SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea marked the delivery of 250 nuclear-capable missile launchers to frontline military units at a ceremony where leader Kim Jong Un called for a ceaseless expansion of his military’s nuclear program to counter perceived U.S. threats, state media said Monday.

Concerns about Kim’s nuclear program have grown as he has demonstrated an intent to deploy battlefield nuclear weapons along the North’s border with South Korea and authorized his military to respond with preemptive nuclear strikes if it perceives the leadership as under threat.

North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency said the launchers were freshly produced by the county’s munitions factories and designed to fire “tactical” ballistic missiles, a term that describes systems capable of delivering lower-yield nuclear weapons.

Kim said at Sunday’s event in Pyongyang the new launchers would give his frontline units “overwhelming” firepower over South Korea and make the operation of tactical nuclear weapons more practical and efficient. State media photos showed lines of army-green launcher trucks packing a large street with seemingly thousands of spectators attending the event, which included fireworks.

North Korea has been expanding its lineup of mobile short-range weapons designed to overwhelm missile defenses in South Korea, while also pursuing intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland.

Kim’s intensifying weapons tests and threats are widely seen as an attempt at pressuring the United States to accept the idea of North Korea as a nuclear power and to end U.S.-led sanctions imposed on North Korea over its nuclear program. North Korea also could seek to dial up tensions in a U.S. election year, experts say.

Kim lately has used Russia’s war on Ukraine as a distraction to further accelerate his weapons development. In response, the United States, South Korea and Japan have been expanding their combined military exercises and sharpening their nuclear deterrence strategies built around strategic U.S. military assets.

Lee Sung Joon, spokesperson of South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, said during a briefing that the South Korean and U.S. militaries were closely analyzing North Korea’s weapons development and further monitoring was needed to confirm the operational readiness of the missile systems showcased Sunday. He didn’t provide a specific assessment on whether the systems could be placed.

Lee said the missiles are likely to be shorter in range than some of North Korea’s most powerful short-range ballistic missiles, which have demonstrated an ability to travel more than 600 kilometers (372 miles).

The North in recent months has revealed a new missile called the Hwasong-11, which analysts say can travel up to 100 kilometers (62 miles). If deployed in frontline areas, the missiles would theoretically be able to cover huge swaths of South Korea’s greater capital area, where about half of the country’s 51 million people live.

In his speech at Sunday’s event, Kim called for his country to brace for a prolonged confrontation with the United States and urged a relentless expansion of military strength. He justified his military buildup as a counter to the “outrageous” military cooperation between the United States and its regional allies, which he claimed are now showing the characteristics of a “nuclear-based military bloc.”

“Negotiations and confrontation are among our options, but we must be more thoroughly prepared to cope with the latter — this is the review and conclusion we have derived from the 30-odd years of dealing with the United States,” Kim said.

“The United States we are now confronting is by no means an administration that remains in power for a tenure of some years, but a hostile state that our descendants, too, will have to counter, generation after generation. This fact testifies to the inevitability of the steady improvement of our defense capability.”

Kim also said the decision to hold the weapons ceremony while the country was trying to recover from disastrous flooding showed its determination to “push ahead with the bolstering of defense capabilities … without stop in any circumstances.”

The floods in late July submerged thousands of homes and huge swaths of farmland in regions near the border with China.

Russia has offered flood aid to North Korea, in another sign of expanding relations between the two nations. Kim has made Russia his priority in recent months as he pushes a foreign policy aimed at expanding relations with countries confronting Washington, embracing the idea of a “new Cold War” and trying to display a united front in Putin’s broader conflicts with the West.
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HONG KONG — Asian equities rallied Tuesday after the previous day’s global rout fueled by U.S. recession fears that have led to calls for the Federal Reserve to cut interest rates before its next meeting.

Tokyo, which suffered a record loss Monday, soared more than 10% at one point as traders rushed back to pick up beaten-down stocks caught up in a catastrophic day for markets in which trading boards were a sea of red.

Analysts warned that there would likely be more volatility to come.

The sell-off came on the back of data Friday revealing a surprisingly low number of U.S. jobs were created last month, and another report showing continuing weakness in the manufacturing sector.

That led to warnings that the Fed had kept rates at more than two-decade highs for too long and was at risk of tipping the economy into recession.

Some analysts pointed to the “Sahm Rule,” which says an economy is in the early stages of recession if the three-month moving average of unemployment is 0.5 percentage points above its low over the previous 12 months. That was triggered by Friday’s data.

While Wall Street’s three main indexes suffered another day of pain — with the Nasdaq down more than 3% — a forecast-beating read on the key U.S. services sector provided a little solace for investors.

Tokyo’s Nikkei, which tanked more than 12% Monday and suffered a record points loss, jumped around 10.5% in the morning before paring some of those gains.

Toyota was up more than 10%, Sony piled on more than 7%, while chip giant Tokyo Electron added 12.26%.

“This is a sweeping, across-the-board gain,” said analysts at Nomura, adding that investors will also pay close attention to the forex market.

Nomura expects the Nikkei to end with the biggest-ever gain, beating 2,676.55 points in October 1990.

“If movements continue as they started, the Nikkei ended yesterday with the biggest loss and will end today by renewing the biggest point gain,” it said.

Hong Kong, Shanghai, Sydney, Seoul, Taipei and Manila also rose but Singapore and Wellington suffered more selling.

Friday’s data has fanned calls for the Fed to cut rates now to support the economy, with Nobel prize-winning U.S. economist Paul Krugman writing on social media: “I wasn’t calling for an inter-meeting cut, because that might signal panic. 

“But since we may be seeing a panic anyway, that argument loses its force. Real case for an emergency cut soon.”  

But Chicago Fed boss Austan Goolsbee urged caution about reading too much into one jobs report. 

“As you see jobs numbers come in weaker than expected but not looking yet like recession, I do think you want to be forward-looking of where the economy is headed,” he told CNBC ahead of the U.S. trading day Monday. 

“The payroll jobs number is plus or minus 100,000 a month, so be a little careful over-concluding about things in the margin of error,” he said, adding that if the U.S. economy deteriorated, the Fed would “fix it.”  

Pantheon Macroeconomics wrote in a note to clients that the Fed “probably will place little weight on the drop in stock prices, as the main indexes still are higher than at the start of the year.”

Fed chief Jerome Powell said after the bank’s policy meeting last week that a cut could come as soon as September.

While bets had been for a 25-basis-point reduction — with at least one more before January — they have risen sharply and investors are now eyeing at least 100-basis-points-worth of cuts by the end of the year.

On currency markets, the yen’s rally ran out of puff and was sitting just below 145 per dollar, having hit a six-month high around 142 Monday.

The Japanese unit has surged over the past month — having hit a nearly four-decade low at the start of July — after the Bank of Japan hiked interest rates on the same day Powell indicated the Fed was planning to loosen policy.

