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 15, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
State Department releases names of three Americans held in Taliban custody (Washington Examiner)
Washington Examiner [7/13/2024 6:00 AM, Beth Bailey, 3607K, Negative]
In response to a Washington Examiner inquiry, a State Department spokesperson confirmed on July 11 that three U.S. citizens, George Glezmann, Mahmood Habibi, and Ryan Corbett, are currently being held in Taliban custody. Taliban representatives repeatedly claimed they only held two Americans in detention.

The revelation comes on the heels of a June 30-July 1 meeting between special envoys, United Nations personnel, and Taliban representatives in Doha, Qatar. Afghan women and discussions of the Taliban’s human rights violations against them were banned from the discussions.

U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Thomas West and Special Envoy for Afghan Women, Girls, and Human Rights Rina Amiri attended the Doha talks. West and Amiri held a sideline meeting with Afghanistan’s de-facto government representatives during the talks to discuss releasing captive U.S. citizens, who are uniformly held without charge, without access to U.S. representatives, with extremely limited contact with family, and in abhorrent conditions.

As Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid explained to reporters, “During our meetings, we talked about the two American citizens who are in prison in Afghanistan.” Per Mujahid, Americans “must accept Afghanistan’s conditions. We also have prisoners in America, prisoners in Guantanamo. We should free our prisoners in exchange for them.”

The State Department did not answer questions about whether it would consider exchanging Guantanamo detainees for U.S. citizens. The spokesman stated that West and Amiri “pressed for the immediate and unconditional release” of Glezmann, Habibi, and Corbett and added that the State Department has emphasized, “in public and in private with Taliban representatives — their relationship with the international community depends entirely on their actions.”

The Washington Examiner has previously reported that Corbett was detained in July 2022 on a trip to check in on the Afghan employees of his company, Bloom Afghanistan. Corbett is now being held in a 9-by-9-foot basement cell. Captivity has caused Corbett to “suffer from fainting, seizures, and discolored extremities” while his health declines rapidly. House Resolution 965 and Senate Resolution 638, issued in June and April, respectively, call for the immediate release of Corbett.

Mahmood Habibi was detained on Aug. 10, 2022 with 29 other employees of ARX Communications because the Taliban believed the company was involved in the targeting of former al Qaeda senior leader Ayman al Zawahiri. House Resolution 1066, issued March 7, calls for Habibi’s immediate release. Per the resolution, the Taliban “refuse to acknowledge” that they are holding Habibi captive.

Glezmann’s arrest was not previously well-known. An airline mechanic with Delta, Glezmann was an avid traveler, having visited over 100 countries before being arrested in Afghanistan on Dec. 5, 2022. Similar to Corbett, Glezmann is said to be in deteriorating health as a result of his captivity, and he is in need of immediate care for known medical concerns. Senate Resolution 753 and House Resolution 1347, issued July 9, call for the immediate release of Glezmann.

This new effort to name and enumerate the U.S. citizens in Taliban detention may be the first sign that the United States has begun to play hardball with the Taliban regime. For U.S. citizens suffering under the Taliban’s mistreatment and for the allies and Afghan women whose lives have been thrust into upheaval since August 2021, it may be a welcome shift.
Taliban tries reconciling science and religion in facing climate change (Washington Post)
Washington Post [7/12/2024 11:28 PM, Rick Noack, 54755K, Negative]
When Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers headed to the country’s first “international climate change conference” earlier this year in the eastern city of Jalalabad, few foreign guests turned up.

Afghanistan remains a global pariah in large part because of the Taliban’s restrictions on female education, and that isolation has deprived the country of foreign funding for urgently needed measures to adapt to climate change.

So, for now, the Afghan government is largely confronting the impacts of global warming on its own and putting the blame for floods and sluggish governmental aid on foreigners. Some former Taliban commanders view global carbon emissions as a new invisible enemy.

“Just like they invaded our country, they’ve invaded our climate,” Lutfullah Khairkhwa, the Taliban’s deputy higher education minister, said in his opening speech at the Jalalabad conference. “We must defend our climate, our water, our soil to the same extent we defend ourselves against invasions.”

With parched deserts and deforested, flood-prone valleys, Afghanistan is deemed by researchers to be among the 10 countries most vulnerable to climate change. Hundreds of people died, for instance, during recent flash floods that officials blamed on ominous changes in the climate.

Kanni Wignaraja, the regional director for Asia and the Pacific at the United Nations Development Program, said prolonged drought in Afghanistan has so hardened soils that flash floods are particularly violent here. “The damage is huge,” she said in an interview.

Before the Taliban takeover, international donors estimated that Afghanistan would need more than $20 billion between 2020 and 2030 to respond to climate change. The United Nations is still able to fund some projects in the country, but Wignaraja said the Taliban-run government is correct when it says that “global money for climate has dried up.”

While Taliban beliefs are rooted in centuries-old Pashtun culture and an extreme interpretation of Islam, the government affirms that climate change is real, that it’s destroying God’s work and that those in the world who reject the truth of climate change need to get on board. The Taliban has asked imams in Afghanistan’s tens of thousands of mosques to emphasize during Friday prayers the need for environmental protection.

Carbon footprints will weigh heavily on judgment day, said Kabul-based imam Farisullah Azhari. “God will ask: How did you make your money? And then he will ask: How much suffering did you cause in the process?” he said in an interview.

Modern science and age-old beliefs

Historically, the Taliban’s environmental activism was unrelated to modern climate science. The Quran encourages Muslims to plant trees, and locals recall how the Taliban flogged illegal loggers when the group was first in power in the late 1990s.

At the Taliban-run Afghanistan Science Academy in Kabul, religious scholars are debating how to reconcile modern science with centuries-old religious beliefs.

“Climate change is real,” said Abdul Hadi Safi, professor of Islamic studies and management. “But if God doesn’t want something to happen, it won’t happen.”

Safi cited the frequent inaccuracy of his smartphone’s weather app to explain his reasoning. Making it rain even when Google says the sky should be sunny “is God’s way of saying: I’m the boss,” he said.

Some religious scholars at Taliban-run institutes fear that prolonged drought and the growing number of deadly floods in Afghanistan may at best be God’s punishment and at worst a sign of the apocalypse. Others allege a new chapter in American hegemony: a foreign plot to bring the Taliban regime to its knees by exposing it to natural disasters.

Members of the institute agree, however, that foreign powers are responsible for climate change and that it’s a religious duty to fight it.

Humvees and night-vision goggles

In Chesht-e-Sharif, a remote town in western Afghanistan, the Taliban’s battle against climate change is fought with American night-vision goggles and two of the Humvees that were seized after the U.S. withdrawal three years ago.

Local police chief Abdul Hay Motmayan and his men happened to be on patrol last month when a small local stream suddenly swelled out of control. As soaked and injured villagers emerged from the flood, Motmayan put aside his assault rifle and turned the Humvee into a makeshift ambulance. The dimly lit vehicle sped through pitch-black villages. Miraculously, he said, nobody died in the flood that evening.

“The Humvee is very strong, and it can’t be washed away,” Motmayan, a former Taliban commander, said. “It can go where others cannot go.”

But few of the more than 800 displaced villagers shared his sense of accomplishment. Most of their fields were destroyed, their livestock drowned, and possessions washed away.

When Washington Post journalists appeared in his town, Motmayan initially mistook them for an international aid team and enthusiastically shook their hands, saying no other assistance had yet arrived. By the time the first government aid convoy finally arrived on day three, Motmayan was repeatedly shouted down by locals. Skirmishes between Taliban soldiers and locals broke out.

“I’m fed up with life,” yelled one man. Police officers steered a Post reporter away from the scene.

Motmayan and his men said there is nothing more they could have done. “These people are upset, but we’re sad, too,” said Motmayan, walking around the village’s ruins.

But when senior disaster response officials arrived in this remote town later in the day, they disagreed. “If there had been just one simple flood barrier, this village could have been saved,” said Wakil Ahmad Nayabi, a disaster directorate expert, shaking his head. “People don’t believe in climate change, but they need to understand it to be able to protect themselves.”

Motmayan, the police chief, acknowledged he had never heard of climate change.

A lesson in climate change

With foreign funding for major projects suspended, government officials want villagers to think of themselves as the first line of defense.

“God won’t help those who don’t take action themselves,” Mohammad Edris Hanif, 32, a regional agriculture director, said during a recent workshop. Surrounded by farmers, he sat on a carpet in an orchard in Wardak, a longtime Taliban stronghold southwest of Kabul.

The farmers listened in silence as they were told to keep the grass on the mountains untouched so that it can absorb rain and were warned not to move rocks that form natural flood barriers.

During a break, one of the officials apologized to a reporter for the farmers’ inability to understand climate change, despite the government’s best efforts. Standing nearby, 53-year-old villager Abdul Ahad Hemat begged to differ. He said that he may not always understand what educated people in the cities say about climate change but that he can see the effects of changes in seasonal climate patterns on his own fields.

He agreed with the government that it is his religious responsibility as a Muslim to survive disaster and resist hardship. But most of the government’s DIY advice on how to adapt had proved useless.

How, he asked, is he supposed to build a dam on his own?
Afghan women taking the initiative against the Taliban (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [7/13/2024 10:48 AM, Shabnam von Heim, 15592K, Neutral]
Maryam Maroof Arvin is the 30-year-old co-founder of the Purple Saturdays Movement.

Every week, the women’s rights advocacy group organizes peaceful protests against the massive curtailment of women’s freedoms in Afghanistan.

They are trying to raise awareness about civil rights and democracy in Afghan society. The organization was founded in the capital, Kabul, after the Taliban seized power in August 2021.

"We can only rely on ourselves," Arvin told DW.

She is one of several women’s rights activists still in Afghanistan who refuse to give up. Arvin and the other women in her network don’t only organize protests. Girls are no longer allowed to attend school after sixth grade, so the women teach them secretly at home. They also collect aid for single mothers and needy families and care for orphans.

Women on their own in Afghanistan

Since the Taliban takeover in Afghanistan in August 2021, the most vulnerable people in society have been left to fend for themselves. Almost all international aid organizations have left the country because the Taliban systematically violate human rights, women’s rights in particular.

The Taliban has introduced a series of laws and political measures that deny women and girls across the country their basic rights purely based on gender. Female employees have been sent home, girls’ secondary schools have been closed, and women have been banned from attending university.

Arvin was studying for her master’s degree when the Taliban barred women from universities in December 2022. Like almost all Afghan women, at home and abroad, she is outraged by the United Nations’ initiative to negotiate with the Taliban without any representation by women.

"We know that, as in the Doha meeting, they are seeking talks with the Taliban to pave the way for the recognition of Taliban rule in Afghanistan. In doing so, they are ignoring the Afghan people and, above all, Afghan women," Arvin said.

UN talks with the Taliban

Last week, in response to a UN initiative, Taliban representatives met in Doha, Qatar, with diplomats from 25 countries and international organizations to discuss the future of Afghanistan. Before the meeting even began, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid made clear that the issue of women’s rights was an "internal matter" for Afghanistan and would not be on the agenda in Doha. Other countries, he insisted, needed to acknowledge Afghanistan’s religious and cultural values.

"Women’s rights are not an internal Afghan matter," US diplomat Rosemary DiCarlo, the UN Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs, told DW. "We wanted to engage in conversation with the Taliban, and we had to start somewhere."

DiCarlo said the Doha meeting was a first step in initiating a step-by-step process. She stressed that the goal was for the Taliban "to live in peace with their neighbors and adhere to international law, the UN Charter, and human rights."

"The Taliban know how to use the international stage to their advantage," commented Afghan writer and education expert Hazrat Vahriz in an interview with DW before the Doha meeting. "The Taliban have always participated in reconciliation talks, even meeting with Ahmad Shah Massoud or other opposition groups in Turkmenistan before they seized power in 2021. They should not be underestimated. They have successful diplomats whose sole focus is imposing their terms. The Taliban expect the people of Afghanistan to be their subjects and accept them as rulers."

Sanctions, economic crisis, poverty

The Taliban are seeking international recognition of their government and are also campaigning for the sanctions on them to be lifted. Their goal is to gain access to Afghan assets frozen by the United States. Afghanistan has been plunged into a severe economic crisis resulting from frozen bank accounts, extensive international sanctions,and the emigration of skilled professionals. According to the United Nations, 97% of the Afghan population now lives in poverty.

