United News of Bangladesh

Thousands of Indians rallied on Sunday under key opposition Congress party leader Rahul Gandhi, who made a scathing attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government over soaring unemployment and rising food and fuel prices in the country. Gandhi accused Modi of pursuing policies benefitting big business groups at the expense of small and medium industries and poor farmers and workers. He also said the government was creating an atmosphere of fear and hatred, in reference to Hindu-Muslim tensions. He said the prices of petrol, diesel, cooking gas and essential food items like wheat have shot up 40%-175% since Modi came to power eight years ago. Without naming the business leaders, Gandhi said two key groups were running India’s ports, airports, oil refineries, information technology sector and big media houses. The rally was held at Ramlila Ground in New Delhi, which is used for religious festivals, major political meetings and entertainment events. The Modi government says it has provided millions of people with toilets, gas connections, drinking water, bank accounts, free health insurance and homes. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman defended the government’s handling of the economy in Parliament and said there was zero probability of India slipping into recession despite battling the COVID-19 pandemic and supply-chain disruptions caused by the ongoing Ukrainian conflict. The rally came three days ahead of the start of Gandhi’s 3,500 kilometers (2,185 miles) walking tour covering Indian cities, towns and villages over the next five months.

The scale of the humanitarian crisis in Pakistan is unprecedented, with a third of the country under water, the UN said Friday. More than 33 million people, 15 percent of the total Pakistani population, have been affected, Dr Palitha Mahipala, the World Health Organization (WHO) representative in the country, said. "More than 6.4 million people are in dire need of humanitarian aid." In the past few weeks, record monsoon rains dumped more than five times the 30-year average for rainfall in some provinces, killing more than 1,200 people and injuring over 6,000 since June. As rains continue and flooding is likely to worsen over the coming days, there is an urgent need to scale up disease surveillance, restore damaged health facilities, and ensure sufficient medicines and health supplies to affected communities. Read: Pakistan fatal flooding has hallmarks of warming "Affected people have told our staff on the ground about their traumatic and scarring experiences as rain and floodwaters swept away their possessions in minutes," Matthew Saltmarsh, spokesperson for the UN refugee agency, said. Torrential monsoon rainfall has caused the River Indus to overflow, submerging land for tens of kilometres wide, according to recent images from the European Space Agency. Crops and livestock have been lost, having a significant impact on both livelihood and nutrition of afflicted communities. Pakistan, which is already facing political and economic turmoil, has been thrown into the front line of the human-induced climate crisis. The South Asian country of 220 million people faced dramatic weather conditions this year, from record heatwaves to deadly floods. Pakistan is home to more glaciers than anywhere outside the polar areas. Global warming makes the country more vulnerable to sudden outbursts of melting glacier water, according to the Meteorological Department in Islamabad.

Sri Lanka’s ousted President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, who returned home after seven weeks in exile following protests over economic hardships, could face legal action over forced disappearances of activists now that he has been stripped of constitutional immunity, a lawyer said Saturday. Rajapaksa flew to Colombo around midnight Friday from Thailand and was escorted under military guard to his new home in the capital. He has no pending court cases because he was protected by constitutional immunity as president. A corruption case against him during his time as a top defense official was withdrawn soon after he was elected in 2019. However, Rajapaksa will be served a summons next week to appear at the Supreme Court, where his immunity from testifying on the forced disappearance of two young political activists is challenged, said lawyer Nuwan Bopage, who represents the victims’ families. He said Rajapaksa fled the country when he was about to be served a summons in July. The disappearances took place 12 years ago soon after the end of the country’s long civil war when Rajapaksa was a powerful official at the Defense Ministry under the presidency of his older brother. At the time, Rajapaksa was accused of overseeing abduction squads that whisked away rebel suspects, critical journalists and activists, many of them never to be seen again. He has previously denied any wrongdoing. Rajapaksa escaped from his official residence when tens of thousands of people, angry over economic hardships when the country slipped into bankruptcy and faced unprecedented shortages of basic supplies, stormed the building on July 9. Days later, he, his wife and two bodyguards flew about a military plane to the Maldives. A day later he went to Singapore, and later Thailand. Sri Lanka has run out of dollars for imports of key supplies, causing an acute shortage of essentials like food items, fuel and critical medicine. The foreign currency shortage has led the country to default on its foreign loans. Sri Lanka’s total foreign debt exceeds $ 51 billion of which $ 28 billion must be repaid by 2027. Read: Sri Lanka’s ousted president Rajapaksa returns home The International Monetary Fund on Thursday agreed to provide Sri Lanka $ 2.9 billion over four years, subject to management approval that will come only if the island nation’s creditors give assurances on debt restructuring. Economic difficulties led to monthslong street protests, which eventually led to the collapse of the once-powerful Rajapaksa family that had controlled the affairs of the country for the most part of the last two decades. Before Rajapaksa resigned after fleeing, his older brother stepped down as prime minister and three other close family members quit their Cabinet positions. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who took over from Rajapaksa, has since cracked down on protests and dismantled their main camp opposite the president’s office. Some protesters said they were not opposed to his return as long as he faces justice. “Whether he is president or not, he is a citizen of Sri Lanka and he has the right to live in this country,” said Wijaya Nanda Chandradeva, a retired government employee who had voted for Rajapaksa and then participated in protests to oust him. He said Rajapaksa should be given necessary protection if there is a threat to his safety. “I reject him because we elected him and he proved himself to be unsuitable,” said Chandradeva.   Bhavani Fonseka of the Center for Policy Alternatives, an independent think tank, said although Rajapaska is not going to be seen favorably, “the anger we saw in July has diminished. But there are still many questions about his role in the economic crisis and the call for accountability is still there.”

