washington — A last-minute bipartisan effort to add key funding aimed at countering China in the Pacific has failed in the U.S. Senate even as a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan moved forward.

A renewal of the 20-year agreement known as the Compacts of Free Association or COFA was signed late last year, but $7 billion dollars to fund it is still struggling to find a path forward in the U.S. Congress.

Lawmakers tried to add funds for COFA to the aid package but no amendments to the legislation were considered prior to its passage early Tuesday morning.

Frustration about the delay in the passage of the funds is mounting in the three compact states: Palau, Micronesia and the Marshall Islands.

“Every day it is not approved plays into the hands of the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] and the leaders here (some of whom have done ‘business’ with the PRC) who want to accept its seemingly attractive economic offers – at the cost of shifting alliances, beginning with sacrificing Taiwan,” wrote Palau’s president, Surangel Whipps Jr., in a letter obtained by VOA and sent to U.S. senators.

“Together our islands give the U.S. strategic control of the sea and air between Hawaii and Asia larger in area than the 48 contiguous United States – including shipping lanes that the PRC covets – effectively extending the U.S. border for military purposes to Asia,” Whipps added, underscoring what’s at stake for U.S. national security.

In a letter to U.S. senators and obtained by VOA, Marshall Islands President Hilda Heine laid out the ways in which Beijing is pressuring her nation, which maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan.

“There have been ‘carrot and stick’ efforts from the PRC to shift our alliances – including discontinuing support of Taiwan, she wrote. “A proposal to develop one of our atoll municipalities – if it were granted autonomy from our national government – that I opposed generated an effort to topple my government in our parliament. Later, people from the PRC [People’s Republic of China] were convicted by a U.S. court of bribing proposal supporters in our parliament who voted against me.”

Congressional supporters of passing funding of the COFA agreement are taking heart in the fact that 24 senators – 12 Republicans and 12 Democrats – signed onto the proposed amendment to the security supplemental, which raised the measure’s profile, they say, in Congress.

“Our amendment to add the COFAs to the package was led by Senator (James) Risch and had broad bipartisan support in the Senate, including from the chairs and ranking members of all three committees of jurisdiction. This support demonstrates the growing awareness of Compacts’ importance and I’m working with my colleagues in Congress and the Biden administration to get this done,” said Senator Mazie Hirono, Hawaii Democrat, in a statement to VOA.

James Risch, a Republican senator from Idaho, told VOA that getting funding passed for COFA is critical.

“China is pushing for military bases, policing agreements and other coercive actions in the region. It is critical the U.S. blunt these efforts, and renewing these compacts is central to pushing back,” Risch said.

Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, echoed his commitment to finding a path forward.

“Amid rising tensions in the Pacific and China’s growing influence in the region, it is more important than ever for international peace and security to maintain U.S. strategic control and a close alliance with our Compact partners,” Manchin told VOA.

Supporters of passing COFA funding are already seeking to attach it to another piece of must-pass legislation – most likely the upcoming government spending bills that must be passed by March 1 and March 8.

“We know there’s wide support for COFA, but COFA has to compete with multiple legislative priorities on taxes, appropriations, CRs [continuing resolutions] and aid to Israel, which I support. COFA is vital to long-term U.S. national security strategy, so it must be passed into law ASAP,” said Congresswoman Aumua Amata Coleman Radewagen, a Republican of American Samoa, in an email.

“COFA has the added benefit of extending our borders and putting our competitors on defense deep into the Indo-Pacific region.”

Last week, the U.S. State Department also indicated the issue is becoming a priority of the Biden administration.

“The Department appreciates the bipartisan support in Congress for the new agreements related to the Compacts of Free Association (COFA). We have been working closely with Congress, the White House and interagency partners on the legislation necessary to bring these agreements into force. We reiterate our call on Congress to pass compacts-related legislation as soon as possible.”
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Brussels — The EU has proposed imposing export bans on firms in mainland China, India and Turkey accused of supplying Russia with military technology as part of a new round of sanctions over the war in Ukraine, according to a document seen by AFP.  

Officials in Brussels are currently hammering out a 13th package of sanctions on Russia to coincide with the second anniversary of its all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. 

As part of the push, the EU’s diplomatic service has proposed adding around 20 firms, including three in mainland China, one in Turkey and one in India to an export blacklist of those providing support to Russia’s military.  

That would mean firms in the 27-nation bloc would be prohibited from doing business with the companies as Brussels steps up efforts to crack down on the circumvention of its sanctions on Russia.  

The EU has already placed similar export bans on over 600 firms, including three based in the Chinese territory of Hong Kong, and firms in countries including Armenia, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan. 

If EU members states agree to the proposal it will be the first time that firms in mainland China will be targeted for helping Russia get around sanctions on acquiring technology that can be used on the battlefield.  

Brussels last year proposed putting five Chinese firms on the list but they were dropped in the face of opposition from Beijing and reluctance from some EU capitals. 

An EU diplomat told AFP that so far this time only Hungary has expressed reservations about adding more firms from third countries to the blacklist.  

The EU has already imposed 12 rounds of unprecedented sanctions on Moscow since it launched its invasion. 

Officials say it is becoming increasingly difficult to agree on new sectors of the Russian economy to hit and increasing attention has focused on closing loopholes in the current measures.  

The new sanctions being planned are also expected to see scores more Russian officials subjected to an asset freeze and visa bans in the EU.   
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Dubai — Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi started a visit to the United Arab Emirates on Tuesday to inaugurate the Middle East’s largest Hindu temple and boost investment and trade links.

The two governments signed deals, including a framework agreement on a major trade and transport route, at the start of Modi’s two-day visit, the third in the past eight months.

