Russia’s state media-monitoring agency has blocked the website of the magazine Novaya rasskaz-gazeta for allegedly “discrediting the Russian armed forces. 

Roskomnadzor blocked the site on July 24 at the request of the Prosecutor-General’s Office, and there was no further explanation. 

Novaya rasskaz-gazeta began publishing on July 15 and was produced by the staff of the respected newspaper Novaya gazeta, which suspended publication in March under pressure from the authorities over its coverage of Russia’s unprovoked war in Ukraine. 

According to the staff of Novaya rasskaz-gazeta, the website lasted seven days and nine hours before being shut down. 

Novaya gazeta began publishing in 1993 and was one of the most respected publications in post-Soviet Russia. The paper’s editor in chief, Dmitry Muratov, won the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize. 

Some members of the paper’s staff left Russia after it stopped publishing and launched the newspaper Novaya gazeta.Europe. Roskomnadzor has blocked its website in Russia as well. 

Shortly after the massive Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, which the Kremlin insists on calling a “special military operation,” Moscow quickly adopted a law criminalizing the dissemination of “false” information that “discredits the armed forces.” The law has been central to a massive crackdown against dissent over the war in Russia.
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Former Sri Lankan prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe has been sworn in as the country’s president and has promised to form an all-party government capable of securing a multibillion-dollar International Monetary Fund bailout.

Wickremesinghe’s victory followed the resignation of President Gotobaya Rajapaksa, who fled to Singapore after hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans marched across the capital on July 9, overran the presidential palace, picnicked on the lawns and even swam in the president’s pool.

However, Wickremesinghe is also unpopular with many of the protesters given his close ties with the Rajapaskas. He served as prime minister under Gotabaya and despite promises that he would form an all-party government, most of his appointments in the new cabinet have been chosen from the ranks of Rajapaksa loyalists.

The Rajapaksa family ruled for 17 years and is widely blamed for bankrupting this country, with debts totaling $51 billion and foreign reserves of just $1.7 billion. The central bank says it needs $7 billion for debt obligations and to sustain Sri Lanka for the rest of this year.

Ganeshan Wignarjara, a senior fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies at the National University of Singapore, said the crisis had been predicted at least four years ago but the Rajapaksas did not want to listen and initial approaches to the IMF in April had come much too late.

“The Sri Lankan economy is at risk of crashing after it defaulted on its debt. Growth is at -4 to –6% in 2022 and inflation is between 50 and 70% this year and there is three-quarters of a million poor people that has been created through this crisis.

“So it’s a terrible situation in Sri Lanka,” he said, adding that Wickremesinghe needs time to get his country’s finances in order.

Officials from Colombo are expected to meet with the IMF in August and negotiations are expected to include Sri Lanka’s top three lenders – Japan, the Asian Development Bank and China.

At the recent meeting of G-20 financial officials in Indonesia, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, urged China to help restructure Sri Lanka’s debt, telling journalists, “Sri Lanka is clearly unable to repay that debt.”

“And it’s my hope that China will be willing to work with Sri Lanka to restructure the debt – it would likely be both in China and Sri Lanka’s interest,” she said.

Wignaraja also said China must play a positive role in resolving the crisis but added that fear of a Chinese debt trap had been exaggerated as Beijing holds just 14% of Sri Lanka’s total debt.

“China gave Sri Lanka $13.2 billion since 2006 for infrastructure projects. These projects have had mixed results; some good projects, some bad projects.

“The total debt burden is something like $7.6 billion. It suggests a rising debt to China but does not indicate that Sri Lanka is yet in a Chinese debt trap,” he said.

Any IMF deal could be months away and Sri Lankans still need to contend with hyperinflation, acute food and fuel shortages, and power blackouts. Schools remain closed and many people work from home.

Shortages of medicine prompted doctors to warn people would die, particularly in the remote countryside, where distribution of essential items, including rice, has ground to a halt as the country has run out of fuel.

Protesters and politicians from all political parties are also demanding an independent investigation into the Rajapaksa family, their wealth and allegations of corruption.

Sri Lankan investigators have previously claimed that more than $2 billion had been transferred to bank accounts in Dubai, held by people close to Mahinda Rajapaksa, brother of Gotabaya, when he served as president, more than seven years ago. Mahinda dismissed those claims as “nonsense.”

Protest numbers have dwindled since Rajapaksa fled the country but ill feeling toward the government remains high, with many demonstrators deeply skeptical and attempting to maintain their tent camp outside of the presidential complex. However, the army and police began forcibly dismantling the camp on Friday morning leading to clashes and arrests.

“Our government, Sri Lankan government, they are killing the innocent people in the rural areas in this country. They have nothing to eat,” said Keith Gibson, a musician and protest leader.

“They only be drinking water – and this corrupted regiment, they are killing the people and they are not leading, and they have no solution for the country, you know, and the people are suffering,” he said.

His sentiments were echoed by Sulaimaan Saim, a medical student who recently returned from studies in Belarus. He said people who once drove luxury vehicles now ride in tuk-tuks, and people who once rode in tuk-tuks are now forced to walk.

“The government has been messing around too much. They’ve been playing around with our money. They’ve been taking people’s money. They’ve been basically stealing it,” he said.

“Now we’re down to zero, nothing, completely nothing, we’ve got nothing, our country’s really messed up. We don’t have fuel, we don’t have food, we don’t have gas. We don’t have medicine. People are dying. Waiting in queues for fuel for like four or five days, it’s really bad,” he said.
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International human rights groups Saturday urged Sri Lanka’s new president to immediately order security forces to cease use of force against protesters after troops and police cleared their main camp following months of demonstrations over the country’s economic meltdown.

A day after President Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in, hundreds of armed troops raided a protest camp outside the president’s office in the early hours of Friday, attacking demonstrators with batons. Human Rights Watch said the action “sends a dangerous message to the Sri Lankan people that the new government intends to act through brute force rather than the rule of law.”

Two journalists and two lawyers were also attacked by soldiers in the crackdown. Security forces arrested 11 people, including protesters and lawyers.

“Urgently needed measures to address the economic needs of Sri Lankans demand a government that respects fundamental rights,” Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. “Sri Lanka’s international partners should send the message loud and clear that they can’t support an administration that tramples on the rights of its people.”

Also condemning the attack, Amnesty International said “it is shameful that the new government resorted to such violent tactics within hours of coming to power.”

“The protesters have a right to demonstrate peacefully. Excessive use of force, intimidation and unlawful arrests seem to be an endlessly repetitive pattern in which the Sri Lankan authorities respond to dissent and peaceful assembly,” said Kyle Ward, the group’s deputy secretary general.

Wickremesinghe, who previously served as prime minister six times, was sworn in as president a week after his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country. Rajapaksa later resigned while exiled in Singapore.

Sri Lankans have taken to the streets for months to demand their top leaders step down to take responsibility for the economic chaos that has left the nation’s 22 million people struggling with shortages of essentials, including medicine, fuel and food. While the protesters have focused on the Rajapaksa’s family, Wickremesinghe also has drawn their ire as a perceived Rajapaksa surrogate.

Armed troops and police arrived in trucks and buses on Friday to clear the main protest camp the capital, Colombo, even though protesters had announced they would vacate the site voluntarily.

Sri Lanka’s opposition, the United Nations, and the U.S. have denounced the government’s heavy-handed tactics.

Despite heightened security outside the president’s office, protesters have vowed to continue until Wickremesinghe resigns.

On Friday, he appointed as prime minister a Rajapaksa ally, Dinesh Gunawardena.

Wickremesinghe on Monday declared a state of emergency as acting president in a bid to quell the protests. Just hours after he was sworn in, he issued a notice calling on the armed forces to maintain law and order — clearing the way for the move against the protest camp.

The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful family of siphoning money from government coffers and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but the former president acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s crisis.

