UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, together with non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and civil society actors in the Asia and the Pacific region, on Friday recommitted to enhanced collaboration to work towards sustainable solutions for the forcibly displaced and stateless. In collaboration with the Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN), International Council of Voluntary Agencies (ICVA) and the Asia Pacific Network of Refugees (APNOR), UNHCR’s Regional NGO Consultations for 2023 were held in Bangkok, Thailand on 14 and 15 September. The in-person and virtual event brought together over 180 participants, representing 161 organizations from 19 countries in the Asia and the Pacific to discuss topics around the central theme of “Promoting Inclusion for Sustainable Solutions.” 2 Rohingyas shot dead during gunfight at Ukhiya camp Currently, there are over 7 million refugees or asylum-seekers and 5 million conflict-affected internally displaced people (IDPs) in the region, as recorded at the end of 2022. Most of those displaced live in increasingly protracted situations in countries where they have found refuge. “Inclusion is a complex subject, often misinterpreted, but when dissected covers many of the key issues we collectively work on to find local solutions for refugees: education, livelihoods, skills and healthcare,” said Indrika Ratwatte, UNHCR Director for Asia and the Pacific. The consultations provided an opportunity for humanitarian partners in Asia and the Pacific to discuss best practices and approaches on how including displaced populations and stateless people in all aspects of life contributes to resilience and long-lasting solutions for the benefit of the whole society. UK to push for long-term solution to Rohingya crisis  “Meaningful inclusion requires a shift in thinking that those forcibly displaced are not beneficiaries of support but are assets. They make important contributions to the communities that they are a part of and by extension require supportive policies and protections to really enable their inclusion,” said Keya Saha Chaudhury, ICVA Regional Representative for Asia and the Pacific. Among the specific topics discussed were how UNHCR, NGOs, and community-based organizations can cooperate with and support member States to promote inclusion in national systems. “Empowering refugee-led organizations is essential. These organizations possess an intimate understanding of the communities they represent and can serve as valuable intermediaries, bridging communication gaps, and facilitating community-driven solutions. Secondly, promoting gender balance is imperative. Member states should actively work to ensure equitable representation of women in decision-making processes at all levels, both within refugee communities and in engagements with government bodies,” said Najeeba Wazefadost, APNOR Executive Director. UN Assistant Secretary-General Kanni Wignaraja visits Ukhia Rohingya camp Throughout the Consultations, participants also acknowledged the important role that refugee-led organizations and civil society play in the refugee response; how to further encourage countries in the region to engage in resettlement and complementary pathways; social-economic inclusion as well as the need for predictable and equitable responsibility-sharing. “We need to think of innovative ways to incorporate the skills that refugees bring to the host communities. We need to ensure that refugees have a platform to utilize those skills and be able to contribute to society so that they can go from vulnerable groups to capable communities,” said Hafsar Tameesuddin, APRRN Co-Secretary General of Asia Pacific Refugee Rights Network. Recommendations from the discussions will be presented at UNHCR Executive Committee in October 2023 and inform and support the global NGO consultations in Geneva in June 2024. The first UNHCR-NGO Regional Consultations were held in July 2021, and focused on the social-economic inclusion of refugees in the context of Covid-19.

A record 59.1 million people were displaced within their homelands last year, 4 million more than in 2020, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) said Thursday.  For the past 15 years, most internal displacements were triggered by disasters, with annual numbers slightly higher than those related to conflict and violence.  Weather-related events such as floods, storms and cyclones resulted in some 23.7 million internal displacements in 2021, mainly in Asia Pacific.  With the expected impacts of climate change, and without ambitious climate action, numbers are likely to increase in the coming years, the IOM said. Meanwhile, conflict and violence triggered 14.4 million internal displacements in 2021, a nearly 50 percent increase over the previous year.  The majority took place in Africa, particularly Ethiopia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, while Afghanistan and Myanmar saw unprecedented numbers of displacement.  Children and youth accounted for more than 40 percent of the total number of those internally displaced last year.  Also read: Ukraine war refugees top 5 million as assault intensifies

The Taliban on Saturday captured a large, heavily defended city in northern Afghanistan in a major setback for the government, and were approaching the capital of Kabul, less than three weeks before the U.S. hopes to complete its troop withdrawal. The fall of Mazar-e-Sharif, the country’s fourth largest city, which Afghan forces and two powerful former warlords had pledged to defend, hands the insurgents control over all of northern Afghanistan, confining the Western-backed government to the center and east. Abas Ebrahimzada, a lawmaker from the Balkh province where the city is located, said the national army surrendered first, which prompted pro-government militias and other forces to lose morale and give up in the face of a Taliban onslaught launched earlier Saturday. Ebrahimzada said Abdul Rashid Dostum and Ata Mohammad Noor, former warlords who command thousands of fighters, had fled the province and their whereabouts were unknown. Read: Taliban sweep across Afghanistan's south, take 4 more cities Noor said in a Facebook post that his defeat in Mazar-e-Sharif was orchestrated and blamed the government forces, saying they handed their weapons and equipment to the Taliban. He did not say who was behind the conspiracy, nor offer details, but said he and Dostum “are in a safe place now” The Taliban have made major advances in recent days, including capturing Herat and Kandahar, the