SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO: | SCA & Staff |
DATE: | Thursday, November 21, 2024 6:30 AM ET |
Afghanistan
Afghan heroes were let down by Britain – and are now at Putin’s mercy (The Independent – opinion)
The Independent [11/20/2024 4:12 PM, Staff, 53826K, Neutral]
It is as bizarre as it is tragic. British-trained Afghan special forces who fought alongside the allies in the long war against the Taliban are now being recruited by the Russians to fight against Ukraine – a British ally struggling for its freedom.
Effectively betrayed by their UK former comrades and mentors, many of these Afghan elite troops have found themselves in exile in Iran – a murderous regime too, but one where they have a better chance of avoiding torture and execution than in their homeland.
It is also somewhere the Kremlin looks to for military assistance. Hence the offers to the Afghan veterans of contracts to fight as mercenaries in Mr Putin’s war. The Russians, we know, are none too fussy about tapping up their few reliable friends in the world to boost their military ranks.
Some 1,000 days in and President Putin’s "special military operation", which was supposed to have lasted until the end of spring 2022, has degenerated into a grinding campaign of attrition, where civilians are targeted as much as the enemy’s military. In every one of the theatres of war, Russia needs to gain an edge – and these elite Afghan soldiers may prove especially valuable in Kursk, where Ukrainian troops continue to hold ground.
Unlike the Russian and North Korean conscripts, by all accounts badly trained and poorly equipped, the Afghan fighters know what they’re doing, and how to make the most of what they’re given in the way of equipment. They will know how the British have trained Ukrainian forces and the weapons they use. Like all special forces, they can inflict damage far out of proportion to their modest numerical strength. The arrival of these Afghan soldiers will not be good news for President Zelensky’s war effort.The Independent is proud to have campaigned for them to be offered asylum in the UK, with notable successes, but far too many have been left behind. In a particularly gruesome case of the law of unintended consequences, this neglect has left them vulnerable to the entreaties of Mr Putin’s agents, well established in Iran with the blessing of the ayatollahs. These former Afghan soldiers, the best of the best, have all the training, experience and bravery that the Kremlin so desperately lacks as it tries to gain as much ground as it can before a ceasefire.
The task now is to rescue them from their hiding places in Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan before they are either "turned" to fight for a new British enemy, or captured, tortured and murdered. A salary of some $3,000 per month is unimaginably lavish to these impoverished, desperate people. They need to be given other options. It has always been the right thing to do, as a matter of honour; but now it is also a question of Ukrainian national security and, thus, the British national interest.
The latest investigation by The Independent, in collaboration with investigative newsroom Lighthouse Reports and Afghan news outlet Etilaat Roz, finds that while the Afghans’ wait drags on, Britain’s adversaries are not wasting time. Thus far, the Afghans have not succumbed to the blandishments on offer from Moscow; but the continuing delays in processing their asylum claims are adding to the pressures on them.
The same obstacles have appeared as those that stymied previous efforts to secure refuge for the "Triples" – so-called after their regimental designation numbers. Interdepartmental wrangling about the various ill-designed special Afghan asylum schemes has been one factor in the delays. The new Labour government, disappointingly, seems just as slow as its predecessor; with the present minister responsible, Luke Pollard, making the same excuses and issuing similar apologies.
There are rumours that the slow pace has been linked to resistance by UK special forces, concerned about the testimony the Afghans might offer about war crimes during the previous campaign once they are in Britain and available to be interviewed. At the moment, those Afghans whose claims are being rejected are not even being informed of the outcome.
Plainly, this is intolerable and unsustainable – not least because the Iranians and Pakistanis will eventually try to deport their unwelcome guests back to Kabul. Given that, even a stint on the front line in Kursk may feel like an attractive option. Pakistan
Pakistan Court Grants Bail to Ex-Prime Minister Imran Khan (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/20/2024 8:07 AM, Ismail Dilawar, 27782K, Negative]
A Pakistani court granted bail to former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a case where he is accused of hiding income but he won’t be freed from jail as he is under arrest in other cases.Judge Miangul Hassan Aurangzeb of the Islamabad High Court ordered to free the opposition leader from jail and granted bail in the case for selling state gifts and not disclosing the income when he was in power, his lawyer Salman Safdar told reporters in Islamabad on Wednesday. Khan will be released from jail “soon,” he said.The ex-cricket star, who is languishing in jail for more than a year and is facing more than 100 cases from corruption to misuse of power and inciting violence, won’t be set free as he is under arrest for many other cases, information minister Attaullah Tarar said on Geo Television channel.The decision comes as temporary relief for Khan who has called upon his supporters nationwide to march toward the capital, Islamabad, on Nov. 24 for a protest against the government. This seems to be the biggest protest call by Khan against Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government that came into power after the controversial polls in Feb.Leaders from Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party have said they will protest and stage a sit-in in Islamabad until their demands including releasing Khan from jail are met. Pakistan’s Imran Khan gets bail in a graft case but will stay behind bars on other charges (AP)
AP [11/20/2024 3:29 PM, Munir Ahmed, 31638K, Neutral]
A Pakistani court granted bail Wednesday to former Prime Minister Imran Khan in a graft case, his lawyer said. But with a slew of other charges pending against him, the opposition leader is staying behind bars.
Still, the order by a superior court in the capital, Islamabad, was a boost for Khan in the case in which he is accused, along with his wife, Bushra Bibi, of keeping and selling state gifts in violation of government rules when he was in power.
Khan, who was ousted in a no-confidence vote in parliament in 2022, has denied the charge. The hearings in the trial on the graft charges started in July and are still ongoing.
Khan has so far been embroiled in over 150 cases and has been sentenced in several, including to three years, 10 years, 14 years and seven years to be served concurrently under Pakistani law.
His convictions were later overturned in appeals but he cannot be freed due to other, pending cases against him. Because the law is unclear in a situation with multiple cases, Khan has remained in the same prison in the garrison city of Rawalpindi where he has been incarcerated since his first conviction.
He has maintained his innocence and has argued that the cases are an attempt to sideline him politically by keeping him out of the public area.
His lawyer, Salman Safdar, said he still remained confident Khan would be freed but experts say there are at least eight cases standing in the way of Khan’s release on bail.
Later Wednesday, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar confirmed that Khan’s release on bail was currently not possible because of the pending cases.
In a further late-night development, police in the garrison city of Rawalpindi announced new charges against Khan of inciting people to violence in September when dozens of his supporters had clashed with police in the city.
Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, has been demanding his release. Khan’s supporters have called for a rally in Islamabad on Sunday to demand his release — despite a government ban on the gathering.
Authorities in Islamabad deployed additional police late Wednesday to handle any gathering by Khan supporters.
Pakistan’s laws allow government officials and politicians to keep gifts given to them by foreign dignitaries, but they must correctly declare the market value of those gifts and declare any money they earned after selling them.
Last month, Bibi was freed on bail in the same case but will have to appear in court for the hearings alongside her husband. Pakistan’s ex-PM Imran Khan gets bail in state gifts case, his party says (Reuters)
Reuters [11/20/2024 8:19 AM, Gibran Peshimam, 88008K, Neutral]
A court in Pakistan granted bail to jailed former prime minister Imran Khan in a case relating to the illegal sale of state gifts, his party said on Wednesday.Khan, 71, has been in prison since August 2023, but it was not immediately clear if the embattled politician would be released given that he faces a number of other charges too, including inciting violence against the state."If the official order is received today, his family and supporters will approach the authorities for his release," one of his party’s lawyers, Salman Safdar, told journalists. Safdar added that, as far as he knew, Khan had been granted bail or acquitted in all the cases he faced.However, Information Minister Attaullah Tarar, a member of the ruling Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz party, told Geo TV Khan lacked bail in cases in which he is charged with planning riots by his supporters in the wake of his arrest in May last year.Khan denies any wrongdoing, and alleges all the cases registered against him since he was removed from power in 2022 are politically motivated to keep him in jail.The case in which he was granted bail on Wednesday by the Islamabad High Court is known as the Toshakhana, or state treasury case.It has multiple versions and charges all revolving around allegations that Khan and his wife illegally procured and then sold gifts worth over 140 million rupees ($501,000) in state possession, which he received during his 2018-22 premiership.Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, were both handed a 14-year sentence on those charges, following a three-year sentence handed to him in late 2023 in another version of the same case.Their sentences have been suspended in appeals at the high court.The gifts included diamond jewellery and seven watches, six of them Rolexes - the most expensive being valued at 85 million rupees ($305,000).Khan’s wife was released last month after being in the same prison as Khan for months. In Pakistan, Afghan journalists face deportation and yearslong waits for humanitarian visas (ABC News)
ABC News [11/21/2024 5:25 AM, Trisha Mukherjee, 31638K, Neutral]
As Jahanzeb Wesa fled toward the Pakistani border in the middle of the night, he wondered if his career defending human rights would help protect him now that he was a refugee himself.A 28-year-old Afghan journalist and women’s rights advocate, Wesa said he was attacked by a Taliban fighter while covering a women’s rights protest just after the fall of Kabul in August 2021. If he didn’t make it across the border, he said, he knew he would likely be killed."We worked for 20 years for a better future for Afghanistan," he recalled thinking. "Why did we lose everything?"But arriving in a new country brought no sense of safety.Following the Taliban’s takeover of Afghanistan, some Afghan journalists said they have been in limbo waiting for humanitarian visas while living in exile in Pakistan, where they fled across the shared border when Kabul fell.The Taliban’s violent suppression of criticism, along with draconian crackdowns on women’s rights, meant journalists who stayed in Afghanistan were at constant risk of being detained, tortured, disappeared or killed.In Pakistan, unable to legally work and threatened with deportation through government ultimatums and face-to-face interactions, some Afghan journalists applied for visas from countries that promised to help Afghan refugees.Almost three years later, many said they still have not received a decision.In the meantime, their prospects in Pakistan are dire, several told ABC News.Life in PakistanSeveral Afghan journalists living in Pakistan told ABC News that their fear of deportation is omnipresent.Khatera, a journalist from northern Afghanistan who asked ABC News not to publish her last name for her safety, fled to Pakistan in April 2022 after the Taliban raided her newsroom, destroying radios and TVs."After that," she said, "everything was a nightmare."Like many Afghan journalists in Pakistan, Khatera arrived on a tourist visa she had to renew every six months through a private travel agent. Visa renewals were sometimes denied without reason, and officials often asked for bribes, she said.The Pakistani government did not reply to a request for comment.Housing, health care and transportation in Pakistan can be prohibitively expensive for Afghans, whose tourist visas don’t allow them to work. Many rely on depleting savings, support from family members, or under-the-table jobs, according to those who spoke to ABC News. Given the economic strain, the biannual visa fee and the corresponding bribes present significant burdens, they said.But not having proper documentation can bring serious consequences. "Anywhere you’re going, the police are asking about your valid documents," said Khatera. They sometimes conduct nighttime home check-ins and try to deport those who can’t provide valid papers, she said.Those disruptions to daily life don’t appear to be unique to journalists. A 2023 Human Rights Watch report declared a "humanitarian crisis" of Pakistani authorities committing widespread abuses, including mass detentions and property seizures, against Afghans in Pakistan. Over a month and a half, the report said, Pakistani authorities deported 20,000 Afghans and coerced over 350,000 more to leave on their own.Afghan journalists regularly receive death threats from the regime at home over social media, Wesa said. "If I’m deported to Afghanistan," he said, "the Taliban is waiting for me.""No journalist has been condemned to torture, disappearance, or death by the government of Afghanistan," said a spokesperson for the Taliban-run Afghan Ministry of Foreign Affairs, adding that "all citizens of the country are equal in the eyes of the law regardless of their position and profession."Some journalists said they also face a widespread mental health crisis. Rahman, an Afghan journalist who asked ABC News to use his middle name due to what he described as ongoing threats from the Taliban, struggles with worsening depression and anxiety. He said he fears for himself and his family, still in Kabul."It’s daily mental torture," he said.An endless waitThe conditions in Pakistan have spurred many Afghan journalists to apply for humanitarian visas from the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and other European countries. Yet, some have not heard back for about three years.Wesa applied for an Australian humanitarian visa on Jan. 4, 2022, six months after he arrived in Pakistan. He supplemented his application with support letters from Reporters Without Borders, Amnesty International and other nongovernmental organizations stating his life was at risk, he told ABC News.More than two years after filing his initial application, he has received a confirmation of receipt but no further updates, he said.A departmental spokesperson from the Australian Department of Home Affairs said they "expect it will take at least 6 years from the date of receipt for processing to commence on [the applications] lodged in 2022, 2023, or 2024.""We will wait – there is no other way," Wesa said in response. "I hope they help us as soon as possible.""Day by day, I’m faced with depression and health issues," he said. "My only hope is that Australia will save my life."Rahman, who reported on women’s rights in Afghanistan, is saving up to apply for a family visa from Australia, where his fiancée lives. The process costs over $9,000. He said he believes a humanitarian visa application will not receive a response.Requests for help from the French embassy and the U.N. have also yielded no results, he said."I believe these countries have always been for freedom and for democracy. They can help out," he said. "I just wonder why it takes such a long time."Khatera applied for a visa from the Swiss embassy. It took a year and a half to receive the file number, she said. She was told she needed close relatives in the country, but otherwise, they would likely not be able to help."I’m getting depression," she said. "I’m just trying to fight."Every Afghan journalist in exile interviewed by ABC News said they continue to receive threats from the Taliban over social media and fear for their lives every day.The Taliban denied sending the threats, saying "the government and officials of Afghanistan have not threatened any journalists."Broken promises Afghan journalists waiting in worsening conditions for responses to their visa applications said they feel that Western countries have broken their promises to help Afghan refugees.
The United States expanded a resettlement program for Afghan refugees in 2021 to include journalists and humanitarian workers who had helped the United States. However, as of 2023, The Associated Press reported that only a small portion of applicants had been resettled.
The U.S. State Department did not respond to a request for comment.
