YANGON: Following an incomplete count due to ethnic conflicts in parts of the country, Myanmar said on Saturday that its first census in 30 years shows the population to be 51.4 million, some 10 million less than expected.
The provisional findings of the census, taken between March-April with support from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA), was released by Minister of Immigration and Population U Khin Yi.
The census was mired in controversy from the outset, as the government and UNFPA were criticized for basing the counting on 135 officially recognized ethnic groups, a classification that critics say is outdated and inaccurate.
Ethnic groups said their political representation and claims to ethnicity would be compromised if they were undercounted.
The estimated population included some 1.2 million people who were not counted in three areas affected by ethnic conflicts, northern Rakhine, and Kachin and Kayin states.
The government said that the estimate of 1.09 million uncounted people in northern Rakhine state was based on pre-census mapping of households by immigration officers.
Much of the controversy surrounded the counting of the Rohingya, who live in western Rakhine state and who are often described by the UN as one of the most persecuted minorities in the world.
The government had promised international sponsors that ethnic groups could choose their classification. But a day before the census kicked off, presidential spokesman Ye Htut indicated that use of the term Rohingya would be prohibited, so those who wanted to identify themselves as Rohingya were excluded from the count.
The government describes the Rohingya as Bengalis, a term that implies they are illegal immigrants from neighboring Bangladesh. However, most have lived in Myanmar for centuries.
Preliminary findings from the census also found a gender gap, with 26.6 million females and 24.8 million males, and it also showed the population pressures building up in the country’s cities.
“For the first time in decades, the country will have data it needs to put roads, schools, health facilities and other essential infrastructure where people need them most,” Janet Jackson, the UNFPA representative in Myanmar said in a news release. More detailed data will be released in May 2015.
Ethnic strife blurs Myanmar’s first census in 30 years
Ethnic strife blurs Myanmar’s first census in 30 years
Indonesia launches first medical tourism special economic zone in Bali
- Sanur medical tourism zone will include international hospital, specialist clinics, research centers
- Initiative also aims to stem high number of Indonesians who annually seek health treatment overseas
JAKARTA: Indonesia has launched its first medical tourism special economic zone in Sanur, on the resort island of Bali, marking a major step in the country’s efforts to develop world-class healthcare services integrated with tourism.
In recent years Indonesia has been working to reform its healthcare sector to improve service standards and reduce the outflow of Indonesians seeking treatment overseas, including in Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand, who spend up to 150 trillion rupiahs ($9.2 billion) abroad annually.
The Sanur medical tourism zone will include a range of facilities, including an international hospital, specialist clinics, medical research centers and a garden with over 380 medicinal plant species.
“I think this is the first of its kind in our country — we envisioned creating a special economic zone offering world-class healthcare services,” President Prabowo Subianto, who inaugurated the project on Wednesday, said during his speech.
Indonesia, a country of more than 270 million people, has about seven doctors for every 10,000 people, according to World Health Organization data. This is below Thailand with nine doctors, the Philippines with eight doctors and Australia with 41 doctors per 10,000.
To transform healthcare in the country, Indonesian lawmakers passed into law a health bill last year that allows foreign medical specialists to practice and be based in the country.
The Sanur medical tourism zone is also part of the government’s efforts “to provide the best healthcare services to all of its citizens,” Prabowo said.
“There are many Indonesian citizens who seek healthcare abroad, which affects our foreign exchange reserves. With this initiative, we can provide healthcare services that are on par with the best in the world.”
Indonesian officials hope the new special economic zone will not only boost the country’s health sector, but put Bali on the global map as a top destination for health and wellness tourism.
As the country’s top overall tourist destination, Bali welcomed 6.3 million international travelers in 2024.
The idea to develop a special zone dedicated to world-class healthcare does have the potential to effectively stem the number of Indonesians seeking medical services abroad, said Kharisma Utari, a researcher with Women’s World Banking.
“But I think we need to remember that quality healthcare cannot be solely developed from one hub. If this stands alone without improving the entire healthcare system nationally, there is a risk of this turning into a gimmick or a mere symbol,” Utari told Arab News on Thursday.
“Quality healthcare should be enjoyed evenly and inclusively across all regions, not just in one exclusive zone,” she added. “State budget should be directed to strengthen basic services that could reach all people.”
‘Thrown out like trash’ from Iran, Afghans return to land they hardly know
- More than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, IMO says
- Tehran had pledged mass deportations to counter growing local discontent over refugees
ISLAMABAD: Ghulam Ali begins his days in pain, his muscles aching from hauling grain on a rickety cart through the streets of Kabul, homesick for the country he called home for nearly four decades.
Ali is among more than 1.2 million Afghans deported from neighboring Iran since March 2024, according to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), after Tehran pledged mass deportations to counter mounting local discontent over refugees.
Thousands have also fled this month after Israeli and US airstrikes hit Iranian military targets.
For Ali, 51, whose family left Afghanistan during the Soviet invasion in the 1980s when he was just 10, Iran was home.
“I grew up there, worked there, buried my parents there,” he said during a midday break from work in Kabul, sipping green tea with a simple lunch of naan bread.
