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Month: July 2024
US reassures Ukraine of American support
washington — Some top U.S. officials have sought to publicly reassure Ukraine of continued support from Washington, arguing that backing Kyiv in its fight against Russia is in America’s best interest.
The United States has provided Ukraine with almost $54 billion in military equipment and other security assistance since Russian forces invaded in February 2022, including a $225 million package earlier this month.
Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General CQ Brown on Friday called such help from the U.S. and other Western countries crucial, warning of dire consequences if that aid stopped flowing.
“If collectively we stop supporting Ukraine, [Russian President Vladimir] Putin wins,” Brown told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum in Aspen, Colorado.
“What that allows, it also emboldens others,” he said. “We have credibility that’s at stake associated with this. Not just the United States, but NATO, the West.
“If we just back away, that opens the door for [Chinese President] Xi Jinping and others that [have] wanted to do unprovoked aggression.”
Some U.S. politicians, however, argue that the current level of support for Ukraine is unsustainable. And they have been led, in part, by the Republican vice presidential nominee, Ohio Republican Senator J.D. Vance.
“There are a lot of bad guys all over the world, and I’m much more interested in some of the problems in East Asia right now than I am in Europe,” Vance told a major security conference in Munich earlier this year.
“Can we send the level of weaponry we’ve sent for the last 18 months?” Vance asked. “We simply cannot. No matter how many checks the U.S. Congress writes, we are limited there.”
The Republicans’ presidential nominee, former President Donald Trump, has also been critical at times of U.S. support for Ukraine, telling supporters during his nomination acceptance speech Thursday that the war “would never have happened if I was president.”
This past May, at a town hall event sponsored by CNN, Trump said, if elected, he would end the fighting in one day.
Brown, the most senior U.S. military official, was cautious about such predictions when pressed at the Aspen conference.
“If he can get it done in 24 hours, that’d be great,” he said, while also rejecting arguments that the U.S. is incapable of providing Ukraine with continued military support.
“We have the capability to produce,” Brown said. “We have the capacity to do it. We’ve just got to make the commitment to do it.”
Other senior U.S. officials also pushed back against arguments that Washington’s European allies are not doing enough.
“The Europeans are doing a lot more than I think Americans give them credit for,” said White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, speaking separately at the Aspen forum.
“When you calculate their contribution to Ukraine in terms of military assistance, economic assistance, humanitarian assistance and other forms, they [European allies] are combined doing considerably more than the United States,” he said, adding that the Ukrainian cause remains popular despite some vocal skeptics.
“Poll after poll shows the American people still care,” Sullivan said. “[They] still support funding Ukraine. Still support the notion that it is our duty-bound obligation to continue to help Ukraine fight for its freedom and its sovereignty and its territorial integrity.”
Some of those supporters, including both Democratic and Republican lawmakers, have urged the White House and President Joe Biden to be even more aggressive and loosen restrictions preventing Ukraine from using U.S.-made weapons systems to strike deep in Russian territory.
“As the war has evolved, our support has evolved, the capacities we provided have evolved, and the parameters under which we’ve provided them have evolved,” Sullivan said. “But thus far, [Biden’s] policy on long-range strikes in Russia has not changed.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on Britain’s new prime minister, Keir Starmer, earlier Friday to help remove those types of restrictions instituted by the U.S. and other Western allies.
Addressing a meeting of the Cabinet at the official residence of the British prime minister, Zelenskyy said Ukraine has proved it can prevent Russian attempts to expand the war by hitting Russian military targets positioned not just along the border but deeper inside Russia.
In an interview with the BBC, British Defense Secretary John Healey was asked about the issue of Ukraine’s use of British-supplied weapons, and he said nothing precludes “them hitting targets in Russia, but that must be done by the Ukrainians. It must be done within the parameters and the bounds of international humanitarian law.”
Also Friday, Zelenskyy said that following a meeting with Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk on Thursday, Ukraine received a “positive decision from the Polish government” that will allow Ukraine to receive U.S.-made F-16 fighter jets sooner.
He did not specify what the decision was in his statement, shared on the social media platform X, formerly Twitter. The Reuters news service said there was no immediate word from the Polish prime minister’s office on Zelenskyy’s comment.
VOA’s Jeff Custer contributed to this report. Some information came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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China’s direct investment in Kenya drops sharply
Nairobi, Kenya — A report by Kenya’s National Bureau of Statistics shows a significant drop in direct investment from China. The report says Beijing’s investments in Kenya fell by more than a third over the last three years. Analysts say China is increasingly focused on exporting products rather than investing.
Jimmy Yimming, a Chinese manufacturer who makes human hair products, showcased wigs at a Kenyan mall. Yimming said he traveled to Nairobi to try to find Kenyan partners for his business.
”I think the Kenyan market is very good,” Yimming said. “I’m looking forward to staying here for a long time in the future, I hope I can have a chance of that.”
China has invested heavily in Kenya and other African countries in recent years, often as part of its Belt and Road Initiative. Beijing became Kenya’s top source of imports, according to national data, and remains so.
But Kenyan data show that between 2020 and 2022, Chinese expenditures in Kenya’s construction sector, which is China’s leading area of foreign investment in the country, dropped more than 34%.
