SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS

epubdos : Afghanistan

Prepared for the U.S. Department of State

Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs

By TechMIS
www.TechMIS.com

Mobile User Copy

TO:	SCA & Staff
DATE:	Friday, May 3, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan

UN observes reduction in Taliban’s enforcement of hijab on Afghan women (VOA)

VOA [5/2/2024 7:43 AM, Ayaz Gul, 761K, Negative]
A new United Nations report suggested Thursday that the hardline Taliban government in Afghanistan has eased its drive to enforce an Islamic dress code or hijab on women.

However, the U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, noted in its quarterly report that violations of human rights at large continued under the Taliban regime.

The Taliban have mandated that Afghan women wear what is termed as the “sharia hijab” in public, covering their faces entirely or only showing their eyes. The operations to enforce the dress code are carried out by the group’s Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.

While UNAMA continued to receive reports of the enforcement of the hijab instruction by the Taliban ministry, the report said that “such incidents significantly decreased after January 2024 with the cessation of the large-scale enforcement actions which took place between December 2023 and January 2024.”

On January 11, the UNAMA raised the alarm over numerous cases of girls and women across Afghanistan, some held incommunicado, being detained, and others reportedly ill-treated for alleged non-compliance with the hijab. Taliban authorities at the time dismissed U.N. concerns as “incorrect” and “propaganda.”

Thursday’s UNAMA report noted that the new school year in Afghanistan commenced without the presence of girls in high schools due to the Taliban’s continued ban on girls’ education beyond grade six.

“An invitation to attend a ceremony in Kabul marking the commencement of the new academic year, issued to media by the de facto Ministry of Education, specifically instructed women journalists not to attend, citing a “lack of proper place[s]” for women,” the report said.

The UNAMA reported that journalists and media workers continue to operate in a challenging environment in Afghanistan, with the media facing a range of restrictions imposed by the Taliban and the risk of arbitrary detention in the course of their work.

Taliban authorities carried out three public executions of individuals sentenced to death on murder charges, the report said. Since the Taliban seized power in August 2021, they have publicly executed five murder convicts despite U.N. calls for halting the practice.

“The de facto authorities also continue to implement judicial corporal punishment in public, with such punishments taking place in at least one province each week,” the UNAMA said.

The Taliban have publicly flogged hundreds of men and women in sports stadiums in the presence of thousands of onlookers. The victims were convicted of offenses such as theft, robbery, adultery, and other “moral crimes” by Taliban courts.

Afghan women have also been barred from many public and private workplaces, including the United Nations.

Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has defended his governance, saying it is strictly in line with local culture and Islamic law. He has dismissed international criticism of his policies and strict interpretation of Islamic law as an interference in Afghanistan’s domestic affairs.

The international community has refused to recognize the Taliban government primarily over its harsh treatment of Afghan women.

Washington defends talks with Taliban as serving American national interests (The Independent)

The Independent [5/2/2024 6:50 AM, Arpan Rai, 3055K, Negative]
The US engages with the Taliban when it serves its national interest, a State Department official said as Afghanistan’s de facto rulers continue to seek legitimacy from the international community.

Active conversations with the Taliban allow the US not only to protect its interests but also support the Afghan people living under the fundamentalist regime, State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said.

“...let me just say that when it comes to our engagements with the Taliban, we engage when it is in the United States’ interest to do so. This is the best way to not just protect US national interests but also support the Afghan people,” he said.

Washington’s engagement “allows us to speak directly with the Taliban, and it’s an opportunity for us to continue to press for the immediate and unconditional release of US nationals in Afghanistan, including those who we have determined to be wrongfully detained”, Mr Patel said.

He was answering a question from a reporter on America’s engagement with Kabul despite rising terrorism in Afghanistan and the continuing ban on education of girls and women.

“We’ll also use those opportunities to directly talk about the Taliban’s commitments to counterterrorism, and of course, as always, human rights is also on the agenda,” Mr Patel told reporters.

The Taliban are pariahs on the global stage, largely because of their restrictions on women and girls. The war-hit nation’s economy is struggling and its infrastructure is poor in the absence of a functional government.

The group seized power in 2021 amid the chaotic withdrawal of US and Nato forces after two decades of war. Their ban on education of women and girls has triggered widespread condemnation and deepened their international isolation.

The Taliban have barred women from education beyond sixth grade, most jobs and public spaces like parks. They have implemented corporal punishment and public executions, practices seen during their first period of rule in the late 1990s. The economy is now in decline and Afghans are experiencing drought, hunger, and displacement on a massive scale.

This Is What It’s Like To Be A Journalist Under Taliban Rule (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [5/2/2024 4:14 PM, Abubakar Siddique, 235K, Neutral]
Afghan journalists are forbidden from broadcasting or publishing stories that are critical of the Taliban.

Reporters who cross that red line have been arrested and jailed, beaten in custody, or threatened and harassed.

But journalists don’t just face restrictions on which issues they can cover. They are also severely limited in how they report stories and who they can interview.

Women and girls are banned from appearing on TV or radio programs. Male reporters, meanwhile, are barred from interviewing women and vice versa.

This is what it is like to be a journalist in Afghanistan nearly three years after the Taliban seized power. The militants have transformed the once-vibrant media landscape in the war-torn country, where censorship is now rife and dissent has been largely stamped out.

"It is impossible to be a journalist under the Taliban," a female reporter based in central Afghanistan told RFE/RL’s Radio Azadi.

The reporter, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution.

‘Red Lines’

After regaining power in 2021, the Taliban initially promised to allow a free press. But its hard-line government soon waged a violent crackdown on independent media.

Scores of reporters and media workers have been imprisoned or physically attacked. The Taliban has shut down dozens of media outlets. Hundreds of journalists have fled the country out of fear.

Only a few independent media outlets still operate under the Taliban. But their journalists face severe restrictions and often resort to self-censorship.

Covering issues like "insecurity, human rights, and corruption" are off-limits, said a Kabul-based editor who works for a major broadcaster.

Taliban officials often instruct journalists to "report only on issues" that put them in a more positive light, the editor said.

The Taliban has also told broadcasters not to interview ordinary Afghans on the streets in a bid to prevent criticism of the group.

"We are also not allowed now to invite Afghans living abroad to participate in programs," the editor said. "It is forbidden to include the views of the Taliban’s opponents."

A reporter based in northern Afghanistan says he tried to investigate reports of alleged sexual abuse in Taliban-run madrasahs, or Islamic seminaries, and the Taliban’s decision to award lucrative mining contracts to state-run companies. But he dropped the stories for fear of reprisals.

"Such issues are completely off-limits," he told Radio Azadi.

‘I Can’t Go Out’

The Taliban’s restrictions on the media have disproportionately affected women.

The militants have imposed severe restrictions on women’s appearances, freedom of movement, and right to education and work.

"I can’t go out now and report," said the female reporter based in central Afghanistan, adding that she is barred from interviewing men and cannot travel far from home without a male chaperone.

Another female reporter from central Afghanistan says she was called in for questioning after reporting on a protest by women against the Taliban’s repressive policies.

"I was asked why I report on such issues," she told Radio Azadi. "They asked me, ‘Are you against the government?’"

She says the officials threatened her and said she would face "serious consequences" if she reported on any unsanctioned rallies again.

In broadcast media, there are even more restrictions.

Female TV presenters have been forced to wear a black robe and head scarf with only their eyes visible.

TV and radio stations have been banned from broadcasting female voices and accepting call-ins from women.

Growing Censorship

The Taliban’s crackdown on journalists appears to be intensifying.

In recent months, the militant group has imposed new restrictions on female journalists’ appearances, banned some women from accessing radio and TV programs, and prohibited the filming or photographing of Taliban officials.

On April 22, three radio journalists were detained in the southeastern province of Khost after they allegedly aired music and received calls from female listeners during broadcasts. They were all released on April 28.

The Taliban suspended the operations of two private TV stations based in Kabul on April 17 for violating "national and Islamic values."

The Taliban has issued "11 rules for journalists" that prohibit the publication or broadcasting of reports that are "contrary to Islam," and which discourage the reporting of news that has not been confirmed by Taliban officials.

The Taliban’s message in clear, said a print journalist based in Kabul: Do not publish or broadcast "anything critical of the government."

The Kabul-based editor says the Taliban’s ongoing persecution and harassment of journalists are forcing more journalists to abandon their professions or flee their homeland.

"Everyone I know just wants to escape abroad," they said.

‘This Is a Film About the Women’s Resistance.’ What Bread & Roses Reveals About the Feminist Fight Against the Taliban (Time)

Time [5/2/2024 10:21 AM, Yasmeen Serhan, 1386K, Neutral]
When Kabul fell to the Taliban, returning the country to the fundamentalist group’s control after two transformative decades, scores of Afghan women were compelled to flee. Those who remained faced a reality in which they could no longer be who they are: journalists deleted evidence of their work, artists destroyed their creations, and graduates set fire to their degrees.

While the Taliban forced many Afghan women to abandon their workplaces and universities, some chose to fight back. Their defiance, and the dangers that have come with it, are vividly captured in Bread and Roses, a documentary that follows three women in real time as their lives become undone by the Taliban’s return. There’s Zahra Mohammadi, 33, a newly-wed dentist whose practice quickly transforms into a meeting space for fellow activists. There’s Taranom Seyedi, 39, a women’s rights activist who is forced into exile in neighboring Pakistan. And there’s Sharifa Movahidzadeh, 31, a government employee who is now confined to her home. The film, which premiered last year at the Cannes Film Festival, is set to be released by Apple on June 21.

More than just a story about the brutality of the Taliban, Bread and Roses is “about the women’s resistance in Afghanistan,” Jennifer Lawrence, the Oscar-winning actor and producer of the film, tells TIME in a recent interview alongside award-winning Afghan filmmaker Sahra Mani, who directed the film, and Pakistani education activist Malala Yousafzai, who served as its executive producer. Ahead of the film’s wider release, the three women discuss how the project came together, the fate of its three protagonists, and what impact they hope the film will have on a world whose attention has been largely drawn elsewhere.

TIME: To start, can you talk about how this project came together?

Sahra Mani: When the Taliban took over the country in 2021, we saw them impose a lot of restrictions on women’s education, women’s movement. And later on, we saw extrajudicial killing, kidnapping, illegal detention, and a lot of women disappearing. I was witnessing everything happening and, as a filmmaker, I was thinking: what can I do? It was my goal to make a film about this situation and I was very lucky that Jennifer and Justine [Ciarrocchi] wrote an email telling me that if I want to make a film, they would be happy to support the project. That’s how this story started.

Jennifer Lawrence: When Kabul fell, I like the rest of the world was watching from the news and was devastated and desperate to get inside Afghanistan. And so Justine and I tried to look for an Afghan filmmaker, which was how we came to see A Thousand Girls Like Me, which was a stunning documentary by Sahra. So we reached out to Sahra, who was already collecting footage, to just try to support her as much as we could.

One of the most striking things about the film is that it gives viewers a first-person window into life under Taliban rule. How did you manage to do it?