The political turmoil has threatened efforts to seek rescue from the International Monetary Fund. Still, earlier this week, Wickremesinghe said bailout talks were nearing a conclusion.

The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, told the Japanese financial magazine Nikkei Asia this week that the IMF hopes for a deal “as quickly as possible.”
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The death toll from more than five weeks of monsoon rains and flash flooding across Pakistan has reached 304, authorities said Saturday.

Since mid-June, the deluge has swollen rivers and damaged highways and bridges, disrupting traffic. Almost 9,000 homes have been fully destroyed or partially damaged.

Particularly hard-hit was the volatile, impoverished southwestern Baluchistan province, where 99 people died in rain-related incidents and subsequent flooding, followed by 70 dead in southern Sindh province.

There have also been 61 fatalities in northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, and 60 in eastern Punjab province. The dead include women and children, and at least 284 people have been injured.

Every year, much of Pakistan struggles with the annual monsoons, drawing criticism about poor government planning. The season runs from July through September. Rains are essential for irrigating crops and replenishing dams and other water reservoirs in Pakistan.
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Afghanistan’s Taliban government announced Saturday it had signed an agreement with Iran to purchase 350,000 tons of oil from the neighboring country.

The Taliban-led Finance Ministry in Kabul said its high-level delegation visited Tehran last week where the two sides reached the deal to help reduce the price of fuel in Afghanistan.

It said that the import of petroleum products from Iran will begin in the next few days, and it will significantly reduce prices in Afghanistan. The statement shared no further details.  

Fuel and gasoline prices have increased at an unprecedented rate in the country, where one liter of gasoline is currently priced at 99 cents and diesel at $1.32.

The Afghan and Iranian sides also agreed to establish a joint committee to propose ways to facilitate trade and transit of petroleum products, establish a gas pipeline for energy imports and build refineries in Afghanistan, said the ministry statement.  

The contract signed with Iran will allow Kabul to import up to 350,000 tons of oil “based on a standard, proper price,” local media quoted Abdul Ghafor, head of the official Afghanistan Oil and Gas Corporation, as saying.

Ghafor said that talks with Russia and Turkmenistan also were ongoing to sign deals for energy imports.

The United Nations, in its latest assessment, says that increasing global energy and food prices are seeping into the Afghan economy, resulting in high inflation.  

In June, prices for diesel increased by nearly 23 percent, and yearly prices for basic household goods went up by 50 percent.  

The U.N. lists war-torn Afghanistan among the world’s largest humanitarian emergencies, where it estimates 18.9 million, nearly half of the population, could be acutely food insecure between June-November 2022, partly due to severe drought and economic crisis.
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South Korea plans to lift its decades-long ban on public access to North Korean television, newspapers and other media as part of its efforts to promote mutual understanding between the rivals, officials said Friday, despite animosities over the North’s recent missile tests.

Divided along the world’s most heavily fortified border since 1948, the two Koreas prohibit their citizens from visiting each other’s territory and exchanging phone calls, emails and letters, and they block access to each other’s websites and TV stations.

In a policy report to new President Yoon Suk Yeol on Friday, South Korea’s Unification Ministry said it will gradually open the door for North Korean broadcasts, media and publications to try to boost mutual understanding, restore the Korean national identity and prepare for a future unification.

Ministry officials said South Korea will start by allowing access to North Korean broadcasts to try to encourage North Korea to take similar steps. The ministry refused to provide further details, saying the plans are still being discussed with relevant authorities in South Korea.

Jeon Young-sun, a research professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University, said North Korea is unlikely to reciprocate because the flow of South Korean cultural and media content would pose “a really huge threat to” its authoritarian leadership.

Ruled by three generations of the Kim family since its 1948 foundation, North Korea strictly restricts its citizens’ access to outside information, though many defectors have said they watched smuggled South Korean TV programs while living in the North.

In 2014, North Korean troops opened fire when South Korean activists launched balloons carrying USB sticks containing information about the outside world and leaflets critical of the Kim family toward North Korean territory.

Relations between the two Koreas remain strained over North Korea’s torrid run of missile tests this year. Yoon, a conservative, has said he would take a tougher stance on North Korean provocations, though he said he has “an audacious plan” to improve the North’s economy if it abandons its nuclear weapons.

Despite the North’s likely reluctance to reciprocate, Jeon said South Korea needs to ease its ban on North Korean media because the restrictions have led to dependence on foreigners and other governments to gather North Korea-related information. Jeon said that has increased the danger of acquiring distorted information on North Korea.

It wasn’t clear how anti-North Korea activists in the South would react to the government’s move. Jeon said there was little chance the move would promote pro-North Korean sentiments.

South Korea, the world’s 10th largest economy, is a global cultural powerhouse. Its nominal gross domestic product in 2019 was 54 times bigger than that of North Korea, according to South Korean estimates.

Some observers say the ban must be lifted in a step-by-step process with discussions on what North Korean contents would be allowed first and how the access should be given to the South Korean public.

While it’s officially illegal to watch or read North Korean media in South Korea, authorities rarely crack down on experts, journalists and others using VPNs or proxy servers to access North Korean websites. A large number of North Korean movies, songs and other contents are also available on YouTube, which is accessible in South Korea.
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The first female climbers from Pakistan and Iran on Friday reached the top of K2, the world’s second-highest peak, at 8,611 meters above sea level known as the “savage mountain.”

Two Pakistanis, Samina Baig and Naila Kiyani, Iranian Afsaneh Hesamifard, and Lebanese-Arab Nelly Attar, were among the four women who achieved the milestone, said a spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan.

“They are also the first Muslim mountaineers to have scaled K2,” Karrar Haidri told VOA.

Baig and Hesamifard have already summited the world’s highest peak, Mount Everest, in Nepal.

“We are extremely proud to announce that Samina Baig, with her strong Pakistani team, successfully summited the world’s most fascinating and dangerous mountain known as the savage mountain,” Baig’s team said in a statement.

“Grateful and blessed that K2 allowed her to stand atop this incredible mountain.”

Pakistani government officials and foreign diplomatic missions, including the U.S. embassy, in Islamabad took to Twitter to congratulate the Pakistani women climbers for setting foot on the world’s second-highest mountain.

“A momentous day and achievement for Pakistani women!” the U.S. embassy said.

Haidri said more than 100 other foreign mountaineers from the United States, Norway, Canada, Taiwan, Russia, Poland and Nepal, also were on their way to the summit and some of them had either reached or expected to do so by Saturday.

He said a professional mountaineer from Afghanistan died from a heart attack on Thursday attempting to scale K2 as part of the team of Pakistani climbers who reached the top Friday. He was the first Afghan to attempt the summit.

On Thursday, Nepalese climber Sanu Sherpa reached the top of Pakistan’s Gasherbrum II mountain, setting a new record by scaling all of the world’s 14 tallest peaks — all higher than 8,000 meters — for a second time.

K2 has gained its reputation as the savage mountain among international climbers. It has one of the deadliest records, with most climbers dying on the way down. Only a few hundred have successfully reached its summit, while Everest has been scaled more than 9,000 times.

The rocky mountain is also known as the deadliest of the five highest peaks in the world because about one person dies on K2 for every four who reach the summit.

While the sheerness of the slopes and overall exposure create a technically challenging climb, mountaineers say weather is always “the great opponent” on K2 year-round.
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Sri Lankan troops have dismantled the main protest site in Colombo, headquarters for demonstrators who had led a monthslong anti-government campaign.  The move is seen as a signal that newly elected President Ranil Wickremesinghe will crack down on campaigners who forced the ouster of his predecessor.

Hundreds of troops and police commandoes armed with assault rifles and batons gathered outside the presidential office in the early hours of Friday evicting protesters, tearing down their tents and removing banners outside the main entrance to the president’s office.

The police action came a day after Wickremesinghe, whom demonstrators also oppose, was sworn into office.

