Asia
Sri Lankan president urged not to use force on protesters
An international human rights group is urging Sri Lanka’s new president to immediately order security forces to cease all unlawful use of force against protesters who have been demonstrating against the government — for months — over the country’s economic meltdown.
A day after President Ranil Wickremesinghe was sworn in Thursday, hundreds of armed troops raided a protest camp outside the president’s office in the early hours of Friday, attacking demonstrators with batons in a move that Human Rights Watch said “sends a dangerous message to the Sri Lankan people that the new government intends to act through brute force rather than the rule of law.”
Two journalists and two lawyers were also attacked by soldiers in the crackdown. Security forces arrested 11 people, including protesters and lawyers.
“Urgently needed measures to address the economic needs of Sri Lankans demand a government that respects fundamental rights,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch, in a statement released early Saturday.
Read: ‘I can’t forget her'- Myanmar’s soldiers admit atrocities
“Sri Lanka’s international partners should send the message loud and clear that they can’t support an administration that tramples on the rights of its people,” she added.
Wickremesinghe, who previously served as prime minister six times, was sworn in as president a week after his predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, fled the country after protesters stormed his residence. Rajapaksa later resigned while exiled in Singapore.
Sri Lankans have taken to the streets for months to demand their top leaders step down to take responsibility for the economic chaos that has left the nation’s 22 million people struggling with shortages of essentials, including medicine, fuel and food. While the protesters have focused on the Rajapaksa political dynasty, Wickremesinghe also has drawn their ire as a perceived Rajapaksa surrogate.
Armed troops and police arrived in trucks and buses on Friday to clear the main protest camp near the presidential palace in the capital, Colombo, where demonstrators had gathered for more than 100 days. They removed tents and blocked roads leading to the site.
The troops moved in even though protesters had announced they would vacate the site on Friday voluntarily.
Sri Lanka’s opposition, the United Nations, and the U.S. have denounced the government’s heavy-handed tactics.
Despite the heavy security now positioned outside the president’s office, protesters have vowed to continue their efforts until Wickremesinghe resigns.
Wickremesinghe was voted president by lawmakers this week — apparently seen as a safe pair of hands to lead Sri Lanka out of the crisis, even though he, too, was a target of the demonstrations. On Friday, he appointed as prime minister a Rajapaksa ally, Dinesh Gunawardena, who is 73 and from a prominent political family.
Read: Sri Lanka's new cabinet of ministers sworn in
On Monday, when he was acting president, Wickremesinghe declared a state of emergency giving him the power to change or suspend laws and giving authorities broad power to search premises and detain people. Overnight, just hours after he was sworn in, he issued a notice under the state of emergency calling on the armed forces to maintain law and order nationwide — clearing the way for the move against the protest camp.
The protesters accuse Rajapaksa and his powerful family of siphoning money from government coffers and of hastening the country’s collapse by mismanaging the economy. The family has denied the corruption allegations, but the former president acknowledged that some of his policies contributed to Sri Lanka’s crisis.
The political turmoil has threatened to make a rescue from the International Monetary Fund more difficult. Still, earlier this week, Wickremesinghe said bailout talks with the fund were nearing a conclusion and talks on help from other countries had also progressed.
The head of the IMF, Kristalina Georgieva, told the Japanese financial magazine Nikkei Asia this week that the fund hopes for a deal “as quickly as possible.”
‘I can’t forget her'- Myanmar’s soldiers admit atrocities
Soldiers in the Myanmar military have admitted to killing, torturing and raping civilians in exclusive interviews with the BBC. For the first time they have given detailed accounts of widespread human rights abuses they say they were ordered to conduct.
"They ordered me to torture, loot and kill innocent people."
Maung Oo says he thought he had been recruited to the military as a guard.
But he was part of a battalion who killed civilians hiding in a monastery in May 2022, reports BBC.
"We were ordered to round up all the men and shoot them dead," he says. "The saddest thing was we had to kill elderly people and a woman."
The testimony of six soldiers, including a corporal, plus some of their victims provides a rare insight of a military desperate to cling to power. All of the Myanmar names in this report have been changed to protect their identities.
The soldiers, who recently defected, are under the protection of a local unit of the People's Defence Force (PDF), a loose network of civilian militia groups fighting to restore democracy.
