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Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience

Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience
Activists take part in a protest march as they demand justice for victims arrested and killed in the recent countrywide violence in Dhaka on August 2, 2024. (AFP)
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Updated 03 August 2024
AFP
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Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience

Bangladesh students call for nationwide civil disobedience
  • Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem last month that killed over 200 in some of the worst unrest of PM Hasina’s tenure
  • Troop deployments briefly restored order but crowds hit the streets in huge numbers after Friday prayers in the Muslim-majority nation
Updated 03 August 2024
AFP
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DHAKA: Student leaders rallied Bangladeshis on Saturday for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government weathered a worsening backlash over a deadly police crackdown on protesters.
Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem last month that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.
Troop deployments briefly restored order but crowds hit the streets in huge numbers after Friday prayers in the Muslim-majority nation, heeding a call by student leaders to press the government for more concessions.
Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing the initial protests, urged their compatriots to launch an all-out non-cooperation movement from Sunday.
“This includes non-payment of taxes and utility bills, strikes by government workers and a halt to overseas remittance payments through banks,” the group’s Asif Mahmud told AFP.
Mahmud’s fellow student leaders also said another round of nationwide rallies would be staged on Saturday.
“Please don’t stay at home. Join your nearest protest march,” Mahmud wrote on Facebook.
Students are demanding a public apology from Hasina for last month’s violence and the dismissal of several of her ministers.
They have also insisted that the government reopens schools and universities around the country, all of which were shuttered at the height of the unrest.
Crowds on the street have gone further, chanting demands for Hasina to leave office.
Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.
Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.
Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of a quota scheme — since scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court — that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.
With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.
The protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups.
Hasina’s government eventually imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed troops and shut down the nation’s mobile Internet network for 11 days to restore order.
Foreign governments condemned the clampdown, with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week calling for an international probe into the “excessive and lethal force against protesters.”
Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters last weekend that security forces had operated with restraint but were “forced to open fire” to defend government buildings.
At least 32 children were among those killed last month, the UN said Friday.

Topics: Bangladesh students protest Bangladesh Protests

Canada alleges Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered campaign targeting Sikh separatists

Canada alleges Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered campaign targeting Sikh separatists
Updated 30 October 2024
AP
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Canada alleges Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered campaign targeting Sikh separatists

Canada alleges Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered campaign targeting Sikh separatists
  • Justin Trudeau has said Canada has evidence Indian agents murdered Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar
  • Indian authorities have repeatedly denied Canada’s allegations while calling them absurd in recent months
Updated 30 October 2024
AP

OTTAWA, Ontario: A Canadian official alleged Tuesday that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered a campaign of violence, intimidation and intelligence-gathering targeting Sikh separatists inside Canada.
Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison told Parliament members of the national security committee that he had confirmed Shah’s name to The Washington Post, which first reported the allegations.
“The journalist called me and asked if it was that person. I confirmed it was that person,” Morrison told the committee.
Morrison did not say how Canada knew of Shah’s alleged involvement.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said a year ago that Canada had credible evidence agents of the Indian government were involved in the murder of Canadian Sikh activist Hardeep Singh Nijjar in British Columbia in June 2023.
Canadian authorities have repeatedly said they have shared evidence of that with Indian authorities.
Indian government officials have repeatedly denied Canada has provided evidence and have called the allegations absurd. India’s embassy in Ottawa didn’t immediately respond to messages for a request for comment on the allegation against Shah.
On Oct. 14, Canada expelled the Indian high commissioner and five other diplomats, alleging they were persons of interest in multiple cases of coercion, intimidation and violence aimed at quieting a campaign for an independent Sikh state known as Khalistan.
Canada is not the only country that has accused Indian officials of plotting an assassination on foreign soil. The United States Justice Department announced criminal charges in mid-October against an Indian government employee in connection with an alleged foiled plot to kill a Sikh separatist leader living in New York City.
In the case announced by the Justice Department, Vikash Yadav, who authorities say directed the New York plot from India, faces murder-for-hire charges in a planned killing that prosecutors have previously said was meant to precede a string of other politically motivated murders in the United States and Canada.
Nathalie Drouin, Trudeau’s national security adviser, told the committee Tuesday that Canada has evidence the Indian government first gathered information on Indian nationals and Canadian citizens in Canada through diplomatic channels and proxies.
She said the information was then passed to the government in New Delhi, which allegedly works with a criminal network affiliated with Lawrence Bishnoi.
Bishnoi is currently in prison in India, but Drouin said his vast criminal network has been linked to homicides, assassination plots, coercion and other violent crimes in Canada.
Before the Royal Canadian Mounted Police went public with allegations that Indian diplomats were persons of interest in criminal investigations, Drouin said there was an effort to work with the Indian government to ensure accountability.
Drouin said a meeting was held with Modi’s national security adviser, Ajit Doval, in Singapore two days earlier.
She said the decision was made to go public when it became evident the Indian government would not cooperate with Canada on proposed accountability measures.
That included asking India to waive diplomatic immunity for the persons of interest, including the high commissioner in Ottawa. Drouin said this was not seen as likely.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police said it took the extraordinary step of talking publicly about ongoing investigations because of threats to public safety.
The Indian government denies the allegations and has expelled six Canadian diplomats in return.
Nijjar, 45, was fatally shot in his pickup truck after he left the Sikh temple he led in Surrey, British Columbia. An Indian-born citizen of Canada, he owned a plumbing business and was a leader in what remains of a once-strong movement to create an independent Sikh homeland.
Four Indian nationals living in Canada were charged with Niijar’s murder and are awaiting trial.
Drouin and Morrison were called as witnesses at the committee alongside Royal Canadian Mounted Police Commissioner Mike Duheme, as well as the director of Canada’s spy service.

