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, June 24, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
UN envoy defends failure to include Afghan women in upcoming meeting with the Taliban in Qatar (AP)
AP [6/22/2024 12:42 AM, Edith M. Lederer, 31180K, Neutral]
The United Nations’ top official in Afghanistan defended the failure to include Afghan women in the upcoming first meeting between the Taliban and envoys from 22 countries, insisting that demands for women’s rights are certain to be raised.

U.N. special envoy Roza Otunbayeva was pummeled with questions Friday from journalists about criticism from human rights organizations at the omission of Afghan women from the meeting in Qatar’s capital, Doha, on June 30 and July 1.

The Taliban seized power in 2021 as United States and NATO forces withdrew following two decades of war. No country officially recognizes them as Afghanistan’s government, and the U.N. has said that recognition is almost impossible while bans on female education and employment remain in place.

Human Rights Watch Executive Director Tirana Hassan said that, in the face of the Taliban’s tightening repression of women and girls, the U.N. plans to hold a meeting “without women’s rights on the agenda or Afghan women in the room are shocking.”

Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said, “The credibility of this meeting will be in tatters if it doesn’t adequately address the human rights crisis in Afghanistan and fails to involve women human rights defenders and other relevant stakeholders from Afghan civil society.”

Otunbayeva, a former president and foreign minister of Kyrgyzstan, insisted after briefing the U.N. Security Council that “nobody dictated” conditions to the United Nations about the Doha meeting, but she confirmed that no Afghan women will be present.

U.N. political chief Rosemary DiCarlo will chair the meeting, Otunbayeva said. She will attend, and a few of the 22 special envoys on Afghanistan who are women will also be there.

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

Undersecretary-General DiCarlo visited Afghanistan in May and invited the Taliban Foreign Minister, Amir Khan Muttaqi, to attend the upcoming meeting. The Taliban accepted and said they are sending a delegation.

“We do hope that delegation will be led by de facto Foreign Minister Muttaqi,” Otunbayeva said, but the Taliban may send another minister.

Just before the Doha gathering, there will be a hybrid meeting with Afghan civil society representatives from inside and outside the country, Otunbayeva said. And on July 2, immediately after Doha, “we’ll be meeting all the civil society people.”

The Taliban have used their interpretation of Islamic law to bar girls from education beyond age 11, ban women from public spaces, exclude them from many jobs, and enforce dress codes and male guardianship requirements.

Otunbayeva said the upcoming gathering will be the first face-to-face meeting between the Taliban and the envoys and will focus on what she said were “the most important acute issues of today” — private business and banking, and counter-narcotics policy.

Both are about women, she said, and the envoys will tell the Taliban, “Look, it doesn’t work like this. We should have women around the table. We should provide them also access to businesses.” She added that “if there are, let’s say, 5 million addicted people in Afghanistan, more than 30% are women.”

Otunbayeva told the Security Council the U.N. hopes the envoys and the Taliban delegation will speak to each other, recognize the need to engage, and “agree on next steps to alleviate the uncertainties that face the Afghan people.”

The U.N. expects a continuation of the dialogue at a fourth Doha meeting later in the year focused on another key issue: the impact of climate change on the country.

Lisa Doughten, the U.N. humanitarian office’s finance director, told the council that “the particularly acute effects of climate change” are deepening Afghanistan’s humanitarian crisis, saying over 50% of the population — some 23.7 million people — need humanitarian aid this year, the third-highest number in the world.

“Extreme weather events are more frequent and more intense,” she said. “Some areas in Afghanistan have warmed at twice the global average since 1950” with the country experiencing increasing droughts and deadly flash flooding.

Otunbayeva said another outcome from the Doha meeting that the U.N. would like to see is the creation of working groups to continue talks on how to help farmers replace poppies producing opium with other crops, how to provide pharmacies with medication to help addicted people, and how to address crime and improve banking and private businesses.

As for what the U.N. would like to see, she said, “we need badly that they will change their minds and let girls go to school.”

Otunbayeva said Afghanistan is the only country in the 57-nation Organization of Islamic Cooperation that doesn’t let girls go to school, which she called “a big puzzle.” Afghanistan has been very male-dominated and “we want to change the minds” of young people from such a traditional society towards women, Otunbayeva said.

The humanitarian office’s Doughten told the council “the ban on girls’ education is fueling an increase in child marriage and early childbearing, with dire physical, emotional and economic consequences.” She also cited reports that attempted suicides by women and girls are increasing.
UN-led Doha meeting with Taliban sparks outcry over women’s rights (Reuters)
Reuters [6/23/2024 2:53 PM, Michelle Nichols, 42991K, Neutral]
Afghanistan’s Taliban government is due to send officials to Qatar next weekend to meet top U.N. officials and envoys from up to 25 countries for a two-day gathering that rights groups have criticized for not including Afghan women.

It will be the third such U.N.-led meeting in Doha, but the first attended by the Taliban, which has not been internationally recognized since seizing power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war.

The U.N. has been trying to find a unified international approach to dealing with the Taliban, who have cracked down on women’s rights since returning to power.

"Excluding women risks legitimizing the Taliban’s abuses and triggering irreparable harm to the U.N.’s credibility as an advocate for women’s rights and women’s meaningful participation," Tirana Hassan, executive director at Human Rights Watch, said of the third planned Doha meeting.

U.N. political affairs chief Rosemary DiCarlo, U.N. special envoy on Afghanistan Roza Otunbayeva and envoys from various countries are due to meet separately with Afghan civil society groups after meeting with the Taliban, the U.N. has said.

The Doha meetings are "part of a process and not a one-off" and women and civil society continue to be part of it, U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said on Sunday.

"It also aims to encourage the de facto authorities to engage with the international community through a coordinated and structured approach for the benefit of the Afghan people," Dujarric said. "Human rights and the rights of women and girls will feature prominently in all the discussions, certainly from the part of the U.N."

‘INSUFFICIENT’ TRUST

Since the Taliban returned to power, most girls have been barred from high school and women from universities. The Taliban have also stopped most Afghan female staff from working at aid agencies, closed beauty salons, barred women from parks and curtailed travel for women in the absence of a male guardian.

The Taliban say they respect rights in line with their interpretation of Islamic law.

"Sidelining critical discussions on human rights would be unacceptable and set a deeply damaging precedent," Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Callamard said of the planned Doha meeting.

Otunbayeva said the Doha meeting would focus on private sector business and counter-narcotics, issues she described as linked to women’s rights. She also said the upcoming meeting had "generated significant expectations that cannot realistically be met in a single meeting."

"We are trying to establish a process and preserve an important mechanism of consultation. We must be realistic about how much each meeting in this process can deliver, especially at this early stage where confidence and trust are insufficient," she told the U.N. Security Council on Friday.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres first convened envoys on Afghanistan from various countries in May last year to work on a unified approach to dealing with the Taliban authorities. The Taliban were not invited.

The Taliban then refused to attend the second Doha meeting in February, when the U.N. rejected its demand to act as Afghanistan’s sole official representative, Guterres said.
Nicaragua names ambassador to Taliban-run Afghanistan (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [6/22/2024 4:57 PM, Staff, 85570K, Neutral]
Nicaragua has appointed an ambassador to Afghanistan, local media reported, in a rare move increasing ties with the diplomatically isolated Taliban regime.

Michael Campbell, currently Nicaragua’s ambassador to China, will take on the additional role from his office in Beijing.

"We thank the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, that people, that government, for the blessing they have given to our comrade Michael Campbell," Nicaraguan Vice President Rosario Murillo said Friday, according to the pro-government news outlet El 19 Digital.

Since their 2021 return to power, Taliban authorities have not been formally recognized by any nation.

The Nicaraguan government did not mention recognizing the Taliban government in its announcement.

China also has an ambassador to Afghanistan without recognizing the Taliban.

The top diplomat from the United States is a charge d’affaires, with Washington operating without a formal ambassador.

The Taliban apply a rigorous interpretation of Islam, leading to suppression of women’s freedoms that the United Nations has described as "gender apartheid."

Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, in office since 2007, has governed via increasingly authoritarian practices, quashing presidential term limits and seizing control of all branches of the state.
Are women being raped in Taliban jails? (The Spectator)
The Spectator [6/23/2024 6:00 AM, Lynne O’Donnell, 2223K, Negative]
It has been almost three years since the Taliban returned to power in Afghanistan. In that time, women have become prisoners in their own homes and targets of violence if they venture outdoors alone.

Now, the United Nations is investigating reports of rape, gang rape, sex slavery and forced abortions of women held in Taliban jails.

The reports, first published in a respected Afghan media outlet, are the first detailed accounts of women being systematically abused for sex by Taliban operatives and commanders.

The reports have drawn the concern of the US State Department and the UN’s Special Rapporteur for Human Rights, Richard Bennett, who has launched an urgent probe.

Bennett said the report published in May by Hasht-e-Subh Daily (known as 8AM) detailing shocking treatment of women detained on flimsy premises and locked up for months without legal representation or access to their families, potentially plumbed new extremes of abuse. 8AM won an Emmy Award with the New York Times in 2023 for investigating Taliban atrocities.

Its report contains such horrific accounts of physical and sexual abuse, and arbitrary killings of women imprisoned in three northern provinces, that it warranted independent checks, Bennett told The Spectator.

‘We are taking it seriously, we have a team looking into it, to see if we can verify,’ Bennett said. ‘In general, I am aware of serious ill treatment of detainees, not only sexual but beatings, threats, extortion.’

Titled ‘From Torture to Sexual Assault and Murder: What’s Happening in the Taliban’s Women’s Prisons?’ the report says that 90 women in prisons in Samangan, Jawzjan and Faryab provinces were raped by Taliban militants who took over security at night, after female guards, cleaners and medical staff ended their day shifts.

Senior and lower ranking Taliban figures are alleged to have entered the prisons at night to sexually assault the women. Women were also taken to the homes of Taliban commanders, where they were sexually assaulted and returned to prison at daybreak.

Sixteen of the women became pregnant after ‘repeated sexual assault and have undergone abortions in local clinics,’ the report said. The women were taken to hospital under Taliban armed guard, and kept separate from other patients and most medical staff while abortions were performed, usually in the third or fifth month of pregnancy, it said. It attributed the information to unnamed ‘prisoners who experienced mistreatment.’

‘One released prisoner affirms that at least four female prisoners in Samangan province fell seriously ill as a result of repeated sexual assaults by Taliban members and were ultimately executed by the Taliban,’ the report said.

It also quoted a female doctor at a hospital in Maymana, the provincial capital of Faryab, as saying ‘the Taliban transferred 13 female prisoners to the gynaecology department… after sexually assaulting them, and these women underwent abortions.’ Multiple women were taken to the hospital bleeding following sexual abuse, and showing signs of torture, another doctor said.

Bennett has visited Afghanistan a number of times since the republic government collapsed and has released reports detailing abuses, which the Taliban leadership has denied. He has branded Afghanistan lawless.

He said he suspected the prisons in the 8AM report were run by the General Directorate of Intelligence, the Taliban secret service, or privately by regional commanders, which would put them outside the authority of the Office of Prisons Administration, which he described as ‘of less concern’.

Women’s rights advocates have long warned that women and girls are enduring appalling abuses under the Taliban’s autarkic regime.

In the last months of the war, in 2021, as the Taliban stormed to victory, reports emerged in regions they captured of terrible treatment, including forced marriages that equated to sex slavery.

A recent series of reports by the George. W. Bush Institute, called Captured State, said: ‘The Taliban’s acquisition of wives – often through force and the manipulation of a family’s desperation – is also leveraged to collect on debts or bolster support from loyalists.’

On retaking control of the country, on August 15, 2021, the Taliban immediately set about dismantling the constitutional human rights put in place by the western-backed government to protect women from abuses that are now enforced as state policy.

Women who called for their rights to be protected were beaten in the streets, and many who were imprisoned in the weeks and months after the Taliban takeover said they had been subject to brutal beatings and sexual assault.

Many women are reluctant to talk, even anonymously, about their ordeals, leading to a lack of substantial evidence of Taliban brutality. There is still a cultural expectation of chastity in the country, with a perception of dishonour for any sexual contact outside marriages. In some communities, there is also a tradition of blaming female victims.

Lack of sex education might mean that many women do not understand what has happened to them. Many fear that revealing they’ve been sexually assaulted will bring shame on their families, and they will not be able to marry. Multiple women who initially said they would talk about their experiences have later reneged.

As a result, investigators like Bennett and other non-government organisations have gathered anecdotal and hearsay reports of disturbing abuse with little solid backup. While the 8AM report is yet to be independently verified, the allegations don’t surprise some experts.

Heather Barr, the associate director of the Women’s Rights Division at Human Rights Watch, said the Taliban regarded women as chattel needing constant supervision to ensure they behave ‘decently’ and do not dishonour male relatives. Errant behaviour – such as leaving their homes alone, protesting violations of their rights, or desiring an education or career – is seen by the Taliban as rightly incurring punishment, so in the Taliban’s worldview ‘they had it coming,’ she said.

It is unlikely that there will be any consequences for the Taliban’s treatment of women. International aid, including cash deliveries of tens of millions of dollars, continues to flow into the country. There is nothing to stop the Taliban doubling-down on its systemic repression.

