epubdos : Afghanistan
SCA MORNING PRESS CLIPS
Prepared for the U.S. Department of State
Bureau of South and Central Asian Affairs
TO:
SCA & Staff
DATE:
Tuesday, October 15, 2024 6:30 AM ET

Afghanistan
Afghan Taliban vow to implement media ban on images of living things (Agence France-Presse)
Agence France-Presse [10/14/2024 6:33 AM, Staff, 1251K, Neutral]
Afghanistan’s Taliban morality ministry pledged Monday to implement a law banning news media from publishing images of all living things, with journalists told the rule will be gradually enforced.

It comes after the Taliban government recently announced legislation formalising their strict interpretations of Islamic law that have been imposed since they swept to power in 2021.

"The law applies to all Afghanistan... and it will be implemented gradually," the spokesman for the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice (PVPV) Saiful Islam Khyber told AFP, adding that officials would work to persuade people that images of living things are against Islamic law.

"Coercion has no place in the implementation of the law," he said.

"It’s only advice, and convincing people these things are really contrary to sharia (law) and must be avoided."

The new law detailed several rules for news media, including banning the publication of images of all living things and ordering outlets not to mock or humiliate Islam, or contradict Islamic law.

Aspects of the new law have not yet been strictly enforced, including advise to the general public not to take or look at images of living things on phones and other devices.

Taliban officials continue to regularly post photos of people on social media and Afghan journalists have told AFP they received assurances from authorities after the law was announced that they would be able to continue their work.

The information ministry did not immediately respond to AFP’s request for comment.

"Until now, regarding the articles of the law related to media, there are ongoing efforts in many provinces to implement it but that has not started in all provinces," Khyber said.

He added "work has started" in the southern Taliban stronghold of Kandahar and the neighbouring Helmand province, as well as northern Takhar.

Before the recent law was announced, Taliban officials in Kandahar were banned from taking photos and videos of living things but the rule did not include news media.

"Now it applies to everyone," Khyber said.

Journalists summoned

In central Ghazni province on Sunday, PVPV officials summoned local journalists and told them the morality police would start gradually implementing the law.

They advised visual journalists to take photos from further away and film fewer events "to get in the habit", a journalist who did not want to give his name for fear of reprisal told AFP.

Reporters in Maidan Wardak province were also told the rules would be implemented gradually in a similar meeting.

Television and pictures of living things were banned across the country under the previous Taliban rule from 1996 to 2001, but a similar edict has so far not been broadly imposed since their return to power.

Since 2021, however, officials have sporadically forced business owners to follow some censorship rules, such as crossing out the faces of men and women on adverts, covering the heads of shop mannequins with plastic bags, and blurring the eyes of fish pictured on restaurant menus.

When the Taliban authorities seized control of the country after a two-decade-long insurgency against foreign-backed governments, Afghanistan had 8,400 media employees.

Only 5,100 remain in the profession, according to media industry sources.

This figure includes 560 women, who have borne the brunt of restrictions the United Nations have called "gender apartheid", including being ordered to wear masks on television.

In Helmand, women’s voices have been banned from television and radio.

Afghanistan has slipped from 122nd place to 178th out of 180 countries in a press freedom ranking compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF).
Relative of Afghan accused of terror plot in U.S. is charged with planning attacks in France (NBC News)
NBC News [10/13/2024 3:33 PM, Nancy Ing and Tom Winter, 46778K, Negative]
A family member of an Afghan national accused of planning to carry out a terrorist attack in Oklahoma on Election Day was charged in France on Saturday with plotting to conduct attacks on a French soccer match or shopping center, according to the Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office in Paris.

Both Afghans are believed to have wanted to carry out the operations on behalf of ISIS, the officials said. It is not known whether they planned to coordinate their attacks in the U.S. and France.

French officials said the Afghan charged there was 22 years old but declined to name him. They also did not identify two other individuals who were also taken into police custody in France for questioning and released.

The Afghan arrested in Oklahoma on Oct. 7, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi, 27, was accused of plotting a violent attack with an assault rifle on behalf of ISIS on Nov. 5, the day Americans head to the polls. Court documents said Tawhedi had contributed to an ISIS charity in March and accessed online ISIS propaganda.

Two sources with knowledge of the matter later told NBC News that Tawhedi worked as a security guard for the CIA in Afghanistan. Court documents say Tawhedi entered the U.S. in September 2021, about a month after the American military completed its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Former President Donald Trump has accused the Biden administration of not properly vetting the Afghan. A senior Biden administration official said Tawhedi had been screened twice but no derogatory information had been detected.

"Every Afghan resettled in the U.S. undergoes a rigorous screening and vetting process no matter which agency they worked with," the official said. "That process includes checking against a full range of U.S. records and holdings."

A plot in France

French law enforcement officials told NBC News that they opened a preliminary investigation into a potential terrorist plot in France on Sept. 27. On Oct. 8, the day after Tawhedi was arrested in Oklahoma, the unnamed 22-year-old Afghan and two other individuals were arrested in the cities of Toulouse and Fronton, in the Haute-Garonne region of southwestern France, where they reside. "The investigations carried out revealed the existence of a planned violent action targeting people in a football stadium or a shopping center instigated by one of them, age 22, of Afghan nationality," a French law enforcement official said. The official added that investigators found evidence that "establish[es] radicalization and adherence to the ideology of the Islamic State."

French officials said the 22-year-old Afghan was indicted on Saturday for plotting attacks against civilians and placed in pretrial detention. The two people detained with him were released, but officials said the investigation was ongoing.

In March, police in Germany arrested two Afghans with suspected links to ISIS in connection with a plot to attack the Swedish parliament, Politico reported. The planned attacks were believed to be retaliation against Quran-burning incidents in Sweden and other Scandinavian countries.

German prosecutors said the two Afghans planned to attack police officers and others "in the vicinity of the Swedish parliament in Stockholm." The two men also researched "the possible crime scene on the internet and tried several times, albeit unsuccessfully, to obtain weapons."

Questions about U.S. vetting

A central question for U.S. investigators has been when Tawhedi became radicalized. Counterterrorism officials assess that it occurred during the three years he lived in the U.S., according to a senior Biden administration official.

A senior law enforcement official said the FBI is still investigating that question. The CIA declined to comment.

The senior Biden administration official said that Tawhedi passed two rounds of vetting. The official said Tawhedi was first screened before he entered the U.S. on what is known as humanitarian parole in September 2021, about 10 days after the last U.S. troops left Afghanistan.

The official said he was vetted again while living in Oklahoma City when he applied for a Special Immigrant Visa. He was eligible for the visa because he had worked for the U.S. government.

Tawhedi was approved for the visa, the official said, but he had not taken the final steps to make it official. Special Immigrant Visas are given to Afghans who worked with the U.S. in Afghanistan after they pass Department of Homeland Security screening.

The screening process includes probing for any possible ties to terrorism, ISIS or the Taliban using data from the applicant’s electronic devices, biometrics and other sources to search the extensive databases the U.S. compiled over 20 years in Afghanistan.
Let’s compare how the world treats the Taliban vs. Taiwan (Washington Post – opinion)
Washington Post [10/14/2024 6:01 PM, Jim Geraghty, 52865K, Neutral]
In mid-September, the Taliban’s Foreign Ministry announced that 39 Afghan embassies and consulates around the world answer to it, and not to the remnants of the previous regime, the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan. Given that some governments already had diplomatic ties with the Taliban and that more were likely to follow suit, the news was just one more sign that the brutal regime in Kabul is gaining international acceptance.

Meanwhile, at the United Nations last month, the General Assembly met with the theme “Leaving no one behind: Acting together for the advancement of peace, sustainable development and human dignity for present and future generations.” Naturally, Taiwan was not allowed to participate in an assembly under the slogan “Leaving no one behind.” Everyone is fearful of a Chinese regime that grows ever more militant in its insistence that Taiwan is part of China and will be taken by force if necessary.

If you want a vivid illustration of why so many Americans shrug at invocations of “the international community,” check out the contrast between the way many countries treat the Taliban and how they treat the democratically elected and independent Taiwanese government. First, there is no cohesive “international community.” Second, that “international community” is full of countries that treat the Taliban a heck of a lot better than they treat Taiwan.

Although no country has formally recognized the Taliban, which seized power in 2021, as Afghanistan’s legitimate government, a whole bunch of countries have given the Taliban de facto recognition.

In March 2022, Russia accredited Taliban diplomat Jamal Nasir Gharwal as Afghan chargé d’affaires in Moscow. In April 2022, China accepted diplomatic credentials from the Taliban, and in September 2023, China became the first country to officially name a new ambassador to Afghanistan. In February 2023, Iran officially handed over the Afghan Embassy in Tehran to diplomats from the Taliban.

You’re probably thinking: Oh, China, Russia, Iran — those are some of the worst regimes on the planet. Of course they’d cozy up with the brutes in Kabul. Game respects game.

But note that just about all of Central Asia has fallen in line, too. In October 2021, Pakistan, a longtime Taliban ally, accepted a regime-appointed diplomat for Afghanistan’s embassy. In April 2022, Turkmenistan handed the Taliban its embassy and consulate. In August, Kazakhstan accepted a new Taliban chargé d’affaires, and other countries in the region went along.

You might say: Oh, most of those countries share a border with Afghanistan. They have no choice but to establish some form of diplomatic communication.

The leaders of other Muslim countries have largely acquiesced to recognizing the Taliban, too, including in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

On and on it goes, with countries in South America and Africa appearing to warm up to the Taliban as well.

Europe is not immune: In July, Bloomberg News reported that Italy was contemplating reopening its embassies in Afghanistan. The article quoted Spain’s foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, saying, “As soon as there are minimum security conditions, we’ll send our ambassador back.”

What do these caving countries have in common? None of them recognizes the Taiwan government as the leader of an independent nation. Only a handful have any significant relationship with Taiwan.

In fact, while the Taliban is increasingly treated like just another regime, Taiwan is becoming more diplomatically isolated. In December 2021, Nicaragua terminated diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The Venezuelan Foreign Ministry released a statement in May claiming that “Taiwan is an inalienable part of China’s territory.”

Just 12 countries have full diplomatic relations with Taiwan: Belize, Eswataini, Guatemala, Haiti, the Marshall Islands, Palau, Paraguay, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Tuvalu and the Vatican. No offense to any of those countries, but they’re not exactly a geopolitical all-star team. (The United States maintains a strategically ambiguous stance toward Taiwan’s sovereignty and does not recognize the Taliban government.)

In the past two generations, Taiwan successfully transitioned from a one-party state operating under martial law, with some periods of terrible brutality in the early chapters of its short history, to a modern, thriving, multiparty democracy. It isn’t a perfect country, but it gets a lot of the big questions right; Freedom House gives Taiwan a 94 out of a possible 100 in human rights. The United States scored an 83; the Taliban regime managed a 6.

And yet, not only do other countries not recognize Taiwan’s government as legitimate and independent, but international groups such as Interpol, the World Health Organization and the International Civil Aviation Organization also exclude Taiwan.

In the end, Taiwan’s championing of human rights and democracy counts for little beside China’s economic power and warnings against recognizing Taiwan’s independence. The Taliban, meanwhile, runs a regime that is especially repressive of women’s rights, but it has access to widely coveted natural resources. For far too many countries, when push comes to shove, that’s what matters.
Pakistan
Violence-hit Pakistan locks down the capital to hold a major Asian security meeting (AP)
AP [10/15/2024 3:33 AM, Munir Ahmed, 456K, Neutral]
Shaken by multiple recent militant attacks, Pakistani authorities have locked down the capital in a major security move before senior officials from several nations arrive for an Asian security group meeting.

A three-day holiday started Monday in normally bustling Islamabad and the nearby garrison city of Rawalpindi, and Pakistan has deployed troops and blocked key roads, making it difficult even for ambulances to take patients to hospitals. Some doctors on blocked roads asked police to remove barricades so that they could go to hospitals, but police instead asked them and others to take longer routes.

The main event of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization will be held Wednesday when leaders and officials from the member states gather to discuss how to boost their security cooperation and economic ties.

In years past, ordinary Pakistanis used to line up on both sides of the main roads to welcome any dignitaries visiting the country, but authorities say they had to take harsh security measures because of the fears of militant attacks.

Officials say their priority is to peacefully hold the meeting of the Asian security grouping that was established in 2001 by China and Russia to discuss security concerns in Central Asia and the wider region. Other members of the SCO are Iran, India, Pakistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

Militants in recent weeks killed dozens of people in multiple attacks in restive northwest and southwestern bordering Afghanistan. But, security experts say militants have limited capacity to strike in Islamabad.

However, two Chinese engineers were also killed on Oct. 6 in a suicide bombing outside the country’s largest airport in Karachi, the capital of southern Sindh province. The attack was claimed by a separatist group.

The slain engineers were working on a power project under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC, which includes building and improving roads and rail systems to link western China’s Xinjiang region to Pakistan’s southwestern Gwadar port on the Arabian sea.

Despite the killing of two Chinese, China’s Premier Li Qiang arrived in the capital on Monday to attend the SCO meeting. Li on Monday virtually inaugurated a Beijing-funded airport built in restive southwestern Balochistan where separatists have warned China to wind up CPEC-related projects to avoid any further attacks on the Chinese engineers working in Pakistan.

However, Pakistan’s military has responded to the threat from the outlawed Baloch Liberation Army by launching multiple raids on their hideouts, and vowed to eliminate them in Balochistan and elsewhere in the country.
Pakistan hosts a major security meeting this week as it struggles against rising insurgent violence (AP)
AP [10/14/2024 3:45 AM, Riazat Butt, 31638K, Negative]
Pakistan is hosting a major security meeting this week, with senior leaders from longtime ally China and archrival India among those attending.

The Shanghai Cooperation Organization was established in 2001 by China and Russia to discuss security concerns in Central Asia and the wider region.

But it’s Pakistan’s own security that is under the microscope.

An attack on a foreign ambassadors’ convoy, violent protests by supporters of an imprisoned former prime minister, and a bombing outside Pakistan’s biggest airport are signs the country is struggling to contain multiplying threats from insurgents.

The meeting, which begins Tuesday in Islamabad, comes at a crucial time for the government. Here’s why:

Armed groups are outpacing the army

Pakistan says it has foiled attacks through intelligence-based operations and preventative measures. It frequently vows "to root out terrorism."

But the frequency and scale of the recent violence give the impression that the government isn’t in control and raises questions about its ability to protect key sites and foreigners, let alone Pakistanis.

In the last few weeks, separatists from Pakistan’s southwest Balochistan province have killed Chinese nationals in Karachi, Pakistan’s biggest city, as well as more than 20 miners in an attack on housing at a coal mine, and seven workers in another attack. The outlawed Baloch Liberation Army, or BLA, is better at mobilizing fighters in different areas and its operational capabilities have increased.

The group wants independence for the province. It’s not interested in overthrowing the state to establish a caliphate, which is what the Pakistani Taliban want. But the two groups have a common enemy -- the government.

Analysts have said the BLA is getting support from the Pakistani Taliban. But, even without an alliance, attacks in the southwest are becoming more audacious and brutal, indicating that the BLA’s tactics are evolving and taking the security apparatus by surprise.

The Pakistani Taliban continue their shootings and bombings in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan.

It could be difficult for militants to hit the meeting, given the security around it and the areas where delegates will stay. But they could still wreak havoc.

Vehicles are often just waved through street checkpoints in Islamabad. Aside from government buildings and top hotels, body searches and under-vehicle scanners are rare.

"At stake for the entire state is the only mission -- how to hold such an event peacefully," said Imtiaz Gul, the executive director of the Center for Research and Security Studies. "How to get it done without any unpleasant incidents taking place. It’s going to be a formidable challenge for the government to disprove the notion of failures within the security apparatus."

Pakistan is paying the price for shutdowns

Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb said last week that the national economy suffered cumulative daily losses of more than $684 million on account of recent agitation.