But analysts at Moody’s Analytics wrote: “Asia’s equity selloff will cause sleepless nights at the Bank of Japan. For the past two years, the central bank had been playing it safe, wary of repeating the mistake of tightening policy right into a downturn.

“The last significant rate hikes by the BoJ were in 2006, just before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and in 2000, just as the dot.com bubble burst. Both times, the BoJ was forced to reverse course.

“The BoJ can hardly be blamed for this latest market selloff, so another U-turn is not a foregone conclusion. But the selloff doesn’t make last week’s rate hike — which was already on shaky ground — look any better.”
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WASHINGTON — Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned and left the country Monday after clashes between student protesters and police left nearly 300 people dead. 

Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman announced an interim government and promised to investigate the deaths, urging everyone to remain peaceful. The protests started over a controversial job quota system but escalated due to the government’s harsh response. 

Here is a timeline of events leading up to the prime minister’s resignation.

July 2: Demonstrations take place in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, to demand the cancellation of a quota system in civil service recruitment, which reserves 56% of jobs for people from various categories. Students say this is discriminatory. 

The demonstrations started after the High Court reinstated the quota system in June, overturning a 2018 government decision to abolish it. While the government appealed the decision to the Supreme Court, students refused to wait for the outcome and demanded a new executive order canceling the quotas.

July 10-12: Students stage sit-in demonstrations at various key intersections in the capital and highways outside the city, disrupting traffic on roads, highways and railways. 

July 14: Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina makes comments critical of the students’ demands to scrap the quotas for children and grandchildren of war veterans. Students express outrage.

July 15: A senior leader of a major political party, the Awami League, tells media that the party’s student wing, the Bangladesh Chhatra League (BCL) will give a “fitting reply” to students.

July 15: Activists of BCL attack anti-quota students at Dhaka University and at Dhaka Medical College Hospital, including injured students at the medical college. Over 300 are wounded in the clashes. 

July 16: Clashes spread and at least six are killed in Dhaka, Chottogram and Rangpur in the north. Ordinary students fight back and drive the BCL group out of Dhaka and Rajshahi Universities and ransack their leaders’ rooms in university campuses.

July 17: Students try to hold “absentee funerals” for those who were killed, but police attack their gatherings at three universities. University authorities’ close campuses and order students to vacate their dormitories. 

July 17: Hasina addresses the nation on television, expresses sorrow over the deaths and announces she will set up a judicial inquiry to hold perpetrators to account. On the matter of quotas, she urges students to wait for the verdict of the Supreme Court and suggests the decision will not disappoint them.

Students respond by calling for a “complete shutdown” of transportation across the country for the next day. 

July 18: The “complete shutdown” program sees massive violence in Dhaka and in 19 other districts. At least 29 people are confirmed dead as police and unidentified people open fire – including with live bullets, shotgun pellets and rubber bullets. Tens of thousands of students are joined by various other groups of people to enforce the shutdown of transportation. Cars, buses, and the state-run television center in Dhaka are set on fire and the city’s Metro Rail transport network is shut down indefinitely. 

July 19: At least 66 people are killed in clashes involving protesters and police. A mob frees nearly 900 inmates from a jail in central Narsingdi district and loots some 80 firearms and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition. The government declares a nighttime curfew and deploys the army to help maintain order.

July 20: At least 21 people are killed in the first day of curfew. The government announces two days of “general holiday” while leaders of the quota movement and some leaders of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) are detained. 

July 21: The Supreme Court delivers its verdict in the quota case, abolishing most of the quotas for civil service jobs and leaving 93% of spaces for general applicants. The curfew continues, and seven more people are killed. 

July 23: The government formalizes the new quota allocation in line with the Supreme Court verdict. But organizers of student protests say it’s too little, too late, and that too many people have been killed. The Daily Star newspaper puts the death toll at 146. The arrest of opposition leaders continues. 

July 26: The Detective Branch of Bangladesh’s police department picks up three organizers of the student movement. The BNP calls for the ouster of the government. 

July 27: Diplomatic missions of 14 Western countries in Dhaka issue a joint letter, calling for law enforcers to be held accountable for wrongdoings. The Detective Branch picks up two more organizers of the student movement. Police continue raids to arrest students. 

July 28: Six organizers of the student movement, while in Detective Branch custody, read out a statement ending their agitation. But their colleagues vow to continue with the movement and protests resume the next day.  

July 31: The government observes a “mourning day” in memory of those who lost their lives in the violence, but students reject the day. Supporters of the student movement turn their social media profiles red to show their rejection. 

Aug. 1: The government issues a notification banning the Jamaat-e-Islami party and its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, as well as its affiliates. The party is accused of being a terrorist entity. Six organizers of the movement are released from police custody.

Aug. 3: Student organizers make a demand at a major rally in Dhaka – the resignation of Hasina and the formation of a “national government” headed by a person who is “acceptable to all.” Hasina offers talks but students reject them. 

Aug. 4: Widespread clashes break out in Dhaka and in at least 21 districts of the country. Media reports say at least 90 people are killed in the violence. The dead include 13 policemen who are beaten to death by a mob in Sirajganj. The government reimposes an indefinite curfew across the country. 

Students announce a plan to hold a march to Dhaka from all parts of the country with the aim to force the government to resign. The army and police urge people not to break curfew or defy the law. 

Aug. 5: Tens of thousands of people from different parts of Dhaka and the surrounding areas defy the curfew to converge on the capital’s center. The army initially tries to stop the flow but then allows people to enter. Crowds storm Hasina’s official residence.

By the afternoon, Hasina hands her resignation letter to President Mohammed Shahabuddin and, along with her sister Sheikh Rehana, flies to neighboring India. Army chief General Waker-uz-Zaman invites several political parties for talks, including Jamaat-e-Islami, which the government had banned only days earlier. The general says an interim government will be formed following consultation with the president. 

The army chief promises justice for the 300 people who died during the 20 days of violent protests and urges the jubilant crowds to calm down and go home. But groups of people attack several offices of the outgoing ruling party, as well as a museum dedicated to Hasina’s father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, a founding father of the country.

This story originated in VOA’s Bangla service.
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Islamabad — Pakistan’s military revealed Monday that millions of liters of Iranian oil are being smuggled into the country each day, but rejected long-standing allegations that it is also playing a role in the illegal trade.

Lt. Gen. Ahmed Sharif Chaudhry, the army spokesperson, told a televised news conference that “consistent efforts” are being made to enhance security along the country’s more than 900-kilometer border with Iran in order to restrict oil smuggling.

“If you look at the numbers, [the fuel smuggling] has come down from 15-16 million liters per day to 5-6 million liters per day, thanks to the combined efforts of the army, Frontier Corps [paramilitary force], law enforcement, and intelligence agencies,” Chaudhry stated.