His trip comes ahead of India’s national election which is expected to begin in April.

He was due to inaugurate the region’s largest Hindu temple on Wednesday, a day after he addresses thousands of expatriates in a community event in the capital Abu Dhabi.

The visit is largely focused on galvanizing the diaspora, according to experts, even though Indians in the UAE can’t vote from abroad.

The UAE is home to about 3.5 million Indian nationals — the largest expatriate community in the Gulf country. 

On Tuesday, Modi met UAE president Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, according to the Indian foreign ministry and local state media, their fifth meeting in eight months.

They inked several deals, including a bilateral investment treaty, building on a Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement signed in 2022, India’s foreign ministry said. 

They also signed a “intergovernmental framework agreement” on the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor, a ship-to-rail transit network that will supplement existing sea and land routes.

The ministry did not elaborate on the deal, which comes after an ambitious plan for a modern-day Spice Route was first announced on the sidelines of a G20 summit in New Delhi in September.

Ties have gradually deepened since a landmark 2015 visit by Modi to the UAE, the first by an Indian prime minister in over three decades. 

The UAE is India’s third-largest trading partner, with a bilateral trade volume of around $85 billion between 2022 and 2023.

Later on Tuesday, Modi was expected to address large crowds at the Zayed Sports City Stadium in Abu Dhabi, where organizers say some 60,000 Indian expatriates had registered.

For Modi, “this visit will be focused on the diaspora,” said Ian Hall, author of the book Modi and the Reinvention of Indian Foreign Policy. 
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Washington — Chinese-linked cyber actors appear to have made a massive, last-minute push to try to derail Taiwan’s recent elections, though the precise goals of the sudden campaign — and the extent to which the attacks succeeded — remain unclear.

A new report Tuesday by the U.S.-based cybersecurity firm Trellix found what researchers described as a significant spike in activity, with attacks on Taiwanese organizations more than doubling in the 24-hour period before Taiwan’s January 13 election.

“Malicious cyber activity rose significantly from 1,758 detections on January 11 to over 4,300 on January 12,” the report said.

Most of the attacks appeared to focus on government offices, police departments, and financial institutions, with the attackers focused on internal communications, police reports, bank statements and insurance information.

Then, almost as suddenly as they came, the attacks seemed to wane, with just over 1,000 attacks detected on election day itself.

“The pattern of the attack is unusual,” Trellix’s Anne An told VOA.

“We see a lot of Chinese APTs [advanced persistent threat actors] that, after they get in, they stay low, maintain persistence,” said An, Trellix’s lead threat intelligence researcher. “We don’t see this crazy spike.”

Trellix is continuing to review the data. But An said one explanation could be a sense of desperation by the Chinese threat actors to find a way to impact the Taiwanese election.

They may well have been “going in with a last effort, trying to dig in the financial information, the policing records and the government internal communications, trying to figure out if there’s anything they can grab,” she said.

Only if the goal was to change how Taiwanese citizens voted or induce some sort of panic as the vote was being counted, it would seem the Chinese-linked hackers failed.

Rumors about election fraud were quickly debunked and dismissed by what some analysts described as “whole of society response” making use of government agencies, independent fact check organizations and even social media influencers.

“Find it early, like a tumor or cancer. Cut it before it spreads,” Taipei’s economic and cultural representative to the U.S., Alexander Tah-Ray Yui, told The Associated Press last month.

Still, the Trellix report says the danger to Taiwan may not be over. It warns that the spike in attacks on the day before Taiwan’s elections may be part of a longer-term strategy by the Chinese-linked threat actors.

“The same set of data also shows that threat actors operating behind these malicious activities leverage a number of living-off-the-land tools,” the report said.

Living-off-the-land attacks allow hackers to infiltrate a computer network or system and hide, quietly stealing additional data or positioning themselves to launch a disruptive attack at a more opportune time.

And it is a tactic that has worried cybersecurity officials in the United States, prompting the FBI and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) to issue a threat advisory to U.S. companies just last week.

A China-linked hacker group known as Volt Typhoon has been “positioning itself to launch destructive cyberattacks that would jeopardize the physical safety of Americans,” the advisory warned.

And CISA director Jen Easterly warned last month that the Chinese strategy is likely closely linked to Taiwan.

Beijing’s goal would be to “incite societal panic and chaos, and to deter our ability to marshal military might,” especially in case of a conflict over Taiwan, she told lawmakers.

China’s goal, Easterly added, would be to “incite societal panic and chaos, and to deter our ability to marshal military might,” especially in case of a conflict over Taiwan.

China has rejected such accusations, accusing U.S. officials of “making irresponsible criticism” when Washington itself is guilty of such behavior.

“We urge the U.S. side to stop,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA in an email in response to the CISA director’s warnings.
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Canberra, Australia — Thousands of sheep and cattle stuck on a ship that was forced to abandon a passage through the Red Sea last month have begun disembarking at the same Australian port they left nearly six weeks ago, Australia’s agriculture ministry said late Monday.

The MV Bahijah sailed from Fremantle, Western Australia on January 5 for Israel with about 14,000 sheep and 2,000 cattle onboard but diverted from its route due to the threat of attack by Yemen’s Houthi militia before being ordered home by the Australian government.

Animal rights advocates and some politicians have branded the treatment of the livestock on the ship as cruel, but the government and industry say they are in good condition.

The government last week rejected an application by the exporter to ship the animals to Israel around Africa, a nearly five-week journey that would have extended their time on board to more than two months.

“All livestock from the vessel MV Bahijah will be discharged commencing from Monday 12 February 2024 and taken by truck from Fremantle Port to appropriate premises in Western Australia,” the agriculture ministry said.