The military seized power from the democratically elected government led by Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup last year. It is now trying to crush the armed civilian uprising.
On 20 December last year, three helicopters circled Yae Myet village in central Myanmar, dropping soldiers with orders to open fire.
At least five different people, speaking independently from each other, told the BBC what happened.
They say the army entered in three separate groups, shooting at men, women and children indiscriminately.
"The order was to shoot anything you see," says Corporal Aung from an undisclosed location in a remote part of Myanmar's jungle.
Read: Genocide against Rohingya: Bangladesh welcomes ICJ's rejection of Myanmar claims
He says some people hid in what they thought was a safe place, but as the soldiers closed in they "started to run and we shot at them".
Cpl Aung admits his unit shot and buried five men.
"We also had an order to set fire to every large and decent house in the village," he says.
The soldiers paraded around the village torching houses, shouting, "Burn! burn!"
Cpl Aung set fire to four buildings. Those interviewed say about 60 houses were burnt, leaving much of the village in ashes.
Most of the villagers had fled, but not everyone. One home in the centre of the village was inhabited.
Thiha says he had joined the military just five months before the raid. Like many others, he was recruited from the community and says he was untrained. These recruits are locally referred to as Anghar-Sit-Thar or "hired soldiers".
At the time he was paid a decent salary of 200,000 Myanmar Khat (approximately 100 USD) a month. He remembers what happened at that house vividly.
He saw a teenage girl trapped behind iron bars in a house they were about to burn down.
"I can't forget her shouting, I can still hear it in my ears and remember it in my heart," he says.
When he told his captain, he replied, "I told you to kill everyone we see". So Thiha shot a flare into the room.
Cpl Aung was also there and heard her cries as she was burnt alive.
Read: Myanmar denies genocide, again describes Rohingyas as 'Bengali community'
"It was heartbreaking to hear. We heard her voice repeatedly for about 15 minutes while the house was on fire," he recalls.
The BBC tracked down the girl's family, who spoke in front of the charred remains of their home.
Her relative U Myint said the girl had a mental health condition and had been left in her home while her parents went to work.
"She tried to escape but they stopped her and let her burn," he says.
She was not the only young woman to suffer at the hands of these soldiers.
Thiha says he joined the military for the money but was shocked by what he was forced to do and the atrocities he witnessed.
He speaks about a group of young women they arrested in Yae Myet.
The officer handed them to his subordinates and said, "Do as you wish," he recounts. He said they raped the girls but he was not involved. We tracked down two of these girls.
Pa Pa and Khin Htwe say they met the soldiers on the road as they tried to run away. They were not from Yae Myet, they had been visiting a tailor there.
Despite their insistence that they were not PDF fighters or even from the village, they were imprisoned in a local school for three nights. Each night, they were repeatedly sexually abused by their intoxicated captors, they say. "They blindfolded my face with a sarong and pushed me down, they took off my clothes and raped me," Pa Pa says. "I shouted as they raped me."
She pleaded with the soldiers to stop but they beat her round the head and threatened her at gunpoint.
"We had to take it without resisting because we were scared that we would be killed," says her sister Khin Htwe, trembling as she speaks.
The girls were too scared to get a proper look at their abusers but say they remember seeing some in plain clothes and some wearing military uniforms.
"When they caught young women," remembers the soldier Thiha, "they would say, 'this is because you support the PDF' as they (raped) the girls."
Read: UN court rejects Myanmar claims, will hear Rohingya case
At least 10 people died in the violence in Yae Myet and eight girls were reportedly raped over the three-day period.
The brutal killings which hired soldier Maung Oo took part in occurred on 2 May 2022 in Ohake pho village, also in Sagaing region.
His account of members from his 33rd Division (Light Infantry Division 33) rounding up and shooting people in a monastery matches witness testimonies and disturbing video the BBC obtained from the immediate aftermath of the attack.
The video shows nine dead bodies lined up including a woman and a grey-haired man lying next to each other. They are all wearing sarongs and t-shirts.
Signs in the footage indicate that they were shot from behind and at close range.
We also spoke to villagers who witnessed this atrocity. They identified the young woman in the video lined up next to the elderly man. She was called Ma Moe Moe, and was carrying her child and a bag containing pieces of gold. She pleaded with the soldiers not to take her things.