He was referring to supporters of former Prime Minister Imran Khan reaching the heart of the capital, despite a suspension of cellphone service and placement of shipping containers at access points to the city. The shutdown hit most business sectors, the gig economy, point-of-sale transactions, commuters, students, workers and more.

Pakistan can’t afford to incur such losses or deepen people’s grievances. It relies on International Monetary Fund bailouts and multibillion-dollar deals and loans from friendly countries to meet its economic needs. There are regular protests over energy bills and the cost of living.

Despite people’s hardships, authorities have declared a three-day holiday surrounding the meeting.

There have been reports of the government ordering the closure of wedding halls, restaurants, hotels, cafes and markets in Islamabad and the neighboring garrison city Rawalpindi for security reasons.

Officials denied the reports, but not very strenuously.

"Generally, high-profile conferences are meant to promote connectivity, trade and improve a country’s image," said Gul. But not in this case because Islamabad won’t look like a normal city, he said.

"It seems they lack innovative thinking," Gul said. "They are unable to use smart approaches and that’s why the easier way is to shut everything down."

A seat at the table and saving face

The last time Pakistan hosted a major conference was in March 2022, a month before Khan was kicked out of office and a new cycle of upheaval started.

The country’s security situation and political instability are two factors that have prevented it from holding big international events.

Even its best-loved sport, cricket, has suffered. There was a 10-year absence of test matches after terrorists ambushed a Sri Lanka team bus in 2009, killing eight people and injuring players and officials.

The meeting is Pakistan’s chance to shine, especially in front of its neighbor China, to whom it is in hock by several billion dollars and whose nationals are prime targets for armed groups, as well as India, which is sending its foreign minister to the country for the first time since 2015.

India and Pakistan have fought three wars and built up their armies but also developed nuclear weapons. China and India fought a war over their border in 1962.

Pakistan, unused to hosting such a high-level meeting, will have to put its best face forward.

Senior defense analyst Abdullah Khan said the government wants to show its international legitimacy amid the domestic crises.

"The presence of heads of state and other senior officials will itself be a success as Pakistan will come out of its so-called isolation," said Khan. "A peacefully held SCO will further improve the country’s image."
China’s premier inaugurates a Beijing-funded airport at the start of a Pakistan trip (AP)
AP [10/14/2024 7:38 PM, Munir Ahmed, 31638K, Negative]
China’s Premier Li Qiang on Monday inaugurated a Beijing-funded airport built in restive southwestern Pakistan a week after militants killed two Chinese workers, as he arrived for a regional security meeting in Islamabad.

Li will be the most prominent leader at the two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization starting Tuesday to discuss how to boost security and economic ties between the member states. It was founded by Russia and China to counter Western alliances.

Hours after arriving in Islamabad, Li and Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif at a televised ceremony virtually inaugurated a Chinese-funded international airport in Gwadar, in the southwestern province of Balochistan. It’s part of a massive investment by Beijing that links a deep sea port and airport on the Arabian Sea by road with China.

Separatists in Balochistan, who accuse the Chinese and others of economic exploitation, are opposed to the project. Last week, two Chinese workers were killed and another was wounded when a suicide bomber dispatched by separatists rammed his explosive-laden vehicle into their convoy outside the country’s largest airport in Karachi.

Eight Pakistani security officials were also wounded in the Oct. 6 attack, which targeted the thousands of Chinese working in Pakistan on projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.

The two leaders also witnessed the signing of agreements to boost economic and trade ties. Li is the first Chinese premier to visit Pakistan in more than a decade, according to Information Minister Attaullah Tarar.

Li vowed to "continue to working hand-in-hand" with Pakistan on joint economic projects, like the Gwadar airport, which he said was built and modernized in five years in the deserts of Balochistan.

"This gift from our brother from China is yet another feather in the cap of the CPEC," Sharif said. He assured Li that he would work closely with him to ensure the safety of Chinese workers in Pakistan.

The airport in Gwadar is one of the biggest in Pakistan, according to civil aviation officials.

Apart from the airport and Gwadar deep see port, one of the main components of the $75-billion CPEC is a 3,200-kilometer (2,000-mile) road linking China to Gwadar port on the Arabian Sea, a highway running directly through Balochistan.

The airport’s opening came hours after Tarar said a high-level investigation into the killings of the Chinese workers in Karachi was still underway. The Foreign Ministry in Beijing said Monday that Chinese investigators were sent to Pakistan and had met with authorities.

The investigators asked Pakistan to conduct thorough investigations, bring all perpetrators to justice, and step up security measures to ensure the safety and security of Chinese personnel, institutions and projects in Pakistan, the ministry said.

Gunmen last week also killed 21 coal miners in the the same province, but the separatist Balochistan Liberation Army denied its involvement. Authorities said they were still trying to determine who was behind the assault.

On Monday, at least four police officers and five insurgents were killed in an attack on a police station in the district of Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, police said. No one has claimed responsibility but the suspicion is likely to fall on the Pakistani Taliban, who often target security forces across the country.

Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry said the SCO meeting will also be attended by representatives of Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. It said Iran’s vice president and the Indian foreign minister would also attend.

Pakistan has increased security in the capital by deploying troops and banning rallies.
Pakistan’s internet slows to a crawl as suspicion falls on government (Washington Post)
Washington Post [10/13/2024 2:00 AM, Rick Noack, 52865K, Neutral]
When Pakistan’s internet suddenly began to slow down earlier this summer, many assumed it was a temporary blip. Some tried restarting their phones or reconnecting their routers.

More than two months later, however, mobile internet in this country of about 240 million people remains painfully slow. Technology experts and political activists now accuse the government of intentionally throttling the internet to suppress protests by supporters of imprisoned opposition leader and former prime minister Imran Khan. Digital rights activists worry that Pakistani officials are installing new controls to more tightly monitor social media and to censor political content.

The government has rejected those accusations, saying initially that the slowdown was due to an upgrade of the country’s “web management system” and then the result of faulty undersea cables, before most recently suggesting that people are imagining their problems. “The internet is working absolutely fine,” Information Minister Attaullah Tarar said last month. “The issue has been resolved.”

But those who rely on the internet to make a living say that the slowdown — and the deeply disruptive economic consequences — has continued. Public skepticism of the government’s explanations has only grown.

Usama Khilji, a Pakistani activist, said the digital rights group he leads is convinced that authorities are trying to remove features that normally make the internet faster by temporarily storing content that’s frequently accessed. Such stored content — also known as a cache — cannot easily be controlled by governments. The newly introduced government technology appears to be “slowing down the internet because it’s disabling access to the cached websites,” he said.

Many young Pakistanis now worry that the slowdown is turning into a case study for what happens when a rising gig economy becomes the collateral damage of political tensions.

“It’s very clear that there is a desire on the part of the state, and certainly the establishment, to really limit the extent to which the internet can be used as a space for dissent,” said Michael Kugelman, the director of the Wilson Center’s South Asia Institute. He added that by doing so, “Pakistan is shooting itself in the foot.”

A prolonged slowdown, he said, “could be the death knell for a burgeoning and significant Pakistani tech sector.”

Pakistan’s tech sector and gig economy had been a rare source of optimism in the country’s crisis-ridden economy, which has struggled from one IMF loan to the next in recent years. An estimated 300,000 Pakistani freelancers work in tech — one of Pakistan’s few booming export sectors — and hundreds of thousands more earn money through food delivery apps or ride-hailing services.

But Pakistani officials increasingly also cite the internet as a source of political instability and a recent surge in militant attacks. “Anarchy is spread through social media,” Asim Munir, Pakistan’s army chief, said in a recent speech, according to state television.

Pakistan’s military establishment, seen as the ultimate arbiter of the country’s politics, appears to have been particularly frustrated with supporters of opposition leader Khan using social media and AI-created videos to circumvent traditional media outlets.

On days when Khan’s party stages protests, mobile internet often crawls to a halt in parts of the country, forcing protesters to communicate on phone lines, which are easier to monitor than WhatsApp. X, formerly known as Twitter, has been largely inaccessible in Pakistan since Khan’s party performed well above expectations in elections in February.

“Of course this is linked to PTI,” said Zulfi Bukhari, a spokesman for Khan’s party, using its initials. “It’s all or nothing for the government.”

Pakistan’s tech and gig workers say they feel caught in the middle of the dispute between the country’s divided political blocs.

At times, ride-hailing apps barely function, leaving riders and drivers stranded or searching for public WiFi networks, which are still working normally. Freelance software developers who can’t afford WiFi say they fear losing projects to competitors based in India or the Persian Gulf states. Some IT students wonder whether there will be any jobs left in Pakistan’s tech sector by the time they graduate.

In Lahore, Pakistan’s sprawling Mughal-era metropolis, the internet slowdown has delivered a financial hit to many of its more than 13 million residents.

Mohammad Arif said becoming a ride-hailing driver seven years ago initially appeared to be a way toward financial independence. As inflation spiraled out of control in recent years, hitting an annual rate of 38 percent in May of last year, many workers in office jobs had to fight to get pay raises. Arif’s fares, pegged to gas prices, went up automatically. Almost a dozen of his friends left their office jobs and followed his example.

But on bad days, Arif now struggles to make a living. When he tries to accept rides, his screen often freezes. And on days when the internet is shut down entirely, earnings drop to zero.

For freelance software developers and other IT services professionals, the past few months have been similarly challenging. Those who are using WiFi have mostly been able to resume work normally. But only about 4 million Pakistanis have their own WiFi, compared with almost 140 million who use cheaper mobile broadband that has been more severely disrupted.

During the worst stretches of the slowdown, when mobile and WiFi internet both ground to a near halt, call-center operations were thrown into turmoil because their calls are transmitted digitally, and Pakistani freelancers’ ratings on digital services sites dropped because these workers were offline for too long, tech workers said in interviews.

Foreign clients remain puzzled by frozen video conference calls or WhatsApp photos that won’t load.

“I haven’t found a good workaround,” said Shameer Kashif, 23, a cybersecurity professional who recently returned from extended travels abroad. “Even on Indonesian islands, the internet was fine,” he said.

The slowdown has also raised questions from clients abroad about privacy issues and the transmission of sensitive data through Pakistani internet filters, said Ali Ihsan, senior vice chairman of the Pakistan Software Houses Association.

But Ihsan remains optimistic that the issues will eventually be resolved. The tech sector is so “critically important” that the government often refers to it as a “national security industry,” he said. Officials “understand the urgency of the problem,” he added, citing discussions about allowing IT businesses to bypass the country’s firewall so that “at least the industry can be protected,” he said.

Shaza Fatima Khawaja, Pakistan’s minister of state for information technology and telecommunications, said in a written response that “at this time, I cannot comment on any specific plans.” She added, “Our focus remains on balancing cybersecurity interests of users with the need for a robust and competitive tech ecosystem.”

Some Pakistanis haven’t had the patience to wait. About 80 percent of data engineer Hammad Khattak’s colleagues have already left Pakistan, he said, a trend that was underway before the internet slowdown but appears to have since sped up. Desks open up with alarming frequency in his Islamabad co-working space, where “Don’t Quit” and “Positive Vibes Only” posters hang in the hallways.

Foreign business partners “are losing interest in Pakistan,” said Khattak, 29. “The general perception of Pakistan is worsening day by day.”

There may be some legitimate reasons for Pakistani officials to exert tighter control over parts of the internet, said Kugelman, citing suspected cyberattacks from India and the use of social media by militants.

But by throttling connectivity for everyone, including millions of Khan’s supporters, the authorities risk contributing to their radicalization. “You have a party with a lot of support, including many young backers, that don’t really have anywhere to peacefully channel their grievances,” Kugelman said. “I think there are some long-term concerns about what that could mean.”
Islamist militants kill four, including three policemen, in Pakistan (Reuters)
Reuters [10/14/2024 2:27 PM, Mushtaq Ali and Saud Mehmud, 37270K, Negative]
Islamist militants stormed a northwestern Pakistani district police office on Monday, killing three policemen and a civilian before police shot and killed all five attackers.

Provincial police chief Akhtar Hayat told Reuters that the attack on the complex, which houses both the district police headquarters and a residential complex, lasted for hours before all the five suicide bombers were killed.

The attackers killed three police officers and a civilian employed at the complex, he said.

The incident occurred in district Bannu, which borders the restive North Waziristan tribal region on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border.

Islamist militant group Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) claimed responsibility for the attack, a spokesperson for the group said.

Bannu is about 350 km (217 miles) from Pakistan’s capital Islamabad, which is under strict security lockdown due to the arrival of Chinese Premier Li Qiang on Monday ahead of a regional leaders’ meeting this week.
At Least 15 Dead In Pakistani Shootings Linked To Sunni-Shi’a Land Feuds (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [10/12/2024 11:30 AM, Staff, 1251K, Negative]
A series of shooting incidents believed to be linked to a tribal land feud in Pakistan’s Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province have left at least 15 people dead and 12 injured, local elders and district officials told RFE/RL’s Radio Mashaal on October 12.

A senior district official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the first incident occurred when unidentified gunmen opened fire on three people who had traveled to Kunj Alizu mountain, causing injuries.

Local elder Imran Maqbal told Radio Mashaal that 14 people were killed and nine injured in a second attack in the Kurram District. The clashes -- believed to be related -- resulted in the closure of public offices, schools, and roads, while authorities also shut down mobile Internet in the district.

The Af-Pak Monitor group, activists, and locals posted photos and videos on social media showing the victims of the shooting.

Dozens of people in recent weeks have been killed in clashes between armed Shi’ite and Sunni Muslim groups over land disputes. Sunnis and Shi’a have lived in close proximity for decades in the area, but armed clashes have occasionally broken out over land, forests, and other properties and religious differences.

The latest violence comes after a nine-day cease-fire that had been agreed to by Sunnis and Shi’ite leaders on September 28.

Health officials, police, and local leaders say 44 people have been killed and more than 130 injured in clashes in the area since September 20.

In 2008 a peace deal was reached between Shi’a and Sunnis. The agreement stipulated that both sides would keep all roads open, prevent the deterioration of security, allow the displaced to return to their villages, and resolve land disputes based on ancient documents and Pashtun tradition in the name of paper property.

Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Province, in Pakistan’s northwest, has been the site of sectarian violence over the years, including attacks by the Pakistani Taliban, known as Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan.
Pakistan’s Ban On Prominent Civil Rights Group Will ‘Alienate’ Pashtun Minority (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [10/12/2024 3:14 AM, Abubakar Siddique, 1251K, Neutral]
Pakistan’s decision to ban a prominent civil rights organization will further alienate the country’s large Pashtun ethnic minority, experts say.

The Pashtun Tahafuz Movement (PTM), a grassroots movement that advocates for the rights of Pakistan’s estimated 40 million Pashtuns, was designated a "proscribed organization" on October 6 for allegedly undermining security in the South Asian country of some 240 million people.

Rights groups say the ban is aimed at silencing the PTM, which has accused the government and the powerful military of committing human rights abuses against civilians in northwestern Pakistan, a militant stronghold.

Analysts say the ban could push the PTM to abandon its nonviolent campaign and further destabilize the northwestern province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, where many Pashtuns live.

"It’s going to make Pashtuns much more apprehensive of the state," said Ayesha Siddiqa, senior fellow at King’s College London. "There’s going to be greater resentment and frustration."

Since its emergence in 2018, the PTM has accused the army of using heavy-handed tactics, including extrajudicial killings, torture, and enforced disappearances, against civilians during counterterrorism operations against militant groups in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa.

The province has been the scene of numerous operations against the Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP) extremist group that have killed thousands of Pashtun civilians and uprooted millions in the past two decades.

Siddiqa said the ban on the PTM was a "knee-jerk reaction" by Pakistan’s military, which has an oversized role in the country’s domestic and foreign affairs. Its traditional dominance of politics has been undermined in recent years by civil rights organizations like the PTM and opposition political parties.

"PTM is a political movement, and that is something which the state finds much more difficult to control," Siddiqa added.

