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, July 1, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Taliban Talks With U.N. Go On Despite Alarm Over Exclusion of Women (New York Times)
New York Times [6/30/2024 4:14 PM, Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
Taliban officials attended a rare, United Nations-led conference of global envoys to Afghanistan on Sunday, the first such meeting Taliban representatives have agreed to engage in, after organizers said Afghan women would be excluded from the talks.

The two-day conference in Doha, Qatar, is the third of its kind. It is part of a United Nations-led effort, known as the “Doha process,” started in May 2023. It is meant to develop a unified approach for international engagement with Afghanistan. Envoys from around 25 countries and regional organizations, including the European Union, the United States, Russia and China, are attending.

Taliban officials were not invited to the first meeting and refused to attend the second meeting, held in February, after objecting to the inclusion of Afghan civil society groups that attended.

The conference has drawn a fierce backlash in recent days after U.N. officials announced that Afghan women would not participate in discussions with Taliban officials. Human rights groups and Afghan women’s groups have slammed the decision to exclude them as too severe a concession by the U.N. to persuade the Taliban to engage in the talks.

The decision to exclude women sets “a deeply damaging precedent” and risks “legitimatizing their gender-based institutional system of oppression,” Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said in a statement referring to the Taliban’s policies toward women. “The international community must adopt a clear and united stance: The rights of women and girls in Afghanistan are nonnegotiable.”

Since seizing power from the U.S.-backed government in 2021, Taliban authorities have systematically rolled back women’s rights, effectively erasing women from public life. Women and girls are barred from getting education beyond primary school and banned from most employment outside of education and health care, and they cannot travel significant distances without a male guardian.

Human rights monitors have described the government’s policies as akin to “gender apartheid” and suggested that the systematic oppression of women and girls could amount to crimes against humanity.

U.N. officials defended their decision to exclude Afghan women in the talks this week, insisting that the issue of women’s rights will be brought up in discussions with the Taliban. They also said that they will meet Afghan civil society representatives before and after the talks with Taliban officials.

“The issue of inclusive governance, women’s rights, human rights writ large, will be a part of every single session,” Rosemary DiCarlo, the U.N. political chief who is chairing the meeting, said in a news conference on Thursday.

Many Afghan women also called on Afghan activists invited to attend the side talks in Doha to boycott the discussions in protest.

The meeting represents an effort by the international community “to normalize the Taliban,” Rokhshana Rezai, an Afghan woman activist, posted on X. “I ask all those who believe in freedom and humanity to boycott this meeting, because this meeting is neither for the benefit of the Afghan people nor for the benefit of Afghan women.”

The controversy around the conference underscores the heated tensions within the West over how to deal with Afghanistan’s new government.

Some groups have pushed to isolate the Taliban by using sticks, like sanctions, over carrots to persuade them to change their most controversial policies toward women. Others have sought to engage the new government, in the hope that fostering more dialogue would bring policy changes within Afghanistan to make the government more palatable to the West.

Officials who are seeking to engage the Taliban want to focus on critical issues like counterterrorism, given the presence of terrorist groups, including the Islamic State affiliate in the region, on Afghan soil. They also say that without greater dialogue, Afghanistan could become more closely allied with Russia and China, both of which have been willing to overlook the Taliban’s human rights record in engaging with their government.

U.N. officials emphasized last week that the conference with Taliban officials did not represent a step toward formally recognizing the group as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan. To date, no country has done so.

The chief spokesman for the Taliban, Zabihullah Mujahid, who is leading the delegation, said in a news conference on Saturday that his government hopes to discuss economic issues and international sanctions affecting Afghanistan.

The Taliban authorities “acknowledge the issues about women,” he said. “But these issues are Afghanistan’s issues,” he added, suggesting that the Afghan government did not believe the international community should be involved in setting its domestic policy regarding women’s rights.
The Taliban tell the West to look past harsh edicts on Afghan women and girls and build ties (AP)
AP [6/30/2024 4:20 PM, Staff, 26386K, Neutral]
The Taliban on Sunday told the West to look past the measures they have imposed on Afghan women and girls for the sake of improving foreign relations.

Their chief spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid said the Taliban uphold certain religious and cultural values and public aspirations that “must be acknowledged” to facilitate progressive bilateral relations rather than encountering disputes and stagnation.

Mujahid made his demand on the opening day of a United Nations-led meeting in Qatar on increasing engagement with Afghanistan and to have a more coordinated response to the country’s issues.

It’s the third such U.N.-sponsored gathering in Doha. The Taliban were not invited to the first meeting, and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said they set unacceptable conditions for attending the second one in February, including demands that Afghan civil society members be excluded from the talks and that the Taliban be treated as the country’s legitimate rulers.

Afghan women have been excluded from the current Doha meeting.

No country officially recognizes the Taliban and the U.N. has said that recognition remains almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain.

But Mujahid struck a defiant note Sunday, saying that the political understanding between the Taliban and other nations was steadily improving.

He said Kazakhstan had removed the Taliban from its list of prohibited groups and that Russia would undertake a similar measure in the near future. Mujahid, who is meeting special envoys on the sidelines, said earlier that Saudi Arabia expressed its intention to reopen its embassy in Kabul.

The relationships with regional countries demonstrated that the Taliban have the commitment and capacity to establish and maintain relations, Mujahid said in his remarks.

“I do not deny that some countries may have problems with some measures of the Islamic Emirate,” Mujahid said in his speech. “I think that policy differences amid states are natural, and it is the duty of experienced diplomats to find ways of interaction and understanding rather than confrontation.”

Such differences should not escalate to the extent that powerful countries used their leverage to impose security, political, and economic pressures that affected Afghanistan in a significant way. He did not mention the harsh edicts on women and girls that have caused global outrage, but has previously referred to them as an “internal matter.” The Taliban have rejected criticism of their treatment of Afghan women and girls, calling it interference.

“Consequently, other nations, particularly Western countries, can remove the obstacles hindering the development of relations with the Afghan government,” said Mujahid.

The decision to exclude Afghan women from the meeting has drawn rebukes from rights groups, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan Richard Bennett, and Nobel laureate Malala Yousufzai.

Yousufzai, who was shot by a Taliban gunman for campaigning for girls’ education, wrote on social media platform X last Thursday that she spoke to U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres about the Doha meeting.

She said she was “alarmed and disappointed” that the Taliban were invited to meet U.N. special envoys while Afghan women and rights defenders were excluded from the main conversation.

Convening the meeting without Afghan women sent “all the wrong” signals that the world was willing to accommodate the Taliban’s demands.

She added that what the Taliban were doing in Afghanistan amounted to gender apartheid.

Earlier, the United Nations’ top official in Afghanistan, Roza Otunbayeva, defended the failure to include Afghan women in the meeting in Doha, insisting that demands for women’s rights are certain to be raised.
Taliban call on West to build deeper ties, ignore curbs on women (VOA)
VOA [6/30/2024 7:34 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4032K, Neutral]
A United Nations-led two-day conference of special envoys for Afghanistan from nearly two dozen countries kicked off Sunday in Qatar with the Taliban demanding an end to financial sanctions and expressing a desire for greater engagement with the West while dismissing curbs on women’s freedom as a policy difference.

This is the first time the Taliban participated in the gathering to discuss international engagement with Afghanistan since U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres initiated what is commonly referred to as the "Doha process" a year ago.

Rosemary DiCarlo, U.N. undersecretary-general for political and peacebuilding affairs is presiding over the talks.

Delegates attending the conference told VOA, the hard-line group’s participation was a boon for the process, despite intense criticism from women’s rights groups in and outside Afghanistan for excluding rights activists. To ensure the Taliban did not skip the meeting as they did in February because activists were invited, the U.N. decided not to bring them to the official event.

The Taliban were not invited to the first round in May last year.

Taliban’s pitch

Zabihullah Mujahid, chief spokesperson of the Taliban’s interim government, is leading the Kabul delegation. Addressing the gathering, Mujahid urged unfreezing Afghan funds and lifting banking sanctions that have cut off the country from the international financial system, saying such actions were hindering the economic progress his government was aiming for.

"Afghans are questioning why the easing of sanctions on financial and trade sectors remains slow-paced? Why the government and the private sector are consistently confronting various challenges?" Mujahid asked the gathering that included representatives from the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank.

The U.S. froze $7 billion of Afghan central bank funds after the Taliban took control of the country in August 2021. In 2022, the Biden administration put half the money in a Switzerland-based trust account called “Fund for the Afghan People,” which a board oversees. The remaining money is locked in the U.S.

The Taliban delegation head did not directly reference the ban on girls’ education and women’s employment in most sectors, or curbs on their mobility, instead hinting at them as cultural, religious and policy differences. In a recent report, U.N. special rapporteur Richard Bennet called the Taliban’s hard-line practices an "attack on the entire civilian population, amounting to crimes against humanity."

"I do not deny that some countries may have problems with some measures of the Islamic Emirate," Mujahid said using the title the regime uses for itself.

"The policy differences should not escalate to the extent that powerful countries use their leverage to impose security, political, and economic pressures on our people, affecting the lives of our nation in a significant way," Mujahid added, apparently criticizing the way the United States and other western countries have been pressuring the Taliban to soften their stance. Mujahid instead called on countries to separate "Afghanistan’s internal matters from foreign relations."

Referring to growing bilateral engagement with Russia, China, and others, Mujahid said the de facto rulers were keen to engage with the West.

"We hope that Western countries will also prioritize mutual bilateral interests in a similar manner," he said.

Prior to the start of formal talks Sunday, the Taliban held bilateral meetings with delegates from Russia, Saudi Arabia, India and Uzbekistan. While no country has recognized the Taliban government since the group came to power in August 2021 at the end of the 20-year, U.S.-led war, at least 16 countries have diplomatic missions in Afghanistan. Only Beijing has exchanged ambassadors with Kabul.

Response to Taliban

"Everyone stated their position. It was good. Everyone talked about engagement," Asif Durrani, Pakistan’s special representative for Afghanistan told media covering the summit. "The very fact that Taliban attended shows the U.N. could prevail."

Despite severe criticism by global rights group of the U.N.’s decision to exclude Afghan women from the event and their issues from the agenda, no country boycotted the gathering. Delegates from the United States, Canada, Norway, and other western countries as well as the European Union are taking part in the talks along with representatives of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.

"There is pressure to attend. There is a realization to make the best of it, to build on it," said a Western diplomat speaking on background to VOA.

They added that it was good that countries were choosing a structured process to deal with the Taliban and that despite nearly three years of Taliban rule, there was still a huge divide between the de facto rulers and the global community.

Speaking to media on the sidelines, Durrani said delegates raised the issue of women’s rights during the closed-door speeches. The Taliban gave measured, "palatable" responses to issues that were difficult for them, he added.

Despite participants expressing concerns about the presence of terrorist groups on Afghan soil and calling out the regime for its treatment of women and girls, Mujahid seemed upbeat afterward.

"The views of all countries seems positive about Afghanistan," Mujahid said responding to a VOA question while talking to the media. "Because everyone wants to cooperate with Afghanistan. Which is good. We want to boost our relations with the countries which are already in touch with us, and those who aren’t, they should come and give importance to interacting with Afghanistan and cooperate with the people of Afghanistan."

More than one delegate told VOA the mood during the talks was good and a positive tone was set for similar engagement in the future.

Discussions on improving conditions for Afghanistan’s private business sector, including exploring ways to collaborate on entrepreneurship, job creation, Islamic finance, and access to markets will take place Monday. This will be followed by talks regarding sustaining the Taliban’s ban on opium poppy cultivation, it’s impact on women, and providing alternative livelihoods to poppy farmers.

U.N. representatives and delegates from various countries plan to meet with Afghan civil society activists after the conference Tuesday. In a post on social media platform X, the Taliban foreign ministry official Zakir Jalali insisted this meeting would not mean the Taliban will be sharing the spotlight.

