BEIJING — Lawmakers from at least six countries said Chinese diplomats were pressuring them not to attend a China-focused conference in Taiwan, in what they described as efforts to isolate the self-governed island. 

Politicians in Bolivia, Colombia, Slovakia, North Macedonia, Bosnia and one Asian country that declined to be named said they were getting texts, calls and urgent requests for meetings that would conflict with their plans to travel to Taipei. China vehemently defends its claim to Taiwan and views it as its own territory to be annexed by force if necessary. 

The conference begins Tuesday and is being held by the Inter-Parliamentary Alliance on China, or IPAC, a group of hundreds of lawmakers from 35 countries concerned about how democracies approach Beijing. IPAC has long faced pressure from the Chinese government: Some members have been sanctioned by Beijing, and in 2021 the group was targeted by Chinese state-sponsored hackers, according to a U.S. indictment unsealed earlier this year. 

But Luke de Pulford, the alliance’s director, said the pressure from Chinese officials the past few days has been unprecedented. During past IPAC meetings in other locations, lawmakers were approached by Chinese diplomats only after they concluded. This year, the first in which IPAC’s annual meeting is taking place in Taiwan, there appeared to be a coordinated attempt to stop participants from attending. 

The Associated Press spoke to three lawmakers and reviewed texts and emails sent by Chinese diplomats asking whether they were planning to participate in the meeting. 

“I’m Wu, from Chinese Embassy,” read a message sent to Antonio Miloshoski, a member of parliament in North Macedonia. “We heard that you got an invitation from IPAC, will you attend the Conference which will be held next week in Taiwan?” 

In some cases, lawmakers described vague inquiries about their plans to travel to Taiwan. In other cases, the contact was more menacing: One lawmaker told AP that Chinese diplomats messaged the head of her party with a demand to stop her from going. 

“They contacted president of my political party, they ask him to stop me to travel to Taiwan,” said Sanela Klarić, a member of parliament in Bosnia. “They’re trying, in my country, to stop me from traveling … This is really not OK.” 

China routinely threatens retaliation against politicians and countries that show support for Taiwan, which has only informal relations with most countries due to Chinese diplomatic pressure. Klarić said the pressure was unpleasant but only steeled her determination to go on the trip. 

“I really am fighting against countries or societies where the tool to manipulate and control peoples is fear,” said Klarić, adding that it reminded her of threats and intimidation she faced while suffering through wars in Bosnia in the 1990s. “I really hate the feeling when somebody is frightening you.” 

The Chinese Foreign Ministry did not respond to a request for comment. 

De Pulford called the pressure “gross foreign interference.” 

“How would PRC officials would feel if we tried to tell them about their travel plans, where they could and could not go?” de Pulford said, using the acronym for China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China. “It’s absolutely outrageous that they think that they can interfere in the travel plans of foreign legislators.” 

Lawmakers from 25 countries were expected to attend this year’s meeting, including Japan, India and the U.K., and IPAC said in a statement that some would meet with high-level Taiwanese officials. The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

Last week, Beijing criticized Taiwan for its annual Han Kuang military drills, saying that Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party was “carrying out provocations to seek independence.” 

“Any attempt to whip up tensions and use force to seek independence or reject reunification is doomed to failure,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning told reporters. 

China has been peeling off the island’s diplomatic allies, often with promises of development aid, in a long-running competition between the two that has swung in Beijing’s favor in recent years. The Pacific Island nation of Nauru switched recognition to Beijing earlier this year, a move that reduced Taiwan’s dwindling number of diplomatic allies to 12. 

But China’s at-times heavy-handed approach has also alienated other countries. 

In 2021, Beijing downgraded relations and blocked imports from Lithuania, a member of both the EU and NATO, after the Baltic nation broke with diplomatic custom by agreeing that a Taiwanese representative office in its capital of Vilnius would bear the name Taiwan instead of Chinese Taipei, which other countries use to avoid offending Beijing. The following year, the EU adopted a resolution criticizing Beijing’s behavior toward Taiwan and took action against China at the World Trade Organization over the import restrictions. 

The pressure over the IPAC meeting was also triggering backlash. 

Bolivian Senator Centa Rek said she submitted a letter of protest after a Chinese diplomat called her and told not to go to Taiwan, saying the island was run by an “imposter president” and that the meeting was hosted by an organization “not accepted within the terms of the policy of mainland China.” When Rek refused, the diplomat said he would report her decision to his embassy, which Rek interpreted as a “veiled threat.” 