In recent years, the authorities have arrested and jailed the leaders and hundreds of members of the PTM, whose rallies often attract tens of thousands of people.

Widespread Condemnation

The government’s ban on the PTM has been widely condemned.

Amnesty International on October 8 called on Islamabad to revoke the ban, which it termed "an affront to the rights to freedom of association and peaceful assembly."

Two days earlier, the Human Rights Commission of Pakistan, an independent rights watchdog, had criticized what it said was "the government’s decision to proscribe the PTM, a rights-based movement that has never resorted to violence and always used the framework of the Constitution to advocate its cause."

The PTM has said that over 200 of its members have been arrested in recent days ahead of a jirga, or assembly, planned for October 11-13.

Two days before the assembly, police clashed with PTM supporters in the northwestern town of Jamrud, using tear gas and batons to disperse the crowd. At least four PTM activists were killed in the clashes.

Despite the ban on the PTM, the provincial government of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa has permitted the group to hold the assembly. On October 11, the provincial authorities said they will urge the central government to revoke the ban.

"The PTM has been raising very legitimate demands," said Farhatullah Babar, a former lawmaker and leader of the secular Pakistan People’s Party.

He said the army and government have consistently reneged on promises it made to the PTM, including the removal of military checkpoints in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the clearance of landmines, and the release of civilians forcibly disappeared by the state.

"Stifling its voice will go down very badly with the entire Pashtun people," said Babar. "I think that this will alienate people even more. The incentives for them to remain peaceful will now decrease."
No thaw in sight at SCO summit for India and Pakistan relations (Nikkei Asia – opinion)
Nikkei Asia [10/13/2024 4:05 PM, Imran Khalid, 2376K, Neutral]
The prospect of diplomatic engagement between India and Pakistan remains faint, despite the upcoming Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit being hosted in Islamabad on Oct. 15-16. Hopes, if any, for a thaw between the two nations had already been dimmed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s decision to stay away from this gathering. Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar will attend instead.

Further deepening the gloom, Jaishankar firmly dismissed any possibility of resuming bilateral talks at the summit. "I am not going there to discuss India-Pakistan relations," he said Saturday. Instead, he positioned his trip as part of India’s commitment to the multilateral event.

This refusal by India to engage underscores the complexity of regional tensions and the growing challenges in finding common ground. It underscores how cross-border relations have taken a frostier turn since India’s general election earlier this year. Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif extended a congratulatory message to Modi upon his reelection, only to receive a curt response. Modi’s reply, cloaked in the language of security, expressed adherence to the security and safety of Indian citizens -- a veiled reminder of the tense relations between the two nations.

Adding more fuel to the fire, Pakistan was excluded from the list of regional leaders invited to Modi’s swearing-in ceremony. This exclusion stood in stark contrast to 2014, when Sharif attended Modi’s first inauguration, hinting at the potential for warmer relations.

In 2015, a rare glimmer of hope surfaced when Modi made an unexpected visit to Pakistan, and the possibility of improved relations between the nuclear-armed neighbors seemed within reach. Yet, by 2019, that inkling of optimism was thoroughly extinguished when Modi’s government stripped Kashmir of its constitutional autonomy, reducing it to a federally administered territory. The region’s limited autonomy, already fragile, was obliterated, and Modi’s actions signaled his intent to fully integrate the disputed territory into India.

The consequences were enormous. Pakistan downgraded its diplomatic relations with India and suspended bilateral trade. The gesture was not just an assertion of territorial control but a blatant statement of defiance to both Kashmir and Pakistan. Kashmir has long been a contested symbol of unfinished business from the partition of British India. Both India and Pakistan claim the region in its entirety, yet they’ve only managed to rule over parts of it since independence. The line dividing Kashmir is a scar that has never fully healed, and Modi’s drastic maneuver in 2019 only deepened the wound.

In July, Modi again hardened his stance toward Pakistan. Speaking on the anniversary of the Kargil conflict (a three-month war between the countries in 1999), Modi accused Pakistan of clinging to relevance through "terrorism and proxy war," branding the country’s leaders as the "masters of terror." It was a scathing indictment.

This was followed by a pointed critique of Pakistan by Jaishankar on Sept. 28 at the U.N. General Assembly, where he accused it of making a "conscious choice" to be left behind in the global order. Jaishankar invoked the notion of karma, suggesting Pakistan’s struggles are self-inflicted: "While some nations are held back by circumstances beyond their control, others choose their fate, often with catastrophic consequences. Our neighbor, Pakistan, is a prime example."

These words reflect an intense hardening of India’s posture, one that seems focused on confrontation rather than reconciliation. It appears to be a political calculation, one taken despite Islamabad trying to adopt a conciliatory tone and engage with New Delhi.

A critical challenge for Islamabad lies in India’s continuous refusal to discuss the Kashmir dispute, which remains central to any potential talks. For Pakistan, entering formal dialogue without addressing Kashmir would be unthinkable -- a peace process excluding Kashmir is no peace process at all. This isn’t a hard-line stance; it reflects the realities of law and principle.

The revival of trade presents further obstacles. While there are advocates for boosting economic ties on both sides, New Delhi has demonstrated no inclination to reopen those channels.

Following the Pulwama incident (a suicide attack by a young Kashmiri that killed more than 40 Indian soldiers in 2019), India imposed a 200% tariff on Pakistani imports. Islamabad officially suspended trade after India annexed Jammu and Kashmir in August 2019.

The distance between the neighbors appears to have widened, with even once-routine diplomatic gestures feeling cold and distant. The subtext of each exchange is clear: The region’s security challenges continue to overshadow any hope for reconciliation, at least for the time being.
India
Indian committee probing US assassination plot plans to visit Washington, State Dept says (Reuters)
Reuters [10/14/2024 6:27 PM, Simon Lewis, 37270K, Negative]
An Indian government committee investigating Indian involvement in a foiled murder plot against a prominent activist in the United States will meet U.S. officials in Washington this week, the State Department said on Monday.

The United States has been pushing India to look in to the Justice Department’s claim that an unnamed Indian intelligence official directed plans to assassinate dual U.S.-Canada citizen Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a prominent Sikh separatist, last year.

In an unusual statement on another country’s investigation, the State Department said on Monday that an Indian Enquiry Committee "is actively investigating the individual" and that India had informed the U.S. it was looking in to "other linkages of the former government employee."

"The Enquiry Committee will be traveling to Washington, D.C. on October 15th, as part of their ongoing investigations to discuss the case, including information they have obtained, and to receive an update from U.S. authorities regarding the U.S. case that is proceeding," it said.

India’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

India has said little publicly since announcing in November 2023 it would formally investigate the claims, and has separately continued a diplomatic dispute with Canada over the June 2023 assassination of another Sikh leader.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in September his country’s intelligence agency was pursuing credible allegations that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government was behind the killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Canadian Sikh separatist who was vocal in supporting the creation of a new separate Sikh state in Northern India called "Khalistan."

India has denied involvement in both incidents.

India withdrew its envoy to Ottawa earlier on Monday along with other officials and diplomats Canada named as "persons of interest" in its investigation.
Canada Expels Indian Diplomats, Accusing Them of Criminal Campaign (New York Times)
New York Times [10/14/2024 4:14 PM, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, 831K, Neutral]
Canada accused the Indian government on Monday of homicide and extortion intended to silence critics of India living in Canada, escalating a bitter dispute that began last year with an assassination of a Sikh activist.

Canada expelled India’s top diplomat and five others, saying they were part of a vast criminal network. India reciprocated, expelling six Canadian diplomats.

The two countries have been in an intense dispute following the assassination in Canada of a prominent Sikh cleric, Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time that his killing had been orchestrated by the Indian government.

Canada is home to the largest Sikh community outside India, where the religious minority lives mostly in the northwestern state of Punjab. The Indian government says that some Sikhs in Canada are actively involved in a secessionist movement that seeks to carve a Sikh homeland known as Khalistan out of India.

Canadian officials said their investigation had focused on the Indian government’s involvement in a campaign aimed at Canadian Sikh activists.

The breakdown in the relationship between the two countries has gone all the way to the top. Mr. Trudeau said on Monday that he had confronted his Indian counterpart, Narendra Modi, about the investigation last week in Laos, where both men were attending a summit.

The Canadian leader said he had asked Mr. Modi for India’s cooperation ahead of a meeting between national security officials from both countries in Singapore. The officials were to discuss the involvement of Indian diplomats in what the authorities have described as serious criminal activities against Sikhs in Canada.

“I impressed upon him that it needed to be taken very, very seriously,” Mr. Trudeau told reporters in Ottawa at a news conference.

Despite the one-on-one discussion between the leaders, the Singapore meeting did not produce the cooperation Canadian officials had sought, leading to the diplomatic expulsions.

“We will never tolerate the involvement of a foreign government threatening and killing Canadian citizens on Canadian soil, a deeply unacceptable violation of Canada’s sovereignty and of international law,” Mr. Trudeau said.

Mélanie Joly, Canada’s foreign minister, said that her country had issued the expulsion orders to the six diplomats after the Indian government refused to waive their diplomatic immunity and allow them to participate in the Canadian investigations. Among those kicked out was Sanjay Kumar Verma, India’s high commissioner, or ambassador, to Canada.

Ms. Joly said that Canada’s law enforcement agencies had identified the six as “persons of interest” in the Nijjar assassination. “The decision to expel these individuals was made with great consideration,’’ she said, adding that investigators had “gathered ample, clear and concrete evidence.’’

Mr. Nijjar was ambushed and killed by three masked men outside a Sikh temple in Surrey, British Columbia. Three Indian nationals have been arrested and charged to date.

The Indian government, in its own statement on Monday, rejected Canada’s account of what had happened to its diplomats. India said it had pulled them out of Canada because of “an atmosphere of extremism and violence” that put them in danger.

The Indian government also said it was expelling six Canadian diplomats from India, including the embassy’s second-highest ranking diplomat, the chargé d’affaires, Stewart Wheeler.

The Indian government has vehemently denied accusations that it was involved in Mr. Nijjar’s killing, and maintains that the allegations against it are politically motivated. It says Mr. Trudeau is in cahoots with Sikh separatists in Canada because they support his Liberal Party.

A top Canadian law enforcement official, Mike Duheme, on Monday presented the accusations against the Indian government, saying that it had set up a criminal network inside Canada to harass and intimidate Sikhs. He provided few specifics about the allegations, but said the investigation had been aided by the F.B.I.

“An extraordinary situation is compelling us to speak about what we have discovered in our multiple ongoing investigations into the involvement of agents of the government of India in serious criminal activity in Canada,” said Mr. Duheme, who is the head of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

He said that the police were taking the unusual step of going public because of a “significant threat to public safety in our country.”

Mr. Duheme said his officers had investigated and charged “a significant number of individuals for their direct involvement in homicides, extortions and other criminal acts of violence.”

He said there had been more than a dozen credible threats to life against members of the Sikh community in Canada. The Indian government agents, including the six diplomats expelled, were based not just in Ottawa, the capital, but also in Vancouver and Toronto and other cities across Canada where Sikhs live.

While Mr. Duheme did not detail the means the Canadian authorities had used to collect evidence against the Indian government and its agents, he said that the investigations had found that it was running a major intelligence-gathering network in Canada. Some of those involved in the network were paid, he said, while others were coerced into helping.

“The information collected by the government of India is then used to target members of the South Asian community,” Mr. Duheme said.

India’s intelligence services have long been accused of directing the killings of opponents inside neighboring countries.

Canada’s accusations against India regarding the Nijjar assassination of have been bolstered by the findings of an American investigation into a similar, though unsuccessful, plot against a U.S.-based Sikh cleric. Last November, federal prosecutors in Manhattan said they had found connections between both plots.

The deepening rift between India and Canada comes as the United States, the European Union and other Canadian allies have been trying to court India as a counterweight to China. India is a booming power on the world stage both in terms of defense and in trade and the economy.

Mr. Trudeau said that he had informed his country’s closest intelligence allies about the developments. Together with Canada, the United States, Britain, Australia and New Zealand make up the so-called Five Eyes intelligence cooperation group.

The accusations against India arise as a Canadian commission is investigating the interference of foreign powers into domestic politics. A Canadian parliamentary report in June, based on information provided by the country’s intelligence services, identified China and India as the two countries that pose the biggest risk of foreign interference.

Mr. Kumar Verma, India’s ambassador to Canada, dismissed the report as politically motivated, and his government on Monday expressed its full support for him. “The aspersions cast on him by the government of Canada are ludicrous and deserve to be treated with contempt,” it said.
Canada alleges much wider campaign by Modi government against Sikhs (Washington Post)
Washington Post [10/14/2024 2:16 PM, Greg Miller and Gerry Shih, 52865K, Negative]
The killing of a Sikh separatist in Canada last year was part of a broader campaign of violence against Indian dissidents directed by a senior official in the Indian government and an operative in the country’s spy agency, according to Canadian officials who cited intercepted Indian communications and other newly acquired information.

Canadian authorities have also identified at least six Indian diplomats serving in Canada who were directly involved in gathering detailed intelligence on Sikh separatists who were then killed, attacked or threatened by India’s criminal proxies, Canadian officials said.

Canada ordered all six of those diplomats to leave the country in notices that were sent early Monday, the officials said. Among them were India’s top diplomat in the country, Sanjay Kumar Verma, and its top consular official in Toronto, the officials said.

India issued a conflicting statement saying it had withdrawn the diplomats over concerns for their safety. India later announced that it had expelled six Canadian diplomats, including Canada’s top diplomat in New Delhi.

The previously undisclosed details about India’s alleged involvement in the 2023 death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar and other attacks stem from an ongoing investigation that Canadian authorities said has uncovered extensive evidence linking a larger outbreak of violence in Canada to the administration of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

“We know they are involved in the Nijjar killing, in other murders and in ongoing violence — actual violence — in Canada,” said a senior Canadian official. The official said that since Nijjar’s death, the pace of threats has escalated to such an extent that authorities have warned a dozen individuals of Indian descent that there was credible information they could be targeted. The official and others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the investigation, citing the sensitivity of allegations that have caused a rupture in relations between Delhi and Ottawa.

India has vehemently denied the accusations. A statement issued by the country’s Ministry of External Affairs on Monday said that Modi’s government “strongly rejects these preposterous imputations and ascribes them to the political agenda” of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau said Monday that “the response of the Indian government has been to deny, to obfuscate, to attack me personally and the integrity of the government of Canada and its officials and its police agencies.”

Even so, the new allegations add to mounting concerns among Western security officials and human rights organizations that Modi’s government has become one of the world’s most aggressive practitioners of “transnational repression,” or the use of violence and other means to neutralize perceived homegrown adversaries who have sought refuge in other countries.

The Biden administration, which has cultivated closer ties with India, last year confronted Modi administration officials with intelligence that an officer in India’s Research and Analysis Wing, a spy service known as RAW, was behind an attempt to assassinate a Sikh separatist in New York — a failed plot with parallels to the Nijjar case in Canada. The Post identified the RAW officer as Vikram Yadav, though he was not named in a U.S. indictment accusing an alleged Indian drug trafficker of seeking to hire a hit man to carry out the killing.

Nijjar and Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, the target of the New York plot, were leaders of a movement that for decades has campaigned to carve out an independent Sikh state in northern India. The movement was marked by violent clashes in the 1980s, but has been relatively dormant since a crackdown led to a mass exodus of Sikhs to other countries.

Modi, who came to power as a champion of Hindu nationalism, has revived concerns about the supposed threat posed by Sikhs living abroad. Modi and other officials have frequently accused Canada, which has the world’s largest population of Sikhs outside India, of harboring terrorists.

Canadian officials said they only recently began to grasp the magnitude of the covert campaign of violence India has waged against Sikhs as new evidence emerged from an ongoing investigation of Nijjar’s killing that is led by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police but has involved other agencies, as well as intelligence provided by the United States and other allies.

