The unexpected announcement on August 12 that Natarajan Chandrasekaran will not seek a third five-year term as executive chairman of Tata Sons, India’s biggest conglomerate, marks the climax of bitter family differences and ego clashes that have colored events at the top of the $280 billion group for decades.

Noel Tata, chairman of the Tata Trusts that control the group, has come out the winner, having triggered Chandrasekaran’s decision to leave when his current five-year term ends next February.

With Chandrasekaran going, Noel is gaining the group leadership that he was denied when his elder half-brother, Ratan Tata, retired as Tata Sons chairman in 2012. At the time, he was seen by many in Mumbai and elsewhere as the natural successor.

Noel’s managerial advancement was also restricted by Ratan during the 21 years that he was chairman, allegedly because he doubted Noel’s ability, but basically, observers say, because of their family history.

Ratan Tata’s parents had a difficult divorce. His father later married Simone Dunoyer from Switzerland, and Noel was born. The two boys grew up separately and it seems that Ratan never accepted his stepmother or half-brother. Noel then complicated the family base by marrying Aloo Mistry, the daughter of Pallonji Mistry whose Shapoorji Pallonji group is Tata’s largest minority shareholder with an 18 percent stake (which it now wants to sell).

Helped initially by his mother, Simone, who was regarded as a trailblazer in cosmetics and fashion retailing, Noel proved his ability by turning Tata’s Trent retail business into a success against strong competition, hitting $2 billion in revenues last year. He also developed Tata’s international trading company and had boardroom roles in various companies.

But Ratan is quoted in a recent biography saying, somewhat dismissively, “perhaps, if Noel had had the experience of handling difficult assignments, he could have established his credentials more forcefully… For Noel to compete successfully for the top post he should have greater exposure than he has had… Partly, his not having it has been his own choice.”

Tata is generally revered as India’s most respectable large business, devoted to charitable enterprises and patriotic principles that guide corporate decisions over its 1.1 million employees and 30 operating companies, ranging from salt to software and Jaguar cars, and hotels to aviation and defense,

The image, however, began to unravel after Ratan retired as chairman of Tata Sons in 2012. He remained head of the trusts that have a controlling 66 percent share in the group and, in 2016, at age 78, he staged a boardroom coup that ousted his chosen successor as chairman, 50-year-old Cyrus Mistry (brother of Noel’s wife). Ratan replaced him with Chandrasekaran, who ran the highly profitable Tata Consultancy Services software business, again sidelining Noel. (Cyrus died later in a car crash).

The coup was widely criticized. “The halo that once surrounded the Tata name has gone. The group looks like just one more conglomerate that has lost its way,” wrote Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, a respected veteran economic affairs columnist, in The Economic Times.

Mistry had not been removed for bad management, though there were criticisms of his style and some of his decisions. He went primarily because he did not show sufficient respect and deference to Ratan. Some of his more brash aides also upset the serenity of Tata’s Bombay House headquarters.

Unlike Mistry, Chandrasekaran managed his relationship with Ratan expertly, but he does not seem to have felt the need to do the same with Noel Tata, probably because, like others, he underestimated Noel’s ability to be tough and exert authority.

Chandrasekaran has had some failures, notably trouble-prone Air India, and there have also been losses on new digital and other ventures with major expansion into AI. But growth has been good with revenues of $185 billion, and many of the problems left by Ratan, such as the Tata Motors’ declining Indian car business, have been turned into successes. That is reflected in a bullish annual report for 2025-26.

Air India’s losses more than doubled to nearly $3 billion in 2025-26 and accounted for some 80 percent of the group companies’ total losses. The airline’s reputation has been hit by a fatal crash last year and by a pilot losing control of an aircraft for four seconds earlier this month. There have been a series of other problems, not least rising fuel costs and restrictions on international flight routes. The airline has just appointed a new chief executive – Tewolde Gebremariam who earlier ran Ethiopian Airlines.

Tata bought Air India from the government in 2022. Ratan, who died in 2024, was still running the trusts and will have had some influence on the decision. Commercially it was a disaster, but it helped the government because there was no other viable buyer, and it was a homecoming for the group that founded the airline in 1932 and lost it to nationalization in 1953.

There were splits among trustees throughout last year about appointments and governance issues. This escalated to the point where Chandrasekaran and Noel went to Delhi last October for a meeting with Amit Shah, the home minister and the prime minister’s troubleshooter, and Nirmala Sitharaman, the finance minister. Chandrasekaran had good links with the government because he had hired S. Jaishankar as a global affairs adviser for a few months in 2018-19 after Jaishankar retired as foreign secretary and before he was appointed foreign minister. But it seems he over-estimated the support that access could yield.

Despite the problems – and tensions over whether Tata Sons should follow a Reserve Bank of India instruction to be floated on the Bombay Stock Exchange – the two main trusts proposed Chandrasekaran for a third term. This however was questioned at a Tata Sons board meeting in February by Noel who was critical about losses. Not a risk-taker, Noel has also raised concern about Chandrasekaran’s $120 billion five-year expansion plan for the group.

The proposal for a third term “was not carried through because one of the Board Members did not support it,” Chandrasekaran said in his resignation statement, referring to Noel without naming him. In the absence of unanimous support, Chandrasekaran said he had, as chairman, deferred the decision. Noel apparently did nothing after that to solve the impasse, so Chandrasekaran made his statement on August 12, avoiding the risk of an embarrassing situation at Tata Sons’ annual general meeting planned for August 18 which was postponed because of separate issues involving one of the trusts.

Noel lacks Ratan’s commanding (though shy) presence, but now has the opportunity to prove that he can preside over the group as head of the trusts. He cannot also be chairman of Tata Sons because Ratan, after he retired from that position, changed the rules so that one person cannot hold both posts.

Ratan having not married, Noel is securing his own family’s role in Tata’s future. He has appointed his 32-year-old son Neville, who has managerial roles in the retail businesses, to the two top trusts. Noel’s two daughters, Leah and Maya, are employed in the group’s hotels and in retail.

First, however, Noel needs to lead the choice of a strong candidate to succeed Chandrasekaran, and then allow the winner freedom to run the group and be its public face.

John Elliot is a veteran observer of India. This is reprinted with permission from his blog, Riding the Elephant.

Hui Ka Yan, the founder and former chairman of China Evergrande Group, once the largest Chinese property developer with a stockmarket valuation above $50 billion, was sentenced to life in prison on corruption charges on Aug. 20 by the Intermediate People’s Court of Shenzhen.

It is rare for a private businessman to be jailed for life in China, and the severity of Hui’s sentence is partly due to the fact that he controlled Chinese banks by bribing bankers. Hui topped the Forbes list of Asia’s wealthiest people in 2017.

Fifty-six others were sentenced the same day to prison terms ranging from one year and 10 months to 18 years in connection with the defunct company, which was delisted in 2025, according to Xinhua.

This is likely the largest number of people imprisoned for one commercial case in Chinese history and the guilty include Hui’s sons Peter Xu and Xu Zhijiang. All were fined or had their assets seized – it will be the job of the court to find the assets, some of which are still concealed.

The court also stripped Hui of his political rights and confiscated his assets. At the same time, Hong Kong courts are hearing cases by creditors seeking to recover assets from Evergrande.

Hui’s staggering fall from the heights of what had been China’s hottest property company at a time of staggering growth marks a milestone in Evergrande’s collapse, which “seriously disrupted” the Chinese property market, the court said.

Evergrande defaulted on $305 billion of debt in late 2021, the largest corporate default ever in China. The collapse triggered the cratering of China’s property market.

