Month: August 2024

Report confirms famine conditions in parts of Sudan’s Darfur

Posted on by SeeAF

United Nations — A United Nations-backed food security report concluded Thursday that more than a year of war in Sudan has pushed parts of North Darfur into famine, including a displaced persons camp that houses more than a half-million people.

“According to the report, catastrophic hunger conditions are projected for the first time in the history of the IPC survey in Sudan, and 14 areas have been declared ‘at risk of famine’ in the coming months,” U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters about the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, the global monitor for food insecurity.

The IPC does not declare famine but provides the evidence for an official declaration to be made.

The IPC says famine conditions are prevalent in North Darfur, including at the Zamzam displacement camp, which is about 12 kilometers (7 miles) south of the regional capital, El Fasher, and are likely to persist through the end of October.

The U.N. says intensified fighting in El Fasher has displaced about 320,000 people since mid-April, with about 150,000 to 200,000 of them believed to have moved to Zamzam camp since mid-May. It says the camp population has expanded to over half a million in just a few weeks.

Fighting between rival generals leading the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Armed Forces for the past 15 months has severely hindered humanitarian access, exacerbating the hunger crisis.

In addition to the areas facing famine, the U.N. warns that half the country’s population — about 25.6 million people — are at crisis levels or worse of food insecurity.

Dujarric said the World Food Program is rapidly increasing its emergency response and trying to find new ways to reach millions of people across Sudan, especially in hard-to-reach areas.

“Our colleagues at WFP are telling us that we are in a race against time to stop famine in its tracks,” Dujarric said. “But there is an urgent need for a massive increase in funding to ramp up assistance at the scale required to avert famine.”

The United Nations has appealed for $2.7 billion this year for Sudan but has received about a third of that — $870 million.

“We and our partners warn that if the war doesn’t stop, more and more people are being pushed into catastrophic levels of hunger,” Dujarric said.

Nongovernmental organization Mercy Corps said the IPC famine report is “merely the tip of the iceberg.”

“We can only imagine the extent of starvation and deprivation in other regions where we lack similar data, particularly in the 14 areas identified in the latest IPC report, including Greater Darfur, the Kordofan areas, and Khartoum State,” Barrett Alexander, Mercy Corps’ director of programs for Sudan, said in a statement.

He said a recent assessment by his team in Central and South Darfur found that 9 out of 10 children, particularly those under age 5, are suffering from life-threatening malnutrition.

On Monday, the U.N. Security Council expressed its concern about the humanitarian situation, urging the international community to increase assistance.

On July 18, the United States announced an additional $203 million in humanitarian assistance to support those affected by the conflict both inside Sudan and those who have fled to neighboring countries.

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield said the IPC report confirms what was known already — that people have been and continue to die in Sudan from starvation.

“Families who fled horrific violence have been going hungry for months,” she said in a statement. “Children have been eating dirt and leaves, and every day, babies have been starving to death.”

She urged the warring parties to attend the cease-fire talks in Switzerland on August 14, which the United States is mediating, and Switzerland and Saudi Arabia are co-hosting.
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China, trying to address trade deficit, moves to boost agriculture imports from Africa

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China is expanding its imports of semi-processed agriculture from Africa in an effort to address a trade imbalance and also as a way of diversifying global food chains amid geo-political tensions. Kate Bartlett visits South Africa’s rural Limpopo province where avocado farmers are getting ready to export their products to the Chinese market for the first time. Video editor: Zaheer Cassim
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China, major democracies step up competition in Pacific

Posted on by SeeEA

Taipei, Taiwan — China and democratic countries, including Australia and Japan, have increased their efforts to deepen engagement with Pacific Island countries in recent weeks, intensifying what some regional politicians and analysts describe as great power competition, especially in the security sector. 

“Geopolitical competition continues to intensify in the Pacific region as traditional partners [roll out] new activities while new partners continue to show new interests,” said Mihai Sora, director of the Pacific Islands Program at the Lowy Institute in Australia. 

Earlier this month, Jeremiah Manele and Charlot Salwai, the prime ministers of the Solomon Islands and Vanuatu, made high-profile trips to China, during which they vowed to “deepen the comprehensive strategic partnership” with China.  