Topics: India Canada relations

A powerful typhoon nears the Philippines, with many shelters still crammed after a recent storm

A powerful typhoon nears the Philippines, with many shelters still crammed after a recent storm
Updated 30 October 2024
AP
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A powerful typhoon nears the Philippines, with many shelters still crammed after a recent storm

A powerful typhoon nears the Philippines, with many shelters still crammed after a recent storm
  • Northern Philippine provinces are forcibly evacuating villagers from high-risk areas as a powerful typhoon approached while the country is still recovering from a recent storm
Updated 30 October 2024
AP

MANILA: Villagers in northern Philippine provinces were forced to evacuate on Wednesday as a powerful typhoon approached the nation still reeling from a recent storm that left at least 182 dead and missing and emergency shelters crammed with displaced people.
Typhoon Kong-rey was last tracked 350 kilometers (217 miles) east of northern Cagayan province, with sustained winds of up to 185 kph (115 mph) and gusting up to 230 kph (143 mph). Forecasters said it could further strengthen at sea.
It was blowing northwestward and was predicted to pass near the northernmost Philippine province of Batanes before slamming into southeastern Taiwan on Thursday.
“We are still recovering from the two previous typhoon and storm and here we go again,” Batanes Governor Marilou Cayco told The Associated Press.
“We’re going around now to supervise the forced evacuation of people, specially those whose houses were severely damaged by the last storm,” Cayco said.
Elsewhere across the northern Philippines, more than 300,000 people displaced last week by Tropical Storm Trami, remained in emergency shelters as the new typhoon approached, Office of Civil Defense officials said.
Forecasters also warned of a “life-threatening storm surge reaching 2 to 3 meters (6.5 to 9.8 feet)” that could be whipped up by Kong-rey in low-lying coasts of Batanes and the nearby Babuyan cluster of islands.
All ships and cargo vessels were advised to remain in ports and those at sea should seek shelter or safe harbor as soon as possible until winds and waves subside.
Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr., who oversees disaster-response efforts, ordered the forced evacuation of people in high-risk areas threatened by Kong-rey, which is locally called Leon.
“We always aim for zero casualty in the event of disasters, so we strongly urge the public to heed our protocols,” Teodoro said.
While Kong-rey was expected to blow off the northern Philippines, its extensive rain band with a width of more than 600 kilometers (373 miles) could lash the entire main northern region of Luzon, the country’s most populous, the government said.
Tropical storm Trami, which blew out of the northern Philippines last Friday, left at least 145 dead and 37 missing mostly in widespread flooding and landslides and affected more than 7 million people in nearly 11,000 mostly rural villages, the government’s disaster-mitigation agency said.
More than 111,000 houses were damaged, many inundated by floods and swollen rivers. Trami dumped up to two months’ worth of rain in just 24 hours in some regions, setting off flash floods that swept away cars and trapped people on their roofs.
At the height of last week’s onslaught, officials in the hard-hit region of Bicol, southeast of the capital of Manila, appealed frantically for more rescue boats to save thousands of villagers trapped in rising floodwaters.
About 20 storms and typhoons batter the disaster-prone Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones in the world, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing, flattened entire villages and caused several cargo ships to ran aground inland and smash into houses and people in the central Philippines.

