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Islamabad — The United Nations said Monday that flash floods in Afghanistan, caused by extreme weather events related to climate change, are impacting tens of thousands of children, especially in northern and western provinces.

The impoverished South Asian country has experienced unusually heavy seasonal rainfall and flash flooding over the past month, affecting more than 100,000 people and resulting in loss and damage to houses, infrastructure, and the livelihoods of people in 32 out of 34 Afghan provinces. 

The calamity has killed at least 350 people, including women and children, damaging close to 8,000 homes and displacing more than 5,000 families besides destroying crops and agricultural land, according to the U.N. Children’s Fund, or UNICEF.

“The recent extreme weather in Afghanistan has all the hallmarks of the intensifying climate crisis — some of the affected areas experienced drought last year,” the agency noted in a Monday statement.

It attributed the loss of lives and livelihoods and damage to infrastructure to an increase in the “frequency and ferocity” of extreme weather events in the country. 

Aid agencies have cautioned that many flood survivors cannot make a living and have been left with no homes, no land, and no source of livelihood. 

Tajudeen Oyewale, the UNICEF representative in Afghanistan, urged the international community to redouble efforts and investments to support communities to alleviate and adapt to the impact of climate change on children.

“The growing number and severity of extreme weather events will require UNICEF and other humanitarian actors to step in with even more rapid and large-scale humanitarian responses,” Oyewale added.  

He stressed the need for UNICEF and the humanitarian community to prepare themselves for “a new reality of climate-related disasters in Afghanistan.

The war-ravaged country ranks 15th out of 163 countries in the Children’s Climate Risk Index. “This means that not only are climate and environmental shocks and stresses prominent in the country, but children are particularly vulnerable to their effects compared with elsewhere in the world,” UNICEF said. 

The Save the Children charity has warned through a recent statement that about 6.5 million Afghan children are forecast to experience crisis-level hunger this year, citing the impact of floods, prolonged drought, and the return of hundreds of thousands of undocumented Afghans from neighboring Pakistan.

The World Food Program estimates that 3 million Afghan children are malnourished, and it can only reach one-third of them. The decline in international assistance has led to a rise in children’s admissions to malnutrition clinics in Afghanistan, the agency cautioned.  

Afghanistan, one of the countries most at risk of global climate crisis, is among the least responsible for carbon emissions. 

Afghan children are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate and environmental shocks and stresses compared to elsewhere in the world, the statement said. 

The return of the fundamentalist Taliban to power in Kabul in 2021 has led to the immediate termination of financial aid to the country, while international humanitarian assistance has recently also declined. This has worsened humanitarian conditions and pushed Afghanistan’s economy to the brink.
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Islamabad — Police and relatives in majority-Muslim Pakistan reported Monday that a Christian man who was severely injured in a mob attack a week ago over disputed blasphemy allegations has died due to his injuries.

Nazir Masih, the 70-year-old victim, was receiving treatment for severe head injuries at a military-run hospital near the capital, Islamabad, after being rescued, along with family members, from angry protesters gathered outside his residence in the city of Sargodha on May 25. He underwent multiple surgeries but could not survive, a police official said.

The mob ransacked Masih’s house and burned down his shoe shop, claiming he had desecrated Islam’s holy book, the Quran, allegations his relatives rejected as baseless.

Social media videos from Sargodha showed Christians carrying Masih’s coffin through the street, shouting “Praise to Jesus” and “Jesus is great.” The coffin was covered in black fabric and had a small crucifix on it.

Christian community leaders lamented the latest mob lynching and urged the Pakistani government to ensure the protection of religious minorities and to punish those responsible for inciting mob violence in the name of religion over controversial blasphemy charges.

“Yet again, hate has brought us to the place where we must ask questions,” Bishop Asad Marshall, the president of the Church of Pakistan, said in a statement posted on X Monday.

“The question is when will those who make a change and those who pursue justice seek truth and cry for a more just and fair world? When will those lives rise up for the sake of Pakistan’s own?” Marshall asked. ‘’We lift our voices in lament, regret, solidarity, and for an honest plea for justice.”

Police have arrested dozens of suspects in connection with the mob attack under Pakistan’s anti-terrorism law. They had also launched an investigation into the blasphemy charges against Masih. 

Blasphemy is a highly sensitive issue in Pakistan, and mere allegations have led to mobs lynching dozens of suspects — even some in police custody. Insulting the Quran or Islamic beliefs is punishable by death under the country’s blasphemy laws, though no one has ever been executed.

The Sargodha incident revived memories of one of the worst attacks on Christians in August 2023 in Jaranwala, another city in the central Punjab province, the country’s most populous.

That attack involved thousands of Muslim protesters attacking a Christian settlement and burning 21 churches as well as damaging more than 90 properties over allegations two Christian brothers had desecrated the Quran. 

The violence prompted several Christian families to flee their homes. A subsequent police crackdown arrested scores of people, including the Christians accused of blasphemy. 

Critics have long called for reforming the blasphemy laws, saying they are often misused to settle personal scores. Hundreds of suspects, mostly Muslims, are languishing in jails in Pakistan because external pressures deter judges from moving their trials forward. 

“While the majority of those imprisoned for blasphemy were Muslim, religious minorities were disproportionately affected,” the U.S. State Department noted in its recent annual report on human rights practices in Pakistan. 

The report noted that Pakistani courts often failed to adhere to basic evidentiary standards in blasphemy cases. The U.S. report attributed the lack of adherence “to fear of retaliation from religious groups if they acquitted blasphemy defendants, and most convicted persons spent years in jail before higher courts eventually overturned their convictions or ordered their release.”
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In the Indonesian capital Jakarta, many residents of Chinese descent still live and work in the city’s Chinatown, as they have for hundreds of years. It’s an area that continues to evolve as traditional shops compete with modern chains. VOA’s Ahadian Utama reports. (Camera: Ahadian Utama, Indra Yoga; Produced by: Ahadian Utama,)
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COLOMBO — Sri Lanka closed schools on Monday as heavy rain triggered floods and mudslides in many parts of the island nation, leaving at least 10 people dead and six others missing, officials said.  

The education ministry announced that the reopening of schools would depend on how the weather develops.  

Heavy downpours have wreaked havoc in many parts of the country since Sunday, flooding homes, fields and roads, and forcing authorities to cut electricity as a precaution.  

Six people died after being washed away and drowning in the capital, Colombo, and the remote Rathnapura district on Sunday, according to the disaster management center. Three others died when mounds of earth collapsed on their houses, and one person died when a tree fell on him. Six people have gone missing since Sunday.  

By Monday, over 5,000 people had been moved to evacuation centers and more than 400 homes had been damaged, the center said in a statement.  

Navy and army troops have been deployed to rescue victims and provide food and other essentials to those affected.  

Sri Lanka has been grappling with severe weather conditions since mid-May caused by heavy monsoon rains. Earlier, strong winds downed trees in many areas, killing nine people. 
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Seoul, South Korea — Seoul will fully suspend a 2018 tension-reducing military deal with nuclear-armed North Korea, the South’s National Security Council said Monday, after Pyongyang sent hundreds of trash-filled balloons across the border.

Seoul partially suspended the agreement last year after the North put a spy satellite into orbit, but the NSC said it would tell the cabinet “to suspend the entire effect of the ‘September 19 Military Agreement’ until mutual trust between the two Koreas is restored.”

In the last week, Pyongyang has sent nearly a thousand balloons carrying garbage including cigarette butts and likely manure into the South, in what it says was retaliation for missives bearing anti-regime propaganda organized by activists in the South.

South Korea has called the latest provocation from its neighbor “irrational” and “low-class” but, unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign does not violate UN sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s isolated government.

The North called off the balloon bombardment Sunday, saying it had been an effective countermeasure — but warning that more could come if needed.

The 2018 military deal, signed during a period of warmer ties between the two countries which remain technically at war, aims to reduce tensions on the peninsula and avoid an accidental escalation, especially along the heavily fortified border.

But after Seoul partially suspended the agreement in November last year to protest Pyongyang’s successful spy satellite launch, the North said it would no longer honour the deal at all.

As a result, Seoul’s NSC said the deal was “virtually null and void due to North Korea’s de facto declaration of abandonment”, anyway, but that abiding by the remainder of it was disadvantaging the South in terms of their ability to respond to threats like the balloons.

Respecting the agreement “is causing significant issues in our military’s readiness posture, especially in the context of a series of recent provocations by North Korea that pose real damage and threats to our citizens,” it said.