After wrapping up his first trip to China as Solomon Islands’ prime minister, Manele announced on July 16 that China is providing more than $20 million worth of “budgetary support” to the Pacific Island country. The Chinese government has yet to confirm the news publicly.  

China also reiterated its commitment to help support and train the Solomon Islands’ police force, which began after Honiara signed two controversial security deals with Beijing over the last two years.

Meanwhile, leaders from 18 Pacific Island countries agreed to enhance Japan’s role in the region’s development following a three-day summit in Tokyo in mid-July. Tokyo and Pacific Island nations also announced a joint action plan for increasing port calls by Japan’s Self-Defense Force as well as deepening cooperation between coast guard agencies. 

Sora said Japan’s desire to deepen cooperation with Pacific countries in the security sector is a departure from its traditional role as an aid donor. 

“We are seeing increased anxiety from Japan with respect to China’s role and impact on international security, and they are particularly concerned with China’s push into the security space in the Pacific,” he told VOA in a video interview. 

In a joint declaration issued at the end of the Pacific Islands leaders meeting, Japan and Pacific Island nations expressed “strong opposition to any unilateral attempts to change the status quo by the threat or use of force or coercion anywhere in the world.” They didn’t identify China in the document. 

Sora said Japan’s efforts are aimed at upholding the rules-based order in the Pacific region and it hopes to increase engagement with regional countries in maritime security. 

Australia, which has traditionally been a security provider to regional countries, is looking into helping the Solomon Islands double the size of its police force as Canberra grows increasingly wary of Honiara’s police deal with Beijing. 

Australia is also providing support to Pacific Island countries’ development needs, including a plan announced this week to open a new undersea cable connectivity and resilience center. The establishment of the center aims to help regional countries grow their digital economies by expanding data network connectivity.  

However, some politicians from Pacific Island countries view major democracies’ efforts to deepen ties with regional countries as potentially problematic.  

“Instead of sending officials focusing on development to engage with Pacific Island nations, major democracies are sending more security folks to facilitate the dialogues,” said Peter Kenilorea Jr., a leading independent member of parliament from the Solomon Islands.  

He says that while China’s attempt to increase security ties with Pacific Island countries remains his top concern, democratic countries’ efforts to counter China’s growing security presence in the Pacific region are overshadowing regional countries’ urgent development needs.  

“While attention from major democracies is there, it is not the right attention for regional countries,” Kenilorea told VOA on the sidelines of the IPAC Summit in Taipei, adding that Pacific Island countries should try to direct the focus back to their development needs during dialogues with big democratic countries.  

Some experts say politicians from other Pacific Island countries have expressed similar concerns about the increasing focus on security and competition with China in the Pacific region. 

“There is a very healthy degree of skepticism” among Pacific leaders about what is driving major democracies’ engagement with them, said Tess Newton Cain, an adjunct associate professor at Griffith Asia Institute in Australia.  

“They are very clear that the reason everybody wants to be their friend and everybody wants to talk to them is because they see this as a way of containing China,” she told VOA by phone. 

Despite Pacific Island nations’ desire to steer engagement with major powers back to development, Sora said concern about China’s growing presence in the Pacific region remains the main driver of democratic countries’ efforts in the region.  

“Concerns about China’s activities in the Pacific region allow lawmakers to mobilize more resources than if they were just looking at the region through the traditional development lens,” he said.  

But he adds that the securitization of the Pacific region is an “inescapable” trend. 

“What differentiates various actors’ approaches is their commitment to transparency and coordination of their activities with Pacific Islands’ priorities,” Sora said.  

As great power competition in the Pacific region will likely intensify in the near future, Kenilorea Jr. said the key for Pacific Island countries to safeguard their interests is to “maneuver together.”  

“I think regionalism is where we can counter some of these big power challenges that we are going through,” he told VOA. 
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Critics question Beijing-friendly donor’s ties to UK-China institute

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London — A British organization that focuses on bringing more transparency to ties between China and the United Kingdom says one of the country’s biggest China institutes at a top university, King’s College London, received almost all of its funds from one single donor — a wealthy Hong Kong businessman who has ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In a report released Sunday, UK-China Transparency said 99.9% of funding for the Lau China Institute, or LCI, came from Lau Ming-wai, who has served as an adviser to the Hong Kong government working on Hong Kong “integration” with China. He was also given a formal role at a body overseen by the Chinese Communist Party’s United Front Work Department, the report said.

