitive sectors, on which a majority of Indians continue to depend — is the one subject on which no Indian leader can concede abroad what they have not yet won democratically at home.

It is this antiquated farm subsidy system that lies at the heart of India’s most intractable dispute at the WTO — its demand that temporary permission to hold large public stocks of foodgrain be made permanent.

This very week, some of India’s farmers are protesting again — a reminder that, if India says no, it is because a large subset of Indians are saying no. And a large subset of Indians can often mean a group of people larger than the populations of most WTO member states.

That doesn’t mean the objectors are always right, or that their demands don’t change over time. To see why, take a closer look at how these farmers’ stated concerns have evolved in just a few years.

In 2020-21, when farmers from northern states blocked road access to India’s capital for 16 months, they wanted to defend a farm subsidy system that guarantees state purchases, at a government-set price, of foodgrain. This process, as many pointed out at the time, no longer fits the needs of a country which is rich enough to participate in global grain markets, which is unlikely ever to run out of foodgrain, and which desperately needs its farmers to diversify into crops other than wheat and rice — to reflect modern diets and to conserve scarce water resources.

Three years on, the same group of farmers are haggling over how the switch to other crops should be underwritten. They want a new law that would guarantee them similar state purchases and a similar mandated price for two dozen other crops. The government is willing to promise only that state-run companies will buy whatever farmers can sell for five years after they move away from foodgrains to other, more climate-sensitive, crops.

If they can reach agreement, then over time India’s most productive farmers will lose their incentive to focus on rice and wheat that the government must buy. The country then will only need to maintain a grain pile sufficient to protect its population from price spikes and sudden shortages. That will, in turn, make it much easier to commit at the WTO to changes in stockholding rules. India’s political dispute has shifted in just two years from whether to change, to how to change.

From the outside, it’s easy to think of India as an undifferentiated mass of individuals with leaders who turn up in places such as Abu Dhabi to reject everything the rest of the world suggests. But this is the world’s most complex democracy, and sometimes we just have to wait while it fights its internal battles over policy that affects the rest of the world. India’s “no” at the WTO is sometimes “not just yet.”
Indian women are being told nationalism will empower them. It’s a trick (The Guardian – opinion)
The Guardian [2/26/2024 1:00 AM, Pragya Agarwal, 12.5M, Negative]
It all started in the family WhatsApp group. A member of my extended family posted photos and videos of fireworks with the caption “a very good day” and many smiley emojis. When I asked, “what are we celebrating?” she replied, “the temple in Ayodhya”. It quickly escalated into a heated discussion about the decision to build a Hindu temple in place of a mosque that was razed to the ground, and the rise of far-right ideology.

As someone who left India 20 years ago for the UK, I am often seen as an “outsider” who cannot really understand Indian politics. If I comment on the political climate I’m accused of being brainwashed by the foreign media and discriminating against India. But I see the country of my birth changing and it upsets me hugely.

I am not going to claim that this is the first time a Hindu-Muslim divide has surfaced. I remember the religious violence during my childhood when schools were closed for weeks and we couldn’t leave the house due to a curfew. But what I mostly remember is that even as a Hindu household, we celebrated Eid and my father had a Muslim “sister” who would tie rakhi on his wrist. I attended a school run by Irish Catholic nuns, a legacy of the British empire, and we celebrated all religious festivals at school and at home. I thought this was what the freedom fighters fought for: a nation for everybody. Maybe I was too young to see the simmering tensions underneath; I believed in the constitutional message that India was a secular country.

I mulled over the idea of writing about this under a pseudonym for a long time, given the abuse I’ve faced on social media every time I’ve commented on this nationalistic fervour, an intimation of the violence lurking within the movement. Often criticism of the rise of Hindu nationalism is equated with criticism of Hinduism as a religion. These are two entirely different things, one is the following of religious values and principles, the other uses religious symbols, imagery and texts to mobilise people into violence and create divisions that benefit political leadership. The people are mere pawns, and increasingly this movement is relying on women to mobilise it, from all levels of society.

Hindu nationalism has deployed gendered imagery for a long time. Women have held leadership positions in this nationalist movement. By becoming nuns or sadhvis they are seen to have risen above the baseness of carnal desire, something that holds huge moral currency. Sadhvis and other prominent women give emotional speeches at public gatherings – appealing to men’s masculinity, and women’s benevolence, to protect the nation from those who do not value their ancestors. They project an image of a pure and pious Bharat Mata (Mother India) that must reject “western values”. They also disguise their political ambition as concern for the children, and for the women they say are under threat from anti-nationalists. They claim Hindu women are being abused and converted to Islam (“love jihad”). They use these narratives to incite communal tension and violence against Muslims, fuelling rightwing ideologies.

Indian women are being bombarded by public lectures by sadhvis on media channels. They are being told that the Hindu goddesses were strong and fiery, and fought for their rights, while they are being corrupted by Muslim invaders and British colonialists. It is easy for many Indian women to believe in the message that they can fight for their rights, that this is empowering rather than an institutionalised way of living.

Women with political ambitions have to be louder, more strident, more outspoken than men to make their mark and be visible. Many of them are seen to be breaking feminine stereotypes, holding huge power and influence, crossing lines of class and caste. Other young women aspire to this kind of influence. As a result, Hindu nationalism is being seen as a movement that will liberate women from the oppressive patriarchal roles they have been relegated to.

But there is an underlying patriarchy within this movement that binds women to subservient roles with deep roots in Indian society. Hindu nationalism has long relied on gender norms. Motherhood is part of this ideology: it is the woman’s role to give birth to children who will take over the mantle of protecting the Hindu nation, and to procreate so that the Hindus are not outnumbered. A recent survey showed that a large proportion of men and women in India, of all ages, believed that women should obey their husbands, that women should be the primary carers of their children, and that men should get priority for jobs.

Alongside their regressive gender politics, these movements are often also homophobic and transphobic – the effects of such extreme ideologies are nearly always intersectional. While women may believe they are taking back control and rejecting patriarchy by leaning into Hindutva ideologies, they are giving away rights and choices over their bodies, their autonomy in public spheres and in their homes, the right to sexuality and control over reproduction: which were all hard fought for.

I feel very anxious seeing how many women from my extended family and friends are being sucked into this movement while claiming their right to celebrate their religion and express their religious views. They are the ones being brainwashed; their vulnerability being exploited to fuel Islamophobia. Many of us in the Indian diaspora are having these debates in family WhatsApp groups and with friends on Facebook, and we are watching with concern as growing numbers of women in India become enablers, but also victims of the nationalist movement.
NSB
Bangladesh’s Nobel winner Yunus fights for legacy as legal screws tighten (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [2/24/2024 3:44 AM, Faisal Mahmud, 293K, Negative]
Years of tension between the government of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the country’s only Nobel laureate, Muhammad Yunus, are coming to a head, with the 83-year-old economist facing an ever-growing list of legal entanglements.

Yunus in the past two months has been slapped with a $5 million tax bill, a travel ban and a suspended jail sentence for allegedly violating labor laws, on top of well over a hundred pending cases against him.

Earlier this month, unidentified officials claiming to be from the flagship organization he founded, Grameen Bank, reportedly seized his office building in Dhaka, which houses several of his other operations. In 2006, Yunus and Grameen Bank won the Nobel Peace Prize for helping the poor escape poverty by granting small loans, known as microcredit.

In a rare news conference on Feb. 15 -- his first in Dhaka in over a decade -- Yunus expressed shock and disappointment over the office raid. "We have faced many challenges but never have we seen such a disaster where people come from outside and take control of our office building," he said. "It’s like being thrown out of your own house by unknown men."

Yunus said his pleas for law enforcement intervention had gone unanswered.

The picture only turned bleaker for Yunus last weekend, when Grameen Bank confirmed that its board had ousted him from two businesses he founded: Grameen Telecom and health care provider Grameen Kalyan. Grameen Telecom is one of Bangladesh’s richest companies and owns a 34% stake in Grameenphone, the country’s largest telecom operator.