The move will allow “military training in the areas around the Military Demarcation Line,” it said, and also enable “more sufficient and immediate responses to North Korean provocations,” it added.

The decision will need to be approved by a cabinet meeting set for Tuesday before it takes effect.

Ties between the two Koreas are at one of their lowest points in years, with diplomacy long-stalled and Kim Jong Un ramping up his weapons testing and development, while the South draws closer to major security ally Washington.

Block the balloons?

Seoul’s decision to jettison the 2018 tension-reducing deal shows “that it will not tolerate trash balloons coming across the border, considering international norms and the terms of the truce,” said Hong Min, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.

“However, it could further provoke Pyongyang when it is impossible to physically block the balloons drifting southwards in the air,” he said.

“The safety of the citizens cannot be guaranteed with such actions while it can wait for the situation to cool down and seek ways to resolve it.”

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons were not found to contain hazardous materials, but had been landing in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the adjacent area of Gyeonggi, which are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.

South Korean officials have also said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea.

In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti-Kim propaganda into the North, which infuriates Pyongyang, with experts warning a resumption could even lead to skirmishes along the border.
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Colombo, Sri Lanka — The Maldives government will ban Israelis from the Indian Ocean archipelago, known for luxury resorts, as public anger in the predominantly Muslim nation rises over the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.

The president’s office said Sunday that the Cabinet decided to change laws to prevent Israeli passport holders from entering the country and to establish a subcommittee to oversee the process.

It said President Mohamed Muizu will appoint a special envoy to assess the Palestinian needs and to launch a fundraising campaign.

Israel’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Oren Marmorstein said in response that the Foreign Ministry recommends Israelis avoid any travel to the Maldives, including those with foreign passports, and those currently there to consider leaving.

The recommendation, the Israeli ministry said, includes Israelis with dual citizenship.

The ministry said in a statement, “For Israeli citizens already in the country, it is recommended to consider leaving, because if they find themselves in distress for any reason, it will be difficult for us to assist.”

Nearly 11,000 Israelis visited Maldives last year, which was 0.6% of the total tourist arrivals.
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The island city state of Singapore has a majority-ethnic Chinese population. So why would the Southeast Asian nation have a Chinatown? Adam Hancock went to this historic district to find out. Camera: Lee Beng Seng.
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Seoul — North Korea said Sunday it would stop sending trash-filled balloons across the border into the South, saying the “disgusting” missives had been an effective countermeasure against propaganda sent by anti-regime activists.

Since Tuesday, the North has sent nearly a thousand balloons carrying bags of rubbish containing everything from cigarette butts to bits of cardboard and plastic, Seoul’s military said, warning the public to stay away.

South Korea has called the latest provocation from its nuclear-armed neighbour “irrational” and “low-class” but, unlike the spate of recent ballistic missile launches, the trash campaign does not violate UN sanctions on Kim Jong Un’s isolated regime.

Seoul on Sunday warned it would take strong countermeasures unless the North called off the balloon bombardment, saying it runs counter to the armistice agreement that ended the 1950-53 Korean War hostilities.

Late Sunday, the North announced it would stop its campaign, after scattering what it claimed was “15 tons of waste paper” using thousands of “devices” to deliver them.

“We have given the South Koreans a full experience of how disgusting and labor-intensive it is to collect scattered waste paper,” it said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

The North said it will now “temporarily suspend” its campaign, saying it had been a “pure countermeasure.”

“However, if the South Koreans resume the distribution of anti-DPRK leaflets, we will respond by scattering one hundred times the amount of waste paper and filth, as we have already warned, in proportion to the detected quantity and frequency,” it said, using the acronym for the country’s official name.

Activists in the South have also floated their own balloons over the border, filled with leaflets and sometimes cash, rice or USB thumb drives loaded with K-dramas.

Earlier this week, Pyongyang described its “sincere gifts” as a retaliation for the propaganda-laden balloons sent into North Korea.

South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff said the balloons had been landing in northern provinces, including the capital Seoul and the adjacent area of Gyeonggi, which are collectively home to nearly half of South Korea’s population.

The latest batch of balloons were full of “waste such as cigarette butts, scrap paper, fabric pieces and plastic,” the JCS said, adding that military officials and police were collecting them.

“Our military is conducting surveillance and reconnaissance from the launch points of the balloons, tracking them through aerial reconnaissance, and collecting the fallen debris, prioritizing public safety,” it said.

South Korea’s National Security Council met Sunday, and a presidential official said Seoul would not rule out responding to the balloons by resuming loudspeaker propaganda campaigns along the border with North Korea.

In the past, South Korea has broadcast anti-Kim propaganda into the North, which infuriates Pyongyang.

“If Seoul chooses to resume anti-North broadcast via loudspeakers along the border, which Pyongyang dislikes as much as anti-Kim balloons, it could lead to limited armed conflict along border areas, such as in the West Sea,” said Cheong Seong-chang, director of the Korean peninsula strategy at Sejong Institute.

In 2018, during a period of improved inter-Korean relations, both leaders agreed to “completely cease all hostile acts against each other in every domain,” including the distribution of leaflets.

South Korea’s parliament passed a law in 2020 criminalizing sending leaflets into the North, but the law — which did not deter the activists — was struck down last year as a violation of free speech.

Kim Jong Un’s sister Kim Yo Jong — one of Pyongyang’s key spokespeople — mocked South Korea for complaining about the balloons this week, saying North Koreans were simply exercising their freedom of expression.

The two Koreas’ propaganda offensives have sometimes escalated into larger tit-for-tats.

In June 2020, Pyongyang unilaterally cut off all official military and political communication links with the South and blew up an inter-Korean liaison office on its side of the border.

The trash campaign comes after analysts have warned Kim is testing weapons before sending them to Russia for use in Ukraine, with South Korea’s defense minister saying this weekend that Pyongyang has now shipped about 10,000 containers of arms to Moscow, in return for Russian satellite know-how.
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SINGAPORE — Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Sunday urged countries to participate in the June 15-16 peace summit in Switzerland.

Zelenskyy, in his keynote speech at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore, emphasized diplomacy’s role in maintaining Ukrainian efforts in the war with Russia, now in its third year.

“Not so long ago, it seemed that the world would always be fragmented, but we saw that most nations truly desire and are capable of cooperation, at least as far as collective security is concerned,” he told hundreds of foreign government officials and delegates at the regional security dialogue.

He stressed how support from countries around the world has helped Ukraine to maintain its defense capabilities amid aggressive attacks launched by Russia while rescuing some Ukrainian children who had been taken to Russia.

“Diplomacy does more when it truly aims to protect life, [and] together with partners, we are defending life and rules-based world order,” he said, adding that Ukraine’s experience has helped to restore “effective diplomacy,” which has led to the peace summit in Switzerland.

“We are moving into the Global Peace Summit so every leader and every country can show their commitment to peace,” he said, stressing that the global majority can ensure that “what is agreed upon is truly implemented” with their involvement in the summit.

While reiterating the importance for countries around the world to remain “united” and act in “complete harmony,” Zelenskyy also expressed his disappointment in some countries’ absence from the peace summit.

“We are disappointed that some world leaders have not yet confirmed their participation in the peace summit, [and] unfortunately, there are also attempts to disrupt the summit,” he said, adding that these attempts would deny the world the opportunity to “decide on war and peace.”

Zelenskyy’s remarks came as Ukraine continues to experience heavy Russian bombardment. Ukrainian officials told local media outlets that an overnight Russian attack involving 100 missiles and drones targeted the country’s power grid and injured at least 19 people across the country.

It also follows China’s decision to skip the peace summit. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters May 31 the summit has not met the conditions proposed by China, which is that both Russia and Ukraine should take part in the meeting.

“There is an apparent gap between the meeting’s arrangement and what China stands for as well as the universal expectation in the international community,” she said, adding that China has shared its concerns with relevant parties while vowing to keep promoting peace talks in its own way.

Several European leaders, including German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron, have expressed concerns in recent months about China’s support for Russia’s war efforts and urged Beijing to use its influence to facilitate a peace process.

Western countries have also repeatedly warned about China’s ongoing support for Russian war efforts against Ukraine. In May, the British defense minister said that intelligence showed evidence of Chinese lethal aid to Russia.

During his keynote address Sunday, Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun reiterated that China has not provided weapons to either party in the Ukraine war and strictly controls the export of dual-use items.

“We stand firmly on the side of peace and dialogue,” he said.

