white house — The White House said Thursday that it would accept the results of Indonesia’s presidential election in which Prabowo Subianto, a former army general who for more than a decade was banned from entering the United States because of allegations linked to human rights abuses, has claimed victory.

“We’ll make our congratulations known at the appropriate time. I couldn’t give you a date certain or time certain for that because I understand that the results are still coming in,” John Kirby, national security communications adviser, said to VOA during a White House briefing. “We will respect the vote and the voice of the Indonesian people.” 

Preliminary counts from several survey institutions showed that Prabowo, who like most Indonesians goes by his first name, outperformed rivals Anies Baswedan and Ganjar Pranowo, securing more than 50% of votes — the threshold to avoid a runoff election.

The official tally from the General Election Commission is set to be released next month. But Prabowo has claimed that he’s won, telling thousands of his supporters in the capital, Jakarta, that this was “the victory of all Indonesians.”

In 2020, the Trump administration dropped the de facto ban on Prabowo’s entry into the United States that was imposed over accusations of human rights abuses, including the abduction and torture of pro-democracy activists during the 1998 ouster of his then- father-in-law, President Suharto, and involvement with military crimes in East Timor.

Pressed by VOA on whether the Biden administration was comfortable with Prabowo’s track record, Kirby underscored that human rights have been “the very foundation” of Biden’s foreign policy.

“There’s not a conversation he has anywhere in the world with foreign leaders where he’s not raising issues and concerns about human rights and civil rights,” he said. “That’s not going to change.”

Prabowo has promised to continue the widely popular policies of outgoing President Joko Widodo. Jokowi, as he is often called, governed with an “economy-first” modernization agenda that has brought rapid gross domestic product growth, ushering Indonesia, the world’s fourth most populous country, into the ranks of middle-income countries.

Jokowi defeated Prabowo in previous elections, but this year signaled support for his former rival through his eldest son, Gibran Rakabuming Raka, 36, who ran with Prabowo as vice president.

Gibran was able to join Prabowo’s ticket only after the country’s constitutional court created an exception to a rule that candidates must be at least 40 years old. That fueled criticism that Jokowi was trying to create a political dynasty in the world’s third-largest democracy.

Those concerns will largely be overlooked by Washington, considering Indonesia’s pivotal role in the U.S. geopolitical contest for influence with China and international efforts to mitigate climate change. Indonesia is the biggest exporter of coal and claims the world’s biggest reserves of nickel, a key component of electric car batteries.

“If the results show a Prabowo victory next month, then I would expect the U.S. to treat Minister Prabowo the same way that it treated Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi after he was elected in 2014, waiving any remaining restrictions on engagement with him,” Aaron Connelly, research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told VOA.

Biden welcomed Modi for a glitzy state visit at the White House last year. The president’s embrace of the autocratic-leaning Hindu nationalist, whose government has overseen a crackdown on press freedom and opposition leaders, has been criticized by lawmakers and activists who say the administration is prioritizing geopolitical expediency over human rights.

Just as with India, which Washington sees as a counterweight to China, the United States is keen to foster closer ties with Indonesia, home to the largest Muslim population in the world and an important voice of the Global South.

For months, Jakarta and Washington have been discussing a potential minerals partnership aimed at facilitating nickel trade. Indonesia’s nickel mining and refining industry has been largely dependent on investment from Chinese companies and besieged by environmental concerns, hence limiting its access to the U.S. market. 
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KANSAS CITY, Missouri — The mass shooting that unfolded amid throngs of people at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl celebration appeared to stem from a dispute between several people, authorities said Thursday. 

Police Chief Stacey Graves said that the 22 people injured in the shooting ranged between the ages of 8 and 47 years old, half of whom were under the age of 16. A mother of two was also killed. 

Three people were detained — including two juveniles — and firearms were recovered during the mayhem, police said. But investigators are calling for witnesses, people with cellphone footage and victims of the violence to call a dedicated hotline. 

“We are working to determine the involvement of others. And it should be noted we have recovered several firearms. This incident is still a very active investigation,” Graves said at a news conference. 

The shooting outside Union Station occurred despite the presence of more than 800 police officers who were in the building and nearby, including on top of nearby structures, said Mayor Quinton Lucas, who attended with his wife and mother and ran for safety when the shots rang out. But he doesn’t expect to cancel the upcoming St. Patrick’s Day parade. 

“We have parades all the time. I don’t think they’ll end. Certainly we recognized the public safety challenges and issues that relate to them,” Lucas said. 

