Imran Khan was a marked man from the moment he returned to Pakistan
Pakistan has long had a peculiarly cruel fashion of dealing with its disrupters.
The 14-year jail sentence handed down to Imran Khan – his wife Bushra Bibi was given seven years – for corruption is intended to be the last nail in the political coffin of the nation’s most charismatic democratic interloper.
Can we be forgiven for not taking the allegations against Mr Khan seriously? The charge sheet says he accepted a gift of land from a real estate developer in exchange for laundered money when Khan was in power.
If so it was a grievous fault – and grievously has the former Pakistani cricket captain answered it. But the Pakistani public will heave a cynical shrug: this is what our political masters do, as natural as breathing, they will say, and it’s what in the end they get punished for. It’s a vicious game, and it’s been going on since 1979 when General Muhammad Zia ul-Haq had Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the prime minister he had overthrown in a coup, executed.
In a political system firmly locked against intruders, Imran Khan was from the start of his career a deeply unwelcome presence. His looks and his cricket credentials gave him fame and popularity right across the population, and in a system based on vote banks tightly related to territory, this was something quite new.
Democracy has never flourished for long in Pakistan, where the sort of land reforms that revolutionised independent India early in its history have never happened, and where feudal lords continue to hold vast unaccountable power. Khan’s was the boldest and most plausible bid to shatter that corrupt and cosy system.
His education in England, first at public school then at Keble College, Oxford, and his philandering with an unspecified number of society blondes, put him way beyond the straitlaced norms of Pakistani life, and when he first tried to enter politics he was greeted with ridicule. Someone as handsome, famous and handy with a cricket bat could not be intelligent. So Imran was a joke – that was the first line of defence against him.
As he did not give up and slink away but instead persisted, perhaps he could be bought up, and successive Pakistani leaders tried to de-fang him by bringing him into their administrations. Khan was having none of it. Shattering the frame of Pakistani politics remained his goal.
What gave him the perseverance that is perhaps his most notable characteristic, enabling him to bash on through more than 20 years of reversals and snubs till finally winning the election of 2018 and becoming prime minister? On the face of it, he is an improbable revolutionary.
Born and raised in Lahore in the Pakistani heartland, brought up by affluent parents from the small professional class, on the face of it there is nothing of the outsider about him. What made the difference is that both his parents were Pashtuns.
The River Indus, from which the word “India” derives, has been the great divide in the subcontinent since Alexander the Great, with the very different tribal culture of Afghanistan on the western side of it. I remember driving over the bridge into what was then still known as the North West Frontier Province back in 2001, and my Punjabi fixer being visibly unhappy about the crossing: they are different people over here, he said.
The Pashtuns, who gave birth to the Taliban, with their fierce martial culture and refusal to bow to successive invaders, are vastly different from the docile farmers of Punjab, and the Durand Line separating Afghanistan from the British Raj remains Pakistan’s wildest and most porous border.
With the glamour of an international sportsman, a wife, Jemima Goldsmith, of Jewish descent, the reputation and looks of a playboy and the adulation he enjoyed with Pashtuns both at home and abroad – no wonder the staid and deeply corrupt Pakistani establishment saw him as a serious threat.
Yet Khan had staying power; and when he finally arrived in government, he showed every sign of being serious about reforming Pakistan.
Khan has long been drawn to the Sufi strain of Islam, with its mystical traditions, its saints and its shrines, and its history of tolerance; his marriage to Bushra Bibi, a Sufi faith healer, cemented the ties and lent credibility to his programme of reducing the pomp and cost of politics, raising the living standards of the poor and taking the state’s commitment to equality seriously.
Did Khan’s visit to Moscow and his neutrality over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine lead to his unseating in a no-confidence vote in 2022? Khan himself believes that the US indicated they wanted rid of him, and everything that followed, followed.
Police volunteer convicted in Kolkata doctor rape and murder case
An Indian police volunteer was convicted of raping and murdering a doctor at a hospital in the eastern Kolkata city, a crime which had sparked nationwide protests last year.
Sanjay Roy’s conviction came five months after the 31-year-old junior doctor’s body was found in the seminar hall of the state-run RG Kar Medical College and Hospital on 9 August.