The government insists it has nothing to do with Yunus’ recent woes. But many analysts say the pressure stems from a perceived political threat he posed a decade and a half ago.

In 2007, riding the momentum from his Nobel triumph, Yunus sought to establish the Nagorik Shakti party, raising his profile and sparking speculation about his own political ambitions. Although he quickly dismissed any intention of running for prime minister, experts say this brief foray made a lasting impression on Hasina and her Awami League, which came to power in 2009.

Hasina over the years has been sharply critical of her would-be rival, accusing him of "sucking blood from the poor" while heading Grameen Bank.

On her watch, Bangladeshi authorities have launched multiple investigations against Yunus, culminating in his removal as Grameen Bank’s managing director in 2011 due to alleged violations of retirement rules. Further accusations of unauthorized foreign funding, including his Nobel Prize money and book royalties, were leveled against him two years later.

"One might well disagree with professor Muhammad Yunus on the efficacy of microcredit," Bangladeshi human rights activist Shahidul Alam told Nikkei Asia. "But to use the full might of the state machinery to persecute an individual simply because of a personal vendetta is blatant abuse of power."

Today, Yunus faces more than 160 cases, including alleged tax evasion. His supporters as well as independent observers claim most if not all are politically motivated.

Hasina’s law minister, Anisul Huq, told Nikkei Asia that the government had no role in "any activity that had happened with Grameen Bank" recently. "The lawsuits against [Yunus] were also filed by the country’s revenue board and anti-corruption body. They operate independently. We don’t have any role in it."

But Dhaka University law professor Asif Nazrul highlighted an "unusual rush" in these proceedings compared with the typical slow pace of labor law enforcement. "Consider the Rana Plaza or Tazreen Fashion cases, in which hundreds of laborers died because of the owners’ alleged negligence," Nazrul said. "But very little progress has been made in those cases. Whereas in cases of Dr. Yunus, the courts seem unusually proactive."

Yunus has asserted that Grameen Bank lacked legal authority to seize his office and operations, emphasizing the independent nature of the affected companies. He also argued that recent appointments of directors to take his place at Grameen Telecom and Grameen Kalyan were evidence of attempts to undermine his social enterprises and harass him.

His woes have drawn international attention. The United Nations on Sunday expressed concern over "recent incidents" involving Yunus, terming him a "valued partner" for achieving Millennium Development Goals and Sustainable Development Goals. Meanwhile, the U.S. warned that the Grameen office raid could hinder foreign direct investment in Bangladesh.

Some experts believe the pressure on Yunus has been cranked up after the U.S. and other governments tacitly accepted the early January election that returned Hasina to power for a fourth term. Like previous elections, the polls were marred by an opposition boycott and allegations of widespread irregularities.

Western governments, particularly Washington, had voiced concerns about the democratic process in Bangladesh leading up to the election. Afterward, they issued muted criticism while pledging to continue cooperation with Hasina’s government.

Political analyst Rezaul Karim Rony believes this "emboldened the government to crack down on Yunus," who is known for his close ties to Western countries. "And it seems the Western countries have very little power to change the course here."

Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in the U.S., offered a more nuanced view and stressed that the West has not abandoned Yunus. But he arrived at a similar conclusion.

"Yunus continues to enjoy the luxury of many powerful friends abroad who will use their prominent platforms to keep advocating for him," Kugelman said. "That said, their leverage is limited, and especially because Bangladesh is not feeling the heat from Western capitals that much these days."

He observed that Western powers have indeed stepped back from pressuring Dhaka on democracy issues since the election. "This has emboldened the Bangladeshi government and given it more space to tighten the screws on Yunus."
Bangladesh’s critically endangered Asian elephants get court protection (BBC)
BBC [2/25/2024 1:34 PM, Staff, 14192K, Negative]
Bangladesh’s critically endangered wild elephants have received a court order banning their adoption and protecting them from exploitation.

Animal rights groups welcomed the High Court suspension of all licences, so young Asian elephants can no longer be captured and taken into captivity.

Some of the animals have been used for begging, circuses or street shows.

There are now only about 200 of the elephants in Bangladesh, with about half of those living in captivity.

The country used to be one of the major homes for the Asian elephant but poaching and habitat loss has caused a marked decrease in their numbers.

Under the previous scheme, young elephants could be taken into captivity where the forestry department issued licenses to logging groups who would use the animals to haul logs. Others ended up in circus groups. Such exploitation broke the terms of the licences, the court said.

Rakibul Haque Emil, head of animal rights group People for Animal Welfare (PAW) Foundation in Bangladesh, said it was a "landmark order".

"In this name of training elephants, private licensees including circus parties brutally separate elephant calves from their mother, shackle them for months and then torture them to teach tricks," he said.

He said it was now hoped that captive elephants could be rehabilitated.

Actor Jaya Ahsan launched the legal case alongside PAW, and said he hoped it would be the end of harsh "training" that could be inflicted on the animals.

A spotlight was shone on the issue last year when a young elephant was killed by a train after being used for begging on the streets. They are often painted in bright colours and forced to perform tricks by their captors.

And in 2019 two emaciated elephants were rescued by police after being used for roadside begging.
Senior US official discusses Sri Lanka’s IMF program in Colombo (Reuters)
Reuters [2/23/2024 7:26 PM, Kanishka Singh, 5239K, Neutral]
Senior U.S. diplomat Richard Verma on Friday met Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe and Foreign Minister Ali Sabry in Colombo, and discussed Sri Lanka’s economic recovery and progress on its IMF program, the U.S. State Department said.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT

The South Asian island nation finalised a $2.9 billion bailout, opens new tab from the International Monetary Fund in March 2023, which helped temper skyrocketing inflation, improved state revenue and boosted foreign exchange reserves.

The country defaulted on its overseas debt in May 2022 after a severe shortage of foreign exchange reserves triggered the worst financial crisis since independence from Britain in 1948.

Sri Lanka has since made progress on about $11 billion of bilateral debt restructuring and hopes to have agreements in place with all key creditors, including bondholders, by May at the latest, Sabry told Reuters earlier this month.

KEY QUOTES

The State Department official and the Sri Lankan leaders "discussed progress on Sri Lanka’s IMF program, including economic and governance reforms aimed at putting Sri Lanka on the path to sustainable economic growth," the department said in a statement.

BY THE NUMBERS

Sri Lanka’s economy is estimated by the World Bank to have contracted by 3.8% last year but is expected to grow by 1.7% in 2024. Sri Lanka’s central bank has projected a more optimistic growth of 3% for this year.
Central Asia
How Two Years Of War In Ukraine Have Changed Central Asia (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/23/2024 8:59 PM, Reid Standish, 235K, Neutral]
As Russia’s war in Ukraine enters its third year, its effects have been global as the grinding conflict upended political assumptions, battered economies, and opened the door to geopolitical realignment.

Perhaps nowhere have the ripple effects from Russia’s invasion been felt stronger than in Central Asia, where Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan have found themselves navigating a very different looking world since February 24, 2022.

Moscow has long been the region’s leading external player, but the war has changed perceptions about Russia within Central Asia that has created openings for China, Turkey, the United States, and the EU.

But after two years of important economic, social, and political changes in Central Asia, what’s next?

To better understand how the war in Ukraine has altered Central Asia, RFE/RL asked five leading experts and journalists to explain how they think the region has changed and where it may be going in the future.

Finding A New Normal With Russia
Temur Umarov, a fellow at the Carnegie Russia-Eurasia Center in Berlin

Initially, there was a prevailing belief in Central Asia that Russia would become a toxic partner, meaning that cooperation with it would be impossible. However, the past two years of war have revealed a different reality, one where despite Russia’s isolation and economic challenges, it remains an important partner for the region.

Two years on, there are still some sectors of partnership where Moscow is a valuable partner for the authoritarian regimes in Central Asia, while Russia itself also finds the region’s five countries increasingly useful as a window to the unsanctioned world.

