Tag: South and Central Asia

China, Russia, Cuba, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are expected to be elected to the board of the UN human rights council on Tuesday, leaving human rights campaigners in the countries aghast and pleading with EU states to commit to withholding their support. The Geneva-based monitoring NGO UN Watch described ...

Draconian surveillance measures introduced during the Covid-19 epidemic are handing “unchecked powers” to authoritarian regimes across Asia, human rights experts are warning. In a report out today, privacy analysts warn that “extreme measures and unchecked powers” brought in to tackle Covid-19 could become permanent features of government across the ...

Conflicts with US military involvement have displaced at least 37 million people since the beginning of the “war on terror” nearly two decades ago, a report has estimated. The invasion of Iraq and the decades of instability that have followed in the country have uprooted at least 9.2 million ...

Pakistan’s government has blocked Tinder, Grindr and three other dating apps, its latest move to curb online platforms deemed to be disseminating “immoral content“. In Pakistan extramarital relationships and homosexuality are illegal. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority said it has sent notices to the management of the five apps, “keeping ...

Authorities have brought in a curfew in many parts of Indian-controlled Kashmir, one day ahead of the first anniversary of India’s controversial decision to revoke the disputed region’s special status. Shahid Iqbal Choudhary, a civil administrator, said the security lockdown was put in place in the region’s main city ...

Facing a continuing upward trajectory in Covid-19 cases, the Indian government is clamping down on media coverage critical of its handling of the pandemic. More than 50 Indian journalists have been arrested or had police complaints registered against them, or been physically assaulted. The majority of those facing action ...

Almost a quarter of Delhi’s 28 million residents may have developed coronavirus antibodies, making it one of the worst-affected capital cities in the world, according to research. A random sample of 20,000 residents by India’s National Centre for Disease Control (NCDC) found 23.4% had antibodies to the virus. It ...

Pakistan’s national airline has written to foreign missions and regulatory bodies, assuring them it has grounded 141 pilots suspected of obtaining licenses through unfair means, the carrier’s spokesman has said. The move is an attempt to assuage safety concerns after Pakistan’s aviation minister, Ghulam Sarwar Khan, said on Friday ...