The Afghan Pro Bono Initiative, a partnership providing free legal representation to Afghan refugees, published a 2023 report entitled "Two Years of Empty Promises." The report found that the U.K. resettlement programs for Afghan refugees were fraught with delays, understaffing, administrative hurdles, narrow eligibility and technical issues.
Earlier this year, Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and other NGOs called on Western countries to adopt prima facie refugee status for Afghan women and girls, which would grant refugee status without the need for individual assessments, potentially streamlining the application process and decreasing lengthy wait times.
Despite the dragging wait times and the pervasive hopelessness, many of the 170 Afghan journalists in exile in Pakistan continue to speak out against the Taliban.
Wesa’s X account includes frequent posts about Afghanistan -- legal updates, protest videos and women singing to resist what they describe as draconian Taliban policies.
"In any country, I will stand for Afghan women," he said. "I will risk my life for them."
Suicide Bombing in Pakistan Kills 12 Troops, Militants Blamed (Newsweek)
Newsweek [11/20/2024 10:59 AM, Amir Daftari, 49093K, Negative]
A suicide car bomber targeted a security post in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, killing 12 troops and wounding several others, officials confirmed Wednesday.
The attack, one of the deadliest in recent months, took place Tuesday evening in the Bannu district, a hotspot for militant violence.
The military reported that troops thwarted the bomber’s attempt to infiltrate the security post, forcing the attacker to detonate the explosive-laden vehicle against the perimeter wall.
The blast collapsed part of the wall, causing extensive damage and the "martyrdom" of 12 security personnel.
In the aftermath, six militants described as "khwarij," a term used for Pakistani Taliban fighters, were killed in an exchange of gunfire. The Hafiz Gul Bahadur faction of the Pakistani Taliban later claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement.
Resurgence of Pakistani Taliban Violence
Pakistan has faced a surge in militant violence since November 2022, when the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), a faction allied with the Afghan Taliban, ended its ceasefire with Islamabad.
The TTP, emboldened by the Taliban’s 2021 takeover of Afghanistan, is said to operate with impunity, with many leaders having taken refuge across the border.
The Hafiz Gul Bahadur group, responsible for Tuesday’s attack, is one of several militant factions targeting Pakistan’s security forces.
In December 2023, a similar suicide bombing at a police station gate in Dera Ismail Khan killed 23 troops, underscoring the rising threat in the region.
Government Responds to Rising Militancy
Tuesday’s bombing coincided with high-level discussions in Islamabad, where Pakistan’s political and military leaders met to address escalating violence. Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif approved a "comprehensive military operation" against separatist and militant groups, including the Balochistan Liberation Army.
This directive followed a November suicide attack at a Quetta train station that killed 26 people.
Security forces in northwest Pakistan frequently engage with TTP and Hafiz Gul Bahadur fighters, but the insurgents’ resilience has raised the concerns of security experts.
Abdullah Khan, a defense analyst with the Pakistan Institute for Conflict and Security Studies, noted that over 900 security forces have been killed since the TTP ended its ceasefire. "TTP and other groups have expanded their operations, showing they are getting more recruits, money, and weapons," Khan said, stressing the need for political stability to counter the insurgents.
Pakistan’s political turmoil has further complicated efforts to address militant violence.
Since former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s removal in 2022 and his subsequent imprisonment in 2023, his supporters have rallied nationwide, deepening divisions.
This instability hampers unified responses to the insurgency, leaving security forces to contend with an increasingly emboldened enemy. Pakistan reopens Punjab schools after smog improves (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [11/20/2024 10:15 AM, Staff, 88008K, Neutral]
Schools reopened Wednesday in Pakistan’s most populated province after authorities announced a drop in dangerous air pollution, with parents rejoicing their children’s return to classes.
Punjab, home to more than half of Pakistan’s 240 million people, closed schools in its major cities on November 6 after dense smog hit "hazardous" levels, a situation described by the province’s environment minister as a "national disaster.".
But Punjab’s environmental agency said late Tuesday that "the ambient air quality had improved in Punjab" due to rain in the north, as well as change in wind direction and speed.
"Therefore, all the educational institutions in the whole province, including Lahore and Multan Division, shall be opened" beginning Wednesday, it announced.
By morning, smog still shrouded the Punjab capital of Lahore as commuters headed to work, while road tractors continued belching wafts of dark smoke.
However the Air Quality Index for Lahore was 150, reflecting a massive improvement from two week ago when pollution in the city climbed to a record-high AQI value of 1,100.
Parent Muhammad Waheed, 48, said his children were "happy when the announcement was made about schools reopening".
Commuters ride along a street engulfed in smog in Lahore.
"The children were getting bored at home," the daily wage worker told AFP. "Thank God, they’ll be going back to school.".
According to authorities, students and staff will still be required to wear face masks.
There is also a "complete ban on outdoor sports and outdoor co-curricular activities till further orders", said the environmental agency.
Every Lahore winter, a mix of low-grade fuel emissions from factories and vehicles, exacerbated by seasonal crop burn-off by farmers, blanket the city, trapped by cooler temperatures and slow-moving winds.
According to a University of Chicago study, high levels of pollution have already reduced life expectancy in Lahore, a city of 14 million inhabitants, by 7.5 years.
But the issue is "not limited to Lahore alone", said Punjab’s environment minister Marriyum Aurangzeb during a press conference Wednesday.
"Due to seasonal atmospheric conditions, it is also affecting southern Punjab, northern Punjab, Islamabad, Rawalpindi, Abbottabad, and now Karachi. The wind speed is also impacting Karachi," she said.
"This is a national disaster, and we must treat it as such. As a nation, we need to come together and take collective action to address this (smog).".- ‘Disrupted’ education -
A steady stream of parents ferrying their children on motorbikes arrived at a Lahore school Wednesday, with staff members checking to see that the girls clad in blue uniforms had on face masks.
Students wearing masks arrive for classes as schools reopened amid smoggy conditions in Lahore on Wednesday.
"It’s good that schools are reopening, as children’s education was being disrupted," said Muhammad Akmal, who had just dropped off his daughter. "Kids were distracted by their phones and not focusing on anything else.".
Instead of closing schools, he said the government should have pursued other measures "such as using artificial rain to address the smog".
Breathing toxic air has catastrophic health consequences, with the World Health Organization (WHO) warning that strokes, heart disease, lung cancer and respiratory diseases can be triggered by prolonged exposure.
Even before smog descended on Pakistan, UNICEF reported that "around 12 percent of deaths among children under five were due to air pollution".
Two weeks ago, the Air Quality Index hit a record high of 1,110. By Sunday, it had fallen below 300 -- the threshold considered "hazardous" for humans.
Still, as of Tuesday evening, the concentration of PM2.5 micro-particle pollutants in Lahore was still more than 10 times higher than levels deemed acceptable by the WHO.
Similar hazardous conditions have hit India’s capital New Delhi, where classes have been moved online after air pollution surged past 60 times the WHO-recommended daily maximum.
Experts believe that modernising car fleets, reviewing farming methods, and making the transition to renewable energies are key to overcoming the smog that paralyzes millions of Pakistanis and Indians every year. India
U.S. Charges Indian Billionaire Adani With Fraud Over Bribery Scheme (New York Times)
New York Times [11/21/2024 4:03 AM, Nico Grant, 831K, Neutral]
Federal prosecutors in New York charged the Indian tycoon Gautam Adani, one of the world’s richest people, with multiple counts of fraud on Wednesday, accusing him and associates of bribing Indian officials and later lying to investors about the scheme.
Mr. Adani, who has amassed a fortune estimated to be over $85 billion from the Adani Group, a conglomerate with holdings in ports, coal mines and airports, was charged with wire and securities fraud by the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of New York, the office said in a statement.
The defendants are accused of paying more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to obtain solar energy contracts worth billions of dollars for Adani Green Energy, a renewable energy company majority-owned by Adani Group. Mr. Adani discussed the bribery plan with officials in person, prosecutors said.
Adani Green Energy then tried to raise money from U.S. and international investors with a 2021 bond offering on the basis of false and misleading statements about the firm’s anti-corruption and anti-bribery efforts, according to the indictment.“As alleged, the defendants orchestrated an elaborate scheme to bribe Indian government officials to secure contracts worth billions of dollars,” Breon Peace, the U.S. attorney for the district, said in a statement. Mr. Adani and his associates “lied about the bribery scheme as they sought to raise capital from U.S. and international investors.”
The Securities and Exchange Commission filed a parallel civil case saying Adani Green Energy raised more than $175 million from U.S. investors. One of Mr. Adani’s associates was charged with conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, which prohibits companies that operate in the United States from bribing foreign officials.
Other executives at Mr. Adani’s energy company who were charged Wednesday included Sagar R. Adani, a nephew of Mr. Adani, and Vneet S. Jaain. The government also indicted former employees of a Canadian institutional investor, including Deepak Malhotra, who are accused of conspiring to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and conspiring to obstruct investigations into the bribery scheme and a grand jury.
A lawyer for Gautam Adani could not be immediately reached for comment. A lawyer for Sagar Adani declined to comment. Mike Kendall, a lawyer for Mr. Malhotra, said his client “is innocent of the charges.”
The share prices of publicly traded Adani Group companies tumbled in India on Thursday, with Adani Green Energy plunging about 17 percent.
According to the indictment, the defendants kept track of their bribes and offers to Indian officials using messaging apps, phones and PowerPoint presentations, sometimes using “code names” in their communications. Several of the defendants referred to Gautam Adani as “SAG,” “Mr. A,” “Numero uno” and “the big man,” the indictment said. Mr. Jaain was called “V,” “snake” and “Numero uno minus one.”
The government goes on to claim that two of the defendants engaged in discussions to delete “incriminating electronic materials, including emails, electronic messages and a PowerPoint analysis.”
While Gautam Adani’s investments in critical infrastructure have made him a powerful force in the Indian economy, his political connections have also set him apart. At the heart of them is a personal relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which has helped Mr. Adani’s company win lucrative contracts. In some instances, the government has changed bidding rules to help the company gain control of airports.
Mr. Adani and Mr. Modi are both from the state of Gujarat, and when Mr. Modi became prime minister in 2014, he flew to New Delhi on an Adani plane. Their relationship has created a widespread perception in India that Mr. Adani can forge any deal he wants, and that there is an uneven playing field.
Mr. Adani has rejected claims of special treatment, saying the foundations of his business were laid when the Indian government relaxed trade restrictions in the 1980s, long before Mr. Modi led the country.
As U.S. prosecutors tell it, the seeds for the bribery scheme involving Mr. Adani were planted between December 2019 and July 2020. Adani Green Energy and another renewable-energy company listed on the New York Stock Exchange won contracts with the Solar Energy Corporation of India, a state-owned company that tries to increase renewable energy use in the country.
Adani Green Energy proclaimed at the time that it had won “the world’s largest solar award.”
It was a $6 billion investment in solar energy, and over 20 years, it was expected to generate more than $2 billion in profit after taxes, according to the indictment. But there was an unintended consequence — the energy was expensive for states in India, and the Solar Energy Corporation of India struggled to find customers to sign on.
In 2020, Mr. Adani and his associates used bribes to help convince Indian states to use their solar energy, prosecutors said. They promised Indian officials approximately $265 million, prosecutors said in the indictment, including $228 million to a single unnamed official, who secured a deal for electricity providers in the state of Andhra Pradesh to purchase seven gigawatts of solar energy.
Between 2021 and February 2022, states and regions including Odisha, Jammu and Kashmir also decided to sign up for the solar power. Around the same time, more individuals joined the bribery scheme, including former employees of a Canadian institutional investor that was the largest shareholder of the energy company listed on the New York Stock Exchange, the indictment said.
Prosecutors said Sagar Adani, Mr. Adani’s nephew, used his cellphone to track details on the bribes offered and promised to officials. For every official, Sagar Adani identified their state or region, how much they were offered and the amount of solar power their region would purchase in exchange for the kickback.
Between 2020 and 2024, Mr. Adani and his associates gave false and misleading information to investors while raising money for the energy venture, the indictment said. Mr. Adani and his nephew lied to investors when their businesses took out a $1.35 billion loan and issued $750 million in bonds in 2021, according to the government, and also did not tell investors about U.S. investigations into their business practices in 2023 and 2024.
The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, enacted in 1977 but more stringently enforced only in recent decades, has led to huge fines for companies, including Germany’s engineering giant Siemens; Brazil’s state-owned energy company, Petrobras; and a subsidiary of Halliburton, the oil services company. Bribery of foreign officials was also a key element in a vast scandal that involved a Malaysian sovereign wealth fund called 1MDB and entangled the investment bank Goldman Sachs.
President-elect Donald J. Trump wanted to strike down the law during his first term because he considered it unfair to American companies, according to two Washington Post reporters in a book published in 2020. Another critic of the law is Jay Clayton, whom Mr. Trump has chosen to become U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Mr. Clayton argued in a 2011 paper that the United States’ anti-bribery policies tended “to place disproportionate burdens on U.S. regulated companies in international transactions,” hurting American competitiveness.
Mr. Adani congratulated Mr. Trump on his election in a post on X last Wednesday, promising to invest $10 billion in “U.S. energy security and resilient infrastructure projects” and create up to 15,000 jobs.
Nearly two years ago, Mr. Adani’s Adani Group was accused of “brazen accounting fraud, stock manipulation and money laundering” by Hindenburg Research, a small investment firm in New York. The Adani Group denied those claims, but its stock price cratered after the report. Billionaire Gautam Adani indicted in New York in alleged bribery scheme (Washington Post)
Washington Post [11/20/2024 7:20 PM, Shayna Jacobs and Bryan Pietsch, 6.9M, Neutral]
An Indian billionaire and power broker in the global energy industry has been indicted in the United States for alleged crimes related to $250 million in bribes promised to Indian government officials to secure solar energy supply contracts, federal prosecutors said Wednesday.
Justice Department officials said 62-year-old Gautam Adani, a nephew and several other executives of a renewable energy company also deceived U.S. investors and international financial institutions when they made false representations about their company’s anti-bribery practices.