"Afghanistan is not the only country where human rights are violated," comments Hazrat Vahriz. "Some in Afghanistan believe it is the responsibility of the international community to solve problems caused by the mismanagement and misrule by our elites. This will only happen if the Taliban do not pose a threat to the interests of powerful countries — the United States and Western countries in particular. But it won’t come about because the Taliban will keep their promises to America. The Afghan population must campaign for themselves."

And women are at the forefront of this effort. "We have to combine our forces," says Arvin. The co-founder of the Purple Saturday Movement is calling on all human rights activists, intellectuals, and dissidents to form a coalition and organize more effective domestic resistance to the Taliban.

"We are advocating for a legitimate, democratic, and inclusive government. And we have to accept that, in doing so, we cannot rely on those who simply use human rights to promote themselves," says Maroof, in a bitter dig at the international community.
The Push To Recognize ‘Gender Apartheid’ As A Crime (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/14/2024 4:14 PM, Michael Scollon, 235K, Neutral]
The world has long been aware of the scourge of apartheid -- the systemic segregation or discrimination of people based on their race. But what about the institutionalized practice of singling people out for ill-treatment due to their gender?

The push to recognize "gender apartheid" under international law is gaining steam, with oppression against women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran fueling calls for immediate action, but tremendous obstacles remain.

What Do They Want?

Advocates want to clearly define gender apartheid as a crime under international law. Currently, only "persecution" on the basis of gender is recognized as a crime against humanity. But rights groups and activists say the concept of persecution does not fully capture the scope of the abuses committed under a system of institutionalized gender apartheid.

The goal is for the United Nations to make up for this gap by legally shielding women and girls from systemic abuse and violence.

Afghan women’s rights defenders are credited with being the first to articulate the concept of gender apartheid in the 1990s, during the Taliban’s first regime.

Since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, the hard-line Islamist group has reimposed its oppressive policies against women and girls, including severe restrictions on their appearances, freedom of movement, and right to work and study.

Hoda Khamosh, an Afghan women’s rights activist, says the recognition of gender apartheid would greatly benefit women’s rights in the country.

"We would be able to hold accountable the authorities and perpetrators of gender-based violence and discrimination against women," Khamosh told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

Meanwhile, Iranian women’s rights activists have said the institutionalized discrimination against women in the Islamic republic amounts to gender apartheid.

UN experts have said the violent enforcement of the hijab law and punishments on women and girls who fail to wear the head scarf could be described as a form of gender apartheid.

When Do They Want It?

Today. The United Nations has been considering the adoption of a major treaty that would unite signatories against crimes against humanity.

Dozens of rights groups and hundreds of individuals signed a statement in March calling for gender apartheid to be included on the draft list of such crimes.

The hope is that the UN General Assembly will adopt procedures to begin negotiations on the treaty when it next meets in September.

Tough Going

While the concept of gender apartheid has increasingly been used by the United Nations and international organizations, particularly in connection with abuses against women and girls in Afghanistan and Iran, there have also been missed opportunities.

During UN-hosted talks in Doha with the Taliban in early July, for example, women did not have a seat at the table.

Rights activists calling for the recognition of gender apartheid and for sanctions to be imposed on those responsible accused the UN of giving legitimacy to the Taliban’s rule and of betraying its commitment to women’s rights.

"The international community has a moral obligation to ensure the protection of Afghan women’s rights and uphold the principles of justice and equality in any engagement with the Taliban," Sima Samar, former chairperson of the Afghan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), told CIVICUS, a global alliance of civil society organizations.

Imprisonment And Death In Iran

Like the Taliban in Afghanistan, Iran’s clerical regime has been labeled a "gender apartheid regime" by rights watchdogs.

Nobel Peace Prize laureate Shirin Ebadi, an Iranian human rights activist who lives in exile, is among the key signatories of a global effort to End Gender Apartheid Today.

The movement, highlighting the international community’s successful effort to end apartheid in South Africa decades ago, noted that women in Iran are banned from many fields of study, sporting events, and from obtaining a passport or traveling outside the country without their husband’s consent.

The Iranian authorities’ goal is to maintain women’s subjugation to men and the state through a system of laws, the movement said. Violations can lead to "violence, imprisonment, and death."

"The situations in the Islamic Republic of Iran and under the Taliban in Afghanistan are not simply cases of gender discrimination," the movement concluded in its call for support.

"Rather, these systems are perpetuating a more extreme, systematic, and structural war against women designed to dehumanize and repress them for purposes of entrenching power.”
Pakistan
Court Grants Party of Imprisoned Former Leader More Seats in Pakistan’s Parliament (New York Times)
New York Times [7/12/2024 4:14 PM, Salman Masood and Christina Goldbaum, 831K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s top court ruled on Friday that the party of former prime minister Imran Khan should receive 23 additional seats in Parliament, a decision that is expected to deepen the political turmoil that has embroiled the country since Mr. Khan was ousted from power two years ago.

The ruling strips the governing coalition, led by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, of its two-thirds majority in Parliament, weakening his already fragile government and emboldening the opposition led by Mr. Khan’s party.

Mr. Sharif’s government came to power five months ago after general elections that were marred by allegations that the country’s powerful military had rigged dozens of races and tipped the scales against Mr. Khan’s party. Pakistan’s generals, who have long been seen as an invisible hand guiding the nation’s politics, have been at odds with Mr. Khan since he was ousted from power in 2022.

But in a stunning rebuke to military leaders, candidates loyal to Mr. Khan won a majority of seats in the National Assembly in the last election — a victory that shattered the military’s once invincible image.

The opposition’s victory reflected the recent swell of discontent with the generals’ influence in politics since Mr. Khan’s ouster, which he accused the military of orchestrating. Those accusations sparked mass protests across the country, challenging the military’s authority like never before. Mr. Khan, a former captain of the country’s popular national cricket team, was imprisoned in August on what he says were trumped up political charges.

Despite winning the majority of seats in Parliament during the last election, Mr. Khan’s party, Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or P.T.I., was not allotted any of the 70 unelected seats reserved for women and minorities, which are typically handed out in proportion to the number of elected seats a party secures.

Instead, those seats were allocated to parties in Mr. Sharif’s governing coalition, giving it a critical two-thirds majority.

The Supreme Court ruling on Friday forced the National Assembly to redistribute some of those reserved seats to P.T.I., making it the single largest party in the National Assembly.

P.T.I. supporters hailed the decision as a major victory in a country where the military has increasingly taken a front seat in politics, more overtly shaping the country’s foreign and domestic policies.

“At a time when Pakistan’s democracy faces severe threats and all democratic norms are being eroded, the Supreme Court’s decision is a welcome relief,” said Fawad Chaudhry, a former information minister in Mr. Khan’s party. “This ruling is a crucial step forward in fortifying democracy in Pakistan.”

The decision came as Mr. Sharif planned to introduce broad judicial reforms, including extending the tenure of the Supreme Court chief justice. Critics said these measures were aimed at influencing the judiciary for political gain.

While Mr. Sharif’s coalition retains a simple majority in Parliament, without a two-thirds majority it will most likely be unable to enact those planned reforms. His coalition, which was already considered weak because it lacked popular support, will now face additional questions over its ability to govern, analysts say.

No prime minister has ever completed a full term in office in Pakistan. The ruling on Friday has added to speculation that Mr. Sharif’s government may, too, face an early end.

On Friday, officials in his coalition sought to downplay the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision.

“As far as the government’s stability is concerned, the ruling coalition has a visible majority,” Azam Nazeer Tarar, the law minister, said at a news conference. A simple majority in Pakistan’s Parliament is 169 out of a total of 336 seats. Still, he added, the government’s ability to pass crucial legislation has been affected.

The decision is the latest sign of the country’s judiciary growing more assertive in challenging the military, analysts said.

In recent months, judges in several lower courts have accused the country’s intelligence agencies of trying to coerce them and have openly criticized the military’s meddling in judicial affairs. The tension between the courts and the military has been exacerbated by the legal cases against Mr. Khan.

“The judges are upending everything that the military establishment had put in place,” said Talat Hussain, an Islamabad-based political analyst. “They have on their side the lawyer bars, a popular party, a popular narrative, and an extremely incompetent government that doesn’t know whether it is staying or going.”

Even before the general election was held in February, anger at the military was brewing across the country among Mr. Khan’s supporters who took to the streets to criticize military leaders more openly and boldly than ever before.

While military leaders hoped the general election would quell that unrest, it only added to the growing discontent. One major point of contention was that Pakistan’s Election Commission forced P.T.I. candidates to run as independents — making them ineligible to receive any of the unelected, reserved seats in Parliament.

The Supreme Court verdict on Friday overruled the Election Commission’s decisions, saying that P.T.I. should be afforded all of the constitutional and legal rights of any political party — thrusting P.T.I. back onto the political main stage.

“As a political party, the P.T.I. is entitled to its reserved seats,” Chief Justice Qazi Faez Isa said while reading out the order in court.
Acquittal for Pakistan’s Khan and Wife in Illegal Marriage Case (New York Times)
New York Times [7/13/2024 4:14 PM, Salman Masood, 831K, Neutral]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan of Pakistan and his wife were acquitted on Saturday in a case that accused them of unlawful marriage, the latest in a string of legal victories for the embattled leader ousted from power two years ago.

However, he is unlikely to be immediately released from prison, where he has been held for nearly a year, as the authorities have recently suggested that he will face new charges. Earlier in the week, his prospects for bail dimmed in a case over accusations that he had incited violent riots and that his supporters had ransacked several military installations last May.

Just days before the Feb. 8 parliamentary elections, Mr. Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were convicted in back-to-back cases. In the one known locally as the illegal marriage case, Mr. Khan and Ms. Bibi each received a sentence of seven years in prison. A court found them guilty of having violated Islamic law by not adhering to the required waiting period between Ms. Bibi’s divorce and her marriage to Mr. Khan.

The conviction drew widespread criticism from human rights and women’s groups, who argued that it represented a setback for women’s rights and would perpetuate male dominance over marital relationships in Pakistan.

On Saturday, Judge Muhammad Afzal Majoka of the Islamabad Additional District and Sessions Court announced that the appeals of both Mr. Khan and Ms. Bibi had been accepted. The judge ordered their release, provided there were no other cases against the couple.

The legal proceedings and appeals of the unlawful marriage case were marred by delays, controversies, heated arguments and even physical violence between Mr. Khan’s lawyers and Khawar Maneka, the first husband of Ms. Bibi.

Mr. Maneka accused Mr. Khan of being a “homewrecker” and even demanded a medical examination of his former wife to ascertain her menstrual cycle, causing shock and condemnation from human rights activists and even some politicians opposed to Mr. Khan.

Mr. Khan has been in jail since last August on several charges, including corruption, treason and arson. Most of the charges had been either overturned or suspended by the courts. Ms. Bibi has been in jail since May of this year.

A world-famous cricket player turned politician, Mr. Khan ascended to power in 2018 but was ousted in 2022 after a vote of no confidence in Parliament. Although he remained popular, he was criticized for his handling of the economy and political vendettas against his opponents. Mr. Khan blamed the military, which controls the levers of power in the country, and the United States for his ouster, a charge both parties have denied.

Since his removal from power, Mr. Khan has managed to retain, and even increase, his popularity and has challenged the country’s powerful military generals. Despite a brutal police crackdown on his party’s leaders and workers before the elections, Mr. Khan’s supporters secured more seats than any other political party in Parliament.

“This acquittal represents a victory not just for Imran Khan and his wife, but for women as well,” said Zulfi Bukhari, a close aide to Mr. Khan. “The case would have set a very bad precedent and made it very hard for any woman to leave a bad marriage.”

Mr. Bukhari said he expected the military establishment to double down against Mr. Khan as it tried to keep him in prison. But he expressed optimism about Mr. Khan’s eventual release.

“It is a matter of time now,” Mr. Bukhari said.
Pakistan Court Sets Aside Ex-Premier Khan’s Seven-Year Sentence (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/13/2024 7:15 AM, Kamran Haider, 27296K, Negative]
A Pakistani court canceled the last of Imran Khan’s jail sentences, emboldening the former prime minister who has been in prison for almost a year and faces dozens of other court cases.

