Month: August 2024

KATHMANDU, NEPAL — A helicopter crashed in a forest outside Nepal’s capital, Kathmandu, shortly after takeoff on Wednesday, killing all five people on board, an official said. The crash is the latest of more than a dozen air crashes in the mountainous region since 2000.

The helicopter, operated by Air Dynasty, crashed into a Himalayan forest in Shivapuri National Park of Nuwakot district, 57 kilometers (35 miles) from the capital, deputy Chief District Officer Krishna Prasad Humagain said.

Police spokesperson Dan Bahadur Karki confirmed all four passengers were Chinese nationals, three men and one woman, while the pilot was a Nepali male.

Residents saw a fire emanating from the forest and alerted authorities, he said.

The helicopter, which was en route to Rasuwa district from Kathmandu, lost contact with air traffic control three minutes after takeoff, the Civil Aviation Authority of Nepal said in a statement.

More than 360 people have died in plane or helicopter crashes in Nepal in the past 24 years.

Wedged between India and China, landlocked Nepal is home to eight of the world’s 14 highest peaks, and its planes often service small airports nestled in remote hills or near peaks blanketed in clouds.
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DHAKA — Bangladesh’s protest leaders said they expect members of an interim government, led by Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus, to be finalized on Wednesday after Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina quit and fled to India following a violent crackdown on a student-led uprising.

Bangladesh’s president appointed Yunus, who was recommended by student leaders as the head of the interim government late on Tuesday, said the remaining members need to be finalized soon to overcome the current crisis and pave way for elections.

The interim government will fill a power vacuum left after Bangladesh’s army chief announced Hasina’s resignation in a televised address on Monday that followed weeks of deadly violence that ripped through the country, killing about 300 people and injuring thousands.

“It is critical that trust in government be restored quickly,” Yunus, 84, told the Financial Times on Wednesday, adding that he was not seeking an elected role or appointment beyond the interim period.

His spokesperson said he is expected to return to Dhaka on Thursday after a medical procedure in Paris.

“We need calm, we need a road map to new elections and we need to get to work to prepare for new leadership,” Yunus told the newspaper.

Hasina’s resignation had triggered jubilation across the country and crowds stormed into her official residence unopposed after she fled, ending a 15-year second stint in power.

Public anger was also in part due to economic distress. Bangladesh’s $450 billion economy expanded under Hasina as the mainstay garments sector grew but costly imports, inflation, unemployment and shrinking reserves in recent years pushed it to seek a $4.7 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.

“The protests… have exacerbated downside risks to economic growth, fiscal performance, and external metrics,” ratings agency S&P said in a note on Wednesday. “The damage to credit metrics may be contained if the sociopolitical situation normalizes soon and Bangladesh forms a new government.”

Normalcy slowly began returning after Monday’s chaos but protests broke at the headquarters of the Bangladesh Bank in Dhaka on Wednesday when hundreds of officials from the central bank forced four of its deputy governors to resign over alleged corruption, two sources at the bank said.

The bank did not immediately comment.

Hundreds of people gathered at a rally in Dhaka by the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, whose leader and former Prime Minister Khaleda Zia, 78, was freed from house arrest by the president on Tuesday.

Zia had feuded and alternated power with rival Hasina, 76, since the early 1990s and she was convicted for graft in 2018 but called the charges politically motivated.

Return to normalcy

Giant neighbor India, which has strong cultural and business ties with Bangladesh, evacuated all non-essential staff and their families from its embassy and four consulates in the country, two Indian government sources said.

Most schools and university campuses in Dhaka and other cities that shut in mid-July due to the protests, reopened while people took buses and other transport to offices and banks. The garments factories that had been shut for days also began opening on Wednesday.

The movement that toppled Hasina rose out of demonstrations against public sector job quotas for families of veterans of the 1971 war of independence from Pakistan, seen by critics as a means to reserve jobs for allies of the ruling party.