Mani: Because I was not inside Afghanistan, it was a bit challenging in the beginning. [Mani was attending a film festival in Europe when Kabul fell, and has lived in exile ever since.] I managed luckily to train a camerawoman and a cameraman who were still left behind because so many film crews left the country. I focused on a dozen women who were willing to share their life with us and I trained them how to film themselves. We ended up with three characters in the film because somehow we decided to focus on young women, my age or maybe younger, to see how this situation affected them as modern women who were ready to contribute their talent to society but had to be in prison inside the home.

Malala Yousafzai: Afghanistan right now is the only country in the world that bans adolescent girls from completing their education and bans women from work and university education. All the Afghan women and experts are calling out that this is a gender apartheid that the women in Afghanistan are witnessing right now. I think there’s nothing more powerful right now than Afghan women and girls sharing their stories in their own voice. And this documentary is that platform for them.

What drew you all to these three women—Zahra Mohammadi, Taranom Seyedi, and Sharifa Movahidzadeh—in particular?

Mani: For me, these three women, their story is not unique, but [it’s] also important because it’s a story of a hundred and a thousand and a million other women under the dictatorship of the Taliban. Because the three of them belonged to three different categories of society, I thought each of them can represent their own category and their own field of work. That’s why I selected them.

What was the process of getting the footage from them? I imagine that, in such a dangerous environment, it couldn’t have been easy.

Mani: I trained them how to take the camera, how to make a frame, how to send me the footage, and, after they sent me the footage, how to clean the camera of their video. If they’re arrested, I didn’t want everyone to know that they’re involved in filming. And then I trained one camerawoman and one cameraman. I stayed on the border of Afghanistan for some time to be able to get the hard drive. I watched the video that the women took and then we would take and I’d [ask] them to correct the framing or the voice or whatever. I think they did a great job, and I really appreciate all those women who shared their lives and the really genius way they found out that this is a way we could raise our voice.

Malala, you understand better than most—having faced the Taliban in your native Pakistan—the situation that Afghan women and girls find themselves in today. What risks come with taking a stand like this?

Yousafzai: I could fully understand how brave these women were, that they took their phones and started recording their lives under the Taliban. What I went through in Swat Valley from 2007 to 2009, in a small part of Pakistan, is very similar to what Afghan women have witnessed, but for a very long time and not just once, but twice. Afghanistan fell to the Taliban back in the late 1990s as well and, around 2001, people were hoping that things were changing. Women who are in their 20s, who were still young, for them that was a story of the past. They were hoping that Afghanistan would be a much better country for women where they could go to school, they could go to work, they could be part of their political parties and their governments, which was the case.

Afghanistan had changed significantly in the past 20 years. And when you listen to the stories of Afghan girls and women, that’s what you hear—that they are so shocked that the past is repeated. But one thing which is very different this time is the resistance of Afghan women. You see it in the documentary how, each and every day, they’re coming together, writing slogans on posters, and collectively—in front of the Taliban, in their faces—calling for freedom, work, and the right to education.

If you experience your life under terrorism, the only thing you wish is that it never happens again; that it stops. And this is exactly what Afghan women wish for.

I told my story because I was hoping that people will realize what it is like for a girl or for a woman to live under that. And today, when millions of Afghan women are facing this, I want the world to connect to them, to see their story closely, and to realize that this is not OK. We cannot let this happen.

What can you tell us about the fate of the three protagonists now?

Mani: Our three characters left Afghanistan. Most of the women I knew managed to leave to Pakistan or Iran. But there are still a lot of women inside Afghanistan who couldn’t find any way to leave. Going to Pakistan or even Iran is not easy for them. They can’t afford it. Being able to leave Afghanistan is a kind of privilege that not everyone has.

Lawrence: It’s devastating, and I remember Malala’s book resonated this feeling so well: that the Taliban comes and takes over these people’s homes. Afghanistan and Pakistan, this is where these people live, this is where their families are, and the Taliban not only comes in and takes away all of their rights and their freedoms, but they steal their homes. Having to leave your own country, to leave your own family behind, in order to be safe is just a nightmare that I can’t even fathom.

What impact do you hope this film will have ?

Mani: Our hope is to [show the] international community that the human rights crisis in Afghanistan, it’s a crisis in human rights everywhere, every corner of this world. Afghan women are really hoping that the feminist community, the women’s rights community, the human community [will be] supporting them and raise their voice and don’t leave them alone. From this platform, I’m calling for all artists, filmmakers, writers, activists, researchers, and women’s communities to come together and to support women of Afghanistan because if we don’t stand against the Taliban right now, maybe tomorrow will be too late. Because they are international terrorists and we can find them everywhere and they can go everywhere and destroy our world. And remember: Afghanistan is part of our world.

Lawrence: These women need our advocacy and they need our attention. This resistance cannot be ignored, the crisis cannot be ignored because, like Sahra said, this is our safety. Children that are born from educated women are less likely to be manipulated into being soldiers for the Taliban. This is an international crisis.

Yousafzai: We also should support the activism led by Afghan women who are running campaigns to raise awareness and also pushing countries and world leaders to take action against the Taliban. There are legal ways to hold the Taliban to account, including the Crimes Against Humanity Treaty and other options. At the same time, we can also support alternative education and environment programs for Afghan women that are led by Afghan activists in the country and outside the country and it’s so important to look around in your own country and see where those Afghan communities are and how you can help them in their activism and support the Afghan girls. I have seen how brave and strong they are.

Three women have risked their lives to tell their story really powerfully to us, and they are not doing it just for themselves but they are doing it on behalf of the millions of Afghan women who may not be able to make it to the screen.

Hearings into alleged war crimes by SAS in Afghanistan delayed into 2025 (The Guardian)

The Guardian [5/2/2024 1:08 PM, Dan Sabbagh, 12499K, Negative]
Detailed hearings into alleged war crimes committed by SAS soldiers in Afghanistan at a public inquiry are likely to be delayed into 2025, prompting a row between investigators and the Ministry of Defence.

A letter, made public on Thursday, from a solicitor to the public inquiry addressed to the MoD complained of unacceptable delays in supplying evidence. The ministry responded by saying it was spending £21m to support of the investigation.

The correspondence highlights that even if the MoD hires extra legal assistants and buys specialist software, it would take until October or November to supply documents, meaning the hearings into the suspicious killings of 80 Afghans would be delayed until March 2025.

“The current situation is completely unacceptable and a most regrettable failure by the MoD to meet its responsibilities,” wrote Piers Doggart, solicitor to the inquiry, describing the number of paralegals allocated to review document disclosure as derisory.

Allegations that members of the SAS killed Afghans in cold blood, some while they slept, between 2010 and 2013 have dominated the initial stages of the judge-led inquiry. But it had been due to examine a catalogue of specific incidents in detail this year, in an attempt to establish whether there had been wrongdoing.

Male Afghans were frequently killed during night raids on compounds in Helmand after they were said to have pulled out a weapon or grenade when they were taken aside by the elite British soldiers. A lawyer for the families has accused the SAS of pursuing a policy of terminating “all fighting-age males”.

A special hearing is due on Friday in which the presiding judge Lord Justice Sir Charles Haddon-Cave will ask the MoD why it has “failed to meet deadlines for the provision of evidence,” the reason for “inadequate resources” dedicated to supporting the inquiry , and what steps will be taken to speed up disclosure.

A reply from government lawyers argued that the department had made significant commitments to support the inquiry, with an estimated 80 people involved in its response, a figure that is due to rise to 90 when 10 more paralegals join to help with document disclosure.

“Spending on the headcount for the MoD’s response is projected to be over £15m over the course of the inquiry,” and could increase further if more support was required, the Treasury solicitor acting for the MoD wrote.

“This does not include the £6m already spent on funding the inquiry team itself, a figure which will increase significantly over the course of the inquiry,” the solicitor added, taking the total spend on the inquiry to £21m.

The government lawyer apologised to the inquiry that Haddon-Cave had “felt compelled” to raise these concerns and to arrange a hearing to explore them, and said that Grant Shapps, the defence secretary, had made a commitment to ensure the inquiry would continue its work.

Delays had been caused, the solicitor said, by the sheer number of documents sought, the availability of legal resource and the complexities of searching secret and top-secret computer systems at a time when “the need must be clearly identified and proven” to spend significant sums of public money.

Pakistan

Exclusive: Imran Khan hits out at ‘laughing stock’ government from his prison cell (The Telegraph)

The Telegraph [5/2/2024 5:30 PM, Ben Farmer, 1824K, Negative]
Pakistan is at a “dangerous crossroads” after a flawed election which has left the government a laughing stock, jailed former prime minister Imran Khan has said.

Writing for The Telegraph from behind bars, the cricketer-turned-politician says the nuclear-armed country of 240 million people is in economic crisis and riven by political anger after February’s widely-criticised polls.

Mr Khan, who is serving lengthy corruption and national security sentences which he alleges are politically motivated, also raises the possibility that the country’s military leadership might attempt to assassinate him.

The world’s fifth most populous country has been buffeted by political turmoil for more than two years since Mr Khan was ousted as prime minister in a parliamentary no-confidence vote.

The 71-year-old was widely seen as having been edged out by the country’s powerful military establishment after falling out with its leadership during his administration.

He has since been hit with an avalanche of dozens of court cases, while his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) party faced a stiff crackdown during campaigning for the February election.

Shehbaz Sharif, of the Pakistan Muslim League became prime minister of a coalition government after that election, but the UK at the time said there were “serious concerns...about the fairness and lack of inclusivity” of the poll.

The election saw widespread claims of rigging and irregularities after the polls closed, following an unexpectedly strong early showing for the PTI. Candidates backed by the PTI still won the highest number of seats in the national assembly.

The US State Department said at the time it was “concerned about allegations of interference in the electoral process. Claims of interference or fraud should be fully investigated.”

In an opinion piece for the Telegraph, Mr Khan says: “The people have shown in no uncertain terms their rejection of state electoral machinations and of the oppression, incarceration and torture of not just the PTI leadership but also of its workers.

“The military leadership has been subjected to overt criticism at a level unseen before in our history. The government is a laughing stock.”

The former cricketer is still fighting a barrage of court cases, after being given his lengthy sentences and being banned from political office in the run-up to the election.

Mr Khan was given a three-year jail term last August in a corruption case and in the days before the election was then given further sentences including 14 years for illegally selling state gifts and 10 years for revealing state secrets.

The ex-prime minister says the cases are an attempt to keep him out of politics.

He says: “The establishment has done all they could against me. All that is left for them is to now murder me. I have stated publicly that if anything happens to me or my wife, the Chief of Army Staff Gen Asim Munir will be responsible.

“But I am not afraid because my faith is strong. I would prefer death over slavery.”

He says the only route out of the country’s turmoil is “to restore the people’s mandate and release all political prisoners including those being held for trial under military courts”.

Pakistan’s political turmoil has struck a country already dealing with galloping inflation and an economic crisis, as well as worsening terrorism along its border with Afghanistan.

Mr Sharif earlier this week said he hoped the disbursement of $1.1 billion (£900 million) from the International Monetary Fund would “bring more economic stability in Pakistan”.