"If several special envoys meet with someone after the meeting of the participants, it has nothing to do with Doha-3," he said.
Afghan Talks Kick Off In Doha Amid Anger Over Taliban’s Exclusion Of Women (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/30/2024 5:05 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Two days of UN-organized talks on international relations with Taliban-led Afghanistan were getting under way in the Qatari capital, Doha, on June 30, with the Taliban present for the first time -- but rights groups expressed anger over the hard-line fundamentalist regime’s exclusion of women and its refusal to discuss women’s rights at the forum.

"The Taliban had a major role in creating the agenda of this meeting and who should be in this meeting,” Shahrazad Akbar, the former head of the Independent Human Rights Commission and currently executive director of the Rawadari rights organization, told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi, speaking from Britain.

“This in itself is a big problem and is giving power and legitimacy to the Taliban," she said.

Habiba Sarabi, a prominent women’s rights activist and former member of the negotiating team of the deposed Afghan government, echoed those remarks, saying, “Afghan women are half of Afghan society.”

“How can we say that women are not present in important decision-making meetings. When it is specifically related to Afghanistan, women should be present and women should also participate in those decisions,” she told Radio Azadi.

This is the third such UN-sponsored meeting on Afghanistan in Doha, but the first in which the Taliban has been involved. Along with UN officials, delegations from some two dozen nations, including the United States, are expected to attend.

The Taliban was not invited to the first Doha conference and set conditions that were rejected for its participation in the second gathering in February, including that it be the sole representative of Afghanistan at the meeting.

UN chief Antonio Guterres said the group’s demands were “unacceptable” and amounted to recognizing the Taliban as the country’s legitimate government, something the international community has refused to do.

Afghan women’s rights groups and supporters have held protests inside Afghanistan and in Europe over the Taliban’s participation and its exclusion of women at the gathering.

Zahid Mustafa, who has organized a protest in Amsterdam, told Radio Azadi that "our goal by these protests is that the United Nations has invited the Taliban to this meeting on behalf of Afghans. But we are protesting this and calling for a boycott of the Doha meeting."

Shukriya Barakzai, a women’s rights activist and Afghanistan’s former ambassador to Norway -- who was invited to the previous meeting -- expressed frustration with the UN organizers of the summit.

"The United Nations’ looking down upon Afghan women and representatives of civil society shows that, despite the fact that this meeting was organized by the United Nations, they are acting against their own procedures and values," she told Radio Azadi from London.

She did not say if she was invited to the current gathering in Doha.

Roza Otunbaeva, the head of the UN mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA), has defended the failure to include Afghan women at the meeting, saying that women’s rights are certain to be raised with the Taliban. She said the group’s inclusion in the talks does not represent a legitimization of its government.

The Taliban government, which took over after the U.S.-led international coalition left the country in mid-2020, is not recognized internationally, although Beijing has accepted credentials from a Taliban ambassador.

The United Nations has accused the Taliban of waging "gender apartheid" on women and girls since returning to power nearly three years ago, closing girls’ schools and forcing women out of the workplace and out of public spaces.

Women’s rights groups and civil society activists are expected to meet with international diplomats and UN officials on July 2, after the close of the official two-day talks.

But Sima Samar, the former head of Afghanistan’s human rights commission of the deposed Afghan government, said that was not sufficient action by the international community.

“They [the UN] have said they will meet the [Afghan] women on the sidelines after the end of the meeting on July 2,” she told Radio Azadi.

“If they care about women, why don’t they meet with women before that, or why aren’t women directly at the table, because the Taliban’s desire is to erase women from all social and political issues in Afghanistan.”
Taliban govt. representatives meet UN, Afghanistan envoys in Doha (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [6/30/2024 11:27 AM, Callum Paton, 85570K, Neutral]
Representatives of Afghanistan’s Taliban government began meetings on Sunday with UN officials as they attended talks in Doha with special envoys to the Central Asian country for the first time, a UN spokesperson said.

The two-day, UN-hosted meeting in Qatar is the third of its kind in the gas-rich emirate in just over a year but the first to include Taliban authorities who seized power in Afghanistan in 2021.

"Preparatory discussions have begun with the UN meeting separately with many of the special envoys in attendance and with the Taliban representatives," the UN spokesperson, who asked not to be named, told AFP.

UN officials and over 20 envoys, including the US special representative to Afghanistan, were expected to meet with the Taliban government’s delegation led by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid.

The talks in Doha were due to discuss increasing engagement with Afghanistan and a more coordinated response to the country, including economic issues and counter-narcotics efforts.

In the aftermath of the Taliban’s return to power, the international community has grappled with its approach to Afghanistan’s new rulers.

The Taliban government in Kabul has not been officially recognised by any other government since it took power and the administration has imposed a strict interpretation of Islam, with women subjected to laws characterised by the UN as "gender apartheid".

The Taliban authorities had been excluded from the first round of UN talks in May 2023 and declined to attend the second round in February, demanding that their delegation be the only Afghan representatives.

In a push to include Taliban government representatives, that condition has been met with the exclusion of civil society groups which will meet with representatives on Tuesday instead.

Ahead of the UN event, Taliban foreign ministry official Zakir Jalaly on Sunday maintained that any meetings taking place after Monday were "unrelated" to the official agenda.

The sidelining of civil society organisations has provoked outcry among the groups, including women’s rights activists.

"Caving into the Taliban’s conditions to secure their participation in the talks would risk legitimising their gender-based institutionalised system of oppression," head of Amnesty International Agnes Callamard said in a statement ahead of the talks.

Yesterday, Mujahid told a Kabul news conference that Taliban authorities "acknowledge the issues about women", but asserted they were "Afghanistan’s issues" to solve.

Hameed Hakimi, an Afghanistan expert, told AFP the international community was "genuinely" concerned over women’s rights and the role of civil society in the country.

But he explained that international policy makers, "while accepting the Taliban are not perfect players in the game, also recognise that there is this gap that has not been filled by the Afghans themselves".

In recent years, many governments, international organisations and aid agencies cut off or severely scaled back their funding to Afghanistan in response to the Taliban authorities’ return to power -- dealing a serious blow to the already struggling economy.

"On the one hand, there’s a humanitarian situation that requires funding, on the other hand you can’t alleviate the humanitarian situation without the political engagement," the Britain-based, Chatham House specialist explained.

Ahead of the UN-hosted discussions, the Taliban government delegation held meetings in Doha with special envoys from Russia, India, Saudi Arabia and Uzbekistan, Mujahid said on X, formerly Twitter.
A year ago, she drank battery acid to escape life under the Taliban. Today, she has a message for other Afghan girls (CNN)
CNN [6/30/2024 1:49 AM, Hilary Whiteman, Anna Coren, Abdul Basir Bina, and Javed Iqbal, 22739K, Negative]
Holding a mirror steady in one hand, Arzo carefully applies pencil to her brows as she gets ready for an English lesson a short walk from her home on the outskirts of Pakistani megacity Karachi.

Every step toward the classroom takes her closer to a future she no longer thought possible almost a year ago when she walked downstairs at her family’s home in Afghanistan and tried to take her own life.

“On that day, I felt like everything was over. I was overwhelmed by hopelessness, and that’s why I drank acid, convinced it would end my life,” said Arzo, whom CNN first met last November as she lay in bed, too weak to speak.

At the time, she was 15 years old but weighed as much as a 4-year-old, her limbs painfully thin after months of starvation despite her siblings’ best efforts to feed her through a tube inserted in her stomach.

Now, after an extraordinary intervention, Arzo is making a remarkable recovery – but she faces a new threat that could force her family to return to Afghanistan, and a life under Taliban rule that has become so intolerable for women and girls that some would rather die.

Pakistan, a place of refuge for millions of Afghans, is carrying out a mass deportation program that has already seen more than 600,000 people cross the border since September 15 – with the threat that more could follow in July, when another class of visas expires.

What awaits them is a system of gender apartheid – violations against women and girls so “severe and extensive” that a senior United Nations official says they may amount to crimes against humanity.

It was what drove Arzo to try to take her own life.

“The gravity and scale of the crimes cannot be overstated,” Richard Bennett, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan, told a Human Rights Council meeting on June 18, as he presented his damning report on the Taliban’s rule.

“We have a collective responsibility to challenge and dismantle this appalling system and to hold those responsible to account,” he said.

Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the report as an attempt to “tarnish perceptions” of Afghanistan before a rare meeting this weekend between UN member states and Taliban officials in Doha, Qatar.

Despite strong condemnation of the Taliban by most UN member states, the issue of women’s rights will not be on the formal agenda.

Instead, talks with Taliban officials will focus on counternarcotics and the private sector.

Afghan women and other civil society members weren’t invited to the meeting – they’ll meet separately with member states, without the Taliban, the next day, according to a UN official.

Rights groups are furious the Taliban meeting is going ahead without Afghan women, and say it legitimizes Afghanistan’s leaders and fails to hold them to account for grave injustices.
Smuggled across the border

Arzo is not her real name. She and her older brother and sister, Ahamad and Mahsa, are using aliases to protect their family members in Afghanistan from reprisals from the Taliban, who have sought to silence critics of their repressive rule.

They’re also hiding from Pakistani authorities, who have threatened to arrest and deport undocumented foreigners, making every trip outside their rented room fraught with risk.

After Arzo drank the acid in Afghanistan last July, a doctor told her family she’d likely die if treated there, so they smuggled her across the border to Pakistan, where another doctor inserted a feeding tube into her stomach.

For a year, the siblings have spent almost every hour inside a rented room in Karachi with three single beds, a ceiling fan and a carpet where they eat, study and read.

For most of that time, Arzo has been confined to bed, unable to eat, after the acid created a stricture – or a blockage – in her esophagus.

Every three hours, including through the night, Ahamad and Mahsa said they fed their little sister fluids – nutritional milk powder and juice – through the tube direct to her stomach.

But it wasn’t enough, and by November, Arzo weighed just 25 kilograms, or 55 pounds.

By then, most of their money was gone, too, on rent and private medical bills.

“We are financially broken here. Whatever we had, we spent it,” Arzo’s brother Ahamad, a 27-year-old journalist under threat from the Taliban due to his occupation, told CNN in November.

“I don’t cry in front of her, but I kiss her and cry while she sleeps at night, for her future, for her treatment, so she can survive this sickness,” he said.

A lifesaving intervention

Within hours of Arzo’s story airing on CNN last December, an email arrived with the offer of help.

A non-profit organization volunteered medical care on the condition that its name wouldn’t be published due to potential repercussions in Pakistan for aiding an Afghan who is residing in the country illegally.

“She was 20 to 22kg at the time that we saw her,” said the doctor who treated Arzo, whom CNN has also agreed not to name.

“She had come to us on a wheelchair and was bedridden at that point. She was essentially one influenza, or cold, or other kind of infection away from essentially dying,” he said.

Doctors told her siblings to increase her caloric intake threefold, so she’d be strong enough for her first medical procedure – an endoscopic examination that revealed severe damage to her esophagus, so that it had almost closed, making it impossible to eat.

Using X-ray guidance, the doctors passed a wire through a gap the size of a pinhole and inflated a tiny balloon to slowly widen the passage.

“Over the course of two months or so, with multiple staged procedures, we were able to open it up to the point where she was able to eat by mouth, which itself was a game changer,” the doctor told CNN.

Arzo’s brother Ahamad sent CNN regular WhatsApp messages.

January 13, 2024

She is worried. She cannot eat, she wants food very much.

January 16, 2024

My sister has gained five kilos again. Now her weight is 33 kilos. My sister is fine, but when the doctor said that she might need an operation in the end, tears flowed from her eyes.

January 23, 2024

Today, they inserted a balloon into my sister’s throat, next week they will insert a balloon again. She is fine but her throat is a little sore.

January 24, 2024

My sister can eat through her mouth for the first time. The doctor said to cook rice with milk well and give it to her. Today she was very happy.
‘These lives are not worth anything’

During an interview this month, Arzo sat upright on the bed, straightened her head scarf and spoke for the first time about why she tried to take her own life.

