Bangladesh

A commission probing violence in Myanmar's Rakhine state on Jan. 4 denied security forces have carried out a genocidal campaign against the Rohingya, days after a video emerged showing police beating civilians from the Muslim minority.

A total of 112 migrants and refugees landed on Greek shores in the first 24 hours of the new year, with 46 arriving on the eastern Aegean island of Chios and another 66 on Samos.

According to the ANA-MPA news agency, 25 Syrians, 12 Algerians, four Nigerians, two Palestinians and one each from Iraq, Cameroon and Yemen, landed on the shores of Chios between Sunday and Monday morning.

More than a dozen Nobel laureates on Dec. 29 urged the United Nations to "end the human crisis" of Myanmar's Rohingya minority group, whose members have been fleeing to Bangladesh to escape a bloody military crackdown.

At least 74 journalists have been killed around the world in 2016 while doing their job, Reporters Without Borders said on Dec. 19.

The press freedom group said that this figure had declined from 101 from 2015, but "this significant fall is due in part to the fact that more and more journalists are fleeing countries that have become too dangerous."

Over 180 illegal migrants have been caught in the northwestern province of Çanakkale and the southwestern province of Burdur as they were preparing to illegally make their way to neighboring countries, a security source told state-run Anadolu Agency on Dec. 18. 

A total of 150 illegal migrants were caught in the Çavdır district of Burdur, the source said.

An Italian court ruled Dec. 13 that the captain of a migrant boat that sank in 2015, killing up to 900 people, was responsible for the disaster, the Mediterranean's worst since World War II.

Rescuers plucked 1,164 people from rubber and wooden boats in the Mediterranean under heavy thunderstorms on Dec. 11 and recovered six dead bodies during the operations, relief services said. 

Bangladeshi actors and directors called for a ban Dec. 12 on the steamy Turkish period drama Sultan Süleyman (The Magnificent Century), saying the show's "rampant sex" was destroying the local TV industry and fueling divorce.

Aung San Suu Kyi must step in to prevent the "genocide" of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar, Malaysia's prime minister said on Dec. 4 as he mocked the Nobel laureate for her inaction.

The Global Peace Index (GPI) 2016 report claims that Bhutan is the most peaceful country in South Asia.