An autopsy confirmed rape and murder, sparking widespread protests that saw doctors and medical staff striking work for several weeks to demand justice for her.
On Saturday, a Kolkata court handed down the guilty verdict to Roy. The trial was held behind closed doors due to concerns about his safety.
“Your guilt is proved. You are being convicted,” the judge told Roy, adding: “The way you throttled the victim, you can be given death or imprisonment”.
Sentencing was set for Monday.
The trial began on 12 November and saw nearly 50 witnesses examined.
As the ruling came, the victim’s father broke down and told the judge: “You have honoured the faith that I reposed in you.”
He, however, expressed dissatisfaction with the investigation, claiming the crime could not have been committed by a single person.
“Our daughter could not have met such a horrific end by a single man,” he said. “We will remain in pain and agony until all the culprits are punished.”
Roy, who had pleaded not guilty to the charges, said he was “falsely implicated”.
“I have not done this, those who have done this why are they being let go,” he said.
Roy’s lawyer had argued that there were glaring discrepancies in the investigation and forensic examination reports.
India’s federal police who investigated the case described the crime as “rarest of rare” and demanded the death penalty for Roy.
A crowd that had gathered outside the court in anticipation of the verdict shouted slogans demanding justice for the victim and capital punishment for Roy.
Dr Aniket Mahato, a spokesperson for the protesting junior doctors, said street protests would continue “until justice is done”.
The judge said the safety and security of the accused was important and sent him back to jail, where he would be kept under security.
The trainee doctor had settled down in the seminar hall for rest after working nearly 20 hours of a 36-hour shift when she was assaulted, according to staff at the RG Kar Medical College.
Her colleagues said she slept on a floor carpet as there were no dormitories or resting rooms for doctors.
The rape and murder sparked nationwide protests, reminiscent of the 2012 Delhi gangrape case. In that instance, a 23-year-old trainee physiotherapist was raped and brutally assaulted with a metal bar on a bus in Delhi on 16 December 2012, before being dumped on a road. She died of internal injuries nearly two weeks later in a Singapore hospital.
Activists alarmed by plans to hand reclusive island tribe voter IDs
The Indian government has distributed voter ID cards for the first time to members of a reclusive Andaman Islands tribe, drawing concerns from activists that the event is a “publicity stunt” to distract from the imminent industrialisation of their fragile homeland.
The decision to issue identification documents that confirm an individual’s right to participate in elections is being promoted by the Narendra Modi government as a historic step towards the democratic evolution of the semi-nomadic Jarawa tribe.
Senior local administrative official Chandra Bhushan Kumar distributed these cards among 19 members of the tribe earlier this month in the federal territory of Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Local officials said the enrolment process was designed to minimise disruption to their daily lives while maximising their understanding of their rights as Indian citizens.
Jarawas are one of five tribes inhabiting the Andaman and Nicobar Islands and are ranked as “particularly vulnerable” by the Anthropological Survey of India. The others are the North Sentinelese, Great Andamanese, Onge, and Shompen.
Jarawas have traditionally been reclusive, maintaining limited contact with the outside world. They live deep inside the forests on the western coasts of South and Middle Andaman Islands, which are known for their rich biodiversity. The tribes are thought to have inhabited their Indian Ocean homeland for as long as 55,000 years.
“This is a landmark achievement in India’s democratic evolution, symbolising the country’s commitment to ensuring inclusivity and equity for all citizens,” said local election official Arjun Sharma.
“We ensured that no aspect of the process would compromise the dignity of the Jarawa people,” Mr Sharma added.
However, activists working with the Jarawa complained that their enrolment in India’s voting process, presented as a step towards inclusivity, has been turned into a “publicity stunt by the administration”.
Activists argued that the process of voter enrolment undermined the dignity and privacy of the tribe while also distracting from a more pressing issue – the Indian government’s plans to implement a major development project that could threaten the land, rights, and survival of Indigenous communities.
The Andaman and Nicobar Islands are located in the Bay of Bengal, about 1,200km (745 miles) southeast of the Indian mainland. The archipelago is a federal territory comprising 836 islands, of which only 38 are inhabited.
