The new Member of Parliament in Kazakhstan, Karakat Abden, has put forward a proposal that has unleashed discontent in her country: that of “imposing a tax on Kazakh girls who marry foreigners”. A group of women’s rights activists immediately started collecting signatures for a petition, leading to Abden’s removal from her parliamentary seat.
In her speech on a TV programme, the MP argued that “a ‘Kazakh woman’ is a national talisman, and we cannot lose cede this abroad, which is why I call for a tax on mixed marriages”. The politician had already hinted at this project in last year’s presidential election campaign, when she was listed as a ‘front’ candidate competing against outgoing President Tokaev.
Having become a member of parliament for the social-patriotic Auyl party, Abden claims to have the support of the other deputies in her group. The country’s feminists have risen up against her, who had already marched on 8 March with the slogan ‘we are not your toys’, aimed precisely at those who, like Abden, want to manipulate the role of Kazakh women.
A woman married to a foreigner, Ajžan, who lives with her husband and family in Thailand, intervened on social media: ‘If the MP is hungry for taxes, let her take them from husbands who beat their wives’.

Christian leaders in Pakistan have slammed the ongoing national census saying the questionnaires were erratic and accused the enumerators of not counting many members of minority groups.
“Many parish houses [parsonages] have been skipped. Maybe they thought no one stays in churches. Since every parish has at least three priests, at least 40 people will be missing in the count [in the city],” Father Mario Rodrigues, rector of St. Patrick’s High School in Karachi, the country’s largest city, told UCA News.
The population in the port city stands at more than 16.5 million as per the seventh national population and housing census that started last month.
Christian leaders like Rodrigues in Karachi and those in other cities have issued a series of allegations against the first-ever digital census including undercounting, faulty questionaries, and delaying tactics.
Based on the latest data, the state-run Pakistan Bureau of Statistics (PBS) said the current population of the country is estimated at 235 million. The agency did not reveal data on the religious minorities in the predominantly Muslim country.
The bureau initially planned to hold the census from March 1- April 1, but it was later extended to April 30, media reports say. The field activities were halted on April 20 for the Eid-ul-Fitr festival and will resume on April 26.

At least 85 people were killed and 322 injured in a deadly stampede at a charity distribution event in Yemen’s capital Sanaa on Thursday, according to an AFP report.
The stampede took place during the distribution of charitable donations by merchants in the final days of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, the Houthi-controlled Ministry of Interior’s spokesperson said in a statement.
At least “85 were killed and more than 322 were injured” after the stampede in the Bab al-Yemen district of the capital, a Huthi security official said. The toll was also confirmed by a health official.
Hundreds of people had crowded into a school to receive the donations, which amounted to 5,000 Yemeni riyals, or about $9 per person, two witnesses involved in the rescue effort told Reuters.
A video posted by Houthi television on Telegram messaging app showed a crowd of people jammed together, some screaming and shouting and reaching out to be pulled to safety.
A video broadcast by the Huthi rebel’s Al Masirah TV channel showed a several bodies piled up, with survivors struggling to get out of the place.
Armed fighters in military uniforms and distribution workers screamed at the crowd to turn back as they rescued people from the stampede.
The dead and injured have been moved to nearby hospitals and those responsible for the distribution were taken into custody, the Huthi’s interior ministry said in a statement carried by the rebel’s Saba news agency.
Families rushed to hospitals but many were not allowed to enter as top officials were also visiting the dead and wounded.

Dashtsend Tsetseg Suren was just three years old when she first walked into the church com-pound in Ulaanbaatar holding the little finger of her Buddhist father, who was one of the workers engaged in constructing the parish church.
During the Easter Vigil this year, the 14-year-old Suren will receive the baptism in the now-completed St. Sophia parish, which is under the Apostolic Prefecture of Ulaanbaatar, based in Mongolia’s capital.
The ninth grader started her catechism classes in 2021 with the guidance of Father Thomas Ro Sang-Min, the parish priest of St. Sophia parish.
“In the initial years, I did not know that this place was a religious place. I was still small and just came to eat something delicious,” she told.
“But now I come here to pray because I know the church is a place to meet with God.”
Her constant contact with the church people for almost a decade in her childhood, which also meant she joined church celebrations and feasts, helped her to become a part of the tiny Catholic community.

Cardinal Charles Bo of Yan-gon has appealed for peace and freedom in Myanmar, where tens of thousands of people, including Christians, continue to bear the brunt of an ongoing civil war between the military and ethnic rebel groups.
“As a nation and as a people, let us roll down the stones of hatred, human suffering and let the message of Jesus, the Prince of Peace, has risen ring in our hearts, in our streets and in every household in this nation,” said Cardinal Bo in an Easter message on April 9.
Just like “the stone was rolled away from Jesus’ tomb, so too can the stones that weigh us down be lifted, allowing us to experience the joy and freedom of new life in Christ.”
The 74-year-old cardinal further said that “let a new Paschal message be heard in this country and let my country rise again into freedom and peace.”
Cardinal Bo, president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of Myanmar (CBCM), said, “We are people of life, we are people of resurrection.”
Churches, hospitals and schools in Christian strongholds in Kayah, Chin, Karen and Ka-chin states remain prime targets for the junta as thousands of internally displaced persons have taken refuge there, while thou-sands more have fled to neighbouring India and Thailand.