Within Central Asia, societal views toward Russia have evolved. People now perceive Russia through a different lens. Surveys conducted by the Central Asian Barometer and Demiscope confirm this shift, highlighting a new trend of prevailing disapproval of its northern neighbor. The war in Ukraine has played a pivotal role in reshaping public sentiment. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has drawn increased attention from the global community toward Central Asia and the region now finds itself in the international spotlight.

Looking ahead, Central Asian nations face a critical agenda. First, they must engage proactively with the international community, but the challenge lies in transforming these external financial and political opportunities into internal progress. Secondly, they need to strike a delicate balance in their relations with Russia and other global players. Avoiding the perception of blind support for Russia’s actions while simultaneously avoiding accusations from Moscow of becoming anti-Russian. Achieving this equilibrium will be pivotal for Central Asia’s future stability and prosperity.

Putting Kazakh Diplomacy To The Test
Chris Rickleton, RFE/RL Central Asia correspondent in Almaty

In Kazakhstan, just weeks before Russian forces began their bombardment of Ukrainian cities, Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev’s regime required an intervention from the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) -- a Moscow-led military bloc -- just to stay afloat, as 238 people were killed in January 2022 during the Central Asian country’s worst independence-era turmoil.

But on the eve of the war, Kazakhstan defied expectations by firmly ruling out the prospect of recognizing Russia-backed separatist entities in eastern Ukraine. Many commentators had seen Toqaev as indebted to Putin for his intervention and Kazakhstan’s neutral stance incurred the collective wrath of Russian lawmakers and Kremlin propagandists.

Some of those commentators made unsubtle references to the 7,600-kilometer border the two countries share -- the longest continuous land border in the world -- and the large ethnic Russian population in Kazakhstan’s northern provinces. But despite the tense rhetoric, Toqaev has managed to keep ties between Moscow and Astana largely stable.

So how has Kazakhstan managed to “sit on two stools,” as Kazakh political commentators put it?

Backing from China has helped.

In September 2022, Chinese leader Xi Jinping made Kazakhstan his first foreign visit since the onset of the coronavirus to Astana. While there, he issued a noteworthy pledge that Beijing would “categorically oppose the interference of any forces in the internal affairs of your country” -- a message, perhaps, to Moscow as much as the West. After that, the hyperaggressive taunting from the north somewhat died down.

This episode highlights how Russia’s war in Ukraine has inspired an international relations renaissance in Central Asia with Toaqev -- a seasoned diplomat -- and Kazakhstan at the center.

The Kazakh president occupied pride of place next to Joe Biden at the first-ever meeting between a U.S. president and his five Central Asian counterparts on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York in September. Talks in the same format between the five leaders and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz came next, followed by a visit from French leader Emmanuel Macron to Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. Toqaev has also been sure to strengthen rapport with countries like Turkey, and the Middle East more broadly.

For the Kremlin this diplomatic maneuvering represents a vexing and contradictory new status quo.

On the one hand, the last thing Moscow needs is more isolated, sanctions-stricken allies. But on the other hand, it is becoming impatient for Kazakhstan to pick a stool.

Harnessing New Opportunities
Luca Anceschi, professor of Eurasian Studies at the University of Glasgow

The Central Asian states seem to have successfully navigated the far more polarized geopolitical environment brought by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, the regions’ key players, adopted a posture of calculated distance from the Kremlin where they are not seen as Russia’s supporters despite issuing no significant criticism of the ongoing invasion.

This middle ground has come with other benefits and has been kind to leaders with nondemocratic outlooks, as seen by the success experienced by the region’s governments in their drive to regenerate their authoritarian agendas at home.

Since 2022, we have witnessed Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan find ways to prolong the time in office of their established leaders; Turkmenistan complete its dynastic succession; Tajikistan lay the groundwork for its own such succession; and Kyrgyzstan to centralize and personalize the power of its president.

When we look at the economic dimensions of the war, Central Asia has also received some benefits from the invasion. Rises in remittances from Russia -- vital for the region’s poorest economies, namely Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan -- have dovetailed with increases in bilateral trade with Russia and boosting the region’s prospects for economic growth in the process.

Much will depend on how the West responds in the future and whether these favorable conditions will stay in place in the medium-term. Increased attention on sanctions busting may, for instance, reduce Central Asia’s economic gains from the war, while a more assertive West may make occupying this middle ground more uncomfortable for Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

China, Russia, and Central Asia
Giulia Sciorati, fellow at the London School of Economics and Political Science

Two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, China’s stance on Moscow remains a balancing act, although Chinese diplomats have attempted to develop more cohesive rhetoric about the war and stepped up their diplomatic efforts toward Ukraine through high-level meetings and indirect economic support.

In the last year, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his Ukrainian counterpart Dmytro Kuleba and a new Ukrainian ambassador to Beijing was appointed -- a position that had been vacant since 2021. Notably, in July 2023, Ukrainian Deputy Economy Minister Taras Kachka visited China, marking the first ranking visit from a Ukrainian official since the war.

This search for balance is no straightforward task. Beijing and Moscow declared a “no limits” partnership shortly before the Kremlin’s invasion and China has at times awkwardly tried to prioritize its relationship with Russia, which is seen as important for jointly pushing back against the West, and its other interests.

In Central Asia, this has seen China carry out a landmark summit with all five countries in May that was followed with a road map for an enhanced economic and political partnership. Beijing has also looked to reshape its global image around the war, selling itself as a neutral peacemaker and unveiling its own outline for how to end the conflict.

Moving forward, one key question for the Central Asian states is how much distance there actually is between China and Russia for them to move through. While Beijing and Moscow do not see eye to eye on every issue, they share many key interests when it comes to the region and the wider neighborhood, as evidenced by their overlapping positions on Afghanistan, Gaza, and Iran.

This limits China’s positive image-building in Central Asia and globally, which remains overshadowed by the country’s prominent cooperation with Moscow.

An Opening For Eurasian Trade
Emil Avdaliani, professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi

The war in Ukraine made the Central Asian states become bolder in their foreign policy and has boosted the region’s importance as a corridor for global trade.

Before February 2022, both the European Union and China found the northern trade route between Asia and Europe via Russia sufficient, as they leveraged Moscow’s extensive rail network and lenient customs practices. At that time the Middle Corridor, stretching from the Black Sea across the Caspian to Central Asia, was largely overlooked, receiving minimal investment or attention from major powers.

But that’s changed since Russia’s invasion, with Western powers, China, Turkey, and smaller states along the route all making efforts to expand it.

For the countries of Central Asia, this means more space. In the case of Kazakhstan, the war gave Astana an opportunity to reassess and reduce its heavy economic reliance on Russia, despite their official alliance and membership in various Russian-led groupings. Kazakhstan has been one of the main drivers behind the Middle Corridor, which has seen new investments and trade volumes rise.

More broadly, the war and subsequent Western sanctions imposed on Moscow have turned Russia into only one among many key players in Central Asia, including the United States, the EU, India, Japan, Iran, Turkey, China, and the Gulf states.

In this vein, the war in Ukraine might have ended an era of Russian domination in Central Asia, which will continue to be eroded by new alternatives, whether they be in the form of trade routes or political partners.
Kazakhstan: Arrest of Karakalpak Activist at Uzbekistan’s Behest (Human Rights Watch)
Human Rights Watch [2/26/2024 1:30 AM, Staff, 190K, Negative]
Uzbek officials have brought wholly unfounded criminal allegations against an activist who had been living in Kazakhstan, leading to his arrest on February 15, 2024, Human Rights Watch said today. Kazakhstan authorities should reject these unfounded allegations and immediately release the activist, Akylbek Muratov, who uses the surname Muratbai and is in custody pending an official request from Uzbekistan for his extradition.

“The criminal case brought against Muratbai in Uzbekistan is a clear-cut case of retaliation against an outspoken human rights activist,” said Mihra Rittmann, senior Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “The charges have no merit and should be dropped, and Kazakhstan should release him from custody immediately.”