Its £280 billion economy faces a chronic balance of payments crisis, with nearly £19 billion to repay in debt and interest over the next fiscal year – three-times more than its central bank’s foreign currency reserves.

All that’s left for them now is to murder me … I’m not afraid to die (The Telegraph – opinion)

The Telegraph [5/2/2024 5:30 PM, Imran Khan, 1824K, Negative]
Today, Pakistan and its people stand in confrontation with each other. Almost two years ago, an engineered vote of no confidence was moved against my government and a government cobbled together by the military establishment came into being.

Since then, the military establishment, under direct guidance of Gen Asim Munir, the chief of army staff, has tried every tactic to decimate my party’s presence from the political environment of Pakistan.

The oppression, torture and denial of our election symbol have been extensively documented, but nothing has worked for the military and the powerless civilian leadership acting as its puppets.

Pakistan’s general elections on Feb 8 2024, showed the utter failure of their design.

With no single electoral symbol in a country where the vast majority of voters are guided by a party symbol, the people came out and voted overwhelmingly for candidates supported by my party, the Pakistan Tehreek e Insaf (PTI), despite standing as “independents” with a host of diverse symbols.

This democratic revenge by the people of Pakistan against the agenda of the military establishment not only was a national defiance by the people but also a complete rejection of the official state narrative of May 9 2023, when PTI supporters were falsely accused – as a pretext for a crackdown – of attacking military installations.

Unfortunately, instead of accepting the people’s mandate, the military establishment went into a fit of rage and electoral results were manipulated to bring into power the losers.

The same vote tampering was seen in the recent by-elections.

As a result, today Pakistan is at a dangerous crossroads. The people have shown in no uncertain terms their rejection of state electoral machinations and of the oppression, incarceration and torture of not just the PTI leadership but also of its workers.

The military leadership has been subjected to overt criticism at a level unseen before in our history. The government is a laughing stock.

More oppression and violence

The response of the state has been to unleash more oppression and violence not just on party workers but also on journalists and human rights defenders. Social media restrictions have been put in place with a complete ban on the X platform.

Perhaps the most ominous development has been the systematic attempt to destroy the independent functioning of the judiciary at all levels.

Judges have been subjected to all manner of pressures including blackmail and harassment of family members. As a result, our trials on false charges are conducted with no proper defence allowed and no concern for the law of the land and the constitution.

The chief justice of Pakistan (CJP) and of the Islamabad High Court have been found short of delivering unbiased justice.

But members of the senior judiciary have risen against the attempted destruction of the independence of the judiciary. Six brave judges of the Islamabad High Court have written a letter to the CJP highlighting instances of harassment and blackmail including of their families by intelligence agencies. Specific instances are cited and details given.

This is unprecedented in our history – although, informally, many knew what was happening to the senior judiciary but for such a letter to have come from these judges shows the level of despair, anger and frustration.

The sorry state of judicial affairs is reflected in the hesitancy shown by the CJP, who eventually felt compelled to act but instead of calling for a full bench hearing of the supreme court and summoning those named by the six judges, he has sought to put the six judges effectively in the dock.

With an economy in crisis, spiralling prices and a people politically angry at having their electoral mandate stolen and being economically beleaguered, the state stands isolated.

Unwilling to mitigate its grave errors which have led Pakistan to this precarious juncture and unable to go beyond its mantra of oppression and violence against critics, the State is treading the same path it trod in 1971, when it lost East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

Upsurge in terrorism

At the same time, it is seeing an upsurge in terrorism and a growing alienation in Balochistan where the issue of enforced disappearances is growing in severity. On Pakistan’s borders, India has already admitted to undertaking assassinations inside of Pakistan and the international border with Afghanistan remains volatile.

The military establishment’s expectation of unquestioning support from the US, in return for the provision of access to airspace and related facilities to the US for military purposes, has been punctured after the publication of the latest US state department’s Country Reports on Human Rights Practices which highlights the many human rights violations in Pakistan.

Again, seeking salvation by relying on support from the International Monetary Fund when there is a confrontation with the people will not result in any stability for Pakistan. There is no other way out of the crisis but to restore the people’s mandate and release all political prisoners including those being held for trial under military courts. The constitutional functioning of state institutions must be restored.

The military establishment has done all they could against me. All that is left for them is to now murder me. I have stated publicly that if anything happens to me or my wife, Gen Asim Munir will be responsible.

But I am not afraid because my faith is strong. I would prefer death over slavery.

Double landmine blast kills one person and wounds at least 18 in Pakistan’s southwest (AP)

AP [5/2/2024 11:15 AM, Staff, 22K, Negative]
Double land mine blasts killed one person and wounded at least 18 on Thursday in Pakistan’s southwest, a police officer said.

The first mine exploded when a truck was passing through a valley in coal-rich Duki district in Baluchistan province. The second detonated when counter-terrorism officials and civilians were examining the initial blast site, said district police officer Asif Haleem.

No one immediately claimed responsibility for the blast. But Baluch separatist groups have previously struck security personnel or infrastructure in the southwest.

They initially wanted a greater share of provincial resources, but later initiated an insurgency for independence from the central government.

Also on Thursday, an Islamabad-based think tank said that militant assaults killed 70 people nationwide in April, mostly in northwest Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.

The Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies also said the country experienced 323 militant attacks in the first four months of the year, resulting in 324 deaths.

Such incidents are unusual in eastern Punjab province, but police said militants from banned groups are responsible for killing three uniformed officers in Lahore city during the past 10 days.

Inspector General of Punjab Usman Anwar urged people to report any suspicious activity.

A report issued in January by another think tank, the Pak Institute for Peace Studies, said there were 306 attacks last year, killing 693 people.

Bus falls into ravine in Pakistan’s far north, killing 20 (Reuters)

Reuters [5/3/2024 4:04 AM, Mushtaq Ali, 5.2M, Negative]
A bus veered into a ravine in Pakistan’s far north early on Friday, a local government spokesman said, killing 20 passengers, while 21 injured were rescued and taken to hospital.

The bus was headed to the mountainous northern area of Gilgit-Baltistan from the garrison city of Rawalpindi in Pakistan’s eastern province of Punjab, when the accident happened in the early hours.

"The bus was passing through Diamer district in Gilgit-Baltistan when it fell into a deep ravine," Faizullah Firaq, a spokesman for local government authorities in the area, told Reuters, adding that 21 people were injured.

The government immediately launched a rescue operation to evacuate all the injured, who were taken to hospital, he added.

Fatal road accidents are common in Pakistan, where traffic rules are rarely followed and roads in many rural areas are in poor condition.

For decades Pakistan has done extensive work in carving roads through its dramatic rugged northern terrain, home to some of the world’s highest mountain ranges, approached by narrow roads perched on sheer cliffs.

Militant attacks, including one in March nearby in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa that killed six people, pose another risk to travellers in the area, targeting Chinese-backed dams and hydropower infrastructure projects.

Why are Pakistan’s wheat farmers protesting against the government? (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera [5/3/2024 12:00 AM, Abid Hussain, 2.1M, Neutral]
Tens of thousands of farmers in Pakistan are holding protests in several cities over the government’s decision not to buy their wheat, causing them huge losses in income.

The farmers in Punjab, the country’s largest province and often called the “bread basket” of Pakistan, are demanding that the government stop wheat imports that have flooded the market at a time when they expect bumper crops.

At a protest in Lahore, the provincial capital, on Monday, police violently pushed back the farmers with batons and arrested dozens of them.

Here is what we know about the issue so far:

What triggered the protests?

The farmers are furious about the import of wheat in the second half of last year and the first three months of this year, resulting in an excess of wheat in the market and reducing prices.

Agriculture is one of the most significant income sectors in Pakistan, making up nearly 23 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country. Wheat makes up 2 percent of the whole.

Following devastating floods in Pakistan in 2022, the impact on wheat farming caused a shortage of wheat in early 2023. While Pakistan consumes around 30 million tonnes of wheat per year, only 26.2 million tonnes were produced in 2022, pushing up prices and resulting in long queues of people in cities trying to buy wheat. There were even instances of people being crushed in crowds trying to access wheat.

The Pakistan Democratic Movement (PDM), the ruling coalition at the time, decided to allow the private sector to import wheat in July 2023, just a month before the end of its tenure in government.

According to figures from the Ministry of National Food Security and Research, between September 2023 and March 2024, more than 3.5 million tonnes of wheat were imported into Pakistan from the international market, where prices were much lower.

As a result of the excess, at the beginning of April this year, when Pakistan’s farmers started harvesting their wheat, the country’s national and provincial food storage department was holding more than 4.3 million tonnes of wheat in its stocks.

Usually, the government purchases around 20 percent of all the wheat produced by local farmers at a fixed price (about 5.6 million tonnes, based on a 2023 yield of 28 million tonnes). This intervention in the market, it says, ensures price stability, prevents hoarding and maintains the supply chain. This year, however, it has announced that it will purchase only 2 million tonnes of wheat from Pakistani farmers.

If farmers produce as much wheat this year as they did last year – and in fact, they expect to produce more – that represents around only 7 percent of total produce, leaving farmers out of pocket, they say.

Khalid Mehmood Khokhar, president of the farmers’ organisation Pakistan Kissan Ittehad (PKI) and a farmer from the city of Multan in Punjab, said that also allowing private importers to bring unlimited wheat into the country last year means that farmers will now have to sell what they can to other sources at much-reduced prices – and they will suffer great losses.

“With a bumper crop, we are expected to grow nearly 32 million metric tonnes of wheat this year, but with the government’s coffers already full of wheat, we will be able to sell not more than 50 percent of our crop. This could result in losses of nearly 380 billion rupees ($1.4bn),” Khokhar told Al Jazeera.

Why does it matter how much wheat the government buys?

According to Adil Mansoor, a Karachi-based food security analyst and researcher, the government’s purchase of domestic wheat each year helps to set the price at which the rest of the farmers’ wheat is sold to flour millers and others in the market.

“When everybody knows that the single largest buyer [the government] will purchase the wheat at a certain price, it means that the rest of the market functions accordingly as the government has set a reference price, and sells goods on that price,” he explained.

What do the farmers say?

Ishfaq Jatt, a wheat and cotton farmer who owns 4.8 hectares (12 acres) of land in Khanewal, Punjab, said the production cost for wheat has risen sharply due to the high price of fertiliser, water and other requirements for growing wheat.

“Now we farmers also have to sell the wheat to middlemen at a much-reduced rate, incurring losses for us,” Jatt told Al Jazeera. “I have a small farm. I do not have any space to store the wheat I have grown. What will I do with it? And if I don’t earn from my harvest, how can I sow my next crops?”

He added that many farmers may opt to avoid planting wheat in future years if they feel they “cannot trust the government anymore”.

What does the government say?

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif has ordered an investigation into the wheat crisis.

Bilal Yasin, provincial food minister for Punjab, told the provincial assembly earlier this week that the crisis had been caused by decisions made by the caretaker government that took over in August last year after the tenure of the previous elected government came to an end. Elections, which should have been held within three months, were delayed by the need to redraw constituencies following the latest census. They were eventually held in February this year.

“Those people who allowed the import of the wheat close to wheat harvest season are responsible for this crisis. However, despite this, the government will fully support the small farmers,” the minister said.