President Mohammed Shahabuddin has also recommended that a veteran of the war should be nominated to the interim government.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry, commenting for the first time since protests broke out, said on Wednesday that “the government and people of Pakistan stand in solidarity with the people of Bangladesh, sincerely hoping for a peaceful and swift return to normalcy.”

China, which over the years has expanded its influence in the region with its Belt and Road infrastructure projects, said it was closely following the situation.

“China is closely monitoring the development of the situation in Bangladesh and sincerely hopes that all parties and factions in Bangladesh will unite and restore social stability as soon as possible,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

Nahid Islam, one of the main leaders of the student movement, told reporters after the president’s announcement that students have recommended 10-15 members for the interim government in an initial list they shared with the president.

Islam said he expects interim government members to be finalized in 24 hours starting from late Tuesday evening. The students’ recommendations for the government include civil society members and also student representatives, Islam said.

Hasina landed in New Delhi on Monday and is staying at a safe house on the outskirts of the capital. Indian media reports have said that she plans to travel onwards to Britain, but the British Home Office has not commented.
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Colombo, Sri Lanka — Sri Lanka’s ruling party nominated a scion of the controversial Rajapaksa family Wednesday to challenge the incumbent president in Sept. 21 polls, the first since the country’s unprecedented economic meltdown.

The Sri Lanka Podujana Peramuna (SLPP) party named Namal Rajapaksa, 38, as its candidate at a Buddhist ceremony at their party office in the capital Colombo.

“After careful consideration, the party decided to make Namal Rajapaksa our presidential candidate,” SLPP Secretary Sagara Kariyawasam said.

Namal was a former sports minister under his father Mahinda Rajapaksa’s presidency, which ended in January 2015.

His uncle, Gotabaya, also won the presidency in November 2019, but was forced out during the economic crisis in 2022.

The entry of a Rajapaksa into the fray formalized a widening split in the government ahead of the election.

A majority of legislators from the SLPP had wanted the party to back their new ally, President Ranil Wickremesinghe, after praising him for turning the economy around after the 2022 crisis.

Wickremesinghe is not from the SLPP.

But he had its backing to replace then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, after Gotabaya fled and resigned following months of protests over corruption and mismanagement.

Despite the downfall of Gotabaya, the SLPP enjoyed a majority in the 225-member parliament, controlled the government — and had supported Wickremesinghe.

However, the parting of ways began when the election was called last month.

That revealed the splits in the once-dominant SLPP, a nationalist party appealing to the Sinhala majority.

The SLPP said it will campaign to elect Namal as the next president, turning the presidential poll into a battle among four main candidates.

Wickremesinghe had contested two presidential elections and lost both. However, he had been prime minister six times since entering parliament in 1977.
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Nobel Peace Prize laureate Muhammad Yunus has been chosen to head Bangladesh’s interim government after the nation’s longtime prime minister resigned and fled abroad in the face of a broad uprising against her rule. 

Known as the “banker to the poorest of the poor” and a longtime critic of the ousted Sheikh Hasina, Yunus will act as a caretaker premier until new elections are held. The decision followed a meeting late Tuesday that included student protest leaders, military chiefs, civil society members and business leaders. 

Hasina was forced to flee Monday after weeks of protests over a quota system for allocating government jobs turned into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule, which was marked by a rising economy but an increasingly authoritarian streak. 

Hasina’s departure has plunged Bangladesh into a political crisis. The army has temporarily taken control, but it is unclear what its role would be in an interim government after the president dissolved Parliament on Tuesday to pave the way for elections. 

Student leaders who organized the protests have wanted Yunus, who is currently in Paris for the Olympics as an adviser to its organizers, to lead an interim government. 

He could not immediately be reached for comment, but key student leader Nahid Islam asserted that Yunus agreed to step in during a discussion with them. The 83-year-old is a well-known critic and political opponent of Hasina. 