It said the unloading would take several days and the animals would be quarantined according to Australian biosecurity rules while the exporter, Israeli company Bassem Dabbah, which owns the livestock, considered its options.

Four cattle and 60 sheep had died on the ship since it sailed, the ministry said, but it added that this was below reportable mortality levels.

Reuters was unable to contact Bassem Dabbah. The ship’s manager, Korkyra Shipping, has not responded to requests for comment.

Most of the animals are likely to be re-exported after a short period on land, said Geoff Pearson at the farm group WAFarmers.

Australia exported more than half a million live sheep and half a million live cattle last year.

The center-left Labor government has pledged to outlaw live sheep exports but faces angry pushback from farm groups who say this would put people out of work and destroy farming communities.
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Jakarta — Indonesians head to the polls February 14 to vote in the world’s largest single-day election to select local and parliamentary representatives and a new president.

Of the 270 million citizens on the country’s 17,000 islands, 205 million over the age of 17 are eligible to vote. Seventy-five percent of Indonesia’s population is expected to vote Wednesday, according to the Indonesian General Elections Commission, with 106 million of those expected voters under age 40, or 52% of anticipated voters.

This is only the second time that the Southeast Asian nation is holding a presidential and parliamentary election simultaneously since 2019. All told, there are some 20,000 administrative posts in play across the country. Voters cast a secret ballot on paper. And while unofficial results should be available within 24 hours of voting, the official results won’t be available until 35 days later, at the earliest.

Three men are vying for the top spot — Prabowo Subianto, Ganjar Pranowo and Anies Baswedan.

Their contest may end in a June runoff before the world’s most populous Muslim nation elects a successor to President Joko Widodo. Known as Jokowi, he must leave after serving two five-year terms despite his popularity. His son, Gibran Rakabuming, is the vice-presidential candidate running with Prabowo, who lost to Widodo in the 2014 and 2019 elections.

Economy, jobs, food

Domestic issues are central to the presidential race. Economic growth slowed to 5% in 2023 compared with 5.3% the year before, according to Statistics Indonesia, which reported the unemployment rate was 5.32% in August 2023. But for Indonesians ages 15 to 24, about 14% were jobless, according to the International Labor Organization.

According to a regional U.N. food security report, almost 70% of Indonesians cannot afford healthy food. Adding to the globally familiar list of the economy, jobs and food security is the domestic debate over Widodo’s ambitious plan to move the capital from Jakarta to Nusantara to ease congestion and distribute economic activity outside the nation’s largest metropolitan area. International issues include the South China Sea dispute with China and climate change.

Watch related report by Yuni Salim:

Complex rules

Prabowo, the son-in-law of Suharto, a former Indonesian strongman, is leading by nearly 30 points in recent polls. Of the 1,200 people surveyed by Indikator Politik Indonesia, between January 28 and February 4, 51.8% said they would vote for Prabowo’s ticket, while 24.1% and 19.6 % would choose Anies and Ganjar, respectively.

Victory for Prabowo is not assured, due to Indonesia’s election rules, even if he gets the most votes on February 14. To win, a candidate must obtain more than 50% of total votes cast, and at least 20% of votes in more than half of the country’s provinces. If Prabowo fails to make those percentages, he faces a June 26 runoff with the second-place finisher, which observers suggest could be a tougher race to win.

Prabowo, 72, is making his third run at the presidency. He is the current minister of defense. During the economic and political turmoil of the 1990s, he was dismissed from the military amid speculation of rights abuses over the kidnapping of democracy activists. He denies any wrongdoing.

Prabowo has rebranded himself on social media, where his “Cuddy Grandpa” social media persona appeals to millennials and Gen Z voters, who make up about 56% of the total eligible voting population, according to the Indonesian General Elections Commission.

But they are too young to recall his brutal past that prompted the United States to ban him until 2020, when he visited Washington after he became Widodo’s defense minister.

Ganjar, 55, comes from a Central Javanese family led by a father who worked as a police officer. He served as the governor of Central Java between 2013 and 2023 and belongs to the nationalist Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P). Before becoming governor, he served in parliament, where he worked on issues related to agriculture, maritime, food security, land and agricultural reforms.

Ganjar topped opinion surveys until he backed a call by the governor of Bali last year to stop Israel from taking part in the Under-20 World Cup, which Indonesia was due to host.

Anies, 54, is a former university rector who launched an initiative in 2010 to bring education to remote corners of the vast archipelago that attracted thousands of volunteers. He went on to serve as the minister of education during Jokowi’s first term. After he was dismissed, he ran for governor of Jakarta, a position often seen as the launch pad for the presidency. He was elected in 2017, when he was supported by hard-line Islamist groups organized against Basuki Tjahaja Purnama, an ethnic Chinese Christian politician.

Anies is not a member of any political party but is endorsed by Nasional Demokrat, a secular nationalist party, and PKS, the conservative Islamic Prosperous Justice Party.

China and climate change

A nationally televised presidential debate held last month illuminated the differences among the presidential candidates on handling the South China Sea dispute with Beijing and climate change.

Indonesia is just one country that has claims in the South China Sea, resource-rich waters that China claims in full as its own. Indonesia has faced pushback from China over its exploration of oil and gas reserves in the North Natuna Sea.

Ganjar proposed three solutions: endorsing a temporary agreement with China, strengthening Indonesia’s naval capacity and patrols, and starting the exploitation of gas reserves in the North Natuna Sea, which is between Indonesia and Vietnam and south of the South China Sea.

Similarly, Prabowo said disputes in the South China Sea underline the need for a strong defense force, platforms for patrols and additional satellites. Meanwhile, Anies said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) needs to play a bigger role in resolving disputes, including those in the South China Sea.