Supreme Leader Haibatullah Arkhundzada has re-introduced execution by stoning, taunting human rights defenders: ‘You say it’s a violation of women’s rights when we stone them to death. But we will soon implement the punishment for adultery.’

Attention has largely turned away from Afghanistan, with the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East. The Taliban are not recognised as a legitimate government, but they have the tacit support of Russia, China and other countries like Japan and Turkey with ambassadors in Kabul. Kazakhstan has just delisted the Taliban as a terrorist organisation, and Russia is said to be moving in that direction.

There is concern that the United States could be moving toward recognition, or at least reopening its Kabul embassy. In response, Afghan women’s rights groups have called for a boycott of a July meeting in Doha, Qatar organised by the UN with the aim of drawing the Taliban into engagement with the international community.

The Taliban refused to attend a similar meeting in February but have confirmed their attendance at the upcoming meeting. Their participation is unlikely to improve conditions for women in this economic and humanitarian basket case.
Pakistan
Pakistan approves new operation to root out terrorism (VOA)
VOA [6/23/2024 1:00 PM, Sarah Zaman, 4032K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s top civilian and military leadership has decided to launch a new multi-faceted nationwide counterterrorism campaign amid the country’s deteriorating security situation.

A high-powered meeting chaired by Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif gave the go ahead for operation “Azm-e-Istehkam,” or Resolve for Stability, to “combat the menaces of extremism and terrorism in a comprehensive and decisive manner,” said a statement issued by the prime minister’s office.

The announcement came as Pakistan faces near daily attacks targeting security personnel and amid mounting pressure from China to ensure the security of its workers. Several Chinese nationals were killed in an attack earlier this year.

“The fight against extremism and terrorism is Pakistan’s war and is absolutely essential for the nation’s survival and well-being,” the official statement said.

Along with an intensified military push, Azm-e-Istehkam will have a diplomatic push.

“In the politico-diplomatic domain, efforts will be intensified to curtail the operational space for terrorists through regional cooperation,” said the statement after the Apex Committee on the National Action Plan reviewed the ongoing counterterrorism campaign and internal security in the country.

Pakistan has a history of courts freeing terror attack suspects because of a lack of evidence. The new campaign aims to counter that through legislative actions.

“The renewed and full-blown kinetic efforts of the armed forces will be augmented by full support from all Law Enforcement Agencies, empowered by effective legislation to address legal voids that hinder effective prosecution of terrorism-related cases and award of exemplary punishments to them,” according to the statement.

Chinese concerns

The new counterterrorism operation comes as Islamabad attempts to convince Beijing it is taking the security of Chinese nationals extremely seriously.

“The forum also reviewed measures to ensure foolproof security for Chinese nationals in Pakistan.” Saturday’s statement said. “Following the Prime Minister’s approval, new Standard Operating Procedures [SOPs] were issued to relevant departments, which will enhance mechanisms for providing comprehensive security to Chinese citizens in Pakistan.”

This comes after Liu Jianchao, minister of the Central Committee of the International Department of the Communist Party of China, told a bilateral political forum in Islamabad last week that Pakistan’s poor security was a hurdle in bringing Chinese investment to the cash-strapped South Asian nation.

“As people often say confidence is more precious than gold, in the case of Pakistan, the primary factor shaking the confidence of Chinese investors is the security situation,” Liu told a gathering that representatives from major Pakistani political parties attended. It was held as part of the third meeting of the Pakistan-China Joint Consultative Mechanism of Political Parties on the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The corridor, commonly known as CPEC, is a flagship project of Beijing’s global Belt and Road Initiative and focuses primarily on energy and infrastructure.

Five Chinese nationals working on the China-funded Dasu hydropower project and their Pakistani driver were killed in March when a suicide bomber rammed the convoy with an explosives-laden vehicle.

At least a dozen more Chinese nationals have been killed in Pakistan in targeted attacks in the last few years.

After the March attack, Pakistan ramped up efforts to enhance the protection of Chinese nationals, including the formation of a new security unit in the capital. A special military unit already exists for the protection of Chinese projects in Pakistan. It is supported by local law enforcement agencies.

Terrorism landscape

According to the South Asia Terrorism Portal that maintains data on terror attacks in the region, Pakistan has witnessed over 300 terrorism-related deaths so far this year.

Dozens of Pakistani security personnel, including officials, have died in the first half of 2024 in militant attacks and counterterrorism operations. On Friday, five Pakistani soldiers were killed when an improvised explosive device blew up their vehicle in the Kurram tribal district near Afghanistan.

Last year, Pakistan recorded a six-year high in terrorism fatalities with most of the attacks concentrated in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan provinces that border Afghanistan.

Islamabad blames the rise in terror attacks on Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan that it says has sanctuaries in neighboring Afghanistan. The Afghan Taliban have rejected evidence of cross-border terror attacks provided by Pakistan as an effort to malign Kabul.

Reports gathered by the United Nations and research groups based in the United States indicate the Afghan Taliban have maintained ties with foreign militants.

Past operations

Pakistan launched massive military operations against terrorists between 2009 and 2017 in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. While the operations managed to kill and flush thousands of militants to Afghanistan and dismantle their cells within Pakistan, they also caused a mass displacement of citizens and millions of dollars in damage to property and infrastructure.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has lately seen a wave of Jirga, or consultative public gatherings, where locals have expressed serious concerns over growing militant violence and frequent counterterrorism operations.

Pakistani military spokesperson Major General Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry told the media last month that security forces had conducted more than 13,000 intelligence-based operations this year, mostly in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Balochistan.
Pakistani police charge 23 people with being part of a mob that murdered a blasphemy suspect (AP)
AP [6/24/2024 2:46 AM, Riaz Khan, 456K, Negative]
Police in Pakistan have arrested 23 people accused of being part of a mob that killed a man suspected of desecrating the Quran, Islam’s holy book, officials said Monday.

The suspects were charged with murder and burning a police station in Madyan, a tourist destination in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province in northwestern Pakistan, where the mob killed the man on Thursday and burned his body.

Police initially identified the slain man as Mohammad Ismail, but on Monday said after an investigation that they have concluded his name was Mohammad Salman. They said his family has not yet contacted police to receive his body.

There was no official statement from police in Punjab, where the man lived.

However, Salman’s mother said in a brief video statement that her son was a drug addict and used to beat her, and she had expelled him from their home because of his violent behavior. She said she was a Muslim and her family was not responsible for any wrongful acts by Salman.

In Madyan, regional police chief Mohammad Ali Gandapur said on Monday that officers have arrested 23 suspects and more raids were underway as part of efforts to detain all those involved in Salman’s killing.

Salman was staying at a hotel in Madyan when a mob accused him of blasphemy.

Authorities say he was taken into custody on Thursday for his protection and was being questioned by police when a mob gathered outside the Madyan police station demanding he be handed over to them so they could immediately punish him for allegedly burning pages from the Quran.

According to police and government officials, police officers tried to assure the mob that Salman would face trial if he had committed blasphemy, but the enraged mob refused to accept the assurances and attacked the police station, wounding some officers.

The mob snatched the man and killed him publicly and burned his body.

Blasphemy accusations are common in Pakistan. Under the country’s blasphemy laws, anyone found guilty of insulting Islam or Islamic religious figures can be sentenced to death. While authorities have yet to carry out a death sentence for blasphemy, accusations can cause riots and incite mobs to violence.

Last month, a mob in Pakistan’s eastern Punjab province attacked a 72-year-old Christian man after accusing him of desecrating pages of the Quran. He later died at a hospital.
Local tourist killed in Pakistan’s Swat over blasphemy allegations (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [6/21/2024 4:14 PM, Abid Hussain, Negative]
A 36-year-old man has been killed and his body burned in Pakistan’s northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa after he was accused of desecrating the Quran, the holy book of Muslims.

The incident occurred on Thursday evening in Madyan, a town in the Swat district, a popular tourist spot located 280km (174 miles) from the capital city of Islamabad.

Police officials in Swat reported that the man, whose identity has not been disclosed, was a tourist from Sialkot, Punjab, who had been accused of “insulting the Quran”. It is unclear precisely what the man did.

“Our police team reached the main market in Madyan to arrest the man and took him to the police station, but the crowd demanded to have him handed over,” a police official told Al Jazeera on condition of anonymity.

Officials added that a large group of hundreds of people gathered outside the Madyan police station where the man was being held by police, attacked the premises and dragged the man out before killing him. How he was killed is unclear, although one police source based at the central Swat police headquarters, about one hour away from Madyan, told Al Jazeera by telephone that the man had been “tortured to death”. Videos circulating on social media show a large crowd chanting religious slogans and surrounding a burning body.

A senior Swat police official, Zahid Ullah Khan, told the media that the group also set fire to the police station and a police vehicle. He added that investigations into the incident were under way.

However, the police have not confirmed whether a First Information Report (FIR) was filed regarding the incident or if any arrests have been made.

Officials at the Civil Hospital in Madyan confirmed to Al Jazeera that at least eight people were brought in overnight with minor injuries from the incident, and all have been treated and discharged.

While traffic was temporarily halted through the main market area of Madyan overnight, local officials stated that the situation in town has returned to normal with businesses operating and tourist traffic flowing as usual.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Chief Minister Ali Amin Gandapur also condemned the tourist’s death and requested an immediate report on the incident from the police.

According to a statement from the chief minister’s office, Gandapur directed the provincial police chief to take emergency measures to control the situation.

Pakistan’s draconian blasphemy laws

Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are based on the legal system of its British colonial rulers, who introduced laws related to religion in 1860 to quell Hindu-Muslim violence in the Indian subcontinent.

These laws remained unchanged following Pakistan’s creation in August 1947, but were first amended in 1974, when a constitutional amendment declared the Ahmadiyya sect, a 500,000-strong religious minority which considers itself to be Muslim, as “non-Muslim”.

During the rule of military dictator General Zia-ul-Haq from 1977 to 1988, the laws were further strengthened with new criminal offences such as defiling the Quran, insulting Islam’s prophet, or using “derogatory” language about certain religious figures.

Blasphemy remains one of the most sensitive subjects in Pakistan, where even insinuations of accusations can lead to widespread violence.

Since 1987, more than 2,000 people have been accused of blasphemy, and at least 88 people have been killed because of such allegations, according to the Centre for Social Justice, an independent group based in Lahore advocating for minority rights, which compiles data relating to blasphemy cases in Pakistan.

Last month, in Sargodha, Punjab, a 70-year-old Christian man was attacked and seriously injured by a group of people, who accused him of desecrating the Quran. The group then started a riot, setting shops on fire and damaging houses belonging to other Christian families in the area.

Police managed to control the violence and rescue the accused, but he died from his injuries nine days later.

In yet another incident in February last year, in Nankana Sahib, Punjab, an angry group attacked a police station and killed a man who had been accused of blasphemy after forcibly removing him from police custody.

In August 2023, Christian communities in Punjab’s Jaranwala town faced widespread attacks on their homes and churches following accusations of Quran desecration by two brothers. More than 22 churches were burned down, and nearly 100 houses were damaged.

Arafat Mazhar, a Lahore-based academic researching Pakistan’s blasphemy laws, said the issue raises serious concerns regarding both security and civil rights. “There is nothing more terrifying than blasphemy-related violence.”

“In the 1980s, the Pakistani state made a promise that anyone hinting or insinuating blasphemy, whether malicious or not, would be killed,” Mazhar told Al Jazeera. “This led to a surge in blasphemy accusations, and when people saw the state did not fulfil its promise, however absurd, they took the law into their own hands.”

Mazhar emphasised that while there is increasing intolerance in society as a result of “the expansion of far-right hate groups”, the fundamental problem lies with the laws that criminalise blasphemy.

“The state must rethink the promise it made decades ago. It needs to counter the surge in blasphemy accusations, radically amend the law and prevent its misuse against people.”
Pakistani Security Forces Killed In Bomb Attack Claimed By Tehrik-e Taliban (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/21/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
Pakistan’s military said at least five soldiers in a troop convoy were killed by a roadside bomb in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province near the Afghan border in an attack claimed by the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a longtime ally of the Afghan Taliban. The attack comes after the group announced a unilateral cease-fire on the occasion of Eid al-Fitr holiday from June 17-19. The region has seen an increase in the number of deadly attacks in the past year attributed to the TTP. Relations between Afghanistan’s Islamist rulers and Pakistan have been tense since the Taliban returned to power in 2021, with Islamabad blaming the Taliban for sheltering the TTP. Residents of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa have protested against the lack of security provided by Islamabad and against the actions of extremists.
India
India boosts defense ties with Bangladesh as it tries to become a counterweight to China (AP)
AP [6/22/2024 7:00 AM, Ashok Sharma, 10447K, Neutral]
India and Bangladesh on Saturday moved to bolster their defense relationship and signed agreements for expanding cooperation in maritime security, ocean economy, space, and telecommunication sectors, as New Delhi tries to present itself as a regional power and a counterweight to China.

The agreements were signed during Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to India, the first foreign leader to visit New Delhi since Narendra Modi became the country’s prime minister for a third term two weeks ago.

Modi welcomed Bangladesh’s decision to join his Indo-Pacific Oceans Initiative to expand and facilitate regional cooperation of India’s maritime neighbors. He said the deals with Dhaka were part of his country’s pursuit of a neighborhood-first approach.

