within the community. That might end up increasing divergence rather than removing it. Uttarakhand was only a practice round for the BJP’s dream of making India a Hindu nation. In the conservative Hindu state, resistance to the new laws was muted and their roll-out uneventful. Now Uttarakhand’s Mr Singh has a new job sitting on the drafting committee in West Bengal. It is close to 30% Muslim, roughly twice the national average, and famous for its always vibrant and often violent politics. Until May it was one of the few states that had never been ruled by the BJP. When the assembly starts to debate its own new civil code, some observers fear unrest. ■ Stay on top of our India coverage by signing up to Essential India, our free weekly newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/08/12/should-every-indian-follow-the-same-rules
Rohingya refugees from Myanmar are living in fear in Malaysia Their welcome has worn thin Aug 13th 2026 “I DON’T WANT to go out any more. I stay home most of the time, I want to leave Malaysia so badly.” So says Nur Sadek, a Rohingya refugee and community organiser who arrived in the country from Myanmar nearly five years ago. Mr Sadek shares messages from strangers threatening him with violence, some naming places where he can be found. One stranger sent him a video showing a rifle being fired. Life in Malaysia has never been good for Rohingyas—a Muslim minority viciously persecuted in Myanmar who have long sought refuge elsewhere in South-East Asia, often arriving in rickety boats. The UN officially counts more than 100,000 of them in the country, though the true number is
doubtless higher. They do not live in refugee camps, but nor do they enjoy many rights. They are not allowed to seek formal employment and their children cannot study in Malaysian schools. Recently matters have been greatly worsened by a hate campaign that has gained strength on Malaysian social media. In May viral posts accused refugees of improper disposal of the remains of animals slaughtered during the Muslim festival of Eid al-Adha. In June a post falsely claimed that more than 2m babies had been born to couples combining a Rohingya and a Malay (feeding on old worries that the foreigners are snapping up local women and having babies who become citizens). Another post pictured a fictitious (AI-generated) “President of Rohingya Malaysia”, supposedly demanding that an entire town be set aside for Rohingyas to live in. The Malaysians who shared that one included the daughter of the deputy prime minister. Ten years ago Malaysians were more welcoming. When large numbers of Rohingyas began fleeing military clearances in Rakhine state in 2017 (which the UN has described as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing”), many Malaysians were willing to stick up for them. These days Malaysians are feeling squeezed by rising living costs and economic mismanagement. Refugees make handy scapegoats. The online vitriol has real-world impacts. In June and July at least nine informal schools teaching Rohingya children in Malaysia were closed, either by authorities (for being unlicensed) or by staff who had grown concerned about their safety; one teacher says he has told children not to walk in groups. Malaysia’s government now routinely turns away or detains Rohingyas’ boats. The police recently held over 100 Rohingya refugees who had travelled to UN offices in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia’s capital, following a reported eviction. On July 29th Malaysia announced plans to send some 5,000 Rohingya refugees back to Myanmar, where their lives may be at risk. Anand Raj, president of the Malaysian bar, warns that such deportations are “neither humane nor a viable option”. Rohingyas will doubtless keep trying to reach Malaysia, no matter how bad things get there. Some 6,500 Rohingyas are known to have attempted the voyage by boat last year, up from 4,300 in 2023 and 2,400 back in 2020.