Fuel prices increased by about 30% across Indonesia on Saturday after the government reduced some of the costly subsidies that have kept inflation in Southeast Asia’s largest economy among the world’s lowest. Indonesians have been fretting for weeks about a looming increase in the price of subsidized Pertalite RON-90 gasoline sold by Pertamina, the state-owned oil and gas company. Long lines of motorbikes and cars snaked around gas stations as motorists waited for hours to fill up their tanks with cheaper gas before the increase took effect on Saturday. The hike — the first in eight years — raised the price of gasoline from about 51 cents to 67 cents per liter and diesel fuel from 35 cents to 46 cents. President Joko Widodo said the decision to increase the fuel prices was his last option as the country’s energy subsidy had tripled this year to 502 trillion rupiah ($34 billion) from its original budget, triggered by rising global prices of oil and gas. “The government has tried its best as I really want fuel prices to remain affordable,” Widodo told a televised address announcing the fuel hike. “The government has to make decisions in difficult situations.” He said that the flow of subsidies to the public was not well targeted — about 70% of subsidies were benefiting middle and upper classes — and the government decided instead to increase social assistance. Finance Minister Sri Mulyani Indrawati said authorities were monitoring the impact on inflation and economic growth of the rise in fuel price. Inflation has been relatively modest with the shock being mostly absorbed through a budget bolstered by energy subsidies. Inflation hit 4.6% in August as Bank Indonesia, the central bank, has said it would reassess the inflation outlook in response to the government fuel price policy. Read: Strong undersea quake causes panic in western Indonesia Indrawati said in a separate news conference that the government would provide 150,000 rupiah ($10) cash handouts to cushion the impact of the fuel price increase on 20.6 million poor families until the year end. The total cost of the handouts will be 12.4 trillion rupiah, which will be reallocated from the budget for energy subsidies. She said the government will also spend 9.6 trillion rupiah ($644 million) on salary assistance to about 16 million low paid workers, and 2.17 trillion rupiah ($145 million) will go to subsidizing transport costs, particularly for motorcycle taxi drivers and fishermen. “We hope this can reduce pressure of rising prices and help reduce poverty,” Indrawati said. The government has subsidized fuel for decades in Indonesia, the vast archipelago nation of more than 270 million people. Fuel prices are a politically sensitive issue that could trigger other price hikes and risk student protests. In 1998, an increase in prices sparked riots that helped topple longtime dictator Suharto.