The United Front Work Department coordinates domestic and foreign influence campaigns for the Chinese Communist Party and is part of a broader effort known as “United Front” work that aims to co-opt individuals and silence opposition to the party.

Lau received his bachelor’s and doctorate degrees from King’s College London and donated at least $14.1 million to support the institute, according to the report.

UK-China Transparency said it has sought information from King’s College under the Freedom of Information Act about the details of Lau’s collaboration with the Institute and any terms or restrictions on Lau’s donation. It also asked whether Lau has any requirements for the appointment of the institute’s director.

The university confirmed Lau’s donations but declined to provide the other information.

UK-China Transparency then complained to the U.K. Information Commissioner’s Office, which supported King’s College’s position. The organization has since appealed to a body known as the First-tier Tribunal to try to force the college to disclose more information.

A British government spokesperson told VOA that it is the responsibility of higher education providers to ensure “they have adequate governance and risk management procedures in place, including on the acceptance of donations.”

“We expect the sector to be alert to security risks when collaborating with international partners, conducting appropriate due diligence to comply with legislation and consider risks, including potential threats to freedom of speech and academic freedom,” the spokesperson said in an emailed statement Thursday.

The LCI was established in 2011 as part of the School of Global Affairs at King’s College London. The institute has 76 members, including 30 doctoral students and 11 core members. Its projects include several topics that are considered sensitive by the Chinese Communist Party.

Kerry Brown, director of the LCI, received an award from a Chinese government-owned think tank in 2020 for “telling Chinese stories and spreading Chinese voices.”

Brown is a former British diplomat who previously worked for the China Section of his country’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office and as first secretary of the U.K. Embassy in Beijing. He is a frequent contributor to Chinese state media.

VOA contacted Brown for comment but did not receive a response at time of publication.

However, Brown said in an interview with VOA last year that while there were legitimate security reasons that made the U.K. have reservations about Chinese investment, the U.K.’s options would be greatly reduced if China was rejected altogether.

“You either accept that China poses problems and you try and deal with them, or you accept that you can’t deal with China and you don’t take any of the economic benefits that come from that,” he said. “It’s about the conversation. It’s about embracing how complex this could be.”

In a summary report released in 2020, the LCI thanked Lau for his continued support, noting that the institute works with several institutions around the world, including Transparency International, the World Bank, BHP Billiton and the G20. The LCI has become an important source of information for policymakers and the public to discuss China, the report said.

A spokesperson for King’s College London told VOA that as a matter of policy, all of its institutes operate independently from donors, who have no influence over the focus of any research undertaken by the institutes.

“We are proud of the work of our global institutes in bringing together leading academics to critically examine and deliver country-focused research and expertise that helps shape and inform global understanding,” the spokesperson said.

The close ties between U.K. universities and China have been under the spotlight in recent years, particularly in the economic and educational sectors.

A report by the U.K. Parliament’s Intelligence and Security Committee last year warned that “China has taken advantage of the policy of successive British governments to boost economic ties between the U.K. and China, which has enabled it to advance its commercial, science and technology, and industrial goals in order to gain a strategic advantage.”

In February, a British government spokesperson told VOA, “We continue to talk to the sector to ensure advice, and measures on tackling security risks in international collaboration remains relevant and proportionate.”

The spokesperson said China was added in May 2023 to a list of countries subject to export controls on certain items with potential military uses.

In April, Oliver Dowden, the U.K. deputy prime minister at the time, said the government would impose stricter oversight of higher education institutions, thereby strengthening protection for sensitive technology and reducing reliance on foreign funding. The move aims to prevent foreign interference in national security, especially from countries that “ignore the rules-based international order.”

Observers said the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act is an important tool for that purpose. However, the Labour Party’s education secretary announced this week that the bill’s implementation would be halted to ensure the “financial stability” of the higher education sector.

Brown said last year that his colleagues at King’s College London were well aware of the problems that arose in their interactions with Chinese students and were not naive. He believes it is important to understand and listen to the voices of Chinese students in the U.K., as they are an important part of the academic community.