“The conviction is set aside and his release ordered if not wanted in any other case,” Salman Safdar, Khan’s lawyer, said in a text message on Saturday. It’s unclear if the opposition politician will be freed due to other legal challenges. A sessions court judge accepted Khan’s appeal challenging his and his wife Bushra Bibi’s convictions in an unlawful marriage case, according to Safdar. They were sentenced to seven years in jail in the case.

The petitioner, Bibi’s ex-husband, can still file an appeal against the ruling in a higher court.

The couple were sent to prison for violating an Islamic law that requires women who have divorced to complete a waiting period before they can remarry.

The decision is a major relief for Khan who had three other convictions suspended by the courts. The 71-year-old politician has been in jail since August.

Khan was the first Pakistani prime minister ousted from power through a parliamentary no-confidence vote more than two years ago after his relationship with the powerful military turned sour. He has said the legal cases are politically motivated and designed to prevent him from staging a comeback — an allegation Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and the military leadership have denied.

An anti-terrorism court on Thursday turned down Khan’s request for a pre-arrest bail in a case linked to last year’s violence that broke out after his brief arrest on corruption charges.

In another legal win, Pakistan’s supreme court handed about two dozen reserve seats in the parliament to Khan’s supporters.

Khan-backed candidates won the most parliamentary seats in February after an election marred by violence and allegations of rigging. But they fell short of a majority and Khan’s rivals moved quickly to form the government in what political analysts said was in part due to support from the military.
Pakistan’s Imran Khan to remain in jail despite acquittal in marriage case (Reuters)
Reuters [7/13/2024 8:48 AM, Asif Shahzad, 85570K, Negative]
Former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his third wife were acquitted on charges of marrying unlawfully by a Pakistan court on Saturday, yet he will not be freed after authorities issued fresh orders to arrest him.

The ruling came a day after his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party won more seats in parliament, ramping up pressure on the country’s fragile ruling coalition which is grappling to stabilise a broken economy.

The couple were sentenced to seven years in February when a court found them guilty of breaking Islamic law by failing to observe the required interval between the divorce from a previous marriage of Bushra Khan, also known as Bushra Bibi, and her marriage to Khan.

They had filed an appeal against their convictions.

"Both the appellants are acquitted of the charges," said an order by the appeal court seen by Reuters.

"They are directed to be released forthwith if not required to be detained in any other case."

It said the prosecution failed to prove its case against the couple.

Khan’s PTI party said authorities have issued fresh arrest warrants for him in three cases linked to violence against the military and other state installations that erupted following his brief arrest in May 2023.

An anti-terrorism court last week cancelled his bail in one of the May 9 cases registered against him and thousands of his supporters.

The party called it a "gimmick" aimed at prolonging his imprisonment.

Bibi is on bail in a land corruption case in which she is also co-accused with Khan, who is a free person after the latest acquittal, the party added.

All four jail sentences Khan received ahead of a February national election have now been overturned or suspended.

Jailed since last August, he was acquitted last month of charges of leaking state secrets. Two other corruption sentences have been suspended.

The PTI has warned that keeping Khan in jail despite Saturday’s decision will deepen a political crisis which has crippled the country of 240 million people since he was ousted in a parliament vote of confidence in 2022.

Khan blames his ouster on the country’s powerful military generals. No prime minister of Pakistan has completed a full five-year constitutional term since the country gained its independence in 1947.
Pakistan to Move Court for Ban on Imran Khan’s Political Party (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/15/2024 5:03 AM, Ismail Dilawar, 5.5M, Neutral]
Pakistan’s government will move the Supreme Court for an order to ban jailed leader Imran Khan’s political party after accusing the former premier of working against the country’s interests.

The cabinet of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a Khan’s bitter rival, will approve the decision before the government asks the top court to ban Tehreek-e-Insaf, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar says at a televised news conference in Islamabad on Monday.
Pakistan Secures New $7 Billion Loan Program From IMF (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/12/2024 6:52 PM, Eric Martin and Faseeh Mangi, 27296K, Neutral]
Pakistan reached a new $7 billion loan deal with the International Monetary Fund, offering breathing room for new Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government to shore up a faltering economy and manage its mounting debts.

To secure the new IMF loan, announced Friday, Sharif’s government forced through a series of unpopular reforms, including record-high taxes and increased energy prices, to meet IMF conditions, standard practice that has often triggered public backlash.

“The new program aims to support the authorities’ efforts to cement macroeconomic stability and create conditions for a stronger, more inclusive, and resilient growth,” the IMF said in a statement.

The new 37-month deal, which will be Pakistan’s 25th since independence, comes as the country faces loan repayments of about $24 billion this fiscal year, which started July 1.

The staff-level agreement will need to be approved by the IMF’s executive board, which is almost always a formality, before the funds can be released. No date has been set for the board vote.

The nation has moved from one loan program to another amid chronic economic crisis, completing its last IMF program of about $3 billion in April. While the country’s inflation has cooled from 28% in January, it was still running at Asia’s hottest rate of more than 12% last month.

Pakistan will aim to raise tax revenues by 1.5% of gross domestic product in the current fiscal year, and by 3% of GDP over the course of the new program, the IMF said. That includes bringing some retail, export and agriculture incomes “properly into the tax system,” it said.

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb has said that the loan package is necessary to attract more foreign investments. Sharif is seeking funds from Gulf states including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and is pushing to launch the second phase of China’s multi-billion economic corridor in Pakistan.

As part of the new deal, however, Pakistan has also agreed to phase out incentives for so-called special economic zones and other guaranteed benefits that have helped lure foreign direct investment.

About half of the country’s debt repayments this year are for loans from China, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, countries that are expected to extend the loan terms for another year, according to central bank Governor Jameel Ahmad.

Aurangzeb said earlier this month that the basic framework for the loan agreement had been hammered out during a 10-day visit by IMF staff to Pakistan in May.

Pakistan has also agreed to reform its energy sector by implementing regular price adjustments and privatizing state-owned entities. The government is also seeking initial bids for New York’s Roosevelt Hotel and is in the final stages of selling its national airline.
Pakistan, IMF Reach Deal For $7 Billion Loan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/13/2024 5:43 AM, Staff, 1530K, Neutral]
Pakistan has reached a deal for a fresh $7 billion loan with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the global lender has announced.

In exchange for the 37-month loan, which Islamabad badly needs to prop up its sputtering economy, the Pakistani government pledged to implement more unpopular reforms.

The loan, the 24th from the IMF to Pakistan in more than six decades, is "subject to approval by the IMF’s executive board," the IMF said in a statement.

The deal’s main aim is to back the Pakistani government’s steps to cement macroeconomic stability while putting in place the necessary conditions for resilient growth.

"This includes steps to strengthen fiscal and monetary policy and reforms to broaden the tax base, improve state-owned enterprises’ management, strengthen competition, secure a level playing field for investment, enhance human capital, and scale up social protection through increased generosity," the statement said.

The deal came after months of negotiations, and on condition that Pakistan improve its tax collection system. Only 5.2 million people filed income-tax returns in 2022 in a country of some 236 million people.

While around 40 percent of the population already lives below the poverty line, the World Bank said in April it feared that 10 million additional Pakistanis would fall below this threshold.

Last year, Islamabad was close to default as its economy was hit hard by political chaos, the aftermath of huge monsoon floods in 2022, and decades of mismanagement.

Pakistan’s financial sector remains very fragile amid high inflation and a huge public debt.

Under the program, "we need to ensure structural reforms and bring self-sustainability in areas of public finance, energy, and state-owned institutions," Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb was quoted by Geo News as saying on July 13.
Malala Calls For Pakistan To Stop Deporting Undocumented Afghans (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/13/2024 6:08 AM, Akshata Kapoor 85570K, Negative]
Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai called for Pakistan to stop deporting undocumented Afghans, saying she was especially concerned about the "dark future" awaiting women and girls sent back.

"It is deeply concerning that Pakistan is forcing Afghan refugees based in Pakistan back into Afghanistan, and I’m deeply concerned about the women and girls", the activist, who was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2014, told AFP in an interview on Friday.

Despite extending leave for Afghan refugees with permits to stay in Pakistan for another year, Islamabad this week said it would remove illegal migrants.

More than 600,000 Afghans have fled Pakistan since Islamabad last year ordered undocumented migrants to leave or face arrest.

Human rights monitors have warned that some sent to Afghanistan faced persecution by the Taliban, who came into power in 2021 and have imposed an austere form of Islam, barring girls from higher education and excluding women and girls from areas of public life.

"A lot of these girls in Pakistan were studying, they were in school, these women were doing work", said Malala, 27, who grew up in Pakistan’s Swat valley.

She had to move to the UK after she was shot, aged just 15, for resisting the Pakistan Taliban’s then-ban on girls’ education in her hometown.

"I hope that Pakistan reverses its policy and that they protect girls and women especially because of the dark future that they would be witnessing in Afghanistan", she added.

Speaking to AFP on her birthday, recognised by the UN as Malala Day, the activist launched into the challenges facing the only country in the world where girls over 12 are barred from school.

"I cannot believe that I’m witnessing a time when girls have been banned from their education for more than three years", she said, adding that while the situation was "shocking", she "admired the resilience of the Afghan activists."

The Malala Fund is campaigning for the UN to formally broaden their definition of crimes against humanity to include "gender apartheid" – a phrase the UN has used to describe the situation in Afghanistan.

Earlier this month, the UN and Taliban sat down for talks in Doha for the first time since the latter came to power but without women in attendance.

Malala said the Doha talks made a "compromise on the future of women and girls", calling for a "principled engagement" with the Taliban.

"World leaders need to realise that when they sit down with the Taliban… and they’re excluding women and girls, they are actually doing a Taliban a favour," she said.

"I want to call out those countries as well – that includes Canada and France – who have a feminist foreign policy" to "condemn" conversations like the Doha talks, she added.

Malala also called for an "urgent" ceasefire in the war in Gaza.

"It is horrifying how many schools have been bombed in Gaza, even more recently the four schools", she added, referring to four schools that were hit by Israeli air strikes this week.

According to the education ministry in the Hamas-run Gaza Strip, 85 percent of educational facilities in the territory are out of service because of the war.

"It is deeply concerning because we know that children do not have a future when they’re living under a war, when their schools and homes are destroyed", said Malala.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which coordinates nearly all aid to Gaza, said it used more than half its budget before the war to fund education.

However, it is facing funding woes after several countries including the United States and Britain suspended aid following Israeli accusations that its workers were involved in Hamas’s attack against Israel on October 7.

Some countries like Australia and Germany have however resumed funding when evidence could not be found to support Israel’s claims.

"When it comes to humanitarian support, all countries should be making no compromise. They should make sure that all the immediate and urgent needs of people are provided, and UNRWA is an example of that", Malala said of countries resuming funding for the group.

"I do hope that all countries are providing aid and support because it’s about those innocent people and civilians who need to be protected".
8 civilians wounded in 2 coordinated suicide attacks near a military facility in northwest Pakistan (AP)
AP [7/15/2024 2:44 AM, Staff, 456K, Negative]
A suicide bomber detonated an explosives-laden vehicle and at least one of his accomplices exploded his vest near the outer wall of a military facility in northwestern Pakistan early Monday, wounding eight civilians and damaging nearby homes, a local police official said.

Tahir Khan said security forces quickly responded to the “coordinated attack” and foiled an attempt by the insurgents to enter the sprawling military facility in the city of Bannu which mainly houses offices of the military and homes of security forces. He also said army helicopters and ground forces were still reaching the area to track more militants.

Local authorities said several soldiers were also wounded in the attacks.

There was no immediate comment from the government or military.

Bannu is in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan. The province has witnessed a surge in militant attacks in recent years. In January 2023 militants killed at least 101 people, mostly police officers, when a suicide bomber disguised as a policeman attacked a mosque in the northwestern city of Peshawar.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but the suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban who have stepped up attacks on security forces across the country in recent months.

Pakistani Taliban — who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP — are a separate group but an ally of the Afghan Taliban. TTP has stepped up its attacks on security forces since the Afghan Taliban seized power in neighboring Afghanistan in 2021.
Thousands of Islamists rally near the Pakistani capital to denounce Israeli strikes in Gaza (AP)
AP [7/13/2024 12:27 PM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
Thousands of supporters of a Pakistani radical political party rallied near the capital, Islamabad, on Saturday, denouncing Israeli strikes in Gaza and urging the government to send more aid to the Palestinians.