Bangladesh also enjoys good ties with China, its major trade partner mostly for raw materials. But maintaining a close relationship with Beijing is challenging for Bangladesh, which also balances diplomatic and trade relationships with India and the United States, China’s main rivals.

Bangladesh’s garment industry, which brings in more than 80% of foreign currency from exports, is heavily dependent on China for raw materials.

Hasina told reporters in New Delhi that the two countries decided to boost the sharing of river waters and cooperation in the power and energy sectors.

She also met Indian industry leaders and invited them to invest in Bangladesh which plans to develop bigger ports, waterways, rail, and road connectivity. India loaned Bangladesh $8 billion in the last eight years, to help expand that infrastructure.

Since Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League party came to power in 2009, she has acted to address New Delhi’s concern about Indian militant groups taking shelter in Bangladesh.

However, an agreement on sharing the waters of the River Teesta remains elusive. The question of illegal immigration from Bangladesh to India also has dogged bilateral ties for years.

India is Bangladesh’s largest export destination in Asia. Trade between the two countries touched $15.9 billion in the financial year 2022-23.

New Delhi mainly exports cotton, motor vehicles, sugar, iron, steel, aluminum, electrical and electronic equipment to Bangladesh. It imports cereal, pulp paper and board, cement, and raw hides from Bangladesh.
Toxic Moonshine Leaves at Least 53 Dead in India’s South (New York Times)
New York Times [6/22/2024 4:14 PM, Mujib Mashal and Hari Kumar, 831K, Negative]
The death toll from tainted liquor in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu has reached 53, officials say, and is likely to rise, with many others in critical condition. The victims were sickened by drinking a bootleg alcohol with a high content of methanol.

Rajat Chaturvedi, the police superintendent in the Kallakurichi District, where the past week’s deaths have occurred, said that 98 people had been hospitalized. “The dead and hospitalized people are mostly daily wage laborers,” he said.

The first death, from drinking local alcohol sold in small pouches for about 50 cents, Mr. Chaturvedi said, was reported on Wednesday. The village of Karunapuram was the worst hit, with more than a dozen victims receiving last rites in a mass cremation on Thursday.

Consumption of tainted alcohol has caused several mass-casualty events across India in recent years. In some states that prohibit alcohol, people turn to smuggled or unregulated liquor. Elsewhere, villagers choose the bootleg product because of its lower price.

In 2019, at least 150 people died in two districts of the northeastern state of Assam from drinking bootleg alcohol. Weeks earlier, 100 people had died in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand.

In August 2020, at least 120 people died in Punjab from drinking toxic local alcohol, with 92 of the deaths in just one district.

In December 2022, at least 70 people died from drinking tainted alcohol in the eastern state of Bihar. Bihar has banned the sale and consumption of alcohol since 2016, but people consume illegal smuggled alcohol or cross the border into Nepal for cheap local alcohol.

Last year, at least 22 people died from consuming similar toxic local alcohol in two other districts of Tamil Nadu, where liquor sales are legal but the number of outlets is restricted. The latest mass casualty has put the state’s government under pressure from opposition leaders as well as from the state’s high court. Opposition lawmakers, who arrived at the assembly dressed in black, called for the resignation of Tamil Nadu’s chief minister, M.K. Stalin.

Mr. Stalin announced an investigation headed by a retired judge and ordered the police across the state to crack down on the homemade liquor trade.

The man accused of making this week’s batch of poisonous alcohol has been arrested, along with his wife and at least one other person, according to police officials. The Kallakurichi District’s top civilian official has been transferred, while several police officers have been suspended.

Local residents have said that the police were complicit, taking a cut from the bootlegger’s peddlers who brought the alcohol to the villages, according to the Indian news outlet The News Minute.

“We cannot say direct involvement of local police, but due to their lack of action, police people were suspended, right from constable to deputy superintendent of police,” said Mr. Chaturvedi, who took charge of the district’s police force after the tragedy.
Deadly methanol-laced bootleg liquor kills dozens in South India (NPR)
NPR [6/23/2024 7:44 PM, Anupama Chandrasekaran, 37088K, Negative]
Fifty-five-year-old Ponnusamy Rajendran was a day laborer who unloaded bags of potatoes, onions and tomatoes at the local wholesale market in the southern Indian town of Kallakuruchi. Last Wednesday, after finishing his work at dawn, he bought three 50-cent plastic pouches of bootleg alcohol to feed his addiction. With his daily earnings of less than $4, he couldn’t afford anything more expensive.

“He had a limited budget with his wages and after sharing half his earnings with his family, he calculated and found it profitable to buy fake alcohol,” says Kaliappan Gnanavel, Rajendran’s son-in-law, speaking in the Indian language of Tamil in a phone interview with NPR.

On Thursday, Rajendran died in a government hospital in Tamil Nadu, a southern state in India. He was among 56 people who died after consuming methanol-laced liquor produced in the Kallakurichi district.

Several regions in India have seen mass casualties due to consumption of tainted alcohol. States including Assam, Punjab, Bihar, and Tamil Nadu have reported hundreds of deaths from bootleg alcohol, due to its lower cost and availability, despite prohibition laws.

Producers of spurious liquor add toxic methanol to increase alcohol content inexpensively, according to a study. Methanol makes the body produce too much acid that the kidneys can’t remove. It also impairs vision.

" ‘I don’t know what is happening,’ my father had said, ‘I cannot see anyone’s face clearly,’ " said Rajendran’s daughter, Karpagam Gnanavel. She remembers her father crying that morning after drinking. “Then a neighbor stopped by to announce that some people were dying in the area after consuming alcohol," she said in Tamil.

Beginning Wednesday morning, 215 individuals were admitted to four different hospitals with symptoms of vomiting, stomach aches, and diarrhea, according to a doctor familiar with the matter who was not authorized to speak publicly. Currently, four of them remain in critical condition.

The government of Tamil Nadu responded to the deaths by appointing M.S. Prasanth, previously an official responsible for rural development, as the new top official in Kallakurichi.

Several police officers too were suspended, according to news reports. Kaliappan Gnanavel alleges that spurious liquor has been sold for many years in the area with the police’s knowledge.

One of the first things the new district official Prasanth did was get more doctors from neighboring districts to treat the rising number of patients.

“Specialist doctors from all around and the medicine stocks and antidote for the methanol poisoning were moved to Kalakurichi,” says Prasanth.

To support the medical staff in four hospitals, 56 doctors were brought in from surrounding districts.

Despite these efforts, a quarter of the hospitalized patients didn’t survive.

“It is a complicated socio-economic problem,” says Prasanth. “There is a demand due to poverty and some of these people are choosing lower priced drinks. We have to cut down the supply and do some long-term interventions in the area.”

On Wednesday, with his father-in-law in the hospital and the death count rising, Kaliappan Gnanavel and about 50 other villagers protested at the local police station, demanding the arrest of the illegal liquor producers.

So far seven of the people involved in the production of illegal liquor have been arrested, Prasanth says.

For now, the Tamil Nadu government has announced compensation of $12,200 for the families of those who lost their lives in this tragedy.

Karpagam Gnanavel confirms that her family received compensation for her father’s death. But she’s angry that the government didn’t act sooner.

"We have battled with the bootleggers to halt the sale of this substance, but instead, they question us, ‘Why do you allow him to come and purchase from us? Keep him at home,’ “ Karpagam says. “This is a major crisis and it must never occur again.”
India Predicts Heavy Rains Along West Coast as Monsoon Advances (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [6/23/2024 6:55 AM, Rajesh Kumar Singh, 27296K, Neutral]
Heavy rains are expected to lash several areas along India’s western coast over the next five days as the monsoon advances, according to the nation’s weather office.

States of Gujarat, Maharashtra, Goa, and Karnataka could see heavy to very heavy rains, India Meteorological Department said in a statement on Sunday. Other coastal provinces, such as Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Odisha, as well as some land-locked states, are also expected to see heavy downpour and gusty winds.

India’s monsoon runs from June to September and is crucial for the country’s farm productivity as well as replenishing hydro-power reservoirs. This month’s rains started weak, which had fueled concerns about the outlook for key crops.

While irrigating the farmlands, heavy rains also cause devastating floods in various parts of the country every year. India’s home minister Amit Shah met with top officials to review preparedness for flood management, news agency ANI reported. Arunachal Pradesh, India’s north-eastern state bordering China, is already flooded, the news agency reported.

More Heat

The northern parts of the country, including states of Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, Punjab and capital New Delhi are likely to see a 2C rise in maximum temperature during the next three days, the IMD said in today’s statement. Heat waves are expected in some pockets of these states on Monday and Tuesday and abate thereafter, it said.

Most parts of central India will likely see a 2C-3C decline in maximum temperatures over the next day, according to the weather office.
Thousands displaced in floods in north-eastern India, rain abates (Reuters)
Reuters [6/24/2024 2:56 AM, Tora Agarwala, 5.2M, Negative]
Thousands of people have been displaced in India’s north-eastern state of Assam and at least 37 people have died in heavy rain, floods and landslides in the last two months, officials said on Monday.

Although rains have abated in the last two days and improved the flood situation marginally, at least 200,000 people were affected in 11 districts of the state due rain-related incidents, a release from the state’s disaster management authority said.

More than 12,000 people have been displaced from their homes in the state and authorities said they expected another wave of floods in July, with the Kushiyara river, a transboundary river between India and Bangladesh flowing above the danger mark in several places.

India’s north-east and neighbouring Bangladesh have been ravaged by floods in the last two months, leaving millions stranded, with weather authorities predicting that the situation could worsen.

The situation in Bangladesh had also improved as water levels of various rivers had receded and upstream water from India had reduced, officials said.
Parts of Modi’s Agenda Face Risk in India’s Fractured Parliament (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [6/23/2024 8:00 PM, Swati Gupta, 27296K, Negative]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s vast domestic agenda is in jeopardy after his party failed to win an outright majority in parliament for the first time in a decade, forcing it to work with a coalition of parties.

Over the last decade that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has ruled with absolute majorities, its advocated for — and pushed through — laws that critics say have furthered its divisive Hindu majoritarian goals.

In 2019, the government scrapped the semi-autonomous status of the Muslim-majority state of Jammu and Kashmir and passed an amendment to the citizenship law which discriminates against Muslims. In January, Modi inaugurated a temple built on the ruins of a demolished mosque in Ayodhya. The destruction of the mosque led to riots across India three decades ago and helped propel the BJP to the national stage.

While analysts and economists expect Modi to broadly continue pursuing the economic policy goals that shaped his first decade in power, they say he may be forced to jettison many of the more controversial social policies his party had advocated prior to it’s electoral setback.

A new parliament taking office Monday may give some hint of whether those domestic policies are now in doubt, or need to be reworked under a coalition government.

Uniform Civil Code

For years, the BJP has advocated for the replacement of India’s religion-based laws with a uniform civil code. This would entail a non-religious set of rules governing issues like marriage, inheritance and divorce. Modi and his party have long championed for a uniform code. They see the current system as allowing non-Hindu communities — especially Muslims — to operate on their own terms, and a new code would likely outlaw many personal practices relating to marriage and divorce.

In a test case, the BJP-run northern Indian state of Uttarakhand passed the code in its state assembly earlier this year. Successive governments have stayed away from amending these laws out of fear of angering voters from all faiths. It’s likely Modi’s key regional allies — all of whom have substantial Muslim populations in their states — will shy away from siding with the BJP should they try and introduce the measure in the current parliament.

National Register of Citizens

A month before India’s elections kicked off in April, the government implemented a religious-based law — the Citizenship (Amendment) Act — which fast-tracks citizenship rights for immigrants from neighboring nations except for those who identify as Muslim.

The law was seen as a precursor for a proposed national citizenship register, which will require Indians to prove their citizenship. Amit Shah, who retained his position as home minister in Modi’s new cabinet, has previously promised to conduct a nationwide exercise to root out illegal immigrants from neighboring countries like Bangladesh, many of whom are Muslims.

In a country with poor literacy and high poverty, documentation is often hard to procure for many Indians and consequently citizenship harder to prove. Critics had feared that if the BJP had won a large majority — as many had predicted prior to the polls — the government would’ve likely pursued the national population register. However, a coalition government, in partnership with other state leaders, will likely force Modi to negotiate with his partners on any deal.

Military Recruitment Scheme

In 2022, the Modi government shifted the Indian army’s recruitment policy to short-term jobs with no pension benefits. The announcement of the scheme resulted in protests across the country as it further limited employment options in a country already grappling with a severe jobs crisis. Under the plan, the recruits would train for six months, serve in the military for three and a half years but will not be entitled to pensions or other benefits when they leave.

Leaders from two of the BJP’s partners in the eastern state of Bihar — which is also one of India’s poorest — have publicly asked for a review of the policy. During the election campaign, scrapping the scheme was one of the opposition’s main promises.

One Nation One Election

The Modi government is keen to revamp the country’s electoral system: It wants to hold simultaneous national and state elections. The government’s stance is that concurrent elections would cut costs and improve efficiency. A committee constituted by the government on the subject submitted its report in March and recommended that the government move to enact a “One Nation One Election” strategy.