“I told him that it was an unacceptable intrusion, that I would not accept an order or intrusion from any government,” Rek said. “These were personal decisions and that it seemed to me that he had gone beyond all international political norms.” 

Most of the lawmakers targeted appear to be from smaller countries, which de Pulford, the alliance’s director, said was likely because Beijing “feels that they can get away with it.” But he added that the coercive tactics have only made participants more determined to take part in the summit. 

Miriam Lexmann, a Slovakian member of the European Parliament whose party head was approached by Chinese diplomats, said the pressure underscored her reason for coming to Taiwan. 

We want to “exchange information, ways how to deal with those challenges and threats which China represents to the democratic part of the world, and of course, to support Taiwan,” she said. 
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INDONESIA — Sofyan Sabi’s sea-dwelling community has fished beneath the waves off the Indonesian coast for centuries, but climate change and overfishing have forced him and many of his contemporaries on land to make a living.

The Bajau tribe of fishermen led a nomadic life at sea for generations, spending days and nights on boats with thatched roofs in the waters between Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines.

Members of the tribe learn to dive from a young age, and their bodies have adapted over time to allow them to fish underwater for longer periods, researchers say.

But for the hundreds of Bajau people living on the tiny boardwalk island village of Pulau Papan in Indonesia, their ancestors’ unique way of life has all but died out.

“We changed professions. We are fishermen who work at a farm. Farming gives better income because there are many crops I can plant,” Sofyan said, adding that he owns a nearby two-hectare plot to grow corn and bananas.

“Sometimes we earn nothing by going to sea. Sometimes there are fish, sometimes there aren’t any,” the 39-year-old told AFP.

Trained to hold his breath between 10 and 15 meters (33 and 50 feet) deep since he was a child, Sofyan still scans the waters for sea cucumbers or an octopus that could earn him as much as 500,000 rupiah ($31).

Researchers attribute the Bajau ability to dive deeper and longer to a possible genetic mutation that has given them larger spleens, allowing their blood to store more oxygen.

But commercial overfishing and rising temperatures have made sea catches increasingly unpredictable, said Wengki Ariando, a researcher at Thailand’s Chulalongkorn University who has studied the Bajau.

“They are facing decreasing marine resources,” he said.

As temperatures rise, fish migration and mating patterns change, corals are bleached, and the food chain changes.

More than half of Indonesia’s 11 fishery management areas are now listed as fully exploited.

The country’s fish stocks fell from 12.5 million metric tons in 2017 to 12 million in 2022, fishery ministry data shows.

“The fish are decreasing because too many people are catching them,” said 52-year-old fisherman Arfin, who goes by one name.

‘Changed their livelihood’

A dilapidated mile-long jetty takes visitors along turquoise waters onto Pulau Papan.

Davlin Ambotang, who lives on the island, says the Bajau first started to settle there three generations ago.

“They saw this island as suitable for building houses, so they settled there. No longer nomads, moving around,” he said.

But life on land has its own challenges.

Davlin’s brother runs a homestay banking on tourist visits.

He complains that authorities direct visitors to sleep at government-built cottages instead of helping Bajau businesses flourish.

“There’s no additional income for the people. The government controls everything,” said Sofyan.

“There are many arguments between them and the locals.”

The long stateless Bajau grew increasingly settled in villages like Pulau Papan in search of government recognition.

“The Bajau changed their livelihood because to get accepted as a people in Indonesia they have to be settled,” said Wengki, adding that the drive to register them officially began in the 1990s under dictator Suharto.

‘Difficulties on land’

Wooden boats sit at the edge of the island, while a main walkway cuts through it, splintering off into side jetties.

The village hosts a silver-domed mosque.

On a makeshift court, women play a game of volleyball, while a group of men sit around smoking cigarettes.

“The young generation, they look like they are missing their identity,” said Wengki.

“They are more like a land-based community.”

With internet access available on land, the Bajau have set up groups on social media with thousands of followers, helping each other with their problems.

“There is no development, nothing. From the district government, there were donations, each family gets two to three bags of rice every month,” said Tirsa Adodoa, a housewife in her 20s whose husband is a fisherman.

“It’s not enough if we only rely on catching octopuses. If the octopus price drops like right now… it’s not even enough for us to eat or buy things.”