"Despite the child she was carrying, they looted her belongings and shot her to death. They also lined up (the men) and shot them one by one," says Hla Hla, who was at the scene but was spared.
The child survived and is now being cared for by relatives.
Hla Hla says she heard soldiers boasting on the phone that they had killed eight or nine people, that it was "delicious" to kill people and describing it as "their most successful day yet".
She says they left the village chanting "Victory! Victory!"
Another woman saw her husband killed. "They shot him in the thigh, then they asked him to lie face down and shot his buttock. Finally they shot his head," she says.
She insists he was not a member of the PDF. "He was really a toddy palm worker who earned his living in a traditional way. I have a son and a daughter and I don't know how to continue living."
Maung Oo says he regrets his actions. "So, I will tell you all," he says. "I want everyone to know so they can avoid falling into the same fate.
All of the six soldiers who spoke to the BBC admitted burning houses and villages across central Myanmar. This suggests it is an organised tactic to destroy any support for the resistance.
It comes as some say the military struggles to maintain its multi-front civil war.
Myanmar Witness - a group of open source researchers tracking human rights abuses - has verified more than 200 reports of villages being burnt in this way over the past 10 months.
They say the scale of these arson attacks is rapidly increasing, with at least 40 attacks in January and February, followed by at least 66 in March and April.
This is not the first time Myanmar's military has used a scorched earth policy. It was widely reported against the Rohingya people in 2017 in Rakhine state.
The country's mountainous ethnic regions have faced these kinds of assaults for many decades. Some of these ethnic fighters are now helping to train and arm the PDF in this current civil war against the military.
The culture of impunity in which soldiers are allowed to loot and kill at will, as described by the soldiers, has occurred for decades in Myanmar, Human Rights Watch says.
People are rarely held accountable for atrocities allegedly carried out by the military.
But Myanmar's military is increasingly having to hire soldiers and militias due to defections and killings by the PDF.
Some 10,000 people have defected from both the army and the police since the 2021 coup, according to a group called People's Embrace, formed by former military and police personnel.
"The military is struggling to maintain its multi-front civil war," says Michael Martin from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies think tank.
"It's running into personnel problems both in the officer ranks and the enlisted ranks, it's taking heavy casualties, problems with recruitment, problems getting equipment and supplies and that's reflected by the fact that they seem to be losing territory or control of territory in various parts of the country."
Magway and Sagaing regions (where the above incidents happened) were one of the historic recruitment grounds for Myanmar's military.
But young people here are instead choosing to join the PDF groups.
Cpl Aung was clear about why he defected: "If I thought the military would win in the long term, I wouldn't have switched sides to the people."
He says soldiers do not dare to leave their base alone as they are worried they will be killed by the PDF.
"Wherever we go, we can only go in the form of a military column. No-one can say that we are dominating," he says.
We put the allegations in this investigation to General Zaw Min Tun, the spokesperson for Myanmar's military. In a statement, he denied that the army has been targeting civilians. He said both of the raids cited here were legitimate targets and those killed were "terrorists".
He denied the army has been burning villages and says that it is the PDFs who are carrying out arson attacks.
It is hard to say how and when this civil war might end but it seems likely that millions of Myanmar's civilians will be left traumatised.
And the longer it takes to find peace, the more women like rape victim Khin Htwe will be vulnerable to violence.
She says she no longer wanted to live after what had happened to her and considered taking her own life.
She has been unable to tell her fiance what happened to her.
UN court rejects Myanmar claims, will hear Rohingya case
Judges at the United Nations’ highest court on Friday dismissed preliminary objections by Myanmar to a case alleging the Southeast Asian nation is responsible for genocide against the Rohingya ethnic minority.
The decision establishing the International Court of Justice’s jurisdiction sets the stage for hearings airing evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya that human rights groups and a U.N. probe say breach the 1948 Genocide Convention. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the violent repression of the Rohingya population in Myanmar, which formerly was known as Burma, amounts to genocide.
Tun Khin, president of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, welcomed the decision, saying 600,000 Rohingya “are still facing genocide,” while “one million people in Bangladesh camps, they are waiting for a hope for justice.”
