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:
Tuesday, May 28, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Renewed flash floods due to unusually heavy seasonal rains kill at least 15 people in Afghanistan (AP)
AP [5/26/2024 4:56 AM, Rahim Faiez, 39876K, Negative]
Renewed heavy rains have triggered more flash floods in Afghanistan, killing at least 15 people, including 10 members of the same family in the northeast, officials said Sunday.

The unusually heavy seasonal rains have been wreaking havoc on multiple parts of the country, killing hundreds of people and destroying property and crops. The U.N. food agency warned that survivors were unable to make a living.

The floods Saturday night hit northeastern Badakhshan and northern Baghlan provinces, with the latter already having suffered the brunt of the rains earlier this month.

The family — a set of parents and their eight children — was reported dead in Faizabad, the capital of Badakhshan, said Mohammad Akram Akbari, director of the provincial natural disaster management department in the province, adding that rescue teams were only able to recover the mother’s body.

In Baghlan province, Edayatullah Hamdard, provincial director of Natural Disaster Management, said at least 40 houses were destroyed in Doshi district, and several people have died but was unable to provide further details.

However, a local official, speaking on condition of anonymity as he wasn’t authorized to talk to the press, reported that five bodies have so far been found in the province and rescue teams were looking for more.

Earlier, the World Food Program said the exceptionally heavy rains in Afghanistan had killed more than 300 people and destroyed thousands of houses, mostly in the northern province of Baghlan on May 10 and May 11. Survivors have been left with no home, no land, and no source of livelihood, WFP said.

In the western province of Ghor, 50 people were reported dead due to floods on May 18.

On May 19, at least 84 people were killed in northern Faryab, and around 1,500 houses were either completely or partially destroyed while hundreds of hectares (acres) of farmlands.

The latest disaster came on the heels of devastating floods that killed at least 70 people in April. The waters also destroyed about 2,000 homes, three mosques and four schools in western Farah and Herat, and southern Zabul and Kandahar provinces.
Afghanistan urgently needs long-term aid after floods (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [5/24/2024 3:33 PM, Shabnam von Hein, 15611K, Neutral]
Severe flooding in northern Afghanistan over the past week has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people. The country’s Taliban government reports that more than 1,500 people have been injured and thousands of homes damaged or destroyed.

Heavy rainfall was immediately followed by hot weather, which has hampered rescue efforts. Speaking from the Afghan capital Kabul, Thomas ten Boer, the country director of the non-governmental aid organization Welthungerhilfe, told DW: "In some areas, the temperature has risen to more than 30 degrees. Many villages are buried in mud, which dries and becomes hard, making it very difficult to remove. Some areas are hard to reach because roads have been destroyed. We’re trying to provide survivors with food and drinking water," he said, but added that, right now, it wasn’t possible to do more than this.

The natural disasters have completely destroyed the livelihoods of many Afghan families, who live predominantly from agriculture. People urgently need long-term help. "According to our initial estimates, more than 10,000 hectares of agricultural land were destroyed in the heavy flash flooding," Latif Nazari, deputy minister of economy in the Taliban government, told DW. He insisted that "humanitarian aid must not be tied to political demands," adding that the government in Kabul had contacted the UN and international NGOs, and had requested financial and technical support from all international donors.

Increased risk of natural disasters due to climate change

The latest natural disaster has exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan. The country is still recovering from severe earthquakes and flooding that hit just a few months ago. Afghanistan is not prepared to deal with extreme weather conditions, such as drought or sudden heavy rainfall, which have become more frequent in recent years. The country is particularly badly affected by the consequences of climate change, and at the same time is particularly badly positioned to mitigate these consequences. According to Afghanistan experts, as many as 80% of the population rely on agriculture for a living.

Added to this are other emergencies, such as the forced return of more than half a million Afghans from Pakistan, and regular deportations of large groups of refugees from Iran, as well as the loss of many income opportunities since the withdrawal of international organizations from Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover.

According to the United Nations, 97% of the Afghan population live in poverty. Around 23.7 million of the 40 million inhabitants depend on humanitarian aid to survive; six million people are on the verge of starvation. This year, 3.06 billion US dollars are needed just to support people’s basic needs, particularly those of children and other vulnerable groups.

Investing in a more resilient society

"By April, only about 8% of our estimated need for humanitarian emergency and disaster relief in Afghanistan in 2024 had been met," Katja Mielke, Afghanistan expert from the Bonn International Centre for Conflict Studies (BICC), told DW. Donor countries, under the leadership of the United Nations, are aware that investment has to be made in the resilience and robustness of Afghan society. There are measures to improve food security, water supply, and healthcare that could be implemented on the ground by international and local organizations.

"Because of the underfunding, we can reach only a few of those in need," Mielke says. "On a strategic level, the sanctions need to be lifted promptly and the frozen state funds released in order to stimulate the economy. That way, incentives could be created for Afghan entrepreneurs to make long-term investments in structural economic activities."

On an operational level, the principle of establishing support that is community-oriented but independent of the state — as many donor countries, including Germany, are seeking — could best be implemented through direct collaboration with the communities. "Local community representatives are best placed to know what they need. Ideally, they can ensure that the distribution is needs-based, and also that women are not excluded," Mielke says.
Russia invites Afghanistan’s Taliban to major economic forum (Reuters)
Reuters [5/27/2024 5:20 AM, Lucy Papachristou and Guy Faulconbridge, 45791K, Negative]
Russia has invited Afghanistan’s Taliban to its biggest annual economic forum as Moscow moves to remove a ban on the Islamist movement, a senior Russian diplomat was quoted as saying on Monday.

Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021 as U.S.-led forces withdrew after 20 years of war, Russia has been slowly building ties with the Taliban, though the movement is still officially outlawed in Russia.

Russia’s foreign and justice ministries have reported to President Vladimir Putin on the issue of removing the ban, Zamir Kabulov, director of the Second Asia Department at the Russian Foreign Ministry, told state news agency TASS.

Some questions remain, Kabulov was quoted as saying, though he said that an invitation to attend the June 5-8 St Petersburg international economic forum had been extended to the Taliban.

Afghan leaders, he said, were traditionally interested in the purchase of oil products.

The St Petersburg forum, which once hosted Western CEOs and investment bankers from London and New York, has changed significantly amid the Ukraine war which has triggered the biggest crisis in Russia’s relations with the West since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Western investors seeking a slice of Russia’s vast resource wealth have now been replaced by businesses from China, India, Africa and the Middle East.

The Taliban, which means "students" in the Pashto language, emerged in 1994 around the southern Afghan city of Kandahar. It was one of the factions fighting a civil war for control of the country following the withdrawal of the Soviet Union and subsequent collapse of the government.

It originally drew members from so-called "mujahideen" fighters who, with support from the United States, repelled Soviet forces in the 1980s.

In 2003, Russia formally labelled the Taliban a terrorist organisation, though it had periodic informal contacts with the movement.
Diplomat: Russia moving closer to delisting Afghanistan’s Taliban as terrorist group (VOA)
VOA [5/27/2024 4:46 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4.2M, Neutral]
A senior Russian diplomat says Russia’s foreign and justice ministries have told President Vladimir Putin that Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban “can be removed” from the list of Moscow-designated terrorist organizations.

Zamir Kabulov, the special presidential envoy for Afghanistan, told state-run TASS news agency Monday that the delisting would enable Moscow to decide whether to recognize the Taliban government.

“Without this [removal of the ban on the Taliban], it will be premature to talk about recognition,” he was quoted as saying. “Therefore, work on this issue continues. All considerations have been reported to the top leadership of Russia. We are waiting for a decision."

Separately, TASS quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov as saying Monday that the Taliban is the “real power” in Afghanistan and that the group’s possible removal from Moscow’s list of banned organizations reflects “objective reality.”

Russia formally labeled the Taliban a terrorist organization in 2003, when the radical group was waging a deadly insurgency against the United States and allied troops in Afghanistan.

The insurgents stormed back to power on August 15, 2021, and established a men-only Taliban government as the U.S.-led foreign troops withdrew from Afghanistan.

No foreign country has formally recognized the Taliban as legitimate rulers, mainly due to human rights and terrorism-related concerns. However, several neighboring and regional countries, including Russia, have retained their embassies in Afghanistan after the Taliban takeover and allowed the de facto government to run Afghan embassies on their respective soils.

Kabulov noted Monday that the Taliban had “come a long way towards being recognized” since seizing power. "But there are still a few hurdles to overcome, after which the Russian leadership will make a decision," he said, without elaborating.

The Russian envoy was also quoted as saying Monday that his government had extended an invitation to the Taliban to attend a June 5-8 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

The event, which once hosted top Western business leaders and investment bankers from London and New York, has changed significantly since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Moscow and the international community at large have been urging the Taliban to govern the war-torn South Asian nation through a politically inclusive government and remove bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

The hardline de facto rulers have rejected criticism of their governance as interference in the internal affairs of Afghanistan, saying their policies are aligned with local culture and Islamic law.

Russia has been developing ties with the Taliban for years and reportedly provided them with weapons while they were waging insurgent attacks on the U.S.-led foreign troops and their Afghan allies. Taliban officials say trade ties between Kabul and Moscow have rapidly grown over the past couple of years.
Rich with US aid, Taliban abuses wrongfully detained US citizen (Washington Examiner – opinion)
Washington Examiner [5/24/2024 1:09 PM, Beth Bailey, 5027K, Neutral]
Armed gunmen affiliated with the Islamic State opened fire on a group of tourists in a bazaar in Afghanistan’s Bamyan province on May 17. Six victims were killed, including three Spanish tourists and three Afghan nationals. Four tourists from Australia, Lithuania, Norway, and Spain were also wounded in the attack. It is the second time Islamic State operatives in Afghanistan have targeted foreigners following a December 2022 bombing and shooting at a hotel frequented by Chinese businessmen.

Suhail Shaheen, head of the Taliban’s political office in Qatar, did not respond to the Washington Examiner’s request for additional details about the attack.

While official recognition of the Taliban government has not materialized, a lack of persistent, vocal condemnation of the Taliban’s repressive rule seems to have lulled travelers into a false sense of security. Sky News reported that about 7,000 tourists visited Afghanistan in 2023, a significant increase from 691 tourists in 2021.

The Bamyan attack demonstrates the Taliban’s difficulty with providing security for foreigners from Islamic State entities. But tourists in Afghanistan also face danger from the Taliban themselves.

A State Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that it “continue[s] to urge U.S. citizens not to travel to Afghanistan,” given the level four “do not travel” advisory associated with the country. “Travel to all areas of Afghanistan is unsafe,” the spokesperson added, explaining that Americans face “risk of wrongful detention, kidnapping and crime” in Afghanistan.

One of two Americans currently detained by the Taliban, Ryan Corbett, is the founder of microfinance and consulting company Bloom Afghanistan, a business he started seven years after moving to Afghanistan with his wife and three children in 2010 to work in the humanitarian aid sector.

After returning to the U.S. with his family following the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021, Corbett made his first trip back to Afghanistan in July 2022 to check on his employees. He returned again in August 2022 because Taliban authorities “had specifically urged him to continue” his business, according to Corbett’s wife Anna, who spoke of her husband at a House Foreign Affairs Committee roundtable on April 30.

During his second visit to Afghanistan, Corbett was detained. Though allegedly “accused of proselytizing Christianity,” Corbett’s family says he has not been charged with any crime.

House Resolution 965 and Senate Resolution 638 call for Corbett’s release. They state that the imprisoned American lives in a basement cell nine feet wide by nine feet long and only experiences sunshine once a month. He has been allowed rare visits from representatives of the U.S. and gets limited phone contact with his family. As a result of his captivity, Corbett is said to suffer from fainting, seizures, and “discolored extremities,” and his physical and mental health are reportedly “rapidly declining.”

Anna Corbett told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that she and her three children fear that her husband will be “unrecognizable to us and unable to ever fully recover” if he makes it out of Afghanistan alive. After waiting 14 months for the State Department “to designate Ryan as wrongfully detained,” and eight months to meet with National Security Council representatives about his case, Corbett said that as of April, she had “no idea what steps are being taken to rescue [her] husband.”

While an American undergoes abuse by the Taliban, the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction reported in May that the U.S. has provided $2.8 billion in “humanitarian and development assistance” to Afghanistan since August 2021. SIGAR noted that the Taliban have siphoned off around $10.9 million through taxes, fees, and duties and described how agencies distributing U.S. support were subject to “direct pressure” from the Taliban to divert additional aid. SIGAR says the U.S. government lacks “comprehensive information … to accurately weight the humanitarian benefits of Afghan aid programs against the risks of providing financial benefits to the Taliban.”

U.S. leaders straddle a widening chasm of oppositional policy choices, seemingly normalizing the Taliban regime through large aid distributions while condemning Taliban actions through official government publications.

To decrease the discord of these contrary efforts, U.S. leaders should immediately identify means to monitor the impact of taxpayer dollars and discontinue payments that enrich the Taliban. In addition, President Joe Biden, who has said precious little about Afghanistan since the catastrophic withdrawal, should publicly condemn the Taliban for causing harm to U.S. citizens, killing our abandoned Afghan allies, and effectively locking Afghan women away in an open-air prison through a spate of misogynistic edicts.
Pakistan
7 Pakistani soldiers, 23 militants killed in separate shootouts during raids along the Afghan border (AP)
AP [5/27/2024 8:51 AM, Staff, 39876K, Negative]
Pakistan’s security forces were conducting several raids in the country’s volatile northwest, a former stronghold of the Pakistani Taliban, when shootouts ensued leaving seven soldiers and 23 militants dead, the army said Monday.

The first exchange of fire occurred overnight on the outskirts of Peshawar, the capital of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing six militants and two army officers who “embraced martyrdom,” according to a statement by Pakistan’s military.

A second shootout happened during another security operation on Monday in the district of Tank, leaving 10 militants dead, the statement said, adding that five soldiers and seven militants were also killed during a separate fire exchange in the district of Khyber.

The military provided no further details, but previous operations in the area targeted members of the Pakistani Taliban who have started regrouping in the northwestern region in recent years.

The Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP, are a separate group but allies of the Afghan Taliban, which seized power in Afghanistan in 2021 as the U.S. and NATO troops were in the final stages of their pullout.

