Author: Minakshi Mukhtar

Berlin (24/10 – 67) UN Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, Nazila Ghanea, visited Tajikistan from April 11 to April 21 to conduct research on issues in this field. The UN expert will assess religious freedom and its interaction with the right to freedom of expression, discuss gender equality, women’s rights, and children’s rights. She stated that the implementation of religious freedom and belief in the country is a cause for concern. Ghanea, the newly appointed UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief, called on Tajikistan to adapt and review its laws, policies, and practices regarding religion…

Ravindran was 14 years old when his father Srinivasan, who ran a photography studio, sent him on an assignment. “My job was to put a dead body on a chair and make it sit straight,” says Ravindran about his first day at work in 1972. “I then had to lift its eyelids so the photographer could take a picture.” Richard Kennedy was just nine when he had a similarly unnerving experience. He was asked to hold up a white cloth as a backdrop behind a chair on which a corpse was seated. “I was scared and shaking. That night, I…

Diplomatic tensions over calls for a separate homeland for Sikhs in India have escalated, after Canada said it was looking at “credible allegations potentially linking” the Indian state to the murder of a separatist leader in British Columbia. India has denied the allegations, describing them as “absurd”. For anyone new to this long-running controversy, here’s an at-a-glance look at the history and current context: Who are Sikhs and where do they live? Sikhism is one of the world’s major religions, founded in the 16th Century in the Punjab region of what is now India and Pakistan – which was divided…

As WP notes, Russia is targeting people whose age and background are less likely to attract the attention of the security services, favoring refugees and young people in their 20s. Russian intelligence agencies are recruiting agents in Poland via the Internet, including among Ukrainian refugees , to track the transit of weapons to Ukraine. According to WP , such vacancies began to appear on the Internet at the beginning of the year. The publication reminds that earlier a large spy network collaborating with the Russian special services was uncovered in Poland. Over the course of several weeks, agents were tasked with scouting Polish seaports, placing cameras…

Police in the southern Indian state of Karnataka have arrested a 78-year-old man who was accused of stealing two buffaloes and a calf in 1965. Ganapati Vitthal Wagore was 20 when he was first arrested 58 years ago for the alleged theft, along with another man. Police said they were freed on bail but disappeared after that and could not be traced. His co-accused died in 2006. Last week, a court freed Wagore on bail on account of his old age after his re-arrest. The case had gone cold but it resurfaced a few weeks ago when a team of…

Frankfurt (22/09 – 58.33) Since May 2022, the Tajikistani authorities have stepped up their ongoing crackdown on Pamiris, an ethnic, linguistic and religious minority originating from the Pamir mountains in Gorno Badakhshan Autonomous Oblast of Tajikistan. They have arbitrarily detained hundreds of Pamiris, including civil society activists and human rights defenders, and imprisoned over 200 of them after convictions in unfair trials, in a campaign aimed at stripping the local communities of their leadership and dismantling their civil society. The authorities must immediately and unconditionally release Pamiri civil society activists, journalists and human rights defenders who have been detained solely…

Is India’s ambitious project to reintroduce cheetahs, more than 70 years after they were declared extinct, facing a crisis? Consider this. Twenty cheetahs were relocated from South Africa and Namibia to the 74,200-hectare Kuno national park in the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh in September last year and February. Since March, six of those cheetahs and three cubs born in the park have died. (The ninth cat died on Wednesday.) To be sure, cheetah experts say that losing half of the founder population in the initial year of relocation in unfenced parks is a common occurrence. There could be…

Indian opposition leader Rahul Gandhi has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of “murdering Mother India” in violence-hit Manipur state. “They killed India in Manipur. Their politics killed India in Manipur,” Mr Gandhi said in parliament amid uproar from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. He was speaking during a no-confidence motion debate that the opposition have brought against Mr Modi’s government. A vote is due on the motion on Thursday after the debate ends. Mr Modi’s government won’t lose the vote as his Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its allies have a majority in parliament. But opposition leaders say the debate…

Tonight, at about 4 am Kyiv time, explosions sounded on the Crimean bridge, as a result of which two people were killed. It is reported by RBC-Ukraine with reference to the Telegram of the Governor of the Belgorod region of the Russian Federation Vyacheslav Gladkov. The death of two people was reported in the first minutes after the explosions, citing eyewitnesses. After 2 hours, the death of a man and a woman, as well as the injury of their daughter, was confirmed by an official. It is reported that in the car that was damaged in the explosion, there were residents of Novy Oskol in…

India’s top court has adjourned opposition leader Rahul Gandhi’s plea seeking a stay on his conviction in a defamation case. The court issued a notice to the complainant – BJP party’s lawmaker Purnesh Modi – and set 4 August as the next date of hearing. The court’s decision will determine whether Mr Gandhi can contest polls. Earlier this month, a court in Gujarat state had dismissed his appeal, saying the conviction was “just and proper”. Mr Gandhi was sentenced to two years in jail for comments about PM Narendra Modi’s surname at an election rally. But he cannot be arrested until he has exhausted…