He did not provide further details, but Chaudhry is the first Pakistani official to publicly share estimates regarding the ongoing large-scale illegal oil trade between the two countries.

A rare comprehensive investigative report on the long-running illicit trade, conducted by two Pakistani official spy agencies and leaked to local media last May, revealed that Iranian traders smuggle more than $1 billion worth of petrol and diesel into Pakistan annually.

The probe found that the illegal fuel supply accounted for about 14% of Pakistan’s yearly consumption, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in losses “to the exchequer.”

The report identified more than 200 oil smugglers as well as government and security officials benefiting from the lucrative illegal oil trade. 

It said that up to 2,000 vehicles, each with a capacity of 3,200-3,400 liters, are used daily to transport diesel across the border. Additionally, some 1,300 boats, each with a capacity of “1,600 to 2,000” liters, are also used to smuggle Iranian fuel.

Petroleum dealers attributed the surge in cross-border smuggling to years of U.S.-led Western sanctions on the Iranian oil sector, which compelled Tehran to seek alternative markets for its exports.

Iranian traders reportedly sell fuel in their local currency to buyers in Pakistan’s southwestern border province of Baluchistan and collect dollars from the Pakistani market. The illegal fuel is then transported elsewhere in the South Asian nation.

Islamabad mainly sources its fuel from the Middle East. The government has dramatically raised fuel prices in recent months as part of efforts to secure a new International Monetary Fund loan of about $7 billion. 

Due to depleting foreign exchange reserves, analysts believe cash-strapped Pakistan could be allowing Iranian oil to be smuggled into the country to fulfill domestic needs.

Chaudhry, while speaking Monday, cautioned that sealing the border with Iran to stop the long-standing oil smuggling without providing alternative livelihood opportunities could have disastrous consequences for poverty-stricken and underdeveloped Pakistani border towns.

The intelligence report published in May estimated that up to 2.4 million individuals in insurgency-hit Balochistan relied on the smuggling of Iranian oil for their sustenance, and they would be left without means of survival if the illicit trade were to cease.

Pakistani government officials did not immediately respond to VOA inquiries seeking a response to Monday’s revelations in time for publication.

Afghan border

Meanwhile, the military spokesperson criticized neighboring Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers for not effectively guarding their side of the nearly 2,600-kilometer border between the two countries.

Chaudhry stated that the Pakistani military has established more than 1,450 border posts while the Afghan side has only more than 200. He argued that the Taliban’s limited number of posts could result from apathy or lack of resources to staff the border crossings.

“Interestingly, it’s not just the lesser number of posts or the border guards,” the army spokesperson said. “We have also noticed that whenever illegal movement or smuggling attempts occur, or people are assisted in crossing the border, gunfire is typically initiated from the Afghan side, or other tactics are used to facilitate such activities.”

Pakistan maintains that anti-state militants have moved their sanctuaries to Afghanistan since the Taliban regained control of the country three years ago and intensified cross-border attacks, killing hundreds of Pakistani security forces and civilians.

There was no immediate reaction from Taliban authorities to Pakistani allegations, but they have previously rejected them as baseless, saying terrorist groups do not operate on Afghan soil and that nobody is allowed to threaten neighboring countries. 
…

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Hanoi — A former Vietnamese property and aviation tycoon was jailed for 21 years on Monday for fraud and stock market manipulation worth $146 million, state media said. 

Trinh Van Quyet was among 50 defendants found guilty in what is the latest corruption case targeting the communist country’s business elite. 

A Hanoi court said Quyet, who owned the FLC empire of luxury resorts, golf courses and budget carrier Bamboo Airways, was given the heaviest sentence because he was the leader of the scam. 

“Through the stock market, the defendants proceeded with fraudulence… leading to mistrust for investors and the stock market, causing anger in society,” the Hanoi People’s Court said in its verdict quoted by the Tuoi Tre newspaper. 

“Therefore relevant punishments are required.” 

The 49 others, including two of Quyet’s sisters and four stock exchange officials, were given between 14 years in jail and a 15-month suspended sentence. 

They were charged with fraud, stock market manipulation, abuse of power and publishing incorrect stock market information. 

According to the prosecution indictment, Quyet set up several stock market brokerages and registered dozens of family members to, ostensibly, trade shares. 

But police said while orders to buy shares were placed in hundreds of trading sessions — pushing up the value of the stock — they were cancelled before being matched. 

The court said Quyet had illegally pocketed more than $146 million between 2017 and 2022. 

There were 25,000 victims of the fraud, the court added. 

One stock trader from Hanoi, who identified himself only as Trung, told AFP he lost close to $8,000 after investing in stocks related to the FLC group. 

“What Quyet and others have done, manipulating the stock market, must be duly punished,” he said.  

“I had to accept my losses, and I have tried to learn from this to help my future trading.” 

‘Will haunt me’

In his final words before the court, Quyet said he had dreamed of changing the lives of ordinary Vietnamese by building resorts and housing that would transform communities. 

This led him to “do things that were not within the law.” 

“What I did will haunt me my whole life,” Quyet said, according to the VnExpress news site.  

The court acknowledged that the FLC group had developed and invested in many projects in remote and poor areas, creating thousands of jobs and contributing to economic development.  

The trial began on July 22 and involved 100 lawyers. 

The case is part of a national corruption crackdown that has swept up numerous officials and members of Vietnam’s business elite in recent years. 

In April, a top Vietnamese property tycoon was sentenced to death in a $27 billion fraud case. She has launched an appeal against her conviction.  

Later that month, the head of one of Vietnam’s top soft drinks companies was jailed for eight years in a $40 million fraud case.
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London — Myanmar’s junta has lost communications with senior officers at a major military base near the Chinese border, in a rare admission of battlefield failure after rebels announced they had taken control of the key regional army headquarters.  

The Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army (MNDAA) rebel group, which said on July 25 it had taken over the base but kept fighting to gain full control, posted photographs of its troops at the military stronghold in Lashio town on Saturday. 

Junta troops have been unable to contact an undisclosed number of officers at the besieged northeastern regional command, said military spokesman Zaw Min Tun on Monday, following weeks of intense fighting in and around the town. 

“It has been found that senior officials were arrested,” he said in an audio message posted on the Telegram messaging app, adding the junta was working to verify the situation. 

Myanmar’s ruling generals are under unprecedented pressure, three years after unseating a civilian government in a dawn coup, with an armed rebellion against military rule gaining ground amid a stalling economy. 

A resistance movement was sparked by a violent crackdown on demonstrations following the February 2021 coup, as thousands of young protesters took up arms and combined forces with several established ethnic rebel groups to fight the military. 

“MNDAA has gained complete victory after destroying remaining enemy troops and fully conquered the northeastern military headquarters,” the group said in a statement on social media, accompanied by photographs of its troops. 