Shabeer Mohamed, a freelance journalist, told VOA that when he went to the site around 1:30 a.m., he was prevented from entering.

“All the entrances were blocked by soldiers. One soldier hit me on my back and threw down my phone. They removed the tents,” he said.

Several people were reported to have been arrested during the raid while several sustained injuries.

Condemning the action, the Bar Association of Sri Lanka said in a statement that the use of armed forces to suppress civilian protests on the president’s first day in office “will have serious consequences on the country’s social, economic and political stability.” The association said that two lawyers who went to the site were assaulted.

Sri Lanka has witnessed months of unrest over an economic crisis that has virtually bankrupted the country and led to severe fuel, food and medicine shortages and runaway inflation, causing huge hardships. Many blame the crisis on mismanagement by the previous government.

The main opposition leader, Sajith Premadasa called the predawn raid a “cowardly assault on peaceful protesters.” In a tweet he said it was “A useless display of ego and brute force putting innocent lives at risk & endangers Sri Lanka’s international image at a critical time.”

Protesters who had earlier announced that they would hand back the site they were occupying on Friday afternoon said they were taken aback by the action.

“It’s brutal, its despicable, it is cowardly,” said Chameera Dedduwage, one of the protesters. “We had already said yesterday that we would vacate the site, but I guess the new president needed to demonstrate his power.”

Wickremesinghe had imposed an emergency on Monday, when he was acting president, raising fears among demonstrators of a crackdown.

After he was elected as president on Wednesday, he warned against any attempt to occupy government buildings, saying legal action will be taken against those who engage in illegal acts.

He also said that “we must allow those who engage in peaceful dissent to do so.”

The protest movement had forced the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa and his family members who occupied top positions in the previous government, holding them responsible for the country’s economic crisis.

While the movement has been largely peaceful, two weeks ago, protesters stormed and occupied several key government buildings, including the homes and offices of the president and prime minister. A mob had also burned down Wickremesinghe’s private residence. Days later, the demonstrators vacated the buildings, but they continued camping outside the president’s office, as they had been for months.

Wickremesinghe’s election to the top job by lawmakers has disappointed those who see him as close to the Rajapaksas and a representative of the same political establishment they have campaigned to remove from power. Even before he took office protesters had raised chants of “Ranil, Go Home.”

Wickremesinghe appointed Dinesh Gunawardena as the new prime minister on Friday who is also known as an ally of the Rajapaksa family. 
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Australian journalist Lynne O’Donnell has covered Afghanistan for the past 20 years, working for publications and news organizations such as Foreign Policy, The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

But during a trip this month to Kabul, Taliban officials came to the guest house where she was staying and threatened to detain her unless she retracted her reporting, O’Donnell told VOA on Thursday.

O’Donnell said they took her to their headquarters and dictated an apology that they forced her to share on social media. And while she was later released and told she could remain in Afghanistan, O’Donnell said she chose to leave, flying to Islamabad, Pakistan, on Wednesday.

Taliban Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Qahar Balkhi told VOA that O’Donnell had been denied permission to work in the country “due to her open support for armed resistance against the current government” and for “falsifying reports of mass violations.”

O’Donnell “lied about her presence in Afghanistan,” the statement said. But officials offered to let her stay if she could produce evidence to “substantiate any of the claims in her report.”

The statement alleged that O’Donnell offered to make an apology via social media and said the Taliban welcomed “journalists that adhere to the principles of journalism.”

O’Donnell denies that she was in the country illegally, saying the Afghan Embassy in London issued her a visa. She said she also applied for a media visa at Kabul International Airport.

“At no time did I misrepresent myself professionally,” she said.

The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.

VOA: What reason did the Taliban give for detaining you?

O’Donnell: They said that they did not recognize me as a journalist, and they wanted to berate me over stories that I have written over the past year. They wanted me to tweet a confession that I know nothing about Afghanistan or Afghan culture, and that I had made up all my stories.

Agents of the General Directorate of Intelligence (GDI) came to my guest house, and they took me to headquarters, where they kept me for about four hours. They told me that they would put me in prison unless I tweeted a confession, which they dictated to me and tweeted. And then they made me say on video that I made everything up, that I know nothing about Afghanistan. 

After they felt they had done what their bosses wanted to do with me, they took me back to my guest house. They told me that I was free to stay, that I could go anywhere in the country that I wanted to, that they would facilitate me.

When I told them where I wanted to go, they said no. And so, I thought that it was best that I leave [the country].

VOA: Was it your choice to leave?

O’Donnell: I left of my own volition.

I haven’t heard from my driver since I was taken into custody by the Taliban. And people who I met with before the intelligence agency [incident] told me that they have been detained and interrogated by the Taliban.

So, I feel that the surveillance systems of the Taliban are getting more sophisticated, that they’re learning as they go how to tighten their grip on information and people’s feeling of freedom to speak their mind. I felt that they had compromised my phone, that they were monitoring my movements.

VOA: What has been the focus of your reporting in Afghanistan?

O’Donnell: I have been reporting on and off on Afghanistan since 2001. I was in Mazar-e-Sharif [capital of Balkh province] when the Americans invaded in October 2001 as retaliation against the Taliban for their collusion with al-Qaida in the attacks of September 11. And I spent time as the bureau chief for two of the world’s biggest news agencies.

I went back last year to report on the final months [of the war in Afghanistan] and left on August 15, just hours before the Taliban came into Kabul and took control. I hadn’t been back since. So, I wanted to see for myself what the situation is now.

I told the Foreign Ministry spokesperson exactly that. And I also told the intelligence agents who interrogated me and detained me, and were abusive and forced me to make a false confession about my activities. I was sincere in all of my dealings with them.

VOA: Tell us about your tweet on July 19, which said, “I apologize for three or four reports written by me accusing the present authorities of forcefully marrying teenage girls and using teenage girls as sexual slaves by the Taliban commanders.”

O’Donnell: Well, I didn’t write it. It was dictated to me, and it was approved by people on the phone who my interrogators were in touch with, for approval of the content of the tweet. They dictated to me what they wanted. When I did it, I gave it to them. They sent it to their boss, who then edited it, made it longer, made it say exactly what he wanted to say.

VOA: The Taliban accused you of making up sources. How credible are your sources?

O’Donnell: They said all the people I quoted in my stories were fictional and didn’t exist. One of the stories they were particularly incensed by was in Foreign Policy in July 23 last year. Every name in that story is genuine. I have notes. I have voice recordings of the interviews, video recordings of the interviews, and a lot of verification. And they said to me, “Give us all the material.” So, I said, “That’s your job. You want to verify it, you go and verify it.”

Then, with a story about LGBTQ people published a couple of months ago, they decided I had made up the names, I had made up the quotes. And they said to me, “There are no gays in Afghanistan.” [An official] said to me, “If I see anybody is gay in Afghanistan, I will kill them.” Then, they asked me why I called them [the Taliban] extremists. I said, “Well, saying that there’s no gays in Afghanistan is kind of a fairly extreme position to take.”

VOA: Many people are happy you are out safely. But some on social media say you are not impartial and use unreliable sources. What is your response to them?

O’Donnell: Everybody is entitled to their opinion. That’s what freedom of speech and thought is all about. And this was the basis of the conversation and the accusations that I endured when I was in the Taliban’s custody. They clearly hadn’t read the stories. They decided that my reporting is a reflection of my own opinions and my biases, but it’s not.

If you’re quoting somebody, you’re quoting what they think and what they say, and you’re reflecting their opinion. It’s not me. I’m a reporter. I am not a commentator. And if they can’t tell the difference between reporting and commentary and opinion, then the problem is with them. I can’t help what people who use social media say about me, either. I know the veracity of my own reporting.

Ayaz Gul in Islamabad contributed to this report, which originated in VOA’s Pashto Service.
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Lawmakers chose India’s first president from the country’s tribal communities on Thursday, which could boost the appeal of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party among marginalized groups ahead of the 2024 general election.