But others yearn for the nomads to keep their seafaring ways — worrying future generations will be less like their boat-dwelling ancestors.

“Once they feel comfortable, it won’t be easy for them to go back to the sea,” said fisherman Muslimin, 49, who goes by one name.

“I wish they could work only as fishermen, because it’s fun. There are too many difficulties on the land.”
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Bangkok — The United Nations’ special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tom Andrews, has told VOA he welcomes Thailand’s plans for a task force to help Thai banks vet business with Myanmar’s military regime for possible arms deals.

Thailand announced the task force last week, nearly a month after a report by Andrews exposed the lead role Thailand’s banks have taken in financing arms purchases for the military regime that ousted Myanmar’s elected government in 2021. The civil war that has followed has claimed thousands of civilian lives.

“It’s a real step in the right direction” and a sign “that Thailand is really taking this seriously and efforts are being made to stop these weapons transfers,” he said in a Saturday interview. 

His report, Banking on the Death Trade: How Banks and Governments Enable the Military Junta in Myanmar, says international sanctions have helped slash the regime’s purchase of weapons through the global financial system by one-third from the 2022 to 2023 fiscal years, which runs April to March, to some $253 million.

The report says those sanctions have also driven most of the regime’s arms-related banking away from Singapore, which clamped down on its banks’ weapons business with Myanmar last year, to Thailand. While the regime’s weapons financing through Singapore over the past fiscal year tumbled from $260 million to $40 million, it says, those through Thailand doubled to $120 million, the most of any country.

Andrews said he hopes the task force will help Thailand follow Singapore’s lead in slashing its arms-related banking with Myanmar’s military regime, which the U.N. and others have accused of war crimes in its bid to put down a growing armed and civil resistance.

“The action that we saw from Singapore was extremely important. And now the process that Thailand is engaged in … is part of an important momentum that I’m hopeful will cut off the means by which the junta can continue to commit these gross human rights violations,” he said.

“We know that as the junta continues to suffer losses, it is responding by intensifying its attacks on innocent people,” he added. “So, it is very important that any and all efforts to stop this be conducted with a great sense of urgency, and I’m hopeful that this task force will convene and act quickly and urgently to address this crisis.”

‘The human rights agenda’

A spokesman for the Myanmar regime could not be reached for comment. The military has previously denied targeting civilians and claims to be taking proportionate action against “terrorists” to restore peace and order.

In its announcement last week, Thailand said its Anti-Money Laundering Office and the Bank of Thailand, the country’s central bank, would be setting up the task force to help commercial lenders investigate transactions that may be linked to weapons purchases for Myanmar’s regime and avoid the taint of any human rights abuses.

In the wake of Andrews’ report, representatives of the Thai banks it named told a meeting of the national security committee of Thailand’s House of Representatives that they lacked the capacity to probe all their transactions with Myanmar for possible weapons deals.

The Thai government has not said when the task force would convene or exactly what types of transactions with Myanmar would be off-limits from now on.

A spokesman for the foreign affairs ministry, which announced the task force, said officials will be holding more talks with Andrews before deciding whether and how to urge the banks to change their behavior.

The government has not come out against facilitating any and all arms deals with Myanmar’s military regime, the spokesman, Nikorndej Balankura, told VOA last week.

“But Thailand attaches great importance to the human rights agenda, and of course we do not support the use of violence. So, if we know for sure that the transactions that took place [are] to purchase weapons, our stance would be definitely not to support that,” he said.

Thailand’s goals of kickstarting a sluggish economy, developing its financial sector and repairing its international reputation since emerging from years of military rule itself will give the new task force a strong incentive to stamp out the country’s role in Myanmar’s arms deals. That’s according to Sean Turnell, an economist and senior fellow at Australia’s Lowy Institute with a focus on Myanmar and Southeast Asia, who spoke with VOA.

Thailand may choose to tread more softly than Singapore and avoid telling its banks to cut the Myanmar junta’s lenders off outright, Turnell said.

“But one could imagine a regulator suggesting quietly to a bank that they regulate that, you know, maybe it’s not such a good idea to be doing business with them,” he added.

Looking for alternatives

Turnell also served as an economic adviser to the civilian government ousted by Myanmar’s military and now advises the National Unity Government, a shadow government vying to kick out the junta. He said Myanmar’s military regime will try to find other countries to help finance its arms purchases should Thailand shut it out, the way it turned to Thailand after Singapore clamped down.