The African nation of Gambia filed the case in 2019 amid international outrage at the treatment of the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of whom fled to neighboring Bangladesh amid a brutal crackdown by Myanmar forces in 2017. It argued that both Gambia and Myanmar were parties to the 1948 convention and that all signatories hade a duty to ensure it was enforced.
Judges at the court agreed.
Reading a summary of the decision, the court’s president, U.S. Judge Joan E. Donoghue, said: “Any state party to the Genocide Convention may invoke the responsibility of another state party including through the institution of proceedings before the court.”
A small group of pro-Rohingya protesters gathered outside the court’s headquarters, the Peace Palace, ahead of the decision with a banner reading: “”Speed up delivering justice to Rohingya. The genocide survivors can’t wait for generations.”
One protester stamped on a large photograph of Myanmar’s military government leader, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing.
Read: UN court to rule on jurisdiction in Rohingya genocide case
The court rejected arguments raised at hearings in February by lawyers representing Myanmar that the case should be tossed out because the world court only rules in disputes between states and the Rohingya complaint was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
The judges also dismissed Myanmar’s claim that Gambia could not file the case as it was not directly linked to the events in Myanmar and that a legal dispute did not exist between the two countries before the case was filed.
Myanmar’s representative, Ko Ko Hlaing, the military government’s minister for international cooperation, said his nation “will try our utmost to defend our country and to protect our national interest.”
Gambia’s attorney general and justice minister, Dawda Jallow, said: “We are very pleased that justice has been done.”
The Netherlands and Canada have backed Gambia, saying in 2020 that the country “took a laudable step towards ending impunity for those committing atrocities in Myanmar and upholding this pledge. Canada and the Netherlands consider it our obligation to support these efforts which are of concern to all of humanity.”
However, the court ruled Friday that it “would not be appropriate” to send the two countries copies of documents and legal arguments filed in the case.
Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 in the aftermath of an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of Rohingya homes.
Read: Genocide against Rohingya: Bangladesh welcomes ICJ's rejection of Myanmar claims
In 2019, lawyers representing Gambia at the ICJ outlined their allegations of genocide by showing judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos of the military campaign. That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.
The International Court of Justice rules on disputes between states. It is not linked to the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, which holds individuals accountable for atrocities. Prosecutors at the ICC are investigating crimes committed against the Rohingya who were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
Sri Lanka's new cabinet of ministers sworn in
Eighteen ministers including Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena were sworn into Sri Lanka's new cabinet before President Ranil Wickremesinghe here on Friday.
The President's Office said that among those who took oaths as cabinet ministers were Ali Sabry as the minister of Foreign Affairs, Harin Fernando as the minister of Tourism and Lands, Nalin Fernando as the minister of Trade, Commerce and Food Security, Kanchana Wijesekera as the minister of Power and Energy.
Dinesh Gunawardena was sworn in as the prime minister earlier in the day, and he also held the position of the minister of Public Administration, Home Affairs, Provincial Councils, and Local Government.
The new cabinet of ministers was sworn in after Ranil Wickremesinghe won an election in parliament on July 20 to become the new president of Sri Lanka following the resignation of Gotabaya Rajapaksa.
Read: Sri Lankan Cabinet reshuffled to counter economic crisis
Lebanese president urges IMF to conclude aid deal with Lebanon
Lebanese President Michel Aoun on Thursday urged the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to conclude the aid agreement with the crisis-ridden country, saying Lebanon has been adopting the needed structural reforms.
The Lebanese president made the remarks during his meeting in Beirut with Pierre Duquesne, French presidential envoy for coordinating international support to Lebanon, said a presidential statement.
Aoun said he hoped that Lebanon can form a new government dutiful in unifying the exchange rate, following up on the "forensic audits" into the financial sector, and dealing with banks' losses fairly.
"This would restore confidence in Lebanon and motivate international institutions to support the country," he said.
Read: Lebanon announces plan to repatriate Syrian refugees
Duquesne, for his part, said France will encourage donor countries and international institutions to support Lebanon's infrastructure to foster job opportunities and curb immigration.
Lebanon has been suffering from an unprecedented financial crisis in the past years and needs quick legislation in the parliament to facilitate the government's recovery plan. ■
African swine fever cases detected in southern Indian state
African swine fever (ASF) cases have been reported from two farms in the southern Indian state of Kerala, officials said Friday.