Muratbai, 35, became an outspoken advocate and rights defender of Karakalpaks, the indigenous population of the autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan in northwestern Uzbekistan, in the wake of the Uzbekistan government’s violent response to protests there in July 2022. Over the last two years, Muratbai, who tweets in both Russian and English, became an important contact on human rights issues in Karakalpakstan for journalists and international rights groups.

Muratbai, a national of Uzbekistan, has been living legally in Kazakhstan for over 10 years. In his various interactions with international actors, including Human Rights Watch, Muratbai has sought to foster better understanding of his native Karakalpakstan.

Police in Almaty detained Muratbai at his home on February 15. On February 17, an Almaty court sanctioned his arrest for 40 days. If, during that time, Kazakh officials receive an extradition request for Muratbai from Uzbekistan, Kazakh law courts could extend his arrest for up to one year, while they consider the request for extradition.

The charges that Uzbekistan has falsely brought against Muratbai include publicly calling for “mass riots” under article 244, part 2b of the Uzbek Criminal Code, which carries a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, and of “preparing, storing, circulating, or demonstrating materials containing a threat to public security or public order” under article 244-1, part 3g, which carries a maximum 8-year sentence.

Denis Zhivago, a lawyer specializing in refugee and asylum law at the Kazakhstan International Bureau of Human Rights and Rule of Law, who has seen a copy of the indictment, is following the case. He told Human Rights Watch that these charges appear to be in connection with videos Muratbai uploaded or shared on his YouTube account, including video recordings of Karakalpak activists speaking at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Warsaw Human Dimension Conference in early October 2023.

In early October, Uzbek security services apparently intimidated one of Muratbai’s relatives in Navoi, a town in central Uzbekistan. In an October 16 tweet, Muratbai posted, “I declare that no matter how much pressure I am under, I will not stop my activities to disseminate information about repressions against ethnic Karakalpaks in Uzbekistan.”

A week later, Muratbai tweeted that an adviser to the consul general at the Uzbekistan consulate in Almaty had invited him for a talk. In his October 25 tweet, Muratbai said: “Today’s two-hour conversation with the adviser was devoted to the topic of recent threats to my relatives from the Uzbek special services, as well as the general human rights situation in Karakalpakstan. I was asked to ‘soften the tone of my speeches a little so that journalists could not (allegedly) inflate and exaggerate my words.’”

Court documents indicate that Uzbekistan authorities filed charges against Muratbai on November 20.

Muratbai is the sixth Karakalpak activist in the last year and a half to be arrested in Kazakhstan at the behest of authorities in Uzbekistan. After holding the previous five activists pending extradition for 12 months, Kazakh authorities released them between September and November 2023. They were not extradited to Uzbekistan, but neither did Kazakh authorities grant their applications for refugee status.

Muratbai has similarly applied for asylum. On February 23, the department of social services in the Almaty city mayor’s office formally registered Muratbai as a “person seeking asylum,” an official status that should help to protect him from forcible return to Uzbekistan while his claim is under review.

Under the international law principle of nonrefoulement, Kazakhstan should not extradite or otherwise forcibly return a refugee to a place where their lives or freedoms would be threatened, or anyone to a place where they would face a risk of torture. These legal norms are also set out in the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and its 1967 protocol and the Convention against Torture, respectively. Kazakhstan is a party to both. The prohibition on the return of refugees extends to asylum seekers who have not had a full and fair determination of their refugee claims.

Human rights organizations have documented numerous cases of torture and other ill-treatment, and arbitrary detention, of individuals accused of anti-state crimes in Uzbekistan in recent years.

International human rights treaties to which Kazakhstan is party trump any bilateral or regional agreements between Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, Human Rights Watch said.

“Kazakhstan is bound by international human rights law not to return Muratbai to Uzbekistan, where he faces serious risk of politically motivated persecution,” Rittmann said. “Kazakhstan should free Muratbai immediately, so he doesn’t have to spend another day behind bars on baseless criminal charges.”
Kazakhstan: Fintech in the crosshairs as government looks to boost tax revenue (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [2/23/2024 4:14 PM, Almaz Kumenov, 57.6K, Neutral]
After Kurmet, a hairdresser in Kazakhstan’s business capital, Almaty, finished a cut earlier this month, the customer reached for his phone to pay.

This has been a standard scene for years. Kazakhs young and old have embraced banking apps with a passion. But things are changing. Kurmet had to say no on this occasion.

“Sorry, brother, only cash, you understand, now it’s like that everywhere,” Kurmet told the client, a regular at his salon.

The customer had to go out to the nearest ATM to pick up some cash to pay.

“This is my fifth client today who has had to go out scrambling for cash,” Kurmet, who asked that his surname not be used in this article, said in an interview with Eurasianet. “Me and a lot of others have stopped accepting mobile transfers. That’s why we have so many inconveniences – we’ve all got so used to being without cash.”

This might be an inconvenience for Kurmet and other small business owners like him, not to speak of their customers, but tax officials will be glad.

The ascendancy of mobile phone cash transfer technology has never sat well with them. As far as they were concerned, too many commercial transactions were being conducted without adequate scrutiny. Untold revenues were accordingly being lost.

Cash transfer technology in Kazakhstan is synonymous with one brand: Kaspi. When the bank, whose commercial success has been so great that it has even listed on stock exchanges in London and New York, brought its app to the market, it was originally conceived as an easy way for friends and family to send one another money. Just like Americans and Europeans might exchange cash on Venmo or Revolut.

Businesses and service providers quickly got in on the act.

But as far back as 2019, the Finance Ministry, which oversees the State Revenue Committee, began looking at regulating this area more strictly.

In November that year, Deputy Finance Minister Ruslan Yensebayev complained to fellow government officials: “These transactions are not being recorded fiscally.”

It took until this January for things to kick into motion. At the end of 2023, tax authorities announced they were poised to undertake an extensive audit of mobile transfers as part of an intensified fight against the shadow economy.

“Using this type of payment, businessmen do not issue cash receipts, they do not reflect turnover in tax reporting. Transfers are sent to third parties who, at the time of the sale of goods or provision of services, are not related to the business or are not registered as a business entity,” the State Revenue Committee said in a statement ahead of the mass audit.

The checks are being carried out on select categories. Entities or persons receiving mobile transfers from 100 or more different people every month for three months in a row are coming under scrutiny.

At the same time, officials emphasize that traders cannot refuse payment by debit card or QR codes, as doing so would violate consumer rights. Breaking this law can incur fines of up to $330.

The effect has been instantaneous. It is mostly just large retail chains, supermarkets, online stores that still accept payments by mobile app. Smaller-scale businesses have ruefully reverted to a medium they had happily cast aside: cash.

Lines at ATMs, sometimes annoyingly long ones, have once again become a sight.

“This situation feels like a throwback to the last century,” Aruzhan Uvaliyeva, an advertising agency employee, told Eurasianet. “I would never have thought that in 2024 we would again be carrying wallets with bills and coins. It’s all so sad.”

Zooming out, this assault on fintech is part of a broader effort to implement President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s new economic policy.

As part of a welfare-centered growth model, Tokayev says he wants the government to expand the annual gross domestic product to $450 billion by 2029, up from $260 billion at present.

Some officials have decided that low taxes are part of the problem.

Last year, the National Economy Ministry proposed increasing VAT, the sales tax, from the current 12 percent to 16 percent starting from 2025. Their main argument is that the tax burden in Kazakhstan is among the lightest in the world, inferior even to that of fellow members of the Russia-dominated Eurasian Economic Union trading bloc.

The business community is unhappy and has argued hiking taxes will only fuel inflation and expand the shadow economy.

So Tokayev has shelved the VAT idea for now.

“You can’t just increase taxes. We need to work on improving the system for collecting them and shrinking the shadow economy,” Tokayev said at a government meeting on February 7.

Arman Beisembayev, a financier at international brokerage group Tickmill, said this tightening of the tax revenue system goes against the spirit of a long-standing, unspoken social contract between the government and Kazakhstan’s population: the authorities do not demand exorbitant taxes, and the public curtails its expectations of the state.

