World
UN urges Afghanistan’s Taliban to end floggings, executions
A U.N. report on Monday strongly criticized the Taliban for carrying out public executions, lashings and stonings since seizing power in Afghanistan, and called on the country's rulers to halt such practices.
In the past six months alone, 274 men, 58 women and two boys were publicly flogged in Afghanistan, according to a report by the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan, or UNAMA.
“Corporal punishment is a violation of the Convention against Torture and must cease,” said Fiona Frazer, the agency's human rights chief. She also called for an immediate moratorium on executions.
The Taliban foreign ministry said in response that Afghanistan’s laws are determined in accordance with Islamic rules and guidelines, and that an overwhelming majority of Afghans follow those rules.
“In the event of a conflict between international human rights law and Islamic law, the government is obliged to follow the Islamic law,” the ministry said in a statement.
The Taliban began carrying out such punishments shortly after coming to power almost two years ago, despite initial promises of a more moderate rule than during their previous stint in power in the 1990s.
At the same time, they have gradually tightened restrictions on women, barring them from public spaces, such as parks and gyms, in line with their interpretation of Islamic law. The restrictions have triggered an international uproar, increasing the country’s isolation at a time when its economy has collapsed — and worsening a humanitarian crisis.
Monday's report on corporal punishment documents Taliban practices both before and after their return to power in August 2021, when they seized the capital of Kabul as U.S. and NATO forces withdrew after two decades of war.
The first public flogging following the Taliban takeover was reported in October 2021 in the northern Kapisa province, the report said. In that case, a woman and man convicted of adultery were publicly lashed 100 times each in the presence of religious scholars and local Taliban authorities, it said.
In December 2022, Taliban authorities executed an Afghan convicted of murder, the first public execution since they took power the report said.
The execution, carried out with an assault rifle by the victim’s father, took place in the western Farah province before hundreds of spectators and top Taliban officials.
Zabihullah Mujahid, the top government spokesman, said the decision to carry out the punishment was “made very carefully," following approval by three of the country’s highest courts and the Taliban supreme leader, Mullah Hibatullah Akhundzada.
There has been a significant increase in the number and regularity of judicial corporal punishment since November when Mujahid repeated comments by the supreme leader about judges and their use of Islamic law in a tweet, the report said.
Since that tweet, UNAMA documented at least 43 instances of public lashings involving 274 men, 58 women and two boys. A majority of punishments were related to convictions of adultery and “running away from home," the report said. Other purported offenses included theft, homosexuality, consuming alcohol, fraud and drug trafficking.
In a video message, Abdul Malik Haqqani, the Taliban’s appointed deputy chief justice, said last week that the Taliban’s Supreme Court has issued 175 so-called retribution verdicts since taking power, including 79 floggings and 37 stonings.
Such verdicts establish the right of a purported victim, or relative of a victim of a crime to punish or forgive the perpetrator. Haqqani said the Taliban leadership is committed to carrying out such sentences.
After their initial overthrow in the U.S. invasion of 2001, the Taliban continued to carry out corporal punishment and executions in areas under their control while waging an insurgency against the U.S.-backed former Afghan government, the report said.
UNAMA documented at least 182 instances when the Taliban carried out their own sentences during the height of their insurgency between 2010 and August 2021, resulting in 213 deaths and 64 injuries.
Many Muslim-majority countries draw on Islamic law, but the Taliban interpretation is an outlier.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called a Taliban ban on women working an unacceptable violation of Afghan human rights.
On April 5, Afghanistan's Taliban rulers informed the United Nations that Afghan women employed with the U.N. mission could no longer report for work. Aid agencies have warned that the ban on women working will impact their ability to deliver urgent humanitarian help in Afghanistan.
The Taliban previously banned girls from going to school beyond the sixth grade and women from most public life and work. In December, they banned Afghan women from working at local and non-governmental groups — a measure that at the time did not extend to U.N. offices.
Under the first Taliban regime from 1996 to 2001, public corporal punishment and executions were carried out by officials against individuals convicted of crimes, often in large venues such as sports stadiums and at urban intersections.
Global Covid-19 cases near 688 million
The overall number of global Covid-19 cases is gradually nearing 688 million.
