Doha, Qatar – A rainbow forming over thatched huts, children frolicking on dusty streets, women being busy with household chores – these are just some of the scenes on display inside a major art space in the heart of Qatar’s capital.

Taken by three young Rohingya refugees – Omal Khair, Dil Kayas and Azimul Hasson – the award-winning images are exhibited at Tasweer, a biennial photo festival in Doha.

They capture daily life at the world’s largest refugee camp at Cox’s Bazaar in Bangladesh, painting a picture of hope and resilience.

More than a million Rohingya have been living in difficult conditions at the refugee camp after fleeing persecution and a brutal crackdown by the army in neighbouring Myanmar 2017.

Nearly six years on, the largely Muslim ethnic minority are confined to the severely overcrowded and unsanitary living spaces with little hope of returning to their homeland in Myanmar. Authorities in the host nation, meanwhile, are increasingly imposing restrictions on their movements.

“I want to tell the world the situation of my people in the refugee camp,” 20-year-old Hasson told Al Jazeera over the phone from Cox’s Bazaar.

“It’s a dream come true for me,” he added, referring to the exhibition running at M7, a fashion and design hub, until May 20.

The three photographers have been documenting life at the camp since becoming media fellows with the Fortify Rights NGO and the Doha Debates platform in 2018.

The images, which were posted on their Instagram accounts, were compiled into A Chance to Breathe, a book published in August last year to mark five years since the Myanmar’s army crackdown.

Vanessa Chong, of Fortify Rights, said the project was conceived with the goal of supporting budding refugee photographers and equipping them with “skills and equipment to tell their stories”.

“And over the course of the last few years, we have been training them several times and trying to curate their pictures so that the photos best present them,” she told Al Jazeera.

Jigar Mehta, the deputy managing director of Doha Debates, said he believed the project could become a template and inspire others to amplify refugee voices.

“If you look at the photos they created in the beginning versus the kind of content they are creating now it’s completely transformed because they have just grown themselves as photographers,” he told Al Jazeera.

Charlotte Cotton, Tasweer’s artistic director, said the audience’s response to the photographers’ work has been incredible.

“People are coming specifically for the show,” she told Al Jazeera.

“The general reason why we are doing this is to honour and celebrate three photographers who may tell extraordinary tales in an absolutely unique way,” added Cotton.

The Rohingya photographers have also been commissioned to contribute photos to a pop-up exhibition for Doha Fashion Fridays, a project that involves photographing migrant workers on the day of their rest.

Khair, Kayas and Hasson were trained to take fashion portraits in their community during Ramadan and Eid.

Speaking from the camp, Hasson said there was a growing anxiety among residents about their future.

“There is no future for Rohingya youth here, as there is no facility available for them,” he said.

Hasson still remembers the day he fled his village in the Maungdaw district of Rakhine State.

“It was early morning of November 25, 2017, when the military came to my village, Boli Bazar, [and] started firing on villagers. Terrified people started to flee to save their lives. I saw many people falling down after being hit by bullets,” he recalled.

Only a young teenager at the time, Hasson ran into a rice field to save himself.

Now, he said he wanted to return home without the fear of being attacked.

“All we want is that we go back to our homeland in Myanmar and live in harmony and peace with other communities.”

Back at the, A Chance to Breathe, exhibition, Mehta said it has been gratifying to work with the three young photographers and urged viewers to engage with their work.

“It will help make a little bit of a shift in [the] thinking about what it means to be a refugee.”

A rise in violence against Palestinians in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem is feared following Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to make it easier for Israelis to acquire firearms.

On Saturday, Netanyahu said he would expedite gun permits for Israeli citizens and to step up efforts to collect “illegal weapons”.

His office also promised new steps to “strengthen” illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.

The announcements were made after a meeting of Netanyahu’s security cabinet – filled with hardline politicians – over two shootings that included an attack in occupied East Jerusalem.

Seven people were killed in the shooting outside an East Jerusalem synagogue on Friday.

The shootings took place towards the end of a month of growing confrontation and follow an Israeli raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin that killed nine Palestinians and exchanges of fire between Israel and Gaza. In all, Israeli forces have killed 32 Palestinians this month.

