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18/01/2020 GMT

Who belongs here?

BBC World Service - From Our Own Correspondent, Who belongs here?

India's citizenship controversy - plus tales from Lebanon, China, Kazakhstan and Japan

India's citizenship controversy; China's crackdown extends to Kazakhs; mourning an Iranian in Lebanon; how Carlos Ghosn escaped Japan's justice system.

For more than a month India has been convulsed with protest and backlash over moves to redefine who has the right to citizenship - and who doesn't. Some people from outside the country now have the chance to regularise their status - but others who've lived in India all their lives, or even for generations, are feeling less welcome and at risk of being made "illegal" by new rules. Yogita Limaye reflects on what the new guidelines reveal of the BJP government's intentions - and how all communities have responded to its plans. 

Pascale Harter introduces this and other stories of life around the world from BBC correspondents, journalists and writers.

China's crackdown on its Uighur Muslim minority has been reported around the world. But now it looks as though some of the same techniques - arrest, detention, interrogation and surveillance - are also being extended to members of another group - the Kazakhs. Near Almaty in Kazakhstan, Claire Press met several survivors of imprisonment in China - and heard accounts not just of brutality, but of broken promises and extreme control measures. Even kitchen knives and headstones had to be registered and approved...

In the battle for influence over the Middle East, which has Sunni and Shia powers vying for power, Iran has been one of the readiest to extend itself abroad - and particularly in Lebanon. As the Hezbollah movement mounted big public events to mourn the Iranian General Qassem Soleimani, recently killed by the USA in a drone strike, Lizzie Porter analysed just how much grief and solidarity Lebanese citizens felt for him. 

And Rupert Wingfield Hayes reveals a surprising side of modern Japan: the fierceness of its justice system, including the regular use of pre-trial detention and high-pressure interrogations. The fugitive former CEO of Nissan, Carlos Ghosn, escaped house arrest in Tokyo to flee to Beirut, and while he might have had some special privileges, his case has plenty in common with others. 

(Photo: Protesters at a demonstration against India's new citizenship law. Credit: Noah Seelam/AFP/Getty Images)

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