Planes carrying fresh supplies are surging across a humanitarian air bridge to flood-ravaged Pakistan as the death toll surged past 1,200, officials said Friday, with families and children at special risk of disease and homelessness. The ninth flight from the United Arab Emirates and the first from Uzbekistan were the latest to land in Islamabad overnight as a military-backed rescue operation elsewhere in the country reached more of the 3 million people affected by the disaster. Two more planes from U.A.E and Qatar with aid will arrive in Pakistan later Friday, and a Turkish train carrying relief goods for flood victims was on its way to the impoverished nation, according to the Foreign Ministry. Read: UN seeks $160 million in emergency aid for Pakistan floods Meanwhile, a Turkish delegation headed by Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu met with Pakistani Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif to convey his condolences to him over damages caused by floods. Multiple officials blamed the unusual monsoon and flooding on climate change, including U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who earlier this week called on the world to stop “sleepwalking” through the deadly crisis. Guterres will visit Pakistan on Sept. 9 to tour flood-hit areas and meet with officials. In a statement Friday, the U.N. refugee agency said although the outcome of Tuesday’s funding appeal from the U.N. was “very encouraging," more help is needed. UNHCR spokesman Matthew Saltmarsh said they were quickly releasing tents, as well as blankets, plastic sheets, buckets and other household items for flood victims. “Our staff in the country report that the scale of the devastation that people face is unimaginable," he said. Pakistan's Foreign Ministry said in a statement Friday that the planes brought food items, medicine and tents. Sharif had planned to travel to UAE on Saturday, but he postponed the trip to visit flood-hit areas at home. So far, Pakistan has received aid from China, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Uzbekistan, U.A.E. and some other countries. This week, the United States also announced to provide $30 million worth of aid for the flood victims. Read: Pakistan fatal flooding has hallmarks of warming Pakistan blames climate change for the recent heavy monsoon rains that triggered floods. Asim Iftikhar, the spokesman at Foreign Ministry, said at a news briefing the previous day that the crisis has lent credibility to climate change warnings from scientists. “This is not a conspiracy, this is a reality and we need to be mindful," he said. According to initial government estimates, the devastation has caused $10 billion in damages. Since 1959, Pakistan has emitted about 0.4% of heat-trapping carbon dioxide, compared to 21.5% by the United States and 16.4% by China, according to scientists and experts. Pakistani officials and experts say there’s been a 400% increase in average rainfall in Pakistan's areas like Baluchistan and Sindh, which led to the extreme flooding. Earlier this week, the United Nations and Pakistan jointly issued an appeal for $160 million in emergency funding to help the 3.3 million people affected by floods that have damaged over 1 million homes. On Friday, authorities were warning people in the district of Dadu in the southern Sindh province to move to safer places ahead of floodwater from the swollen Indus river that's expected to hit the region this week. In May, some parts of Sindh were the hottest place in Pakistan. Now people are facing floods there that have caused an outbreak of waterborne diseases. Although flood waters continued to recede in most of the country, many districts in Sindh remained underwater. Farah Naureen, the director for Pakistan at the international aid agency Mercy Corps, told The Associated Press that around 73,000 women will be giving birth within the next month, and they needed skilled birth attendants, privacy, and birth facilities. Otherwise, she said, the survival of the mother and the newborn will be at risk. According to the military, rescuers, backed by troops, resumed rescue and relief operations early Friday. Rescuers are mostly using boats, but helicopters are also flying to evacuate stranded people from remote flood-hit towns, villages and districts across Pakistan areas and deliver food to them. Since mid-June, floods have also killed 733,488 goats, cows, and buffaloes apart from damaging crops. It forced Pakistan's government to start importing vegetables to avoid a shortage of food. Pakistan is also in contact with Russia to import wheat, as floods destroyed grains stored by many villagers in homes to meet their whole year's needs.

