Month: July 2023

U.S. officials are leaving Australia feeling emboldened following a nearly weeklong trip that also featured a visit to Papua New Guinea. 

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s ninth trip to the Indo-Pacific aimed to improve intensifying ties with Papua New Guinea by strengthening the government’s defense capabilities, and secure more ambitious plans for defense cooperation with Australia. 

Speaking on the sidelines of multiple meetings with Australian defense officials, U.S. officials said the work, especially discussions in Brisbane for the 33rd annual Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations, paid off. 

“The U.S.-Australia alliance is stronger than it has ever been,” a senior U.S. defense official said, previewing Saturday’s announcement of new defense initiatives with the Australian government. 

Those initiatives include infrastructure improvements to a series of air bases across northern Australia, increased deployments of U.S. forces and capabilities to Australia on a rotational basis, and plans to have Australia start manufacturing precision guided missiles and ammunition, the types of which have been in high demand in Ukraine. 

Beyond those plans, however, U.S. and Australian officials have emphasized the closeness of the alliance. U.S. officials have repeatedly referred to it as “unbreakable,” while Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong called the U.S. Australia’s “vital ally.”  

The U.S. “is our closest global partner, our closest strategic partner,” Wong said following Saturday’s AUSMIN consultations, adding the relationship is now “about operationalizing our alliance to ensure peace, stability” in the Indo-Pacific region. 

Visit to troops

To emphasize the close ties, Austin and Australian Defense Minister Richard Marles on Sunday flew on the U.S. Defense Department’s jet – a militarized Boeing 747 – from Brisbane to Townsville, Australia, to visit troops taking part in Exercise Talisman Sabre. 

The bilateral exercise is the largest joint U.S.-Australian exercise, this year involving 30,000 troops, including those from 11 other nations. Some of those other countries, including Papua New Guinea, Fiji and Tonga, are taking part for the first time. 

“What becomes manifestly clear … is a sense of team and shared vision between the countries participating,” Marles said, addressing a collection of troops from multiple countries. 

“Relationships which are being built and created and which will endure when this exercise comes to an end,” Marles added, before mixing with the troops. “Countries, participating in Talisman Sabre are building a connectedness with each and [in] the way in which we go about our work which enhances the collective security of the Indo-Pacific region.” 

Austin was no less effusive. 

“I’m proud, I’m really proud that we have 13 countries participating in this year’s exercise who share that common vision,” Austin said.  

“You’re bolstering deterrence by building capability,” he said. “You’re practicing logistics interoperability under realistic conditions so that we can improve combined capabilities, as well as our responses to a range of potential contingencies.” 

One of those scenarios is a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan. 

Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly ordered his armed forces to be ready to reunite Taiwan with China by force by 2027.  

U.S. intelligence officials have said it is not clear whether Xi will order such an invasion — the latest intelligence continues to suggest he would prefer not to use force — but U.S. military and defense officials have said regardless of Beijing’s actual plans, the U.S. and its allies must be ready. 

There are likewise concerns about China’s ever more aggressive military posture, in the air and on sea, across the Indo-Pacific. 

Australian military officials said some of the necessary capabilities, such as the ability to effectively communicate across militaries and platforms, and efforts to cut through the fog of mis- and disinformation, have been key aspect of the current exercises. 

‘Shared regional vision’

Some analysts also say that the developments over the past several days, and the series of new agreements, will bolster the ability of key U.S. partners to push back against China, if necessary. 

“Today, Australian leaders lack a way to militarily threaten or retaliate against China if Beijing were to commit acts of aggression against Australia,” said Bryan Clark, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Hudson Institute. 

“For example, China is likely to mount ‘gray zone’ operations against Australia as Chinese leaders attempt to expand their military’s reach and influence across the Western Pacific,” he told VOA by email. “If Australia cannot threaten to fight back, China could escalate the scale and intensity of harassment or begin intruding on Australian territory, as China has already done to Japan, the Philippines, and Taiwan.” 

But following this most recent visit, U.S. officials involved in the talks with America’s Pacific partners are encouraged by what they see. 

“There is a shared regional vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific,” a second senior defense official told reporters, briefing on the condition of anonymity. 

“It is not just the United States,” the official said. “You hear it from countries throughout the Indo-Pacific, big and small, that there are certain principles, certain precepts that they believe are important and valuable and [that] undergird stability in the region.” 