“Definitely there will be other takers; they’ll find their way through the cracks. But every time you have to do that you lose some of your ability to do that sort of financing,” he said.

With each move, he said, the regime will have to turn to less globally connected and reputable banks that will charge higher fees, possibly even bribes and kickbacks, for their services.

“As soon as you start leaving major financial centers and major international banks, it just becomes more and more difficult to get these sorts of transactions going,” Turnell said.

Getting shut out of one country after another could also push Myanmar’s military regime into settling more and more of its arms purchases informally, for instance with cash and barter trades that come with their own costs and limitations, Turnell added.

“I’m not sure how many countries are going to want to barter jet fuel for beans and pulses,” said Jared Bissinger, an economist and visiting fellow in the Myanmar program at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, in an interview with VOA.

With the exception of only natural gas, dried beans have been Myanmar’s main export in recent years, according to World Integrated Trade Solution, a trade data aggregator developed by the World Bank.

“I’d imagine they will continue seeking out ways to make transactions via banks and intermediaries in a range of countries that are less cooperative with enforcement of sanctions,” Bissinger said.

“But this takes time, effort, and money. So, there is certainly some value in the disruptions and resource denials that sanctions cause. Sanctions are a bit of a game of whack-a-mole,” he said, where a problem is solved in one place only to reemerge someplace else.

“But it still hurts the mole when it gets whacked,” he added.
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sydney, australia — The world’s largest platypus conservation center has welcomed its first residents as part of a project to protect the semi-aquatic mammal found only in Australia amid threats to its habitat from extreme weather and humans. 

The four platypuses — two females and two males — were released over the last two weeks into a custom-built research facility at Taronga Western Plains Zoo in Dubbo, about 400 kilometers (250 miles), northwest of Sydney.  

Featuring multi-tiered streams, waterfalls, pools and earth banks for burrowing, the facility will help researchers understand more about the species, Taronga Conservation Society Australia official Phoebe Meagher told Reuters. 

“This facility will allow us to not only save the species from the immediate threats of climate change, but also in the long term, be able to repopulate those populations,” she said. 

“We would love to see some puggles or baby platypus in the facility and understand what led to that reproductive success.” 

The facility was formed as a partnership between the Taronga Conservation Society Australia, San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance, the University of New South Wales, the New South Wales state government and wildlife rescue organization WIRES. 

Boasting the bill of a duck, webbed feet and a beaver-like tail, the platypus is unique to Australia. The nocturnal mammals lay eggs and live mostly across the eastern seaboard, from the far north of Queensland to the island state of Tasmania, close to rivers and streams whose beds and banks they forage for food. 

Platypus numbers may have more than halved over several decades, research models show, but figures are hard to pinpoint. Environment groups estimate the total population between 30,000 and 300,000. 

“Sadly, we’re not leaving many places left in the wild for platypus,” Meagher said. “So these platypus that we have here … will really fill those knowledge gaps and allow us to help save this species.”  
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paris — Australia took the lead in its swimming showdown against the United States at the Paris Olympics by claiming two of three gold medals on the first full day of competition. 

Ariarne Titmus turned one of the most anticipated races of the Games into a blowout when she left Katie Ledecky in her wake at La Defense Arena. Titmus led from start to finish in the 400-meter freestyle Saturday night. 

The Australian star known as “The Terminator” handed Ledecky a second straight Olympic defeat in an event the American won at Rio de Janeiro in 2016. 

Titmus faced her stiffest challenge from 17-year-old Canadian phenom Summer McIntosh, but she won comfortably as McIntosh claimed the silver. Ledecky settled for bronze. 

Australia then made it 2 for 2 against the Americans in the women’s 4×100 freestyle relay, claiming its fourth straight Olympic title in that event. 

The quartet of Mollie O’Callaghan, Shayna Jack, Emma McKeon and Meg Harris set an Olympic record with a winning time of 3 minutes, 28.92 seconds. 

The Americans — Kate Douglass, Gretchen Walsh, Torri Huske and Simone Manuel — rallied to take silver. China took bronze. 

The U.S. finally got its first gold in the men’s 4×100 freestyle relay. The Americans were anchored by Caeleb Dressel, who won the eighth gold medal of his career. 