However, when asked to elaborate on China’s plan for the peace process in Ukraine during the Q&A session of his keynote speech, Dong skipped the question and used his time to repeat China’s objection to Taiwan’s efforts to seek independence.

Zelenskyy told a press conference that while the United States has confirmed its “high-level” participation in the peace summit and has been encouraging countries to attend, China has been asking countries “not to attend the summit.”

“These are two different approaches,” he said.

When asked what he hopes to achieve by coming to Singapore, Zelenskyy said he wants to secure more support from Asian countries and hopes to let Asian countries understand what is happening in Ukraine.

“We want Asia to be involved in the peace summit and if we see Asian leaders attend the peace summit, we will know that my trip has succeeded,” he said, adding that he has not had any interaction with the Chinese delegation.

While he said he does not expect Ukraine to receive defensive support from China, Zelenskyy said he hopes China will support Ukraine’s efforts to ensure nuclear and food security in the world.

“It’ll be great if China supports and helps to solve these two issues,” he told journalists.

Some analysts say Dong’s reluctance to elaborate on Beijing’s plan for peace processes in the war shows it does not consider part of its core interests.

“They don’t think it’s a good topic for them, so they are just not going to talk about it,” Ray Powell, a fellow at Stanford University’s Gordian Knot Center for National Security Innovation, told VOA on the sidelines of the Shangri-La meeting.

Powell said that while part of Zelenskyy’s goal may be trying to rally more countries to join the peace summit, he may have difficulty convincing some Indo-Pacific countries to become more involved in the Ukraine War.

“Some Indo-Pacific countries’ immediate concerns don’t go that far out so I think Zelenskyy may just be thinking about keeping certain countries that have been supportive of Ukraine’s cause at the United Nations close and try to make his case to those governments,” Powell said.

Zelenskyy said that by joining the event, countries can involve their people in global affairs and unite the world against one war.  
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SINGAPORE — Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun Sunday issued a stern warning on Taiwan and the South China Sea at the Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore.

During his 40-minute-long keynote speech, Dong accused Taiwan’s government under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, which favors highlighting Taiwan’s sovereignty, of “pursuing separation [from China] in an incremental way” while external forces continue to sell arms to Taiwan and maintain “illegal” official contacts with Taiwan.

“What they are doing is to embolden Taiwan independence separatists in an attempt to contain China with Taiwan,” he told a room full of delegates from dozens of countries, warning that these moves will push Taiwan into “a dangerous situation.”

He reiterated that China’s handling of the Taiwan issue is entirely its internal affair and that Beijing remains committed to achieving unification with Taiwan through peaceful means.

“Anyone who dares to separate Taiwan from China will only end up in self-destruction,” Dong warned, adding that the People’s Liberation Army remains committed to taking actions to curb attempts to pursue Taiwan independence.

Dong’s comments came a week after China launched a two-day, large-scale military exercise encircling Taiwan, which Beijing said was a move to “punish” Taiwan President Lai Ching-te for the messages he conveyed through his inauguration speech on May 20, during which he emphasized that neither side of the Taiwan Strait is subordinate to the other.

During his Saturday keynote speech to the forum, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin only briefly mentioned the Taiwan issue, reiterating that Washington is committed to upholding the status quo across the Taiwan Strait.

In a remark viewed as an indirect reference to China’s large-scale war games around Taiwan, Austin highlighted the importance of resolving disputes through dialogue rather than coercion or “punishment.”

“[Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s war of aggression is a glimpse of a world where tyrants trample sovereign borders, a world where peaceful states live in fear of their neighbors, and a world where chaos and conquest replace rules and rights,” he said.

Some analysts said Dong’s warning over Taiwan reflects Beijing’s concerns about the trajectory of Taiwan’s development under the leadership of Lai Ching-te, who Beijing has repeatedly characterized as a separatist.

“In Beijing’s view, Lai is more provocative, and I think Dong’s warning shows that his administration will have a hard time ahead,” Zhou Bo, senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in China, told VOA on the sidelines of the meeting.

In his view, he said, Beijing will prioritize forceful responses to any development in Taiwan that they view as “provocative.”

“Each response from China might create a new status quo that neither Washington nor Taiwan wants to see,” Zhou said, adding that it is in Taiwan’s interest not to be so provocative.

Reiterating China’s interest in the South China Sea

In addition to the Taiwan issue, Dong reiterated China’s commitment to uphold what it sees as its South China Sea interests. While claiming that the sea has “seen overall stability,” Dong, without naming the Philippines directly, said a certain country has broken bilateral agreements and its promises due to support from external forces.

That country “has made premeditated provocations and created false scenarios to mislead the public,” he said.

Additionally, he accused the Philippines of allowing a certain country to deploy a mid-range missile system to the region, indirectly aiming the criticism at the United States, which placed a mid-range capability missile system on northern Luzon in April as part of joint military exercises. He argued that Manila’s move would endanger the security and stability of the region.

“China has exercised great restraints in the face of such infringements and provocations,” Dong told the foreign delegates, warning that there is a limit to Beijing’s restraint and hoping the country, naming the Philippines, could return to the right track of dialogue and work with other countries to make the South China Sea more peaceful.

In contrast to Dong’s solemn message to the Philippines and the United States on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Lloyd Austin highlighted the importance of ensuring the freedom of navigation in the South China Sea that is permitted under international law.

“The harassment that the Philippines has faced is dangerous, pure and simple,” he said during his keynote speech on Saturday. “We all share an interest in ensuring that the South China Sea remains open and free.”

Some analysts say Dong’s emphasis on Taiwan and the South China Sea reflects his desire to reiterate China’s position on these issues that Beijing views as its core interests.

“His tough stance is aiming at what Beijing views as Taiwan independence forces and the possible interference by external forces,” Lin Ying-yu, a military expert at Tamkang University in Taiwan, told VOA by phone.

Throughout the course of the three-day conference, the Chinese military held three press conferences, a stark contrast to the lack of interaction with the media from the United States or other Western countries.

Lin said these efforts reflect Beijing’s desire to increase the Chinese military’s engagement with the outside world, which is one of the goals that China has set for its military since 2010.

The Chinese military is “showing some relatively soft side during the press conferences while adopting a tough tone during his speech,” he told VOA, adding that such strategies show Beijing’s desire to amplify its positions and ideas in front of an international audience.

Despite their differences on issues concerning Taiwan and the South China Sea, Zhou from Tsinghua University said he thinks the United States and China still want to prioritize the importance of maintaining an open line of communication through the Shangri-La Dialogue.

“The relationship between Beijing and Washington can never be a smooth one, and since the communication in Singapore is between the two militaries, they are more cautious and they want to stress the importance of open communication,” he told VOA.

In his view, he said, the primary goal of the 75-minute meeting between Dong and Austin on the sidelines of the conference on May 31, was to prevent the bilateral relationship between Beijing and Washington from “sliding into confrontation.”

“We have different views about the nature of this relationship but the consensus is not to let our competition slide into a confrontation,” Zhou said.
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NEW DELHI — Voting has ended in India’s mammoth election with exit polls projecting that Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party and its allies will win a big majority in Parliament.

Voters cast ballots on Saturday for 57 Parliamentary constituencies in the seventh phase of the polls that stretched over six weeks in the searing summer heat.

All eyes are now on Tuesday, when votes will be counted for all 543 elected seats in the lower house of Parliament. As India uses electronic voting machines, results are expected the same day.

The elections will test the popularity of 73-year-old Modi whose image of a strong leader and champion of Hindu nationalism has been boosted by a host of welfare measures for tens of millions of poor people during his decade in power.

The BJP campaign was dominated by the Indian leader, who crisscrossed the country to hold over 200 rallies.

Before elections got under way, the BJP was expected to cruise to an easy victory. The party had set a target of winning a supermajority by bagging 400 seats.

According to exit polls broadcast by several television channels, the party along with its allies could win 350 seats or more, far ahead of the 272 needed for a simple majority. That would hand Modi a rare, third straight term in office.

“It’s a litmus test for Mr. Modi. When elections started, it appeared to be a one-horse race. He appeared very invincible, very formidable and raised the bar very high,” according to political analyst Rasheed Kidwai.

Many observers had expected an opposition alliance of over two dozen parties that is challenging Modi of cutting into his party’s huge Parliamentary majority but exit polls projected that it would not be able to do so and showed the alliance trailing with around 150 seats. However, in the vast, diverse country, exit polls have not always been reliable.

“The final numbers will depend on whether the BJP can hold ground in populous northern states where the party has secured huge success in the past,” analyst Kidwai said.