Officials said the investigation has uncovered evidence of Indian government involvement in home invasions, drive-by shootings, arson and at least one additional killing.

Officials cited the death of Sukhdool Singh, who was shot in Winnipeg on Sept. 20, 2023, less than a day after he was featured in a wanted list of gangsters posted on X by India’s National Investigation Agency. The killing came two days after Trudeau publicly accused India of killing Nijjar.

Officials described an operational “chain” in which Indian diplomats in Canada collect intelligence on alleged Sikh separatists that is then used by RAW to identify targets for attacks carried out by a criminal syndicate led by Lawrence Bishnoi, whose organization, the officials said, has an extensive presence in Canada. Bishnoi is imprisoned in India and could not be reached for comment. His organization has previously asserted responsibility for violent attacks in Canada, officials said.

Officials said Indian diplomats have used violence as well as threatened to deny needed immigration documents to coerce Indians living in Canada to serve as informants against Sikh activists. Canadian officials said this scheme involves Indian officials at the country’s consulates in Vancouver and Toronto as well as its High Commission — the embassy equivalent — in Ottawa. Canadian officials said the collection operation was overseen by Verma, India’s high commissioner in Ottawa.

“The coercion goes far beyond threatening to deny visas, to include physical threats to them and their families in India,” said a senior Canadian official, who added that “the information is being sent to India at almost the highest level.”

Conversations and texts among Indian diplomats include references to “a senior official in India and a senior official in RAW” who have authorized the intelligence-gathering missions and attacks on Sikh separatists, the Canadian official said.

Canadian officials identified the senior official in India as Amit Shah, a member of Modi’s inner circle who serves as home affairs minister. Spokespeople in India’s Ministry for External Affairs and its Home Ministry, which oversees national security matters, did not respond to requests for comment about Shah’s alleged role.

Canadian officials shared details about the references to Shah and other evidence with India’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, at a secret meeting in Singapore on Saturday. Canadians who took part in the meeting included Trudeau’s national security adviser, Nathalie Drouin, and Deputy Foreign Minister David Morrison, as well as a top RCMP official.

Canada had sought the meeting in an attempt to persuade Modi’s government to end an escalating campaign of violence in Canada, but also to warn that details exposing Indian involvement in attacks were likely to become public as prosecutors move forward next month with a planned trial of four suspects in Nijjar’s killing.

Instead, officials said Doval made clear that India “would deny any link to the Nijjar murder and any link to any other violence in Canada no matter what the evidence was,” a senior Canadian official said.

Officials provided other details about the five-hour encounter with Doval, 79, a former spymaster who is seen as one of Modi’s closest confidants and has served as national security adviser for a decade.

Doval “did admit that India did use its diplomats to follow people, take pictures, et cetera, but denied any links to threats or violence,” an official said.

When Canadian officials outlined evidence that India had enlisted Bishnoi’s gang networks in Canada to carry out the Nijjar killing and other attacks, Doval initially “pretended not to have any idea who the guy was,” a Canadian official said. Later, however, Doval began rattling off “facts, figures and anecdotes” about Bishnoi, acknowledging that he “was capable of orchestrating violence from wherever he is incarcerated” and “was known to be up to no good from his jail cell.”

Bishnoi, 31, is one of India’s most notorious mob bosses, officials said, but has also been accused on social media of collaborating with the government while in prison. Bishnoi’s gang asserted responsibility for Singh’s killing in September last year after Trudeau’s public statement linking India to Nijjar’s death.

In a news conference Monday — Canada’s Thanksgiving holiday — RCMP officials said that violence orchestrated by India had become a “significant threat to public safety,” and that at least eight people have been arrested and charged in connection with homicide cases and nearly two dozen in connection with extortion investigations.

Canadian requests to interview Indian diplomats implicated in attacks were rebuffed by Modi’s government, officials said.

Doval ended the Saturday meeting by asking his counterparts to treat the discussion as if it “never took place” — meaning they should refrain from issuing any public statement or acknowledgment of the gathering.

By the time Drouin and Morrison had made it back to Ottawa, however, pro-Modi media reports had surfaced in India describing how Indian officials had taken a “strong stance” and lectured Canada that “it cannot make unsubstantiated charges.”
Canada, India Expel Diplomats in Escalating Dispute Over Sikh Activist’s Killing (Wall Street Journal)
Wall Street Journal [10/14/2024 5:51 PM, Vipal Monga and Paul Vieira, 810K, Neutral]
Canada and India expelled diplomats from each country on Monday, intensifying a dispute over the killing of a Sikh activist last year.

The Canadian government said it expelled six diplomats Monday, including India’s top official in the country, over allegations that the officials gathered intelligence about Sikh separatists who were then targeted for violence.

India responded the same day by expelling six Canadian officials from India, including the top diplomat, Stewart Wheeler.

On Monday afternoon, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said investigators have clear and compelling evidence that agents of the government of India were involved in activities, including murder, that targeted Canadian citizens.

“This is a deeply unacceptable violation of Canada’s sovereignty and international law,” said Trudeau. “We cannot abide by what we’re seeing right now.”

India called Canada’s latest allegations “preposterous,” and accused Trudeau of pushing the accusations as a political ploy meant to gain support from Canada’s Sikh community, which is among the largest in the world outside of India.

“Prime Minister Trudeau’s hostility to India has long been in evidence,” said a statement issued by India’s Ministry of External Affairs.

Canada’s foreign affairs ministry said Canadian police had asked India to waive consular and diplomatic immunity for its officials to help in the investigation into a campaign against Canadian Sikhs, but New Delhi refused, which prompted the expulsions.

Ottawa kicked out the Indian diplomats, including its high commissioner to Canada, Sanjay Kumar Verma, after seeing the evidence gathered by Canada’s federal police force, said the country’s minister of foreign affairs, Mélanie Joly.

Joly said she has spoken with Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar, and with her counterparts in the “Five Eyes” intelligence-sharing networking, including the U.S., the U.K., Australia and New Zealand.

In a statement, India said it withdrew the diplomats because it was concerned for their security.

The investigation by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police linked agents of the government of India to “homicides and violent acts,” said Mike Duheme, a commissioner for the RCMP.

The Indian diplomats collected information about Canadians that was used to threaten and coerce them into working with the Indian government, said the RCMP.

Duheme said a dozen members of Canada’s South Asian community have been warned by police about threats to their safety.

Along with Verma, based in Ottawa, the expelled diplomats included officials based in Indian consular offices in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia, according to a senior Indian official.

Monday’s expulsions are the latest flare-up in a diplomatic dispute that began when Trudeau said in Parliament last year that Canada was pursuing “credible allegations” that agents of the Indian government were involved in killing Hardeep Singh Nijjar, a Sikh activist in Surrey, British Columbia, in June 2023.

At the time, New Delhi called the allegations “absurd” and forced Ottawa to withdraw more than 40 diplomats from India.

Trudeau’s allegations were bolstered in November, when the U.S. Justice Department accused an Indian citizen, Nikhil Gupta, of working for Indian government agents to orchestrate a foiled plot to assassinate Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, a Sikh activist and a close associate of Nijjar who was living in New York City. According to the indictment, U.S. agents recorded Gupta saying that Nijjar was also a target for killings that were purportedly arranged by an agent of the Indian government.

Pannun heads a U.S.-based activist group called Sikhs for Justice that has organized mock referendums in Canada and elsewhere asking whether Punjab, home to some 16 million Sikhs, should be a separate country.

He said on Monday that the diplomats’ expulsion validates his group’s concerns about the Indian government’s attempts to suppress dissent from Sikh separatists.

Officials from the RCMP, the foreign-affairs department and the national-security department met with Indian officials on Saturday in Singapore to seek their cooperation on the investigation.

“That did not result in the outcomes that were expected,” Duheme said in a briefing Monday.

Trudeau said he met with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi last week in Laos on the sidelines of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit.

“I highlighted how incredibly important the meeting between our national security advisers in Singapore this weekend was going to be,” said Trudeau. “He told me that he was aware of that meeting. I impressed upon him that it needed to be taken very, very seriously.”
Indian opposition pushes Modi for discussion on worsening Canada ties (Reuters)
Reuters [10/15/2024 3:08 AM, Shilpa Jamkhandikar, 5.2M, Neutral]
India’s main opposition Congress party has urged Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government to take all political parties into confidence regarding worsening ties with Canada a day after the two countries said they expelled each other’s diplomats.

Ties deteriorated further on Monday with the expulsions, while Canada linked India’s diplomats to the murder of a Sikh separatist leader and accused the South Asian nation of a broader effort to target Indian dissidents in Canada.

Congress expected Modi to take leaders of other political parties into confidence on "the extremely sensitive and delicate issue of worsening India-Canada relations," party spokesperson Jairam Ramesh said on Monday.

The row is a major deterioration of ties between the Commonwealth members already frayed after Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said last year he had evidence linking Indian agents to the assassination of Sikh leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar on Canadian territory.

"India’s foreign policy has always been based on building domestic consensus, not on unilateralism," Sagarika Ghose, a lawmaker of the Trinamool Congress party, which is opposed to Modi, said in a post on X.

Trudeau said his government had "clear and compelling evidence that agents of the government of India have engaged in, and continue to engage in, activities that pose a significant threat to public safety."

India has long denied Trudeau’s accusations. On Monday, it dismissed Canada’s move and accused Trudeau of pursuing a "political agenda".

Canada had briefed New Zealand on the criminal investigation into violence against members of its South Asian community, Winston Peters, the foreign minister of the latter, said on Tuesday.

"The alleged criminal conduct outlined publicly by Canadian law enforcement authorities, if proven, would be very concerning," Peters said in a post on X.
Why politicians ignore abuses in India’s sugar industry: They run it (New York Times)
New York Times [10/11/2024 5:54 PM, Megha Rajagopalan and Qadri Inzamam, 6765K, Neutral]
In the sweltering sugar fields of the western Indian state of Maharashtra, abusive practices such as debt bondage and child labor have long been an open secret. But in 2019, a state lawmaker named Neelam Gorhe documented a new level of brutality: Female workers were getting unnecessary hysterectomies at alarmingly high rates.

She presented her findings to the state’s health minister and alerted the region’s sugar regulator. She called on her government colleagues to ensure that workers received basic services including toilets, running water and a minimum wage — all in accordance with Indian law.

Yet most lawmakers apparently ignored the report, or read it and moved on. They launched no further investigation and passed no laws. The abuses, detailed in an investigation that ran in The New York Times, remain as widespread as ever, and young women continue to be coerced into unnecessary and potentially life-altering hysterectomies.

The reason, to many in Maharashtra, is obvious. Sugar is among the state’s most important industries, one that sells to big brand buyers such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi, and is heavily controlled by the political elite.

Most of the state’s sugar mills are led by sitting lawmakers or political figures, a new investigation by The New York Times and The Fuller Project found. That includes at least 21 state lawmakers, four members of the national Parliament, five government ministers and nearly 50 former officials. Mill bosses come from every party — both in government leadership and opposition — including the Indian National Congress, the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Shiv Sena and the National Congress Party.

Countless other mills have business or family ties to politicians and lawmakers.

That means, in many cases, that the very people who could protect workers are also profiting from their exploitation.

“No one is on our side,” said Archana Ashok Chaure, a sugar laborer in her mid-30s who, since about age 14, has cut sugar for a Coca-Cola supplier. She suffered debilitating side effects last year after a hysterectomy that medical records showed was unnecessary.

The links between industry and politics are so close that some sugar mills list on their websites the government connections of their current and former executives.

“Not all politicians own sugar mills,” said Dilip Walse Patil, a state government minister and sugar mill founding director. “But most of the mills are led by politicians.”

Even the state’s former top sugar regulator, Shekhar Gaikwad, said that enforcing labor regulations or pushing for change was all but impossible because it meant taking on the state’s political elite. “It’s a clear conflict of interest,” he said.

The earlier investigation by The Times and The Fuller Project revealed a brutal system in Maharashtra that controls women’s lives from early adolescence. Young girls are pushed into marriages at illegally young ages to cut sugar with their husbands. Debt to their employers forces them to return, season after season. Working-age women said they felt pressured to get hysterectomies to resolve common ailments such as painful periods so they could keep working.

Government officials have used their political weight to maintain that status quo. In court documents reviewed by The Times, officials downplayed the abuses or denied that they occurred. In interviews, lawmakers and politicians said that, despite the evidence, the accounts of hysterectomies were overblown or false.

“I have not come across such things,” Balasaheb Thorat, a former state revenue minister from the Congress party, said when asked about the hysterectomies. Mr. Thorat is a figure at a sugar mill named after his father. “I have not heard a single woman complain to me about these issues,” he added.

Dhananjay Munde, the state’s agriculture minister and a member of the National Congress Party, said that he remembers Ms. Gorhe’s report. But Mr. Munde, whose wife and cousin operate sugar mills, dismissed it. “It was a huge report,” he said, “but it was half of the truth.”

After the Times and Fuller Project investigation, the U.S. Department of Labor added Indian sugar cane to its list of commodities made with forced labor. The list is intended in part to encourage foreign governments to crack down on labor abuses.

But as long as there are customers for sugar, the authorities in Maharashtra seem unlikely to force change.

And there are customers. International brands including Coca-Cola, Pepsico, Unilever and others, as well as major Indian companies, buy sugar from Maharashtra. Both Coca-Cola and Pepsico pledged this year to look into abuses identified in their supply chains, but they have provided no detail on what steps they have taken.

An Industry Built on Exploitation

Practically since Indian independence in 1947, local landowners have banded together to build and operate mills, share profits and finance public projects like schools.

These cooperatives elected chairs whose political power swelled as Maharashtra’s fledgling sugar industry grew into one of India’s most important.

“A lot of these very old-school kind of family politicians have used this as a springboard for their entry into politics,” said Sandip Sukhtankar, a professor of economics at the University of Virginia who has studied the political connections of Maharashtra’s sugar mills.

Among the sugar barons are some of Maharashtra’s most prominent figures. Sharad Pawar, who along with allies controls several sugar mills, is one of India’s best-known politicians. Pankaja Munde, Dhananjay Munde’s cousin and a state lawmaker from the Bharatiya Janata Party, controls a sugar mill opened by her father, who was himself a government minister. And Jayant Patil, a political ally of Mr. Pawar and a state lawmaker for three decades, is a director and adviser at least one mill in the district of Sangli.

The Times has not linked any of these politicians to specific cases of abuse. But its reporting, along with Ms. Gorhe’s report and research by labor groups, has found that abuses are widespread throughout the region and linked to its system of recruiting laborers.

The industry, and in turn its political clout, has long been based on exploitation.

Elsewhere in India, farm owners directly hire labor to harvest their sugar cane, which is then sold to mills for processing. But in Maharashtra, the mills hire contractors to recruit migrant workers to do the harvesting. The mills argue that, technically, the laborers work for the contractors.

Instead of wages, Maharashtra workers receive an advance every season, paid by the contractors with money from the mills. That serves as a kind of loan, one that is all but impossible to pay off in a single season and that keeps workers returning year after year.

Because the workers typically do not own land, they cannot participate in the cooperative system. So, as mill executives profited, ran for office and established political power, the chasm between them and their workers grew.

Today, many of the mills are now private, not cooperative, but all benefit from the same system. It can be hard to separate the interests of the government from those of the sugar barons.

“They use their political powers to suppress the issues in the sugar industry,” said Devappa Anna Shetti, a former member of Parliament who heads a small political party in his home state of Maharashtra. “This is being done deliberately.”

Some politicians argue that the relationship is beneficial. “If a sugar factory and a lawmaker are on the same page, for instance, it’s not an issue,” Mr. Thorat said. “It can help. They both want to grow the economy.”

Historically, Professor Sukhtankar said, the two most powerful political parties — Congress and the National Congress Party — had the most control over sugar mills. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party, the B.J.P., has also grown in clout in the sugar industry in tandem with its rise in power in Maharashtra.