The loss of Lashio — the first of 14 regional military commands to fall to rebels — marks a major defeat for the junta, which last year suffered a succession of stinging losses in northern Shan state near the Chinese border. 

That rebel offensive, dubbed Operation 1027, came to a halt after Beijing intervened to help forge a fragile ceasefire, but that collapsed when fighting resumed in June in northern Shan state, where Lashio is located. China has urged dialogue and an end to hostilities.  

“The rapid fall of the Myanmar army’s Northeastern Command makes it fully clear to the ranks of the resistance and to neighboring countries just how weak the Myanmar military has become,” said Jason Tower at United States Institute of Peace. 

“For Min Aung Hlaing, the implications are existential,” he said, referring to the embattled junta chief. “The fall of Lashio could prove to be the beginning of the end.” 

Three other anti-junta ethnic armies, which are fighting the Myanmar military along the Thai and Indian borders, on Sunday congratulated the MNDAA and another allied group for the successful offensive in Lashio.  

“We will also continue to fight as allies until the military falls,” said the statement from the Kachin, Karen and Chin groups. 
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MANILA — A Vietnamese coast guard ship arrived in Manila on Monday for a four-day goodwill visit and joint exercises as the two countries attempt to put aside their own territorial disputes in the face of rising tensions with China over control of key features in the South China Sea.

The Philippines and Vietnam are among the most vocal critics of China’s increasingly hostile actions in the disputed waters, a key global trade and security route. The neighboring Southeast Asian countries themselves have overlapping claims in the busy sea passage along with Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan and the disputes are regarded as an Asian flashpoint and a delicate fault line in the U.S.-China regional rivalry.

As the host’s coast guard personnel waved Philippine and Vietnamese flags and a brass band played under the morning sun at Manila’s harbor, a 2,400-ton Vietnamese coast guard ship with 80 crewmembers docked. Some of its officers saluted from the lower and upper decks of the 90-meter white ship.

During its stay in Manila, the two coast guard forces are expected to hold talks and tour each other’s ships. They will hold joint search and rescue drills along with fire and explosion contingency drills in Manila Bay, on the western coast of northern Philippines facing the South China Sea.

“This is a good template, a good way to deescalate the situation,” Philippine coast guard spokesperson Rear Admiral Armand Balilo said. “This shows that even rival claimants can have an opportunity to nurture a relationship.”

Col. Hoang Quoc Dat, who headed the Vietnamese coast guard’s delegation, said in a speech that their Manila port call was a way to strengthen the two countries’ “cooperative relationship for mutual benefit.”

“This will promote and enhance the efficiency of information sharing and the coordination in maritime law enforcement, in accordance with international law,” he said and added such friendly collaboration contributes to “the preservation and protection of the region’s maritime security and safety.”

In a separate goodwill engagement last month, Vietnamese and Philippine navy forces played volleyball, football and tug-of-war games in the Vietnam-occupied Southwest Cay in the South China Sea’s hotly contested Spratly archipelago, according to Vietnamese and Philippine officials.

In June, Vietnam said it was ready to hold talks with the Philippines to settle their overlapping claims to the undersea continental shelf in the South China Sea, while China has long claimed much of the entire seaway and vowed to defend its territorial interests at all costs.

After a violent June 17 confrontation in the Philippine-occupied Second Thomas Shoal in the South China Sea between Chinese forces — armed with knives, axe, and improvised spears — and Filipino navy personnel, China and the Philippines reached a temporary agreement last month to prevent further clashes that could spark a major armed conflict in the atoll.

A week after the deal was forged, Philippine government personnel transported food and other supplies to Manila’s territorial ship outpost at the shoal, which has been closely guarded by the Chinese coast guard and navy ships, no confrontations were reported.

The Philippines, however, has vowed to press on with efforts to strengthen its territorial forces and defense and expand security alliances with Asian and Western countries.
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DHAKA — Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina resigned on Monday and fled the country, multiple sources said, as more people were killed in some of the worst violence since the birth of the South Asian nation more than five decades ago.

Army chief General Waker-Us-Zaman said in a televised address that Hasina 76, had left the country and that an interim government would be formed.

Media reports said she had flown in a military helicopter with her sister and was headed to the eastern Indian state of West Bengal just across the border. Another report said she was headed to India’s northeastern state of Tripura.

Reuters could not immediately verify the reports.

Television visuals showed thousands of people pouring into the streets of the capital Dhaka in jubilation and shouting slogans. Thousands also stormed Hasina’s official residence ‘Ganabhaban,’ shouting slogans, pumping fists and showing victory signs.

Television visuals showed crowds in the drawing rooms of the residence, and some people could be seen carrying away televisions, chairs and tables from what was one of the most protected buildings in the country.

“She has fled the country, fled the country,” some shouted.

Protesters in Dhaka also climbed atop a large statue of independence leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, Hasina’s father, and began chiseling away at the head with an axe, the visuals showed.

Student activists had called for a march to the capital Dhaka on Monday in defiance of a nationwide curfew to press Hasina to resign, a day after deadly clashes across the country killed nearly 100 people. About 150 people were killed in protests last month.

On Monday, at least six people were killed in clashes between police and protesters in the Jatrabari and Dhaka Medical College areas on Monday, the Daily Star newspaper reported. Reuters could not immediately verify the report.

Bangladesh has been engulfed by protests and violence that began last month after student groups demanded scrapping of a controversial quota system in government jobs.

That escalated into a campaign to seek the ouster of Hasina, who won a fourth straight term in January in an election boycotted by the opposition.

 
…

SYDNEY — Australia has raised its official terror alert level to “probable” amid community tensions over the war in Gaza, with the nation’s intelligence services believing that the domestic and global security environments have become more volatile

Security authorities in Canberra believe the chances of a violent extremist act are now more likely than when authorities lowered the alert level to “possible” in November 2022.

Mike Burgess, the head of ASIO, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization, the domestic spy agency, told reporters Monday in Canberra that “more Australians are being radicalized and being radicalized more quickly.”  

The ASIO boss said that the security agencies in Australia had disrupted eight incidents in the last four months that involved alleged terrorism or were investigated as potential acts of extremism.  

Burgess added that the conflict in Gaza was not the “cause” for raising the terror level, but it was a “significant driver.”

Community groups in Australia have reported an increase in Islamophobic and antisemitic abuse since Israel’s war in Gaza began last October.    

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Monday reassured Australians that ‘probable’ does not mean inevitable, and it does not mean there is intelligence about an imminent threat.

However, Albanese told reporters Monday that his government must remain vigilant.

“We have seen a global rise in politically motivated violence and extremism,” he said. “Many democracies are working to address this, including our friends in the United States and in the United Kingdom.  There are many things driving this global trend towards violence.  Governments around the world are concerned about youth radicalization, online radicalization and the rise of new mixed ideologies.”