After polls closed on Saturday, Modi thanked voters and expressed confidence that the “people of India have voted in record numbers” to reelect the government.

His comments came after he ended two days of meditation at the southernmost tip of India at a memorial for Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda — images released by his party showed him clad in saffron robes with eyes closed and prayer beads in hand.

The opposition’s hopes of making gains rest on tapping into growing resentment over high unemployment that faces the country’s huge youth population and rising prices.

Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi, who was the face of the opposition campaign, focused his campaign on the need to create jobs and growing wealth inequality in the country and said the government’s policies have favored the rich at the expense of the poor.  The party has promised cash transfers to poor women and a guarantee of apprenticeships for college graduates. It has also raised concerns about democratic backsliding under Modi.

The Congress Party has been marginalized over the last decade amid the BJP’s rise into a formidable political force under Modi – it only holds 52 seats in Parliament.

“Much will depend on how the Congress Party and its allies perform in swing states like Maharashtra in the west, Bihar in the east and Karnataka in the south,” according to Kidwai.

The opposition faces a daunting task. To make significant gains it would also have to fare well in populous northern states, where the BJP is well entrenched and where its Hindu nationalist agenda resonates the most.  The BJP, on its part, hopes to expand its influence in some southern states where it has virtually no presence.

The election campaign has been called one of India’s most divisive.  At rallies, Modi charged the Congress Party of being pro-Muslim and of planning to hand benefits reserved for lower caste Hindus to Muslims if it is voted into power – analysts said the polarizing rhetoric was a bid to shore up support among his Hindu base after voting got off to a lackluster start last month.

In a letter on Thursday addressed to voters in Punjab, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Modi of indulging in the “most vicious form of hate speeches that are purely divisive in nature” during the campaign and accused him lowering the dignity of the Prime Minister’s office.

Punjab was among the seven states and one federal territory that voted on Saturday.

Only India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, secured a third straight term in office. The winning party is expected to form the next government by mid-June before the term of the present Parliament ends.
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BANGKOK — Thailand kicked off its celebration of the LGBTQ+ community’s Pride Month with a parade Saturday, as the country is on course to become the first nation in Southeast Asia to legalize marriage equality. 

The annual Bangkok Pride Parade filled one side of a major thoroughfare with a colorful parade for several hours in one of the Thai capital’s busiest commercial districts. Pride Month celebrations have been endorsed by politicians, government agencies and some of the country’s biggest business conglomerates, which have become official partners or sponsors for the celebration. 

Ann “Waaddao” Chumaporn, who has been organizing Bangkok Pride since 2022, said in a recent interview with The Associated Press that she hopes the parade can be “a platform that allows everyone to call out for what they want and express who they really are.” 

Waaddao thinks Thai society has shifted a lot from a decade ago, and the issue has now become a fashionable social and business trend. 

Thanks in part to her work, a marriage equality bill granting full legal, financial and medical rights for marriage partners of any gender could become reality sometime this year. 

But the public celebration of gender diversity was not always so popular in Thailand despite its long-standing reputation as an LGBTQ+ friendly country. 

The first big celebration for the community in Thailand was held on Halloween weekend in 1999 and called the “Bangkok Gay Festival.” It was organized by Pakorn Pimton, who said that after seeing Pride parades on his overseas travels, he wanted Thailand to have one, too. 

It was hard organizing such an event back then, when Thai society was much less open, he said. 

“Everyone told me, even my boyfriend, that it would be impossible,” he said in an interview with AP. 

Organizing such an event in a public space requires permission from authorities, and it didn’t go that smoothly for Pakorn, yet he eventually pulled it off. 

Pakorn said some police officers treated him well, but there were others who gave him dirty looks, or were dismissive. He recalled hearing one officer say, “Why do you even need to do this? These katoey …” 

“Katoey,” whose rough equivalent in English would be “ladyboy,” has generally been used as a slur against transgender women or gay men with feminine appearances, although the word now has been claimed by the community. 

After getting the permit, Pakorn, who then was actively working in show business, said he tried contacting television stations for advertising and finding sponsors for his project, but they all rejected him. 

“There were no mobile phones, no Facebook, no nothing. There were only posters that I had to put up at gay bars,” he said. 

Because of that, Pakorn said, he was bewildered to see thousands of people, not only Thais but many foreigners, take to downtown Bangkok’s streets for that first celebration in colorful and racy costumes, carrying balloons and dancing on fancy floats. 

The event got attention from both domestic and international media as both Thailand’s first gay parade and one of the first in Asia. It was described as energetic and chaotic, not least because the police did not completely close it off from traffic, resulting in marchers, dancers and floats weaving their way through moving buses, cars and motorbikes. 

Only recently did the political significance behind the term “Pride” gain much importance in the event, said Vitaya Saeng-Aroon, director of an advocacy group Diversity In Thailand. 

Previously, there were not a lot of organized LGBTQ+ communities who joined in, “so there were no messages in the parade. It became like a party just for fun,” he said. 

Now the parade carries a more political tone because the observance has been organized by people like Waaddao who have long worked to raise awareness on gender equality and diversity. 

Waaddao said she became inspired to organize the parade after taking part in the youth-led pro-democracy protests that sprang up across the country in 2020. She said the protests convinced her that street action can also advance a political agenda. 
…

BANGKOK — Tin Oo, one of the closest associates of Myanmar’s ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi as well as a co-founder of her National League for Democracy party, died Saturday. He was 97.

Tin Oo died at Yangon General Hospital, said Moh Khan, a charity worker, citing a member of his family. Charity workers in Myanmar handle funeral arrangements.

Moh Khan said Tin Oo had been hospitalized at Yangon General Hospital on Wednesday due to difficulty urinating and other health problems, including weakness. His cause of death was not immediately announced.

Tin Oo was respected by many of his party’s members for his outspokenness and courage as he shared many of Suu Kyi’s travails.

In 1988, Tin Oo helped found the National League for Democracy with Suu Kyi after a failed revolt against military rule. He became vice chairman, then chairman of the new party.

But when the military cracked down the following year, he was put under house arrest, as was Suu Kyi. Like her, he spent 14 of the next 21 years under house arrest or in prison before he was released ahead of the 2010 general election. The party had won a 1990 election, but the results were annulled by the ruling military, which launched a crackdown on its opponents.

In 2003, in one of the intermittent periods when he and Suu Kyi were at liberty before their 2010 release, they had the harrowing experience of being ambushed on a country road in upper Myanmar by a mob widely believed to have been assembled by an element of the military. The incident occurred as the party leaders were making a political tour and attracting large crowds of supporters.

The two leaders managed an escape, although dozens in their entourage were apparently killed in the attack, details of which remain murky. Despite being the targets, Suu Kyi and Tin Oo were detained in prison and then house arrest again after the incident.

When the party was allowed to fully resume political activities, Tin Oo served as its senior leader and patron. He was often seen in public rallies, and he helped campaign with Suu Kyi for the 2015 election, which the party won by a landslide.

“He endured with dignity the various house arrest and prison terms and detentions imposed on him,” Moe Thuzar, senior fellow and coordinator of the Myanmar Studies Program at Singapore’s ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute, said in an email interview.

“His sense of loyalty — to principles, to persons who he believed could uphold and continue the pursuit of this principles — was also evident in his unswerving support for the party he co-founded.”

Because the constitution enacted under military rule contained a clause effectively barring Suu Kyi from becoming president on the grounds that she was married to a foreigner — British academic Michael Aris — there had been speculation that Tin Oo might take the position.

He declared he wasn’t interested, saying Suu Kyi should have the job.

“I never want to be president. I want to help her as much as I can,” he told journalists. Htin Kyaw, a politician and scholar, ended up as president, while Suu Kyi took the newly created post of state counselor, the equivalent of prime minister with overall authority over government.

Suu Kyi’s government was ousted by the army in 2021 after winning a second term in the 2020 election. Suu Kyi was arrested and tried on a series of charges that were widely seen as trumped up for political reasons to keep her locked up. Tin Oo was not arrested and was allowed instead to stay quietly at his Yangon home.

Tin Oo’s background was unusual for a senior politician opposed to army rule, as he joined the National League for Democracy after a high-profile military career.

He had been Myanmar’s fourth commander-in-chief of the armed forces between 1974 and 1976 under the government of the late dictator General Ne Win. A year after his retirement, he was imprisoned for allegedly withholding information about a failed coup against Ne Win but was released in 1980 under an amnesty. Some scholars believe he was purged because his popularity threatened Ne Win’s grip on power.