Droupadi Murmu, 64, a teacher-turned-politician, will be the second woman to hold the largely ceremonial role as head of the republic when she takes office July 25 at the start of a five-year term. She will take over from Ram Nath Kovind.

More than 4,500 state and federal lawmakers voted Monday in the presidential election and ballots were counted Thursday. Murmu’s victory was assured as she was backed by Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which dominates federal and state politics.

“A daughter of India hailing from a tribal community born in a remote part of eastern India has been elected our president!” Modi said on Twitter.

Born into a family of the Santhal tribe from the state of Odisha, Murmu started her career as a schoolteacher and actively participated in community issues.

She later joined mainstream politics and served as a BJP state lawmaker in Odisha before becoming governor of the eastern state of Jharkhand.

Her election is seen as the BJP’s outreach to India’s tribal communities, which make up more than 8% of its 1.4 billion people.

“The BJP will want to offset any anti-incumbency of the last 10 years in 2024, and one of the ways to do that is to go for a new vote base,” political columnist Neerja Choudhary told Reuters.

Murmu beat opposition candidate Yashwant Sinha, a former BJP finance minister and now a fierce critic of Modi, winning nearly twice as many votes.

The Indian president acts as supreme commander of the armed forces but the prime minister holds executive powers.

The president, nevertheless, has a key role during political crises, such as when a general election is inconclusive, by deciding which party is in the best position to form a government. 
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A climber from Nepal reached the top of Pakistan’s Gasherbrum II mountain Thursday, setting a new record by scaling all the world’s 14 tallest peaks — all higher than 8,000 meters — for a second time.

Sanu Sherpa, 47, successfully summited the world’s 13th highest mountain at 8,035 meters above sea level early in the morning, said a spokesman for the Alpine Club of Pakistan (ACP).

“A huge congratulations to Sanu Sherpa. This is a new world record in the mountaineering history,” ACP Secretary Karrar Haidri told VOA.

Haidri added that a few weeks ago the Nepalese climber also scaled Pakistan’s Nanga Parbat, the ninth-highest mountain on Earth at 8,126 meters.

Sherpa’s Pioneer Adventure hiking company in the Nepalese capital, Kathmandu, also confirmed his achievement.

“He is the only person in the world to scale each of the 14 highest mountains twice,” Nibesh Karki, the company’s executive director told Reuters.

Nepal hosts eight of the 14 highest peaks on Earth, including the world’s tallest, Mount Everest; five others are in Pakistan, including the world’s second-tallest, K2, and one along the border of Nepal and the Tibetan region of China.

Sherpa has successfully summited Everest seven times and K2 twice.

A team of 10 Nepalese climbers made history in January 2021 when they became the first in winter to reach the summit of Pakistan’s K2. The peak at 8,611 meters was the last of the 14 tallest mountains to be scaled in wintertime.

Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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New Sri Lanka President Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in Thursday, taking the office of ousted leader Gotabaya Rajapaksa.

Wickremesinghe took the oath of office a day after members of Parliament elected him to the post.

The 73-year-old, six-time prime minister had served as interim president after Rajapaksa fled the country and resigned earlier this month.

Rajapaksa’s resignation came after months of protests calling for the country’s top leaders to step down amid an economic crisis.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
…

India’s Supreme Court has ordered the release of a leading Muslim journalist and fact-checker arrested last month over a 4-year-old tweet that, according to the police, “hurt religious sentiment” of Hindus.

Mohammed Zubair, a co-founder of the fact-checking website Alt News and a critic of Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government, regularly tracks and highlights anti-Muslim hate speech by Hindu right-wing activists, mostly in his tweets.

Weeks before his arrest, Zubair highlighted what some interpreted as derogatory comments made by Nupur Sharma, a spokesperson for Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), about the Prophet Muhammad.

On Wednesday, the top court ordered that Zubair be released from jail immediately, noting that there was no justification for keeping him in custody and that “power of arrests must be pursued sparingly.”

Two hours later, Zubair walked out of New Delhi’s Tihar Jail.

Delhi police officially arrested Zubair on June 27 for his 2018 tweet. But many believe the BJP-led government targeted him because of his tweet in May about Sharma’s comments, a post that had been widely shared and had sparked strong protests against India in many Muslim countries.

After Zubair’s arrest last month, police in India’s northern state of Uttar Pradesh filed seven new cases against him on charges that included “provocation to riot” and calling some Hindu religious leaders who practiced anti-Muslim speech “hatemongers,” among others.

On Friday, a Delhi court granted Zubair bail in the original 2018 tweet case. The Supreme Court on Wednesday granted him bail in the Uttar Pradesh cases.

The court has ordered the Uttar Pradesh police to consolidate all police cases against Zubair and transfer them to Delhi police. As Zubair has been released on bail, the court ordered that the Delhi police may continue investigations in the cases.

While granting bail, the court turned down the Uttar Pradesh government’s plea to stop Zubair from tweeting.

“We cannot ask a journalist not to write. … We cannot stop him from tweeting. We cannot anticipatorily interdict him from exercising his right of free speech,” the court said.

Zubair’s arrest reignited concerns about deteriorating journalistic freedoms in the world’s largest democracy. Soon after he was taken into custody, the hashtags #IStandWithZubair and #ReleaseZubair began trending on Twitter in India. Global media outlets, such as the Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders and human rights bodies, such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, condemned his arrest and demanded his immediate release.

Those who had expressed solidarity with Zubair after his arrest welcomed his release on bail Wednesday.

“The Press Club of India welcomes grant of bail to AltNews co-founder Muhammed Zubair by the Supreme Court today in all cases registered against him, restoring his personal liberty,” the organization tweeted.

Opposition Trinamool Congress Member of Parliament Mahua Moitra tweeted: “Stand up straight @zoo_bear [Mohammad Zubair] & continue to walk the talk. Truth always prevails.”

Zubair being granted bail is a heartening first step that “underscores the importance of the Indian judiciary as a safeguard against the abuse of state power,” said Rohit Chopra, an associate professor at Santa Clara University in the U.S. state of California.

“One hopes that the next step will be dismissing the cases against Zubair, all of which are patently absurd. These cases are clearly meant as a tool of harassment and to produce a chilling effect so that other government critics refrain from speaking up,” Chopra told VOA via email.

“Unless the Indian judiciary stands firm in defending constitutional rights and freedom of speech, there is absolutely nothing to prevent the same thing from happening again to anyone who draws the ire of the Hindu Right or the BJP government.”  
…

A new United Nations report said Wednesday that the erosion of women’s rights in Afghanistan had been one of the most notable aspects of the Taliban takeover of the country last August.

The U.N. Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA, released the report at a news conference in Kabul, saying it was “deeply concerned about the apparent impunity with which human rights violations have been carried out to date” since the country’s abrupt transition to the insurgent-turned-Taliban rule.

“Since 15 August, women and girls have progressively had their rights to fully participate in education, the workplace and other aspects of public and daily life restricted and in many cases completely taken away,” the report lamented.

“The decision not to allow girls to return to secondary school means that a generation of girls will not complete their full 12 years of basic education.”

The Taliban have significantly rolled back women’s rights to work and education, and barred most teenage girls from resuming secondary school, defending their policies as in line with Afghan culture and Shariah or Islamic law. Women working in the public sector have been told to stay at home barring education, health and a couple of other ministries.

“The education and participation of women and girls in public life is fundamental to any modern society. The relegation of women and girls to the home denies Afghanistan the benefit of the significant contributions they have to offer,” said UNAMA Chief Markus Potzel.

Just days after seizing power, the Taliban announced a general amnesty for former Afghan government and security officials in a bid to bring a permanent end to years of hostilities in the country.