Yunus called her resignation the country’s “second liberation day.” She once called him a “bloodsucker.” 

Pioneered use of microcredit

An economist and banker by profession, Yunus was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for pioneering the use of microcredit to help impoverished people, particularly women. The Nobel Peace Prize committee credited Yunus and his Grameen Bank “for their efforts to create economic and social development from below.” 

Yunus founded Grameen Bank in 1983 to provide small loans to entrepreneurs who would not normally qualify to receive them. The bank’s success in lifting people out of poverty led to similar microfinancing efforts in other countries. 

He ran into trouble with Hasina in 2008, when her administration launched a series of investigations into him. He had announced he would form a political party in 2007 when the country was run by a military-backed government but did not follow through. 

During the investigations, Hasina accused Yunus of using force and other means to recover loans from poor rural women as the head of Grameen Bank. Yunus denied the allegations. 

Hasina’s government began reviewing the bank’s activities in 2011, and Yunus was fired as managing director for allegedly violating government retirement regulations. He was put on trial in 2013 on charges of receiving money without government permission, including his Nobel Prize and royalties from a book. 

He later faced more charges involving other companies he created, including Grameen Telecom, which is part of the country’s largest mobile phone company, GrameenPhone, a subsidiary of Norwegian telecom giant Telenor. In 2023, some former Grameen Telecom workers filed a case against Yunus accusing him of siphoning off their job benefits. He denied the accusations. 

Earlier this year, a special judge’s court in Bangladesh indicted Yunus and 13 others on charges in a $2 million embezzlement case. Yunus pleaded not guilty and is out on bail for now. 

Yunus’ supporters say he has been targeted because of his frosty relations with Hasina. 

‘Eureka moment’ launched movement

Yunus was born in 1940 in Chittagong, a seaport city in Bangladesh. He received his Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University in the United States and taught there briefly before returning to Bangladesh. 

In a 2004 interview with The Associated Press, Yunus said he had a “eureka movement” to establish Grameen Bank when he met a poor woman weaving bamboo stools who was struggling pay her debts. 

“I couldn’t understand how she could be so poor when she was making such beautiful things,” he recalled in the interview. 
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washington — China has lost a partner with the resignation under pressure of Bangladesh’s long-serving Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, who during a visit to Beijing last month signed 28 bilateral agreements and agreed to raise ties between the countries to a “comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership.”

Beijing’s official response to her flight into exile was muted, with the Xinhua News Agency quoting the Foreign Ministry describing Bangladesh as a “friendly neighbor” and expressing its hopes that “social stability would be restored soon.”

But on Chinese social media platforms, users have openly praised the courage of the student protesters who drove Hasina out of office, braving a harsh military crackdown that saw dozens if not hundreds of students killed.

“At a moment when democracy and equality were faced with sustained and serious setbacks, the heroic people of Bangladesh used their lives and blood to turn the tide around. The world’s civilizations may be diverse, but they only have one path forward. Best wishes to the Bengalis,” one Weibo user wrote.

Some internet users lamented that Chinese are less willing than their Bangladeshi counterparts to resist government policies.

“They’re much braver compared to the people in China,” a Weibo user wrote.

“Agreed, some Chinese people aren’t even brave enough to leave their communities because of the pandemic,” another replied, a reference to the tight restrictions the Chinese government put in place during the COVID-19 outbreak.

Hours after Hasina fled, Bangladeshi Army Chief of Staff General Waker-Uz-Zaman addressed the people of Bangladesh, promising that the military would investigate the violent crackdown on the student protesters.

“Keep faith in the military, we will investigate all the killings and punish the responsible,” he said, adding that he had ordered the army and police to not open fire on crowds under any circumstances.

The military’s newfound restraint elicited praise from some Chinese social media users.

“I salute the brave Bangladeshi people, I salute the military that stands together with the people. Rights are acquired through fighting. Best wishes to the Bangladeshi people,” a comment read.