Many TTP leaders and fighters have found sanctuary in Afghanistan since then.
A mob in Pakistan burns down a house and beats a Christian over alleged desecration of Quran (AP)
AP [5/25/2024 8:33 AM, Babar Dogar, 2291K, Negative]
Hundreds of Muslims in eastern Pakistan went on a rampage over allegations that a Christian man had desecrated the pages of Islam’s holy book, ransacking and burning his house and beating him before police officers rescued the man and his father, officials said.

The incident occurred Saturday in the Mujahid Colony residential area in Sargodha, a city in Punjab province, said district police chief Ijaz Malhi. He said police quickly responded and saved the lives of the two men.

Malhi said the situation was under control and officers were investigating the allegations.

The incident brought back memories of one of the worst attacks on Christians in Pakistan in August 2023, when angry mobs burned churches and attacked dozens in Jaranwala, a district in Punjab province. Muslim residents claimed they saw a Christian and his friend tearing out pages from a Quran and throwing them on the ground. No one was killed. In 2009, six Christians were killed and some 60 homes burned down in the district of Gojra in Punjab following allegations of insults to Islam.

Malhi said police on Saturday dispersed the crowds and were also seeking help from religious scholars to defuse tensions. The Punjab government condemned the attack.

The man’s small shoemaking factory was also burned down, Malhi said.

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 no one has been executed for blasphemy, often just an accusation can cause riots and incite mobs to violence, lynching and killings.
Alleged blasphemy triggers violent Muslim mob attack on Pakistani Christians (VOA)
VOA [5/25/2024 4:18 PM, Ayaz Gul, 4186K, Negative]
Police in central Pakistan said Saturday that hundreds of Muslims violently attacked a minority Christian settlement over blasphemy allegations, resulting in injuries to several people.

The mob attack occurred in the city of Sargodha in the Punjab province, the country’s most populous.

Witnesses and minority rights leaders said protesters ransacked and burned down the house, as well as a small shoemaking factory of a 70-year-old Christian man they accused of desecrating Islam’s holy book, the Quran. He was severely beaten and injured in the process, his relatives reported.

A police statement said their forces promptly responded to the crisis and rescued at least 10 Christians and brought them to safety before dispersing the crowd. Several of those rescued suffered injuries and were undergoing treatment in a local hospital.

The police statement noted that clashes with angry protesters also left 10 security personnel injured. It added that deploying hundreds of additional units in and around the Christian settlement helped defuse the religious tensions.

Senior provincial police officers have reported the detention of up to 20 suspects in connection with the mob attack, promising more arrests in the ongoing crackdown. They said that an investigation into the blasphemy allegations was underway.

Violent mob attacks against religious minorities in majority-Muslim Pakistan are not uncommon.

In August 2023, thousands of people in the Jaranwala district of Punjab attacked and burned 21 churches and damaged more than 90 Christian properties after accusing two Christian brothers of blasphemy. Several Christian families fled their homes because of the violence. Police arrested more than 250 persons, including the three Christians accused of desecrating a Quran.

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan, and mere allegations have led to mobs lynching dozens of suspects — even some in police custody. Insulting the Quran or Islamic beliefs is punishable by death under the country’s blasphemy laws, though no one has ever been executed.

Critics have long called for reforming the blasphemy laws, saying they are often misused to settle personal scores. Hundreds of suspects, mostly Muslims, are languishing in jails in Pakistan because external pressures deter judges from moving their trials forward.

"While the majority of those imprisoned for blasphemy were Muslim, religious minorities were disproportionately affected,” the U.S. State Department noted in its annual report on human rights practices in Pakistan.

"Lower courts often failed to adhere to basic evidentiary standards in blasphemy cases, which civil society groups and lawyers ascribed to fear of retaliation from religious groups if they acquitted blasphemy defendants, and most convicted persons spent years in jail before higher courts eventually overturned their convictions or ordered their release,” the report noted.
5th journalist slain in Pakistan in 2024 (VOA)
VOA [5/24/2024 12:22 PM, Staff, 4186K, Negative]
A journalist in Pakistan’s southern Sindh province Friday died of a gunshot wound he sustained in an attack earlier this week, bringing the total number of media workers reported killed nationwide in 2024 to five.

Doctors and officials confirmed the death of Nasrullah Gadani, who was undergoing treatment in a hospital in Karachi, the provincial capital, after being shot and injured by unidentified assailants in a remote Sindh district on Tuesday. There were no claims of responsibility for the attack.

Activists and colleagues said the slain journalist had consistently highlighted the civic issues plaguing impoverished Sindh in his reporting. Gadani also was critical of the powerful feudal lords in the region, which led to his repeated detention by the police, as noted by Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir in this social media post on X, formerly Twitter.

The news of Gadani’s death sparked outrage among journalists and civil society members, leading to a protest demonstration demanding justice for the slain reporter.

“I am deeply in grief and sorrow along with Nasrullah’s family and the media organization he is affiliated with,” Murad Ali Shah, the provincial chief minister, said in a statement. Critics hold Shah’s government for allegedly being behind some of the recent attacks on media workers in Sindh.

The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, a leading independent rights watchdog, said it was “deeply concerned” by the situation facing journalists in the country. It urged the Sindh government to investigate Gadani’s killing and hold the perpetrators to account.

Meanwhile, the Committee to Protect Journalists, or CPJ, has pressed Pakistan to immediately reveal the whereabouts of Ahmad Farhad Shah, a freelance journalist and poet.

Several unknown men seized Shah from outside his home at night in the capital, Islamabad, and forced him into a vehicle over a week ago, said a copy of a petition his wife filed with the federal high court shortly after the incident.

Shah’s wife, Syeda Urooj Zainab, has accused the Pakistani spy agency, Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, of abducting him for his activism against the country’s powerful military establishment.

“The secretive, late-night seizure of journalist … Shah is further evidence of an intensifying crackdown on media freedom in Pakistan,” the CPJ quoted its program director, Carlos Martinez de la Serna, as saying on Thursday.

“Authorities must either present Ali Shah in court or immediately release him and ensure that law enforcement agencies do their job of investigating crimes against journalists,” Serna said.

On Friday, the Islamabad High Court judge hearing the case summoned senior officers from the country’s intelligence agencies, including the ISI, to respond to the charges in the next hearing scheduled for May 29.

“His whereabouts remain unknown. Ahmad has spoken fearlessly about state oppression and enforced disappearance in the past,” Amnesty International wrote Friday on X.

Pakistan’s ISI has long been accused of forced disappearances of journalists and political as well as human rights activists for criticizing the military’s role in national politics. The agency and successive governments have consistently denied the allegations.
Pakistan arrests 11 militants involved in Chinese engineers’ killing, say officials (Reuters)
Reuters [5/26/2024 10:34 AM, Asif Shahzad, 45791K, Negative]
Pakistani authorities have arrested 11 Islamist militants who were involved in the suicide bombing that killed five Chinese engineers in March in the north of the country which borders Afghanistan, officials said on Sunday.

The announcement was made at a news conference held by Pakistan’s counter-terrorism chief Rai Tahir along with Interior Minister Mohsin Naqvi.

The arrested men belong to local Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), which is an umbrella group of dozens of Sunni Islamists and sectarian militant groups.

The TTP aims to overthrow the government and replace it with a harsh brand of Islamic law.

Tahir said a cellphone which the suicide bomber had been using to communicate with his local handlers led to the arrest of the suspects.

The investigation and evidence show the militants had been taking instructions from TTP leaders in Afghanistan, he said.

Pakistani military had already said the attack was planned in Afghanistan and that the suicide bomber was also an Afghan national, a charge Kabul denies.

The TTP previously denied involvement and a spokesman said on Sunday that it had already explained its position on the attack.

"We have forensic evidence to prove that the TTP militants who were operating from Afghanistan are involved in it," said Naqvi, the minister.

The suicide bomber drove a vehicle into a convoy of Chinese engineers working on a dam in northwest Pakistan in March, killing five of the engineers and a local diver.

Kabul previously said rising violence in Pakistan is a domestic issue for Islamabad.

Relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have soured in recent months. Islamabad says Kabul is not doing enough to tackle militant groups targeting Pakistan.

The minister said legal assistance will be sought from Kabul to arrest another three main members of the TTP who were directing the attacker and his facilitator from Afghanistan.

"We want Afghanistan to act against these terrorists. Either try them there or hand them over to us," said the minister.
Pakistan to Revive China Belt and Road Initiative Projects (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [5/27/2024 9:28 AM, Faseeh Mangi, 24454K, Positive]
Pakistan’s new government is hoping to inject some fresh momentum into projects that fall under China’s Belt and Road Initiative, as it tries to boost the country’s troubled economy.

The South Asian nation is looking at joint ventures for renewable energy projects, agriculture collaboration and possibly enticing some Chinese companies to relocate to Pakistan, said Ahsan Iqbal, Pakistan’s federal minister for Planning, Development and Special Initiatives, who also co-heads the committee responsible for the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, in an interview.

“Yeah, I’m very hopeful because I was there in China recently and I had meetings with their senior leadership,” said Iqbal at his office in Islamabad, decorated with a large map showcasing the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor. “So I see great interest on the Chinese side to revive the momentum for CPEC and also to take it into the second phase.”

Pakistan was seen as a flagship destination for BRI projects, with CPEC — which includes a port in the southern town of Gwadar and new power plants — the crown jewel. The progress on new projects stalled in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic and amid Pakistan’s on-going economic difficulties that have required the International Monetary Fund’s intervention.

Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, who was elected to a second successive term in February, has been looking to revive economic cooperation with China for the past two years. Sharif’s older brother, Nawaz, led the country when Pakistan signed on to the BRI in 2013.

Projects worth about $25 billion came online in the first phase, including power plants that ended the nation’s chronic power deficit.

A Pakistani committee approved a long-delayed railway upgrade project last week — but scaled it down from $10 billion to $6.8 billion.

The project will be done in two phases “so there is not a big burden on Pakistan,” said Iqbal. The railway, in its first phase will run from Karachi, the southern coast city, to Multan, a little over halfway to the capital, Islamabad.

The Sharif government has also finished some key BRI projects that were pending for years: a water-supply project in Gwadar, dredging work at the port and an electricity transmission line from Iran.

“So all these things really help China see that the new government is again serious and it restored their confidence that now Pakistan is, you know, serious about CPEC initiatives,” said Iqbal.

China has also been a key financial lender, alongside the IMF, with its loans helping Pakistan avoid bankruptcy. The country is struggling with low growth and the fastest rising consumer prices in Asia. Islamabad’s difficulties have seen it fall behind on payments related to Chinese-funded power plants.

To mark the tenth anniversary of CPEC last year, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng unveiled five new corridors including one focused on growth to boost economic activity in Pakistan. The others are related to livelihood, innovation, green energy and regional connectivity. Sharif is likely to visit China soon, said Iqbal.

One change in the second phase would likely involve Islamabad taking a step back while urging the private sector to forge partnerships with Chinese firms.

The other big focus, albeit a long-shot prospect, is to try and attract Chinese firms thinking of relocating from China amid rising labor costs and heightening geopolitical tensions.

“That would be a success because at the moment more than 80 million jobs are being relocated from China to other countries because of the high level cost in China,” said Iqbal. “They have gone to Vietnam and you know, Laos and Cambodia. There is now overcrowding there. So they are certainly looking for new places.”
Pakistan temperatures cross 52 C in heatwave (Reuters)
Reuters [5/27/2024 10:41 AM, Akhtar Soomro and Ariba Shahid, 45791K, Negative]
Temperatures rose above 52 degrees Celsius (125.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in Pakistan’s southern province of Sindh, the highest reading of the summer and close to the country’s record high amid an ongoing heatwave, the met office said on Monday.

Extreme temperatures throughout Asia over the past month were made worse most likely as a result of human-driven climate change, a team of international scientists have said.

In Mohenjo Daro, a town in Sindh known for archaeological sites that date back to the Indus Valley Civilization built in 2500 BC, temperatures rose as high as 52.2 C (126 F) over the last 24 hours, a senior official of the Pakistan Meteorological Department, Shahid Abbas told Reuters.

The reading is the highest of the summer so far and approached the town’s and country’s record highs of 53.5 C (128.3 F) and 54 C (129.2 F) respectively.

Mohenjo Daro is a small town that experiences extremely hot summers and mild winters, and low rainfall, but its limited markets, including bakeries, tea shops, mechanics, electronic repair shops, and fruit and vegetable sellers, are usually bustling with customers.

But with the current heatwave, shops are seeing almost no footfall.

"The customers are not coming to the restaurant because of extreme heat. I sit idle at the restaurant with these tables and chairs and without any customers," Wajid Ali, 32, who owns a tea stall in the town.

"I take baths several times a day which gives me a little relief. Also there is no power. The heat has made us very uneasy."

Close to Ali’s shop is an electronic repairs shop run by Abdul Khaliq, 30, who was sat working with the shop’s shutter half down to shield him from the sun. Khaliq also complained about the heat affecting business.

Local doctor Mushtaq Ahmed added that the locals have adjusted to living in the extreme weather conditions and prefer staying indoors or near water.

“Pakistan is the fifth most vulnerable country to the impact of climate change. We have witnessed above normal rains, floods,” Rubina Khursheed Alam, the prime minister’s coordinator on climate, said at a news conference on Friday adding that the government is running awareness campaigns due to the heatwaves.

The highest temperature recorded in Pakistan was in 2017 when temperatures rose to 54 C (129.2 F) in the city of Turbat, located in the Southwestern province of Balochistan.

This was the second hottest in Asia and fourth highest in the world, said Sardar Sarfaraz, Chief Meteorologist at the Pakistan Meteorological Department
The heatwave will subside in Mohenjo Daro and surrounding areas, but another spell is expected to hit other areas in Sindh, including the capital, Karachi - Pakistan’s largest city.
India
Free Food? Modi Makes Sure Every Indian Knows Whom to Thank for It. (New York Times)
New York Times [5/26/2024 4:14 PM, Suhasini Raj and Alex Travelli, 831K, Neutral]
Durga Prasad, an 80-year-old farmer, was resting under the shade of a tree in front of his home when the party workers came. An app on their smartphones could tell them in an instant who Mr. Prasad was, whom he might vote for — and why he should be grateful to India’s prime minister, Narendra Modi.

“You get installments of 2,000 rupees, right?” asked a local official from Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P. Mr. Prasad concurred. He receives $72 a year through a farmers’ welfare program started and branded by Mr. Modi.

“Do you get rations?” the official then asked, though he already knew the answer. He had made his point.