Hui rose from humble rural origins and at the peak of his power and fame he was routinely lauded for his rags to riches saga as a symbol of China’s economic success. He publicly backed the Communist Party.

The court found Hui, who is also known as Xu Jiayin, fully responsible for the operations and crimes of Evergrande, which was headquartered in Shenzhen. Evergrande was fined RMB8.82 billion S$1.3 billion) and its main subsidiary, Hengda Real Estate Group, was fined RMB7 billion.

“The amounts involved were extremely huge, the nature of the crimes was exceptionally serious, resulting in extremely large economic damage and exceptionally severe harm to society, [the defendants] should be severely punished,” Xinhua wrote.

“China Evergrande Group and Xu Jiayin [Hui] gained control of financial institutions through bribery. They illegally obtained loans and insurance funds for Evergrande’s use. They bribed banks to illegally issue loans,” said the Xinhua report.

Hui pleaded guilty in Shenzhen on April 14 to embezzling public funds, fraudulently raising funds, fraudulently issuing bonds and securities, illegally using funds, failure to disclose material information, abuse of position and bribery.

Hui once created a subsidiary to employ a cast of young Chinese women, the Evergrande Song and Dance Troupe, to entertain rich and powerful men and to corrupt Chinese officials, according to Asia Sentinel on April 15.

Hui “used his position as chairman of Evergrande to falsify financial reports to embezzle company assets in the name of dividends,” Xinhua wrote. The court said that from 2016 to 2021 the defendants inflated assets, concealed debt, illegally took funds from the public, fraudulently raised funds and fraudulently issued securities.

Evergrande overstated its revenues by hundreds of billions of RMB, due to its aggressive approach to recognising revenues, said a judgement in Hong Kong’s Court of Appeal on Jan. 2. This resulted in “a dramatic reversal” of $99 billion in revenues recorded by Evergrande for 2021, said the Hong Kong judgement.

Evergrande lied about its completed properties held for sale and properties under development, the judgement added. It inappropriately classified developments as investment properties and overstated their values, the judgement added.

The misstatements were made under the direction of Hui and Xia Haijun, a former vice chairman of Evergrande, said the Hong Kong judgement. Xia resigned from the company in 2022.

Hong Kong’s Accounting and Financial Reporting Council (AFRC) sanctioned US accounting giant PwC and two of its former partners, Cheung Siu Cheong and Chow Sai Keung, for misconduct in connection with audits of Evergrande’s financial statements, the regulator announced on April 23.

The watchdog fined PwC HK$300 million ($38 million), restricted its practice in Hong Kong for six months and fined the two former partners HK$10 million.

The Evergrande case raises broader issues for the US, including foreign creditor rights in corporate restructurings in China, risks in how Chinese firms are structured, operate, and report, and the extent to which China market risks are sufficiently disclosed, said a US Congressional Research Service (CRS) report on May 12.

“Congress might assess China’s property market and debt levels with an eye to US investment exposure to China,” the report suggested.

Toh Han Shih is a Singaporean writer in Hong Kong and a regular contributor to Asia Sentinel.

The Philippines is taking another legal and diplomatic step to assert its maritime rights in the West Philippine Sea, asking a United Nations commission to consider the 2016 South China Sea arbitral award as it reviews Manila’s claim to an extended continental shelf (ECS) off western…

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Aug. 5 marked the seventh anniversary of the demotion of Jammu and Kashmir from a state to two federally governed Union Territories (UTs). Seven years on, India’s decision to unilaterally withdraw special state status remains politically fraught as regional parties, except the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), still oppose the decision as something that politically dispossessed the region.

While the BJP celebrated the day for completing the “constitutional integration” of Jammu and Kashmir with India (the region is also claimed by Pakistan and a small portion of it by China), major regional parties like the National Conference (NC) and People’s Democratic Party (PDP), continue to mourn the loss of special status, which they say snatched away decades of constitutional rights and diluted the special identity of the region.

Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and president of the National Conference party, said the “wounds have not yet healed” seven years after Aug. 5, 2019. He said the central government’s promise to restore full statehood remains unfulfilled and his party is committed to reversing a decision that “took away our rights and threatens our identity.”

NC leaders and MPs joined protests in Delhi and Srinagar on Aug. 5, demanding immediate restoration of full statehood. They said that central government assurances after delimitation and elections remain unmet.

The president of the regional PDP, Mehbooba Mufti, called Aug. 5 a “black day.” She said the central government “looted the special status of Jammu and Kashmir” and demanded the restoration of the rescinded Articles 370 and 35A, release of political prisoners and an end to curbs on democratic expression. PDP activists staged candlelight protests on the occasion in Srinagar and other towns.

“Neither Pakistan nor China granted Article 370 and 35A to Jammu and Kashmir but it was the Indian Constitution. However, the BJP used the brute majority to snatch Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir. We are an alive nation and will keep fighting for it,” Mufti said on Aug.4 while participating in a protest in Srinagar on the eve of the anniversary.

A recent report released by the Forum for Human Rights in Jammu and Kashmir, an informal group of concerned Indian citizens including former judges, senior bureaucrats, military officers, academics, lawyers, and activists, paints a grim picture of the political condition of the region since special status was revoked. The group calls for full statehood to be restored.

The report, Jammu and Kashmir: Seven Years Under Union Rule, was released this month and describes 2025-26 as a year of “contradictory trends” with fewer militant incidents (about 20 vs 35 the previous year) but no corresponding improvement in democratic normalcy or civil liberties.

Deepening accountability gap

The report notes that the current administration has “deepened a governance and accountability gap” as elected representatives, including the ruling NC government, have limited power over key domains. The report highlights the continued use of anti-terror laws, frequent detentions and restrictions on peaceful protest and free expression.

On the overall security situation in Jammu and Kashmir, the report notes that it appears to have improved between August 2025 and July 2026, with reported fatalities in armed conflict falling to 32 in 20 incidents with no civilian deaths, 23 alleged terrorist fatalities and 9 soldiers killed. However, the report points out, “Kashmir-related militancy continues and may once again be targeting significant structures in the rest of India.”

The report concludes that fully restoring statehood is a human rights issue and that linking statehood to the security situation is “dangerous” and can be used indefinitely to justify the suspension of democratic rights.

The report notes that governance remains “stalemated between the concentration of powers in the hands of the Lieutenant-Governor, who is not accountable to the people, and the administration, which is accountable to the people but has little to no powers of governance.”

“The grant of emergency powers over telecommunications to Manoj Sinha [the Lieutenant Governor of the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir] further compounds the helplessness of the elected administration,” the report states.

The report is also critical of the region’s economic trajectory. The report found that the regional economy has suffered from “ill-considered interventions” by the Union government that follow a “start‐stop pattern” that disrupts long-term planning in key sectors. The report highlights rising unemployment in the Union Territory, which is about twice the national average. It links economic underperformance to concentrated power in the hands of the Lieutenant Governor and criticizes the absence of stable, accountable institutions that can design and implement coherent economic policy over time.

The Forum has recommended restoring the pre‐2019 federal arrangements, and reviving independent oversight institutions (including a human‐rights commission) that were disbanded or weakened post-2019.

Grievances remain despite elections

In a recently published research paper authored by two Kashmir-based academics, Waseem Ahmad Bhat and Javaid Ahmad Bhat, the authors analyzed the 2024 assembly elections in the context of the post-2019 changes, arguing that while the local polls provided formal procedural representation, they operated firmly within boundaries engineered by the central government.

