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UN cites possible crimes vs. humanity in China’s Xinjiang
China’s discriminatory detention of Uyghurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western region of Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity, the U.N. human rights office said in a long-awaited report Wednesday, which cited “serious” rights violations and patterns of torture in recent years.
The report seeks “urgent attention” from the U.N. and the world community to rights violations in Beijing’s campaign to root out terrorism.
U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet, facing pressure on both sides, brushed aside multiple Chinese calls for her office to withhold the report, which follows her own, much-criticized trip to Xinjiang in May. Beijing contends the report is part of a Western campaign to smear China’s reputation.
The report has fanned a tug-of-war for diplomatic influence with the West over the rights of the region’s native Uyghurs and other ethnic groups.
The report, which Western diplomats and U.N. officials said had been all but ready for months, was published with just minutes to go in Bachelet’s four-year term. It was unexpected to break significant new ground beyond sweeping findings from researchers, advocacy groups and journalists who have documented concerns about human rights in Xinjiang for several years.
But the 48-page report comes with the imprimatur of the United Nations and its member countries — notably including rising superpower China itself. The report largely corroborates earlier reporting by advocacy groups and others and injects U.N heft behind the outrage that victims and their families have expressed about China’s policies in Xinjiang.
Also read: Taiwan: China, Russia disrupting, threatening world order
“Beijing’s repeated denial of the human rights crisis in Xinjiang rings ever-more hollow with this further recognition of the evidence of ongoing crimes against humanity and other human rights violation in the region,” Agnes Callamard, Amnesty International’s secretary-general, said in a statement.
The run-up to the report’s release fueled a debate over China’s influence at the world body and epitomized the on-and-off diplomatic chill between Beijing and the West over human rights, among other sore spots.
China shot back, saying the U.N. rights office ignored human rights “achievements” made together by “people of all ethnic groups in Xinjiang.”
“Based on the disinformation and lies fabricated by anti-China forces and out of presumption of guilt, the so-called ‘assessment’ distorts China’s laws, wantonly smears and slanders China, and interferes in China’s internal affairs,” read a letter from China’s diplomatic mission in Geneva issued in response to the U.N. report.
China released a 122-page report titled “Fight Against Terrorism and Extremism in Xinjiang: Truth and Facts” that defended its record and was distributed by the U.N. with its assessment.
The U.N. report says “serious human rights violations” have been committed in Xinjiang under China’s policies to fight terrorism and extremism, which singled out Uyghurs and other predominantly Muslim communities, between 2017 and 2019.
The report cites “patterns of torture” inside what Beijing called vocational training centers, which were part of its reputed plan to boost economic development in region, and it points to “credible” allegations of torture or ill-treatment, including cases of sexual violence.
Above all, perhaps, the report warns that the “arbitrary and discriminatory detention” of such groups in Xinjiang, through moves that stripped them of “fundamental rights … may constitute international crimes, in particular crimes against humanity.”
The report called on China to release all individuals arbitrarily detained and to clarify the whereabouts of individuals who have disappeared and whose families are seeking information about them.
The report was drawn in part from interviews with former detainees and others familiar with conditions at eight detention centers. Its authors suggest China was not always forthcoming with information, saying requests for some specific sets of information “did not receive formal response.”
The rights office said it could not confirm estimates of how many people were detained in the internment camps in Xinjiang, but added it was “reasonable to conclude that a pattern of large-scale arbitrary detention occurred” at least between 2017 and 2019.
According to investigations by researchers and journalists, the Chinese government’s mass detention campaign in Xinjiang swept an estimated million or more Uyghurs and other ethnic groups into a network of prisons and camps over the past five years.
Beijing has closed many of the camps, but hundreds of thousands continue to languish in prison on vague, secret charges.
The report said that reports of sharp increases in arrests and lengthy prison sentences in the region strongly suggested a shift toward formal incarceration as the principal means for large-scale imprisonment and deprivation of liberty — instead of the use of the “vocational training centers” once touted by Beijing.
“This is of particular concern given the vague and capacious definitions of terrorism, ‘extremism’ and public security related offenses under domestic criminal law,” the report said, saying it could lead to lengthy sentences, “including for minor offenses or for engaging in conduct protected by international human rights law.”
Some countries, including the United States, have accused Beijing of committing genocide in Xinjiang. The U.N. report made no mention of genocide.
Bachelet said in recent months that she received pressure from both sides to publish — or not publish — the report and resisted it all, treading a fine line while noting her experience with political squeeze during her two terms as president of Chile.
In June, Bachelet said she would not seek a new term as rights chief and promised the report would be released by her departure date on Aug. 31. That led to a swell in back-channel campaigns — including letters from civil society, civilians and governments on both sides of the issue. She hinted last week her office might miss her deadline, saying it was “trying” to release it before her exit.
Bachelet had set her sights on Xinjiang on taking office in September 2018, but Western diplomats voiced concern in private that over her term, she did not challenge China enough when other rights monitors had cited abuses against Uyghurs and others in Xinjiang.
In a statement from her office early Thursday, Bachelet said she had wanted to take “the greatest care” to deal with responses and input received from the Chinese government last week. Such reports are typically shared with the concerned country before final publication, but generally to check facts — not to allow vetting or influence of the final report.
“I said that I would publish it before my mandate ended and I have,” she said after the report was published.
Critics had said a failure to publish the report would have been a glaring black mark on her tenure, and the pressure from some countries made her job harder.
