We speak with Iranian American policy analyst Trita Parsi about Israel’s latest attack on Iran on Saturday, when it bombed military facilities and air defense systems in the country. Iran said four soldiers were killed in the attack. Israel also struck air defense batteries and radars in Syria and Iraq. Israel’s assault this weekend came about four weeks after Iran launched a missile attack on Israeli military sites in response to Israel’s war on Lebanon and Israel’s assassination of Hezbollah and Hamas leaders, part of a series of actions between the two countries since the outbreak of the war on Gaza last year. “The Israelis are just continuously escalating the situation,” says Parsi, executive vice president of the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft. He warns that Iran’s relatively restrained responses to Israeli actions could encourage decision-makers in both Israel and the United States to “go all the way” and strike Iranian nuclear sites and other major targets. “This, unfortunately, is leading — much thanks to the approach of the Biden administration — towards a much larger escalation.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
“Are you sure you don’t want to just, you know, remove it?” the artist asks assertively.
I considered this before making my appointment at the open-air studio. It’s a relic from a bleak time, after all. But history wasn’t meant to be erased.
“Yep, let’s stick with the plan.”
I’m nervous I’ll prickle too much once the algae ink-coated needle pierces my forearm, now sun-loved and wrinkled. But the process ends up being way less painful than I remember.
After a couple of pokes, the tattoo of my youth, The climate changed, has a new ending: And so did we.
Roughly half of L.A. tattoo artist Sonny Robinson Bailey’s clients come to him for climate-themed tats: a motley crew of surfers, scuba divers, scientists, and environmental scholars no doubt lured by his Instagram bio: “tattoos for the climate concerned.”
Originally from the U.K., Robinson Bailey started focusing on climate tattoos after moving to the U.S. and feeling overwhelmed by all the waste he saw. Some of his designs are quite dramatic (think: a cartoon sun with burning-hot lasers coming out of its eyes; “MINDLESS CONSUMPTION” written in commanding letters), while others are more subtle nods to planetary thresholds and tipping points.
“I did a flash tattoo day a couple of years ago where I wrote a few paragraphs of facts and figures about the climate, put all the numbers in boxes, and tattooed them on people,” he told me on a video call. Five people showed up to get inked with numbers such as .9 (projected sea level rise by the end of the 21st century, in meters) and 1.5° (the warming threshold set forth in the Paris Agreement, in Celsius).
He added a new tattoo to his personal collection that day, too, he said, maneuvering the camera to show me the 2.12° above his left elbow — the approximate amount that global temps have risen since the Industrial Revolution, in Fahrenheit.
Sonny Robinson Bailey’s “2.12” tattoo. Courtesy of Sonny Robinson Bailey
While this figure will eventually become outdated, Robinson Bailey doesn’t mind. “I like to look at my tattoos as a journal,” he said. “[They] are always going to be a sign of the times.” And, he said, looking at it helps him sit in the discomfort of global warming. While many climate disasters feel far away when he reads about them in the news, tattoos “bring things back to reality.”
Robinson Bailey’s clients all have their own reasons for getting climate-themed tattoos. He recalls a researcher who asked for a coral tat to celebrate their work making reefs more resistant to heat waves, and a New Yorker who got the .9 sea level rise tattoo in solidarity with their threatened coastal city. Robinson Bailey said that talking to people about their connections to the climate is “the best part” of his job.
I took a page from his book and spoke with several people who have climate-themed tattoos about why they got them and what they represent. For some, they are reminders of what to fight for; for others, an ever-present reminder of what’s already lost. Almost all of them said they plan to get more. Here are their tats and the stories behind them.
Most of visual artist Justin Brice Guariglia’s photography, sculpture, and installation work explores human relationships with the natural world, built upon a foundation of climate science. So when he felt the itch to get tatted in 2016, it was only natural to turn to the latest NASA data for source material.
Sitting in a bean bag chair in his studio in downtown New York, Brice Guariglia pulled up his sleeve to reveal a NASA Surface Temperature Analysis graph climbing all the way up his right arm.
Justin Brice Guariglia’s Surface Temperature Analysis tattoo. Studio Justin Brice Guariglia
The tattoo, which shows the planet’s surface temperature from 1880 to 2016, is accurate and to scale. Brice Guariglia even emailed the scientist behind the work, James Hansen, for fact-checking before he made it permanent. “If you make art about climate or the environment, it’s so important to know the science,” he said. “Otherwise, it’s just decoration.”
Although his tattoo is essentially global warming immortalized, Brice Guariglia isn’t distressed when he looks at it — or when he explains it to others who inevitably mistake it for a mountain range or an electrocardiogram reading. “It doesn’t feel negative to me. If it felt negative, I wouldn’t have gotten it.” Instead, he said, it reminds him of his mission to keep working for a better future. “Climate change is the moral imperative of our time.”
Sanjana Paul is currently a graduate student at MIT focused on conflict negotiation in the energy transition, but she’s worn many hats throughout her career in climate. Trained as an electrical engineer, Paul (who was featured on the Grist 50 list in 2023) has collected atmospheric science data with NASA, hosted environmental hackathons, and pushed for climate policy as a community organizer.
The tattoo on her right ankle — the “ground” symbol, which resembles an upside-down T with two lines underneath — is a symbol for her of what has been constant throughout these diverse experiences.
“In circuit diagrams, the ground symbol is where the electric potential of the circuit is zero, so it’s your starting point,” she explained. She got the tat after she graduated from engineering school as a way to mark the starting point of her new career. Now, it nudges her to stay “grounded” — that is, motivated by her deep love for the planet — as she engages in different forms of climate work. And, she added, “In all seriousness, it was just funny.”
Sanjana Paul’s ground symbol and Green New Deal tattoos. Courtesy of Sanjana Paul
As for the “GND” letters above it, Paul added those after her community successfully advocated for a Green New Deal in Cambridge, Massachusetts — a package of environmental policies that passed the legislature in 2023.
“It took us two years of concerted effort,” Paul said. “[The tattoo] was kind of a commemorative thing to say, ‘We did it.’” She still has a screenshot of the photo of it she sent to her group chat when the legislation passed.
Paul, who also has a likeness of the NASA satellite Calipso on her arm, is currently dreaming up her next climate tattoo: an ode to the North Atlantic Ocean in honor of an offshore wind project she’s involved with. The tattoos in her growing collection are reminders of the unexpected places her work has taken her, and she also considers them gateways into climate conversations with all types of new people who ask about what the designs mean.
France-based photographer Mary-Lou Mauricio started something of a movement two years ago, when she began taking photographs for a campaign she called “Born in … PPM.” In the lead-up to COP27, the 2022 U.N. climate summit, she used temporary makeup to “tattoo” subjects with the measurement of the parts per million of CO2 in the atmosphere the year they were born — a way to capture just how much our overreliance on fossil fuels has changed the Earth’s chemistry — and photographed portraits of them.
The campaign caught on, and to date, she has collected over 4,000 images of people all around the world who have marked their personal ppm on their hands, faces, and stomachs. The portraits offer a way to visualize rapidly rising global greenhouse gas emissions, particularly when older subjects are juxtaposed with younger ones.
She knows of at least two people who have gotten their numbers permanently inked — and she has as well.