“This amnesty does not, however, appear to have been consistently upheld, with UNAMA recording at least 160 extrajudicial killings of former government and security officials by members of the de facto authorities between 15 August 2021 and 15 June 2022,” said Fiona Frazer, the UNAMA chief of human rights.

She added that the Taliban had limited dissent by cracking down on protests and curbing media freedoms, including by arbitrarily arresting journalists, protestors and civil society activists and issuing restrictions on media outlets.

“Human rights violations must be investigated by the de facto authorities, perpetrators held accountable, and ultimately, incidents should be prevented from reoccurring in the future,” Frazer said.

The report largely blamed rights abuses on Taliban intelligence operatives. It said directives issued by the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, which interprets and enforces Islamic law, have limited human rights, particularly those of women.

“Although such directives are said to be recommendatory in nature, at times members of the de facto authorities have taken a harsh stance on their implementation, including carrying out physical punishments for alleged infringements of their directives.”

The Taliban have consistently denied allegations of rights abuses against their forces, including extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. They also dismiss as propaganda charges the Ministry of Propagation of Virtue and Prevention of Vice has forced Afghans, including women, to do anything.

The UNAMA report also noted that the armed conflict significantly declined in Afghanistan and so are civilian casualties since the Taliban takeover. However, it noted with concern that continued attacks by Islamic State-linked armed groups have killed 700 civilians and wounded more than 1,400 others since August.
…

Sri Lanka’s parliament has chosen six-time Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe as the troubled island nation’s new president Wednesday.

The 73-year-old Wickremesinghe received 134 votes in the 225-member legislature in Wednesday’s secret ballot, with 82 votes going to Dullas Alahapperuma, a former journalist who has held various government ministries as a member of the ruling SLPP party. Anura Dissanayake, the leader of the left-wing JVP party, received only three votes.

The vote comes a week after President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled Sri Lanka amid a popular and often violent uprising sparked by a months-long economic crisis that has left it unable to import food, fuel or medicines due to its depleted foreign exchange reserves.

His departure and subsequent resignation effectively ended his family’s two-decade hold on Sri Lanka. His brothers Mahinda and Basil quit their posts as prime minister and finance minister, respectively, several weeks earlier amid rising anti-government demonstrations.

Wickremesinghe will serve out the remainder of Rajapaksa’s tenure, which ends in November 2024. He was appointed prime minister in May after Mahinda Rajapaksa’s resignation, and has been negotiating with the International Monetary Fund on a multi-billion dollar bailout package.

But protesters have accused Wickremesinghe of being too close to the Rajapaksa family and have demanded his resignation as well.

Wednesday’s vote is the first time Sri Lanka’s parliament has chosen a new president since 1993, when then-Prime Minister D.B. Wijetunga was unanimously elected to succeed President Ranasinghe Premadasa, who was assassinated.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Al-Qaida, boosted by leadership stability and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan, appears to be positioning itself to once again be seen as the world’s preeminent terror group and as the greatest long-term threat to the West.

Intelligence shared by United Nations member states and published in a new report Tuesday, finds al-Qaida is enjoying a degree of freedom under Taliban rule that has allowed its leadership to communicate more often and more easily with affiliates and followers, and sell itself as a more attractive option than its rival, the Islamic State terror group, also known as IS, ISIS or ISIL.

“The international context is favorable to al-Qaida, which intends to be recognized again as the leader of global jihad,” according to the U.N. report.

“Al-Qaida propaganda is now better developed to compete with ISIL as the key actor in inspiring the international threat environment, and it may ultimately become a greater source of directed threat,” the report added, noting that IS “has suffered a rapid succession of leadership losses since October 2019, with an as yet unknown impact on its operational health.”

The report further concludes that al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri, long rumored to be in ill health or dying, is “alive and communicating freely.”

The intelligence shared by U.N. member states also concludes al-Qaida has cemented its leadership team in order of seniority, with Zawahiri being followed by Saif al-Adel, long seen as his likely successor, Yazid Mebrak with al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQIP), and by Ahmed Diriye with al-Qaida’s Somali affiliate al-Shabab.

At least one U.N. member state intelligence agency said al-Qaida now appears to favor its African affiliates over al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), a potentially monumental shift given AQAP’s history of plotting attacks against the West, like the December 2019 shooting at the U.S. Naval Air Station in Pensacola, Florida.

The intelligence findings also suggests that al-Shabab, in particular, may be gaining financial leverage, with one U.N. member state reporting that the Somalia-based affiliate is using some of its $50 million to $100 million in yearly revenue to directly support al-Qaida’s core leadership.

An ‘underestimated’ al-Qaida

“It is entirely clear that Zawahiri has been shamefully underestimated,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a counterterrorism analyst and the CEO of threat analysis firm Valens Global, told VOA. “Al-Qaida is a stronger organization today by far than when Zawahiri first took the reins.”

Other analysts say the U.N. report calls into question the long-term effectiveness of U.S. and Western counterterrorism strategies.

“Even after 20 years, some of al-Qaida’s most senior operatives remain at large and are ready to carry on the mantle of jihad,” Katherine Zimmerman, a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told VOA.

“Al-Qaida’s bench remains deep even after serious attrition,” she texted. “The next generation has now been fighting for 20 years … they are just as experienced (and perhaps with lessons-learned) as OBL [Osama bin Laden], Zawahiri, and Saif al Adel were on 9/11.”

A renewed threat?

But there are questions as to when and whether al-Qaida’s core leadership will push for renewed attacks against the West.

“Attacking the U.S. is not the be-all and end-all for al-Qaida,” Gartenstein-Ross said. “For the past decade or so, it has deprioritized 9/11 style attacks against the United States for a variety of reasons, including that al-Qaida enjoys many more opportunities within the region.”

The U.N. report similarly cautions that while al-Qaida may be better positioned, it is likely to refrain from launching external attacks in order not to embarrass Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers and because the al-Qaida core still lacks “an external operational capability.”

U.N. member state intelligence agencies, in contrast, view the threat from Islamic State as immediate despite a series of operations by the U.S. and others that have whittled away at the group’s senior leadership.

U.N. member states, according to the report, “observed no significant change of direction for the group or its operations in the core conflict zone.”

IS, which still commands 6,000 to 10,000 fighters across Syria and Iraq, “remains a resilient and persistent threat owing to its decentralized structure and ability to organize complex attacks.”

The report further finds that IS has developed a network of nine regional offices – in Syria, Iraq, Turkey, Afghanistan, Somalia, Africa’s Lake Chad Basin, Libya, Yemen, and Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula – “to sustain the group’s global capability and reputation.”

Intelligence from various member states indicates some of the offices are “a work in progress.”

The Turkey-based office, known as al-Faruq, is mostly defunct following a series of key arrests by Turkish authorities. IS offices in Libya, Yemen and the Sinai are likewise described, for the moment, as “low-functioning or moribund.”

But U.N. member state intelligence suggests IS’ offices in Afghanistan, Somalia and the Lake Chad Basin are functioning well.

The al-Karrar office in Somalia, for example, appears to have become a key financial hub for IS despite the terror group’s limited presence in the country, moving funds from Yemen to Afghanistan to help buy weapons and pay the salaries of IS fighters in multiple locations.

Islamic State leadership

U.N. member states, though, have not resolved the question of who is leading IS following the death of its previous leader in February.

The report says intelligence agencies have coalesced around three possibilities for the identity of the man known by the nom de guerre Abu al-Hassan al-Hashimi al-Qurashi.

Iraqi national Bashar Khattab Ghazal al-Sumaida’i is “cited as the most likely candidate,” according to the report. The other likely candidates are Juma’a Awwad Ibrahim al-Badri, the brother or former IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, and Abd al-Raouf al-Muhajir, who led the IS general directorate of provinces.

In May, Turkish officials claimed to have captured the new IS leader during a raid in Istanbul.