Sophie Grig, Asia campaigns director at Survival International, told The Independent: “Of course the Jarawa should have the right to participate in the democratic process if they want to.
“But we are concerned that the Andaman and Nicobar administration is claiming to be enrolling the Jarawa in the electoral register in a way that respects their privacy and dignity, but in fact has turned the whole thing into a publicity stunt for the administration, which is the exact opposite of dignified and private.”
The Rs720bn (£6.83bn) Great Nicobar Island Development Project, which aims to transform the fragile biodiverse rich territory into an economic hub, was proposed by the Indian government in 2021 and involves building a cargo transit hub, airport, and power plant on the southern tip of Great Nicobar Island.
“Recognising and respecting the rights of the Indigenous peoples of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands as citizens of India is about far more than just adding them to the voter register,” Ms Grig said. “It is also about recognising and respecting their rights to their territories; their rights to life, to their ways of life and to choose how much or how little they wish to interact with the mainstream.
“This seemed to be deliberately designed to distract attention from the fact that the Indian government is planning to build a dangerous, and fundamentally undemocratic, mega project on the Shompen’s island, which experts have warned will lead to the genocide of the tribe,” she said.
Last year in February, a letter signed by genocide experts across the world called on India’s government to scrap the project.
“Should the government of India’s proposal to create an international container transhipment terminal, associated port and harbour facilities, airport, power plant, defence base, industrial zones, as well as major urban development, proceed, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide,” the letter read.
Activists said the island’s vulnerable tribes such as the Nicobarese and the Shompen face risks from exposure to external cultures and diseases.
The Independent reached out to senior officials of the Andaman and Nicobar administration and the chief electoral officer of the federal territory for comment.
Pankaj Sekhsaria, curator of The Great Nicobar Betrayal, a collection of essays on the project, told Down To Earth magazine: “The Directorate of Tribal Welfare of the Andaman and Nicobar Administration, the main body tasked with ensuring tribal welfare, is on record promising the project proponent all help in clearing regulatory processes, including for de-reservation of tribal reserve land, for the project. This is really unfortunate.”
He added that the Great Nicobar project should not proceed due to the ecological and human risks it allegedly poses. Besides the destruction of local ecosystems and Indigenous communities, he said the project site is in a highly tectonically active region, towards the periphery of the Pacific Ring of Fire.
“Earthquakes happen here on a weekly basis. The site of the project in Great Nicobar saw a permanent subsidence of 15ft (4.5m) in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake of December 26, 2004,” he said.
Mr Sekhsaria said this raises concerns about the safety of the proposed investment and the potential danger to 300,000 settlers.
Two Iranian Supreme Court judges assassinated in Tehran
Two judges of Iran’s Supreme Court were shot dead and a third wounded in Tehran on Saturday, the judiciary’s news website said.
The attacker reportedly killed himself after opening fire at the veteran judges at 10.45am local time on Saturday.
The slain judges were identified as Mohammad Moghiseh and Hojatoleslam Ali Razini who were reportedly dealing with offences related to national security, espionage and terrorism.
“Three judges of the Supreme Court were targeted. Two of them were martyred and one was injured,” Mizan Online reported.
Fars News, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said the attacker was a staff member responsible for providing refreshments at the Iranian judiciary’s headquarters.
He used a handgun to shoot judges and then himself, it said.
The Judiciary Media Centre, however, gave a differing account, referring to the shooter as an “intruder”. “This morning, an armed infiltrator at the Supreme Court carried out a premeditated assassination targeting two brave and experienced judges renowned for their fight against crimes against national security, espionage, and terrorism,” it said, according to Iran International.
The motive for the assassinations was unclear.
In the past, opposition websites said Moghiseh was involved in trials of people they described as political prisoners.
The assassinations came after the Supreme Court upheld the death sentence of Kurdish woman activist Pakhshan Azizi, inviting condemnation for serious violation of international human rights law.
Ms Azizi was arrested in Tehran on 4 August 2023, allegedly for supporting refugees in Iraq and Syria.
She was subjected to psychological and physical torture during solitary confinement, activists alleged.
South Korean investigators seek extension of president Yoon’s custody
The investigators probing South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol over charges of insurrection saught to extend his detention on Friday as the leader refused to cooperate with questioning.