Al Jazeera reached out to the food minister for further comment, but did not receive a response.

How will consumers be affected?

Mansoor said the government’s decision not to buy the excess wheat this year “reeks of poor planning and management”, but he pointed out that it will ultimately benefit consumers who have been hard hit by the cost-of-living crisis, as the price of wheat will fall.

“Farmers are naturally going to be very upset, with some incurring massive losses. But if consumers are getting benefit, is it a bad situation?” Mansoor asked.

Pakistan has been hit by skyrocketing prices over the past two years. At its high, inflation stood at nearly 38 percent in May 2023.

However, government action to tackle inflation – along with loans from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – have brought relative stability, with inflation dropping to 17 percent in April, its lowest in more than two years.

Mansoor also welcomed the government’s effective retreat from interfering in the market.

“The government should have communicated better to farmers about their plan of not purchasing wheat from them. But in the long term, it is a good thing that the government exits from the market,” he said. “This cannot be done overnight, but gradually, it should phase out its involvement in coming years.”

India

Biden Calls Japan and India ‘Xenophobic’ in Defending U.S. Immigration (New York Times)

New York Times [5/2/2024 4:14 PM, Michael D. Shear, 831K, Neutral]
For months, President Biden has been under pressure to prove he can be tough at the border. But at a campaign reception on Wednesday night, he also tried to voice his commitment to America’s long history of immigration.

He did so by taking a swipe at two of America’s partners, saying that Japan and India are struggling economically “because they’re xenophobic.” He said the two democratic countries, along with China and Russia, “don’t want immigrants.”

“Immigrants are what makes us strong,” the president told the crowd of supporters. “Not a joke. That’s not hyperbole, because we have an influx of workers who want to be here and want to contribute.”

The comments have the potential to be a diplomatic irritant for the administration, which has spent years courting the governments of both Japan and India as part of the president’s strategy to counter Chinese aggression in the region. Japan and India are two of the five allies Mr. Biden has hosted with state dinners at the White House since taking office.

John F. Kirby, the national security spokesman at the White House, told reporters Thursday that Mr. Biden was trying to make a comment about America’s immigrant “DNA,” not insult other countries. And he insisted that officials in India and Japan understand that.

“Our allies and partners know well in tangible ways how President Biden values them, their friendship, their cooperation,” Mr. Kirby said.

But the president’s comments also underscore how Mr. Biden is trying to find a politically palatable balance on immigration as he seeks a second term in the White House.

In response to anger from Republicans and Democrats about historic surges of migrants at the southern border, the president signed off on the most restrictive immigration legislation in years. That legislation stalled in Congress, but now Mr. Biden is considering whether to use his executive power to enact a severe crackdown on asylum on his own.

At the same time, Mr. Biden is trying to assert the moral high ground on the country’s treatment of migrants by drawing a contrast with former President Donald J. Trump and his yearslong assault on immigration.

During the 2020 campaign, Mr. Biden repeatedly attacked Mr. Trump for supporting what he called racist and xenophobic policies. On his first day in office, Mr. Biden proposed a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system that would have expanded rights for immigrants.

Many advocates for immigrants have said they expected explicit support for what the president called a “humane” approach to immigration to continue in Mr. Biden’s White House. But the reality has been more complicated.

As the situation on the border worsened, demands for tougher action grew — even from the president’s Democratic allies in big cities like Chicago, New York and Denver. While Mr. Biden has proposed new legal options for some migrants to enter the United States, his policies and rhetoric have become more forceful.

In January, as Congress was considering the immigration legislation, Mr. Biden said he was eager to use it to shut down the border.

“If given that authority,” he said, “I would use it the day I sign the bill into law.”

Maribel Hernández Rivera, the director of policy and government affairs for the border and immigration at the A.C.L.U., said Thursday that she hoped the president’s comments at the fund-raiser indicated that he was reconsidering some of those tougher proposals.

“The first thing he did was propose immigration reform, right? So that was a good thing,” she said, referring to Mr. Biden’s early actions as president. “We also, unfortunately, have seen other policies that are not helpful, such as trying to limit asylum, access to asylum for vulnerable people.”

She added: “Banning asylum in any way goes against both international and national domestic laws. That is not the solution.”

On Thursday, Mr. Kirby sought to emphasize that the president believed in the importance of immigration to the economic success of the United States.

“Look, I think the broader point that the president was making, and I think people all around the world recognize this, that the United States is a nation of immigrants and it’s in our DNA,” he said. “We’re better for it. We’re stronger for it. We’re not going to walk away from it. And that’s the broader point that he would make.”

India criticizes 2024 religious freedom report from US agency (VOA)

VOA [5/2/2024 6:03 PM, Staff, 761K, Neutral]
India on Thursday condemned a U.S. report released this week on religious freedom, which advised the U.S. State Department to designate India and 16 others as Countries of Particular Concern.

Addressing a news conference, India’s Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal called the report "propaganda on India."

Countries are added to the CPC list because of "particularly severe violations of religious freedom," according to the U.S. State Department.

The report was released Wednesday by the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, or USCIRF, an independent bipartisan agency that annually releases policy recommendations to the U.S. government on international religious freedom.

The report recommended that 12 countries designated in 2023 by the U.S. State Department to be of "particular concern" be named again on the 2024 list, including China and Russia. This year’s report added five new countries: Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Nigeria, Vietnam and India.

It also recommended the redesignation of seven nonstate actors as Entities of Particular Concern, including groups like al-Shabab and Boko Haram.

Eleven nations were recommended to be added to the State Department’s special watch list for "perpetration or toleration of severe violations of religious freedom."

"We really have no expectation that USCIRF will even seek to understand India’s diverse, pluralistic and democratic ethos," Jaiswal said at the news conference, adding that "their efforts to interfere in the largest electoral exercise in the world will never succeed." National elections are currently under way in India.

USCIRF’s report on India said, "The government, led by [President Narendra Modi’s ruling] Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), reinforced discriminatory nationalist policies, perpetuated hateful rhetoric and failed to address communal violence."

It said that this violence "disproportionately" affects Muslims, Christians, Sikhs, Dalits, Jews and Adivasis, or indigenous peoples.

In addition to recommending that the U.S. government designate India as a Country of Particular Concern, it recommended sanctions against those responsible for religious freedom violations.

The commission further advised the U.S. Congress to provide financial assistance and arms sales to India only under the condition that religious freedom conditions improve.

India deports Myanmar refugees who fled 2021 coup (Reuters)

Reuters [5/2/2024 7:37 AM, Tora Agarwala, 6098K, Negative]
India on Thursday deported the first group of Myanmar refugees who had sought shelter after a 2021 military coup, a top state minister said, following weeks of efforts that were hampered by fighting between Myanmar’s rebel forces and the ruling junta.

Thousands of civilians and hundreds of troops from Myanmar have crossed the border to India after the coup. This has worried New Delhi, which has announced plans to fence its border with Myanmar and end a visa-free movement policy.

At least 38 refugees were deported on Thursday by the border state of Manipur, which plans send back a total of 77 people as it copes with sporadic violence that has killed at least 220 people since ethnic clashes broke out in May last year.

"Without any discrimination, we have completed the first phase of deportation of illegal immigrants from Myanmar," Manipur Chief Minister N. Biren Singh said in a social media post. "The state government is continuing the identification of illegal immigrants."

One Indian national was also repatriated by Myanmar, Singh added.

New Delhi has not signed the 1951 U.N. Refugee Convention, which spells out refugee rights and states’ responsibilities to protect them, and it does not have its own laws protecting refugees.

Singh, who is from Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, said in March deportations had begun, but Indian security officials said the efforts were held up by fighting in Myanmar.

Modi is seeking a rare third straight term in ongoing national elections and his government has blamed the refugee influx as one reason for violence that has roiled Manipur.

High security in India’s Manipur on anniversary of ethnic clashes (Reuters)

Reuters [5/2/2024 11:40 PM, Tora Agarwala, 11975K, Negative]
Security forces were on heightened alert in India’s troubled northeastern state of Manipur on Friday, the first anniversary of the start of clashes between the majority Meitei community and tribal Kukis that have killed at least 220 people.

The remote state bordering Myanmar has been hit by violence since May 3 last year after a court ordered the state government to consider extending special economic benefits and quotas in government jobs and education enjoyed by the Kukis to the majority Meiteis as well.

Although much of the violence was put down within days, sporadic clashes, gun battles and bomb attacks have continued in the state of 3.2 million people.

The region has become divided into a valley controlled by Meiteis and the Kuki-dominated hills, separated by a stretch of no-man’s land monitored by federal paramilitary forces, with some 60,000 displaced people living in relief camps.

"Elaborate preventive measures are in place," a top state police officer said, without giving details about security measures in a state where thousands of extra troops and federal police have been sent in the last year.

The Kuki Inpi Manipur, the apex body of the Kukis, said it will observe May 3 as "Kuki-Zo Awakening Day", or a day for "introspection" and "self-realisation".

The Kuki-dominated hill districts will hold mass prayers in the morning at churches followed by meetings to commemorate those who lost their lives during the past year.

The Indigenous Tribal Leaders Forum (ITLF), another body representing Kuki interests, has called for a shutdown through the day in the Kuki-dominated district of Churachandpur to "honour the sacrifices and struggles of our warriors".

In the Meitei-controlled valley, the Coordinating Committee on Manipur Integrity (COCOMI), a civil society organisation, will launch a booklet highlighting key issues of the conflict.

"It has been one year of this long crisis. We will be condemning the kind of injustice that has been meted out to the indigenous people (Meiteis) of Manipur," COCOMI spokesperson Kh. Athouba said.

The violence in Manipur has been sporadic and security officials have described the quiet periods as "apparent peace".

"Both communities don’t trust each other because they have not had any formal talks yet about the root cause, or the way forward," said a senior police officer, who did not want to be named as he was not authorised to speak to the media.

Many residents say there is widespread disappointment over the inability of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to end what critics have called a mixture of anarchy and civil war in the state, governed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party.

Rahul Gandhi to Contest Key Seat in Uttar Pradesh in India Polls (Bloomberg)

Bloomberg [5/2/2024 11:27 PM, Swati Gupta, 5543K, Negative]
India’s main opposition party selected Rahul Gandhi as its candidate to contest a key seat in Uttar Pradesh state previously held by his mother.

Gandhi will contest the election in Raebareli, the Indian National Congress said in a post on social media platform X on Friday, a seat that Sonia Gandhi held for four terms. Rahul Gandhi is also contesting elections from Wayanad constituency in the southern state of Kerala.

The party will field Kishori Lal Sharma as its candidate for Amethi constituency in Uttar Pradesh, a seat it lost to the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party in 2019 elections.

The announcement ends weeks of speculation over who will contest the election in the Gandhi family strongholds. Rahul’s sister Priyanka, who is the Congress party’s general secretary, was seen as a possible contender for one of the posts.

Elections are currently underway in India for the 543 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Lok Sabha. The BJP is widely expected to win a majority, giving Prime Minister Narendra Modi a third term in power.