None of the parties has an incentive to challenge an arrangement that has been at the heart of the industry since its birth.

‘Laborers Are Not Employees’

Indian employers are required to pay a minimum wage and to provide benefits, including pension contributions. In recent years, the country has begun extending protections to workers in the gig economy.

Labor laws would seem to cover the sugar laborers. But mill leaders say that the longstanding arrangement with the middleman contractors absolves them of responsibility.

Mr. Gaikwad, the former sugar regulator, said that claim was an effort “to evade the clutches of these labor laws.”

The contractors, often young men whose only qualification is owning a car, say they cannot be held responsible for labor conditions they do not control. They pay the laborers with money from the mills. The government has made no effort to force these contractors to comply with labor laws.

Mr. Gaikwad ran the office that licensed sugar factories. But he said that he was powerless to do more than offer “mandates in the form of advisories.” Enforcing the laws requires political will, he said. And the politicians are not merely in lock step with the mill executives — they are the mill executives.

Mr. Pawar is the patriarch of one of the state’s most important political dynasties. At 83, he has served as Maharashtra’s top official for four terms. He has led the National Congress Party for decades. The party split last year, and he now leads one of the two sides. Asked whether sugar mills should provide any protections at all for laborers, he shook his head.

“Laborers are not employees,” he said.

That distinction is important because, if they worked for the mills, factory executives could be forced not only to pay a minimum wage but also to provide sick days.

Instead, sugar cane cutters must pay their contractors for a day off, even for a doctor’s visit. So women often forgo routine gynecological care and are encouraged to seek hysterectomies for issues like painful periods or cysts, or as a drastic form of uterine cancer prevention.

Changing that arrangement could fundamentally change the way Maharashtra produces sugar. Sanjay Khatal, managing director of a major lobbying group for sugar mills, hinted at the industry’s reluctance. “It’s a contentious issue,” he said.

‘Children Are Not Allowed to Work’

Last year, the acting chief justice of Maharashtra’s top court read an article in the newspaper The Hindu about how sugar cane laborers lived in poverty, on the social and economic fringe of society.

Concerned, he opened a case and asked government officials, industry leaders, labor activists and researchers to submit court papers on the issue.

The records are not public, but affidavits reviewed by The Times reveal a pattern of dismissiveness among state officials. One document, filed on behalf of state agencies, said that problems did not exist or were not that severe.

The affidavit denied that child labor was prevalent. “Children are not allowed to work in sugar cane cutting,” the affidavit said. As a practical matter, it said, cutting sugar was too difficult for children.

That claim was rebutted by nearly every laborer interviewed by The Times and The Fuller Project. Most women said they themselves had begun working when they were underage. A Times photographer witnessed children cutting cane. Many other children perform basic tasks like fetching water, interviewees said.

The affidavit declared that the workers were “free to move” and not locked in debt bondage. Yet even the contractors acknowledge that it is all but impossible for families to repay their debts in a single season.

And, in an oblique reference to Ms. Gorhe’s report on hysterectomies, the agencies suggested that her concerns were overblown. They said that about 17 percent of female sugar laborers had received the surgery — less than the 20 percent that Ms. Gorhe found and the nearly 33 percent cited in another report.

The government said that it had already instructed the sugar companies to provide housing for workers. And it pointed to the work of a state welfare board.

The board said that it, too, had done all it could. In its own affidavit, it said it had registered workers and built hostels for their children to stay during harvest.

Enforcing labor laws, a board representative said, was the responsibility of the state government.

A court-appointed inquiry found evidence of child labor, debt bondage and “atrocious” working conditions that harmed women’s health.

It also found a pattern of hysterectomies, according to an affidavit. “Since menstruation leads to a fall in productivity, it was more convenient for the women workers to get their uteruses removed,” it said.

Chandan Kumar, a labor-rights activist in Pune, Maharashtra, who helped conduct the study, said government officials were denying reality.

“This kind of rosy picture, given by this government department, is a lie,” said Mr. Kumar, of the Working People’s Charter Network, which focuses on organizing workers in the informal economy. “The government is trying to cover up wrongdoing.”

This year, the acting chief justice who had taken an interest in the issue was transferred from the state.

The case had already been creeping through the notoriously backlogged Indian court system. Now, its fate is unclear. A hearing is due, but no date is set.
Ladakh’s Local Hero Wants India to Pay Attention to His People (New York Times)
New York Times [10/13/2024 4:14 PM, Anupreeta Das and Hari Kumar, 831K, Neutral]
Sonam Wangchuk has worn many hats: as an engineer, an environmentalist and an education reformer.

His work has inspired a Bollywood movie, and he has been honored with what is often called Asia’s Nobel Peace Prize, the Ramon Magsaysay Award.

A native of Ladakh, an ecologically fragile Himalayan region of northern India, Mr. Wangchuk is now leading protests to demand more control over how that land is used and governed. With China to the east and Pakistan to the west, Ladakh is critical to India’s national security.

But the region was upended by the Indian government’s decision in 2019 to bring Ladakh under direct federal control.

Ladakh residents initially rejoiced at the change, thinking it would help preserve the remote region’s unique identity and culture. For many, the mood has since soured.

In the past month Mr. Wangchuk and a group of supporters trekked about 500 miles from Leh, the biggest city in Ladakh, to New Delhi, the nation’s capital. They plan to protest there until the Indian government agrees to restart talks on the issue.

Negotiations in March were inconclusive, but India’s Ministry of Home Affairs said in a statement at the time that the government is “committed to provide necessary constitutional safeguards” to Ladakh. It has not officially responded to the current protests.

“Governments in democracies should be sensitive to people’s demands,” Mr. Wangchuk told reporters on Thursday. “Good leaders listen to people’s voices, especially when they have been walking for a month.”

He added that government officials should be especially attentive to Ladakhis, many of whom are called upon to patrol the region’s borders with China and Pakistan.

Mr. Wangchuk is also more than a week into what he plans as a 28-day fast — one he says he would end if the government agrees to negotiate. Mr. Wangchuk was on the seventh day of his fast on Saturday, when Hindus celebrated Dussehra, a holiday marking the triumph of good over evil.

“But I can’t see truth winning in the real world,” he posted to his 1.4 million followers on Instagram. “Let’s all first make that happen and then say, ‘Happy Dussehra.’”

On Sunday, police officers in Delhi detained several dozen people who had been protesting in solidarity with Mr. Wangchuk and his group. In a post on X, Mr. Wangchuk said the detentions violated the constitutional right to freedom of speech and expression.

Until 2019, Ladakh was part of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. India and Pakistan have fought several wars over the Muslim-majority region of Kashmir.​ Five years ago, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government revoked Kashmir’s autonomous status, including the ability to set its own laws.

The move allowed Jammu and Kashmir to elect its own local assembly but decreed that Ladakh would be ruled directly by New Delhi, with no such powers. The government cast the moves partly as a way to spur economic development in the troubled regions.

Ladakh’s present status is “primarily driven by its geostrategic position,” Naresh Kumar Verma, an assistant professor at the Special Center for National Security Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, said via email. “This will remain a major calculus on the part of New Delhi when considering an arrangement for Ladakh,” said Dr. Verma, who co-wrote a paper published this summer on Ladakh’s quest for autonomy with Rahul Rawat, a Ph.D. candidate.

In 2020, India and China were locked in deadly border skirmishes in Ladakh’s Galwan Valley. Ladakh’s territory also includes Kargil, where India and Pakistan fought a bitter war in 1999.

Mr. Wangchuk, who received the Magsaysay award in 2018 because of an eco-friendly school he founded, said he got involved in the movement for autonomy out of concern that haphazard construction, heavy tourism, the sale of mining rights and other actions were destabilizing Ladakh’s natural habitat and threatening the local environment.

With nearly 300,000 residents, including Kargil, Ladakh is surrounded by the peaks and valleys of the high Himalayas, where rare flowers bloom and elusive snow leopards roam. Tourism is an important driver of the economy.

“Ladakh is like Mars, which is not easy to understand,” Mr. Wangchuk said Thursday in an interview. Dressed in a blue kurta and Nike sweatpants, he looked frail but composed. He said he was subsisting on water, lemons and salt along with a group of about 20 protesters gathered on the campus of a government building. This is his fourth fast for the cause, he said.

Those who have lived in the region for generations understand its “ecology, its glaciers, its land, its forest, the culture of people, which saved us so far,” he said, urging that their input should be included in shaping policies that affect them.

Ladakhis have sought a number of remedies from the government, foremost of which is a provision in the Constitution granting the region the right to set its own rules on matters like agriculture and forestry.

Whether or not Ladakh’s demands are met, “the protests serve as genuine feedback for policymakers,” Dr. Verma said. “This will work as a loop to include the participation of locals as the quintessential stakeholders in formulating” policies and programs.
Muslim politician Baba Siddique shot dead in India’s Mumbai (Al Jazeera)
Al Jazeera [10/13/2024 6:04 AM, Staff, 25768K, Negative]
A senior Muslim politician in India’s financial capital Mumbai has been shot dead weeks before a key state election, with police probing the role of a notorious crime gang.

Baba Siddique, 66, a three-time legislator and former minister in Maharashtra state, was shot multiple times outside the office of his son, also a legislator, in Mumbai on Saturday night, police said in a statement.

He later succumbed to his wounds at the city’s Lilavati Hospital.

Siddique was associated with the main opposition Congress party for decades but had recently joined the Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) - a regional party that governs Maharashtra in coalition with another regional group, the Shiv Sena, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Assembly elections in Maharashtra are expected to be held in November.

The shooting came weeks after Siddique’s security detail was upgraded when he reportedly received death threats.

News agency Press Trust of India reported that two suspected attackers had been arrested, and police were searching for another.

Broadcaster NDTV said the two suspects claimed they were part of a gang run by Lawrence Bishnoi, who is in jail accused of running a crime gang that has carried out multiple killings.

Siddique was also close to several Bollywood superstars and was known for throwing lavish parties.

Maharashtra’s Deputy Chief Minister Ajit Pawar, who heads the NCP group that Siddique belonged to, said he was "shocked" by the killing.

"The incident will be thoroughly investigated and strict action will be taken against the attackers. The mastermind behind the attack will also be traced," Pawar said in a statement on X.

"This is not a time for division or for exploiting the pain of others for political advantage. Right now, our focus must be on ensuring that justice is served."
US and India Should Do More With Critical Minerals (Bloomberg – opinion)
Bloomberg [10/14/2024 5:00 PM, Mihir Sharma, 27782K, Neutral]
India and the US often describe each other as natural partners. In reality, collaboration between them usually fails to meet expectations. That seems likely to be the case with their new pact on critical minerals unless both sides focus on what exactly each can bring to the relationship.

In a recently signed memorandum, the two countries agreed only to find avenues for “mutually beneficial commercial development” of the critical minerals supply chain. The language did not go as far as deals the US has struck with Japan and South Korea, which extended federal electric-vehicle subsidies to cars with battery components in which value has been added in the two US allies.

This is short-sighted. China’s dominance of the critical-minerals supply chain is so extensive and dangerous that the US needs all the friends it can get. And India should be able to fill a crucial gap in those chains.

While China contributes over half of the world’s production of critical minerals, it is even more dominant in processing, where it controls 85% of capacity.

India itself has considerable untapped reserves, but has struggled to develop those resources. Last year, New Delhi freed up 38 parcels of land for private companies to mine 29 critical minerals. Several rounds of auctions have been held to issue mining rights; only 14 of the 38 attracted bidders. After the government announced it would pay for half of exploration costs, it got four more bids.

Both the US and India need to be realistic about the chances that India’s critical-mineral resources will be identified and extracted on a reasonable time scale.

Where India can compete is in processing. Right now, China has corporate energy and plentiful labor on its side. Researchers at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC have pointed out that the mainland boasts 38 mineral processing schools, the largest of which has 1,000 undergraduates and 500 graduate students. Only India will be able to match these numbers at short notice.

India is also a private sector-led economy, with big firms that are global in outlook and comfortable operating in difficult and risky geographies. Large companies willing to get their hands dirty and spend decades securing supply chains are not exactly common elsewhere.

Finally, India has incentives that both the consuming West and producing South can understand. It is naturally viewed with less distrust than the US or China when the extraction or processing of mineral wealth is discussed in resource-rich nations.

Unlike many of its commodity-exporting peers in the emerging world such as Indonesia or Brazil, it is a large consumer of those minerals. New Delhi would therefore prefer a decentralized and secure pipeline for critical minerals that allows for prosperity to be widely shared — not a de facto monopoly or a new cartel.

India is also struggling to find a way back to manufacturing. With its potential workforce and effective companies, it should be more than capable of scaling up its ability to process critical minerals and competing with China. In fact, nobody else might be able to do so.

But companies need incentives. India’s government is not exactly flush with funds and can’t set aside subsidies on the scale needed. What firms need is the most basic incentive of all: markets. The Indian market for batteries and EVs is nowhere near large enough.

That’s where the West comes in. To be sure, India needs to create a clear critical minerals policy, one that prioritizes the creation of processing capacity. But the US and the European Union then need to ensure that their critical minerals plans and incentives encourage Indian-controlled processing. A partnership would benefit both sides, as long as it involves more than vague promises.
NSB
Hindus in Bangladesh celebrate their largest festival under tight security following attacks (AP)
AP [10/12/2024 8:48 AM, Julhas Alam and Al Emrun Garjon, 12468K, Neutral]
Schoolteacher Supriya Sarker is glad to celebrate Bangladesh’s largest Hindu festival of Durga Puja but feels the festivities would be more jubilant without the fear and violence that overshadow this year’s event.

The weeklong celebration that ends in the Muslim-majority Bangladesh on Sunday with immersions of the Hindu Goddess has strained the Hindu community with reports of vandalism, violence and intimidation in parts of Bangladesh, which has seen harassment and attacks on Hindus, who make up about 8 percent of the country’s nearly 170 million people, or more than 13 million people.

Despite pledges to keep the festival safe, this year’s version was subdued following the ousting of former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and attacks on minority groups, especially Hindus. Hasina left the country for India because of a mass uprising spearheaded by a student-led anti-government movement.

Bangladesh’s current interim leader, Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, has faced serious challenges in maintaining law and order since he took over in August, and Durga Puja was seen as an acid test of his administration’s ability to protect minorities.

Minority communities have blamed the Yunus-led government for failing to adequately protect them, and reports suggest that hardline Islamists are becoming increasingly politically influential and visible since the fall of Hasina.

"It is a challenging time for us Hindus," said Sarker, the schoolteacher, as she joined the Kumari Puja in Dhaka’s Uttara district. "We faced problems in the past as well, but we did not see such escalation earlier. This is our country, we want to live here peacefully with our Muslim brothers and sisters and others without discrimination or intimidation."

Her concern comes as the country’s leading minority rights group, the Bangladesh Hindu, Buddhist, Christian Unity Council, said that between Aug. 4 and 20, a total of 2,010 incidents of communal violence targeting minorities, mostly Hindus, were reported. The group’s leaders said at least nine people belonging to minority groups were killed, four women were raped, and homes, businesses and temples were torched or vandalized.

In recent weeks, new incidents of vandalism occurred in parts of Bangladesh as the Hindu community prepared their temples for Durga Puja. In Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood, Hindus were forced to hold the festival in a smaller venue after a procession by Muslims called on authorities to not allow them to install idols in an open field.

Jayanta Kumar Dev, president of Sarbajanin Puja Committee, said they have reports of attacks on temples and idols before this year’s festival formally began on Oct. 9.

Bangladesh’s Home Affairs Adviser Mohammad Jahangir Alam Chowdhury, and incumbent Army Chief Gen. Waker-Uz-Zaman, had promised to provide adequate security, Dev said.

"They told us there’s nothing to be worried about. We became content and puja is taking place across the country," he said.

But the situation remains tense.