Throngs had lined the parade route before the shooting, with fans climbing trees and street poles or standing on rooftops for a better view. Players rolled through the crowd on double-decker buses, as DJs and drummers heralded their arrival. 

It’s unclear exactly how many people attended the Chief’s Super Bowl parade. When the Kansas City Royals won the World Series in 2015, an estimated 800,000 people had flocked to that victory parade, shattering expectations in a city with a population of about 470,000 and a metropolitan area of about 2 million. 

Witnesses described confusion as gunshots began, sounding to some like fireworks. 

Some people didn’t run at first but others immediately scrambled for cover. The rally music initially continued playing despite the havoc. And then, within moments of the shooting stopping, some people were walking as if nothing happened. 

Gene Hamilton, 61, of Wichita, Kansas, said he found it unnerving that the upbeat rally music continued among the confusion. 

“If people are shooting, they should change the music,” he said. 

Ashley Coderre, a 36-year-old from Overland Park, Kansas, said she heard two or three shots after walking out of a Panera near Crown Center, a couple blocks from Union Station. She said people were running and yelling. 

Then suddenly she said people were walking around like nothing had happened: “We were so confused.” 

It is the latest sports celebration in the U.S. to be marred by gun violence, following a shooting that wounded several people last year in Denver after the Nuggets’ NBA championship and gunfire last year at a parking lot near the Texas Rangers’ World Series championship parade. 

Social media users posted shocking video of police running through Wednesday’s crowded scene as people scrambled for cover and fled. One video showed someone apparently performing chest compressions on a victim as another person, seemingly writhing in pain, lay on the ground nearby. People screamed in the background. 

Another video showed two people chase and tackle a person, holding them down until two police officers arrived. In an interview Thursday with ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Trey Filter of Wichita, Kansas, said he saw someone being chased and took action. 

“I couldn’t see much. I heard, ‘Get ’em!’ I saw a flash next to me. And I remember I jumped and remember thinking, ‘I hope this is the fool they were talking about,'” he said. “They started yelling that, ‘There’s a gun! There’s a gun!'” 

Filter said he and another man kept the person pinned down until officers arrived. “I remember the officers pulling my feet off of him and at that point I was just looking for my wife and kids,” he said. 

It was not immediately clear if the person he held down was involved in the shooting, but Filter’s wife, Casey, saw a gun nearby and picked it up. 

The woman killed in the shooting was identified by radio station KKFI-FM as Lisa Lopez-Galvan, host of “Taste of Tejano.” 

Lopez-Galvan, whose DJ name was “Lisa G,” was an extrovert and devoted mother from a prominent Latino family in the area, said Rosa Izurieta and Martha Ramirez, two childhood friends who worked with her at a staffing company. 

“She’s the type of person who would jump in front of a bullet for anybody — that would be Lisa,” Izurieta said. 

Kansas City has long struggled with gun violence, and in 2020 it was among nine cities targeted by the U.S. Justice Department in an effort to crack down on violent crime. In 2023, the city matched a record with 182 homicides, most of which involved guns. 

Lucas has joined with mayors across the country in calling for new laws to reduce gun violence, including mandating universal background checks. 

“We did everything to make this event as safe as possible,” Lucas, a Democrat, said in an interview on KMBC-TV Thursday. “But as long as we have fools who will commit these types of acts, as long as we have their access to firearms with this level of capacity, then we may see incidents like this one.” 

The parade and rally were the third in five years after Chiefs’ Super Bowl wins. Lucas said it may be time to reconsider how to handle the next one if they win again, perhaps holding a “vastly smaller event” at Arrowhead Stadium, with fans going through metal detectors. 

Lisa Money of Kansas City was trying to gather some confetti near the end of the parade when she heard somebody yell, “Down, down, everybody down!” At first she thought it might be a joke, until she saw the SWAT team jumping over the fence. 

“I can’t believe it really happened,” Money said. “Who in their right mind would do something like this?” 

University Health spokesperson Leslie Carto said two of the eight gunshot victims brought to the hospital are still in critical condition. One is in stable condition. The other five have been discharged. The hospital also treated four people from the rally who had nongunshot injuries. Three of those patients were discharged, Carto said. 

Stephanie Meyer, chief nursing officer for Children’s Mercy Kansas City, said it was treating 12 patients from the rally, including 11 children between the ages of 6 and 15, many of whom suffered gunshot wounds. All were expected to recover, she said. 

When asked about the condition of the children, Meyer responded: “Fear. The one word I would use to describe what we saw and how they came to us was fear.” 