Australia took the silver. 

China takes first gold of games 

The first gold medal of the Paris Olympics went to China when Huang Yuting and Sheng Lihao beat South Korea’s Keum Jihyeon and Park Hajun in the final of the 10-meter air rifle mixed team event Saturday morning. 

Shortly before that, Kazakhstan’s Alexandra Le and Islam Satpayev became the first medalists of the games when they beat Germany’s Anna Janssen and Maximilian Ulbrich 17-5 for the bronze. 

Wemby’s debut 

Victor Wembanyama did not disappoint in his Olympic debut. The NBA Rookie of the Year had 19 points, nine rebounds, four steals and three blocked shots for host France in a 78-66 win over Brazil. 

The game was played in front of a sold-out crowd in support of last year’s top pick in the NBA draft. 

France’s first medals 

Luka Mkheidze and Shirine Boukli won France’s first two medals of the Olympics when Mkheidze claimed silver and Boukli earned bronze in judo. 

Mkheidze lost 1-0 to Yeldos Smetov of Kazakhstan in the final of the men’s 60-kilogram division — a disappointing result for the raucous crowd at Champ-de-Mars Arena. About 30 minutes before Mkheidze’s loss, Boukli claimed France’s first medal of its home Olympics with a victory over Spain’s Laura Martinez in a bronze-medal match. 

Canada soccer scandal 

FIFA deducted six points from Canada in the Olympics women’s soccer tournament and banned three coaches for one year each for a drone spying scandal. 

Two assistant coaches were caught using drones to spy on New Zealand’s practices before their opening game last Wednesday. Head coach Bev Priestman, who led Canada to the Olympic title in Tokyo in 2021, already was suspended by the national soccer federation and then removed from the Olympic tournament. She is now banned from all soccer for one year. 

Tennis controversy 

Novak Djokovic was perplexed by the Olympics rules after his 6-0, 6-1 rout in less than an hour against an overmatched Matthew Ebden, a 36-year-old doubles player from Australia who hadn’t competed in a tour-level, main-draw singles match since June 2022. 

Djokovic felt other singles players deserved a spot at the Olympics instead of Ebden. 

Ebden was in Paris to compete in men’s doubles, where he’s been as high as No. 1 and currently is No. 3 and has won two major championships. That made him available for the singles competition when 16th-ranked Holger Rune of Denmark pulled out because of a wrist injury. 

10-time Olympian 

Georgian shooter Nino Salukvadze made history as the first woman to compete at 10 Olympic Games in a career that began representing the Soviet Union. She has competed at every Summer Olympics since 1988, when she won gold as a 19-year-old Soviet prodigy. 

She set her latest record when she stepped into the shooting range for qualification in the women’s 10-meter air pistol. Salukvadze placed 38th and didn’t advance to Sunday’s eight-shooter final. She gets another shot at a medal Friday in qualification for the 25-meter pistol event. 

She has represented her home country of Georgia following its independence for the last eight Olympics. 

China’s diving quest 

China has ruled diving for decades and came to Paris seeking to sweep all eight gold medals. The nation got off to a perfect start Saturday when the team of Chang Yani and Chen Yiwen won gold in the women’s synchronized 3-meter springboard with 337.68 points on five dives. 

Three years ago in Tokyo, China won seven of eight gold medals. It has never pulled off the elusive gold sweep. 

Hungarian fencer loses 

An era-defining streak in Olympic fencing was snapped by an upset when Hungarian fencer Aron Szilagyi lost his opening bout while chasing a fourth consecutive gold medal. 

Szilagyi won gold medals in men’s individual saber in 2012, 2016 and 2021 and was trying to become the only fencer in history to win a fourth. 

Instead, the streak ended in Szilagyi’s first bout of the Paris Games as he was beaten 15-8 by the 27th-seeded Canadian Fares Arfa in one of the biggest upsets so far at the 2024 Olympics. 
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HANOI, Vietnam — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken visited Vietnam on Saturday to pay his respects following the death of Communist Party chief Nguyen Phu Trong, underlining warmer ties between the countries a half-century since they fought a brutal war.

Blinken arrived in Hanoi late Saturday after attending a regional summit in Laos and visited the family home of Trong, a Marxist-Leninist ideologue who as party chief was Vietnam’s most powerful figure for 13 years and who died last week at 80.