According to the latest global data, the total Covid-19 case count is 687,803,066, while the death toll reached 6,871,031 this morning.
The US has reported 106,768,296 Covid-19 cases so far, while 1,162,431 people have died from the virus in the country — both highest counts globally.
India on Sunday logged 2,380 new cases of Covid-19, bringing down the active cases to 27,212 from 30,041 a day before.
READ: WHO downgrades COVID pandemic, says it's no longer emergency
According to the global data, the Covid-19 case tally was recorded at 44,969,630.
France and Germany have registered 40,021,190 and 38,411,062 Covid-19 cases so far, occupying the third and fourth positions in the world number-wise, and 166,811 and 173,375 people have died in the European countries, as per Worldometer.
READ: WHO fires scientist who led COVID search over sex misconduct
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation (WHO) on Friday announced that the Covid-19 pandemic was no longer a global health emergency. Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, Director-General of WHO, made the announcement while addressing a media briefing on Covid-19 and global health issues.
Covid-19 situation in Bangladesh
Bangladesh reported 23 more Covid-19 cases in 24 hours till Sunday morning.
With the new numbers, the country's total caseload rose to 2,038,338 according to the Directorate General of Health Services (DGHS).
However, the official death toll from the disease remained unchanged at 29,446 as no new fatalities were reported.
Boat capsizes in southern India, at least 20 people dead
Twenty people, including women and children, died after a boat carrying more than 30 passengers capsized on Sunday night near a beach in India's southern state of Kerala, local media reported.
“The boat is being hauled ashore and more bodies are expected to be recovered from inside,” Sports Minister V Abdurahiman told the Press Trust of India news agency, adding that four people in critical condition were admitted to a hospital.
Rescuers had reached Tanur, a coastal town in the state’s Malappuram district, where the capsizing occurred near Thoovaltheeram beach. It's not clear what caused the boat to overturn.
Trump rejects last chance to testify at New York civil trial
Former President Donald Trump rejected his last chance Sunday to testify at a civil trial where a longtime advice columnist has accused him of raping her in a luxury department store dressing room in 1996.
Trump, a Republican candidate for president in 2024, was given until 5 p.m. Sunday by U.S. District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan to file a request to testify. Nothing was filed.
It was not a surprise. Trump has not shown up once during the two-week Manhattan trial where writer E. Jean Carroll testified for several days, repeating claims she first made publicly in a 2019 memoir. She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages totaling millions of dollars.
The jury has also watched lengthy excerpts from an October videotaped deposition in which Trump vehemently denied raping Carroll or ever really knowing her.
Without Trump’s testimony, lawyers were scheduled to make closing arguments Monday, with deliberations likely to begin on Tuesday.
After plaintiffs rested their case Thursday, Trump attorney Joe Tacopina immediately rested the defense case as well without calling any witnesses. He did not request additional time for Trump to decide to testify. Tacopina declined in an email to comment after the deadline passed Sunday.
On Thursday, Kaplan had given Trump extra time to change his mind and request to testify, though the judge did not promise he would grant such a request to reopen the defense case so Trump could take the stand.
At the time, Kaplan noted that he’d heard about news reports Thursday in which Trump told reporters while visiting his golf course in Doonbeg, Ireland, that he would “probably attend” the trial. Trump also criticized Kaplan, a Bill Clinton appointee, as an “extremely hostile” and “rough judge” who “doesn’t like me very much.”
On the witness stand, Carroll, 79, testified that Trump, 76, raped her in spring 1996 after they met at the entrance of the midtown Manhattan department store Bergdorf Goodman.
She said the encounter began as a fun and flirtatious outing as Trump coaxed her into helping him shop for a gift for another woman. She said they ended up in the store’s desolate lingerie section, where they teased each other to try on a see-through bodysuit.
As Carroll recalled it, laughter accompanied them into a dressing room where Trump became violent, slamming her up against a wall, pulling aside her tights and raping her before she kneed him and fled the store.
In his deposition, Trump said Carroll made it up. He called it “a false, disgusting lie” delivered by a “nut job” who was trying to stoke sales of her book.
He also repeated comments he made in statements that she was not his “type.”