“Durable political stability and substantive democratic agency in Jammu and Kashmir will remain elusive without genuine restoration of representative autonomy, clear institutional accountability and a federal recognition of regional diversity,” the authors write in the conclusion of the paper, published in the journal Asian Affairs.

A Kashmir-based political analyst and academic told Asia Sentinel that the abrogation of Article 370 fundamentally changed the political and constitutional position of Jammu and Kashmir.

“It reduced the region’s political autonomy and increased the role of the central government through Union institutions and the Lieutenant Governor. The restrictions, detentions, communication shutdowns, and limits on political activity after 2019 created a sense of uncertainty and political alienation among many people,” the analyst said, wishing to remain anonymous.

Overall, he said the 2024 elections were a key sign of renewed political participation, “but not necessarily evidence of full democratic reconciliation or restoration of the political autonomy that existed before 2019.” He said voting does not necessarily mean that political grievances have been resolved.

Burhan Majid, a Kashmiri academic who teaches law at Jamia Hamdard University in New Delhi, told Asia Sentinel that demands for the restoration of statehood, and the continued opposition of regional political parties, show that the 2019 changes have not resolved the deeper political contest over Jammu and Kashmir.

“Even the Supreme Court, in upholding the abrogation in 2023, ordered the government to hold elections and restore statehood, a tacit admission that legality and legitimacy are not the same thing,” he said.

Majid Maqbool is an independent journalist and writer based in Kashmir.

Chinese President Xi Jinping, who faces enemies on many fronts, needs all the friends he can get as he seeks a fourth term. This is why Xi is handing out exceptional honors to two late Chinese leaders, President Jiang Zemin and Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, analysts told Asia Sentinel.

“The fact that Xi has been forced to adopt high-profile functions to honor Zhu and Jiang shows the limits of Xi’s powers,” Willy Lam, a veteran Hong Kong journalist and senior fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, told Asia Sentinel. “It is possible that Xi might merely be giving lip service to Zhu and Jiang to placate still-powerful CCP (Chinese Communist Party) members loyal to Zhu and Jiang.”

Zhu, hailed in state media as “an outstanding leader,” was cremated in Beijing on Aug. 18. The Chinese flag in Tiananmen Square in Beijing was flown at half-mast while tight security sealed off the area.

The tight security likely reflects the Chinese government’s fear that the death of Zhu, who is liked by many Chinese for his economic reforms, might spark demonstrations. The death of another Chinese leader, Hu Yaobang, in April 1989 led to the protests in Tiananmen Square that ended in carnage on June 4, 1989.

The official hagiography of Jiang in particular now approaches idolatry.

A silver coin bearing Jiang’s face will be issued, the People’s Bank of China announced on Aug.14. China’s postal service issued stamps on Aug. 17 commemorating Jiang. With the support of the Chinese government, a book of articles on foreign diplomacy by Jiang has been distributed throughout the nation, state media reported on Aug. 17.

“Xi has to honor both of them to mitigate conflict. Xi probably seeks a fourth term as general secretary and president and he must build public and party support,” an ex-banker told Asia Sentinel.

Getting ready for term 4

Xi will chair a meeting in Beijing in October at which analysts believe he will seek endorsement for a fourth term. Xi already broke a rule laid down by the late leader Deng Xiaoping that Chinese presidents should not serve more than two five-year terms. His power may be creating unease.

“He has amassed too much power, so everybody is against such an upstart. He broke the 10-year tenure rule and went after other princelings for corruption, so he alienated himself from the princelings. Not only did he not protect their interests, but actually moved their cheese away from them,” a Malaysian analyst told Asia Sentinel.

“Xi has enemies aplenty and everywhere. So he needs some sort of allies,” said the analyst, who declined to be named. “Apparently, Xi needs to bolster himself with the help of the Jiang faction nowadays, hence all the olive branches to the Jiang faction.”

In a ceremony marking the 100th anniversary of Jiang’s birth at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Aug. 17, Xi spoke glowingly of Jiang, who died in 2022 at the age of 96. Xi praised Jiang for having lived a glorious life and making contributions that can never be forgotten. Xi commended Jiang for having made the Chinese people more prosperous and deepening economic reforms. Xi declared of Jiang, “We must learn from his strategic foresight.”

Cai Qi, the fifth most powerful Chinese leader, is hosting a discussion on the thought of Jiang in Beijing Aug. 17-19, Chinese state media reported. The forum will discuss “the Three Represents,” the signature philosophy of Jiang, which reconciled capitalism with Chinese Communist doctrine.

Jiang’s good old days

Under the current political and economic climate in China, Xi needs to respect Jiang’s accomplishments. Many Chinese remember that under Jiang the economy boomed and wages rose. Xi needs to create a narrative that builds on Jiang, rather than denouncing or criticizing him, because many Chinese question the course that Xi has chosen for China,” explained the ex-banker, who declined to be named.

Xi’s effusive praise for Jiang is an apparent reversal of the two men’s rivalry when Jiang was alive. In 2020, Xi cancelled the initial public offering (IPO) of Ant Group in Hong Kong and Shanghai, for example. The $37 billion dual listing would have been the world’s biggest IPO at that time. Alvin Jiang Zhicheng, a grandson of Jiang Zemin, was a minority shareholder of the Chinese online payment company.

Alvin and his father, Jiang Mianheng, attended the 100th anniversary event for Jiang. At the ceremony, Xi shook hands with Jiang Mianheng, the eldest son of Jiang Zemin, and posed for photographs with members of the Jiang family.

Former Chinese leaders like Wen Jiabao, Wang Qishan and Zhang Gaoli also attended the ceremony.

The meaning of the elders

Conspicuously absent was Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor. The former Chinese President was escorted out of a Communist Party Congress session in Xi’s presence in Oct. 2022 and is rarely seen in public any longer. Hu was seen as close to Jiang.

“A key point of observation for these commemorative events is whether Hu Jintao will make another public appearance. If he attends, it could at least be leveraged on the level of political messaging to demonstrate that unity persists between the current leadership and the retired elders; if he continues to be absent, it will inevitably reignite external speculation about his health and high-level relationships,” China watcher David Tsai tweeted on Aug. 15.

“By comparison, whether Wen Jiabao and Wang Qishan appear is equally noteworthy. There have been numerous unverified rumors surrounding their political circumstances in recent years, so if the two attend as normal, it would undoubtedly address some of those external speculations to a certain extent; conversely, if several heavyweight retired leaders are absent simultaneously, the political symbolism would only be further amplified,” Tsai said.

At the ceremony, Xi praised Jiang for being “decisive, confronting risky challenges, resolutely overcoming danger and difficulties.”

Deng had chosen Jiang to be his successor, largely because Jiang put down the protests in Shanghai without bloodshed in 1989, in contrast to the bloody crackdown in Beijing that year.

“We must learn from his resolve and unusual courage…to better combine development and security,” Xi said at the ceremony.

Another of the old titans, former premier Zhu Rongji, died at the age of 97 on Aug. 12. The next day, Chinese state media praised him in a lengthy obituary, saying that after Zhu stepped down as prime minister in March 2003, he “firmly supported” Hu as China’s leader and subsequently Xi as China’s leader.

In many circles, it is believed Zhu was at odds with Xi over his economic policy, but after retirement, Zhu remained quiet on policy matters, which allowed speculation to continue.

In the words of government economists these days, South Korea hasn’t had it so good in years.

Riding on the back of strong semiconductor exports, the economy this year is expected to post 3 percent growth for the first time in five years, boosting per capita annual income from $40,000 to $50,000, nearly on par with Japan.