The alleged bribery scheme that was hatched from 2020 to 2024 was projected to make Adani’s business $2 billion in profits over a two-decade period. Adani, who founded the Adani Group energy conglomerate, is accused of personally having in-person discussions with an Indian official in connection with the bribery arrangements.
Adani, his nephew Sagar Adani and company executive Vneet Jaain were indicted on charges of conspiracies to commit wire fraud and securities fraud and substantive securities fraud.
Four of Adani’s business associates were charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice for attempting to conceal the illegal activities and their knowledge of crimes from investigators.
None of the individuals charged in the matter are in custody.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a statement that the defendants lied about their activities in India while trying to secure funding from U.S. investors and investors in other countries.
The indictment alleges that electronic evidence confirmed aspects of the investigation.
Sagar Adani had notes on his cellphone that tracked the region where a bribe was paid, the amount paid and the expected contract size for solar power business that his company would be expected to provide in return, according to the 54-page indictment.
Cyril Cabanes, Saurabh Agarwal, Deepak Malhotra and Rupesh Agarwal are associates who are accused of destroying evidence and trying to mislead federal investigators who were looking into Adani-related corruption.
Text messages cited in the indictment allegedly reveal efforts by those associates to manage a crisis unfolding because of the U.S. government’s investigations into Adani’s suspected corruption. Those efforts included lying directly to investigators.
The Adani Group and the Indian Embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Adani’s indictment follows a wave of other allegations that have tarnished his net worth and jeopardized his standing in the business community.Adani was once Asia’s richest man — and briefly the world’s second-richest person — but previous allegations of fraud slashed the value of his companies, significantly cutting into his wealth.
Last year, Hindenburg Research, a U.S. investment firm that investigates companies in an effort to discover potential shortfalls or wrongdoing and then short their stocks, alleged that Adani had artificially inflated the share prices of his companies by using shell companies linked to his family members.
Those allegations led to a massive sell-off in Adani subsidiaries, forcing Indian markets to halt the trading of some Adani businesses. Adani denied the allegations, but his wealth and perhaps his reputation did not fully recover.
He is now the 18th-richest person in the world, according to Bloomberg’s Billionaire Index, one spot behind Indian businessman Mukesh Ambani. Adani has close ties with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The Washington Post has previously reported that Indian government officials have bent to the will of Adani’s businesses, even when projects appeared to make little economic sense or were opposed by local leaders.
An Adani coal plant in Godda, India, was erected despite opposition from locals, including a lawmaker who went on a hunger strike in protest. He was jailed for six months.
The Indian government has touted renewable energy reforms, but on at least three occasions it changed laws to help Adani’s coal businesses, saving him at least $1 billion, The Post reported. Indian Billionaire Gautam Adani Charged in $250 Million Bribery Scheme (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [11/21/2024 3:25 AM, James Fanelli and Corinne Ramey, 810K, Neutral]
Gautam Adani, the billionaire founder of one of India’s biggest business conglomerates, was charged by the Justice Department with orchestrating a massive bribery scheme to pay off Indian government officials to secure lucrative solar-energy supply contracts.
Prosecutors announced a 54-page indictment Wednesday that alleges Adani, the chairman of the Adani Group, personally met with Indian officials to advance the illicit deal and secure contracts worth billions of dollars for a renewable-energy company owned by the conglomerate. Prosecutors also alleged that Gautam Adani, 62 years old, and two Adani Green Energy executives conspired to misrepresent the renewable-energy firm’s antibribery and corruption practices to U.S. investors and financial institutions to obtain financing.
In total, eight executives were charged in the scheme. None of the defendants have been arrested and are believed to be at large overseas, according to a spokeswoman for the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, which brought the case. One of the defendants is Sagar Adani, Gautam Adani’s nephew who oversees the Adani Group’s renewable-energy businesses.“My office is committed to rooting out corruption in the international marketplace and protecting investors from those who seek to enrich themselves at the expense of the integrity of our financial markets,” said Brooklyn U.S. Attorney Breon Peace.
Gautam Adani and Sagar Adani were charged with securities fraud and two counts of fraud conspiracies. The Securities and Exchange Commission also brought civil charges against the two defendants, who are Indian nationals.
In a statement, the Adani Group denied the allegations, calling them “baseless.”“The Adani Group has always upheld and is steadfastly committed to maintaining the highest standards of governance, transparency and regulatory compliance across all jurisdictions of its operations,” it said.
Gautam Adani founded the Adani Group in 1988. It built its energy empire on coal and is now setting up a solar supply chain. It is also building a solar farm in Western India that is expected to cover an area over five times the size of Paris.
The group’s flagship firm, Adani Enterprises, has started making materials used for making solar-power cells and panels. It is the first Indian company to do so.
Adani’s firm has capitalized on India’s goal of increasing renewable energy while reducing dependence on Chinese imports. Although India has managed to start building solar panels within its borders, the raw materials have been mainly imported from China.
Adani Group shares fell sharply Thursday following the news. Adani Enterprises was down 10% and Adani Green Energy was 19% lower. Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone fell 10%.
Adani Green Energy said it wouldn’t proceed with its planned U.S. dollar-denominated bond offerings in light of the Justice Department’s actions. India’s Opposition Calls for Adani’s Arrest After US Indictment (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/21/2024 3:30 AM, Shruti Srivastava, 5.5M, Neutral]
India’s main opposition party sought an investigation into business dealings of billionaire Gautam Adani after US prosecutors indicted the tycoon for promising bribes to the South Asian nation’s government officials.
Rahul Gandhi, a leader of the Indian National Congress party, questioned the country’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s links with Adani, and suggested that those close ties helped shield the tycoon from being questioned about alleged corruption. He said that the alliance of opposition parties in the country will take up the matter together in parliament when the session starts next week and called for joint parliamentary committee to scrutinize the group while seeking the arrest of the businessman.
US federal prosecutors on Wednesday alleged that Adani along with his associates, promised to pay more than $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials to win solar energy contracts, and concealed the plan as they sought to raise money from US investors. The allegations are baseless, the group said in a statement Thursday, adding that it would seek all possible legal recourse to defend itself.“It’s now pretty clear and established in America that Mr. Adani has broken both American and Indian laws,” Gandhi said. “I’m wondering why Mr. Adani is still roaming free in this country,” despite being accused of more than $200 million in bribes and other alleged activities, he said.
Both Modi and Adani hail from the western Indian state of Gujarat and have risen in tandem, with the tycoon’s sprawling business built on a close alignment with Modi’s nation-building priorities in infrastructure, green energy, defense and digital services.
Adani Group stocks tumbled in India Thursday, with flagship Adani Enterprises Ltd. falling by as much as 23% to the lowest level in a year, while Adani Green plunged over 19%. US Bribery Case Against Adani Is Bad News for Modi (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [11/21/2024 4:18 AM, Andy Mukherjee, 5.5M, Neutral]
The US Justice Department’s criminal charges against Gautam Adani pose the biggest threat yet to the Asian tycoon’s $169 billion empire. More importantly, though, it’s also a missed opportunity for India’s opposition, an unexpected gift to President-elect Donald Trump, and an all-around embarrassment for Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The 54-page indictment alleges that Adani Green Energy Ltd.’s mega 2020 order from Solar Energy Corporation of India had a problem — there were no takers for the expensive power, which jeopardized the lucrative contract. That, the DOJ says, gave rise to a corrupt scheme “to pay over $250 million in bribes to Indian government officials, to lie to investors and banks to raise billions of dollars, and to obstruct justice.” The case is against group Chairman Gautam Adani, his nephew Sagar, who is executive director of the green-energy business, and six other individuals. The conglomerate denied the allegations as baseless and said it’s fully compliant with all laws. “All possible legal recourse will be sought,” the group said in a statement.
The news about the court filing came hours after the end of assembly elections in the western state of Maharashtra, home to India’s financial capital Mumbai. Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi had made crony capitalism — especially Adani’s proximity to Modi — the central piece of his campaign, particularly in the Maharashtra poll. Which is what makes the timing of these charges unfortunate for him.
Adani, who owns the two Mumbai airports and supplies electricity to the city, will soon start redeveloping its biggest shantytown. Gandhi and his allies have alleged that the terms of the controversial $3 billion project were sweetened for Adani by the state government, which is controlled by Modi’s party. Neither Adani nor Modi has responded to the allegations. A change in the local administration might lead to a fresh tender.
The outcome of the Maharashtra vote is already sealed. Votes will be counted Saturday, though exit polls suggest that Gandhi’s challenge to dislodge the government probably failed in a close contest.
For Trump, though, the indictment couldn’t have come at a better time. His incoming administration will bargain with India for greater market access, especially for US tech firms, from a position of strength. The Adani Group is yet to comment on the charges, although an early settlement would allow the sprawling conglomerate to continue to access its most-important raw material: debt financing.
Adani’s stocks and bonds are already tumbling. For bankers to take an Adani loan file to the risk committee, the overhang of criminal charges against Gautam and Sagar, who’s part of an elaborate succession plan, must first go away.
This is also what Modi will want. The indictment is the biggest blowback against him yet from the ever-expanding corporate-governance saga that has engulfed the infrastructure behemoth. Adani is the prime minister’s longtime friend, and neither Modi’s government nor the ruling party shied away when New York-based Hindenburg Research accused Asia’s second-richest man of “pulling the largest con in corporate history” in January last year.
That turned out to be a manageable crisis. The group strenuously denied the short seller’s allegations of stock manipulation and accounting fraud, and the storm appeared to blow over. The conglomerate’s market value doubled from the low it hit in February 2023, following a $150 billion-plus selloff.
By comparison, the DOJ’s charges are grave. The indictment alleges that Indian state governments weren’t too keen to buy 12 gigawatts — eight from Adani and four from US-listed Azure Power Global Ltd. — of what they perceived to be expensive power. According to the court filing, Gautam and Sagar Adani and Ranjit Gupta, the then-chief executive of Azure, among others, “devised a scheme to offer, authorize, make and promise to make bribe payments” to government officials in India so they would be persuaded to purchase the electricity.
The two groups worked out their respective shares of the bribes, the DOJ noted. Adani and its officers allegedly “relied on the US financial system to perpetuate this fraudulent scheme.” They did this by seeking and securing investors and potential investors physically located in the US and causing wires to be sent and received that passed through New York, the indictment said.
The echoes of the case will reverberate through India. So far it’s mostly Gandhi pounding the tables. For regional opposition leaders, Adani’s link with Modi hasn’t exactly been a hot-button issue.
That was also the case when in a fresh report in August, Hindenburg alleged that Madhabi Puri Buch, head of the Securities and Exchange Board of India, had a potential conflict of interest, raising doubts about the objectivity of SEBI’s ongoing probe into Adani. Buch and the regulator denied the accusations, and the SEBI chief skipped a scheduled appearance before a lawmakers’ committee in October.
But the fresh US charges change everything. The indictment alleges that Adani has concealed the “bribery scheme” from investors and financial investors since at least March last year, when Federal Bureau of Investigation agents served Sagar with a search warrant in the US.
While concepts like conflicts of interest — or alleged breaches of securities law — require a modicum of financial training, bribery is something every politician understands. Almost $228 million, the DOJ says, was offered to just one person, identified in the court filing as Foreign Official #1 from the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. There’s plenty here for a full-blown domestic scandal. If this affair drags out, Modi’s own Bharatiya Janata Party may wonder how long it should support a prime minister who at 74 is unlikely to lead it to the 2029 election.
In other words, Gandhi’s intuition to stick to the alleged Modi-Adani nexus as a talking point in election campaigns may have been vindicated. In a press conference Thursday, the Congress Party leader called for Buch’s removal and Adani’s arrest. While the DOJ indictment came too late to sway the vote in Maharashtra, it may yet cast a long shadow — both on India’s national politics, and relations with Washington next year. India condemns Canadian report claiming Modi was aware of plot to kill Sikh separatist Nijjar (The Independent)
The Independent [11/21/2024 4:48 AM, Arpan Rai, 27782K, Neutral]
India has rubbished a Canadian media report accusing Indian prime minister Narendra Modi of being aware of an alleged plot to murder a Sikh separatist leader on Canada’s soil, terming it “ludicrous”.A report by Canada’s The Globe and Mail on Wednesday said the Hindu leader was aware of the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a prominent separatist leader, in British Columbia and other violent plots, citing Canadian security agencies.The remarks were shared with the leading newspaper by a senior national security official who was investigating intelligence on New Delhi’s alleged foreign-interference operations in Canada.India’s home affairs minister Amit Shah, intelligence chief Ajit Doval, and foreign affairs minister S Jaishanker were also tied to the assassination operation plotted abroad, the official claimed, according to the report.Reacting sharply to the report in New Delhi, Indian external affairs ministry spokesperson Randhir Jaiswal said such “ludicrous statements” should be dismissed with the contempt they deserve.“We do not normally comment on media reports. However, such ludicrous statements made to a newspaper purportedly by a Canadian government source should be dismissed with the contempt they deserve,” he said. “Smear campaigns like this only further damage our already strained ties,” Mr Jaiswal said on Wednesday.This is not the first time senior Indian officials have been explicitly named by Canada in assassination plot to take out separatist leaders of Khalistan movement who are seeking a separate nation for Sikhs in India.Last month, Canada said Mr Shah, who is the right-hand man of Mr Modi, was behind plots to target Sikh separatists in Canada, taking the bilateral tensions, on the already strained ties between Ottawa and New Delhi, further.The allegation followed Canada’s expulsion of six Indian diplomats it has linked to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader on Canadian soil, with India immediately reciprocating in equal measure.India has previously denied Canadian allegations and has responded by expelling Canadian six diplomats.Shortly after, Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau said India made "a horrific mistake" by thinking it could interfere as aggressively as it allegedly did in Canada’s sovereignty.The diplomatic row, which has steadily boiled over in the past one year, can impact India’s ambitions as it tries to project itself as a rising world power and also backpedal Indo-Canada relations severely.“India-Canada bilateral relations, which have been on a downslide since last year, will take a further hit, which will take a long time to repair,” said Praveen Donthi, senior analyst with the International Crisis Group.Mr Modi and Mr Trudeau were seen in Rio, Brazil, this week when the two leaders came together in the same frame for a G20 Summit family photo. But the two were not seen exchanging words. India’s Modi offers aid to Caribbean nations while meeting leaders in Guyana (AP)
AP [11/20/2024 8:34 PM, Bert Wilkinson, 31638K, Positive]
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said Wednesday he would share technology for combatting seaweed infestation with Caribbean nations, as he visited Guyana in the first such visit by an Indian leader in more than 50 years.