It was July 2023, and she was sitting on the second floor of her family’s two-story home, in a remote Afghan province, eating what would be her last meal for months.

“As I ate food at home, I glanced at pictures of my classmates and felt a deep sense of longing for them,” she said.

Arzo hadn’t seen her classmates since the Taliban banned girls from secondary education after seizing power in August 2021, and rarely messaged them because the internet connection was cut to her family’s village.

So, in a moment of grief for the friends and the life that she loved, she walked downstairs to the battery her family used to power their home and drank its contents. Her sister Mahsa found her and forced her fingers down her throat to make her vomit.

“When I asked her why she had done such a thing, her response was heartbreaking,” said Mahsa. Arzo had told her: “These lives are not worth anything,” she said.

At the time, Arzo was just 15.

Mahsa also lost everything with the Taliban takeover. She was 22 and had graduated from high school before the Taliban banned girls from getting an education beyond elementary school. She held ambitions to become a dress designer or to work in a beauty salon, but those career paths were soon shut down.

“When I went to Kabul, I enrolled in a tailoring program. However, for three months, I lived in constant fear as the Taliban would visit our workshop daily and criticize us for not wearing the hijab. They eventually forced us to shut down the workshop,” she said.

The Taliban ordered beauty salons to close in July 2023.

Instead of working, Mahsa found herself in Pakistan caring for Arzo, who was in constant pain with no medication to ease her suffering.

“When she was asleep, it provided a brief respite from the distress, but the moments when she was awake during our meals were particularly challenging for us to endure,” Mahsa said.

Arzo’s treatment has allowed them both to think about their future, and for the first time in years, they’ve glimpsed the possibility of a better life.

“When hope is lacking and life seems directionless, unexpected events can present themselves,” Mahsa said.

Arzo is determined to put the past behind her and has urged other girls in Afghanistan not to follow her lead.

“My message to all girls in Afghanistan who can’t continue their education or go to school is to stay strong and don’t lose hope.”

No safe haven in Pakistan

While the Taliban is in power, Arzo does not want to go back to Afghanistan, but she and her siblings are not wanted in Pakistan.

Last October, Islamabad gave around 1 million undocumented Afghan migrants one month to leave the country or face arrest and deportation. More than 600,000 people fled – most voluntarily, though 89% said they did so for fear of arrest, according to UN data. Of the total, more than 30,000 people were arrested and deported.

On the outskirts of Karachi, residents in one Afghan community thought they were safe from the deportation drive. Security officials came to their area late last year and painted red numbers on their homes to show how many people lived there and their visa status.

“At the beginning, the local people were happy over the markings because … it would certify that only registered Afghan refugees were living in a specific premises,” said lawyer Moniza Kakar, who showed CNN the markings.

Some houses were marked with “ACC” (Afghan Citizen Card), others with “POR” (Proof of Registration) – both forms of identification issued to Afghans long before the Taliban’s return.

But then in April, the government added around 800,000 ACC holders to its removal list. And the expiry date for POR cards was set to June 30, putting another 1.35 million people at risk of deportation.

Rain had already washed away some of the red paint, then residents tried to scrub it off to avoid encounters with police, said Kakar, managing partner at Abbas and Kakar Law Offices, who helps community members navigate Pakistan’s immigration system.

“They feel fear and uncertainty about what should happen to them,” she said.

Pakistan’s policy on “illegal foreigners” is no different to that of other nations, Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokeswoman Mumtaz Zahra Baloch told CNN.

“Individuals who are here illegally have to be dealt with according to Pakistani laws, and that includes fines, imprisonment and deportation,” she said.

Baloch told CNN on Friday that the government still hadn’t decided whether to extend POR visas that were set to expire on Sunday, and had earlier said that Pakistan was considering the implications of “all the various options.”

Many of those at risk of deportation know little of Afghanistan.

Amanullah was just a boy when his family sought refuge in Pakistan during the former Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan in the 1980s, an event that ultimately plunged the country into four decades of near constant conflict. Now he’s firmly settled in the Afghan community in Karachi with seven children of his own, and two grandchildren.

“We have nothing left in Afghanistan anymore,” Amanullah told CNN. “My children have grown up here and know little about their homeland.”

A member of the Mughal tribe, Amanullah sells watermelon at a fruit stall, but he said some other residents had closed their businesses for fear of being deported with no notice.

Pakistan has sheltered Afghan migrants for decades but now, amidst a surge in militant attacks on its territory, government officials say they present a security risk.

The Taliban has denied any involvement, and relations between the two countries are worsening as they trade accusations – and in some cases retaliatory strikes.
‘Our room is like a prison’

In March, as Arzo began to regain strength, her brother Ahamad’s messages turned to the threat of deportation and what that could mean for their family.

There are ways out of Pakistan for people like Arzo, Ahamad and Mahsa, but they typically involve taking risky journeys across borders, or joining lengthy waiting lists to be relocated to a third country that agrees to receive them.

Afghans without visas can’t legally work in Pakistan, and many who fled Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover have already run out of money.

Arzo and her siblings survive on handouts from a small number of supporters outside Pakistan, who are trying to raise enough money to sponsor them to move to Canada.

But it’s an expensive and time-consuming process, with no guarantee they won’t be arrested and deported while they wait.

Arzo realizes how lucky she is to be alive and says she’s willing to go anywhere she can continue her education, to become a doctor like those who saved her life.

“I really thank all the doctors from the bottom my heart,” she said.

“My message to my friends is to be patient. One day, the Taliban will leave Afghanistan, and we will be able to pursue our goals.”

But until then, women and girls live in a suffocating silence, where the Taliban have issued at least 52 new edicts since last June, tightening their control over the female population, according to the UN report.

“It should shock all of us that that there’s a country on this planet that denies girls access to education beyond sixth grade, that denies women access to most paid employment,” said Heather Barr, associate women’s rights director at Human Rights Watch.

“Women can’t go to a park. They can’t walk in the sunshine; they can’t exercise; they can’t play sport,” she said. “You know, all of these things that make you feel human.”

Barr is scathing of the UN process and says it’s clear that engaging with the Taliban has not worked.

“Diplomatic engagement in terms of getting the Taliban to respect women’s rights has been a 100% failure,” she said. “It’s achieved nothing. And so, it’s time now for us to be talking about other strategies.”

She said countries could bring a case against the Taliban in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), much like South Africa’s allegations of genocide against Israel over its military actions in Gaza, or Taliban leaders could be charged with gender persecution in the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“It (also) means diplomats and countries listening to the Afghan women’s rights defenders, who are calling for the crime of gender apartheid to be recognized under international law,” Barr added.

In his report, UN special rapporteur Bennett also backed calls for gender apartheid to be a punishable offense and predicted a dystopic future for women and girls should the world fail to act.

“Left unchecked, the Taliban’s institutionalized system of gender oppression will become more robust, as those resisting it suffer increasing violence, as memories of female role models and notions of female independence fade, and as new generations are raised and radicalized in a society unquestioning of its dehumanization and exploitation of women and girls,” he wrote.

Arzo doesn’t want a life like that for herself, her sister, or the women and girls still in Afghanistan.

She’s learning English, hopeful that one day soon she’ll be able to leave Pakistan for a safe country.

“I don’t know what the future holds, but as long as I am in Pakistan, I will continue my lessons,” she said.

“I’m determined to achieve my goals … Now I am not scared of anything.”
Pakistan
Pakistani parliament denounces US congressional resolution calling for a probe into recent elections (AP)
AP [6/28/2024 2:59 PM, Munir Ahmed, 31180K, Negative]
Pakistan’s lower house of Parliament on Friday denounced a U.S. congressional resolution that called this week for an independent investigation into allegations that Pakistan’s parliamentary elections earlier this year were massively rigged.

The Pakistani resolution, introduced by ruling party lawmaker Shaista Malik, was adopted by the National Assembly despite objections from lawmakers from the party of imprisoned former prime minister Imran Khan, who say the Feb. 8 vote was rigged.

Malik in a televised speech said the U.S. resolution passed Wednesday was “completely against the facts.” She said Pakistan would not tolerate any such interference in its internal affairs.

The latest development came a day after Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry rejected the U.S. congressional resolution, which stunned authorities in Pakistan.

On Friday, Islamabad said it has decided to appoint a new ambassador to the U.S. to replace Masood Khan.

At a news conference, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baluch, said Khan would be replaced by diplomat Rizwan Saeed Sheikh. However, she said the new appointment had already been under consideration.

Baluch said Pakistan regretted the resolution adopted by the U.S. House of Representatives.

“The resolution clearly stems from an inadequate and erroneous understanding of the political and electoral processes of Pakistan. It is also an unsolicited interference in Pakistan’s domestic affairs,” she said.

The latest development came a day after an appeals court in Pakistan upheld the conviction and seven-year prison sentence for Khan and his wife for their 2018 marriage, which was found to be unlawful. The couple denied they violated a mandatory three-month waiting period — a requirement of Islamic law enforced by Pakistani law.

Though Pakistan’s top leadership expressed anger over the U.S. resolution, Khan’s party hailed it, saying its victory in the election was converted into a defeat by the Election Commission of Pakistan.

Khan’s party won the most seats but fell short of a simple majority to form a government. That paved the way for Khan’s political rivals to form a coalition government.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who replaced Khan after his ouster from power in 2022 through a no-confidence vote in Parliament, has repeatedly offered a dialogue with Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, which has a strong presence in the parliament.

However, Khan’s party has rejected the offer, saying Sharif’s came into power through a fraud vote.
Pakistani parliament slams US demand for election probe (VOA)
VOA [6/28/2024 3:18 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4032K, Negative]
Pakistan’s ruling coalition passed a resolution in the lower house of parliament Friday denouncing a U.S. congressional call for a probe into allegations that the country’s February election was rigged.

The legislative National Assembly stated that Pakistan “will not accept any interference in its internal affairs, and the subject resolution is an attempt to undermine the state.”

The resolution comes two days after the U.S. House of Representatives voted 368-7 on Tuesday urging “the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities” in Pakistan’s election.

It also condemned what it described as “attempts to suppress” Pakistanis’ participation in their democracy through harassment, violence, intimidation, arbitrary detention and restrictions on access to the internet and telecommunications.

“The house deeply regrets that the subject resolution clearly reflects an incomplete and wrong understanding of the political and electoral process of Pakistan,” the Pakistani lawmakers responded Friday in their counter-resolution.

The resolution passed on a voice vote in which no individual votes were tallied.

Lawmakers loyal to the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan opposed the resolution. They instead welcomed the U.S. demand for an investigation into what they claimed was massive rigging on a scale never witnessed before in national elections.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday rejected the U.S. resolution in a formal response. Its spokesperson renewed the rebuke at her weekly news conference Thursday, calling the U.S. congressmen’s decision unfortunate.

“This resolution is not constructive; it is not objective; it is divorced from the realities in Pakistan, and it is an interference in Pakistan’s internal affairs,” Mumtaz Baloch said.

When asked for comments on the congressional resolution on Wednesday, the U.S. State Department avoided discussing it but said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Washington’s ambassador in Islamabad have consistently urged Pakistan “to respect the rights of its people and live with its constitutional and international obligations.”

The February 8 vote, in which no single party won a simple majority, was marred by deadly violence, allegations of military-orchestrated rigging, nationwide mobile phone and internet shutdowns on election day and delayed results. PTI leaders, candidates and supporters were subjected to a nationwide state crackdown in the run-up to the election, forcing many to contest the polls from hiding.

PTI and independent observers have maintained the vote manipulation was solely meant to keep Khan-backed candidates from sweeping the election, allegations the country’s election commission denies.

Khan, 71, has been jailed since August on disputed charges of corruption, a fraudulent marriage and leaking state secrets. Many central members of his party, including women, also remain in jail on disputed charges.

Despite the crackdown, legal setbacks and alleged vote rigging by election authorities, candidates backed by Khan’s PTI won the most seats in the 342-seat National Assembly but were short of a simple majority.