At the moment, state polls are spread across the country’s five-year election cycle. For example, polls in the key states of Maharashtra and Haryana will take place later this year, just months after the country voted in national elections.

To implement the scheme, the government would need to amend the constitution, a task made considerably harder while governing with a coalition and against an opposition staunchly opposed to the proposal. Modi’s opponents have long feared that the BJP will use its national popularity to also sweep simultaneously-held state elections. Currently, off-cycle elections spread over a five-year period mean local issues — and parties — often dominating voter’s preferences.

Census and Delimitation

India’s last census was conducted in 2011. The next one, due in 2021, was put on hold because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, parliament passed a law requiring a census followed by a delimitation exercise, after 2026.

The last delimitation exercise, or redistricting, was conducted in 2002, with subsequent governments kicking the can down the road to not upset the current balance of seats in parliament.

Southern states, which have always lagged in terms of seat distribution — given their lower population — expect delimitation to further reduce their representation in India’s lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha. The country’s populous northern states — many of them BJP strongholds — would almost certainly see their share of parliamentarians increase.

A fresh census and reshaping of the political constituencies will also pave way for Modi to implement the women reservation bill that sees a third of lawmakers’ seats reserved for females.

Affirmative Action

Under India’s constitution, affirmative action is enshrined for socially and economically backward communities — including of lower caste Indians. A specific quota of government jobs and places in government-run educational institutions are reserved for those on the lowest rungs of the caste system under the policy.

Modi’s BJP lost support among lower caste Hindus in the latest election, with many of them voting for caste-based parties, especially in some key northern states.

In TV interviews and election rallies, Modi blamed the opposition for exploiting cleavages over the caste system to sway voters and repeatedly assured the country that the BJP would not scrap affirmative action policies. He also stressed that the BJP would never give affirmative action based on religion, specifically for Muslims.

Modi’s ally, the Telugu Desam Party does target some affirmative action program on the basis of religion where it rules in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh — making it an issue where the BJP will likely be at odds with a much-needed ally.
India’s Modi To Lay Out Third-term Plans As Parliament Meets (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [6/24/2024 12:35 AM, Staff, 1.4M, Neutral]
Indian lawmakers begin taking their oaths Monday as parliament opens after an election setback forced Prime Minister Narendra Modi into a coalition government for the first time in a decade.

Expected in the first session, which will run until July 3, is a preview of Modi’s plans for his third term and the likely formal appointment of Rahul Gandhi as leader of the opposition -- a post vacant since 2014.

Modi’s first two terms in office followed landslide wins for his right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), allowing his government to drive laws through parliament with only cursory debate.

But now analysts expect the 73-year-old Modi to moderate his Hindu-nationalist agenda to assuage his coalition partners, focusing more on infrastructure, social welfare and economic reforms.

Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Kiren Rijiju on Monday called for a "peaceful and productive" session, but Indian media said they expected lively debate with a far stronger opposition.

"All set to spar", one headline in the Hindustan Times read Monday.

"Resurgent opposition set to push government", the Indian Express front page added.

Rahul Gandhi, 54, defied analyst expectations to help his Congress party nearly double its parliamentary numbers, its best result since Modi was swept to power a decade ago.

Gandhi is the scion of a dynasty that dominated Indian politics for decades and is the son, grandson and great-grandson of former prime ministers, beginning with independence leader Jawaharlal Nehru.

Parliamentary regulations require the opposition leader to come from a party that commands at least 10 percent of the lawmakers in the 543-seat lower house.

The post has been vacant for 10 years because two dismal election results for Congress -- once India’s dominant party -- left it short of that threshold.

The parliamentary session will start with newly elected lawmakers taking their oaths over the first two days.

Many will be watching if two lawmakers elected from behind bars, bitter opponents of Modi, will be allowed to join.

One is Sikh separatist Amritpal Singh, a firebrand preacher arrested last year after a month-long police manhunt in Punjab state.

The second is Sheikh Abdul Rashid, a former state legislator in Indian-administered Kashmir.

It is unclear if either will be granted bail to attend the ceremony in person.

Modi’s decade as premier has seen him cultivate an image as an aggressive champion of the country’s majority Hindu faith, worrying minorities including the country’s 200-million-plus Muslim community.

But his BJP won only 240 seats in this year’s poll, 32 short of a majority in the lower house -- its worst showing in a decade.

It has left the BJP reliant on a motley assortment of minor parties to govern.

Modi has kept key posts unchanged in this government and the cabinet remains dominated by the BJP.

That includes BJP loyalists Rajnath Singh, Amit Shah, Nitin Gadkari, Nirmala Sitharaman and S. Jaishankar -- the defence, interior, transport, finance and foreign ministers, respectively, staying on in their jobs.

But out of his 71-member government, 11 posts went to coalition allies who extracted them in exchange for their support -- including five in the top 30 cabinet posts.

Many will also be eying the election of the speaker, a powerful post overseeing the running of the lower house, with lawmakers slated to vote on Wednesday.

Coalition allies covet the post, but others suggest Modi will put forward a candidate from his BJP.
Open letter in India calls for withdrawal of go-ahead to prosecute Arundhati Roy (The Guardian)
The Guardian [6/23/2024 11:59 AM, Amrit Dhillon, 86157K, Neutral]
More than 200 Indian academics, activists and journalists have published an open letter urging the Indian government to withdraw last week’s decision sanctioning the prosecution of the Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy under the country’s stringent anti-terrorism law.

“We … deplore this action and appeal to the government and the democratic forces in the country to ensure that no infringement of the fundamental right to freely and fearlessly express views on any subject takes place in our nation,” the group said in the letter.

One of the signatories, the history professor Ajay Dandekar, said the decision was unjustified. “The Indian constitution upholds Roy’s right to the freedom of her opinions and we are a constitutional democracy,” he said.

Others also voiced support for Roy, including the Samyukt Kisan Morcha, an umbrella group of farmer unions, which condemned the decision. A few protests by civil rights groups, activists, and students in Delhi and Bengaluru have also taken place.

Last week the lieutenant governor of Delhi, Vinai Kumar Saxena, gave the go-ahead to the police to prosecute Roy, along with the academic Sheikh Showkat Hussain, under the anti-terrorism law, known as the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), for remarks they made at a seminar in 2010.

Roy is reported to have said the disputed region of Kashmir had never been “an integral part of India”.

Ever since Roy’s literary success in 1997, when she won the Booker prize for her debut novel The God of Small Things, she has been a sharp critic not only of Narendra Modi’s government but of previous governments too. She has attracted praise and censure in equal measure for her critiques of capitalism, the treatment of minorities, and globalisation, as well as her support for human rights causes.

However, the decision to prosecute her under the law, which makes bail difficult and results in people spending long years in prison awaiting trial, has shocked some Indians.

“Are we a democratic country or not?” asked Mukta Manohar, the general secretary of the Pune municipality Safai union, one of the signatories. “We signed the letter because we have to uphold our constitutional right to disagree with the government. We can’t let the government take revenge against critics like Roy out of some personal whim.”

Arnab Goswami, an unapologetically pro-Modi TV anchor, expressed his “delight” at the lieutenant governor’s decision.

“I’m very happy that Arundhati Roy, that terrorist supporter, that Maoist sympathiser, what I call a Gucci separatist, who made speaking against India a career option when her books failed, is finally going to be prosecuted,” said Goswami.

What remains unclear is why the decision to prosecute has been taken at this particular moment, when the complaint against her, filed by someone who attended the seminar, has been pending with the police for 14 years without being pursued.

Lawyers say they are puzzled as to why such a draconian law has been invoked. The supreme court lawyer Sanjay Hegde thinks that if Roy had been prosecuted under other, less harsh laws such as those dealing with provoking disharmony or inciting enmity among certain groups, the government would have run foul of the statute of limitations. No such limitation applies to the UAPA.

Nonetheless, Hegde thinks the case will be challenged in the courts at a very early stage for two reasons.

“The police will have to explain the 14-year delay and also explain why she should be charged when her words have not resulted in any violence or criminal acts in all this time,” he said.

The human rights lawyer Colin Gonsalves agreed that the case, if the government goes ahead, could collapse at the first hurdle. “It’s a crazy decision and they won’t be able to prove that Roy was linked to any violence or any efforts to overthrow the state. The prosecution is unlikely to succeed,” he said.

Nor is it clear whether the decision to sanction action against her is based on evidence that has emerged from a police investigation or whether it is expected to emerge from a police investigation that is still to take place.

Some liberals had hoped Modi’s reduced majority in the recent general election and his dependence on two regional parties could herald a more tolerant approach to dissent.

But Hegde said the opposite seemed to be happening and that Roy had been chosen as a target for being a “low-hanging fruit” in that she is seen as representing a broad swathe of intellectuals and activists ranged against the government.

Even if the prosecution failed, he said, it would send a loud message to Modi’s critics that keeping quiet was their best option because one day the state may come looking for them under the UAPA.

“The message is, don’t think that given our reduced mandate, we are going to be any nicer. If anything, we may be even harsher than before,” said Hegde.
India College Entrance Exam Scandal Spreads With Criminal Probe (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [6/24/2024 1:47 AM, Preeti Soni, 5.5M, Negative]
India’s government launched a criminal investigation into allegations of cheating and corruption in national entrance exams for medical colleges and removed the head of the agency in charge of handling the tests as student protests about the growing scandal continued to mount.

The Central Bureau of Investigation said Sunday it will probe alleged irregularities, “including conspiracy, cheating, impersonation, breach of trust, and destruction of evidence by candidates, institutes, and middlemen.” A day earlier, the government replaced the director general of the National Testing Agency, Subodh Kumar Singh, with immediate effect.

The decision follows mounting pressure from opposition parties and protests by thousands of students demanding a cancellation of the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test for admission into undergraduate medical programs for the current academic year, which are set by the federal government. Some 2.4 million students took the exam last month, competing for the more than 100,000 seats in state-run and private medical colleges. An unusual high number of students scored perfect scores in the exam, prompting allegations of cheating and the possible leaking of exam papers.

The scandal presents Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government with its first real challenge since taking office after elections ended in June. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is forced to share power in a coalition government after losing its outright majority in the parliament. The Indian National Congress, the country’s main opposition group, has vowed to raise the exam scandal in the first session of the new parliament, which began Monday.

Exam paper leaks aren’t uncommon in India. However, the alleged irregularities this time have taken center stage in the country and raised questions about the entire testing system. Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan told reporters last week that the government scrapped entrance tests for doctorate programs after an inquiry revealed the exam paper was available on the “dark net.”
‘Time is life’: the Delhi clinic treating the city’s heat stroke victims (The Guardian)
The Guardian [6/23/2024 11:13 PM, Amrit Dhillon, 86157K, Negative]
As Dr Amlendu Yadav flicks the switch, the large pipe starts gushing water while he shovels ice into the tub. In two minutes, it is full, ready for the next patient in his newly created emergency heatstroke unit at Ram Manohar Lohia hospital in the Indian capital.

The point, he explains, is speed. Heatstroke patients need to be dunked in the bath the moment they arrive at the hospital if they are to stand a chance of surviving.

“Time is life, time is tissue,” said Yadav, head of emergency medicine. “It is imperative to bring a patient’s temperature down fast and this is the quickest way. That’s why the water pipe is big so that the 250 litre tub fills fast and why the ice making machine can make 50 kilos of ice.”

The hospital has seen well over 50 heatstroke patients in the past week. People in New Delhi and much of north India have been battered by relentlessly high temperatures of 40 degrees or more every single day since mid-May. March was the hottest month ever recorded. At the start of June, Delhi recorded its highest ever temperature, with two weather stations in the capital reporting temperatures of 49C (120.2F) and 49.1C (120.38F).

According to newspapers that have collated figures, hospitals in Delhi have reported 275 deaths in the heatwave since mid-May. The real figure is believed to be much higher. Many such deaths, overwhelmingly involving poor labourers working outdoors, go unrecorded with neither relatives nor doctors recognising that heatstroke was the cause.

Many Indian people, although accustomed to hot weather, are unaware that being outside in exceptionally high temperatures can damage the kidneys and liver, cause unconsciousness and lead to organ failure.

“They don’t recognise the symptoms so they continue working until they feel confused and in that confusion they don’t seek help and eventually collapse. Usually, we have to put the patients who come to us straight on to the ventilator,” said Dr Seema Wasnik who works with Yadav.

Outside the new unit, the corridors are crowded with people suffering from heatstroke-related ailments. “My husband works crushing stones all day and he began vomiting. I thought it was a viral infection or something he ate,” said Sharmila Devi, standing by her husband’s gurney.

Before the hospital opened the new heatstroke unit, doctors would use cold sponging, ice packs, and cold IV fluids to bring patients’ temperatures down. It was time-consuming and slow. Temperatures of 40C – Yadav has even seen 43C – take time to come down and in this time the organs can be damaged.

The tubs reduce that time to 25 to 30 minutes as the cold water acts on the body’s surface area. While inside the tub, the patient’s vital signs are constantly monitored. Once the temperature comes down, the patient is moved to the ICU.

If more than two patients are admitted, the unit has an inflatable tub – essentially a paddling pool – which has the advantage of being portable and easy to transport to wherever the patient is.

Dileep Mavalankar, a public health specialist who helped to formulate India’s first Heat Action Plan for Ahmedabad in Gujarat, said it was unconscionable that a decade later, hardly any other cities have followed suit.