Trong’s “bamboo diplomacy” trod a delicate balancing act between rival superpowers the United States and Communist neighbor China, helping to elevate Vietnam’s ties with both of its two biggest trade partners.

Blinken greeted Trong’s family before lighting an incense stick in front of a shrine displaying the general secretary’s photo. He then stood for a moment with his hands clasped in a show of respect.

He wrote a page-long message in a condolence book and, during conversations with Trong’s family, conveyed the condolences of President Joe Biden.

Trong’s two-day state funeral, which ended Friday, drew more than 250,000 Vietnamese mourners in ceremonies in Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and his home in Dong Anh on the outskirts of the capital, state media reported.

Blinken’s brief visit comes at a sensitive time for U.S.-Vietnam relations, which have improved of late given shared concerns about China’s growing regional clout and interest from U.S. investors in a country with an economy that grew an average 5.8% annually during Trong’s time in office.

During a visit by Biden to Hanoi last year, the U.S. and Vietnam upgraded ties to a comprehensive strategic partnership, and U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has promoted Vietnam as a “friend-shoring” destination to shift U.S. supply chains away from China.

On Friday, the U.S. Commerce Department is set to announce whether to upgrade Vietnam to market economy status, something Hanoi has long sought.

The upgrade is opposed by U.S. steelmakers, Gulf Coast shrimpers, honey farmers and members of the U.S. Congress representing them, but backed by retailers and some other business groups.

After visiting Trong’s home, Blinken also met Vietnam’s president, To Lam, the former internal security agency chief who has assumed Trong’s duties, and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh.

Blinken told Lam Trong was a “visionary leader” who built a lasting bridge between the two countries and showed the world they could move forward despite their difficult past.

In his meeting with the prime minister, Blinken said one of the highlights of the Biden administration was its elevation of its strategic ties with Hanoi.
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BUDAPEST, HUNGARY — Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban said on Saturday that Russia’s leadership was “hyper rational” and that Ukraine would never be able to fulfill its hopes of becoming a member of the European Union or NATO.

Orban, a nationalist in power since 2010, made the comments during a speech in which he forecast a shift in global power away from the “irrational” West toward Asia and Russia.

“In the next long decades, maybe centuries, Asia will be the dominant center of the world,” Orban said, mentioning China, India, Pakistan and Indonesia as the world’s future big powers.

“And we Westerners pushed the Russians into this bloc as well,” he said in the televised speech before ethnic Hungarians at a festival in the town of Baile Tusnad in neighboring Romania.

Orban, whose country currently holds the rotating EU presidency, has sharply differed from the rest of the bloc by seeking warmer ties with Beijing and Moscow, and he angered some EU leaders when he went on surprise visits to Kyiv, Moscow and Beijing this month for talks on the war in Ukraine.

He said that in contrast to the “weakness” of the West, Russia’s position in world affairs was rational and predictable, saying the country had shown economic flexibility in adapting to Western sanctions since it invaded Crimea in 2014.

Orban, whose own government has passed several anti-LGBT measures, said Russia had gained clout in many parts of the world by severely restricting LGBTQ+ rights.

“The strongest international appeal of Russian soft power is its opposition to LGBTQ,” he said.

He added that Ukraine would never become a member of the EU or NATO because “we Europeans do not have enough money for that.”

“The EU needs to give up its identity as a political project and become an economic and defense project,” Orban said.

The EU opened membership talks with Ukraine late last month, although a long and tough road lies ahead of the country before it can join the bloc.

A declaration at the end of the NATO summit this month said the alliance will support Ukraine on “its irreversible path” toward membership.
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TOKYO — Depending on whom you ask, the bones that have been sitting in a Tokyo repository for decades could be either leftovers from early 20th-century anatomy classes, or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes. 

Activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met last weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of their discovery and renew a call for an independent panel to examine the evidence. 

Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and Korean forced laborers at Japanese mines and factories, often on grounds of lack of documentary proof. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia, but since the 2010s it has been repeatedly criticized in South Korea and China for backpedaling. 

Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and other parts of skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989, during construction of a Health Ministry research institute at the site of the wartime Army Medical School. The school’s close ties to a germ and biological warfare unit led many to suspect that they could be the remains of a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged. 