That enabled PTI rivals the Pakistan Muslim League-N, or PML-N, and the Pakistan People’s Party, or PPP, to form a coalition government, allegedly with the military’s backing. The PML-N leader, Shehbaz Sharif, became the prime minister.

The election process and its outcome, however, remain contentious. They face multiple legal challenges, some of which also are being heard by Pakistan’s Supreme Court.

Analysts have downplayed the U.S. resolution, saying it will not affect Washington’s policy toward Islamabad.

Just hours before the Pakistani parliament passed Friday’s resolution, Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar hosted a meeting with the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, Donald Blome.

A post-meeting Foreign Ministry statement said, “The two sides reviewed the latest developments in bilateral relations and discussed ways to move the relationship forward.”

Cash-strapped Pakistan is engaged in talks with the International Monetary Fund to secure a new multibillion-dollar loan to stave off an economic crisis. Economic experts believe Washington’s support will be crucial for Islamabad to negotiate the much-needed bailout package successfully.
Pakistan finance minister confident about new IMF programme (Reuters)
Reuters [6/30/2024 1:39 PM, Charlotte Greenfield, 42991K, Positive]
Pakistan’s finance minister said on Sunday he was "very confident" his country would secure a new funding programme from the International Monetary Fund after the cash-strapped country’s annual fiscal budget passed into law.

The budget comes ahead of more talks with the IMF for a loan of between $6 billion and $8 billion to avert a debt default by Pakistan, the slowest-growing economy in South Asia.

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said at a press conference that his government would work on securing its next IMF programme to ensure economic stability.

"We are taking it forward; it is inevitable. I’m very optimistic that we’ll be able to take it through to the finish line for an Extended Fund Programme, which is going to be larger and longer in nature," he said, according to local broadcaster Geo News.

Pakistan’s parliament on Friday passed the government’s tax-heavy finance bill for the coming fiscal year. In April Pakistan completed a short-term $3 billion programme, which helped stave off sovereign default.
Finance minister: Pakistan’s new IMF loan program ‘on track’ for up to $8 billion (VOA)
VOA [6/30/2024 3:23 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4032K, Neutral]
Pakistan said Sunday that discussions with the International Monetary Fund to secure a new multibillion-dollar loan program are progressing well and the program “is on track."

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb confirmed during a news conference that Islamabad is negotiating a three-year loan program valued at $6 - $8 billion to avoid a debt default.

He stated that the government is pursuing the loan facility to sustain macroeconomic and currency stability, increase foreign exchange reserves, and attract foreign direct investment to cash-strapped Pakistan.

"The IMF program is our assurance in terms of macroeconomic stability. We are taking it forward certainly; it is inevitable… without this program, we cannot move forward,” he said.

“We are making positive progress. We are very optimistic that we will be able to take it through the finishing line for an Extended Fund Program, which is going to be larger and longer in nature,” the minister said of his ongoing talks with the U.S.-based global lender.

Aurangzeb underlined the importance of the IMF loan, saying it would help unlock investments from other international financial institutions and countries that are friendly toward Pakistan, including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. “They want a backstop for investment, which is the Fund program.”

Last week, Pakistan’s parliament passed the government’s tax-laden budget for the coming fiscal year. Officials claimed the budget would guide the country towards an era of sustainable and inclusive growth. Opposition parties rejected the budget, saying it would be highly inflationary.

Pakistan is facing $25 billion in external debt payments in the coming fiscal year starting in July, a significantly higher amount than its current level of foreign exchange reserves.

US support crucial

Aurangzeb, speaking Sunday, dismissed concerns that a recent resolution in the U.S. Congress calling for a probe into fraud allegations in Pakistan’s February elections would undermine the ongoing talks with the IMF.

Washington’s support is crucial for Islamabad to negotiate the bailout package successfully.

On Tuesday, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 368-7, urging “the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities” in the February 8 vote.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s administration promptly rejected the resolution on Wednesday, saying it “stems from an incomplete understanding of the political situation and electoral process” in Pakistan.

On Friday, ruling coalition lawmakers passed a counter-resolution in the legislative lower house of parliament, decrying the congressional move as an “interference” in Pakistan’s internal affairs.

The opposition party of jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan and independent observers have persistently alleged that the powerful military was behind widespread rigging, including mobile phone and internet shutdowns on polling day, and unusually delayed results to help its favored political parties to win the elections, charges Pakistan’s election commission denied.

The contentious election has fueled political turmoil in the country of about 250 million people, making it harder for the Sharif administration to tackle the economic crisis and attract much-needed foreign investment.

Since gaining independence in 1947, Pakistan has received 23 bailout packages from the IMF, the most of any country in the world. Critics blame repeated military-led dictatorial rules, financial mismanagement, and corruption by elected governments for hindering democratic and economic progress.
‘No dialogue’: Pakistan says open to attacks on Afghan-based armed groups (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [6/28/2024 7:44 AM, Abid Hussain, 20871K, Negative]
Pakistan’s Defence Minister Khawaja Asif has warned that the country would not hesitate to launch attacks on the territory of Afghanistan, its neighbour, amid rising tensions between the two over security concerns.

When asked whether Pakistan would consider cross-border attacks to control perpetrators, the Asif replied to an interviewer, “If the need arises, there is nothing more important than Pakistan’s sovereignty.”

Addressing the legality of potential cross-border attacks, Asif argued that Pakistan must prioritise its own interests. “It is also a violation of international norms when Afghan soil is used to export terrorism, with those responsible receiving protection and safe havens by the people there,” he added.

In the interview on Thursday, he also rejected the prospects of any dialogue with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistan Taliban, an armed group accused by Pakistan of launching attacks from across the border.

“There is no chance of a dialogue with them. What do we talk about, we need to have a common ground to speak to them,” Asif said.

The interview follows Pakistan’s recent announcement of a renewed military operation named Azm-e-Istehkam, aimed at curbing escalating violence since November 2022, when the TTP unilaterally ended a ceasefire.

Founded in 2007 and aligned ideologically with the Afghan Taliban, the TTP is an armed group advocating for the reversal of the merger of Pakistan’s northwestern tribal regions with Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, and stricter enforcement of their interpretation of Islamic laws in the region.

Pakistan has repeatedly accused armed groups of launching attacks from Afghanistan, where it says the ruling Afghan Taliban, in power since August 2021, provides them with a safe haven. The Taliban denies these allegations.

Relations between the two neighbours have deteriorated significantly in the past two years, with numerous border skirmishes that have often led to closures of border crossings.

In March this year, Pakistan conducted air strikes inside Afghan territory in retaliation for attacks that resulted in the deaths of seven soldiers in Pakistan’s North Waziristan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Afghan interim government claimed that Pakistan targeted ordinary Afghan homes and condemned what it termed as its neighbour’s reckless actions.

Yet, even as Asif’s comments underscored the taut ties between the neighbours, Pakistan has insisted that it is not shutting the door on Afghanistan – and is keen to remain engaged in its neighbour’s future.

Pakistan’s Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said on June 27 in the National Assembly that the country would send a delegation to attend United Nations-hosted talks with the Afghan Taliban in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on June 30.

Dar, who also serves as the country’s deputy prime minister, added that the foreign office is planning a future visit by officials to Kabul.

“Afghanistan remains a top priority on our agenda. Make no mistake, Afghanistan has not been ignored by this government,” he emphasised.

However, Riccardo Valle, a researcher based in Venice with The Khorasan Diary – a non-partisan platform run by journalists – said that while improving the country’s security situation was necessary, the Azm-e-Istehkam operation could have negative consequences for Pakistan’s relations with the Afghan Taliban and may not achieve the goal of reducing violence.

“Pakistan has previously conducted air strikes, reportedly targeting TTP militants’ camps. These actions not only failed to weaken the group but also triggered strong propaganda responses from the TTP,” Valle told Al Jazeera.

Pakistan has witnessed a surge in violence over the past 18 months, with data showing more than 700 attacks in 2023 alone, resulting in nearly 1,000 deaths, primarily among law enforcement personnel.

The government has dispatched numerous delegations to Kabul, including a high-level visit by Asif and Pakistan’s intelligence chief, General Nadeem Anjum, in February 2023, yet mutual distrust between the two nations persists.

Valle notes the close relationship and shared ideology between the TTP and the ruling Afghan Taliban, making it challenging to envision a scenario where the Afghan Taliban would crack down on the Pakistan Taliban.

The researcher pointed out that the announcement of Operation Azm-e-Istehkam had already stoked fierce resistance from residents and political parties in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

“Today in Afghanistan, there exists a regime maintaining ties with the Pakistani Taliban. By launching this operation, Pakistan risks fostering further grievances in the province towards the state, potentially aiding the TTP,” he said.
Pakistan to start second phase of Afghan deportations (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [6/30/2024 7:01 AM, Staff, 20871K, Negative]
Pakistan is set to start the second phase of a controversial plan to send undocumented Afghan refugees back to their country.

Beginning Sunday, authorities are likely to expel more than 800,000 Afghans from the country, after about 541,000 were forced to leave in the first phase in November last year.

If they do not leave voluntarily, the refugees face arrest and deportation.

Before the first phase of repatriation, the Pakistani government claimed there were nearly 4.4 million Afghan refugees, out of which an estimated 1.73 million were undocumented.

The government has defended the crackdown, citing security concerns and a struggling economy.

The deportation order came amid a dramatic increase in armed attacks across Pakistan, with the government attributing the attacks to groups and nationals based in Afghanistan, an allegation the Taliban government in Afghanistan rejected.

Philippa Candler, the representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) in Islamabad, told Al Jazeera that Pakistan should look at the profiles of the undocumented Afghans before expelling them, as many of them were “in need of international protection”.

“They’re refugees. They’re not involved in terrorist activities. They’re just people who fled and who need protection,” said Candler, adding that if any Afghan nationals were involved in terrorist activities, “it should be dealt with separately”.

Al Jazeera’s Kamal Hyder, reporting from the Khazana refugee camp in Peshawar city that hosts about 1,300 Afghan families, said the refugees have pleaded with the international community and the Pakistani government to give them more time “so that they could leave in a dignified manner”.

“They complain that their houses are being raided in the dead of the night. They’ve been forced to leave this country in a very miserable condition,” Hyder said, adding that it was “very difficult to leave after spending a lifetime in a country and then being forced out”.

Pakistan is not a signatory to the 1951 UN convention that protects the rights of the refugees. The country also lacks domestic laws to protect the refugees as well as procedures to determine the status of individuals seeking international protection within its borders.

Rights group Amnesty International has warned of the risk of persecution for the refugees returning to Afghanistan.
18 inmates flee a prison after overpowering guard in Pakistan-administered Kashmir (AP)
AP [7/1/2024 2:49 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
Eighteen inmates, including some on death row, have escaped from a prison in the disputed Himalayan region of Kashmir after overpowering a guard with a pistol, Pakistani officials said on Monday.

Local police chief Riaz Mughal said one of the prisoners was shot and killed in the breakout from Rawalakot prison the previous day.

A massive search has been launched to trace and arrest all those inmates who fled the prison, Mughal said, authorities opened an investigation into what lead up to the prison break. The prison’s chief and some other officers have already been dismissed from their post while some officials had been arrested for question, he said.

Mughal said six of the prisoners were on death row, while another three were serving life sentences. Such jail breaks are rare in Pakistan, he said.

Officials say one of the inmates had a pistol that was used to overpower a guard and snatch the keys to the prison cells.

The disputed Himalayan region is divided between India and Pakistan, both armed with nuclear weapons. The South Asian neighbors have fought three wars since their independence from British colonial rule in 1947.
India
India says it rejects "deeply biased" US religious freedom report (Reuters)
Reuters [6/28/2024 10:08 AM, Tanvi Mehta, 42991K, Negative]
New Delhi on Friday rejected the U.S. State Department’s 2023 religious freedom report on India, calling it "deeply biased" and one that does not understand the South Asian nation’s social fabric.