The cases were detected at Mananthavady in Wayanad district, about 468 km north of Thiruvananthapuram, the capital city of Kerala.
"The disease was detected among pigs of two farms in the district and later confirmed after the samples were tested at the National Institute of High Security Animal Diseases in Bhopal," an official at the district magistrate office in Wayanad said. "The samples were collected after pigs died last week."
Read: UN: China's African swine fever outbreak could cross borders
According to officials, measures have been taken to prevent the spread of the disease, and an order to cull pigs has been issued.
"After confirming the infection orders have been issued to cull 300 pigs from all the nearby farms to contain the infection. As per the guidelines, all pigs within a one-kilometer radius of the epicenter of the disease are to be culled if there are reports of ASF," a local media report said.
ASF cases have been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Assam last week.
Experts say ASF does not affect humans. However, they could be the carriers of the virus. ■
UN court to rule on jurisdiction in Rohingya genocide case
The United Nations' highest court is ruling Friday on whether to proceed with a landmark case that accuses Myanmar's rulers of genocide against the country's mainly Muslim Rohingya minority.
The International Court of Justice is set to deliver its decision on Myanmar's claims that the Hague-based court does not have jurisdiction and that the case filed by the tiny African nation of Gambia in 2019 is inadmissible.
If judges reject Myanmar's objections, they will set the stage for court hearings airing evidence of atrocities against the Rohingya that rights groups and a U.N. probe say amount to breaches of the 1948 Genocide Convention. In March, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that violent repression of the Rohingya population in Myanmar amounts to genocide.
Amid international outrage at the treatment of the Rohingya, Gambia filed the case with the world court alleging that Myanmar is breaching the genocide convention. The nation argued that both Gambia and Myanmar are parties to the convention and that all signatories have a duty to ensure it is enforced.
Also read: Dhaka urges Jakarta to do more for repatriation of Rohingya refugees
Lawyers representing Myanmar argued in February that the case should be tossed out because the world court only hears cases between states and the Rohingya complaint was brought by Gambia on behalf of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation.
They also claimed that Gambia could not bring the case to court as it was not directly linked to the events in Myanmar and that a legal dispute did not exist between the two countries before the case was filed.
Gambia’s Attorney General and Justice Minister Dawda Jallow insisted in February that the case should go ahead and that it was brought by his country, not the OIC.
“We are no one’s proxy,” Jallow told the court.
The Netherlands and Canada are backing Gambia, saying in 2020 that the country “took a laudable step towards ending impunity for those committing atrocities in Myanmar and upholding this pledge. Canada and the Netherlands consider it our obligation to support these efforts which are of concern to all of humanity.”
Myanmar’s military launched what it called a clearance campaign in Rakhine state in 2017 in the aftermath of an attack by a Rohingya insurgent group. More than 700,000 Rohingya fled into neighboring Bangladesh and Myanmar security forces have been accused of mass rapes, killings and torching thousands of homes.
Also read: Rohingya Repatriation: Dhaka seeks proactive role from Indonesia, ASEAN
In 2019, lawyers representing Gambia at the ICJ outlined their allegations of genocide by showing judges maps, satellite images and graphic photos of the military campaign. That led the court to order Myanmar to do all it can to prevent genocide against the Rohingya. The interim ruling was intended to protect the minority while the case is decided in The Hague, a process likely to take years.
The ICJ case was complicated by last year's military coup in Myanmar. The decision to allow the Southeast Asian nation's military-installed government to represent the country at the February hearings drew sharp criticism. A shadow administration known as the National Unity Government made up of representatives including elected lawmakers who were prevented from taking their seats by the 2021 military coup had argued that it should be representing Myanmar in court.
The International Court of Justice rules on disputes between states. It is not linked to the International Criminal Court, also based in The Hague, which holds individuals accountable for atrocities. Prosecutors at the ICC are investigating crimes committed against the Rohingya who were forced to flee to Bangladesh.
Asian shares mixed on weak Japan manufacturing data
Asian shares were mixed Friday after another day of gains on Wall Street amid a deluge of news about the economy, interest rates and corporate profits.