Others argued that the past month’s protests were the result of disorder brought upon the country by Western ideology, and that only an ideology such as that of the Chinese Communist Party could bring stability to Bangladesh.

“A handful of ambitious people, plus a small group of mindless fanatics, has shaped and destroyed the fate of everyone,” wrote one Weibo user. “The only way to avoid this result is through iron-fist rule by a party representative of the people. Democracy and freedom accelerate a country’s self-destruction. They are the worst political system.”

Other users applied the government’s own talking points to counter that argument.

“Democracy and freedom are written into socialist values. Who do you think you are, daring to oppose socialist values?” one comment read.

Hasina was Bangladesh’s longest-serving female head of government. She was re-elected for a fourth consecutive term in January elections boycotted by her main political rival. Thousands of opposition members were arrested ahead of the elections. The United States and Britain condemned the election results as untrustworthy.

Although what comes next remains to be seen, China will be watching closely given the amount of money and energy it has already invested in the relationship.

In the July communique announcing the two sides’ upgrade to a comprehensive strategic cooperative partnership, the two countries announced plans to increase defense exchanges and allow for an expanded Chinese role in Bangladeshi infrastructure and economic development.

In the security domain, Bangladesh has been a steady consumer of Chinese weapons. From 2009, when Hasina took power, to 2023, Bangladesh received 12% of Chinese total arms exports, a quantity second only to Pakistan, according to the SIPRI Arms Transfer database.

The two sides also partook in their first military exercise in early May of this year.

Bangladesh joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative in 2016 to receive Chinese financial assistance on various infrastructure projects. So far, China has assisted in the construction of important roads and railways, expansion of the power and communications grids, modernization of seaports and development of a surface water treatment plant.

Katherine Michaelson contributed to this report.
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DHAKA, Bangladesh — Bangladesh’s Nobel laureate Muhammad Yunus will head the country’s interim government after former Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina stepped down and fled the country amid a mass uprising against her rule led mostly by students. 

The announcement early on Wednesday came from Joynal Abedin, the press secretary of President Mohammed Shahabuddin. Abedin spoke to The Associated Press over the phone. 

Abedin also said that the other members of the Yunus-led government would be decided soon after discussion with political parties and other stakeholders. 

The leaders of the student protests, the chiefs of the country’s three divisions of the military, civil society members, as well as some business leaders held a meeting with the president for more than five hours late on Tuesday to decide on the head of the interim administration. 

The students had earlier proposed Yunus and said he agreed. He is expected to return to the country from Paris soon, local media reported. 

Following the decision, student leaders left the president’s official house shortly after midnight Tuesday obviously satisfied and welcoming the decision. 

Earlier, Bangladesh’s president dissolved Parliament, clearing the way for new elections to replace the longtime prime minister who resigned and fled the country following weeks of demonstrations against her rule that descended into violence. 

President Mohammed Shahabuddin also ordered the release of opposition leader Khaleda Zia from house arrest. Zia, a longtime rival of ousted Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, was convicted on corruption charges by Hasina’s government in 2018. 

On Tuesday, some senior positions in the military were reshuffled. The student protesters said they would not allow any military-backed government. 

The streets of Dhaka, the capital, appeared calmer Tuesday, with no reports of new violence as jubilant protesters thronged the ousted leader’s residence. Some posed for selfies with soldiers guarding the building, where a day earlier angry protesters had looted furniture, paintings, flowerpots and chickens. 

Dhaka’s main airport resumed operations after an eight-hour suspension. 

The Bangladesh Police Association said it was launching a strike across the country because of a lack of security after numerous police stations were attacked on Monday and “many” officers were killed, though it didn’t give any number of the dead. 

It said officers would not return to work unless their safety is assured. The association also apologized for violent police attacks on student protesters, saying officers had been “forced to open fire” and had been cast as the “villain.” 

Hasina fled to India by helicopter on Monday as protesters defied military curfew orders to march on the capital, with thousands of demonstrators eventually storming her official residence and other buildings associated with her party and family. 