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In a much-anticipated press conference by ousted Bangladesh premier Sheikh Hasina in New Delhi that drove relations between the two countries to a new low, Hasina reiterated that she intends to return to Bangladesh in December but did not disclose a specific date or travel plan, avoiding spelling out a roadmap. Her son, Sajeeb Wazed Joy, joined the briefing from the United States and acknowledged India’s continued support for his mother since she left Dhaka two years earlier, following the student-led uprising that ended the Awami League government.

Dhaka expressed dismay over Hasina’s appearance, charging that New Delhi had allowed a convicted individual to address journalists. Bangladesh’s foreign ministry objected to what it described as an opportunity for Hasina and her allies to attack the state and people of Bangladesh. The ministry said the event was an affront to Bangladesh’s sovereignty and an insult to those killed during the July Revolution, while adding that Bangladesh still sought a constructive and forward-looking relationship with India based on sovereign equality, mutual respect, non-interference and national dignity.

Reactions from Bangladesh over the Hasina event were sharp and strong, with the country’s home minister, Salahuddin Ahmed, criticizing New Delhi for allowing Hasina to repeatedly address the media, including some global news agencies, from Indian soil. Reiterating Dhaka’s wish for friendly ties with New Delhi, the minister argued that Hasina’s presence in India has emerged as a source of discomfort in bilateral ties between the two countries. Earlier, a statement from the Bangladeshi foreign ministry said that Dhaka was outraged over an absconder’s open press briefing in New Delhi. It asserted that “convicted mass murderer Hasina and her mafia enterprise will never have a place in the polity of Bangladesh.”

It also raised questions about the timing, as on that particular date the people of Bangladesh observed the second anniversary of the Monsoon Revolution that deposed Hasina’s autocratic government. Dhaka said New Delhi had been informed in advance about the potential negative consequences of the Hasina event on bilateral relations, but its concerns were not taken into consideration, which it interpreted as an insult to the July-August martyrs. Insisting on a constructive, mutually beneficial and forward-looking relationship with India based on non-interference in each other’s internal affairs and respect for national dignity, the statement described the Delhi program as detrimental to bilateral ties. It also called for Hasina’s extradition to Bangladesh under the 2013 extradition treaty without delay. When Dhaka repeated its demand for Hasina’s repatriation, New Delhi responded that the matter remained under legal scrutiny.

New Delhi responded that the event had been organized by an independent press club made up of journalists from Indian and international media organizations, and that the Indian government neither organized the briefing nor endorsed the views expressed. A foreign ministry spokesperson said India had no role in the program and added that, even if Hasina had been granted shelter, she was not permitted to conduct political activity from Indian soil against another sovereign state. New Delhi is not expected to press Hasina to leave India unless it receives assurances from Dhaka that she would be treated in accordance with due legal process after her return.

New Delhi clarified that Hasina’s event was organized by an independent press club comprising journalist-members from national and international media organizations and that the Indian authorities do not endorse any views expressed during the press briefing. The Indian authorities had no role in the program, a foreign ministry spokesperson said, adding that even though Hasina has been granted asylum, she is not allowed to pursue political activities targeting another sovereign nation from Indian soil. It is understood that New Delhi would not insist that Hasina leave India unless it receives assurances from Dhaka that she would be treated in accordance with legal provisions upon her arrival in Bangladesh. However, New Delhi reiterated that it does not endorse the comments made by either Hasina or Joy, both of whom were highly critical of the current BNP government in Dhaka.

Hasina, 78, has lived in New Delhi in self-imposed exile since August 2024. In what was billed as her first public media interaction in two years, she repeated comments already reported, saying that “whatever fate awaits” her, she would return home. Recalling the struggles of her father, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, during the 1971 liberation war and the sacrifices of the Muktijoddhas, or freedom fighters, Hasina said fear for her life would not determine whether she returned. She said December was an appropriate month because Bangladesh marks Victory Day on 16 December, commemorating the 1971 surrender of Pakistani forces.

Referring to the July-August 2024 unrest, Hasina alleged that organized groups had infiltrated the job-quota reform movement and transformed it into a campaign demanding her resignation. She said what began as a peaceful protest turned violent, with demonstrators attacking public infrastructure and law-enforcement personnel. Hasina argued that the escalation forced her to leave Bangladesh but did not sever her connection with the people. She also claimed that the February national election was stage-managed because the Awami League was barred from participating, leaving citizens, in her words, under fear, repression and economic hardship.

The government led by Professor Muhammad Yunus took charge in August 2024, after Hasina fled shortly before a mob entered the prime minister’s residence. Eighteen months later, the caretaker administration sponsored a general election in which Khaleda Zia’s Bangladesh Nationalist Party emerged victorious and BNP chief Tarique Rahman became prime minister. Since then, Hasina has faced numerous penalties in absentia, including a death sentence from Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal over alleged crimes against humanity during the July-August uprising. The Awami League has also been restricted from political activity and from contesting elections.

The interim administration demanded Hasina’s repatriation from India to face trial in Dhaka, and the BNP government has repeatedly asked New Delhi to extradite her under the bilateral treaty between the two countries. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi was among the first foreign leaders to congratulate Tarique Rahman before he took office, but New Delhi has remained non-committal on Hasina’s extradition. That cautious posture appeared to be reflected in Rahman’s recent first overseas visit, which included Malaysia and China but not India. He has been invited to New Delhi for the BRICS summit on 12-13 September, though Dhaka has reportedly not confirmed his attendance.

Dhaka is yet to confirm Prime Minister Tarique Rahman’s visit to India, with Bangladesh Deputy Foreign Minister Shama Obaed stating that the proposed trip to New Delhi was “yet to be finalized.” It is speculated that the Bangladeshi government has insisted on Hasina’s extradition before the prime minister accepts the multiple invitations from New Delhi to visit the country. Tarique Rahman received the first invitation months ago for a bilateral trip to India and was later invited to attend the BRICS Summit outreach session in New Delhi on September 12-13 in his capacity as the current BIMSTEC chair. It is believed that the prime minister conveyed his position to the Indian government during a meeting with Indian envoy Trivedi in Dhaka on August 10. Trivedi later returned to New Delhi to brief the Indian prime minister on their discussions.

Meanwhile, Bangladesh is set to hold a presidential election on August 20, with BNP stalwart Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir poised to become the country’s next head of state. As the BNP holds a majority in the Jatiya Sansad, the party nominee, who currently serves as a minister in Tarique Rahman’s cabinet, is widely expected to win the election and move into Bangabhaban in the coming days. A trusted ally of former premier Khaleda Zia during periods of severe crisis, including her illnesses, he effectively led the BNP while Tarique Rahman remained in exile for years. A grassroots BNP worker, Mirza Fakhrul endured repeated humiliations at the hands of the ruling Awami League leadership. The August 20 election became necessary after President Mohammed Shahabuddin, regarded as a Hasina loyalist, resigned prematurely on July 24.

In Dhaka the same day, Prime Minister Tarique Rahman inaugurated the July Uprising Memorial Museum, converted from the vandalized Ganabhaban complex at Sher-e-Bangla Nagar, in the presence of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Professor Yunus. Yunus said the museum would honor the courage and sacrifice of those killed in the 2024 revolution, now widely described by its supporters as a struggle for democracy in Bangladesh. He urged citizens to visit the museum and reflect on the vision of a new nation that rejects authoritarianism.