Such handouts are among the most distinctive parts of Mr. Modi’s mass appeal. The country’s new airports, diplomatic prestige and booming stock markets may look like Mr. Modi’s calling card, but for the 95 percent of Indians who earn too little to file income taxes, small infusions of cash and household goods matter more. And Mr. Modi’s party is organized to make the most of them in the national election that ends early next month.

India’s welfare programs are vast in reach and scope. Under the biggest, 821 million Indians are entitled to five-kilogram (11-pound) sacks of free rice or wheat every month. The government started doling out grain to prevent hunger early in the pandemic and has since committed $142 billion to the program. Mr. Modi’s face began appearing on the sacks in January.

Another prime minister-branded program has helped people build 15 million homes since 2015, at a price tag of $3 billion a year; home improvements and additions are covered, too. The government has also footed the cost of millions of toilets, and it is working to provide piped drinking water to every home.

The foundation of this expanded welfare system was laid soon after Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014. Bank accounts, also “P.M.” branded, became available to all Indians who lacked them, meshed with a universal-ID program started by the previous government.

The accounts gave the state valuable information about the financial lives of even its poorest citizens. And they opened the way for “direct benefit transfers,” money that bypasses the sometimes corrupt local officials who once distributed welfare — appearing to come instead from Mr. Modi himself.

These transfers grew to $76 billion in the last fiscal year. But Mr. Modi’s budgets have not become profligate. That is in part because government spending on education and health care — long-term investments — has shrunk as a share of the economy as branded welfare programs have proliferated. Spending on a guaranteed-employment program associated with Mr. Modi’s opponents has also fallen.

Whatever the motivation behind them, the tangible food and household benefits prioritized by Mr. Modi have relieved Indians’ pain as the economy slowed before the pandemic, collapsed during its first year and then recovered unevenly. The Hindu-nationalist government distributes the assistance equally among all religious groups, even if it does not receive many votes from some of them.

The handouts are perhaps the most powerful thing Mr. Modi can point to when claiming credit for improving the lives of his fellow Indians, hundreds of millions of whom remain desperate for reliable jobs with decent pay.

Vinod Misra, the local B.J.P. official who recently visited Mr. Prasad in Amethi, a district in the state of Uttar Pradesh, explained that in poorer places where people once died of hunger, “our party is working especially for programs that touch everyone.”

“All we have to do is go and tell the family, ‘Brother, this roof you got, who made it happen?’” Mr. Misra said.

In a country where 80 percent of the population is either rural or poor, people are dead serious about getting something in exchange for their votes, said Pradeep Gupta, the director of Axis My India, a polling outfit. If a politician delivers on promises, “the people elect you again and again and again,” Mr. Gupta said. Everything else is “marketing.”

The B.J.P.’s follow-up with voters is the end result of a gargantuan effort that leverages its ideologically committed core membership, its funding, its nationwide organization and, increasingly, its sophisticated management of data.

In the temple town of Pushkar, west of Amethi within the Hindi-speaking “cow belt” that is a stronghold of the B.J.P., another local party worker explained the virtue of an app called Saral. With a few swipes and taps, the worker, Shakti Singh Rathore, shared a bird’s-eye view of his neighbors, whom he intended to marshal for Mr. Modi.

There are 241 “booths,” or polling stations, in Pushkar’s constituency, each with its own mapped boundaries. Mr. Rathore flicked open the information for one of the booths he was supervising. His targets were not just voters, but beneficiaries, or “labharthis” — an important new term of art in the ground campaign.

“The labharthis’ names are all listed here,” Mr. Rathore said. One man he named had received a cooking gas cylinder — “here is his address and postal code and phone number.” Another had gotten cash from the farmers’ welfare program.

“All the data is here,” Mr. Rathore said.

Anyone can download Saral through the Apple or Google Play stores for campaign updates, though only enlisted B.J.P. workers get to explore its databases. The party’s national leadership has said it uses Saral to connect more than six million of its workers. They can both retrieve and upload data about voters and beneficiaries.

Voters do not seem bothered, or are at least not surprised, that so much information about their relationships with the national government is carried door to door by political workers.

Mr. Misra said he did not know exactly how all the personal information made its way into the app. Other local-level workers said they assumed that the data had been provided by the government itself, given its accuracy. Amit Malviya, the B.J.P.’s head of information and technology, said at a start-up conference in December that the 30 terabytes of data had been collected manually by the party over the past 10 elections.

Saral does many other things that are useful for the party’s ground game. It tracks workers’ outreach and measures them against one another by their performance, in effect “gamifying” the hard slog of canvassing.

It also gives the workers the chance to help smooth out voters’ receipt of their benefits, erasing the distinction between partisan politics and government work.

Mr. Modi himself said to a TV crew this month that he had told party workers to gather information about voters who had not received their benefits and to “assure them that it’s the Modi guarantee — they will get it in my third term.”

Ajay Singh Gaur, a B.J.P. worker who accompanied Mr. Misra for the doorstepping around Amethi, found himself drawn into a long exchange with Dinesh Maurya, a farmer who complained that a faulty electrical wire had fallen onto his wheat field.

“My whole crop was burned down, and I haven’t got a single coin’s worth of compensation,” Mr. Maurya said.

Mr. Gaur assured Mr. Maurya that he would get him the money the state owed him. “I have spoken to the officer in charge” at the generating station, he said. “I will get it done.”
Millions vote in India’s election as prime minister’s part seeks 3rd term (AP)
AP [5/25/2024 9:44 AM, Ashok Sharma, 39876K, Neutral]
Millions of Indians voted Saturday in the next-to-last round of a grueling national election with a combined opposition trying to rattle Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s campaign for a third-consecutive term for himself and his Hindu nationalist party.

Many people lined polling stations before the start of voting at 7 a.m. to avoid the blazing sun at the peak of Indian summer. The temperature soared to 43 degrees Celsius (109 degrees Fahrenheit) in the afternoon in the Indian capital.

“This (election) is also like a festival, so I don’t have a problem voting in the heat,” said Lakshmi Bansal, a housewife.

Saturday’s voting in 58 constituencies, including seven in New Delhi, will complete polling for 89.5% of 543 seats in the lower house of Parliament. The remaining 57 seats will be decided on June 1, wrapping up a six-week election. The votes will be counted on June 4.

President Droupadi Murmu and External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar were among the early voters. Opposition Congress party leaders, Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi, also voted in New Delhi.

Mehbooba Mufti, a former top elected official of Indian-controlled Kashmir, held a protest with her supporters Saturday claiming that scores of her party workers were detained by police to prevent them from voting. Mufti, the chief of the People’s Democratic Party who is contesting the parliamentary election in the Anantnag-Rajouri district, said she complained to election officials.

In West Bengal state, workers belonging to the All India Trinamool Congress party blocked the car of Agnimitra Paul, one of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party candidates, as she proceeded to vote in the Medinipur constituency. The two parties are rivals in the state and their activists often clash on the streets.

Trinamool leader and state’s top elected official Mamta Banerjee accused the BJP of launching an attack that left one activist dead on Friday in the Purba Medinipur district. Several houses and shops were burned in the area, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Banerjee as saying.

Suvendu Adhikari, a BJP leader in the state, accused Trinamool members of attacking and killing an activist on Thursday, an accusation rejected by his rivals, PTI reported.

The election is considered one of the most consequential in India’s history and will test Modi’s political dominance. If Modi wins, he’ll be only the second Indian leader to retain power for a third term, after Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first prime minister.

Most polls predict a win for the BJP, which is up against a broad opposition alliance led by the Congress and powerful regional parties. But a less-than-expected turnout in the previous five rounds of voting has left some doubts about the BJP’s projected margin of victory.

“When the polls began it felt like a one-horse race, with Modi leading from the front. But now we are seeing some kind of shift,” political analyst Rasheed Kidwai said. “The opposition is doing better than expected and it appears that Modi’s party is rattled. That’s the reason you see Modi ramping up anti-Muslim rhetoric to polarize voters.”

Kidwai said the opposition had challenged Modi by centering its campaign narrative on social justice and rising unemployment, making the contest closer than expected.

Modi ran his campaign like a presidential race, a referendum on his 10 years of rule. He claimed to help the poorest with charity, free health care, providing toilets in their homes, and helping women get free or cheap cooking gas cylinders.

But he changed tack after a poor turnout in the first round of the election and began stirring Hindu nationalism by accusing the Congress party of pandering to minority Muslims for votes.

Hindus account for 80%, and Muslims nearly 14%, of India’s over 1.4 billion people.

Manish Bhatia, a New Delhi voter, said that “politics on the basis of caste and religion is dangerous for the country,” adding that voting should be based on how candidates perform.

Nearly 970 million voters — more than 10% of the world’s population — were eligible to elect 543 members to the lower house of Parliament for five years.

Voters’ relative apathy has surprised some analysts. In the five rounds of polling, turnout ranged between 62.2% to 69.16% — averaging 65.9%. By comparison, India’s 2019 national election registered the highest-ever turnout — 67.11%. Modi’s BJP won 303 seats in Parliament in 2019.

Modi’s inauguration of a massive Hindu temple for the god Rama, his massive roadshows and big public rallies raised the BJP’s hopes of a massive surge in voters’ support.

The current prime minister came to power in 2014, dislodging the Congress party that governed the country for nearly 55 years after India won independence from British colonialists in 1947.

Before the election, the opposition INDIA alliance was seen bickering, but it has since held together, particularly after two chief ministers of two opposition-controlled states were sent to jail on corruption charges. Both deny the accusations.

One of them — New Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal — has since been released on bail and returned to the campaign trail.

In March, Gandhi completed a 6,713-kilometer (4,171-mile) walk across the country, starting in the violence-hit northeastern state of Manipur, to raise awareness on issues of poverty, unemployment, and democracy with voters.

“The walk helped Gandhi boost his image as a serious politician among the voters, and that is helping the opposition,” Kidwai, the analyst, said.
India holds the penultimate phase of mammoth election (VOA)
VOA [5/25/2024 8:32 AM, Anjana Pasricha, 4186K, Neutral]
Millions of Indians lined up Saturday at polling booths to cast their votes in the penultimate phase of the country’s multistage election in which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is seeking a third term in office.

The polling was held in 58 constituencies across eight states and federal territories amid a scorching heat wave that has seen temperatures in parts of north India soar to 45 degrees Celsius (113 Fahrenheit) in the past week.

Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or BJP, which is pitted against an opposition alliance of the Congress Party and regional parties, is widely expected to win the elections.

Among the most closely watched contests are seven parliamentary seats in the capital, Delhi, where the BJP faces a joint fight mounted by the Aam Aadmi Party headed by Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and the Congress Party.

Kejriwal, who was arrested in March in connection with corruption allegations, was released on bail by the Supreme Court earlier this month to allow him to campaign.

In fiery speeches, Kejriwal has accused Modi of sending opposition leaders to jail to cripple his political rivals.

“People are voting in large numbers against dictatorship, inflation and unemployment,” he said after casting his vote.

Political analyst Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay said, “I think Kejriwal’s release and his campaign [have] given a huge momentum to the opposition. Many people do see the allegations against him as politically motivated and believe he was arrested to prevent him from campaigning.”

The BJP’s optimism about returning to power relies largely on Modi’s popularity, especially in populous northern states. The party had won 45 of the 58 seats where polling was conducted on Saturday.

In a message on social media platform X, Modi called on people, especially women and youth, to vote in large numbers. "Democracy thrives when its people are engaged and active in the electoral process."

Among those who cast their vote early was Sanjay Jha, a fruit seller in New Delhi. “Modi is a very good leader for the country. There is nobody like him,” said Jha, folding his hands as a mark of respect for the Indian leader.

Jha cites Modi’s inauguration of a grand Hindu temple earlier this year on the site of a mosque destroyed three decades ago among the reasons for his support.

In the Hindu majority country, the BJP’s Hindu nationalist policies have won Modi wide support, but critics call him a polarizing leader. During the campaign, he has been accused of using divisive rhetoric — at rallies he and other top leaders of the BJP have said the Congress Party plans to favor Muslims at the expense of Hindus if voted to power.

Modi has said he is not against Islam or Muslims.

In a country where the opposition has been weakened over the last decade by the rise of the BJP, lawyer Vartika Sharma, a New Delhi resident, said she wants to see both a strong government and a strong opposition.

“I am happy that the BJP government took some strong decisions that were good for the country, but somewhere the radicalization that is happening, I am not able to agree to it,” said Sharma after casting her vote. “Whichever government comes should uphold the constitution principles and weed out corruption.”

Before elections began, Modi had set a goal of attaining a supermajority by winning, along with his party’s allies, 400 of the 543 elected seats in the lower house of parliament.

While the BJP is expected to emerge ahead of other parties, the opposition is hoping to make gains amid disaffection on the ground over joblessness and rising prices.

The Congress party has flagged the need to address rising unemployment and alleviate rural distress and has focused its campaign on the need for social justice.

“The BJP appeared to be supremely confident when the election got underway. But Modi has failed to construct an overarching national narrative, as a result of which the election is now focused on local constituency level issues. There is no one single issue binding the campaign,” according to analyst Mukhopadhyay.

As the heat wave raised fears for voters who often have to wait in long lines at polling stations, the Election Commission put up tents and mist fans and deployed paramedics at polling stations in Delhi.

The blistering weather did not deter 90-year-old K.C. Gupta in New Delhi from casting his vote. “I think something must be done to improve the lives of people in this country, especially the lower strata. They should be helped as much as possible,” he said.

The final round of voting will be held on June 1, and votes will be counted on June 4. The results are expected the same day.
Leaflet by Leaflet, a Few Aging Activists Fight India’s Tide of Bigotry (New York Times)
New York Times [5/28/2024 12:01 AM, Sameer Yasir, 831K, Neutral]
One recent morning, Roop Rekha Verma, an 80-year-old peace activist and former university leader, walked through a north Indian neighborhood prone to sectarian strife and parked herself near a tea shop.

From her sling bag, she pulled out a bundle of pamphlets bearing messages of religious tolerance and mutual coexistence and began handing them to passers-by.

“Talk to each other. Don’t let anyone divide you,” one read in Hindi.

Spreading those simple words is an act of bravery in today’s India.

Ms. Verma and others like her are waging a lonely battle against a tide of hatred and bigotry increasingly normalized by India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.

As Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his deputies have vilified the country’s minorities in a yearslong campaign that has escalated during the current national election, the small band of aging activists has built bridges and preached harmony between religious groups.