The three vice-presidential candidates tackled environmental issues during the debate. Iqbal Damanik, a forest campaigner at Greenpeace Indonesia, said the statements by the vice- presidential candidates on climate change failed to offer lasting solutions for coastal communities and the importance of environmental impact assessment.

Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, compiled opinion surveys of Indonesian voters, which concluded that voters care more about climate change than politicians do, and climate change is the top concern of young voters.
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washington — Since the Taliban seized control in August 2021, China, Iran and Russia have been steadily courting Afghanistan’s de facto government for influence. The three countries have kept their embassies open in Kabul and were among the first to hand over Afghan embassies to the Taliban at home.

Last month, Moscow, Beijing and Tehran were the most high-profile participants at the Taliban’s first conference on regional cooperation in Kabul.

But what are the real prospects of China, Russia, Iran and the Taliban cooperating in the region?

Analysts tell VOA that while Beijing, Moscow and Tehran may be united in a common goal to oppose the U.S. in the region, that is perhaps the only area where their interests align, analysts say.

“Anti-Americanism is the one idea” that brings China, Iran and Russia together, said Alex Vatanka, founding director of the Iran Program at the Middle East Institute in Washington.

He told VOA that Tehran, Moscow and Beijing “want to push the United States out of Eurasia and Central Asia … [but] how much can they on the operational level cooperate? That’s a big question.”

He added that “anti-Americanism” alone cannot keep the partnership together as there “is nothing ideological to bring them together.”

According to a newly released U.S. State Department’s strategy document, China, Iran and Russia seek “strategic and economic advantage, or at a minimum, to put the U.S. at a disadvantage.”

“China, Iran and Russia have cultivated very close ties with the Taliban,” said Nilofar Sakhi, a lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University, adding that they are trying to “have political and economic influence in the region.”

Despite close ties, none of the three countries has formally recognized the Taliban’s government and their interests in the region all differ.

Pragmatic approach

Late last month, China was the first country to formally accept the credentials of the Taliban’s ambassador.

Some former diplomats and analysts say the move was akin to formal recognition. Sun Yun, the director of the China Program at the Stimson Center in Washington does not agree.

China still has to “formally extended political recognition to the Taliban’s government,” Sun told VOA. Even so, compared to Western countries, China has established “very close” relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.

“China adopts a pragmatic approach in Afghanistan,” said Sun, adding that early on Beijing realized that the U.S.-backed former Afghan government did not have “the popular support to continue” governing Afghanistan.

Beijing had been cultivating ties with the Taliban for years before the Taliban’s takeover of Kabul.

Sun said that “what has happened in the past two and a half years substantiated that assessment that the Taliban regime is not going anywhere.”

She added that security, economic and political factors are “all part of a broader consideration that comes to the foundation of China’s policy toward Afghanistan.”

For China, one key concern is about any breach of militancy from Afghanistan into its western region of Xinjiang.

Beijing also has economic interests in Afghanistan, including extending the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a flagship of the Belt and Road Initiative, to Afghanistan and investing in minerals in Afghanistan.

China has also been vocal in criticizing the U.S. and NATO for freezing Afghanistan’s assets and “leaving the Afghan people in a serious humanitarian crisis” in the country.

Complicated past

Though Iran has not formally recognized the Taliban, it handed over the Afghan embassy in Tehran to the Taliban in February 2023.

The Middle East Institute’s Vatanka said that the Iranian regime has not recognized the Taliban because of some bilateral issues, including border security and water distribution.

Last year, tensions between Iran and the Taliban over the Helmand River’s flow of water escalated to a deadly clash, which killed two Iranian security guards and one Taliban border guard.

Iran and the Taliban have had complicated relations in the past.

During the civil war in Afghanistan in the 1990s, Iran was supporting the forces fighting against the Taliban, particularly after the Taliban killed nine Iranian diplomats in the northern city of Mazar-e Sharif in 1998.

“It is still too early for the Iranians to forget what the Taliban was” when it was in power in the 1990s, said Vatanka.

Full of contradiction

Like Iran, Russia was another country that supported forces fighting the Taliban during the civil war in the 1990s.

Ghaus Janbaz, a former Afghan diplomat to Moscow, told VOA that Moscow’s policy toward Afghanistan has been “full of contradictions” in recent years.

Janbaz added that Russia is politically supporting the Taliban, but at the same time, its “military and security officials criticize the Taliban and cite an uptick in terrorist activities in Afghanistan.”

He said that before the Taliban’s takeover, Moscow had diplomatic relations with the former Afghan government, but it also supported “the Taliban at all the levels.”

“It is similar now. Russia has ties with the Taliban, but an anti-Taliban leader was invited to Moscow,” Janbaz said. “They say it was not an invitation by the government, but nothing happens without the approval of the government in Russia.”

An Afghan anti-Taliban leader, Ahmad Masoud, participated in a conference on Afghanistan in Russia in November 2023.

Janbaz says that despite Moscow’s close ties with the Taliban, “I do not think that in the near future, Moscow will extend recognition to the Taliban’s regime.”

He said that similar to China and Iran, Russia’s policy toward the Taliban is driven by regional geopolitics.

“Tactically they might have an alliance against the West, but there are strategic differences” between these countries, Janbaz said.

This story originated in VOA’s Afghan Service.
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islamabad — Pakistan confirmed Monday that separate counterterrorism raids near the Afghan border within the past week had killed two senior leaders of a regional Islamic State affiliate known as Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).

Military officials identified the slain militant commanders as Surat Gul and Abdul Shakoor, also known as Abu Hamza. Both were targeted in intelligence-driven security operations in northwestern Khyber and southwestern Qila Saifullah districts.