At the same time, he stressed that cooperation with China is still necessary, especially in areas such as life sciences and medical research, as these are common global issues.

VOA’s Adrianna Zhang, Yu-wen Cheng and Daniel Schearf contributed to this report.
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Historic prisoner swap sees Americans Paul Whelan, Evan Gershkovich, Alsu Kurmasheva freed from Russia

Posted on by SeeEU

Washington — The U.S. on Thursday confirmed a historic prisoner swap with Russia that included the release of American journalists Evan Gershkovich and Alsu Kurmasheva, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, and permanent resident Vladimir Kara-Murza.

In total, the U.S. secured the release of 16 individuals, including five wrongfully detained Germans and seven Russian citizens, in return for eight held in America, Germany, Poland, Norway and Slovenia.

It marked the largest prisoner swap between the United States and Russia since the Cold War.

“Today’s exchange will be historic. Not since the Cold War has there been a similar number of individuals exchanged in this way,” national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters at a briefing. “It’s the culmination of many rounds of complex, painstaking negotiations over many, many months.”

Sullivan said the deal also marks the first time so many countries and allies worked together to secure the release of wrongfully detained individuals.

Alongside the Americans, the deal secures the release of German nationals and Russian political prisoners, including Dieter Voronin, Kevin Lick, Rico Krieger, Patrick Schoebel, Herman Moyzhes, Ilya Yashin, Liliya Chanysheva, Kseniya Fadeyeva, Vadim Ostanin, Andrey Pivovarov, Oleg Orlov, and Sasha Skochilenko.

Of the Americans, the longest held was Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine, who was arrested in Moscow in 2018. In 2020, he was sentenced to 16 years in a penal colony on spying charges that he and the U.S. government den

Wall Street Journal reporter Gershkovich and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty journalist Kurmasheva were both detained in 2023 and were convicted in separate closed trials on July 19, which were widely decried as shams.

And Kara-Murza, an activist and columnist for The Washington Post detained since April 2022, was also freed. The politician and historian won a Pulitzer for his letters written from prison.

On the Russian side, the Kremlin negotiated for the release of Vadim Krasikov, a Russian serving life in prison in Germany.

Sullivan told reporters: “It became clear that the Russians would not agree to the release of these individuals without an exchange that included Vadim Krasikov.”

Krasikov was convicted in the 2019 murder of a Chechen dissident in Berlin. He had previously been in the running to be exchanged for opposition leader Alexey Navalny, who died in February 2024.

Other individuals returning to Russia include Artem Viktorovich Dultsev and Anna Valerevna Dultseva from Slovenia; Mikhail Valeryevich Mikushin from Norway; Pavel Alekseyevich Rubtsov from Poland; and Roman Seleznev, Vladislav Klyushin and Vadim Konoshchenock from the United States.

Paul Beckett, an assistant editor at the Journal, who led the newspaper’s campaign to secure Gershkovich’s release, told VOA earlier this year that his colleague’s jailing highlights the dangers facing journalists around the world.

“It’s certainly a reminder for all of our reporters who are in dangerous places that journalism is a risky business,” Beckett said. “It is a noble and valued endeavor that some governments in the world really don’t like.”

Kurmasheva is a Prague-based editor on the Tatar-Bashkir Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The dual U.S.-Russian national traveled to Russia in May of 2023 to care for her ailing mother.

When Kurmasheva tried to leave the country in June 2023, authorities confiscated her passports, and she was waiting for them to be returned when she was detained in October 2023.

Kurmasheva had not been designated by the U.S. State Department as wrongfully detained. A senior administration official told VOA, however, that Kurmasheva became part of the negotiations shortly after she was detained, and the U.S. is glad to bring her home.

A similar deal in 2022 led to American basketball player Brittney Griner being freed in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who was serving a 25-year sentence in the United States.

Kurmasheva’s husband, Pavel Butorin, said that since her arrest, his primary concern has been the couple’s daughters.

“They’re old enough to understand the brutality of the regime that captured their mother,” he told VOA in early July at their Prague home. “We dream of our family being reunited after this ordeal.”

The couple’s eldest daughter, Bibi, said she missed the little moments with her mother, like when they blasted music together on the car ride to school in the morning.

“And on the way back home from school, she would always bring snacks, and we would always talk about our day. I really miss that,” the 16-year-old said.