Investments over the same period from the U.S. increased slightly, to 7.4% from 7.1%.
Research analyst Churchill Ogutu said Washington is setting foot in Kenya’s crucial areas of need for investment.
“Broadly we are looking at a number of sectors that are usually the beneficiaries,” Ogutu said. “Health, ICT [information and communications technology], pharmaceuticals are the main beneficiaries of FDIs [foreign direct investments] into Kenya, and this is where America stands out.”
In a State Department report last year, the U.S. said Kenya’s positive business climate has made it attractive to international firms seeking a location for regional or pan-African operations, adding that American companies continue to show strong interest in establishing or expanding their presence there.
The National Bureau of Statistics report indicates India is now the leading nation for foreign investment in Kenya, followed by Japan, then China.
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Some older working Americans bristle at calls for Biden to step aside
NEW YORK — A swath of Americans watching U.S. President Joe Biden is seeing something beyond debate-stage stumbles and prime-time miscues: themselves.
Debate about the 81-year-old Democrat’s fitness for another term is especially resonating with other older Americans who, like him, want to stay on the job.
“People were telling me I should retire, too,” says 89-year-old D’yan Forest, a New York comedian. “But you’ve got to keep working, no matter what.”
Forest has stumbled on an occasional joke and finds it more difficult to memorize her lines. But she’s busier than ever, drawing audiences and getting big laughs with bawdy jokes and ukulele-strummed songs. She dismisses Biden’s debate performance as a “blip” and grows angry that a single night would cause people to look past all the benefits age brings.
People 75 and older are the fastest-growing age group in the U.S. workforce. All told, about 1 in 5 Americans age 65 and older are employed, according to the Census Bureau.
Many older adults are wary of seeing a peer shoved aside because of his age and, like Forest, insist it should be up to each individual when they decide to exit the workplace.
“He has the experience,” she says. “He has judgment. He’s seen it all.”
Even among that growing population of older workers, though, some want Biden to give up.
“Forget it! The party’s over!” says Betty Ann Talomie, an 81-year-old from Seneca Falls, New York, who was born just a few weeks after the president. “Some people can’t face that it’s time.”
Talomie worked her last shift as a waitress in January. She still treasured regular customers, loved her co-workers and relished having something to occupy boring winter days. But she started feeling more tired at the end of her shift and knew the time had come.
“It’s like anything at this age: It’s twice as hard to do anything,” says Talomie.
She plans to vote for Donald Trump, as she did in 2020, but says he’s ready for retirement too.
“I think they should both sit in lounge chairs,” she says.
Biden insists he’s not stepping aside. Trump, 78, has escaped similar questioning about his age. If he is elected and serves a full term, he would eventually supplant Biden as the oldest president in U.S. history.
Eli Trujillo, an 87-year-old barber in Cheyenne, Wyoming, sees age taking its toll on Biden, but he knows he doesn’t cut hair as fast as he used to or log as many hours either.
Who is he to judge when it comes to the president’s decision?
“If he feels he could still do it,” Trujillo says, “I don’t hold it against him.”
Older employees see rampant age discrimination in their workplaces, and for those who remain on the job, being asked about retirement plans is a constant aggravation.
“They look at me and say, ‘Why don’t you retire? You can take it easy,’” says Paul Durietz, a 76-year-old teacher in Gurnee, Illinois. “I just like teaching,” he tells them.
Durietz, who teaches seventh-grade social studies, may come home a little more tired than he used to, but he says working into later life is no longer a big deal.
Polls have shown older Americans are more likely than younger people to have a favorable view of Biden and are less likely to say he should withdraw to allow another candidate. But even among older people, Biden faces steep skepticism.
Six in 10 people over 70 favored Biden’s withdrawal from the race in a survey released Wednesday by the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
Harriet Newman Cohen is one of them. Although she will vote for Biden if he remains, she finds his appearances painful to watch and fears he has lost all sense of self awareness.
“What’s happening now,” the 91-year-old attorney says, “is giving older age such a bad rap.”
Cohen says she hasn’t slowed at all and finds old age has brought her “more acuity, more keenness, more energy.” Even as she bristles at the idea of anyone suggesting she retire from the work she loves, she believes the time has come for Biden to step aside.
“I’ve just been so lucky,” Cohen says. “But the president has not been so lucky.”
Although many younger people can’t imagine working longer than they have to, older workers often say they can’t imagine themselves not remaining on the job.
Some who work into their 70s, 80s and beyond do so because their finances force them to, but many others do so out of preference. Polls consistently show job satisfaction grows with age and for those who love their work, deciding to quit is a tough decision.
Jim Oppegard, a 94-year-old school bus driver in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, is wrestling with whether to return to work next month as a new school year begins.
He loves the children and having extra cash to donate, and he continues to pass annual exams to make sure he’s up to the job. The Guinness World Records certified him earlier this year as the world’s oldest bus driver, an honor that made him reflect on his future.
He’s considered retiring before but has always gone back. This time might be different.
“There’s something to be said,” Oppegard says, “for going out on top.”