“To be perfectly honest, the politicization of these serious human rights issues by some states did not help,” said Bachelet, who early on staked out a desire to cooperate with governments.
“I appeal to the international community not to instrumentalize real, serious human rights issues for political ends, but rather to work to support efforts to strengthen the protection and promotion of human rights,” she added.
Her trip to the region in May was widely criticized by human rights groups, the U.S. administration and other governments as a public relations exercise for China.
Hours before the publication, the spokesman for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Stephane Dujarric, said the U.N. chief had “no involvement” in how the report was drafted or handled, citing his commitment to Bachelet’s independence.
Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said Bachelet’s “damning findings explain why the Chinese government fought tooth and nail to prevent the publication of her Xinjiang report, which lays bare China’s sweeping rights abuses.”
Richardson urged the 47-member Human Rights Council, whose next session is in September, to investigate the allegations and hold those responsible to account.
Ex-Malaysian leader Mahathir, 97, hospitalized with COVID-19
Former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, 97, was hospitalized Wednesday after testing positive for COVID-19, his office said.
“Mahathir has been admitted to the National Heart Institute for observation for a few days as advised by the medical team,” it said in a statement. It didn't provide further details on his condition.
Mahathir, who was Malaysia's prime minister for two different periods, once was the world's oldest leader. He has had two coronary bypass surgeries but remains robust and sharp witted. He was admitted several times to the same hospital earlier this year.
Mahathir later said he was hospitalized after experiencing shortness of breath due to a shortage of red blood cells. He later had a pacemaker implanted but acquired an infection during the surgery. He has said he thought he was dying at that point but somehow made a recovery.
Read: Mahathir seeks Parliament vote as new Malaysian PM sworn-in
Mahathir ruled Malaysia initially for 22 years until his retirement in 2003. Spurred by anger over government corruption, he led the opposition to a historic election victory in 2018 that ousted the governing party in the first peaceful transfer of power since Malaysia’s independence in 1957.
Mahathir became the world’s oldest leader at 92 for a second stint but that triumph lasted only 22 months as his government collapsed due to defections. Mahathir formed a new ethnic Malay party in 2020 and a Malay alliance this year to contest elections due next year.
Mahathir said in an interview with The Associated Press earlier this month that he plans to contest the polls “If I am strong enough, if I am healthy enough, if they want me to contest, I will contest.”
UN inspectors head to Ukraine nuclear plant in war zone
United Nations inspectors made their way toward Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant on Wednesday, a long-anticipated mission that the world hopes will help secure the Russian-held facility in the middle of a war zone and avoid catastrophe.
Underscoring the danger, Kyiv and Moscow again accused each other of attacking the area around Europe's biggest nuclear plant.
In recent days, the plant was temporarily knocked offline because of fire damage to transmission line — heightening fears that fighting could lead to a massive radiation leak or even a reactor meltdown. The risks are so severe that officials have begun distributing anti-radiation iodine tablets to nearby residents.
Russia-backed local authorities claimed Wednesday that Ukrainian forces repeatedly shelled the territory of the plant and that drone strikes hit the plant’s administrative building and training center. Regional Ukraine governor Valentyn Reznichenko, meanwhile, said a city across the river from the plant came under heavy artillery fire during the night.
“This appears to be nuclear blackmail of the local population and international society,” Reznichenko said on Telegram.
The complex, a vital source of energy for Ukraine, has been occupied by Russian forces and run by Ukrainian workers since the early days of the 6-month-old war. Ukraine alleges Russia is essentially holding the plant hostage, storing weapons there and launching attacks from around it, while Moscow accuses Ukraine of recklessly firing on the facility.
For months, as the fighting has played out, the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency has sought access to the plant — and world leaders have demanded the U.N. nuclear watchdog be allowed to inspect it.
With a team finally on the way, Rafael Grossi, the head of the agency, said he knew full well the implications of the unprecedented mission.
“We are going to a war zone. We are going to occupied territory,” he said upon departure early Wednesday.
He added that he had received “explicit guarantees” from Russia that the mission of 14 experts would be able to do its work.
Russian authorities in Enerhodar, where the plant is located, said there were no casualties or release of radioactivity in the most recent fighting.
Read:U.N. monitors head to troubled Ukraine nuclear plant
But that did little to assuage fears for the safety of the U.N. mission itself. Ukraine on Tuesday accused the Russians of bombing the roads the mission planned to use to access the plant, alleging they were trying to encourage the inspectors to course route and move via Russia-controlled areas instead.
The world watched the mission's progress with anxiety. European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell renewed a call to Russia for the area around the power plant to be fully demilitarized.
“They are playing games. They are gambling with the nuclear security,” Borrell told reporters in the Czech capital, Prague. “We cannot play war games in the neighborhood of a site like this.”
Kyiv is seeking international assistance to take back control of the area.
“We think that the mission should be a very important step to return (the plant) to Ukrainian government control by the end of the year,” Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko told The Associated Press.
If all goes well, the inspectors should reach the Zaporizhzhia region, 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, later Wednesday. The experts may have to pass through areas of active fighting, with no publicly announced cease-fire.
Grossi met Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the mission, which is expected to last several days.
In other developments:
— Zelenskyy's office said Wednesday that automatic weapons fire was heard on the streets of southern Kherson and claimed Russian soldiers were searching private residences for partisans, as Ukrainians resisting Russian rule are known. There was speculation early in the week that Ukraine had attempted to start a counteroffensive there.