Ousted Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa is expected to return home more than seven weeks after he fled the country amid mass protests that demanded his resignation, holding him and his family responsible for the country's economic crisis. Rajapaksa currently does not face any current arrest warrants. A corruption case against him in his former role as secretary to the Defense Ministry was withdrawn when he was elected president in 2019 because of constitutional immunity. Some other investigations were also suspended. Officials familiar with arrangements for his arrival said Rajapaksa was expected to return from Thailand later Friday, while local media reported it would be Saturday. It was not possible to independently verify the timing. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter. Read: IMF agrees to provide crisis-hit Sri Lanka $2.9 billion Rajapaksa fled from the president’s official residence on July 9 when tens of thousands of people stormed the building and occupied it, along with several other key state buildings. On July 13, he fled to the Maldives on a military jet and a day later flew to Singapore, from where he announced his resignation. Two weeks later he arrived in Thailand on a diplomatic visa following a Sri Lankan government request. Rajapaksa was elected president in 2019 by an overwhelming majority on a promise to uplift the country’s economy and strengthen national security, after Islamic State-inspired bomb attacks on churches and hotels killed 270 people on Easter Sunday that year. However, policy blunders including drastic tax cuts which reduced national income and pushed down credit ratings, a ban on agrochemicals ostensibly to promote organic farming, and the release of scarce foreign currency to artificially control exchange rates led to the worst economic crisis in the country's history. Sri Lanka has suspended repayment of its foreign debts, which total more than $51 billion, of which $28 billion must be repaid by 2027. Read: Sri Lanka hopes to reach initial agreement with IMF for help The International Monetary Fund announced Thursday a preliminary agreement to extend $2.9 billion to Sri Lanka over four years, provided there are assurances from the country's creditors on loan restructuring. Months of street protest have dismantled the one-powerful Rajapaksa political family. Before Rajapaksa resigned, his older brother stepped down as prime minister and three more close family members quit their Cabinet positions. President Ranil Wickremesinghe, who succeeded Rajapaksa, has cracked down on protests, helping the Rajapaksa family and its supporters who were in hiding to return to public politics. Nuzly Hameem, who helped lead the protest movement, said the former president’s return shouldn’t be an issue “as long as he is held accountable.” “He is a Sri Lankan citizen so no one can prevent him from coming back. But as someone who wants justice for the corrupt system, I would like to see action taken — there should be justice, they should file cases against him and hold him accountable for what he did to the country.” “We didn’t expect him to flee, we wanted him to resign. As long as he doesn’t involve himself in active politics, it won’t be a problem," Hameem said.

An explosion tore through a crowded mosque in western Afghanistan on Friday, killing at least 18 people. including a prominent cleric close to the Taliban, Taliban officials and a local medic said. At least 21 people were hurt. The explosion in the city of Herat left the courtyard of the Guzargah Mosque littered with bodies, the ground stained with blood, video from the scene showed. Men shouted, “God is great,” in shock and horror. Read:One year on, Afghans at risk await evacuation, relocation The bomb went off during Friday noon prayers, when mosques are full of worshippers. Among the dead was Mujib-ul Rahman Ansari, a prominent cleric who was known across Afghanistan for his criticism of the country’s Western-backed governments over the past two decades. Ansari was seen as close to the Taliban, who seized control over Afghanistan a year ago as foreign forces withdrew. His death was confirmed by the chief Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid. Just before the bombing, Ansari had been meeting in another part of the city with the Taliban government’s deputy prime minister, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, who was on a visit to Herat. He had rushed from the meeting to the mosque to get to the noon prayers, an aide to Baradar said in a tweet mourning the cleric. Ambulances transported 18 bodies and 21 people wounded from the blast to hospitals in Herat, said Mohammad Daud Mohammadi, an official at the Herat ambulance center, There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Friday’s blast. Read: Taliban: 2 civilians killed in a bomb blast in Afghanistan Last month, a bombing at a mosque in the capital Kabul targeted and killed a pro-Taliban cleric in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. IS has waged a bloody campaign of attacks on Taliban targets and minority groups, particularly Shiites whom the extremist Sunni IS considers heretics. It has frequently hit mosques with suicide attacks during Friday prayers. Herat’s Guzargah Mosque, where Ansari has long been the preacher, draws followers of Sunni Islam, the dominant stream in Afghanistan that is also followed by the Taliban. Ansari was for years a thorn in the side of Afghanistan’s pro-Western government. In his sermons at the Guzargah, he urged his many supporters to carry out protests against the governments and preached against women’s rights.

A court in Myanmar on Friday sentenced the country’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi to three years' imprisonment after finding her guilty of involvement in election fraud. The ruling adds more jail time to the 17 years she is already serving for other offenses. It also imperils the survival of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party following the government’s explicit threats to dissolve it before a new election the military has promised will take place in 2023 Also read: Myanmar’s Suu Kyi testifies in election fraud trial Suu Kyi’s party won the the 2020 general election in a landslide victory. The military seized power from Suu Kyi’s elected government on Feb. 1, 2021, saying it acted because of alleged widespread voter fraud. Independent election observers did not find any major irregularities. Two senior members of Suu Kyi's former government were co-defendants in the case and also received three-year prison sentences. Also read: Myanmar says Suu Kyi held alone in new prison quarters