“She’s not my type and that’s 100% true,” he said.
And he repeated his claims in a 2005 “Access Hollywood” video in which he bragged that men who are celebrities can grab women by the genitals without asking.
“Historically that’s true with stars,” he said.
Carroll sued Trump in November, minutes after New York state enacted a law allowing adult sexual assault victims to sue others even if the attacks occurred decades earlier.
Carroll’s attorney, Roberta Kaplan, wrote a letter to the judge Sunday to complain that Trump still has not removed April 26 posts on his social media network in which he called Carroll’s allegations “a made up SCAM.” And she noted that he repeated disparaging remarks about the trial three days ago in Ireland.
After the April 26 postings on Truth Social, Judge Kaplan, who is not related to Carroll’s lawyer, said Trump’s comments were “highly inappropriate” and expressed concern that Trump was trying to communicate to the jury “about stuff that has no business being spoken about.”
The Associated Press typically does not name people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Carroll has done.
Fire in gold mine kills at least 27, Peruvian officials say
A fire broke out deep in a gold mine in southern Peru and killed at least 27 workers during an overnight shift, Peruvian authorities reported.
The Yanaquihua mining company said in a statement that a total of 175 workers had been safely evacuated after the accident, which happened late Friday or early Saturday. It said the 27 dead worked for a contractor that specializes in mining.
READ: Gazipur factory fire brought under control
Government officials said the cause of the incident was under investigation. Some news reports said preliminary investigations indicated an explosion might have been set off by a short circuit in a part of the mine about 100 meters (330 feet) below the surface.
Relatives of the victims were brought by buses to the mine in Yanaquihua in the Arequipa region, where they were briefed by security agents. Some sat in front of posters at the entrance to the mine to wait for the bodies of their loved ones.
Marcelina Aguirre said her husband was among the dead. She said he had told her there were risks at the mine.
READ: Boat capsizes in southern India, at least 20 people dead
“We are very worried, very sad we are, to lose a husband, leaving two abandoned children,” she said.
The Public Ministry of Arequipa’s Fiscal District said investigators were working to clarify what happened. “During the investigation, the Prosecutor’s Office will determine the cause of the tragic event and the responsibilities of those involved,” its statement said.
Rallygoers in Pakistan kill man accused of blasphemy
Rallygoers for a political party in Pakistan beat to death a participant for allegedly making a blasphemous speech, police said Sunday.
Local police officer Iqbal Khan said Maulana Nigar Alam, 40, was killed Saturday night by demonstrators in Sawaldher village of Mardan district northeast of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province.
The rallygoers, gathered to express support for the country's judiciary, accused Alam of blasphemy when he made a concluding prayer at the end of the event.
“Some words of his prayer were deemed blasphemous by a number of protestors, leading to torture and death at the hands of the angry mob,” said Khan.
Witnesses said the police deputy on duty at the rally attempted to save the man by locking him up in a nearby shop, but the mob broke through the door and attacked him.
Videos circulating on social media showed people pushing the accused man to the ground, kicking him and beating him with batons. The man died at the scene.
Police took the body into custody and said an investigation was underway.
Accusing people of blasphemy in Pakistan is common.
Last month, the Pakistani police arrested and later released a Chinese national named Tian, who was working in Pakistan on a dam project and was accused by the locals of blasphemy.
In February, an angry mob entered a police station in Pakistan’s eastern city of Lahore, snatched a person accused of blasphemy from his cell and killed him.
In 2021, a Sri Lankan national, Priyantha Diyawadanage, who was working as a factory manager in Pakistan, was killed by an angry mob over allegations of blasphemy.
In 2017, Pakistani student Mashal Khan was killed by a mob on the premises of his university over allegations of posting blasphemous content online.
Japan leader expresses sympathy for Korean colonial victims
Japan’s prime minister expressed sympathy for the suffering of Korean forced laborers during Japan’s colonial rule, as he and his South Korean counterpart on Sunday renewed resolve to overcome historical grievances and strengthen cooperation in the face of shared challenges such as North Korea’s nuclear program.