The new Israeli government, inaugurated last month, is the most right-wing in the country’s history and has sparked fears for Palestinians living under illegal Israeli military occupation in the West Bank and in Israel proper, as well as left-wing Israelis.

Part of the new government are national security minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and finance minister Bezalel Smotrich, both outspoken about their intention to expand illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank and the annexation of Palestinian land, and are notorious for inciting violence against Palestinians.

Both are settlers living deep inside the occupied West Bank.

“You have the minister of national security who has made it very clear that he believes in killing Palestinians, you have a minister of finance who has made it clear that [Palestinians] are here only temporarily,” Haifa-based analyst Diana Buttu told Al Jazeera.

“And you also have a prime minister who’s making it clear that people should be armed and they’re going to do nothing to stop the killing of Palestinians. You can see the recipe is that more and more Palestinians are going to be killed.”

According to the Palestinian Authority’s health ministry, more than 200 Palestinians were killed in 2022. The United Nations said it was the deadliest year for Palestinians in 16 years.

Among those killed was Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. While reporting, she was shot dead by Israeli forces with a bullet to the head during a military raid in the occupied West Bank city of Jenin in May.

Last month, Al Jazeera Media Network submitted a formal request to the International Criminal Court (ICC) to investigate and prosecute those responsible.

“In none of those instances [of killed Palestinians] – not one – was there an investigation opened that led to charges, not even in Shireen’s case, probably the most investigated murder we’ve ever seen,” Buttu said, adding that in more than 90 percent of attacks that settlers perpetrate against Palestinians, “the police does nothing, the army does nothing, they just close off the file, there are no charges that are laid”.

Al Jazeera’s Diplomatic Editor James Bays, reporting from occupied East Jerusalem, said Netanyahu’s plans to approve more gun permits for Israeli citizens come as Israeli police were also encouraging those with existing licenses to carry their guns.

“While Netanyahu is urging Israelis not to take the law into their own hands, he’s also putting more weapons into those very same hands,” said Bays, who went on to describe the measures as “collective punishment” and “a clear breach of human rights”.

Yara Hawari, senior policy fellow at think tank Shabaka, told Al Jazeera the announcement is “a worrying escalation that will no doubt lead to more attacks and more extrajudicial killings of Palestinians”.

“With this move, Netanyahu is giving the green light for all Israelis to inflict violence upon Palestinians with full impunity,” said Hawari.

Buttu added that Israel is already “armed to the teeth” and “shooting at Palestinians is very common”.

“It’s not at all uncommon to see Israeli settlers walking around with not just handguns but with assault rifles,” said Buttu. “It’s quite common whether it’s at the mall, on the bus, on the train, in religious places to see people carrying weapons.

“The problem here is that it’s not just a question of arming people. It’s that this government has always given Israelis a green light to go ahead and shoot at Palestinians”, whether it’s on the level of the police or army, she said.

As part of the punitive measures against Palestinians, Netanyahu also said that the homes of suspected assailants will be sealed ahead of demolition “in order to exact an additional price from those who support terrorism”.

His office said social security benefits for the families of attackers will also be cancelled.

Buttu said the government is “not just trying to arm people, but trying to extract punitive measures not just against individuals, but against their families”.

“Now it’s also taking it a step forward, of trying to strip them of their citizenship, trying to strip them of any national rights.”

When the Taliban returned to power in August 2021, thousands of Afghans fled the country fearing curbs on freedoms. Cartoonist Sayed Muhammad Hussainy was one of them.

The 29-year-old artist, who has taken refuge in Germany, said he feared the Taliban would target him for working with the previous West-backed government of President Ashraf Ghani.

His sketches portrayed women as confident, colourful and playing important roles in society: athletes, doctors, teachers, engineers, and officers.

But Afghanistan’s new rulers do not seem to see women from these lenses. Instead, they have incrementally been pushing Afghan women out of public roles in society and barring them from having access to education.