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Leader of Belarus marks 30 years in power after crushing dissent
TALLINN, Estonia — For three decades, European leaders have come and gone by the dozens, but Alexander Lukashenko remains in absolute control of Belarus.
His longevity is due to a mixture of harshly silencing all dissent, reverting to Soviet-style economic controls and methods and cozying up to Russia, even as he sometimes flirted with the West.
Lukashenko, 69, was dubbed “Europe’s last dictator” early in his tenure, and he has lived up to that nickname.
On Saturday, he marks 30 years in power — one of the world’s longest-serving and most ruthless leaders.
As head of the country sandwiched between Russia, Ukraine and NATO members Poland, Lithuania and Latvia, Lukashenko was elected to his sixth term in office in 2020 in balloting widely seen at home and abroad as rigged.
Months of mass protests that followed were harshly suppressed in a violent crackdown that sent tens of thousands to jail amid allegations of beatings and torture. Many political opponents remain imprisoned or have fled the nation of 9.5 million.
But the strongman shrugged off Western sanctions and isolation that followed, and now he says he will run for a seventh five-year term next year.
Lukashenko owes his political longevity to a mixture of guile, brutality and staunch political and economic support from his main ally, Russia.
Most recently, in 2022 he allowed Moscow to use Belarusian territory to invade Ukraine and later agreed to host some of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons.
“Lukashenko has turned Belarus into a fragment of the USSR, dangerous not only for its own citizens but also threatening its Western neighbors with nuclear weapons,” said independent political analyst Valery Karbalevich.
He described the Belarusian leader as “one of the most experienced post-Soviet politicians, who has learned to play both on the Kremlin’s mood and the fears of his own people.”
In power since 1994
When the former state farm director was first elected in July 1994 just 2½ years after Belarus gained independence following the USSR’s collapse, he pledged to fight corruption and boost living standards that had plunged amid chaotic free-market reforms.
An admirer of the Soviet Union, Lukashenko pushed soon after his election for a referendum that abandoned the country’s new red-and-white national flag in favor of one similar to what Belarus had used as a Soviet republic.
He also quickly bolstered ties with Russia and pushed for forming a new union state in the apparent hope of becoming its head after a full merger — an ambition dashed by the 2000 election of Vladimir Putin to succeed the ailing Boris Yeltsin as Russian president.
Under Lukashenko, Belarus’ top security agency retained its fearsome Soviet-era name of the KGB. It also has been the only country in Europe to keep capital punishment, with executions carried out with a shot to the back of the head.
In 1999 and 2000, four prominent Lukashenko critics disappeared, and an investigation by the Council of Europe concluded they were kidnapped and killed by death squads linked to senior Belarusian officials. Belarusian authorities stonewalled European demands to track down and prosecute the suspected culprits.
“Lukashenko never bothered with his reputation,” said Anatoly Lebedko, leader of the now-outlawed United Civil Party of Belarus. “He relished in calling himself a dictator and bragged about being a pariah even when he was publicly accused of political killings and other crimes.”
Lukashenko initiated constitutional changes that put parliament under his control, removed term limits and extended his power in elections that the West didn’t recognize as free or fair. Protests following the votes were quickly broken up by police and organizers were jailed.
His Soviet-style centralized economy depended heavily on Russian subsidies.
“Instead of helping Belarus, cheap Russian oil and gas have become its curse, allowing Lukashenko to receive windfall profits from exporting oil products to Europe and freeze the situation in Belarus,” said Alexander Milinkevich, who challenged him in a 2006 election. “Opposition calls for reforms and movement toward the European Union literally drowned in the flood of Russian money.”
But even while relying on Moscow, Lukashenko repeatedly clashed with the Kremlin, accusing it of trying to strong-arm Belarus into surrendering control of its most prized economic assets and eventually abandoning its independence.
While maneuvering for more subsidies from Russia, he often tried to appease the West by occasionally easing repressions. Before the 2020 election, the U.S. and EU lifted some sanctions as Belarus freed political prisoners.
Turning point
The balancing act ended after the vote that sparked the largest protests ever seen in Belarus. In the subsequent crackdown, over 35,000 people were arrested, thousands were beaten in police custody, and hundreds of independent media outlets and nongovernmental organizations were closed and outlawed.
While Putin had been annoyed by Lukashenko’s past maneuvers, he saw the protests as a major threat to Moscow’s influence over its ally and moved quickly to shore up the Belarusian leader, who came under Western sanctions.
Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, who challenged Lukashenko in that election and then fled the country to lead the opposition from exile, said the vote marked a watershed as it became clear that he had “lost support of the majority of the Belarusians.”
“Lukashenko has survived primarily thanks to Russia, which offered him information, financial and even military support at the peak of the protests,” she told The Associated Press. “The Kremlin’s intervention prevented a split in the Belarusian elites. Now Lukashenko is paying back that support with the country’s sovereignty.”
Belarus’ leading human rights group, Viasna, counts about 1,400 political prisoners in the country, including group founder and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Ales Bialiatski, who has been held incommunicado like other opposition figures.
“Lukashenko has created a harsh personalist political regime in the center of Europe with thousands of political prisoners where civic institutions don’t function and time has turned back,” said Bialiatski’s wife, Natalia Pinchuk. “Torturous conditions in which Ales has been held are emblematic for thousands of Belarusian prisoners and Lukashenko’s path in politics.”