The protesters also demanded that Pakistan declare Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “a terrorist.” There was no immediate response from the government following the rally in the garrison city of Rawalpindi.

Pakistan has no diplomatic relations with Israel. Pakistan has been calling for a cease-fire in the nine-month Israel-Hamas war, and in recent months has sent relief items for the Palestinians in Gaza.

Saad Rizvi, head of the Islamist Tehreek-e-Labiak Pakistan party, which led the rally, said the sit-in at the protest would continue as long as its demands are not accepted by the government.

Hundreds of police were deployed near the rally, which took place as militant attacks have surged in Pakistan.
India
Sullivan talks to Indian counterpart days after Indian PM Modi’s Russia visit (Reuters)
Reuters [7/12/2024 1:18 PM, Krishn Kaushik, 42991K, Neutral]
U.S. National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to his Indian counterpart Ajit Doval on Friday, India said, just days after the U.S. raised concerns with New Delhi about Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sullivan and Doval "discussed a wide range of issues of bilateral, regional and international concern" during their phone conversation, India’s foreign ministry said in a statement.

The statement did not mention if they discussed Modi’s two-day visit to Russia earlier this week. In Moscow, Modi told Putin that death of innocent children was painful, a day after a lethal strike at a children’s hospital in Kyiv.

Though India has not condemned Russia for its war in Ukraine, Modi also told Putin that a resolution can only be found through talks, and not on the battlefield.

However, both Russian and Indian officials later rejected reports that there were any disagreements between their leaders during their meetings.

In their conversation Sullivan and Doval "agreed to work closely to further advance India-US relations, which are built on shared values and common strategic and security interests" and reiterated the need to work collectively to address global challenges to peace and security, the Indian statement said.

The U.S. State Department had said on Monday that it had shared its concerns with New Delhi about India’s relationship with Moscow.

Modi’s visit to Russia coincided with a NATO summit in Washington, which was dominated by Western concerns over Ukraine.

Russia has been one of India’s closest strategic partners, and its largest weapons supplier for decades. However, the U.S. has been trying to forge closer ties with New Delhi as a counterweight to an ascendant China in the region.
A Wedding Puts India’s Gilded Age on Lavish Display (New York Times)
New York Times [7/12/2024 4:14 PM, Anupreeta Das, 831K, Neutral]
The younger son of Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man, is set to wed his fiancée in Mumbai on Friday, the finale of a monthslong extravaganza that signaled the arrival of the unapologetic Indian billionaire on the global stage — and introduced the world to the country’s Gilded Age.

For much of the year, the festivities surrounding the nuptials of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, the daughter of a fellow business tycoon, have grabbed eyeballs for their lavish displays of wealth. Millions have been spent on diamonds and emeralds the size of credit cards, on haute couture saris, on wedding invitations made of silver and gold.

Billionaire businessmen, Bollywood stars, models and politicians were among the more than 1,200 guests at a pre-wedding bash in March. Bill Gates stopped by. Rihanna performed. In May, the bride and groom-to-be threw a four-day party on a luxury cruise ship in the Mediterranean; Ms. Merchant told Vogue India they couldn’t find a land venue big enough to host all their guests.

Jay Gatsby would have been awed.

The spectacle has served as an invitation to peek inside India’s uppermost echelons, where a few individuals and families have amassed astounding fortunes in recent years. Buoyed by booming growth and a cheerleading government, the number and wealth of Indian billionaires has soared. They are overlords of the Indian economy, running the phone networks that connect millions of people, the hospitals that treat them, the supermarkets where they shop and the high-rises in which many live.

A lot of money, in the hands of the few.

In 2000, India had nine billionaires, according to Oxfam. Now, India has 200 billionaires, who collectively hold around $1 trillion in wealth, according to Forbes — nearly a quarter of the country’s 2023 gross domestic product.

Their dizzying rise is stark in a land where many live below or just around the poverty line, mirroring the extreme inequality of America’s Gilded Age, when robber barons flaunted their jewels amid extreme destitution.

Kavil Ramachandran, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Indian School of Business, said there were more billionaires with fatter wallets because India has sustained a high growth rate for more than two decades. That’s created a deep domestic market for goods and services, and pushed Indian companies to pursue new businesses, pairing opportunity with ambition.

“It’s a consequence of rapid growth and entrepreneurialism,” Mr. Ramachandran said.

In 2002, Radhakishan Damani spotted the opportunity for an Indian supermarket and launched his first store in Powai, a suburb of Mumbai. More than two decades later, his company Avenue Supermarts runs one of the country’s most popular supermarket chains, DMart. Mr. Damani, who has a net worth of $17 billion, is sometimes called India’s “retail king.”

A recent study about wealth and inequality in India subtitled “The Rise of the Billionaire Raj” found that the total wealth of billionaires has steadily increased from under 5 percent of national income in the 1990s to more than a fifth in 2022.

“All of this suggests that at least the very rich seem to be doing very well in recent years,” the authors wrote.

India’s opening set off breakneck growth.

India has come a long way from its socialist origins. Until 1990, the country operated under strict government supervision and protectionist policies. Companies could only run after procuring multiple permits and licenses from the government, leading to the name “License Raj” — a play on the term British Raj, which referred to colonial rule.

Once India opened up its economy after a series of reforms, some domestic companies embraced the logic of free markets while remaining family-run and tightly controlled, diversifying into new businesses.

In the 2000s, India’s software and services boom — for a time, the country was nicknamed the world’s “back office” — created a slew of new billionaires. Azim Premji successfully transformed Wipro from a hydrogenated cooking fat company into an IT giant, becoming one of India’s first tech billionaires. Fellow tech billionaire Nandan Nilekani co-founded Infosys and helped create Aadhar, a unique identification system for Indian citizens that is somewhat similar to a Social Security card.

Gautam Adani, whose conglomerate the Adani Group is India’s biggest ports operator, has ridden the country’s shipping, infrastructure and energy boom to build a net worth of more than $80 billion.

Mr. Adani’s rise has matched that of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, with whom he shares close ties and whose ambitions for India have unleashed a construction frenzy. Everywhere, there are new bridges, highways, tunnels and high-speed rail tracks — and Mr. Adani’s company is at the center of many of them.

The Ambanis are the first family of Indian capitalism.

Mr. Ambani, whose $115 billion fortune also makes him Asia’s richest man, has long sat atop India’s explosive growth in wealth. Reliance Industries, the giant conglomerate founded by his father that is the source of much of his family’s fortune, has sometimes served as a proxy for India’s economic rise.

Its businesses include one of the world’s largest oil refineries, India’s biggest mobile phone network, television and entertainment ventures and a popular chain of grocery stores.

Many Indians see in Mr. Ambani’s staggering rise in stature and wealth a version of the India they want: a country that doesn’t make a play for attention but demands it. Some even feel pride that his son’s wedding has attracted such global attention. To them, India’s poverty is a predictable fact, such opulence is not.

“Based on the level of the Ambanis’ wealth, the wedding is perfect,” said Mani Mohan Parmar, a 64-year-old resident from Mumbai.

“Even the common man here in India spends more than his capacity on a wedding,” Ms. Parmar said. “So it’s nothing too much if we talk about Ambani. He has so much money due to God’s grace, so why shouldn’t he spend it by his choice?”

The Ambani family’s wealth and influence are so unquestioned that even the use of public resources to aid his private festivities can be a source of pride. In March, the pre-wedding function they hosted in Jamnagar, a town in the western state of Gujarat where Reliance’s oil refinery is based, threatened to overwhelm the town’s small domestic airport.

With hundreds of private jets carrying guests hovering in the air, India’s top civil aviation body and its air force stepped in to help Dhananjay Singh, the airport’s director, manage the air traffic.

“Although it was a demanding period with little sleep, the effort was well worth it,” Mr. Singh wrote on his LinkedIn profile.

Some question the showy displays of wealth.

Rashmi Venkatesan, who teaches human rights law and popular culture at the National Law School of India University, found the “consciously explicit public nature” of the Ambani wedding peculiar.

To Ms. Venkatesan, the celebration was about more than the wealthy getting wealthier; she was bothered by what she called the “valorization” of this kind of wealth.

It’s not just the mind-boggling rise of billionaire wealth that is new, but also the way that wealth has created a new kind of royalty in a country well acquainted with maharajahs.

Like yesteryear’s royal families, today’s billionaires are increasingly keeping their wealth within their class — either through dynastic succession or by marriage. Each of Mr. Ambani’s three children are heading up three different lines of the Reliance business.

In 2018, Mr. Ambani’s daughter Isha married Anand Piramal, the son of the billionaire Ajay Piramal, who runs one of India’s pharmaceutical giants. On Friday, his son Anant is marrying Radhika, the 29-year-old daughter of Viren and Shaila Merchant, the multimillionaire founders of a health care company on whose board she sits.
On the Hands of India’s Brides, Reminders of a Stark Wealth Divide (New York Times)
New York Times [7/13/2024 4:14 PM, Pragati K. B., 831K, Neutral]
The ceremony was on the grounds of the exclusive Bangalore Club, an oasis in one of India’s largest cities. The bride-to-be, Sreya Muthukumar, was ensconced on the terrace, wreathed in smiles, greeting and chatting with her guests. Two women were attending to her, each wielding a thin plastic cone filled with henna paste.

For seven hours last Thursday, the artists drew freehand, etching patterns, motifs and mandalas on Ms. Muthukumar’s limbs. When they were done, dark green lines stretched from the tips of her fingers to above her elbows. Four other artists catered to the palms of guests. Once the henna paste, known as mehndi, dried, it was washed or scraped off to reveal the bright orange stain that has long been associated with Indian weddings — no matter how modest or lavish.

“After all those hours, when, in the end, the bride looks at her hands and says ‘I love it,’ that’s the high point for me,” said Sunitha Parihar, who adorned Ms. Muthukumar’s arms. “We mehndi artists are so important to make the bride look and feel beautiful on her big day.”

Big wedding celebrations are the norm in India for those who can afford it, and have led to a cottage industry of henna artists. But the ritual is also a reminder of the vast disparity that persists in India, where the number of billionaires has tripled over a decade while 90 percent of the country makes less than $3,900 a year.

Ms. Muthukumar’s nuptials were far from the season’s most lavish — that distinction goes to the union of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant, whose wedding festivities this weekend are the culmination of a monthslong extravaganza that has put a global spotlight on India’s new Gilded Age.

The henna ceremony for the Ambani-Merchant wedding was held Wednesday at the Ambani home in Mumbai, a 27-story residential tower inhabited by only the family. The groom’s father, Mukesh Ambani, is one of the richest men in the world. According to local news media, the celebrity henna artist Veena Nagda was there.

It’s unclear how much the Ambani-Merchant party paid for their henna. But the two henna artists who worked on Ms. Muthukumar’s limbs earlier this month at the Bangalore Club earned a combined $90. The artists who applied the dye to the guests each made about $30 for about three and half hours of work.

The fee to apply to join the Bangalore Club is 500,000 rupees — about $6,000.

After Ms. Muthukumar’s henna ceremony, Ms. Parihar collected about $50 of the $90, and the artist who did the bride’s legs got $14. The rest went to Pushpa Mehndi Arts, a collective that all the artists belonged to and which helps find clients and provides uniforms, material and equipment to the artists.

Ms. Parihar offered Ms. Muthukumar an album of designs to choose from. “I picked out the motifs I liked first, and then the geometric designs,” Ms. Muthukumar said. “How they are both combined and executed, I left it to the artist’s expertise and imagination.”

Henna decoration, considered a symbol of fertility and good luck, is ubiquitous in Indian weddings. Historically, it was done mostly in India’s north and was confined to family. Now it is one other event to welcome guests during weddings that extend for multiple days.

Many of Ms. Muthukumar’s friends showed up for her henna event in Bengaluru, the center of India’s high-tech industry. “This ceremony is a fun occasion for a get-together. We have flown in from different parts of the country to be with the bride and the groom,” said Ankita Nanda. Another friend of the bride told an artist to decorate only the outside of her hand, so she could still hold her drink while the henna dried.

Sapna Jain of the Pushpa Mehndi collective said henna artists in Bengaluru can command as much as 25,000 rupees, or $300, for primping a bride. But such a fee is rare; $90 to $120 is more typical.

Although henna is an integral part of Indian marriage ceremonies, it adds relatively little to the cost of a wedding, said Neethi Shantakumar, a wedding planner in Bengaluru.

