Asia/Oceania

Muslim men instantly divorcing their wives without explanation has been made illegal in India. The country’s Parliament voted overwhelmingly in favour of the Muslim Women (Protection of Rights on Marriage) Bill, with 303 for and 82 against. It makes “triple talaq” — in which a husband can annul a marriage by saying the Arabic for divorce three times — punishable by three years in prison. The Government said it was aware of more than 570 cases of the practice since August 2017. No explanation was needed, and if a woman wanted to remarry, she had to give up custody of any children.

Police in India have launched a murder investigation after a teenager who has accused a powerful politician of rape was seriously hurt alongside her lawyer in a fatal car crash. A truck collided with the 19-year-old’s car at the weekend, killing two of her aunts. The teenager has accused Kuldeep Singh Sengar, a politician with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), of raping her at his home in Unnao in 2017. Police in Uttar Pradesh at first refused to take action. Then, when a case was registered, the teenager’s father was arrested and badly beaten in police custody. He later died of his injuries. Sengar denies rape and is in prison awaiting trial.

Officials from China’s Xinjiang region said that most of the people detained in the area’s contentious re-education centres have been moved out of the facilities and have signed “work contracts” with local companies, but those assertions have been challenged by accounts from Uighurs and Kazakhs who say their relatives remain missing. The United States, human rights groups and independent analysts estimate that about a million Muslims have been arbitrarily detained in Xinjiang’s heavily guarded internment camps, which the Chinese Government calls vocational training centres.