In one of the most vivid episodes of the crackdown, a commercial jet carrying a dissident journalist from Greece to Lithuania was forced to land in Minsk in May 2021 when it briefly crossed into Belarusian airspace in what the West condemned as air piracy. The journalist, Raman Pratasevich, was convicted of organizing protests and sentenced to eight years in prison. He later was pardoned and became a Lukashenko supporter.
The future for Lukashenko
The Belarusian leader is sometimes blustery and mercurial. He once praised Adolf Hitler for “raising Germany from ruins.”
Lukashenko shrugged off the COVID-19 pandemic as “psychosis” and advised people to “kill the virus with vodka,” go to saunas and work in the fields because “tractors will cure everybody!”
Amid the 2020 crackdown, Lukashenko declared that “sometimes we shouldn’t care about the laws and just take tough steps to stop some scum.”
He kept his youngest son, 19-year-old Nikolai, at his side at official events, fueling speculation that he could be nurturing him as a successor.
Lukashenko maintained a tough-guy image by playing hockey, skiing and doing other sports. After contracting COVID-19, he said he recovered quickly, thanks to physical activity.
But he’s become visibly less energetic in recent years amid rumors of health problems that he denied with his usual bravado.
“I’m not going to die,” he said last year. “You will have to tolerate me for quite a long time to go.”
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US, Latin American nations unveil strategy to boost the hemisphere
Members of the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity met this week in Washington to establish concrete projects for economic development
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China vows to boost economic growth by balancing reform, national security
TAIPEI, TAIWAN — China’s ruling Communist Party concluded a highly anticipated party conclave Thursday, promising to boost economic growth through comprehensive reform while reiterating the importance of maintaining national security.
The Central Committee, in a communique at the end of the four-day, closed-door Third Plenum, laid out reform objectives to be completed by 2029, the 80th anniversary of the People’s Republic of China.
The party’s top decision-making body also vowed to finish “building a high-standard socialist market economy in all respects” by 2035.
“All of this will lay a solid foundation for building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects by the middle of this century,” the communique said.
To achieve these goals, the communique said China must better utilize market mechanisms and double down on efforts to promote “high-quality development,” which includes prioritizing investment in advanced technologies and facilitating growth through technological and scientific innovation.
“We must deepen supply-side structural reform, improve incentive and constraint mechanisms for promoting high-quality development, and strive to create new growth drivers and strengths,” the communique said.
The key political meeting comes as China’s economic growth slowed to 4.7% in this year’s second quarter, prompting banks such as Goldman Sachs to lower their 2024 gross domestic product growth forecast for China from 5.0% to 4.9%.
Meanwhile, China’s property crisis continues as investment in the sector dropped 10.1% in the first six months of this year compared to a year earlier, and consumer confidence remains weak.
To address these challenges, Beijing promised to implement measures to defuse risks in the property sector while improving income distribution, the job market, social security, and the health care system.
“Ensuring and enhancing the people’s well-being in the course of development is one of the major tasks of Chinese modernization,” the communique said.
As local governments across China face mounting debt resulting from the real estate crisis, the communique stressed the need to roll out fiscal and tax reforms and facilitate better integration between cities and the countryside.
“The Party must promote equal exchanges and two-way flows of production factors between the cities and the countryside, so as to narrow the disparities between the two and promote their common prosperity and development,” the statement said.
As foreign investors closely monitor signals coming out of the plenum, the party said it would remain committed to the state policy of “opening to the outside world” and promised to “expand cooperation with other countries.”
“We still steadily expand institutional opening up, deepen the foreign trade structural reform, further reform the management systems for inward and outward investment,” the communique said.
Some analysts say the communique shows that Beijing is focusing on areas critical to China’s national strength, including technology and advanced manufacturing.
“This isn’t Western-style market liberalization; it’s about reinforcing China’s existing strategy,” Lizzi Lee, a fellow on the Chinese economy at the Asia Society Policy Institute’s Center for China Analysis, said in a written response to VOA.
“The document cements Xi’s governance approach and his brand of reform, which focuses on consolidating power rather than adopting new liberal economic paradigms, endures,” she wrote.
Balancing reform and national security
In addition to laying out the long list of reform goals, the communique also highlighted the need for the party to balance development and security.
“We will strengthen the network for preventing and controlling public security risks so as to safeguard social stability [and] improve public opinion guidance and effectively deal with risks in the ideological domain,” it said.
The document also reiterated that the party’s top leadership, especially Xi Jinping, remains the “fundamental guarantee” for deepening reforms.
“We must uphold Comrade Xi Jinping’s core position on the Party Central Committee and in the Party as a whole and uphold the Central Committee’s authority and its centralized, unified leadership,” the communique said.
Some experts say the communique’s emphasis on upholding public security and following the guidance of party leadership shows Beijing is trying to tighten control over efforts to reform China’s troubled economy.
“Tightening control is at the heart of [Beijing’s] dilemma because in order for the reforms to work, they need to loosen control,” Dexter Roberts, a nonresident senior fellow at Atlantic Council’s Global China Hub, told VOA by phone.
