Bangladesh’s High Court on Sunday confirmed the death penalty for two people tied to a banned Islamist militant group for the killing of an atheist blogger critical of radical Islam.

The court also upheld jail sentences for six others after appeals were filed challenging the verdicts handed down by a trial court in 2015.

Sunday’s decision involves the killing of Ahmed Rajib Haider, who was hacked to death in 2013. Haider had campaigned for banning the Jamaat-e-Islami party, which opposed Bangladesh’s independence from Pakistan in 1971.

One of the defendants was Mufti Jasimuddin Rahmani, the leader of the Ansarullah Bangla Team, and the rest were university students inspired by his sermons.

During the trial, the students said that Rahmani incited them to kill Haider in sermons in which he said all atheist bloggers should be killed to protect Islam.

The two North South University students who received the death sentences included Faisal bin Nayeem, who the court said hacked Haider with meat cleavers in front of his house in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s capital. Another was tried in absentia. The others received prison sentences ranging from three years to life. Rahmani was sentenced to five years.

The defendants can appeal Sunday’s decision to the Supreme Court.

The High Court said there was no scope to reduce the sentences given the gravity of the crimes.

Prosecutors had earlier said the student who was sentenced to death in absentia and was accused of planning the attack is a member of Jamaat-e-Islami’s student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, but the party denied involvement in the killing.

Bangladesh in recent years has experienced a surge of attacks by radical Islamists targeting atheist bloggers and writers, foreigners and members of minority groups.
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Witnesses and relatives in southern Afghanistan say a pre-dawn bomb blast killed at least 10 civilians, mostly children and women, in an area where Afghan national security forces were conducting anti-Taliban operations.

It was not immediately clear whether an airstrike by government forces or an insurgent armed retaliation caused the deadly explosion Sunday in Baba Ji, a volatile portion of Lashkargah, the capital of the embattled Helmand province.

The blast destroyed a house, causing the civilian deaths, residents said.

A regional military spokesman, General Wali Mohammad Ahmadzai, confirmed that a search operation had been underway in the area to clear it of Taliban insurgents.

“We are aware of the reported civilian casualties and a special commission has been tasked to investigate them,” he told VOA, without giving further details.

Opium poppy-growing Helmand is Afghanistan’s largest province and is mostly under the control or influence of the Taliban. The insurgents also are entrenched in areas around Lashkargah and have made several attempts in recent months to overrun the city.

Provincial Governor Hayatullah Hayat told VOA last week that Afghan forces have launched clearing operations to push back insurgents from areas in and around Lashkargah, as well as other districts.

“We are undertaking these operations to strictly avoid civilian casualties and destruction of houses and shops,” Hayat asserted.

The offensive went into action shortly after the Taliban captured the administrative center of the key district of Sangin late last month.

The United Nations documented a record number of Afghan civilian casualties in 2016 and repeatedly has called on warring sides to avoid harm to non-combatants.
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Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party has retained support in its Yangon strongholds, but loyalty has weakened in ethnic minority areas that helped boost the NLD’s 2015 general election victory, according to by-election results announced Sunday.

The results from Saturday’s by-elections released by the country’s election commission showed the NLD taking eight of 12 seats for the combined upper houses of the national parliament. It won only one of seven seats at stake in state assembles, where ethnic-focused parties performed strongly.

The NLD won its 2015 election majority with the support of ethnic minorities anxious to end five decades of military rule, but Suu Kyi’s failure so far to meet their political demands for greater autonomy has fractured their united front.

The military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which led the previous government, won one lower house seat and one state assembly seat.

Suu Kyi has come under criticism for failing to boost the economy faster, as well as falling short on reconciliation with ethic minorities and other social issues. In a nationally televised speech last week marking one year since her party took power, she suggested she would step down if Myanmar’s people felt she was failing to do her best, a suggestion that was less an offer than a solicitation for a mandate from voters.