Fourteen members of the U.S. Congress have written to the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations expressing concerns over reports of an alleged violent crackdown by the Bangladesh government on opposition parties and other dissidents ahead of general elections likely taking place in January.

In their letter to Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the congressmen and women called for the deployment of U.N. peacekeeping forces during the next general election in Bangladesh to ensure free and fair polls.

They also sought the immediate suspension of Bangladesh’s membership in the U.N. Human Rights Council until an “impartial and transparent” investigation into the government’s alleged crimes against political opponents and others, including journalists, is completed.

“Over the past 6 to 8 months, thousands of peaceful and courageous protesters have demonstrated in support of free and fair elections [in Bangladesh],” the letter stated, referring to the demonstrations by the opposition and pro-democracy activists.

“These demonstrations have often been met by violence, tear gas, and brutal assault by police, other state actors, and supporters of [Prime Minister Sheikh] Hasina.”

In the letter, the congress members also raised concerns about the coming elections, which Hasina and her ministers insist will be free and fair.

“Given its history of election fraud, violence, and intimidation; we are highly skeptical that the Hasina government will permit fair and transparent elections,” the congress members noted in the letter.

Allegations of rigging

The 2014 elections were boycotted by the Bangladesh Nationalist Party or BNP — the largest opposition party in the country. And, in 2018, the elections were marred by allegations of massive rigging by Hasina’s ruling Awami League [AL] party— a charge Hasina repeatedly denied.

France-based exiled Bangladeshi pro-democracy activist and popular YouTuber Pinaki Bhattacharya said that Hasina “appears incapable” of delivering a free and fair election.

“She made similar promises in 2018. But we ended up witnessing one of the most fraudulent elections in global history, with ballot boxes stuffed overnight on the eve of the election. She has structured her administration, the election commission, and the police force in such a way that they either actively engage in vote rigging or turn a blind eye when it occurs,” Bhattacharya told VOA.

“Sheikh Hasina has consistently dismissed any legitimate evidence from both national and international sources that indicates rampant election rigging. So, how can she claim to have the capacity or, the willingness to hold a free and fair election?”

Demands to ‘step aside’

For several months, the BNP and its allies have been staging a series of demonstrations demanding that Hasina step aside making way for a non-partisan caretaker government before the next general elections take place — a demand her government has rejected.

On Saturday (July 29), tens of thousands of BNP leaders and supporters staged sit-in protests on main roads in Dhaka demanding the resignation of Hasina.

As the protesters tried to resist by throwing stones, police at several locations fired rubber bullets, pellets and teargas at them. Visuals in local TV channels and newspapers showed AL supporters — carrying machetes and sticks — attack and chase away the BNP protesters, in the presence of police.

Scores of protesters, including senior BNP leaders such as Gayeshwar Chandra Roy, Abdus Salam Azad and Ishraq Hossain, were injured during Saturday’s protests. Some police officers were injured too, a police spokesperson said.

The BNP says several of its initially peaceful rallies on political and other issues were violently attacked by the police and AL activists in the past year and 19 of its activists have been killed.

Also in the past year, according to the BNP statistics, more than 25,000 of its leaders and activists have been arrested. The party says police arrested at least 600 BNP protesters in the past week.

A spokesperson of Dhaka Metropolitan Police did not respond to messages from VOA on WhatsApp related to the July 29 clashes with the BNP protesters. The Bangladesh Ministry of Home Affairs, which controls the police, has not responded to requests for comment either.

Taking to the streets

BNP Secretary General Mirza Fakhrul Islam Alamgir said Hasina, while she was in opposition, took to the streets demanding a neutral caretaker government.

“In 1996, the BNP-led government introduced the election-time caretaker government system to the constitution. In 2009, the Awami League-led government amended the constitution and scrapped the system and kept rigging the elections to stay in power. People have lost interest in such sham elections in the country and are staying away from casting their votes,” Alamgir told VOA. “We want people to cast their votes. For this, we have to change the system. There is no alternative but to reintroduce the election-time non-partisan caretaker government system.”

Since last year, the U.S. and other countries have urged the Hasina government to hold the next general election in a free and fair manner.

U.S. President Joe Biden has selected Colorado Springs as the permanent location of the U.S. Space Command headquarters, the U.S. military said Monday, ending a long-running debate over potentially moving it to Republican-stronghold Alabama. 

The Pentagon said the decision by Biden, a Democrat, would ensure “peak readiness” of the command during a critical period. 