Delhi devised a plan this year that includes “early warning systems” but there has been no sign of progress during the current heatwave.

Speaking to the Times of India, Mavalankar said the Indian Meteorological Department website predicted a heatwave but the government did little to prepare the public.

“We’ve been breaking heat records now since 2022. Unless we take action now, it will only get worse,” he said.

Some rain brought very slight relief over the weekend – temperatures fell to 37C – but the meteorological department said higher temperatures were set to return.

Human-caused climate breakdown is making every heatwave in the world more intense and more likely to happen. Some, such as the extreme heatwave in western Canada and the US in 2021, would have been all but impossible without global heating.
Sikh assassinations: Are the US and Canada raising the heat on India? (Al Jazeer)
Al Jazeera [6/23/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 20.9M, Neutral]
A year after Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar was killed outside a community shrine near Vancouver, a series of diplomatic and legal measures is sharpening the scrutiny on India’s alleged role in quashing overseas Sikh separatist movements through assassinations in both the United States and Canada.

In Canada, an upcoming hearing on the Nijjar case on June 25 will offer prosecutors a new chance to present evidence to back their allegations of India’s involvement in the murder.

Meanwhile, Nikhil Gupta, suspected of being involved in a plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, was extradited from the Czech Republic to the US earlier this month.

Here is more about what Canada and the US are doing – and what it means for India:

What’s happening in Canada with the Nijjar case?

Four Indian nationals were arrested in May this year over the fatal shooting of Nijjar in June last year. The four men are Amandeep Singh, 22; Kamalpreet Singh, 22; Karan Brar, 22; and Karanpreet Singh, 28.

Sikh activists marked the first anniversary of Nijjar’s death by holding a mock trial of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi outside the Indian consulate in downtown Vancouver. They carried an effigy of Modi in prison stripes, asserting the Indian government’s role in Nijjar’s death.

Meanwhile, the Canadian Parliament last week honoured Nijjar on the anniversary of his assassination with a moment of silence – sparking an angry response from India. Nijjar, 45, was deemed a terrorist by the Indian government three years before his death.

Sikhs in Canada are continuing to hold non-binding referendums on the creation of a separate Sikh nation out of India’s Punjab state, with the next vote scheduled on July 28 in Calgary, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

The four men accused of involvement in Nijjar’s murder will appear in a court hearing on June 25 in the city of Surrey.

How has Nijjar’s case strained India-Canada ties?

Nijjar was shot dead outside a Sikh temple in Surrey in Canada’s British Columbia on June 18, 2023. Surrey has a large number of Sikhs, who make up 2 percent of Canada’s population.

Nijjar was associated with the Khalistan movement, an ethnoreligious movement that sprung up among the Sikhs in India, who make up 2 percent of India’s population but nearly 60 percent of the population in the northern state of Punjab.

Khalistan is the proposed name for a Sikh nation envisioned by some Sikhs, incorporating the state of Punjab as well as other Punjabi-speaking areas of northern India.

While the movement died down after a crescendo in India in the 1970s and early 1980s, due to a crackdown by Indian forces and Hindu mobs, it has recently seen a resurgence among Sikhs in the diaspora.

In September 2023, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said that Canada was probing the possibility that India’s government was involved in Nijjar’s assassination. India has rejected any involvement in Nijjar’s death.

The incident put a strain on the relationship between the two countries, with India withdrawing its diplomats from Canada and briefly suspending visas for Canadians. Trade talks between the nations have been in deep freeze since Trudeau’s bombshell allegations.

Last week at the G7 conference in Italy, Modi and Trudeau shook hands, but it was unclear whether they discussed India’s potential involvement in Nijjar’s death.

The tensions are not likely to abate anytime soon, especially with hearings into the Nijjar case expected to reveal more about Canada’s accusations against India. The Modi government has repeatedly accused Trudeau of pandering to Sikh separatists in the search for their votes, ignoring Indian national security concerns.

That criticism emerged again last week, after the Canadian Parliament’s mark of respect for Nijjar. “Time again, we have said that Khalistani activities are a matter of serious concern for us. We have been repeatedly calling upon the government of Canada to take action. Political space provided to extremist anti-India elements and those advocating violence must stop and they must take action,” India’s Ministry of External Affairs Spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said.

India claims that Canada has not yet provided it with any clear evidence linking Nijjar’s assassination to Indian agents. New Delhi has insinuated that a rivalry between criminal gangs in Canada may have been behind the killing.

What is happening in the US?

But Canada is not the only country where the overseas actions of Indian security agencies are under scrutiny.

The Czech Republic has extradited Indian national Nikhil Gupta to the US, where prosecutors have accused him of involvement in an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot to kill Sikh separatist Gurpatwant Singh Pannun.

Gupta, 53, who was arrested last year in June by Czech authorities while travelling from India to Prague, reached the US on June 14.

Much like in the Nijjar case, the Indian government has sought to dissociate itself from the plot against Pannun. However, it has said it will formally investigate security concerns raised by Washington.

Last month, Washington said it was satisfied so far with India’s moves to ensure accountability in the alleged plots while adding that many steps still needed to be taken.

Gupta, who has been held in the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn, New York, since his arrival to the US, pleaded not guilty on June 17.

What was the Gurpatwant Singh Pannun case?

On November 29, 2023, the US Justice Department announced charges against Gupta, accusing him of working for the Indian government to carry out the planned assassination of Pannun, who is a US citizen, in New York.

Federal prosecutors described Gupta as an associate of an Indian government agency employee identified only as “CC-1”, who previously worked with the Central Reserve Police Force, a leading Indian government paramilitary force, the indictment stated.

The indictment alleged that CC-1 directed the murder plan from India and recruited Gupta around May 2023 to coordinate it.

Gupta, on CC-1’s direction, contacted a person whom he believed was a criminal associate who could carry out the assassination, the indictment alleged. But the person he reached out to was, unknown to Gupta, working confidentially for US law enforcement.

This source in turn connected him to a “hitman” who was actually an undercover law enforcement officer, working for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), said the indictment.

Gupta agreed to pay the hitman $100,000 for killing Pannun, paying him an advance of $15,000 in cash in Manhattan around June 9, 2023, according to the US Justice Department.

If convicted, Gupta can face up to 20 years in prison.

The DEA, as well as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), are probing this case, according to a Justice Department press release on June 17.

Are the tremors being felt elsewhere?

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) recently published an article accusing Indian agents of harassing and threatening members of the Sikh diaspora in Australia, and linking those cases to Nijjar’s assassination as well as the alleged plot in the US targeting Pannun.

The ABC has previously reported on Australia expelling an alleged “nest of spies” from India. Its reporting suggests that agents from the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO), the domestic intelligence agency, met with Sikh activists in Australia regarding Nijjar’s death.

The ABC has said that YouTube blocked some of its in India ahead of the country’s general election. YouTube said the ban was following a “confidential” order which came under India’s Information Technology Act of 2000.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese – who in May 2023 had feted Modi in Australia, comparing his popularity to that of iconic singer Bruce Springsteen – or his government has not commented on the ABC reports.
NSB
Bangladesh PM Hasina visits India twice ahead of China trip (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [6/24/2024 4:07 AM, Pranay Sharma, 1.2M, Neutral]
Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina showed apparent inclination to India by visiting New Delhi this weekend -- her second visit in less than a fortnight -- ahead of her scheduled trip to Beijing next month.

Hasina was among the leaders who attended Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi on June 9 after the general election, and she was again on a two-day state visit from Friday to Saturday.

She held wide range of discussions with Modi and other senior members of the Indian leadership, both individually and also during talks between the two delegations.

The two countries signed over 10 agreements, including vision documents, to advance cooperation in digital and green technologies and in areas ranging from defense, trade, commerce and connectivity, to power, energy, space and oceanography.

They also agreed to start talks on the proposed Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) so that it can be concluded at the earliest possible time.

India agreed to help Bangladesh develop its own satellite and put it in space using India’s own launch vehicle. New Delhi also announced an e-visa program to facilitate Bangladeshi nationals visiting India for medical treatment.

Although Hasina managed to bag a number of important agreements during her state visit, Bangladeshi observers remained skeptical about the outcome of her India trip.

"Hasina returns with a number of agreements to show the visit was a success," said commentator and retired Bangladeshi diplomat Shamsher M. Chowdhury. "But a lot will depend on how early they are implemented."

The main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party leader Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir criticized the government for failing to raise Bangladesh’s concerns with India and said that the 10 agreements were signed for Indian benefit. He noted that Hasina could not even get any concessions on the crucial issue of sharing the water of the Teesta River.

The river originates in the eastern Himalayas and goes through the Indian states of Sikkim and West Bengal before flowing into Bangladesh. About 21 million people in Bangladesh are estimated to be directly or indirectly dependent on the river for their livelihoods, according to the Asia Foundation.

Chowdhury said, "Hasina’s decision to visit India before China was part of a diplomatic move to get a commitment from the Indian leadership on Teesta [River] before she heard the Chinese offer."

Modi said, "An Indian technical team will soon visit Dhaka for talks on the conservation and management of Teesta." He added that negotiations will soon start for sharing the water of the 30-year Ganges Water Sharing Treaty of 1996 which will no longer be valid after 2026.

But former Bangladesh Foreign Secretary Touhid Hossain felt that the Indian offer was aimed at scuttling China’s offer to develop the Teesta project as New Delhi did not mention anything about sharing the water of the Teesta River. "I am not hopeful about what India says on Teesta," he said.

China had agreed to help develop the Teesta project after Bangladesh approached it for assistance.

But India is reluctant to allow China to work on a project in Bangladesh that is barely 100 kilometers away from the Siliguri "chicken neck" -- the strategic corridor that links India’s volatile Northeastern region with the mainland.

India’s counter-offer to develop Teesta now poses a serious diplomatic challenge for Hasina.

"Given the new context, Hasina’s forthcoming visit to China will now gain added salience," Hossain said.

There are other reasons behind Hasina prioritizing the India visit.

India’s former High Commissioner to Dhaka Veena Sikri said, "China may be a major investor for Bangladesh but India is ‘bread and butter’ for it."

Sikri added, "India is her largest neighbor and China is not even a South Asian nation." Her decision to visit India first was "no-brainer," he said.

Humayun Kabir, former diplomat and current president of the Dhaka-based think tank Bangladesh Enterprise Institute, said, "Hasina was traditionally close to India but now she is also indebted to the country for political support."

Kabir’s reference was to India’s support for Hasina in the run-up to Bangladesh’s parliamentary election last year that helped ease American and Western pressure on her for democratic backsliding and allowed her to win an election that was boycotted by the opposition parties.

It was also thanks to India’s nudging that the U.S. and other European nations ultimately recognized Hasina as the country’s legitimate leader, he added.
Nearly 2 million people stranded as second wave of devastating floods hits Bangladesh in less than a month (CNN)
CNN [6/23/2024 2:06 AM, Helen Regan, 22739K, Negative]
Extensive flooding has stranded about 1.8 million people in northeast Bangladesh, following weeks of heavy rains that have submerged homes and devastated farmland, according to state media and humanitarian agencies.

Video shows large swathes of Sylhet city and the nearby town of Sunamganj underwater in the second wave of flooding to hit the region in less than a month, state-run news agency Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS) reported Saturday.

The widespread flooding was triggered by prolonged torrential rain and water runoff from the hilly regions upstream on the border with India, which caused four rivers to swell beyond their danger marks, the Water Development Board said last week, according to local media.

Villagers in the hardest-hit low-lying areas of Sylhet could be seen wading through chest-deep water and heaping their belongings into piles to protect them from the muddy waters.

There is concern for those trapped by floodwaters who now face food shortages and a lack of clean water, according to local media.

About 964,000 people in Sylhet and 792,000 in Sunamganj had been affected by the flooding and authorities said they had set up more than 6,000 shelters to help the displaced, BSS reported.

Among them are 772,000 children who were in urgent need of assistance, the United Nations’ Children’s Fund (UNICEF) said Friday. More than 800 schools had been flooded with 500 more used as flood shelters, the agency said.

“As waters rise, children are the most vulnerable, facing heightened risks of drowning, malnutrition, deadly waterborne diseases, the trauma of displacement, and potential abuse in overpopulated shelters,” Sheldon Yett, UNICEF Representative to Bangladesh, said in a statement.

International development organization BRAC said it was helping to deliver emergency food and health support to hundreds of families in Sylhet and Sunamganj. It said about 2.25 million people have been affected by the flash floods, which have left 12,000 people in the region without power.

Khondoker Golam Tawhid, program head of BRAC’s Disaster Risk Management Program said flooding in the country is “becoming more dangerous” with “huge losses to livelihoods, biodiversity and infrastructure — and interruption to schooling and health services.”

“Bangladesh is used to flooding, but climate change is making floods more intense and less predictable, making it impossible for families to stay safe, let alone plan ahead,” Tawhid said.

Meanwhile, fish farmers have faced significant losses as floodwaters wash away thousands of farms and ponds, with local media reporting an economic toll of over $11.4 million.

Densely populated and low-lying Bangladesh is prone to seasonal rains, flooding and cyclones.