His office said that in the east, four people were killed and two wounded in rocket firing in the Donetsk region in the past day.
— Russia’s Gazprom stopped the flow of natural gas through a major pipeline from to western Europe early Wednesday, a move it announced in advance and said was for routine maintenance.
Taiwan forces fire at drones flying over island near China
Taiwan’s military fired warning shots at drones from China flying over its outposts just off the Chinese coastline, underscoring heightened tensions and the self-ruled island's resolve to respond to new provocations.
Taiwan's forces said in a statement that troops took the action on Tuesday after drones were found hovering over the Kinmen island group. Dadan, one of the islands where a drone was spotted, lies roughly 15 kilometers (9 miles) off the Chinese coast.
The statement Wednesday referred to the unmanned aerial vehicles as being of “civilian use," but gave no other details. It said the drones returned to the nearby Chinese city of Xiamen after the shots were fired. Taiwan previously fired only flares as warnings.
The incident comes amid heightened tensions after China fired missiles into the sea and sent planes and ships across the dividing line in the Taiwan Strait earlier this month. It followed angry rhetoric from Beijing over a trip to Taiwan by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the highest-ranking U.S. dignitary to visit the island in 25 years.
China claims Taiwan as its own territory and its recent actions have been viewed as a rehearsal of a possible blockade or invasion. China's drills brought strong condemnation from Taiwan's chief ally, the U.S., along with fellow regional democracies such as Australia and Japan. Some of China's missiles early in August fell into nearby Japan's exclusive economic zone.
Taiwan maintains control over a range of islands in the Kinmen and Matsu groups in the Taiwan Strait, a relic of the effort by Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists to maintain a foothold on the mainland after being driven out by Mao Zedong's Communists amid civil war in 1949.
Taiwan's Defense Ministry said China's actions failed to intimidate the island's 23 million people, saying they had only hardened support for the armed forces and the status quo of de-facto independence.
Officials said anti-drone defenses were being strengthened, part of a 12.9% increase in the Defense Ministry’s annual budget next year. The government is planning to spend an additional 47.5 billion New Taiwan dollars ($1.6 billion), for a total of 415.1 billion NTD ($13.8 billion) for the year.
The U.S. is also reportedly preparing to approve a $1.1 billion defense package for Taiwan that would include anti-ship and air-to-air missiles to be used to repel potential Chinese invasion attempt.
Read: Taiwan leader tells troops to keep cool amid Chinese threats
Following the Chinese drills, the U.S. sailed two warships through the Taiwan Strait, which China has sought to designate as its sovereign waters. Foreign delegations from the U.S., Japan and European nations have continued to arrive to lend Taipei diplomatic and economic support.
Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey is currently visiting Taiwan to discuss production of semiconductors, the critical chips that are used in everyday electronics and have become a battleground in the technology competition between the U.S. and China.
Ducey is seeking to woo suppliers for the new $12 billion Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp. (TSMC) plant being built in his state.
The governor is also visiting tech powerhouse South Korea, and in a statement on his official website said his aim was to take these relationships to the next level - to strengthen them, expand them and ensure they remain mutually beneficial.”
Last week, the Indiana governor visited Taiwan on a similar mission.
Taiwanese Air Force pilots have also trained at Luke Air Force Base outside Phoenix for more than 25 years, an indication of continuing U.S. support for Taiwan's defense despite the lack of formal diplomatic ties.
Taiwan produces more than half the global supply of high-end processor chips. China's firing of missiles during its exercises disrupted shipping and air traffic, and highlighted the possibility that chip exports might be interrupted.
Reacting to Ducey's visit, China on Wednesday reaffirmed its opposition to any official contacts between the U.S. and Taiwan. That was a further reminder of the Communist Party's refusal to acknowledge the separation of powers within the U.S. government and the right of American local officials to operate independently of the administration.
“We urge the relevant parties in the U.S. to ... stop any forms of official contacts with Taiwan, and refrain from sending wrong signals to the Taiwan independence forces," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing.
“China will take strong measures to resolutely safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity," Zhao said.
U.N. monitors head to troubled Ukraine nuclear plant
A team of international nuclear inspectors was heading Wednesday to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant caught in the middle of the fighting in southern Ukraine amid international concern of a potential accident or radiation leak.
Rafael Grossi, the head of the the International Atomic Energy Agency, said he hoped to establish a permanent mission in Ukraine to monitor Europe’s largest nuclear plant.
“These operations are very complex operations. We are going to a war zone. We are going to occupied territory. And this requires explicit guarantees from not only from the Russians, but also from the Republic of Ukraine,” Grossi said in the Ukrainian capital of Kyiv before the monitoring the mission’s departure.
“We have been able to secure that. ... So now we are moving.”
The power plant has been occupied by Russian forces and operated by Ukrainian workers since the early days of the 6-month-old war.
Also read: Russia, Ukraine trade claims of nuclear plant attacks
It was recently cut off temporarily from the electrical grid because of fire damage, causing a blackout in the region and heightening fears of a catastrophe in a country haunted by the Chernobyl disaster.
Ukrainian Energy Minister German Galushchenko said Kyiv is seeking international assistance to try and demilitarize the area.
“We think that the mission should be a very important step to return (the plant) to Ukrainian government control by the end of the year,” Galushchenko told The Associated Press.