country’s second- and third-largest cities. They now control about 24 of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, leaving the Western-backed government with a smattering of provinces in the center and east, as well as the capital, Kabul. On Saturday, the Taliban captured all of Logar province, just south of Kabul, and detained local officials, said Hoda Ahmadi, a lawmaker from the province. She said the Taliban have reached the Char Asyab district, just 11 kilometers (7 miles) south of the capital. Later, the insurgents took over Mihterlam, the capital of Laghman province, northeast of Kabul, without a fight, according to Zefon Safi, a lawmaker from the province. On Saturday, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani delivered a televised speech, his first public appearance since the recent Taliban gains. He vowed not to give up the “achievements” of the 20 years since the U.S. toppled the Taliban after the 9/11 attacks. The U.S. has continued holding peace talks between the government and the Taliban in Qatar this week, and the international community has warned that a Taliban government brought about by force would be shunned. But the insurgents appear to have little interest in making concessions as they rack up victories on the battlefield. “We have started consultations, inside the government with elders and political leaders, representatives of different levels of the community as well as our international allies,” Ghani said. “Soon the results will be shared with you,” he added, without elaborating further. Hours later, his forces suffered one of the biggest setbacks since the Taliban offensive began. Mazar-e-Sharif, home to a famous blue-tiled Muslim shrine, was a stronghold of the Northern Alliance, ethnic militias who helped the U.S. topple the Taliban in 2001. In 1997, as many as 2,000 Taliban fighters were captured and killed by forces loyal to Mohammed Mohaqiq, a Shiite Hazara leader, and his ethnic Uzbek allies. The following year, the Taliban returned and killed thousands of Hazaras in Mazar-e-Sharif in a revenge attack. Several makeshift camps had sprung up around Mazar-e-Sharif where mostly ethnic Hazaras had taken shelter after fleeing their homes in outlying areas. They said the Taliban had detained relatives who sought to leave their districts and in some cases burned schools. Read:Taliban press advance after capturing 2 major Afghan cities Tens of thousands of Afghans have fled their homes, with many fearing a return to the Taliban’s oppressive rule. The group had previously governed Afghanistan under a harsh version of Islamic law in which women were forbidden to work or attend school, and could not leave their homes without a male relative accompanying them. Salima Mazari, one of the few female district governors in the country, expressed fears about a Taliban takeover earlier Saturday in an interview from Mazar-e-Sharif, before it fell. “There will be no place for women,” said Mazari, who governs a district of 36,000 people near the northern city. “In the provinces controlled by the Taliban, no women exist there anymore, not even in the cities. They are all imprisoned in their homes.” The Taliban appointed hard-line cleric Mujeeb Rahman Ansari as women’s affairs minister in Herat, according to a prominent women’s activist from the city who did not want to be identified because she fears for her safety. She described Ansari as being “strongly against women’s rights.” He rose to prominence about 2015 and became infamous for dozens of billboards he installed in Herat that told women to wear Islamic hijab and demonized those who would promote women’s rights. The Taliban also captured Paktika province and small Kunar province, both bordering Pakistan, as well as Faryab province in the north and the central province of Daykundi, lawmakers from those areas said Saturday. Sayed Hussan Gerdezi, a lawmaker from Paktia province, said the Taliban seized most of its local capital, Gardez, but battles with government forces were still underway. The Taliban said they controlled the city. The withdrawal of foreign troops and the swift collapse of Afghanistan’s own forces — despite hundreds of billions of dollars in U.S. aid over the years — has raised fears the Taliban could return to power or that the country could be shattered by factional fighting, as it was after the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. It’s also prompted many American and Afghan veterans of the conflict to question whether two decades of blood and treasure was worth it. Afghans have been streaming into Kabul’s international airport in recent days, desperate to fly out, even as more American troops have arrived to help partially evacuate the U.S. Embassy. U.S. President Joe Biden has authorized an additional 1,000 U.S. troops for deployment to Afghanistan, according to a statement from a defense official. That raises to roughly 5,000 the number of U.S. troops to ensure what Biden calls an “orderly and safe drawdown” of American and allied personnel. U.S. troops will also help in the evacuation of Afghans who worked with the military during the nearly two-decade war. The first Marines arrived Friday. The rest are expected by Sunday, and their deployment has raised questions about whether the administration will meet its Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline. The U.S. Air Force has carried out several airstrikes to aid its Afghan allies on the ground but they appear to have done little to stem the Taliban’s advance. A B-52 bomber and other warplanes traversed the country’s airspace Saturday, flight-tracking data showed. Read:Taliban take 10th Afghan provincial capital in blitz The U.S. invaded shortly after the Sept. 11 attacks, which al-Qaida planned and carried out while being sheltered by Taliban. After rapidly ousting the Taliban, the U.S. shifted toward nation-building, hoping to create a modern Afghan state after decades of war and unrest. Earlier this year, Biden announced a timeline for the withdrawal of all U.S. troops by the end of August. His predecessor, President Donald Trump, had reached an agreement with the Taliban to pave the way for a U.S. pullout. Biden’s announcement set the latest offensive in motion. The Taliban, who have long controlled large parts of the Afghan countryside, moved quickly to seize provincial capitals, border crossings and other key infrastructure. “The security situation in the city is getting worse,” said Kawa Basharat, a resident in Mazar-e-Sharif, hours before the city fell. “I want peace and stability; the fighting should be stopped.”