Headquartered in then-Japanese-controlled northeast China, Unit 731 and several related units injected prisoners of war with typhus, cholera and other diseases, according to historians and former unit members. They also say the unit performed unnecessary amputations and organ removals on living people to practice surgery and froze prisoners to death in endurance tests. Japan’s government has acknowledged only that Unit 731 existed. 

No trials for leaders

Top Unit 731 officials were not tried in postwar tribunals as the U.S. sought to get hold of chemical warfare data, historians say, although lower-ranked officials were tried by Soviet tribunals. Some of the unit’s leaders became medical professors and pharmaceutical executives after the war. 

A previous Health Ministry investigation said the bones couldn’t be linked to the unit, and concluded that the remains were most likely from bodies used in medical education or brought back from war zones for analysis, in a 2001 report based on questioning 290 people associated with the school. 

It acknowledged that some interviewees drew connections to Unit 731. One said he saw a head in a barrel shipped from Manchuria, northern China, where the unit was based. Two others noted hearing about specimens from the unit being stored in a school building, but had not actually seen them. Others denied the link, saying the specimens could include those from the prewar era. 

A 1992 anthropological analysis found that the bones came from at least 62 and possibly more than 100 different bodies, mostly adults from parts of Asia outside Japan. The holes and cuts found on some skulls were made after death, it said, but it did not find evidence linking the bones to Unit 731. 

But activists say that the government could do more to uncover the truth, including publishing full accounts of its interviews and conducting DNA testing. 

Kazuyuki Kawamura, a former Shinjuku district assembly member who has devoted most of his career to resolving the bone mystery, recently obtained 400 pages of research materials from the 2001 report using freedom of information requests, and said it shows that the government “tactfully excluded” key information from witness accounts. 

Vivid descriptions

The newly published material doesn’t contain a smoking gun, but it includes vivid descriptions — the man who described seeing a head in a barrel also described helping to handle it and then running off to vomit — and comments from several witnesses who suggested that more forensic investigation might show a link to Unit 731. 

“Our goal is to identify the bones and send them back to their families,” said Kawamura. The bones are virtually the only proof of what happened, he said. “We just want to find the truth.” 

Health Ministry official Atsushi Akiyama said that witness accounts had already been analyzed and factored into the 2001 report, and the government’s position remains unchanged. A key missing link is documentary evidence, such as a label on a specimen container or official records, he said. 

Documents, especially those involving Japan’s wartime atrocities, were carefully destroyed in the war’s closing days, and finding new evidence for a proof would be difficult. 

Akiyama added that a lack of information about the bones would make DNA analysis difficult. 

Disturbing memory

Hideo Shimizu, who was sent to Unit 731 in April 1945 at age 14 as lab technician and joined the meeting online from his home in Nagano, said he remembers seeing heads and body parts in formalin jars stored in a specimen room in the unit’s main building. One that struck him most was a dissected belly with a fetus inside. He was told they were “maruta” — logs — a term used for prisoners chosen for experiments. 

Days before Japan’s August 15, 1945, surrender, Shimizu was ordered to collect bones of prisoners’ bodies burned in a pit. He was then given a pistol and a packet of cyanide to kill himself if he was caught on his journey back to Japan. 

He was ordered never to tell anyone about his Unit 731 experience, never contact his colleagues, and never seek a government or medical job. 

Shimizu said that he could not tell if any specimen he saw at 731 could be among the Shinjuku bones by looking at their photos, but that what he saw in Harbin should never be repeated. When he sees his great-grandchildren, he said, they remind him of that fetus he saw and the lives lost. 

“I want younger people to understand the tragedy of war,” he said.
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bangkok — Countries in Southeast Asia are hoping to boost their economies by luring long-staying professionals with digital nomad visas.

In recent years East and Southeast Asian countries including Indonesia, Malaysia and Japan have launched digital nomad visas, which allow remote workers to live and work within their borders. International tourism and foreigners’ spending contributes significantly to these countries’ economies.

Indonesia launched its KITAS E33G visa, known as the remote worker visa, earlier in 2024. Bali, the holiday island hotspot, is one of the most popular destinations for digital nomads in the country.

Dustin Steller, from the U.S. state of Missouri, works remotely as the owner of his marketing company and has lived in Bali for two years.

“I immediately fell in love with the culture, the food, the lifestyle and the people – both locals and expats,” he told VOA.

Bali has become a popular “place to base” for social media influencers and cryptocurrency investors in recent years. With cheaper living costs than in Western countries, living in Bali allows professionals to build their businesses while spending less.