The Gandhi siblings belong to the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty. Their great grandfather, grandmother and father were all prime ministers of India. Their father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in 1991. His widow Sonia led the party when a Congress-led alliance last held power from 2004-2014, with Manmohan Singh as the country’s prime minister.

Rahul Gandhi, 53, remains the face of the Congress party even after resigning as its president in 2019 following the party’s routing in the elections against Modi’s BJP. Critics have questioned Gandhi’s leadership abilities, while he’s often portrayed by Modi and the BJP as being out of touch with voters.

India’s opposition Congress leader Rahul Gandhi to contest elections from Raebareli too (Reuters)

Reuters [5/2/2024 11:07 PM, YP Rajesh, 5239K, Neutral]
India’s main opposition Congress party said on Friday that Rahul Gandhi, the face of the party and its former president, will contest general elections from the family bastion seat of Raebareli in north India as well.

The decision of the party and the family to field Gandhi from the seat in Uttar Pradesh state signals their confidence to take on the political might of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

It is also expected to boost the morale of party members in a key state from which it has been almost wiped out by BJP and regional players. Uttar Pradesh is India’s most populous and elects the most lawmakers and a party needs to win a large number of seats here to win power nationally.

India’s general elections got underway on April 19 and the country will vote in seven phases until June 1, with votes set to be counted on June 4.

Congress has ruled India for 54 of its 76 years since independence from Britain, and members of the Nehru-Gandhi family were prime ministers for more than 37 of those 54 years.

The adjoining seats of Raebareli and Amethi have been strongholds of the family for decades as they have elected generations of Gandhis or their close relatives since the 1950s.

However, the party itself has sunk to historical lows since it was swept out of power by Modi in 2014 and has been struggling to revive itself.

While Rahul Gandhi’s Italian-born mother Sonia won from Raebareli in 2019 - the only seat Congress won of the 80 in Uttar Pradesh - Rahul lost from Amethi in a shocking defeat at the hands of BJP minister Smriti Irani.

He entered parliament from the second seat he had contested from Wayanad in the southern state of Kerala. He is in the fray from Wayanad, which voted on April 26, this time as well.

This year, Sonia decided against contesting from Raebareli and instead entered the upper house of parliament through indirect elections.

Local media reports had since said that her daughter Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, 52, was likely to make her electoral debut and contest from Raebareli while Rahul Gandhi, 53, would stick to Amethi.

India allows a candidate to contest more than one seat but they can keep only one if they record multiple victories.

‘Vote jihad’: As Modi raises anti-Muslim India election pitch, what’s next? (Al Jazeera)

Al Jazeera [5/3/2024 12:00 AM, Yashraj Sharma, 2.1M, Neutral]
Speaking to a saffron-clothed crowd of supporters in his home state of Gujarat earlier this week, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi turned to an increasingly favoured electoral theme – how opposition parties are collaborating with Muslims to plot a takeover of the nation.

“[The opposition alliance] is asking Muslims to do ‘vote jihad’. This is new because we have so far heard about ‘love jihad’ and ‘land jihad’,” said Modi, referring to a string of Islamophobic conspiracy theories, before emphasising to his audience why they needed to be fearful. “I hope you all know what the meaning of jihad is and against whom it is waged,”

As India’s giant national election nears its mid-point, with the third of seven phases of voting scheduled for May 7, Modi’s rhetoric against Muslims is growing shriller. That’s worrying analysts and even Muslims who backed the prime minister until recently but now fear that the rhetoric risks serving as oxygen for increased physical violence against Indian Muslims.

His latest remarks came after a local leader of the opposition Samajwadi Party, Maria Alam, addressed a gathering in the northern Indian state of Uttar Pradesh, asking Muslims to carry out a “jihad” of “votes”, as “that is the only jihad” that they could carry out to remove Modi from power. After Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) attacked her for the use of “jihad” in her speech, she clarified to the press that by “jihad”, Arabic for struggle, she was encouraging Muslim voter participation.

Modi, in his speech, however, suggested that a call for “vote jihad” was “dangerous for the country’s democracy”. Critics and opposition leaders, however, allege that the PM’s words, targeted against India’s 200 million Muslims, are what are troubling for India, especially in the middle of a tense election, in which 960 million voters have registered to cast their votes.

‘Infiltrators’, ‘invaders’, ‘looters’

In a campaign speech last week, Modi equated the Muslim community with “infiltrators” and described them as “those who have more children”, pandering to a popular Hindu majoritarian trope that Muslims produce more children, with the aim of eventually outnumbering Hindus in India. In reality, Muslims constitute less than 15 percent of the national population, and government data shows their fertility rate is going down faster than that of Hindus and other major religious groups.

Those comments set off a political row, inviting sharp criticism from the opposition and sections of civil society. Nearly 20,000 citizens wrote to the Election Commission of India to act against the accusations of hate speech by Modi.

Yet, two days later, on 23 April, Modi doubled down on his comments claiming a conspiracy hatched by the Congress — the country’s principal opposition party — and Muslims to steal Hindu wealth.

“I presented the truth before the nation that the Congress has hatched a deep conspiracy to snatch your property and distribute it among their special favourites,” he said, in reference to Muslims.

Then, on April 30, the BJP published an animated campaign video on Instagram, showing stereotypical portrayals of violent and greedy Muslim male raiders attacking medieval India and plundering her wealth, before Modi arrives to rescue the nation. The video again peddled the PM’s assertions that that the Congress, if elected, will distribute Hindu wealth and property among Muslims.

While former Congress Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had said, 18 years ago, that disadvantaged Indian communities, including Muslims, should have first access to national resources, the Congress campaign manifesto does not make any reference to taking wealth away from one community to give it to any other group. Other conspiracy theories that Modi has referenced publicly in recent days include the notions of ‘love jihad’ – that Muslim men are marrying women from other faiths in order to convert them to Islam – and ‘land jihad’ – that Muslims are hoarding land to gain control of the terrain of India.

None of this is surprising to Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a Modi biographer, who said that religious polarisation has been second nature to Modi for decades. “Indian democracy has been badly brutalised by the BJP and Modi,” he told Al Jazeera. “This is perhaps the worst time to be a Muslim in India today, who all the time now feel they are prisoners of their identity.”

While Instagram took down the April 30 video after multiple users reported it for hate speech, India’s election commission is yet to act on complaints against Modi, leading to criticism by opposition leaders.

“Modi has disgraced the dignity of the PM post; his words can never be words coming out of an Indian prime minister’s mouth,” said Congress legislator Pramod Tiwari, the leader of the opposition in the upper house of the Indian parliament.

“Democracy is at stake in these elections and the election commission of India is sleeping over it,” he said, speaking with Al Jazeera. “The Congress party calls for the disqualification of Modi’s candidature and he should be barred from campaigning.”

Al Jazeera reached out to three BJP spokespersons for a response to the allegations against Modi, but they did not comment.

‘Trigger more hatred’

Meanwhile, critics say that Modi’s “hateful remarks” have left Muslims more vulnerable to violence. “These remarks are likely to make the Hindutva workers feel vindicated due to support by the country’s highest office. They would feel the patronage,” said Irfan Engineer, director of the Mumbai-based Centre for Study of Society and Secularism. Hindutva refers to the Hindu-majoritarian ideology of the BJP and its ideological mentor, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).

“I hope these remarks do not trigger more hatred and violence – but that’s a hope against hope.”

Engineer has monitored communal violence for decades and visited affected areas with fact-finding teams, he said, adding that “these kinds of speeches and rallies have sparked violence” in areas otherwise known for inter-religious harmony.

Amnesty International said it too was worried about the consequences of Modi’s remarks.

“Institutions created to monitor such speech during elections should be working to bring to account those responsible for such remarks, however, so far, we have only seen an unfortunate condoning of such incitement and hostility by the Election Commission of India,” said Aakar Patel, the chair of the board of Amnesty International in India, in a statement to Al Jazeera.

“This widespread impunity signals the extension and intensification of the systematic discrimination suffered by Muslims in India.”

Where Modi has previously portrayed himself as a victim of opposition attacks – alluding to his childhood in relative poverty as opposed to the privilege many opposition leaders grew up with, for instance – “this time, he has moved on from himself and instilled a victimhood in the entire Hindu community”, said Engineer.

“This is the ultimate point of the Hindu nationalist movement, where all Hindus are victims – and, therefore, you need a strong state with no place for democratic institutions, freedom of speech, or [freedom of] religion.”

‘Subsumed by the individual’

Research suggests that at least in some parts of India, Muslim support for the BJP, though tiny, is slowly growing. It went up from under 5 percent in 2012 to more than 9 percent in 2022, in Uttar Pradesh, India’s largest and most politically significant state.

Yet, Mukhopadhyay, Modi’s biographer, said even those Indian Muslims who have supported Modi are today vulnerable. “Modi will still come and attack Muslims,” he said.

That turned true for Usman Ghani, a young political leader from the northwestern state of Rajasthan. Ghani joined the student wing of the BJP during college and rose to become his district’s minority-wing president. A few months ago, he welcomed Modi during the state election campaign.

However, when he went for poll outreach, he said the voters made him respond to PM Modi’s remarks against the community, which he called “nonsense”. He was expelled from the party and then was detained by the local police in the BJP-ruled state.

“Modi is a bigger cult than anyone has ever been [in the Hindutva movement],” Mukhopadhyay said. “Is this an election or an individual glorification drive?”

“The Hindutva movement has been subsumed by the individual. And it is a great paradox because, for the Sangh [RSS] family, no individual is above the organisation.”

A New Delhi-based political commentator, who requested anonymity fearing repercussions to their work, said Modi’s focus on anti-Muslim fears could be a reaction to lower-than-usual voter turnouts in the first two phases of the national election. “Nobody is buying Modi’s economic development pitch any more, so he is, of course, polarising the voters.”

Yet, despite record-high unemployment, widening income and wealth inequality, and backsliding on democratic indices, polls position Modi as the favourite to return to power for a third time.

“If the 2014 mandate was for so-called development and the 2019 was for nationalism, now, in 2024, Modi will feel more confident that he won votes for polarisation,” Engineer said. “Anti-Muslim hate is now central to the BJP’s campaign.”

NSB

Bangladesh influencers push tree planting to fight record heat (Reuters)

Reuters [5/2/2024 7:33 AM, Md. Tahmid Zami and Mosabber Hossain, 11975K, Neutral]
With heat-related deaths mounting, the tarmac on roads melting and desperate people gathering in mosques to pray for an end to the deadly heatwave ravaging Bangladesh, the call went out from cyberspace: plant more trees.

The worst heatwave in seven decades is particularly unbearable in the capital Dhaka with temperatures reaching as high as 43 degrees Celsius (109 Fahrenheit) in a crowded city that has been steadily stripped of the trees, lakes and ponds that once offered its residents relief and shelter.

Now social media influencers are urging their followers to plant trees in a bid to make the city, and country, more liveable during heatwaves, which scientists say are becoming more frequent, more severe and longer because of climate change.

In late April, Peya Jannatul, a model, actress and lawyer, asked her 1.6 million followers on Facebook to go out and plant 10 trees each.