The report, released on Wednesday, noted violent attacks on minority groups, especially Muslims and Christians, including killings, assaults and vandalism of houses of worship.

Criticism of India by the U.S. is usually restrained due to close economic ties and New Delhi’s importance for Washington in countering China, political analysts say.

"As in the past, the report is deeply biased, lacks understanding of India’s social fabric and is visibly driven by vote bank considerations and a prescriptive outlook. We, therefore, reject it," the Indian government said on Friday.

India said the report challenged the integrity of some decisions made by the country’s judiciary and incidents were handpicked to form a pre-conceived narrative.

Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Reuters.

The U.S. report listed dozens of incidents, including violence in the northeastern state of Manipur that started in May 2023 and a fatal shooting of a security official and three Muslims on a train near Mumbai.

It also cited examples of attacks against Muslims based on allegations that Muslim men were participating in the slaughter of cows or beef trading.

India also said that it had officially taken up cases of hate crimes and racial attacks against its citizens and other minorities in U.S.

"However, such dialogues should not become a licence for foreign interference in other polities," the government statement said.
US, India extend digital tax truce to Sunday as deadline approaches (Reuters)
Reuters [6/28/2024 6:06 PM, David Lawder, 42991K, Neutral]
The United States and India have extended a standstill agreement on U.S. retaliation over India’s digital-services tax until Sunday, aligning it with a fast-approaching deadline for a global deal to reallocate taxing rights on the world’s biggest and most profitable companies, the U.S. Treasury said on Friday.

In a brief announcement, the Treasury said that a November 2021 political compromise that expired March 31 would be extended through the end of the month, as negotiations on the "Pillar 1" tax agreement continue.

The Pillar 1 deal is in danger of collapse, as the U.S., India and China have failed to agree on key elements of the deal related to calculation of transfer pricing to help determine local tax liabilities.

The stakes of the last-minute negotiations are high. The deal’s failure could prompt several countries to reinstate their taxes on U.S. tech giants such as Apple (AAPL.O), Alphabet’s Google (GOOGL.O), opens new tab, and Amazon.com (AMZN.O) and risk punitive duties on billions of dollars in exports to the U.S.

The extension of the U.S.-India agreement also aligns it with the expiration of similar deals with six other countries that had enacted digital-services taxes: Austria, Britain, France, Italy, Spain and Turkey.

These countries suspended their digital-services taxes shortly after a two-pillar tax deal was struck in October 2021 by nearly 140 countries to impose a 15% global minimum corporate income tax and complete negotiation on reallocating some taxing rights on large multinationals to countries where they sell goods and services. This was meant to replace the digital-services taxes.

At the same time, the U.S. Trade Representative’s office agreed to suspend planned trade retaliation against the digital taxes while negotiations were completed.

U.S. negotiations are being led by the Treasury, where a spokesperson declined to comment on the state of negotiations.

A USTR spokesperson also declined to comment on next steps, but added: "As we’ve said previously, we oppose digital-services taxes that unfairly target U.S. companies and the OECD/G20 Inclusive Framework negotiations offer the best path to address the challenges that digitalization of the economy poses to the international tax system."

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Reuters at a G7 finance meeting in May that India and China were hindering agreement on the alternative transfer-pricing mechanism known as "Amount B," but that talks were continuing.

Italy’s finance minister also blamed the U.S. demands for the inability to agree on terms. Italy is seeking an extension of the U.S. standstill agreement and sources told Reuters earlier on Friday that Italy has asked Google to pay $1 billion in unpaid taxes.
An Indian military tank sinks while crossing a river in a region bordering China, killing 5 soldiers (AP)
AP [6/29/2024 3:47 AM, Staff, 31180K, Negative]
Five Indian soldiers were killed when a military tank they were travelling in sank while crossing a river in the remote region of Ladakh that borders China, officials said Saturday.

The tank sank early Saturday due to sudden increase in the water levels of Shyok River during a military training activity, according to an Indian army command center statement. It said the accident took place in Saser Brangsa near the Line of Actual Control that divides India and China in the Ladakh region.

Defense Minister Rajnath Singh called it an “unfortunate accident.”

“We will never forget exemplary service of our gallant soldiers to the nation. My heartfelt condolences to the bereaved families. The nation stands firm with them during this hour of grief,” Singh wrote on the social platform X.

The Indian and Chinese militaries have been locked in a standoff in Ladakh since May 2020, when they clashed along their land border in the region, with 20 Indian and four Chinese soldiers killed.

The skirmish turned into a long-running standoff in the rugged mountainous area, where each side has stationed tens of thousands of military personnel. New Delhi and Beijing have held a series of diplomatic and military talks to resolve their worst military conflict in decades.

The border dispute between India and China dates back to the 1950s, and the two sides fought a war over it in 1962.
Monsoon rains collapse roof at New Delhi airport, crushing cars and killing 1 (Washington Post)
Washington Post [6/28/2024 8:39 AM, Anant Gupta and Karishma Mehrotra, 6.9M, Negative]
Heavy monsoon rains in the Indian capital of New Delhi brought part of the airport terminal roof crashing down on parked cars, killing at least one person and injuring eight others, according to officials.

Operations at the terminal were suspended, Civil Aviation Minister Ram Mohan Naidu Kinjarapu told reporters at the site, while attributing the damage to the rain. Government critics, however, alleged that negligence and poor maintenance amid the nation’s infrastructure construction boom are behind the accident.

“The rest of the terminal building has been closed off and everything is being thoroughly inspected so that any other untoward incident does not happen here,” he added. “Passengers are the first priority for us.”

Stranded passengers complained about the lack of clear communication from authorities. “There are about 800 of us stuck here but there is no responsible person who can talk to us,” one passenger told a local television network. “We are just cluelessly standing here.”

After the initial suspension, officials diverted all operations to the airport’s other two terminals that also manage international flights. IndiGo Airlines, a company that controls 60 percent of India’s domestic aviation market, according to trade analysts, initially canceled flights scheduled to depart from the terminal.

The rescue operation was conducted by fire safety officials over three hours, according to Atul Garg, director of the Delhi Fire Service. The accident came as parts of New Delhi were submerged in knee-deep water from the monsoons, halting traffic and bringing down power lines.

There has long been criticism over poor maintenance in the country and a lack of oversight over contractors in major building projects. India has seen a massive infrastructure boom to meet rising demands for transportation.

“The rapid infrastructure development in the recent years has been of poor quality, without monitoring and maintenance, and has involved corruption,” said Anup Kumar Srivastava, a former consultant with the National Disaster Management Authority who now consults independently. “The common man’s life is now in danger when traveling on a bridge, in a tunnel or on a dam.”

India’s aviation industry, with the world’s third-largest market, has built 75 airports and seen a doubling of domestic passenger traffic in the past decade.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has heavily marketed the country’s ambitious infrastructure push with frequent travels to inaugurate highways, railway stations and airports. His party’s recent election campaign made infrastructure development a central focus.

Three months ago, Modi inaugurated a revamped terminal at the same airport, but officials rushed to clarify that it was not for the part of the airport that just collapsed. Members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party have blamed the airport wreckage on the Congress party, which was in power when that particular roof was constructed.

A chorus of critics on social media, however, called the Delhi incident the latest in a long line of infrastructure woes afflicting the country despite fees paid specifically for maintenance. On Thursday, rains collapsed part of the canopy at an airport in Madhya Pradesh state that was unveiled just weeks earlier.

“Corruption and criminal negligence is responsible for the collapse of shoddy infrastructure falling like a deck of cards,” the Congress party’s president, Mallikarjun Kharge, wrote in a post.

Recently, a rail accident killed nine people in Bengal, evoking images from an even worse incident a year ago, when a three-train pileup killed 275 people and injured about 1,000. Late last year, a collapsed tunnel left 41 construction workers stranded nearly 300 feet underground for almost three weeks.

Delhi International Airport Ltd., the company that operates the facility, which was built in 2009, announced compensation of $24,000 for the family of the deceased and about $3,500 each for those injured in the collapse.
Eleven dead in Indian capital after heavy rain, flight operations stutter (Reuters)
Reuters [6/30/2024 4:37 AM, Shivangi Acharya, 42991K, Negative]
The death toll from this week’s sudden heavy rain has climbed to 11 in New Delhi, including four citizens who drowned in submerged underpasses, the Times of India reported, while flight operations stuttered in the Indian capital.

New Delhi, which endured one of its worst heatwaves in history earlier this month, faced the biggest downpour in decades on June 28, with rainfall in a single day surpassing the city’s average for the entire month.

The torrential rain caused a fatal roof collapse at one of the three terminals of Delhi’s main airport, disrupted flights, flooded underpasses, and led to massive traffic jams, power and water outages in parts of the city.

Nearly 60 flights were cancelled from New Delhi’s main airport in the last 24 hours, according to data from flight tracking platform Flightaware.

Operations were largely normal on Sunday, with most flights from the affected terminal diverted to the other two, an airport official said but did not rule out possible flight cancellations in the course of the day.

The Delhi airport is one of the country’s biggest and busiest.

Terminal 1, the now-closed terminal, is mostly used by low-cost carriers IndiGo, operated by Interglobe Aviation (INGL.NS), and SpiceJet, and currently has a capacity to handle 40 million passengers annually.

An Indigo spokesperson did not comment on the flight cancellations and a SpiceJet spokesperson did not immediately respond to a phone call.
India enforces new criminal laws despite opposition seeking delay (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [7/1/2024 2:40 AM, Kiran Sharma, 2M, Neutral]
India on Monday implemented three new criminal laws that replace archaic colonial-era legislation, aiming to significantly overhaul its criminal justice system.

Among the legal reform’s key highlights, it defines terrorism for the first time, drops the sedition law -- which was used under British rule to jail freedom fighters -- and introduces a provision for the death penalty over mob lynchings.

Under the new laws, anyone harming the nation’s interests, integrity, sovereignty or unity will be strictly dealt with, but criticizing the government of the day will not be an offense -- unlike during British rule, which ended in 1947.

"If someone interferes with the country’s flag, borders or property, they will definitely go to jail," Home Minister Amit Shah said in Parliament in December, when the three laws were passed.

He said the 150-year-old colonial laws were "aimed at giving punishment instead of justice" and added, "These laws were made by a foreign ruler to run his rule and govern its slave subjects."

Instead of prioritizing cases of homicide and misbehavior with women, he told Parliament, the focus of the old laws was on the protection of the treasury and railways and the safety of the British crown. He added that the new ones have been made on the basis of the basic spirit of the Indian Constitution protecting the freedom of the individual, human rights and the principle of equal treatment to all.

Shah said the new laws prioritize "crimes against women and children; matters affecting the human body; security of the country’s borders; crimes related to the army, navy and air force; electoral crimes; and tampering with coins, currency notes and government stamps."

In a separate event in February, he exuded confidence that after these laws come into force, justice will be delivered within three years after a case is registered, employing a digitally equipped policing system and online trials to speed up the process.

Addressing an event in April, D.Y. Chandrachud, the chief justice of India, called the new laws "a watershed moment for our society because no law affects the day-to-day conduct of our society like the criminal law, [as it] directs the moral arc of a nation and has the ability of depriving people of their cherished liberties as well."

"I think the enactment of these laws by Parliament is a clear indicator that India is changing," he said. "India is on the move -- and that India needs new legal instruments to deal with current challenges which we envisage for the future of our society."

The new laws came into effect despite opposition party members and judicial experts calling for a postponement of enforcement.

On June 14, days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi was sworn in for a third straight time, a government circular notified all departments about the enforcement of the new laws from the first day of July.

Eight days later, Jairam Ramesh, a senior leader of the opposition Indian National Congress, posted on X (formerly Twitter) that the three far-reaching bills "had been bulldozed through Parliament without proper debate and discussion, and at a time when 146 MPs had been suspended." A large number of members of Parliament from the opposition Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance -- a bloc of over two dozen parties led by the Congress party -- were suspended after protesting a security breach at Parliament.