More women and children were killed and wounded in Afghanistan in the first half of 2021 than in the first six months of any year since the United Nations began systematically keeping count in 2009, a U.N. report said Monday. The war-torn country saw a 47% increase in the number of all civilians killed and wounded in violence across Afghanistan in the first six months of the year, compared to the same period last year, according to the report. “I implore the Taliban and Afghan leaders to take heed of the conflict’s grim and chilling trajectory and its devastating impact on civilians,” said Deborah Lyons, the U.N. secretary-general’s special representative for Afghanistan. Read:Women’s groups call for UN peacekeeping force in Afghanistan “The report provides a clear warning that unprecedented numbers of Afghan civilians will perish and be maimed this year if the increasing violence is not stemmed,” Lyons added in a statement accompanying the report. The Taliban have swiftly captured significant territory in recent weeks, seized strategic border crossings with several neighboring countries and are threatening a number of provincial capitals. The advances come as the last U.S. and NATO soldiers leave Afghanistan. The report found a particularly sharp increase in killings and injuries since May, when international military forces began their withdrawal and the fighting intensified following the Taliban’s offensive. The U.N. mission in Afghanistan reported in its Afghanistan Protection of Civilians in Armed Conflict midyear update 2021 that there were 1,659 civilians killed and 3,254 wounded. It said that’s a 47% increase compared with the same period last year. Women and children made up close to half of all civilian casualties in the first half of 2021 at 46%, according to the report. Thirty-two percent were children, with 468 killed and 1,214 wounded. Fourteen percent of civilian casualties were women, with 219 killed and 508 wounded, the report said. The U.S.-NATO withdrawal is more than 95% complete and due to be finished by Aug. 31. While making swift gains on the ground, the Taliban have also said they do not want to monopolize power. However, they insist there won’t be peace in Afghanistan until there is a new negotiated government in Kabul and President Ashraf Ghani is removed from office. Read:Afghan president slams Taliban; rockets target Kabul palace Lyons, the U.N. envoy who also heads the U.N. mission in Afghanistan, called on the Taliban and Afghan leaders to intensify their efforts at the negotiating table. “Stop the Afghan against Afghan fighting. Protect the Afghan people and give them hope for a better future,” she said. The U.N. report warned that without a significant de-escalation in violence, Afghanistan is on course for 2021 to have the highest ever number of documented civilian casualties in a single year since U.N. record-keeping in the country began. The number of civilians killed and wounded in May and June is almost as many as recorded in the preceding four months. During May and June there were 2,392 casualties, with 783 killed and 1,609 wounded. That’s the highest for those months since systematic documentation began in 2009, the report said. According to the report, much of the battlefield action during May and June took place outside of the cities. But the U.N. is concerned that if intensive military action is undertaken in urban areas with high population densities, the consequences for Afghan civilians could be catastrophic. “The pursuit of a military solution will only increase the suffering of the Afghan people,” the report said. It blamed anti-government forces for 64% of all civilian casualties, with 39% inflicted by the Taliban, nearly 9% by the Islamic State group and 16% undetermined. Afghan security forces were responsible for 23% of civilian casualties, and pro-government armed groups for 2%. Read:To reach a peace deal, Taliban say Afghan president must go The May 8 attack outside the Sayed ul-Shuhuda school in the Afghan capital of Kabul accounted for more than 300 civilian casualties, mostly girls, including 85 killed. No one has claimed responsibility for that attack, the report said. The U.N. attributed 11% of all civilian casualties to crossfire during ground engagements in which the exact party responsible for casualties could not be determined. According to the report, the main cause of civilian casualties was improvised explosive devices, followed by fighting on the ground and targeted killings.