Patsy Widakuswara contributed to this report.
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Young fencer shows NY grit on Paris 2024 stage

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EAUBONNE, France — Growing up in cutthroat New York gave Lauren Scruggs the competitive mindset needed to claim an unexpected fencing silver medal on her Olympic debut in Paris.

The 21-year-old Queens native shared the podium with fellow American Lee Kiefer, who retained her Olympic title in the women’s individual foil event gold medal bout on Sunday.

“I’ve grown up in New York my whole life. It can be kind of rough sometimes,” Scruggs, the first Black American fencer to win an Olympic medal in a women’s individual event, told Reuters.

“You develop a hard shell, and in terms of how that translates to my fencing, I think it came out, that energy and that toughness.”

When Scruggs found herself neck-and-neck with then world No. 2 Arriana Errigo in the quarterfinals, she managed to score the last touch, knocking out the Italian 15-14.

“I think that was my toughest bout of the day in terms of energy, and going past my limits, and I have definitely New York to thank for that,” said Scruggs, one of the rare Black fencers at the highest level.

“Fencing is predominantly white, I think for a multitude of reasons, it’s just the history of the sport, and the lack of representation and encouragement,” she explained.

“To have this accomplishment is a big deal for me, because when I was younger I only had a few people to look up to in the sport, so to be someone that little kids now can look up to is very special to me.”

They can draw inspiration from her impressive grit, which coach Sean McClain described in the U.S. training venue in Eaubonne, in the outskirts of Paris, saying that since she was eight, Scruggs only cared about winning medals.

“And she’s maintained that distaste for losing her entire career,” he said. “I really think in an event like the Olympics, it’s more about how you compete.”

Expensive sport

Born in the U.S. to Jamaican immigrants, Scruggs grew up in Queens with her mother and grandmother.

“I was in a single-parent household early on, so my family had to basically cut some corners around here and there to support us,” said Scruggs, whose brother was the first to get into fencing and inspired her to take up the sport.

Now a college student at Harvard, where she trains every day, Scruggs had to fight to make it into a “pretty expensive” sport.

“It was not easy growing up, trying to fence while being from where I’m from, just income-wise,” she said.

“If you have the funds, it makes it a lot easier to pursue the sport and feel comfortable asking that from your family.

“But if you’re coming from a lower-income background, it might push you harder. And I think it’s what happened with me. I just wanted it more than my peers.”

On paper, Scruggs did not have a big medal chance, but she showed her mettle at the Grand Palais arena.

“Fencing skill wise, Lauren is on par with the better fencers in the world, but she’s not better than them. What made the difference was that competitiveness,” said McClain, who has also become Scruggs’ stepfather.

“That comes from my wife,” he added. “I knew it was possible, but I didn’t really think Lauren was going to win a medal in her first Olympics. But my wife did. She was like, she’d better win a medal. So that’s where it comes from — that’s the fiery spirit!”

With Kiefer and alongside teammates Jackie Dubrovich and Maia Weintraub, Scruggs will represent the U.S. against China on Thursday in the quarterfinals of the women’s foil team event.

Scruggs is aiming for gold this time and is dreaming already of qualifying for the next Games, which will take place in Los Angeles in four years’ time.

“I can’t imagine myself not fencing,” she said. “It’s not even love, it’s just a part of me. It’s connected to who I am,” she said. 
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U.S. strengthens Indo-Pacific alliances – but are they ready for potential conflict?

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The United States has moved to significantly strengthen its alliances in the Indo-Pacific in recent days amid the security threat from China – including a major upgrade of its military command in Japan. Just how ready are the United States and its allies to act if conflict erupts? Henry Ridgwell reports from Tokyo.
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FAO head’s rare visit to North Korea raises questions

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washington — A rare visit by the head of the Food and Agricultural Organization to North Korea has drawn criticism from former U.S. officials and humanitarian experts, with some raising the possibility of the U.N. official, a former Chinese official, using his position to serve China’s political interests.

FAO Director-General Qu Dongyu, currently in his second term and who formerly served as China’s vice minister of agriculture and rural affairs, took a rare trip to Pyongyang, July 13-16, and praised North Korean leader Kim Jong Un for making “great achievement” in food security and agricultural development, according to a FAO statement.