Henna artists are the only vendors or service providers to deal so closely with members of a wedding party, for such a lengthy period and in a semipublic setting. Sometimes the wealth disparity results in henna artists being treated with disrespect. Most can recall at least one instance when it’s happened to them.

“I was spoken to rudely this one time and asked to get out of the venue,” said Ms. Parihar, who worked on Ms. Muthukumar, describing another job. “I cried that day.”

Prejudice is also a reality. Ms. Shantakumar said that some of the best henna artists she knows are Muslim women, but sometimes even seemingly progressive families have objected to hiring Muslims.

However, Shabana Habeeb, a Muslim henna artist, said her interactions with clients from other faiths were not representative of the political environment in the country, which has become hostile toward minorities.

Her sentiment was echoed by a peer, Fathima Begum. “The streets are a scary place for us,” Ms. Begum said. “But at the mehndi events we go to, we are treated like family.”

Applying henna is a common household activity for many women from northern India, as well as for Muslim women all across India; thus many henna artists tend to be from these communities. Many also tend to come from patriarchal families and to be denied educational opportunities, but their henna skills can be an avenue for financial freedom, dignity and respect.

Ms. Parihar, who has been a professional henna artist for almost a decade, is from Rajasthan in the north. She doesn’t remember the designs she wore on her own wedding day — she was just 10 years old then. (She continued to live with her family, moving in with her in-laws only after she turned 21.)

Her family had a reception when she moved out, and she said she got to sport a pretty henna design then. She had hopes of becoming an engineer but wasn’t allowed to study beyond the 12th grade.

Initially, her in-laws objected to her work as a henna artist. They were also against the kurta tops she had to wear on the job; since she was a married woman, they wanted her to wear a sari and to use it to cover her head.

“Over the years, I have been successful in negotiating against it with my in-laws,” said Ms. Parihar, 33, who now has a 7-year-old daughter. She said she can earn roughly $840 for 20 days of work during peak wedding season. The rest of the time, however, she makes about $120 a month. The additional income she brings to her family is the only source of savings for them.

“Slowly, I’m changing things for myself,” she said, “and also for my daughter.”
India announces ‘Murder of Constitution Day’ remembrance (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/12/2024 9:13 AM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
India said Friday it would hold an annual "Murder of the Constitution Day" from next year, commemorating a dark historical chapter tied to the family of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s chief political rival.

June 25, 2025 will mark the 50th anniversary of the Emergency, when then-premier Indira Gandhi suspended the constitution in response to a court ruling that threatened her hold on power.

The following months saw thousands of activists jailed, press freedoms suspended and an abusive compulsory sterilisation campaign that forced millions of men to receive vasectomies in an abortive population control effort.

Modi said on social media platform X that the new day of remembrance would "serve as a reminder of what happens when the Constitution of India was trampled over".

"It is also a day to pay homage to each and every person who suffered due to the excesses of the Emergency."

A government notice announcing the new remembrance day said that June 25 would recommit Indians "to not support in any manner such gross abuse of power in future".

Indira was the daughter of India’s first post-independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru, whose Congress party led the successful battle against British colonial rule.

Her grandson Rahul Gandhi is the leader of India’s opposition in parliament and the de facto leader of Congress.

Rahul has routinely accused Modi of not respecting India’s constitution, echoing rights groups who say the Hindu-nationalist premier’s administration has targeted critics and restricted press freedoms.

Modi in turn has invoked the Emergency along with other contentious chapters of Indian history to insist that Rahul belongs to a bloodline unfit to govern the country.

Rahul has steered Congress to three successive election losses to Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

But his leadership was buoyed by a better than expected result in this year’s poll which deprived the BJP of a parliamentary majority and forced Modi to rely on coalition allies to govern.
NSB
Bangladesh Prefers India Over China in $1 Billion River Project (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [7/15/2024 3:58 AM, Sudhi Ranjan Sen, 5.5M, Neutral]
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina said her government would prefer neighboring India execute a $1 billion river development project, a move that would soothe New Delhi’s security concerns.

“China is ready but I want India to do the project,” Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina told reporters at a press conference in Dhaka on Sunday.

China and India both want to execute the Teesta River Comprehensive Management and Restoration — a Dhaka-led initiative to better manage the river’s waters — as the two nation vie for influence in neighboring Bangladesh.

The project to develop the river basin of 414 km (257.25 miles) long Teesta river that flows from India into Bangladesh figured prominently in talks during Hasina’s visit to New Delhi in June. The two countries share numerous rivers that flow from the Himalayas into the Bay of Bengal.

An agreement on sharing the river’s water was reached in 2011 but could not be sealed after the eastern Indian state of West Bengal, through which the river flows before it enters Bangladesh, objected to the deal.

As India has dithered over resolving the issue, China stepped in with its proposal. New Delhi responded earlier this year with its own offer amid security concerns about Chinese engineers working close to its borders.

“China has made an offer to us, they did a feasibility study. India has also made an offer, and will do a feasibility study,” Hasina said added, “But I would give greater priority to this being done by India because India has held up the Teesta’s waters.”
Maldives climate minister released in ‘black magic’ case (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [7/13/2024 3:48 AM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
A former Maldives climate change minister detained last month on allegations she performed "black magic" on the country’s president was released Saturday, police said.

Fathimath Shamnaz Ali Saleem was arrested along with her sister and another person last month in the capital Male and stood down from her post shortly afterwards.

Local media reported she was accused of performing "black magic" on President Mohamed Muizzu to win favour from his new administration.

Police had asked for an extension of her detention twice, but on Saturday they had no reason to hold her any longer -- although the case was still ongoing.

"The investigation is still pending," a police official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told AFP in Male.

Police and authorities have not confirmed or denied the nature of the allegations against Shamnaz, and a criminal court has heard the case behind closed doors.

Her position was an important job in a nation on the frontlines of the climate crisis, with UN environment experts warning rising seas could make it virtually uninhabitable by the end of the century.

Sorcery is not a criminal offence under the Maldivian penal code, but it does carry a six-month jail sentence under Islamic law.

People across the archipelago widely practice traditional ceremonies, believing they can win favours and curse opponents.

A 62-year-old woman was stabbed to death by three neighbours on Manadhoo last year after she was accused of conducting black magic ceremonies after a lengthy police investigation.

In 2012, police cracked down on an opposition political rally after accusing organisers of throwing a "cursed rooster" at officers raiding their offices.
Is Maldivian President Muizzu the Target of Sorcery? (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [7/12/2024 7:02 AM, Ahmed Naish, 1156K, Negative]
A close aide of the Maldives president has been under arrest for nearly three weeks on suspicion of using black magic against the first couple.

Former State Minister for Environment Fathmath Shamnaz is accused of performing sorcery or black magic to seduce President Dr. Mohamed Muizzu, local media reported in late June, fueling salacious speculation on social media and drawing bemused international media attention.

“The president and his family have not reported any such case about anyone to the police,” an exasperated government spokeswoman said in response to queries from journalists. Media reports linking the first family to the arrests were “untrue and false news,” Heena Waleed, chief spokesperson of the Maldives President’s Office posted on X, formerly Twitter, on July 1.

But the case involves sorcery or black magic against Muizzu and First Lady Sajidha Mohamed, the police confirmed, refusing to divulge any further details.

Shamnaz and her sister Hawwa Sana Saleem were arrested on June 23 along with an alleged practitioner of black magic enlisted by the siblings.

The male suspect — identified by the media as Hussain Sameer from Thaa Kinbidhoo island — was released after a week. But police sought to keep Shamnaz and Sana in custody. At their last remand hearing on July 8, the Criminal Court granted an extension of detention for five more days.

The women were arrested after police raided their apartment in Malé. A search warrant authorized the seizure of phones, computers and “any device that can store digital data,” local outlet Adhadhu reported.

Other items collected as evidence included a woolen plush doll and a lock of hair found in Sana’s room, an unnamed source told Adhadhu.

The police accused Shamnaz and Sana of paying Sameer on several occasions to perform “sorcery and black magic to split up a couple and to win over love and establish close relations with persons.”

However, the Islamic Ministry has concluded that the items seized by the police were not related to black magic, Shamnaz’s lawyer Ali Shah told Adhadhu on Wednesday, July 10.

Police officers have repeatedly attempted to coerce Shamnaz into providing false testimony to frame her ex-husband Adam Rameez, he alleged. “The police want Shamnaz to give a statement against Adam Rameez and said they will release her when the statement is given,” the lawyer was quoted as saying.

The police spokesman promptly denied the allegation.

Both Shamnaz and Rameez were members of the Malé city council when Muizzu was the capital’s mayor. Rameez was Muizzu’s most senior aide during the campaign for the September 2023 presidential election.

The couple resigned from the city council after Muizzu assumed office in November 2023. Rameez became an influential minister in the President’s Office. After briefly serving as a personal assistant to First Lady Sajidha, Shamnaz was appointed as a State Minister at the Presidential Palace. She was later transferred to the Ministry of Climate Change, Environment and Energy as an official at the same rank on April 4.

According to media reports, Rameez divorced Shamnaz two weeks before her arrest, which followed rumors of the president falling out with his “righthand man,” whose absence from Muizzu’s side at official events was conspicuous.

After the news of the arrest broke, Rameez and Shamnaz were suspended on June 27. Shamnaz was later sacked and her photo was removed from the list of political appointees on the President’s Office website.

Meanwhile, the revelations about police seeking digital information spurred allegations about the authorities using sorcery as a pretext to arrest Shamnaz. Several opposition figures insinuated a different motive behind the arrests and expressed concern over keeping a mother with a breastfeeding child in custody.

The police could have been looking for a pen drive with evidence implicating Muizzu in corruption, former President Abdulla Yameen suggested on July 4, referring to alleged graft at the Malé city council when Muizzu was the mayor.

“So could it possibly be that they found an opportunity to raid her home because she was a person who worked closely [with Mayor Muizzu] and has a pen drive with corruption cases that occurred then?” Yameen asked at a rally of his People’s National Front (PNF) party, which has declared itself to be in opposition to the Muizzu administration.

As in other Islamic countries, arrests related to black magic are not uncommon in the Maldives. Most recently, a 60-year-old man was arrested over alleged sorcery against a ruling party parliamentary candidate. Irate islanders accused him of casting spells on trees and protested outside the courthouse when he was remanded.

Last year, a 62-year-old woman was stabbed to death by three young men as revenge for practicing black magic.

However, the Maldives penal code does not explicitly criminalize sorcery. In most cases, suspects are charged with possession of unlawful items, which must be declared to be implements of sorcery by a committee at the Islamic Ministry.
Nepal’s Prime Minister Loses Confidence Vote, Adding to the Turmoil of Monsoon Season (New York Times)
New York Times [7/12/2024 4:14 PM, Bhadra Sharma and Lynsey Chutel, 831K, Neutral]
Nepal’s prime minister lost a vote of confidence in the country’s Parliament on Friday, throwing the Himalayan country into political disarray as it tries to manage a spate of devastating natural disasters.

Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a guerrilla fighter turned politician, lost control of the government when his coalition partners turned on him after a fractious alliance collapsed.

Friday’s vote of confidence was the fifth Mr. Dahal has faced during his 18 months in office. He became Nepal’s 13th prime minister in 16 years when his current term began in December 2022, but he had led the country twice before, from 2008 to 2009 and from 2016 to 2017.

This revolving door of leaders has left the country of 30 million in a continuous state of political uncertainty, hampering efforts to develop from a largely rural economy that is reliant on remittances from Nepalese citizens working in the Gulf and other wealthier countries.

Nepal also has more immediate problems with a deadly monsoon season. On Friday, the authorities searched for more than 60 people swept away in a landslide, and last week, 15 people died in floods. Hundreds of people have been struggling to find shelter, while remote towns and villages remained cut off after roads and highways were destroyed.

Lawmakers are expected to vote for a new prime minister on Sunday.

Mr. Dahal’s likely successor is K.P. Sharma Oli, the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist); Mr. Dahal is the leader of the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist Center).

Also a former prime minister, Mr. Oli orchestrated the breakaway from Mr. Dahal, joining with the Nepali Congress, the largest party in the country and Mr. Dahal’s former coalition partner.