While other specific reforms are expected to be rolled out in other plenum documents in coming days, Lee said she expects consumer spending in China to remain sluggish and that recovery in the property sector remains slow in the short term.
“The prolonged transition period poses significant risks. It could lead to reduced investments and slower economic growth,” she told VOA, adding that the Chinese government will likely use targeted interventions to boost key sectors.
However, some analysts think that Beijing’s state-led economic growth model is unlikely to yield the results the government hopes for.
“China’s state-led investment, which concentrates resources on areas such as semiconductors and artificial intelligence, is going to take years to pay dividends, and meanwhile, the economy will continue to fail to deliver growth and jobs,” Andrew Collier, managing director of Orient Capital Research in Hong Kong, told VOA in a video interview.
He said unless the government takes concrete steps to reduce its involvement in economic reforms, the country’s economic downturn could grow worse in coming years.
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China’s Third Plenum does nothing to revive economy, observers say
Taipei, Taiwan — China’s ruling party has concluded the Third Plenum of its 20th Central Committee with a communique described as vague and cliché by China watchers, who said it lacks specific measures to address China’s economic difficulties.
Shi He-ling, an associate professor of economics at Monash Business School at Monash University in Caulfield, Australia, said the communiqué was disappointing and that its writers were completely unthinking.
The 5,000-word communiqué, issued on Thursday, touted the Chinese Communist Party’s achievements in “comprehensively deepening reforms” and said the future will be critical for comprehensively advancing “Chinese-style modernization,” building a strong country and rejuvenating the nation.
Shi said that while Chinese President Xi Jinping has set out a new vision of “Chinese-style modernization” to highlight his differences from previous party leaders, the communiqué does not provide any specific definitions that are measurable.
“It does not make macroeconomic adjustments at all but is like a philosophical article, which is basically a cliché,” Shi told VOA.
In addition to “socialist market mechanisms” and “new quality productivity,” the communiqué stressed that national security is an important foundation for the steady and long-term development of Chinese-style modernization; that the modernization of national defense and the armed forces is an important part of it; and that “party leadership” in particular is the “fundamental guarantee” for promoting this policy.
Yeh Yao-yuan, chairman of the Department of Political Science at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, said that under the framework of “Xi Thoughts,” it is difficult for the economic exposition of this communiqué to be new.
Even if the “socialist market economic system” is repeatedly touted, it will not be able to reverse China’s economic decline, he said, adding that Xi’s economic reform is in fact “changing things to their old ways.”
These include forcing the private sector to retreat in order to help the state advance and tightening controls over foreign capital, which will hit the market economy hard.
Ming Chu-cheng, professor emeritus of political science at National Taiwan University in Taipei, offered a similar assessment on Thursday at a seminar in Taiwan.
Xi “is touting the market economy, but what he really pushes is ‘the people retreat and the country advances,’ which is completely opposite to what he says,” Ming said. “I don’t have great hopes for the Third Plenum. Even if you relax the economic restrictions, you will encounter exactly the same problems in another 20 years because politics is choking the economy.”
The communiqué received more than 100 million views on Weibo and made it to the hot search list hours after its release. However, there was hardly any substantive discussion online among Chinese people in the comment areas. Most just reposted and recited some of the communiqué text to express their concerns.
The personnel changes made at the plenum attracted a lot of attention as the CCP officially approved the removal of its former foreign minister, Qin Gang, from its Central Committee.
Qin, who has not been seen in public since last summer, is no longer a member of the Communist Party leadership. He was dismissed as foreign minister in July last year and removed from the post of state councilor three months later.
His resignation from the top body had been accepted. No further details were provided, and the reasons behind Qin’s disappearance remain unclear. He was allegedly investigated for having an extramarital affair, leaking secrets and endangering national security.
The plenum also confirmed the expulsion of former Defense Minister Li Shangfu. Li Yuchao and Sun Jinming of the People’s Liberation Army’s Rocket Force were also removed from the Central Committee.
Many online comments focused on Qin being called “comrade” in the party’s published decision while others were calling Qin’s ousting a “soft landing.”
After the discussion on Qin’s removal became a hot topic, the Weibo accounts of various media outlets seemed to be alerted and comments were concealed.
Chong Ja Ian, an associate professor of political science at the National University of Singapore, said that Beijing dislikes Chinese people arguing online about the CCP’s high-level personnel because comments might call into question the party’s decisions and judgment, especially as Qin was previously Xi’s close confidant and the foreign minister.
“What happened to Qin has not been particularly public so far,” Chong told VOA, “and too many of these discussions [about Qin] will also distract public attention from the economic reform plan the Third Plenum wants to promote.”
Adrianna Zhang, Yang An, Joyce Huang contributed to this story.
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Washington touts 15-day Congo truce
washington — U.S. diplomats are working closely with African partners, the White House said Thursday, amid a fresh 15-day truce between the army and Rwanda-backed rebels in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo. Experts on the ground say they’re holding their breath, citing the dire humanitarian consequences of spiraling violence in this fragile region.