The combined national and state assembly seat totals showed the NLD winning nine, the Shan Nationalities League for Democracy six, the USDP 2, and the Arakan National Party and the All Nationalities Democracy Party one apiece. One of the NLD’s victories was to fill the seat won in 2015 by Suu Kyi, who had to give it up when she joined the Cabinet as state counsellor, the country’s de facto leader.

The Shan party represents the biggest of the ethnic minorities, and the by-elections it won were held to fill seats where polling could not be held in 2015 because of unrest.

In Rakhine state, the Arakan National Party’s seat was won by its chairman, Aye Maung, who is an outspoken critic on behalf of his Rakhine ethnic group in its sometimes violent communal struggle with the Muslim Rohingya ethnic minority.

The All Nationalities Democracy Party captured its Kayah State assembly seat in a constituency that had been won by the NLD in 2015, but where the ruling party this year missed a deadline to put up a candidate.
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When Durdana married for a second time and to a man of her own choosing, her parents threatened to kill her if she tried to see her new husband. They imprisoned her in their home, but she still had her mobile phone and had learned that a helpline for women had been set up. She noted the number and then one day when she was alone in the house, she called.

Nayab Hassan was on the other end. She had been trained how to answer the call. “Be gentle. Listen. Let them speak. Let them tell you what they want. Sometimes they are very emotional,” she said at the helpline center — located in the sprawling provincial parliament buildings in Pakistan’s deeply conservative Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province, where tribal councils still hand over young girls to settle disputes.

Not far from the border with neighboring Afghanistan, Khyber Pukhtunkhwa became the first province in Pakistan to set up a hotline for women that feeds directly into the provincial legislature.

It’s still a small operation. It began March 1 and so far there are only two operators, Hassan and Mehran Akbar. They take the information from the women and Shandana Naeem, a lawyer, follows up with advice and a network of free legal services.

They keep a careful log of all their calls, which average one a day so far, and while most have emanated from the provincial capital of Peshawar, several have come from more remote regions.

Durdana’s call was from Swat, a picturesque mountain region of clear blue lakes that ramble through valleys surrounded by imposing peaks. The area’s beauty is a stark contrast to its dark and violent history. It was in Swat where Pakistan’s Taliban briefly ruled, beheading police in the town square and where Malala Yousafzai was shot in the head for advocating girls’ education and criticizing the violent religious radicals as being frightened of female education.

The log book is carefully kept. It records names, dates, phone numbers and then their stories. Some are horrifying.

One woman, Aneesa, called to say that two years earlier her husband had thrown acid at her, stole her money and jewelry and fled to Saudi Arabia. She had moved in with her parents and now her eyesight was deteriorating from the acid attack; she needed medical assistance but had no money to pay for it.

Naeem said they helped her work through the red tape of getting a health card – the first step to health care. But Aneesa’s call also made them realize the need to engage local health clinics and develop a network that would be willing to offer free health care, similar to their legal service network.

Naeem said most of the calls have been over property disputes, where women were being denied their inheritance.

The helpline was developed by Meraj Humayun Khan, a 70-year-old parliamentarian who has taken on her male colleagues to organize a women’s caucus in the provincial parliament. With the weight of the 22-member caucus behind her, Khan lobbied for the direct helpline to the legislature.

“We need to be in touch with their issues,” she said in an interview. “I can have a lot of ideas but it should come from them.”

The original call that prompted the helpline was a property dispute, said Khan, explaining that Pakistan’s inheritance laws — based on Islamic injunctions — allow male relatives priority and give a lesser share to women. And those women are often denied or intimidated by male relatives to forfeit even that lesser share.

The reason for locating the helpline in the provincial parliament was to collect data from women that would in turn bolster arguments for legislative changes. Khyber Pukhtunkhwa province is already behind on women’s right issues; lawmakers there have so far refused to pass an anti-domestic violence law that other provinces have approved.

Hard-line religious parties hold significant sway in Khyber Pukhtunkhwa. Jamaat-e-Islami and the Jamiat-e-Ulema Pakistan (whose madrassas or religious schools were favored by Afghanistan’s Taliban) are partners in the provincial coalition government.

The 22 women in the provincial parliament are there on quota seats reserved for women. No female candidate has been able to win a general election seat in the deeply conservative and tribal-dominated province.