Mr. Dahal, who earned the nickname Prachanda, or the Fierce One, led a decade-long insurgency against the Nepalese monarchy, fighting until the country became a republic in 2008. He was first elected to office after a United Nations-brokered peace agreement, and his political career has been marked by strained alliances ever since.

In recent years, some in Mr. Dahal’s own party have criticized his lavish lifestyle and his growing connections with big business. There is also growing discontent among Nepalese voters, disillusioned by political infighting and power grabs. Once the most popular party, the Maoist Center has had declining support in the last decade.

The political uncertainty has made it more difficult to coordinate a response to the recent natural disasters, experts said.

“Nepali leaders are indifferent and unconcerned on the plight of the common people,” said Vijay Kant Karna, the chairman of Center for Social Innovation and Foreign Policy, a research group in the capital area of Kathmandu.
New Prime Minister Is Named in Nepal After Government Collapses (New York Times)
New York Times [7/14/2024 2:01 PM, Bhadra Sharma, 153395K, Neutral]
Nepal’s president on Sunday appointed a new prime minister, the latest in a revolving door of leaders that has left the country of 30 million in a continuous state of political uncertainty.

The new prime minister, K.P. Sharma Oli, held the post three times in the past and succeeds Pushpa Kamal Dahal, a former rebel against the Nepalese monarchy who lost a confidence vote on Friday.

Mr. Dahal lost control of the government when his coalition partners, including Mr. Oli’s party, turned on him and the fractious alliance collapsed. Mr. Dahal, who had been in power since late 2022, was seen as easier than Mr. Oli for India to manipulate and as frequently changing coalition partners for his personal benefit.

Mr. Oli, who leads Nepal’s largest communist party, forged a deal with the Nepali Congress, the largest party in Parliament, to form a new government with him at the helm. Under the power-sharing deal, the Nepali Congress and Mr. Oli’s party — the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist-Leninist) — have agreed to lead the government on a rotating basis until late 2027, when this session of Parliament concludes.

The deal makers said the new coalition would ensure stability by amending some electoral provisions, including trimming the number of seats in Parliament and merging some local governments established when Nepal’s first Constitution was instituted nine years ago.

Mr. Oli is taking charge of the government for the fourth time. First elected as prime minister in 2015, he firmly stood against a crippling economic blockade that India, Nepal’s southern neighbor, imposed that year over provisions it opposed in the new Constitution.

During his second stint as prime minister, after elections in 2017, Mr. Oli revised Nepal’s political map in a way that further soured relations with India.

Despite Mr. Oli’s previous stints in office, many doubt he will last.

“Frustrated by the opportunist tendency of Dahal, two big parties have come closer, seeking stability in politics,” said Anurag Acharya, a director of Policy Entrepreneurs Incorporated, a think tank in Kathmandu, Nepal’s capital. “There’s no guarantee of stability though.”

The armed rebellion once led by the departing prime minister, Mr. Dahal, succeeded in overthrowing the centuries-old Hindu monarchy and establishing a democratic republic, which Mr. Dahal and his supporters said would pave a path to economic prosperity. But as the country has churned through governments, development has not taken off.

Nepal, which lies between India and China, is reliant on remittances sent from its citizens working abroad. With few job opportunities, many young people migrate to countries in the Persian Gulf and elsewhere to feed their families back home.

The government is changing at a time when the country has been facing a string of monsoon-related disasters. In one such episode, the authorities were still searching on Sunday for scores of people missing after a landslide swept two buses into a river swollen by monsoon rains in central Nepal.

The emergency response is being hampered by Nepal’s constant political turnover. Mr. Oli is to be sworn in on Monday, a statement by the Nepali president’s office said, and Parliament must seal his appointment with a vote within 30 days.

“Leaders are just focused on breaking or making the alliance,” said Meraj Mansuri, who was trying to locate his 22-year-old brother, Raifal, after Friday’s bus disaster. “My brother has been missing for the last three days. The government is doing nothing.”

Mr. Mansuri, a mechanical engineer preparing to go to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for work, added, “I’m now depressed with this pathetic situation.”
Nepal’s new prime minister has taken the oath of office at a ceremony in Kathmandu (AP)
AP [7/15/2024 4:19 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 456K, Neutral]
Nepal’s newly appointed prime minister took the oath of office Monday at a ceremony in Kathmandu.

Khadga Prasad Oli, the leader of Nepal’s largest communist party, was named prime minister on Sunday following the collapse of a previous coalition government.

Oli, 72, will be leading a coalition government made up of his Communist Party of Nepal (Unified Marxist Leninist) and the Nepali Congress party, the two largest parties in Nepal. This is his fourth time serving as prime minister of the Himalayan nation.

Two deputy prime ministers and 19 ministers appointed by him also took the oath of office. He is expected to further expand the Cabinet, including members from coalition partner parties.

The last government headed by Pushpa Kamal Dahal collapsed on Friday after Oli’s party, which had been part of the coalition, withdrew its support to join the new partnership.

Oli will have to seek a vote of confidence in parliament within a month to continue in office. The two parties in the new alliance have more than half the members in parliament, giving them enough votes to pass a vote of confidence.

Oli’s biggest challenge as prime minister will be balancing Nepal’s relationship with its giant neighbors India and China, as both seek to wield influence over the small nation. Landlocked Nepal is surrounded by India on three sides and imports all of its oil and most supplies from India. It also shares a border with China.

“Among other challenges, the new government has the task to re-establish Nepal’s diplomatic credibility and balance between the powers in the north (China) and south (India),” said Bhoj raj Pokhrel, an independent analyst.

Relations between Nepal and India had sunk to their lowest level during Oli’s first term as prime minister in 2015, when India was unhappy with a new constitution adopted by Nepal.

India imposed an unofficial economic blockade on Nepal, blocking supplies of oil, medicine and other goods that created severe shortages in the country. But relations calmed after Oli visited New Delhi in February 2016.

Oli was credited with opening doors with China and boosting trade and joint infrastructure projects including a highway through the mountains. Oli’s relations with China have annoyed New Delhi.

Oli was born in a village in east Nepal and has been involved in politics since he was young.

He worked his way up the ranks of the communist party and was jailed a total of 14 years for opposing the autocratic rule of Nepal’s monarchs. The royals banned political parties until 1990, when street protests forced then-King Birendra to hold free elections that turned Nepal into a constitutional monarchy, which was formally abolished in 2008.

Oli has had two kidney transplants.
Rescuers in Nepal recover 11 bodies after a landslide swept 2 buses full of people into a river (AP)
AP [7/15/2024 2:27 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 456K, Neutral]
Rescuers in Nepal have recovered a total of 11 bodies from the river that two buses full of people were swept into by a landslide, officials said Monday.

Rescuers found the bodies in different spots along the riverbanks as they searched for the missing buses and some 50 people who were on board.

Government administrator Khima Nanda Bhusal said seven bodies were identified and relatives contacted. Three of the dead are Indians and the remaining four are Nepali nationals.

He said four more bodies were also recovered from the river, but because they haven’t been identified, it was unclear if they had been on board the buses.

“We will continue the search as long as it is needed and have no plans to give up. We will work until all of them are found,” he said.

The buses were on the key highway connecting Nepal’s capital to southern parts of the country when they were swept away Friday morning near Simaltal, about 120 kilometers (75 miles) west of Kathmandu. Three people were ejected from the buses and were being treated in a nearby hospital.

The first body was recovered Sunday some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from where the buses fell. Other bodies were recovered from as far as near the border with India. Two of them were found in Tribeni, more than 100 kilometers (60 miles) from the landslide site, officials said.

Relatives of those missing gathered on the river seeking information as rescuers from the security forces used magnets, scuba diving equipment and underwater sonar imaging devices for the search.

Nepal’s rivers generally are fast-flowing due to the mountainous terrain. Heavy monsoon downpours in the past few days have swollen the waterways and turned them murky brown, making it even more difficult to see the wreckage.

Weather conditions improved Saturday and search teams were able to cover more ground in the hunt for the missing buses and passengers. Heavy equipment cleared much of the landslide from the highway, making it easier to reach the area as rescuers expanded their scope toward the southern region from where the first body was found, Bhusal said.

Monsoon season brings heavy rains to Nepal from June to September, often triggering landslides in the mountainous Himalayan country.

The government imposed a ban on passenger buses traveling at night in the areas where weather warnings are posted, according to the Home Ministry.
No hope of survivors in Nepal bus accident, 55 still missing (Reuters)
Reuters [7/15/2024 12:24 AM, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, 5.2M, Neutral]
Rescuers in Nepal ruled out chances of finding survivors in last week’s landslide that swept two passenger buses carrying 65 people into a river swollen by heavy rain, authorities said on Monday.

Hundreds of security personnel resumed search operations early on Monday to locate the buses and 55 passengers who remained missing, over 72 hours after the accident.

Searchers scouring Friday’s accident site in Chitwan district, about 86 km (53 miles) west of the capital Kathmandu, have so far found seven dead bodies, including two on Monday.

"There are no chances of finding survivors. Our focus is on recovering bodies," Bhesh Raj Rijal, a senior police official in Chitwan district said.

Family members, who gathered at the search site, have given up hope on finding their loved ones alive, an official said.

"They are requesting us to at least find the dead bodies. The scene here is grim," said Khimananda Bhusal, a government official in the district.

Landslides and floods triggered by torrential monsoon rains have killed over 100 people in Nepal since mid-June.

Following the landslide, the government announced plans to ban buses from travelling at night in places with adverse weather forecast.
Central Asia
Tajik Activist Stateless After Moscow Revokes His Russian Citizenship (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/13/2024 7:49 AM, Barot Yusufi and Irshod Sulaimoni, 1530K, Negative]
Qadam Ismatov has no country to call home.

The 60-year-old ethnic Tajik, who was once known for criticizing the Tajik government, has been left stateless and stranded in Tajikistan after Moscow revoked his Russian citizenship and extradited him to Dushanbe last year.

Ismatov was wanted by Tajikistan on suspicion of having links to Group 24, an opposition movement that Dushanbe banned and branded a "terrorist and extremist organization" in 2014.

A criminal case against Ismatov has since been dropped by Tajik prosecutors, but his appeals to the Russian authorities to reinstate his citizenship remain unanswered.

Ismatov, who was born in Soviet Tajikistan, has lived in Russia since the early 1990s and obtained a Russian passport in 2005. Ismatov says he built a home, family, and life in the southwestern Russian city of Saratov, where he worked as a driver.

Ismatov also became active on social media, often criticizing both the Tajik government and its political opponents.

The social media posts put the ordinary driver living thousands of kilometers from Dushanbe on the radar of Tajik officials, who do not tolerate dissent and hunt down their critics at home and abroad.

Ismatov recalls his world turning upside down when a Russian court unexpectedly looked into his citizenship case in 2021 and revoked his passport, accusing him of giving false information on his application.

Ismatov denies the allegation as "baseless, blatant slander." He believes the Russian court ruling was connected to a Tajik plan to bring him to Dushanbe to face criminal charges for his criticism of the government.

"[The prosecutors] were not able to provide any evidence to back their charge that I had allegedly lied on my citizenship application. I demanded proof but they couldn’t provide any," Ismatov told RFE/RL. "But the court ruled to strip me of my citizenship anyway."

Ismatov’s appeals were denied.

In August 2023, Russia extradited Ismatov to Dushanbe, where he was detained on a charge of "membership in an extremist group." But Tajik prosecutors later dropped the case against Ismatov under an amnesty.

Prosecutors said Ismatov had abandoned his "criminal activities" in 2017 and had "ceased contacts with terrorist and extremist organizations," namely the European-based National Alliance of Tajikistan that brings together several opposition parties, including Group 24 and the Islamic Renaissance Party.

Left In Limbo

Ismatov was released in December 2023 and has since been appealing to the Russian and Tajik authorities -- including the Russian Embassy in Dushanbe -- to help reinstate his Russian citizenship. Ismatov says he has received no response.

RFE/RL has contacted the embassy for comment.

"I have a home in Russia, my wife is there, I have a job and property there," Ismatov said. "I have lived more than half of my life in Russia and I want to return to my home, to my family."

Ismatov is stranded in Tajikistan with no home and income, staying with relatives in Dushanbe and the Rasht Valley.

Asked about Ismatov’s options to restore his Russian citizenship, prominent Tajik lawyer Shokirjon Hakimov suggested that "he also has the right to appeal to the Russian human rights ombudsman and the representatives of the UN in Tajikistan."