They have continued to hit the pavement even as the price for dissent and free speech has become high, trying to keep the flame alive for the nonsectarian ideal embedded in India’s constitution and in their own memories.

More than three dozen human rights defenders, poets, journalists and opposition politicians face charges, including under antiterrorism laws, for criticizing Mr. Modi’s divisive policies, according to rights groups. (The government has said little about the charges, other than repeating its line that the law takes its own course.)

The crackdown has had a chilling effect on many Indians.

“That is where the role of these civil society activists becomes more important,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, a deputy director at Human Rights Watch. “Despite a crackdown, they are refusing to cow down, leading them to hold placards, distributing fliers, to revive a message that once was taken for granted.”

The use of posters and pamphlets to raise public awareness is a time-tested practice among Indian activists. Revolutionaries fighting for independence from British colonizers employed them to drum up support and mobilize ordinary Indians. Today, village leaders use them to spread awareness about health and other government programs.

Such old-school outreach may seem quixotic in the digital age. Every day, India’s social media spaces, reaching hundreds of millions of people, are inundated with anti-Muslim vitriol promoted by the B.J.P. and its associated right-wing organizations.

During the national election that ends next week, Mr. Modi and his party have targeted Muslims directly, by name, with brazen attacks both online and in campaign speeches. (The B.J.P. rejects accusations that it discriminates against Muslims, noting that government welfare programs under its supervision assist all Indians equally.)

Those who have worked in places torn apart by sectarian violence say polarization can be combated only by going to people on the streets and making them understand its dangers. Merely showing up can help.

For Ms. Verma, the seeds of her activism were planted during her childhood, when she listened to horror stories of the sectarian violence that left hundreds of thousands dead during the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

Later, as a university philosophy professor, she fought caste discrimination and religious divides both inside and outside the classroom. She opposed patriarchal attitudes even as slurs were thrown at her. In the early 1980s, when she noticed that the names of mothers were excluded from student admission forms, she pressed for their inclusion and won.

But more than anything else, it was the campaign to build a major Hindu temple in the town of Ayodhya in her home state of Uttar Pradesh that gave Ms. Verma’s life a new meaning.

In 1992, a Hindu mob demolished a centuries-old mosque there, claiming that the site had previously held a Hindu temple. Deadly riots followed. This past January, three decades later, the Ayodhya temple opened, inaugurated by Mr. Modi.

It was a significant victory for a Hindu nationalist movement whose maligning and marginalizing of Muslims is exactly what Ms. Verma has devoted herself to opposing.

The Hindu majority, she said, has a responsibility to protect minorities, “not become complicit in their demonization.”

While the government’s incitement of religious enmity is new in India, the sectarian divisions themselves are not. One activist, Vipin Kumar Tripathi, 76, a former physics professor at the prestigious Indian Institute of Technology in New Delhi, said he had started gathering students after classes and educating them about the dangers of “religious radicalization” in the early 1990s.

Today, Mr. Tripathi travels to different parts of India with a message of peace.

Recently, he stood in a corner of a busy train station in northeastern New Delhi. As office workers, students and laborers ran toward platforms, he handed information sheets and brochures to anyone who extended a hand.

His materials addressed some of the most provocative issues in India: the troubles in Kashmir, where the Modi government has rescinded the majority-Muslim region’s semi-autonomy; the politics over the Ayodhya temple; and ordinary citizens’ rights to question their government.

“To respect God and to pretend to do that for votes are two different things,” read one of his handouts.

At the station, Anirudh Saxena, a tall man in his early 30s with a pencil mustache, stopped and looked Mr. Tripathi straight in the eyes.

“Sir, why are you doing this every week?” Mr. Saxena asked.

“Read this,” Mr. Tripathi told Mr. Saxena, handing him a small 10-page booklet. “This explains why we should read books and understand history instead of reading WhatsApp garbage and extracting pleasure out of someone’s pain.”

Mr. Saxena smiled, nodded his head and put the booklet in his handbag before disappearing into the crowd.

If just 10 out of a thousand people read his materials, Mr. Tripathi said, his job is done. “When truth becomes the casualty, you can only fight it on the streets,” he said.

Shabnam Hashmi, 66, another activist based in New Delhi, said she had helped distribute about four million pamphlets in the state of Gujarat after sectarian riots there in 2002. More than 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, died in the communal violence, which happened under the watch of Mr. Modi, who was the state’s top leader at the time.

During that period, she and her colleagues were harassed by right-wing activists, who threw stones at her and filed police complaints.

In 2016, months after Mr. Modi became prime minister, the government prohibited foreign funding for her organization. She has continued her street activism nonetheless.

“It is the most effective way of reaching the people directly,” she said. “What it does is, it somehow gives people courage to fight fear and keep resisting.”

“We might not be able to stop this craziness,” she added, “but that doesn’t mean we should stop fighting.”

Even before Mr. Modi’s rise, said Ms. Verma, the activist in Uttar Pradesh, governments never “showered roses” on her when she was doing things like leading marches and bringing together warring factions after flare-ups of religious violence.

Over the decades, she has been threatened with prison and bundled into police vehicles.

“But it was never so bad,” she said, as it has now become under Mr. Modi.

The space for activism may completely vanish, Ms. Verma said, as his party becomes increasingly intolerant of any scrutiny.

For now, she said, activists “are, sadly, just giving proof of our existence: that we may be demoralized, but we are still alive. Otherwise, hatred has seeped so deep it will take decades to rebuild trust.”
Delhi voters, scarred by Hindu-Muslim riots, want peace (Reuters)
Reuters [5/25/2024 8:53 AM, Shivam Patel, 45791K, Negative]
Suhel Mansuri, who carries scars from Hindu-Muslim riots that killed dozens in his district of India’s capital in 2020, says his vote on Saturday in national elections was for "peace and brotherhood" as divisive religious rhetoric rises.

Mansuri and his brother were surrounded by a crowd during the riots in Delhi’s most densely populated district and beaten with iron rods and bricks, resulting in multiple bone fractures.

Saturday’s vote is the first since the riots in which at least 53 people, mostly Muslims, were killed and more than 500 injured as crowds roamed the streets for days, attacking each other with swords and guns, and setting buildings on fire.

"I don’t want anyone to suffer like this ever again," said Mansuri, 29, a Muslim who has a small clothing business in the Mustafabad area. "People forget that we’re all just the same as the next person when they are incited by hateful speeches."

Rhetoric focussing on religion and inequality has dominated much of India’s massive seven-phase vote running through June 1, as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) faces accusations of targeting minority Muslims in its campaign.

The Northeast Delhi constituency elected a BJP lawmaker in the past two national elections, in 2014 and 2019.

Modi, favoured to become only the second person to win three consecutive terms as India’s prime minister, referred to Muslims as "infiltrators" and people who have "more children" in a speech last month. He later denied targeting the group that constitutes about 200 million of majority-Hindu India’s 1.4 billion people.

"I want to vote for peace and brotherhood. It’s difficult that the BJP will garner any votes here," said Mansuri, in a thought echoed by voters in Mustafabad, including some Hindus.

Mithilesh, 42, a Hindu woman who gave only her first name, said she feared for her safety during the riots as a crowd stabbed two youths to death on her street while she was locked inside her house with her daughter-in-law.

"We heard their screams and were scared of what would happen to us. Our member of parliament at the time was from the BJP, who wants votes again, but we will not vote for him."

Sabir Ali, 42, a Muslim tailor, said Modi’s speeches are just political rhetoric. "But if he thinks Muslims will vote for him despite these speeches, then he is mistaken."
In the nearby Jaffarabad area, Muslim grocery store owner Wasim Raja, 36, said high inflation was his main concern, as his business had taken a hit.

"The Hindu-Muslim issue has always been there and we are all voting for Congress this time, but despite that the BJP will likely win," he said.

Support for the BJP, which looks set to return to power, was high in Hindu-dominated neighbourhoods as voters spoke of national pride and praised India’s economic growth.

"Hindus have awakened now because of Modi, and this fire will not die down," said Akash Kumar Kashyap, 48, who runs a transport business in the Bhajanpura area.

"Modi has improved the economy and infrastructure. He’s grown India’s stature globally, so we like him for that," said Mahesh Chand Barthwal, 35, who works in a law firm.
Two Deadly Fires in Rapid Succession Expose India’s Gaps in Safety (New York Times)
New York Times [5/26/2024 4:14 PM, Mujib Mashal, Pragati K.B., and Hari Kumar, 831K, Negative]
Seven newborn babies lost their lives after their New Delhi neonatal clinic was engulfed in flames. What remained of the two-story building on Sunday morning was its burned facade, a charred spiral staircase and oxygen cylinders covered in soot.

Hours earlier, in the western Indian city of Rajkot, an amusement park of trampolines and bowling lanes had turned to an inferno. The families of people who had come to enjoy a discounted offer of all-you-can-play to celebrate the start of summer vacation were left trying to identify bodies among the at least 27 dead, many of them children too charred to be recognizable.

As after every such deadly episode, political leaders were quick with messages of condolence, announcements of arrests, creations of inquiries — and finger-pointing. But to analysts and experts who had warned for years about India’s abysmal fire preparedness, the back-to-back disasters on Saturday were the latest reminder that systemic change to make the country safer was still missing.

Building safety compliance remains abysmal across India, the world’s most populous nation. The fire services have long faced huge gaps in the numbers of stations, personnel and equipment. Government audits after mass-casualty disasters unearth glaring shortcomings, with little follow-up.

Though the number has gone down over the past decade, more than 20 fire-related deaths occur every day in India, according to government statistics. Many of the fires — particularly in crowded urban centers — are caused by short circuits, an alarming prospect as India faces an intense period of heat waves that strains electrical wires.

R.C. Sharma, a former fire service chief in Delhi, said that one major problem is that fire regulations go unenforced. Another is that fire-response resources have failed to keep up with urbanization that is happening rapidly and often without regard to safety.

“We are not in a good condition,” Mr. Sharma said. “In other countries, you have fire hydrants and everything at all the places. But in India, we don’t even have drinking water around the clock, so we do not think of having firefighting water around the clock.”

Data provided to the Indian Parliament in 2019 by the country’s Home Ministry painted a dire state of preparedness, with major deficiencies. India had only 3,377 fire stations when regulations called for 8,559. The shortfall in personnel and equipment was even worse. The fire service had about 55,000 people, when a half-million were called for, and 7,300 vehicles, when it should have had 33,000.

It is unclear how much of those gaps have been filled in the five years since. A new $600 million program for expansion and modernization of the fire service announced by India’s central government last year, with additional resources to be pooled from the states, suggests a lot of it remains undone.

Government audits have repeatedly flagged the vulnerability of public buildings, particularly hospitals.

A study last year of hospitals across India where there had been a fire in the past decade showed that half were not legally compliant on safety measures. Private and public hospitals were about equally bad. Short circuits were the cause of the fires in nearly 90 percent of the episodes.

In one state, after a fire killed 10 babies in a neonatal care unit, assessments found that more than 80 percent of the state’s hospitals had never carried out fire safety audits; half had never conducted fire drills; and only a few had fire safety certificates.

“The tendency is to comply in letter, not spirit,” said S.A. Abbasi, an emeritus professor at Pondicherry University, who was the lead author of the report. “Lapses and laxity continue to be the norms rather than exceptions.”

What caused the fire at the amusement park in Rajkot, in the state of Gujarat, was not known. But the initial police complaint, a copy of which was seen by The New York Times, made clear that the facility lacked both a clearance certificate from the fire department and effective equipment and protocols in case of fire.

Ilesh Kher, Rajkot’s chief fire officer, said the fire at the facility had started just before 6 p.m., and the flames were contained in a little over an hour. He did not know how many people were present when the blaze broke out, but witness accounts in local news suggested over 100.

The building appeared to be a temporary structure made of iron poles and metal sheets.

Daksh Kujadia, a teenager who had gone bowling with a cousin, said the fire had started under an emergency exit. About 30 people became trapped in the bowling lanes.

“We didn’t have an option but to tear the metal sheet in a corner,” he told local news media. “Fifteen of us got out by jumping from there.”

The two-story Delhi neonatal hospital that caught fire just before midnight was operating out of a residential building. Neighbors described frequent disputes, as trucks often blocked the road outside the hospital to unload large cylinders of oxygen.

“A few of us climbed on top of each other and climbed into the building from the back side,” said Ravi Gupta, who lives in the area and helped evacuate a dozen babies from the back of the building as the front caught fire and multiple explosions were heard as oxygen cylinders burst. “We brought ladders and bedsheets from our houses. I carried infants in my hands from the fire and brought them down.”

Health care in Delhi, India’s capital, has in recent years has been caught in a messy political fight between the central government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Delhi’s elected local government, run by a smaller opposition party, the Aam Aadmi Party, or A.A.P. The local administration has accused Mr. Modi of using his control over government officials to handicap its efforts.

Accusations continued to fly after Saturday’s deadly hospital fire.

Pankaj Luthra, a local official affiliated with Modi’s party in the neighborhood where the hospital is, blamed the A.A.P. for giving the hospital its license. There had been, he said, complaints of illegal oxygen cylinder refilling at the hospital.

Saurabh Bhardwaj, A.A.P.’s health minister for Delhi, released a statement complaining that the most senior official in Delhi’s health department — a civil servant technically supervised by Mr. Bhardwaj, but in fact answering to the central government — was ignoring his calls and messages.

“I got to know about this incident through a media flash,” Mr. Bhardwaj said.
At least 13 killed in a stone quarry collapse in India’s northeast. 16 others remain missing (AP)
AP [5/28/2024 4:29 AM, Wasbir Hussain, 456K, Negative]
A stone quarry collapsed Tuesday in India’s northeast due to heavy rains triggered by a tropical storm, killing 13 quarry workers, officials said, while 16 remain missing.

Senior police officer Rahul Alwal said rescuers recovered the bodies of those killed from the quarry in Melthum, some 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) from the state capital Aizwal, and were able to pull out two workers alive from the debris.

Alwal said rescue workers are digging through the rubble to try and reach the trapped workers while looking for more survivors

Mizoram houses many stone quarries where raw material is mined for road and building construction. Many companies, however, extract stones without getting the required environmental clearance.

Last year, seven workers were killed in the state’s Mamit town when a stone quarry collapsed. In 2022, 12 workers were killed in another similar collapse.

India’s northeastern states are witnessing heavy rainfall after tropical storm Remal made landfall in Bangladesh on Monday.