“But in the end, they threw us out like trash. I lost everything — my home, my little savings in cash, my dignity,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by video link.
Like many others, he has returned to a homeland he barely knew and one that has changed drastically.
Outsiders in their own country, many men struggle to support their family while women face severe restrictions on their daily life under the ruling Taliban.
Since late 2023, an estimated 3 million Afghans have been forced out of Iran and Pakistan, where they had sought safety from decades of war and, since the Taliban’s return to Kabul in 2021, from extremist rule.
Unwelcome abroad, they have returned to a homeland facing economic collapse and international indifference.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, in his latest report on Afghanistan, called on countries hosting Afghan refugees to protect those in need and abide by international obligations to ensure any returns to Afghanistan are voluntary.
“Returnees face immense challenges... in particular securing housing, employment and access to basic services,” he said.
Up to 10,000 Afghan women, men and children are taking the Islam Qala border crossing from Iran on a daily basis, according to the Taliban authorities. Inside Afghanistan, humanitarian aid agencies say conditions are dire, with inadequate shelter, food shortages and no road map for reintegration.
“They return to a homeland that is dramatically unprepared to receive them,” warned Arafat Jamal, the UNHCR representative in Afghanistan in a statement last month.
The Taliban’s deputy minister for border and refugees affairs, Abdul Zahir Rahmani, also told local media this week that Afghanistan had seen a sharp increase in refugee returns since this month’s 12-day air war in Iran.
Many said they had no say in the matter.
Ali said he was arrested at a construction site in Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, lacking documentation during a crackdown on refugees by the Iranian police.
He and his wife, six children, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren were deported in March.
“We were treated like criminals,” he said. “They didn’t care how law-abiding or in need we were. They just wanted all Afghans out.”
The extended family — 15 people aged 5 to 51 — is now packed into a two-room, mud-brick house on Kabul’s western fringes.
Ali said his Persian-accented Dari draws sneers from fellow laborers – another reminder he doesn’t fit in. But he brushes off their mockery, saying his focus is on feeding his family.
“We can barely afford to eat properly,” his wife Shahla said by video as she sat cross-legged on a worn rug.
“Rent is 4,000 afghanis ($56) a month — but even that is a burden. One of my sons is visually impaired; the other returns home every day empty-handed.”
For women and girls, their return can feel like a double displacement. They are subject to many of the Taliban’s most repressive laws, including restrictions on their movement without a “mahram,” or male companion, and curbs on education and employment.
On Kabul’s western edge, 38-year-old Safiya and her three daughters spend their days in a rented house packing candies for shops, earning just 50 afghanis for a day’s work, below Afghanistan’s poverty level of $1 a day.
Safiya said they were deported from Iran in February.
“In Tehran, I stitched clothes. My girls worked at a sweet shop,” said Safiya, who declined to give her last name.
“Life was tough, but we had our freedom, as well as hope … Here, there’s no work, no school, no dignity. It’s like we’ve come home only to be exiled again.”
During their deportation, Safiya was separated from her youngest daughter for a week while the family was detained, a spat over documents that still gives the 16-year-old nightmares.
In Iran, said Safiya, “my daughters had inspiring dreams. Now they sit at home all day, waiting.”
Afghans are also being forcibly deported from next-door Pakistan – more than 800,000 people have been expelled since October 2023, according to Amnesty International.
Born in Pakistan to Afghan refugee parents, Nemat Ullah Rahimi had never lived in Afghanistan until last winter, when police barely gave him time to close his Peshawar grocery store before sending him over the Torkham border crossing.
“I wasn’t allowed to sell anything. My wife and kids — all born in Pakistan — had no legal documents there so we had to leave,” said the 34-year-old.
Rahimi now works long hours at a tire repair shop at a dusty intersection on the edge of Kabul as he tries to rebuild a life.
“I can’t say it’s easy. But I have no choice. We’re restarting from zero,” he said.
Several arrested in Serbia as tensions mount ahead of anti-corruption rally in Belgrade on weekend
- Protesting university students have called Saturday’s rally to press their demand for an early election
- Authorities made similar arrests back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest
BELGRADE: Police in Serbia have arrested several people accused of allegedly plotting to overthrow the government as tensions soared ahead of a major anti-government rally planned this weekend in the capital Belgrade.
Police said six were detained on Wednesday evening, suspected of “preparing criminal acts against the constitutional order and security of Serbia” and “calling for violent change of the constitutional order.”
At least one other university student was arrested earlier this week accused of preparing “an act of terrorism” based on his private conversations over a mobile phone. Hundreds on Thursday demonstrated against the arrest in Belgrade.
Protesting university students have called Saturday’s rally to press their demand for an early election after nearly eight months of almost daily anti-corruption demonstrations that have shaken the populist government of President Aleksandar Vucic.
Persistent protests started in November after a renovated rail station canopy collapsed that killed 16 people and which many blamed on rampant government corruption and negligence in state infrastructure projects. University students have been a key force behind the nationwide movement.
