University revokes niqab ban:
Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena (3rd left), and Sri Lankan First Lady Jyanthi Sirisena (3rd right), talk with Japanese Emperor Akihito (left), and Empress
Michiko (right), at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo on March 13. President Sirisena is on a six-day official visit to Japan. (AFP)
visited North Korea, held talks on Monday with Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Taro Kono. (RTRS) removed from the state constitution.
“Deepening the reform of the party and state institutions is an inevitable requirement for strengthening the long-term governance of the party,” Liu He, Xi’s top economic adviser and confidante, wrote in a commentary in the official People’s Daily.
“Strengthening the party’s overall leadership is the core issue,” he said.
The commentary suggested the party will have greater influence and say in the government, or the State Council, which is headed by Premier Li Keqiang, some analysts say.
The long-awaited move to tighten oversight of China’s $42 trillion banking and insurance sectors comes as authorities seek more clout to crack down on riskier lending practices and reduce high corporate debt levels.
“The biggest news is still about the merger of the financial regulators. The central bank will be in charge of the macro supervision side, while the merged regulators will be responsible for the more concrete part of things,” said Zhou Hao, senior emerging markets economist at Commerzbank. (RTRS)
An Indonesian university whose ban on niqab face veils made global headlines has reversed the policy following criticism that it trampled on personal choice.
Sunan Kalijaga State Islamic University in Indonesia’s cultural capital Yogyakarta issued the edict last week to more than three dozen niqab-wearing students — and warned they could be expelled for noncompliance.
The school, which has about 10,000 students, had said the now-cancelled rule was aimed at countering religious extremism in the world’s biggest Muslim majority country.
“The guidance concerning students using a face veil will be revoked in order to maintain an academic climate that is conducive to fairness,” said a statement issued by the university at the weekend.
Backers of the new rules said wearing the full veil with a small slit for the eyes was not a religious obligation, but critics saw the anti-niqab appeal as impinging on individual rights.
Another school in Yogyakarta, Ahmad Dahlan University, has also urged students not to wear the niqab — without penalty for non-compliance — while several Indonesian universities have issued niqab bans in the past.
Although niqabs are common in ultraconservative Saudi Arabia and some other Gulf states, they’re rare in secular Indonesia, where around 90 percent of its 260 million people have traditionally followed a moderate form of Islam, and are often seen as an unwelcome Arab export. (AFP)