This week, police arrested at least two members of an Islamic cultural group in the southeastern city of Chattogram after six of its members sang Islamic revolutionary songs inviting Hindus to join an Islamic movement after they took the stage of a temple on Thursday.

The video of the singing became viral in social media, drawing criticism as the authorities promised to arrest and punish those involved. Media reports said they belongs to the student wing of the country’s largest Islamist party - Jamaat-e-Islami - but the party denied the allegation.

On Friday night, a firebomb was thrown at the Hindu Goddess at a temple in Dhaka’s Tantibazar area, creating panic among the devotees who thronged the temple. No one was hurt, police said. Media reports said, quoting volunteers, that at least five people were injured after being stabbed by muggers.

Security was heightened after Friday night’s incident at the temple, authorities said.

Ankita Bhowmick, a resident of Dhaka, said she was happy with the security provided by the government, but such a situation is suffocating.

"We won’t need any security if we have the mentality and tendency that each individual can practice their religion according to their customs. There will be no fear. There will be no need for comparison between last year’s security arrangement and this year’s measures," she said at Dhaka’s Dhakeswari temple.

Home Affairs Adviser Chowdhury said a special security measures would remain in place until Sunday when the festival ends.

He said apart from police and the usual security agencies, the military, navy and air force have also been deployed to ensure law and order beyond the Hindu festival.

Arpita Barman, a university student, was optimistic.

"People who thronged here are jubilant. In the future we also want to see, more people come here and celebrate puja. I feel happy to see people irrespective of their religions here. We want to see such scenes in the future and a harmonious Bangladesh," she said.
Bangladesh: Journalists supportive of ex-PM Hasina targeted (Deutsche Welle)
Deutsche Welle [10/14/2024 10:48 AM, Tasmiah Ahmed, 16637K, Negative]
After Bangladesh’s Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina was ousted and fled the country on August 5, journalists who allegedly supported her and her Awami League party during weeks of violent protests are facing a litany of public legal complaints.

The South Asian nation’s interim government has said it is committed to ensuring media freedom.

Nahid Islam, a student activist who now leads the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting and serves as a media adviser for the interim government, has said those who "indirectly supported mass killings by shaping public opinion" would be held accountable.

In late August, Bangladesh’s Health Ministry said over 1,000 people were killed during the weeks of anti-government protests against Hasina’s government.

The interim administration has promised those responsible will be brought to justice.

Legal complaints filed by the public

A.F. Hassan Arif, an interim government adviser, told DW if investigative agencies find no evidence linking the accused journalists to the cases filed after August 5, they will be cleared of charges.

He added that the legal complaints were not initiated by administration officials, but were filed by members of the public. "Should these cases be deemed baseless, the accused have the option to file a petition before the High Court" to get them quashed, Arif said.

He stressed that the government has no authority to prevent individuals from filing cases, nor can the police refuse complaints.

Regarding granting bail to those accused in cases, Arif explained that it falls under the courts’ jurisdiction, adding that there is no intention on the part of the government to keep journalists in jail.

Syeda Rizwana Hasan, another interim government adviser, told DW that the government was not exerting any pressure on law enforcement agencies to arrest journalists accused.

Press freedom concerns

The targeting of journalists has raised significant concerns among human rights organizations.

These groups, including the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, have urged the interim government to ensure fair trials and uphold procedural rights for the accused.

Activists say filing false cases is nothing new in Bangladesh and this tactic has been used in the past as a tool to intimidate the opposition and advance the ruling party’s agenda.

Senior news editor Masood Kamal told DW that these cases were a reflection of the country’s political culture.

Kamal criticized the interim government for failing to prevent the cases, adding he was confident that many of the charges would not be proven. However, he warned that the filing of such cases had set a troubling precedent.

Angur Nahar Monty, coordinator for Women Journalists Network Bangladesh, told DW that it was inappropriate to file criminal cases without specific allegations.

Monty said the tendency to level baseless allegations against journalists and file criminal charges could damage the confidence of media personnel and affect press freedom.

Fahmida Akhter, a broadcast journalist at Bangladesh’s Channel I, said that while cases may be filed against journalists with legitimate evidence, it is unacceptable for the interim government to allow cases motivated by anger.

"If this continues, the media’s role as a watchdog could be compromised," she told DW.

Advocate ZI Khan Panna, a lawyer and human rights activist, told DW that since the interim government is dedicated to ensuring press freedom in Bangladesh, it will take action to dismiss baseless cases filed against journalists.

Supreme Court Lawyer Ainun Nahar Siddiqa Lipi said that it is impossible to determine at this point whether these journalists have been rightfully accused or not, as investigations have not been completed.
China’s ‘New Great Wall’ Casts a Shadow on Nepal (New York Times)
New York Times [10/12/2024 4:14 PM, Hannah Beech and Bhadra Sharma, 831K, Neutral]
The Chinese fence traces a furrow in the Himalayas, its barbed wire and concrete ramparts separating Tibet from Nepal. Here, in one of the more isolated places on earth, China’s security cameras keep watch alongside armed sentries in guard towers.

High on the Tibetan Plateau, the Chinese have carved a 600-feet-long message on a hillside: “Long live the Chinese Communist Party,” inscribed in characters that can be read from orbit.

Just across the border, in Nepal’s Humla District, residents contend that along several points of this distant frontier, China is encroaching on Nepali territory.

The Nepalis have other complaints, too. Chinese security forces are pressuring ethnic Tibetan Nepalis not to display images of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader, in Nepali villages near the border, they say. And with the recent proliferation of Chinese barriers and other defenses, a people have also been divided. The stream of thousands of Tibetans who once escaped Chinese government repression by fleeing to Nepal has almost entirely vanished.

Yet Nepal’s leaders have refused to acknowledge China’s imprints on their country. Ideologically and economically tied to China, successive Nepali governments have ignored a 2021 fact-finding report that detailed various border abuses in Humla.

“This is the new Great Wall of China,” said Jeevan Bahadur Shahi, the former provincial chief minister of the area. “But they don’t want us to see it.”

China’s fencing along the edge of Nepal’s Humla District is just one segment of a fortification network thousands of miles long that Xi Jinping’s government has built to reinforce remote reaches, control rebellious populations and, in some cases, push into territory that other nations consider their own.

The fortification building spree, accelerated during Covid and backed by dozens of new border settlements, is imposing Beijing’s Panopticon security state on far-flung areas. It is also placing intense pressure on China’s poorer, weaker neighbors.

China borders 14 other countries by land. Its vast frontier, on land and at sea, remained largely peaceful as China’s economy grew to become the world’s second-largest. But amid Mr. Xi’s tenure, Beijing is redefining its territorial limits, leading to small skirmishes and outright conflict.

“Under Xi Jinping, China has doubled down on efforts to assert its territorial claims in disputed areas along its periphery,” said Brian Hart, a fellow at the China Power Project of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.

Viewed individually, each action along China’s borders — fortifying boundaries, contesting territory and pushing into disputed zones — might seem only incremental. But the aggregated result is startling.

Near its eastern maritime reaches, in what are internationally recognized as Philippine waters, China has turned a coral reef into a military base. On its far western land border, China’s People’s Liberation Army has pushed into disputed mountain territory shared with South Asian neighbors.

Two dozen soldiers from India and China, both nuclear powers, died in high-altitude, hand-to-hand combat in 2020. Another border clash two years later injured more soldiers.

China’s border buildup is a major reason that the U.S. Department of Defense, in its 2023 China Military Power Report, declared that China has “adopted more dangerous, coercive, and provocative actions in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The shifting security landscape is drawing the attention of global powers and leading to new alliances. Small nations with ties to China, like Nepal, are vulnerable, even as they downplay or deny border disputes for fear of losing Beijing’s economic favor.

“Weaker states like Nepal,” Mr. Hart said, “face immense pressures because of the overwhelming power differential with China.”

“If China does not face costs for encroaching on its weakest neighbors, Beijing will be further emboldened to threaten countries in the region,” he added.

Nepal’s foreign minister, Arzu Rana Deuba, said in an interview with The New York Times that she had not received complaints about problems on the border with Tibet and that the government’s focus was more on the southern boundary with India, where more Nepalis live.

“We have not really thought much of looking at the northern border, at least I haven’t,” she said.

A Top Secret Report

The distance from Simikot, the capital of Humla District, to the frontier village of Hilsa is 30 miles. But the drive to the border with Tibet takes more than 10 bone-jarring hours through rough, rocky terrain. Humla is unconnected to Nepal’s national road network. Cars and heavy machinery must be flown in.

Himalayan passes in Humla reach nearly 16,400 feet. Deadly altitude sickness can set in fast. It was to this district, Nepal’s poorest and least developed, that members of a fact-finding mission — composed of Nepali Home Ministry officials, government surveyors and police personnel — traveled three years ago.

Armed with a 1960s map from when Nepal and China formally agreed upon their boundary, they set out to discover whether the official cartography diverged from the reality on the ground. The mission members trekked to remote border pillars. They chatted with yak herders and Tibetan Buddhist monks.

Eventually, they produced their report to Nepal’s cabinet. And then the report disappeared. The public was not allowed to see it. Even high-ranking officials and politicians were refused access, several people involved said.

The veil of secrecy extended to the historical map that the mission brought with it. Survey department employees said they have been cautioned that sharing it could be a security breach — a strange warning for a map accessible in American archives.

A copy of the report obtained by The Times shows that the government mission documented a series of small border infringements by China. Also coursing through the report are worries about China’s grander geopolitical intentions and fears about upsetting Nepal’s powerful neighbor.

A nation of 30 million people, Nepal is small, landlocked and underdeveloped. Its government is headed by a Communist, who this year replaced a former Maoist rebel as prime minister. In ideology and in economics, Nepal leans heavily toward China, even as it remains in the orbit of nearby India.

The report says that in several places in and around Hilsa, China constructed fortifications and other infrastructure, including closed-circuit TV cameras, that are either in Nepal or in a buffer zone between the two countries where building is prohibited by bilateral agreement. Chinese border personnel took over a Nepali irrigation canal fed by the Karnali River, the report said, although the Chinese retreated when the Nepali mission visited.

Chinese forces have illegally prevented ethnic Tibetans living in Nepali areas near the border from grazing their livestock and participating in religious activities, the report said. Such constraints bring extraterritorial menace to Mr. Xi’s campaign of repression in Tibet.

The report advised that Nepal and China urgently needed to address various border disputes, but a bilateral mechanism for resolving border problems, which includes joint inspections, has been stalled since 2006.

N.P. Saud, Nepal’s foreign minister until March, said in an interview with The Times that bilateral “border meetings are held frequently.”

But one of Mr. Saud’s deputies told The Times that no border inspections had occurred in more than 17 years. Asked about this, Mr. Saud amended his statement.

“I can share with you that the joint inspection team will work soon,” he said. “I can’t tell you the exact time until it is finalized.”

Mr. Saud said that he did not know why the Humla report had not been made public.

“The border of a country,” he said, “is not a matter of secrecy.”

Mr. Saud said Nepal could not make any determination on the report’s validity until the joint inspections restart.

“Until and unless we confirm the report,” he said, “how we can raise the issue internationally with another country?”

Ms. Deuba, who replaced Mr. Saud as foreign minister, said she was not aware of the report or of Chinese fencing on the border.

The Chinese Embassy in Kathmandu declined to comment.

The Chinese government says that it is a force for peace in the region. In an article in the party-run People’s Daily, Pan Yue, the head of the National Ethnic Affairs Commission, wrote last year that China “never sought to conquer or expand territorially, never colonized neighboring countries.”

History collides with such national mythmaking. In 1979, Chinese forces briefly invaded Vietnam, which China had once controlled for a millennium. Since the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, China and India have fought two border wars.

Mr. Shahi, the former provincial chief minister from Humla, said that his efforts to publicize Chinese border intrusions have been actively discouraged.

“The Chinese, they say to our government, and then the government says to me, ‘If you talk about this border issue, then they will stop trade, they will stop everything,” he said. “Who the hell can say this to me about our land?”

A Holy Land, Divided

The border fence separating Hilsa from Chinese-controlled Tibet cleaves not only nations but centuries. On the Chinese side, modern buildings feature glass atriums, armored vehicles glide along paved roads and floodlights blaze in the night sky. Nepal, by contrast, seems stuck in a bygone era. Ramshackle shelters hunch in the cold. There is not an inch of asphalt or any reliable electricity.

The Chinese side used to be nearly as remote, the seclusion broken only by a flow of pilgrims to Mount Kailash, which is holy to four faiths. But as part of a push into lands populated by ethnic minorities, the Chinese government has seeded Tibet and the neighboring Xinjiang region with new infrastructure.

Migrants from China’s Han ethnic majority have poured in, including to the Tibetan town of Purang near the border with Hilsa. A new high-altitude airport in Purang, a feat of engineering, serves both civilian and military purposes, part of a transportation network that gives the People’s Liberation Army easy access to border areas. Just 20 miles away is the junction of China, Nepal and India.

Beijing considers a large swath of Indian-controlled territory along the Tibet-India boundary to be its own, calling it “South Tibet.” On the border with tiny Bhutan, China claims more disputed land and has built settlements there.

The Chinese focus on Tibet reflects more than geopolitical ambitions. Mr. Xi’s government has overseen a brutal effort to pacify ethnic minorities. High-tech surveillance of Tibetans, and the fortification of the border, has all but severed their escape route into Nepal, where ethnic Tibetans also live.

Chinese police and border guards, Hilsa residents say, regularly cross over to Nepal without going through normal immigration procedures. They intimidate ethnic Tibetan Nepalis and have captured some of the few Tibetans who succeeded in fleeing to Nepal, said Lhamu Lama, a Humla District village administrator.

An officer with the Nepali paramilitary police in Hilsa said that last year his commander asked the Chinese to retreat from an area that the 1960s official map indicated was not Chinese land. The Chinese never responded, said the officer, who did not want his name used because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.

“China is big and powerful so it can do what it wants,” said Pema Wangmu Lama, who was born in Tibet but now lives in Nepal. “Even if Hilsa is swallowed up one day, who would know or care what’s happening here?”
Sri Lanka closes schools as floods hammer the capital (AP)
AP [10/14/2024 9:16 AM, Bharatha Mallawarachi, 44095K, Negative]
Sri Lanka closed schools in the capital, Colombo, and its suburbs on Monday as heavy rains triggered floods in many parts of the island nation.

Heavy downpours over the weekend have wreaked havoc in many parts of the country, flooding homes, fields and roads. Three people drowned, while some 134,000 people have been affected by flooding, according to the country’s Disaster Management Center.

The center said rains and floods have damaged 240 houses and nearly 7,000 people have been evacuated. Authorities have cut electricity in some areas as a precaution.

Navy and army troops have been deployed to rescue victims and provide food and other essentials.

Local television channels showed flooded towns in the suburbs of Colombo. In some areas, waters reached the roofs of houses and shops.

Sri Lanka has been grappling with severe weather conditions since May, mostly caused by heavy monsoon rains. In June, 16 people died due to floods and mudslides.
Central Asia
Kazakh Uranium Miner Investors to Vote on Huge Deal With China (Bloomberg)
Bloomberg [10/15/2024 2:56 AM, Nariman Gizitdinov and Dylan Griffiths, 5.5M, Neutral]
Kazakhstan, the world’s No. 1 uranium producer, will decide next month on whether to approve a huge deal to supply concentrates to China’s nuclear industry.

Shareholders of state-owned miner Kazatomprom will vote on Nov. 15 at an extraordinary general meeting in Astana on whether to support the transaction with CNNC Overseas Ltd. and China National Uranium Corp. The deal requires investor approval under Kazakh law, the company said.

“The transaction value, cumulative with the previously concluded transactions with CNUC and CNNC Overseas, comprises fifty percent or more of the total book value of the company’s assets,” Kazatomprom said in a statement on Tuesday.

The deal with affiliates of China National Nuclear Corp. comes after uranium prices soared over the past four years in anticipation of a surge in demand for the nuclear fuel. The US, Japan and France were among 22 nations that pledged late last year to triple nuclear energy capacity by 2050.