For Mauricio, the 340 ppm tattoo on her right shoulder represents the marks that climate change has already left on her and her family. “My parents live in the south of Portugal, where droughts are becoming increasingly severe,” she said. “In 2022, a fire ravaged my parents’ region. … Sometimes they call me when it’s raining, because it’s becoming so rare.”
She told me that this ppm tattoo likely won’t be her last: “I’d like to add the ppms of my children’s births, because they’re the ones I’m campaigning for.”
Illegal guns are pervasive in Laos as government measures to control them have been largely ineffective, a government official with knowledge of the situation said.
Under current law, Laotians must register weapons they own with authorities, but that is largely unheeded — leading to crimes committed with guns.
In September, for example, a group of unidentified armed men stormed a prison in Vientiane, fired at guards and escaped with five prisoners.
“Many wealthy Laotians buy weapons from the other side of the Mekong River,” said a Public Security Ministry official, who like other sources in this report requested anonymity so he could speak freely without retribution, referring to Thailand and Myanmar.
“They smuggle them into Laos,” he said. “There are too many guns in the country right now. It’s difficult to control the spread of weapons because they bought the guns, but they wouldn’t register them with us.”
It is difficult to determine just how many people have guns, he added.
The Ministry of Public Security issued an order on Aug. 16 notifying citizens that it would cancel authorizations to use firearms issued by all security departments that were not in compliance with a decree on registration and control of guns dated June 23, 2022.
‘Guns are everywhere’
The ministry also said it would set up a police force to implement a prime ministerial decree on confiscating and controlling weapons and explosives, and that this force should “invite” gun owners to hand over their firearms.
Those who fail to comply within 15 working days will be charged with illegal possession of firearms.
Still, a resident of the capital, Vientiane, said gun control was weak, noting that there have been more shootings there in the past several years.
“Guns are everywhere. Our community is not safe,” he said. “Our security department is not strict and not effective.”
Many local officials and residents have some kind of weapon despite the bans, said an official at the Houaphanh province police department in northeastern Laos.
The department has confiscated and destroyed many of the weapons, but he said many people own hunting rifles or air guns that they make from metal pipes or other materials.
On Oct. 11, authorities in the southern province of Savannakhet reported that police were able to register 3,140 guns from 2019 to 2023, including 1,870 short guns, such as pistols, and 1,270 rifles. They also confiscated 265 illegal guns and 1,113 bullets during this period.
Guns are rife in the north, in the Chinese-controlled Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone in Bokeo province, a resident told RFA Lao. In June 2023, authorities arrested a Lao national for shooting two Chinese men in the zone.
“They sell them to each other like they are selling cake,” he said. “Safety protection and controls in the zone are based on who has money and authority in the zone.”
Translated by Max Avary for RFA Lao. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA Lao.
Burr of blade and crash of trunk broke embraces held for centuries. My grove — seeded ere memory — found itself emptied of life by the sound and fury of saw.
Alone, I watched seasons grow erratic. Alone, I watched frost whip rathe flowers. Alone, I watched heat deepen and linger. Alone, I lost the hope to restore the grove.
Then, the humans returned. With spade in place of saw, they broke the ground again. In wounds reopened, they sowed you whose roots embrace all mine, you who taste of lands unknown.
On a near cloudless August day, I arrived at a waist-high iron barrier gate in Washington’s Marckworth State Forest, accompanied by staff from the Mountains to Sound Greenway Trust, a Seattle-based nonprofit that conserves and restores land from the easternmost edge of the Cascade mountains to the Puget Sound — an area known as the Mountains to Sound Greenway National Heritage Area. In 1900, Weyerhaeuser — the second largest lumber company in North America — bought its first 900,000 acres of timberland in what, today, is the greenway. “The birth of industrial timber was right here,” said the trust’s executive director Jon Hoekstra, “for better or for worse.” For 35 years, Hoekstra said, conservation groups and nearby tribes have made intense efforts to knit the devastated forests back together through many different projects.
On this particular day, Kate Fancher, the trust’s restoration project manager, took me into the forest to the Stossel Creek reforestation site, which lies some 20 miles northeast of Seattle in the foothills of the Cascade mountains. Stossel Creek is unique among the roughly four dozen projects that the trust currently manages. Here, Fancher is overseeing a multiyear experiment on an urgent new approach to forest management: assisted migration. The strategy involves intentionally shifting the range of certain trees to make forests more resilient to climate change.
“I’m not used to doing this type of experiment. Normally it’s more informal,” she said. “But I think it’s really important to see what we can take away from this and then potentially tie that into our restoration work going forward.”
Fancher (right) walking to the Stossel Creek restoration site in August, along with Sarah Lemmon, a public relations consultant hired by the trust. Syris Valentine / Grist
For the last several decades, standard best practice for reforestation projects said to source native treelings from local nurseries that collect seed from nearby forests. Forest managers learned the hard way that locally sourced seedlings had a better chance of survival, forest geneticist Sally Aitken later told me. During early large-scale reforestation campaigns, seedlings sourced from native but nonlocal trees had a much harder time establishing themselves into environments they weren’t adapted to. Many died. Those that survived often failed to grow as tall or healthy as their locally sourced counterparts.
“Forest geneticists spent decades and decades convincing foresters that they should use local populations of trees to get their seed from for reforestation,” said Aitken, who has been studying the implications of climate change for trees since the early ’90s.
But as the changing climate has created both new extremes and a new normal outside of what local species evolved to withstand, some forest managers are championing an approach that replants with trees adapted not to the current climate, but to the future one.
While that can mean introducing species into ecosystems they have never before occupied, in most cases, like Stossel Creek, the species are the same ones already in the forest, but the individual seedlings are trucked in from other regions, selected based on the environments they’ve adapted to.
The trust and its partners seeded the Stossel Creek acreage with trees sourced from warmer, drier climes akin to what the Pacific Northwest can expect to experience in the future. Some of the 14,000 seedlings planted on the site traveled over 500 miles north from California to reach their new home.
This experiment emerged after Seattle City Light, the city’s electric utility, purchased 154 acres of land in 2015 that a logging company had clear-cut three years prior. City Light acquired the land to preserve salmon and steelhead habitat as part of its extensive commitments to environmental stewardship, and the utility partnered with the trust and several other organizations to coordinate a mass planting of climate-adapted trees in 2019. The hope is that by reseeding the lands with trees adapted to hotter and drier environs, interplanted among locally sourced seedlings, the emergent forest “will be more resilient to heat, drought, pests, disease, and wildfire,” said a report authored by Rowan Braybrook, the programs director at Northwest Natural Resource Group, one of the trust’s partners on the project.
To find out where to source trees that may be well-adapted to the future climate of this particular forest, the project’s designers used the Seedlot Selection Tool developed by the U.S. Forest Service, Oregon State University, and the Conservation Biology Institute. The tool allows researchers and practitioners to experiment with a wide range of scenarios to determine where they might source seeds for the climate scenario selected. In the case of Stossel Creek, the project designers looked at the worst-case climate projections for the next several decades to identify regions and nurseries in southern Oregon and Northern California that would provide the best seedstock.
The specific portions of those two states were selected based primarily on two measures: the “summer heat-moisture index,” to capture the increasing aridity of Northwest summers, and the “mean coldest month,” a key consideration because Douglas firs need a good winter chill to grow come spring. Selecting seedlings from across this range, Braybrook said, has allowed them to use the Stossel Creek experiment to “stress test” assisted migration.