Interim Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar told reporters in Islamabad that Abu Hamza had plotted two back-to-back bomb attacks against campaign gatherings in Qila Saifullah and the nearby Pishin border districts on the eve of national elections held last Thursday.

“On the second day of the elections, February 9, an operation was conducted, and a prominent leader of Daesh was neutralized and eliminated in the same Qila Saifullah district,” Kakar said, referring to the killing of Abu Hamza.

Daesh is an Arabic acronym for IS-K, which the United States and the United Nations say is operating out of bases in Afghanistan.

The bombings in Pishin and Qila Saifullah collectively killed nearly 30 people. Both districts are part of the southwestern Baluchistan province, which shares nearly half of the country’s 2,600-kilometer-long (1616 miles) border with Afghanistan.

Gul was killed Sunday in a shootout with Pakistani security forces during a raid against his hideout in the northwestern Khyber border district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, according to a military statement.

The statement said the “terrorist ringleader” was involved in “numerous terrorist activities including [the] target killing of innocent civilians” and “was highly wanted by the law enforcement agencies.”

IS-K has confirmed the death of Gul in a gunfight with Pakistani security forces, but it has not commented on the fate of Abu Hamza.

The United Nations said in a report last month that while a “high concentration of terrorist groups in Afghanistan” was a cause of concern for member states, the “greatest threat within Afghanistan still comes from ISIL-K, with its ability to project into the region and beyond.”

ISIL-K is another acronym for IS-K.

The ruling Taliban in Afghanistan claim their security forces have eliminated IS-K bases nationwide and degraded the group’s ability to threaten national security and that of the region.

“Member States assessed that, despite the recent loss of territory, casualties, and high attrition among senior and mid-tier leadership figures, ISIL-K continued to pose a major threat in Afghanistan and the region,” the U.N. report noted.
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PALU, Indonesia — Indonesian police Monday named two Chinese nationals as suspects in the explosion of a smelting furnace at a Chinese-owned nickel plant on Sulawesi Island that killed 21 workers and injured dozens of others.

Four Chinese and nine Indonesian workers died instantly on December 24 when the furnace at PT Indonesia Tsingshan Stainless Steel, or PT ITSS, exploded while they were repairing it. Eight others died in the following days while being treated at hospitals. Of the total number of workers killed, eight were from from China.

The furnace was located inside a nickel processing-based industrial area under the management of PT Indonesia Morowali Industrial Park, known as PT IMIP, in Morowali regency of Central Sulawesi province.

Following their investigation, police had enough evidence to designate the two Chinese nationals, identified only by their initials, ZG and Z, as suspects, said Djoko Wienartono, the Central Sulawesi police spokesperson.

ZG was the furnace supervisor and Z was his vice supervisor, Wienartono said. 

“ZG and Z were the persons in charge of the furnace when the explosion occurred,” Wienartono said at a news conference in Palu, the capital of Central Sulawesi province, “They have violated the company’s operational standard.”

He said police would bring a criminal charge of negligence leading to death or serious injury. The maximum penalty for conviction of the charge is five years in prison. 

The police investigation showed that the furnace was under maintenance and not operating at the time of the explosion, which was triggered by fire from “residual slag in the furnace” that flowed out, causing an explosion when the fire came into contact with nearby oxygen cylinders used for welding, Wienartono said.

The blast was the latest in a series of fatal incidents at nickel smelting plants in Indonesia that are part of China’s ambitious transnational development program known as the Belt and Road Initiative.

Nickel is a key component of batteries for electric vehicles.

Two dump truck operators were killed last April when they were engulfed by a wall of black, sludgelike material following the collapse of a nickel waste disposal site in Central Sulawesi province, which has the largest nickel reserves in Indonesia.

In January 2023, two workers, including a Chinese national, were killed in riots that involved workers of the two nations at an Indonesia-China joint venture in neighboring North Morowali regency.

In 2022, a loader truck ran over and killed a Chinese worker while he was repairing a road in PT IMIP’s mining area, and an Indonesian man burned to death when a furnace in the company’s factory exploded. 

Nearly 50% of PT IMIP’s shares are owned by a Chinese holding company, and the rest are owned by two Indonesian companies. It began smelter operations in 2013 and is now the largest nickel-based industrial area in Indonesia. 
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Already facing social stigma in deeply religious or otherwise conservative societies, transgender individuals also risk losing their rights to vote in some of the over 50 countries holding elections this year. VOA’s Ahadian Utama reports on the challenges to registering transgender voters in one of those countries. Camera: Gregorius Giovanni
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Islamabad — Taliban authorities in Afghanistan said Monday that two of its nationals who were detained and rendered to the United States-run prison in Guantanamo Bay more than 20 years ago had returned home.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said on his X social media account that Abdul Karim and Abdul Zahir landed in Kabul early morning from Oman, where they had been transferred in 2017 and held under house arrest until now.  

Abdul Mateen Qani said that senior Taliban officials were among those “who greeted and welcomed” the two men at the international airport in the Afghan capital.

“They both spent more than 20 years in trouble, and the Islamic Emirate facilitated their return,” Qani added. Both Zahir and Karim had been under surveillance without the right to travel for seven years in the Gulf kingdom, he said.

Zahir, a resident of the Afghan province of Logar, was arrested by American forces just outside Kabul in May of 2002 before being transferred to Guantanamo.

Karim, a resident of the southeastern Afghan province of Khost, was moved to the prison in 2003 after having been arrested in neighboring Pakistan by local authorities before being handed over to U.S. custody.