Australia has five official levels under its national terrorism threat classification system, ranging from “certain” to “not expected.” 

Monday’s change moves the rating to the mid-level of “probable.” 

This means that security officials in Australia believe “there is a greater than 50% chance of an onshore attack or attack planning in the next 12 months.”
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LAHORE, PAKISTAN — The tree-lined alley leading to the personal residence of Pakistan’s former Prime Minister Imran Khan in Lahore is quiet. A severe crackdown on his political party has scared away supporters who used to revel late into the night and sleep at their beloved leader’s doorstep.

Now, only a small contingent of police idly keep watch outside the iconic address in the eastern metropolis. A placard bearing a Quranic verse blesses the resident who has been gone for a year.

Aug. 5 marks one year since Khan was put behind bars in the garrison city of Rawalpindi near the capital Islamabad on graft charges. Over time, the list of the former prime minister’s alleged crimes grew to include treason, illicit marriage, fomenting anti-state violence and inciting vandalism of military and state properties.

Convictions coming in quick succession sentenced one of the country’s most popular politicians to nearly three decades in prison, just as Pakistan headed to general elections in February this year. By July, though, higher courts had overturned lower courts’ verdicts.

Despite much-needed legal relief, Khan remains behind bars facing new charges of corruption and anti-state violence. He denies any wrongdoing.

Analysts say Khan’s incarceration and the military-backed crackdown on his Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, or PTI, may have quashed street agitation that followed his 2022 ouster. They have failed to bring political stability. Instead, experts say, the widely criticized measures have plunged powerful state institutions into a tug of war.

Military v. judiciary

Veteran journalist and political analyst Suhail Warraich says the legal relief Khan has received after a very public falling out with the country’s powerful military is unusual in Pakistan’s political history.

“For the first time, the alliance between [military] establishment and judiciary that has been going on since 1954, in which the judiciary would stamp any decision that the military took, is not there,” Warraich told VOA. “We know the [military] establishment wants one decision and judiciary is giving a different decision.”

Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari, a spokesperson for Khan’s Tehreek-e-Insaf party, told VOA the legal victories were expected.

“We knew that when his [Khan’s] cases come up in court, as soon as they go to a higher court, it will be virtually impossible for any judge to consider these previous cases as genuine,” said Khan’s close aide.

Still, Khan has accused of bias the Chief Justice of Pakistan Qazi Faez Esa and the top judge of the Islamabad High Court, demanding their recusal from his cases.

A United Nations-backed panel last month declared Khan’s detention arbitrary.

Speaking to VOA, Azma Bukhari, spokesperson of the Punjab government, rejected the popular view that the state failed to bring credible charges against Khan.

“Khan is a lucky man! It’s not as if the government has not been able to provide evidence. It’s just that nothing stands up to Imran Khan,” said Bukhari, a member of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s party, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz).

“There is a sense that only those siding with Khan will be respected and spared bullying,” Bukhari said, accusing senior judges of favoring Khan under populist pressure.

Analysts whom VOA spoke with agree some senior judges may be following the public’s pulse.

Unclear ideology

Since his ouster, Khan may have succeeded in unleashing pent-up public anger against the military’s self-admitted interference in political affairs, but it is unclear whether his aggressive criticism of the top brass is rooted in a desire for civilian supremacy, political observers say.

Last week, Khan offered “conditional negotiations” to the military if the leadership appointed a representative. He has refused to speak with politicians. The message came through a post on his account on X, formerly Twitter, operated from overseas.

“We will not hold any talks, nor will we negotiate [a deal] with the puppet, mafia regime, imposed on us illegitimately through fraud and rigging,” the message stated.

Government spokesperson Bukhari and journalist Asma Shirazi criticized Khan for rejecting talks with public representatives.

“It is important to get clarity on what is Khan’s ideology? What does he want? How does he see democracy, civilian supremacy, freedom of expression? Where does he want to take that?” asked Shirazi.

While in office, Khan rejected the charge that he rose to power with the military’s support, though he frequently touted his closeness with the powerful institution. He repeatedly accused his political opponents of corruption and treason, without providing evidence. In 2021, global media watchdog Reporters Without Borders listed Khan among “press freedom predators.”

“The way the constitution ensures judicial independence, media freedom, civil liberties, PTI does not believe in that strongly,” Warraich said. “This is a gripe a lot of democratic [-minded] elements have with him.”

Instability persists

Since May 9, 2023, when Khan’s supporters stormed government and military properties in protest, PTI has faced a severe military-backed crackdown, forcing several senior party leaders to either defect or go underground.

Still, PTI-backed candidates won the largest number of seats in the Feb. 8 general elections this year. PTI has also managed to keep Khan and the party’s plight in the spotlight internationally.

In June, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging an investigation into claims of election irregularities.

“There is a diaspora that has influence, and it is using that,” Shirazi said.

Pakistan rejected statements from U.S. lawmakers as unwelcome and unwarranted interference.

“That is not interference. That is awareness,” said Khan’s aide Bukhari, defending the leader’s seemingly contradictory position of seeking support from U.S. lawmakers while accusing the Biden administration of conspiring in his ouster. Washington has denied the allegation.

Sharif’s government seems to have backed down on its recent threat to ban PTI for alleged anti-state activities, but the party’s spokesperson and its electronic and social media team members are under arrest, facing anti-state propaganda and terrorism charges.

Social media platform X, where Khan’s supporters are active, has remained largely suspended in Pakistan since February, while PTI’s attempts at street agitations have been frequently quashed.

Despite being imprisoned, Khan holds the key to end the political deadlock that continues to destabilize the country, Shirazi insists, since public sympathy remains with him.

The battle between Khan and the military, however, has deep implications for Pakistan, she said.

“This is not a fight for rule,” Shirazi said. “This is a fight for power.”
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TOKYO — Asia-Pacific business executives urged emerging economies in the region to issue climate bonds indexed to a basket of currencies, which would reduce the risk from foreign exchange fluctuation in raising funds for clean energy transition.

The group of business executives comprising ABAC, which is APEC’s Business Advisory Council, also proposed on Sunday launching a pilot program to develop a voluntary carbon market (VCM) for the Asia-Pacific region.

“What we’re trying to establish is an interoperable, or mutually tradeable, voluntary carbon credit network within the Asia-Pacific region that can accelerate the region’s transition to a low-carbon society,” Hiroshi Nakaso, head of ABAC’s finance and investment task force, told a news conference on Sunday.

Under the program, like-minded countries will conduct cross-border carbon credit transactions on a trial basis to identify problems and possible solutions, Nakaso said.

The Asia-Pacific region lacks cross-border standards or regulatory infrastructure for a voluntary carbon market, a mechanism that channels private financing into climate projects.

The proposals, compiled at a meeting in Tokyo on Aug. 1-4, underscore a growing awareness in Asia about the need for private and public sectors to cooperate in financing the huge cost of energy transition.