“If you move too far, too fast,” Aitken said, “the biggest risk is cold damage.” While climate change is, on average, warming things up year over year, it has also made sudden and severe cold snaps more likely, which could damage or kill trees born for the California sun.
But after I walked around the Stossel Creek site itself with Fancher, weaving through rows of baby trees ringed by plastic mesh skirts to protect them from grazing elk and deer, and later reviewed the data collected in the four years after the big 2019 planting, I was surprised by how much the Douglas firs from California seem to love the new climate emerging in the western Cascade foothills.
Of the three seedlots — one each from Washington, Oregon, and California — the California Dougs have survived the best and grown the fastest, followed closely by the Oregon firs. On average, over 90 percent of the firs sourced from those southern neighbors survived through 2023. Meanwhile, those sourced from Washington’s own iconic evergreen forests have fared worse, with only 73 percent surviving, according to data collected through last September. According to a report published last year by the Northwest Natural Resource Group, it’s still too early to draw major conclusions from the experiment — but these early results seem to indicate that planting for the climate of the future could bolster reforestation efforts.
Left: A row of Douglas firs planted in one of Stossel Creek’s test plots leading to a weather station. Right: A shore pine planted beside a stump on one of the test plots. Syris Valentine / Grist
Despite the results from experiments like Stossel Creek, and others that have occurred in the Eastern U.S. as well as Canada and Mexico, assisted migration is still a controversial practice. “The Forest Service still requires us to use local seed stock for most of our restoration work,” Jon Hoekstra said, with the goal of preserving local adaptations. Hoekstra, Aitken, and others have increasingly come to realize that those local adaptations may be mismatched to the future climate. Still, they said, forest managers can be averse to assisted migration because they’re often focused on reducing near-term risks. “The safest thing for getting the trees established today isn’t necessarily the best thing for the longer term,” Aitken said.
Assisted migration essentially goes against decades of conservation wisdom — and it constitutes a level of intervention that makes some uneasy. Aitken also noted that it’s not going to be the right approach in every circumstance. “If you’ve got an established, intact forest ecosystem that isn’t suffering from some massive hit of climate or pest, disease, et cetera, I don’t think you want to intervene at this point,” she said. She also advises caution when it comes to moving species outside of their established range — for instance, planting redwoods in Washington. “It’s fundamentally going to change that ecosystem.”
But, ultimately, ecosystems are changing — and, as Grist has covered previously, some believe that approaches like assisted migration may be the best way to recognize and direct the profound changes humans are already having on the landscape. As forest managers plan and implement conservation projects, Aitken said, “We need to balance the risks of movements against the risks of doing nothing, and the right decisions are going to be different in different situations.”
Assisted migration is also being considered as a potential strategy to help animals whose homes are threatened by climate change — like the key deer, a subspecies of white-tailed deer that lives only on the islands of the Florida Keys. Just about 1,000 remain in the wild, and some are advocating relocating the species as sea level rise threatens its home. Here, a doe (smaller than her mainland cousins; about the size of a golden retriever) crosses Key Deer Boulevard on Big Pine Key.
IMAGE CREDITS
Vision: Grist
Spotlight: Syris Valentine / Grist
Parting shot: Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Three years ago, Erin Primer had an idea for a new summer program for her school district: She wanted students to learn about where their food comes from. Primer, who has worked in student nutrition within California’s public school system for 10 years, applied for grant funding from the state to kick off the curriculum, and got it. Students planted cilantro in a garden tower, met a local organic farmer who grows red lentils, and learned about corn. “Many kids didn’t know that corn grew in a really tall plant,” said Primer. “They didn’t know that it had a husk.”
The curriculum, focused on bringing the farm into the school, had an effect beyond the classroom: Primer found that, after learning about and planting ingredients that they then used to make simple meals like veggie burgers, students were excited to try new foods and flavors in the lunchroom. One crowd pleaser happened to be totally vegan: a red lentil dal served with coconut rice.
“We have had students tell us that this is the best dish they’ve ever had in school food. To me, I was floored to hear this,” said Primer, who leads student nutrition for the San Luis Coastal district on California’s central coast, meaning she develops and ultimately decides on what goes on all school food menus. “It really builds respect into our food system. So not only are they more inclined to eat it, they’re also less inclined to waste it. They’re more inclined to eat all of it.”
Primer’s summer program, which the district is now considering making a permanent part of the school calendar, was not intended to inspire students to embrace plant-based cooking. But that was one of the things that happened — and it’s happening in different forms across California.
A recent report shows that the number of schools in California serving vegan meals has skyrocketed over the past five years. Although experts say this growth is partly a reflection of demand from students and parents, they also credit several California state programs that are helping school districts access more local produce and prepare fresh, plant-based meals on-site.
Growing meat for human consumption takes a tremendous toll on both the climate and the environment; the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that livestock production contributes 12 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. Specifically, cattle and other ruminants are a huge source of methane. Animal agriculture is also extremely resource-intensive, using up tremendous amounts of water and land. Reducing the global demand for meat and dairy, especially in high-income countries, is an effective way to lower greenhouse gas emissions and mitigate the rate of global warming.
The climate benefits of eating less meat are one reason that school districts across the country have introduced more vegetarian — and to a lesser degree, vegan — lunch options. In 2009, Baltimore City Public Schools removed meat from its school lunch menus on Mondays, part of the Meatless Mondays campaign. A decade later, New York City Public Schools, the nation’s largest school district, did the same. In recent years, vegan initiatives have built upon the success of Meatless Mondays, like Mayor Eric Adams’ “Plant-Powered Fridays” program in New York City.
But California, the state that first put vegetarianism on the map in the early 20th century, has been leading the country on plant-based school lunch. “California is always ahead of the curve, and we’ve been eating plant-based or plant-forward for many years — this is not a new concept in our state,” said Primer. A recent report from the environmental nonprofit Friends of the Earth found that among California’s 25 largest school districts, more than half — 56 percent — of middle and high school menus now have daily vegan options, a significant jump compared to 36 percent in 2019. Meanwhile, the percentage of elementary districts offering weekly vegan options increased from 16 percent to 60 percent over the last five years.
Student nutrition directors like Primer say the foundation that allows schools to experiment with new recipes is California’s universal free lunch program. She notes that, when school lunch is free, students are more likely to actually try and enjoy it: “Free food plus good food equals a participation meal increase every time.”
Nora Stewart, the author of the Friends of the Earth report, says the recent increase in vegan school lunch options has also been in response to a growing demand for less meat and dairy in cafeterias from climate-conscious students. “We’re seeing a lot of interest from students and parents to have more plant-based [meals] as a way to really help curb greenhouse gas emissions,” she said. A majority of Gen Zers — 79 percent — say they would eat meatless at least once or twice a week, according to research conducted by Aramark, a company provides food services to school districts and universities, among other clients. And the food-service company that recently introduced an all-vegetarian menu in the San Francisco Unified School District credits students with having “led the way” in asking for less meat in their cafeterias. The menu includes four vegan options: an edamame teriyaki bowl, a bean burrito bowl, a taco bowl with a pea-based meat alternative, and marinara pasta.
Stewart theorizes that school nutrition directors are also increasingly aware of other benefits to serving vegan meals. “A lot of school districts are recognizing that they can integrate more culturally diverse options with more plant-based meals,” said Stewart. In the last five years, the nonprofit found, California school districts have added 41 new vegan dishes to their menus, including chana masala bowls, vegan tamales, and falafel wraps. Dairy-free meals also benefit lactose-intolerant students, who are more likely to be students of color.