Comments by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida during his summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol — their second meeting in less than two months — were closely watched in South Korea, where many still harbor strong resentment against Japan's 1910-45 colonial occupation of the Korean Peninsula.
Yoon has faced domestic criticism that he had preemptively made concessions to Tokyo without getting corresponding steps in return. Kishida’s statement, which avoided a new, direct apology over the colonization but still sympathized with the Korean victims, suggests he felt pressure to say something to maintain momentum for an effort to improve ties.
“And personally, I have strong pain in my heart as I think of the extreme difficulty and sorrow that many people had to suffer under the severe environment in those days,” Kishida told a joint news conference with Yoon, referring to the Japanese colonial period.
He said he believes “it is my responsibility as prime minister of Japan to cooperate with” Yoon to forge stronger relations.
Kishida arrived in South Korea earlier Sunday for a two-day visit, which reciprocates a mid-March trip to Tokyo by Yoon and marks the first exchange of visits between the leaders of the Asian neighbors in 12 years.
The back-to-back summits were largely meant to resolve the countries’ bitter disputes caused by the 2018 court rulings in South Korea that ordered two Japanese companies to financially compensate some of their aging former Korean employees for colonial-era forced labor. Japan has refused to abide by the verdicts, arguing that all compensation issues were already settled when the two countries normalized ties in 1965.
The wrangling led to the countries downgrading each other’s trade status and Seoul’s previous liberal government threatening to spike a military intelligence-sharing pact. Their strained ties complicated U.S. efforts to build a stronger regional alliance to better cope with rising Chinese influence and North Korean nuclear threats.
In March, however, Yoon’s conservative government took a major step toward mending the ties by announcing it would use local funds to compensate the forced labor victims without demanding contributions from Japanese companies. Later in March, Yoon traveled to Tokyo to meet with Kishida, and the two agreed to resume leadership-level visits and other talks. Their governments have since taken steps to withdraw their economic retaliatory steps.
Yoon’s push, however, drew strong backlash from some of the forced labor victims and his liberal rivals at home, who have demanded direct compensation from the Japanese companies. Yoon has defended his move, saying greater cooperation with Japan is required to jointly tackle North Korea’s advancing nuclear program, the intensifying U.S.-China strategic rivalry and global supply chain challenges.
“We should stay away from a thinking that we must not make a step forward because our history issues aren’t settled completely,” Yoon said Sunday. He said that 10 out of the 15 former forced laborers or their families involved in the 2018 rulings had accepted compensation under Seoul’s third-party reimbursement plan.
Kishida said: “I’m struck by the fact that many people, despite their painful memories from the past, opened their hearts for the future as measures by the South Korean government related to (the fund) move forward.”
Kishida also reaffirmed his government upholds the positions of previous Japanese administrations on the colonization issue, including the landmark 1998 joint declaration by Tokyo and Seoul, but didn’t make a new apology. In that declaration, then-Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi said: “I feel acute remorse and offer an apology from my heart” over the colonial rule.
Japanese governments have expressed remorse or apologies over the colonial period numerous times. But some Japanese officials and politicians have occasionally made comments that have been accused of whitewashing Tokyo’s wartime aggressions, prompting Seoul to urge Tokyo to make new, more sincere apologies.
Ahead of his summit with Yoon, Kishida and his wife, Yuko Kishida, visited the national cemetery in Seoul, where they burned incense and paid a silent tribute before a memorial. Buried or honored in the cemetery are mostly Korean War dead, but include Korean independence fighters during the period of Japanese rule. Kishida was the first Japanese leader to visit the place in 12 years.
“Kishida’s comments about Koreans who suffered under Japanese colonialism may be criticized for not being more specific about historical perpetrators and more apologetic toward historical victims,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, said. “But Kishida did visit South Korea’s national cemetery and said that his heartfelt views, respect for the past, and recognition of current global challenges produce a sense of responsibility for improving Seoul-Tokyo relations.”
Yoon said talks among Seoul, Tokyo and Washington are underway to implement their earlier agreement on a faster exchange of information on North Korean missile tests. Yoon said he and Kishida reaffirmed that North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs pose a grave threat to the two countries and the rest of the world.