He said the Congress party was of the "firm opinion" that the implementation date of the new laws should be deferred to enable a thorough review and reexamination involving "more extensive and meaningful consultations with various legal experts and organizations who have serious concerns" on the current form of the legislation, and that the laws should then be taken up again in Parliament.

Writing a letter to Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal on June 11, a senior advocate of India’s Supreme Court, Indira Jaising, also asked him to delay the enforcement until all those concerned -- including the judiciary, the federal and state governments, and the citizenry of the country -- "have an opportunity to debate and discuss the implementation of these laws and its implications on access to justice."

She observed that as and when the new laws come into effect, the existing ones will continue to stay in effect for perhaps another 20 years -- the average lifespan of a case in India -- or more until cases filed under them are resolved.

"In effect, we will be having two parallel criminal justice systems for the foreseeable future, which can range from 20-30 years," she said in the letter.

Jaising also pointed out that there apparently was no judicial audit conducted on the effects of the three new laws on the already-overburdened judiciary. In a separate post on X, she added that the "backlog of criminal litigation [is] likely to go up by an alarming estimated [rate of] 30%."
How India’s Newly Empowered Opposition Can Stand Up for Rohingya (Time – opinion)
Time [6/29/2024 4:00 AM, Rasheed Ahmed, 21766K, Negative]
In July 2023, Indian authorities led a Rohingya refugee couple to burial grounds in the northern state of Jammu and Kashmir. Their 40-day-old daughter had just died in the refugee detention center where the couple was also held, following refugee-led protests in which police deployed teargas against detainees. As their daughter was buried, they watched on with handcuffed wrists, tethered to police escorts.

Video of the incident caused a stir in India, but it was just one tragedy in the broader campaign of intense persecution Rohingya refugees have faced from the Hindu nationalist government of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The Muslim Rohingya came to India fleeing genocide by the military in neighboring Myanmar, but now has to contend with death threats, police brutality, arbitrary arrest, deportation, and dehumanizing hate speech from leading figures within Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

The hatred of the Rohingya is pervasive in India. Despite them comprising only around 0.02% of the country’s 200 million Muslims, 6% of all Indian anti-Muslim social media posts and 5% of surveyed anti-Muslim in-person hate speeches were specifically targeted at Rohingya in 2023, according to the Washington, D.C.-based India Hate Lab research group.

As of late May, an additional 45,000 Rohingya had fled a new surge of violence in Myanmar’s Rakhine state (40,000 were already in India), including reports of beheadings, mass arson, and forcible conscription into Myanmar’s government forces. With further migration into India likely, the issue of the Modi regime’s treatment of Rohingya refugees takes on renewed urgency.

India stands at a crossroads. It can continue to persecute Rohingya refugees in violation of international law, or it can set out on a new path, providing safe haven and pathways to citizenship for a minority group fleeing crimes against humanity.

Fortunately, India’s progressive opposition is at last in a position to demand change. The progressive INDIA coalition’s gains in just-concluded elections mean that Modi will have to govern in coalition for the first time in more than a decade. Facing national and international censure internationally for his anti-Muslim campaign speeches, Modi must also contend with renewed pressure from outside India.

India’s progressive forces and the international community can use this momentum to push back against the Modi regime’s past abuses and secure reforms that benefit the Rohingya settled in India—along with the many more likely to seek refuge in the future.

Such efforts must begin with attempts to repeal Modi’s Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), a landmark piece of Hindu nationalist legislation that specifically excludes Muslim migrants from obtaining Indian citizenship.

So long as the CAA is in place, Rohingya will be excluded from the same pathways to citizenship given to Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, and Christians fleeing persecution in nearby countries. Without citizenship rights, Rohingya will continue to lack legal protection against the abuses of the Indian government.

The opposition must also push India to finally sign onto the international laws enshrined in the U.N.’s 1951 Refugee Convention and the 1967 Protocol, which guarantee the rights of refugees to seek asylum and prohibit deportations to life-threatening countries. To adopt these widely accepted laws would be a major gain for a country that has largely, according to experts, pursued an “ad-hoc and arbitrary” refugee policy driven more by short-term geopolitical thinking than respect for legal norms.

Such measures would help to legitimize a nation frequently criticized for its capricious treatment of refugees and equip it with legal tools to face challenges that it is likely to face in the future. That includes the possibility of a mass exodus from flood-threatened Bangladesh, where close to 1 million Rohingya are now living, after they fled Myanmar.

As the situation in Myanmar once again devolves into chaos, it is crucial to implement these changes now. India must release the hundreds of Rohingya refugees currently held in jails, stop deporting Rohingya to a nation that is profoundly unsafe, stop demolishing Rohingya homes and places of worship, and stop attacking a people that has fled genocide. With Modi’s grip on power finally challenged, there is no better time to stand up for India’s Rohingya.
NSB
Maldives US envoy says China, US and India are all important partners (Reuters)
Reuters [6/28/2024 4:14 PM, David Brunnstrom, 42991K, Positive]
The Maldives, which has raised U.S. and Indian concerns by signing defense agreements with China, sees all the big powers in the Indo-Pacific as important partners and considers regional stability vital, its Washington ambassador said on Friday.

Speaking after a Washington visit by Maldives Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer this week, Abdul Ghafoor Mohamed told Reuters his country occupies a very strategic position and is aware of its responsibilities in maintaining a "free, peaceful and stable Indian Ocean."

Zameer’s Washington visit came two months after Maldives President Mohamed Muizzu’s party won a landslide in parliamentary elections. Muizzu has pivoted ties towards China and away from India, a key U.S. regional partner in standing up to Beijing’s efforts to spread its regional influence.

Zameer met U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Tuesday, who said Washington sought a deeper partnership.

Ghafoor said he was not privy to details of defense agreements the Maldives has signed with China, but they should not be a cause of concern to others.

"We deal with other countries in a sincere way and therefore we expect other countries to be dealing with the Maldives sincerely ... I don’t think there are any hidden agendas in this at all," he said.

"We would not do anything that would harm or create problems in the region ... because as a small country very much reliant on tourism, peace and stability, not only in the Indian Ocean, but also globally, is important to us."

Asked how the Maldives, a low-lying archipelago of about half a million people, balanced its ties with India, China and the U.S., he replied:

"We consider all of them are partners ... all these countries are of importance to us and they help us."

In May, India said it had replaced 80 soldiers on the Maldives with civilians after a demand by Muizzu as part of his "India out" campaign.

Ghafoor said relations with India were nevertheless "quite good" and improving, with a visit expected by India’s external relations minister soon.

U.S.-Maldives relations had become "very robust," he said, with both sides recently opening embassies in each other’s country. He said the Maldives economic minister is expected to visit the U.S. next month to discuss a trade and investment framework agreement.

Ghafoor said Washington has been helping with projects on climate change, renewable energy and technical assistance to help management of debt financing.

He said the Maldives would like to seem more U.S. investment especially in the tourism sector, which attracted some 76,000 U.S. visitors last year.
At least 9 dead including an entire family when landslides hit Nepal villages (AP)
AP [6/29/2024 7:37 AM, Staff, 31180K, Negative]
Landslides triggered by heavy rainfall on Saturday killed at least nine people including an entire family while they were sleeping in Nepal’s mountainous districts, officials said.

The landslides buried houses in three separate areas in the country’s mountainous region, about 250 kilometers (156 miles) west of the capital, Kathmandu, according to Nepal’s National Disaster Rescue and Reduction Management Authority.

Five members of the same family were killed when their house was swallowed by a landslide while they were asleep at Malika village in Gulmi district. The victims included a couple, their daughter-in-law and two grandchildren including an 8-month-old girl.

Two more people were killed in neighboring Baglung district and another two in Syangja districts, officials said.

The monsoon season that brings heavy rainfall in Nepal began earlier this month. It generally triggers landslides in the mountainous areas that cover most part of this Himalayan nation, causing deaths and damage until September.
Nepal landslides kill nine, including 3 children (Reuters)
Reuters [6/29/2024 2:26 AM, Gopal Sharma, 42991K, Negative]
At least nine people, including three children, were killed after heavy monsoon rains in west Nepal triggered landslides, an official said on Saturday.

Five members of a family were sleeping when their house was washed away by a landslide in Malika village in Gulmi district, about 250 km (156 miles) west of Kathmandu, according to Dizan Bhattarai, a spokesman for the National Disaster Rescue and Reduction Management Authority.

“Bodies of all five have been recovered,” Bhattarai told Reuters, adding that the family included two children.

In neighbouring Syangja district, one woman and her three year old daughter died in a landslide that swept away their house, while in Baglung district, which borders Gulmi, two people were killed in another landslide.

At least 35 people across Nepal have died in landslides, floods and lightning strikes since mid-June when annual monsoon rains started. Rains normally continue until mid-September.

Landslides and flash floods are common in mostly mountainous Nepal during the monsoon season and kill hundreds of people every year.
Central Asia
Imprisoned Former Kazakh Prime Minister Masimov’s Pardon Request Rejected (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/28/2024 6:16 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
Kazakh lawmaker Abzal Quspan said on June 28 that the Central Asian nation’s presidential commission on clemencies had rejected a pardon request filed by Karim Masimov, a once-powerful politician who twice served as Kazakhstan’s prime minister and now is serving 18 years in prison on charges of high treason and attempting to seize power during unrest in 2022.

Masimov officially asked President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev for clemency in March.

Officials said that despite the appeal, Masimov still faced charges of bribe-taking and money laundering, which are currently under investigation.

Masimov, a close ally of former President Nursultan Nazarbaev, was jailed in April 2023 over his role in deadly events that followed unprecedented anti-government protests in the former Soviet republic in January 2022.

The unrest began in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen in January 2022 over a sudden fuel price hike. But the demonstrations, buffeted by anger over corruption, political stagnation, and widespread injustice, quickly grew.

Much of the protesters’ ire appeared directed at Nazarbaev, who ruled Kazakhstan from 1989 until March 2019, when he handed over power to President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev.

However, Nazarbaev was widely believed to remain in control behind the scenes.

The protests were violently dispersed by police and military personnel, including troops of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization whom Toqaev invited into the country claiming that "20,000 extremists who were trained in terrorist camps abroad" had attacked Almaty.

The authorities have provided no evidence proving Toqaev’s claim about foreign terrorists.
Victims Of Kazakh Justice System Press To Clear Names, Reform Corrupt Courts (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/28/2024 12:11 PM, Chris Rickleton, 1530K, Neutral]
A series of scars that run horizontally across Rustem Amangeldy’s forearm recall a prison sentence that redefined his life and later his work as an anti-corruption activist in Kazakhstan.

“I simply couldn’t come to terms with the unfairness. They were telling me that I was a thief, but I knew that I wasn’t. They couldn’t even be bothered to fabricate the evidence against me well enough to make it believable,” said Amangeldy, who co-owned a construction company at the time he was investigated for embezzlement.

Amangeldy survived a suicide attempt in 2012 and walked free in 2016 after four hard years in prison.

During the first year of his freedom he slept with his eyes half open -- a habit ingrained in him from his time behind bars.

But when it comes to Kazakhstan’s justice system, his eyes are wide open -- and he is not the only one.

Amangeldy is one of hundreds of Kazakhs who are joining forces to call for a special commission to review controversial court rulings and promote broader justice reform.

The diverse group of “convicts” and those who have lost administrative cases even recently formed a public association to lobby the government that is called New Kazakhstan, Fair Kazakhstan.

They are the slogans that President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev has trumpeted to establish a break with the legacy of his long-ruling predecessor, Nursultan Nazarbaev, after regime-shaking unrest at the beginning of 2022.

“We want to support these stated aims,” said Amangeldy, who now runs the watchdog-style Altynbas YouTube program on corruption, government policy, and lawlessness in the construction sector, where he once worked.

“Even if they are a long way from reality at the moment,” he added.