The group has said the clampdown falls within its interpretation of Islamic laws, despite being the only Islamic country banning women from pursuing education. Most Muslim-majority countries have criticised the Taliban for imposing curbs on women.

Prior to the Taliban takeover, Sayed’s art channelled Disney-eque qualities, with imaginative characters beaming with infectious smiles and wide-eyed gazes. He would depict women with hope and a confident sense of purpose, often draped in the red, green and black colours of the Afghan flag adopted under the previous West-backed government. The Taliban has adopted a new flag.

Now Sayed’s striking and unapologetic art has become mired with muted faces looking blankly back at the viewer as the chaos swirls around them, portrayed by strong downpours of rain or menacing men engulfing all of the space.

“You can see the difference between my art before and after the Taliban took over,” said Sayed. “It’s like night and day.”

In one of the sketches shared last April on his Instagram with a following of more than 18,000, several men encircle a woman. With weapons in their hands, they forcefully place a veil over her. Their muted tones are in sharp contrast to the woman’s bright colours and hue. She is sad, but her grip on her books is strong and unwavering.

Sayed, who drew the picture from an undisclosed location in Afghanistan knowing full well his life was at risk for his actions, knows his blunt images might make viewers uncomfortable. But he says it is his duty to help strengthen the voices of those standing up for women’s rights and educational freedom in Afghanistan.

The art also mirrors Sayed’s internal struggles coming to grasp with the reality of what people in Afghanistan are going through today, which includes growing levels of poverty and food insecurity.

“I feel the pain and hurt of my country and I try to show those emotions in my art,” he said.

Despite the overwhelming feeling of hopelessness in Sayed’s drawing, he said the women in Afghanistan are heroines that have the power of resilience and perseverance.

“I want to amplify the voices of Afghan women, I want to show the truth of what is happening to women in my country”, said Sayed.

Travelling across Afghanistan to pursue a passion

Sayed discovered art at a young age as an outlet to silence the distraught noise around him of everyday violence and the discovery that friends and family were affected. More than 240,000 people were killed during the 20 years of US-led war and occupation. The Taliban, which led an armed rebellion, was also blamed for targeting civilians.

“It’s hard to be a kid in Afghanistan”, said Sayed. “You don’t have the same rights and freedoms as other kids from around the world.”

What started as a hobby soon became a passion that would take up most of his days. He left his home province of Sar-e Pul in northern Afghanistan to explore a digital art course in neighbouring Balkh province in 2014.

However, his hunger went beyond the course, often looking at drawings of famous comic book artists like Clay Mann to study dynamic poses. YouTube tutorials from digital artists like Ross Tran and Sam Yang also helped Sayed hone his craft when it came to colouring techniques.

After completing the course, Sayed travelled to the capital Kabul, where his art garnered the attention of government ministries.

The night Kabul fell

Sayed’s first digital poster was commissioned by the Press Directorate of the Presidential Palace in 2019 as part of a campaign to denounce violence against women in Afghanistan.

As Sayed had more work commissioned, showing Afghan women in confident positions of power, the Taliban were making their way towards Kabul.

Sayed remembered the night the Taliban took over the Presidential Palace vividly, as he was working in the vicinity.

“It was horrible, when I went out of the presidential area everyone was running and screaming, it was like a horror movie”, said Sayed. “It was like zombies had come to the city.”

With the sounds of gunfire and chaos around him, Sayed managed to escape from the scene. It took him four hours to get home that night.

In the days that followed, Sayed’s family moved locations while he deleted personal pictures from social media accounts.

A friend who was detained by the Taliban told Sayed that they saw his art on his phone and asked who had drawn the pictures. Having worked closely with the government, Sayed believed he would be targeted by the Taliban.

“I went into hiding, I cried for three weeks every day,” says Sayed. “I couldn’t believe what had happened to my country”.

Sayed tried for more than a year to leave Afghanistan, due to fear of reprisals by the Taliban, even desperately getting in touch with human traffickers who offered to smuggle him into Iran without a visa. He finally managed to enter neighbouring Pakistan last September from where he made it to Germany.

