Category: Asia

MUMBAI (REUTERS) – Indian tax authorities are hoping for a windfall with the auction on Tuesday (March 26) of rare oil paintings that were once part of fugitive billionaire jeweler Nirav Modi’s collection and have been seized by the government. Auctioneers say the sale is the first of its kind in a country where tax authorities have […]

Authorities in the Karbi Anglong Autonomous Council forcibly evicted more than 600 Muslim families from their land in Hojai, saying the families, including Kulsuma’s, had encroached upon government land. In February 2017, the government informed the Assam assembly that about 3,481 families were evicted from 13 districts. Indrajit Bezbaruah, an associate professor at Assam’s Lumding College, saidt hose evicted were either internally displaced persons from flood-affected areas, IDPs from ethnic conflict-ridden Bodoland districts, or the local landless peasants belonging to the indigenous Kachari Muslim community settled in the area since the 1970s. Assam has 362,450 landless families spread across 31 of its 33 districts, Forest Minister Pramila Rani Brahma told the state assembly in February last year. Suprakash Talukdar, a leader of the Communist Party of India-Marxist, alleged that Assam government has not conducted any land settlement survey since 1965, which has denied land to the landless and kept them vulnerable to forced evictions. Bhabesh Kalita, Minister of State for Revenue and Disaster Management in Assam said his government was working to rehabilitate those displaced by erosion. Muslim IDPs in Assam carry an additional risk of being stripped of their citizenship rights, according to Guwahati-based activist Hafiz Ahmed.

Indonesian President Joko Widodo inaugurated the country’s first mass rapid transit (MRT) system on Sunday with the aim of easing the worsening traffic congestion in the capital Jakarta. The 16-kilometer long line with six underground and seven elevated stations stretches from the south to the city center with 30-minute travel time. The same route would […]

Pakistan wants peace with India and they should focus on health and education, the Pakistani president said on Saturday during a parade to show off its military might following a tense standoff between the nuclear-armed neighbours. Conflict between the rivals erupted last month following a suicide bomb attack claimed by a Pakistan-based militant group in […]

“Highly choreographed” tours to Xinjiang organised by the Chinese government are misleading and propagate false narratives about the troubled region, a U.S. official said, after China announced plans to invite European envoys to visit. China has been stepping up a push to counter growing criticism in the West and among rights groups about a controversial […]

With a mob telling them to “go to Pakistan,” a Muslim family was beaten with hockey sticks and iron rods in their house in northern India, officials and local media reported Saturday. “An 11-member family was injured after an argument over playing cricket escalated into a brawl in a village beneath Bhondsi on Thursday evening,” […]

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuters) – Malaysia will finalize talks with China in early April regarding a $20 billion rail project that has been suspended since July last year, the Malaysian representative for the negotiations said late on Friday. The renegotiations could result in cost savings of more than 10 billion ringgit ($2.5 billion) for Malaysia, the […]

Pakistan’s prime minister on Friday hailed Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Malaysian premier Mahathir Mohamad for taking a quick and clear stand on deadly terror attacks on mosques in New Zealand. In a live televised joint news conference with his Malaysian counterpart in capital Islamabad, Imran Khan said there were only a few Muslim […]