Tin Oo displayed no inclination to reconcile with the military in which he once served, although it made several overtures.

Nearly a year after the 2021 army takeover, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, the head of the military government, paid a visit to Tin Oo at his home in Yangon and inquired about his health.

In June last year, a Buddhist monk with close links to the army visited and suggested to him that Suu Kyi should retire from politics and get involved in working for peace. The army’s seizure of power spurred widespread armed resistance, which has since reached the intensity of a civil war.

A week after the monk’s visit, Tin Oo’s family hung a sign on their property’s front fence declaring “No Visitors Allowed.”
…

SINGAPORE — U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin tried to refocus attention on China’s threat in the Asia-Pacific region on Saturday, seeking to alleviate concerns that conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza have distracted from America’s security commitments in the region.

Austin, who was speaking at the annual Shangri-La Dialogue security summit in Singapore, met his Chinese counterpart, Dong Jun, on Friday in a bid to cool friction over issues such as Taiwan and China’s military activity in the South China Sea.

There has been increasing concern that Washington’s focus on helping Ukraine counter Russia’s invasion and support for Israel’s war in Gaza, while trying to ensure that the conflict does not spread, has taken away attention from the Indo-Pacific.

“Despite these historic clashes in Europe and the Middle East, the Indo-Pacific has remained our priority theater of operations,” Austin said in his speech, which appeared aimed at underlining the administration’s legacy in the region as President Joe Biden’s first term in office nears its end. Biden is running for reelection in November against former President Donald Trump.

“Let me be clear: The United States can be secure only if Asia is secure,” Austin said. “That’s why the United States has long maintained our presence in this region.” Austin underscored the importance of alliances in the region.

“And … peaceful resolution of disputes through dialogue and not coercion or conflict. And certainly not through so-called punishment,” Austin said, taking a shot at China. The speech took aim at Beijing’s actions in the region, including the South China Sea, without naming China for the most part.

In response, Chinese Lieutenant General Jing Jianfeng said the U.S. Indo-Pacific strategy was intended “to create division, provoke confrontation and undermine stability.”

“It only serves the selfish geopolitical interests of the U.S. and runs counter to the trend of history and the shared aspirations of regional countries for peace, development and win-win cooperation,” said Jing, deputy chief of the Joint Staff Department of China’s Central Military Commission.

Some U.S. officials say Beijing has become more emboldened in recent years, recently launching what it described as “punishment” drills around Taiwan, sending heavily armed warplanes and staging mock attacks after Lai Ching-te was inaugurated as Taiwan’s president.

About $8 billion in U.S. funding is set aside for countering China in the Indo-Pacific as part of a supplemental funding bill passed by lawmakers.

Philippine President Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. on Friday denounced illegal, coercive and aggressive actions in the South China Sea, a disputed ocean territory that China has been flooding with coast guard ships in recent months.

The Philippines, a sprawling archipelago with strong historical ties to the United States and close geographical proximity to China, is at the center of an intensifying power struggle between Washington and Beijing.

Austin said the harassment faced by the Philippines was dangerous and reiterated that the United States’ mutual defense treaty with Manila was iron clad. He said the aim was for tensions between Beijing and Manila not to spiral out of control.

“America will continue to play a vital role in the Indo-Pacific, together with our friends across the region that we share and care so much about,” Austin said.

Jing, the Chinese general, said these alliances contribute to instability in the region.

“It is natural for neighbors to bicker sometimes, but we need to resolve disagreements through dialogue and consultation rather than inviting wolves into our house and playing with fire,” he said.
…

NEW DELHI — Millions of Indians voted Saturday in the last phase of India’s mammoth election that will decide whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi secures a third consecutive term in office.

Voters were casting ballots for 57 parliamentary constituencies in the seventh phase of the polls that stretched over six weeks in the searing summer heat.

Among the seats for which votes were cast on Saturday was Modi’s constituency, Varanasi, a holy Hindu city in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh. The Hindu nationalist leader has won the seat in the last two elections with huge margins.

All eyes are now on Tuesday, when votes will be counted for all 543 elected seats in the lower house of Parliament. As India uses electronic voting machines, results are expected the same day.

The elections will test the popularity of 73-year-old Modi, whose image as a strong leader and champion of Hindu nationalism has been boosted by a host of welfare measures for tens of millions of poor people during his decade in power.

The Bharatiya Janata Party campaign was dominated by the Indian leader, who crisscrossed the country to hold over 200 rallies.

Before elections got underway, the BJP was expected to cruise to an easy victory. The party had set a target of winning a supermajority by winning 400 seats.

Most observers say it could fall short of that ambitious goal even though it is expected to win a majority.

“It’s a litmus test for Mr. Modi. When elections started it appeared to be a one-horse race. He appeared very invincible, very formidable and raised the bar very high,” political analyst Rasheed Kidwai told VOA.

But he said an opposition alliance of more than two dozen parties that is challenging Modi has put up a spirited fight.

“The final numbers will depend on whether the BJP can hold ground in populous northern states where the party has secured huge success in the past,” he said.

On Friday, the Indian leader started two days of meditation at the southernmost tip of India at a memorial for Hindu philosopher Swami Vivekananda — images released by his party showed him clad in saffron robes with eyes closed and prayer beads in hand.

Both Modi and the opposition alliance have exuded confidence about winning.

The opposition’s hopes of making gains rest on tapping into growing resentment over high unemployment that faces the country’s huge youth population and rising prices.

Congress Party leader, Rahul Gandhi, who was the face of the opposition, focused his campaign on the need to create jobs and growing wealth inequality in the country and said the government’s policies have favored the rich at the expense of the poor. The party has promised cash transfers to poor women and a guarantee of apprenticeships for college graduates. It has also raised concerns about democratic backsliding under Modi.

The Congress Party has been marginalized over the last decade amid the BJP’s rise into a formidable political force under Modi – it only holds 52 seats in Parliament.

Political observers said the party and its allies could regain some momentum.

“Much will depend on how the Congress Party and its allies perform in swing states like Maharashtra in the west, Bihar in the east and Karnataka in the south,” according to Kidwai.

Still the opposition faces a daunting task. To make significant gains it would also have to fare well in populous northern states, where the BJP is well entrenched and where its Hindu nationalist agenda resonates the most.  The BJP, for its part, hopes to expand its influence in some southern states where it has virtually no presence.

The election campaign has been called one of India’s most divisive. At rallies, Modi charged that the Congress Party was pro-Muslim and planned to hand benefits reserved for lower caste Hindus to Muslims if it is voted into power – analysts said the polarizing rhetoric was a bid to shore up support among his Hindu base after voting got off to a lackluster start last month.

In a letter addressed to voters in Punjab on Thursday, former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh accused Modi of indulging in the “most vicious form of hate speeches that are purely divisive in nature” during the campaign and accused him of lowering the dignity of the prime minister’s office.

Punjab was among the seven states and one federal territory that voted Saturday.

Only India’s first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, secured a third straight term in office. The winning party is expected to form the next government by mid-June before the term of the present Parliament ends.
…

UNITED NATIONS — The United States and allies South Korea and Japan clashed with China and Russia Friday over North Korea’s latest satellite and ballistic missile launches and threats to use nuclear weapons that have escalated tensions in northeast Asia.

The scene was an emergency open meeting of the U.N. Security Council called after North Korea’s failed launch of a military reconnaissance satellite on May 27 and other launches using ballistic missile technology in violation of U.N. sanctions.

Since the beginning of 2022, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – the North’s official name – has launched over 100 missiles using this banned technology as it has advanced its nuclear weapons program. In response, the U.S. and its allies have carried out an increasing number of military exercises.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Khaled Khiari briefed the council meeting saying sovereign states have the right to benefit from peaceful space activities – but the DPRK is expressly prohibited from conducting launches using ballistic missile technology and its continuing violations undermine global nuclear disarmament and non-proliferation treaties.

“We remain deeply concerned about growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula,” Khiari said. “There is a need for practical measures to reduce tensions, reverse the dangerous dynamic, and create space to explore diplomatic avenues.”

North Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Kim Song insisted that its satellite launches – and it had a successful one last November – are “the legitimate and universal right of a sovereign state” under international law and the Outer Space Treaty. He stressed that reconnaissance satellites are not only needed to strengthen its self-defense capabilities but to defend its sovereignty.

Kim told the Security Council that the “massive deployment of strategic assets and aggressive war exercises” by the United States on the Korean Peninsula and in the region have broken all records and destroyed the military balance.