The Biden administration believes this conflict in the northeast corner of the largest country in sub-Saharan Africa “poses a real threat to global peace and security,” a National Security Council spokesperson told VOA on Thursday.
In Congo, more than 940,000 people have been displaced this year, the United Nations says. And 7.3 million Congolese people – more than half women – are currently displaced. Conflict is the culprit more than 80% of the time.
This new truce, set through August 3, aims to quiet the constant thrum of violence that has plagued this resource-rich corner of Congo since the late 1990s. That’s when Hutu extremists with ties to Rwanda’s genocide fled over the Congolese border and began to organize militias along the shores of the massive Lake Kivu. That violence snowballed into a bloodbath that left millions dead across Congo in one of the worst civil wars of the 20th century.
Several rounds of United Nations peacekeeping missions have failed to stop the cycle of violence, which picked up anew after Congo’s violent elections in late 2023. Kinshasa accuses Kigali of backing one of the main combatant groups, M23, which is composed primarily of fighters from Rwanda’s minority Tutsi ethnic group.
State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel emphasized Washington’s diplomatic efforts.
“This is something that we are working closely on with the parties,” he said. “We’re going to work closely with the government of the DRC, Rwanda and Angola to support regional diplomatic efforts to reach a durable cessation of hostilities and set conditions for the voluntary return of displaced populations.”
He did not provide details when asked by reporters how the Biden administration plans to work with Rwanda’s government.
The last truce fell apart Monday, with an incident in the town of Bweremana that killed four children, according to media reports. White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson on Wednesday condemned those killings, while noting that “the parties to the conflict have largely respected the truce” – raising hopes that the children’s deaths may not provoke a slide into violence.
Analysts and humanitarian officials say the situation in Goma, the capital of North Kivu province – a shambolic but dynamic town in the shadow of the ever-smoldering Mount Nyiragongo – is unusually dire.
Onesphore Sematumba, a Goma-based analyst with the International Crisis Group, spoke in stark terms about a town accustomed to fielding knockout punches from both nature and humanity. In the past two decades, Goma has weathered an Ebola outbreak and multiple volcanic eruptions, all while facing a stream of violent militant groups, including an increasingly powerful Islamic State group offshoot.
Sematumba spoke Wednesday on a podcast on the subject, saying that the streets, roundabouts, storefronts and bars of Goma were thronged with desperate displaced people, among them women with babies on their shoulders and backs, begging.
“This crisis is massive,” he said in French. “This crisis is, I would say, gigantic, but as humanitarians rightly say, it is a forgotten crisis.”
Patel, of the State Department, also noted that Washington allocated more than $620 million in humanitarian aid to the nation in fiscal 2023.
Sematumba cited fears that if diplomacy fails to keep the peace, conflict could draw in neighboring Rwanda and Uganda, nearby Burundi and Tanzania and even – clear on the other side of DRC, the smaller Republic of Congo as well. And he voiced concerns that the two major diplomatic efforts conducted in Luanda, Angola, and Nairobi, Kenya, “are struggling to materialize.”
“We would be heading towards a catastrophe like we’ve never seen, even at the height of the 1996 war, which drained almost all African countries, all African armies, from the upper reaches of the continent and into Congo,” he said. “So everyone is holding their breath, and everyone is trying to hang on to all the diplomatic goings-on to avoid such a nightmarish scenario.”
Nike Ching contributed to this report from Washington; Isabella Dail provided translation assistance from Washington.
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Kenyan court suspends police ban on protests in Nairobi
nairobi, kenya — Kenya’s High Court on Thursday suspended a police ban on protests in the capital, stating citizens have a right to demonstrate peacefully.
Before the high court’s decision, police had barred protests in Nairobi indefinitely, saying they lacked leadership that would ensure peaceful demonstrations.
The suspension of the ban came before a planned protest, in which demonstrators were expected to march to the president’s office calling for his resignation over poor governance.
Acting police inspector general, Douglas Kanja, in a statement said the lack of leadership had “made it difficult to enforce safety protocols.”
Recent protests have left businesses counting losses after the lootings and burnings.
Protests were yet to be seen Thursday, but major roads leading to the president’s office remained barricaded by the police.
A month of protests
Kenya has seen a month of protests that started with calls for legislators to vote against a controversial finance bill that proposed higher taxes amid a cost-of-living crisis and ballooning public debt.
At least 50 people have died since the protests began on June 18, according to the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights.
President William Ruto said he wouldn’t sign the finance bill that was passed by parliament on June 25 — the day protesters stormed and burned part of the building, prompting legislators to flee. The president last week dismissed almost his entire Cabinet and the attorney general, as demanded by protesters who accused ministers of incompetence, corruption and display of opulence.
The U.S. Embassy in Nairobi on Thursday urged police to protect the right of Kenyans to demonstrate and encouraged the government to “continue taking steps forward” toward national unity and reconciliation.
Some businesses in Nairobi remained closed in anticipation of protests Thursday. Police remained heavily deployed around the central business district patrolling the streets.
Government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura on Thursday said the economy had incurred loses worth 6 billion Kenyan shillings ($45 million) because of ongoing monthlong protests.