Experts have said keeping the base in Colorado Springs would avoid a lengthy transition period to Huntsville, Alabama, a spot favored by former Republican President Donald Trump, and which is known as “Rocket City” for its role in developing space rockets. 

“It will also enable the command to most effectively plan, execute and integrate military space power into multi-domain global operations in order to deter aggression and defend national interests,” the Pentagon said in a statement. 

Biden’s decision comes as a Republican senator from Alabama, Tommy Tuberville, is blocking hundreds of U.S. military appointments to protest the Pentagon’s policy of reimbursing costs for service members who travel to get an abortion. 

Biden last week criticized Tuberville for preventing many women and people of color from moving into more senior roles, some of them historic in nature. 

Those include Air Force General CQ Brown, the first Black person to lead any branch of the armed services, whom Biden has nominated to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Navy Admiral Lisa Franchetti, who would become the first woman to command the service and become a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. 

The Teamsters said on Sunday that the union was served a notice that Yellow Corp. is ceasing operations and filing for bankruptcy. 

“Yellow has historically proven that it could not manage itself despite billions of dollars in worker concessions and hundreds of millions in bailout funding from the federal government,” Teamsters General President Sean M. O’Brien said in a statement. 

Yellow did not immediately respond to a Reuters’ request for comment. 

Earlier in the day, The Wall Street Journal reported about the closure of the trucking firm’s operations which cited notices sent to customers and employees. Last week, WSJ also reported that the company has laid off a large number of workers. 

Earlier this month Yellow averted a threatened strike by 22,000 Teamsters-represented workers, saying the company will pay the more than $50 million it owed in worker benefits and pension accruals. 

The company said on Thursday it is exploring opportunities to divest its third-party logistics company Yellow Logistics Inc. and is engaged with multiple interested parties. 

Its customers include large retailers like Walmart WMT.N and Home Depot, manufacturers and Uber Freight, some of which have paused cargo shipments to the company for fear those goods could be lost or stranded if the carrier went bankrupt. 

In 2020, the Donald Trump-led government rescued the company with a $700 million pandemic relief loan in exchange for a 30% stake. 

Nigerien participants in the Francophone Games, which have kicked off in the Democratic Republic of the Congo’s capital, have been left struggling after a putsch in their home country last week.

Drawing athletes and artists from mostly French-speaking states, the games are being held for the first time in DRC’s capital, Kinshasa, the world’s largest French-speaking city.

The event, which features athletic and cultural contests, began in the central African metropolis on Friday.

But just two days prior, army officers had appeared on television screens in Niger to announce the overthrow of President Mohamed Bazoum and the closure of the Sahel state’s borders.

Ibrahim Mahamane, who heads Niger’s cultural delegation to the games, said the putsch had thrown the team into disarray.

Some participants had planned to arrive in Kinshasa on the day of the coup, or shortly afterward.

“Due to certain circumstances prevailing in the country, the entire delegation was unable to travel, and some remained in Niger,” he said.

For example, sculptor Adamou Tchiombiano managed to fly to the DRC in time, but the giraffe sculpture made from recycled flip-flops that he was due to exhibit got stuck in Niger.

“It’s put the brakes on my career,” said the artist, who thinks his sculpture was a winner.

Back at work

But the 33-year-old is undaunted. On Sunday, he was hard at work in Kinshasa’s Academie des Beaux Arts, using a chainsaw to shape tropical wood into a new giraffe sculpture, which he aims to finish before the end of the games.

“They’ve welcomed me with open arms. It’s like a family,” said Tchiombiano.

Some Nigerien artwork also turned up in Kinshasa without the accompanying artist, according to Mahamane. And members of a musical group that was due to compete are missing.

With one of the largest teams in the games, the 100-strong Nigerien delegation proudly waved flags during the opening ceremony on Friday.

Niger is due to compete in 10 out of 11 cultural contests and eight out of nine sporting events, according to the delegation.

“It’s hard. We feel the weight of what happened to us,” said Mahamane, referring to the coup.

But, he added, “Niger is still standing and it’s our mission to represent it.”

Safety concerns and standards of facilities have dogged the games in Kinshasa, prompting some delegations to pull out or send reduced teams.

The Canadian province of Quebec, for example, is not participating.

But the Nigeriens are unfazed and uncomplaining, despite their substandard accommodation.

Their building in the so-called Games Village at the University of Kinshasa has patchy electricity and water, for example, and it’s far away from the event facilities, leaving them vulnerable to Kinshasa’s infamous traffic jams.