Renewed artistic purpose

Since arriving in Berlin, Germany five months ago as a refugee, Sayed said he draws about four hours a day to keep the dialogue online alive about women’s rights in Afghanistan. He has often posted using the hashtags #LetAfghanGirlslearn or #DontforgetAfghanistan.

“Before I used to draw my art to get the attention of people living outside of Afghanistan”, said Sayed. “Now, I draw to give hope to Afghans too”.

Although Sayed said his mind is calmer these days as he gets acclimated to his new surroundings, he still stays up at night thinking about friends and family who are still in Afghanistan.

“In Afghanistan, under the current government it’s OK for women to be begging on the street late at night but it’s not OK for women to go to school or university,” said Sayed.

“This reality is so shocking to me. I can’t keep quiet.”

Thousands of people have gathered in the hills of central Myanmar for the annual Tazaungdaing light festival that marks the end of the rainy season with a fiery nighttime display of exploding hot-air balloons.

Balloons of exquisite shapes were propelled upwards about 100 metres (320 feet) using the heat from fire before fireworks inside exploded, obliterating months of work in a spectacular burst of lights across the inky sky.

The celebrations in the former British hill station of Pyin Oo Lwin have not been held for two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic and unrest following a military coup.

The festivities are a rare respite from the economic misery and violence wracking much of the country almost two years after the military’s power grab.

“We are holding our festival here but we are sorry for what is happening elsewhere,” said Aung Myat Thu, aged 37, who spent months working with friends on their balloon.

“When we were preparing for the competition, we all worked alongside our worries.”

The hot-air balloons featured an array of artwork from images of Buddha to traditional motifs, with one made in the shape of a polar bear.

Some participants hooked dozens of red, white and yellow candles to their balloons before releasing them into the chilly night air to huge cheers.

Crowds ambled between stalls at a temporary fairground while traditional dancers performed.

While the Tazaungdaing tradition is rooted in Buddhism, the hot-air balloon contest was started by British colonialists in the late 19th century.

Previous editions have drawn tens of thousands of local and foreign visitors, attracted by the colour – and danger – of the gathering.

The balloons are loaded with fireworks, and any miscalculation on when to light the rockets can result in catastrophe.

In 2014, three people were killed at Tazaungdaing celebrations in Taunggyi in neighbouring Shan state when a balloon crashed onto spectators below.

From ghosts to bats

When research on so-called interbrain synchrony emerged in the 2000s, some scientists dismissed it as parapsychology, a trippy field of the 1960s and ’70s that claimed to find evidence of ghosts, the afterlife and other wonders of the paranormal.

In 1965, for example, two ophthalmologists published in the prestigious journal Science an absurd study of 15 pairs of identical twins. Each twin, with electrodes on their scalps, was placed in a separate room and asked to blink on command. In two of the pairs, the study reported, one twin showed distinctive patterns of brain activity while the sibling was blinking in the other room. The doctors called it “extrasensory induction.”

“The paper is hilarious,” said Guillaume Dumas, a social physiologist at the University of Montreal who has studied brain-to-brain synchrony for more than a decade. In that far-out era, he said, “there were many papers with methodologically questionable conclusions claiming to demonstrate interbrain synchronization with two people.”

Since then, however, many sound studies have found brain synchronies emerging during human interactions, starting with a paper in 2002 that described how to collect and merge data from two brain scanners simultaneously as two people played a competitive game. This enabled researchers to observe how both brains were activated in response to each other. In a Science paper in 2005, this “hyperscanning” technique showed correlations of activity in two people’s brains when they played a game based on trust.

In 2010, Dr. Dumas used scalp electrodes to find that when two people spontaneously imitated each other’s hand movements, their brains showed coupled wave patterns. Importantly, there was no external metronome — like music or a turn-taking game — that spurred the pairs to “tune in” to each other; it happened naturally in the course of their social interaction.

“There’s no telepathy or spooky thing at play,” Dr. Dumas said. Interacting with someone else is complicated, requiring an ongoing feedback loop of attention, prediction and reaction. It makes sense that the brain would have some way of mapping both sides of that interaction — your behaviors as well as the other person’s — simultaneously, although scientists still know very little about how that happens.