Asian

Taliban suspend university education for women in Afghanistan

The Taliban government has suspended university education for all female students in Afghanistan, the latest step in its brutal clampdown on the rights and freedoms of Afghan women. A spokesman for the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education confirmed the suspension to CNN on Tuesday. A letter published by the education ministry said the decision was […]

Demand to end caste-based discrimination in Bangladesh

A rights body in Bangladesh has called for lifting the unwritten ‘ban’ on the entry of Dalits – the lowest outside the four main castes in the Indian subcontinent’s social order– into restaurants and eateries after a youth burnt his hand in a scuffle over the issue. The Bangladesh Dalit and Excluded Rights Movement (BDERM) […]

Selling Christmas in Muslim-majority Bangladesh

Some 20 years ago when Mohibul Hasan began his textile shop in the Mirpur area of Dhaka, Christmas was largely unknown in Bangladesh but now it has become a season for brisk sales. “If I sell 100 sarees a month, in the week before Christmas it would be around 300 sarees,” the 52-year Muslim said from […]

Vietnamese converts bring others to Christmas

Nguyen Van Hai walked around watching hundreds of converts from other faiths making different styles of creches with colourful lights, pretty stars, evergreen trees, Santa Claus figures and other decorations in the compound of Rach Vop church in Soc Trang province on Dec. 18. Those people, who have been attending courses in catechism for years […]

Christmas under the shadow of terrorism in Pakistan

Children at the Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta have rehearsed well for a traditional Christmas play they were forced to abandon by a terror attack five years ago. The mayhem caused by two suicide bombers at the church in Pakistan’s restive Balochistan province in 2017 is still fresh in the minds of the survivors. […]

Philippine Church is forced to work with dictator’s son

In ancient times, the phrase “Vox Populi, Vox Dei” — the voice of the people is the voice of God — was almost a sacred incanta-tion of every monarch. When a king’s legitimacy was being questioned, all he needed to do was to resort to divine teaching that his rule was ordained by God because […]

North Korea executes teens for distributing foreign films

Terrified residents expre-ssed grave shock as North Korean authorities publicly executed three teenagers by firing including two who alle-gedly watched and distributed South Korean movies, says a report. A third teenager was accused of murdering his stepmother, Radio Free Asia (RFA) reported on Dec. 2 quoting witnesses. The officials in the ultra-communist pariah state have […]

Food prices compound ordinary Bangladeshis’ woes

Suman Haldar, a Catholic who runs a small grocery store in a Bangladesh village, is feeling the pinch thanks to skyrocketing prices and falling income which has led to the rationing of food in his six-member household. “I could afford chicken once a week even during the Covid pandemic, but now it’s become difficult to […]

Eviction-facing Indian Catholics to fight Muslim charity’s claims

Goans oppose tourism project near 16th century basilica