India’s Meteorological Department has warned that heavy rains may cause damage to vulnerable structures and thatched houses, and result in landslides in the region.
I’m an Indian Muslim, and I’m Scared to Say So (New York Times – opinion)
New York Times [5/26/2024 4:14 PM, Mohammad Ali, 831K, Negative]
I used to answer the phone with “Salam.” Not anymore. I don’t want people to know I’m a Muslim.

There is little that would identify me as Muslim to begin with, aside from my name. I don’t wear a skullcap, and in public I avoid wearing the loosefitting Pathani kurta and peppering my speech with Urdu words, all of which are identity markers for Indian Muslims. But in the India of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, you can’t take any chances.

For 10 years, Mr. Modi’s Hindu-chauvinist government has vilified the nation’s 200 million Muslims as dangerous undesirables. Recently, he took that rhetoric to a new low during the six weeks of voting in India’s national elections — which are widely expected to win him a third consecutive five-year term — directly referring to Muslims as “infiltrators” in a country that he and his followers seek to turn into a pure Hindu state.

As offensive as that was, it is sadly familiar to Indian Muslims like me who — after a decade of denigration, violence and murder — live in daily fear of being identified and attacked, forcing us into self-denial to protect ourselves.

India is home to one of the world’s largest Muslim populations. Islam came here around 1,300 years ago, and Indian Muslims descend from natives of this land who converted to Islam centuries ago. Many Indian Muslims fought against British colonization, and millions rejected the 1947 partition of the country into a predominantly Hindu India and a mostly Muslim Pakistan. India is our home, and people like me are proud patriots.

But Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalism has made us the targets in what might be the largest radicalization of people on the planet. Its seeds were planted with the founding in 1925 of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, a right-wing Hindu organization that sought the establishment of a fully Hindu state in India and was inspired by the European fascism of that era. When Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party — a political offshoot of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh — won elections in 2014 and he became prime minister, he and his followers saw it as the civilizational moment that Hindus had been waiting for. Mr. Modi was the god-king who would free Hindu civilization from centuries of domination, first by a series of Muslim rulers culminating with the Mughal empire that ruled India for around three centuries and then by the British colonizers who followed.

Islamophobia isn’t new to India, and Muslims also faced prejudice and recurring violence during the generations in which the liberal upper-caste Hindu elite dominated the nation’s secular democratic politics. But under Mr. Modi’s right-wing leadership, hatred of Muslims has effectively become state policy. India is now a country where police have been accused of standing by as Hindus attack Muslims, where the killers of religious minorities go unpunished and where Hindu extremists openly call for the genocide of Muslims.

Protest, and you run the risk of having a Hindu mob unleashed on you. That’s what happened after Mr. Modi’s government in 2019 pushed through a citizenship law that discriminates against Muslims and his party promised to expel “infiltrators” from the country. When Indian Muslims protested, one of Mr. Modi’s supporters responded with a provocative speech that is blamed for sparking deadly clashes between Hindus and Muslims in Delhi in February 2020. Police were accused of looking the other way as Muslims had their shops destroyed, were assaulted and were even killed.

Bulldozers have become a symbol of this state terrorism — rolled out at right-wing rallies, tattooed on the arms of Modi supporters and featured in Hindu nationalist songs — because of their use in areas governed by the Bharatiya Janata Party to illegally knock down the homes and businesses of Muslims who dare to speak up. Some states have essentially made Muslim-Hindu relationships illegal, based on an absurd Hindu conspiracy theory that Muslim men are seducing Hindu women as part of a long-term plan to turn India into a Muslim nation.

The liberal Hindu elite, instead of acknowledging its role in enabling the sentiments on which Mr. Modi has capitalized, has done little to help, other than to ineffectually express nostalgia for a lost Hindu tolerance. And there is little that Indian Muslims can do within the political system: Although the Muslim share of India’s population has slowly grown to 14 percent, the percentage of Parliament members who are Muslim has declined to less than 5 percent today, compared with 9 percent in the early 1980s.

The Indian Muslim response to our subjugation has largely been a deafening silence. Many of us are simply unwilling to speak out against the Modi’s government bitter bargain: that for us to exist as Indian citizens, we must meekly accept historical revisionism, dehumanization and demonization.

This debasement, and the knowledge that you are essentially outside the protection of the law, kills something inside you. You take precautions to protect yourself. My mother no longer packs mutton for me to take back to Delhi after I visit her, as she used to. She’s afraid it will be mistaken for beef: Dozens of Muslims have reportedly been killed or assaulted by Hindu mobs on suspicion of killing cows — which are sacred to Hindus — or for eating or possessing beef . Muslim parents now routinely repeat a litany of don’ts to their children: Don’t appear Muslim in public, don’t reveal your name, don’t enter Hindu areas or travel alone and don’t get pulled into any potential confrontation.

While we caution one another to blend in, it’s difficult to reconcile with the whole thing. Each of us has something embedded in our sense of self and expression that is particularly painful to erase. And the sort of physical markers we are trying to hide are not even wholly specific to Muslims in India. My cousin likes to wear his Pathani kurta, but so do many Hindus. My youngest sister prefers to keep her head covered, but so do many Hindu women, although not with a hijab. I’m attached to using certain Urdu words that have long been a feature of India’s syncretic culture and have been used widely by Hindus, too.

Self-denial leads to deep frustration. Now during gatherings with friends and family, we avoid politics; discussing the elephant in the room only reminds us of our helplessness. The cumulative weight of all this has created a mental health crisis of fear and depression among Muslims. Yet because of a desperate shortage of mental health professionals in India and a limited understanding of our new reality by many non-Muslim therapists, many Muslims are left to cope on their own.

I was hesitant to write this essay. I am not supposed to protest, to speak up. When I sometimes do, posting online about it, the typical response is, “Go to Pakistan.” But why would I leave? I am an Indian. I was born here, as were my ancestors who opposed the religious basis of the partition with Pakistan and believed in the Indian ideals of secular democracy.

But many Muslims have fled over the years, emigrating to Australia, Canada, Britain, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia or elsewhere because of the worsening political climate. Many who can’t afford to emigrate are moving out of the predominantly Hindu or mixed neighborhoods where they lived for decades, to poorer Muslim areas for safety. Two of my Muslim friends and I used to own apartments in a suburban area near New Delhi where many upper-caste Hindus lived. But in 2020, after the discriminatory citizenship law was passed, a Hindu mob charged through the neighborhood baying for Muslim blood. My two friends soon moved out. I kept my apartment, but in the elevator one evening in 2022, I overheard two men discussing how many katua (a derogatory term for Muslims that refers to circumcision) lived in the area. I moved out the next day. Sadly, Hindu friends and colleagues of mine also have become colder and more distant and are dropping out of contact.

On June 1, India’s voting period comes to a close. It looms as a day of dread for Muslims like me. According to most projections, it will be another victory for Mr. Modi — and further validation of mob rule and the debasement of 200 million Muslims by a hubristic Hindu majority.
NSB
Renewed U.S. outreach to Bangladesh signals strategic shift in region (Nikkei Asia)
Nikkei Asia [5/28/2024 2:00 AM, Faisal Mahmud, 2.2M, Neutral]
When Donald Lu visited Bangladesh last year, the veteran American envoy was banging the drum of democracy ahead of elections that critics warned were tilted in favor of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and her ruling Awami League.

Washington had threatened visa restrictions on officials suspected of impeding a free vote. But Hasina still cruised to a fourth consecutive term in a poll boycotted by the opposition and tarnished by violence, the arrests of rival leaders and activists, and allegations of manipulation at polling stations.

Both the U.S. and the U.K. criticized the poll as "not free and fair" while UN human rights chief Volker Turk called on Bangladesh’s government "to take steps to renew the country’s commitment to democracy and human rights."

Lu, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, returned to Dhaka this month with a starkly different message focused on bolstering economic ties and battling climate change.

Unlike his 2023 visit, the diplomat also skipped meetings with opposition leaders and rights groups, stirring questions about whether Washington had abandoned its stance on democracy in a country that critics say is quickly sliding into authoritarianism.

"It appears that the U.S. has accepted the ground reality, albeit grudgingly, and hitting the reset button in the relationship," Ali Riaz, distinguished professor of Politics and Government at Illinois State University, told Nikkei Asia.

Following a meeting with Bangladesh’s foreign minister, Lu acknowledged that Washington’s earlier warnings about the elections had stoked tensions, and pointed to a need to "move forward" and "rebuild trust."

"I can only say that during his trip, [he] focused on talking about economic partnership and Bangladesh’s role in the U.S.’s Indo-Pacific policy," Mohammad Ali Arafat, Bangladesh’s State Minister for Information and Broadcasting, said of Lu’s three-day visit. "There was no discussion about the opposition, democracy, human rights, politics or elections."

Bangladesh is among the biggest apparel exporters to the U.S., while Washington sees the country of 164 million, squeezed between India and Myanmar, as a valuable ally in its bid to contain China’s rising regional influence, analysts said.

Just a month after the controversial January election, deemed unfair by Washington, U.S. President Joe Biden sent Hasina a letter expressing a "sincere desire" to work together on a range of issues, and "partnering ... on our shared vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific."

"The U.S. accords Bangladesh with considerable levels of strategic significance that have risen amid intensifying great power competition," said Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia Institute at the Wilson Center in Washington. "[It] views Bangladesh as a strategically located littoral state sitting astride the Indian Ocean -- and one that has strengthened ties with Beijing even amid a close relationship with New Delhi."

Still, within a week of Lu’s May 14-16 visit, the U.S. government slapped sanctions on retired Bangladeshi army chief Aziz Ahmed and his immediate family on corruption allegations.

"The Ahmed case is a reminder that the U.S. hasn’t jettisoned the values component of its policy in Bangladesh," Kugelman said. "But I wouldn’t overstate its impact on the relationship. It’s a fairly light punishment -- much lighter than economic sanctions -- and it targets a retired military leader, not the current government."

Illinois State’s Riaz said Washington was prioritizing business and geopolitical interests while still aiming to maintain some influence over the Bangladeshi government.

"Apparently, these considerations are prompting the U.S. to work on low hanging fruit and avoid stress in the relationship in the near future," he added. "But such engagement on ‘soft’ issues without addressing democracy and human rights issues will further diminish U.S. leverage in Bangladesh and the region."

Years of past political unrest in Bangladesh may also be playing a role in how Washington massages its messaging with Dhaka.

"Despite the near collapse of democracy in Bangladesh, the country remains largely stable," said Shafquat Rabbee, a U.S.-based geopolitical analyst. "So, from the American perspective, a less turbulent Bangladesh, with some obvious undercurrent of political oppression, is better than a violently unstable Bangladesh with a chaotic democracy."
Mystery over Bangladesh MP’s brutal murder in India (The Independent)
The Independent [5/24/2024 8:01 AM, Maroosha Muzaffar, 44927K, Negative]
A member of parliament from Bangladesh who travelled to India for medical treatment has been found murdered.

Anwarul Azim Anar, a member of the ruling Awami League in Bangladesh, was reported missing by a friend a day after he travelled to India’s eastern state of West Bengal on 12 May.

Bangladesh’s home minister Asaduzzaman Khan confirmed the MP’s death and said that three arrests had been made, citing the Indian police.

“The information we have so far is that the people of our country are involved in the killing,” the minister said while speaking at a press briefing in Dhaka, according to the Indian state-sponsored DD News.

Mr. Khan said: “We have been working to arrest a few more people. This is a murder… Nothing happened here that would lead to deterioration in relations with India since no Indian is involved with the incident. According to the information we have received so far, some people from our country are involved in this murder.”

Anar represented the Jhenaidah constituency in Bangladesh.

According to India Today, which quoted anonymous sources in West Bengal’s Crime Investigation Department, Anar’s body was brutally dismembered before being disposed of across the city, but this has not been confirmed publicly by police officials.

The News18 channel reported that a suspect named Jihad Hawladar, a resident of Khulna district in Bangladesh who had illegally entered India and was staying in Mumbai, had been arrested.

“Investigation indicated that the Bangladeshi parliamentarian fell into a honey trap laid by a woman who was also close to the victim’s friend,” the Press Trust of India quoted an official as saying. “It seems, Anar was lured into the New Town flat [in Kolkatta] by the woman. We suspect he was murdered soon after he went to the flat.”

The late MP’s family members are preparing to travel to Kolkata for further formalities, according to Livemint, and their visa process is currently underway.

The West Bengal government has received a letter from India’s ministry of external affairs urging the state government to investigate the murder.

Special Investigation Team [SIT] has also reportedly been formed to investigate the case.

The MP’s family friend, Gopal Viswas, filed a complaint at the Baranagar police station in Bidhannagar in West Bengal after the MP’s daughter reported being unable to contact her father.

Akhilesh Kumar Chaturvedi, CID Inspector General was quoted as saying by ANI: “We had no prior intimation of the Bangladeshi MP’s arrival to this city. We came to know about him after his acquaintance in Kolkata, Gopal Biswas, filed a missing diary [report] on 18 May.

“We were in the middle of that investigation when, on 20 May, we received an intimation from the Ministry of External Affairs and today an input that makes us suspect that the victim may have been murdered,” he said.

The motive for the killing is still unknown.

“Jhenaidah is a [India] bordering area known for its high crime rate. Azim [Anar] was the local lawmaker there. The incident took place after he went to India for treatment. According to what we currently know, he was killed there”, the Bangladesh home minister said at his press briefing earlier.

“We suspect that after killing Anar, the murderers mutilated the body, segregated the flesh from the bones and mixed those with turmeric powder to delay decomposition,” a West Bengal CID officer was quoted as saying by FirstPost.

“The body parts were probably put inside plastic bags and scattered at different locations. We also suspect that some parts were kept in a refrigerator and we have collected samples,” the officer said, adding a wider search for more body parts was underway.

Meanwhile, the ruling BJP has accused the state government of hiding a “can of worms” and taken this opportunity to criticise a high-profile opposition figure, West Bengal’s chief minister Mamata Banerjee.

“This isn’t the first such brutal killing in West Bengal. Investigation into the murder will open a can of worms, involving powerful people in the WB [West Bengal] Govt…,” Amit Malviya, a senior BJP leader wrote on X, without providing evidence.
Sri Lanka holds rates to manage inflation, foster economic stability (Reuters)
Reuters [5/28/2024 3:54 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 5.2M, Neutral]
Sri Lanka’s central bank held interest rates steady on Tuesday to ensure inflation pressures remain in check as authorities look to foster economic stability and lift growth following the South Asian nation’s worst financial crisis in decades.