A student group linked to the ruling Awami League party launched a campaign on April 21 to plant 500,000 trees in just 10 days, while a popular cleric urged his 4.3 million Facebook followers to donate money to plant 300,000 trees.

Green Savers, which allows people to sponsor tree planting across 22 districts, is helping translate the calls for tree planting into action.

"We are seeing a surge of interest in our tree sponsorship programme," said Ahsan Rony, the CEO of Green Savers, which also trains gardeners.

A sponsor donates less than $2 to plant a tree at a poor family’s home and can then digitally track the tree and see how the host family is benefitting. Since 2012, 66,000 trees have been planted across the country under the programme, Rony said.

Photographer Mahmud Rahman has harnessed social media to encourage others to help him turn a rubbish-filled space near his home beside Dhaka’s Gulshan Lake into a verdant oasis bright with colourful flowers.

Through his Facebook page, Rahman encourages other residents and visitors to volunteer to help plant 50-60 varieties of plants and herbs along the kilometre-long Gulshan-2 lakeside.

Treena Bishop, a U.S. citizen living in the neighbourhood, was one of the volunteers.

"This is a great example of how the community is contributing to tree plantation in Dhaka... and I hope everybody should know how it works so that they can follow it," she said.

THE RIGHT TREE AT THE RIGHT TIME

The heatwave scorching Bangladesh is taking a heavy toll across the region -- tens of people have died in several countries, schools have been closed and authorities are warning of forest fires, heat stroke and dehydration.

The U.N. World Meteorological Organization said this month that Asia is warming faster than the global average and was the most disaster-hit region by climate-related hazards last year.

Trees can help mitigate heatwaves by cooling cities but Dhaka is ill-prepared. Rapid, unplanned growth as migrants flocked to the city, sometimes to escape the effects of climate change along the coast and rivers, saw trees being cut down to make space for concrete buildings and other development.

And environmental activists warn that planting new trees, especially in the searing heat of summer, is not always the best answer in this mega-city of 23 million people.

"It does not make sense to plant new saplings every year if we cannot protect mature trees with large canopy that give shade and shelter to not only heat-stricken people but also to the city’s birds, beasts, and insects," said Amirul Rajiv, a photographer and activist who organised a movement last year to protect hundreds of trees in the city’s Dhanmondi neighbourhood.

It is also important to choose the right trees, said Mohammad Zashim Uddin, professor of botany at the University of Dhaka, noting that non-native trees like eucalyptus or acacia can harm local biodiversity.

City authorities have put forward plans governing land use through to 2035, including proposals for 55 new parks around water bodies and 14 eco-parks to protect biodiversity.

Environmental experts say the authorities should tap the knowledge of specialists to draw up a coordinated approach.

"We need to have clear annual goals (saying) by what percentage we can increase green space in Dhaka, and with what trees," said botany professor Zashim Uddin .

Md Imran Hosen, a postdoctoral researcher at University of New South Wales, Australia, said the government should use water management to cool the city, while people could also play their part by creating rooftop gardens or installing vertical greening on tall buildings.

"Planting trees to cool cities is common sense, but you need to combine that with many other factors - and we need deeper studies to plan out optimal actions," he said.

Broadband internet services are disrupted in most parts of Nepal (AP)

AP [5/2/2024 9:54 AM, Binaj Gurubacharya, 6902K, Negative]
Broadband internet was disrupted in many parts of Nepal on Thursday as Indian vendors from whom most Nepali private operators source the bandwidth stopped providing the services because of payment defaults.

Private internet service providers in Nepal issued notices saying their services were either disrupted or connections were slow. The state-run Nepal Telecom was still continuing to provide internet services.

Two private mobile services operating in Nepal were working, but their internet speed was affected.

Private ISPs in Nepal haven’t been able to pay the Indian vendors for months as the government hasn’t provided them foreign currency from the banks to make the payments. The government has been refusing to do so until the private companies clear taxes on certain services they provide.

The private companies say they are exempted from such taxes.

Wlink Communications, the largest ISP in Nepal, blamed the government for the disruption.

“Our upstream provider has disconnected our internal links citing nonpayment,” the Wlink notice said. “ISPs in Nepal have not been able to remit such payments as we are unable to obtain permission from the Nepal government for foreign exchange.”

There was no immediate comment from the government.

Nepal’s Opportunity to Protect Children in New Budget (Human Rights Watch)

Human Rights Watch [5/2/2024 6:05 PM, Lena Simet, 190K, Neutral]
When Nepal’s Finance Minister Barshaman Pun presents the budget on May 28, he has an opportunity to extend the country’s Child Grant program. Doing so would advance the economic and social rights of Nepali children, helping families across the country.

The Child Grant, also known as the child nutrition grant, is a proven Nepali success story. The program involves monthly payments to families with children under the age of five in 25 out of Nepal’s 77 districts, and all Dalit children under five across the country. It has been endorsed by numerous Nepali civil society organizations and international policy experts including UNICEF, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and the European Union. But despite the praise, successive governments have not followed through on commitments to roll it out nationwide.

Therefore, it was encouraging when Nepal’s Minister for Women, Children and Senior Citizens, Bhagawati Chaudhary, announced this week that the government intends to extend the program to all districts. She also said the grant amount should be increased, as the current monthly payment of 532 Nepali rupees (about US$4) is insufficient.

“We are dedicated to ensuring that every child in Nepal, regardless of their location, receives the essential nutrition support they need for healthy growth and development,” Chaudhary said.

Studies underscore the transformative impact of the Child Grant, including increased birth registration rates, improved access to food and clothes, and lower likelihood of child labor for the recipients and their siblings. Research also shows that the program enhances public perceptions of the government, strengthening the social contract.

Nepal became a pioneer of social protection in South Asia by introducing a universal old age allowance in the 1990s. But with 40 percent of the population aged under 18, investing in social protection for children is key to ensuring Nepal’s future prosperity.

Nepal’s Constitution guarantees social and economic rights, including the right to social security for all children, and the Children’s Act of 2018 provides further guarantees.

According to a 2021 UNICEF study, expanding the Child Grant to children up to age 17 is financially feasible. Family poverty could drop by 16.8 percent, enabling families to afford better food, healthcare, and education.

The Nepali government’s extension of the Child Grant would be an important step toward a more equitable future and another example of forward-looking policy to countries around the world.

Central Asia

Kazakhstan: A jury will soon decide the fate of an ex-minister accused of murder (EurasiaNet)

EurasiaNet [5/2/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
One of the most sensational trials of the independence era is unfolding in Kazakhstan, in which a former government minister, Kuandyk Bishimbayev, stands accused of the brutal beating death of his wife, Saltanat Nukenova.

The case is nearing its conclusion. On May 2, prosecutors presented their summation of the case. The prosecution team asserted that Nukenova wasn’t just murdered, she was systematically abused. “Saltanat Nukenova developed a guilt complex, formed by Bishimbayev. This explains the indecisiveness in trying to break a toxic relationship,” said one prosecutor Aizhan Aimaganova.

The trial has riveted the attention of Kazakhs, raising awareness about the issue of domestic violence. An unusual aspect of the trial is that a jury is hearing the case. Mediazona Central Asia figured out how jury trials work in Kazakhstan and how the verdict will be determined.

A critical pillar buttressing most liberal democratic political systems, jury trials were a very un-Soviet practice. They were introduced in Kazakhstan only in 2007. Until 2009, jury trials were held only in cases where defendants faced the death penalty or life imprisonment. Starting in 2010, juries were empowered to hear a wider variety of cases involving serious crimes. The scope of jury-eligible cases was further expanded at the start of 2024. Juries are now empowered to help decide the fates of those charged under 44 categories of crimes. Even so, jury trials remain uncommon in the country.

Abdrashit Zhukenov, the chair of Kazakhstan’s Supreme Court’s Judicial Collegium for Criminal Cases, reports that jury trials in Kazakhstan have a roughly 10 percent acquittal rate, adding that the acquittal rate for regular court proceedings is under 2 percent. Zhukenov added that the quality of the pre-trial investigation with the participation of a jury tends to be more thorough and the parties are more active in the proceedings themselves.

A jury trial can be held in Kazakhstan at the initiative of the criminal defense team. Differing from juries in the United States, a jury in Kazakhstan comprises 10 citizens and the presiding judge, along with two alternates. Lists of potential jurors between the ages of 25 and 65 are compiled by regional executive authorities.

Jury pools of up to 300 citizens are then summoned for service. Doctors, teachers, firefighters and other public servants are exempted from jury duty. Those who fail to answer a jury service summons are subject to civil penalties and fines.

When a jury trial is placed on the docket, 17 potential jurors are selected as potential candidates for service via an administrative process. Once the pool of potential jurors is narrowed to 17, lawyers for the defense and prosecution have a limited ability to challenge an individual’s qualifications to be empanelled. The presiding judge, although also a member of the jury, can question potential jurors about their suitability to serve.

Jurors during a trial are forbidden from discussing the case with anyone outside of the court without the permission of the judge. They are also not supposed to research the case on their own, or disclose information discussed during closed court sessions, or during jury deliberations.

The first part of a trial in Kazakhstan involves the presentation of material facts relating to the case; jurors hear evidence from the prosecution and the defense concerning the guilt or innocence of the defendant. During this phase, jurors have the right to pose questions via the presiding judge. Jurors do not participate in the second phase of a criminal case, in which circumstantial and contextual evidence surrounding the alleged crime is presented. Other matters, including sentencing guidelines and potential civil claims, are also discussed during the trial’s second phase.

Juries must go through a three-step process to reach a verdict on every charge faced by a defendant. In the deliberation room, jurors must answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to a series of three questions. The jury does not have to be unanimous in its opinion: a simple majority of jurors determines the outcome of the questioning process.

The first question determines whether a crime occurred consistent with the charge against the defendant. In Bishimbayev’s case, this means the jury has to be convinced that the victim was murdered and did not die from another cause. The second question asks whether there is sufficient proof that a crime has been committed and the third question asks whether jurors think the proof shows that the defendant committed the crime. A ‘yes’ answer is required for all three questions for the jury to convict the defendant of a criminal charge. A ‘no’ answer to any step of the process renders a ‘not guilty’ verdict.

Sentencing of a convicted defendant is determined separately. During the sentencing phase, the presiding judge instructs the jury on the laws governing the case and the sentencing parameters. The sentencing decision is then made by an open vote of the jury in the deliberation room.

In the event Bishimbayev is convicted of murder, he can receive a life sentence only if the jury voting was unanimous to all three questions during deliberations, and the sentencing decision is likewise unanimous. The votes of eight or more jurors are needed to impose a 15-year sentence.

Presiding judges, given that they sit on a jury, can exert considerable influence over the outcomes of deliberations, especially since only a simple majority of jurors is required to convict or acquit, legal observers say.

That situation may not last much longer, however. In March, Kazakhstan’s lower house of parliament approved the first reading of a bill that aims to end a judge’s participation in a jury and institute all-citizen panels to hear cases. If the bill becomes law, an 11-person jury will decide verdicts without input from a judge.

Kazakh Journalist On Trial For Voicing Support For RFE/RL (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [5/2/2024 11:38 AM, Baghdat Asylbek, 223K, Neutral]
Kazakh journalist Zhamila Maricheva went on trial on May 2 for an online article she wrote supporting RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Radio Azattyq.