Bangladeshi author Taslima Nasreen also backed Hasina’s stated intention to return, saying after the audio address that the former prime minister should be guaranteed an impartial and internationally credible judicial process. Nasreen said she understood the pain of exile, having lived outside Bangladesh for more than three decades, and wished Hasina success in the next phase of her political life. She criticized the government’s restrictions on media coverage of Hasina’s New Delhi event as undemocratic and called for the ban on the Awami League to be lifted. At the same time, she reminded Hasina that, during her 15 years in power, she had not allowed Nasreen to return home because of opposition from radical Islamist groups—a position Nasreen said had later turned against Hasina herself.

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Humanity has entered the Anthropocene, an era in which human activity shapes Earth’s climate, ecosystems, rivers, and natural processes at planetary scale. Yet many institutions guiding development were built around a narrower vision of environmental impacts, focusing on individual projects while cumulative ecological consequences can extend over time and across ecosystems, regions, and national borders.

Today, climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and resource depletion are interconnected consequences of how societies produce energy, build infrastructure, use land, and extract resources. Decisions made in one place can reshape ecosystems, economies, and communities far beyond it.

Mainland Southeast Asia’s river basins reveal the challenge clearly. The Mekong, Salween, and Irrawaddy show how hydropower, mining, industrial growth, and climate change can transform interconnected ecosystems. The issue is not whether development should continue, but whether it can remain sustainable if the ecological systems that support it are irreversibly weakened.

The crises facing Mainland Southeast Asia’s river basins reveal a broader mismatch between planetary-scale environmental change and development institutions still organized around individual projects and national boundaries. The Anthropocene requires a new approach to development governance—one that aligns economic progress, ecological resilience, and human well-being while strengthening regional cooperation.

Development and Governance in an Interconnected World

Modern environmental governance was built around national sovereignty. A dam was evaluated by the country that built it, a mine regulated by the government that approved it, and development measured through growth and infrastructure. Safeguards typically focused on individual projects rather than cumulative and transboundary effects.

This approach is increasingly insufficient. Rivers cross borders, fish migration links watersheds, sediment sustains downstream deltas, pollution travels across regions, and greenhouse gas emissions affect the global climate. Earth functions as an interconnected system, while governance remains fragmented by borders, sectors, and institutions.

International development institutions have reduced poverty and improved welfare, but many were designed for a world in which economic progress and environmental protection were treated separately. In the Anthropocene, development must be redefined around the life-support systems that make prosperity possible: rivers, forests, oceans, biodiversity, and climate stability.

Mainland Southeast Asia’s River Basins: Early Warnings of the Anthropocene

The river basins of Mainland Southeast Asia illustrate this governance gap. These rivers are not merely waterways; they sustain communities, economies, biodiversity, agriculture, fisheries, transportation, and regional stability.

The Mekong illustrates the cumulative consequences of intensive development. According to the Stimson Center’s Mekong Dam Monitor, hundreds of dams across the basin have altered flows, trapped sediment, accelerated riverbank erosion, disrupted fish migration, deepened salt intrusion, and increased pressure on fisheries, agriculture, and wetlands in the Mekong Delta.

Hydropower has expanded electricity access and supported economic development, including Laos’ ambition to become the “Battery of Southeast Asia.” But the Mekong also shows the limits of evaluating projects individually when their combined effects reshape an entire river system.

The Salween offers a different warning. As one of Asia’s last major free-flowing rivers, it remains comparatively intact but faces rising hydropower and mining pressure. It shows why preventive governance matters: ecological systems should be protected before irreversible changes occur.

The Irrawaddy shows that the challenge is not limited to transboundary rivers. Myanmar’s largest river sustains agriculture, fisheries, and millions of livelihoods, yet it also has the highest concentration of mining sites in Mainland Southeast Asia. Together with proposed hydropower projects, land-use change, and climate pressures, these cumulative impacts underscore the need for basin-wide governance and long-term ecological assessment.

The Stimson Center’s River Basins Dashboard identifies 2,699 mining sites on or near rivers across Mainland Southeast Asia, including substantial activity in the Mekong and Irrawaddy basins. Rare earth, gold, and other minerals are essential for renewable energy, electric vehicles, and electronics, but poorly managed extraction can introduce heavy metals, disrupt sediment systems, degrade forests, and harm downstream communities.

Together, these basins reveal a fundamental lesson: environmental impacts accumulate across landscapes and borders, while governance often remains limited to individual projects and jurisdictions.

The challenge of the Anthropocene is to ensure that our institutions see as comprehensively as the systems they seek to govern.

Toward Planetary Development Governance

The solution is not to weaken national sovereignty or create a single global authority. Nations must retain the ability to develop and improve living standards. But sovereignty in the Anthropocene must evolve from an exclusive right to control territory into a responsibility to protect shared ecological systems.

A decision made within one country can affect rivers, forests, climate systems, and communities beyond its borders. Recognizing these connections does not diminish sovereignty; it strengthens governance by aligning national decisions with ecological reality.

The future requires a development paradigm that treats economic progress, environmental protection, and human well-being as mutually dependent. The goal is not to slow advancement, but to ensure that its ecological foundations are not destroyed.

The river sees the ecosystem in its entirety. Governance often does not.

An ASEAN Opportunity

The 2025 ASEAN Declaration on the Right to a Safe, Clean, Healthy and Sustainable Environment is an important regional recognition of environmental rights. But principles must become institutions and procedures capable of turning shared responsibility into action.

One practical institutional model worthy of regional consideration would be an ASEAN Transboundary Environmental Protection Mechanism (ATEPM). It would not replace ASEAN, national governments, the Mekong River Commission, development banks, or existing cooperation frameworks. Instead, it would connect and strengthen them by addressing a critical gap: cumulative environmental impacts that cross borders and exceed the capacity of any single jurisdiction to govern effectively.

ATEPM could focus on four practical functions:

• First, regional environmental monitoring using satellite data, water-quality monitoring, biodiversity assessments, sediment measurements, and climate information to identify emerging risks.

• Second, independent transboundary environmental review for major projects that may affect shared ecosystems before irreversible impacts occur.

• Third, protection of environmental knowledge and defenders, including communities, Indigenous peoples, scientists, journalists, and civil society groups whose observations provide essential early warnings.

• Fourth, transparency and cooperation to ensure environmental information is accessible and that trust becomes the foundation for regional action.

ATEPM should operate as a lean coordinating mechanism rather than a large bureaucracy. Funding could come from ASEAN contributions, development banks, climate and environmental funds, and partners. Over time, ASEAN could establish a Regional Environmental Stewardship Fund to support monitoring, scientific assessment, ecological restoration, and community participation.

Humanity’s Responsibility to Transform Global Development

The river basins of Mainland Southeast Asia are more than ecosystems under pressure; they are early warnings that humanity’s ability to transform the planet has grown faster than its institutions’ ability to govern the consequences.

No single country, institution, or generation can meet this challenge alone. Governments must recognize that sovereignty carries obligations beyond borders. Development banks and international institutions must move from project-by-project assessment toward ecosystem-scale risk management, while businesses and investors ensure that growth does not shift environmental costs onto vulnerable communities.

Citizens, scientists, Indigenous peoples, environmental and human rights defenders, and civil society must be protected and empowered as sources of knowledge, early warning, accountability, and public oversight.

The climate, rivers, oceans, forests, and atmosphere that sustain human life are interconnected across borders, linking humanity in a shared ecological fate. In the Anthropocene, cooperation is no longer optional; it is a condition for long-term prosperity, stability, and sustainability.