The Central Bank of Sri Lanka (CBSL) kept the Standing Deposit Facility Rate at 8.50% and the Standing Lending Facility Rate at 9.50%, it said in a statement.

The decision surprised some in the market as eight out of 15 economists and analysts polled by Reuters had projected rates to be cut by 50 basis points.

Sri Lanka’s key annual inflation rate was at 1.5% in April, down from 6.4% at the start of the year, and prices appear well anchored, the central bank said in a statement.

"Incoming data suggests that headline inflation is likely to be below the targeted level of 5 per cent in the upcoming months due to the combined impact of the administered price adjustments and eased food prices, although some upside risks remain," the central bank said.

CBSL reduced rates by 50 bps in March as it continued an easing cycle that has seen rates drop by 700 bps since June, partially reversing the 1,050 bps in increases made since April 2022 when the economy plunged into crisis.

Space remains for market lending interest rates to decline further given the prevailing accommodative monetary policy stance, CBSL Chief P. Weerasinghe told reporters at a post-policy press conference. The governor reiterated the need for lenders to pass on the benefits of lower rates to borrowers without further delay and support the pick up of private sector credit to boost overall growth.

"There could be space for rates to be adjusted lower later on when the economy has stabilised more but we will make those decisions based on data," Weerasinghe said.

Economists say private sector credit growth remains key to shoring up the economy.

"The weighted average lending rate need to adjust more. That is what will assist people to borrow. It’s clear the central bank wants private sector credit to expand to boost growth," said Udeeshan Jonas, chief strategist at equity research firm CAL Group.

Sri Lanka’s economy is expected to grow 3% in 2024 after Colombo secured a $2.9 billion lending programme from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) last March.

The island’s economy shrank 7.3% in 2022 and 2.3% last year after a record shortfall of dollar reserves and huge debt sparked a severe financial crisis.

Sri Lanka now faces a June deadline for a deal with its bilateral creditors and to secure an agreement with bondholders to renegotiate its foreign debt and release a third tranche of $337 million from the IMF.

"Negotiations with both bilateral creditors and bondholders are progressing in parallel and we are hopeful the review will be completed in June," Weerasinghe said.
Central Asia
Zelenskiy Hopes To See Central Asian Leaders At Swiss Peace Summit (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/24/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Neutral]
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has challenged Central Asian leaders to put aside concerns of angering Russia, which considers the region part of its sphere of influence, and attend a summit in Switzerland next month aimed at achieving peace in Ukraine.

Speaking to Central Asian journalists during a visit on May 24 to Kharkiv, just a few kilometers away from raging front-line battles with Russian troops, Zelenskiy said fear of Moscow’s wrath should not deter Central Asian leaders from attending the June 15-16 summit.

"I think they are mostly choosing the Russian side because of the fear of the Kremlin," Zelenskiy said, adding that he had invited all the Central Asian presidents to the summit in Switzerland and "wants to see them at the summit."

"We are now on the most difficult path of fight for our independence.... I advise you to start moving on that path now so that not to fight for it as painfully as Ukrainians are doing it now.... If you were in our position, how would you feel about the countries that did not join [the peace process]? " he added.

The aim of the summit is to create a broad front to oblige Russia to agree to a peace settlement under the terms of the UN Charter.

Zelenskiy’s peace plan calls for the withdrawal of all Russian forces and the restoration of Ukraine’s 1991 borders. Russia, which rejects the plan, has not been invited to the summit and has dismissed any discussion of the conflict without its participation as pointless.

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale aggression against Ukraine in February 2022, all Central Asian leaders, excluding officials from Turkmenistan, have expressed a neutral stance to the ongoing invasion, calling on both sides to resolve "the conflict" via peaceful means.

Zelenskiy also told the Central Asian reporters at the meeting in Kharkiv that not even countries that are rich in mineral resources and energy supplies need to avoid being dependent on other countries.

The Kharkiv region has been a point of intense fighting in recent weeks, with Russia saying it is trying to establish a "buffer zone" to prevent Ukrainian cross-border attacks.

A day before Zelenskiy arrived in Kharkiv, at least eight people were killed in a wave of Russian strikes that he called "extremely brutal."
In Kazakhstan ‘The Floods Are Over But The Problems Have Just Begun’ (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/27/2024 1:22 PM, Chris Rickleton, Petr Trotsenko and Ainur Saparova, 1299K, Negative]
The dozens of residents who held a weeklong protest outside a government building in the flood-hit town of Qulsary have packed up their tents and their banners -- for the moment.

But they are not the only ones crying out for faster and larger government compensation after historic flooding in Kazakhstan.

Beyond the immediate financial fallout in terms of handouts for the tens of thousands who lost homes, livestock, and other possessions in the floods, there is the longer-term impact on th environment and agriculture, with swathes of crop-growing land damaged by the deluge.

"The floods are over but the problems have just begun," summed up Almasbek Sadyrbaev, chairman of Shanyrak, a farming association with members across the country.

Kazakhstan’s cagey authorities are likely aware of that, but will they find answers?

Disagreement On The Costs

Seasonal floods that President Qasym-Zhomart Toqaev called the worst experienced by the country for some 80 years began devastating the country in the second half of March, peaking in the first half or April and continuing into May.

The deluge was caused by a sudden spell of warm weather on the back of cold temperatures and high snowfall, which allowed for a dangerous build-up of ice on Kazakhstan’s vast steppes.

Well over 100,000 people were evacuated during the flooding that began in the second half of March and peaked in mid-April, causing several fatalities.

The worst-hit regions were northern and western Kazakhstan.

Gauez Nurmukhambetov, governor of North Kazakhstan Province, estimated earlier this month that his region alone required 73 billion tenges ($165 million) to compensate damages.

That was more than the amount allocated annually for the development of the province’s administrative center, Petropavl, where more than 200,000 people live, he added.

Local authorities in Aqtobe, one of the first provinces hit by the floods and one of the first where they receded, reckoned on 51 billion tenges ($115 million) in late April.

Given that they are just two of seven provinces affected, Deputy Prime Minister Kanat Bozumbaev’s initial projection of 400 billion tenges ($923 million) in total damages -- he stressed at the time that the figure was only preliminary -- is looking increasingly forlorn.

Of course, not everyone has been happy about the size of compensation presently on offer.

Qulsary, a town in the western province of Atyrau, suffered disproportionately, with around 2,000 permanent homes damaged and a further 1,000 deemed beyond repair.

Hundreds of residents were seeking upfront payments of 400,000 tenges ($903) per square meter in compensation, while officials have cited calculations of between 200,000 and 240,000 tenges ($450-$563).

Dozens of demonstrators had camped out on the town square, but they ended their protest on May 22, telling RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that they feared "provocations" after citizens unaffected by the flood joined them and issued broader political demands.

But several residents who have been homeless for more than a month told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that they remain unsatisfied with the lower figure, with some saying that it doesn’t take into account labor costs. They have not ruled out resuming their protest.

Containing The Anger

On the same day as Qulsary ended its protest, Kazakh media reported that the Halyk charitable fund controlled by Timur Kulibaev -- Kazakhstan’s top banker and the son-in-law of ex-President Nursultan Nazarbaev -- had begun paying residents of the town compensation.

The Ata Meken business website noted that Halyk had contributed 31.4 billion tenges (more than $70 million) to fighting the floods, with most of the money going to victims in Atyrau.

Protests about compensation were also held this month outside the town hall in Oral, the administrative center of West Kazakhstan Province, whose city outskirts were badly flooded.

One Oral resident said last week that he was paid a visit by police at the evacuation point where he is living with his family after their home went underwater.

He told RFE/RL that they warned him that he faced 15 days imprisonment if he protested again, to which he replied: "I have nothing to lose. I am homeless anyway."

There have been few reports of arrests connected with the protests despite the fact that gatherings that take place without government approval are illegal under Kazakh law.

But at least 29 citizens had faced administrative sanctions for spreading "false information" connected to the flooding, according to Prime Minister Olzhas Bektenov.

Six of those citizens were sentenced to short detentions, Bektenov said on May 21.

Additionally, Oral journalist Raul Uporov was charged and fined for hooliganism after he recorded a video message defying local authorities’ prohibition on media coverage in parts of the flood zone.

Uporov and his colleague Lukpan Akhmedyarov made several video reports on the floods in Oral on their YouTube channel Prosto Jurnalistika.

Spoiled Land?

Aside from publicly calling on oligarchs like Kulibaev to pick up part of the compensation tab, Toqaev has moved quickly to cancel or cut funding for flashy budget-funded events whose costs are scrutinized by the population.

One of these was the Astana International Forum, which the capital was due to host in June.

Climate change was one of a number of topics addressed at the last edition of the forum, which is typically viewed as an attempt to project the country’s international image and attract investment, similar to Russia’s St. Petersburg International Economic Forum.

In his keynote address last year, Toqaev raised concern that "droughts and floods in Central Asia will [reduce] GDP by 1.3 percent per year and reduce agricultural yields by 30 percent, resulting in an estimated 5 million internal climate migrants by 2050."

While Toqaev was talking in general terms, experts are already counting the cost of 2024’s floods to agriculture, with Sadyrbaev warning that the sector had been "set back several years."

In late April, the Agriculture Ministry said that it had paid out 278 million tenges ($680,000) in compensation for livestock, with calculations continuing.

But Sadyrbaev said multiple farmers have reported problems in proving their right to compensation to his organization.

The government’s initial preference that farmers retain the corpses of their livestock as proof was rendered meaningless amid evidence that some livestock had been washed downstream as far as the Caspian Sea, he said.

Shanyrak and other farming associations are now hopeful the government will work out fair compensation according to the farmbooks kept by local administrations, where "all animals are more or less recorded."

What of the damage to land? That is a big unknown for the moment.

Laura Malikova, chairman of the board of the Association of Practicing Environmentalists, told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service that farmers should carry out water and soil tests for harmful substances -- especially in areas where cattle burial grounds were washed away -- before restarting any agricultural work.

Longer term, the government should develop a national adaptation plan for climate change in order to minimize the risk from future disasters, something that the ecologist says does not exist yet.

Kiril Pavlov, an analyst and consultant focused on agriculture, raises similar fears.

"Our farmers often do not observe crop rotation, planting the same crop in the same place for 10–15 years," Pavlov said, highlighting wheat production as typical of this habit.

"As a result, certain pathogens appear in the soil that reduce productivity. When the floods swept through the fields, the water collected not only pathogens like these but also pesticides and insecticides that were used to treat the soil," Pavlov said.

Kazakhstan’s spring sowing campaign began in mid-May.

A readout from a May 14 government meeting stated that 580 billion tenge will be allocated for sowing work, mostly in the form of soft loans and subsidies for farmers.

The readout did not mention the flooding but said that the figure was "three times greater than in previous years."

At the same time, the fields in some parts of the country appear to be either waterlogged or too soaked to begin work, Pavlov noted.

"Moreover, in northern [Kazakhstan] there are predictions of a cool summer," the analyst noted.

"Late sowing and a summer with less sun. When you combine these factors, they raise big questions about [this year’s] harvest."
Former Kyrgyz Customs Official Matraimov’s Brother To Face Trial Soon (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/27/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 235K, Negative]
The Osh regional court in Kyrgyzstan’s south told RFE/RL on May 27 that it had registered a criminal case against Tilek Matraimov, a brother of Raimbek Matraimov, the former deputy chief of Kyrgyzstan’s Customs Service who was at the center of a high-profile corruption scandal involving the funneling of close to $1 billion out of the country.

Tilek Matraimov, the ex-governor of the Kara-Suu district, was charged with abuse of office, his lawyer Mamat Shaiev said.

Tilek Matraimov and his brothers -- Raimbek, Ruslan, and Islambek -- were extradited to Kyrgyzstan in March from Azerbaijan, where they were in hiding.

Raimbek Matraimov, the most notorious of the brothers, was charged with money laundering and the abduction and illegal incarceration of unnamed individuals as part of the 2020-21 corruption scandal.

In February 2021, a Bishkek court ordered pretrial custody for Matraimov in connection with the corruption charges. He received a mitigated sentence that involved fines amounting to just a few thousand dollars but no jail time.

The court justified the move by saying that Matraimov had paid back around $24 million that disappeared through corruption schemes that he oversaw.

In November last year, the chairman of the state security service, Kamchybek Tashiev, accused Matraimov and crime boss Kamchy Kolbaev (aka Kamchybek Asanbek), who was added by Washington to a list of major global drug-trafficking suspects in 2011, of "forming a mafia in Kyrgyzstan."

Matraimov left Kyrgyzstan in October after Kolbaev was killed in a special security operation in Bishkek. In January, the Kyrgyz Interior Ministry said Matraimov was added to the wanted list of Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security.

In 2019, an investigation by RFE/RL, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and Kloop implicated Matraimov in a corruption scheme involving the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars out of Kyrgyzstan.

Also in March, a court in neighboring Uzbekistan sentenced late Kolbaev’s close associate, influential Uzbek crime boss Salim Abduvaliev, to six years in prison on charges of illegal possession and transportation of arms and explosives.

Abduvaliev is believed to have ties with top Uzbek officials and leaders of the so-called Brothers’ Circle, a Eurasian drug-trafficking network that included Kolbaev.
Turkmen Police Detain Couples Holding Hands, Looking Romantic In Public (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [5/26/2024 8:35 AM, Farangis Najibullah, 235K, Negative]
A young married couple in the city of Turkmenabat were hugging inside their parked car when a policeman approached and threatened to arrest them for undermining moral values.

“I was hugging my wife to calm her down because she was crying as we were discussing how to get enough money for some needed medicine,” the man said. “We’re struggling financially these days. At that moment the policeman came and confronted us.”

The man told RFE/RL that the officer patrolling their Bahar neighborhood demanded that the couple show their passports and marriage certificate to prove they were legally married.

The man said that, despite eventually establishing the couple’s marital status, the policeman didn’t let them go and instead tried to extort a bribe.

“When I refused to give him money, the officer threatened me: ‘Don’t forget that you live in this city, [so we will meet again],’” the man said he was told in describing the May 7 incident.

The man spoke on condition of anonymity fearing reprisals by officials in the strictly controlled Central Asian nation, one the most repressive countries in the world.

There have been multiple reports in recent weeks of similar incidents in Turkmenabat, the capital of the northeastern Lebap Province, in which police target couples holding hands, sitting close, kissing, or hugging in public places.