Members of the Christian Awakening Movement Pakistan demanding the resignation of Member of Parliament Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali for insulting the Bible during a speech at the national assembly, at the Islamabad Press Club on April 1st.
Christian groups in Pakistan are demanding the resignation of a Muslim parliamentarian after he allegedly insulted the Bible during a speech at the national assembly last week.
Politician Maulana Abdul Akbar Chitrali of the Jamaat-e-Islami party was speaking against the policy of giving additional marks to medical students who can memorize Quran or Bible. He was speaking at the National Assembly, the lower house of the bicameral Pakistan parliament.
“The gospel, Torah and the psalms are cancelled (scriptures). We believe in all of them and don’t reject them but Quran is permanent and will remain till the judgment day,” he said on March 28.
Hundreds of Christians condemned Chitrali on social media for insulting the Bible with some demanding a public apology while some others wanted his resignation from parliament.
Some 20 members of the Christian Awakening Movement Pakistan, shouted slogans outside the Islamabad Press Club on April 1st, demanding Chitrali’s resignation.

Some 200 people were forced to flee their homes in Bangladesh after eight tribal Christians were killed on Maundy Thursday in a gun battle between two insurgent groups in a remote village in the restive Chittagong Hill Tracts.
They fled their homes fearing further violence in Khamtangpara, a village in Bandarban district where the attack took place on April 6, said Naiton Bawm, a leader of the ethnic Bawm people.
“Around 200 people fled the area. They now live in government-run schools. The government provides them with food. They can return home only when the situation becomes normal. We Bawm people live in fear,” Naiton told.
Police recovered eight bodies from the village on April 7, Abdul Mannan, the Ro-wangchhari sub-district police chief told.
All the dead were Christians – four Baptists and four Presbyterians, said Pastor Georgy Loncheu of the local Presbyterian Church.
“Our Good Friday and Easter were very painful. We Bawm people are worried. On Easter Sunday, we prayed for the souls of those who were killed. We prayed to God so we have the patience to overcome this shock,” Loncheu told.
Mannan said local people alerted police to the gunfight between insurgent tribal groups – the Kuki-Chin National Front and the United People’s Democratic Front. Two guns were also found near the bodies, Mannan said.
Loncheu said only one of the eight victims might have been a member of the Kuki-Chin National Front, but did not give details.
“Terrorists killed them and claimed they were insurgents,” he said.
The wife of one of the victims, Sankhum Bawm, who now lives with her daughters in a government school, told they were “afraid to return home” fearing further violence.
“Our daughters’ education will stop now because my husband was the only earning member in our family,” she said.

Mohammad Javad enters a fashionable shop in well-to-do north Tehran with his mother. For the first time ever he wants a necktie, long banned in Iran as a symbol of Western decadence. The 27-year-old dentist said he opted for this clothing accessory in hopes of looking his best during the first meeting with his future in-laws.
“In our society, wearing a tie is like wearing a mask before Covid-19 hit,” he said as the salesman adjusted his suit. “People would look at you differently because the negative view still remains.”
“I think a man looks chic with one. Unfortunately, we Iranians have imposed strange and unnecessary restrictions on ourselves. It’ll take time for that to change, but hopefully, it will.”
Dress rules have stoked strong passions in Iran, especially restrictions on women who have long been required to wear modest clothing and headscarves.
Iran was gripped by unrest, labelled “riots” by the authorities, after the Sept 16 death in custody of Iranian Kurd Mahsa Amini, 22, following her arrest for an alleged violation of the country’s strict dress code for women.

The disappointment on Daniel Massey’s face was an indicator of the lukewarm response from Pakistan’s minority Christians to the government’s first-ever digital population and housing census rolled out on March 1, with promises to be transparent and inclusive.
The massive undertaking aims to gather demographic data on every individual ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections. It is also expected to serve as an effective tool for planning measures for the socioeconomic development of the nation’s poor.
However, Christians don’t seem too enthused about participating in the latest self-enumeration campaign, says Massey.
The campaign is being conducted by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), a Lahore-based research and advocacy group, amid concerns that Christians have been undercounted in the national census over the past two decades.
According to the 2017 national census, Pakistan had 2.6 million Christians who form just 1.27 percent of its 207 million people, mostly Muslims.

Christian concerns grow as Pakistan pushes digital census
The disappointment on Daniel Massey’s face was an indicator of the lukewarm response from Pakistan’s minority Christians to the government’s first-ever digital population and housing census rolled out on March 1, with promises to be transparent and inclusive.
The massive undertaking aims to gather demographic data on every individual ahead of this year’s parliamentary elections. It is also expected to serve as an effective tool for planning measures for the socioeconomic development of the nation’s poor.
However, Christians don’t seem too enthused about participating in the latest self-enumeration campaign, says Massey, who is part of an ongoing campaign creating awareness among the minority community on the need of joining the online census.
The campaign is being conducted by the Center for Social Justice (CSJ), a Lahore-based research and advocacy group, amid concerns that Christians have been undercounted in the national census over the past two decades.