The task is not to halt development, but to align it with ecological realities: sovereignty paired with stewardship, prosperity with environmental protection, and innovation with human dignity.

History shows that institutions evolve when circumstances demand it. The climate and ecological crises of the Anthropocene urgently require a similar evolution in the way development is governed.

The planet has changed; in the Anthropocene, humanity must adapt as well to safeguard the ecological foundations on which present and future generations depend. This planet is the only known home capable of sustaining life, nurturing humanity, and making civilization possible. Protecting it is not merely an environmental obligation; it is a duty to ourselves and to those who will inherit the Earth after us.

Humanity transformed the planet together. To safeguard it, humanity must now act together.

Phạm Phan Long, P.E., is a professional engineer and former president of the Viet Ecology Foundation, with experience in environmental engineering, water management, and sustainable infrastructure.

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In a dusty rural town 50 kilometers south of Manila, an elderly male patient sits in a simple clinic as he seeks medical treatment for the painful red spots on his ankles. During his medical consultation, he notices his attending doctor running a description of his ailment symptoms through ChatGPT before diagnosing his medical condition, prescribing the appropriate medication to alleviate his symptoms, and sending him on his way in a matter of minutes.

This illustrates the growing impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on healthcare delivery and service quality in lower-income regions, from Africa to Southeast Asia. Physicians with limited training or experience are increasingly using their phones to call up AI as a supplementary tool for diagnosis and prescription decisions.

Beyond that, AI is supporting faster screening, improving diagnostic accuracy, and reducing prescription errors. According to a recent study, AI-assisted tuberculosis screening reduced misdiagnosis rates by more than 30 percent and improved predictive forecasting of seasonal disease outbreaks by more than 80 percent.

AI adoption within public healthcare systems has seen remarkable growth in the past few years. However, this exponential growth in routine clinical adoption remains highly uneven between countries and health systems along socioeconomic wealth and median income lines. In the Asia-Pacific, the growing usage of healthcare AI serves more than anything else to highlight how the world’s most populous region continues to see some of the largest unmet healthcare needs and the strongest potential for technology to compensate for shortages of human expertise.

According to the World Health Organization, over the past two years, healthcare AI across the world has experienced increasing policy attention, experimentation, and early implementation. As far back as 2021, the WHO listed six guiding principles within a groundbreaking global report on AI healthcare ethics meant to provide fundamental guardrails for AI adoption in improving healthcare provisions. These six guiding principles focus on keeping human autonomy at the heart of any AI-enabled healthcare system and medical decision-making framework, with appropriate transparency and accountability in using appropriately inclusive and representative datasets for safeguarding the public interest across diverse societies.

In the Asia-Pacific, AI has already been used to improve the speed and accuracy of diagnosis and screening, while also highlighting applications in clinical care and public health. For instance, last year in the Philippines’ Sulu province an hub-and-spoke teleradiology model system with potential AI application pathways was introduced with specific intent to address diagnostic-imaging gaps in one of the archipelago country’s most underserved healthcare areas. Like many other lower-income countries, particularly in the Asia-Pacific with a record of outsized but binary healthcare professional contributions outside of their own borders, the Philippines is increasingly reliant on telemedicine to provide the necessary healthcare infrastructure to overcome geographic and specialist-access barriers, while AI is developing as a separate but increasingly relevant layer of its digital-health ecosystem.

Another example can be found in Singapore’s adoption of the SELENA+ AI software system into its national diabetic-retinopathy screening infrastructure since 2020. Singapore has one of the highest rates of childhood myopia in the Asia-Pacific with almost one in three children requiring the usage of glasses by the age of 7 and significant diabetic retinopathy along similar statistical lines. The exponential growth in ophthalmologic screening access enabled by a centralized national tele-ophthalmology infrastructure with trained human graders examining retinal photographs at a central reading center in Singapore saw annual screening numbers balloon to over 100,000 by 2019.

That has provided major impetus for the development of SELENA+ in 2018 as a deep-learning AI system built on analyzing over 500, 000 retinal images and corresponding locally-generated datasets taken for screening diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration health issues. After 2021, SELENA+ has been widely recognized as a successful example of AI being used to extend scarce specialist healthcare capacity to cope with a wider screened population with quicker diagnostic triaging.

According to Medicins Sans Frontiers (MSF), since 2022, AI has been successfully leveraged in expanding the healthcare workforce capability in lower-income countries to analyze and interpret antimicrobial susceptibility testing beyond pure reliance on fully-trained microbiologists through its Antibiogo offline smartphone application. MSF has also successfully used AI to enable greater throughput and accuracy of tuberculosis community screening in the Philippines since 2024.

AI is increasingly being considered as a component of future health-system infrastructure especially in enabling lower-income countries to catch up to their higher-income developed counterparts, but many developing economies remain at the stage of establishing the digital-health foundations needed for large-scale deployment. The two main obstacles can be roughly classified into hardware capability and software data relevancy, given the high energy demands of datacenters critical for AI computational processing and the still-entrenched Western-centric datasets used as default by predominantly Western AI companies in their model developments.

The issue of high energy demands in existing AI processing infrastructure is an acutely growing concern for the Asia-Pacific, particularly when multiple countries have already been driven to energy rationing and curtailing in-person office work due to the ongoing price shock fallout from Iran’s disruption of Middle Eastern maritime energy imports since February this year. According to the UN, the Asia-Pacific is projected to account for 85% of global power-demand growth in 2026 with much of it driven by increased electricity demands from data centers.

Furthermore, evidence for a positive-impact growing adoption of generative AI and their corresponding large language models in routine healthcare information provision, clinical decision support, and administrative tasks continue to remain limited. This is an issue that will be resolved in time, but only if conscious effort is put into progressive integration of AI-assisted diagnostics and triage into existing physical and telemedicine infrastructure, rather than a fully established AI-enabled, but solely telemedicine model.

Over the two decades following 2001, Afghan women earned law degrees, rose to the bench as judges and made all efforts to reshape their nation. They confronted corruption and struggled to curb rising violence targeting women and children. These educated and powerful women spearheaded the effort to build a modern democracy. Yet when Western forces pulled out in August 2021, Afghanistan’s women judges, including their families, were suddenly exposed to life-threatening peril.

In her Orwell Prize 2026-winning book, The Escape from Kabul, writer and journalist Karen Bartlett tells the story of the escape of nearly 200 women and their families, supported by a network of professional friends, female judges and lawyers from around the world, who refused to abandon them to the Taliban.

The former director of a leading campaign group for democracy and human rights, Bartlett is the author of five other non-fiction books including The Health of Nations, The Diary That Changed The World: The Remarkable Story of Otto Frank, The Diary of Anne Frank and After Auschwitz with Eva Schloss.

In an exclusive interview with Asia Sentinel, the London-based author talks about what drew her to write the story of these brave Afghan women judges who had upheld the rule of law in their country for 20 years, and how it suddenly vanished, and the coming together of an informal network of female judges, lawyers, and volunteers spread across Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere who sprang into action from their bedrooms and kitchens to rescue about 300 Afghan women judges and their families.

Edited Excerpts:

What initially drew you to this story, and how did you begin working with international networks like the International Association of Women Judges (IAWJ) to document the lives and escape of these Afghan female judges?

In August 2021, as Kabul was falling, I learned that hundreds of Afghan women judges had suddenly become some of the most wanted people in the country. These were women who had spent two decades putting violent extremists, terrorists and domestic abusers behind bars. Overnight, the prison doors had been opened and many of the men they had sentenced were now free.