Kazatomprom announced that it had signed contracts with the Chinese companies last November, but said the volumes involved were confidential. The uranium miner is 75% owned by the Kazakh state.
Kazakhstan’s Teen Pregnancies Driven By Abuse, Lack Of Sex Education (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [10/14/2024 7:29 AM, Dilara Isa, 1251K, Neutral]
By the time 13-year-old Guldauren finally confided in her sister, she was already seven months pregnant.

The teenager, whose name has been changed to protect her identity, was raped by a neighbor four years older than her.

She had stayed silent about the incident due to her fear that the village community in southern Kazakhstan where she lived would judge her instead of supporting her.

Sure enough, despite the fact that Guldauren’s abuser was arrested and sentenced to jail for the rape, it was Guldauren’s family who left the village where the incident took place.

For 15-year-old Sezim (name also changed), the story was similar, except that the person who raped her was her older brother.

Having discovered the pregnancy late while suffering abdominal pains, Sezim soon gave birth. She and her mother eventually decided to give the baby to a children’s home.

These are just two stories of women who spent time in crisis centers in the southern province of Turkestan and the largest city in the area, Shymkent.

According to the Health Ministry, in the first half of 2024, 1,166 girls aged between 15 and 17 gave birth in Kazakhstan, a country of around 20 million people.

Separate to that figure, another 174 teens were recorded as having abortions, including five girls under the age of 14.

Lack Of Support

Experts say these figures are boosted by a lack of protection for girls who fall victim to sexual abuse and a lack of education about sex and pregnancy, especially in the more conservative regions of the country.

"There are girls who entered into sexual relations voluntarily and became pregnant, and there are also those who became victims of sexual violence, sometimes from a father, stepfather, or biological brother," said Perizat Kaldarova, a psychologist who works with young girls who suffered abuse.

"Incest is especially difficult. Almost every girl who has experienced such violence is left with a feeling of fear and horror. They often find out about their pregnancy too late," she told RFE/RL’s Kazakh Service.

That means they are late in turning to family crisis centers, which are the only real form of institutional support available to young people when others -- staff psychologists in schools, for instance -- fall short.

Girls who live in crisis centers typically receive schooling to compensate for lost time in school and psychological help to cope with depression, which Nurgul Berdibaeva, a social worker at the Komek Crisis Center in Shymkent, says is common both during and after the pregnancy.

"The girls usually come to the center only just before giving birth…. Each comes in a state of anxiety, with eyes full of fear. After giving birth the girl’s life changes dramatically," she says.

"The psychological trauma remains for a long time and returning to school is very difficult. Any word that reminds them of what they have gone through can plunge them straight back into depression," said the social worker.

And the resources of crisis centers are fairly stretched.

In response to questions from Human Rights Watch in 2019, the Kazakh Interior Ministry said 40 crisis centers -- both governmental and nongovernmental -- functioned across the country.

Feelings Of Guilt

HRW said that figure fell short of internationally recommended standards of one shelter space per 10,000 people.

HRW’s report, which was focused on victims of domestic violence in particular, also found that "staff in the government-run crisis centers lacked sufficient training to provide services."

The report also said staff in some of the centers covered by the group’s research were prone to victim-blaming.

In the context of both domestic violence and teen pregnancies, victims often already blame themselves, according to psychologist Kaldarova.

She argues that this problem stems in part from the taboo surrounding family discussion about sex, where the topic can be associated with shame.

But experts say better sexual education for early teens would go a long way both toward preventing unwanted pregnancies, stressing the importance of consent and expanding the resources available to teenagers.

A 2018 report on sexual education by Kazakh researchers Karlygash Kabatova and Sergei Marinin noted that "despite multiple strategies for health-care improvement…there is still no coherent plan for addressing reproductive health and sexual rights for adolescents."

After the report’s publication, Kabatova founded Uyat Emes (It’s Not Shameful), a platform to promote sexual health and sexual education.

Since then, Kabatova says, alterations made to Kazakhstan’s Health Care Code provide "some grounds" for sexual and reproductive health and rights education for young people.

Nevertheless, "I haven’t seen it being introduced on a large scale," Kabatova says, naming the elite, state-run Nazarbaev schools -- named for Kazakhstan’s first president -- among the institutions that had adopted some sexual education classes.

The expert’s earlier research, meanwhile, showed that raising the topic of sex and any intimate relationships within families is especially difficult "in families where the dominant language is Kazakh compared to those where the Russian language is dominant, irrespective of ethnicity."

"Sex ed should include not just the methods of contraception, but the principles of consent and healthy relationships," Kabatova told RFE/RL.
Kyrgyzstan: Conviction of journalists at anti-corruption outlet is “turning point for press freedom (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [10/11/2024 4:14 PM, Ayzirek Imanaliyeva, 57.6K, Neutral]
Rights groups are assailing Kyrgyz authorities for convicting four journalists at an anti-corruption news organization on charges of inciting civil unrest, characterizing it as a “crushing blow” to press freedom in the Central Asian state. The outlet’s head, meanwhile, plans to appeal, alleging that Kyrgyzstan’s leadership is manipulating the justice system to establish a “dictatorship.”

In all, 11 journalists affiliated with the Temirov Live YouTube channel, and its affiliated social media channel, Ait Ait Dese, stood to hear verdicts in a trial that concluded October 10. Four were convicted on charges of obliquely conspiring to incite mass unrest via the production and distribution of content “discrediting” Kyrgyz authorities, including President Sadyr Japarov and his chief lieutenant, State Security Services chief Kamchybek Tashiev.

Makhabat Tazhibek kyzy, a co-chief of the news organization, received a six-year prison sentence. Another defendant, poet Azamat Ishenbekov, received a five-year term for the content he created for Ait Ait Dese. Two others received suspended three-year prison terms. The seven remaining defendants were acquitted ostensibly for lack of evidence.

Tazhibek kyzy’s husband and co-founder of the organization, Bolot Temirov, lives in exile in Russia and was not a defendant in the case.

In a highly unusual form of punishment, the court also took custody of Tazhibek kyzy’ and Temirov’s 12-year-old son, issuing an order to make him a ward of the state, even though Temirov and other close family relatives remain at liberty and can care for the child.

Temirov, in an interview with Eurasianet, described the sentencing as “hostage taking.”

“Once again, they [top officials] showed that the courts and law enforcement agencies work on orders from the authorities,” Temirov said. “This sentence is a demonstrative admission that the current authorities no longer have the moral right to talk about the existence of democracy and freedom of speech in the country. With this decision, they admitted that the country is heading towards dictatorship and terror.”

International rights watchdog groups, including Amnesty International, The Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, are echoing Temirov’s assessment.

“Kyrgyzstan has forfeited its reputation as a relative haven of press freedom in Central Asia and entered a dark new page in its history,” a CPJ statement quoted Gulnoza Said, the organization’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, as saying. CPJ also called on “international partners” to bring collective pressure to bear on the Kyrgyz government “to reverse its growing attacks on the press.”

Temirov Live is an investigative YouTube channel that is a local partner of the global non-profit watchdog Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP). The channel was launched in August 2020, shortly before Japarov’s rise to the presidency. Temirov subsequently started up Ait Ait Dese as an affiliated social media channel to explore political issues via music and poetry.

Temirov and his colleagues have long been targeted for their journalistic activities. In January 2022, Temirov was charged with a variety of crimes, including drug possession, illegal border crossing and document forgery, a case he said was politically motivated. He was subsequently acquitted of the most serious charges, but a court ordered him deported to Russia. Temirov has dual Kyrgyz and Russian citizenship.

The case that culminated October 10 against Temirov Live dates back to January, when authorities raided the outlet’s office in Bishkek. Nurbek Sydykov, a lawyer for one of the defendants, asserted that the case against the journalists rested on the misapplication of Kyrgyz law, which specifies that only those making active calls for civil disobedience can be charged under ‘inciting’ statutes. The content that figured centrally in the case made no such explicit appeals to protest government policies.

In addition, Sydykov said that testimony presented by expert witnesses for the prosecution should be considered invalid for lack of standing.

“If real experts saw these opinions, they would cry. One of the experts we questioned answered that he is not an expert and is not on the register of experts, but is only a research fellow,” a local news site, Kaktus Media, quoted Sydykov as saying.

Reporters Without Borders’ World Press Rankings for 2024 showed that Kyrgyzstan ranked 120th out of the 180 countries surveyed. The country has experienced a precipitous fall in the rankings since Japarov came to power: in 2020, Kyrgyzstan was ranked 82nd out of 180.
Tajikistan: Government report highlights the problems of poverty and unemployment (EurasiaNet)
EurasiaNet [10/11/2024 4:14 PM, Staff, 57.6K, Neutral]
A report issued by the Tajik government paints a dire economic picture for the vast majority of citizens, noting that most do not earn enough money every month to afford basic necessities.

The report, compiled by the Presidential Statistical Agency, tries to put the best spin possible on a sorry situation. “In connection with the reform of the country’s economy, its transition to new market relations, the material living conditions of the population are changing significantly,” the report states. “The multi-structured nature of the economy affects the nature of employment of the working-age population, new sources of income have appeared, the number of unemployed and persons without permanent sources of income is increasing.”

The report shows that as of 2023, the typical Tajik family had about 920 somoni in monthly income per member of the household, or roughly $87 per month at official exchange rates. Of that amount, however, only an average of 359 somoni was employment income. Another 329 somoni per month per person was received by the average family via what appears to be remittances from abroad (labeled vaguely in the report as “other money inflow”), while the remainder was generated from food grown in small, private plots, government pensions, business and investment income, and the sale of non-investment real estate.

The reported figures indeed substantiate that unemployment and poverty are widespread, and that remittances from labor migrants abroad remain a critical element of support for most Tajik families. Remittance income, however, is coming under pressure, as Russia, a major destination for the majority of Tajik labor migrants, has cracked down on Central Asian guest workers since the Crocus City Hall terrorist attack in Moscow in the spring.

Compounding the grim family budget figures, the report shows the cost of living for most Tajik families is significantly outpacing their monthly income. Categorizing average monthly expenditures using the oblique terminology “all expended gross income,” the report states that most families need to spend 1,105 somoni per person per month on basic necessities. Almost 60 percent of monthly income goes towards food for the average family, the report shows.
Medical Tourism Draws Tajiks, Other Central Asians To Neighboring Uzbekistan (Radio Free Europe)
Radio Free Europe [10/15/2024 12:02 AM, Farangis Najibullah, 235K, Neutral]
Ranokhon Burhonova is recovering from eye surgery to remove a cataract that was causing vision problems.

There are many hospitals in Burhonova’s native Tajikistan offering cataract surgery, a relatively simple procedure. But the 59-year-old former nurse from the northern Sughd Province went to neighboring Uzbekistan for the operation.

"I paid about $800 for the surgery in Tashkent in late September," she said. "The prices are roughly the same in Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. But for me the most important factor was the quality of care."

Burhonova says she has "lost trust" in doctors at home after many reports of incorrect diagnoses and medical malpractice.

"I’m not saying we don’t have good doctors in Tajikistan, but I didn’t want to take any risk, especially when my eyesight is at stake," she said.

She is planning to return to Tashkent for a follow-up appointment with her ophthalmologist six weeks after the procedure.

Uzbekistan has become a top medical-tourism destination for many middle-income Tajiks and other neighboring Central Asians pursuing better quality and affordable treatment. Some patients seek specialized medical expertise that is not available in their home country.

According to Uzbek official statistics, 57,380 Tajik citizens traveled to Uzbekistan from January to August for medical care. The figure marks a 100 percent increase from the same period last year when some 28,600 Tajiks went to Uzbekistan for health reasons.

Tajik patients began exploring private medical treatments in Uzbekistan in 2018 after Tashkent introduced three-month, visa-free travel for its Central Asian neighbors.

Medical tourism has flourished in recent years after the borders reopened following a suspension during the coronavirus pandemic.

Affordable accommodation and food prices, the absence of bureaucratic hurdles, and the lack of a language barrier -- Russian being spoken widely in Central Asia -- have made Uzbekistan even more attractive to foreign patients.

Most Tajiks who seek medical treatment in Uzbekistan are middle class and can afford to make several trips to the neighboring state for consultations, treatment, and follow-up appointments.

Those who are better off usually opt for hospitals and clinics in China, Iran, and Russia.

Nazokat, a 48-year-old Tajik patient who didn’t want to give her last name for privacy reasons, travels to Tashkent every three months so her doctor can monitor her recovery.

Nazokat was diagnosed with stage 4 liver fibrosis in November in Uzbekistan after a hospital in Tajikistan failed to detect the problem following a long-term hepatitis-C infection.

"In Tajikistan, I had a successful six-month treatment that killed the virus, but I continued feeling unwell. My relatives advised me to see doctors in Tashkent," she told RFE/RL.

"It saved my life. Now I know that it was almost too late for me. My condition was close to developing into cirrhosis," said Nazokat.

Dushanbe Disputes Uzbek Stats

Tajik authorities have disputed Uzbekistan’s statistics on medical tourism that show a steady rise in the number of Tajiks exploring their treatment options abroad.

When Tashkent last year issued the number of Tajiks who visited Uzbekistan for health issues in 2023 -- putting it at some 43,200 people -- Dushanbe rejected it as "impossible."

"This figure does not reflect reality," Tajik Health Minister Jamoliddin Abdullozoda said at the time in reaction to the Uzbek statement.

"These numbers were taken from the records of the border-crossing points," he said.

Abdullozoda added that many people who cross the border give their reason for travel as "medical treatment" -- possibly to avoid further questions -- even if it is untrue.

The Tajik health minister said his country has adequate health care, with 896,600 patients hospitalized in Tajikistan in 2023. Some 314,800 of them underwent surgeries, he said.

But many Tajiks complain about a shortage of specialists beyond the big cities, with thousands of medics moving to Russia in recent years for better wages.

Regional Hub

The Uzbek government supports medical tourism as part of the travel industry.

In 2019, the government introduced simplified medical-visa procedures for foreigners -- while official travel websites promote Uzbek hospitals and sanatoriums to attract foreign patients.

Besides Tajiks, who make up the majority of foreign patients, thousands of Kazakhs, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, and Russians have opted for medical care in Uzbekistan.

According to Uzbek state figures 8,542 Kazakh, 6,704 Kyrgyz, 1,299 Russian, and 672 Turkmen citizens traveled to Uzbekistan for health treatments from January to August.

The figures reflect an increase from the same period last year when the number of Kazakh and Russian patients was 7,200 and 800, respectively. The number of Kyrgyz and Turkmen medical tourists saw a twofold increase.
Twitter
Afghanistan
Suhail Shaheen
@suhailshaheen1
[10/13/2024 9:43 AM, 735.9K followers, 84 retweets, 544 likes]
Spokesman of the Ministry of Interior, Mufti A. Mateen Qani: Currently, 2,000 police women and female police officers are working in the Ministry of Interior, IEA. This figure can increase in the light of needs which are reviewed by a relevant committee from time to time.

Suhail Shaheen
@suhailshaheen1
[10/11/2024 1:35 PM, 735.9K followers, 212 retweets, 881 likes]
The Ministry of Promotion of Virtues and Prevention of Vices, has prevented forced marriages of 5,000 women who were being married against their consent and returned to 20, 000 women their rights of inheritance. This was unprecedented in the Afghan society in the past.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[10/14/2024 9:26 AM, 95.9K followers, 52 retweets, 330 likes]
Be cautious when advocating for ‘the Taliban’ to open schools for girls. Current boys’ education has shifted sharply toward madrassas, focusing on religious indoctrination. The question is: does the universal right to education guarantee a holistic, well-rounded curriculum?

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[10/14/2024 9:26 AM, 95.9K followers, 8 retweets, 51 likes]
The distortion of education to serve extremism is the crucial issue. If the Taliban opens schools, what will that look like? We must advocate for protections that ensure a sound curriculum—preparing children for the future while balancing religious teachings responsibly.