“We have information that they are now trying to hide their military presence, so they should check all of this.”
Zaporizhzhia is a vital source of energy for Ukraine and remains connected to its power grid. Ukraine and Russia accuse each other of shelling the wider region around the nuclear power plant and the risks are so severe that officials have begun distributing anti-radiation iodine tablets to nearby residents. Grossi met Tuesday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to discuss the mission that is expected to last several days. The inspectors from the IAEA, a United Nations body, where due to reach the Zaporizhzhia region, 450 kilometers (280 miles) southeast of the Ukrainian capital, later Wednesday.
Feds cite efforts to obstruct probe of docs at Trump estate
The Justice Department said Tuesday it had uncovered efforts to obstruct its investigation into the discovery of classified documents at Donald Trump’s Florida estate, saying “government records were likely concealed and removed” from a storage room even after the former president’s representatives had assured officials that they’d thoroughly searched the property.
The FBI also seized 33 boxes containing more than 100 classified records during its Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago and found three classified documents stashed in office drawers, according to a filing that lays out the most detailed chronology to date of stained interactions between Justice Department officials and Trump representatives over the discovery of government secrets.
Tuesday night’s filing included a photo showing the cover pages of a smattering of paperclip-bound classified documents — some marked as “TOP SECRET//SCI” with bright yellow borders, and one marked as “SECRET//SCI” with a rust-colored border — along with whited-out pages, splayed out on a carpet at Mar-a-Lago. Beside them sits a cardboard box filled with gold-framed pictures, including a Time Magazine cover.
The filing offers yet another indication of the sheer volume of classified records retrieved from Mar-a-Lago. It shows how investigators conducting a criminal probe have focused not just on why the records were improperly stored there, but also on the question of whether the Trump team intentionally misled them about the continued, and unlawful, presence of government secrets.
The document sheds new details on the events of this past May and June, when FBI and Justice Department officials issued a subpoena for the missing records and then visited a storage room at Mar-a-Lago that contained top-secret documents and other information.
During that June visit, the document says, Trump’s lawyers told investigators that all the records that had come from the White House were stored in one location — a Mar-a-Lago storage room — and that “there were no other records stored in any private office space or other location at the Premises and that all available boxes were searched.”
After that, though, the Justice Department “developed evidence that government records were likely concealed and removed from the Storage Room and that efforts were likely taken to obstruct the government’s investigation.”
In their search earlier this month, agents found classified documents both in the storage room as well as in the former president’s office, including three classified documents found not in boxes, but in office desks.
The filing responds to a request from the Trump legal team for a special master to review the documents seized during the Aug. 8 search of Mar-a-Lago. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon is set to hear arguments on the matter.
Trump’s lawyers last week asked for the appointment of a special master who’d be tasked with reviewing the records taken and setting aside documents protected by claims of legal privilege. Cannon on Saturday said it was her “preliminary intent” to appoint such a person but also gave the Justice Department an opportunity to respond.
On Monday, the department said it had already completed its review of potentially privileged documents and identified a “limited set of materials that potentially contain attorney-client privileged information.”
Read:Trump CFO’s plea deal could make him a prosecution witness
In a separate development, the Trump legal team has grown with the addition of another attorney. Chris Kise, Florida’s former solicitor general, has joined the team of lawyers representing Trump, according to two people familiar with the matter who were not authorized to discuss the move by name and spoke on condition of anonymity. Kise did not return messages seeking comment.
UN seeks $160 million in emergency aid for Pakistan floods
The United Nations and Pakistan issued an appeal Tuesday for $160 million in emergency funding to help millions affected by record-breaking floods that have killed more than 1,160 people since mid-June.
U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Pakistan’s flooding, caused by weeks of unprecedented monsoon rains, were a signal to the world to step up action against climate change.
“Let’s stop sleepwalking toward the destruction of our planet by climate change,” he said in a video message to an Islamabad ceremony launching the funding appeal. “Today, it’s Pakistan. Tomorrow, it could be your country.”
Guterres will visit Pakistan on Sept. 9 to tour areas “most impacted by this unprecedented climate catastrophe,” U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric announced Tuesday. The U.N. chief meet displaced families and witness how U.N. staff are their humanitarian partners are supporting government efforts to provide assistance, Dujarric said
More than 33 million people, or one in seven Pakistanis, have been affected by the catastrophic flooding, which has devastated a country already trying to revive a struggling economy. More than 1 million homes have been damaged or destroyed in the past two and half months, displacing millions of people. Around a half million of those displaced are living in organized camps, while others have had to find their own shelter.
Read: Over 33 mln people, 72 districts of Pakistan affected by floods
Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif said the floods badly destroyed crops, and his government was considering importing wheat to avoid any shortage of food.
Sharif said Pakistan was witnessing the worst flooding in its history and any inadvertent delay by the international community in helping victims “will be devastating for the people of Pakistan.”
He promised funds from the international community would be spent in a transparent manner and that he would ensure all aid reaches those in need. “This is my commitment,” he told reporters, saying his country is “facing the toughest moment of its history.”
Pakistan says it has received aid from some countries, and others were dispatching aid too.
On Tuesday, the U.S. government said it would provide $30 million in assistance to help victims of the flood. According to a statement released by the U.S. Agency for International Development, this aid will be given to Pakistan through USAID. It said the United States is deeply saddened by the devastating loss of life and livelihoods throughout Pakistan.