Indonesia has converted nearly its entire oxygen production to medical use just to meet the demand from COVID-19 patients struggling to breathe. Overflowing hospitals in Malaysia had to resort to treating patients on the floor. And in Myanmar’s largest city, graveyard workers have been laboring day and night to keep up with the grim demand for new cremations and burials. Images of bodies burning in open-air pyres during the peak of the pandemic in India horrified the world in May, but in the last two weeks the three Southeast Asian nations have now all surpassed India’s peak per capita death rate as a new coronavirus wave, fueled by the virulent delta variant, tightens its grip on the region. The deaths have followed record numbers of new cases being reported in countries across the region which have left health care systems struggling to cope and governments scrambling to implement new restrictions to try to slow the spread. When Eric Lam tested positive for COVID-19 and was hospitalized on June 17 in the Malaysian state of Selangor, the center of the country’s outbreak, the corridors of the government facility were already crowded with patients on beds with no room left in the wards. Read:India's deaths during pandemic 10X official toll The situation was still better than in some other hospitals in Selangor, Malaysia’s richest and most populous state, where there were no free beds at all and patients were reportedly treated on floors or on stretchers. The government has since added more hospital beds and converted more wards for COVID-19 patients. Lam, 38, recalled once during his three weeks in the hospital hearing a machine beeping continuously for two hours before a nurse came to turn it off; he later learned the patient had died. A variety of factors have contributed to the recent surge in the region, including people growing weary of the pandemic and letting precautions slip, low vaccination rates and the emergence of the delta variant of the virus, which was first detected in India, said Abhishek Rimal, the Asia-Pacific emergency health coordinator for the Red Cross, who is based in Malaysia. “With the measures that countries are taking, if people follow the basics of washing the hands, wearing the masks, keeping distance and getting vaccinated, we will be seeing a decline in cases in the next couple of weeks from now,” he said. So far, however, Malaysia’s national lockdown measures have not brought down the daily rate of infections. The country of some 32 million saw daily cases rise above 10,000 on July 13 for the first time and they have stayed there since. The vaccination rate remains low but has been picking up, with nearly 15% of the population now fully inoculated and the government hoping to have a majority vaccinated by year’s end. Doctors and nurses have been working tirelessly to try to keep up, and Lam was one of the fortunate ones. After his condition initially deteriorated, he was put on a ventilator in an ICU unit filled to capacity and slowly recovered. He was discharged two weeks ago. But he lost his father and brother-in-law to the virus, and another brother remains on a ventilator in the ICU. “I feel I have been reborn and given a second chance to live,” he said. With India’s massive population of nearly 1.4 billion people, its total number of COVID-19 fatalities remains higher than the countries in Southeast Asia. But India’s 7-day rolling average of COVID-19 deaths per million peaked at 3.04 in May, according to the online scientific publication Our World in Data, and continues to decline. Indonesia, Myanmar, and Malaysia have been showing sharp increases since late June and their seven-day averages hit 4.17, 4.02 and 3.18 per million, respectively, on Thursday. Cambodia and Thailand have also seen strong increases in both coronavirus cases and deaths, but have thus far held the seven-day rate per million people to a lower 1.29 and 1.74, respectively. Individual countries elsewhere have higher rates, but the increases are particularly alarming for a region that widely kept numbers low early in the pandemic. With the Indian experience as a lesson, most countries have reacted relatively quickly with new restrictions to slow the virus, and to try to meet the needs of the burgeoning number of people hospitalized with severe illnesses, Rimal said. “People in this region are cautious, because they have seen it right in front of them — 400,000 cases a day in India — and they really don’t want it to repeat here,” he said in a telephone interview from Kuala Lumpur. Read:Vietnam puts southern region in lockdown as surge grows But those measures take time to achieve the desired effect, and right now countries are struggling to cope. Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous nation with some 270 million people, reported 1,383 deaths on Wednesday, its deadliest day since the start of the pandemic. Daily cases through about mid-June had been about 8,000, but then began to spike and peaked last week with more than 50,000 new infections each day. Because Indonesia’s testing rate is low, the actual number of new cases is thought to be much higher. As hospitals there began to run out of oxygen, the government stepped in and ordered manufacturers to shift most production from industrial purposes and dedicate 90% to medical oxygen, up from 25%. Before the current crisis, the country needed 400 tons of oxygen for medical use per day; with the sharp rise in COVID-19 cases, daily use has increased fivefold to more than 2,000 tons, according to Deputy Health Minister Dante Saksono. Though the production of oxygen is now sufficient, Lia Partakusuma, secretary general of Indonesia’s Hospital Association, said there were problems with distribution so some hospitals are still facing shortages. In Indonesia, about 14% of of the population has had at least one vaccine dose, primarily China’s Sinovac. There are growing concerns that Sinovac is less effective against the delta variant, however, and both Indonesia and Thailand are planning booster shots of other vaccines for their Sinovac-immunized health workers. In Myanmar, the pandemic had taken backseat to the military’s power seizure in February, which set off a wave of protests and violent political conflict that devastated the public health system. Only in recent weeks, as testing and reporting of COVID-19 cases has started recovering, has it become clear that a new wave of the virus beginning in mid-May is pushing cases and deaths rapidly higher. Since the start of July its death rate has been climbing almost straight up, and both cases and fatalities are widely believed to be seriously underreported. “With little testing capacity, low numbers in the country vaccinated, widespread shortages of oxygen and other medical supplies, and an already beleaguered health care system under increasing strain, the situation is expected to get increasingly worse in the coming weeks and months,” said ASEAN Parliamentarians for Human Rights, a regional advocacy group. “Meanwhile, the junta’s confiscation of oxygen, attacks on health care workers and facilities since the coup, and the lack of trust in any services they provide by the majority of the population, risks turning a crisis into a disaster.” On Tuesday, the government reported 5,860 new cases and 286 new deaths. There are no solid figures on vaccinations, but from the number of doses that have been available, it’s thought that about 3% of the population could have received two shots. Read:Covid-19: Government orders 66 crore vaccine doses worth RS 14,505 crore Officials this week pushed back at social media postings that cemeteries in Yangon were overwhelmed and could not keep up with the number of dead, inadvertently confirming claims that hospitals were swamped and many people were dying at home. Cho Tun Aung, head of the department that oversees the cemeteries told military-run Myawaddy TV news on Monday that 350 staff members had been working three shifts since July 8 to ensure proper cremations and burials of people at Yangon’s seven major cemeteries. He said workers had cremated and buried more than 1,200 people on Sunday alone, including 1,065 who had died at home of COVID-19 and 169 who had died in hospitals. “We are working in three shifts day and night to inter the dead,” he said. “It is clear that there is no problem like the posts on Facebook.”