India on Friday scripted history by becoming the first country in South Asia to induct into its Navy a domestically built aircraft carrier. The 45,000-tonne Indian Naval Ship (INS) Vikrant, capable of accommodating 30 military aircraft, was commissioned by Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a grand ceremony in the southern port city of Kochi. With the formal commissioning, India has joined an elite group of nations -- the US, the UK, Russia, China and France -- that can design and build such large aircraft carriers. Also read: Hasina's India visit to open new windows of cooperation: MoFA "INS Vikrant is the reflection of our Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant) mission," Modi said at the event. "Today, India has entered the list of countries that can build such large warships indigenously. Vikrant has infused new confidence," he added. INS Vikrant has been christened after her illustrious predecessor, India’s first Aircraft Carrier that played a stellar role in the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. The warship has been built at a cost of 2.5 billion US dollars over the past 13 years. Also read: Coast Guard detains 31 Indian fishermen Modi also unveiled the new naval ensign that has India's national flag on the upper canton. "In adopting the new naval ensign, India has removed a burden of slavery off its chest," he said. The Indian Navy's maritime fleet now has two aircraft carriers, 10 destroyers, 12 frigates and 20 corvettes.

China has denounced a long-delayed U.N. report that was released over its protest and that says the government's arbitrary detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity. Human rights groups and the Japanese government welcomed the report, which had become caught up in a tug-of-war between China and others, who were critical of the delay and lobbying for its release. The assessment released late Wednesday by the U.N. human rights office in Geneva concluded that China has committed serious human rights violations under its anti-terrorism and anti-extremism policies and calls for “urgent attention” from the U.N., the world community and China itself to address them. The report largely corroborates earlier reporting by researchers, advocacy groups and the news media, while carefully steering away from estimates and other findings that cannot be definitively proven. It adds the weight of the U.N. to the conclusions, though China showed no sign of backing off its blanket denials and portraying the criticism as a politicized Western smear campaign. In a sternly worded protest that the U.N. posted with its report, China's diplomatic mission in Geneva said it firmly opposed the release of the U.N. assessment, which it said ignores human rights achievements made in Xinjiang and the damage caused by terrorism and extremism to the population. “Based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of presumption of guilt, the so-called ‘assessment’ distorts China’s laws, wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China’s internal affairs,” the protest read in part. Japan was one of the first foreign governments to comment on the report, which was released early Thursday morning in Asia. Its top government spokesperson urged China to improve transparency and human rights conditions in the Xinjiang region. “Japan is highly concerned about human rights conditions in Xinjiang, and we believe that it is important that universal values such as freedom, basic human rights and rule of law are also guaranteed in China,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said. Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International called on the U.N. and governments to set up an independent investigation into the human rights abuses. Read: A Uyghur gets death sentence, as China bans once OK’d books “Never has it been so important for the U.N. system to stand up to Beijing, and to stand with victims,” said John Fisher, the deputy director of global advocacy for the group. The U.N. report made no mention of genocide, which some countries, including the United States, have accused China of committing in Xinjiang. The report was drawn in part from interviews with former detainees and others familiar with conditions at eight detention centers. It said that descriptions of the detentions were marked by patterns of torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment and said that allegations of rape and other sexual violence appear credible. “The extent of arbitrary and discriminatory detention of members of Uyghur and other predominantly Muslim groups ... in (the) context of restrictions and deprivation more generally of fundamental rights ... may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity,” the report said. The rights office said it could not confirm estimates that a million or more people were detained in the internment camps in Xinjiang, but added it was “reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred” at least between 2017 and 2019. Beijing has closed many of the camps, which it called vocational training and education centers, but hundreds of thousands of people continue to languish in prison, many on vague, secret charges. The U.N. assessment said that reports of sharp increases in arrests and lengthy prison sentences in the region strongly suggested a shift toward formal incarceration instead of the use of the camps. The report called on China to release all individuals arbitrarily detained and to clarify the whereabouts of those who have disappeared and whose families are seeking information about them. That the report was released was in some ways as important as its contents. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet said she received pressure from both sides to publish — or not publish — and resisted it all, while noting her experience with political squeeze during her two terms as president of Chile. Her announcement in June that the report would be released by end of her 4-year term on Aug. 31 triggered a swell in back-channel campaigns — including letters from civil society, civilians and governments on both sides of the issue. “To be perfectly honest, the politicization of these serious human rights issues by some states did not help,” said Bachelet, who early on staked out a desire to cooperate with governments. Critics had said a failure to publish the report would have been a glaring black mark on her tenure. Agnès Callamard, the secretary general of Amnesty International, said, “The inexcusable delay in releasing this report casts a stain" on the record of the U.N. human rights office, “but this should not deflect from its significance.”