Youtube video thumbnailAccording to initial government estimates, the devastation caused $10 billion in damage to the economy.
“It is a preliminary estimate likely to be far greater,” Planning Minister Ahsan Iqbal told The Associated Press. More than 243 bridges and more than 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) of road have been damaged.
Although rains stopped three days ago, large swaths of the country remain underwater, and the main rivers, the Indus and the Swat, are still swollen. The National Disaster Management Authority on Tuesday warned emergency services to be on maximum alert, saying flood waters over the next 24 hours could cause further damage.
Rescuers continued to evacuate stranded people from inundated villages to safer ground. Makeshift tent camps have sprung up along highways.
Meteorologists have warned of more rains in coming weeks.
“The situation is likely to deteriorate even further as heavy rains continue over areas already inundated by more than two months of storms and flooding. For us, this is no less than a national emergency,” Pakistani Foreign Minister Bilawal Bhutto-Zardari said Tuesday, urging the international community to give generously to the U.N. appeal.
“Since mid-June, in fact, Pakistan has been battling one of the most severe, totally anomalous cycles of torrential monsoon weather,” he said. Rainfall during that time was three times the average, and up to six times higher in some areas, he said.
Read: Pakistan flooding deaths pass 1,000 in 'climate catastrophe'
The U.N. flash appeal for $160 million will provide food, water, sanitation, health and other forms of aid to some 5.2 million people, Gutteres said.
“The scale of needs is rising like the flood waters. It requires the world’s collective and prioritized attention,” he said.
Pakistan Foreign Ministry spokesman Asim Iftikhar told U.N. correspondents at a virtual press conference that Turkey, China, United Arab Emirates and Qatar all offered relief supplies, some of which has already arrived. More important will be the next reconstruction and rehabilitation phase where requirements are going to be “huge,” he said.
A day earlier, the International Monetary Fund’s executive board approved the release of a much awaited $1.17 billion for Pakistan.
The funds are part of a $6 billion bailout agreed on in 2019. The latest tranche had been on hold since earlier this year, when the IMF expressed concern about Pakistan’s compliance with the deal’s terms under the government of former Prime Minister Imran Khan. Khan was ousted through a no-confidence vote in the parliament in April.
Pakistan has risked default as its reserves dwindle and inflation has spiraled, and to get the IMF bailout, the government has had to agree to austerity measures.
The flooding catastrophe, however, adds new burdens to the cash-strapped government. It also reflects how poorer countries often pay the price for climate change largely caused by more industrialized nations. Since 1959, Pakistan is responsible for only 0.4% of the world’s historic emissions blamed for climate change. The U.S. is responsible for 21.5%, China for 16.5% and the EU 15%.
Several scientists say the record-breaking flooding has all the hallmarks of being affected by climate change.
“This year, Pakistan has received the highest rainfall in at least three decades,” said Abid Qaiyum Suleri, executive director of the Sustainable Development Policy Institute and a member of Pakistan’s Climate Change Council. “Extreme weather patterns are turning more frequent in the region and Pakistan is not an exception.”
Mikhail Gorbachev, who steered Soviet breakup, dead at 91
Mikhail Gorbachev, who set out to revitalize the Soviet Union but ended up unleashing forces that led to the collapse of communism, the breakup of the state and the end of the Cold War, died Tuesday. The last Soviet leader was 91.
Gorbachev died after a long illness, according to a statement issued by the Central Clinical Hospital in Moscow. No other details were given.
Though in power less than seven years, Gorbachev unleashed a breathtaking series of changes. But they quickly overtook him and resulted in the collapse of the authoritarian Soviet state, the freeing of Eastern European nations from Russian domination and the end of decades of East-West nuclear confrontation.
“Hard to think of a single person who altered the course of history more in a positive direction” than Gorbachev, said Michael McFaul, a political analyst and former U.S. ambassador in Moscow, on Twitter. “Gorbachev was an idealist who believed in the power of ideas and individuals. We should learn from his legacy.”
Gorbachev’s decline was humiliating. His power hopelessly sapped by an attempted coup against him in August 1991, he spent his last months in office watching republic after republic declare independence until he resigned on Dec. 25, 1991. The Soviet Union wrote itself into oblivion a day later.
A quarter-century after the collapse, Gorbachev told The Associated Press that he had not considered using widespread force to try to keep the USSR together because he feared chaos in the nuclear country.
“The country was loaded to the brim with weapons. And it would have immediately pushed the country into a civil war,” he said.
Many of the changes, including the Soviet breakup, bore no resemblance to the transformation that Gorbachev had envisioned when he became Soviet leader in March 1985.
By the end of his rule, he was powerless to halt the whirlwind he had sown. Yet Gorbachev may have had a greater impact on the second half of the 20th century than any other political figure.
Read: UN warns 6 million Afghans at risk of famine as crises grow
“I see myself as a man who started the reforms that were necessary for the country and for Europe and the world,” Gorbachev told the AP in a 1992 interview shortly after he left office.
“I am often asked, would I have started it all again if I had to repeat it? Yes, indeed. And with more persistence and determination,” he said.
Gorbachev won the 1990 Nobel Peace Prize for his role in ending the Cold War and spent his later years collecting accolades and awards from all corners of the world. Yet he was widely despised at home.