Still, vegan meals are hardly the default in California cafeterias, and in many places, they’re unheard of. Out of the 25 largest school districts in the state, only three elementary districts offer daily vegan options, the same number as did in 2019. According to Friends of the Earth, a fourth of the California school districts they reviewed offer no plant-based meal options; in another fourth, the only vegan option for students is a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. “I was surprised to see that,” said Stewart.
Making school lunches without animal products isn’t just a question of ingredients. It’s also a question of knowledge and resources — and the California legislature has created a number of programs in recent years that aim to get those tools to schools that need them.
In 2022, the state put $600 million toward its Kitchen Infrastructure and Training Funds program, which offers funding to schools to upgrade their kitchen equipment and train staff. This kind of leveling up allows kitchen staff to better incorporate “scratch cooking” — essentially, preparing meals on-site from fresh ingredients — into their operations. (The standard in school lunch sometimes is jokingly referred to as “cooking with a box cutter,” as in heating up and serving premade meals that come delivered in a box.) Another state program, the $100 million School Food Best Practices Funds, gives schools money to purchase more locally grown food. And the Farm to School incubator grant program has awarded about $86 million since 2021 to allow schools to develop programming focused on climate-smart or organic agriculture.
Although only the School Food Best Practices program explicitly incentivizes schools to choose plant-based foods, Stewart credits all of them with helping schools increase their vegan options. Primer said the Farm to School program — which provided the funding to develop her school district’s farming curriculum in its first two years — has driven new recipe development and testing.
All three state programs are set to run out of money by the end of the 2024-2025 school year. Nick Anicich is the program manager for Farm to School, which is run out of the state Office of Farm to Fork. (“That’s a real thing that exists in California,” he likes to say.) He says when state benefits expire, it’s up to schools to see how to further advance the things they’ve learned. “We’ll see how schools continue to innovate and implement these initiatives with their other resources,” said Anicich. Stewart says California has set “a powerful example” by bettering the quality and sustainability of its school lunch, “showing what’s possible nationwide.”
One takeaway Primer has had from the program is to reframe food that’s better for the planet as an expansive experience, one with more flavor and more depth, rather than a restrictive one — one without meat. Both ideas can be true, but one seems to get more students excited.
“That has been a really important focus for us. We want [to serve] food that is just so good, everybody wants to eat it,” Primer said. “Whether or not it has meat in it is almost secondary.”
Read coverage of this story in Chinese here and here
Concerns are once more being raised about anti-Japanese hate in China following the killing of a 10-year-old Japanese boy in the southern city of Shenzhen last month, with the country’s foreign ministry forced to deny that the government teaches its citizens to hate Japan.
In the wake of the tragedy, social media footage of people in China trampling on the Japanese flag has further highlighted the national mood.
Anti-Japanese feeling has long been a key weapon in the armory of China’s nationalistic “little pinks,” a hardy staple of Chinese television and cinema and a handy form of clickbait for anyone seeking to boost social media traffic, commentators told Radio Free Asia in recent interviews.
The online hate seems to be having an impact on the ground. The Shenzhen killing wasn’t the first attack this year – a Chinese woman died and a Japanese mother and child were injured in a knife attack in the eastern city of Suzhou in June.
In March, social media users took aim at Chinese bottled water manufacturer Nongfu Spring over the allegedly Japanese references on its product labels, while last year’s release of treated radioactive wastewater by the crippled Fukushima nuclear plant into the surrounding ocean launched a wave of nuisance phone calls to Japan.
And yet recent government figures from Japan show a sharp rise in Chinese nationals coming to the country for tourism and study, belying the nationalist tropes that are daily occurrences on WeChat, Weibo and Douyin.
Popular tourist destination
A survey by Tokyo-based Intersect Communications last month interviewed 556 Chinese respondents aged 10 to 60 years old via a WeChat poll, and found that 53.1% said Japan would be their first choice of tourism destination over the Oct. 1 National Day holiday period.
Meanwhile, data from the Japan National Tourism Organization recently revealed that the Chinese make up the largest proportion of foreign tourists visiting Japan, with 745,800 visits in August 2024 alone.
A resident of the eastern province of Anhui who gave only the surname Wu for fear of reprisals said a large proportion of anti-Japanese comments online are left by a relatively small group of people keen to show their nationalistic credentials, for a variety of reasons.
Everyone else is actually pretty keen to go to Japan and shop for appliances, food and clothing.
“Japanese products have always been popular in the Chinese market, especially electronics, mobile phones, and so on,” Wu said. “A lot of businessmen and politicians know this very well.”
A resident of the eastern province of Jiangsu who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals said plenty of people shout nationalistic slogans online, but their personal feelings about a country and its people, and their real-world actions, tell a very different story.
Deflected frustration
Citing the example of Chinese commentator Sima Nan, who has been ridiculed for his anti-American sloganeering while living full-time in the United States, Wang said: “A lot of people are anti-American or anti-Japanese on the surface, but their actual actions run counter to their words — for example, they might send their kids to study in the United States.”
He said much of the criticism of foreign governments is a form of deflected frustration over the fact that they’re not allowed to criticize their own.
“Criticizing foreign governments is safer, and some people make a living out of it,” Wang said, in a reference to nationalistic influencers, some of whom pick on Japanese people on the streets of China and ask them aggressive questions about their country’s historical abuses of Chinese people.
“Patriotism is a kind of clickbait, particularly in the context of online sales,” he said.
Yet it’s not just tourism and shopping trips that are drawing Chinese people to Japan.
A survey by the Japan Student Services Organization last year found that there were around 115,000 young Chinese people studying in Japan in May 2023, a rise of 11% on the same period the year before, according to Chinese blog Japan Story.
It quoted a veteran journalist as saying: “10 years ago, there were less than 100 Chinese high school students in Japan, and now that number has increased tenfold … some Japanese high schools have started actively recruiting Chinese students to come study here.”
Government deliberately spreading ideas
A teacher from the northern province of Shanxi who gave only the surname Wang for fear of reprisals said many of her friends send their kids to Japan to study, to get them used to life outside of China before sending them to overseas universities.
“Japan’s much easier to get to than the United States, and the cultural and economic costs are less,” she said. “There’s also a … high-quality education system with good welfare.”
“What these people who claim to hate Japan don’t realize is that it’s the [Chinese] government that is deliberately spreading these ideas,” Wang said.
Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Lin Jian denied that his government encourages anti-Japanese sentiment, when asked by Japan’s NHK on Sept. 24.
“On what you referred to as “anti-Japan” comments, let me just say that China does not teach its people to hate Japan,” Lin told a regular news briefing in Beijing.
“After the attack near the Shenzhen Japanese School, many Chinese laid flowers outside the school to mourn the boy. They expressed opposition to violence and called for ever-lasting friendship between the Chinese and Japanese people,” he said.
Lin said Beijing sees history as not about perpetuating hatred but about “cherishing the hard-won peace and creating a bright future.”
But Yang Haiying, a professor at Shizuoka University in Japan, said Lin’s remarks were disingenuous.
“This is national policy [in China], because without anti-Japanese sentiment, the Chinese Communist Party loses its legitimacy,” Yang told RFA Mandarin in a recent interview.