Says one refugee in Malaysia: “If we didn’t flee we would have been killed.” ■ For exclusive coverage of Asian politics, economics and security, sign up to Asia Bulletin, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/08/13/rohingya-refugees-from-myanmar-are- living-in-fear-in-malaysia
South-East Asia braces for more smoke from Indonesia Has the region learned anything from past crises? Aug 13th 2026 In 2015, as South-East Asia was engulfed in toxic smog caused by fires in Indonesia, Jusuf Kalla, the country’s vice-president at the time, suggested that his neighbours needed a change in perspective. “For 11 months they enjoyed nice air from Indonesia and they never thanked us,” he said. South- East Asians flocked to a satirical website created to express gratitude to Indonesia. The site has registered more than 34m votes of sarcastic thanks. That number may soon grow. Fears of another severe haze are rising as fires rage in Indonesia. Weather-watchers estimate that the number of blazes detected across the island of Borneo in the first 12 days of August alone exceeds the figure registered during the entire month in each of the past
seven years (see chart). The smoke is already forcing officials to act. In Pontianak, the capital of the Indonesian province of West Kalimantan, schools have shut. In neighbouring Sarawak, in Malaysia, officials urged people to stay indoors. Singapore has put its own responders on standby. Meteorologists fear that much worse is to come. El Niño, a weather pattern associated with unusually warm waters in the Pacific, tends to cause drier conditions in the region. This increases the chance of fires, especially on Indonesia’s peatlands, where the carbon-rich soil is more combustible and where fires smouldering underground are hard to extinguish. Many climatologists think that this year’s El Niño will turn out to be the strongest yet, raising concerns about a haze episode comparable to the one in 2015. That would be a disaster. The smog in 2015 caused some 100,000 excess deaths in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, according to one study. But there was also a heavy economic toll: the World Bank put Indonesia’s losses at $16.1bn, almost 2% of GDP. Economies in the region are already vulnerable, having been hit to varying degrees by the war in Iran. That war could also contribute to the haze. The blockade of the Strait of Hormuz has pushed up fuel and fertiliser costs, prompting the Indonesian government to mandate greater use of biofuels. This, in turn, is driving up
the demand for palm oil, putting pressure on farmers and plantation companies to clear more land with fire. The region may be better prepared than it was a decade ago. Better satellite monitoring has improved forecasts. A centre in Singapore tracks fires and smoke across the region and provides early warnings, allowing governments to implement public-health measures. In April ASEAN, the regional bloc, inaugurated the secretariat of a new haze-control centre in Jakarta, Indonesia’s capital, which seeks to improve co-ordination between governments. But for all the machinery of regional co-operation, it still lacks much bite. ASEAN has had an agreement on transboundary haze since 2002, but implementation and enforcement rest with national governments. Its fund to pay for anti-haze resources, such as water-bombing aircraft and other firefighting equipment, relies on voluntary contributions and remains small. Ultimately, the severity of haze-related problems this year will depend on what happens in Indonesia. After the disaster of 2015, Joko Widodo, then the president, made prevention a priority. His successor, Prabowo Subianto, has kept much of that emphasis. Last year he created a new department to tackle blazes, and strengthened patrols, aerial surveillance and emergency teams. In the coming weeks, they face trial by fire. ■ For exclusive coverage of Asian politics, economics and security, sign up to Asia Bulletin, our weekly subscriber-only newsletter. This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/08/13/south-east-asia-braces-for-more-smoke- from-indonesia
Japan's long-overdue revamp of its intelligence services Growing threats from enemies and a less dependable America have driven the move Aug 13th 2026 A PHOTOGRAPH OF a wooden plaque with handwritten characters marked the launch of Japan’s new “National Intelligence Bureau” (NIB) on July 31st. It was an appropriately understated reveal for a big overhaul of Japanese spookery. Japan’s intelligence apparatus has long been fragmented and feeble. Since the country’s defeat in the second world war, legal and political constraints have made it hard to counter adversaries snooping around inside Japan and to run human intelligence (HUMINT) operations abroad. Japan’s prime minister, Takaichi Sanae, calls the creation of the NIB, along with the
establishment of a new National Intelligence Council, the first steps of broader reforms necessary to navigate an increasingly dangerous world. Japan was once a formidable intelligence player. During the Russo-Japanese war in the early 20th century, Japanese forces cracked codes, ran agents across the Far East and funded anti-tsarist agitators in Europe; during the second world war, “special duty units” undertook covert actions across Asia. But following Japan’s defeat, the imperial architecture was largely demolished. Attempts to establish a new centralised intelligence service faced severe resistance from a public that remembered imperial-era secret police all too well; many Japanese leaders were happy to rely upon America for intelligence, as they did for security more broadly. Japan’s own intelligence activities were spread across discrete departments at the foreign, defence and justice ministries as well as the police agency. The Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office (CIRO), nominally the highest intelligence body in the country, lacked the authority to manage the fragmented agencies. As one Japanese official grumbled in the early 2000s, compared with America’s CIA, Japan’s CIRO was “about the equal of a nursery school”. The latest reforms are intended to help Japan’s intelligence community grow up fast. The first phase involves “getting the structure right”, says Richard Samuels, author of “Special Duty”, a history of Japanese intelligence. The new bureau, an upgraded version of the CIRO, will have the authority to consolidate information from across the disparate ministries and generate synthesised analyses. Meanwhile, the intelligence council, which the prime minister personally heads, gives political leaders the ability to set intelligence strategy and to integrate findings into policymaking. The next planned steps include passing an anti-espionage law to beef up counter- intelligence, and creating a new foreign-intelligence agency to conduct operations abroad. Though such reforms have been discussed for decades, the process has accelerated in recent years. Growing threats from China, Russia and North Korea have sharpened minds, while increasing anxiety about American reliability has heightened the urgency over developing home-grown capabilities. Ms Takaichi made intelligence reform a pillar of her political