ABAC, an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) advisory council, will present its recommendations at the APEC leaders’ summit to be held in Lima in November. Peru is this year’s chair of APEC, a bloc that accounts for almost half of world trade.

In the list of proposals, ABAC called on governments in the region to issue 10-year bonds with interest and principal payments indexed to a basket of currencies.

Such bonds would give developing nations access to hard currency to buy solar farms and storage facilities, and mitigate risk from exchange-rate fluctuation for lenders, said Tom Harley, one of the task force’s project leaders from Australia.

Asia is among the world’s most vulnerable regions to climate-related natural disasters. It also consists of many economies reliant on fossil fuel or vulnerable to currency market swings, heightening challenges for energy transition.
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DHAKA, bangladesh — A new round of violence in Bangladesh left at least eight people dead and hundreds of others injured as student protesters clashed with police and ruling party activists on Sunday, officials and media reports said, as protests that began over a government jobs quota continued with demands for the resignation of Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

The protests began as students called for an end to a quota system that awarded 30% of government jobs to relatives of veterans, but escalated into violence that left more than 200 dead in July.

Authorities closed schools and universities across the country, blocked internet access and imposed a shoot-on-sight curfew. At least 11,000 people have been arrested in recent weeks.

Protesters called for “non-cooperation,” urging people not to pay taxes and utility bills and not show up for work on Sunday, a working day in Bangladesh. Offices, banks and factories opened, while commuters in Dhaka and other cities faced challenges getting to work.

Meanwhile, thousands of members of the ruling Awami League party and its associate bodies took to the streets for counterprotests, raising the risk of violent confrontations.

Protesters attacked Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University, a major public hospital in Dhaka’s Shahbagh area, torching several vehicles.

In Dhaka’s Uttara neighborhood, police fired teargas to disperse hundreds of protesters who blocked a major highway. Protesters attacked homes and vandalized a community welfare office in the area, where hundreds of ruling party activists took positions. Some crude bombs were detonated and gunshots were heard, witnesses said.

Abu Hena, a hospital official in Munshiganj district near Dhaka, said two people were declared dead after being rushed to a hospital with injuries.

Jamuna TV station reported another six deaths in Bogura, Magura, Rangpur and Sirajganj districts, where the protesters backed by the country’s main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party clashed with police and the activists of the ruling Awami League party and its associated bodies.

Users complained of disruptions in mobile internet service on Sunday afternoon and many others faced problems accessing Facebook.

The protests began last month as students demanded an end to a quota system that reserved 30% of government jobs for the families of veterans who fought in Bangladesh’s war of independence against Pakistan in 1971. As violence crested, the country’s Supreme Court scaled back the quota system to 5% of jobs, with 3% for relatives of veterans, but protests have continued demanding accountability for violence the demonstrators blame on the government’s use of excessive force.

The quota system also includes quotas members of ethnic minorities, and disabled and transgender people, which were cut from 26% to 2% in the ruling.

Hasina’s administration has blamed the main opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party and now-banned right-wing Jamaat-e-Islami party and their student wings for instigating violence, in which several state-owned establishments were also torched or vandalized.

Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir, secretary-general of the main opposition party, repeated a call for the government to step down to stop the chaos.

Hasina offered to talk with student leaders on Saturday, but a coordinator refused and announced a one-point demand for her resignation.

Hasina repeated her pledges to thoroughly investigate the deaths and punish those responsible for the violence. She said that her doors were open for talks and she was ready to sit down whenever the protesters want.

The protests have become a major challenge for Hasina, who has ruled the country for over 15 years, returning to power for a fourth consecutive term in January in an election that was boycotted by her main opponents.
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MANILA, Philippines — The Philippines and Germany on Sunday committed to signing a defense cooperation arrangement this year, vowing to stand for the international rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific region.

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius and his Philippine counterpart Gilberto Teodoro committed to establishing long-term relations between their armed forces to expand training and bilateral exchanges, explore opportunities to expand bilateral armaments cooperation and engage in joint projects.

The two met in Manila during the first such visit by a German defense minister, as their countries mark 70 years of diplomatic relations.

Teodoro said the Philippines, seeking to modernize its military to boost external defense, will be “looking to engage Germany as a possible supplier of these capabilities.”

“These are in the command and control, anti-access aerial denial, maritime domain, aerial domain and in higher technologically capable equipment,” Teodoro told a news conference with Pistorius.

Manila and Berlin are deepening military ties as tensions have flared in recent months between China and the Philippines, which have traded accusations over run-ins in disputed areas of the South China Sea, including charges China intentionally rammed Manila’s navy boats seriously injuring a Filipino sailor.

China claims sovereignty over most of the South China Sea, including areas claimed as exclusive economic zones by Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia. In 2016, the Permanent Court of Arbitration in the Hague said Beijing’s claims had no legal basis. China rejects that decision.

“This ruling remains valid, without any exceptions,” said Pistorius. “It is our obligation to strengthen the maritime border and we are living up to it.”

The South China Sea is a vital trade route with more than $3 trillion in ship-borne trade passing through it every year.

Teodoro said the Philippines was not provoking China and did not seek war, but reiterated Manila’s stance that the only cause of conflict in the waterway “is China’s illegal and unilateral attempt to appropriate most if not all of the South China Sea.”

China has expressed concern about the growing ties between NATO members and Asian nations such as Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, as Washington and its partners expand alliances and partnerships, including those that span the globe.

Germany on Friday joined the U.S.-led United Nations Command in South Korea, becoming the 18th nation in a group that helps police the heavily fortified border with North Korea and has committed to defend the South in the event of a war.

Pistorius said that move was evidence of Berlin’s strong belief that European security is closely linked to security in the Indo-Pacific region.

Germany’s commitments and engagements in the region “are not directed against anybody,” Pistorius said in Manila. “Instead, we are focusing on maintaining rules-based order, securing freedom of navigation and protecting trade routes.”
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Moscow — Russian President Vladimir Putin has offered condolences to North Korean counterpart Kim Jong Un over devastating floods that caused untold casualties and damaged thousands of homes, the Kremlin said on Saturday.

The North, in turn, said Sunday that Putin had also offered “immediate humanitarian support” to aid its recovery efforts, to which Kim responded that he “could deeply feel the special emotion towards a genuine friend.”

Pyongyang said this week it had seen a record downpour on July 27 which killed an unspecified number of people, flooded dwellings and submerged swaths of farmland in the north near China.

“I ask you to convey words of sympathy and support to all those who lost their loved ones as a result of the storm,” Putin said in a telegram to Kim.

“You can always count on our help and support.”

“The message of sympathy from Moscow was conveyed to the Foreign Ministry of the DPRK” on Saturday, said the official KCNA, noting it was immediately reported to leader Kim.