Sara Wahedi
@SaraWahedi
[10/14/2024 9:30 AM, 95.9K followers, 7 retweets, 44 likes]
Advocate for protections now because the Taliban may soon claim the curriculum is “revised” and allow women and girls to return to school. But what kind of education will they return to? The Taliban’s strategy is calculated—the world must call their bluff and act accordingly.

Habib Khan
@HabibKhanT
[10/14/2024 4:14 PM, 238.4K followers, 47 retweets, 84 likes]
The Taliban have banned photographs of all living things in Afghanistan, claiming it’s forbidden under Islam. They enforced similar bans on television and images during their rule from 1996 to 2001.
Pakistan
Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/14/2024 12:13 PM, 6.7M followers, 720 retweets, 2.1K likes]
Held most productive talks with Chinese Premier H.E. Mr. Li Qiang . We expressed satisfaction at the progress of various important CPEC initiatives and agreed to ensure their timely execution. We also discussed ways to further enhance cooperation in multiple areas including trade, investment, economy, energy, agriculture, IT, and defence as well as regional peace and security. Our strategic partnership and full understanding on our core issues is a cornerstone of regional stability and prosperity. We presided over the completion ceremony of New Gwadar Airport and witnessed the exchange of important MoUs that will enhance bilateral cooperation in various fields. Long live Pakistan-China friendship!

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/14/2024 5:44 AM, 6.7M followers, 778 retweets, 2.6K likes]
Pakistan warmly welcomes Palestinian medical students for completion of their studies. Their presence further strengthens the bonds of solidarity between our peoples. We stand firmly with the people of Palestine in support of their inalienable rights to education, health, and a brighter future for all.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/14/2024 4:38 AM, 6.7M followers, 2.1K retweets, 5.8K likes]
Delighted to welcome H.E. Mr. Li Qiang,Premier of the State Council of People’s Republic of China, to Islamabad! Looking forward to a historic & productive visit by my brother that will further strengthen and deepen our friendship. We will review progress on existing initiatives, especially CPEC and also explore new avenues of mutually beneficial cooperation. Pakistan-China All-Weather Strategic Cooperative Partnership is a cornerstone of regional stability & prosperity.

Shehbaz Sharif
@CMShehbaz
[10/13/2024 12:58 AM, 6.7M followers, 323 retweets, 1.2K likes]
Deeply saddened at the passing away of former Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress (NPC) and former Vice Premier Wu Bangguo. He was an outstanding leader of the CPC and a true friend of Pakistan, who made a profound contribution in strengthening our bilateral cooperation. His visit to Pakistan in 2006 remains a significant milestone. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family and the people of China in this difficult moment. #PakistanChinaFriendship

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 9:15 AM, 214K followers, 22 retweets, 148 likes]
It’s a crucial week for Pakistani diplomacy: Pakistan is holding meetings w/China’s PM, hosting a high-level summit of the SCO-which focuses mainly on Central Asia, a key strategic space for Islamabad-and welcoming, for SCO, the first senior Indian official in nearly a decade.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 9:15 AM, 214K followers, 4 retweets, 20 likes]
And yet one of the biggest questions is how much domestic political tensions will intrude on all this. PTI is looking to leverage the importance of this week for Islamabad to amp up pressure on the state (by calling for protests tomorrow) to make concessions on Imran Khan.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[10/14/2024 10:52 AM, 92.7K followers, 1.8K retweets, 3.4K likes]
PAKISTAN: Rather than address the legitimate demands to hold accountable the officials responsible for extrajudicial killing, Pakistani authorities instead chose to fiercely crack down against peaceful participants of the Sindh Rawadari March in Karachi on 13 October. The police meted out tear gas and batons against the peaceful protesters, arbitrarily detained several participants and charged the organizers under Section 144 of the Criminal Procedure Code – an alarming example of lawfare to silence dissent. The protesters were demanding accountability for the extrajudicial killing of a 32-year-old doctor accused of blasphemy by police officers in Umerkot in September.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[10/14/2024 10:52 AM, 92.7K followers, 107 retweets, 223 likes]
Amnesty International calls on the Pakistan government to immediately drop criminal charges against the organizers and participants of the Sindh Rawadari March and ensure their safety from threats of violence. Authorities must also carry out a thorough, independent investigation into the instances of unlawful use of force by the police across the country and bring those responsible to justice. The latest repression comes at a time when protests in cities across provinces are being targeted, including students protesting on campuses in Lahore, under Section 144 imposed on the pretext of security for the Shanghai Cooperation Organization Summit taking place in Islamabad on 15 and 16 October. Authorities should revoke the blanket restrictions on protests under Section 144 and adopt proportionate measures to facilitate the right to freedom of peaceful assembly across the country. Any restrictions must strictly comply with the principles of legality, necessity and proportionality.

Amnesty International South Asia, Regional Office
@amnestysasia
[10/12/2024 8:59 AM, 92.7K followers, 225 retweets, 412 likes]
PAKISTAN: The alarming trend of killings due to blasphemy allegations at the hands of law-enforcement officials is violative of the right to life, right to fair trial and right to freedom of belief and religion. Amnesty International urges the Pakistani authorities to conduct a thorough, impartial and independent investigation into the incidents and ensure those responsible are prosecuted in fair and transparent trials, without recourse to the death penalty. The government must also take steps to repeal blasphemy laws which have since long perpetuated discrimination and violence. #RepealBlasphemyLawsNow
India
Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[10/13/2024 11:33 AM, 102.8M followers, 7.7K retweets, 45K likes]
PM #GatiShakti has played a critical role in adding momentum to India’s infrastructure development journey. It is using technology wonderfully in order to ensure projects are completed on time and any potential challenge is mitigated.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[10/13/2024 11:26 AM, 102.8M followers, 7.3K retweets, 37K likes]
Today, as #GatiShakti completed three years, went to Bharat Mandapam and visited the Anubhuti Kendra, where I experienced the transformative power of this initiative.

Narendra Modi
@narendramodi
[10/12/2024 10:04 AM, 102.8M followers, 16K retweets, 118K likes]
Took part in the Vijaya Dashami programme in Delhi. Our capital is known for its wonderful Ramlila traditions. They are vibrant celebrations of faith, culture and traditions.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[10/14/2024 5:02 AM, 3.2M followers, 350 retweets, 3.1K likes]
Always enjoy my interaction with young diplomats attending the Raisina Forum for Future of Diplomacy. Shared with them as to why Bharat matters today on the global stage and how India foreign policy is taking lead in building partnerships, being voice of the Global South, bridge differences and work towards building a multipolar world order.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[10/14/2024 4:57 AM, 3.2M followers, 324 retweets, 1.9K likes]
Delighted to launch the revamped e-Migrate portal along with my Ministerial colleague @mansukhmandviya ji & MoS @PmargheritaBJP ji today in Delhi. A true reflection of PM @narendramodi government’s commitment to improving ease of living and enhancing people-centric governance, the portal will assist our citizens to subscribe to safe and legal mobility channels. Confident that this portal will add another dimension in preparing Indian youth for a global workplace.

Dr. S. Jaishankar
@DrSJaishankar
[10/13/2024 1:41 PM, 3.2M followers, 375 retweets, 3.1K likes]
A good interaction with @USISPForum Board of Directors today in Delhi. Spoke about our plans to create industrial nodes, expanding infrastructure and enhancing skills and talents. Urged participation in our internship program. Confident that the strategic convergence will be backed by strong IN-US business collaboration.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 10:26 PM, 214K followers, 94 retweets, 390 likes]
The U.S. and Canada have both accused India of being involved in transnational repression. Why has Delhi’s reaction to Canada’s allegations been angrier?
-India’s ties w/Ottawa already in a bad place.
-Canada more public with its allegations.
-US released more detailed evidence.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 2:19 PM, 214K followers, 79 retweets, 244 likes]
Canada’s release of this statement is an extraordinary development: A rare case of Ottawa publicly disclosing info about its allegations against Delhi. The lack of evidence in the public domain is something Delhi has often cited while repeatedly rejecting Ottawa’s allegations.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 2:19 PM, 214K followers, 8 retweets, 29 likes]
And let’s be clear, these are extremely serious allegations. They throw into sharp relief Ottawa’s worries about malign foreign influence exerted by both China and India.

Michael Kugelman
@MichaelKugelman
[10/14/2024 11:48 AM, 214K followers, 630 retweets, 6.6K likes]
One can argue that at this moment, India has worse diplomatic relations with Canada than it does with Pakistan. Today’s external affairs ministry statement is absolutely blistering. It conveys the full force of New Delhi’s anger with Canada on the Khalistan issue.
NSB
MOFA of Nepal
@MofaNepal
[10/15/2024 12:46 AM, 260K followers, 28 retweets, 45 likes]
Nepal strongly condemns recent attacks on the UNIFIL peacekeepers & urges parties of the conflict to guarantee their safety & security. Such actions must stop immediately & should be adequately investigated. A joint statement by 34 UNIFIL-contributing countries

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[10/14/2024 7:49 AM, 132.3K followers, 22 retweets, 363 likes]
Had a productive meeting with @UN Assistant Secretary-General & Regional Director for Asia & the Pacific at the @UNDP @kanniwignaraja who is also the highest ranking Sri Lankan in the UN. We discussed key areas like governance, economic reforms, and the need for greater women’s participation in the economy. I appreciated UNDP’s continued support in advancing Sri Lanka’s development efforts.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[10/14/2024 5:48 AM, 132.3K followers, 27 retweets, 303 likes]
I’ve directed officials to prioritize immediate relief for those affected by the inclement weather in Colombo, Gampaha, Puttalam, and Kalutara. Rs. 50 million additional funds has already been allocated for flood relief, and more funds will be provided if necessary. We need a sustainable program to address recurring floods in the future.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[10/12/2024 5:47 AM, 132.3K followers, 47 retweets, 483 likes]
A meeting of the candidates of Jathika Jana Balavegaya (NPP) for the 2024 Parliamentary General Election was held this morning (13) at the Grand Monarch Hotel in Thalawathugoda. NPP candidates are not simply looking at the numerical majority. A qualitative development in the parliament is also required to bring about the change mandated by people.

Anura Kumara Dissanayake
@anuradisanayake
[10/14/2024 9:44 AM, 132.3K followers, 40 retweets, 278 likes]
Had a productive virtual discussion today (11) with @USAID Administrator Ms. Samantha Power. We explored future cooperation and how USAID can support our development initiatives. Looking forward to strengthening ties between Sri Lanka and USAID as we align our efforts with the people’s priorities. Together, we can enhance our country’s growth!

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[10/14/2024 7:12 PM, 7.5K followers, 5 retweets, 85 likes]
Pragmatic approach and critical thinking in addressing the current challenges particularly in economy is vital at this juncture, rather than sticking to ideological rhetoric. https://thediplomat.com/2024/10/sri-lankas-new-president-is-more-a-pragmatist-than-a-marxist/

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[10/12/2024 4:33 AM, 7.5K followers, 59 retweets, 290 likes]
This isn’t about whose nomination was rejected or what their qualifications are—that’s for the public to decide. The real issue is whether rejecting a nomination based on an absurd technicality is right. Even if a nomination paper was handed over by an unauthorized person, shouldn’t the nomination officer verify that before accepting it? How can it be acceptable to accept the papers, wait until the deadline lapses, and then reject the entire list? Is it the public duty of an election official to accept and then invalidate without giving a chance to correct the error? Even if there was one. If the nomination paper is in proper form, contains the names of the candidates, has the necessary signatures, and shows clear consent, isn’t that substantial compliance? Should the entire list be thrown out just because of who physically handed it in?

The Election Commission’s job is to facilitate the people’s right to choose, not block it over technicalities. Their role is to guide the process and ensure that the public can exercise their right to vote, not to penalize candidates. Substantial compliance should be the standard, not rigidly enforcing minor procedural issues that prevent the public from making their choice. We’ve seen this before like in 2018, with the Weligama Urban Council case. Even though all candidates were present together, the entire nomination list was rejected because someone other than the leader handed over the papers. This technicality denied an entire electorate from deciding the candidates of their choice from a wider pool of eligible candidates. This is about democracy and the people’s right to choose their leaders, not about individual candidates or parties. Procedures matter, but the Election Commission’s role is to ensure fair representation, not obstruct it with overly rigid interpretations of the law. The focus should be on guidance, not punishment, when minor procedural errors arise because at the end of the day, democracy is about giving the people the right to decide. Its beside the point whose nomination paper was rejected and what is his profession and whether one like him or not.

M U M Ali Sabry
@alisabrypc
[10/11/2024 9:44 PM, 7.5K followers, 10 retweets, 61 likes]
Education, digitization, administration of justice, and agricultural modernization are like the unseen software powering a nation’s progress less visible than physical infrastructure, but just as crucial for economic transformation. Without significant investment in these areas, true progress will be limited, and the long-term benefits, such as a stronger, more resilient economy, will remain out of reach. Prioritizing and investing in these sectors is essential if we want to drive the lasting changes our country needs.
Central Asia
Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/14/2024 6:25 PM, 201.7K followers, 1 retweet, 15 likes]
Today’s agenda of President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev also included a groundbreaking ceremony for important industrial projects worth $2 billion in such sectors as renewable energy, textile industry, expanding industrial facilities.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/14/2024 5:36 PM, 201.7K followers, 1 retweet, 20 likes]
11 projects worth $3.4 billion were presented to President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev for implementation in Tashkent region. Investors include companies from China, South Korea, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Russia, Azerbaijan and local entrepreneurs. 23 thousand jobs will be created in the textile, food, medical, electrical, energy, construction, mining, service and other industries.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/14/2024 4:48 PM, 201.7K followers, 8 likes]
During the trip to #Tashkent region, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev also visited a small industrial zone "Tinchlik" in #Yangiyul district and got acquainted with the activities of a number of enterprises, including “Enter Steel”, “Enter Green Solar”, “Mesal Water Technologies”. Such enterprises greatly contribute to the socio-economic development of the region, creation of favourable conditions for entrepreneurial activity and ensuring employment to the population.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/14/2024 3:13 PM, 201.7K followers, 13 likes]
Today President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev visited #Tashkent region in order to examine the well-being of the population and new projects in the region. The visit started with Tashkent district, its new industrial facilities and infrastructure developed in the past years.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/11/2024 1:37 AM, 201.7K followers, 7 retweets, 26 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev was awarded a commemorative medal “300 years of Magtymguly Fragi” concluding the International Forum in #Ashgabat. Following this, the President of #Uzbekistan completed his working visit and arrived in #Tashkent.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/11/2024 9:33 AM, 201.7K followers, 10 retweets, 36 likes]
Another meeting of the President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev on the sidelines of the International Forum in #Ashgabat, was held with the President of the Islamic Republic of #Iran @drpezeshkian. The leaders of the two countries discussed issues of developing UZ-IR multifaceted relations further, and exchanged views on international and regional agenda.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/11/2024 8:32 AM, 201.7K followers, 11 retweets, 43 likes] Later today, President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev held a meeting with the National Leader of the Turkmen people, the Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty of #Turkmenistan #Gurbanguly_Berdimuhamedov. The sides considered the issues of further expansion of UZ-TM strategic partnership, deepening multifaceted cooperation primarily in political, interparliamentary, trade and economic, cultural and humanitarian spheres.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev’s Press-service
@president_uz
[10/14/2024 7:36 AM, 201.7K followers, 4 retweets, 35 likes]
President Shavkat #Mirziyoyev participated at the International Forum dedicated to the 300th anniversary of a great #Turkmen poet and philosopher #Magtymguly_Fragi’s birthday in #Ashgabat. The forum emphasized the importance of reinforcing regional ties of brotherhood, fostering closer relations among nations, and promoting the region’s rich cultural and spiritual heritage on a global scale.

{End of Report}
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