Intelligence shared by some U.N. member states for the report suggested that the official captured by Turkish authorities is likely al-Sumaida’i.

Neither U.S. nor Western counterterrorism officials have publicly confirmed the Turkish claims, but multiple officials speaking to VOA on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss intelligence have said the person in custody is a senior IS official.
…

In Sri Lanka, interim president Ranil Wickremesingh and former minister Dullas Alahapperuma will be the main contenders in a presidential contest that will decide who will lead the crisis-hit country facing an economic collapse and wracked by monthslong mass protests.   

The 225-member parliament will vote in a secret ballot on Wednesday and the race is expected to be tight. The vote will be held a week after former President Gotabaya Rajapaksa fled the country, bringing an end to a powerful dynasty that had ruled the country for nearly two decades.  

Whoever wins the race will face the tough task of winning the confidence of an angry public facing acute hardships as food prices spiral and fuel supplies run out.   

“It’s tremendously important that we have a new government soon, that political stability is restored and that conversations with the International Monetary Fund for a bailout come to a fruitful conclusion,” said Paikiasothy Saravanamuttu, the head of the Center for Policy Alternatives in Colombo.

Wickremesinghe, a veteran politician and a six-time prime minister, has the backing of a faction of the ruling party, which is the largest party in parliament. But seen as an ally of the Rajapaksas, he is deeply unpopular among protestors, who held demonstrations Tuesday to oppose his candidacy.  

Protestors, who burned down his residence on July 9 and occupied his office last week, have replaced cries of “Gota Go Home” with “Ranil Go Home.” They accuse him of being part of the same “system” that led to the country’s economic collapse — he was appointed as prime minister by Gotabaya Rajapaksa in May.

He has also been seen as taking a hardline stance against demonstrators as he vowed to restore law and order last week and imposed an emergency on Monday ahead of the vote.   

Opposition parties also accuse Wickremesinghe of lacking political legitimacy. His United National Party was routed in the 2020 elections and holds only one seat in parliament.   

Wickremesinghe will face off against Dullas Alahapperuma, a five-time lawmaker and former minister in the Rajapaksa administration who resigned in April after former president Rajapaksa dissolved his cabinet. Described as a “dark horse” in the race, he has been nominated by a breakaway faction of the ruling coalition and secured the support of the main opposition party after its candidate Sajith Premadasa withdrew.   

“For the greater good of my country that I love and the people I cherish, I hereby withdraw my candidacy for the position of President,” Premadasa said in a Twitter post before parliament convened. He said his alliance will work hard to make Alahapperuma the president. 

In a statement announcing his nomination last week, Alahapperuma, a former journalist turned lawmaker, called himself a “trustworthy politician” and said that he can build consensus not only among political parties but also among “religious leaders, young political activists, professionals and the wider public.”   

Political analysts say he is likely to be more acceptable to protestors. 

“With all the opposition votes, it is entirely conceivable that Alahapperuma will emerge as the victor,” said Saravanamuttu. “What people want to see is a degree of political stability, a reduction in the powers of the powerful executive presidency and steps to reduce people’s hardships.”   

A third candidate, Anura Kumara Dissanayaka, is not seen as a serious contender, with his party holding just three seats in parliament.   

The country’s new leader will be in office for the remaining of Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s term, which was to run until November 2024.  

He will be in charge of a country deeply worried over how it will recover from a crisis that has seen millions go short of food due to spiraling prices, face hours of power outages and stand for days in line for fuel.
…

 An earthquake has shaken a remote area of eastern Afghanistan, injuring at least 31 people, a Taliban official said Tuesday.

The quake struck in the same region where an earthquake last month killed hundreds of people and caused widespread devastation. Earlier reports said 10 people were injured.

The U.S. Geological Survey said Monday’s earthquake had a magnitude of 5.1.

Abdul Wahid Rayan, director of the Taliban news agency Bakhtar, said the quake struck two districts of the eastern Paktika province.

He said that 18 people were injured in Gayan and 13 others injured in Ziruk district, “There are women and children among those injured in the quake,” added Rayan.

Dozens of residential houses were destroyed and there have been several aftershocks since Monday evening, he added.

Last month’s more powerful earthquake ignited yet another crisis in the struggling country, further underscoring the Taliban’s limited capabilities and isolation. U.N. officials said at the time that 770 people were killed, while the Taliban put the death toll at 1,150.

Overstretched aid groups already keeping millions of Afghans alive had rushed supplies to victims of the June quake, but most countries responded tepidly to Taliban calls for international help.

The international cut-off of Afghanistan’s financing has deepened the country’s economic collapse and fueled its humanitarian crises.
…

Lawmakers began voting Monday to choose India’s next president in an election expected to be won by a woman from India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party who hails from a minority ethnic community. 

The election of Draupadi Murmu is a formality as Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s BJP controls enough seats in federal and state legislatures to push its favored candidate. She is also likely to get the support of other regional parties in state assemblies. 

The president in India is chosen by an electoral college that consists of lawmakers in both houses of Parliament and elected members of the legislative assemblies of all states. The president’s role is largely ceremonial, but the position can be important during times of political uncertainty such as a hung parliament, when the office assumes greater power. 

The votes from Monday’s election will be counted Thursday. 

Modi’s party has projected Murmu as a leader representing poor tribal communities, which generally lack health care and education facilities in remote villages. Murmu, 64, hails from the eastern state of Odisha and previously was governor of Jharkhand state. 

If elected, she will become the first president from one of the country’s tribes and the second-ever female president of India. She is a member of the Santal ethnic minority. 

Murmu’s main opponent is a former BJP rebel, a candidate put up by a divided opposition. Yashwant Sinha, 84, was finance minister during the previous BJP government from 1998 to 2002. He quit the party following a divergence with Modi on economic issues in 2018. 

The winner will replace Ram Nath Kovind, a leader from the Dalit community, which is at the lowest end of the complex hierarchy of caste in Hinduism. 

Kovind, 76, is also a longtime associate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, or National Volunteer Corps, a Hindu nationalist group that has long been accused of stoking religious hatred against Muslims. He has been president since 2017. 

 
…

In a two-story apartment building in the Gupkar neighborhood of Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir, two transgender women are having a cup of tea as they sit cross-legged watching a soap opera on television.

Babloo, 50, was visiting one of her close friends, Sameer, 45, on a Friday afternoon to inquire about her health.

“She does not keep well after heart surgery,” Babloo said. “I, being her best friend, make sure to visit her home time and again to know if she is in need of something.”

According to the 2011 census, Kashmir was home to more than 4,000 trans people, but recent figures on that demographic are not known. India’s planned door-to-door 2021 census was put off because of the COVID-19 pandemic. An estimated 12 million people live in Kashmir.

Being transgender, Babloo said, is not easy in a place like Kashmir, as they are bombarded with epithets, abused, harassed and victimized.

“Only a handful of trans people like me are lucky to find family support, while most of us are denied basic human rights because of our actual sexuality and gender identity,” she said.

Members of Kashmir’s transgender community have, in several awareness programs, claimed that crimes against them have increased over the years. They note physical and sexual assault as well as verbal abuse.

The territory has no official record of such crimes and data on such incidents is based on an ethnographic study of the transgender community of Kashmir in the book Hijras of Kashmir: A Marginalized Form of Personhood. The term “hijras” refers to a transgender person in the local Kashmiri language.

Mehak Mir, president of the Transgender Union of Kashmir, told VOA that rising crime rates against the transgender community forced them to seek an independent institution for themselves in 2011.

On July 13, Manoj Kumar Dwivedi, the principal secretary of a civil service agency known as the General Administration Department (GAD), announced the formation of a Transgender Welfare Board on the direction of Kashmir’s lieutenant governor, Manoj Sinha.

Its makeup, however, has angered members of the transgender community since they are not represented in the board’s governing body. They accuse the local government in Indian Kashmir of “deceiving” them.