President George Bush’s administration opened the controversial Guantanamo detention center just months after the U.S.-led coalition forces invaded then-Taliban-ruled Afghanistan to punish them for sheltering al-Qaida planners of the September 2001 terrorist strikes on America.

The detention center located in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, was originally designed to detain and interrogate individuals who were suspected of having links to al-Qaida operatives and their Taliban hosts and who were captured by U.S. forces during their two-decade-long “war on terror” operations in Afghanistan.

However, the prison received many suspects from several other countries over time.

Human rights groups have, from the outset, criticized the U.S. military prison and demanded its closure, citing reported abuses, torture, and prolonged detentions of inmates, many without charges or trial.

Guantanamo Bay has been the subject of extensive litigation. In 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court found that detainees were entitled to minimal protections under the Geneva Conventions, despite the assertions of the George W. Bush administration. The United Nations has demanded the closure of Guantanamo Bay, as has Amnesty International, which found in 2005 that the facility “has become the gulag of our times, entrenching the notion that people can be detained without any recourse to the law.”

Most of the inmates, including senior Taliban leaders, have been released over the years. One Afghan prisoner, Muhammad Rahim, remains in detention at Guantanamo.

The Taliban reclaimed power in Kabul in August 2021 when all U.S.-led coalition forces withdrew from the country after battling Taliban insurgents in the years that followed the invasion of Afghanistan.

The Islamist rulers have reimposed their harsh interpretation of Islamic law, barring women and girls from work and receiving an education beyond the sixth grade, deterring the global community from recognizing the de facto government in Afghanistan. 
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Manila, Philippines — The alleged mastermind of a bombing at a Catholic Mass in the southern Philippines has died after a clash between members of a pro-Islamic State group and government troops, officials said Monday.

Four people were killed and dozens wounded in the Dec. 3 attack on worshippers inside a university gym in Marawi, the country’s largest Muslim city, that was later claimed by the Islamic State group.

Eight Dawlah Islamiyah militants were suspected of carrying out the attack on Mindanao island, army brigade commander Brigadier General Yegor Rey Barroquillo told AFP.

Five have been killed in manhunt operations, one has been detained and another two were still on the run, he said.

Among the dead was Khadafi Mimbesa, who went by the alias of “Engineer.” The Armed Forces of the Philippines said in a statement that he was the “mastermind” behind the bombing.

Mimbesa was wounded in a shootout between army soldiers and militants hiding out at a mountain farm near the remote southern municipality of Piagapo in late January, Barroquillo told AFP.

Nine militants, including three suspects in the bombing, were killed in the fighting.

Mimbesa was wounded but escaped and died days later while being cared for by a supporter, Barroquillo said, citing intelligence reports.

In the statement, military chief General Romeo Brawner urged other members of the militant group to surrender and “avoid the same fate as your dead comrades.”

Militant attacks on buses, Catholic churches and public markets have been a feature of decades-long unrest in the south.

Manila signed a peace pact with the nation’s largest rebel group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, in 2014, ending their deadly armed rebellion.

But smaller bands of Muslim fighters opposed to the peace deal remain, including militants professing allegiance to the Islamic State group.
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A former army general who allegedly ordered troops to commit human rights abuses may be on the verge of becoming Indonesia’s next president. This possibility is raising questions about how much the archipelago’s youth know about their country’s past. Dave Grunebaum has the story from Jakarta.
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New Delhi — India’s foreign ministry said Monday that Qatar had freed eight ex-navy personnel it had previously arrested and sentenced to death, reportedly for spying for Israel.

The foreign ministry never gave details on the eight Indian nationals or their alleged crimes, and Qatar has not commented on the case or made the charges public.

But Indian media have reported that the men,  among them former high-ranking and decorated officers, including captains who once commanded warships, were arrested in Doha in August 2022.

In October, India said it was “shocked” after a Qatari court had sentenced them to death, but the sentence was reduced in December.

The eight men were employees of Al Dahra, a Gulf-based company that offers “complete support solutions” to the aerospace, security and defense sectors, according to its website.

The Hindu newspaper reported the men were spying for a “third country,” while the Times of India has said that “various reports claimed they were accused of spying for Israel.”

On Monday, New Delhi said the men had all been released.

“The Government of India welcomes the release of eight Indian nationals working for the Dahra Global company who were detained in Qatar,” the foreign ministry said in a statement.

“Seven out of the eight of them have returned to India,” it added, thanking Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani for the decision “to enable the release and homecoming” of the detainees.
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Sydney — With the death toll rising from missile and drone strikes almost two years after Russia invaded, Ukraine is urging Australia to share its world-leading approach to treating burn victims.

Doctors say the number of Ukrainians dying from injuries caused by burns during Russia’s invasion is rising sharply and warn Ukraine’s medical system is struggling to cope.

Representatives from the Lviv-based Christian Medical Association of Ukraine are in Australia urging the government to send specialist medical expertise and supplies.

There has been no official government response so far.

Australia has expertise with burn injuries. Many techniques were developed after the terrorist bombings on the Indonesian island of Bali in 2002. Two hundred and two people were killed, including many foreign nationals.

Rudi Myhovych of the Christian Medical Association of Ukraine told the Australian Broadcasting Corp. he hopes the government will send doctors to Ukraine.

“We hope to get teams of plastic burns doctor[s] to Ukraine for [the] short term,” he said. “We respect your time, and we are trying to be careful and maximize all of the help that is in our hands. But also, we plan to send Ukrainian doctors. They can observe and take the knowledge and better skills. So, because [the] amount of cases is unbelievable.”

The United Nations Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has reported that at least 10,000 civilians have been killed and upwards of 18,500 have been injured since Russia invaded on February 24, 2022.