In late April, Yoon made a state visit to the United States and agreed with President Joe Biden to reinforce deterrence capabilities against North Korea's nuclear threats. During a joint news conference, Biden thanked Yoon “for your political courage and personal commitment to diplomacy with Japan.”
Yoon, Biden and Kishida are expected to hold a trilateral meeting later this month on the sidelines of the Group of Seven meetings in Hiroshima to discuss North Korea, China's assertiveness and Russia's war on Ukraine. Yoon was invited as one of eight outreach nations.
Kishida said he and Yoon would pay respects before a memorial for Korean atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima. In another apparent conciliatory measure, Kishida said Japan will allow South Korean experts to visit and inspect a planned release of treated but still radioactive wastewater from the damaged Fukushima nuclear power plant.
Ukraine farmers risk losing their lives or livelihoods
A grassy lane rutted with tire tracks leads to Volodymyr Zaiets’ farm in southern Ukraine. He is careful, driving only within those shallow grooves — veering away might cost him his life in the field dotted with explosive mines.
Weeds grow tall where rows of sunflowers once bloomed. Zaiets’ land hasn't been touched since the fall of 2021, when it was last seeded with wheat. Now, it's a minefield left by retreating Russian forces.
Zaiets eschewed official warnings and demined this patch of land himself, determined not to lose the year’s harvest. He expects that 15% of his 1,600 hectares (4,000 acres) of farmland was salvaged.
Workers like Victor Kostiuk still spot mines, but he's ready to start the tractor.
“We have to do it,” he says, “Why be afraid?”
Across Ukraine, the war has forced grain growers into a vicious dilemma. Farmers in areas now free from Russian occupation are risking their lives to strip their land of explosives before the critical spring planting season. Even then, they must cope with soaring production and transportation costs caused by Russia’s blockade of many Black Sea ports and recent restrictions that neighboring countries imposed on Ukrainian grain.
The dual crisis is causing many farmers to cut back on sowing crops. Bottlenecks in shipping grain by land and sea are creating losses, with expectations of a 20% to 30% reduction in grain output, poorer quality crops and potentially thousands of bankruptcies next year, according to industry insiders, Ukrainian government officials and international organizations.
The “drastic reduction” of grain crops potentially threatens global food security, said Pierre Vauthier, head of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization in Ukraine. “That is the main thing everybody eats. So that’s why it is a big concern.”
More than a year since Russia's invasion, the Ukrainian agriculture industry is starting to see the full impact of what's been dubbed “ the breadbasket of the world,” whose affordable supplies of wheat, barley and sunflower oil are crucial to Africa, the Middle East and parts of Asia where people are going hungry.
The FAO says 90% of agricultural businesses lost revenue and 12% reported lands contaminated with mines. Land planted with grain dropped last year to 11.6 million hectares (28.6 million acres) from 16 million hectares (around 40 million acres) in 2021. That's expected to fall to 10.2 million hectares (25.2 million acres) this year.
In the southern Kherson province, between the threat of missiles from the sky and mines on the ground, farmers make the same, often tragic, calculation: Take the risk and plant or lose their livelihoods.
The region is among the highest wheat-producing areas in Ukraine and the most heavily mined. Demining services are overstretched, with infrastructure and civilian homes prioritized over farms.
But growers can’t wait: April and May are key planting months for corn, the autumn months for wheat. Many are switching to planting oil seeds that are less costly.
“We have nearly 40 big farmers in our area, and nearly everyone is unable to access their lands except two,” said Hanna Shostak-Kuchmiak, head of the Vysokopillya administration that includes several villages in northern Kherson.
Zaiets is one, and Valerii Shkuropat from the nearby village of Ivanivka is the other.
“Our heroes,” said Shostak-Kuchmiak, “who were driving their cars around picking up mines and bringing them to our deminers.”
Neither farmer felt they had the choice. Both knew that without a harvest this year, they will be insolvent by next.
Everyone understands the risks, said Shkuropat, who’s vast 2,500 hectares (more than 6,000 acres) of land once grew peas, barley, millet and sunflowers. He estimates that half can be planted.
Last month, one of his workers was killed and another was wounded while picking up metal missile remnants.