But the South Asian country is one of the world’s most vulnerable to the impacts of the human-caused climate crisis, studies show. As extreme weather events become more frequent and severe as a result of the climate crisis, the humanitarian and economic impacts to Bangladesh will continue to deteriorate.

By 2050, 13 million people in Bangladesh could become climate migrants and severe flooding could cause GDP to fall by as much as 9%, according to the World Bank.

The latest bout of heavy rains and floods came as the region had barely recovered from widespread flooding in late May following Tropical Cyclone Remal, which lashed Bangladesh and southern India and impacted about 5 million people.

“For many, this will change the course of their lives, leaving them without homes and schools and forcing them to move to temporary shelters for who knows how long,” said Sultana Begum, Save the Children’s regional humanitarian advocacy and policy manager for Asia, in a statement.

“Everything we are hearing points towards these kinds of extreme weather events getting worse and worse. And we have certainly not seen two bouts of severe flooding happen in such quick succession before. Make no mistake, the climate emergency is already making its mark on India and Bangladesh, and it is robbing children of their homes, families, food, water, and access to education and healthcare.”

Rohingya vulnerable

Monsoon rains and landslides have also affected southern Bangladesh, where about a million people from the Rohingya Muslim community are living in the world’s biggest refugee camps, having fled persecution and violence in neighboring Myanmar.

At least 10 people, including three children, died from mudslides and heavy rainfall in the refugee camps near Cox’s Bazar on Wednesday, according to Bangladesh’s Ministry of Disaster Management and Relief.

“People have been evacuated from the low-lying areas and at least 500 people have been shifted to other relief centers,” Hasan Sarwar, head of the refugee cell for the ministry told CNN last week.

Many Rohingya refugees live in bamboo and tarpaulin shelters perched on hilly slopes that are vulnerable to strong winds, rain, and landslides.

Save the Children said about 8,000 people in 33 camps have been impacted by the torrential downpours, which have destroyed or damaged more than 1,000 shelters.

The humanitarian group noted that the monsoon season in Bangladesh has only just started and will last for the next two months, with the potential to bring more heavy rains, landslides and flooding.

Landslides, heavy rains and flooding have also hit the neighboring Indian state of Assam, affecting more than 4 million people, according to Save the Children.

At least 31 people have died in the floods and landslides since May 29 in the state, according to local police and disaster management authorities.

Some immediate relief for northeast Bangladesh is in sight, however, as the rains began to ease and there are signs that floodwaters were starting to recede, local media reported.

The Bangladesh Water Development Board said Saturday that water levels of the major rivers in the northeast were falling and the trend could continue over the coming days if further rains hold off.

“Overall improvement of the flood situation in various low-lying areas under districts of the northeastern part of the country may continue in next 72 hours,” it said.
Rohingya May Have Crossed Into Bangladesh Amid Latest Fighting: Report (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [6/24/2024 4:43 AM, Sebastian Strangio, 1.2M, Neutral]
Rohingya Muslims may have crossed into Bangladesh in recent weeks in a bid to escape the intensifying fighting between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army (AA), according to a Bangladeshi official.

Bangladesh is already home to around 1 million Rohingya, most of whom were driven out of Myanmar’s Rakhine State during the “clearance operation” launched by the Myanmar military, one that many view as genocidal. Growing increasingly frustrated with the seeming permanence of the sprawling refugee camps dotted around the city of Cox’s Bazar in southeastern Bangladesh, Dhaka says that it will not permit any more Rohingya to enter the country.

However, in a report on Friday, Reuters quoted Mohammed Mizanur Rahman, the country’s chief of refugee relief and repatriation, as saying that he had received reports that some civilians had managed to get across the border.

“Some people have managed to enter Bangladesh in various ways and have taken refuge in different places,” Rahman told the news agency. “I believe some people are being allowed to enter unofficially.”

Fighting is currently raging across the northern part of Rakhine State, in Myanmar’s west, as the AA, the armed wing of the United League of Arakan, seeks to expel the Myanmar army’s remaining forces from the area. The AA, which seeks to create an independent state for the Rakhine Buddhist minority, has made significant gains in Rakhine State since the collapse of a ceasefire with the military junta in November, and now claims to exercise primary control over nine of the state’s 17 townships.

In mid-May, it captured the town of Buthidaung in the northern part of Rakhine State, after weeks of fighting. This was followed by a wave of arson attacks that reduced large parts of the town to ash, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Rohingya eyewitnesses claimed that the AA was responsible for the attacks; the group vociferously denied the claims, blaming junta air and artillery strikes.

Last week, the AA announced that it was closing in on the town of Maungdaw, which shares a long border with Bangladesh, and called on the town’s residents to “urgently” evacuate.

Given what happened in Buthidaung, this announcement gave rise to immediate concerns that the evacuation order was a prelude to further displacement of the Rohingya population of Maungdaw, many of whom are survivors of the 2017 “clearance operation.”

With the main exit routes from Maungdaw blocked, around 70,000 Rohingya are currently trapped there awaiting the final showdown between the Myanmar military and the AA.

United Nations human rights chief Volker Turn has also publicly expressed his concerns about the situation in Maungdaw. “Rohingya have no options,” he said. “There is nowhere to flee.” One resident of Maungdaw concurred, stating to Reuters, “We have nowhere to go, no safe zone, not enough food and basic necessities.”

All of this has raised fears that the AA’s evacuation order was its way of disavowing responsibility for Maungdaw’s Rohingya population if and when it captures the town. In a statement on June 18, the Special Advisory Council on Myanmar stated that “The evacuation notice of 16 June and impending attacks in Maungdaw, and rhetoric of senior members of the AA, give cause for concern over a possible intention on the part of the AA to forcibly transfer the Rohingya population from Rakhine state.”

The Reuters report seems to suggest that running the gauntlet of the Bangladeshi border authorities, and entering the limbo of the refugee community in Cox’s Bazar, may well be the least worst option available to those seeking sanctuary from the conflict that has once again consumed northern Rakhine State.
Central Asia
Kazakh Authorities Say Suspect Arrested In Attempt In Kyiv On Activist’s Life (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/22/2024 9:11 AM, Staff, 1530K, Negative]
One of two suspects wanted in connection with the attempted murder in Kyiv of Kazakh opposition activist and journalist Aidos Sadyqov was arrested by Kazakh authorities after turning himself in, Kazakhstan’s Prosecutor-General’s Office said on June 22.

Sadyqov, an outspoken critic of Kazakh President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev and his government, was shot on June 18 while he was in his car in the Ukrainian capital and is currently in intensive care. His wife, Natalya Sadyqova, who is also a journalist, was in the vehicle during the attack but was unharmed.

Ukrainian police said investigators established that Sadyqov was shot by two Kazakh suspects -- Altai Zhaqanbaev, born in 1988, and Meiram Qarataev, born in 1991 -- who were added to an international wanted list.

The Kazakh Prosecutor-General’s Office said in a statement on June 22 that Zhakanbaev on June 21 "contacted the internal affairs bodies of the Republic of Kazakhstan on his own and was questioned about the circumstances of the case. On the same day, he was arrested on suspicion of committing this crime."

The statement did not say where the arrest took place or in whose custody Zhakanbaev was, adding that it would not release more details "in the interest of the investigation."

It said investigations are under way "to determine the location" of the second suspect, Meiram Qarataev.

Sadyqova has said that Qarataev worked as a police officer in the northern Qostanai region. The Kazakh Interior Ministry, however, claimed that Qarataev had been sacked from the police force in 2019.

Ukraine’s Interior Ministry said Zhaqanbaev and Qarataev arrived in Ukraine on June 2 from Poland, renting an apartment and buying a car in Kyiv, after which they surveyed Sadyqov’s daily routines.

"On June 18, one of the suspects approached [Sadyqov’s] car and shot him, while his accomplice was near the building to act as a lookout. After that, they fled the crime scene," the statement said, adding that the two suspects then left Ukrainian territory via the Ukrainian-Moldovan border.

It was not immediately known who may have ordered the attempt on Sadyqov’s life.

The Sadyqovs, along with their children, moved to Kyiv in 2014 after Kazakh authorities launched a case against Sadyqova, who worked as a journalist for the independent Respublika newspaper at the time. She was accused of slander.

On June 19, Sadyqova told RFE/RL that, hours before the attack, she and her husband had issued a new video titled Toqaev Is Putin’s Puppet on their YouTube channel.

The video criticizes Toqaev’s "pro-Russian politics" and looks at the activities of Russian oligarchs and agents of influence in Kazakhstan, some of whom obtained Kazakh citizenship after Russia launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

She added that Toqaev would have stood to gain from her husband’s killing but did not present any evidence that connected the president in any way to the shooting.

Toqaev’s spokesman, Berik Uali, said on June 21 that the Kazakh president "had ordered law enforcement entities to find the two suspects’ whereabouts and undertake corresponding measures."

"Kazakhstan’s side is ready to cooperate with Ukraine’s law enforcement structures, including via Interpol," Uali said.

Sadyqov used to lead a branch of the opposition Azat Social Democratic Party in his native Aqtobe region in Kazakhstan’s northwest until 2010. He later headed a group that was a major force for establishing a union to defend the rights of Kazakh workers at the Chinese-owned CNPC-Aktobemunaygaz oil company.
Kazakhstan needs to overhaul labor, poverty statistics, experts say (VOA)
VOA [6/22/2024 3:00 AM, Naubet Bisenov, 4032K, Neutral]
Economic analysts in Kazakhstan say the government is using a formulation for setting the poverty line that fails to capture the number of people living below a humane standard of living. The result, they say, lowers the amount of assistance provided to the poor.

Kazakhstan sets the poverty line at about $70 a month, slightly over $2 a day. That results in an official poverty rate of 5.1% of the population. The World Bank, in a March report, More, Better and Inclusive Jobs in Kazakhstan, said that using its poverty line of $3.65 a day for lower middle-income countries (although the World Bank actually classifies Kazakhstan as upper middle-income) puts the poverty rate at about 10% in 2018.

Meruert Makhmutova, an economist and director of the Almaty-based Public Policy Research Center, said Kazakhstan should adopt the World Bank standard, which she said would result in more people receiving government assistance.

"The switch to $3.65 a day would automatically increase the number of the poor and the government would have to provide targeted social assistance to a greater number of people," Makhmutova said. "As a result, the government, failing to admit the real scale of poverty, reduces budget spending on social assistance to poor citizens."

The official Kazakh poverty level is close to the World Bank’s extreme poverty line of $2.15 a day, but Andrey Chebotarev, an Almaty-based economist and director of the Alternativa center for topical research, told VOA that figure is not applicable in Kazakhstan because of climate.

"It’s hard to just survive on the street in Kazakhstan in winter because the weather and climate make it impossible," he told VOA, referring to winter temperatures that could drop to minus 30 degrees Celsius.

"We need to assess poverty differently," he said.

Makhmutova also disputed methods authorities use to set the minimum wage and gauge the unemployment level.

Until recently, the minimum wage has been set arbitrarily without consideration of personal incomes or the real cost of living in the country. It was set around $190 a month for 2024, even though the average monthly wage was $890 at the end of last year.

"The government doesn’t use the average wage for setting the minimum wage, that’s why the minimum wage doesn’t grow substantially and its growth in the past few years doesn’t even match the inflation rate," Makhmutova said.

Baglan Kasenov, the head of the Kazakh Labor and Social Protection Ministry’s department for labor and social partnership, told VOA the Kazakh government had adopted a new methodology to set the minimum wage starting next year. It conforms to International Labor Organization recommendations, he said, and will be based on the median wage and productivity, reaching 50% of the median wage in future. The median wage, where half of workers receive less than that and half receive more, was about $560 a month last year.

The joblessness rate is another contentious issue in Kazakhstan, as authorities, Chebotarev said, now categorize people, for example, farming their kitchen gardens and working without pay in family businesses as "self-employed," which is new.

Makhmutova said the move "masks unemployment"; the number of jobless has been constant at around 450,000 people or under 5% in the past few years, whereas the number of self-employed is around 2.1 million, according to the government.

"As for unemployment, it’s a Kazakh invention of global scale because we have invented 2 million self-employed and blame everything on them," Chebotarev said. "Our estimates of unemployment should be revised … but no one in government wants to consider self-employed as jobless."

World Bank report questioned

Use of the government figures has resulted in criticism of the World Bank report, which claimed that despite declining economic growth, Kazakhstan’s poverty rate had dropped.

Makhmutova questioned the World Bank’s report because it based its analysis on "irrelevant" official Kazakh income and unemployment statistics – figures that are derived from the wrong method to assess poverty as well as being out of date.

She told VOA the report "is not objective in the first place because it relies on statistics provided by the labor ministry which avoids the assessment of the real scale of poverty and unemployment."

In addition, although the report was published this year, "the latest statistical data on poverty is from 2018, which is why it is irrelevant for the assessment of the current situation," she said, citing the COVID-19 pandemic and high inflation after Russia invaded Ukraine as having worsened living standards and increased poverty in Kazakhstan since 2018.

In response to Makhmutova’s criticism, the World Bank said it welcomes "critique and debate" over its reports, adding that the report "used the latest available data as is standard in World Bank reports for analysis."
Kyrgyzstan insists construction of controversial mega project go on (VOA)
VOA [6/22/2024 2:30 AM, Staff, 4032K, Neutral]
In July 2022, when Kyrgyz authorities unveiled plans for Asman, a new city on the shores of scenic Lake Issyk Kul, they said the project would boost the local economy, attract foreign tourists, and help unify the nation.