Guyana, a South American nation with many citizens of Indian origin, serves as headquarters for the 15-member Caribbean trade bloc known as Caricom, and Modi met with regional leaders Wednesday as part of the India-Caricom summit. They last met in 2019.
Modi arrived with promises to help the region in areas including health, energy and agriculture. He also announced more than 1,000 scholarships over the next five years for trade bloc nations, mobile hospitals for rural areas and drug-testing laboratories as well as river and sea ferries for marine transport.
But Caribbean leaders reserved their loudest applause when Modi announced that India had made tremendous progress in converting large quantities of sargassum into fertilizer and other economic uses as he urged the region to take advantage of his offer.
"We are willing to share this with all the countries," he said, calling the seaweed invasion on beaches in the tourism-dependent region "a very big problem.".
Modi also was thinking of home. Noting Guyana’s growing importance as an oil-producing nation after vast quantities of oil and gas were discovered off its coast in 2015, he said: "Guyana will play an important role in India’s energy security.".
He added that his government also is willing to fully equip at least one government building in each of the trade bloc nations with a solar power system.
Speaking after meeting with Guyanese President Irfaan Ali, the country’s first Muslim leader, Modi promised to help Guyana and the region improve agriculture production, saying food security is important to island nations.
Trade between India and Guyana has strengthened in recent years, with India providing Guyana lines of credit for military passenger planes and funding to buy a fast river ferry that services far-flung jungle areas close to neighboring Venezuela.
Modi also noted that indentured laborers from India were brought to Guyana during the British colonial era and now make a significant contribution to the country. Nearly 40% of the population is East Indian.
Modi’s visit marks the first time an Indian prime minister has come to Guyana since Indira Ghandi in 1968. Delhi’s Squabbling Officials Leave Millions Choking on Toxic Air (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/20/2024 9:30 PM, Dan Strumpf and Swati Gupta, 27782K, Neutral]
As the worst air pollution in years descended on India’s capital this week, the country’s health minister was not in New Delhi coordinating a response. Instead, he was 800 miles away, campaigning in a state election.Prime Minister Narendra Modi, meanwhile, was in Nigeria, where he accepted an award from the country’s president before heading off to Brazil for the Group of 20 summit. Neither has commented on the toxic air pollution back home.Each year around the end of autumn, a blanket of smog descends on wide stretches of northern India and parts of Pakistan, as temperatures drop, winds grow still and farmers set their fields ablaze. This year, pollution levels have been particularly shocking: Air Quality Index readings in New Delhi were more than 17 times acceptable levels earlier this week, surging above 1,700. Yet the response from officials has been no different. Schools were shut, traffic restricted and construction halted — similar to previous years. And local and central government officials once again traded blame over who should take responsibility for a crisis that studies show is killing more than 1 million Indians a year. At the heart of the policy inaction is India’s fractious politics. Delhi is ruled by the opposition Aam Aadmi Party, whose leader Arvind Kejriwal is a vocal critic of Modi, while the prime minister’s Bharatiya Janata Party runs the national government.On Monday, Delhi Chief Minister Atishi blamed the federal government for not doing enough to curb crop fires in surrounding states ruled by the BJP. It was pushing “all of North India into a medical emergency,” the chief minister, who goes by one name, said. Delhi’s environment minister on Tuesday said it was the central government’s “moral responsibility” to help Delhi.The BJP branch in New Delhi, meanwhile, issued a flurry of social-media posts blaming Atishi’s party, which also controls the farm-belt state of Punjab and where illegal fires soared earlier this week. The BJP singled out Kejriwal for ridicule and compared the party’s leaders to characters on the TV show “Game of Thrones.”Asked for comment, the Health Ministry pointed to a health advisory it issued to states on Monday. Modi’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment.
“It has become a blame game where one party accuses the other and then there are counter charges,” said Sandeep Shastri, a political scientist at Lokniti, a public policy think tank. “If every party has only a short-term vision of seeking to gain a political benefit, then I think really we cannot go forward towards the solution.”Deeper political obstacles also fuel inaction. India’s small-scale northern farmers, who burn their fields in advance of rotating winter crops, represent a key voting bloc and are quick to mobilize in response to political threats.Among Delhiites, resignation is running high. Almost two-thirds of families in the capital say they plan to live with the pollution without making major changes to their routine, according to a survey by local advocacy group LocalCircles.Shashi Tharoor, a longtime opposition lawmaker, said he held annual consultations on air quality since 2015, but “gave up last year because nothing seemed to change and no one seemed to care.”
“There is no sense of emergency,” said Parthaa Bosu, a Delhi-based air quality expert who heads a consulting firm. “India is starting to get adjusted to the situation in a way.” Delhi’s stop-gap measures to deal with the pollution don’t address the root causes, which require a more comprehensive political solution that transcends party politics, Bosu said. National efforts like India’s National Clean Air Programme, launched in 2019, aren’t well administered, he added, pointing to reports showing that a large share of allocated funds aren’t spent.“If it were terrorism, then would the center step in and take control of the situation, or would it just let the state agencies deal with it?” he said. “I think a similar mechanism is required for air quality,” Focus this year remained on northern-state crop fires, with the Punjab Remote Sensing Centre showing just under 10,000 such fires there since September. The Supreme Court in October reprimanded the central government and two nearby state governments for what they said was a failure to control the farm fires. Local media reported a spate of farmer arrests in the state of Haryana in recent weeks over accusations of illegal crop burning. Yet farm fires account for only a share of India’s pollution, comprising up to 35% of the daily contribution of fine particles in Delhi in November, according to the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology. The rest comes from a wide mix of sources that further complicates pollution-busting efforts, including road emissions, construction, heavy industry and waste burning.
“Largely the pollution comes from within the city rather than coming from outside — due to unpaved pavements, burning of wood for heat, traffic,” said Frank Hammes, global chief executive officer at IQAir. “Agriculture burning at this time of the year is definitely a crucial component but the burning of biomass and traffic too contribute to it.”One political body that has in the past helped push through pollution reforms is the Supreme Court. In 2002, the court orderedbuses in the capital to run on compressed natural gas, and expanded the order to other vehicles in later years. It has also ordered the installation of large-scale air purifiers in the past.While the court continues to step in and chastise authorities when it believes they aren’t adequately addressing pollution, it hasn’t shown the same interest in aggressive pollution-tackling measures as in the past, said Avikal Somvanshi, an independent air pollution expert who previously helped advise the court on air-quality matters.“The federal government’s interest on the issue has been declining,” he said. “All the actions before the pandemic were driven by the judiciary, and the judiciary in last couple of years has not been as active with the issue.” Exit Polls Predict Narrow Victory for Modi in Maharashtra State (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [11/20/2024 10:56 AM, Swati Gupta, 27782K, Positive]
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party is leading in one of the two recent state elections with a small margin, according to exit polls, while the opposition alliance is trailing closely behind.In the western state of Maharashtra, which includes India’s financial powerhouse of Mumbai, the BJP-led alliance is predicted to win 145 seats, with the opposition close behind with 131 seats in a state legislature of 288 seats.While the exit polls aren’t definitive, investors would welcome a win by the BJP-led alliance in Maharashtra as it is seen as more business-friendly. A win for the opposition in Maharashtra may disrupt major investment projects launched under the BJP-led alliance, including billionaire Gautam Adani’s plans to revamp Mumbai’s famous Dharavi slum.The latest voter turnout in Maharashtra stood at about 58.43%, according to the Election Commission.In October, BJP won a surprise victory in the northern Indian state of Haryana but lost the union territory of Jammu and Kashmir to the Congress alliance. An election victory in an important state like Maharashtra will show that Modi’s popularity remains substantial, even though his party lost an outright majority in national polls.In Jharkhand state, the exit polls forecast a tie between the BJP alliance and the Congress-led alliance, with both sides within reach of the halfway mark of 41. The latest voter turnout for Jharkhand stood at 67.76%, according to the Election Commission of India.Official results for both states are due to be released on Saturday.MaharashtraThe state, currently governed by a BJP-led alliance, contributes over 10% of India’s gross domestic product and is home to companies such as Reliance Industries Ltd. and Tata Group. Maharashtra’s lofty economic reputation, however, is at risk of being tarnished by growing farm distress and high unemployment. It has also seen exceptional political turmoil in recent years, and investors hope the new government will recharge the state’s economic prospects bringing some much-needed stability. JharkhandThe state, home to some of India’s biggest steel mills as well as uranium mines, is currently governed by an alliance between a regional party and the Indian National Congress. Approximately 26 million people are registered to vote in Jharkhand, which has a large tribal community. Jharkhand’s legislative assembly has 81 seats, including 37 which are reserved for candidates from socially and economically backward communities. Indian international students in US outnumber Chinese for the first time in 15 years (CNN)
CNN [11/20/2024 5:06 AM, Jessie Yeung, 24052K, Neutral]
For more than a decade, Chinese students have flocked to the United States, drawn by the prestige of an overseas education and the glamor of the American Dream. Education consultancies flourished across China, with parents paying big bucks for tutors and classes that promised to send their children abroad.
But that’s changing now – and recent statistics suggest the allure may be wearing off.
During the last academic year, students from India became the largest group of international students in American higher education – knocking China off the top seat for the first time since 2009, according to figures released Monday by the US State Department and the nonprofit Institute of International Education.
China was still a major source, making up one fourth of all international students, compared to India’s 29%, the report found.
But experts say the decline reflects significant shifts in both policy and public perception, with many Chinese students and families worrying about safety, racism and discrimination, and immigration difficulties – especially as more options open up in other countries, including in China itself.
Meanwhile, India overtook China as the world’s most populous country last year, and more than 40% of Indians are under 25 – prompting hopes of a youthful new engine for the global economy just as China’s population begins to dwindle and age. There were more than 331,600 Indian students in the US last academic year, according to the State Department.
"We’re seeing from both sides, Chinese students studying in America and American students studying in China, the numbers are going down," said Mallie Prytherch, a researcher at the University of Hong Kong’s Centre on Contemporary China and the World, who interviewed Beijing university students on their views toward the US during the pandemic.
For many Chinese students, "their parents, their teachers, had said, ‘Go to America, study, maybe you can even stay – you’ll get a good job, have a good life,’" she added. But the "onslaught" of racism and anti-Asian hate crimes during Donald Trump’s first presidency and the Covid-19 pandemic meant students became "disillusioned with this idea of the American Dream," she said.
A changing China
It was a different world in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when Chinese students first began surging overseas.
At the time, China was rapidly transforming from a poverty-stricken nation to an economic superpower, thanks to an "opening up" initiative that began in the late 1970s and saw sweeping reforms.
It also changed China’s relationship with the world. After China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001 and hosted a tremendously successful Olympic Games in 2008, "there was this upturn in US-China relations – everyone had a really optimistic view of what China could be," said Prytherch. "So there was a lot of openness in accepting students into America.".
Many Chinese families were also newly wealthy in this flourishing economy. There was a feeling of "opening and moving out, and a chance to really go somewhere different," Prytherch said.
The State Department’s figures reflect this trend – with the number of Chinese university students in the US rising from about 98,200 in 2009 to a record high of 369,500 in 2019. That also meant China became an increasingly lucrative market for American universities, who stepped up efforts to attract students from the nation.
But attitudes began changing by 2016 as Trump was in his first run for office, Prytherch said. US-China relations tanked in the following years, as the two countries engaged in a trade war and finger-pointing during the pandemic.
The downward spiral was reflected in policy, too: Trump imposed an executive order canceling the US’ Fulbright exchange program with China, then introduced a ban that effectively prevents graduate science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) students from several Chinese universities from gaining visas to the US, the world’s biggest research hub.
In 2020, the US revoked visas for more than 1,000 Chinese students and researchers deemed security risks. When President Joe Biden took office, many of those Trump-era policies were kept in place – making it difficult for Chinese grad students and researchers to secure a visa.
In January this year, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in a briefing that "dozens of Chinese nationals, including international students, have been forcibly deported by the US each month." He decried it as "discriminatory," urging the US to protect the rights of Chinese students abroad.
Li Jing, a research assistant at Tsinghua University in Beijing with a master’s degree in cybersecurity, told CNN in June he tried to attend an academic conference in the US but was denied a visa three times, costing him nearly $690 in the process."I don’t know whether it’s my academic background that renders the visa denials," he said.
The Covid years
The number of Chinese students in the US plunged during the pandemic and hasn’t rebounded since.
"The total number of students from China has decreased in the last three years, primarily at the undergraduate level," said Mirka Martel, research head at the Institute of International Education, at a briefing Monday announcing the latest figures.
One education consultancy, Education First, has seen a 10% decline in the number of Hong Kong and Macau students wanting to attend college in the US, according to general manager Steven Hon.
The State Department’s figures didn’t come as a surprise to many on Chinese social media platforms. "Since the economic sanctions and tech restrictions started in 2018, many (Chinese) students have been sent back home," one user wrote on Weibo. Another user wrote: "The only reason I don’t want my child to study in the US is safety — issues like violence, robbery, gun violence, and drugs.".
Concerns about safety have only risen since the pandemic brought a wave of anti-Asian racism and hate crimes. And while gun violence has always posed a worry for overseas families, the increased use of social media during the pandemic also meant attacks circulated more widely online, reaching more eyes in China, said Prytherch.