‘The Bribes Have Been Doled Out’

Almaty-based Amangeldy is not officially a member of New Kazakhstan, Fair Kazakhstan, as legal reasons prevent him from officially joining civic organizations.

But he is one of at least 300 members of a WhatsApp group of the same name that has served as an organizing platform.

They are a diverse bunch.

One of the more vocal members of the group is former Colonel Mukhtar Karabekov, who has been pressing for the reversal of his corruption conviction and other judgments and dismissals concerning more than 200 military officers.

Thus far, fewer than 10 officers have been able to reverse the decisions against them and return to service, he said.

Other members of the group who met with RFE/RL in the Kazak capital, Astana, included women who lost property in civil lawsuits.

Alia Mamedova has been trying for two years to get the proceeds of a house worth nearly $100,000 that was confiscated in a court ruling.

She is part of a smaller group that has regularly camped outside the Supreme Court and other government buildings in Astana in a bid to get their cases reviewed.

On one occasion, she was arrested and sentenced to nearly a week in administrative detention.

Angelika Glinskaya, who is from the northern city of Pavlodar, contacted RFE/RL when she heard that the group’s struggles were being covered.

Glinskaya claims her husband paid judges to ensure that she emerged from their divorce settlement not only impoverished but in large debt to her former spouse.

Her appeals to Toqaev’s office and the anti-corruption agency have yet to yield any result.

One thing that unites the vast majority of the members of New Kazakhstan, Fair Kazakhstan is their inability to get a proper hearing at Kazakhstan’s highest appeals court -- a fact they say deprives them of a constitutional right.

Instead, they are stuck with the judgments issued at the local level (a district court, followed by a city court) where Karabekov argues “corporate solidarity” solidifies corruption.

“The Supreme Court doesn’t want to get involved in our cases, because the bribes have already been doled out here and there. Acknowledging these mistakes would require the relevant judges and investigators to be punished. And there are a lot of them,” Karabekov said.

Jury Trials No Panacea

Galym Ageleuov, a rights defender and the director of the Liberty nonprofit, says that second-instance courts “rarely, if ever, look into the substance of the case,” meaning that they don’t affect acquittal rates that are typically lower than 5 percent in such criminal courts.

Those cases that do go to the Supreme Court, in turn, find “a ready decision” as opposed to due process, Ageleuov argued.

Bribe-givers, he said, have multiple paths to influence the court’s decision -- if they cannot access judges directly, they often attempt to reach officials in city administrations who then put pressure on judges.

Toqaev and his administration have so far shown no appetite for any form of lustration, a process that earns its name from an ancient Roman purification ceremony and entails the mass canceling of officials or judges associated with systemic malpractice and corruption.

But after the president’s meeting with Supreme Court Chairman Aslambek Mergaliev in March, his office reported there was an increase in the number of trials by jury.

According to Ageleuov, an expansion of jury trials, including for civil cases, enjoys widespread popular support. But even this system needs to be overhauled, with full transparency in jury selection and rules preventing judges joining jurors in their deliberation.

“At the moment, the judges do everything to form the opinion of the jurors. And the judge is in turn politically dependent,” Ageleuov said.

Amangeldy, the businessman-turned-citizen journalist, has been fighting his case for more than a decade.

Once a millionaire, he now spends “most of [his] annual salary” on legal fees, both to clear his name and try to restore personal, business, and family assets appropriated by the country’s largest bank after a court process that he described as packed with irregularities.

Earlier this year, he won his first small victory when he managed to gain a hearing with Kazakhstan’s deputy prosecutor-general, who agreed that his case deserved consideration.

A prosecutorial protest -- which may now follow -- is one of the few means through which citizens can force a reversal of their verdicts.

Not everyone can get that kind of audience, he acknowledges.

“People like me will use all our resources to address their problems via the legal avenues that the system provides. Other people are at the end of their tether. They can become radicalized, set fire to themselves, or even worse because the system will not hear them,” Amangeldy said.
At Least 8 Dead, More Missing Amid Kyrgyzstan Flooding (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/30/2024 7:05 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
At least eight people have been confirmed killed in flooding and mudslides caused by heavy rainfall in a southern region of Kyrgyzstan.

Dramatic footage of rescue operations from the Nookat district of the southern Osh region showed Kyrgyz troops helping to evacuate residents, including small children, across makeshift barriers and bridges over racing floodwaters.

A state of emergency has been declared in the area.

The Kyrgyz Emergency Situations Ministry said six of the eight deaths were children or teens from a single family.

The Emergency Situations Ministry in neighboring Kazakhstan said two Kazakh minors were among the dead in Nookat, and two more Kazakh nationals were still missing.

The floods erupted late on June 29 following heavy rainfall.

Authorities said around 1,300 people who were stranded by the flooding in a tourist area in the region, known as Abshyr-Sai, have been evacuated to a safe location.

Sudden springtime rains and flooding have hit much of Central Asia and Russian regions hard this year, displacing thousands of residents.
Xi To Combine SCO Summit With State Visits To Kazakhstan, Tajikistan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/30/2024 3:47 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
China’s Foreign Ministry announced on June 30 that President Xi Jinping will attend the 24th summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Astana and pay state visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan from July 2 to July 6.

The announcement, on the ministry’s official website, quotes spokesperson Hua Chunying as saying the Kazakh and Tajik visits will come at the invitation of those Central Asian states’ respective leaderships.

"From July 2 to 6, President Xi Jinping will attend the 24th Meeting of the Council of Heads of State of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization in Astana and, at the invitation of President [Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev] of the Republic of Kazakhstan and President Emomali Rahmon of the Republic of Tajikistan, pay state visits to Kazakhstan and Tajikistan," the ministry said.

The SCO, a political and security grouping, was launched by China and Russia in 2001.

Its July 3-4 summit comes with SCO members -- which include Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan but not Turkmenistan among the post-Soviet Central Asian republics -- expected to focus in part on economy and energy issues but also grappling with fallout from Russia’s war on Ukraine and other geopolitical issues.

Beijing has continued and intensified cooperation with Moscow since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in early 2022, days after Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin agreed a new "no limits" partnership in part to counter Western power and influence.

Russia was Astana’s largest trading partner when the war broke out, and the attack on Ukraine and the international backlash have posed additional challenges for Kazakh diplomacy, society, and the economy as Astana has sought to maintain neutrality.

A recent report by the Atlantic Council, a Washington think tank, alleged that China was experimenting with spreading its authoritarian model to other countries.

The gunning down of a Kazakh opposition activist and journalist in Ukraine earlier this month raised fresh questions about possible authoritarian trends and dissent in Kazakhstan.

Natalya Sadyqova, the wife of Aidos Sadyqov, who remains hospitalized in Kyiv, has called his June 18 shooting an attempt to silence him over reporting she and Sadyqov have done on Russian influence in Kazakhstan.

In January 2022, Kazakh President Toqaev allowed Russian troops to help quell deadly unrest that he suggested was part of an internal power struggle against people connected to Kazakhstan’s former leadership, in a move that raised concerns of tighter security and military reliance on outside powers including Moscow.

China and Tajikistan pledged in May to boost bilateral cooperation as Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with President Rahmon in Dushanbe, following up on Rahmon’s to China visit a year earlier.

China has pledged billions of dollars to megaprojects in some of Central Asia’s poorest areas, including a major China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan (CKU) highway that is among Beijing’s most ambitious there.

A Chinese company is also said to have committed itself to a major solar power plant in Tajikistan, near that country’s border with Afghanistan.

China has already invested major sums in power and other infrastructure projects in Tajikistan just as Dushanbe’s debt payments are on the rise to China’s Exim Bank.

The SCO’s membership also includes India, Iran, and Pakistan.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Suhail Shaheen
@suhailshaheen1
[6/30/2024 5:04 PM, 732K followers, 31 retweets, 152 likes]
On the 1st day on the sidelines of Doha-3 Meeting, we, the IEA’s delegation, met with delegations of: Qatar, KSA, Uzbekistan, Kazakistan, Indonesia, OIC, Russian Federation, China, India, UK, UN, Norway, Netherlands and discussed various bilateral and multilateral topics.

Natiq Malikzada
@natiqmalikzada
[6/30/2024 4:01 AM, 40K followers, 14 retweets, 38 likes]
Taliban delegates for Doha conference, but Muttaqi is absent. Earlier, it was reported that the relationship between Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s foreign minister, and the group’s leader has soured, and Hibatullah has not allowed Muttaqi to participate in the conference. Mujahid, Taliban spox, has participated instead of their FM.

Ali Maisam Nazary
@alinazary
[6/30/2024 6:17 AM, 120.9K followers, 46 retweets, 134 likes]
The third Doha meeting started today. Unfortunately, like the previous two, this futile approach appears to be an inefficient use of time and resources. The Taliban, as a terrorist organization, respond only to pressure and coercion. Their lack of cooperation over the past three years is evident. The Taliban’s primary goal is to consolidate their reign of terror and tyranny in Afghanistan and expand terrorism elsewhere. Our position may be seen as harsh and unpopular, but it is driven by the pursuit of stability and the well-being of all. In time, this will become clear to everyone.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@JahanzebWesa
[6/29/2024 2:24 PM, 2.5K followers, 73 retweets, 138 likes]
Number of Afghan women HRDs in Islamabad had protest, with the name of “Song & Color” they called on UN and international community to stand for women rights abuses in Afghanistan. These women also called UN’s to respect women rights in Doha meeting in Doha. #Women #Afghanistan

Jahanzeb Wesa
@JahanzebWesa
[6/30/2024 2:23 PM, 2.5K followers, 2 retweets, 8 likes]
Mahmoud Saiqal, the former representative of Afghanistan in the United Nations, says that the United Nations has alienated the people of Afghanistan. Mr. Saiqal asked the United Nations to try to regain the trust of the Afghan people.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[6/30/2024 5:00 PM, 80.1K followers, 12 retweets, 42 likes]
This week, I joined discussions with countries who invested greatly in Afghan women’s rights over 20 years. I emphasized that supporting platforms which exclude women’s voices only legitimizes gender apartheid. Commend @CanadaAFG_SR for this statement.

Shaharzad Akbar
@ShaharzadAkbar
[6/29/2024 6:07 AM, 175K followers, 32 retweets, 76 likes]
Woman health workers protesting Taliban’s latest assault on women’s livelihoods. The Taliban recently reduced salaries of female employees of government to equivalent of 70 USD monthly regardless of rank & experience. This could be a step before full dismissal. Gender apartheid

Laila Haidari
@Laila_Haidari
[6/30/2024 3:50 AM, 8.7K followers, 29 retweets, 94 likes]
Once in Kabul, I attended a meeting where there were three other women present. Everyone at that meeting supported negotiating with the Taliban, arguing that we are compelled to negotiate with them to encourage their support for human rights values. 1/3

Laila Haidari
@Laila_Haidari
[6/30/2024 3:50 AM, 8.7K followers, 14 retweets, 66 likes]
These women were all citizens of other countries, holding foreign passports. I told them to tear up their passports and live like millions of other women, and then talk about negotiating with the Taliban. The situation remains the same now.2/3

Laila Haidari
@Laila_Haidari
[6/30/2024 3:50 AM, 8.7K followers, 7 retweets, 68 likes]
Women from within the country speak about negotiation and engagement on behalf of other women, while keeping their foreign passports in their pockets. For them, Afghanistan is a place for leisure and business, not for living.3/3
Pakistan
Government of Pakistan
@GovtofPakistan
[6/28/2024 2:49 PM, 3.1M followers, 16 retweets, 44 likes]
Foreign investment in Pakistani equities has shown a remarkable improvement in FY 2024, breaking away from a decade-long trend of disinvestment. The substantial inflow of $140.8 million signifies renewed confidence among overseas investors.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/28/2024 8:53 AM, 211K followers, 5 retweets, 19 likes]
There’s good reason to believe China was a motivating factor driving Pakistan’s new counterterrorism plan—and that it might even play a role in the strategy once it is implemented. This week’s South Asia Brief for @ForeignPolicy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/26/pakistan-counterterrorism-strategy-ttp-china-afghanistan/