Qu’s trip was the first by an aid organization since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2019.

For several decades, North Korea has suffered chronic food shortages exacerbated by recurring famine and floods damaging harvests. A FAO report released in July described North Korea’s food situation as “fragile.”

Hit again by heavy rains that flooded vast farmlands in Sinuiju and Uiju near the Chinese border, Kim “expressed deep concern” at an emergency meeting held to restore the damage after inspecting flood-hit areas, said state-run KCNA on Wednesday.

“The fact that North Korea has suffered periodic famines and for the head of the FAO to praise” the country’s food situation “is beyond ironic,” said Kevin Moley, former U.S. ambassador to the U.S. Mission to the U.N. in Geneva from 2001 to 2006.

“It’s nothing more or less than a political agenda between China and North Korea,” he added.

Other former U.S. officials and analysts said the visit seems to have been made to benefit bilateral interests of Beijing and Pyongyang.

“Qu’s comments were probably an attempt by the DPRK leadership to use the U.N. to tell the world everything is fine” at a time when “we have evidence there was a second famine from 2018 to 2023 that killed tens of thousands or more,” said Andrew Natsios, who served as administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development from 2001 to 2006.

“The Chinese government is worried of an increase in Russian influence in the DPRK and a decline in [its own] influence. The Russians are providing food to North Korea beginning last year in exchange for the DPRK providing them artillery shells, which the Russians are running out of in the Ukraine war,” added Natsios, the director of the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University.

North Korea’s official name is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

China has long been the primary food aid provider to North Korea, and deepening ties between Moscow and Pyongyang since Russian President Vladimir Putin’s visit to Pyongyang in June is believed to make Beijing nervous about its own influence on North Korea.

VOA contacted the FAO for its comments on the criticism of Qu’s Pyongyang visit but did not receive a reply.

Max-Otto Baumann, a senior researcher at the German Institute of Development and Sustainability, said China might be interested in promoting agricultural productivity in North Korea through the FAO.

He said that could be done “with little transparency and accountability” such as through Qu’s signature Hand-in-Hand Initiative “seen by some FAO insiders and diplomats as a continuation of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.”  

 

The Hand-in-Hand Initiative is aimed at eradicating poverty and ending hunger and malnutrition through data-driven agricultural transformation.

Courtney Fung, a non-resident fellow at the Lowy Institute, said the Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang “sends an implicit message” that China’s leadership role at the FAO can gain access to North Korea “when other leaders cannot or have not, while advancing ostensibly apolitical technical solutions for global governance problems.”

The Chinese Embassy in Pyongyang was the first to release a statement about Qu’s trip there ahead of the FAO.

Qu has been accused of using the FAO as a vehicle to spread China’s influence in countries the agency serves and to fulfill Beijing’s goals in the several occasions in the past.

On the other hand, Jerome Sauvage, the U.N. resident coordinator in North Korea from 2009 to 2013, said, “No FAO director-general has ever been completely protected from the influence of their country of origin.”

Qu’s “connection with China actually facilitates the reentry of one U.N. agency into DPRK,” he added.

Bradley Babson, a former World Bank adviser and a current advisory council member of the Korea Economic Institute of America, said Qu’s trip does not seem to be motivated by China’s political interest but rather by “trying to help North Korea find a better way to feed its people with U.N. support.”
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Online misinformation fuels tensions over deadly Southport stabbing attack

Posted on by SeeEU

LONDON — Within hours of a stabbing attack in northwest England that killed three young girls and wounded several more children, a false name of a supposed suspect was circulating on social media. Hours after that, violent protesters were clashing with police outside a nearby mosque.

Police say the name was fake, as were rumors that the 17-year-old suspect was an asylum-seeker who had recently arrived in Britain. Detectives say the suspect charged Thursday with murder and attempted murder was born in the U.K., and British media including the BBC have reported that his parents are from Rwanda.

That information did little to slow the lightning spread of the false name or stop right-wing influencers pinning the blame on immigrants and Muslims.

“There’s a parallel universe where what was claimed by these rumors were the actual facts of the case,” said Sunder Katwala, director of British Future, a think tank that looks at issues including integration and national identity. “And that will be a difficult thing to manage.”