The US government’s handling of the pandemic also shook students in China, she added. Although many were also unhappy with Beijing’s strict zero-Covid policy and the chaotic end of its lockdown years, they still largely preferred that to the sense of Covid running rampant in the US – viewed not only as a failure of the government, but of democracy.
During her research in Beijing, one student told Prytherch: "In America, they say you’re free, but if you can’t walk safely on the street, how is that freedom?".
However, Hon said, the decline didn’t mean there was necessarily less appetite for an overseas education – just that there were more choices besides the US now.
"The reason why we’ve seen a slight drop in the US is because there have been more immigration-friendly policies in other nations, like Canada, the UK and Australia," he said. "Parents have a lot more options to choose from in terms of where they want to go, and what universities are willing to accept their children.".
One of those options is simply staying in China, where universities are growing in prestige, said Prytherch. Many Chinese professors previously based in the US are now returning to teach in China – partly because of the difficult conditions they faced in the US, but also because of the improvement in Chinese educational quality, she said.
In that context, many students no longer think an American education automatically grants them a competitive edge in the Chinese market unless they attended an Ivy League or a similar top university, she added. In fact, with more Chinese students eyeing the stability and benefits of government jobs, some even wonder if an overseas education might damage their chances of such a career.
All that said, the US is still a highly popular destination for students, said Hon, from Education First – especially graduate students in AI and tech, since the top schools and research grants in those fields are still largely American.
And despite the tightening of immigration rules under the last two administrations, some US officials are still trying to encourage the flow of students.
"I want to confirm that we very much welcome students from China to the US. We have the largest number of Chinese students studying outside of China here. We do know that US universities are continuing to value Chinese students," said Marianne Craven of the State Department in a briefing this week, according to state-run outlet China Daily.
Whether Chinese students believe that is another question.
"A lot of (Chinese students) want families in the future, and they’ve begun to think that China is the best place to do that," said Prytherch. "They think, you know what, China is not too bad anymore. At least it’s safe.". Why Have China and India Suddenly Come Together? (Foreign Policy – opinion)
Foreign Policy [11/20/2024 6:00 AM, Kanti Bajpai, 1851K, Neutral]
In late October, just before the U.S. presidential election, India-China relations turned a corner.
In the first of two sudden developments, India announced on Oct. 21 an agreement with China on patrolling rights in Depsang and Demchok in eastern Ladakh along the two countries’ contested Himalayan border. These had been denied to India after a deadly military clash in the nearby Galwan Valley in June 2020. The resumption of both sides patrolling will be followed by the withdrawal of thousands of Chinese and Indian troops deployed in forward positions since the 2020 clash. This agreement came after stabilizing buffer zones were created at other conflict points in eastern Ladakh in 2021-22.
The second, almost simultaneous, development was the announcement that Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping would hold a bilateral meeting at the BRICS summit in Kazan, Russia. That meeting was duly held on Oct. 23.
What caused this uptick in China-India relations? While there is no official account of the reasons, three factors may have led to a detente.
The first likely factor was economic. India’s economy is growing at an average of 7 percent per annum, but if it wants to raise GDP growth to 8-10 percent per annum, it needs critical Chinese products (metals, active pharmaceutical ingredients, and machinery and electricals) as well as Chinese investment. China’s growth range is trending to 3-4 percent per annum. India is becoming more attractive as an export and investment destination—it is closing in on Japan’s GDP—particularly as China’s economic ties with the West shrink from de-risking strategies.
A second possible factor propelling the detente is the realization that the two sides are in a stalemate. Unless China and India are looking to settle matters on the battlefield, the massive post-Galwan deployments are a waste of men, money, and material. Since both sides understand that a decisive military victory in eastern Ladakh is implausible, the deployments are militarily futile, and they have outlived their symbolic value as well.
In addition, both militaries face larger challenges. For India, a two-front conflict with China and Pakistan would be daunting. This could occur in two ways. The first is a terrorist strike from Pakistani soil that leads to an Indian surgical strike (as in 2016 and 2019) and then escalates to full-scale war. If the war turns against Pakistan, China might be prompted to intervene in Ladakh to slow down Indian forces. The second possibility of a two-front war is if a border incident between India and China in Ladakh escalates to war and Pakistan senses an opportunity to grab Kashmir. New Delhi needs to ensure that it avoids such a conjuncture. Historically, it has found it easier to deal with China than Pakistan, both diplomatically and militarily. In addition, to stabilize military relations with China is more urgent since the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) is a far more formidable force than Pakistan’s.
For China, the primary military worry concerns the Taiwan Strait, the East China Sea, and the South China Sea, especially if the United States becomes involved in a fight. Beijing therefore also wants to reduce the chances of a two-front confrontation. Stabilizing its western borders with India is easier than stabilizing East Asian conflicts that involve some combination of Taiwan, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States.
The third possible cause of the detente is quite a different strategic worry—namely, the United States. India is a strategic partner of the United States, primarily because both countries look at China as a threat. Yet New Delhi is going through a rocky phase with Washington—over U.S. criticism of India’s democratic backsliding, human rights and minority protections and, most recently, allegations that Indian officials had a hand in an attempted assassination on American soil of a Sikh separatist activist. U.S. intelligence apparently also shared information with Canada over the killing of a Sikh separatist in British Columbia, which Ottawa says was organized by elements of the Indian government. By making up with China, the Modi government may well be signaling to the United States that it has other strategic options.
For China, relations with the United States have continued to slide under President Joe Biden—over trade and technology; internal issues such as Tibet and Xinjiang; Taiwan and the South China Sea; and the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a coalition comprising Australia, India, Japan, and the United States. It is in China’s interest to destabilize that coalition, and nudging India toward neutrality is one way of doing so. For Beijing, this is an opportunity to capitalize on New Delhi’s tendency to oscillate between rivalrous big powers as part of its nonalignment or strategic autonomy stance.
Donald Trump’s victory in the U.S. presidential election came after the China-India agreement on patrolling and the Xi-Modi discussions at the BRICS summit. With Trump in the White House, both New Delhi and Beijing may have additional reasons to cement their detente. Trump’s general volatility and his economic agenda of higher tariffs on countries that he thinks are not playing fair—a list that includes both India and China—are reasons for New Delhi and Beijing to come together. It gives them one less thing to worry about as they deal with a new, unpredictable U.S. administration; increases their diplomatic bargaining hand; and diversifies their economic relationships.
These three factors are significant enough that the detente could be sustained and eventually return both countries to the path of normalization. What further steps can India and China take to encourage that larger process of normalization?
The first step has already been taken with the resumption of patrolling by both militaries in Depsang and Demchok and the attendant enabling protocols—smaller patrols, prior notification of patrolling, and more. What lies ahead of the two militaries is the resumption of patrolling in Galwan, Pangong Tso, and other flash points. Here, the stabilizing measure thus far has been buffer zones to keep the troops apart.
The buffer zones have been helpful. However, both sides may fear secret intrusions into these areas that then become permanent deployments. Monitoring the zones is therefore vital. Patrolling is one means of monitoring. Other means include ground and satellite sensors as well as drones. Drones in turn can be destabilizing since they can "wander" beyond the buffer zones. And, of course, they can carry weapons. So, talks will be necessary to determine if the buffer zones in Galwan, Pangong Tso, and elsewhere are enough.
It is worth noting that China, too, has sought patrolling rights in two areas of Arunachal Pradesh where India is in military control. New Delhi has resisted Chinese patrolling demands there, but these areas have been the site of face-offs in recent years, and pressures to allow PLA patrols will grow. If Indian resistance to a patrolling deal persists, we could well see military flare-ups there in the not-so-distant future. New Delhi may then find that it faces the same problem as in Ladakh: buffer zones or a patrolling deal. China may not raise the diplomatic and military stakes there for now, given the incipient detente, but it is unlikely to allow the matter to drop. The two sides will therefore at some point have to talk about friction points in Arunachal Pradesh.
A second step is to make a partial but real beginning on troop withdrawals. A long hard winter is ahead of the thousands of troops in Ladakh. While a complete pullback—so-called de-induction—cannot occur immediately, a positive move would be de-inducting a not-insignificant portion of the massive deployments. This would bring real and symbolic benefit. The phasing and sequencing of de-induction may not be strictly equal and reciprocal. De-induction is easier for the Chinese military given superior infrastructure and the flatter terrain in Tibet to which the PLA would return. It is harder for the Indian military because of poorer infrastructure and the twisting mountain roads that the retreating forces must traverse.
Finally, since there was probably an economic rationale for the detente, the normalization of economic relations needs to occur if both sides are to reap the full benefits of the agreement. Here, India needs to speed up permission for Chinese imports and investments that are not deemed a security risk. It also needs to ease visa restrictions on Chinese business executives and technical experts who service Chinese equipment in India. And China needs to do something about the huge trade imbalance with India, which irks and worries New Delhi. In 2023-24, the trade imbalance stood at $85 billion, in China’s favor. It is simply not enough for Beijing to assert that the problem is with Indian businesses that are uncompetitive. China needs to liberalize imports from India in areas where it is competitive: for example, agricultural products, pharmaceuticals, and information technology and related services. If Xi can do an economic deal with Trump, surely he can do one with Modi as well.
In short, even though China and India remain suspicious of each other, they have an opportunity to steer their troubled bilateral relationship to a more positive path.
This essay is a modified version of an essay published by the Asian Peace Programme at the National University of Singapore’s Asia Research Institute. NSB
Muhammad Yunus on the Race to Build Bangladesh 2.0 (Time)
Time [11/21/2024 12:00 AM, Charlie Campbell, 15975K, Negative]
Dhaka looks reborn after a fresh lick of paint. Though this is not your typical municipal spruce-up. The sprawling Bangladeshi capital has been festooned with garish political murals celebrating August’s student-led ouster of reviled Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wazed. Mile upon mile of concrete balustrades are daubed with caricatures of the deposed autocrat with fangs and devil horns, slogans extolling "Gen-Z, the real heroes," and vows to "flush sh-ts from our society.".
It’s not language that sits easily with 84-year-old Muhammad Yunus, though the Nobel laureate says he can forgive the students’ salty exuberance. "The words are very explosive," Yunus tells TIME with a chuckle. "These young minds are full of ideas and ambitions and aspirations. They depicted their future in those murals and it’s something much greater than Bangladesh has ever seen.".
The task of turning those aspirations into reality now falls to Yunus, who was tapped to serve as "chief adviser" to the interim government though for all intents and purposes is Bangladesh’s new leader. His job is to piece back together South Asia’s second biggest economy of over 170 million people and shepherd the motley band of student leaders, military generals, Islamists, and opposition politicians who forced Hasina’s departure toward fresh elections. A six-pronged reform process is underway, focusing on the election system, police administration, judiciary, anti-corruption commission, public administration, and national constitution.
"The previous government created this environment of total oppression, denial of everything, killing at random, disappearance of people, destroying every single institution," he says. "It was a fascist regime.".
Indeed, more than 1,500 people were killed in clashes between protesters and security forces during July and August and many more wounded. (In addition, Yunus claims 3,500 people were extrajudicially disappeared during the last 15 years of Hasina’s reign.) The uprising began with peaceful demonstrations against employment quotas for regime loyalists, but a heavy-handed crackdown ignited a powderkeg of rage against inequality and political repression that brought tens of thousands of mothers and daughters, bankers and beggars, united onto the street.
As protesters encircled her official residence in Dhaka, Hasina fled in a military helicopter to India, where she and her cabal of key advisers continue to rail against her ouster. Yunus revealed that he would be seeking Hasina’s extradition after prosecutors issued a warrant for her part in the violence, though few believe Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi would comply.
"Not only is she being hosted by India, the worst part is that she’s talking, which causes a lot of problems for us," says Yunus. "It makes people very unhappy to hear that voice. So this is something that we have to resolve.".
Yunus grew to global renown in the 1970s for pioneering poverty-reducing microcredit. What began with a single $5 loan to a woman weaving bamboo stools in his home city of Chittagong has since spread to over 100 countries. Over four decades, Yunus’s Grameen Bank disbursed some $37 billion in collateral-free loans to over 10 million of the world’s poorest people. More than 94% of loans worldwide have gone to women, who suffer disproportionately from poverty and are more likely to use earnings to help their families than men.
It’s a life’s work that won Yunus the sobriquet "banker to the poor" as well as the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize, the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009, and the Congressional Gold Medal a year later. But Yunus’s global fame rankled Hasina, who derided him as a "bloodsucker," and her government launched over 200 legal cases—including over alleged forgery, money laundering, and embezzlement—against him in a bitter and bizarre vendetta.
When TIME last spoke with Yunus in June, he was facing six months in prison on a sham conviction for violating Bangladesh’s labor laws. But Hasina’s ouster both expunged his legal travails and presented a late career change as his tormentor’s successor. "At first, I tried to skip the responsibility," he says. "I said, ‘Find someone else.’ But later I said, ‘OK, you have given your lives, your friends have given their lives, so I will do the best I can.’".
Today, the octogenarian cuts a cheerful and sprightly figure despite swapping the international lecture circuit for dawn to dusk meetings. Still, it’s been a chaotic transition. Hasina’s sudden flight left a political and security vacuum as her party, the Awami League, was purged at all levels of government and its members arrested. Practically every government institution had been politicized, engendering deep distrust of the military, courts, civil service, and especially security services. Thousands of police deserted lest they be targeted in reprisals (at least 44 officers were killed.).
The basic instruments of state ground to a halt. Instead, private citizens from the opposition and Bangladeshi diaspora were summarily drafted into key roles, prompting accusations of nepotism, as the anti-establishment agitators became the new ruling class overnight. These new officials struggled to navigate a bureaucratic quagmire that often requires half-a-dozen signatures simply to send an email. For days Bangladesh’s new rulers lacked the most basic facilities. Yunus’s first speech to the nation was drafted on an aide’s iPhone.