Tokyo, Shanghai and Hong Kong gained while Sydney and Seoul declined. U.S. futures edged lower while oil prices rose.
A preliminary reading on factory activity for Japan showed output and new orders contracting to their worst levels in months. Companies blamed shortages of raw materials and rising costs, but demand may be weakening as the country endures yet another wave of coronavirus outbreaks, economists said.
July’s purchasing manager indexes “suggest that the manufacturing sector is slowing as demand weakens, while the latest COVID-19 is starting to hit the service sector,” Marcel Thieliant of Capital Economics said in a commentary.
Japan reported its inflation rose at a slower pace in June, with food prices growing 6.5% year-on-year compared to 12.3% in May and the increase in energy costs falling to 16.5% from 20.8%. Core inflation excluding volatile energy and food prices rose to 2.6% from 2.2% the month before.
Read: Asia shares rise on optimism about easing COVID restrictions
The Bank of Japan has indicated that unlike the Federal Reserve and other central banks, however, it does not intend to raise its minus 0.1% benchmark interest rate to counter the trend given that wages are not rising in tandem with prices, constraining consumer demand.
Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index gained 0.4% to 27,914.66, while the Hang Seng in Hong Kong added 0.3% to 20,624.18. Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 lost less than 0.1% to 6,791.50.
In South Korea, the Kospi declined 0.6% to 2,393.14. The Shanghai Composite index edged 0.1% higher to 3,274.15.
Much of the focus this week has been on Europe. The European Central Bank opted, as expected, to raise its key interest rate Thursday, ending a yearslong experiment with negative interest rates. It was its first increase in 11 years.
A key pipeline carrying Russian natural gas into the region reopened, though at 40% of capacity as worries persisted that Moscow may restrict supplies to punish allies of Ukraine. In Italy, Premier Mario Draghi resigned after his ruling coalition fell apart. That adds more uncertainty as Europe contends with the war in Ukraine, high inflation and the potential for trouble in Europe’s bond markets.
On Wall Street, the S&P 500 climbed 1% to 3,998.95 on Thursday, returning to its highest level in six weeks. The Dow rose 0.5% to 32,036.90 and the Nasdaq rose 1.4% to 12,059.61.
The Russell 2000 gained 0.5%, at 1,836.69.
Stocks briefly lost ground after President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID.
The Federal Reserve is set to raise rates next week for a fourth time this year, once again trying to tamp down high inflation without pulling the economy into a recession.
Some parts of the U.S. economy already have begun to soften.
The number of workers who filed for unemployment benefits last week was the highest in eight months, though it remains relatively low. A separate report released Thursday showed manufacturing in the mid-Atlantic region weakened much more than economists had expected.
Strong profits from big U.S. companies have driven gains on Wall Street this week.
Tesla climbed 9.8% in the first trading after the electric-vehicle maker reported results for the spring that were better than analysts expected. It was the biggest gainer in the S&P 500.
Stocks of energy companies also fell as the price of U.S. crude oil settled 3.5% lower.
Early Friday, U.S. benchmark crude oil was up $1.40 at $97.75 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Brent crude, the pricing basis for international trading, advanced $1.31 to $100.79 per barrel.
In currency trading, the U.S. dollar bought 137.85 Japanese yen, up from 137.41 late Thursday. The euro slipped to $1.0199 from $1.0230.
N Korea warns of security instability over US-S Korea drills
North Korea has warned that the United States and South Korea will face “unprecedented” security challenges if they don’t stop their hostile military pressure campaign against the North, including joint military drills.
North Korea views any regular U.S.-South Korean military training as an invasion rehearsal even though the allies have steadfastly said they have no intention of attacking the North. The latest warning came as Washington and Seoul prepare to expand their upcoming summertime training following the North’s provocative run of missile tests this year.
“Should the U.S. and its allies opt for military confrontation with us, they would be faced with unprecedented instability security-wise,” Choe Jin, deputy director general of the Institute of Disarmament and Peace, a Foreign Ministry-run think tank, told Associated Press Television News in Pyongyang on Thursday.
Choe said that Washington and Seoul’s joint military drills this year are driving the Korean Peninsula to the brink of war. He accused U.S. and South Korean officials of plotting to discuss the deployment of U.S. nuclear strategic assets during another joint drill set to begin next month.