“It took the government 11 years to set up the board,” Mir said, adding that her community had high hopes.

“I wonder how we are supposed to get help from the welfare board when not a single transgender is part of its governing body,” she said. “The current body has no idea about our suffering, and I believe they will use our name and identity to mint money from the government for their personal benefit.”

Mir told VOA that only a transgender person can understand the needs of another trans person.

“None of us can be a part of this board unless we are given full representation in the governing body,” she said. “The government announced [a] 13-member governing body to run the affairs of the Transgender Welfare Board but we would like to see only trans people running the institution that has been formed to safeguard our rights.”

More than half a dozen transgender people who spoke to VOA expressed their happiness regarding the establishment of the welfare board but also said the governing body should have included trans individuals.

Malik Suhail, deputy secretary to the GAD, told VOA his office only “constituted the welfare board after receiving a proposal” from Kashmir’s Social Welfare Department, which deals with social services.

VOA reached out to Sheetal Nanda, commissioner secretary to the Social Welfare Department, for a comment as to why transgender people were not on the welfare board’s governing body. Nanda did not respond to repeated calls and text messages.

Aijaz Ahmad Bund, a prominent LGBT activist and author of Hijras of Kashmir: A Marginalized Form of Personhood, welcomed the establishment of the board, saying, “There [is] no doubt that the body has been formulated for the welfare of the community.”

He said, however, that the government should hand over the affairs of the Transgender Welfare Board to trans people in order to best serve that community.

“Full-fledged representation of transgender in the governing body of Transgender Welfare Board is very important,” he said. “Bureaucrats and people unfamiliar with the suffering of a transgender won’t serve any purpose.”

Bund said that transgender welfare boards in other Indian states act as a governing body that facilitates the “need assessment and percolation of benefits” to the community. Bund said he expects the same kind of work from the newly established board.

Meanwhile, Babloo and Sameer said they believe that the major concern is the need for a home for older transgender people.

“Two of our elderly community members in 2011 and 2018 died while spending nights on footpaths during the winter when the temperature was below the freezing point,” Babloo said.

“None of the people from the so-called civilized society bothered to look at them when their bodies were lying on the footpath. People realized both of them had died only after dogs started eating their flesh.”

Siamak Dehghanpour and Kevin Nha contributed to this report.
…

Sri Lanka’s acting President Ranil Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency Sunday for the island nation that has been wracked with a crippling economic crisis and weeks of protests. 

The declaration said the move was needed “in the interests of public security, the protection of public order and the maintenance of supplies and services essential to the life of the community.” 

Wickremesinghe, who is the former prime minister, was sworn in as the country’s acting president last week, after Gotabaya Rajapaksa resigned the presidency after arriving in Singapore, from the Maldives where he first fled to escape the protests about the country’s economic woes. 

Rajapaksa’s resignation was formally accepted Friday by the speaker of Parliament, who said that a new president would be elected within a week to serve the remaining two years of the president’s term.

Saying that the election will be done in a “swift and transparent manner,” the speaker of Parliament, Mahinda Yapa Abeywardena, called on people to “create a peaceful atmosphere” to implement the democratic process.

His appeal came after a chaotic week, in which protesters stormed the president’s and prime minister’s residences and offices after Rajapaksa defied monthslong calls to step down. They only vacated the buildings on Thursday, saying they had achieved their objective of demonstrating people’s power and wanted to ensure their struggle remains peaceful.

The 73-year-old Rajapaksa’s resignation marks a major victory for the protest movement that had demanded his exit after an economic crisis left the island nation struggling with runaway inflation and severe shortages of fuel and medicine, as foreign exchange reserves ran out. 

Rajapaksa and his family, who held key posts in the government, including that of prime minister and finance minister, controlled about 70% of the national budget and are widely blamed for mismanagement leading to the country becoming virtually bankrupt. It was a rude shock for a nation once hailed as a success story among developing countries with a well-educated population and a large middle class. 

Seen as being close to the Rajapaksas and accused of alleviating pressure on Gotabaya Rajapaksa to resign after he accepted the prime minister’s job in May, Wickremesinghe also is under pressure from protesters to quit.

Wickremesinghe had earlier said he will step down when a new administration is in place and called on political parties to elect a new unity government, but the ruling party has said he will be their choice for the next president.

The main opposition party wants its leader, Sajith Premadasa, to head the country. Political observers said it is imperative for lawmakers to set aside their differences and arrive at a consensus.

“The hope is that the political parties can come together because restoring the economy has to be a collective effort and everyone must share the responsibility,” says Jehan Perera at the National Peace Council research group in Colombo.
…

Pakistan’s opposition party of deposed Prime Minister Imran Khan swept by-elections in the country’s most populous Punjab province Sunday, dealing a serious blow to the central coalition government and possibly paving the way for snap national polls. 

Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI) won 15 of the 20 seats up for grabs, according to unofficial results reported by the state-run radio Pakistan and independent television stations. 

The rival Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz (PML-N) party of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif secured four seats and one went to an independent candidate, his party leaders confirmed at a late-night news conference. 

The outcome has given the PTI the requisite majority in the provincial legislature to reclaim power from the PML-N government of incumbent Chief Minister Hamza Shehbaz, son of Sharif, who took an oath of office only eight weeks ago. 

Defense Minister Khawaja Asif and other top PML-N leaders in separate statements congratulated the PTI for its “historic” victory. 

“We accept the opinion of the public. They are constitutionally the real decision-makers and this is democracy,” said Marriyum Aurangzeb, federal information minister. 

Khan thanked his party workers, voters and allies for helping the PTI win Sunday’s elections and renewed his demand for snap elections in Pakistan. 

Call for snap elections

“The only way forward from here is to hold fair & free elections under a credible ECP (Election Commission of Pakistan). Any other path will only lead to greater political uncertainty & further economic chaos,” Khan tweeted. 

Punjab was ruled by a PTI-led coalition until mid-April when then-Chief Minister Sardar Usman Buzdar resigned shortly after Khan’s four-year-old central government fell in a parliamentary vote of no-confidence earlier that month. That paved the way for Sharif to replace him as the country’s new prime minister and form a multiparty coalition. 

Khan’s subsequent nominee for the post of chief minister was defeated after a faction among his party provincial lawmakers voted for Hamza Shebaz instead. 

The PTI successfully petitioned the Election Commission of Pakistan to unseat the legislators in question for voting against the party in breach of anti-defection laws, leaving 20 Punjab seats vacant for which voting was eventually held Sunday. 

Khan, the nearly 70-year-old former cricket legend, has accused Sharif and his other partners in the ruling coalition of conspiring with the powerful military and the United States to bring down his government. The U.S. government denied the allegation. 

The deposed prime minister has since drawn tens of thousands to rallies across the country, condemning the Sharif administration in his televised speeches and media interviews as an “imported government” imposed on Pakistan by the alleged Washington-led conspiracy. 

Khan has been pressing Sharif to hold early general elections. He has been urging his supporters during campaigning for the by-elections and media interviews to vote for his party to help him end dynastic family rule and the alleged U.S. influence on Pakistan’s foreign policy. 

Incumbent’s challenges 

The provincial election came as Sharif’s administration struggles to deal with the highest inflation facing the country in 13 years. Central bank foreign exchange reserves also have rapidly depleted to around $9.7 billion, barely enough to cover a few weeks of imports. 

Last week, Islamabad and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) agreed to revive a bailout financial package for the cash-strapped South Asian nation to help it tackle a payment crisis in the wake of high global price of energy imports, mainly blamed on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. 

The agreement, subject to the approval by the IMF board, was struck only after Sharif took politically unpopular decisions of raising energy prices and taxes to meet requirements mutually agreed with the global lending agency. 