“Everyone understands how deeply corruption has penetrated the system of government in Kazakhstan, and they do not want to pay taxes that will be stolen by officials,” Beisembayev told Eurasianet. “Now the state wants to force citizens to share their income, but without first eradicating corruption.”

The risk is that this will fuel discontent. There are some signs of this already. In January, more than 100 owners of small neighborhood stores around Almaty met with local government officials to demand a reduction in the retail tax. They complained that with the twin pressures of large retail chains and online retail, small stores cannot survive.

“With the start of the year, the problems with mobile transfers [even further] impacted sales,” the Atameken National Chamber of Entrepreneurs, a business lobby, quoted one of them as saying.

It is a measure of the government’s nervousness about public grumbling that this has already triggered a re-think.

At a government press conference on February 13, National Economy Minister Nurlan Baybazarov said official policies on mobile transfers would be subjected to further review.

“This is a sensitive issue,” he told reporters.

His colleague, Finance Minister Madi Takiyev, took a different tack. Paying taxes is the duty of every citizen and “mobile transfers will be checked come what may,” he said.

Skeptics remain unconvinced. Meruert Makhmutova, an economist and director of the Public Policy Research Center, said the priority should be to boost transparency and efficiency in the expenditure of budget resources.

“Unfortunately, our officials have little idea of how people live, how entrepreneurs work. It is more important for them to show rosy statistical indicators,” Makhmutova told Eurasianet. “Hence their ill-considered decisions.”
Three Tajik Public Figures Handed Prison Terms Over Book (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/23/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
Tajikistan’s Supreme Court has handed prison terms to three well-known public figures for writing, editing, and publishing a book that highlights some of the challenges faced by those living in the tightly controlled former Soviet republic, which the authorities ordered cleared from bookstores.

Several sources told RFE/RL on February 23 that the court sentenced Abdukhalil Kholiqzoda to 6 1/2 years, Abduqodir Rustam to 4 1/2 years, and Suhrob Rajabzoda to one year in prison after finding them guilty of inciting hatred.

There was no official announcement of the verdicts and sentences as the trial was held behind closed doors within a detention center in Dushanbe.

Lawyers and relatives of the three defendants refused to comment, while Supreme Court officials confirmed to RFE/RL that the trial session was held on February 22, but they could not comment, saying the trial judge was not available for comment.

It remains unclear if Kholiqzoda, Rustam, and Rajabzoda will appeal the sentences.

The men were arrested in August 2023 and went on trial on January 19.

The charges against them stemmed from their roles in publishing a book titled Stories Of My Life that, among other things, focused on everyday developments in modern Tajikistan, including corruption, migration, and cultural challenges faced in the Central Asian country.

The authorities confiscated all copies of the book from bookstores after the three men were arrested. The book’s author is businessman Kholiqzoda, while Rustam edited it, and Rajabzoda’s Er-Graf publishing house published it.

Self-exiled Tajik intellectuals and opposition figures condemned the arrests and the sentencing of the three men, calling the case against them a crackdown on freedom of expression.

Meanwhile, amid a lack of transparency in the country, speculation has risen that the case might be connected to a power struggle among the elite.

President Emomali Rahmon, who has run Tajikistan for almost 30 years, has been criticized by international human rights groups over his administration’s policies toward independent media, religious freedoms, civil society, and political pluralism.

In recent years, several Tajik journalists, rights activists, and opposition politicians have been handed lengthy prison terms on charges seen by rights groups as trumped-up and politically motivated.
Demand For Exorcisms On The Rise In Tajikistan And Central Asia, Despite Crackdown, Scandals (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/25/2024 8:30 AM, Farangis Najibullah and Mullorajab Yusufzoda, 223K, Negative]
Exorcism is a key source of income for Sabohiddin Shodiev, a popular cleric in his rural community on the outskirts of Dushanbe, the capital of Tajikistan.

Shodiev -- not his real name -- says that every week he treats about 15 clients who ask him to expel what they believe is an evil spirit, or jinni, possessing them, or to rid them from "an evil eye."

The 53-year-old cleric has been practicing exorcisms -- which he learned to do from his father -- for more than two decades. Most of Shodiev’s clients come from Dushanbe and nearby districts, but some to travel from faraway regions to seek his help.

Shodiev says he doesn’t have a set fee for performing the Islamic rite. "It’s up to the clients how much to pay."

Three Tajik clerics who spoke to RFE/RL claimed the demand for exorcisms is on the rise in the predominately Muslim country.

There are no official statistics in Tajikistan on exorcisms or the number of people performing the centuries-old practice, which survived decades of religious crackdowns during the atheistic Soviet era and most recently the Tajik government’s attempts to restrict exorcisms.

Tajik laws do not ban the procedure. But several men who perform exorcisms have been jailed in recent years on charges of fraud, sexual molestation, or practicing the occult.

Some Tajiks see the ongoing efforts by the secular government as a way to keep a tab on "all things religious." As part of that campaign, Islamic hijabs have been banned in schools and offices, while growing a long or bushy beard is frowned upon for young men.

Exorcisms are practiced among the followers of Islam, Christianity, and some other world religions.

There is a belief among Muslims that an evil spirit or jinni can possess a person but can be driven out of the possessed person’s body through an exorcism that includes reciting certain verses from the Koran.

But several Tajik clergymen told RFE/RL that many clerics in the country refrain from performing exorcism because it requires special training.

In the meantime, the spike in demand for exorcisms has led to a rise in the number of self-proclaimed exorcists, and charlatans, according to the clerics and officials. Many of them perform exorcisms and do faith healings.

Some also mix in elements of the occult, which is outlawed in Tajikistan and prohibited within Islam.

Tajikistan’s Religious Affairs Committee said, "Muslims believe that the Koran has healing powers, therefore they seek help [from exorcisms] to treat certain mental health issues, but unfortunately there have been cases in which some [self-proclaimed exorcists] tried to take advantage of people’s [religious] beliefs."

Exorcism Gone Wrong

Tajik law-enforcement agencies in recent years released what they called footage of self-proclaimed exorcists and faith healers molesting their female clients. The incidents were allegedly recorded by hidden cameras, which police installed after receiving complaints.

In 2021, police in the northern Sughd Province released a video that purportedly shows Alijon Ghaniev, a 50-year-old self-proclaimed exorcist and faith healer, performing an unusual ritual on a female client that ends with sexual intercourse.

According to local media, Ghaniev charged his 21-year-old client the equivalent of $14 for three exorcism and faith healing sessions.

State television showed what it described as Ghaniev’s exorcism tools, including several knives, tarot cards, various herbs, and a bunch of dried tree branches. Once in police custody, Nabiev told the TV channel that he regretted his actions "getting out of control under the devil’s temptation."

It is not clear if Nabiev’s confession was voluntary or was made under pressure.

In a similar case in 2019, a court in Hisor district handed a prison sentence to Juraboi Sochaev, who was accused of sexually harassing his female clients during exorcism rites. Sochaev charged his clients up to $270 for a session, prosecutors said.

A probe is under way in the northern city of Khujand against a self-proclaimed exorcist, Abduvali Nabiev, 68, who was arrested in October on sexual harassment charges.

Police and prosecutors said none of the men has had religious education or medical training but claimed to have special abilities to expel jinni and treat ailments.

Exorcisms made shocking headlines in Central Asia recently when a woman died due to severe beatings during the ritual in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent.

Court documents say two men used a hammer, chain, and stakes in the procedure that broke several of the woman’s ribs and caused internal bleeding. The exorcists were sentenced to 2 1/2 and three years in prison.

Gone Underground

Asked about the tragic Uzbek case, Shodiev said he has never performed or heard of an exorcism that led to physical harm.

"We do use some tools, but we don’t beat the clients to death, we just tap their elbow, for example, with the blunt side of a knife," Shodiev said.

Shodiev and many others in Tajikistan no longer perform exorcisms openly, fearing what they see as the government’s campaign against the practice.

About five to seven years ago, clients used to come to Shodiev’s house for the procedure, but nowadays he visits them in the evenings in their homes to perform the ritual.