Topics: Philippines

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Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked
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Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked

Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked

Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked
Updated 30 October 2024
AP
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Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked

Tuberculosis infected 8 million people last year, the most WHO has ever tracked
  • WHO says TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific
Updated 30 October 2024
AP

LONDON: More than 8 million people were diagnosed with tuberculosis last year, the World Health Organization said Tuesday, the highest number recorded since the UN health agency began keeping track.
About 1.25 million people died of TB last year, the new report said, adding that TB likely returned to being the world’s top infectious disease killer after being replaced by COVID-19 during the pandemic. The deaths are almost double the number of people killed by HIV in 2023.
WHO said TB continues to mostly affect people in Southeast Asia, Africa and the Western Pacific; India, Indonesia, China, the Philippines and Pakistan account for more than half of the world’s cases.
“The fact that TB still kills and sickens so many people is an outrage, when we have the tools to prevent it, detect it and treat it,” WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said in a statement.
TB deaths continue to fall globally, however, and the number of people being newly infected is beginning to stabilize. The agency noted that of the 400,000 people estimated to have drug-resistant TB last year, fewer than half were diagnosed and treated.
Tuberculosis is caused by airborne bacteria that mostly affects the lungs. Roughly a quarter of the global population is estimated to have TB, but only about 5–10 percent of those develop symptoms.
Advocacy groups, including Doctors Without Borders, have long called for the US company Cepheid, which produces TB tests used in poorer countries, to make them available for $5 per test to increase availability. Earlier this month, Doctors Without Borders and 150 global health partners sent Cepheid an open letter calling on them to “prioritize people’s lives” and to urgently help make TB testing more widespread globally.

Topics: tuberculosis WHO

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In Georgia, some voters balanced EU hopes with the fear of war with Russia

In Georgia, some voters balanced EU hopes with the fear of war with Russia
Updated 30 October 2024
Reuters
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In Georgia, some voters balanced EU hopes with the fear of war with Russia

In Georgia, some voters balanced EU hopes with the fear of war with Russia
  • For many voters, avoiding war with Russia a priority
  • Election result poses a challenge to EU ambitions
Updated 30 October 2024
Reuters

TBILISI: For some Georgians who supported the ruling Georgian Dream party in Saturday’s disputed parliamentary election, the aspiration to go West toward the European Union had to be balanced by the brutal reality of the need to keep the peace with Russia.
The opposition and foreign observers had cast the election as a watershed moment that would decide if Georgia moves closer to Europe or leans back toward Russia amid the war in Ukraine. The ruling party, which is seen as loyal to its billionaire founder Bidzina Ivanishvili, says it wants to one day join the EU but that it must also avoid confrontation with President Vladimir Putin’s Russia that could leave the South Caucasus republic devastated like Ukraine.
“We’ve had peace these 12 years in Georgia,” said Sergo, a resident of the capital Tbilisi who has voted for Georgian Dream in every election since the party rose to power in 2012. Georgian Dream clinched 54 percent of the vote on Saturday, the electoral commission said, while opposition parties and the president claimed the election had been stolen and the West called for investigations into reports of voting irregularities.
Observer groups, including the 57-nation Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), said alleged violations, including ballot-stuffing, bribery, voter intimidation and violence, could have affected the election’s outcome.
The EU and the United States said there was not a level playing field but stopped short of saying the result was stolen by Georgian Dream. Russia accused the West of meddling. Beyond the rhetoric, though, the result poses a challenge to Tbilisi’s ambitions to join the European Union, which polls show the overwhelming majority of Georgians support.
Brussels has effectively frozen Georgia’s EU accession application over concerns of democratic backsliding under Georgian Dream and what it casts is its pro-Russian rhetoric.
Georgian Dream backers say that while they want to join Europe, they don’t want to sacrifice Georgia’s traditional values of family and church.
EU ASPIRATIONS?
For them, Georgian Dream’s party slogan, “Only with peace, dignity, and prosperity to Europe,” appeals.
Official results, which the opposition says are fraudulent, showed the party securing huge margins of up to 90 percent in rural areas, even as it underperformed in Tbilisi and other cities.
Ghia Abashidze, a political analyst close to Georgian Dream, attributed the party’s showing to its emphasis on keeping the peace and preserving traditional values. The Georgian parliament passed a law this year curbing LGBT rights and Pride events have been attacked by violent mobs in years past. The topic remains sensitive in conservative Georgia, which is devoutly Orthodox Christian. Abashidze said that Georgian Dream was still committed to EU integration, but found more to like in some of the bloc’s Eastern European members such as Hungary, whose premier Viktor Orban flew to Tbilisi on Monday and hailed the election as free.
He said Orban’s Hungary, which has also been accused of democratic backsliding, shared the Georgian ruling party’s core values of “family, traditions, statehood, sovereignty, peace.”
In Isani, a working class Tbilisi neighborhood and one of the few in the capital where Georgian Dream received more votes than the four main opposition parties combined, Sergo, who did not want to give his last name, echoed the sentiment.
“We want to go to the European Union with our customs, our traditions, our mentality,” the 56-year-old said, passing freshly-baked bread to customers from his shop window. He said he believed LGBT people should receive medical treatment and go to church to become “normal people.”