St. Luke’s Hospital spokesperson Emily Hohenberg said one gunshot victim at the hospital remains in critical condition. Four people who suffered injuries while fleeing the aftermath of the shooting were treated and released. 
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Berlin — German automaker Volkswagen said Wednesday several of its models had been refused entry into the United States, after it emerged that a Chinese-made component may have breached labor laws.

“We are working to rectify a delay in delivering certain Volkswagen Group vehicles from ports to dealers due to a customs issue,” Volkswagen said in a statement.

The trouble related to a “small electronic component,” which was “in the process of being replaced,” Volkswagen said.

The part, said to be from “western China,” was found to be in breach of U.S. anti-forced labor laws, according to the Financial Times, which reported the news first. The Financial Times said Porsche, Bentley and Audi models were affected.

According to the report, Volkswagen was not aware of the origin of the part, having sourced it from a supplier.

The German auto group was made aware of the issue by a supplier and notified U.S. authorities, per the report.

Volkswagen said it “takes allegations of infringements of human rights very seriously, both within the company and in the supply chain.”

“As soon as we received information of allegations regarding one of our sub-suppliers, we have been investigating the matter,” the group said.

The United States has banned most imports from Xinjiang, in western China, unless companies offer verifiable proof that production did not involve forced labor.

Rights campaigners have for years accused Beijing of a brutal crackdown against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang, including through forced labor and detention camps. Beijing denies the allegations of abuse.

The issue of forced labor is acutely sensitive for Volkswagen, which has long been plagued by questions over its factory in the region, operated by its local partner SAIC.

Earlier on Wednesday, Volkswagen said it was discussing the future of its activities in China’s troubled Xinjiang province, after the Handelsblatt daily reported that forced labor may have been used to build a test track in Turpan, Xinjiang.

VW said it had seen no evidence of human rights violations in connection with the project but that it would likewise investigate any new information that came to light.
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washington — Special counsel Jack Smith urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to let former President Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case proceed to trial without further delay. 

Prosecutors were responding to a Trump team request from earlier in the week asking for a continued pause in the case as the court considers whether to take up the question of whether the former president is immune from prosecution for official acts in the White House. Two lower courts have overwhelmingly rejected that position, prompting Trump to ask the high court to intervene. 

The case — one of four criminal prosecutions confronting Trump — has reached a critical juncture, with the Supreme Court’s next step capable of helping determine whether Trump stands trial this year in Washington or whether the proceedings are going to be postponed by weeks or months of additional arguments. 

The trial date, already postponed once by Trump’s immunity appeal, is of paramount importance to both sides. Prosecutors are looking to bring Trump to trial this year while defense lawyers have been seeking delays in his criminal cases. If Trump were to be elected with the case pending, he could presumably use his authority as head of the executive branch to order the Justice Department to dismiss it or could potentially seek to pardon himself. 

Rapid response

Reflecting their desire to proceed quickly, prosecutors responded to Trump’s appeal within two days even though the court had given them until next Tuesday. 

Though their filing does not explicitly mention the upcoming November election or Trump’s status as the front-runner in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, prosecutors described the case as having “unique national importance” and said that “delay in the resolution of these charges threatens to frustrate the public interest in a speedy and fair verdict.” 

“The national interest in resolving those charges without further delay is compelling,” they wrote. 

Smith’s team charged Trump in August with plotting to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, including by participating in a scheme to disrupt the counting of electoral votes in the run-up to the January 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, when his supporters stormed the building in a violent clash with police. 

“The charged crimes strike at the heart of our democracy. A president’s alleged criminal scheme to overturn an election and thwart the peaceful transfer of power to his successor should be the last place to recognize a novel form of absolute immunity from federal criminal law,” they wrote. 

Trump’s lawyers have argued that he is shielded from prosecution for acts that fell within his official duties as president — a legally untested argument since no other former president has been indicted. 

The trial judge and then a federal appeals court rejected those arguments, with a three-judge appeals panel last week saying, “We cannot accept that the office of the Presidency places its former occupants above the law for all time thereafter.” 

The proceedings have been effectively frozen by Trump’s immunity appeal, with U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan canceling a March 4 trial date while the appeals court considered the matter. No new date has been set. 

Further delays possible

Trump’s appeal and request for the Supreme Court to get involved could cause further delays depending on what the justices decide. In December, Smith and his team had urged the justices to take up and decide the immunity issue, even before the appeals court weighed in. But the court declined. 

The Supreme Court’s options include rejecting the emergency appeal, which would enable Chutkan to restart the trial proceedings in Washington’s federal court. The court also could extend the delay while it hears arguments on the immunity issue. In that event, the schedule the justices set could determine how soon a trial might begin, if indeed they agree with lower-court rulings that Trump is not immune from prosecution. 