Mr Yoon became South Korea’s first incumbent president to be arrested after he was charged with insurrection for declaring martial law last month in a move that thrust the country into political turmoil. He was impeached by the National Assembly over his short-lived martial law declaration on the night of 3 December and suspended from office.
The Corruption Investigation Office for High Ranking Officials (CIO) will need a court to approve its ongoing detention of Mr Yoon, and has requested another 20 days.
A CIO official said the agency has made the request due to “the gravity of crime”. The request is set to be reviewed on Saturday afternoon by Seoul Western District Court, reported Yonhap news agency.
President Yoon said the jail cell where he is being held was “a little uncomfortable” but he was doing well, according to a statement by his lawyer.
The president thanked hundreds of his supporters who gathered outside the prison in chilly conditions, saying: “I am grateful for the people’s burning patriotism.”
Mr Yoon has exercised his right to remain silent throughout the CIO’s efforts to question him this week, while his party appears to have profited from the country’s growing political polarisation by improving its polling ratings since his arrest.
The approval rating for Mr Yoon’s ruling People Power Party (PPP) was 39 per cent in a Gallup Korea poll released on Friday, up from 34 per cent a week ago and overtaking the main opposition Democratic Party for the first time since August which stood at 36 per cent.
Mr Yoon’s lawyers have said that there is no reason for him to sit through further questioning.
“He has fully stated his basic position on the first day (of the arrest), and we believe there is no reason or need to answer the Q&A style back-and-forth,” Mr Yoon’s lawyer, Seok Dong-hyeon, said in a statement.
On Wednesday, Mr Yoon said he had decided to comply with the arrest warrant but that the “rule of law has completely collapsed in this country”.
“When I saw them break into the security area using firefighting equipment today, I decided to respond to the CIO’s investigation – despite it being an illegal investigation – to prevent unsavoury bloodshed,” he said in a statement.
South Korea is facing its worst political crisis in decades after Mr Yoon’s failed attempt to impose martial law on 3 December. The order was lifted in a matter of hours after soldiers failed to keep National Assembly members from voting it down.
As well as the criminal case against him, Mr Yoon faces a Constitutional Court trial that started this week to decide whether to permanently suspend his powers or return him to office.
Taiwan’s first execution in five years sparks outcry: ‘Shocking’
The execution of an inmate on Thursday by Taiwan, marking the first death penalty carried out by the island’s authorities in five years, has sparked condemnation from rights groups.
Death row inmate Huang Linkai, who was convicted of raping and murdering his ex-girlfriend and killing her mother in 2013, was executed at the Taipei detention centre, according to the Ministry of Justice.
This marks the first execution order signed by minister of justice Cheng Ming-chien since assuming office in May last year.
In 2017, the Supreme Court upheld Linkai’s death sentence for the murder of his ex-girlfriend and affirmed a life imprisonment sentence without parole for the killing of her mother.
Prosecutors, at the time, attributed the double homicide to anger over the breakup and a financial dispute.
On 16 January, the Taiwanese minister of justice authorised the execution of Linkai, despite unresolved concerns about constitutional standards for the death penalty in the country. The constitutional court had earlier acknowledged flaws in its application, mandating reforms by 2026, including unanimous judgments and stringent review processes.
Linkai’s lawyer filed an appeal citing these issues, but the execution proceeded.
His execution has upset the European Union and several rights groups across the world who called it “unlawful”.
E-Ling Chiu, Amnesty International Taiwan’s director, said the execution was a “huge setback for human rights in Taiwan”.
“This execution is a shocking and cruel development. Taiwan’s Minister of Justice, with a strike of his pen, has undone several years of hard-fought progress towards the abolition of the death penalty.
“The execution of Huang Linkai was carried out in violation of constitutional and international safeguards on the use of the death penalty, and while an appeal filed by his lawyer to stop the execution was still pending before the courts. This renders his execution unlawful and arbitrary, in violation of the right to life,” Ms Chiu said.
“It is horrifying that the execution was carried out at a few hours’ notice, without the possibility of any last family visits. The death penalty is a cruel and irreversible punishment and the Taiwanese authorities have implemented it in a way that shows an utter disregard for the rights of those affected.