“The poll was a referendum on both the new gov’t’s performance and on Khan’s narrative about his ouster,” Michael Kugelman, an expert on South Asian affairs at Washington’s Wilson Center, tweeted while commenting on the results of the by-elections 

“If the new beleaguered government was looking for a boost to its mandate, it clearly didn’t get it,” Kugelman said. “Now it’s stuck with a free-falling economy, it lacks a public mandate, and it confronts a galvanized opposition.” 
…

India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party has removed its social media head in the northern state of Haryana for an allegedly anti-Islam tweet five years ago, but Indian Muslims are demanding that Arun Yadav be arrested.

In the 2017 tweet, Yadav likened the Kaaba, the Muslim shrine in Mecca’s Great Mosque, to an ice cube in a glass of whiskey.

In the first week of July, when some online activists and Muslim leaders called attention to the five-year-old tweet and demanded legal action against Yadav, the BJP removed him on July 7.

“Arun Yadav’s abusive comment targeting the Kaaba hurt the religious sentiment of all Muslims. The community across the country demanded that he is arrested and tried in court for his dirty depiction of Islam’s holiest place,” Syed Azharuddin, a Muslim leader in the southern state of Telangana, told VOA.

“But to our disappointment, the government is showing no sign it will act against Yadav,” he said.

Before Narendra Modi became India’s prime minister in 2014, his party set up social media wings, known as information technology or IT cells, across the country, aiming to propagate its ideology and political messages, and to expand popular support.

These cells have in recent years been blamed for spreading propaganda against opposition party leaders. Social media fact-checkers have frequently exposed fake news materials, allegedly spread by the BJP’s IT cell network.

Online activists and Muslim community leaders have long accused the cells of spreading Islamophobia on social media platforms. By posting aggressive anti-Islam or anti-Muslim content, many BJP IT cell workers, including top executives, aim to improve their political profiles within the party, Muslim community leaders said.

“Many from the BJP IT cell frequently post anti-Muslim content that is liked by the leaders and followers of the Hindu nationalist party. Such posts abuse the Prophet Muhammad, Kaaba Sharif [Holy Kaaba] etc., and insult the religious beliefs of Muslims. Yet, to gain popularity among a good number of Hindu community members, those like Arun Yadav post content abusing and attacking Muslims,” the president of Tipu Sultan Party, a political party, Shaikh Sadeque, told VOA.

Yadav’s firing was just a BJP action, nothing was done by the government for the “blasphemous” post, Sadeque said.

“The Indian government also did not act against BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma for abuses she aimed at the Prophet Muhammad. The government does not want to take action against any BJP leader for any of their anti-Muslim statements or comments, so, they keep posting such abusive content fearlessly.”

BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma allegedly insulted Muhammad in a May television appearance, sparking international condemnation. She was suspended from the party.

VOA sought a reaction from the BJP IT cell following the allegation against Yadav but emails sent to the cell’s national head, Amit Malviya, have remained unanswered.

There are hundreds of past instances of social media users being arrested in India for hurting religious sentiments. Perhaps the most sensational among them is the recent arrest of journalist and fact-checker Mohammed Zubair. Police accused him of insulting Hindu beliefs in a 2018 tweet.

“Zubair was arrested for a tweet carrying a screen grab of a movie scene which showed a hotel signboard repainted from ‘Honeymoon Hotel’ to ‘Hanuman Hotel.’ The tweet of Yadav was certainly more abusive. Yet he has not been arrested,” Muslim leader Azharuddin said. Hanuman refers to a monkey god revered by Hindus.

The BJP routinely uses anti-Muslim propaganda to polarize the Hindu society and to unite Hindus by identifying Muslims as “the other, an outsider, an enemy,” New Delhi-based Muslim leader Zafarul Islam Khan told VOA.

“They can go on doing this because, under the current dispensation, they enjoy full immunity. The victims [Muslims] have no recourse — the government, bureaucracy and police do not listen to them,” Khan said.

“Even courts are not keen to listen to the victims or are not taking the matters seriously. The victims find no one around to turn to for justice.”

Activists say the BJP and other Hindu right-wing organizations, including the RSS, or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, work in tandem, attacking the religious minorities and making them appear as threats to the majority community or the Hindus. The RSS is also known as the ruling party’s ideological guide.

Delhi University teacher Apoorvanand said the “life breath of the RSS and BJP is anti-Muslim and anti-Christian prejudice and hatred.”

“To keep it alive and make it part of the lives of Hindus they have to keep creating images of Muslims which look abhorrent to Hindus. They have to manufacture stories and events which paint Muslims as horrible creatures, their living practices as ugly, unclean, backward, conservative… and Muslims as a collective always conspiring against Hindus,” Apoorvanand told VOA.

“By keeping Hindus fed with this hatred the RSS and BJP want to turn them into their unquestioning followers as if it is only the RSS/BJP which can protect them from Muslims and keep Muslims in their place,” he said.
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Sri Lanka’s ousted president, who fled overseas this week to escape a popular uprising against his government, has said he took “all possible steps” to avert the economic crisis that has engulfed the island nation.

Gotabaya Rajapaksa’s resignation was accepted by parliament Friday. He flew to the Maldives and then Singapore after hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters came out onto the streets of Colombo a week ago and occupied his official residence and offices.

Sri Lanka’s parliament met Saturday to begin the process of electing a new president, and a shipment of fuel arrived to provide some relief to the crisis-hit nation.

Dhammika Dasanayake, the secretary-general of Sri Lanka’s parliament, formally read out Rajapaksa’s resignation letter, the contents of which had not previously been made public.

In the letter, Rajapaksa said Sri Lanka’s financial crisis was rooted in years of economic mismanagement that predated his presidency and in the COVID-19 pandemic that drastically reduced Sri Lanka’s tourist arrivals and remittances from foreign workers.

“It is my personal belief that I took all possible steps to address this crisis, including inviting parliamentarians to form an all-party or unity government,” the letter said.

Parliament will meet Tuesday to accept nominations for the post of the president. A vote to decide the country’s leader is set to take place Wednesday.

Prime minister Ranil Wickremesinghe, an ally of Rajapaksa who is the sole representative of his party in parliament, has been sworn in as acting president until then.

Wickremesinghe is one of the top contenders to take on the role full-time but protesters also want him gone, leading to the prospect of further unrest should he be elected.

The opposition’s presidential nominee is Sajith Premadasa.

The potential dark horse is senior ruling party lawmaker Dullas Alahapperuma.

Urgent relief program

Wickremesinghe said Saturday he would implement an urgent relief program to provide fuel, gas and essential food items to Sri Lankans who are struggling because of the economic situation. He also promised to enter dialog with protesters on reducing government corruption.

Sri Lanka’s economy is likely to contract by more than 6% this year as political instability and social unrest affect discussions on financial relief with the Internation Monetary Fund, the governor of the country’s central bank told The Wall Street Journal.

Over 100 police and security personnel with assault rifles were deployed on the approach road to parliament Saturday, manning barricades and a water cannon to prevent any unrest.

Columns of security forces patrolled another approach road to parliament, though there were no signs of any protesters.

Street protests over Sri Lanka’s economic meltdown simmered for months before boiling over July 9, with protesters blaming the Rajapaksa family and allies for runaway inflation, shortages of basic goods, and corruption.

The Rajapaksa family had dominated politics in Sri Lanka for years and Basil Rajapaksa, brother of Gotabaya Rajapaksa, resigned as finance minister in April as street protests surged and quit his seat in parliament in June.

Dayslong fuel queues have become the norm for the island nation of 22 million, while foreign exchange reserves have dwindled to close to zero and headline inflation hit 54.6% last month.

Sri Lanka received the first of three fuel shipments Saturday, Energy Minister Kanchana Wijesekera said. These are the first shipments to reach the country in about three weeks.

A second diesel consignment will also arrive Saturday, with a shipment of petrol due by Tuesday.

“Payments completed for all 3,” the minister said in a Tweet.

 
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