Police accused of brutality
Police have been accused of brutality against protesters. Japhet Koome, the former inspector general of police, resigned on July 12 after calls from demonstrators for him to take responsibility for the shooting of protesters.
The Independent Policing Oversight Authority on Wednesday said it had forwarded four of 10 cases of police brutality to the director of public prosecutions with recommendations.
The watchdog had recorded witness statements and directed that various police officers to appear before it to give their testimony.
Kenyan police officers have in the past been accused of brutality and a contingent of 400 officers is currently in the Caribbean nation of Haiti leading a U.N.-backed police mission to combat gang violence.
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Embattled Biden faces physical and political isolation
U.S. President Joe Biden faces physical and political isolation as he deals with COVID and as more Democrats urge him to step aside as the party’s nominee. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara reports.
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UN agency cites improvements in North Korea’s food security; experts still cautious
washington — The head of the United Nations agency responsible for alleviating world hunger is heaping praise on the government of North Korea after a breakthrough visit to the reclusive country, the first from any official of a U.N. specialized agency since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.
Qu Dongyu, director general of the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO), “commended the great achievement made by the DPRK people in agricultural development, food security and the Pyongyang city under the leadership of H.E. Kim Jong Un,” said a statement the agency issued Wednesday.
The assessment stands in sharp contrast with the view of most independent experts, who say North Korea — officially the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea — remains far from able to feed its own people.
The FAO noted in its own report on July 5 that the country’s food security situation was “expected to remain fragile, amid persistent weak economic growth.”
Some analysts told VOA they believed Qu’s praise was intended simply to keep the door open for future visits.
North Korea reopened its borders in August 2023, easing draconian pandemic measures put in place in 2020 that stopped virtually all cross-border activities, including humanitarian aid.
Pyongyang has since allowed some countries such as China, Russia, Mongolia and Cuba to resume their diplomatic presence but has not allowed international aid workers into the country to work there.
A spokesperson for the FAO’s regional office for Asia and the Pacific told VOA’s Korean Service on Thursday that FAO has an office in North Korea with local staff working on projects that never ceased, but “there are no international staff in the country since COVID-19 border closures.”
In a separate statement provided to VOA on Thursday, an FAO spokesperson at its headquarters in Rome wrote that the FAO was “ready to provide more technical expertise and global experience in different areas and encourages the government [of North Korea] to explore new opportunities for collaboration and resource mobilization, together with FAO, for the vulnerable people most in need.”
Qu’s visit included a tour of North Korea’s Kangdong Greenhouse Complex and Central Institute for Vegetables as well as the FAO-sponsored Pyongchon Fish Farm, according to the statement.
North Korea announced the opening of the Kangdong Greenhouse Complex in the outskirts of Pyongyang in March, releasing the pictures of leader Kim Jong Un visiting the complex. It comprises more than 1,050 buildings spread over 260 hectares, according to the Pyongyang Times.
‘Political statement’
William Brown, a former CIA analyst who closely monitors North Korea’s economy, said he believed Qu, who is Chinese, made the remarks flattering North Korea’s authoritarian leader as “a political statement designed to get him back to Pyongyang.”
In reality, Brown said, “so many people in North Korea are going hungry even as we speak,” even though about a third of the population are farmers.
Pointing out a picture of Qu and Chinese Ambassador Wang Yajun taken in Pyongyang on Sunday and released by the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang on Monday, Brown said it was odd that no North Korean official was shown in the photo.
The Chinese “may be trying to throw a counterpunch to the Russians in a mild way of saying, ‘We’re here too,’ ” Brown said.
Growing ties between Kim and Russian President Vladimir Putin, especially after their meeting in Pyongyang in June, are believed by analysts to be making China uncomfortable.
In Pyongyang, Qu thanked China for the long-term food support it has provided to North Korea, according to a statement by the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang. China has long been the largest food aid provider to North Korea.
Bradley Babson, a former World Bank adviser and an advisory council member of the Korea Economic Institute of America, said, “It’s not surprising to me that there were over-the-top compliments,” because the FAO wants to “reestablish a relationship.”
Babson continued, “If FAO goes back” into North Korea and works there, it’ll be “a good thing.”
Jerome Sauvage, who served as the U.N. resident coordinator in North Korea from November 2009 to 2013, said the visit suggested North Korea was still not willing to accept humanitarian aid but would take development aid. The FAO is “not a humanitarian organization that delivers urgent aid,” he pointed out.
“North Korea will probably discuss on a case-by-case basis which organizations come to help them with development and technical cooperation, instead of just humanitarian aid,” he said.
Ready to resume aid
Other aid organizations say they are eager to resume their work in North Korea.
Chiara Frisone, communication specialist for UNICEF’s regional office for East Asia and the Pacific, told VOA on Thursday that it was “ready to resume its regular activities” in the country and urged North Korea “to facilitate the earliest possible return.”
UNICEF announced the same day that in partnership with GAVI, the vaccine alliance, and the World Health Organization, it has delivered three vital consignments of vaccines to North Korea that can immunize more than 600,000 children and pregnant women who have not received vaccines since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Steve Taravella, a senior spokesperson for the World Food Program, told VOA on Thursday that “we hope that the visit by the director-general of FAO will lead to greater information about changes to food security in DPRK since the pandemic and pave the way to resumption of access and activities.”