This has turned the Korean Peninsula “into the most fragile zone in the world, fraught with the danger of outbreak of war,” he said, claiming that joint military exercises since the beginning of the year are “a U.S.-led nuclear war rehearsal.”

The DPRK ambassador said the Security Council shouldn’t waste time debating the legitimate rights of a sovereign state, but should direct its attention to putting an immediate end to the killing of civilians in Gaza, “which continues unabated under U.S. patronage.”

South Korea’s U.N. Ambassador Joonkook Hwang said it should be his country – not the DPRK – that should claim the right to self-defense.

He said the DPRK’s nuclear policy and its rhetoric “are getting increasing aggressive and hostile, and Pyongyang no longer views its nuclear arsenal as just a deterrent against the United States, “but instead as a means to attack my country.”

He quoted DPRK leader Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong, saying two weeks ago that the only purpose of their tactical nuclear weapons “is to teach a lesson to Seoul.”

U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood urged the Security Council to condemn the DPRK’s launches and hold it accountable for violating U.N. sanctions.

“But two council members, China and Russia, continuously block the Security Council from speaking against the DPRK’s behavior with one voice and makes us all less safe,” he said.

Wood also accused the DPRK of unlawfully transferring dozens of ballistic missiles and over 11,000 containers of munitions to Russia to aid its war against Ukraine, “prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people.”

He rejected as “groundless” and disingenuous” claims by the DPRK and its supporters on the council that its missile launches are a response to U.S.-led military exercises.

Russia’s U.N. Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva countered that “one of the key catalysts for the growing tensions in the region has been and remains the build-up of military activity by the U.S. and its allies.”

U.S.-led military drills against the DPRK and numerous other hostile acts with a threatening military component “are provoking countermeasures from North Korea, which is forced to take action to strengthen its national defense capacity,” she said.

Evstogneeva claimed “the unstable situation around the Korean Peninsula is of benefit to Washington, which continues to confidently and deliberately pursue the path of confrontation instead of dialogue.”

She also dismissed claims that Russia is engaging in illegal military and technical cooperation with the DPRK as “absolutely unfounded.”

China’s U.N. Ambassador Fu Cong called the situation on the Korean Peninsula “highly tense, with antagonism and confrontation escalating,” and called on all parties to exercise restraint and avoid any actions or rhetoric that might increase tension.

He warned that a planned large-scale joint military exercise on the peninsula in August “practicing a scenario involving a nuclear war” will only increase tensions.

U.S. envoy Wood retorted that “the United States is in no way a threat to the DPRK,” stressing that the U.S. offer to reach out “an open hand” and hold talks with the DPRK without preconditions over the past few years “has been met with a clenched fist.” 
…

MULLAITIVU, Sri Lanka — At the site of a bloody battlefield that marked the end of Sri Lanka’s civil war, Singaram Soosaimuthu fishes every day with his son, casting nets and reeling them in.

It is a skill he has known for much of his life — and one that he had to relearn after a devastating injury. The former Tamil fighter lost both legs in 2009 as the nation’s generation-long civil war drew to a close and the Tamils retreated in defeat.

Making something of himself despite his injuries brought Soosaimuthu success — an achievement in which he finds profound meaning. He sees his fellow ethnic Tamils in the same light: To regain their voice, they must thrive.

But defeat — bloody, protracted and decisive — has brought Sri Lanka’s minority Tamil community to a point of despair.

Some parents have given up hope of ever learning the fate of the thousands of missing children. Parts of the Tamil lands are decimated, with poor infrastructure and fewer economic opportunities. Survivors have lived under surveillance for years, and many now feel that members of the rising generation have grown too fearful and apathetic toward speaking up for their rights.

“There is a clear agenda underway to degenerate a defeated community,” says Selvin Ireneus, a social activist based in Jaffna, the Tamils’ northern cultural heartland.

The government, he says, doesn’t want today’s Tamils to be politically evolved. After fighting ended, he asserts, narcotics and other vices have been systematically introduced into the region. “They only want them to eat, drink and enjoy and not have a political ideology,” Ireneus said. “This has happened with all defeated communities in the world.”

The island nation of 20 million is overwhelmingly ethnically Sinhalese, with the Tamil community making up about 11% of the population. The separatist civil war broke out in 1983 after years of failed attempts to share power within a unified country, with Tamil fighters — known as the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, or simply the Tamil Tigers — eventually creating a de facto independent homeland in the country’s north.

The group was crushed in a 2009 government offensive. The war killed at least 100,000 on both sides, and left many more missing.

Though not all Tamils were part of or supported the Tamil Tiger rebel group, their defeat has effectively become a political defeat to the community. They have lost their bargaining power.

“What is remaining now is a very small community, and they don’t have the courage … to show dissent,” says K.T. Ganeshalingam, head of political science at the University of Jaffna.

Sri Lanka’s government had promised the United Nations and countries like India and the United States that they would share power with the Tamil-majority areas to resolve the causes that led to the civil war. However, successive governments have not followed up.

Fifteen years on, some in Tamil areas are still in denial that the armed campaign has been defeated and that the rebel leader Velupillai Prabhakaran, who was seen as invincible, has been killed. Sections of the expatriate Tamils in Europe have been claiming that Prabhakaran would return soon to take on the campaign to the next stage, including a woman who claims to be his daughter and is said to be collecting donations in his name.

Prabhakaran’s nephew in Denmark, Karthic Manoharan, says the time has come to put a stop to the rumors and state, emphatically, that the leader is dead.

“We don’t have any doubt regarding (his death) because he loved his country so much. And he’s not a coward to run from the country and live in another country, in a different country to save himself, his wife and his daughter,” Manoharan says.

Such beliefs are more than simply inaccurate, says Ganeshalingam; they’re genuinely harmful to any possible future that the Tamil people are trying to chart. He wonders: “If I have not grasped the fact that I am defeated, how can I rise from that?”

Discussing the Tamil Tigers’ defeat, their past mistakes and even Prabhakaran’s death is discouraged in Tamil society, especially in the diaspora. Ganeshalingam says such attitudes have created a stagnation in Tamil politics.

Political leaders are divided and are in disarray. A political alliance that the Tamil Tigers formed is fragmented with many leaders breaking away to form their own parties. Civil activists are now working to unify them and strengthen their bargaining position ahead of the presidential election later this year.

In the villages of Mullaitivu district, where the final battle between government forces and the Tamil Tigers unfolded, many men are addicted to narcotics and alcohol, forcing women to be the family’s main breadwinners, says Yogeswari Dharmabaskaran, a social worker in the Udaiyarkattu area of Mullaitivu district. School dropouts soar in the villages, she says, as boys find easy money through selling narcotics, illegal tree-felling and the mining of river sand.

In Jaffna, local politician Thiyagaraja Nirosh says family elders discourage young people from discussing political rights. Because of that, it is difficult to find younger candidates to run in local elections.

“There is fear that talking politics is dangerous. Many family elders do not encourage talking politics,” Nirosh says “The reason is that there has been no justice for the past killings. They see no guarantee that such incidents won’t recur.”

Thayalan Kalaipriya, a former rebel, wonders about the future often. She says her many losses have made her deeply desire unity among all Sri Lankans; at the same time, she says it is painful to realize their efforts to win political rights have been wasted.

Former rebels often do not receive adequate support and at times ex-fighters, like those who conscripted children at the height of the war, are treated with resentment, although she says some respect their commitment and sacrifice.

She finds solace by working with her young children, educating them and helping to give them a good life in a land she hopes is free of civil war and the sad echoes it has caused.

“We teach our children about what happened,” she says, “but never to seek revenge.”
…

SAMASTIPUR, India — Narendra Modi swept to power a decade ago on promises to transform India’s economy, and it would be hard to argue he hasn’t made strides. As he seeks a third term as prime minister, the country’s economic growth is the envy of the world, its stock markets are booming, and new buildings and highways are popping up everywhere.

There are cracks in the facade, though, that his political challengers hope to benefit from, including high unemployment, persistent poverty and the sense that only a small portion of India’s 1.4 billion people has been able to cash in on the good fortune.

“You have a booming economy for people higher up on the socioeconomic ladder, but people lower down are really struggling,” said Milan Vaishnav, director of the South Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party have remained popular since he was first elected prime minister in 2014 on a strident Hindu-first platform and pledges to succeed where past governments had failed by finally transforming the economy from rural to industrial.