“China has whipped up anti-Japanese sentiment to a very high level, but now it can’t control it,” he said.
Japanese journalist Fukuzawa Takashi agreed.
“For the Chinese government to maintain stability, it must have access to two emotional ATMs,” Fukuzawa said, adding that online influencers have picked up on nationalism as a permitted way to generate online outrage and discussion, boosting traffic.
This has created the impression, through repeated brainwashing, that it’s wrong not to be anti-Japanese in China, he said.
“Over time, this so-called anti-Japanese sentiment becomes deeply implanted in their heads, so that when a person is having financial difficulties, or is depressed and frustrated with other areas of their life, the Japanese are the best target for them to vent,” Fukuzawa said. “And they become a hero in the process.”
Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Luisetta Mudie and Paul Eckert.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Qian Lang and Huang Chun-mei for RFA Mandarin.
Vietnam has denounced what it called the brutal behavior of Chinese law enforcement personnel who it said beat and injured Vietnamese fishermen on a boat intercepted near the Paracel Islands.
Vietnamese media said the Chinese attackers boarded the fishing boat near an atoll in the Paracel Islands in the South China Sea on Sunday and beat the crew with iron bars, seriously injuring four of them. They told Vietnamese authorities the men smashed the boat’s equipment and took away its catch.
China denied the accusations saying “on-site operations were professional and restrained, and no injuries were found.”
Both countries, as well as Taiwan, claim the islands but China occupies them entirely.
What are the Paracel Islands?
Known as Xisha in China and Hoang Sa in Vietnam, the archipelago consists of some 130 reefs and small coral islands, 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of central Vietnam and 350 km (220 miles) southeast of China’s Hainan island. They are 760 km (472 miles) north of the Spratly Islands, the other main disputed archipelago in the South China Sea.
The South China Sea is a strategically important shipping route with an estimated US$3.4 trillion worth of trade cruising through its waters every year.
The Paracels are believed to sit on top of large reserves of natural gas and oil though the extent is not known, as there has been little exploration of the area, partly due to territorial disputes over the islands.
The archipelago is surrounded by rich fishing grounds that generations of Chinese and Vietnamese fishermen have worked.
History of the Paracel Islands
Both Vietnam and China say that the Paracels are mentioned in their ancient texts. The name Paracel, however, was adopted in the 16th century after Portuguese explorers named the islands “Ilhas do Pracel”. “Pracel”, or parcel, is a Portuguese term used by navigators to refer to a submerged bank or reef.
France claimed the archipelago as part of the French Indochinese Union in the 19th century and put it under the same colonial administration as Vietnam’s southern mainland, known at the time as Cochinchina. The Chinese nationalist Kuomintang, now one of the main political parties in Taiwan, claimed the Paracels as territory of the Republic of China in January 1921.
Japanese forces occupied the archipelago between 1939 and 1945. Disputes over the islands continued in later years between the governments of the then South Vietnam, which annexed some reefs, and the People’s Republic of China.
On Jan. 19, 1974, Chinese troops attacked and defeated South Vietnamese forces deployed on the islands, killing 74 South Vietnamese sailors and soldiers in the so-called Battle of the Paracel Islands. Chinese troops then occupied the whole archipelago.
China’s construction
In 2012, China established Sansha City, headquartered on Woody Island, the largest Paracel island, which China callsYongxing. The administrative headquarters is in charge of all of the features China claims in the South China Sea, including the Paracels and the Spratlys to the south.
According to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative think tank, China has at least 20 outposts in the Paracels. Three of them have harbors capable of handling large numbers of naval and civilian vessels and five have helipads. China opened the civil-military Sansha Yongxing Airport in 2014.
Woody Island has been developed into a complete urban hub protected by HQ-9 surface-to-air missile batteries. It is home to a growing civilian population of at least 2,300.
Upgrades of island facilities have included a kindergarten and primary school in 2015. The island also has a courthouse, a cinema, banks, hospitals, post offices and a stadium, according to a report in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post in May 2023.
Vietnam’s claim
Vietnam has not abandoned its claim over the Paracel islands, which it officially classifies as a district of Danang City, called the Hoang Sa District, established in 1997.
In its complaint about China’s treatment of the fishing crew, Vietnam’s foreign ministry referred to the islands as Vietnamese.
“Vietnam is extremely concerned, indignant and resolutely protests the brutal treatment by Chinese law enforcement forces of Vietnamese fishermen and fishing boats operating in the Hoang Sa archipelago of Vietnam,” foreign ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang said in a statement on Oct. 2.
Confrontations
In one of the most serious escalations of the dispute between Hanoi and Beijing over the archipelago, in May 2014 China moved an oil-drilling platform into waters near the Paracels, leading to a three-month standoff. The crisis triggered an unprecedented wave of anti-China protests in Vietnam, until China withdrew the oil rig a month earlier than scheduled.
Fishing crews from central Vietnam operate around the Chinese-occupied reefs and are often subjected to harassment by Chinese maritime militia and law enforcement personnel, fishermen say.
In 2020, a Chinese maritime surveillance vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat. Vietnam lodged an official protest, saying: “The Chinese vessel committed an act that violated Vietnam’s sovereignty over the Hoang Sa archipelago and threatened the lives and damaged the property and legitimate interests of Vietnamese fishermen.”
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Luna Pham for RFA.
The 2014 Umbrella Movement was a 79-day pro-democracy civil disobedience campaign in Hong Kong. The protesters, many of whom were teenagers and university students, used umbrellas as protection from police pepper spray and tear gas, giving the movement its nickname.
Key figures in the movement continued to advocate for democracy in Hong Kong long after the initial protests ended. Here’s what they’re doing now.
NATHAN LAW
Then: Student leader during Umbrella Movement
Now: London-based activist
After 2014
Became leader of Hong Kong Federation of Students in 2015.
Co-founded the pro-democracy Demosisto party in 2016 and was elected to the Legislative Council of Hong Kong but disqualified by the courts.
Eventually jailed in connection with his role in the Umbrella Movement.
Left Hong Kong after the passage of the National Security Law in 2020. He surfaced in London, where he was granted political asylum.
Hong Kong police have issued an arrest warrant for him and revoked his passport.
ALEX CHOW
Then: A main organizer of the Occupy Central campaign. Leader of the Hong Kong Federation of Students. Organizer and speaker during Umbrella Movement
Now: U.S.-based activist
After 2014
Eventually jailed in connection with his role in the movement.
Left Hong Kong about six months after the National Security Law was passed.
Studied in London and California, where he received a doctoral degree.
Has served as board chairman of the U.S.-based Hong Kong Democracy Council and is a current board member. He also is a founding member and advisor for Flow Hong Kong, a magazine for the city’s diaspora.
JOSHUA WONG
Then: Convenor and founder of the Hong Kong student activist group Scholarism
Now: In prison
After 2014
Co-founder of Demosisto, a former pro-democracy youth activist group that disbanded in June 2020.
Barred from running for office.
Jailed in connection with his role in the movement and after his release has been jailed multiple times.
AGNES CHOW
Then: Founding member of Demosisto and former spokesperson of Scholarism.
Now: In exile in Canada
After 2014
Ran for Legislative Council but was blocked by authorities.
Arrested and jailed for her role in the 2019-20 protests.