Two years later, Asman city planners are bogged down in scandals over the project’s substantial costs, ambiguous financing schemes and schedule delays.

The Kyrgyz government nevertheless seems poised to continue with the project.

Kyrgyz authorities envision Asman as "a green and sustainable city" featuring business centers, banks, sports arenas, high-tech buildings, a bullet-train system and state-of-the-art colleges and medical facilities where vehicles would run on natural gas and electricity.

As a nod to Kyrgyz culture, Asman (Asman means "sky" in Kyrgyz) would be laid out in the shape of a komuz, a traditional Kyrgyz musical instrument. The city would spread across 4,000 hectares and be populated by half a million residents. According to the project designers, it would take up to $20 billion in investments and 10 years to complete.

President Sadyr Japarov, seen by Kyrgyz media as the project’s main promoter, did not hide his nation-building intentions at last June’s groundbreaking ceremony.

Addressing the event, he said that the bringing together of people from across the country at the start of the project “attests to unity and cohesiveness of our people."

The new city, he said, would "become a financial hub uniting the East and West, the North and the South."

Supporters have hailed the project.

Ruslan Akmataliev, a Bishkek architect who designed the city, described it last year as “a city of future, where innovative ideas and modern technologies will meet with environmental sustainability and high quality of life.”

“The city infrastructure,” he said, “will be developed with the use of advanced technology to minimize negative environmental impacts. From using renewable energy to creating green zones and balanced waste disposal system, Asman seeks to be an example for other cities in terms of environmental responsibility."

Local residents concerned

Locally, however, reactions have been mixed.

In the lakeside villages of Toru Aygyr and Chyrpykty, 190 kilometers (118 miles) to the east of Bishkek and close to Asman city’s proposed site, a dozen residents randomly interviewed by VOA said they supported the project because of potential economic benefits but also quietly voiced concerns.

"The lands [of the proposed Asman city site] are used for grazing cattle and farming. There are also many houses. What will happen to them?" asked a Toru Aygyr shopkeeper who refused to give her name for fear of official retaliation.

In a country where transparency has been a perennial problem, other locals were more frank.

"We heard that the government is spending a lot of money on [building] it, but we haven’t seen any results,” Askhat, a retired schoolteacher from Chyrpykty who provided only his first name, told VOA.

He said the whole area is still empty a year after the groundbreaking, adding, “We all know that officials use big construction projects to steal money."

Japarov’s hopes that the project would unite the nation appear to be ill-founded.

Some critics say the Kyrgyz public has not been property consulted. As of this month, the State Directorate for Asman City, a government agency that was created in October 2021 to build and run Asman, has neither an office nor a website. During VOA’s visit to the construction site, there were no billboards or signs with information about the project.

A prominent critic

Others point to the project’s hefty costs.

Zhanar Akayev, a Kyrgyz member of parliament, referred to pressing problems elsewhere in the country in a late June 2023 interview with Kyrgyz media.

"We have problems with water supply in the summer; in winter, we are dealing with smog pollution. Public transportation is outdated, new neighborhoods are in bad condition, there is a scarcity of kindergartens and schools. Waste disposal has not improved despite much investment,” he said.

“If we continue this way, the city of Bishkek will turn into a big village. Instead of wasting billions of U.S. dollars to build a new city, why not repair Bishkek city?" he asked.

As a member of the Supreme Council, or the Jogorku Kenesh, Akayev gained prominence for opposing the controversial "foreign agents law" and publicly condemning government persecution of human rights activists and journalists. In a country where the authorities have been increasingly cracking down on political dissent, Akayev remains one of the few outspoken government critics.

Scandals pile up

Asman has become marred in a series of scandals as well. The leadership of the State Directorate for Asman City has reportedly changed three times since 2022.

Timur Fayziev, the initial director of the agency, was arrested on money laundering charges in October.

In March 2023, Japarov’s administration announced that the President’s Office was taking over control the State Directorate; previously, the State Directorate was under the Cabinet of Ministers.

Under the Kyrgyz constitution, the President’s Office has more political and economic clout than the Cabinet. The transfer also means Japarov will be personally involved in day-to-day management of the project.

Ambiguities in the financing plan have also raised public concerns. In 2022, Kyrgyz authorities said four French companies would provide funding for Asman.

In June 2023, Kyrgyz officials said that investors from India, Qatar, UAE and Turkey would finance Asman.

A year later, the Kyrgyz government apparently dropped the previous investors in favor of a little-known South Korean company.

In May, to increase Asman’s attractiveness to investors, the Kyrgyz government proposed a law to allow foreign citizens to own real estate in the Issyk Kul region. Current law bans ownership of real estate by foreigners.

More-serious opposition to Asman has come from environmentalists.

In January 2022, when the Kyrgyz government was more tolerant of political dissent, critics formed an organization to oppose the project and distributed a petition opposing it.

In a more recent display of environmental concerns, Dmitri Pereyaslavskiy, an ecological activist for Archa, a Bishkek-based environmental nonprofit, told Kyrgyz media that even if the new city did not have people, its construction would have harmful ecological consequences for Issyk Kul.

“Any type of construction, which happens in natural parks, is harmful for the environment," he said.

The project continues

Despite various obstacles and public concerns about the project, Kyrgyz authorities are unwilling to abandon the project.

Japarov’s administration announced this month that construction would resume, albeit with a slight change of focus: Authorities said they would concentrate on making the new city more environmentally friendly.

This measure has done little to quell political tensions, though.

Discussions became heated during a late May parliamentary meeting on the draft law to allow foreigners to own Issyk Kul real estate. Sultanbai Aijigitov, one of the key opponents of the law, walked out of the parliamentary session after accusing the initiators of the law of "selling the motherland."

Akylbek Japarov, the head of the Cabinet of Ministers, explained why the Kyrgyz government is poised to continue with Asman despite the obstacles. In a February 2022 interview with Kyrgyz media, he said, "We, the Kyrgyz, [historically] had conquered cities, destroyed them, set fire, and then grazed cattle on what was left of them. Building a new city is a dream of Kyrgyz people. Asman city is a dream of the [Kyrgyz] president, and as I hope, this dream will come true."
Kyrgyz Activist Gets 10 Years In Prison On Hostage-Taking Charge (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/21/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
A court in Bishkek has sentenced Kyrgyz activist and Social Democratic Party member Alga Kylychev to 10 years in prison on a charge of hostage-taking, which he vehemently denies, calling it politically motivated.

Bailiffs immediately arrested Kylychev after a judge at the Alamudun district court in the northern Chui region pronounced the ruling on June 21.

The charge against Kylychev stems from 2019 events in a Bishkek suburb, where former President Almazbek Atambaev and his supporters clashed with law enforcement officers at Atambaev’s Koi-Tash compound.

The violence broke out after the former president refused to obey three summons to appear at the Interior Ministry for questioning about the 2013 release of notorious crime boss Aziz Batukaev.

Kylychev told RFE/RL after he was arrested that none of the prosecutors’ witnesses confirmed that he was in the Koi-Tash compound during the deadly clashes.

"I consider it as a political ruling," Kylychev said, adding that if his life is in danger while he is in custody, the authorities should be held responsible for that.

According to Kylychev, his incarceration is retaliation by authorities for his refusal to take part in the "illegal exoneration" of another former president, Kurmanbek Bakiev, who fled the country in 2010 following deadly anti-government protests and was sentenced to life in absentia in 2014.

The standoff between security forces and Atambaev’s supporters in 2019 resulted in the death of a senior security officer and more than 170 injuries -- 79 of them sustained by law enforcement officers.

Authorities launched a probe into the deadly standoff and charged Atambaev and 13 of his supporters with murder, attempted murder, threatening or assaulting representatives of the authorities, hostage-taking, and the forcible seizure of power.

In 2020, Atambaev was sentenced to 11 years in prison for his role in the illegal release of Batukaev.

In February last year, Atambaev was released due to his deteriorated health and allowed to travel to Spain to receive treatment. He has not returned.
Former Chairman Of Tajik Parliament Reportedly Detained Amid Arrests (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [6/21/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
The former chairman of Tajikistan’s parliament, which was known as the Supreme Council until the early 1990s, has reportedly been detained on unspecified charges.

Several sources told RFE/RL on June 21 that Akbarshoh Iskandarov was summoned to the Prosecutor-General’s Office for questioning on June 13 and 14 and has been held in custody since the second visit.

They added that about 50 people in total were summoned to the Prosecutor-General’s Office at the time, all of whom were released but ordered not to leave Dushanbe.

Neither Tajik officials nor Iskandarov’s relatives would comment on the situation.

The 73-year-old veteran politician briefly served as the acting president of the Central Asian nation in the wake of uprisings in the early 1990s that led to a devastating five-year civil war that started in 1992.

Recently, Iskandarov worked at the Tajik Science Academy’s Institute of Philosophy, Political Sciences, and Law.

In the past, he served as Tajikistan’s ambassador to Kazakhstan, Mongolia, and Turkmenistan.

RFE/RL’s Tajik Service sent an official query to the Prosecutor-General’s Office asking for comments regarding the case but did not receive a response.

A day earlier, several other sources told RFE/RL that Tajik authorities had detained former Foreign Minister Hamrohkhon Zarifi on unspecified charges last week.

One source close to law enforcement said Zarifi was suspected of financial crimes related to the construction of the Foreign Ministry’s new building.

Zarifi served as the tightly controlled former Soviet republic’s foreign minister from 2006 to 2013. From 2015 until his retirement in 2018, Zarifi served as Tajikistan’s ambassador to Japan.

Last week, investigators also arrested lawmaker Saidjafar Usmonzoda on a charge of "usurping power." No further explanation of the charge was given, and it remains unclear if the arrests are linked.

On June 14, Tajik Prosecutor-General Yusuf Rahmon publicly said that "Usmonzoda and other individuals" are suspected of attempted power seizure.

Rahmon did not specify who the "others" were.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[6/23/2024 9:25 AM, 42.8K followers, 1 retweet, 14 likes]
Third round of UN-held talks on Afghanistan in Doha to be held on June 30 -- this is the first time the Taliban will participate. The envoys of 22 countries will be present. Afghan women, however, won’t have a seat at the table. That legitimizes the Taliban’s exclusion of women.

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[6/22/2024 12:15 PM, 62.7K followers, 130 retweets, 234 likes]
Hi @antonioguterres. Afghan women have warned for months that how you conduct the Doha 3 meeting has major consequences for the struggle for Afghan women’s rights—and for @UN credibility. Other women are raising their voices too—like @TiranaHassan.

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[6/22/2024 4:22 AM, 62.7K followers, 149 retweets, 209 likes]
When diplomats convene to discuss Afghanistan at the Doha 3 meeting on June 30 they won’t hear from any Afghan women—the @UN has shut them out.

Heather Barr
@heatherbarr1
[6/22/2024 4:23 AM, 62.7K followers, 9 retweets, 9 likes]
Human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have criticized the U.N. for inviting the Taliban to the Doha huddle rather than holding them accountable for crimes against Afghan women and girls. https://www.voanews.com/a/un-confirms-doha-talks-with-taliban-will-exclude-afghan-rights-defenders/7665707.html
Pakistan
Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/21/2024 11:18 AM, 210.3K followers, 13 retweets, 18 likes]
On June 26, we host a half-day conference that takes stock of US-Pakistan relations. Speakers include @Masood__Khan, former US ambs to Pakistan (@MunterCameron Anne Patterson David Hale), @mgweinbaum @pamconstable1 @Ishrat_Husain & more. Agenda/RSVP info: https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/looking-back-looking-forward-assessing-us-pakistan-relationship

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/22/2024 2:03 PM, 210.3K followers, 115 retweets, 640 likes]
The horrific mob lynching in Swat shows how it so misses the point to say that TLP and its ilk aren’t electorally significant. They regularly instigate & inspire abhorrent acts. The state is unwilling (or unable) to rein them in or to touch the blasphemy laws that galvanize them.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/22/2024 2:03 PM, 210.3K followers, 6 retweets, 35 likes]
They command high levels of influence, along with fair degrees of public support. That, combined with the impunity they enjoy, makes them deeply politically powerful unelectables and in many ways untouchable. All of this affords their dangerous ideologies more space and reach.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/24/2024 1:37 AM, 99.1M followers, 2.6K retweets, 10K likes]
Proud to serve our nation. Taking oath as a Member of Parliament.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/24/2024 12:59 AM, 99.1M followers, 3.1K retweets, 12K likes]
Sharing my remarks at the start of the first session of the 18th Lok Sabha. May it be a productive one. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1yNxaZgqBqRKj