He promised to clamp down on deeply rooted corruption and to leverage the country’s manpower advantage to turn it into a manufacturing powerhouse. While campaigning this spring — the six-week-long election concludes Saturday — Modi has vowed to make India’s economy the world’s third-largest, trailing only those of the U.S. and China. Votes will be counted Tuesday.

Modi has had successes. The economy is growing by 7% and more than 500 million Indians have opened bank accounts during his tenure — a big step toward formalizing an economy where many jobs are still off the books and untaxed. His administration has also poured billions of dollars into the country’s creaky infrastructure to lure investment, and notably streamlined its vast welfare program, which serves around 60% of the population and which his party is leveraging to try to win over poor and disillusioned voters.

Despite these advances, though, Modi’s economic policies have failed to generate employment that moves people from low-paying, precarious work to secure, salaried jobs. With inequality, joblessness and underemployment soaring, they’ve become central themes of the election.

Even as India’s millionaires multiply, nearly 90% of its working-age population earns less than the country’s average annual income of around $2,770, according to a World Inequality Lab study. The top 1% own more than 40% of the country’s wealth, while the bottom 50% own just above 6%, the study found.

To stem economic discontent, Modi and the BJP are hoping to win over poor and disgruntled voters with more than $400 billion in welfare subsidies and cash transfers.

At the heart of their welfare agenda is a free ration program, which serves 800 million people. It existed under the previous government and is a right under India’s National Food Security Act. But it was greatly expanded during the pandemic to provide grain for free, instead of just cheap, and then extended for another five years beginning in January.

Through roughly 300 programs, hundreds of millions have received household goods ranging from cooking gas cylinders to free toilets. Millions of homes have been built for the poor, who now have greater access to piped water, Wi-Fi and electricity. And the government has ramped up cash transfers to farmers and other key voting blocs.

When Rajesh Prajapati lost his job at a chemical factory in Prayagraj, a city in India’s largest state, Uttar Pradesh, his family of five survived on government grain.

“For almost a year, the free ration was our only solace,” he said, adding that it was the reason they voted for Modi again.

Indian parties have always used welfare to win elections. But experts say the BJP has done it better.

Benefits such as subsidies, pensions and loans are now delivered through cash transfers directly to bank accounts linked to each individual’s biometric identity card, which the government says has helped eliminate leakages and corruption by cutting out intermediaries.

These large-scale handouts provide relief, but some say they are only a temporary fix and a sign of rising economic distress. To reduce inequality, they should be accompanied by investment in health and education, which have stagnated in recent years, said Ashoka Mody, an economist at Princeton University.

Subsidies are helpful, “but they do not create the ability of people to put themselves on a trajectory where they and their children can look forward to a better future,” he said.

Tuntun Sada, a farmworker from Samastipur, a city in the eastern state of Bihar, said the 18 kilograms of free grain that helps feed his family of six each month has only marginally improved their lives. He still earns less than $100 a month after working the fields of wealthier landowners.

“People like us don’t get very much,” Sada said. “Modi should walk the talk. If we don’t earn enough, how will we raise our children?”

The free rations don’t last through the month, piped water has yet to reach his community and there are no nearby schools for his four kids to attend. What he really needs, he said, is a better job.

Modi’s opposition, led by the Congress party, are betting on the jobs crisis to dent the BJP’s chances of securing a majority. Before the election, a survey by the Center for Study of Developing Societies found that more than 60% of voters were worried about unemployment and believed finding a job had become tougher. Only 12% felt like economic opportunities had increased.

Official government data, which many economists question, shows the unemployment rate declining. But a recent report from the International Labor Organization found that youth unemployment in India is higher than the global average, that more than 40% of Indians still work in agriculture, and that 90% of workers are in informal employment.

The liberalizing of India’s economy in the 1990s laid the foundation for the remarkable growth since, with millions escaping poverty and spawning a middle class. But it has also allowed for the growing disparity between rich and poor, economists say.

Rahul Gandhi, the main face of the opposition, has sought to tap into the growing resentment felt by the country’s many have-nots by promising to take on the issue of wealth distribution if his alliance gains power.

Modi, who says his government has lifted 250 million Indians out of poverty, is unapologetic. In a TV interview this month, he said wealth distribution is a gradual process and dismissed criticism of the growing inequality by asking, “Should everyone be poor?”

Both the BJP and the Congress party say they will create more employment through various sectors including construction, manufacturing and government jobs. Experts say this is crucial for reducing economic disparities, but it’s also hard to do.

Mass unemployment and underemployment have always been intractable problems in India, so parties inevitably fall back on the promises of handouts, said Mody, the Princeton economist. Case in point: The Congress party has pledged to double people’s free rations if voted into power.

“It’s completely the wrong focus… what we need is job creation,” Mody said. “And there is no one today who has an idea of how to solve that problem.”
…

Washington — The conviction of former U.S. President Donald Trump on Thursday for falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment ahead of the 2016 election quickly became one of the hottest topics on Chinese social media.

Trump’s conviction became the most searched topic on Chinese social media platform Weibo and search engine Baidu on Friday morning in China. On short-video platform Douyin, TikTok’s China-based sister application, it also landed among the five most searched topics.

While views varied, many Chinese netizens posted they hope the verdict by a New York jury, which found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts, will cause unrest in the U.S. between the former president’s supporters and opponents.

Although as president, Trump took a series of punitive measures against China in areas such as technology and trade, some Chinese netizens felt that his conviction was unfair and repeated unfounded claims by his supporters that the verdict was political persecution from U.S. President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party.

“The Democrats’ tactics are really low,” one Weibo user under the name Little Rabbit and Evil Cake commented on the news.

Other netizens stood by the guilty verdict, declaring Trump’s conviction his own doing.

“If you do too much evil, you will be killed by yourself,” one user under the name Gray Wolf with White Fur wrote on Weibo.

But many Chinese netizens were less interested in the verdict than the unrest they hoped it would cause in the U.S.

“Trump supporters quickly mobilize and occupy Congress,” said one Weibo user in a call for a repeat of the January 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by Trump supporters trying to stop the 2020 election from being certified.

Those who stormed the Capitol were repeating Trump’s claim, without evidence, that Biden cheated in the election.

A Chinese nationalist commentator named Lu Kewen insulted Trump’s supporters in a post that hoped they resort to violence.

“Put Trump in jail and wait for the fuming rednecks to draw their guns,” he wrote.

His was not the only call for violence in the U.S. that as of Friday morning had not been removed from Chinese social media, despite the ability of Beijing’s Great Firewall internet censors to quickly delete posts by China’s own critics and domestic calls for unrest.

“Fast forward to the new Civil War. I want to see rivers of blood!” another user under the name Wearing Red Clothes wrote.

But there were also more analytical comments from Chinese netizens.

Chinese economist Hong Hao posted on his Weibo that Trump’s trial is not conducive to the stability of American society.

“The biggest issue in the United States right now is not allowing a criminal to run for president. Rather, politicizing the judicial process in these Trump cases has shaken the foundation of the rule of law in the United States,” he said.

During the 2016 election, Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, paid adult film actress Stormy Daniels $130,000 in exchange for her silence about a sexual encounter she said she had with Trump in 2006. Such payments are not illegal and are called hush money.

Trump was found guilty of falsifying company business records to conceal the reimbursement paid to Cohen. Trump denies the encounter with Daniels or that anything illegal occurred.

Trump on Thursday railed against the jury’s verdict and said, without presenting any evidence, that the trial was rigged.

“We have a judge who’s highly conflicted. He happens to be corrupt. It’s the worst confliction that anybody’s seen. Nobody has ever seen anything like it,” he said.

A spokesperson for the White House Counsel’s Office responded, saying only, “We respect the rule of law.”

Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on July 11, just days before the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Despite the conviction, Trump is expected to be the Republican presidential nominee for the election on November 5.

Trump on Friday said he would appeal the conviction and repeated unfounded claims that the trial was rigged.

Biden on Friday said the verdict showed “the American principle that no one is above the law was reaffirmed” and said it is “reckless, is dangerous, it’s irresponsible for anyone to say this (trial) was rigged just because they don’t like the verdict.”

When asked at a regular Chinese Foreign Ministry briefing Friday if Trump’s conviction would prevent him from visiting China, if reelected in November, or present any other difficulties for China-American relations, spokesperson Mao Ning declined to comment, calling it a U.S. domestic affair.
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ISLAMABAD — Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, will lead a high-level delegation to China next week on an official 5-day visit, Islamabad announced Friday. 