On Wednesday, prosecutors urged the court to reject Trump’s petition to hear the case, saying that lower-court opinions rejecting immunity for the former president “underscore how remote the possibility is that this Court will agree with his unprecedented legal position.” 

But if the court does want to decide the matter, Smith said, the justices should hear arguments in March and issue a final ruling by late June. 

Prosecutors also pushed back against Trump’s argument that allowing the case to proceed could chill future presidents’ actions for fear they could be criminally charged once they leave office and open the door to politically motivated cases against former commanders-in-chief. 

“That dystopian vision runs contrary to the checks and balances built into our institutions and the framework of the Constitution,” they wrote. “Those guardrails ensure that the legal process for determining criminal liability will not be captive to ‘political forces,’ as applicant forecasts.”
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Washington — Some Asia experts are calling for tough new economic sanctions on China, arguing that the nation’s economic downturn makes it particularly vulnerable to pressure to crack down on North Korea’s ability to make and launder money for its nuclear weapons and missile programs. 

Other analysts argue the opposite, saying new sanctions now would make Beijing less receptive to U.S. efforts to get it to help curb Pyongyang’s weapons programs. 

“Beijing is worried that a long or deep recession would lead to political unrest,” and “that worry gives Washington greater leverage over Beijing — leverage that it didn’t have during the period of strong Chinese economic growth,” said Joshua Stanton, an attorney based in Washington, D.C., who helped draft the Sanctions and Policy Enforcement Act in 2016.  

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) predicted in a report last month that China’s economy will slow from 5.2% GDP growth in 2023 to 4.6% this year, further declining into 4.1% in 2025. 

China’s manufacturing activities contracted for the fourth consecutive month in January and the country is further troubled by soaring debt in the property market and local governments. 

In an email to VOA last Friday, Stanton said the Biden administration should “increase pressure on a central government that fears any regional recession” and “designate canneries and sweatshops that employ North Korean labor.”  

Chinese factories are known to employ North Korean laborers and label products they manufactured as made in China. Approximately 3,000 North Koreans working illegally in China staged a violent protest in January over unpaid wages, according to Reuters, citing South Korea’s intelligence agency.  

In 2017, the U.N. Security Council passed a resolution urging countries to repatriate all North Korean workers by December 2019 to curb Pyongyang’s ability to make income abroad that supports its weapons programs. North Korean workers remit most of their overseas earnings to the regime. 

Stanton argued that Washington should also “apply enhanced scrutiny to local bank branches in Chinese cities” that launder money for North Korea. “China always promises to cooperate if we don’t sanction its banks, but it always breaks those promises,” he said. 

China been tightening regulations on its banks that deal with Russia recently in response to strengthened U.S. sanctions on financial institutions that work with the Russian military.

Anthony Ruggiero, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, dismissed the Biden administration’s current North Korea sanctions as “weak and ineffective.” 

“The administration should target North Korea’s revenue generation and Russian and Chinese banks, entities, and individuals aiding Pyongyang’s sanctions evasion,” he said.  

David Asher, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, said North Korea still works “largely via China” to finance and acquire high-technology products for its military and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs. 

Asher, who oversaw the disruption of North Korea’s illegal trading and WMD networks during the George W. Bush administration, said last Saturday via email that there is a “robust” criminal sector in China, “especially Macao and Hong Kong, where North Korean elites continue to launder money including billions of dollars generated via cybercrime.” 

But other experts are warning against sanctioning China, especially when its economy is slowing, and the U.S. is trying to get Beijing’s help to curb to North Korea’s missile launches.  

“You can twist the knob on China and try to enforce more pain in return for its support on North Korea,” said Ken Gause, senior adversary analytics specialist at the Center for Naval Analyses, in a telephone interview on Friday. 

“But that will blow up in your face because then, China would see us actively trying to harm China to get it to do something on North Korea.”

He continued, “China will not react very well to that, and we could actually make the situation much worse.”

He added that “the only way sanctions would work” is when there are “overlapping U.S. and Chinese strategic equities.”

Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and WMD during the Obama administration, agreed during a telephone interview on Monday that the Biden administration may be concerned that sanctioning Chinese entities would make Beijing “less likely to cooperate on diplomatic efforts.” 

Samore, who is currently professor of the practice of politics at Brandeis University, added that even if some Chinese entities stopped doing business with North Korea because of sanctions, there could be other Chinese entities that would be willing to work with North Korea.  
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