Khan says she plans to run on a general seat in the 2018 elections, but she admits even those men who have championed and endorsed her candidacy have been met with skepticism and resistance.

“Everyone they talk to asks ‘That’s all well and good, but don’t you have any men who can run?”‘ she said. “It’s a humiliation for them to be represented by a woman. They think women don’t know anything about politics, about economics.”

The chairperson of Pakistan’s Human Rights Commission, Zohra Yusuf, says different provinces are making progress on women’s issues at different paces. Southern Sindh is Pakistan’s most progressive province in terms of laws to safeguard women, she said. Earlier this month the most populous province, Punjab, opened state-of-the-art shelters for women facing abuse at home.

Last year Pakistan passed a bill that essentially closed a loophole which used to allow so-called honor killers to escape punishment.

Yusuf said that despite the legislative progress, on-the-ground enforcement of these new laws still remains a significant hurdle.

“I think the governments are realizing it’s about time something needs to be done,” she said in a telephone interview. “Laws were passed last year, the honor killing bill, rape, violence against women, but still it is about enforcement.”

In Pakistan it is difficult to even get the police to register a case of domestic violence, said Khan, who explained they often see it as a private family issue.

Durdana in Swat, whose family threatened to kill her if she met her husband of choice, was told to go to the police station and charge her parents with unlawful confinement or tell her husband to go to police to demand he be allowed to see her, said Naeem, the helpline lawyer.

That was March 6. Naeem has tried repeatedly to telephone Durdana on the number she gave but it is either turned off or rings unanswered. The dilemma, she says, when giving advice is that there is no way to know whether the police, for example, will help the women or hand them back to the family they are fleeing.

“We have to get the police, the justice system, the many government departments, on our side, working with us,” said Khan the founder of the helpline. “While all government departments agreed… we now need them to make good on their promises.”
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From Bollywood superstars to political heavyweights, the Regal theater hosted some of India’s biggest names over more than eight decades.

But with nostalgic theater-goers singing their way to the exits after a final showing of a Bollywood classic, the iconic New Delhi theater has closed its doors to make way for a multiplex.

“It’s the end of an era. It’s very sad,” said Nanak, who had worked at the theater since 1979. Nanak, whose grandfather and father were part of the Regal’s management team in the 1950s and ’60s, uses one name.

With its corridors studded with black-and-white images of Bollywood stars such as Nargis, Madhubala, Meena Kumari, Dev Anand and Raj Kapoor, the magic of a bygone era was visible throughout the theater.

For its final screening, the Regal showed “Sangam,” or “Union of Two Hearts,” on Thursday night in a tribute to producer-director Kapoor, Bollywood’s biggest showman, who premiered his movies at the theater from the 1950s to the ’70s.

Around 600 movie buffs cheered the 1964 Bollywood classic at the final screening. Some young movie lovers came with their parents and grandparents, and many were singing the film’s songs as they left the theater.

“There was nostalgia,” said Sudhir Dutta, 75, recalling that he had seen “A Tale of Two Cities” in 1958 in his first visit to the Regal.

India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, and his daughter, Indira Gandhi, also used to watch movies there, said Bhoop Singh, a theater executive.

The Regal opened in 1932, built by Sobha Singh, an Indian civil contractor and real estate owner. At first, the theater hosted mainly Indian stage shows. Then came performances by Western classical musical artists, Russian ballets and British theater groups.

Finally, movies were shown. The 1931 Bollywood film “Alam Ara,” the first Indian movie with sound, was the first Hindi movie screened at the Regal.

The theater, part of an 84-year-old shopping hub known as Connaught Place, is in one of the main commercial areas of New Delhi, built during British colonial rule.

A decision to shut the theater was prompted by a craze for multiplexes in India. Also, the recent caving in of portions of the roofs of two buildings in the area raised concerns about the Regal’s safety.

Building a multiplex is a better option than renovating such an old building, Bhoop Singh said, adding, “We may resume screening movies in the multiplex within two years.”
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