After serving her first sentence, she was rearrested under the national security law on suspicion of “collusion with foreign forces,” then released on bail pending investigation, and subjected to a travel ban.
Forced to go on a patriotic “study trip” to mainland China. Allowed to study in Canada on condition she return to Hong Kong by the end of 2023. She later announced she was going into exile there.
Hong Kong police have listed her as a wanted person and warned they will “pursue her for life.”
BENNY TAI
Then: Occupy Central movement co-founder. University of Hong Kong law professor
Now: In prison
After 2014
Involved in plans to get pro-democracy legislators elected in Hong Kong.
One of 47 democracy advocates charged with conspiracy to commit subversion in 2021 for their involvement in an unofficial primary. Pleaded guilty and is seeking a lighter sentence.
REV. CHU YIU-MING
Then: Occupy Central co-founder
Now: In exile in Taiwan
After 2014
Convicted in April 2019 for crimes related to his role in the Umbrella protests and received a suspended sentence.
In 2023, published a memoir, “Confessions of a Bell Toller,” on his life helping the needy and battling authoritarian rule.
CHAN KIN-MAN
Then: Occupy Central co-founder. Sociology professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong
Now: Researcher at Academia Sinica focusing on the Umbrella Movement
After 2014
Forced out of Chinese University of Hong Kong
Jailed for 16 months for his role in the Umbrella Movement and released in 2020.
Leaves city to teach at a university in Taiwan in 2021
Gives final lecture in Taiwan in June 2024.
LESTER SHUM
Then: Deputy leader of Hong Kong Federation of Students
Now: In prison
After 2014
Elected to Hong Kong District Council in 2019.
Ran for Legislative Council in 2020 but the government invalidated his nomination.
Sentenced in 2021, for participating in an unlawful assembly in 2020.
One of 47 democracy advocates charged with conspiracy to commit subversion in 2021 for their involvement in an unofficial primary. Pleaded guilty.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by Written by Paul Nelson, Graphics by Amanda Weisbrod.
The Israeli military is reportedly preparing to invade Lebanon while continuing to launch extensive airstrikes across the country, forcing tens of thousands to flee. Lebanon’s Health Ministry reports the death toll has reached at least 569 people, with more than 1,800 wounded. Israeli strikes have killed United Nations employees, medical workers, at least one journalist and 50 children over the past two days. Meanwhile, Hezbollah launched dozens of rockets at Israel, including a long-range missile fired toward Tel Aviv that was intercepted by Israeli air defense systems. “Lebanese civilians are paying the price,” says Aya Majzoub in Beirut, Amnesty International’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, who calls Israel’s attacks “unprecedented” and “devastating.” “In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed. … It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars.”
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
North Koreans are growing weary of being bombarded by “Friendly Father,” an upbeat propaganda song praising leader Kim Jong Un that has been blanketing the country for months now, sources in the country tell Radio Free Asia.
People are forced to sing it before every public event and a loudspeaker car drives through cities blaring it, said a resident of Ryanggang province in the north on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“He is holding his 10 million children in his arms and taking care of us with all his heart,” go the lyrics.
“The love you give me is like the sea. The trust you give me is like the sky,” says verse two. “You are always by our side, and make all our wishes come true.”
The Ryanggang resident said that he has heard the song every day since it was introduced in April, except for a three-day break in early May due to the death of a high-ranking official.
“Every factory, company, school, work unit, and neighborhood-watch unit in the province has both children and adults sing this song whenever the opportunity arises.” he said.
Music video
The government created a high-quality music video for the song depicting people from all walks of life enthusiastically singing along to it.
Friendly Father was inspired by an earlier propaganda song called “Friendly Name” that sung the praises of Kim’s father and predecessor Kim Jong Il. The melody is different but many of the lyrics in “Friendly Father” are callbacks to the earlier song, which most North Koreans know by heart.
The order to promote the song comes from the Central Party of the ruling Korean Workers’ Party, the Ryanggang resident said.
It’s gotten to the point where people actively avoid places where the song is played publicly if they can help it, he said.
Deserted park
For example, in the city of Hyesan, on the border with China, there is a park where retired people gather to spend their free time by talking, singing, dancing, playing games or exercising.
But when the park turned off their music and began playing “Friendly Father” over the park’s public address system, the senior citizens went home, according to the resident.
“The manager forced them to stop dancing to a folk song but to dance in praise of the marshal instead,” he said, referring to Kim by his military rank.
“The elderly people stopped dancing and began to return home. The song … rang out in the empty park where everyone had left one by one … until it was deserted.”
The park, which used to teem with old folks from sunrise to sunset, is now empty almost every day, he said.
Respect thy elder
Another problem with the song stems from Korea’s Confucian culture.
Often complete strangers are expected to grant older people a certain amount of respect simply because they are older, with the promise that they will receive the same respect from the young when they reach the same age.
However, “people in their 70s and 80s are being forced to call Kim Jong Un, who is only in his 40s and is about the same age as their sons, their ‘friendly father,’” the resident said.
The government’s push of “Friendly Father” is even more aggressive than its efforts to promote songs from the reigns of Kim Jong Un’s father and grandfather, a resident of the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA who also asked not to be identified.
“Back then, their songs were sometimes played on broadcasting cars, but they did not make people sing at the start of every learning session or lecture session, nor was it forced upon the elderly, as they are doing right now,” he said.
People scoff at the notion that Kim Jong Un could be their “friendly father,” because they do not trust his leadership abilities, the second resident said.
“They have no hope in their leader, but they are forced to familiarize their eyes, ears, and mouths with the image of him as their friendly father through the song,” he said.
It seems that the propaganda efforts are getting bigger and louder as people’s dissatisfaction with society increases, he said.
Translated by Claire S. Lee and Leejin J. Chung. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.
As Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and running mate JD Vance continue to spread debunked, racist lies that Haitians living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets, we speak with Guerline Jozef from the Haitian Bridge Alliance, an immigrant advocacy group, about threats of violence that have forced closures and evacuations at hospitals, colleges and City Hall in Springfield, with some threats citing anger over the city’s resettlement of Haitian immigrants. This comes as Trump continues to promise mass deportations if he is reelected, starting in Springfield, even though the Haitians there were welcomed under the Temporary Protected Status program.
This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.
In recent years, Thailand and China have seen growing ties, particularly through the ambitious trans-continental railway project. This initiative, designed to connect the Indochina Peninsula to the Malacca Strait, promises substantial economic benefits for both countries, especially by boosting tourism and enhancing regional connectivity.
However, the strategic implications of the railway project have caused alarm in Thailand, where memories of the World War II-era Death Railway stir anxieties about potential military use. Some fear that China could leverage this infrastructure in a future conflict with the U.S. and its Asian allies, transforming it from an economic asset into a tool of geopolitical strategy.
What is the situation?
Since a 2014 military coup, Thailand has increasingly shifted its political and economic alignment toward China.
Once a key non-NATO ally of the U.S., Thailand has grown more dependent on Chinese-made weaponry, including tanks and submarines, while adopting a power-balancing strategy in its foreign relations.
The coup, led by former army chief Prayuth Chan-o-cha, strained Thailand’s nearly two-century-old ties with the U.S., pushing the kingdom closer to China both economically and politically.
The current civilian government, which succeeded Prayuth, has also embraced a pro-China stance, marking a significant departure from Thailand’s historical alignment with the U.S.