"If Ismatov successfully proves his case, he also will ultimately be eligible for compensation for the moral and financial damages he has suffered," Hakimov added.

Russia, a major ally and strategic partner of Tajikistan, has extradited numerous ethnic Tajiks -- including many political activists -- to Dushanbe regardless of their citizenship status.

Among the most prominent cases, Russia deported two Tajik migrant leaders -- Karomat Sharifov and Izzat Amon -- in 2017 and 2021, respectively.

Sharifov and Amon, both outspoken critics of the Tajik government, were also stripped of their Russian citizenship on disputed charges of violating immigration laws.

Several Tajik activists, including influential community leaders from Tajikistan’s restive Gorno-Badakhshan region, have disappeared in Russia in recent years and later reappeared in police custody in Dushanbe.
Foreign ‘Undesirables’: Who Are The Targets Of Uzbekistan’s Incoming Deportation Law? (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [7/14/2024 10:33 AM, Chris Rickleton, 1530K, Neutral]
A "worthy response" to Russia’s soapbox chauvinists or a sign that Uzbekistan is closing the door to more measured foreign critics?

It depends on who you ask.

But whomever it is aimed at, Uzbekistan looks set to pass a law on "undesirable persons" that will provide a legal framework for deporting or denying entry to foreign citizens and stateless people perceived as having offended the country and its population.

According to the Oliy Majlis’s press service, the law was drafted "due to the need to establish, in modern conditions of globalization, additional measures to protect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Uzbekistan."

A final reading of the bill sailed through the lower house of parliament last month, leaving only senatorial approval and the president’s signature for it to become law.

Foreigners can become undesirable because of "public calls or actions that contradict the state sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of Uzbekistan, provoking interstate, social, national, racial and religious hostility, discrediting the honor, dignity, and history of the people of Uzbekistan."

The law comes just months after two Russian chauvinists made deeply presumptuous remarks in relation to Uzbekistan and its people.

Yet it also comes at a time when Central Asia’s most populous country is becoming less accessible to foreign journalists and activists who ask uncomfortable questions about its direction, explaining why activists and journalists -- especially Uzbek-born foreign nationals -- feel targeted by the law.

Prilepin’s Law?

When the ultranationalist Russian politician and writer Zakhar Prilepin used a press conference in Moscow in December to taunt Uzbekistan and Uzbeks, it went down very badly in the country he was insulting.

Prilepin called for countries that send migrant workers to Russia to be "annexed" and for their citizens to be "taught Russian language on the spot...in Uzbekistan, for instance."

By disavowing documents on the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia could reabsorb former Soviet republics, he argued. "Since 2 million of your citizens are on our territory, we claim your territory," he added.

A robust response was demanded.

The Uzbek Foreign Ministry duly called in Russian Ambassador Oleg Malginov to protest Prilepin’s statement.

The Russian Foreign Ministry said Prilepin did not represent Russia’s official position.

Monitoring of Telegram groups by RFE/RL’s Uzbek Service at the time found several calls for the type of law that Uzbekistan’s lower house just passed.

The calls were repeated in January when another Russian public figure, Mikhail Smolin, questioned the history of the Uzbek people in an insulting form during a talk show in January on the Russian NTV channel.

Rasul Kusherbaev, a government adviser and former lawmaker who positions himself as a pro-reform voice in President Shavkat Mirziyoev’s administration, sent Prilepin "and all those who want to take over Uzbekistan" an X-rated response on his Telegram channel.

More than half a year later, after the passage of the bill, Kusherbaev was triumphant.

"Earlier, a number of foreign politicians made humiliating and offensive statements against Uzbekistan. In the future, the new law will be a worthy response to such chauvinists," he wrote.

But nearly 30 human rights groups, mostly based in Europe and Uzbekistan’s Central Asian neighbors, disagree.

They wrote in a joint appeal on July 5 that the amendments "represent a flagrant violation of international standards on freedom of expression and pose a serious risk of isolating the country."

That outcome would be bitterly ironic, given the political capital Mirziyoev has invested in pulling the country out of the isolation of his hard-line mentor and predecessor, Islam Karimov.

Or A Law For Labor Rights Monitors?

In addition to entry bans, the law on undesirables envisages two types of deportations for foreigners and others without citizenship. One is soft and the other hard, with a five-year prohibition on reentry in both cases.

According to the draft law, foreigners found to have transgressed the law can be asked to leave the country voluntarily within a period of 10 days. "If the [undesirable] person does not leave the country voluntarily within this period, he will be deported by the internal affairs bodies…[and] forcibly expelled from the country," it reads.

Other restrictions forbid undesirable persons from opening bank accounts, purchasing real estate, privatizing property, or entering into financial and contractual relationships with Uzbek citizens.

Uzbek authorities have said that Russia, which has a law on "undesirable organizations," was one of the sources of inspiration for the law along with countries like Belarus and Poland.

Little in the law’s language seems relevant to Prilepin, who, after making his remarks, probably isn’t considering visiting Uzbekistan any time soon, much less buying a house there.

But they seem much more applicable to foreign rights defenders -- including those born in Uzbekistan but naturalized elsewhere -- that come to the country to monitor and support their increasingly under-pressure colleagues.

The Cotton Campaign, a global coalition for labor rights in the cotton industry, released a statement in May about rights defender Umida Niyazova cutting her visit to Uzbekistan short after Niyazova and local journalist Sharifa Madrahimova were intimidated by a pair of men near Madrahimova’s house.

The men, one of whom is a pro-government blogger, accused Niyazova of "organizing information attacks against Uzbekistan."

Niyazova is the Uzbek-born, Berlin-based chairwoman of the Uzbek Forum, an organization well-known for its monitoring of labor rights in Uzbekistan, including in the lucrative cotton sector.

She spent four months in jail in Uzbekistan in 2007 when the government was heavily cracking down on civil society and media in the wake of the government’s killing of hundreds of protesters in the eastern city of Andijon.

Now a German citizen, she felt safe enough to return to the country in 2021 and, in 2023, when she was invited to participate in the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s annual meeting in Samarkand.

"This time [2024] was the most hostile, for sure. Surveillance. Intimidation. I really got the feeling that they were trying to tell me: you’re not welcome," Niyazova told RFE/RL.

In addition to the incident that she and Madrahimova endured in Ferghana, Niyazova told RFE/RL that she was unable to meet with some partners of the Uzbek Forum in Tashkent after they were called in by the police and questioned for several hours in their home regions.

"They were not charged with any crime. They were psychologically intimidated. [Police] asked them, ‘Why are you working with enemies of our country?’ That sort of thing."

The Door Is Open, Just Not For You

The shame of all this is that Mirziyoev’s Uzbekistan gave even the most cynical Central Asia-watchers something to get excited about in the first four or so years after Karimov’s death in 2016.

From being a republic that still had exit visas in force for its own citizens prior to Mirziyoev’s arrival in power, Uzbekistan by January 2020 had become arguably Central Asia’s most tourism-open country, having granted visa waivers to citizens of 85 different countries -- the United States a notable exception.

Even more importantly, in terms of their international image, Uzbek authorities led a successful drive to reduce forced labor in the cotton harvest, defined by the International Labor Organization as "the largest seasonal mobilization of labor in the world."

This achievement led to the Cotton Campaign ending its more than decade-long boycott of Uzbek cotton and, in 2019, won Uzbekistan the honor of being The Economist’s "country of the year. "

But the second half of Mirziyoev’s nearly eight years in charge has seen an uptick in prison terms against bloggers, deportations of foreign journalists and activists, the introduction of punitive new laws, and his administration’s very own watershed moment -- the bloody crackdown on pro-autonomy protests in Uzbekistan’s autonomous Karakalpakstan region in 2022.

And now that the news coming out of the country is not so good, Tashkent seems to want fewer critical eyes coming in.

Joanna Lillis, a correspondent for the same publication that awarded Uzbekistan "country of the year," has not had her media accreditation renewed since she applied in February 2023, and says she has been asked not to carry out any professional activities during trips to the country.

Mihra Rittman, a U.S. citizen and researcher for Human Rights Watch, applied for an Uzbek visa in April, after her previous visit to the country at the end of 2023. Despite following up on the request multiple times, she was not granted a visa for her intended May visit.

Many Karimov-era Uzbek exiles say they are still on a blacklist that in some of their cases goes back to the 1990s. Others were allowed back, only to be shown the door later.

Journalist and documentary filmmaker Shahida Yakub, an Uzbek-born British citizen, was able to visit the country -- albeit after an hourlong interrogation about her work at the border -- for a family funeral in 2022. But she was barred from entering while on another private visit in April 2023.

There are plenty of other examples -- the 2021 deportation of Polish journalist Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska being one of the more headline-grabbing -- but prominent Russian chauvinists are not among them.

Indeed, "desirable" international visitors to Uzbekistan apparently include Denis Pushilin, the Kremlin-appointed head of the Russian-occupied Donetsk region in Ukraine, who is subject to sanctions from the United States, the European Union, and at least six other Western countries.

A statement by the so-called "Donetsk People’s Republic" separatists on April 23 described Pushilin’s trip to the country as a "working visit."

Reflecting on what he witnessed at a tech-focused business park in the Tashkent region, Pushilin called the park an experience "which we can adopt and implement" and noted plans to create an "eco-technopark on the basis of Azovstal," a former steel plant in Mariupol that now lies in ruins after being besieged by Russian forces in one of the most intense and deadly battles of the war in Ukraine.

"Thanks to cooperation with friendly countries, we have the opportunity to gain new experience in order to develop, increase intellectual capital, and introduce modern technologies and innovations," Pushilin said.

RFE/RL sent requests for comment to the Uzbek Foreign Ministry on Niyazova, Rittman, and Lillis’s cases, but had not received a reply at the time of publication.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Zhao Xing
@ChinaEmbKabul
[7/14/2024 9:46 AM, 28.6K followers, 15 retweets, 102 likes]
I met with the Acting Minister of Mines and Petroleum of Afghanistan, Mr. Hidayatullah Badri. We exchanged views on strengthening investment cooperation in the fields of economic and trade between China and Afghanistan.

Golchehrah Yaftali
@womenaidafghan1
[7/14/2024 3:40 AM, 24.3K followers, 85 retweets, 133 likes]
The #Taliban attacked a former military house in Maimana province of Afghanistan, and they beat and took away the entire family of women, girls and children. #Taliban #Afghanistan

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[7/14/2024 4:26 PM, 254.6K followers, 2 retweets, 6 likes]
Taliban in Western Herat province say they have detained between 25 to 30 people accused of coming to harvest pistachios before the harvest season could start in Herat’s Kashke Rabat district from the forests in the mountains. Afghan pistachios from Herat and Badghis provinces in Western Afghanistan could fetch 1000 Afghanis to 1050 (14USD) per KG in Herat. But Iranian pistachios are also popular and more affordable, which can be found for 500 Afghanis to 560 (7.93 USD) per KGs in Herat. Given their quality, Herati and Badghisi pistachios are often sent to Kabul and then exported.

Qais Alamdar
@Qaisalamdar
[7/14/2024 9:25 AM, 4.1K followers, 31 retweets, 99 likes]
#Afghanistan | These men allege responsibility for the attack on #DonaldTrump. The speaker identifies himself as Raees Ajmal, a commander of the resistance. He claims that Ahmad Massoud, leader of the NRF anti-Taliban resistance, ordered the attack on Trump and that they plan to target #JoeBiden and all Americans next. However, it is clear these are not actual resistance members. The speaker’s rehearsed manner suggests he was struggling to remember his lines. Given the setting with the red plastic chair and painted wall outdoors, these two more likely appear to be guards at a Taliban base or checkpoint. https://x.com/i/status/1812478612203008314
Pakistan
Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/13/2024 2:40 PM, 211.1K followers, 46 retweets, 266 likes]
For now, judiciary-military relations have supplanted civil-military relations as the biggest fault line in Pakistani politics. That was bound to happen in the era of the hybrid regime.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/12/2024 10:50 PM, 211.1K followers, 7 retweets, 32 likes]
Pakistan has a new staff-level IMF agreement (still needs Board approval). IMF praises Pakistan’s “hard-won macroeconomic stability achieved over the last year.” Islamabad’s day started with a blow dealt by the Supreme Court, and ended with a boost provided by a critical donor.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/12/2024 11:31 AM, 211.1K followers, 758 retweets, 2.9K likes]
The Pakistan Supreme Court ruling today is massive, and perhaps the PTI’s biggest legal victory since the election. The ruling coalition’s wings have been clipped, because its legislative clout will be curtailed by the return of PTI’s reserved seats.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[7/12/2024 11:31 AM, 211.1K followers, 12 retweets, 85 likes]
Make no mistake: This Supreme Court ruling-which takes aim at key Election Commission decisions that impacted the PTI electorally-will have much greater implications for Pakistan than anything coming from the UN, legislative actions in other countries, or anything else abroad.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/13/2024 10:59 AM, 42.8K followers, 5 retweets, 41 likes]
Major development in Pakistan today: the convictions of Imran Khan and his wife overturned in the unlawful marriage case, a case which had been rightfully decried as an affront to women’s rights. This is the only conviction currently keeping Khan in jail.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/13/2024 11:03 AM, 42.8K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
This follows on the Supreme Court decision yesterday granting Khan’s party the status of a political party, and giving it its reserved seats in parliament. Two of Khan’s other convictions were also recently overturned, including the one on charges of leaking state secrets.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/13/2024 11:04 AM, 42.8K followers, 2 retweets, 3 likes]
This is the judiciary going against the establishment. The major question is what happens next. What is the state’s next move?