Kim thanked Putin for the outreach but said “already-established plans as state measures were taken at the present stage.”

Regarding the offer, Kim said, “if aid is necessary in the course, he would ask for it from the truest friends in Moscow,” KCNA reported.

Pyongyang said on Wednesday that officials who neglected their disaster prevention duties had caused unspecified casualties, without providing details on the location.

It said on Saturday that there were no casualties at all in the Sinuiju area, the region Pyongyang claimed suffered the “greatest flood damage.”

North Korea and Russia have been allies since the North’s founding after World War II and have drawn even closer since Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Media in South Korea, which has offered urgent support to the victims, said this week the toll of dead and missing could be as high as 1,500.

Kim lashed out at the reports, dismissing them as a “smear campaign to bring disgrace upon us and tarnish” the North’s image.

North Korea is accused of breaching arms control measures by supplying weapons to Russia for use in its war in Ukraine.

Natural disasters tend to have a greater impact on the isolated and impoverished country due to its weak infrastructure, while deforestation has left it vulnerable to flooding. 
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Manila, Philippines — A 6.8-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of the southern Philippines on Saturday, the United States Geological Survey said, but no tsunami warning was issued and there were no immediate reports of damage.

The shallow quake hit just before 6:30 a.m. about 20 kilometers (12.4 miles) from the village of Barcelona on the east side of Mindanao island, the USGS said.

Many people were sleeping when the strong shaking jolted them from their beds.

The local seismological agency said no damage was expected from the earthquake.

In Lingig municipality, where Barcelona is located, local disaster officer Ian Onsing said he was woken by the tremor.

“The shaking was quite strong. The things around here were moving. I guess, the shaking took around 10 to 15 seconds,” he told AFP by telephone. “So far, there are no reported casualties or damage. We are now monitoring the shores for any rough movement.”

In the municipality of Hinatuan, about 25 kilometers (15.5 miles) north of Barcelona, local disaster officer Jerome Ramirez saw appliances “moving for around 30 seconds” from the strong shaking.

He also said there had been no reports of injuries or damage in coastal communities in the area.

“Now we are just monitoring for possible aftershocks,” Ramirez told AFP by telephone.

A series of aftershocks were felt in some areas in Mindanao, with the strongest at 6.3 magnitude about 36 kilometers (22.3 miles) east of Barcelona, according to the USGS.

“Aftershocks are happening here every two minutes, but we’re glad it’s not as strong as the earthquake this morning,” Onsing said.

Earthquakes regularly strike the Philippines, which sits along the Pacific Ring of Fire, an arc of intense seismic and volcanic activity that stretches from Japan through Southeast Asia and across the Pacific basin.

Most are too weak to be felt by humans, but strong and destructive quakes come at random with no technology available to predict when and where they will happen.

In December, a 7.6-magnitude quake struck off Mindanao, briefly triggering a tsunami warning.

That sent residents along the east coast of the island fleeing buildings, evacuating a hospital and seeking higher ground. At least three people died.
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Dhaka, Bangladesh — Student leaders rallied Bangladeshis on Saturday for a nationwide civil disobedience campaign as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s government weathered a worsening backlash over a deadly police crackdown on protesters.

Rallies against civil service job quotas sparked days of mayhem last month that killed more than 200 people in some of the worst unrest of Hasina’s 15-year tenure.

Troop deployments briefly restored order, but crowds hit the streets in huge numbers after Friday prayers in the Muslim-majority nation, heeding a call by student leaders to press the government for more concessions.

Students Against Discrimination, the group responsible for organizing the initial protests, urged their compatriots to launch an all-out noncooperation movement on Sunday.

“This includes nonpayment of taxes and utility bills, strikes by government workers and a halt to overseas remittance payments through banks,” the group’s Asif Mahmud told AFP.

Mahmud’s fellow student leaders also said another round of nationwide rallies would be staged on Saturday.

“Please don’t stay at home. Join your nearest protest march,” Mahmud wrote on Facebook.

Students are demanding a public apology from Hasina for last month’s violence and the dismissal of several of her ministers.

They have also insisted that the government reopen schools and universities around the country, all of which were shuttered at the height of the unrest.

Crowds on the street have gone further, chanting demands for Hasina to leave office.

Hasina, 76, has ruled Bangladesh since 2009 and won her fourth consecutive election in January after a vote without genuine opposition.

Her government is accused by rights groups of misusing state institutions to entrench its hold on power and stamp out dissent, including the extrajudicial killing of opposition activists.

Demonstrations began in early July over the reintroduction of a quota scheme — since scaled back by Bangladesh’s top court — that reserved more than half of all government jobs for certain groups.

With around 18 million young Bangladeshis out of work, according to government figures, the move upset graduates facing an acute employment crisis.

The protests had remained largely peaceful until attacks on demonstrators by police and pro-government student groups.

Hasina’s government eventually imposed a nationwide curfew, deployed troops and shut down the nation’s mobile internet network for 11 days to restore order.

Foreign governments condemned the clampdown, with European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell this week calling for an international probe into the “excessive and lethal force against protesters.”

Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan told reporters last weekend that security forces had operated with restraint but were “forced to open fire” to defend government buildings.

At least 32 children were among those killed last month, the United Nations said Friday.
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TAIPEI, TAIWAN — Hu Xijin, the former editor-in-chief of China’s state-run tabloid Global Times, has gone silent on social media for a week after his analysis of China’s economic policies triggered a backlash from Chinese state media and other prominent commentators.

Hu, a prominent nationalistic commentator known for his outspoken style on social media, has not shared anything on any of his social media accounts, including the microblogging site Weibo, Chinese messaging app WeChat and X, formerly known as Twitter, since July 27.

His silence comes after his July 22 WeChat opinion article pointing out that the Communist Party had left out a key phrase, “state sector is the mainstay of the Chinese economy,” from the resolution on reforming the Chinese economy adopted by China’s top leadership during the Third Plenum, a closed-door conclave that laid out key economic policies for the next five years.

He claimed that the move, which deviates from the Communist Party’s usual practice of reiterating the slogan in official documents, shows that China is hoping to “achieve true equality between the private and state-owned economy.”

Hu’s comments in the article, which has since been removed from WeChat, triggered widespread criticism on Chinese social media outlets, as some conservative commentators accused him of misinterpreting the resolution, which vowed to “consolidate and develop the state-owned economy.”

In addition to online criticism, China’s state-run People’s Daily also published an opinion article on July 30, reiterating that China’s fundamental position on the state and private sectors has not changed and will not change in the future.

The party “will be able to inject a surging impetus into the promotion of Chinese-style modernization by adhering to and perfecting the basic socialist economic system, promoting stronger and better state-owned capital and state-owned enterprises, and creating a favorable environment and providing more opportunities for the development of the nonstate sector of the economy,” the article said.