Local lawmaker Patrick Hurley said the result was “hundreds of people descending on the town, descending on Southport from outside of the area, intent on causing trouble — either because they believe what they’ve written, or because they are bad faith actors who wrote it in the first place, in the hope of causing community division.”

One of the first outlets to report the false name, Ali Al-Shakati, was Channel 3 Now, an account on the X social media platform that purports to be a news channel. A Facebook page of the same name says it is managed by people in Pakistan and the U.S. A related website on Wednesday showed a mix of possibly AI-generated news and entertainment stories, as well as an apology for “the misleading information” in its article on the Southport stabbings.

By the time the apology was posted, the incorrect identification had been repeated widely on social media.

“Some of the key actors are probably just generating traffic, possibly for monetization,” said Katwala. The misinformation was then spread further by “people committed to the U.K. domestic far right,” he said.

Governments around the world, including Britain’s, are struggling with how to curb toxic material online. U.K. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said Tuesday that social media companies “need to take some responsibility” for the content on their sites.

Katwala said that social platforms such as Facebook and X worked to “de-amplify” false information in real time after mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019.

Since Elon Musk, a self-styled free-speech champion, bought X, it has gutted teams that once fought misinformation on the platform and restored the accounts of banned conspiracy theories and extremists.

Rumors have swirled in the relative silence of police over the attack. Merseyside Police issued a statement saying the reported name for the suspect was incorrect, but have provided little information about him other than his age and birthplace of Cardiff, Wales.

Under U.K. law, suspects are not publicly named until they have been charged and those under 18 are usually not named at all. That has been seized on by some activists to suggest the police are withholding information about the attacker.

Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right English Defense League, accused police of “gaslighting” the public. Nigel Farage, a veteran anti-immigration politician who was elected to Parliament in this month’s general election, posted a video on X speculating “whether the truth is being withheld from us” about the attack.

Brendan Cox, whose lawmaker wife Jo Cox was murdered by a far-right attacker in 2016, said Farage’s comments showed he was “nothing better than a Tommy Robinson in a suit.”

“It is beyond the pale to use a moment like this to spread your narrative and to spread your hatred, and we saw the results on Southport’s streets last night,” Cox told the BBC.
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China sanctions US lawmaker

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Washington — China issued sanctions on U.S. Representative Jim McGovern, the sponsor of a bill advocating for a peaceful resolution of the China-Tibet dispute China views Tibet as an “inseparable part of China since ancient times,” despite supporters of the Tibetan Government in Exile and the Dalai Lama saying that Tibet has historically been independent.

Framed as a response to McGovern’s efforts to undermine Chinese territorial sovereignty, the sanctions freeze the representative’s Chinese assets, prohibit organizations or individuals in China from engaging with him, and ban him and his family from entering Chinese territory, according to a publication from Chinese state-media agency Xinhua.

McGovern has no assets or business dealings in China, according to The Associated Press.

McGovern’s Tibet-China Dispute Act, which passed through the House in mid-June, gives the State Department increased authority to counter Chinese disinformation about Tibet and promotes the resumption of talks between Chinese leaders and the Dalai Lama. No such talks have occurred since 2010.

President Joe Biden signed the legislation into law on July 12.

China stands accused of large-scale human rights abuses in Tibet, which the congressman hoped to alleviate with this legislation.

McGovern’s office did not respond to a VOA request for comment.

In a statement released on June 12 when the bill passed the House, McGovern said, “The People’s Republic of China has systematically denied Tibetans the right to self-determination and continues to deliberately erase Tibetan religion, culture, and language.”

“The ongoing oppression of the Tibetan people is a grave tragedy, and our bill provides further tools that empower both America and the international community to stand up for justice and peace,” he said.

Among the signees of the statement were House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, Senator Todd Young, McGovern and Senator Jeff Merkley.

In a response, Chinese state-sponsored media Xinhua said the Tibet-China Dispute Act “grossly interferes in China’s internal affairs,” violates international law and distorts historical facts to suppress China and encourage Tibetan separatist movements.

This is not the first time China has sanctioned a U.S. representative for their involvement in an issue that threatens Chinese territorial homogeneity. Over the last year, China has sanctioned both Representative McCaul and former Representative Mike Gallagher over their support for Taiwan. 
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