The headlines understandably focused on the airport evacuation, but there was another extraordinary story unfolding behind the scenes. These women had upheld the rule of law for twenty years, and suddenly the law they upheld and built had vanished.

I began speaking to the international judges involved in the evacuation efforts, and then the Afghan judges who had managed to escape. The International Association of Women Judges had become the nerve center of an extraordinary rescue operation - working alongside lawyers, judges and supporters across the world to try to evacuate hundreds of women and their families.

What amazed me was that this wasn’t a government-led operation. It was ordinary people, mostly women, working from kitchen tables, spare bedrooms and laptops across different continents. They were coordinating visas, flights, safe houses and communications while governments struggled to respond.

This was a story about courage, solidarity and what happens when civil society steps into a vacuum left by international institutions. That became the heart of Escape from Kabul. Yet this book was so much more, I wanted to chronicle the work and lives of women in Afghanistan. That was absolutely crucial because we see them in that role again in our lifetimes.

Before 2021, Afghan women were leading landmark efforts against domestic violence and corruption. How did these women transform the judiciary over two decades, and at what point did their professional work make them direct targets for retaliation?

These women were highly trained and experienced legal professionals who fundamentally changed Afghanistan’s justice system. Afghanistan appointed its first woman judge in 1969. After 2001, Afghanistan began rebuilding its legal institutions, and women entered the judiciary in unprecedented numbers. They worked in anti-terror courts, commercial courts, family courts, violence against women courts and on anti-corruption cases and criminal prosecutions. They enforced the Elimination of Violence Against Women law, prosecuted honor killings, forced marriages and domestic abuse, and held powerful individuals accountable.

For many Afghan women, walking into a courtroom and seeing a female judge for the first time was transformative. Victims of abuse often said they finally felt someone understood their experiences.

But that same work made the judges enemies. Every conviction created another person who might seek revenge. Extremist groups regarded them as symbols of Western influence, while convicted criminals saw them as personal enemies.

By around 2015 or 2016, many judges were already travelling in different cars each day, changing routes to work and hiding where they lived. They received death threats regularly.

The danger intensified as the Taliban gained territory. By 2021, judges weren’t just threatened because they were women - they were threatened because they represented an independent legal system based on constitutional rights.

The January 2021 assassination of two female Supreme Court judges on their way to work was a devastating blow. From your interviews, did that mark the moment judges realized the threat was existential, or did most still hope to stay and protect the legal system until the final collapse in August?

The assassination of Judges Zakia Herawi and Qadria Yasini in January 2021 was a profound shock. It was truly devastating, and I will never forget the impact it had on their families. Many judges I’ve spoken to describe it as the moment they realized nobody was beyond reach. Yet the judges continued to go to work every day.

These women had devoted their lives to building Afghanistan’s justice system. Many genuinely believed that the institutions they had spent 20 years creating would survive. They continued hearing cases, writing judgments and going to court because they felt a profound duty to their country.

Even in August, as provinces began falling very quickly one by one, many still expected there would be some negotiated political settlement. Very few anticipated how quickly the entire state would collapse.

When Kabul fell on 15 August, the speed of events overtook everyone. One day they were judges; the next they were forced to flee. Those that left lost not only their homeland but also their identity and purpose.

When Western governments failed to establish organized evacuation pathways, an informal network of female judges, lawyers, and volunteers sprang into action from their bedrooms and kitchens. How did they work across time zones and make coordinated efforts at a time when the international diplomacy broke down?

It’s one of the most remarkable examples of grassroots international cooperation I’ve ever encountered. There was no command center. There was no official structure. Instead, there were volunteers spread across Europe, North America, Australia and elsewhere.

People worked almost continuously because someone was always awake somewhere in the world. A volunteer in London might hand over to someone in Washington, who handed over to someone in Sydney or Wellington in New Zealand.

They created encrypted messaging groups, verified identities, checked passport details, searched for available flights, contacted embassies, negotiated with governments and reassured terrified families who were hiding from the Taliban.

Many of these women had never met one another.

It demonstrated something extraordinary: when governments move slowly, networks built on trust and professional solidarity can achieve remarkable things. It wasn’t perfect, and not everyone escaped, but hundreds of lives were saved because these individuals refused to accept that nothing could be done.

What were the most extraordinary logistical hurdles they faced in carrying out the rescue efforts? Any particularly risky rescue mission that stands out?

Every stage of this process involved life-or-death decisions. The first challenge was communication. The Taliban monitored phones and social media, so simply contacting people carried risks.

Then there was the practical reality of moving families across Kabul, and Afghanistan. Imagine travelling through multiple Taliban checkpoints while carrying children, elderly relatives and very few possessions, knowing your name may already be on wanted lists.

One story that stayed with me involved judges repeatedly attempting to reach the airport during the chaotic final days of the evacuation. They were turned back several times, forced into hiding, then tried again under cover of darkness.

Another extraordinary aspect was that many judges refused to abandon colleagues. They constantly shared information and have continued trying to help others long after they themselves had reached safety.

Perhaps the greatest logistical challenge was simply uncertainty. Flights were cancelled. Borders closed unexpectedly. Countries changed visa requirements overnight. Every successful rescue required dozens of people solving problems in real time.

It was an enormous humanitarian operation run largely through determination rather than formal authority.

The high-ranking Afghan judges had to start over as refugees with severe language barriers and loss of professional identity in foreign countries. How are they navigating this transition in their host countries, and how many still yearn to return to Afghanistan if conditions ever change?

The escape was not the end of their story, it was the beginning of a very different struggle.

These women had occupied some of the most respected positions in Afghan society. They had decades of legal expertise, authority and responsibility. Suddenly, many found themselves unable to practice law because their qualifications weren’t recognized or because they didn’t speak the language fluently.

That loss of professional identity was deeply painful. Many describe feeling as though they had lost not only their country but also the purpose that had defined their lives.

Yet their resilience and resourcefulness are amazing.

Many are learning new languages, retraining, studying law, working with universities, supporting refugee communities or contributing to international human rights organizations. Others are campaigning to keep attention focused on Afghanistan and documenting human rights abuses.

Almost every judge I’ve interviewed says the same thing: if Afghanistan once again became a country governed by law and where women could serve safely, they would return without hesitation. Their exile is not a rejection of Afghanistan. It is an enforced separation from the country they dedicated their careers to serving.

What are some critical lessons that the collapse of Afghanistan’s legal system offers to other constitutional democracies regarding the fragility of judicial independence and the protection of women’s rights?

One of the central lessons is that the rule of law is far more fragile than we often imagine. For 20 years, Afghanistan built courts, trained judges, educated lawyers and developed legal institutions. Many people assumed those institutions were permanent. In reality, institutions only endure if there is sustained political commitment to defending them.

The second lesson is that women’s rights are often among the first casualties when democratic systems weaken. The Afghan women judges weren’t targeted simply because they were women. They were targeted because they represented the idea that women could exercise authority, interpret the law and hold powerful men accountable.

Another lesson is that judicial independence depends on more than constitutions and legislation. Judges need practical protection, international support and functioning institutions. Without those safeguards, even the most courageous judges become vulnerable.

Finally, I think the story reminds us that democracy isn’t self-sustaining. It relies on thousands of individuals who quietly uphold democratic values every day.

The women in Escape from Kabul defended those values until the very last moment. Their story isn’t only about Afghanistan. It’s a reminder to every democracy that rights can never be taken for granted, and that defending the rule of law requires constant vigilance.