After 24 years of heartache and searching, a Chinese couple were reunited with their son who was abducted as a toddler outside their front gate. Guo Gangtang and his wife, Zhang Wenge, hugged their 26-year-old son with tears in their eyes Sunday at a reunion organized by police in their hometown of Liaocheng in the eastern province of Shandong, according to a video recording released by police. The story of their reunion after Guo crisscrossed China by motorcycle searching for his son and became an activist who helped police return other missing children to their parents prompted an outpouring of public sympathy and condemnation of abductions. Guo Xinzhen, then age 2 1/2, was grabbed by a woman and her boyfriend who took him northwest to Hebei province, which surrounds Beijing, the Chinese capital, according to police. From there, he was sold to a couple in central China. Read:China dinosaur footprint fossil named after Doraemon's "Nobita" Abductions of children for sale are reported regularly in China, though how often it happens is unclear. The problem is aggravated by restrictions that until 2015 allowed most urban couples only one child. Boys are sold to couples who want a son to look after them in old age. Girls go to parents who want a servant or a bride for an only son. Police experts found Guo Xinzhen in June by searching databases for images of people who looked like he might as an adult, according to a police ministry statement. His identity was confirmed by a DNA test. The woman and her boyfriend, identified only by the surnames Tang and Hu, were caught and confessed to trafficking three boys, according to the ministry. They have yet to stand trial, but potential penalties range up to death. Blood samples from Guo Xinzhen’s parents were added to an “anti-abduction DNA system,” but no matches were found with boys who were believed to have been abducted, the police ministry said. Kidnappers target children who are too young to know their names or hometowns and sometimes even that they were abducted. “So happy for Mr. Guo,” said a post signed Ding Dalong on the Zhihu social media platform. “He found his long-lost son and can move on with his own life.” Others called for buyers of trafficked children to be punished. There was no word on whether the couple who bought Guo Xinzhen would face penalties. Guo Xinzhen grew up in Henan province, according to police, but no other details of his life have been reported. It isn’t clear whether he knew he was abducted. Read:New dinosaur species "dancing dragon" identified in China His mother, Zhang, described her despair in a 2015 television interview. “What use is it for me to live?” she said. “It was me who lost the child.” Guo Gangtang, now 51, started his search carrying a flag with his son’s photo and details, including “a scar on his left little toe.” Guo wrote on his social media account that he wore out 10 motorcycles riding through 30 of China’s 34 provinces and regions. According to news reports, he operates a shop in Beijing that sells artwork. He received financial help from his father, who kept working into his 70s, and other relatives. Guo started a website in 2012 and a charity in 2014 to help other parents of abducted children, according to news reports. “Thank you for participating in anti-trafficking activities for 24 years and helping more than 100 children return home,” the police ministry said on its social media account. Guo’s search inspired the 2015 movie “Lost and Love,” written by Sanyuan Peng and starring Hong Kong heartthrob Andy Lau. “Only when I am on the road do I feel like a father,” the character based on Guo was quoted as saying in the movie’s advertising. The couple had two more sons, but reporters said Guo wanted them to think Xinzhen was an only child. That would add to the emotional impact of his search. Read:Scientists find possible evidence of chromosomes, DNA preserved in dinosaur fossils In a video on his social media account, Guo said he was worn out from public attention and wanted to give no more interviews. In the 2015 TV interview, Guo said he nearly fell over a cliff when he was blown off his motorcycle in a rainstorm. Guo Xinzhen said he will stay in Henan but plans to visit his biological parents regularly, according to news reports. “He is a great father,” Guo Xinzhen was quoted as saying to reporters. “I am proud of him.”

For China’s Communist Party, celebrating its 100th birthday on Thursday is not just about glorifying its past. It’s also about cementing its future and that of its leader, Chinese President Xi Jinping. In the build-up to the July 1 anniversary, Xi and the party have exhorted its members and the nation to remember the early days of struggle in the hills of the inland city of Yan’an, where Mao Zedong established himself as party leader in the 1930s. Dug into earthen cliffs, the primitive homes where Mao and his followers lived are now tourist sites for the party faithful and schoolteachers encouraged to spread the word. The cave-like rooms feel far removed from Beijing, the modern capital where national festivities are being held, and the skyscrapers of Shenzhen and other high-tech centers on the coast that are more readily associated with today’s China. Read:India cranking up border infrastructure to narrow gap with China Yet in marking its centenary, the Communist Party is using this past — selectively — to try to ensure its future and that of Xi, who may be eyeing, as Mao did, ruling for life. “By linking the party to all of China’s accomplishments of the past century, and none of its failures, Xi is trying to bolster support for his vision, his right to lead the party and the party’s right to govern the country,” said Elizabeth Economy, a senior fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. This week’s celebrations focus on two distinct eras — the early struggles and recent achievements — glossing over the nearly three decades under Mao from the 1950s to 1970s, when mostly disastrous social and economic policies left millions dead and the country impoverished. To that end, a spectacular outdoor gala attended by Xi in Beijing on Monday night relived the Long March of the 1930s — a retreat to Yan’an that has become of party lore — before moving on to singing men holding giant wrenches and women with bushels of wheat. But it also focused on the present, with representations of special forces climbing a mountain and medical workers battling COVID-19 in protective gear. The party has long invoked its history to justify its right to rule, said Joseph Fewsmith, a professor of Chinese politics at Boston University. Shoring up its legitimacy is critical since the party has run China single-handedly for more than 70 years — through the chaotic years under Mao, through the collapse of the Soviet Union and through the unexpected adoption of market-style reforms that over time have built an economic powerhouse, though millions remain in poverty. Many Western policymakers and analysts believed that capitalism would