“If we sow, if we grow crops, people will have jobs, salaries and they will have a means to feed their families,” Shkuropat said. “But if we don’t do anything, we will have nothing.”
Russia’s blockade of Ukraine’s Black Sea ports stripped the country of the advantage it once enjoyed over other grain-exporting countries. Transit costs, now four to six times higher than prewar levels, have rendered grain production prohibitively expensive.
High costs of fuel, fertilizer and quality seeds only add to farmers' woes. Most must sell their grain at a loss.
Farmers are responding by seeding less, said Andrii Vadaturskyi, CEO of Nibulon, a top Ukrainian grain shipping company.
“No one is paying attention to the fact that already 40% less wheat has been seeded (this year), and we expect 50% less corn will be seeded in Ukraine,” he said, drawing on data from 3,000 farmers.
Nibulon once paid an average of $12 to ship a ton of grain from the southern port city of Odesa. Now it pays $80-$100 per ton, Vadaturskyi said,
HarvEast CEO Dmytro Skornyakov said that his agricultural company pays almost $110 in logistics costs to export every ton of corn.
“It covers our expenses, but doesn’t give us any profit,” he said.
Negotiations are underway on renewing the U.N.-brokered agreement that allows Ukrainian grain to safely leave three Black Sea ports. Shippers say the deal isn't working efficiently.
Russian inspections are causing long wait times for vessels, piling on fees and making the sea route expensive and unreliable, Ukrainian grain shippers say. Russia denies slowing inspections.
“We had some vessels which were waiting close to 80 days in the queue simply to be loaded,” said Vadaturskyi of Nibulon. “Someone has to lose that money, either the buyer, owner of the vessel or trader.”
Transit routes through Europe are open even as Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Bulgaria and Hungary temporarily banned Ukrainian wheat, corn and some other products over concerns about their own farmers' profits.
But those routes are slow and costly. Shipping by sea accounted for 75% of Ukrainian grain exports at the start of the year.
Meanwhile, some farmers won't risk planting their fields.
Oleh Uskhalo’s land in Potomkyne is awash with ammunition, the vast wheat farms reduced to a graveyard of scorched equipment.
Inside a bombed-out grain shed lies piles of wheat grain — Ushkalo’s entire prewar harvest — rotting under the sun.
“We can go on for another year,” he said. After that, he doesn’t know. He hopes for government compensation.
“I cannot send (my workers) to a field where I know mines and bombs are,” Uskhalo said. “To send a person to blow themselves up? I can’t do that.”
He faces resistance from his employees, eager to earn wages.
“The tractor drivers, they say, ‘We can go, we can sign a document stating that we take full responsibility,’” Uskhalo said.
It’s too risky, he told them.
In the distance, he can see a tractor equipped with disk tillers, a type of plow. “I wonder if it’s Volodymyr Mykolaiovych,” he said, referring to Zaiets.
“All it takes is for one of those disks to hit a mine and that’s it.”
That’s what happened to Mykola Ozarianskyi.
In April, the farmer took a chance: He hopped on his tractor in his village of Borozenske, in Kherson, to head to a friend’s sunflower field to cut stalks.
He swerved to turn down a side farm road. He remembers the explosion, then waking up in a hospital bed with a collapsed lung and broken ribs.
Every day, he thinks of his 16 hectares (around 40 acres) of land, still unseeded.
“I will do it,” he said, straining to speak while a tube drains blood from his chest. “For a farmer, not planting means death.”
20 Indonesian trafficking victims freed in Myanmar
Indonesian officials said Sunday they freed 20 of their nationals who were trafficked to Myanmar as part of a cyber scam, amid an increase in human trafficking cases in Southeast Asia.
Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry said in a statement that its embassy in Yangon with help from local networks had managed to release the victims from Myawaddy township and brought them to the Thai border on Saturday.
The Indonesian Embassy in Bangkok will work closely with Thai authorities to repatriate the victims to Indonesia, the statement said. Myawaddy is in eastern Kayin state along the Thai border and is the site of an armed conflict between Myanmar’s military and ethnic Karen rebels.