RUSSIA OR EU?
By contrast, opposition supporters say the ruling party’s positions on foreign policy and social issues are incompatible with Europe’s, and keeping the peace with Russia depends on Georgia aligning with the West.
At a thousands-strong protest against the election results on Monday, Salome Gasviani said the opposition was fighting to preserve Georgia’s freedom and independence.
“We’re here to say out loud that Georgia is a very European country and our future is in the EU, in the West,” she said.
Russia, which ruled Georgia for about 200 years, won a brief war against the country in 2008, and memories of Russian tanks rolling toward Tbilisi are still fresh for many. During the campaign, Georgian Dream played on fears of war, with posters showing devastated Ukrainian cities beside picturesque Georgian ones to illustrate the threat.
“The main thing is that we don’t have a war,” 69-year-old Otar Shaverdashvili, another Isani resident, said before the vote. “I remember the last war very well. No one wants another one.”
Kornely Kakachia, head of Georgian Institute of Politics think tank, said the opposition had struggled to allay fears that a change of government could risk Georgia being sucked into the Ukraine war.
“If someone asks you to choose between war and the European Union and you have this kind of choice, then of course people will choose the status quo,” he said.

Topics: Georgia EU Russia

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Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday

Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday
Updated 30 October 2024
Reuters
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Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday

Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday
  • Packing gusts of nearly 300 kph, the storm has strengthened into a super typhoon and is expected to further intensify before hitting Taitung county
  • Up to 1.2 meters of rainfall is expected in mountainous eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely to hit coastal areas on Thursday
Updated 30 October 2024
Reuters

TAIPEI: Taiwan expects Super Typhoon Kong-rey to make landfall on Thursday along its sparsely populated east coast, issuing a warning on Wednesday ahead of the powerful storm that will bring heavy rain and strong winds across a swath of the island.
Packing gusts of nearly 300 kph, the storm has strengthened into a super typhoon and is expected to further intensify before hitting Taitung county, according to US Navy’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center.
The storm is then forecast to cross Taiwan’s south, enter the Taiwan Strait and head toward China, Taiwan’s Central Weather Administration said, which labelled the storm a “strong typhoon,” the most powerful storm level for Taiwan.
Up to 1.2 meters (3.9 feet) of rainfall is expected in mountainous eastern Taiwan and destructive winds are likely to hit coastal areas on Thursday, according to the administration.
Taiwan President Lai Ching-te urged people to stay away from the mountains and coast.
“I would like to urge my friends in the eastern, southern and northern parts of the country to be on alert,” he wrote on his Facebook page.
Taiwan’s defense ministry said it had put about 36,000 troops on standby across the island.
Central Weather Administration forecaster Stan Chang said it was relatively rare for a strong typhoon to directly hit Taiwan this late in the year, pointing to the still favorable environment for typhoons, including warmer sea temperatures in the Pacific and later-than-normal cold fronts from the north.
“We must urge people to make preparations. It’s a strong typhoon with a large size,” Chang added.
Heavy rain is also expected in the north around the capital Taipei throughout the day on Thursday, the administration said.
The transport ministry said at least 26 ferry trips to outlying islands had been stopped for Wednesday, while Taiwan’s largest domestic carrier UNI Air said it had canceled all flights for Thursday.
Subtropical Taiwan is frequently hit by typhoons. The last one, Typhoon Krathon, killed four people earlier this month as it passed through the south of the island.

Topics: weather Taiwan

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