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/13/2024 11:09 AM, 42.8K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
The answer? An accountability bureau arrest in a new Toshakhana (state gifts) case. The state is determined to keep Khan in jail. A judiciary-establishment clash to watch.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/12/2024 11:37 PM, 42.8K followers, 2 retweets, 11 likes]
Spoke to the BBC World Service on the major developments in Pakistan today —the Supreme Court decision reverting PTI to its party status & giving it its reserved seats in parliament, & the $7 bill IMF agreement announced today as well (at the 16 min mark): https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/w172zbfjdsbfmt8

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/14/2024 9:05 AM, 42.8K followers, 10 retweets, 74 likes]
An important win for the PTI today as Pakistan’s Supreme Court rules that it can keep its reserved seats in parliament. The right decision.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[7/14/2024 9:05 AM, 42.8K followers, 4 likes]
With these seats in parliament, PTI will serve as a crucial check on the power of the coalition government.

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[7/14/2024 11:17 AM, 8.5M followers, 793 retweets, 1.6K likes]
Another journalist killed in Pakistan. Malik Hasan Zeb is the 8th journalist killed in the first 7 months of 2024. @FreedomofPress @CPJAsia @RSF_en @amnestysasia @hrw @freepressunltd @freepress @wppressfreedom @dw_freedom @UNHumanRights @HRCP87

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[7/13/2024 12:33 AM, 8.5M followers, 299 retweets, 1.6K likes]
There is a serious clash between powerful circles and the judiciary on the matter of meddling by the agencies. With the public showing resistance through the ballot on Feb. 8, the superior courts took a stand against the interference in judicial functions. https://tribune.com.pk/story/2479315/sc-ruling-offers-glimmer-of-hope

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[7/14/2024 11:08 AM, 73.1K followers, 15 retweets, 138 likes]
Those who say that PMLN faced the same sort of fascism during PTI what PTI workers are facing currently, are partially right and partially wrong. Yes, PMLN faced harsh treatment but that was because Imran Khan went personal with PMLN and the establishment enabled it. PTI on other hand is facing this treatment due to animosity with establishment but the PMLN is enabling the establishment to do what its doing with PTI, where there have been alot of firsts.

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[7/14/2024 10:02 AM, 73.1K followers, 7 retweets, 61 likes]
Pakistan to send new Envoys in Beijing, Berne, Jakarta, Cairo, AbuDhabi among other countries, soon — Current Spox MoFA Mumtaz Zahra likely to be sent to APAC country, Faisal Niaz Tirmizi to get a new place, Aamer Shaukat likely to be sent to Cairo, Summary to be sent to PM soon
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/13/2024 9:57 AM, 100M followers, 3.1K retweets, 14K likes]
Speaking at the inauguration of The Indian Newspaper Society Towers in Mumbai. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWNadvmwJQ

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/13/2024 8:51 AM, 100M followers, 5K retweets, 23K likes]
The development projects launched in Mumbai today will enhance connectivity, significantly upgrade the city’s infrastructure and greatly benefit its citizens. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1OwxWNakLVjJQ

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[7/12/2024 7:09 AM, 100M followers, 17K retweets, 65K likes]
To observe 25th June as #SamvidhaanHatyaDiwas will serve as a reminder of what happens when the Constitution of India was trampled over. It is also a day to pay homage to each and every person who suffered due to the excesses of the Emergency, a Congress unleashed dark phase of Indian history.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/14/2024 9:52 AM, 3.2M followers, 494 retweets, 6.6K likes]
Thank outgoing Foreign Secretary Vinay Kwatra for his dedication and many contributions in the field of foreign policy and national security. Particularly in the last decade,he has helped strategize and execute so many of our key policies. Wish him well in his future endeavors.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/12/2024 10:09 AM, 3.2M followers, 514 retweets, 3.3K likes]
The #SamvidhaanHatyaDiwas to be commemorated every June 25th is a reminder of the attempt in 1975 to strangulate the Constitution. There are important lessons from this past that should never be forgotten.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[7/12/2024 7:56 AM, 3.2M followers, 317 retweets, 1.9K likes]
A productive BIMSTEC Foreign Ministers’ Retreat. Useful meetings with Bangladesh, Bhutan, Myanmar, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Nepal on the sidelines. Here’s a quick look. https://x.com/i/status/1811731452167327839
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[7/14/2024 12:28 AM, 639.2K followers, 25 retweets, 71 likes]
Minister for @bdmoefcc @saberhc called upon the @UN to be more responsive to the needs of the developing countries, especially the most vulnerable ones in addressing #climate challenges. During a meeting with @AminaJMohammed, the Deputy Secretary General of the UN, he said, "For Bangladesh, issues like sea level rise, salinity intrusion and glacial melt are matters of survival. Time is running out". https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/environment-minister-seeks-uns-support-in-empowering-vulnerable-countries-to-tackle-climate-crisis/139269 #ClimateChange #ClimateAction

Awami League
@albd1971
[7/14/2024 11:00 AM, 639.2K followers, 23 retweets, 74 likes]
State Minister for Posts, Telecommunications & @ictdivision @zapalak said that boosting of #semiconductor industry could propel #Bangladesh to the forefront of technology and progress. The State Minister said that with prpper training, govt could create 10,000 experts in this sector. https://bssnews.net/business/199731

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[7/14/2024 7:44 AM, 54.3K followers, 19 retweets, 26 likes]
Ambassador-at-Large Ahmed Naseer met with @USAID Mission Director, Gabriel Grau, and had a fruitful conversation regarding strengthening collaboration and enhancing the #Maldives -#US partnership @USAIDMaldives

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[7/12/2024 4:29 AM, 54.3K followers, 26 retweets, 37 likes]
SM @SherynaSamad attends the 2nd high-level conference of the Forum on Global Action for Shared Development in Beijing & delivered remarks at the closing ceremony. An excellent platform to strengthen our commitment to sustainable growth & international cooperation. @MDVinChina

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[7/12/2024 1:00 PM, 54.3K followers, 23 retweets, 32 likes]
The 56th Session of the Human Rights Council concludes with the active participation and engagement of the Maldives Delegation Press Release | https://t.ly/VjO6o

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[7/12/2024 12:56 PM, 54.3K followers, 50 retweets, 66 likes]
Maldives pledges over 1.29 million US Dollars to Palestine Press Release | https://t.ly/ixoxr

Aruni Wijewardane
@AWijewardane
[7/13/2024 3:17 AM, 1.1K followers, 7 retweets, 55 likes]
Pleased to co-chair the 5th US-Sri Lanka Partnership Dialogue with Acting Under Secretary for Political Affairs @UnderSecStateP. Acting US Bass noted “what Sri Lanka has achieved in 2 years is remarkable.” We discussed US-Sri Lanka relations& reaffirmed our commitment to further consolidate ties.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[7/14/2024 6:30 AM, 321.7K followers, 9 retweets, 87 likes]
I chaired the launch of the second and third phases of the Bingiriya EPZ development, aimed at transforming Bingiriya into a major economic zone as part of our commitment to creating new investment zones to strengthen the export economy. This project will focus on five key sectors, which are manufacturing, tourism, technology, modern agriculture, and exports. The projected export revenue through the investment zone expansion is USD 2,600 million, with 75,000 new job opportunities. This year alone, 35 new investment agreements have been concluded as a result of our economic policies. During my visit I inaugurated the newly constructed Dongxia Industrial & Commerce Co. Ltd in the Bingiriya EPZ. I had the opportunity to tour the premises and talk to the employees. I also held discussions with officials from the BOI and the UDA on developing Bingiriya, Dummalasuriya, and Madampe to metropolitan standards and improving infrastructure in the EPZ. Our plans include developing agriculture, manufacturing, information technology, tourism, and the fishing industry, solidifying Bingiriya’s position as a major economic zone in Sri Lanka.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[7/14/2024 1:31 AM, 321.7K followers, 62 retweets, 348 likes]
My home was set on fire two years ago. If the Air Force had come to put out the fire, they would have had to shoot, and I didn’t want anyone to be harmed. As a result, my home was fully destroyed. Everyone deserves the security and stability that comes with homeownership. People of this country should not only have the opportunity to own their homes but also feel safe and not have to worry about their homes being destroyed for doing the right thing by standing up for their country.

Our primary focus has been on granting rights to the people, as owning land or a home represents their hopes and aspirations. To achieve this, we first had to establish economic stability and maintain law and order. Two years ago, there was widespread fear about our country’s future, but today we have achieved stability and lifted the country out of bankruptcy. Now, we are ensuring that the people benefit from this stability. I have long advocated for land rights for farmers, and together, we have made this a reality.

We inaugurated the “Randora Urumaya” housing deed awarding program in Colombo, beginning the first phase of providing 50,000 homes to low-income families residing in Colombo flats. I awarded ownership of 130 homes located in 31 apartment complexes in the Colombo district. The “Urumaya” program aims to provide free land rights to 2 million people and grant full ownership of homes to 250,000 low-income families living in flats in Colombo. The National Housing Development Authority has allocated Rs.150,000 for each home to ensure that families renting at Rs.3,000 or less per month can soon become homeowners. Although payments are still being completed, within a month, 50,000 families will receive full home ownership under the first phase. By the end of this year, we plan to award title deeds to 1,070 beneficiaries.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[7/12/2024 11:09 PM, 321.7K followers, 46 retweets, 285 likes]
I’ve always said that if our banking system collapses, our entire economy and country will collapse. A strong banking system is a must for a nation’s stability. We’ve worked hard and are now seeing results. We’ve secured an $8 billion debt relief package as part of our debt restructuring. Our economy is on the rise again, but we need foreign investment for further growth. Despite fixing the economy, our political system remains broken. Leaders ran away in fear. We need strong, fearless leaders who can face reality, take responsibility, and keep moving forward. The future depends on today’s actions. We need a responsible political system. I united all main parties for disciplined governance, and young MPs have joined us for the country’s future. Let’s keep working to align our political system with our economic progress.
Central Asia
Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/14/2024 6:08 PM, 23.5K followers, 2 likes]
Samarkand, July 14, 2024: Discussing anti-corruption efforts in Uzbekistan, including in the media sector … witn Sherzod Saparov @AntikorUz. @USAGMgov workshops on #SolutionsJournalism

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/14/2024 6:34 PM, 23.5K followers]
Conflicts of interest: Deeper look into journalism and blogging in Uzbekistan, as part of @USAGMgov media workshop in Samarkand, bringing together reporters, editors, producers, and influencers from various regions.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/14/2024 6:34 PM, 23.5K followers]
Paid content vs news reporting and analysis. Journalism vs blogging. Global norms vs “real Uzbekistan”

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/14/2024 6:35 PM, 23.5K followers]
Intense discussions on media revenue, financial dependence/independence, and how Uzbek media get funded today. @USAGMgov workshop in Samarkand, following similar seminar in Tashkent.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[7/14/2024 6:35 PM, 23.5K followers]
Where do we go from here: Establishing code of ethics, adopting international norms, promoting best practices - deliberations @USAGMgov workshop in Samarkand.

{End of Report}
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