Bloomberg News reported that Hu has been banned from posting on social media, citing an anonymous source, but in a brief response to Hong Kong’s Sing Tao Daily, Hu refused to elaborate on his unusual silence.

“Personally, I don’t want to say anything. Just read what’s on the internet. Please understand,” he told Sing Tao Daily.

Some analysts say the incident reflects the Chinese government’s attempt to tighten control over discussions and narratives about China’s economy, which remains sluggish despite the government’s plan to roll out reform following the plenum.

“As the Chinese economy gets into a more precarious situation, the leadership in China becomes increasingly aware that it is a source of instability, so they decide to double down on control over economic and business information,” Dexter Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told VOA by phone.

Other experts say Hu’s silence, which departs from his usual outspoken style on social media, also shows that he has crossed the line by publicly contradicting party policy.

“His comments have crossed the red line set up by the Communist Party, and the severity of the punishment, which is an outright ban from posting on social media, sends a warning to the rest of China that authorities have zero tolerance for opinions that deviate from the official line,” said Hung Chin-fu, an expert of Chinese politics at National Cheng-Kung University in Taiwan.

In his view, while the resolution mentioned the goal of expanding China’s private sector, development of the private sector still needs to be guided by the party, which means that the state sector will still play a dominant role in that process.

“China’s top leadership will allow some discussions on the development of its private sector, but they don’t want those voices to overshadow the official narrative,” Hung told VOA by phone.

Some analysts say Hu’s silence on social media may be a result that is in line with existing laws in China. “The new Chinese Communist Party Disciplinary Regulations explicitly forbids people like Hu from jumping the gun like he did,” Wen-ti Sung, a political scientist at Australian National University, told VOA in a written response.

While Hu is unlikely to face a total ban on social media, Roberts said, he may become more careful when commenting on topics related to the Chinese government’s policies or sensitive domestic issues in the future.

“There is less and less tolerance for outspoken people like Hu in China these days, so I don’t think something like this [can] happen to him without there being longer-term repercussions,” he told VOA.

Sung said Hu’s case also shows the growing risks Chinese people, including those working for the Communist Party, face when commenting on sensitive issues.

“Hu’s episode probably speaks to how hard it is to know where the red line is for anyone engaging in public political discourse in China today — even for a real insider like Hu, who worked in the party’s propaganda system for 28 years,” he said.
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PHNOM PENH, Cambodia — Vietnamese President To Lam was confirmed Saturday as the new chief of the Communist Party after his predecessor died July 19.

Lam will be the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, the country’s most powerful political role, state media said. It was unclear if Lam will stay in his role as president.

The previous general secretary, Nguyen Phu Trong, dominated Vietnamese politics since he became party chief in 2011. He was elected to a third term as general secretary in 2021. He was an ideologue who viewed corruption as the gravest threat facing the party.

In his first speech as the Communist Party chief, Lam said that him taking the reigns was because of “an urgent need to ensure the leadership of the party.”

Lam said he would maintain the legacies of his predecessor, notably the anti-corruption campaign that has rocked the country’s political and business elites and a pragmatic approach to foreign policy known as bamboo diplomacy — a phrase coined by Trong referring to the plant’s flexibility, bending but not breaking in the shifting headwinds of global geopolitics.

Lam spent over four decades in the Ministry of Public Security before becoming the minister in 2016. As Vietnam’s top security official, Lam led Trong’s sweeping anti-graft campaign until May, when he became president following the resignation of his predecessor, who stepped down after being caught by the campaign.

Big changes in Vietnam’s strategic approach are unlikely, said Nguyen Khac Giang, a visiting fellow in the Vietnam Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS–Yusof Ishak Institute, but Lam’s relative newness to governing meant that it remains to be seen how he will lead.

Given the current composition of the upper echelons of Vietnamese politics, Giang said it was possible that Lam’s promotion could mean an end to the internal fighting that has rocked the party for several years.

“To Lam is the new unchallenged power who will dominate Vietnamese politics in the years, if not a decade, ahead,” he said.

Giang said the party will vote for the general secretary again in 2026, and Lam’s performance will be a factor.

“For now, however, it seems a new era has come,” he said.
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Taipei, Taiwan — Concern is rising among China’s more than 1 billion internet users over a government proposal portrayed as a step to protect their personal information and fight against fraud. Many fear the plan would do the opposite.

China’s Ministry of Public Security and the Cyberspace Administration issued the draft “Measures for the Administration of National Network Identity Authentication Public Services” on July 26.

According to the proposal, Chinese netizens would be able to apply for virtual IDs on a voluntary basis to “minimize the excessive collection and retention of citizens’ personal information by online platforms” and “protect personal information.”

While many netizens appear to agree in their posts that companies have too much access to their personal information, others fear the cyber ID proposal, if implemented, will simply allow the government to more easily track them and control what they can say online.

Beijing lawyer Wang Cailiang said on Weibo: “My opinion is short: I am not in favor of this. Please leave a little room for citizens’ privacy.”

Shortly after the proposal was published, Tsinghua University law professor Lao Dongyan posted on her Weibo account, “The cyber IDs are like installing monitors to watch everyone’s online behavior.”

Her post has since disappeared, along with many other negative comments that can only be found on foreign social media platforms like X and Free Weibo, an anonymous and unblocked search engine established in 2012 to capture and save posts censored by China’s Sina Weibo or deleted by users.

A Weibo user under the name “Liu Jiming” said, “The authorities solemnly announced [the proposal] and solicited public opinions while blocking people from expressing their opinions. This clumsy show of democracy is really shocking.”

Beijing employs a vast network of censors to block and remove politically sensitive content, known by critics as the Great Firewall.

Since 2017, China has required internet service and content providers to verify users’ real names through national IDs, allowing authorities to more easily trace and track online activities and posts to the source.

Chinese internet experts say netizens can make that harder by using others’ accounts, providers, IDs and names on various platforms. But critics fear a single cyber ID would close those gaps in the Great Firewall.

Zola, a network engineer and well-known citizen journalist originally from China’s Hunan province, who naturalized in Taiwan, told VOA “The control of the cyber IDs is a superpower because you don’t only know a netizen’s actual name, but also the connection between the netizen and the cybersecurity ID.”

Mr. Li, a Shanghai-based dissident who did not want to disclose his full name because of the issue’s sensitivity, told VOA that the level of surveillance by China’s internet police has long been beyond imagination. He said the new proposal is a way for authorities to tell netizens that the surveillance will be more overt “just to intimidate and warn you to behave.”

Some netizens fear China could soon change the cyber ID system from a voluntary program to a requirement for online access.

A Weibo user under the name “Fang Zhifu” warned that in the future, if “the cyber ID is revoked, it will be like being sentenced to death in the cyber world.”

Meanwhile, China’s Ministry of Public Security and Cyberspace Administration say they are soliciting public opinion on the cyber ID plan until August 25.
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