Attacks on health care facilities, a lack of medical staff and power shortages have made it harder for victims to receive care during the conflict.

Russia has claimed its invasion of Ukraine is a “special military operation” and has insisted it does not target civilians — both of which are refuted by Ukraine, the U.N., the United States and NATO.

Australia is among the largest non-NATO contributors to Kyiv’s war effort, supplying missiles and armored personnel carriers.

The government also has imposed sanctions on hundreds of Russian politicians, including President Vladimir Putin, military commanders and businesspeople. They are the most sweeping penalties Australia has ever put on another country.

Additionally, Canberra has banned imports of Russian oil, petroleum, coal and gas.
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Bangkok — Myanmar’s military regime has undertaken a major expansion of the country’s prison system since toppling an elected government three years ago, according to new analysis of satellite data, amid a bloody civil war and crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

Rights groups fear the expansion portends more arbitrary arrests, prisoner abuse and forced labor.

By scouring open-source satellite images from the months leading up to the February 2021 coup through last month, Myanmar Witness, a project of the U.K.-based Center for Information Resilience, found dozens of new buildings inside and next to existing prisons and whole new prisons built or begun around the country. It shared the findings in a report issued January 31, just before the February 1 anniversary of the putsch.

“As activists and civil society continue to be arrested and detained by the Myanmar military, in many cases arbitrarily and without trial, this report reveals the scale of growth in the regime’s repressive prison complex,” Myanmar Witness project director Matt Lawrence told VOA.

He said their research found evidence of new detention facilities or expanded perimeters “in almost half of the prisons we mapped.”

The team said it found 33 new structures at 25 of the 59 prisons it mapped, as well as “large perimeter expansions” at another two in Sagaing region, the scene of some of the stiffest armed resistance to the junta.

Though many of the structures are outside the prisons’ walls, Myanmar Witness said their “high-security design” bears the hallmarks of detention facilities.

“We assessed these additional structures as most likely being used for prisoner accommodation because of the appearance of double fencing along the entire perimeter in satellite and other imagery,” Lawrence said.

“Some larger additions appeared to have small gatehouses on the entrances or a security entrance gate, and some other additions appeared to have a watchtower adjacent to the perimeter,” he added. 

The team said it also mapped two new prisons built since the coup, one in Sagaing and another in Mon state, and a third nearing completion in Ayeyarwady state. Since completing its analysis for the report, Lawrence told VOA they also mapped a fourth new prison underway in Bago region.

Myanmar Witness labeled six of the 59 sites it mapped as unconfirmed prisons for various reasons. It says one site may have been abandoned and that others had the telltale signs of a typical prison but did not appear on the regime’s official list.

On the whole, though, Lawrence said the team’s inventory of the growth of Myanmar’s prison system was probably an underestimate, given the limits of open-source data.

That growth comes amid a wave of arrests of those resisting the junta, from armed rebels to online critics, even journalists for covering the news. The junta has outlawed any criticism of the regime or the coup.  

The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a rights groups based in neighboring Thailand tracking the crackdown, said the junta has arrested over 26,000 political prisoners since the coup and that some 20,000 remain in custody.

AAPP founder and joint secretary Bo Kyi said the scale of the prison expansion program uncovered by Myanmar Witness suggests the junta intends to continue arresting many more dissidents in a bid to intimidate the resistance.

“The expansion of prisons mean they will arrest more people who [are] against them,” he told VOA.

“The issue of political prisoners is directly related with current political problems. People [are] against the military and people want to replace military rule to civilian rule. Therefore [the] military junta is trying to create [a] climate of fear,” he said.

In his latest report, from October, the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, said the junta has continued arresting dissidents at a “staggering scale.” They included over 130 people arrested last June for wearing flowers to celebrate the 78th birthday of the junta’s most famous prisoner, Aung San Suu Kyi. The ousted government’s de facto leader was arrested on the morning of the coup and remains in custody serving a 27-year prison sentence on a spate of charges widely seen to have been trumped up. 

Andrews’ report describes overcrowded and filthy conditions inside some prisons alongside unchecked abuse and torture, from beatings to rape and genital mutilation. At the time of the report, the AAPP said at least 188 political prisoners had died either in prison or during interrogation from a lack of health care, torture or outright murder. 

In July 2022 the regime openly executed four convicted dissidents at Insein Prison, the country’s first use of capital punishment in decades. More than 100 others remain on death row.

If the new prisons, expanded perimeters and prison buildings uncovered by Myanmar Witness portend more prisoners, they also portend more prisoner abuse, said Manny Maung, Myanmar researcher for Human Rights Watch.

“If you’ve … got these new structures where they plan on putting people in after summary trials that are completely opaque already and then taking them somewhere else where we have no insight or no visibility on, I think the risk of abuse in detention is extremely high,” she told VOA.

She also said she worries that the junta may be adding prison capacity to boost its supply of forced labor.

“Because they have a history of labor camps, they have a history of forced recruitment and portering. Certainly this forced labor is something … I would be increasingly worried about if they’re filling up these prisons as well,” she said.

Along with the prisons, Myanmar Witness said it used satellite images to map and analyze at least 29 labor camp sites, mostly quarries and farms, and possibly 24 more. While they did not show the same degree of development and expansion as the prisons, it says most appeared to still be active.
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Islamabad — Pakistan’s much-awaited election vote count concluded Sunday, with jailed former Prime Minister Imran Khan’s allies winning the most National Assembly seats but not enough to form a simple majority.  

The Election Commission website showed a group of independent candidates, almost all nominated by Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, claiming 101 seats in the 266-member legislative lower house of parliament. 