Public displays of affection are not banned in Turkmenistan, but police in other Turkmen regions, including the capital, Ashgabat, and Mary Province were previously accused of arresting young men and women in parks and on the streets for violating “social norms.”

“Offenders” in Mary were taken away in handcuffs to police stations and forced to attend lectures on moral values.

Turkmenabat residents say the latest restriction in their city began in April when several local students and other young people complained about being ambushed by officers seemingly acting as morality police.

In most cases the incidents ended with police extorting money from the couples, according to several people involved in the raids.

‘Unbecoming For Turkmen’

A student from the Turkmenhimiya vocational school told RFE/RL that he was targeted by police while on a date with a young woman at the city’s Gorogly Park earlier this month.

“I was kissing the girl on her forehead when I noticed a policeman photographing us on his phone. He then told us: ‘aren’t you ashamed of behaving like this in a public place?’” the student told RFE/RL on condition of anonymity.

The officer then proceeded to arrest the couple for “disturbing public order,” the student claimed, adding that the policeman finally let them go after he paid bribes.

“I told him that I have [the equivalent of] $20 in my pocket. The policeman’s serious face immediately broke into a smile and he told us: ‘Don’t be naughty here,’” the Turkmenabat student said.

Another resident claimed he and his girlfriend were stopped while holding hands at the city’s National Flag Square early one evening last month.

The young man said an officer scolded the couple for their “shameful behavior that is unbecoming for Turkmen, especially under the national flag,” and tried to force them into a police vehicle.

“The officers threatened to open a criminal case against me on a charge of resisting a police officer,” the man told RFE/RL. “Then one of the officers took me to one side and demanded [the equivalent of] $30. I told him that I only have $10 with me. He took the money and let us go.”

RFE/RL cannot verify the residents’ claims. Regional officials in Lebap didn’t respond to requests for comment.

But authorities in Turkmenistan are notorious for restricting their citizens’ liberties and civil rights.

In the coastal province of Balkan, police imposed an unofficial nighttime curfew earlier this year that banned people from leaving their homes after 9 p.m.

Residents said they received leaflets from regional police that warned them against "walking on the streets in the evenings with or without a purpose."

Female high school students in the Balkan and Dashoguz provinces have been subjected to mandatory virginity tests, which officials say are needed to evaluate the teenagers’ morality. The controversial test were conducted without the consent of either the students or their parents.
Putin arrives in Uzbekistan on the 3rd foreign trip of his new term (AP)
AP [5/26/2024 9:25 PM, Staff, 39876K, Neutral]
Russian President Vladimir Putin arrived Sunday in the capital of Uzbekistan where he is to hold talks with President Shavkay Mirziyoyev that are expected to focus on deepening the countries’ relations.

Putin laid a wreath at a momument to Uzbekistan’s independence in Tashkent and held what the Kremlin said were informal talks with Mirziyoyev. The formal meeting of the presidents is to take place Monday.

The visit is Putin’s third foreign trip since being inaugurated for a fifth term in May. He first went to China, where he expressed appreciation for China’s proposals for talks to end the Ukraine conflict, and later to Belarus where Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons.

Ahead of the Uzbekistan trip, Putin and Mirziyoyev discussed an array of bilateral cooperation issues, including trade and economic relations, the Kremlin said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]
Russia to build a small nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan (AP)
AP [5/27/2024 4:06 PM, Staff, 39876K, Neutral]
Russia and Uzbekistan signed an accord Monday for Moscow to build a small nuclear power plant in the Central Asian country, as Russian President Vladimir Putin held talks in the Uzbek capital with Uzbekistan leader Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Mirziyoyev hailed the project as “vital” in remarks after the talks, noting that Uzbekistan has “its own large reserves of uranium.” Putin, in turn, vowed to “do everything in order to work effectively on Uzbekistan’s (nuclear energy) market.”

If the agreement is implemented, the plant would become the first in Central Asia, further increasing Russia’s influence in the region.

Russia’s state news agency RIA Novosti quoted the Russian state-owned energy corporation, Rosatom, as saying that the project envisions building six reactors with the total capacity of 330 megawatts. According to Russian media, the two countries were earlier discussing building a nuclear power plant of a larger capacity — of 2.4 gigawatts.

Putin also promised to increase gas deliveries to Uzbekistan.

The talks between Putin and Mirziyoyev took place in the Uzbek capital, Tashkent, where the Russian leader traveled on Sunday in his third foreign trip since being inaugurated for a fifth presidential term earlier this month.

He first went to China, where he expressed appreciation for China’s proposals for talks to end the Ukraine conflict, and later to Belarus where Russia has deployed tactical nuclear weapons.

The trips reflect the Kremlin’s ongoing effort to shore up support amid unabating tensions with the West over the conflict in Ukraine.
Russia to build Central Asia’s first nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan (Reuters)
Reuters [5/27/2024 10:58 AM, Mukhammadsharif Mamatkulov, 45791K, Positive]
Russia will build a small nuclear power plant in Uzbekistan, the first such project in post-Soviet Central Asia, Uzbek President Shavkat Mirziyoyev said on Monday at a meeting with visiting Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The nuclear deal, if implemented, will showcase Russia’s ability to export not only energy, but also high-tech products to new Asian markets, at a time when the West is increasing pressure on it through sanctions.

Putin said Russia would put $400 million into a joint investment fund of $500 million to finance projects in Uzbekistan.

Mirziyoyev also said Tashkent was interested in buying more oil and gas from Russia, a reversal of decades-long practice where Moscow imported hydrocarbons from Central Asia.

The Uzbek president described Putin’s visit as "historic".

"It heralds the beginning of a new age in the comprehensive strategic partnership and alliance relations between our countries," he said.

Putin also called Tashkent Moscow’s "strategic partner and reliable ally".

According to documents published by the Kremlin, Russian state nuclear firm Rosatom will build up to six nuclear reactors with a capacity of 55 megawatts each in Uzbekistan, a much smaller-scale project than the 2.4 gigawatts one agreed in 2018 which remains to be finalised.

There are no nuclear power plants in any of the five ex-Soviet Central Asian republics, although Uzbekistan and its neighbour Kazakhstan, both uranium producers, have long said their growing economies needed them.

The Kazakh project, however, can only move ahead after a national referendum which has not yet been scheduled.

"Nearly all the leading countries of the world ensure their energy security and sustainable development with the help of nuclear energy," Mirziyoyev said.

ENERGY SUPPLIES

Taking advantage of Russia’s campaign to redirect its gas exports to Asia amid a rift with the West over Ukraine, Uzbekistan last October started importing Russian natural gas via the same pipeline which had previously pumped it in the reverse direction.

Although its own gas production remains substantial at about 50 billion cubic metres a year, Uzbekistan struggles to fully meet domestic demand, and Russian supplies have allowed it to avert an energy crisis.

"(Gas) exports are running well ahead of schedule and we are ready to increase their volume if needed," Putin said.

According to Mirziyoyev, Tashkent is also keen to increase imports of Russian oil.

The two leaders also said their governments were working on large projects in mining, metals, and chemicals.

Uzbekistan, whose economy depends heavily on remittances from migrant labourers working in Russia, has maintained close ties with Moscow after it invaded Ukraine in 2022.

However, Mirziyoyev and other leaders in the region have never spoken in support of what the Kremlin calls its special military operation in Ukraine, and all countries in the region are also working with the West on projects such as cargo shipping routes designed to bypass Russia.
Indo-Pacific
Cyclone Remal Tears Through India and Bangladesh, Killing at Least 23 (New York Times)
New York Times [5/28/2024 4:08 AM, Jin Yu Young and Saif Hasnat, 831K, Negative]
At least 23 people were killed and millions were left without power after Cyclone Remal, the first tropical storm of the season, hit Bangladesh and neighboring eastern India on Sunday.

Remal, which had measured winds of over 70 miles per hour, left a trail of destruction, uprooting trees and damaging power lines throughout the region, officials said.

The storm killed 13 people in Bangladesh, and it damaged or destroyed more than 35,000 homes across the coastal areas, affecting about 3.5 million people, according to officials. More than 13 million people there lost electricity on Monday evening, according to power ministry officials. The South Asian country has a population of 170 million.

The storm also caused power outages and damaged homes in the Indian state of West Bengal. On Tuesday, officials said that at least 10 people were killed, with several more missing, after heavy rains from the remnants of the cyclone caused a stone quarry to collapse in the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram, which neighbors Bangladesh.

The storm hit after weeks of intense heat in the region, with temperatures reaching about 104 Fahrenheit, or 40 Celsius. Remal made landfall near Bangladesh’s southern port of Mongla and the neighboring Sagar Islands of India around 9 p.m. on Sunday.

Around a million people were evacuated from Bangladesh’s coastal villages before the storm hit. Most of those villages were flooded, leaving millions of people vulnerable, officials said.

“As Cyclone Remal hits the coastal areas of Bangladesh, over 8.4 million people, including 3.2 million children, are at high health, nutrition, sanitation and safety risks,” Sheldon Yett, a UNICEF representative to Bangladesh, said in a statement.

Bangladesh’s inland capital, Dhaka was hit with heavy rain and strong winds. The storm disrupted flights at Shah Amanat International Airport in southeastern Bangladesh and at Kolkata Airport in India.

By Tuesday, the storm had weakened, but meteorologists in Bangladesh and India warned that heavy rain and strong winds could continue for a few days.

Bangladesh has been hit with several violent storms in recent years. Last May, a severe cyclone, Mocha, hit Bangladesh and Myanmar and left several people dead. The storm caused widespread damage in the sprawling Rohingya refugee camps in Cox’s Bazar, destroying over 3,000 shanties and learning centers made of bamboo slats and plastic tarpaulin.

The Philippines has also seen its first tropical storm of the season. Typhoon Ewiniar hit the island nation early Saturday morning. The Office of Civil Defense reported Monday that there were seven casualties from the storm. The storm had gusts of over 40 miles per hour, according to the Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration.
Cyclone Remal kills 16, snaps power links to millions in India, Bangladesh (Reuters)
Reuters [5/26/2024 6:49 AM, Mohammad Ponir Hossain, Ruma Paul and Subrata Nag Choudhury, 45791K, Negative]
Strong gales and heavy rain brought by cyclone Remal lashed the coastlines of India and Bangladesh on Monday, with the storm killing at least 16 people and cutting electricity supply to millions before losing intensity.

The cyclone is the first this year of the frequent storms that have pounded the low-lying coasts of the South Asian neighbours in recent years, as climate change drives up surface temperatures at sea.

Packing speeds of up to 135 kph (84 mph), it crossed the area around Bangladesh’s southern port of Mongla and the adjoining Sagar Islands in India’s West Bengal late on Sunday, weather officials said, making landfall at about 9 p.m. (1530 GMT) before weakening on Monday morning.

The official death toll mounted in both countries as information arrived from coastal regions.

At least 10 people lost their lives in Bangladesh, disaster management chief Mijanur Rahman told Reuters, without providing details.

Two were killed as they headed to cyclone shelters, Rahman earlier said, adding that authorities will need more time to gauge the full extent of losses.

"People are usually very reluctant to leave their livestock and homes to go to cyclone shelters," he said. "They wait until the last minute when it is often too late."

In India’s West Bengal state, four people died due to electrocution, authorities said, taking the death toll in the state to six.

One person was crushed to death by falling concrete in the state capital of Kolkata, while a woman died when a mud home collapsed on the island of Mousuni in the Sundarbans delta.

POWER SUPPLY HIT

Bangladesh shut down electricity supply to some areas in advance to avoid accidents, while in many coastal towns fallen trees and snapped electricity lines further disrupted supply, power ministry officials said.

"We have had no electricity since night, my mobile battery will run out any time," said Rahat Raja, a resident of Bangladesh’s coastal district of Satkhira. "By Allah’s grace, the cyclone was not as violent as we thought."

Nearly 3 million people in Bangladesh were without electricity, officials added. West Bengal authorities said at least 1,200 power poles were uprooted, while 300 mud huts had been razed to the ground.

Fierce winds also blew the roofs off some tin and thatched houses. The rain and high tides damaged some embankments and flooded coastal areas in the Sundarbans, home to some of the world’s largest mangrove forests, which is shared by India and Bangladesh.

Rain flooded roads disrupted travel in Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, where authorities gearing for the storm set up nearly 8,000 cyclone shelters and drafted in 78,000 volunteers.

In Mongla, boatman Shah Alom said he had not seen such a lengthy cyclone in decades. "Usually the storm lasts for a couple of hours, but this one has been going on since last night," he said. "I don’t know when it will end."

Rains brought by the storm flooded many streets in Kolkata, television images showed, with reports of wall collapses and at least 52 fallen trees.

Kolkata resumed flights after more than 50 were cancelled from Sunday. Suburban train services were also restored.

Both nations moved nearly a million people to storm shelters, about 800,000 in Bangladesh and roughly 110,000 in India, authorities said.

The storm is expected to move northeast and gradually weaken further into a deep depression by afternoon, bringing more rain to states there, they added.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Freshta Razbaan
@RazbaanFreshta
[5/27/2024 3:58 PM, 4.7K followers, 6 retweets, 14 likes]
The question posed by the members of the Afghan Women’s Freedom Movement to the UN and international representatives strikes at the heart of a profound moral and ethical dilemma. Engaging in negotiations with the Taliban—a group that has seized power through violence and continues to propagate extremism and terror—raises critical questions about the principles and values that underpin global diplomacy. How can the international community, which ostensibly champions human rights, gender equality, and democratic governance, justify sitting at the negotiating table with a regime that systematically violates these very ideals? The Taliban’s brutal treatment of women, their suppression of fundamental freedoms, and their relentless imposition of a regressive and oppressive order starkly contradict the values that the UN and its member nations purport to uphold. This engagement risks legitimizing a regime that operates through fear and coercion, undermining the struggles and sacrifices of those who have fought for a free and equitable Afghanistan. It sends a perilous message to the world: that power, however brutally obtained, can be negotiated with and potentially rewarded. The international community must critically evaluate the implications of its actions and ensure that any dialogue with the Taliban is contingent upon concrete commitments to human rights, especially the rights of women and minorities. True peace and stability cannot be achieved through compromise with terror and extremism but through steadfast support for justice, equality, and the dignity of all Afghan people. #NoToTaliban

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzi12947158
[5/27/2024 4:27 AM, 2.5K followers, 4 likes]
Well-known education activist and founder of the "Pen Path" community, @MatiullahWesa, who was imprisoned by the Taliban for a long time, the Afghan Knowledge organization in Denmark announced “Action Award” and cash payment to him for his education activities in Afghanistan:

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzi12947158
[5/26/2024 3:18 PM, 2.5K followers, 5 retweets, 11 likes]
Shahmama officials is host the session "Untold Narratives by Women Released from Taliban Prisons," with Richard Bennett @SR_Afghanistan the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Afghanistan:
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[5/27/2024 2:56 PM, 6.7M followers, 488 retweets, 1.2K likes]
May 28 signifies more than just a mere commemoration of a day; it encapsulates the narrative of our nation’s arduous yet remarkable path towards establishing a credible minimum deterrence. On this historic day ,in 1998, PM Nawaz Sharif demonstrated bold leadership by rejecting nerve wrecking pressures & inducements to make Pakistan a nuclear armed nation. I also pay tribute to Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the founder of Pakistan’s nuclear programme for his strategic foresight and unwavering commitment to the cause. This significant day symbolizes the collective effort of all facets of national power, overcoming what seemed like an insurmountable challenge and achieving a milestone in our country’s defense capabilities. Youm-e-Takbir Mubarak!