The interim government’s ambiguous legality has also meant that U.S. backing—as demonstrated by Yunus’s meeting with President Joe Biden in September—has been key to retaining the engagement of institutions such as the IMF and World Bank. But Donald Trump’s impending return to the White House in January has spurred a sense of deep anxiety. In the wake of Hasina’s ouster, there were sporadic attacks on Hindus and other minorities that were spun and amplified by the Awami League as evidence that radical Islamists had seized control.
On Oct. 31, Trump posted on X to condemn the "barbaric violence against Hindus, Christians, and other minorities who are getting attacked and looted by mobs in Bangladesh, which remains in a total state of chaos.".
Both the Awami League and influential Indian Americans are understood to be lobbying Trump to impose sanctions on Bangladesh, for which the U.S. is top export destination. Compounding matters, Yunus has his own baggage with Trump, owing to his close friendship with Hillary Clinton, publicly lamenting her 2016 election defeat: "Trump’s win has hit us so hard that this morning I could hardly speak. I lost all strength.".
Still, Yunus is confident that he can find common ground with the President-elect despite their divergent worldviews. "Trump is a businessman; we are in business," he says. "We are not asking for free money to help us out of some crisis; we want a business partner.".
Reassuring global firms that Bangladesh remains open for business is a top priority. Still, the glacial pace of reform means doubts fester.
A new constitution is being drawn up, yet whether Bangladesh adopts a more presidential or parliamentary system, unicameral or bicameral, is still to be thrashed out. Smaller parties are pushing for proportional representation, though secularists fear that may boost the clout of fringe religious hardliners. Then there’s a question of whether the new constitution needs to be ratified by a referendum to be truly legitimate. Not to mention the fact that none of Bangladesh’s existing politicians have been involved in the process.
"They formed six reform commissions without discussion with any of the political parties," says A K M Wahiduzzaman, information and technology affairs secretary of the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). "This is not a good sign. This is a sign of an autocratic government.".
Wahiduzzaman wants a timeline and roadmap to elections to be unveiled as soon as possible. Yunus won’t be rushed, though. "I don’t have a date," he says. "First we have to fix the rails so that the train goes in the right direction.".
But true national reconciliation may not be possible without the participation of Bangladesh’s oldest political party that, at one time at least, enjoyed tremendous popular support. Today, Awami League members that remain in Bangladesh say they are being subjected to collective punishment. Zahid Maleque, who served as health minister until January, says he dares not surrender to court to answer conspiracy charges as he suffers from a heart condition and believes he’d be refused bail. "My passport has been canceled, my family bank account has been frozen," he tells TIME from hiding. "I’m a sick man. I’ve not seen my family for four months.".
The purge has spread beyond party bigwigs. Across Dhaka, influential citizens who once flaunted their connections to the Awami League are now minimizing any ties, fearful they could be weaponized by business rivals. Human-rights groups have also raised alarm that journalists perceived as sympathetic to Hasina have been stripped of their press credentials and at least 25 charged with crimes against humanity related to the violence. "Media professionals are bearing the brunt of the need for vengeance," Antoine Bernard, director of advocacy and assistance for Reporters Without Borders, said in a statement. "The interim authorities … must do everything in their power to end this vicious process.".
Yunus insists everyone will receive a fair trial and that the Awami League will be welcome to contest elections once those responsible for killings and abuses are held accountable. "They are as free as anybody else to participate," he says. "We’ll fight them on political grounds.".
Yunus is also determined to recapture some of the reported billions of dollars that the Awami League has siphoned out of the country. He says that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has offered to share the bloc’s mechanisms for rooting out corruption in aspirant members. "Every country that we talk to has offered support to get the money back," says Yunus. "They have done it before in other situations.".
Yet human-rights advocates believe that the incorporation of Islamist elements into the interim administration augurs diminishing space for minorities. For all its legion of faults, the Hasina regime kept a lid on extremism and had even tabled a transgender protection law. But one of the first actions the interim government took was to rescind a ban on Bangladesh’s main Islamist party, Jamaat-e-Islami. Ho Chi Minh Islam, a Dhaka-based nurse and transgender rights activist, says that religious hardliners within the student movement have made LGBTQ+ people fear for their safety. "Senior figures in the interim government have spoken out against our community," she tells TIME. "All we want is safety and security.".
Women were at the forefront of the uprising yet are sparsely represented in the interim government, whose six reform commissions are all led by men. "I’m disappointed, I’m enraged," says Samantha Sharmin, a graduate of Dhaka University’s Fine Arts Department who was a prominent figure in the protests. "I don’t know what happened. Women were the main force turning this protest into an uprising. We want women and young people to be central in politics.".
It’s a race to enact meaningful reforms before the clamor for elections reaches fever pitch. In September, the Asian Development Bank lowered its growth forecast for Bangladesh from 6.6% to 5.1% due to the political tumult as well as recent catastrophic flooding. The BNP appears the government-in-waiting though has a reputation for graft and retributive politics to rival the Awami League. (Wahiduzzaman insists any corruption within his party is limited to a tiny minority and offenders are brought to book.).
If unrest and paralysis continue, a beleaguered populace may even look more fondly at Hasina’s record. Bangladesh was the Asia-Pacific’s fastest growing economy over the past decade, with GDP rising from $71 billion in 2006 to $460 billion in 2022. Yunus knows that improving livelihoods is the only sure way to buy the necessary time to rebuild state institutions, so autocracy can never return—a new Bangladesh that prospers long after those murals have sun-bleached and blistered. "Reform is the core of the whole revolution," says Yunus. "That’s why we call it Bangladesh 2.0.". International Spotlight on Bangladesh as Rohingya Leader’s Case Heads to the UN (The Diplomat)
The Diplomat [11/20/2024 9:35 AM, Shafiur Rahman, 1198K, Negative]
The case of Dil Mohammed, a prominent Rohingya spokesperson currently detained by Bangladeshi authorities, has now reached the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD). This development places international scrutiny on Bangladesh’s treatment of Rohingya refugees and raises pressing questions about the legal and humanitarian conditions of his detention.Since his arrest in January 2023, Mohammed has been subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, restricted communication with his family, and interrogations without legal representation – conditions amounting to violations under multiple international conventions including the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Convention Against Torture.Mohammed’s case must be viewed in the context of the broader struggles of Rohingya refugees and the complex regional dynamics that worsen their plight. The WGAD complaint argues that Mohammed’s detention is not only arbitrary but reflects systemic issues in how displaced persons are handled within Bangladesh’s jurisdiction, especially those in “No Man’s Land.” Bangladesh will soon have to address these allegations before the U.N., confronting the delicate balance between security operations and upholding human rights. Dil Mohammed’s journey as a Rohingya refugee and his eventual role as a spokesperson for displaced communities placed him in the crosshairs of a brutal system that is now coming under international scrutiny. After fleeing Myanmar’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya in 2017, Mohammed and his family sought refuge in the buffer zone between Bangladesh and Myanmar, the so-called No Man’s Land, where thousands of Rohingya refugees lived in fragile and volatile conditions. Yet instead of finding safety, they experienced recurring violence, neglect, and now, detention.The January 2023 arrest of Mohammed unfolded under deeply troubling circumstances. On January 18, during the attack on No Man’s Land, I exchanged WhatsApp messages with him. In a downhearted voice, he described the chaos: “Bangladesh’s notorious RAB [Rapid Action Battalion], with Rohingya Solidarity Organization [RSO], have attacked us since 6am. The entire camp is destroyed. We have taken refuge in Myanmar. There is firing now from BGP [Myanmar’s Border Guard Police].” Despite the unfolding crisis, we managed a few more exchanges before his line abruptly went dead the next day – and it has remained silent ever since. The following day, Mohammed was reportedly summoned by the RSO for a meeting to discuss the camp’s security. However, upon his arrival, he was detained, handcuffed, and blindfolded. Handed over to Bangladeshi authorities, he disappeared into a dark, torturous period of solitary confinement lasting four months. This process, conducted without informing his family or permitting access to legal counsel, constitutes abduction by international standards.What unfolded next reads as a catalogue of violations against international law. Mohammed’s confinement included coerced interrogations, physical restraint, and ongoing psychological abuse, as he was subjected to threats against his family’s safety if he did not comply. Such conditions have left Mohammed physically weakened and mentally exhausted, illustrating a disturbing disregard for his rights as a human being, let alone as a refugee deserving protection. For the first four months of his detention, his family had no idea whether he was alive or dead, a period of anguish that many human rights experts argue constitutes enforced disappearance. The WGAD submission outlines that Mohammed was neither told of any charges at the time of his arrest nor allowed a proper defense. Such omissions are not just procedural lapses but are violations under multiple international human rights statutes, including the Convention Against Torture and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The U.N.’s Mandela Rules, which establish standards for the fair and humane treatment of prisoners, prohibit prolonged solitary confinement and emphasize the right to legal counsel. Yet Bangladesh appears to have cast these rules aside in Mohammed’s case, maintaining a detention that fits the WGAD definition of “arbitrary.” Bangladesh now finds itself under the magnifying glass. The WGAD’s review will demand that the government explain its treatment of Mohammed, with potential recommendations of release and international censure looming if they fail to comply. But this is not simply about a single detained man. Dil Mohammed’s situation is emblematic of how Bangladesh’s security policies impact the lives of vulnerable Rohingya refugees. The broader implications cannot be ignored. Bangladesh, while faced with genuine security concerns around its borders, has increasingly used these concerns as justification for harsh measures that risk undermining the very humanitarian protections refugees are entitled to.There is, however, some room for optimism. A new administration in Bangladesh has taken office and even appointed an adviser on the Rohingya crisis, a position equivalent to a Cabinet role. This signals an awareness at the highest levels of government of the need for more strategic engagement with the Rohingya issue. Additionally, changes at the top of some of the security services implicated in Dil Mohammed’s incarceration and mistreatment could pave the way for a fair reassessment of his case. These developments present an opportunity for Bangladesh to turn a page and demonstrate its commitment to justice and human rights by bringing this troubling chapter to a swift and just conclusion.International advocates argue that Bangladesh must face the fact that security can coexist with human rights protections. By continuing down this path of apparent arbitrary detention, Bangladesh’s new government risks jeopardizing their standing in the global community and further alienating partners who are crucial in addressing the Rohingya crisis. As the WGAD prepares its findings, the case of Dil Mohammed stands as a poignant reminder of the cost of turning a blind eye to human suffering – and of the international community’s duty to hold accountable those who do. Maldives working on debt-for-nature swap, says minister (Reuters)
Reuters [11/21/2024 4:48 AM, Gloria Dickie, 5.2M, Neutral]
The Maldives is working on a debt-for-nature swap, the country’s environment minister said on Thursday, with funds freed up expected to go towards the preservation of coral reefs, mangroves and sea grass.Debt swaps have become increasingly popular with debt-laden countries over the past two years. The swaps raise financing for environmental projects by exchanging existing debt for cheaper loans, typically with backing from a multilateral lender."One of the things we are trying to do is we need to know what is the value of our natural assets," Thoriq Ibrahim, minister of climate change, environment and energy, told Reuters, saying the country had started the process of valuing its coral reefs and would assess its mangroves and sea grass."That is the basis to start with," said Ibrahim on the sidelines of the COP29 U.N. climate talks in Baku, Azerbaijan.Ibrahim said the government had signed an agreement in recent days with U.S.-based conservation group The Nature Conservancy, which has been involved in a number of debt swaps, from Indonesia to Belize.The island nation has struggled with dwindling foreign currency reserves, sparking fears it could become the first country to default on Islamic sovereign debt, with a $500 million sukuk maturing in 2026.Ibrahim said it had not yet been decided whether the debt earmarked for the swap would be the Islamic bond or bilateral debt or what the size of the swap was expected to be.According to World Bank data, the country’s total public and publicly guaranteed debt stood at $8.2 billion, equivalent to 116% of GDP, in the first quarter of this year.About half of that is external debt, with a big chunk owed to China and India which have extended $1.37 billion and $124 million in loans, respectively, numbers from the Washington-based lender show. Sri Lanka expects IMF staff level agreement on Friday to release further bailout funds (Reuters)
Reuters [11/21/2024 2:23 AM, Uditha Jayasinghe, 5.2M, Neutral]
Sri Lanka expects the IMF to announce a staff level agreement on its third review of the country’s bailout programme on Friday, President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told the first sitting of the new parliament.
Once IMF executive board approval is given, a further tranche of about $337 million in funds is expected to be released to Sri Lanka.
Dissanayake’s Marxist-leaning National People’s Power (NPP) coalition won a record 159 seats in the 225-member parliament in a general election last week.
A delegation from the International Monetary Fund is in Colombo for the third review of its $2.9 billion programme and will hold a press briefing on Saturday.
Dissanayake also outlined plans to complete a $12.5 billion debt restructuring with bondholders in December.
Sri Lanka will enter into individual agreements with bilateral creditors including Japan, China and India needed to complete a $10 billion debt restructuring, he added.
"Our economy is hanging by a thread. This economy cannot absorb any shocks. We have to think deeply and in detail about the policy decisions we take. The moment we obtained power our priority was to build confidence and reassure stakeholders," he told lawmakers."We need to do much more to put the economy on a stable path."
A nation of 22 million, Sri Lanka was crushed by a 2022 economic crisis triggered by a severe shortage of foreign currency that pushed it into a sovereign default and caused its economy to shrink by 7.3% in 2022 and 2.3% last year.
The president will have to present an interim budget in the next few weeks, as well as find ways to reduce taxes and increase welfare, which were his key election pledges, without derailing the IMF programme.
Sri Lanka is expected to grow 4.4% in 2024, according to World Bank data, for the first time in three years. Sri Lanka’s president makes U-turn on IMF bailout (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [11/20/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 1.7M, Neutral]
Sri Lanka’s new leader on Thursday backed a controversial IMF bailout, marking a U-turn from his election pledge to renegotiate the deal secured by his predecessor.
Leftist President Anura Kumara Dissanayake, who tightened his grip on power last week after winning a huge majority in the legislature following his own victory in September, vowed to maintain the IMF programme.