They experienced a letdown Friday when they were bused away from the opening ceremony straight after their flag parade, missing the opening ceremony’s sound and light show. 

“It’s a very big disappointment,” said Mahamane, who wanted to see the show. “But we want the games to succeed. We can overcome all that. We’re used to difficulties.”

Issaka Aissata Ibrah, the head of the Nigerien athletic delegation, was equally upbeat.

“We have 50 athletes. We want 50 medals,” she said. “But medals or no medals, we will have had the merit of representing our country.”

In the courtyard of the Nigerien building in the Games Village, a joyful shout burst from a window.

“It’s one of my wrestlers. The water’s come back,” said Mohamed Manzo, the Nigerien wrestling team’s coach. “He hadn’t had a shower for two days.” 

Thousands of refugees fleeing Darfur to neighboring Chad to escape fighting and ethnically targeted attacks in Sudan’s western region are struggling to secure basic shelter and supplies as heavy rains and winds batter makeshift camps.

The United Nations estimates over 300,000 fled from Darfur to Chad since April 15 when fighting between Sudan’s army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out in the capital of Khartoum.

Islam, one of the roughly 33,000 refugees in the camp in Chad’s Ourang, pleaded for shelter from the relentless rain as she stood in front of destroyed tents.

“Please provide us with a shelter as soon as possible. This is humiliating. Anyone in here lost three or four people and came here with nothing to eat or drink,” she said as tears streamed down her face.

Some now stay in flimsy tarpaulin tents brought down easily by the rain, others bundle themselves in blankets to stay warm.

The onset of the rainy season makes it harder for aid agencies operating in Chad to provide for refugees arriving on foot or donkey carts, with each flare of clashes prompting more to cross the border. 

A recent attack on the west Darfur town on Sirba killed more than 200 people and made thousands more flee, according to the Darfur Bar Association.

Those who fled Darfur reported shortages of food, electricity, and water supply amid violence in residential areas.

“It was not safe to move around, there was nothing to eat in the market. So, we came with our kids and came here, and we found that the road is worse,” Mohamed Ibrahim told Reuters. 

COLOMBO, Sri Lanka — Japan’s Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi said Saturday that Sri Lanka is a key partner in a Tokyo-led initiative aimed at building security and economic cooperation around the Indo-Pacific but also at countering an increasingly assertive China.

Sri Lanka, strategically located in the Indian Ocean, is integral to realizing a free and open Indo-Pacific, Hayashi said. He was speaking after a meeting with his Sri Lankan counterpart, Ali Sabry, in the capital, Colombo.

The initiative, announced by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in March includes Japan’s assistance to emerging economies, support for maritime security, a provision of coast guard patrol boats and equipment and other infrastructure cooperation.

Last year Sri Lanka, which owed $51 billion in foreign debt, became the first Asia-Pacific country since the late 1990s to default, sparking an economic crisis.

While Japan is Sri Lanka’s largest creditor, about 10% of its debt is held by China, which lent Colombo billions to build seaports, airports and power plants as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. In March, China agreed to offer Sri Lanka a two-year moratorium on loan repayments.

Hayashi said that he conveyed expectations for further progress in Sri Lanka’s debt restructuring process. He welcomed Sri Lanka’s efforts under an agreement with the International Monetary Fund, which includes anti-corruption measures and transparency in the policy-making process.

Sri Lanka’s Foreign Minister Sabry said that he, along with Sri Lankan President Ranil Wickremesinghe, invited Japan to resume investment projects already in the pipeline and to consider fresh investments in sectors such as power generation, ports and highways, and dedicated investment zones, as well as in the green and digital economy.

Over many decades, Japan became one of Sri Lanka’s key donors, carrying out key projects under concessionary terms. However, relations between the two countries came under strain after Wickremesinghe’s predecessor, Gotabaya Rajapaksa, unilaterally scrapped a Japan-funded light railway project following his election in 2019.

Sri Lanka’s Cabinet has already approved a proposal to restart the railway project.

Rajapaksa was forced to resign in July 2022 amid angry public protests over the country’s worsening economic crisis.

An Afghan branch of Islamic State claimed responsibility Monday for a suicide bombing in Pakistan that killed at least 54 people at a pro-Taliban party’s election rally, in one of the region’s worst attacks in recent years. 