They were followed by the Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz, or PML-N, led by another former prime minister, Nawaz Sharif. It won 75 seats and became the largest single parliamentary party, because PTI-backed independent candidates ran as individuals.  

The Pakistan People’s Party of former Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto Zardari was third with 54 seats, while smaller regional parties trailed. 

 The commission released the final tally nearly three days after the conclusion of Thursday’s daylong polling across the nation of 241 million, with Pakistan suspending mobile phone and internet services nationwide, citing security concerns.  

The unusually long delay, coupled with the communication blackout, raised questions about the vote’s credibility, giving credence to widespread allegations that the results were manipulated to favor military-backed parties over PTI.  

Khan’s candidates ran as independents because the election commission, just weeks before the polls, had barred them from running under his party’s iconic cricket bat electoral symbol for not complying with election laws, a decision widely criticized as unconstitutional and politically motivated. 

The final vote count indicates that no single party has enough seats to form a government independently, dampening hopes the election outcome would help end a political turmoil that has gripped nuclear-armed Pakistan since an opposition parliamentary vote of no-confidence ousted Khan from power in 2022.  

The 71-year-old cricket hero-turned-politician could not run in the election after being sentenced to 14 years in prison and banned from holding public office leading up to Thursday’s vote. 

PTI-backed candidates’ shocking success came despite a monthslong military-backed crackdown on the party leadership and supporters before the elections. They were prohibited from holding campaign rallies and hundreds of them were arrested, with many nominees forced to run while in hiding.  

The Election Commission blamed the delay in processing the results on “communication issues.” 

Pakistan’s military-backed interim government has defended its decision to suspend communication networks on election day, saying it was meant to protect the process in the wake of a deadly spike in militant attacks on the eve of and during the polls. 

Sharif has said that his PML-N is holding talks with other parties to form a coalition government in Islamabad. Khan’s party has also declared victory, saying it was well-placed to form a government and urging “all institutions” in Pakistan to respect its mandate.  

Thousands of Khan supporters have staged protest rallies outside election offices returning results in major cities, saying their candidates were declared losers despite having won the polls and demanding legal action against those responsible for what they called vote fraud. Police in the eastern city of Lahore rounded up several PTI supporters in a crackdown on Sunday.  

Meanwhile, Pakistani courts have been flooded with PTI-led petitions challenging the election results, prompting the high in Lahore to block the election commission from declaring winners in more than two dozen constituencies. 

The communication outage on Thursday drew concern from foreign governments, including the United States, and rights groups. 

More than two dozen U.S. members of Congress have posted concerns about Pakistan’s election irregularities and manipulation on social media platforms.  

Michael McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said free and fair elections were a “fundamental cornerstone” of any democracy and must be protected.  

“Any allegations of corruption or fraud must be fully investigated, and those responsible must be held accountable. The United States supports the right of the Pakistani people to a democratically elected government that respects the rule of law and human rights.” 

On Friday, the U.S. State Department spokesperson condemned the restrictions on access to the internet and telecommunication services, stressing the need for timely completion of results that reflected the will of the Pakistanis. 

“We join credible international and local election observers in their assessment that these elections included undue restrictions on freedoms of expression, association, and peaceful assembly,” Mathew Miller said.   

Khan used an artificial intelligence-generated speech on Friday to claim that his party had been deprived of a landslide victory by manipulating the results, assertions backed by many independent commentators and critics. 

“From the pre-poll phase to election day irregularities to the post-poll counting process — the attempts to subvert the PTI were blatantly executed,” read a Saturday editorial in the prestigious English-language Dawn newspaper. “It seems the only thing the state was able to achieve through its persistent victimization of the PTI was to turn it into a symbol of resistance for the people,” the paper added. 

Pakistan has pushed back against the foreign criticism and “the negative tone” of some statements, dismissing them as incorrect.    

“While we value constructive advice from our friends, making negative commentary even before the completion of [the] electoral process is neither constructive nor objective,” a foreign ministry statement said on Saturday. 
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Of the 50 or so countries that have held or are holding elections in 2024, none will have more people going to the polls on a single day than Indonesia. The current president is on his second term and ineligible to run, leaving Indonesians with three choices to replace him when they head to the polls Wednesday. In Jakarta, Indonesia, VOA’s Ahadian Utama reports. Devianti Faridz and Yuni Salim contributed to the report.
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BISHKEK, Kyrgyzstan — A court in Kyrgyzstan has ruled to dissolve a nongovernmental organization that ran a popular news website often critical of the government. 

The court order late Friday to shut down Kloop.kg follows raids on several other media outlets and arrests of their reporters, steps that Western governments have criticized as a crackdown on independent media. 

Kloop.kg’s troubles began last August when state prosecutors filed a lawsuit to have it shut down on the grounds that Kloop Media, its nongovernmental organization (NGO) publisher, was not registered as a media organization. 

Prosecutors also pointed out that many of the outlet’s publications were critical of the government, saying they discredited the authorities of the Central Asian nation. 

The court said that Kloop Media was carrying out activities outside of its charter. 

“The court ruling on Kloop is another nail in the coffin of media freedom in Kyrgyzstan,” Anna Kapushenko, the editor-in-chief of Kloop.kg’s Russian-language version, told Reuters. 

The group said it would appeal the ruling. 

Media in Kyrgyzstan, a former Soviet republic, have long enjoyed greater freedoms than those in other Central Asian countries with more autocratic governments. 

However, under President Sadyr Japarov, who came to power in 2020, the country adopted a law making it illegal for media and individuals to “discredit” the authorities, giving the government a tool to go after its critics. 

Kyrgyzstan is closely allied with Russia and hosts a Russian military airbase. 
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