Maricheva was detained late on April 24 while she was out jogging and charged with distributing "false information."

The charge stems from an article she posted on her ProTenge Telegram channel in January where she raised the issue of problems faced by Radio Azattyq on obtaining official accreditation from the Foreign Ministry, which had sparked fears the government was trying to stifle independent media.

Maricheva praised Radio Azattyq for what she called its professionalism, stressing the importance of the broadcaster’s programs in Kazakhstan.

Another Kazakh journalist, Askhat Niyazov, reposted Maricheva’s article at the time and was charged with slander.

A court last week acquitted Niyazov and closed the case, stressing that there was nothing criminal in Niyazov’s actions.

Maricheva reiterated her innocence at the trial on May 2 and stated that police violated her rights by detaining her for questioning while she was jogging instead officially summoning her to a police station.

Maricheva’s lawyer, Asel Toqaeva, asked the court to dismiss the case against her client, and that Maricheva’s constitutional rights were violated by police during her detention and questioning.

In January 2023, the Foreign Ministry denied accreditation to 36 journalists of Radio Azattyq. Some of the correspondents had not been able to extend their accreditation since late 2022.

The situation was exacerbated when a group of Kazakh lawmakers approved a draft bill that would allow the tightly controlled former Soviet republic’s authorities to refuse accreditation to foreign media outlets and their reporters on grounds of national security concerns.

RFE/RL reached an agreement with the Kazakh Foreign Ministry over the accreditations less than two weeks ago.

Maricheva’s trial was adjourned until May 6.

US Religious Freedom Watchdog Recommends Kyrgyzstan for Special Watch List (The Diplomat)

The Diplomat [5/2/2024 2:54 PM, Catherine Putz, 201K, Neutral]
On May 1, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) released its annual report and recommendations, highlighting violations of religious freedom around the world. For the first time, all five Central Asian states are named in the report for violating religious freedoms, underscoring the persistence of the issue in the region.

USCIRF is an independent, bipartisan federal body that monitors the status of freedom of religion abroad in order to make policy recommendations to the president, secretary of state, and Congress. Each year, USCIRF releases an annual report making these recommendations. Later in the year, the U.S. State Department makes its determination on which countries to list as Countries of Particular Concern (CPCs) under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA), which stipulates punitive sanctions – unless, of course, those sanctions are waived. The report also recommends countries to include on a special watch list (SWL), which entails no immediate punishments, but indicates concern.

In the 2024 report, Kyrgyzstan makes its first ever appearance, with USCIRF recommending Bishkek be added to the special watch list alongside Central Asian neighbors Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The rest of the recommended special watch list includes Algeria, Egypt, Indonesia, Iraq, Malaysia, Sri Lanka, Syria, and Turkey.

USCIRF once again recommends that Tajikistan and Turkmenistan continue to be designated as CPCs alongside China, Cuba, Eritrea, Iran, Nicaragua, North Korea, Myanmar, Pakistan, Russia, and Saudi Arabia. The report further urged CPC designations for Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Nigeria, and Vietnam.

When the U.S. State Department last made religious freedom designations, on December 29, 2023, Tajikistan and Turkmenistan were labeled as CPCs as recommended in the 2023 report – although both were again granted waivers from punitive sanctions – but Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan were not include in the special watch list despite USCIRF recommendations that they be added.

It will likely be many months before the State Department makes its designations. Over much of the last decade the designations have tended to be announced in November or December.

Why Is USCIRF Recommending Special Attention on Kyrgyzstan?

As noted above, USCIRF has recommended Kyrgyzstan for the special watch list for the first time. The report notes that this is “based on heightened religious repression by the government of Kyrgyzstan in 2023.” USCIRF writes that in 2023, Kyrgyz authorities “increasingly enforced long-existing restrictive legislation regulating religion.”

The USCIRF report calls out Kyrgyzstan for targeting Muslims “who practice a form of Islam that deviates from the state’s preferred interpretation” as well as non-Muslims, including Catholics, Protestants, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and Hare Krishnas.

One illustrative case is that of Protestant Christian Aytbek Tynaliyev, who was sentenced in July 2023 to six months in prison for “inciting religious enmity” online. As Forum 18 reported, Tynaliyev was accused of insulting Islam with his critiques of the state’s religious policy but the prosecutor “refused to say how exactly Tynaliyev insulted Islam.” After he was released in September, Tynaliyev was reportedly visited by the same police investigator who had led the May 2023 raid on his home and told “to be careful and not post religious materials or statements on social media.”

Importantly, the USCIRF report stated, “Sources continued to report that members of certain religious groups were reluctant to report religiously based hate crimes for fear of government retaliation or non-response.” This fear may disguise the reality of the problem.

Other issues cited by USCIRF regarding religious freedoms in Kyrgyzstan include a member of parliament proposing a ban on face coverings and long beards in November, and State Committee on National Security Chair Kamchybek Tashiev commenting on those whose religious practices “differ from the traditional Islamic religion practiced by our forefathers,” noting that they “wear different clothes” and “commit acts of religious fanaticism.”

Furthermore, USCIRF noted that the Kyrgyz State Commission for Religious Affairs (SCRA) introduced a new draft religion law that would “further restrict and securitize peaceful religious practices.” A number of U.N. special rapporteurs in December 2023 wrote to Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov expressing their concern that certain provisions in the draft law “could fail to meet Kyrgyzstan’s obligations under international human rights law.”

Given the track record of recommendations to designations, when it comes to Central Asian states, it seems unlikely at this juncture that Kyrgyzstan will be listed when the U.S. State Department gets around to making its designations. Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, it should be noted, were recommended for the special watch list last year and were not listed. That said, the USCIRF report further illuminates a broader trend – witnessed in Kyrgyzstan and elsewhere – in which authorities whose power is populist in nature harken back to a (mostly) imagined past, using the promotion of a specific vision of “tradition” and “culture” in ways that circumscribe people’s contemporary behavior. Ultimately, it’s not about piety; it’s about power.

Kyrgyzstan tells citizens to temporarily avoid travel to Russia (Reuters)

Reuters [5/2/2024 10:50 AM, Lucy Papachristou, 5239K, Negative]
Kyrgyzstan’s foreign ministry said on Thursday it was recommending its citizens to temporarily avoid travelling to Russia, becoming the second Central Asian nation to do so after Tajikistan issued similar advice last weekend.

Russia has placed about a dozen people - including Tajiks and a Kyrgyz-born man - in pre-trial detention in connection with a deadly attack on a concert hall outside Moscow on March 22 that was claimed by militant group Islamic State.

Since then, Russian independent media have reported on allegations of mistreatment of Central Asian nationals living in Russia.

Tajikistan’s foreign ministry summoned Russia’s ambassador on Monday to protest over what it described as unfair treatment of its citizens by Moscow, in a rare dispute between post-Soviet allies.

Tajikistan said last weekend that nearly 1,000 of its citizens trying to enter Russia had been stranded in Moscow’s Vnukovo airport in unsanitary conditions since April 27.

In its statement on Thursday, Kyrgyzstan’s foreign ministry said it had not received any information about "mass refusal of entry" into Russia for Kyrgyz nationals. But it said it was "monitoring the current situation in the Russian Federation and its impact on the legal status" of Kyrgyz citizens.

Russia Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Monday that Russia had temporarily tightened controls on its border as a counter-terrorism measure, but was taking steps to resolve long delays on the frontier.

Central Asian economies, including those of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, depend heavily on remittances from millions of migrant labourers working in Russia.

Tajikistan: Forcibly Disappeared Opponent Allegedly Tortured (Human Rights Watch)

Human Rights Watch [5/2/2024 7:00 PM, Staff, 190K, Negative]
Tajik authorities should immediately confirm the detention and whereabouts of and release the opposition activist Sukhrob Zafar, Human Rights Watch, Norwegian Helsinki Committee, and International Partnership for Human Rights said today.

Based on a media report and reports from reliable sources, Zafar was forcibly disappeared while in Türkiye in March 2024, despite holding official UNHCR asylum seeker status there. The sources said that the Tajik State Committee on National Security is holding him in Dushanbe, is periodically torturing him, and has denied him medical assistance. The Tajik government has neither confirmed that he is in their custody nor his whereabouts.

“There are devastating reports that Sukhrob Zafar may already have lost his ability to walk as a result of torture, so prompt action could be a matter of life and death,” said Syinat Sultanalieva, Central Asia researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Tajik authorities should immediately verify Zafar’s detention status and whereabouts and urgently investigate allegations that he has been tortured.”

Authorities should also ensure and confirm that Zafar receives his full due process rights, including contact with his family, access to a lawyer of his own choosing, and necessary medical treatment, the groups said.

Zafar, a senior figure in Group 24, a banned Tajik opposition group, was forcibly disappeared on March 10 in Türkiye, and his colleague Nasimjon Sharifov was forcibly disappeared on February 23. Both had previously been detained by the Turkish police in March 2018 at the request of Tajik authorities and threatened with extradition, but were eventually released.

Group 24 is a political opposition movement seeking political reforms in Tajikistan, which the Tajik authorities banned and designated a terrorist organization in October 2014, after the group called on the Tajik population to publicly protest against the government. In the last decade, Tajik authorities have cracked down brutally on the group and its members, imprisoning scores at home and driving large numbers into exile.

Recently, many exiled activists associated with the group have organized protests against the Tajik government in Europe and elsewhere. In response, Tajik authorities have sought their forced return from abroad, while some have allegedly been killed or forcibly disappeared.

A recent Human Rights Watch report on repressive governments targeting critics abroad includes accounts of the Tajik government seeking the arrest and extradition to Tajikistan of current and former members of Group 24 who have fled the country on charges of extremism and terrorism-related activities.

On April 23, eight members of Group 24 were detained in Rome during a protest about a visit by Tajik president Emomali Rahmon to Italy. They were released the next day, but the Tajik interior minister raised with his Italian counterpart the possibility of Italy detaining and deporting Tajiks with a search warrant or an Interpol Red Notice against them.

Türkiye is a member of the Council of Europe and party to the European Convention on Human Rights, and any involvement of, or acquiescence by, state agents in the forcible disappearance of and potential extrajudicial transfer of Zafar and Sharifov to Tajikistan is a serious violation of the convention.

The European Court of Human Rights has warned that “any extra-judicial transfer or extraordinary rendition, by its deliberate circumvention of due process, is an absolute negation of the rule of law and the values protected by the Convention. It therefore amounts to a violation of the most basic rights guaranteed by the Convention.”

“Türkiye should thoroughly investigate the unlawful actions on Turkish territory, which appear to have led to the forced rendition to Tajikistan of Zafar Sukhrob,” said Marius Fossum, regional representative in Central Asia at the Norwegian Helsinki Committee. “Zafar should be released pending a fair trial on any credible charges and provided with redress for the violation of his rights as a result of his forced removal to Tajikistan.”