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/29/2024 9:15 AM, 211K followers, 18 retweets, 88 likes]
Pakistan and India will both soon have new ambassadors arriving in Washington. Rizwan Sheikh has been announced as Islamabad’s new envoy. Vinay Kwatra (who had been India’s foreign secretary) is reported to be New Delhi’s next envoy. Both have served in Washington previously.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/28/2024 10:57 PM, 211K followers, 6 retweets, 24 likes]
I’m quoted here explaining why the India-Pakistan relationship is not about to experience any notable improvements anytime soon—though both governments have a strong interest in ensuring it doesn’t spiral out of control.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[6/30/2024 3:19 PM, 8.5M followers, 417 retweets, 1.2K likes]
Salaried Class Alliance of Pakistan headed by some leading figures of corporate sector filed a petition in the Supreme Court of Pakistan against disparities in the recent taxation. Salaried class of private sector is already paying heavy taxes and now came under more tax burden.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[6/29/2024 12:14 AM, 8.5M followers, 45 retweets, 223 likes]
PPP supported a controversial budget in the centre to get something in Punjab but CM Punjab is proving to be the main hurdle in the PPP getting what it wants, with some suggesting that her stonewalling tactics reflect ‘pre-planned tactics’ of the PML-N. https://dawn.com/news/1842687

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[6/28/2024 1:11 PM, 8.5M followers, 1.4K retweets, 4.2K likes]
Justice Qazi Faez Isa was a big supporter of media freedom in 2021.He mentioned the 145th position of Pakistan in world press freedom index and declared it unforgivable. Now Pakistan stands at 152nd in 2024 and he miss no chance to criticise media as chief justice of Pakistan.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[6/28/2024 10:13 AM, 8.5M followers, 40 retweets, 164 likes]
The National Assembly on Thursday approved a resolution condemning a recent resolution by the United States House of Representatives which called to probe the irregularities in February 8 elections. This resolution was tabled by PML-N MNA Shaista Pervez Malik and some Lady MNAs.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/30/2024 11:10 PM, 99.5M followers, 1.5K retweets, 10K likes]
Greetings on #DoctorsDay. This is a day to honour the incredible dedication and compassion of our healthcare heroes. They can navigate the most challenging complexities with remarkable skill. Our Government is fully committed to improving the health infrastructure in India and ensuring doctors get the widespread respect they deserve.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/30/2024 5:18 AM, 99.5M followers, 6K retweets, 57K likes]
I’ve been an admirer of coffee from Araku as well. Here are pictures of conversations over coffee with AP CM @ncbn Garu and others in 2016 in Visakhapatnam. The great part is- this coffee cultivation is closely linked to tribal empowerment too.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/29/2024 2:10 PM, 99.5M followers, 88K retweets, 497K likes]
CHAMPIONS! Our team brings the T20 World Cup home in STYLE! We are proud of the Indian Cricket Team. This match was HISTORIC.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/28/2024 12:51 PM, 99.5M followers, 8.1K retweets, 56K likes]
Met those who have become Ministers of State for the first time in the Council of Ministers. Heard their experiences and insights as they have just embarked on their ministerial journey. Also discussed ways to further strengthen governance at the grassroots.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/1/2024 12:24 AM, 3.2M followers, 66 retweets, 653 likes]
In a heartfelt birthday greeting to ex Vice President @mvenkaiahnaidu ji, PM @narendramodi hails him as a wordsmith and a worksmith. The nation should celebrate a leader whose life journey showcases dedication, adaptability and an unwavering commitment to public service. Do read PM’s straight from the heart piece. https://narendramodi.in/venkaiah-garu-life-in-service-of-bharat

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/29/2024 2:18 AM, 3.2M followers, 260 retweets, 2.8K likes]
Delighted to meet Odisha Chief Minister Shri Mohan Charan Majhi ji; Deputy CMs Shri Kanak Vardhan Singh Deo ji and Smt. Pravati Parida ji this morning. Congratulated them on the assumption of such significant responsibility. Confident that their Government will take Odisha to a higher trajectory of growth and prosperity. Assured that MEA will work closely with Odisha Government in promoting tourism, establishing international linkages and accessing a global workplace. Wished them a successful tenure. @MohanMOdisha @KVSinghDeo1 @PravatiPOdisha
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[6/30/2024 7:55 AM, 639K followers, 22 retweets, 72 likes]
During the general discussion on proposed national budget fo fiscal 2024-25, HPM #SheikhHasina declared a drive against #corruption vowing no one will be spared. She also said that #AwamiLeague likes to challenges and will implement the latest budget. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/war-against-graft-underway-no-one-will-be-spared-pm-hasina-declares-in-js/138362

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/30/2024 1:21 PM, 639K followers, 36 retweets, 86 likes]
HPM #SheikhHasina said the allocation for the Annual Development Plan (ADP) is Tk2.65 lakh crore. She said the country’s growth was positive while in other countries, including the West, the growth was negative mentioning that the growth target of #Bangladesh is set at 6.75%. #EconomicGrowth #SmartBangladesh https://dailymessenger.net/bangladesh/news/22921

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/29/2024 5:03 AM, 639K followers, 41 retweets, 89 likes]
The @WorldBank’s Board of Executive Directors approved $650 million to help #Bangladesh invest in infrastructure critical for developing the Bay Terminal deep seaport.The Bay Terminal, located in the Anandangar/Sandwip channel, west of the #Chattogram, is expected to handle 36 percent of Bangladesh’s container volumes. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/world-bank-approves-650-mln-to-help-bangladesh-develop-bay-terminal/138316

The President’s Office, Maldives
@presidencymv
[6/29/2024 3:36 PM, 108.9K followers, 181 retweets, 190 likes]
Vice President @HucenSembe attends the inauguration of the 36th National Quran Competition. The competition for this year will take place at King Salman Mosque. A total of 1029 participants took part in this year’s competition. Students from 53 schools and 18 atoll councils participated in the competition.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[6/29/2024 2:04 AM, 13.5K followers, 51 retweets, 73 likes]
Successfully concluded my visit to New York, and wrapped up my first Official Visit to the United States. Pleased to have had the opportunity to partake in fruitful discussions with UN Officials at the highest level, converse with Permanent Representatives of countries from various regional groups, and meet with private sector representatives to promote #Maldives tourism. I also enjoyed being able to meet with the vibrant Maldivian community in New York.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[6/28/2024 1:45 PM, 13.5K followers, 42 retweets, 52 likes]
I visited @MVPMNY and met with the Permanent Representative and staff of the Mission. I expressed my appreciation to Ambassador @AlinyMohamed, the diplomats and staff at the Mission for their tireless efforts in advancing the engagements of the #Maldives at the UN.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[6/28/2024 1:28 PM, 13.5K followers, 38 retweets, 75 likes]
It was a pleasure to meet with the Maldivian community residing in the New York area. It is a source of pride for all Maldivians that students, professionals and representatives from the Maldives are excelling in various fields and capacities all over the world.

Mahinda Rajapaksa
@PresRajapaksa
[6/28/2024 4:29 AM, 556.6K followers, 18 retweets, 86 likes]
Thrilled to meet my old friend President Xi Jinping at the 70th Anniversary of Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence in Beijing! For 70 yrs, these principles have shaped global diplomacy & international law. Together, we should strive to build a peaceful & cooperative world.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[6/30/2024 10:47 PM, 5.8K followers, 4 retweets, 25 likes]
Deeply saddened by the passing of R. Sampanthan, a towering figure and unwavering advocate for the Tamil community. His steadfast belief in democracy & devolution of power, always within an "undivided & indivisible Sri Lanka" will forever resonate. In his memory, let us strive to build a nation where all Sri Lankans live in peace & harmony, embracing our diversity as a source of strength. May he rest in peace.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[6/29/2024 11:31 AM, 5.8K followers, 22 likes]
Pleased to take part in the 125th Anniversary celebrations of the Al-Hambra Maha Vidyalaya in Darga Town, in the #Kalutara District . While admiring the great services rendered by this monumental institution, I congratulated the school community for their dedicated work to uplift the institution. I also emphasized the importance of inclusive and rounded education to create a more robust and competitive workforce.

Karu Jayasuriya
@KaruOnline
[6/30/2024 7:26 AM, 53.4K followers, 1 retweet, 10 likes]
LKA’s inflation was 1.7% in June, up from 0.9% in May, on a Year on Year basis. However, the cost of living is felt much harder by any average person. Without strong regulatory action, profiteering continues to harm the poor. Decisive measures must be taken to ensure fair prices.
Central Asia
MFA Kazakhstan
@MFA_KZ
[6/28/2024 7:17 AM, 51.5K followers, 2 retweets, 20 likes]
Astana Hosted a Meeting of the #CICA Senior Officials Committee http://gov.kz/memleket/entities/mfa/press/news/details/801399?lang=ru

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/28/2024 11:32 PM, 23.5K followers, 3 retweets, 6 likes]
UN: @antonioguterres is heading to Central Asia. His first stop is Uzbekistan. He will then travel visit Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan. Meeting leaders, focusing on climate change and youth. In Astana, @UN SecGen is expected to deliver remarks at the #SCO summit on 4 July.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[6/28/2024 9:39 PM, 1.4K followers, 3 retweets, 11 likes]
Had a wonderful meeting with a member of @WaysMeansCmte @RepDonBeyer. Discussed further strengthening the partnership between Uzbekistan and the United States. Grateful to Congressman for co-sponsoring #HRes1755 exempting 🇺🇿 from the Jackson-Vanik Amendment.

Furqat Sidiqov
@FurqatSidiq
[6/28/2024 1:49 PM, 1.4K followers, 1 retweet, 9 likes]
Had a productive meeting w/ Janet O’Callaghan, VP for Public Policy @Discovery, & Alvardo Castillo, Senior Specialist. We exchanged ideas and explored ways to showcase Uzbekistan’s rich history, century-old architecture, and stunning natural landscapes through exclusive content.

Uzbekistan MFA
@uzbekmfa
[6/30/2024 4:34 PM, 7.5K followers, 3 retweets, 6 likes]
.@UN SG @AntonioGuterres visited the Hazrati Imam complex, where he was informed about the history of mosques & mausoleums. The delegation got acquainted with the Quran of Usman & other monuments in the complex. There’s also a presentation of the Center for Islamic Civilization.

Uzbekistan MFA
@uzbekmfa
[6/30/2024 4:27 PM, 7.5K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
The @UN Secretary General @AntonioGuterres visited the New Uzbekistan park and laid flowers at the base of the Independence Monument. The delegation got acquainted with our country’s rich history, its development during independence, and the creating of this unique complex.

Uzbekistan MFA
@uzbekmfa
[6/30/2024 7:59 AM, 7.5K followers, 9 retweets, 18 likes]
The UN SG H.E. @AntonioGuterres arrived in #Tashkent w/ an official visit. The @UN delegation’s agenda in #Uzbekistan is rich, includes all the issues of UZ-UN ties. Stops at Independence Monument in the New Uzbekistan park & the Khazrati-Imam complex are scheduled during the day.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[6/29/2024 8:03 AM, 194.8K followers, 27 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev held a meeting to discuss new tasks and initiatives in the field of youth policy. At the meeting, the effectiveness of activities, including educational and employment programs that support young people, was discussed. The President emphasized the importance of promoting careers in the "fourth industrial revolution" and introducing new educational and research initiatives. Special attention was paid to encouraging entrepreneurship among young people and creating favorable conditions for their professional and creative development.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[6/28/2024 10:18 AM, 194.8K followers, 1 retweet, 26 likes]
On the eve of Youth Day, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev honored active young people with the "Kelajak Bunyodkori" medal and the "Mard o`glon" State Prize. The ceremony was held at the #Kuksaroy residence, where the President congratulated the young recipients and wished them success in their future endeavors.

{End of Report}
To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.