Vucic and his right-wing Serbian Progressive Party have refused the students’ demand for a snap vote, instead accusing the protesters of planning to spur violence at Saturday’s gathering.
Police alleged the detained group met last week in a hotel in the central town of Kraljevo to plan a violent change of government and attacks on police and pro-government media outlets. One of the suspects had a gun and ammunition, they said.
No other details were immediately available. Serbian media reported that those arrested include an opposition politician, veteran of the wars of the 1990s, and others.
Authorities made similar arrests back in March, ahead of what was the biggest ever anti-government protest in the Balkan country, which drew hundreds of thousands of people.
Vucic’s loyalists also set up a camp in a park outside his office which still stands. The otherwise peaceful gathering on March 15 came to an abrupt end when part of the crowd suddenly scattered in panic, triggering allegations that authorities used a sonic weapon against peaceful protesters, which they have denied.
Vucic, a former extreme nationalist, has become increasingly authoritarian since coming to power over a decade ago. Though he formally says he wants Serbia to join the European Union, critics say Vucic has stifled democratic freedoms as he strengthened ties with Russia and China.
Europe rights court condemns France over racial profiling
- Police stopped Karim Touil three times in 10 days in the eastern city of Besancon in 2011
- The court ordered the French state to pay him 3,000 euros ($3,500)
STRASBOURG: A top European court on Thursday condemned France for failing to protect the rights of a Frenchman who had accused his country’s police of racial profiling.
The European Court of Human Rights was unable to determine discrimination in the case of five other French plaintiffs.
But it found that the government had provided no “objective and reasonable justification” for police stopping Karim Touil three times in 10 days in the eastern city of Besancon in 2011.
The court said it was “very aware of the difficulties for police officers to decide, very quickly and without necessarily having clear internal instructions, whether they are facing a threat to public order or security.”
But in the case of Touil, it presumed “discriminatory treatment” that the French government was not able to refute.
It ordered the French state to pay him 3,000 euros ($3,500).
Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International last year said racial profiling was “widespread throughout the country and deeply rooted in police practices.”
HRW said young men and boys perceived as black or Arab, some as young as 10, were often subjected to “abusive and illegal identity checks.”
The rights groups said they had lodged a complaint with the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination.
France’s rights ombudsman in 2017 found that a young person “perceived as black or Arab” was 20 times more likely to face an identity check than the rest of the population.
Philippine police face mandatory fitness training to stay in service
- New program is called Pulisteniks, from ‘pulis’ – police in Tagalog – and ‘calisthenics’
- Program mandates police units across the country to dedicate Tuesdays and Thursdays to fitness
MANILA: The Philippine National Police has kicked off a new fitness initiative for officers, vowing to get overweight personnel back in shape or out of the service.
Launched this week, the campaign is called Pulisteniks, from “pulis,” which means police in Tagalog, and “calisthenics.”
The program mandates PNP units nationwide to dedicate Tuesdays and Thursdays to fitness, including various physical activities such as running, walking, jogging, biking, Zumba, and combat sports like arnis – the national martial art and sport of the Philippines – aikido, boxing, karate-do, judo, muay thai, swimming, table tennis, and taekwondo.
“The directive of our chief PNP is clear. We need our police officers to be physically fit. This program has been in place for a long time, but now we’re putting more focus on it because we’re also aiming to meet our target response time,” Maj. Philipp Ines, Manila Police District spokesperson, told Arab News.
“What is happening now is just a reiteration of our ongoing programs. The good thing is we’re now being given time to focus on physical conditioning every Tuesday and Thursday from 4 p.m. to 5 p.m. This is a good program to help our officers reduce weight and be able to keep up with the demands of public service.”
Under the Department of the Interior and Local Government Act of 1990 all PNP officers are required to keep their body weight within 5 kg – either above or below – a standard weight based on their height and sex.
“We undergo quarterly check-ups, where they check if our BMI – body mass index – is within the acceptable range. If it’s not, the health or medical officer tells our personnel to lose weight. That’s why now there’s a program in place to help with that because before it was hard for many officers due to the lack of time,” Ines said.
“The Manila Police District Health Service is monitoring our progress so we can track whether we’re able to comply. And every year, there’s a required physical fitness test that we all have to pass. If you fail those tests twice in a row, it could be grounds for separation from service.”
Philippine Police Chief Gen. Nicolas Torre III said that officers are given a target of six months to a year to lose weight.
“After a year, if they don’t meet the standards, they can be removed from the service,” he said in a radio interview.
The fitness program has already gained support from Filipino netizens whose comments on Facebook ranged from “I hope they lose weight to look better” to “It’s embarrassing to see all fat police officers these days,” and “your uniform doesn’t fit you.”
Remedios Borejon, retired National Police Commission public affairs officer, told Arab News the program should help improve how the police are seen.
“I’m in favor of the program. This is also to help make our police officers look prim and proper, like gentlemen. Because it really doesn’t look good if a police officer looks sloppy or overweight,” she said.
“In the past, you rarely saw overweight police officers. I support this. It helps improve their image and boosts professionalism.”