Ticktock Tyranny: Turkmen Officials Ordered To Buy Watches Bearing Leader’s Likeness (Radio Free Europe)

Radio Free Europe [5/2/2024 10:18 AM, Staff, 223K, Neutral]
Regional officials and employees of local state entities in Turkmenistan’s western region of Balkan have been forced to buy watches with pictures of President Serdar Berdymukhammedov and his father and predecessor, Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov, on the face of the timepiece. RFE/RL correspondents report that the watches cost between 1,500 and 3,000 manats ($410-$820). Those of higher ranks are obliged to buy the more expensive watches, while the less expensive editions are for lower-tier employees at state entities. Despite Turkmenistan’s abundant resources of natural gas, the majority of its population has been living in poverty for years.

Twitter

Afghanistan

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[5/3/2024 2:08 AM, 79.7K followers, 8 retweets, 25 likes]
AFGHANISTAN: Only when media workers are able to do their job without fear, the stories of Afghan people can come to the fore. Their right to freedom of expression must be prioritised and protected #JournalismWithoutFear #WorldPressFreedomDay #Afghanistan

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[5/3/2024 2:08 AM, 79.7K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Join us in calling for #JournalismWithoutFear in Afghanistan on #WorldPressFreedomDay

Bilal Sarwary
@bsarwary
[5/2/2024 10:53 AM, 253.4K followers, 6 retweets, 46 likes]
Hamid Khorasani, commander of the Badri operational unit within the Taliban movement, is preparing for his fourth marriage. The lavish ceremony took place in Kabul. Despite the fact that the Taliban leader Haibatullah Akhundzada has prohibited multiple marriages, these commanders continue to act without restraint, disregarding their supreme leader’s authority in various ways. It is important for the Taliban to prioritize political and economic measures to enhance the well-being of common Afghans, rather than solely focusing on personal desires.

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzi12947158
[5/2/2024 5:14 PM, 2.5K followers, 1 like]
In its report on the human rights situation in Afghanistan, released, UNAMA stated that despite the general amnesty announced by the Taliban, it continues to receive reports of arbitrary arrests, torture, and extrajudicial killings of former government: https://kabulnow.com/2024/05/taliban-continues-arresting-and-killing-former-government-officials-and-soldiers-says-un/

Jahanzeb Wesa
@Jahanzi12947158
[5/2/2024 3:50 AM, 2.5K followers]
Richard Bennett, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Afghanistan, has told the Taliban to be committed to respecting human rights, especially women’s rights. Bennett, called on international community to take serious action about human rights violations in Afghanistan.

Pakistan

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[5/3/2024 2:01 AM, 73.1K followers, 7 retweets, 53 likes]
Pakistan’s first satellite mission to the moon, iCube Qamar, is set to be launched on board China’s Chang’E6 from Hainan, China, today -- Pakistan’s satellite mission will reach the lunar orbit in five days and will circle around the moon for three to six months.

Anas Mallick
@AnasMallick
[5/2/2024 5:00 PM, 73.1K followers, 54 retweets, 201 likes]
Imran Khan’s article at the telegraph has essentially buried the narrative that some tried to create of a possible "deal" -- there is no deal for sure, going by the tone and seems that the bridges from his end have been well burnt. #Pakistan

Madiha Afzal
@MadihaAfzal
[5/2/2024 4:17 PM, 42.6K followers, 9 retweets, 55 likes]
If Pakistan is to have a real democracy, the targeting of the political opposition has to stop. And incumbent politicians need to stop participating in it. They’re all on the merry-go-round, and the same thing will happen to them next time.

India

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/3/2024 1:35 AM, 97.5M followers, 2.1K retweets, 7.5K likes]
TMC, Left and Congress lack vision for development. They have only looted and betrayed West Bengal. People are seeing the BJP as the only ray of hope. Watch from Bardhaman.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/3/2024 12:29 AM, 97.5M followers, 1.7K retweets, 5.6K likes]
Congress has converted Karnataka and Telangana as ATM of loot, worsening the overall law and order situation and ensuring development suffers.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/2/2024 10:06 AM, 97.5M followers, 3.7K retweets, 20K likes]
The people of Gujarat are all set to bless NDA because they want development and all-round growth.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/2/2024 10:05 AM, 97.5M followers, 3.1K retweets, 14K likes]
The rallies in Junagadh and Jamnagar were filled with great euphoria. The people of Gujarat, who have anyway rejected Congress for decades, are very angry at the blatant votebank politics they are now advocating.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[5/2/2024 8:02 AM, 97.5M followers, 7.6K retweets, 51K likes]
Upon reaching Jamnagar, went to the residence of Jam Saheb Shri Shatrusalyasinhji and had a wonderful interaction with him. Meeting him is always a delight. His warmth and wisdom are exemplary.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[5/2/2024 11:45 PM, 3.1M followers, 406 retweets, 1.8K likes]
The big change after 2014 in India is a strong sense of Bharat First, where we have both the confidence to think through the pathway and using national interest as the primary metric of judgment. This has encouraged us to pursue a multi-vector diplomacy that maximizes partners and minimizes problems. Today’s India is a Viswa Bandhu that carries everyone along. This is an important element of #ModiKiGaurantee. My piece in today’s @IndianExpress. https://indianexpress.com/article/opinion/columns/jaishankar-vikshit-bharat-diplomacy-9304387/

NSB

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[5/2/2024 11:32 PM, 79.7K followers, 8 retweets, 14 likes]
Bangladesh: On this World Press Freedom Day, we stand with journalists, activists and dissenters in Bangladesh, who serve as the first line of defense to protect free speech. The government of Bangladesh must take immediate steps to guarantee freedom of expression for all. Repeal Cyber Security Act, or amend it according to international standards. Drop all charges against those who are arrested or charged under the CSA, the Digital Security Act and the Information and Communication Technology Act solely for exercising their right to freedom of expression. #pressfreedom #repealCSA #WorldPressFreedomDay

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/3/2024 12:15 AM, 637.3K followers, 11 retweets, 24 likes]
State Minister for Information and Broadcasting @MAarafat71 said the government, civil society and #massmedia can be partners to fight against the agenda-based motivated #journalism and #disinformation campaign. https://bssnews.net/news-flash/186866 #Bangladesh @info_min_BD

Awami League
@albd1971
[5/3/2024 12:18 AM, 637.3K followers, 13 retweets, 34 likes]
#AwamiLeague General Secretary Obaidul Quader MP said that the main goal of the party is to work for the welfare of the toiling people of the country. Reminding the #BNPJamaat tenure, he said they never increased the workers’ wages while in power. https://bssnews.net/news-flash/186834

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[5/3/2024 12:40 AM, 5.2K followers, 1 like]
The country’s media is facing multifarious challenges as space for media and civil society is shrinking as the laws are being used purposefully due to chance to misuse these. The state organisations that are supposed to ensure accountability were debilitated due to politicisation. #Bangladesh ‘Space for country’s media shrinking’ https://en.prothomalo.com/bangladesh/nnligylwi6 #

Sabria Chowdhury Balland
@sabriaballand
[5/3/2024 12:38 AM, 5.2K followers]
The IMF mission that will conclude the current visit on May 8 recommended the adjustment of electricity, gas, and fuel prices more regularly to reduce budget subsidies. #Bangladesh IMF insists on power tariff hike https://newagebd.net/post/country/234193/imf-insists-on-power-tariff-hike

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives
@MoFAmv
[5/2/2024 8:14 PM, 53.8K followers, 22 retweets, 35 likes]
State Minister @SherynaSamad hosts an introductory meeting with a delegation of the @ICRC for South Asia. Discussed ways to strengthen collaboration with government institutions and expand cooperation in humanitarian affairs between #Maldives and ICRC.

Moosa Zameer
@MoosaZameer
[5/3/2024 12:10 AM, 13K followers, 14 retweets, 26 likes]
Tuna plays a vital role in our sustenance, ensuring food security, economic development and supporting livelihoods for many countries. #Maldives has always relied on sustainable fishing methods to conserve its tuna population. On this #WorldTunaDay, let us raise awareness on sustainable fishing practices while recognising the need to preserve tuna stocks for future generations.

Embassy of Nepal, Washington, D.C.
@nepalembassyusa
[5/2/2024 4:42 PM, 3.3K followers, 3 retweets, 15 likes]
On 2nd May 2024, the Embassy, with the sponsorship of Mr. Susan Bradford, shipped 24 pieces of lost Nepali artifacts to Nepal from Hawaii. Second Secretary Uttam Ghimire received those artifacts from Ms. Bradford in Maui, Hawaii on April 19, 2024.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[5/2/2024 5:12 AM, 5.3K followers, 1 like]
Merchandise export performance in March 2024 amounted to USD 1,138.9 million, recording an increase of 9.77% compared to March 2023. Furthermore, export performance in March 2024 increased by 7.51% compared to the preceding month, February 2024 - EDB-

Central Asia

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[5/2/2024 9:13 AM, 28.9K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Bishimbayev’s lawyer says his main mistake was his "humanity". Can’t help wondering how that will go down with the jurors as the verdict approaches in his trial for allegedly murdering his wife #Kazakhstan

Joanna Lillis
@joannalillis
[5/2/2024 7:30 AM, 28.9K followers, 2 retweets]
As the West comes to terms with the idea of engaging with the Taliban, cooperation between #CentralAsia and Taliban-ruled #Afghanistan is proceeding apace - @Peter__Leonard takes a look on Substack https://havli.substack.com/p/while-west-mulls-engaging-with-the?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=2446111&post_id=144234331&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=awgla&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[5/3/2024 2:18 AM, 4.7K followers]
Participation at the OIC Foreign Ministers Meeting https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/14964/participation-at-the-oic-foreign-ministers-meeting

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[5/2/2024 12:01 PM, 4.7K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes]
Meeting of the Minister of Foreign Affairs with the Ambassador of the United States of America https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/14962/meeting-of-the-minister-of-foreign-affairs-with-the-ambassador-of-the-united-states-of-america

MFA Tajikistan
@MOFA_Tajikistan
[5/2/2024 10:56 AM, 4.7K followers]
Meeting with the Global Green Growth Institute Director General https://mfa.tj/en/main/view/14959/meeting-with-the-global-green-growth-institute-director-general

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/2/2024 7:26 AM, 167.7K followers, 4 retweets, 12 likes] As part of the Tashkent International Investment Forum program, Shavkat #Mirziyoyev met with the President of the @TheOPECFund, Abdulhamid Alkhalifa. The head of our state emphasized the OPEC Fund’s important role in achieving the main Sustainable Development Goals and highly appreciated the projects financed in #Uzbekistan.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[5/2/2024 6:44 AM, 167.7K followers, 2 retweets, 14 likes]
In the lead-up to the Tashkent International Investment Forum and the second meeting of the Council of Foreign Investors, #Uzbekistan’s President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev received a delegation from the @EBRD, headed by its President @OdileRenaud .

Saida Mirziyoyeva
@SMirziyoyeva
[5/2/2024 5:28 AM, 17.8K followers, 7 retweets, 69 likes]
On behalf of the President, the conservation and restoration of the ancient manuscript of the Holy Koran Mushraf of Othman, included in the #UNESCO Memory of the World Register, will be carried out. I am grateful to everyone who will participate in this noble mission.

{End of Report}

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