“We urge Taiwan’s government to immediately halt any plans to carry out further executions. Instead, the authorities must immediately change course and establish an official moratorium on executions as the first critical step towards abolition of the death penalty,” she said.
Taiwan’s most recent execution took place on 1 April 2020.
By 31 December 2023, 37 of the 45 individuals on death row will have their sentences finalised and face the possibility of execution.
Globally, 113 countries have abolished the death penalty for all crimes, while 144 are abolitionist in law or practice.
The EU also condemned the execution and expressed condolences to Linkai’s family. “The European Union condemns this crime in the strongest terms and expresses its sincere sympathy to the family of the victims. At the same time, the EU recalls its opposition to capital punishment in all cases and all circumstances,” it said in a statement.
“The EU believes that the death penalty is an inhumane and degrading punishment, which represents the ultimate denial of human dignity. Evidence shows clearly that the death penalty has little or no effect in deterring or reducing crime.
“The EU therefore calls on Taiwan to apply and maintain a de facto moratorium, and to pursue a consistent policy towards the full abolition of the death penalty in Taiwan.”
Japan likely to face a devastating megaquake in the next 30 years
The probability of a “megaquake” happening in Japan within the next 30 years has risen to over 80 per cent, the government’s earthquake investigation panel found.
A megaquake is defined as an earthquake with a magnitude of 8 or greater, bringing the potential for exceptional destructive power and a strong likelihood of generating a tsunami.
The most likely location for a megaquake in Japan is along the Nankai Trough, an 800km-long undersea trench near Japan’s Pacific coast, where the government panel said there was now more than 80 per cent probability of such an earthquake – up from a previous figure of 70-80 per cent.
Each year, the Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion updates the probability of earthquakes occurring along active faults and seabed areas around Japan, using data from 1 January.
“This probability is a number indicating that it would be no surprise if an earthquake were to happen at any time,” Naoshi Hirata, head of the expert panel and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, said during a press conference.
“We’d like to ask people to continue to be prepared.”
The panel found that the likelihood of a megaquake in the Japan Trench and Chishima Trench has also increased, with a 20 per cent chance of an 8.6-magnitude quake off the coast of Tokachi.
The cause of the potential earthquake is the movement of two tectonic plates: the Philippine Sea plate is slowly slipping beneath the continental plate that Japan sits on. As these plates move, they get stuck against each other. Over time, this causes energy to build up. When the plates finally break free from their stuck position, this energy is suddenly released, which could result in a megaquake.
Megaquakes in the Nankai Trough have occurred every 100 to 200 years over the past 1,400 years, with the most recent one recorded in 1946, according to Japan’s Headquarters for Earthquake Research Promotion. The earthquake, which was felt throughout Japan, destroyed 36,000 houses in the southern part of Honshu alone.
In August last year, the Japan Meteorological Association issued its first megaquake advisory since the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, warning of an increased likelihood of a major earthquake along the Nankai Trough.
One year has passed since the 1 January earthquake on the Noto Peninsula in Ishikawa Prefecture last year. The panel also released an assessment report saying that the repeated occurrence of large earthquakes in the region over several years was “something Japan has never seen before”.
Japan is highly earthquake-prone due to its location on the “Ring of Fire”, where intense seismic and volcanic activity occurs.
“Japan sits on the boundaries of four tectonic plates, which makes it one of the most earthquake-prone areas in the world,” Shoichi Yoshioka, a professor at Japan’s Kobe University told CNN last year.
“About 10 per cent of the world’s earthquakes of magnitude 6 or higher occur in or around Japan, so the risk is much higher than in places like Europe or the eastern United States, where earthquakes are rare.”
The panel’s report, released on Wednesday, also mentions that regions with a high probability of experiencing a megaquake in the next 30 years include the coast off Nemuro in Hokkaido, along the Chishima Trench, and the coast of Miyagi Prefecture, along the Japan Trench.
The likelihoods for these areas are projected to be around 80 per cent and between 80 per cent and 90 per cent, respectively. The probability for Miyagi’s coast has risen from a range of 70 per cent to 90 per cent last year.