Since the 2020 onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, Malaysia’s Ministry of Communications and its executive arm, the Malaysian Communications and Multimedia Commission, have metastasized into one of Asia’s largest state information control agencies, raising concerns among civil libertarians and press protection organizations that it is u…

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Happy birthday to us!

Today (August 6), Asia Sentinel completes 20 years of informed analysis, news, and commentary on business, politics, economics, and pressing social issues in Asia. We said when we started that we are independent of all governments and major media enterprises, and we still are. We have twice won the top award for investigative and interpretive reporting from the Society of Publishers in Asia, Asia’s version of the Pulitzer Prize (one in 2013 and again in 2014). We hope we are highly respected in the business, economics, and diplomatic communities across the region.

We are open to contributions not only from journalists but also from professionals in fields such as finance, diplomacy, science, and the arts. We have no ideology other than a belief in the benefits of a free media. We will not publish editorials but give free rein to diverse opinions.

Along the way, we have printed stories about fishing for brown trout in Bhutan, the Caucasian contribution to Asia’s beauty queens, vultures acting as undertakers in India, major scandals in Malaysia and Indonesia, pale faces in Bollywood, and where to find the best dumplings in Hong Kong—more than 10,000 stories in all, most of them from indigenous journalists across the region. We were the first to identify an obscure Terengganu Fund as the precursor to the massive scandal around Malaysia Development Bhd.

We are looking forward to seeing our publication continue into the future, although we would not mind handing it off to new blood. We hope we have met your expectations as readers, whose number now stands at 17,000. For those reading this for the first time, we would like to see you become paid readers too.

None of this would have been possible without the support of our paying subscribers, whose subscriptions have enabled us to continue producing independent journalism over the past 20 years. To those who have supported us along the way, we offer our sincere thanks. If you are not yet a paid subscriber, we hope you will consider becoming one.

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Also, help spread the word about Asia Sentinel to friends and colleagues who value independent journalism. We look forward to many more years of covering Asia with the same independence that has guided us since the beginning.

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While police raids on online scam operations in Indonesia are no longer a rare occurrence, with victims falling for sophisticated romance scams for a decade, the magnitude of fraud is astonishing, with the country ranked the second most fraud-vulnerable in the world after Pakistan according to the Glob…

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The saga of 38 Oxley Road, near Singapore’s prestigious Orchard Road, appears to be over. The Singapore government has decreed that the house will be preserved as a shrine to Lee Kuan Yew, independent Singapore’s founder and first prime minister.

Stunningly, as an indication of the rancor, it was a dispute in which former Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong appears to have brought down the power of the government to intervene in a family clash in which the decision to preserve the house has precipitated a bitter implosion in one of Asia’s most illustrious families, a rupture that is unlikely to ever be repaired.

Lee Hsien Yang, Hsien Loong’s brother, retired as a brigadier general and later CEO of Singtel, a leading Singaporean telecommunications carrier. He has been granted asylum under the 1951 Geneva Convention in the United Kingdom with his wife Lee Suet Fern, a distinguished lawyer and founder of Stamford Law Corporation, a leading Singaporean law firm, and president of the Inter-Pacific Bar Association. Because of the fight over the mansion, she was suspended from practicing law for 15 months. Both she and her husband were interviewed for allegedly giving false evidence in a case involving the handling of the father’s final will.

Their eldest son, Li Shengwu, is a professor of economics at Harvard University in the US and unlikely to ever move back to Singapore. The third sibling, Lee Wei Ling, a neurologist and former director of Singapore’s National Neuroscience Institute, died in 2024 holding onto an implacable will to fulfill her father’s wish to have the house demolished. Title to the house passed into Hsien Yang’s hands on her death. That didn’t stop the government from gazetting it for a monument.

Prominent families often fall victim to secrecy in the face of intense external pressure to maintain a perfect public image – especially in Singapore, a city state that prides itself on its Asian exceptionalism – and “empty shell” dynamics where honest communication completely stops. Relatives switch destructively between being emotional family members and objective business stakeholders, crippling family dynamics. But in this case, whatever the pressures in the family, it came apart over the patriarch’s home.

The acrimonious, years-long feud escalated into a public rift in 2017, with the siblings accusing Hsien Loong of going against their father’s final wishes. He died on March 23, 2015, with the feud between the siblings going public in June 2017 with a joint statement on Facebook by Wei Ling and Hsien Yang, which stated they did not trust Hsien Loong (who was then Singapore’s prime minister) “as a brother or as a leader.” Lee Hsien Yang, fearing arrest, fled to live in self-imposed exile abroad. Any hopes for reconciliation may have permanently been closed.

“Today, the PAP government has seized control of 38 Oxley Road,” he wrote on Facebook on July 31. “My father’s wish was crystal clear: demolish his home. Wei Ling and I sought to honor his wish, as the executors of his will. The compulsory acquisition of his home is a repudiation of his values and a flagrant disregard for his long-held wish. No amount of sophistry can disguise this fact.”

By most accounts, Lee wanted the house destroyed to keep it from turning into a shrine to his efforts to turn Singapore into a modern economic powerhouse, becoming an international statesman in the process. In 2011, Lee, in an interview, told reporters he wanted the distinguished black and white mansion demolished after his death or kept as a closed residence for his family and descendants, a view he repeated in his memoirs and writings and in his first will published that year.

That same year, government officials debated whether to conserve the house for historical reasons. Although the patriarch met with the cabinet and told them the house should be demolished, the cabinet, then headed by Hsien Loong, informally decided that it should not be due to its historical significance.

In later discussions with the family, Lee Kuan Yew is quoted by Hsien Loong in a parliamentary debate as agreeing to preserve the building. In early 2012, Ho Ching, the wife of Hsien Loong and then head of the sovereign wealth fund Temasek, emailed the family with detailed plans about how the house would be renovated. Ho said that if there were objections to renting out the house after it was renovated, Hsien Loong’s family could move in with Wei Ling, who was granted the right to live in the house after Lee’s 2014 death until she herself died or moved out.

“We have observed that Hsien Loong and Ho Ching want to milk Lee Kuan Yew’s legacy for their own political purposes. We also believe, based on our interactions, that they harbor political ambitions for their son, Li Hongyi,” alleged the statement by Wei Ling and Hsien Yang. “Lee Kuan Yew believed that Hsien Loong and Ho Ching were behind what was represented to the family as a government initiative to preserve the house.”

Hsien Loong has denied any wrongdoing. Hongyi previously said he has no interest in politics. Hsien Loong has said he would not sue his siblings for libel out of respect for their late parents. Although Lee Kuan Yew is revered by many Singaporeans as the father of the nation, critics have faulted Lee senior’s propensity to sue opposition politicians and international media for defamation.

In fact, the case has bled into Singapore politics, featuring debate in parliament and with Home Affairs Minister K Shanmugam and Singapore Foreign Minister Vivian Balakrishnan collecting more than S$600,000 (US$468,000) from Hsien Yang for defaming the two in an earlier Facebook post about their rental of two huge heritage houses. The two ministers sued Hsien Yang for libel in 2023, after Hsien Yang accused them in a Facebook post of getting the Singapore Land Authority to grant them preferential treatment in renting the dwellings. No Singaporean official has ever lost a defamation case in the island republic.

There the matter stands, with three of the Lees in what appears to be permanent exile and with the government saying that “to balance heritage with privacy, the government plans to alter the interior, including removing private living areas, rather than preserving the house exactly as the Lee family knew it.” Lee Hsien Yang remains defiant, criticizing the state’s action, reiterating that it disregards his father’s explicit, long-held wish for the property’s demolition.

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