transform China into a democracy as its people prospered, following the pattern of former dictatorships such as South Korea and Taiwan. The Communist Party has confounded that thinking, taking a decisive turn against democracy when it cracked down on large-scale protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989 and quashing any challenges to single-party rule in the ensuing decades — most recently all but extinguishing dissent in Hong Kong after anti-government protests shook the city in 2019. Read:China's comical picture 'The Last G-7' raps Japan's Fukushima water Its leaders have learned the lesson of the Soviet Union, where the communists lost power after opening the door to pluralism, said Zhang Shiyi of the Institute of Party History and Literature. Instead, China’s newfound wealth gave the party the means to build a high-speed rail network and other infrastructure to modernize at home and project power abroad with a strong military and a space program that has landed on the moon and Mars. China is still a middle-income country, but its very size makes it the world’s second-largest economy and puts it on a trajectory to rival the U.S. as a superpower. In the meantime, it has doubled down on its repressive tactics, stamping out dissent from critics of its policies and pushing the assimilation of ethnic minorities seeking to preserve their customs and language in areas such as Tibet and the heavily Muslim Xinjiang region. While it is difficult to gauge public support for the party, it has likely been boosted at least in some quarters by China’s relative success at controlling the COVID-19 pandemic and its standing up to criticism from the United States and others. “We have never been so confident about our future,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told journalists on a recent trip to the party’s historic sites in Yan’an. Tiananmen Square, where Mao proclaimed the founding of communist China in 1949, is no longer a home for student protesters with democratic dreams. On Thursday, the plaza in the center of Beijing will host the nation’s major celebration of party rule. While most details remain under wraps, authorities have said that Xi will give an important speech. The anniversary marks a meeting of about a dozen people in Shanghai in 1921 that is considered the first congress of the Chinese Communist Party — though it actually started in late July. The festivities will likely convey the message that the party has brought China this far, and that it alone can lift the nation to greatness — arguing in essence that it must remain in power. Xi also appears to be considering a third five-year term that would start in 2022, after the party scrapped term limits. The centennial is at once a benchmark to measure how far the country has come and a moment for Xi and the party to move toward their goals for 2049, which would mark the 100th year of communist rule, said Alexander Huang, a professor at Tamkang University in Taiwan. By then, Xi has said, the aim is basic prosperity for the entire population and for China to be a global leader with national strength and international influence. Read:Biden at NATO: Ready to talk China, Russia and soothe allies “Whether they can achieve that goal is the biggest challenge for the Chinese leadership today,” he said, noting growing tensions with other countries, an aging population and a young generation that, as elsewhere, is rejecting the grueling rat race for the traditional markers of success. Still, the party’s ability to evolve and rule for so long, albeit in part by suppressing dissent, suggests it may remain in control well into its second century. The party insists it has no intention of exporting its model to other countries, but if China continues to rise, it could well challenge the western democratic model that won the Cold War and has dominated the post-World War II era. “In the United States, you only talk, talk, talk,” said Hua of the Foreign Ministry. “You try to win votes. But after four years, the other people can overthrow your policies. How can you ensure the people’s living standards, that their demands can be satisfied?”

Afghanistan’s is racing to ramp up supplies of oxygen as a deadly third surge of COVID-19 worsens, a senior health official told The Associated Press in an interview Saturday. The government is installing oxygen supply plants in 10 provinces where up to 65% of those tested in some areas are COVID positive, health ministry spokesman Ghulam Dastigir Nazari said. By WHO recommendations, anything higher than 5% shows officials aren’t testing widely enough, allowing the virus to spread unchecked. Afghanistan carries out barely 4,000 tests a day and often much less. Read: NATO leaders bid symbolic adieu to Afghanistan at summit Afghanistan’s 24-hour infection count has also continued its upward climb from 1,500 at the end of May when the health ministry was already calling the surge “a crisis,” to more than 2,300 this week. Since the pandemic outbreak, Afghanistan is reporting 101,906 positive cases and 4,122 deaths. But those figures are likely a massive undercount, registering only deaths in hospitals — not the far greater numbers who die at home. Meanwhile, Afghanistan received 900 oxygen cylinders from Iran on Saturday, part of 3,800 cylinders Tehran promised to deliver to Kabul last week. The shipment was delayed by Iran’s presidential elections, said Nazari. Afghanistan has even run out of empty cylinders, receiving a delivery of 1,000 last week from Uzbekistan. Meanwhile hospitals are rationing their oxygen supplies. Afghans desperate for oxygen are banging on the doors of the few oxygen suppliers in the Afghan capital, begging for their empty cylinders to be filled for COVID infected loved ones at home. Abdul Wasi, whose wife has been sick for nearly 10 days, has been waiting four days for one 45-liter cylinder to be filled at the Najb Siddiqi oxygen plant in east Kabul. Scores of mostly men were banging on the 10-foot steel gate of the oxygen plant. Some rolled their empty oxygen cylinders up against the gate, while others waved small slips of paper carrying the number of their cylinder inside the plant, waiting to be filled. Wasi said there were no hospital beds for his wife, whose oxygen level hovers around 70-80%. They are rationing her, he said giving her small amounts of oxygen when it drops to around 45 -50%. “How can I do anything else? I have been waiting four days for my cylinder to be filled,” he said. The oxygen plant refills cylinders for 400 Afghanis (roughly $5), while in the market it costs 4,000 Afghanis (roughly $50). For the country’s poor — over half of Afghanistan 36 million people according to World Bank figures — the situation has become desperate. Wasi said on Friday as he waited outside the oxygen plant that a patient on a stretcher was carried to the door while the family begged for oxygen. The patient died. “Right there,” he said pointing to the gate. “I saw them carrying the patient. They were crying and