During the visit that will begin June 4, Sharif will meet Chinese President Xi Jinping and hold delegation-level talks with Chinese Premier Li Qiang, according to the Pakistani Ministry of Foreign Affairs. 

Sharif, who will be accompanied by ministers and government officials as well as a group of Pakistani business leaders, will also meet high-ranking government officials and tycoons during the trip that will end June 8. 

“The two sides will undertake discussions to further strengthen the all-weather strategic cooperative partnership; upgrade China-Pakistan Economic Corridor; advance trade and investment; enhance cooperation in security and defense, energy, space, science and technology, education; and promote cultural cooperation and people-to-people contacts,” said foreign ministry spokesperson Mumtaz Zahra Baloch at the weekly news briefing. 

The visit, that was expected to occur in May, comes at a time when Islamabad is anxiously seeking to ramp up the multibillion-dollar China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, or CPEC, in a bid to spur its ailing economy. However, Beijing is deeply concerned about the safety of Chinese citizens working in Pakistan on the flagship project of its global Belt and Road Initiative. 

In recent weeks, Pakistan has ramped up efforts to meet Beijing’s key demand that Islamabad enhance the security of Chinese workers, and arrest and punish the perpetrators of a March suicide attack that killed five Chinese nationals and their Pakistani driver on their way to work at a hydropower project in the mountainous north. 

Although no group claimed responsibility for the attack, Pakistan has said the attacker was an Afghan citizen whose handlers were based in Afghanistan. 

A high-ranking Pakistani delegation visited Kabul Thursday to share the findings of its probe with the Afghan Taliban and demanded cooperation in arresting the perpetrators. Just days earlier, Islamabad revealed arresting 11 suspects that belonged to the banned militant outfit Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP.   

Along with enhancing security protocols for Chinese nationals, Islamabad also recently announced more than $2.5 million in compensation for the families of the slain foreign workers. 

Responding to VOA on whether Pakistan was confident it could satisfy China’s security concerns in the upcoming visit, Baloch said she disagreed with the notion that Beijing has “doubts in our approach on the issue of terrorism.” 

“There’s already a robust dialogue on terrorism that takes place between Pakistan and China. The two countries have a history of trust and confidence in each other and that makes our relation much more effective,” the spokesperson said. 

When asked if Islamabad had formally requested Beijing talk to Kabul to curb cross-border terrorism in Pakistan, Baloch refused to share details. 

“I am not in a position to share the internal deliberations and privileged diplomatic conversations between Pakistan and its iron brother China,” she said responding to VOA. 

A joint statement after a mid-May meeting between Pakistani and Chinese foreign ministers in Beijing called for international efforts to help Afghanistan “pursue good-neighborliness and firmly combat terrorism, including not allowing its territory to be used for terrorist acts.” 

Despite United Nations’ reports and research by Washington-based research groups indicating otherwise, the Afghan Taliban deny the presence of terror groups on their soil. 

Commenting on the Pakistani prime minister’s upcoming visit, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told media Friday that Chinese and Pakistani leaders will “jointly draw up a blueprint for the growth of bilateral relations.” 

“China stands ready to work with Pakistan through this visit to make greater progress in our all-weather strategic cooperative partnership and take new steps in the building of an even closer China-Pakistan community with a shared future in the new era,” she added. 

Earlier in the week, Mao expressed support for Pakistan’s efforts to investigate the March attack while assuring cooperation in enhancing security for its workers there.

“China supports Pakistan in continuing to get to the full bottom of what happened and hunting down and bringing to justice all the perpetrators,” Mao said. “China will continue to work with Pakistan to strengthen security cooperation and ensure the safety and security of Chinese personnel, projects, and institutions in Pakistan.” 

At least 17 Chinese nationals have been killed in targeted attacks in Pakistan in recent years, dealing a blow to CPEC.
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New York — A senior United Nations official said Friday that the organization remains “deeply concerned” about growing tensions on the Korean Peninsula, following North Korea’s latest attempted launch of a spy satellite and firing of ballistic missiles. 

“We encourage all member states, and members of this council, to seek unity, and for all parties to create an environment conducive to dialogue and cooperation,” U.N. assistant political chief Khaled Khiari told a meeting of the Security Council. “At this particularly difficult moment in securing global peace and security, it is imperative to de-escalate the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula.” 

Several council members, including the United States, Japan and South Korea, requested the meeting after North Korea unsuccessfully launched a spy satellite on May 27. That was followed on Thursday by the firing of a barrage of ballistic missiles toward its eastern sea. 

Washington’s envoy said Pyongyang is advancing its prohibited weapons program “at an alarming rate,” and has launched more than 100 ballistic missiles since the beginning of 2022. 

“Each of these launches — successful or not — is a flagrant violation of U.N. Security Council resolutions,” U.S. Deputy U.N. Ambassador Robert Wood said. “Each launch informs the DPRK of its capability gaps and allows Pyongyang to further advance its weapons programs.” 

DPRK is the abbreviation for North Korea’s official name: the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. 

While the spy satellite exploded shortly after it was fired, an earlier launch in November was successful. In December, Pyongyang announced that it plans to launch three more military satellites this year. 

North Korea’s U.N. envoy was defiant. 

“We make it clear once again that the DPRK’s possession of space reconnaissance capabilities is an independent right that can never be abandoned or bartered for anything else,” Ambassador Kim Song told the council. “It is an important undertaking of absolute necessity for defense of the state sovereignty and legitimate self-defense.” 

North Korea’s Monday launch took place just hours after a rare trilateral dialogue wrapped up in Seoul among China’s premier, Japan’s prime minister and South Korea’s president, with a call for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. 

Chinese Ambassador Fu Cong said Friday it is imperative all parties adopt a rational and practical approach, swiftly resume dialogue, act calmly and not intensify tensions. 

He expressed concern about a planned U.S. joint military exercise on the peninsula planned for August. 

“Such a plan will only increase tensions and the risk of war and turmoil on the peninsula, making the goal of long-term stability ever more elusive,” he said. “China opposes the plan.” 

South Korea’s ambassador said Pyongyang’s nuclear policy and its rhetoric are becoming increasingly hostile and aggressive towards his country. 

“Pyongyang no longer regards its nuclear arsenal as just a deterrent against the U.S., but instead as a means to attack my country, the Republic of Korea, which the North Korean leader himself called in January not a fellow nation but, ‘the most hostile foreign enemy to be subjugated,’” Ambassador Hwang Joon-kook said. 

Hwang added that North Korea announced Friday that the multiple short-range ballistic missiles it fired on Thursday were aimed at his country, and that Pyongyang says it will not hesitate to carry out a preemptive attack on “the enemies.” 

“Faced with these menacing threats, the Republic of Korea has to take all necessary measures to protect national security and our people by maintaining a robust combined defense and deterrence posture,” Hwang said. 

Russia-DPRK military cooperation 

The United States and several other council members also raised, not for the first time, Russia’s procurement of weapons and munitions from North Korea for use in its war in Ukraine, in violation of the council’s own sanctions and arms embargo. 

“The DPRK has also unlawfully transferred dozens of ballistic missiles and over 11,000 containers of munitions to aid Russia’s war against Ukraine, prolonging the suffering of the Ukrainian people,” Ambassador Wood said. 

“We continue to monitor closely what North Korea gains in return,” said Ambassador Kazuyuki Yamazaki of Japan. “We cannot let the current situation become the new normal.” 

Both Moscow and Pyongyang have previously denied the weapons allegations. 

Several council resolutions prohibit North Korea from developing a ballistic missile program, as well as ban it from exporting arms or related material to other states. 

Russia’s envoy said accusations that their activity with North Korea is illegal are “absolutely unfounded” and Moscow is simply cooperating with a friendly neighbor. 

“The cooperation between Russia and the DPRK is exclusively constructive and lawful in nature,” Deputy Ambassador Anna Evstigneeva said. “It doesn’t threaten anyone or violate anyone, and it will continue.” 

On March 28, Russia used its council veto to shut down the panel of experts who monitor implementation of the Security Council’s sanctions on North Korea, drawing criticism that it was trying to shield itself from scrutiny. 

Since 2006, the council has adopted several sanctions resolutions intended to limit North Korea’s access to funds and materials for its illicit nuclear and ballistic missile weapons programs. The council created the panel of experts in 2009, and since then they have documented implementation and alleged violations of council resolutions. But despite tough sanctions, Pyongyang continues to advance its weapons programs. 

VOA Seoul Correspondent William Gallo contributed to this report.
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