Sri Lanka went to the IMF for a rescue package after the country defaulted on its $46 billion external debt in April 2022 during an unprecedented economic meltdown.
The shortage of foreign exchange that left the country unable to finance even the most essential imports of food and fuel led to months of street protests and forced then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign.
The $2.9 billion loan secured early last year required Colombo to sharply raise taxes, remove generous energy subsidies and agree to restructure more than 50 loss-making state enterprises.
Dissanayake’s National People’s Power party had said it did not agree with the International Monetary Fund’s debt assessment and would renegotiate the bailout programme.
But in his first address to the new parliament, where his party enjoys a two-thirds majority, Dissanayake said the economic recovery was too fragile to take risks.
"The economy is in such a state that it cannot take the slightest shock... there is no room to make mistakes," he said as he ruled out negotiations with either the IMF or creditors.
"This is not the time to discuss if the terms are good or bad, if the agreement is favourable to us or not... The process had taken about two years and we cannot start all over again," he said.
The delayed third review of the four-year loan programme could be concluded by this weekend, with the finance ministry holding talks with a visiting IMF delegation in Colombo, he added.
Sri Lanka expects the next tranche of about $330 million following an early approval from the board of the international lender of last resort.
Dissanayake’s interim cabinet last month signed off on a controversial restructuring of $14.7 billion in foreign commercial credit tentatively agreed by predecessor Ranil Wickremesinghe.
The debt restructuring is a key IMF demand to rebuild the island’s economy, which suffered its worst crisis in 2022 when it shrank 7.8 percent.
The dissatisfaction with traditional politicians held responsible for the economic collapse was a key driver of Dissanayake’s electoral success.
In June, the government concluded a deal with its bilateral lenders to restructure its official credit amounting to $6 billion, but formal agreements are yet to be signed.
Under the deal announced on September 19, private creditors holding more than half of international sovereign bonds and foreign commercial loans to the South Asian nation agreed to a 27 percent haircut on their loans.
They also agreed to a further 11 percent reduction on the interest owed to them.
International sovereign bonds account for $12.5 billion and the balance of $2.2 billion is owed to the China Development Bank. Central Asia
COP29: Caspian and Central Asian states make progress in promoting “green” trade plan (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [11/20/2024 4:14 PM, Brawley Benson, 57.6K, Neutral]
While discussions on containing global warming have bogged down inside the blue zone at the COP29 climate summit in Baku, Caspian Basin and Central Asian states have been busy on the sidelines looking for ways to boost “green” trade.
The Middle Corridor, an emerging trade route linking China and Europe via the Caucasus and Central Asia, has been a major topic of discussion on the fringes of COP29. In the spirit of the climate gathering, participants say they are intent on developing a sustainable “green” energy corridor, involving the construction of new infrastructure and the digitization of trade systems.
There is a large financial incentive for such agreements. With the Russia-Ukraine war passing the 1,000-day milestone, the corridor has become attractive as an alternative route that bypasses Russia. The World Bank estimates that trade along the corridor will triple by 2030.
The first major Middle Corridor development during COP29 occurred on November 13, two days after the gathering’s start, when the presidents of Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan signed a “Strategic Partnership in the Development and Transmission of Green Energy.”
While light on firm commitments, a post-signing briefing by the presidents gave some clues about their intentions. Azerbaijani leader Ilham Aliyev confirmed that the partnership is related to an ongoing effort to build an underwater power line across the Caspian Sea. The project was unveiled last May and is designed to facilitate the trilateral sharing of electricity generated from renewable sources, and, most importantly, the export of power to Europe. “The feasibility study for this project is nearing completion, so we will connect Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe, the Caspian and the Black seas with a single energy corridor,” Aliyev said.
Aliyev also noted progress on another crucial link in that corridor – an underwater Black Sea cable passing from Georgia to European Union territory. Such projects are important for Azerbaijan’s ongoing efforts to diversify its fossil fuel exports-dependent economy and become an alternative power source for Europe.
At the news conference, Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev directly linked the power line projects to the development of the Middle Corridor. “The practical fruition of this agreement will contribute to the development of the Middle Corridor as a green bridge connecting our economies,” said Tokayev after the signing. “Close cooperation in this key area will step up the exchange of experience and advanced technologies among the three states and contribute to the further strengthening of our energy security.”
COP29 has also proved to be a fruitful venue for inking other Middle Corridor-related business deals, and, in tandem, a platform for China to demonstrate its growing economic role in the Caspian Basin.
Another infrastructure agreement signed on the sidelines of the conference underscores the point. On November 12, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, and China established a joint venture to build a new intermodal cargo terminal at the Port of Baku. China is additionally helping to build a container hub on the other side of the Caspian Sea at the Kazakh port city of Aktau.
At a Middle Corridor-focused roundtable held on November 20 under COP29’s auspices, Rashad Nabiyev, an Azerbaijani development official, said Azerbaijan expects to double the number of Chinese cargo trains passing through its territory in 2025. The United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP), the UN agency in charge of promoting regional economic contacts, also endorsed the regional initiatives during the roundtable discussion. “ESCAP will continue to support the development of sustainable and digital transport corridors, including the Middle Corridor,” said Armida Salsiah Alisjahbana, an agency representative.
Meanwhile, a sting operation conducted by a transparency watchdog group, Global Witness, alleges that Azerbaijan has used its hosting status of COP29 to hold talks with potential partners on the development and expanded export of fossil fuels seen as the primary source of global warming.
A report distributed by Global Witness, relying on undercover reporting in which a researcher for the group posed as a representative of an energy investment firm when conducting a video call with Elnur Soltanov, the COP29 CEO and Azerbaijan’s deputy energy minister, appears to show a conflict of interest in which the Azerbaijani official does not draw a clear distinction between his COP role and his governmental position. “COP29 officials abused their positions by facilitating talks about oil and gas deals at a climate conference,” Global Witness alleges in a statement. “Petrostates are perfecting a sinister playbook which sees COP as just another business opportunity for polluters.” Almaty Court Says RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service Spread ‘False Information’ (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/20/2024 12:33 PM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
An Almaty court has found RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service, known locally as Radio Azattyq, guilty of disseminating false information, and the court imposed a fine of 184,000 tenges ($371), it said on November 20.
The case originated from a complaint filed on November 13 by Shymkent resident Alisher Turabaev.
Turabaev alleged that a Kazakh-language video published on Radio Azattyq’s portal on September 13 falsely stated that a prosecutor had requested an eight-year prison sentence for journalist Daniyar Adilbekov on September 12.
Turabaev pointed out that court proceedings did not reach this stage until October 16, making the prosecutor’s request impossible at the time.
Radio Azattyq acknowledged the error was due to a translation mistake when adapting content from a Russian-language publication.
The original Russian report stated that Adilbekov faced "up to eight years in prison" for charges of defamation based on a Telegram post. However, during translation into Kazakh, the phrase was inaccurately rendered as stating that the prosecutor had already "requested eight years." Radio Azattyq expressed readiness to correct the mistake.
This marks the second time Radio Azattyq has been fined under Article 456-2 of Kazakhstan’s Administrative Offenses Code.
In October 2023, Turabaev successfully filed another complaint against Radio Azattyq, alleging the phrase "Russian-led CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization)" on its Russian-language site was false information. The court fined Radio Azattyq 103,500 tenge ($220) in that case.
Details of Turabaev’s motives in filing the accusations are unknown. Some people have speculated that he has taken the action on the orders of the authorities.
The Dissemination of False Information article was added to Kazakhstan’s Administrative Offenses Code in September 2023 and has been widely criticized by human rights organizations as a tool to restrict freedom of speech.
The law does not require proof of intent to spread falsehoods, nor does it provide opportunities for corrections or warnings.It also does not require the existence of a victim. Critics have likened the law to Russia’s legislation against "fake news," warning it is being used to silence journalists, activists, and bloggers.
Radio Azattyq’s challenges extend beyond legal battles. On January 3, the Kazakh Foreign Ministry denied or refused to renew accreditation for 36 of its employees, citing violations of the Dissemination of False Information law.
This dispute was later resolved through mediation.
The growing use of Article 456-2 to penalize media and activists has raised concerns about press freedom and the shrinking space for dissent in Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan’s ‘Eco-Entrepreneurs’ Battle Indifference To Promote Sustainability (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [11/21/2024 5:21 AM, Maqpal Mukankyzy and Chris Rickleton, 235K, Neutral]
They might not know much about it, but the appropriately named Black Soldier Flies are now on the front lines of the battle for a more sustainable planet.
In Kazakhstan, like in many other countries, that battle sometimes looks like an uphill one.
While the government has recently committed to carbon neutrality by 2060, the green economy in Central Asia’s richest country still has a long way to go.
Coal currently accounts for about half of all energy consumption, the oil and gas industry dominates economic activity, and the vast majority of household waste is not recycled.
But for Bekezhan Qairgaliev, an entrepreneur in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, this means there is great potential for his environmentally friendly business to expand -- so long as enough people find out about it.“We receive about 400 kilograms of organic waste per day. That produces about 130-150 kilograms of fertilizer,” Qairgaliev told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service during a recent ecological fair, where he was promoting the services of his new Black Soldier Fly farm.“At the moment we are working with 27 restaurants. We want to begin working with schools, too,” he added.
It is the dark, metallic-bodied flies, which are about two centimeters long, that are the agents of this highly efficient conversion, explaining why farms like Qairgaliev’s have emerged in countries all over the world in the last decade or so.
Their hungry larvae can devour large volumes of organic waste starting just a week after they are hatched, helping to produce a nutrient-rich compost at several times the speed of traditional compost heaps.
As they do so, they are helping reduce landfill emissions of methane -- the second-most prevalent greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and the most potent in terms of heating up the planet in proportional terms.
A Small Assist For Kazakhstan’s Big Methane Pledge
At the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Dubai in 2023 (COP 28), Kazakhstan became the first Central Asian country to join the Global Methane Pledge, a commitment shared by more than 150 countries that obligates members to a 30 percent reduction in emissions of the gas by 2030.
The overwhelming focus of Kazakhstan’s commitment will be in the oil and gas sector, which is by far the energy-rich republic’s biggest methane emissions source and the second-largest globally, after agriculture.
Third on the global methane culprit list? Organic waste, rotting in landfills.
According to the Climate and Clean Air Coalition, an initiative backed by the United Nations Environment Program, Black Soldier Fly (BSF) Technology is one of two “underfinanced yet highly effective solutions to reduce the emissions impact of organic waste,” along with bio-covers, which are applied directly at landfills.
In addition to creating fertilizer of varying quality, BSF entrepreneurs can also use the larvae from the flies to create valuable and environmentally sustainable feed for other industries such as fish farms.
Qairgaliev is not asking for any financial help from the government.
He says his business is profitable despite costing his clients less than traditional waste collection.
But he argues that authorities could at least raise awareness about sustainable business and ensure that different types of household waste are sorted before collection.
In the past, authorities have made only half-hearted efforts in this regard, he said.“[There was a time] when [separate] yellow containers appeared. But it didn’t work at all. In the end only one rubbish truck came. And then it just took everything to the landfill.”
Reducing Waste At Ground Level
Kazakhstan’s government has admitted that it is not doing enough when it comes to environmentally friendly waste management.
Less than a quarter of the 4 million tons of municipal waste last year was processed in any way, authorities say.
Other assessments are even more damning.
At a conference in April organized by Atameken, Kazakhstan’s leading business lobby, industry experts said only around 3.5 percent of the 100,000 tons of plastic deposited on landfills across the country in 2023 was recycled.
In March, Environment Minister Erlan Nysanbaev pledged that 37 plants would be built in the near future to recycle solid waste.
But sustainability has to come from the bottom as well as the top.
One organization that is trying to raise awareness at the ground level is Recycle.Birge (We Recycle Together) which holds regular “eco-subbotniki” in Almaty.
The idea of a subbotnik comes from the voluntary workdays -- often city clean-up days -- organized during the Soviet Union.
But here the emphasis is on collecting and sorting waste into very specific categories, with bins for different types of plastics, metals, cosmetic and medical waste, batteries, and more.
In some cases, the beneficiaries of these drives are local “eco-entrepreneurs” who turn waste into sellable products, like Yuri Kirdyushkin, whose Plastic Harahura project has used around three tons of plastic waste in the last two years to create new objects and art.
But more important, according to the organizers, is the introduction of a culture of recycling, and the spread of the message about what items can still be reused.
Leila Mukhitdinova, known to her friends as “Farmer Leila” is doing something similar, albeit on a slightly smaller scale, via the 100-member WhatsApp group that she administers called Eco-Guardians.
The group discusses the finer questions of waste disposal and recycling, such as whether tea bags can be placed on compost heaps, and what environmentally friendly options there are for the disposal of expired medicines.
Mukhitdinova, who says that she hasn’t purchased new clothes in 20 years, benefits from the group too.
Many of her members now offer their waste food to the chickens and goats that she keeps at her farm outside Almaty instead of throwing it away.
But she is proud of the fact that many of her group’s members are now keen composters -- a hobby that remains rare in Kazakhstan -- and are aiding the effort to reduce the landfill burden.“[WhatsApp] chats like this are important because we might look a bit strange from the outside. Sometimes even our relatives think that we are strange, almost crazy. And that is why we need to support each other. People should understand that they are not the only ones,” Mukhitdinova told RFE/RL. Turkmenistan Forcibly Hospitalizes Human Rights Defender (Human Rights Watch)
Human Rights Watch [11/20/2024 8:51 PM, Rachel Denber, 2M, Neutral]
Turkmenistan’s authorities have gone to extreme lengths to stop veteran human rights defender, Soltan Achilova, from traveling abroad. Achilova, 75, was scheduled to travel to Geneva for events hosted by the Martin Ennals Foundation, honoring her achievements. But at 6:30 a.m. on Wednesday, the morning of her planned departure, four men in laboratory coats showed up at her apartment in Ashgabat, the country’s capital, claimed they suspected she had an infectious disease, forcibly bundled her into an ambulance, and took her to a hospital for infectious diseases.