"I don’t want to get accused of some made-up charges, like practicing the occult, for example," he said.

For some Tajiks -- such as Akmal Halimov, a 34-year-old resident of the Vadhat district -- the scandals surrounding the exorcists have done little to erode their faith in the religious ritual.

Halimov believes an exorcism saved him after he "was possessed by an evil spirit" during his student years in Dushanbe.

"My relatives took me to a mullah who treated me for 10 days. After that I felt that something bad had left my body," he said.

But in the rural district of Mastchoh, Zuhro Mukhtorova isn’t optimistic about receiving any benefits from an exorcism.

About a decade ago, the 34-year-old Mukhtorova developed an illness that affects her ability to speak. When medical treatments didn’t help, relatives suggested she must have been "possessed by jinni." Mukhtorova has been to several exorcists, but despite her faith in them the rituals have not helped her.

She still speaks with difficulty and has given up on exorcisms.
Though Fading In Turkmenistan, The Russian Language Is Still In Demand (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [2/25/2024 9:39 AM, Chris Rickleton, 223K, Neutral]
In an online post on the tiny Turkmen corner of TikTok earlier this month, a user introducing herself as a female singer complained of being language-shamed during an interview for a gig at a restaurant in Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan.

"The manager of the cafe spoke in Russian, so I replied in Russian," the singer wrote on the video-sharing platform, before detailing how the manager asked her: "You speak Russian so badly, are you sure you can sing?"

"Should all singers know Russian?" the TikTok user asked her subscribers -- in Turkmen.

"I think it’s important to respect each other because I am not telling [the manager] that a person who lives in Turkmenistan should know Turkmen."

The video garnered nearly 70,000 likes in a week and racked up more than 500 largely sympathetic comments.

Many were adamant that the shame was the restaurant manager’s alone: If you live in Turkmenistan, you should speak Turkmen.

As is so often the case with Turkmenistan, the details underpinning the post were impossible to verify.

Nevertheless, its resonance indicated a persisting truth: Despite fading dramatically from public life in Turkmenistan in the first three decades of post-Soviet independence, the Russian language can still be a source of snobbery and contention.

This month, the Dunya Turkmenleri (Turkmen of the World) weekly program produced by RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service is publishing a series of talks looking at current and historical trends of Russian-language usage in a country that remains the most authoritarian and isolated of all the 15 republics that became independent countries after the Soviet collapse.

The insights show that while Russia is definitely "down" in the country that pursued "Turkmenization" rapidly after independence, it is not yet out.

The Great Pandemic-Era, Russian-Language School Panic

Serdar Berdymukhammedov made Russia his first foreign visit on June 10, 2022, less than three months after replacing his father, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, as president of Turkmenistan.

Russian President Vladimir Putin thanked his visiting counterpart during their talks for "the country’s caring attitude toward the Russian language and culture."

Putin also name-checked a Russian-Turkmen School in Ashgabat named after wordsmith Aleksandr Pushkin. The school uses a Russian curriculum and is a popular destination for children of the local political elite, according to RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service.

The new Turkmen leader suggested furthering cooperation in education with the creation of a Russian-Turkmen university, a proposal that "was met with full understanding and support from [Putin]," according to a report by Russia’s TASS news agency.

The tone of those exchanges was quite different from the alarmist headlines in the Russian press at the beginning of the school year in 2020, when it appeared that what remained of Russian-language education in Turkmenistan might be heading for an exit.

RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service reported then that an order went out demanding ethnic Turkmen employees of law enforcement agencies transfer their children to Turkmen-language schools.

Parents at schools with Russian instruction in the capital, meanwhile, were reporting dramatic reductions in Russian-language class time and -- in many cases -- the end of all Russian-language classes.

Turkmenistan’s government failed to explain the situation and no official order was made on the end of Russian-language education in the country.

But pro-Kremlin media outlets in Russia drew their own conclusions.

"Without the Russian language, Turkmenistan is plunging into the Middle Ages," screamed in one such publication, Vzglyad.

Vzglyad’s article quoted a fairly moderate statement of concern from the Russian Embassy in Turkmenistan, which cited Turkmen authorities as informing the embassy that Russian-language classes were being closed due to difficulties enforcing sanitary norms in those classes during the coronavirus pandemic.

The embassy said it had expressed regret over the Turkmen officials’ actions in the context of a dissemination of the Russian language in Turkmenistan and the Turkmen language in Russia.

Whether due to pressure from Moscow or pressure from disappointed parents whose children were struggling to adapt to Turkmen, schools with full or partial Russian-language instruction weathered the storm.

And there are still dozens open to this day, mostly in Ashgabat. Moreover, they are still in very high demand.

Closing ‘Windows’ For Russian Speakers

The Turkmen government promoted the dominance of the Turkmen language intensely from the early years of independence, with Russian losing its status as a language of interethnic communication in 1992 -- a year in which Russian-language newspapers in Turkmenistan implored their readers to learn Turkmen.

The following year, Russian-language state television broadcasts in Turkmenistan were cut to a few hours a day, while state radio broadcasts in Russian ceased entirely by 2000.

Ethnic Russians left the country by the tens and then hundreds of thousands, although seemingly deliberate bureaucratic obstacles imposed by the authorities in the mid-1990s stemmed the flow somewhat.

Today, other than Russian-speaking communities in Ashgabat, notable pockets of Russian-speakers exist in the western Turkmen cities of Turkmenbashi and Balkanabat.

In fact, at Turkmenbashi’s Kenar bazaar, "only Russian is spoken," according to RFE/RL’s correspondent in Balkan Province.

And while Russian television channels -- typically accessed via satellite dish -- remain popular across the country, according to correspondents of RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service, it is in this city on the Caspian coast that they are well ahead of the competition.

Turkmenbashi, a town of less than 100,000 people, was captured by Russian imperial forces in 1869 and became an important staging post for attacks on the Silk Road cities of Khiva and Bukhara in modern day Uzbekistan.

The Russians named the settlement Krasnovodsk, a translation from its prior Turkmen name, Kyzyl-Su.

That designation survived for nearly 125 years before Turkmenistan’s self-aggrandizing first president, Saparmurat Niyazov, gave it in 1993 the same name he gave himself, Turkmenbashi (Father of the Turkmen).

But the persistence of the Russian language in Turkmenbashi and Balkanabat is explained by the relatively cosmopolitan populations in those cities, which, whilst mostly Turkmen, also include notable Azeri, Armenian, and Slavic minorities.

Even despite the significant local demand of Russian, the supply of teachers is limited, meaning it is mostly taught only as a foreign language.

RFE/RL’s Balkan Province correspondent also reported textbook shortages as one key problem.

The correspondent added that weekly teaching of the Russian language in the province has been reduced from six hours to two hours in most schools, with only older age groups getting three hours a week.

In comparison to other Central Asian countries, Turkmenistan is now certainly the most ethnically homogenous.

Authorities’ decision to revoke a bilateral agreement recognizing dual citizenship in 2003 saw another wave of Russian speakers leave as they were suddenly forced to choose between the two countries.

But Serdar Berdymukhammedov’s visit to Russia in 2022 saw Turkmen officials return to issuing travel passports to residents who had dual Turkmen-Russian citizenship, allowing Turkmen citizens who obtained Russian citizenship after 2003 to apply for Turkmen passports after almost two decades of waiting.

Migration Trends A Boost For Russian?

Russia’s Rossotrudnichestvo agency, charged with promoting Russian language and culture abroad, stated last year that 40 percent of the population of Turkmenistan can speak or understand Russian -- less than any of the other four Central Asian countries. The agency also claimed that as much as 12 percent of the Turkmen population still views the language as a mother tongue.

Wherever that data came from, it wasn’t Turkmenistan’s most recent census, which no longer contains data on ethnic or linguistic minority groups.

Easier to see is the fact that Russia has lost ground as a second language of Turkmen citizens to Turkish, which is close to Turkmen and therefore easier to learn, especially after Turkmenistan shifted to the Latin alphabet in 1993.