On 26 December 1707, all segments of the Nankai Trough ruptured simultaneously, causing an earthquake that remains Japan’s second-most powerful on record – referred to as the Hoei Earthquake – triggering the last eruption of Mount Fuji.
After World War II, Japan faced two megaquakes along the Nankai Trough in 1944 and 1946.
Not all experts are convinced by predictions of an imminent Nankai Trough megaquake, however. Robert Geller, a seismologist and professor emeritus at the University of Tokyo, criticises the idea of issues regular warnings about a Nankai Trough quake, calling it a “made-up construct” and a “purely hypothetical scenario” in a CNN report last year.
He argued that earthquakes don’t follow predictable cycles and can occur unpredictably, making it pointless to forecast future quakes based on past ones. This view contrasts with the traditional scientific belief in the “stick-slip” process, where stress builds up along faults and is eventually released in earthquakes.
China’s population fell in 2024 for third year in a row
China’s population fell for the third consecutive year in 2024, authorities reported on Friday.
The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) said China’s population declined by 1.39 million in 2024, reaching 1.408 billion, as deaths continued to surpass births.
Data released earlier in January 2024 had shown a 2.08 million decline in 2023, bringing the population to 1.409 billion. This decline was double the previous year’s, which marked the first population drop in 60 years in China.
Recent efforts by China to curb the declining birthrate have not succeeded in reversing the long-term trend, with the NBS acknowledging that the country is facing several challenges.
In its report released on Friday, the bureau said: “We must be aware that the adverse effects brought by the external environment are increasing, the domestic demands are insufficient, some enterprises have difficulties in production and operation, and the economy is still facing difficulties and challenges.”
The statistics bureau reported that China recorded 9.54 million births in 2024, up from 9.02 million in 2023. The birth rate increased to 6.77 births per 1,000 people in 2024, compared to 6.39 per 1,000 people in 2023. In 2023, marriages increased by 12.4 per cent compared to the previous year, following the end of the Covid-19 pandemic. This led to a short-lived rise in births in certain areas during the first half of 2024.
Last year was also the “Year of the Dragon” in China, which is considered auspicious in the country and is traditionally linked to a slight baby boom across Asia. However, experts indicate that the overall trend is declining.
The number of deaths decreased to 10.93 million in 2024, down from 11.1 million in 2023.
“In the medium and long term, the annual number of births in my country will continue to decline,” Ren Yuan, a professor at Fudan University’s Institute of Population Studies told The New York Times.
China’s birth rates have been declining for decades, driven by the “one-child policy” implemented from 1980 to 2015, along with rapid urbanisation.
The country officially ended its “one-child policy” in 2016, a measure that had been in place for decades to control the country’s population growth. However, the policy resulted in a skewed population due to a cultural preference for male children.
The high cost of childcare, education, job uncertainty, and a slowing economy have discouraged many young Chinese from marrying and starting families, demographers believe. They also point to gender discrimination and traditional expectations for women to manage the household as contributing factors to the declining birthrate.
“Much of China’s population decline is rooted in entrenched structural reasons: Without fundamental structural transformations – from enhancing the social safety net to eliminating gender discrimination – the trend of population decline cannot be reversed,” Yun Zhou, an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Michigan told Reuters.
In 2024, Chinese authorities introduced a series of measures to boost the birth rate. In December, they urged universities to incorporate marriage and “love education” into curricula to promote positive views on marriage, love, fertility, and family. In November, the state council called on local governments to allocate resources to address the population crisis and promote respect for childbearing and marriage at the “right age”.
The number of women of reproductive age in China is projected to fall by over two-thirds to under 100 million by the end of the century.
Meanwhile, China’s economy grew by 5 per cent in 2024, in line with government forecasts, but GDP growth is expected to slow further in the coming years.
In response to a demographic crisis, Beijing has introduced measures to gradually increase the mandatory retirement age, raising it from 60 to 63 for men, from 55 to 58 for women in managerial and technical roles, and maintaining the retirement age at 55 for all other women workers.
China is not alone in facing a demographic crisis; Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan are also experiencing population declines due to similar factors, including restrictions on immigration.
Additional reporting with agencies.