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Wall Street Journal firing shocks chair of Hong Kong journalists group
BANGKOK — The newly elected chair of the Hong Kong Journalists Association says she was “shocked and appalled” to be fired by the Wall Street Journal this week, immediately after taking her position.
Selina Cheng says the media outlet terminated her contract Wednesday after she accepted the role leading the association, known as the HKJA.
Speaking with VOA, Cheng said, “I think I would not be terminated if I had complied with their request to not be chair.”
The reporter says Wall Street Journal editors had warned her that her HKJA role could be a conflict of interests because the Journal covers press freedom issues in Hong Kong.
Cheng said in a news conference that the Journal’s actions called into question its commitment to press freedom, saying management is blocking employees “from advocating for freedoms the Journal reporters rely on to work, in a place where journalists and their rights are under threat.”
She said the Journal is applying a double standard, noting its advocacy efforts to free American journalist Evan Gershkovich, who is on trial in Russia.
Cheng, who joined the Journal as a full-time employee in 2022, covers the electric vehicle and auto industry.
A spokesperson at Dow Jones, parent company of the Journal, confirmed to VOA that personnel changes were made in Hong Kong on Wednesday.
When pressed over the reason to terminate Cheng’s role, the spokesperson said, “We don’t comment on specific individuals. This is a newsroom decision.”
The spokesperson added, “The Wall Street Journal has been and continues to be a fierce and vocal advocate for press freedom in Hong Kong and around the world.”
Conflict brewing for weeks
In a statement shared on the social media platform X on Wednesday, Cheng said that about three weeks ago, Wall Street Journal editors learned that she was running for election to be chair of HKJA.
Cheng says that her supervisor, who is based in Britain, then asked her to withdraw.
“She also asked me to quit the board — which I have served on since 2021 —even though the Wall Street Journal approved this when I was hired. This day was the day before our election,” Cheng said in a statement.
When she refused, Cheng says, her supervisor told her the role as chair “would be incompatible” with her job and that “employees of the Journal should not be seen as advocating for press freedom in a place like Hong Kong.”
Cheng told VOA she had been expecting something to happen when she refused to stop her association with the HKJA.
“There didn’t seem to be any room for discussion, and they went straight to threatening to dismiss weeks ago. I’m deeply shocked and appalled by this,” she said.
The journalist said that on Wednesday, Gordon Fairclough, the world coverage chief at the Journal, flew from Britain to Hong Kong to inform Cheng her role had been terminated as part of a restructure.
Cheng said the Journal made layoffs in Hong Kong earlier this year, but that she was kept on.
“Prior to knowing that I was going to run for chair, there wasn’t any indication [of being dismissed],” she told VOA. “In fact, I was a small number of people kept on in the newsroom and my reporting area was highlighted from our editor in chief as being one of the key areas to continue reporting on in Asia.”
Cheng told VOA she had not been asked to relocate to any other of the Journal bureaus.
Cheng has worked in Hong Kong since 2017, reporting on the umbrella protest movement, the removal of books about Tiananmen Square from libraries and a lobbying campaign that sought to revoke the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act.
She previously worked at English news website the Hong Kong Free Press and Hong Kong media outlet HK01.
Association is ‘outraged’
The HKJA in a statement said that it was “outraged” by the Journal’s actions. The statement says Cheng is consulting her lawyers about a potential breach of Hong Kong labor law.
“By pressuring employees not to take part in the HKJA, a key advocate for both local and international journalists working in Hong Kong, the WSJ risks hastening the decline of what space for independent journalism remains,” the statement said.
The HKJA said that other elected board members had come under similar pressure.
The HKJA has come under pressure from authorities and criticism from Chinese-state media since Beijing enacted the national security law in Hong Kong four years ago to quell dissent. The association has been criticized for alleged links to activist organizations.
Former HKJA chair Ronson Chan was sentenced to five days in jail in September for allegedly obstructing a police officer.
Chan was an editor at the now-defunct Stand News website, one of several media outlets to close for allegedly conspiring to publish seditious publications. Media executives and journalists from the outlet are on trial, with a verdict expected in August.
Press freedom in Hong Kong and East Asia have seen a decline in the past year, according to media watchdog Reporters without Borders, known as RSF.
Hong Kong ranks 135 out of 180, where 1 shows the best environment. In 2019, the year before the national security law came in, Hong Kong ranked 73.
Since the national security law was enacted, at least 28 journalists and press freedom defenders have been arrested, with 10 still in jail, and over a dozen media outlets have closed.
Aleksandra Bielakowska, an advocacy officer at RSF, says press freedom has “plummeted.”
“While Reporters Without Borders does not comment on individual employment disputes, we want to express our support for Selina Cheng’s courageous work with the Hong Kong Journalists Association,” she told VOA.
“As press freedom has sharply plummeted in Hong Kong in recent years, and as pressure has grown against foreign and domestic media operating in the territory, independent journalism is more crucial than ever,” she said.
RSF’s World Press Freedom Index lists these countries in East Asia as the most dangerous for media: China, North Korea and Vietnam.
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