Farid Tuhbatullin, a Vienna-based human rights defender who works closely with Achilova and spoke with her several times throughout the day she was detained, said that when leaving the apartment, Achilova tried to lock the door. The men detaining her grabbed and confiscated her keys, telling her: “what do you need these for?”
Achilova’s daughter and son-in-law arrived at her apartment 15 minutes later to take her to the airport and found one of the lab-coat clad men still there. He claimed that since the couple had come into contact with Achilova, they too had to be tested.
At the hospital, staff took blood from Achilova but offered no information on which disease she was allegedly suspected of having. Staff later told her that she tested positive and would need to remain at the hospital for an unspecified period of time.
Achilova, her daughter, and son-in-law were forced to spend the night at the hospital.
The spectacle of men in white coats forcibly taking Achilova and her family to an infectious disease hospital might seem like a plot from a dystopian film, but it is the harsh reality of a government who fears a courageous woman. Turkmenistan’s authorities have a long record of interfering with freedom of movement, particularly that of people like Achilova, who are critical of the country’s severely repressive government.
Indeed, it is a common occurrence for authorities at passport control to simply stop Turkmenistan citizens from leaving the country without explanation. Last year, when Achilova and her daughter tried traveling to Geneva also for a Martin Ennals event honoring her, border authorities tampered with their passports, then claimed the women could not travel as the documents were damaged.
Turkmenistan’s authorities should immediately release Achilova and her family from their arbitrary forced confinement in the hospital and allow her to travel to Geneva as planned. Turkmenistan tightening exit rules for citizens seeking to travel to Uzbekistan (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [11/20/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
Turkmen authorities are cracking down on cross-border tourism with Uzbekistan reportedly because it highlights Ashgabat’s inability to provide basic goods and services to its citizens.
Tourism involving Turkmen citizens traveling to Uzbekistan has been on the rise in 2024. Many have used the trips to buy up foodstuffs and wares not readily available in Turkmenistan, which has been gripped by a severe economic crisis in recent years. Over the past month, Turkmen customs officials have introduced new rules designed to discourage quick cross-border trips, according to a report distributed by RFE/RL. The new rules require would-be travelers to present an array of documents, such as marriage certificates and proof of residency, before being allowed to proceed on their journey. Local residents in the Dashoguz Region told RFE/RL that at least dozens of individuals have been prevented from leaving the country due to their inability to produce all the documentation.
RFE/RL reports that Turkmen officials feel embarrassed by the fact that so many Turkmen are using Uzbekistan to procure necessities, and thus want to prevent it by tightening border controls. The report also indicates that a $50 “gift,” provided to a customs agent via “intermediaries,” can resolve any issues holding up an individual’s travel plans.“Customs officers accuse these citizens [Uzbekistan-bound travelers] of bringing shame on the country by engaging in trade, and under this pretext they do not let them through customs control,” RFE/RL quoted an individual as saying. Twitter
Afghanistan
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[11/20/2024 12:53 PM, 96.9K followers, 58 retweets, 253 likes]
History has shown that Afghan women’s emancipation is inevitable. Yet, the Western world, which boasts its commitment to human rights, has turned its back. Afghan women will reclaim their rights, but the West’s betrayal will leave its human rights advocacy forever discredited.
Sara Wahedi@SaraWahedi
[11/20/2024 1:59 PM, 96.9K followers, 3 retweets, 26 likes]
The global majority’s hesitancy toward Western advocacy for human rights, especially for women, has turned into distrust after failures like Afghanistan. This shift will redefine global perceptions, diminishing the West’s credibility in championing justice and equality worldwide.
Habib Khan@HabibKhanT
[11/20/2024 6:14 PM, 244.7K followers, 44 retweets, 132 likes]
The biggest Afghanistan-related news—the 17-year-old Nila Ibrahimi winning the prestigious International Children’s Peace Prize hasn’t made headlines in Afghanistan’s private media, many of which, despite Western funding, now serve as platforms for the Taliban’s propaganda.
Jahanzeb Wesa@JahanzebWesa
[11/21/2024 1:42 AM, 4.6K followers, 2 retweets, 4 likes]
Today, on World Television Day, the critical situation of media in Afghanistan draws global attention. Freedom of expression & media are restricted under Taliban rule, with journalists, especially women, facing threats & severe pressures. International community must take action.Jahanzeb Wesa@JahanzebWesa
[11/20/2024 3:09 AM, 4.6K followers, 1 retweet, 5 likes]
Reports: Taliban publicly flogged three individuals in a stadium in Khulm district, Samangan, accusing them of adultery. Each received 39 lashes. In the past month, 97 people, including 14 women, have been publicly flogged across Afghanistan. #HumanRights #Afghanistan #Freedom Pakistan
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[11/20/2024 9:51 AM, 480K followers, 9 retweets, 33 likes]
Pakistan and Kazakhstan held the third round of Bilateral Political Consultations in Islamabad today. Additional Foreign Secretary (Afg & West Asia) Ambassador Ahmed Naseem Warraich led the Pak side and Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Ambassador Alibek Bakayev led the Kazakh side. The two sides discussed: bilateral political relations; inter-parliamentary exchanges; economic & trade ties; connectivity; education; telecommunication, culture and tourism. They also discussed regional and global developments.
Ministry of Foreign Affairs – Pakistan@ForeignOfficePk
[11/20/2024 5:20 AM, 480K followers, 24 retweets, 74 likes]
The US Ambassador to Pakistan, Mr. Donald Blome today called on the Deputy Prime Minister/ Foreign Minister, Senator Mohammad Ishaq Dar. Bilateral issues of mutual interest were discussed during the meeting.
Imran Khan@ImranKhanPTI
[11/20/2024 9:38 AM, 21M followers, 11K retweets, 22K likes]
With the complete nonexistence of democracy, rule of law, and human rights, Pakistan stands at a critical crossroads today. I appeal to all Pakistanis to rise to the occasion— not only by reaching Islamabad in overwhelming numbers on November 24th, but also by lending your financial support to this cause. To my overseas Pakistanis; make generous contributions to support the struggle for genuine freedom, rule of law, and the return of stolen mandate in Pakistan. Click on the link to contribute now: http://ptioverseas.com http://insaf.pk/donate
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[11/21/2024 1:46 AM, 74.2K followers, 2 retweets, 7 likes]
Its OFFICIAL, President of Belarus Alexander Lukashenko to visit Pakistan on the invite of PM @CMShehbaz from 25th to 27th of November, announces @ForeignOfficePk spox in its weekly briefing.
Anas Mallick@AnasMallick
[11/20/2024 1:59 PM, 74.2K followers, 29 retweets, 122 likes]
Imran Khan has been arrested in case in Rawalpindi’s police station that talks about anti terror clauses, riot and interference in state affairs -- Comes after A high court ordered Imran Khan’s release in the Toshakhana 2 case. #Pakistan India
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/20/2024 5:54 PM, 103.7M followers, 1.5K retweets, 6.6K likes]
With CARICOM leaders at the 2nd India-CARICOM Summit in Guyana. This Summit reflects our shared commitment to strengthening ties with the Caribbean nations, fostering cooperation across diverse sectors. Together, we are working to build a bright future for the coming generations!
Narendra Modi@narendramodi
[11/20/2024 12:09 PM, 103.7M followers, 2.4K retweets, 12K likes]
Addressing the India-CARICOM Summit in Guyana. https://x.com/i/broadcasts/1zqKVYLDBOAxB Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[11/20/2024 9:40 PM, 3.3M followers, 910 retweets, 8.1K likes]
Another great moment for IN as PM @narendramodi is awarded the highest national award of Guyana, "The Order of Excellence”. Noting PM’s championing of the rights of the Global South and sharing India’s development journey with the world, the award is a true recognition of his visionary leadership.
Dr. S. Jaishankar@DrSJaishankar
[11/20/2024 9:39 PM, 3.3M followers, 296 retweets, 2K likes]
Congratulate PM @narendramodi on being conferred with Dominica’s highest National Award - "Dominica Award of Honour". Recognizing PM’s statesmanship, especially support to Dominica during the Covid-19 pandemic, the award reinforces PM @narendramodi’s leadership in being a true partner and voice of the Global South.Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/21/2024 12:04 AM, 214.8K followers, 22 retweets, 92 likes]
The Biden administration concluded a $550 million deal with Adani on a port development project in Sri Lanka. It views the project as a signature effort to counter China. And yet here we’re told Washington wants to cut off Adani’s access to US financing
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/20/2024 10:34 PM, 214.8K followers, 204 retweets, 970 likes]
It was relatively easy for Adani to deny and shrug off allegations from an activist short-seller, or from Western media organizations. And he did, and his companies bounced back well reputationally and financially. But he can’t easily deny and shrug off this new indictment.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/20/2024 10:34 PM, 214.8K followers, 13 retweets, 72 likes] That’s why Adani and his businesses have been dealt a body blow. The image rehabilitation, the financial recovery, the regained confidence and momentum--I suspect, no matter how things eventually pan out with the investigation, that all of that will come crashing down.
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/20/2024 4:30 PM, 214.8K followers, 1.3K retweets, 3.3K likes]
Major breaking news: Indian billionaire Gautam Adani & other execs have been indicted by US prosecutors in New York for "participating in a scheme that involved paying more than $250M in bribes to Indian officials and concealing them from US investors."
Michael Kugelman@MichaelKugelman
[11/20/2024 4:30 PM, 214.8K followers, 17 retweets, 113 likes]
It allegedly was linked to solar energy contracts. Adani’s businesses are huge players in India’s fast-growing renewable energy sector, with PM Modi prioritizing India’s energy transition and hoping to achieve ambitious clean energy goals by 2030. NSB
Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Maldives@MoFAmv
[11/20/2024 3:42 AM, 55K followers, 35 retweets, 42 likes]
6th Meeting of the Joint Mechanism on the Safety of Chinese Tourists was held in Malé, co-chaired by State Minister Sheryna Samad and Ambassador Wang Lixin. Both sides reaffirmed their commitment to strengthening safety measures and enhancing MV-CN ties.
Namal Rajapaksa@RajapaksaNamal
[11/20/2024 6:38 AM, 436.6K followers, 80 retweets, 177 likes]
According to reports, an army camp in the North has been withdrawn, for land to be released back to civilians and many more such camps are to be withdrawn in coming months. While the release of lands is not an issue if it is done in consultation with the security forces, it should not be done at the cost of compromising national security. SL fought 30 yrs of terrorism & today all communities enjoy freedom at the cost of thousands of lost lives. It is of utmost importance that national security is maintained whether it is in the North or South.
Karu Jayasuriya@KaruOnline
[11/20/2024 5:06 AM, 53.7K followers, 7 retweets, 56 likes]
The new Minister of Trade faces many pressing issues: an artificial Nadu rice shortage, unchecked profit margins, and market manipulation. Strong action is needed to restore trust and protect consumers. Time he changes the NATO (No Action Talk Only) status that prevailed so far! Central Asia
Furqat Sidiqov@FurqatSidiq
[11/20/2024 8:43 PM, 1.5K followers, 1 retweet, 2 likes] It was great to have caught up with @RepTomSuozzi. Discussed untapped opportunities to strengthen inter-parliamentary coop. & agreed to advance initiatives on the Hill to foster closer 🇺🇿🇺🇸 ties. Encouraged him to co-sponsor on repealing Jackson-Vanik amendment towards UZ.
Furqat Sidiqov@FurqatSidiq
[11/20/2024 8:41 PM, 1.5K followers, 2 retweets, 1 like]
Had a productive meeting with @RepGraceMeng. Grateful for her support of the Uzbek diaspora in New York’s 6th Congressional District/Queens. Encouraged the Congresswoman to join the #UzbekistanCaucus @HouseFloor and co-sponsor #HR1755 on repealing Jackson-Vanik Amendment for UZ.
Furqat Sidiqov@FurqatSidiq
[11/20/2024 8:38 PM, 1.5K followers, 1 retweet, 1 like]
Pleasure to meet with @RepTrentKelly, co-chair of the #UzbekistanCaucus. Discussed the upcoming CODEL visit to 🇺🇿 & joint events on the Hill to strengthen our strategic partnership. Grateful for his huge efforts to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment towards Uzbekistan.
Furqat Sidiqov@FurqatSidiq
[11/20/2024 12:25 PM, 1.5K followers, 1 like]
Today, President Shavkat Mirziyoyev (@president_uz) addressed Parliament. The President highlighted remarkable economic growth over the past five years and outlined ambitious goals for the future in key priority areas. Find out more - https://uzbekistan.org/it-is-time-for-new-approaches-in-the-work-of-parliament-and-government-based-on-dedicated-service-to-the-people/5122/
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/21/2024 1:46 AM, 205.5K followers, 1 like]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev reviewed new proposals for developing #Samarkand region and improving the people’s welfare. A new decree will be developed to improve the investment and business climate in the region. From now on projects will be placed in line with the master plan, additional jobs and modern housing will be created.
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service@president_uz
[11/20/2024 11:51 PM, 205.5K followers, 1 retweet, 6 likes]
A meeting of the @OliyMajlis was held on appointing #Uzbekistan’s #PrimeMinister. President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev outlined strategic tasks before the #Government to ensure stable socio-economic growth. It was decided to declare #2025 the Year of Environmental Protection and Green Economy.
Navbahor Imamova@Navbahor
[11/21/2024 1:01 AM, 23.8K followers, 1 like]
Uzbekistan: @USAGMgov Tashkent trainees got to hear from @UZEmbassyDC @FurqatSidiq as we wrapped up #SolutionsJournalism seminar in Tashkent. They said it was encouraging to hear the Uzbek ambassador to US say that UZ and its strategic partners like the US benefit from credible, professional journalism at home.{End of Report} To subscribe to the SCA Morning Press Clips, please email SCA-PressOfficers@state.gov. Please do not reply directly to this email.