Russians blamed him for the 1991 implosion of the Soviet Union — a once-fearsome superpower whose territory fractured into 15 separate nations. His former allies deserted him and made him a scapegoat for the country’s troubles.
His run for president in 1996 was a national joke, and he polled less than 1% of the vote.
In 1997, he resorted to making a TV ad for Pizza Hut to earn money for his charitable foundation.
“In the ad, he should take a pizza, divide it into 15 slices like he divided up our country, and then show how to put it back together again,” quipped Anatoly Lukyanov, a one-time Gorbachev supporter.
Gorbachev never set out to dismantle the Soviet system. What he wanted to do was improve it.
Soon after taking power, Gorbachev began a campaign to end his country’s economic and political stagnation, using “glasnost,” or openness, to help achieve his goal of “perestroika,” or restructuring.
In his memoirs, he said he had long been frustrated that in a country with immense natural resources, tens of millions were living in poverty.
“Our society was stifled in the grip of a bureaucratic command system,” Gorbachev wrote. “Doomed to serve ideology and bear the heavy burden of the arms race, it was strained to the utmost.”
Once he began, one move led to another: He freed political prisoners, allowed open debate and multi-candidate elections, gave his countrymen freedom to travel, halted religious oppression, reduced nuclear arsenals, established closer ties with the West and did not resist the fall of Communist regimes in Eastern European satellite states.
Rread: UNHCR raises concerns over Afghan refugees forced returns from Tajikistan
But the forces he unleashed quickly escaped his control.
Long-suppressed ethnic tensions flared, sparking wars and unrest in trouble spots such as the southern Caucasus region. Strikes and labor unrest followed price increases and shortages of consumer goods.
In one of the low points of his tenure, Gorbachev sanctioned a crackdown on the restive Baltic republics in early 1991.
The violence turned many intellectuals and reformers against him. Competitive elections also produced a new crop of populist politicians who challenged Gorbachev’s policies and authority.
Chief among them was his former protege and eventual nemesis, Boris Yeltsin, who became Russia’s first president.
“The process of renovating this country and bringing about fundamental changes in the international community proved to be much more complex than originally anticipated,” Gorbachev told the nation as he stepped down.
“However, let us acknowledge what has been achieved so far. Society has acquired freedom; it has been freed politically and spiritually. And this is the most important achievement, which we have not fully come to grips with in part because we still have not learned how to use our freedom.”
There was little in Gorbachev’s childhood to hint at the pivotal role he would play on the world stage. On many levels, he had a typical Soviet upbringing in a typical Russian village. But it was a childhood blessed with unusual strokes of good fortune.
Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev was born March 2, 1931, in the village of Privolnoye in southern Russia. Both of his grandfathers were peasants, collective farm chairmen and members of the Communist Party, as was his father.
Despite stellar party credentials, Gorbachev’s family did not emerge unscathed from the terror unleashed by Soviet dictator Josef Stalin: Both grandfathers were arrested and imprisoned for allegedly anti-Soviet activities.
But, rare in that period, both were eventually freed. In 1941, when Gorbachev was 10, his father went off to war, along with most of the other men from Privolnoye.
Meanwhile, the Nazis pushed across the western steppes in their blitzkrieg against the Soviet Union; they occupied Privolnoye for five months.
When the war was over, young Gorbachev was one of the few village boys whose father returned. By age 15, Gorbachev was helping his father drive a combine harvester after school and during the region’s blistering, dusty summers.
His performance earned him the order of the Red Banner of Labor, an unusual distinction for a 17-year-old. That prize and the party background of his parents helped him land admission in 1950 to the country’s top university, Moscow State.
Read: Russia blocks final document at nuclear treaty conference
There, he met his wife, Raisa Maximovna Titorenko, and joined the Communist Party. The award and his family’s credentials also helped him overcome the disgrace of his grandfathers’ arrests, which were overlooked in light of his exemplary Communist conduct.
In his memoirs, Gorbachev described himself as something of a maverick as he advanced through the party ranks, sometimes bursting out with criticism of the Soviet system and its leaders.
His early career coincided with the “thaw” begun by Nikita Khrushchev. As a young communist propaganda official, he was tasked with explaining the 20th Party Congress that revealed Soviet dictator Josef Stalin’s repression of millions to local party activists. He said he was met first by “deathly silence,” then disbelief.
“They said: ‘We don’t believe it. It can’t be. You want to blame everything on Stalin now that he’s dead,’” he told the AP in a 2006 interview.
He was a true if unorthodox believer in socialism. He was elected to the powerful party Central Committee in 1971, took over Soviet agricultural policy in 1978 and became a full Politburo member in 1980.
Along the way, he was able to travel to the West, to Belgium, Germany, France, Italy and Canada. Those trips had a profound effect on his thinking, shaking his belief in the superiority of Soviet-style socialism.
“The question haunted me: Why was the standard of living in our country lower than in other developed countries?” he recalled in his memoirs. “It seemed that our aged leaders were not especially worried about our undeniably lower living standards, our unsatisfactory way of life, and our falling behind in the field of advanced technologies.”
But Gorbachev had to wait his turn. Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev died in 1982, and was succeeded by two other geriatric leaders: Yuri Andropov, Gorbachev’s mentor, and Konstantin Chernenko.
It wasn’t until March 1985, when Chernenko died, that the party finally chose a younger man to lead the country: Gorbachev. He was 54 years old.