Then there is Turkmen migration to Turkey, a standout trend in Central Asia in recent years.

In September 2022, some 230,000 Turkmen had valid Turkish resident permits or work visas, according to Turkish officials.

That is a huge proportion of an official national population of 7 million -- a figure analysts view as a vast exaggeration by the Turkmen government that ignores massive migration from the country due to an abysmal economy and a society severely lacking basic freedoms.

It is many times the number of Turkmen citizens in Russia, which in response to Turkmenistan’s own closed-door travel policies does not allow nationals from the country to enter its territory without a visa.

But these numbers are now shifting, after Turkey decided to end visa-free travel for Turkmen at Ashgabat’s request.

The numbers of Turkmen officially living in Turkey dipped below 200,000 last year. It is not clear how many are there unofficially.

As deportations of Turkmen to their homeland for supposed migration violations have picked up pace, the number seeking to avoid a grim, job-scarce economy by traveling to Russia are growing monthly -- a trend that could boost the amount of Russian spoken.

In the summer of 2023, Russia’s embassy also announced that up to 300 places would be available for Turkmen to study at its universities -- more than in the past and with a new, simplified application procedure.

One thing that has thus far not occurred in Turkmenistan that has colored debates surrounding the Russian language in other former Soviet countries, is opposition to Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Turkmenistan’s general information isolation -- which includes very controlled access to the Internet, which is also one of the world’s slowest -- means the war is not discussed at any public or national level.

But at the end of 2022, RFE/RL’s Turkmen Service reported on a concerted campaign by officials from the education, interior, and national security ministries to convince young people that "American and European media information" had caused the Ukrainian war.

In the policymaking ranks of the latter two ministries, according to an RFE/RL correspondent that contributed to Dunya Turkmenleri’s series, the ability to speak Russian remains essential, rather than optional.

"They are sent on business trips to the Russian Federation to improve their skills," the correspondent said, citing sources in the two ministries.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[2/25/2024 12:39 PM, 62.2K followers, 74 retweets, 152 likes]
Security Council member states and the @UN should stop holding closed door meetings on Afghanistan. Afghans—especially women and girls who are so under attack by the Taliban—have a right to know what is being discussed and decided.

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[2/23/2024 5:44 AM, 62.2K followers, 20 retweets, 59 likes]
Curious about whether the civil society participants think it’s accurate that they said it is “imperative to continue engagement with…the Taliban.” @Lnajafizada @Shahgul_Rezaie @Metra_Mehran @SerajMahbouba

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[2/23/2024 5:45 AM, 62.2K followers, 17 retweets, 34 likes]
For example we know Metra Mehran said in this meeting: “Full compliance with international human rights obligations, including the unconditional reversal of all restrictions restricting women’s rights, must be an antecedent to any engagement.” https://kabulnow.com/2024/02/34575/

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[2/25/2024 5:54 AM, 62.2K followers, 5 retweets, 14 likes]
We get it that states inc US think it is imperative to engage with the Taliban re their own interests—counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics, hostages, etc—but we should be well past pretending or hoping that engagement helps with the Afghan civil society goal of protecting rights.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[2/26/2024 3:20 AM, 77.1K followers, 4 retweets, 5 likes]
Another public execution in a soccer stadium has been scheduled today in Afghanistan’s Jawzjan province. Just days after another public execution, which was strongly condemned by the UN, the Taliban is getting bolder.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[2/25/2024 7:58 AM, 77.1K followers, 102 retweets, 210 likes]
In Afghanistan’s Khost province, the Taliban just prohibited women from calling into radio/TV shows, erasing a vital platform used for decades, especially in rural areas. It is a severe escalation in erasing Afghan women’s existence - now, even their voices are outlawed.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[2/25/2024 8:03 AM, 77.1K followers, 7 retweets, 23 likes]
These provincial (even local) level changes, like the taxi ban for women in Ghor and the recent radio/TV call ban in Khost, raise critical questions about their broader implications in terms of engagement with the Taliban re: Afghan women and girls.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzi12947158
[2/25/2024 7:49 AM, 2.4K followers, 18 retweets, 22 likes]
Since UN Doha meeting & praise of Taliban. Lets keep recording:
1. Two individuals publicly executed in Ghazni.
2. Videography & photography prohibited in Kandahar.
3. Girls age 10 banned from schools in Kandahar
4.Women & girls banned from mobile calls with media in Khost.
Pakistan
Sadanand Dhume
@dhume
[2/25/2024 4:01 PM, 8171.3K followers, 64 retweets, 184 likes]
The problem in Pakistan is that even liberals accept that there is such a thing as “blasphemy,” and that those who commit it deserve punishment. But what if this terrified young woman had indeed worn a “blasphemous” kurta decorated with verses from the Koran? Pakistani liberals wouldn’t know how to respond because they can’t say the most obvious thing out loud: Blasphemy is an imaginary thought crime. And in the 21st century nobody should fear death for insulting religion.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[2/25/2024 11:42 PM, 8.4M followers, 246 retweets, 632 likes]
Who is behind this war against digital rights? @UsamaKhilji disclosed that Pakistan has recently acquired a new National Filtration System to block websites with the help of China. https://www.dawn.com/news/1817130
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 2:23 PM, 95.7M followers, 927 retweets, 2.8K likes]
With 2000 projects being launched in one go, India is set to witness a mega transformation of its railway infrastructure.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 10:05 PM, 95.7M followers, 5.7K retweets, 28K likes]
Today is a historic day for our Railways! At 12:30 PM, 2000 railway infrastructure projects worth over Rs. 41,000 crores will be dedicated to the nation. In order to enhance the travel experience, 553 stations will be redeveloped under the Amrit Bharat Station Scheme. The foundation stones for these stations would be laid. Overbridges and underpasses across India will also be inaugurated. These works will further ‘Ease of Living’ for the people.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 10:03 PM, 95.7M followers, 1.4K retweets, 5.4K likes]
Will be inaugurating Bharat Tex 2024 at 10:30 AM today. This forum will showcase India’s vibrant textile heritage and innovation. Together, let us weave a brighter future for trade, investment and exports in the important textiles sector. #BharatTex2024 https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetail.aspx?PRID=2008827

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 7:37 AM, 95.7M followers, 5.6K retweets, 30K likes]
Today is an important day for the health sector. India gets 5 new AIIMS. While in Rajkot, I went to the AIIMS Rajkot campus. These institutions will strengthen healthcare infrastructure in different parts of India.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 6:52 AM, 95.7M followers, 2.8K retweets, 9.4K likes]
The vibrancy of Rajkot is exceptional. Speaking at the launch of development works pertaining to healthcare, connectivity, energy and tourism sectors.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 5:48 AM, 95.7M followers, 5.9K retweets, 37K likes]
It was wonderful to meet Swami Shri Sadanand Saraswati Ji Maharaj Shri in Dwarka. We are all proud of his efforts to further spiritual awakening among people. Also recalled the greatness of Adi Shankaracharya Ji, whose ideals continue to inspire. @DandiSwami

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/25/2024 3:05 AM, 95.7M followers, 37K retweets, 171K likes]
To pray in the city of Dwarka, which is immersed in the waters, was a very divine experience. I felt connected to an ancient era of spiritual grandeur and timeless devotion. May Bhagwan Shri Krishna bless us all.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/24/2024 11:55 PM, 95.7M followers, 7.1K retweets, 42K likes]
Delighted to inaugurate Sudarshan Setu today - a bridge that connects lands and people. It stands vibrantly as a testament of our commitment to development and progress.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/24/2024 12:47 PM, 95.7M followers, 5.3K retweets, 31K likes]
Landed in Jamnagar to a very warm welcome. Will be joining the programmes in Dwarka and Rajkot tomorrow. The works which will be inaugurated will have a transformative impact by boosting connectivity, ensuring better healthcare, education and more. https://pib.gov.in/PressReleseDetailm.aspx?PRID=2008562

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/23/2024 8:41 AM, 95.7M followers, 4.2K retweets, 22K likes]
Took part in the prize distribution ceremony of the Sansad Sanskrit Pratiyogita. It is amazing to see the people of Kashi excel in diverse activities including promotion of Sanskrit, sports, photography and more.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[2/23/2024 8:27 AM, 95.7M followers, 6.4K retweets, 42K likes]
Honoured to have joined the Sant Ravidas Jayanti celebrations in Kashi. The various development works around Sant Ravidas Janam Sthali will greatly benefit pilgrims.