But the deepening ties with China have created economic challenges, as Chinese goods – from produce to electric vehicles – flood Thai markets, increasing the trade deficit.
In 2023, bilateral trade between Thailand and China reached US$118.7 billion, leaving Thailand with a $28.1 billion deficit for the year. By mid-2024, the deficit surged nearly 15% year-on-year to $20 billion, driven by a 7.12% rise in Chinese imports. While the U.S. remains Thailand’s largest export market, Chinese imports dominate the domestic market, with Chinese e-commerce platforms providing direct access to consumers at lower prices.
This influx of Chinese goods has severely impacted Thailand’s small and medium-sized enterprises. Nearly 700 factories shut down in the first half of 2024, 86% more than the same period a year earlier, as domestic industries struggle to compete with cheaper Chinese products, according to the Joint Standing Committee on Commerce, Industry and Banking.
What is the main concern?
The economic benefits of infrastructure projects like the high-speed railway are evident but historical fears of external dominance linger, especially in light of events during World War II.
During the war, more than 90,000 Asian civilians and 16,000 Western prisoners of war perished from hard labor, starvation, and disease while being forced to build the Imperial Japanese “Death Railway.” This strategic railway, constructed by Japan in 1942, connected Ratchaburi in Thailand to Myanmar, despite allied bombings.
At the time, Thailand, then Siam, employed a “Bend With The Wind” strategy to avoid direct colonization, but was ultimately compelled to join forces with Japan under unequal terms – a brief but painful period of domination.
When Japan launched an amphibious assault on Thailand in 1941, just a day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, Thai forces resisted for only a few hours before conceding to Japanese demands. Despite this, Thailand’s ambassador to the U.S. delayed delivering a declaration of war, sparing the country from post-war repercussions once Japan surrendered.
Today, experts like Panitan Wattanayagorn caution that history could repeat itself.
“In wartime, the Belt and Road Initiative and other key infrastructure in Asia will be prime targets for superpowers, particularly the United States and its allies,” said Panitan, a former security adviser to the Prayuth administration.
Should conflict arise between China and the U.S., Thailand may be forced to pick sides and defend its infrastructure, potentially siding with China to protect Belt and Road projects, said Panitan, adding in such a scenario, the high-speed railway and other Chinese investments could be repurposed for military use, drawing Thailand deeper into geopolitical tensions.
How should Thailand respond?
Experts stress that Thailand should be “fully aware” of China’s military projection in Southeast Asia in order to navigate strategic entanglements.
Dulyapak Preecharush, an associate professor of Asian Studies at Thammasat University in Bangkok, said last month that China’s military projection would include Cambodia’s military buildup and its support of the narcotics-dependent ethnic Wa militia force in northeast Myanmar.
Cambodia and Thailand have also yet to solve a maritime border dispute in a gas-rich part of the Gulf of Thailand, and Cambodia’s claim to Koh Kood, a tourist resort island off southeast Thailand, could become a flash point.
Thailand had to weigh its big-power options carefully, Dulyapak said.
“We have to discuss with China more and more if we don’t have a policy to accommodate India and the U.S. to balance China,” he said.
“But if we lean toward the U.S. and other superpowers we have to calculate the consequences.”
Thailand’s newly appointed prime minister, Paetongtarn Shinawatra, last week told parliament that she would turn the tide on trade while maintaining a peaceful foreign policy.
“The government will support and protect the interests of SMEs from foreign unfair trade practices, especially from online platforms,” she said.
She promised to promote “consistent and clear policy, working with countries to actively promote peace and common prosperity.”
She also vowed to tackle online scam centers, operated by Chinese investors, which are proliferating in Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.
Edited by Taejun Kang and Mike Firn.
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By RFA and BenarNews Staff.
Some 20,000 Rohingya have entered Bangladesh in the last three months as they flee worsening conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, with some new arrivals taking shelter in rented houses outside U.N.-administered camps, refugees and local officials say.
The uptick comes with Bangladesh enmeshed in political turmoil and amid worsening violence in Rakhine, which lies just across its southeastern border. Arakan Army insurgents have been waging a fierce campaign to wrest control of the state from Myanmar’s military government.
“There is a terrible situation in Rakhine. There is no condition to stay there. No food, no shelter, no treatment for sick people,” said Mohammed Feroz Kamal, who arrived last week from Rakhine’s Maungdaw district.
“Drone attacks are being carried out, especially on the people who have gathered to flee to the border in that country,” he told BenarNews. “Hundreds of people are dying. ”I saw many dead bodies on the way.”
Rohingya community leader Mohammed Jubair, chairman of the Arakan Rohingya Society for Peace and Humanity, said at least 20,000 people had crossed into Bangladesh during the past three months.
But a Bangladeshi official put the number at around 16,000.
“They used the poor law-and-order situation as an advantage,” Refugee Relief and Repatriation Commissioner Mohammed Mizanur Rahman told BenarNews, referring to the chaotic and lawless atmosphere in Bangladesh before and after the Sheikh Hasina government fell in early August.
Earlier this week, in the face of new cross-border arrivals, Bangladesh transitional government head Muhammad Yunus called on the international community to speed up efforts to resettle Rohingya refugees in third countries.
The “resettlement process should be easy, regular and smooth,” Yunus said during a meeting on Sept. 8 with the International Organisation for Migration, Reutersreported.
The interim administration headed by Yunus, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and pioneer of microcredit loans, has been struggling to maintain law and order since Hasina resigned and fled the country amid student-led, anti-government protests.
This week, a BenarNews correspondent visited several villages, including the municipal town of Teknaf, which lies along the border with Myanmar.
According to local officials, Rohingyas are crossing the frontier into Bangladesh every day.
“Border Guard Bangladesh and Bangladesh Coast Guard are working to prevent Rohingyas at the border,” Mohammed Adnan Chowdhury, executive officer of Teknaf Upazila sub-district, told BenarNews. “However, some Rohingyas are entering the border in the middle of the night. Many of them are renting houses in the main towns of the city and entering the villages.”
He and others described how the recent influx differed from those in the past, including in 2017 when some 740,000 Rohingya fled into Bangladesh’s Cox’s Bazar district over a period of months.
Rented digs
Most of the new arrivals are businessmen or from relatively well-to-do families in Maungdaw district, Rohingya community leaders said.
Feroz, who paid a broker 50,000 Bangladeshi taka (US$418) to enter Bangladesh, is now spending 4,000 taka (US$33) per month to stay in a six-room, tin-roofed house in Teknaf alongside two other Rohingya families already living there.
Another Rohingya, Nur Shahed, is staying in an apartment with another Rohingya family in Teknaf’s Shilbania neighborhood
He said he had intended to take his family to the Kutupalong refugee camp, but there was no more space.
“So many people like me have taken shelter here in villages and in rented houses,” he told BenarNews.
Immigration expert C.R. Abrar, a professor at Dhaka University, underlined that regardless of their income status, the new arrivals were being forced to come to Bangladesh to save their lives.
“Therefore, they should not be treated as criminals under any circumstances; they should be given facilities and security as refugees,” he said, noting that Bangladesh — with its huge refugee population — should pass laws on how to treat them, and participate in related international agreements.
“Those who are outside the refugee camps are in a more vulnerable situation than those inside the camps,” he said. “They are likely to face various forms of harassment and violence. Therefore, they should be taken to the camps, from a humanitarian point of view, as the primary task.”