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[5/26/2024 3:01 AM, 6.7M followers, 576 retweets, 1.9K likes]
As an iron-brother and a strategic partner of China, Pakistan has always extended its principled support to the Chinese position on Taiwan and will continue to do so. Pakistan adheres to ‘One China’ policy, regards Taiwan as an inalienable part of the People’s Republic of China and supports the Chinese government’s efforts for national reunification. The so-called elections or transition of the self-proclaimed government in Taiwan do not change the objective facts on the Taiwan issue.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[5/25/2024 2:06 AM, 6.7M followers, 917 retweets, 2.3K likes]
I reaffirmed Pakistan’s strong commitment to the just struggle of the Palestinian people and lauded ICJ decision to order Israel to stop its assault on Gaza and Rafah. We hope the oppressed people of Kashmir would receive similar attention from the international community, as they too have been enduring brutal occupation and denial of fundamental human rights for the last seven decades

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[5/27/2024 3:46 PM, 42.7K followers, 135 retweets, 615 likes]
Twitter banned in Pakistan since the election, but even the government continues to (eagerly) use it via VPN. The irony is lost on them.

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[5/24/2024 11:02 AM, 42.7K followers, 23 retweets, 134 likes]
MBS reportedly delays visit to Pakistan for no specified reason; a bit of a setback for the new govt’s hopes from the Kingdom.

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[5/27/2024 7:24 AM, 73.3K followers, 25 retweets, 111 likes]
Pakistan has shared evidence of involvement of TTP from Afghanistan in the attack on Chinese nationals in Bisham in March this year, the event was planned and executed from Afghanistan but the Afghan government is yet to act, says Pakistan’s Interior Minister @MohsinnaqviC42

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/27/2024 10:45 PM, 210K followers, 34 retweets, 115 likes]
I’m quoted by @tomthehack re China’s terrorism concerns in Pak. "If the terrorist attacks were to continue in the coming months, ‘we can’t rule out Beijing bringing its security forces into Pakistan to provide protection.’..That would be an ‘embarrassment’ for Pakistan’s security forces."

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[5/27/2024 10:45 PM, 210K followers, 9 retweets, 34 likes]
The piece reports that "China has started to lean on Afghanistan’s Taliban regime to prevent cross-border attacks on Chinese personnel and interests in neighbouring Pakistan...Chinese diplomats in Islamabad and Kabul were forced into action by Pakistan’s failure to prevent a surge in such cross-border terrorist attacks..." https://scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3263802/china-pressures-afghanistans-taliban-stop-attacks-its-interests-pakistan-dangles-economic-carrot

Hamid Mir
@HamidMirPAK
[5/27/2024 11:31 PM, 8.5M followers, 666 retweets, 1.7K likes]
International Federation of Journalists @IFJGlobal President @DomPradalie asked Governor Punjab @SaleemHaiderPPP not to sign the defamation bill recently passed by Punjab Assembly because this law will be used to silence the voices against the government.
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/27/2024 12:30 AM, 98M followers, 2.5K retweets, 8.3K likes]
In my interview to @ANI, I discussed about the Lok Sabha polls and several other vital topics. Do watch. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1zqKVqeYznpxB

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/27/2024 5:39 AM, 98M followers, 4.7K retweets, 15K likes]
In an interview to @ians_india, discussed several topics concerning the current political scenario, governance and more. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1mnGeplRXrbKX

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/26/2024 11:30 PM, 98M followers, 5.3K retweets, 18K likes]
In my interview with @thetribunechd, I share my views on the current elections, our vision for Punjab and the way ahead in terms of taking India to new heights of progress. https://tribuneindia.com/news/india/current-punjab-leadership-mirrors-ideology-of-urban-naxals-they-may-take-state-down-the-wrong-path-625150

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/26/2024 12:02 PM, 98M followers, 7.4K retweets, 46K likes]
Reviewed the preparedness in the wake of Cyclone Remal. Took stock of the disaster management infrastructure and other related aspects. I pray for everyone’s safety and well being.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/25/2024 2:13 AM, 98M followers, 3.9K retweets, 27K likes]
The fire tragedy at a hospital in Delhi is heart-rending. My thoughts are with the bereaved families in this incredibly difficult time. I pray that those injured recover at the earliest.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/25/2024 11:30 AM, 98M followers, 4.3K retweets, 27K likes]
Extremely distressed by the fire mishap in Rajkot. My thoughts are with all those who have lost their loved ones. Prayers for the injured. The local administration is working to provide all possible assistance to those affected.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/25/2024 10:03 AM, 98M followers, 8.8K retweets, 66K likes]
I thank all those who have voted in the penultimate phase of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls. NDA’s numbers are looking better and better. People have realised that since INDI Alliance is coming nowhere close to power, voting for it is futile.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/26/2024 12:46 PM, 3.1M followers, 207 retweets, 1.4K likes]
Participated at an interactive session at the Benares Club. Spoke on the topic: Bharat’s Rise in Global Diplomacy. Today, the leadership of the country has clarity, a mission, confidence and strength. Therefore, Bharat’s rise is Modi’s Guarantee. The track record of the last decade speaks for itself. Whether it be security, safety of Indians abroad or safeguarding the interests of our country, the nation is today motivated and determined. Our collective decision about the nation’s future will be guided by our ambition to become Viksit Bharat.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/27/2024 11:30 AM, 3.1M followers, 228 retweets, 2.1K likes]
So nice to meet representatives of the Tamil community and others at Kanchi Kamakoti temple in Varanasi. The Kashi Tamil Sangamam has played a valuable role in promoting national integration. Fostering the spirit of ‘Ek Bharat-Shreshtha Bharat’ will take our nation forward.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/25/2024 6:59 PM, 3.1M followers, 162 retweets, 899 likes]
Delighted to interact with teachers and students of Varanasi on the topic: Empowering With Education-Teaching for a Better Tomorrow.Firmly believe in Education for an era of Technology and Globalisation. Underlined the many steps in the last decade to make the best of the tech era and the global workplace. At the same time, we are giving due focus on our traditions and civilizational heritage. Influence of Bharat will be a function of progress of the country. Our teachers have a special role in shaping the future because it is our students who will realise it in our Amritkaal.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/27/2024 11:52 AM, 3.1M followers, 200 retweets, 1.7K likes]
Deeply grieved at the loss of lives in the terrible fire in Rajkot. Our thoughts are very much with all those impacted by this tragedy.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/24/2024 10:45 PM, 3.1M followers, 4K retweets, 41K likes]
Cast my vote in New Delhi this morning. Urge all voting today to turnout in record numbers and vote in this sixth phase of the elections.
NSB
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bangladesh
@BDMOFA
[5/27/2024 8:32 AM, 36.7K followers, 3 retweets, 23 likes]
#ASEAN-BANGLDESH workshop and training on Sustainable and Climate Resilient Aquaculture have been inaugurated today at ASEC, Jakarta. # Speakers hoped that it would be instrumental to promote future collaboration between BD-ASEAN by sharing best practices.

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/27/2024 1:41 PM, 637.8K followers, 18 retweets, 50 likes]
How #AwamiLeague-led government saves lives and mitigates damage from cyclone Remal
Steps taken so far
Massive awareness campaign
More than 800000 people and 52,146 livestock evacuated
9,424 cyclone shelters hosting evacuees
Helplines are opened to public
Cash assistances worth 6.85 crore allocated for affected families,
1,471 medical teams for emergency health services.
#CycloneRemal #Bangladesh #CycloneRemalUpdate

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/27/2024 7:43 AM, 637.8K followers, 20 retweets, 41 likes]
Bangladesh Chhatra League (@bslBD1971) central committee has directed its leaders and activists to help the affected people of #cyclonERemal. BCL President @saddam1971 and its General Secretary Sheikh Wali Asif Enan urged them through a statement. https://bssnews.net/news/191359

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/27/2024 3:38 AM, 637.8K followers, 16 retweets, 46 likes]
SM for Finance Waseqa Ayesha Khan (@ctgchatter) said the govt is considering determining the economic value of unpaid #householdwork done by women. She said, “It is important to evaluate the contribution of women, who are contributing to the economy by working at home." https://bssnews.net/business/191309 #WomenEmpowerment #EconomicFreedom

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/26/2024 9:15 AM, 637.8K followers, 33 retweets, 64 likes]
Over 8 lakh people have been evacuated to shelters so far as #cycloneRemal is approaching #Bangladesh coast, said SM for Disaster Management and Relief Md Mohibur Rahman. https://unb.com.bd/category/Bangladesh/over-8-lakh-people-evacuated-to-shelters-state-minister-mohibur/136240 #Cyclone #CycloneRemalUpdate

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[5/27/2024 4:13 AM, 81.1K followers, 3 retweets, 6 likes]
.@amnesty Secretary General @AgnesCallamard was in Nepal last week as a part of her first visit to South Asia. Read excerpts of her interview with @kathmandupost where she talks of the human rights situation in #Nepal and the rest of the world. https://kathmandupost.com/interviews/2024/05/26/people-are-now-listening-to-democratically-elected-authoritarian-leaders

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[5/26/2024 1:48 AM, 5.5K followers, 4 retweets, 33 likes]
President Ranil Wickremesinghe distributed 600 freehold deeds, part of the "Urumaya" program, to residents at a ceremony in Putthukudiirippu Madhya Maha Vidyalaya a short while ago. These deeds cover 5 DS divisions in the Mullaitivu district. A total of 1,376 freehold deeds are scheduled to be distributed under the "Urumaya" program in the same district -

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[5/25/2024 1:21 AM, 5.5K followers, 8 retweets, 54 likes]
It is with profound sadness that I reflect upon the passing of senior president counsel Mr. Gamini Marapana PC. Mr. Marapana was more than a colleague; he was a friend and a true gentleman. A stalwart of the Bar in our generation, he embodied fearlessness, honesty, and forthrightness, always standing firmly for what he believed to be right. I had the honor of meeting Mr. Marapana at the courts, where I had the privilege of opposing him. His sharp intellect was matched only by his courtesy, making him a towering figure in our profession. In the early days of my career, he encouraged me with invaluable advice, sharing his own experiences and offering tips as we struggled to find our feet in the profession. He genuinely appreciated talent and was always encouraging, a trait that made him one of the finest gentlemen I have encountered in our field. Our friendship blossomed as we worked together on some of the most challenging cases of our careers. The more time I spent with him, the more I admired him. He was a great character and a balanced human being. Mr. Marapana’s legacy lives on through his only child, Navin Marapana, who has inherited all the remarkable qualities of his father. Navin can be very proud of the legacy Mr. Marapana has left behind. My heartfelt thoughts are with Mrs. Marapana, Navin, Laksara, and the entire family during this difficult time. May they find solace in the wonderful memories and the enduring legacy of such an extraordinary man. May he attain the supreme bliss of Nibbana.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[5/25/2024 12:59 AM, 5.5K followers, 2 retweets, 34 likes]
President Ranil Wickremesinghe inaugurated the Centre of Excellence for Women’s Healthcare at the District General Hospital in Kilinochchi a short while ago. This project, costing Rs. 5,320 million is in line with the government’s initiative to enhance health sector facilities nationwide, was funded by the Gov. of Netherlands -

Harsha de Silva
@HarshadeSilvaMP
[5/28/2024 12:33 AM, 357.2K followers, 2 retweets, 12 likes]
Had a great chat with the SG of the @gaspworld @satyatripathi and DG @susdevSL @chamindry on how best to leverage opportunities for blended finance to bring down cost of post restructure #SriLanka borrowing, help the plantation sector and heal the world at the same time.
Central Asia
MFA Kazakhstan
@MFA_KZ
[5/27/2024 12:41 PM, 50.8K followers, 2 retweets, 12 likes]
Official visit of Deputy Сhairman of the Cabinet of Ministers, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkmenistan Rashid Meredov to Astana https://x.com/i/status/1795133310332469372

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/27/2024 7:33 AM, 175.8K followers, 13 retweets, 43 likes]
The "Kuksaroy" residence hosted an official ceremony to welcome the President of #Russia, Vladimir #Putin. The forecourt featured the flags of both nations and a guard of honor. President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev extended a warm reception to his counterpart before initiating their diplomatic dialogue.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/27/2024 2:55 PM, 175.8K followers, 27 retweets, 101 likes]
Today, at the invitation of the President of #Uzbekistan Shavkat #Mirziyoyev, the President of the #RussianFederation🇷🇺Vladimir #Putin arrived in Uzbekistan on a state visit. At the airport, he was warmly welcomed by the Uzbek leader, and flags of both countries were raised in honor of the guest. The main events are scheduled for May 27.

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/28/2024 12:31 AM, 23.1K followers, 2 retweets]
In Uzbekistan, Rosatom envisions building six reactors with a total capacity of 330 megawatts. https://apnews.com/article/russia-nuclear-plant-uzbekistan-putin-6b29cec95b9f5be8d1b408063f1d0065?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=share

Navbahor Imamova
@Navbahor
[5/27/2024 6:48 PM, 23.1K followers, 1 retweet, 4 likes]
Independent judiciary, adherence to the rule of law, and a commitment to ethics and professional integrity are essential for Uzbekistan’s development, according to these fellows, returning home with LLM @PennStateLaw, UZ-funded @elyurtumidi

{End of Report}
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