Protests against a quota system for government jobs, which critics said favored people with connections to her party, grew into a broader challenge to her 15-year rule, which was marked by human rights abuses, corruption and allegations of rigged elections amid a brutal crackdown on her opponents. 

A bloody crackdown on the demonstrations led to clashes that left scores dead, further fueling the movement. 
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ISLAMABAD — Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban said Tuesday that about 3.7 million former refugees have returned to the country since the Islamist group took power three years ago. The statement was a response to the International Organization for Migration, or IOM, which reported last week that more than twice as many Afghans have left the country since 2020.

Which side is correct? Possibly both.  

The dispute began with a July 31 IOM report that said “nearly 8 million Afghans” have departed the country over the last four years. 

Of those, said the IOM, 85% moved to neighboring countries, mostly Iran and Pakistan, and almost 1 million headed to Europe. The IOM said almost 70% of Afghans who went to Iran cited a lack of job opportunities as the main factor driving their migration. 

The Taliban-run Ministry of Refugees and Returnees challenged the IOM figure, saying there has not been such a significant exodus of people from the country since the Soviet invasion and subsequent decade-long occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s. 

“In the last three years alone, 3.7 million Afghan citizens have returned home, marking the first instance of such a substantial influx in the last 40 years in Afghanistan’s history,” the ministry declared. 

The ministry accused the U.N. agency of issuing false and misleading figures to attract donor funding. 

While neither side’s figure can be independently confirmed, it’s conceivable that both numbers are accurate.  

Afghanistan has experienced significant outflows and inflows of people this decade. Many Afghans flee turmoil sparked by the withdrawal of the U.S.-led anti-terrorism coalition and the return to power of the Taliban, who continue to battle Afghan insurgent groups as well as sanctions imposed by Western countries over human rights concerns, mainly laws that ban women from most aspects of public life. 

At the same time, many Afghans are getting a cold welcome in what they hoped would be countries of refuge. In its report, the IOM acknowledged that the number of Afghans repatriating from Iran “remains consistently high.” It stated that nearly 1 million Afghans came back home in 2023, with “70% being undocumented and 60% forcibly returned.” 

Meanwhile, neighboring Pakistan reported this week that its crackdown on undocumented foreigners in the country has led to the repatriation of nearly 700,000 Afghans in the last 10 months. Another 1.4 million legal Afghan refugees remain in the country. 

IOM and its partner agencies have repeatedly urged all countries to “immediately halt the forced returns of Afghans, both in the short and long term, until conditions are established to ensure safe, dignified, and voluntary returns, regardless of legal status.” 

Climate change impact 

Meanwhile, Save the Children reported Tuesday that extreme weather events forced at least 38,000 people, about half of them children, from their homes in Afghanistan in the first six months of this year.  

The aid group said, “While most displacements in recent decades have been due to conflict, in 2022, climate disasters became the main reason people fled their homes and moved to other areas within Afghanistan.”  

The report noted that more than one-third of Afghans are facing crisis levels of hunger, driven mostly by climate shocks and high food prices. 

Recent U.N. reports have cited drought as the main reason for disaster-driven displacement in Afghanistan, ranked as the sixth most vulnerable country to the impacts of climate change.  The assessments found that 25 of the 34 Afghan provinces “face severe or catastrophic” drought conditions, affecting more than half the country’s more than 40 million population. 

The Taliban reclaimed power in August 2021 from the then-internationally backed government in Kabul, as the United States and NATO troops withdrew from the country after almost two decades of involvement in the Afghan war. 

No country has officially recognized the fundamentalist Taliban regime over its sweeping restrictions on women’s rights to education, employment, and public life, among other human rights concerns.  

The international isolation has deterred potential partners from providing development assistance to help Taliban-ruled Afghanistan in addressing climate change and post-conflict reconstruction challenges.
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