Fake recruiters had offered the Indonesians high-paying jobs in Thailand but instead trafficked them to Myawaddy, about 567 kilometers (352 miles) south of Naypyidaw, the capital, to perform cyber scams for crypto websites or apps, said Judha Nugraha, an official in Indonesia’s Foreign Affairs Ministry.
The situation drew a national outcry in Indonesia after a video made by one of the victims went viral on social media last month. It showed dozens of grim-faced Indonesian workers in a dormitory room, asking their government to help them out of “the war zone” where they see violence almost every day.
“Please help us back to Indonesia, because our life here is very miserable and threatened,” one person said, describing how they had been transferred from one company to other companies over the past eight months before being stranded in Myawaddy. The victim said they were tortured when they failed to reach certain work targets, receiving beatings, electrocutions and other physical punishments.
Authorities said the victims were likely trafficked to Myanmar by illegal means since no records were found of their arrival in Myanmar’s immigration system.
The case had prompted Indonesian President Joko Widodo to order the Foreign Affairs Ministry to make an “all out” effort to help rescue the victims, telling a news conference on Thursday: “They have been deceived and taken to an unwanted place by the traffickers."
It was unclear how their release was secured, but National Police spokesperson Sandi Nugroho said negotiations were held with the company that employed them.
Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told a news conference on Friday that the government is also working to help Indonesian victims of online scams in Myanmar, Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos and the Philippines.
She said the Indonesian Embassy in Manila said Friday that Philippine authorities have rescued more than 1,000 trafficking victims from 10 countries, including 143 Indonesians, who will be repatriated to their countries of origin.
“As the chair of ASEAN this year, Indonesia is trying to raise this issue at the 42nd ASEAN Summit,” Marsudi said.
ASEAN includes Brunei, Cambodia, Vietnam, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippine, Singapore and Thailand. Indonesia will host the bloc’s leaders’ meeting on May 10-11 in Labuan Bajo on Flores island.
Arab League poised to vote on restoring Syria membership
Foreign ministers from Arab League member states in Cairo were poised to vote Sunday on restoring Syria’s membership to the organization after it was suspended over a decade ago.
The meeting in the Egyptian capital took place ahead of the Arab League Summit in Saudi Arabia on May 19, where many have expected to see a partial or full return of Syria following a rapid rapprochement with regional governments since February.
It also took place days after regional top diplomats met in Jordan to discuss a roadmap to return Syria to the Arab fold as the conflict continues to deescalate.
Syria’s membership in the Arab League was suspended 12 years ago early in the uprising-turned-conflict, which has killed nearly a half million people since March 2011 and displaced half of the country’s pre-war population of 23 million.
The body usually attempts to make decisions by consensus, but decisions otherwise could pass with a simple majority vote.
There is still no clear consensus among Arab countries about Syria’s return to the Arab League. Notably, Qatar, a key backer of opposition groups, is not onboard with normalization, and did not attend the Cairo meeting.
The Arab League has not issued a statement indicating the conditions for Syria’s return. However, experts have said that Saudi Arabia and the region have likely prioritized issues related to gridlocked United Nations-brokered political talks with opposition groups, illicit drug smuggling and refugees.
As President Bashar Assad regained control of most of the country with the help of key allies Russia and Iran, some of the Syria's neighbors that hosted large refugee populations took steps towards reestablishing diplomatic ties with Damascus. Meanwhile, Gulf monarchies the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain reestablished ties.
The Feb. 6 earthquake that rocked Turkey and Syria was a catalyst for further normalization across the Arab world, as well as regional rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran reestablishing ties in Beijing, which had backed opposing sides in the conflict.
Though once backing opposition groups to overthrow Assad, Saudi Arabia and Syria took steps towards restoring embassies and flights between the two countries, in what experts say was a major prelude towards reinstating Syria into the Arab League.
Jordan last week hosted regional talks that included envoys from Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Egypt, and Syria. They agreed on a framework, dubbed the “Jordanian initiative,” that would slowly bring Damascus back into the Arab fold. Amman’s top diplomat said the meeting was the “beginning of an Arab-led political path” for a solution to the crisis.
The conflict in Sudan is also on the agenda, as Arab governments try to stabilize a shaky ceasefire in the ongoing fighting that has killed hundreds of people over the past few weeks.