begging and then he died.” Read:Afghan Hazaras being killed at school, play, even at birth Barat Ali had arrived at the plant at 6 a.m. Saturday. It was his third day waiting for his cylinder to be filled. “The poor people in this country have nothing. I have been standing in the sun for eight hours,” he said clutching his small piece of paper that contained his cylinder number. The government “has eaten all the (international) donations.” Necephor Mghendi, who is the Afghanistan delegation head for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the AP in an interview in Kabul that the groups are working to get an oxygen generation plant into the country. The Afghan Red Crescent runs a 50-bed hospital devoted to COVID patients and uses roughly 250 cylinders a day, but in recent days it has been receiving barely half that many. The needs are critical he said, offering as an example one patient currently at the Red Crescent hospital who needs one 45-litre cylinder every 15 minutes to stay alive, he said. “The situation is very concerning,” he said. Inside the Najib Siddiqi oxygen plant dozens of cylinders were being filled, but owner Najib Siddiqi said he can’t keep up. He supplies hospitals but has cut output to them by half, with the other half going to the crowds banging on his gates. He even fills smaller cylinders for free, but he has only the capacity to fill 450-500 cylinders a day. “It’s not enough. They are outside like this all day,” he said. Read:Amid brutal case surge, Afghanistan hit by a vaccine delay Sakhi Ahmad Payman, chairman of the Afghanistan Chamber of Industries and Mines, who was inside the plant having made a tour of the oxygen plants in the city, said all nine facilities in Kabul were overwhelmed. Countrywide he said Afghanistan has 30 oxygen producing plants, and all are unable to keep up with demand. Payman blasted the government. “They knew we were in the middle of a crisis and didn’t do anything until it was too late,” he said.

Improved access to coronavirus vaccines and other tools needed to fight the pandemic are vital to crushing the pandemic and hastening a recovery, officials said Saturday in an online meeting of Pacific Rim economies. The unprecedented crisis brought on by COVID-19 requires a coordinated, cooperative response, said New Zealand’s Trade and Export Growth Minister Damien O’Connor, who hosted the meeting. The 21-member APEC gathers economies all along the Pacific Rim, from tiny Brunei to the United States to Chile and New Zealand. One of its long-term aims is to promote a free trade area of the Asia-Pacific region. The focus Saturday was on “the most pressing problem our region faces, getting people vaccinated against COVID-19 as quickly as possible,” O’Connor said, adding he would be asking his counterparts how they could speed up trade in vaccines and other needed goods. “The successful distribution of vaccines across our region will be critical to our recovery,” he said. Read:Amid brutal case surge, Afghanistan hit by a vaccine delay APEC has long focused on dismantling trade barriers, and many of its members are still struggling to obtain and deploy enough COVID-19 vaccines to vanquish coronavirus flare-ups. Nearly 5 billion doses are still needed for the region of almost 3 billion people, O’Connor noted. In much of the Asia-Pacific region, the share of people vaccinated so far is in the low single digits. That includes places like Thailand and Taiwan that initially managed to avoid initial massive outbreaks but have seen cases rebound recently. APEC members Japan, South Korea and New Zealand are ranked among the worst among all developed nations in vaccinating their people for COVID-19, below some developing countries such as Brazil and India. Australia is also performing comparatively poorly. This week, President Joe Biden announced the U.S. will swiftly donate an initial allotment of 25 million doses of surplus vaccine overseas through the United Nations-backed COVAX program, promising infusions for Asia, South and Central America, Africa and others. Read:Senators say US donating vaccines to Taiwan amid China row That would be a substantial and immediate boost to the lagging COVAX effort, which to date has shared just 76 million doses with needy countries. While some countries at times have limited exports of vaccines, chemicals needed to make them or of protective equipment such as surgical masks, it’s unclear whether tariffs and other trade barriers have been the main problem since countries like Japan and New Zealand imposed onerous approval requirements that have slowed inoculations. The average tariff on vaccines is a low 0.8%, according to the APEC Secretariat. But duties on some other products such as freezing equipment, vials and alcohol solutions can be as high as 30% for some countries. Control of patents for the vaccines is a contentious issue. The U.S. has urged countries and pharmaceutical companies to waive COVID-19 patents to help increase supplies, and officials said they expected to discuss that issue during their talks this weekend. But some say such intellectual property rights are crucial for boosting vaccine production and should not be waived. Read: Sinopharm vaccine: Efforts underway to normalise things after price disclosure A broad waiver of such rights requires a consensus under World Trade Organization rules, O’Connor said. “We’re very mindful that the development of the intellectual property is what’s enabled us to very quickly get vaccines developed, in a time we previously haven’t seen across the globe,” he said. “We have to respect that intellectual property.” These are “extraordinary times,” O’Connor said. “We believe if there clearly are barriers to the rollout of vaccines caused by IP, then we should seek a waiver.” “We’re actually really encouraged to see more WTO members come forth with proposals on what they can support at the WTO with respect to the intellectual property rules of the WTO and how they apply to the COVID vaccine,” said U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai. She said the U.S. was carefully reviewing proposals on the issue and hoping to move toward “text-based negotiations.” Read: Share vaccines to cope with new surges, variants: UN At a vaccine summit last month, the head of the WTO said it was also crucial to diversify manufacturing and have more jabs produced in Africa and Latin America. Much is at stake. Beyond potential lives saved or lost, trade in vaccines and related supplies and equipment was estimated at $418.5 billion in 2019, according to the latest available data, and likely surged in 2020. The APEC meeting additionally focused on “building back better” by reallocating resources to improve health care, education and social safety nets. Even with the region still staggering from the pandemic and tourism still paralyzed by quarantines and border restrictions, Pacific Rim economies are forecast to regain momentum this year, with growth rebounding to more than 6% from a 1.9% contraction in 2020.