Islamic State in Khorasan Province made the claim in a statement posted on its Amaq website. It said the attacker detonated an explosive vest, and that the bombing Sunday in the northwestern town of Bajaur was part of the group’s continuing war against forms of democracy it deems to be against Islam. 

Hours earlier, hundreds of mourners in Bajaur carried caskets draped in colorful cloths to burial sites following the previous day’s attack at the election rally for the Jamiat Ulema Islam party. Officials said the bombing killed 54 people, including at least five children, and wounded nearly 200. 

The attack appeared to reflect divisions between Islamist groups, which have a strong presence in the district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province that borders Afghanistan. The Jamiat Ulema Islam party has ties to the Afghan and Pakistani Taliban. 

At least 1,000 people were crowded into a tent near a market for the rally ahead of fall elections, according to police. 

“People were chanting God is Great as the leaders arrived,” said Khan Mohammad, a resident who said he was standing outside the tent, “and that was when I heard the deafening sound of the bomb.” 

Mohammad said he heard people crying for help, and minutes later ambulances arrived and began taking the wounded away. 

Police had suggested in their initial investigation that Islamic State in Khorasan Province was a suspect. The group is based in neighboring Afghanistan’s Nangarhar province and is a rival of the Afghan Taliban and al-Qaida. 

Pakistan security analyst Mahmood Shah also previously had said that breakaway factions of the Pakistani Taliban could be possible suspects, though the group distanced itself from the attack. 

The Pakistani military spent years fighting the Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, in Bajaur before declaring the district clear of militants in 2016. But the Jamiat Ulema Islam party, headed by hard-line cleric and politician Fazlur Rehman, has remained a potent political force. 

On Monday, police recorded statements from some of the wounded at a hospital in Khar, the district’s principal town. 

Female relatives and children wailed and beat their chests at family homes Monday as the dead were taken for funerals, following local customs. Hundreds of men followed the caskets to mosques and open areas for special funeral prayers and then into the hills for burial. 

As condolences continued to pour in from across the country, dozens of people who had lesser injuries were discharged from hospital, while the critically wounded were taken to the provincial capital of Peshawar by army helicopters. The death toll continued to rise as some critically wounded people died in hospital, physician Gul Naseeb said. 

Gul Akbar, the father of an 11-year-old boy who was wounded in the attack, told The Associated Press that his entire family was in a state of shock after hearing about the bombing Sunday. He said he first went to the scene of the attack, and later found his son Taslim Khan being treated in a hospital in Khar. 

“What would I have done if he had also been martyred? Five children died in this barbaric attack, and we want to know what our children did wrong,” he said. 

Rehman’s party is preparing to contest elections, which are expected in October or November. Abdul Rasheed, one of the party’s senior leaders, said the bombing was aimed at weakening the party but that “such attacks cannot deter our resolve.” 

Rehman’s party is part of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s coalition government, which came to power in April 2022 by ousting former Prime Minister Imran Khan through a no-confidence vote in the legislature. 

Sharif called Rehman to express his condolences and assure the cleric that those who orchestrated the attack would be punished. Khan condemned the bombing Sunday, as did the U.S. and Russian embassies in Islamabad. 

The Pakistani Taliban also distanced themselves from the bombing, saying that it was intended to set Islamists against each other. Zabihullah Mujahid, the spokesperson for the Afghan Taliban, wrote in a tweet that “such crimes cannot be justified in any way.” 

The bombing came hours before Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng arrived in Islamabad, where he signed new agreements to boost trade and economic ties to mark a decade of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, a sprawling package under which China has invested $10 billion in Pakistan over 10 years, according to Sharif. 

“We will not tolerate any obstacles in the way of friendship with China,” Sharif said, as he stood by He. 

But the government canceled a cultural event that had been arranged in honor of He, according to Sharif, while the nation mourns. 

Some Chinese nationals have also been targeted by militants in northwestern Pakistan and elsewhere. 

Rehman, who has long supported Afghanistan’s Taliban government, survived at least two known bomb attacks in 2011 and 2014, when bombings damaged his car at rallies. 

Sunday’s bombing was one of the worst in northwestern Pakistan in the last decade. In 2014, 147 people, mostly schoolchildren, were killed in a Taliban attack on an army-run school in Peshawar. 

In January, 74 people were killed in a bombing at a mosque in Peshawar. And in February, more than 100 people, mostly policemen, died in a bombing at a mosque inside a high-security compound housing Peshawar police headquarters. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we’ll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.