His tenure was filled with rocky periods, including a poorly conceived anti-alcohol campaign, the Soviet military withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the Chernobyl nuclear disaster.
But starting in November 1985, Gorbachev began a series of attention-grabbing summit meetings with world leaders, especially U.S. Presidents Ronald Reagan and George Bush, which led to unprecedented, deep reductions in the American and Soviet nuclear arsenals.
After years of watching a parade of stodgy leaders in the Kremlin, Western leaders practically swooned over the charming, vigorous Gorbachev and his stylish, brainy wife.
But perceptions were very different at home. It was the first time since the death of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin that the wife of a Soviet leader had played such a public role, and many Russians found Raisa Gorbachev showy and arrogant.
Although the rest of the world benefited from the changes Gorbachev wrought, the rickety Soviet economy collapsed in the process, bringing with it tremendous economic hardship for the country’s 290 million people.
In the final days of the Soviet Union, the economic decline accelerated into a steep skid. Hyper-inflation robbed most older people of their life’s savings. Factories shut down. Bread lines formed.
And popular hatred for Gorbachev and his wife, Raisa, grew. But the couple won sympathy in summer 1999 when it was revealed that Raisa Gorbachev was dying of leukemia.
During her final days, Gorbachev spoke daily with television reporters, and the lofty-sounding, wooden politician of old was suddenly seen as an emotional family man surrendering to deep grief.
Gorbachev worked on the Gorbachev Foundation, which he created to address global priorities in the post-Cold War period, and with the Green Cross foundation, which was formed in 1993 to help cultivate “a more harmonious relationship between humans and the environment.”
In 2000, Gorbachev took the helm of the small United Social Democratic Party in hopes it could fill the vacuum left by the Communist Party, which he said had failed to reform into a modern leftist party after the breakup of the Soviet Union. He resigned from the chairmanship in 2004.
He continued to comment on Russian politics as a senior statesman — even if many of his countrymen were no longer interested in what he had to say.
“The crisis in our country will continue for some time, possibly leading to even greater upheaval,” Gorbachev wrote in a memoir in 1996. “But Russia has irrevocably chosen the path of freedom, and no one can make it turn back to totalitarianism.”
Gorbachev veered between criticism and mild praise for Putin, who has been assailed for backtracking on the democratic achievements of the Gorbachev and Yeltsin eras.
While he said Putin did much to restore stability and prestige to Russia after the tumultuous decade following the Soviet collapse, Gorbachev protested growing limitations on media freedom, and in 2006 bought one of Russia’s last investigative newspapers, Novaya Gazeta.
Gorbachev also spoke out against Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. A day after the Feb. 24 attack, he issued a statement calling for “an early cessation of hostilities and immediate start of peace negotiations.”
“There is nothing more precious in the world than human lives. Negotiations and dialogue on the basis of mutual respect and recognition of interests are the only possible way to resolve the most acute contradictions and problems,” he said.
Gorbachev ventured into other new areas in his 70s, winning awards and kudos around the world. He won a Grammy in 2004 along with former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Italian actress Sophia Loren for their recording of Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf, and the United Nations named him a Champion of the Earth in 2006 for his environmental advocacy.
Gorbachev is survived by a daughter, Irina, and two granddaughters.
The official news agency Tass reported that he will be buried at Moscow’s Novodevichy cemetery next to his wife.
Eyes on Kherson as Ukraine claims bold move on Russians
A surge in fighting on the southern front line and a Ukrainian claim of new attacks on Russian positions fed speculation Tuesday that a long-expected counteroffensive to try to turn the tide of war has started.
Officials in Kyiv, though, warned against excessive optimism in a war that has seen similar expectations of changing fortunes before.
Even though independent verification of battlefield moves has been extremely tough, the British defense ministry said in an intelligence report that, as of early Monday, “several brigades of the Ukrainian Armed Forces increased the weight of artillery fires in front line sectors across southern Ukraine.”
Attention centered on potential damage Ukraine might have inflicted on Russian positions around the port city of Kherson, a major economic hub close to the Black Sea and one of Moscow's prized possessions since it started the invasion just over half a year ago.
Ukraine’s presidential office reported Tuesday that “powerful explosions continued during the day and night in the Kherson region. Tough battles are ongoing practically across all” of the strategic area. Ukrainian forces, the report said, have destroyed a number of ammunition depots in the region and all large bridges across the Dnieper that are vital to bring supplies to the Russian troops.
Russian state news agency Tass reported five explosions rocking Kherson on Tuesday morning — blasts likely caused by air defense systems at work.
The Ukrainian military’s Operation Command South also reported destroying a pontoon crossing the Dnieper that the Russian forces were setting up and hitting a dozen command posts in several areaas of the Kherson region with artillery fire.
“The most important thing is Ukrainian artillery’s work on the bridges, which the Russian military can no longer use," Ukrainian independent military analyst Oleh Zhdanov told The Associated Press.
“Even the barges have been destroyed. The Russians can’t sustain forces near Kherson — this is the most important.”
On Monday, the southern command center's Nataliya Gumenyuik told Ukrainian news outlet Liga.Net that Kyiv’s forces have launched offensive operations “in many directions in our area of responsibility and have breached the enemy’s first line of defense.” The statement quickly made headlines after weeks of reports that Ukraine forces were preparing an offensive there and as Ukrainian attacks on the Kherson region intensified.