BenarNews is an RFA-affiliated online news organization.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Abdur Rahman and Ahammad Foyez for BenarNews.
Russian President Vladimir Putin looks up to Kim Jong Un with the utmost admiration and respect, North Koreans were told at this week’s mandatory lectures at neighborhood watch unit meetings, two residents told Radio Free Asia.
The weekly lectures – at which a local party official reads lecture materials received from the central government – are intended to reinforce loyalty to the country’s leadership and Kim’s cult of personality.
“This week’s lecture session informed the residents of the Russian president’s boundless admiration for their leader, Kim Jong Un,” a resident from the northeastern province of North Hamgyong told RFA Korean on condition of anonymity for security reasons.
“It was intended to promote the high international standing of the marshall,” a reference to Kim, he said.
Russia has been cozying up to North Korea since Putin ordered the invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. While many in the international community are hesitant to engage with Russia while the war rages on, North Korea has been more than willing to trade with Russia and publicly declare support for the war.
The United States has accused Russia of using North Korean weapons in Ukraine, which North Korea and Russia deny.
Putin and Kim met in the Russian Far East in September 2023, and again in Pyongyang in June 2024.
As evidence of Putin’s admiration for Kim, the lecture listed several examples.
One was that Putin, who is notoriously late for nearly all his meetings with other global leaders, was 30 minutes early for his meeting with Kim in Vladivostok in April 2019, the resident said.
“Whenever President Putin meets with world leaders, he is late because he looks down on other countries and has a unique sense of superiority,” he said. “But when it comes to The Marshal, he expresses it as admiration.”
However, the lecture didn’t mention Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June, when he arrived several hours later than planned, turning what should have been a two-day state visit into a quick one-day stop.
Luxury car
Another example in the lecture was Putin’s gift of a Russian-made luxury sedan to Kim, a resident of the northern province of Ryanggang told RFA on condition of anonymity to speak freely.
But this generated “a cold atmosphere” in the lecture hall, the second resident said.
“Some residents [privately] protested, saying, ‘If I were the head of the country, I would have asked for food, which the country desperately needs instead of a car,’” he said.
The apparent point of the lecture was to instill in the public the idea that Russia is being respectful to North Korea – and that other world leaders also yearn to meet Kim, he said.
This wasn’t very convincing to most listeners, he said.
“Residents who can’t even eat one full meal don’t listen to the government’s propaganda,” he said.
North Korean authorities also held lectures on similar topics for residents in the early 2000s when they were receiving aid such as rice and fertilizer from South Korea and the international community.
Park Ju Hee, an escapee from Musan, North Hamgyong province, said that aid coming from Western countries at the time was because of the “bold strategy and outstanding leadership” of then leader Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father.
Translated by Claire S. Lee. Edited by Eugene Whong and Malcolm Foster.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Kim Jieun for RFA Korean.
A decision by Hong Kong’s top court in August to uphold the convictions of seven of Hong Kong’s most prominent pro-democracy activists, including newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai, has not only raised fears for freedom of the press but also questions about the role of foreign judges.
One of the quirk’s of Hong Kong’s system negotiated when Britain handed it back to China in 1997 was foreign judges in the judiciary. They have long been upheld as a testament to the commitment to the rule of law.
But criticism is growing that they legitimize an administration that fails to uphold values of political freedom and freedom of expression.
Chris Patten, the last British governor of Hong Kong, made a pointed remark after the Hong Kong court’s August ruling, describing the verdict as one that “revealed the rapidly deteriorating state of the rule of law in Hong Kong.”
“This unjust verdict is further compounded by the involvement of Lord Neuberger, a former head of Britain’s Supreme Court, in this decision,” he said.
David Neuberger is a British judge who served as the president of the British Supreme Court from 2012 to 2017. After his retirement, Neuberger participated in Hong Kong’s judicial system as part of the Court of Final Appeal, or CFA, which has the power of final adjudication and the ability to invite judges from other common law jurisdictions to join the court when necessary.
He said in August his role as a judge in Hong Kong was to decide cases that come before him according to the law.
Why does Neuberger sit at the CFA?
Hong Kong’s CFA was established on July 1, 1997, as part of the city’s legal framework under the Basic Law, which serves as its mini-constitution.
The CFA replaced the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council in London as Hong Kong’s highest court after the end of British colonial rule.
The Basic Law set out the city’s judicial system, which includes the CFA, the High Court, District Court, magistrates’ courts, and other specialized courts. It also ensured that Hong Kong’s common law system would continue.
Cases in the CFA are heard by the chief justice, three permanent judges chosen by the chief justice, and a non-permanent judge who can be from Hong Kong or another common law jurisdiction. They are also selected by the chief justice.
Under the Hong Kong Court of Final Appeal Ordinance, an overseas non-permanent judge must be a judge or a retired judge of a court of unlimited jurisdiction in either civil or criminal matters in another common law jurisdiction. They should also ordinarily reside outside Hong Kong. There are no restrictions on the type of cases an overseas judge may preside over.
Government officials and legal figures in Hong Kong often cite the presence of overseas judges as proof of international confidence in the independence of Hong Kong’s judiciary.
As of Sept. 11, there were seven overseas non-permanent judges at the CFA.
What are the recent debates?
The engagement of overseas judges has come under public scrutiny, particularly after some resignations following the implementation of a Beijing-imposed national security law in June 2020.
The United States, Britain and other countries have criticized the law under which many Hong Kong residents have been prosecuted for dissent and media outlets shut.
Only judges nominated by the city’s chief executive can sit on national security cases but the list of nominees is not made public, media has reported.
The Hong Kong government said that any judge, regardless of nationality, was “eligible for designation” under the national security law, but in the small number of national security law cases that have reached the top court, no overseas judge has sat.
A pro-establishment barrister and government adviser, Ronny Tong, questioned whether the city needed judges who owe their allegiance to other countries. They should not preside over national security cases, particularly if they came from countries “hostile to China or Hong Kong,” he said.
Social media critics question the foreign judges’ “luxurious” lifestyle.
They are flown into Hong Kong on an ad hoc basis, enjoying first class travel and a generous salary for their visits, which typically last 29 days, media critics said.
What are the foreign judges’ positions?
Some of foreign judges who have stepped down since 2020 have questioned their roles under an administration that they say no longer respects basic rights and freedoms.
In 2020, senior Australian judge James Spigelman cited the impact of the National Security Law as he stepped down.
Two years later, U.K. Supreme Court justices Robert Reed and Patrick Hodge resigned following concerns raised by the British government. Other British judges, Jonathan Sumption and Lawrence Collins, resigned in June.
Collins cited the “political situation in Hong Kong” in a brief statement about his departure, while Sumption wrote in the Financial Times that Hong Kong was “slowly becoming a totalitarian state”.
“The rule of law is profoundly compromised in any area about which the government feels strongly,” Sumption said, adding that it was “no longer realistic” to think that the presence of overseas judges could help sustain the rule of law in Hong Kong.
A spokesperson for Hong Kong’s judiciary said in June that its “operation will not be affected by any change in membership of the court”.
Hong Kong’s government rejects any suggestion that the courts are subject to political pressure. It says the national security law, introduced after mass protests in 2019, was necessary to ensure the stability that underpins the financial hub’s prosperity.
Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Taejun Kang for RFA.