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/22/2024 8:12 AM, 99.1M followers, 8.5K retweets, 66K likes]
Glad to have welcomed PM Sheikh Hasina to Delhi today. Over the year, we have met about ten times but this visit is special because she is our first state guest after our Government returned to power for the third term. Be it the ‘Neighbourhood First’, ‘Act East’ or SAGAR policy, Bangladesh is key to them all.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[6/22/2024 8:12 AM, 99.1M followers, 1.7K retweets, 6.5K likes]
Over the last year, India and Bangladesh have covered significant ground in sectors like infrastructure, connectivity, trade and energy. We are now looking ahead, seeking to work closely in areas such as green energy, digital technology and space. PM Hasina and I also reviewed cooperation in water resources, security and enhancing a strong framework for disaster management.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/23/2024 11:51 PM, 3.2M followers, 206 retweets, 1.1K likes]
On the occasion of the 12th Passport Seva Divas, extend my greetings to all Passport Authorities in India and abroad. Commend their efforts in furthering our mission of a citizen centric foreign policy. #TeamMEA reaffirms its commitment to make our passport services more timely, reliable, accessible, citizen-friendly, transparent and accessible.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/23/2024 12:30 AM, 3.2M followers, 5.4K retweets, 18K likes]
Today marks the 39th anniversary of one of the worst acts of terrorism in history. Pay my homage to the memory of the 329 victims of AI 182 ‘Kanishka’ who were killed this day in 1985. My thoughts are with their families. The anniversary is a reminder why terrorism should never be tolerated.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/1/3800 6:29 AM, 3.2M followers, 579 retweets, 5.5K likes]
Today’s State visit of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina reflects the depth of the Bharat-Bangladesh Maitri. That PM Hasina is the first State guest in our new term shows the importance we attach to the IN BD relationship. As PM @narendramodi said, Bangladesh lies at the intersection of our Neighborhood First, Act East, SAGAR and Indo-Pacific policies. Being truly good neighbors, our ties are consolidating traditional areas and covering new ground. The agreements signed today show the breadth of our bonds. From seas to space, digital, green and health, military, rail and disaster, our two countries are collaborating across all avenues of human endeavor. Confident that under PM @narendramodi and PM Sheikh Hasina’s leadership, IN-BD will keep growing from strength to strength. https://bit.ly/3VU4SKc

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/21/2024 9:39 AM, 3.2M followers, 648 retweets, 6.9K likes]
Delighted to call on Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of Bangladesh this evening. Her State visit to India underlines our close and abiding ties. Appreciate her guidance on the further development of our special partnership.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[6/21/2024 8:20 AM, 3.2M followers, 260 retweets, 2.7K likes]
A warm meeting with Chief Minister of Mizoram Shri @Lal_Duhoma ji today. Discussed our Act East Policy and challenges on the border.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/21/2024 10:44 AM, 210.3K followers, 8 retweets, 67 likes]
I’m quoted here by @khushboo228 on recent developments with Tibet. On Wednesday, a US codel met the Dalai Lama in Dharamshala. Yesterday that codel met Modi in New Delhi. Today the Dalai Lama came to New Delhi. India appears increasingly defiant on Tibet. https://www.scmp.com/news/china/article/3267435/us-lawmakers-meeting-modi-after-dalai-lama-signals-new-delhi-shift-china-analysts

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[6/21/2024 9:26 AM, 210.3K followers, 16 retweets, 64 likes]
The Khalistan issue presents a delicate diplomatic dilemma and notable foreign policy challenge for Narendra Modi in his third term--and for some of India’s key Western partners, including the US. This week’s South Asia Brief for @ForeignPolicy: https://foreignpolicy.com/2024/06/20/india-west-transnational-repression-sikh-separatist/
NSB
Awami League
@albd1971
[6/24/2024 12:34 AM, 638.9K followers, 5 retweets, 11 likes]
Honorable Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina inaugurating stipend and tuition-fee distribution programme for FY 2023-24 among meritorious students of secondary to honors (pass) and equivalent level

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/23/2024 7:46 AM, 638.9K followers, 9 retweets, 33 likes]
HPM #SheikhHasina at a discussion organized to celebrate the 75th founding anniversary of Bangladesh Awami League. Date: 23 June 2024 Venue: Suhrawardy Udyan, Dhaka #ALBDat75 #75thAnniversary #AwamiLeague

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/23/2024 7:44 AM, 638.9K followers, 44 retweets, 150 likes]
#AwamiLeague (AL), #Bangladesh’s largest political party, is celebrating its 75th founding anniversary with nationwide festivities today. To mark the occasion, Prime Minister #SheikhHasina paid tribute to the Father of the Nation, #Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, by placing a wreath at his portrait at the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum in Dhaka’s Dhanmondi-32 this morning. Following the tribute, she stood in solemn silence, honouring Bangabandhu’s memory. Prime Minister Hasina, accompanied by AL General Secretary Obaidul Quader, inaugurated the day’s celebrations by hoisting the national and party flags and releasing pigeons and balloons. The Awami League had previously outlined an array of elaborate programs for the anniversary. The day’s events began with the hoisting of national and party flags at central and regional party offices at dawn. Tributes were paid at Bangabandhu’s portrait in front of Bangabandhu Bhaban at 7 am. A discussion is scheduled for 3 pm at Dhaka’s Suhrawardy Udyan, followed by a cultural event. Awami League President and Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina is expected to chair the discussion. Additionally, cultural programs will take place at Rabindra Sarobar, and there will be a boat race and cycle rally at Hatirjheel in the afternoon. A delegation from the Awami League Central Working Committee will honour Bangabandhu by placing a wreath at his mausoleum in Tungipara, Gopalganj today. Bangladesh Awami League was founded on this day in 1949. Over the decades, it has evolved into the country’s largest political party, leading the movements for independence, the Liberation War, and various democratic movements. #ALBDat75 #75thAnniversary #PlatinumJubilee

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/23/2024 6:17 AM, 638.9K followers, 31 retweets, 78 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina and the leaders of the party have paid homage to #Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of Bangladesh #AwamiLeague today. #ALBDat75 #75thAnniersary

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/22/2024 12:02 AM, 638.9K followers, 43 retweets, 242 likes]
Prime Minister #SheikhHasina paid a courtesy call to the Indian President Smt Droupadi Murmu today at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi. During the meeting, Indian President praised #Bangladesh’s success under the prudent leadership of PM Hasina. https://bssnews.net/news-flash/196208 @rashtrapatibhvn

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/22/2024 9:21 AM, 638.9K followers, 37 retweets, 129 likes]
HPM #SheikhHasina said that #India and #Bangladesh endorsed the ‘Vision Statement’ to guide themselves toward a peaceful and prosperous future. After her meeting with @narendramodi today, she said, ‘We agreed to have a shared vision for ‘Digital Partnership’ and ‘Green Partnership for a Sustainable Future’. https://dhakatribune.com/bangladesh/foreign-affairs/349919/pm-hasina-modi-endorse-rare-vision-statement-for #BDIndiaRelations

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/22/2024 7:15 AM, 638.9K followers, 45 retweets, 150 likes]
Dhaka and New Delhi today signed 10 MoUs including seven new and three renewed in the presence of Prime Minister #SheikhHasina and her Indian counterpart @narendramodi to further consolidate the ever-growing relationship between the two neighbouring countries. Details: https://bssnews.net/news-flash/196118 @BDMOFA @PMOIndia @ihcdhaka @MEAIndia

Awami League
@albd1971
[6/21/2024 11:50 AM, 638.9K followers, 39 retweets, 226 likes]
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has met the Minister of External Affairs of India @DrSJaishankar today at the Taj Palace in #Delhi. PM Hasina is now in India for a two-day visit at the invitation of @narendramodi. @MEAIndia @PMOIndia @BDMOFA

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[6/23/2024 1:27 PM, 54.2K followers, 23 retweets, 32 likes]
Foreign Minister Moosa Zameer departs to the United States of America on an Official Visit Press Release | https://t.ly/dkJCN

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[6/24/2024 2:28 AM, 258.2K followers, 2 retweets, 10 likes]
Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China H.E. Mr. Sun Weidong arrived in Kathmandu this morning leading a Chinese delegation to the Sixteenth Meeting of Nepal-China Diplomatic Consultation Mechanism. @nksthaprakash @sewa_lamsal @amritrai555

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[6/24/2024 2:28 AM, 258.2K followers, 1 like]
He was warmly welcomed by Mr. Krishna Prasad Dhakal, Joint Secretary and Head of the North East Asia Division of Ministry of Foreign Affairs, at the VIP Lounge in Tribhuvan International Airport, Kathmandu.

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[6/23/2024 9:11 PM, 258.2K followers, 6 retweets, 31 likes]
DPM & Foreign Minister Hon Mr. Narayan Kaji Shrestha held a bilateral meeting Sunday evening with HE Dr Ali Bagheri, Acting Foreign Minister of Iran, on the margins of 19th Asia Cooperation Dialogue Ministerial Meeting in Tehran. @sewa_lamsal @nksthaprakash

MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[6/23/2024 9:11 PM, 258.2K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
During the discussions, both sides exchanged views on cordial relations between Nepal & Iran and other pertinent issues of mutual interests including regional cooperation in ACD.

Ranil Wickremesinghe
@RW_UNP
[6/23/2024 9:37 AM, 320.7K followers, 48 retweets, 236 likes]
I met Indian Foreign Minister @DrSJaishankar during his official visit to Sri Lanka, marking the first diplomatic exchange between India and Sri Lanka under the new government. We inaugurated houses built under the Indian Housing Project in Kandy, Nuwara Eliya, and Matale. Thanks to @JeevanThondaman and @S_Thondaman for coordinating this project, benefiting the Indian-origin Tamil community. We also handed over houses from model villages in Colombo and Trincomalee. We formally commissioned the Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre, with a main centre in Colombo, a sub-centre in Hambantota, and unmanned installations across Sri Lanka’s coastline. I thank PM @narendramodi and @DrSJaishankar for their continued support to Sri Lanka.

Namal Rajapaksa
@RajapaksaNamal
[6/23/2024 4:13 PM, 436.6K followers, 3 likes]
Under the programs to strengthen Piriven education, coordinated by State Minister DV Chanaka, we provided assistance to several Pirivenas and temples. I would like to thank Mr. Vijitha Beirugoda, Member of Parliament, for launching such programs to improve education.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[6/23/2024 9:46 AM, 356.6K followers, 21 retweets, 76 likes]
A sovereign’s ability to repay its (external) debt is regularly announced to the world by independent credit rating agencies @SPGlobalRatings @FitchRatings @moodysratings and not by any politician. #SriLanka will get out of default rating after the ISB exchange is completed.

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[6/23/2024 9:46 AM, 356.6K followers, 4 retweets, 16 likes]
That will happen after restructuring agreement on bilateral debt. Issue is whether we should agree to their MLB heavy ‘April Proposal’. @sjbsrilanka view is that it’s detrimental to us. We must get a better deal; not compromise the ISB restructure for short term political gain.
Central Asia
Farangis Najibullah
@FarangisN
[6/21/2024 9:35 AM, 10K followers, 12 retweets, 8 likes]
Another high-profile arrest in #Tajikistan: Former acting president Akbarshoh Iskandarov detained in Dushanbe. Also in jail are a former FM and a prominent lawmaker. https://www.ozodi.org/a/akbarshoh-iskandarovro-ba-bozpursi-burda-javob-nadodand/33003928.html

Bakhtiyor Saidov
@FM_Saidov
[6/24/2024 2:32 AM, 3.8K followers, 3 likes]
We resolutely condemn the vicious terrorist acts carried out in #Dagestan yesterday. On behalf of @UzbekMFA, express our deepest condolences to all the close ones of the victims.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/23/2024 11:30 PM, 23.4K followers, 1 retweet, 3 likes]
Uzbekistan #imports - top 10 partners, Jan-May 2024:
1. China, $4.2 bln
2. Russia, $3.4 bln
3. Kazakhstan, $1.1 bln
4. South Korea, $905 mln
5. Turkey, $703 mln
6. Turkmenistan, $407 mln
7. Germany, $396 mln
8. India, $318 mln
9. USA, $276 mln
10. Lithuania, $230 mln
Source: UZ Stat Agency

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/23/2024 12:11 AM, 23.4K followers, 14 retweets, 53 likes]
2.8 million foreign tourists in Uzbekistan Jan-May this year. Top 5 countries of origin: Tajikistan (872k) , Kyrgyzstan (857k) Kazakhstan (498k), Russia (290k), and Turkmenistan (59k). Followed by Turkey, India, China, Italy, and South Korea. Khiva UZ

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/22/2024 7:40 AM, 23.4K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
Kazakhstan government is using a formulation for setting the poverty line that fails to capture the number of people living below a humane standard of living, analysts say. It lowers the amount of assistance provided to the poor. https://www.voanews.com/a/kazakhstan-needs-to-overhaul-labor-poverty-statistics-experts-say/7666058.html

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/22/2024 7:37 AM, 23.4K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Lake Issyk Kul, Kyrgyzstan: Asman city planners are bogged down in scandals over the project’s substantial costs, ambiguous financing schemes and schedule delays. https://www.voanews.com/a/kyrgyzstan-insists-construction-of-controversial-mega-project-go-on/7665496.html

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[6/23/2024 8:58 AM, 23.4K followers, 9 retweets, 10 likes]
In Astana, Assistant Secretary Stewart will sign the National and Nuclear Risk Reduction Center Secure Line Agreement between the United States Department of State and the Kazakhstan Ministry of Defense. https://www.state.gov/assistant-secretary-stewart-travels-to-kazakhstan-and-switzerland/

{End of Report}
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