In the end, the buildup seemed to eclipse the finale. People across New Zealand and around the world stayed up Wednesday to watch a cosmic event called a super blood moon, a combination of a total lunar eclipse and a brighter-than-usual supermoon. During the buildup, a glittering moon rose above the horizon. As the Earth’s shadow began taking bites from the moon, it created a dramatic effect. Half the moon vanished, leaving it looking like a black-and-white cookie. When the full eclipse took hold, however, the moon darkened, turning a smudgy burnt orange color for many viewers. Read:Cosmic 2-for-1: Total lunar eclipse combines with supermoon In celestial terms, it was a wonder: a projection of the world’s sunsets and sunrises onto the black canvas of the eclipsed moon. But for people peering up from their backyards, it wasn’t quite the brilliant display they had anticipated. Not quite super or blood-colored. “It was not that vivid for those on ground,” said Ben Noll, a meteorologist with New Zealand scientific research agency NIWA. “Personally, I thought there would be a bit more red in the sky.” Still, Noll thought that overall, the evening was sensational. He heard plenty of people cheering and cars honking in downtown Auckland where he watched it all unfold. John Rowe, an educator at the Stardome Observatory & Planetarium in Auckland, said it was like the moon turned into a big, spooky smile looking down at him. That’s because of a bright rim that remained at the bottom. Rowe also enjoyed seeing surrounding stars appear to brighten as the light from the moon dimmed. The full eclipse lasted about 15 minutes, while the whole cosmic show lasted five hours. A partial eclipse began as the moon edged into the Earth’s outer shadow, called the penumbra, before moving more fully into the main shadow and then reversing the process. Rowe likes to imagine it as if he’s standing on the moon. The Earth would come across and block out the sun. The reddish light around the edges would be the sunsets and sunrises happening at that time on Earth, projected onto the moon’s surface. Pretty cool, he reckons. The color of the moon during the total eclipse can appear different depending on where people are in the world, and by factors like the amount of dust in the atmosphere and global weather. Read: SpaceX to send Dogecoin-funded satellite to the Moon in 2022 In much of New Zealand, the weather remained calm and clear on Wednesday, providing excellent viewing conditions. The same was true in Australia, although those in South Korea struck out because rain and cloudy weather across much of the country obscured the eclipse. There also was disappointment in Japan because of cloudy weather, with many posting messages like “I can’t see anything” on Twitter. Some places in the Pacific and East Asia got to see the show before midnight, while night owls in Hawaii and the western part of North America got to watch it in the early morning hours. Sky gazers along the U.S. East Coast were out of luck because the moon was setting and the sun rising. Europe, Africa and western Asia all missed out as well. In Anchorage, Alaska, Doug Henie didn’t know what to expect from his first lunar eclipse. He and his wife saw just a sliver of the moon as they drove to a prime viewing spot, on a hill off a winding road between Cook Inlet and the Anchorage airport. Once they arrived, he set up his camera as the eclipse neared totality just after 3 a.m. local time, when it looked more like dusk than night. That’s because Anchorage had more than 18 hours of sunlight on Wednesday. “It’s kind of cool,” Henie said. “I was kind of hoping to see a little more action, I guess, but now it’s lightened up. The light is certainly coming back.” In Hong Kong, Dickson Fu left work early to watch the eclipse from a seaside promenade in the Sai Kung neighborhood. Fu, who is president of Hong Kong’s Sky Observers’ Association, picked that particular spot because it would give him an unobstructed view. Read:NASA completes engine test firing of moon rocket on 2nd try “In recent years I’m more interested in taking photos, and in the past few days I have already done rehearsals, testing out equipment such as the camera and lenses,” said Fu. For those living in places where the eclipse wasn’t visible, there were livestreams available. And everyone around the world got to see the bright moon, weather permitting. It was the first total lunar eclipse in more than two years. The moon was more than 220,000 miles (357,460 kilometers) away at its fullest. It was this proximity, combined with a full moon, that qualified it as a supermoon, making it appear slightly bigger and more brilliant in the sky.