Brahma Chellaney
@Chellaney
[2/24/2024 8:08 AM, 262.5K followers, 41 retweets, 212 likes]
The Indian foreign minister’s description of the Quad as a “creative, flexible, nimble, responsive and openminded” enterprise is at odds with the Quad’s apparent stagnation and lack of strategic direction at a time when Biden is seeking to appease the PRC. https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Biden-s-neglect-of-the-Quad-carries-Indo-Pacific-risks
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[2/25/2024 12:42 PM, 636.1K followers, 27 retweets, 73 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina has sought a special fund from the @WorldBank (WB) to create more #womenentrepreneurs for their #socioeconomic advancement and more loans at concessionary rates to implement #climate-related projects. @bjerde_anna https://tbsnews.net/bangladesh/pm-seeks-wb-special-fund-thrive-women-entrepreneurs-798786

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/25/2024 7:49 AM, 636.1K followers, 33 retweets, 85 likes]
.@WorldBank Managing Director (Operations) @bjerde_anna has heaped praise on #Bangladesh, noting that is in a good position in terms of project implementation and #debt repayment despite challenges facing the global economy. https://en.somoynews.tv/news/2024-02-25/bangladesh-is-in-a-good-position-wb-md

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/24/2024 10:44 AM, 636.1K followers, 34 retweets, 87 likes]
Prime Minister and #AwamiLeague President #SheikhHasina has said that no one will be able to erase the contribution of Father of the Nation #Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman in the #LanguageMovement. https://link.albd.org/2yabh #Bangladesh #InternationalMotherLanguageDay

Awami League
@albd1971
[2/24/2024 9:42 AM, 636.1K followers, 32 retweets, 77 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina said that #Bangladesh’s participation at the @MunSecConf reflected the country’s strong commitment to #peace, #sovereignty, and overall #globalsecurity. https://albd.org/articles/news/41326/

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/25/2024 9:15 PM, 5.1K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
There was a 12 party #BoycottIndia demonstration in #Bangladesh of BNP like-minded parties but the BNP did not participate. What is happening is that the BNP is sticking out like a sore thumb in its refusal to take a stand against Indian hegemonism. It is becoming clearer & clearer (what a lot of us already knew) that the BNP must have ties with India|RAW & places that alliance above the well being of Bangladeshis. Actions speak louder than words.

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/25/2024 3:33 PM, 5.1K followers, 2 retweets, 5 likes]
The US is investing in & keeping good business relationships with a country which is governed by a highly corrupt dictatorial regime which had no regards for human rights. #Bangladesh

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[2/25/2024 7:01 PM, 5.1K followers, 3 likes]
Human rights organisations say politically motivated arrests, extrajudicial killings and other human rights abuses have risen under Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government. A recent report by Human Rights Watch (HRW), said the "violent autocratic crackdown" by Bangladeshi authorities was a clear attempt to quash the opposition before the elections. “This all seems like there is no space for dissent or criticism that is so crucial to a functioning democracy," says Meenakshi Ganguly, Deputy Director of Human Rights Watch, Asia Division.#Bangladesh https://bbc.com/news/world-asia-67891682

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/24/2024 1:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 18 retweets, 126 likes]
We’re starting to get more clarity on US policy in Bangladesh, post-BD polls. The focus on strategic & trade cooperation will continue, while the focus on rights/democracy will revolve around pushes to strengthen civil society, but w/less public criticism of the gov’t in Dhaka.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/24/2024 1:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 1 retweet, 7 likes]
DAS Afreen Akhter spoke on this civil society-focused approach-and linked it to the US Indo Pacific strategy- in a recent briefing. Akhter is one of 3 senior US officials in Dhaka this weekend. Meetings with civil society leaders were on the agenda.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/24/2024 1:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 5 likes]
Akhter also met w/leaders of the opposition BNP, which has faced severe crackdowns. USG said little publicly about the meeting other than this brief post from the US Embassy. So the values-based approach continues, but w/ a more careful tone/messaging.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[2/24/2024 1:27 PM, 209.7K followers, 5 likes]
Great power competition and the Indo-Pacific factor (the US reacted positively to BD’s Indo-Pacific Outlook), along w/trade, will be major drivers of partnership. Climate change & impact on BD of Myanmar’s intensifying war (including Rohingya issue) will be priority issues too.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/26/2024 1:27 AM, 107.1K followers, 55 retweets, 62 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the community of Hanimaadhoo Island in the South Thiladhunmathi Atoll, where he gave them the assurance that the Administration would work to achieve their intended agenda for development.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/26/2024 1:14 AM, 107.1K followers, 40 retweets, 35 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the Island Council & WDC members of Finey Island in South Thiladhunmathi Atoll. The council members discussed with the President about the island’s development plans, expressing their concerns and highlighting their priorities.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/26/2024 1:08 AM, 107.1K followers, 41 retweets, 42 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the Island Council & Women’s Development Committee members of Hanimaadhoo Island in South Thiladhunmathi Atoll. At the meeting, council members expressed their developmental needs of the Island.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/25/2024 8:52 AM, 107.1K followers, 69 retweets, 71 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the community of HA. Baarah Island, where the President reiterated his commitment to fulfil all pledges made. He also assured that the Administration would thoroughly examine the issues raised by the Council and explore feasible solutions.

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/25/2024 2:30 AM, 107.1K followers, 58 retweets, 61 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the Island Council & Women’s Development Committee members of Vashafaru Island in North Thiladhunmathi Atoll. They held extensive discussions on the socioeconomic development of the Island & ways to address the challenges facing the island community

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[2/24/2024 11:51 PM, 107.1K followers, 98 retweets, 100 likes]
President Dr @MMuizzu met with the community of HA. Dhidhdhoo Island, where he committed to addressing the community’s concerns and shared the Island’s developmental strategy. This meeting was held at the Haa Alif Atoll Education Centre.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[2/25/2024 12:04 AM, 5K followers, 5 retweets, 7 likes]
There is light at the end of the tunnel. Although it may seem as small as a pinhole at the moment, continued reforms will accelerate passage through the tunnel and allow this light to become bigger and bigger. Maintaining the reform momentum is Lanka…
Central Asia
Mihra Rittmann
@MihraRittmann
[2/25/2024 9:11 PM, 4.5K followers, 8 retweets, 15 likes]
#Kazakhstan: Arrest of #Karakalpak Activist at #Uzbekistan’s Behest https://www.hrw.org/news/2024/02/25/kazakhstan-arrest-karakalpak-activist-uzbekistans-behest

Hugh Williamson
@HughAWilliamson
[2/23/2024 5:16 AM, 10.4K followers, 27 retweets, 33 likes]
1/ Kyrgyzstan: @HRW is deeply concerned that the ‘foreign representatives’ draft law was passed on 2nd reading in the Kyrgyz parliament on 22 Feb. The bill breaks Kyrgyzstan’s commitment, also as member of UN Human Rights Council to uphold human rights

Hugh Williamson
@HughAWilliamson
[2/23/2024 5:21 AM, 10.4K followers, 3 retweets, 3 likes]
The bill restricts activities of non-governmental groups eg in social services, welfare, education sectors & allows authorities to sanction NGOs for ill-defined ‘political activities’. Civil society groups play a legitimate part in society and should not be stigmatised @HRW

Hugh Williamson
@HughAWilliamson
[2/23/2024 5:24 AM, 10.4K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
3/ @HRW urges the Kyrgyz parliament to withdraw to draft bill & engage in constructive dialogue with NGOs on transparency & governance issues

{End of Report}
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