“The U.S. should keep in mind that it will be treated on a footing of equality when it threatens us with nukes,” Choe said. He said Washington must abandon “its anachronistic and suicidal policy of hostility” toward North Korea or it will face “an undesirable consequence.”
Read: UN court to rule on jurisdiction in Rohingya genocide case
The regular U.S.-South Korea military drills are a major source of animosity on the Korean Peninsula, with North Korea often responding with missile tests or warlike rhetoric.
In May, U.S. President Joe Biden and new South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol said after their summit that they would consider expanded joint military exercises to deter North Korean nuclear threats. Biden also reaffirmed the American extended deterrence commitment to South Korea, a reference to a full range of U.S. defense capabilities including nuclear ones.
Their announcement reflected a change in direction from that of their predecessors. Former U.S. President Donald Trump complained about the cost of the U.S.-South Korean military drills, while former South Korean President Moon Jae-in faced criticism that his dovish engagement policy only helped North Korea buy time to perfect its weapons technology. Yoon accused Moon of tilting toward North Korea and away from the United States.
The U.S. and South Korean militaries haven’t officially announced details about their summertime drills including exactly when they would start. But South Korean defense officials said the drills would involve field training for the first time since 2018 along with the existing computer-simulated tabletop exercises.
In recent years, the South Korean and U.S. militaries have cancelled or downsized some of their regular exercises due to concerns about COVID-19 and to support now-stalled U.S.-led diplomacy aimed at convincing North Korea to give up its nuclear program in return for economic and political benefits.
Japan Cabinet sets Abe state funeral amid mixed public view
Japan’s Cabinet on Friday formally decided to hold a state funeral on Sept. 27 for assassinated former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe amid national debate over the plan, which some criticize as an attempt to glorify a divisive political figure.
Abe was gunned down earlier this month during a campaign speech in the western city of Nara, shocking a nation known for safety and strict gun control. The alleged gunman was arrested immediately after the shooting and is being detained for interrogation as authorities seek to formally press murder charges.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno said a state funeral is appropriate because of Abe’s “distinguished contributions” as the longest-serving Japanese leader and his “outstanding leadership and decisive actions” in broad areas including economic recovery, the promotion of diplomacy centered on the Japan-U.S. alliance, and reconstruction following the 2011 tsunami disaster.
Matsuno said the funeral will be a non-religious ceremony held at the Nippon Budokan, an arena originally built for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics that has since become a popular venue for sports, concerts and cultural events. The government also holds an annual memorial service on Aug. 15 marking Japan’s World War II defeat at the arena.
Foreign dignitaries will be invited to Abe’s state funeral, Matsuno said, though further details, including the estimated cost and number of attendees, are yet to be determined.
Read: Key moments in life of Shinzo Abe, former Japanese leader
Prime Minister Fumio Kishida last week announced plans for a state funeral that some see as a move to stabilize his grip on power by pleasing ultra-conservatives who backed Abe, who led the biggest party wing.
The plan has received a mixed reaction from opposition leaders and the public. Some oppose the use of tax money on the event, while others criticize Kishida’s governing party for politicizing Abe’s death to glorify him and attempt to end debate over his highly divisive legacy, including his hawkish diplomatic and security policies and revisionist stance on wartime history.
On Thursday, a civil group opposing plans for Abe’s state funeral submitted an injunction request asking the Tokyo District Court to suspend the Cabinet decision and budget for the event, saying a state-sponsored funeral without Parliament approval violates the constitutional right to freedom of belief.
Dozens of protesters stood outside the Prime Minister’s Office on Friday to oppose the Cabinet decision. An opposition leader, Mizuho Fukushima, said the decision was not based on public consensus, has no legal basis and should be scrapped.
Abe’s private funeral was already held at a Tokyo temple and attended by about 1,000 mourners, including lawmakers, business leaders and others.
Abe’s assassination shed a light on his and his party’s decades-long questionable links to the Unification Church.
The alleged assassin, Tetsuya Yamagami, 41, has told police that he killed Abe because of his links to a religious group that he hated. His reported accounts and other evidence suggest he was distressed because his mother’s massive donations to the church had bankrupted the family.