Read: UN agency to inspect Ukraine nuclear plant in urgent mission
Zhdanov said that Russia has three lines of defense in the Kherson region, and breaching the first one signals only “isolated offensive actions by the Ukrainian army.”
The war has ground to a stalemate over the past months with casualties rising and the local population bearing the brunt of suffering during relentless shelling in the east and also in the wider area around the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia atomic power plant which has also been at the heart of fighting in Ukraine.
Amid fears the plant could be damaged, leading to a radioactive leak, a U.N. nuclear watchdog team has arrived in Kyiv and is further preparing a mission to safeguard the Russian-occupied plant from nuclear catastrophe.
The stakes couldn’t be higher for the International Atomic Energy Agency experts, who will visit the plant in a country where the 1986 Chernobyl disaster spewed radiation throughout the region, shocking the world and intensifying a global push away from nuclear energy.
“Without an exaggeration, this mission will be the hardest in the history of IAEA,” Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said.
Compounding an already complicated task is the inability of both sides in the war to agree on much beyond allowing the team to go there. Ukraine and Russia have accused each other of shelling the wider region around the nuclear power plant, Europe’s largest, time and again.
Nikopol, which is just across the Dnieper River from the Zaporizhzhia plant, once again came under a barrage of heavy shelling, local authorities said, with a bus station, stores and a children’s library sustaining damage.
The dangers of an accident are now so high that officials have begun handing out anti-radiation iodine tablets to nearby residents.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy reacted to speculation about whether his forces had launched a major counteroffensive by asking in his nightly video address Monday, “Anyone want to know what our plans are? You won’t hear specifics from any truly responsible person. Because this is war.” His adviser, Mykhailo Podolyak, cautioned against “super-sensational announcements” about a counteroffensive.
From the other side, the Moscow-appointed regional leader of Crimea, Sergei Aksyonov, dismissed the Ukrainian assertion of an offensive in the Kherson region as false. He said Ukrainian forces have suffered heavy losses in the area. And For its part, Russia’s Defense Ministry said its forces had inflicted heavy personnel and military equipment losses on Ukrainian troops.
The Kherson region is just north of the Crimean peninsula that Russia annexed from Ukraine in 2014 to set off a conflict that was frozen until the Feb. 24 invasion.
Taiwan leader tells troops to keep cool amid Chinese threats
Taiwan's president told the self-ruled island's military units Tuesday to keep their cool in the face of daily warplane flights and warship maneuvers by rival China, saying that Taiwan will not allow Beijing to provoke a conflict.
China has kept up military pressure on Taiwan in the weeks following U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in early August. Beijing initially retaliated with large military drills in the waters and skies near Taiwan. It fired missiles over the island, some of which landed in Japan’s economic zone, considered a serious escalation, while also sending warships and planes toward the island in large numbers.
President Tsai Ing-wen said Taiwan must remain restrained despite the daily pressure from China.
“The more provocative enemy soldiers are, the more stable we need to be. We will not allow those on the opposing banks to manufacture a conflict with an inappropriate excuse,” she said during a visit to the navy's station on Penghu, an archipelago of several dozen islands off Taiwan's western coast.
She also inspected a radar squadron, an air defense company, and a navy fleet.
At the Magong air base, she was greeted by pilots standing in front of a Taiwanese-made Indigenous Defense Force fighter jet.
“You are the pride of the Taiwanese people,” Tsai said. “When each Taiwanese person sees you in the national military uniform, everyone’s hearts are filled with respect and gratitude.”
China accuses the U.S. and Taiwanese “separatist forces” for creating instability by rejecting Beijing’s claim to sovereignty over the island.
Read: US sails warships through Taiwan Strait in 1st since Pelosi
“The Taiwan independence forces’ attempt to solicit foreign support, including that of the U.S., for independence is the source of current tensions across the Taiwan Strait,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said at a daily briefing in Beijing.
Zhao also criticized the visit of Guatemalan Foreign Minister Mario Bucaro to Taiwan on Tuesday.
“The Taiwanese ... authority has been using the so-called countries with diplomatic ties for political manipulation. These are nothing but self-deceiving tricks and cannot block the historical trend that China will be fully reunified," he added.
Bucaro met with Tsai earlier Tuesday and reaffirmed his country's support of Taiwan. Guatemala is one of Taiwan's 14 remaining diplomatic allies.
“Guatemala will always support Taiwan because we have very firm belief in the principles of peace, sovereignty, and territorial integrity," he said. “The Guatemalan government strongly believes that people have the right to enjoy peace in their lives, and the right to live in peace is not negotiable.”
While China's biggest maneuvers, which had disrupted fishing, shipping and air traffic, are over, Beijing has kept up the pressure in recent weeks with daily flights by warplanes and warship navigations, often over the median line of the Taiwan Strait, a waterway that separates the island from China.
Taiwan has responded by tracking the ships and the planes, issued warnings and used its missile systems to monitor the other side's movements.
China has also sent drones flying over the Kinmen islands, which are closest to China, in the latest escalation. A video that went viral last week showed two soldiers staring up at the drone from an outpost in an outlying island in Kinmen before attempting to strike it down with a rock. This weekend, another video published online allegedly showed a Chinese drone flying around a different outlying island.
A spokesperson for Kinmen's army unit said in a statement Monday that Taiwan would take a four-step measure to deal with drones in the future, which involves warning it off, reporting the incursion, expelling the drone, and finally shooting it down if it doesn't leave.