“Bali offers tremendous opportunity for serious nomads who want to connect with like-minded people,” Steller told VOA.

“Bali is the Silicon Valley of tech, AI and crypto,” he added. “There are highly intelligent people doing some good work here. I have found the community of likeminded entrepreneurs is bigger and more concentrated here in Bali.”

Malaysia released its digital nomad visa in 2022, while the Philippines reportedly has plans to announce its own scheme.

Remote workers who travel have existed since the development of the internet and the availability of global travel, but the term “digital nomad” has only been popularized in recent years. Five years ago, the digital nomad visa scheme didn’t exist. Estonia became the first country to launch such a scheme in 2020 while many people began working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

According to a recent survey on YouGov, digital nomads favor countries in Asia for their vibrant work culture, solid infrastructure such as reliable internet and modern facilities, and flexible options for visas. The top 15 countries among people from Singapore include Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines and Cambodia, all Southeast Asian countries.

Now Thailand is the latest country in the region to launch its own version of a digital nomad visa.

The Destination Thailand Visa (DTV), available since July 15, allows digital nomads, freelancers and remote workers to live, work and travel in the country for up to 180 days per entry and is valid for five years.

Applicants can attain the visa if they participate in Thailand’s “soft power” activities, including Muay Thai boxing, and short-term education courses. The fee for the visa is $270, while applicants must be able to show proof of funds equating to approximately $13,855 in savings.

For many remote workers, living in Thailand is an exciting prospect.

Samantha Haselden, a British expat who owns an IT business with her husband in the United Arab Emirates, is looking into applying.

“We’ve been going to Thailand for years. My aunt and uncle retired there; it always feels like home. We’ll be visiting Thailand in a few weeks and will be seeing a solicitor that deals with visas and see what he thinks of our chances of being accepted are,” she told VOA.

“We’re in our late 40s. Never fancied Bali because it looks like a place for under 25-year-olds,” she added.

Members of several Thailand-visa Facebook groups have also praised Thailand’s quick internet speed, low cost of living, great food and friendly people as reasons for wanting to apply for the DTV visa.

But since the announcement, the high volume of interest on social media has provided more questions than answers over eligibility.

VOA contacted Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs for comment on this but has yet to receive a response.

For Thailand, the importance of overseas arrivals benefiting its economy is evident. Tourism accounted for 11.5% of the country’s overall GDP in 2019 with a record year of 39 million visitors. Thailand is forecasting 36 million arrivals for 2024 and a record-breaking 41 million in 2025.

The Thai government also relaxed visa requirements for visitors from 93 countries to enter the country for 60 days. Previously, visitors from dozens of countries were allowed a 30-day stay, and some had to apply for a visa prior to arrival.

Gary Bowerman, a tourism analyst based in Kuala Lumpur, says Thailand’s visa exemptions are aimed at boosting its economy.

“Thailand’s challenge is to expand the high-yield composition of its tourism base. While it leads Southeast Asia by a long way in terms of visitor arrivals, per-visitor spend[ing] remains comparatively low. These measures are designed to attract more visitors who will stay longer, travel more widely and spend more in different locations,” he told VOA.

But questions remain about whether Thailand could suffer from “overtourism.” The term is used when mass tourism disrupts everyday life for residents.

Spain has seen street protests against overtourism in multiple locations, including Barcelona and Madrid. Complaints centered on high rental prices, which prompted the Spanish government to ban short-term rentals from 2028.

Pravit Rojanaphruk, a veteran journalist at Khaosod English, thinks it’s too soon for Thailand to worry about such growth.

“Real estate may go up, particularly in Bangkok, and make it less affordable for some locals. But we are far from there, considering that 100 million people visited France in 2023, while only 28 million visited Thailand despite both countries having roughly the same land size and population,” he told VOA.
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MELBOURNE, Australia — At least 26 people were reportedly killed by a gang in three remote villages in Papua New Guinea’s north, United Nations and police officials say.

“It was a very terrible thing … when I approached the area, I saw that there were children, men, women. They were killed by a group of 30 young men,” acting Provincial Police Commander in the South Pacific island nation’s East Sepik province James Baugen told Australian Broadcasting Corp. on Friday.

Baugen told the ABC that all the houses in the villages had been burned and the remaining villagers were sheltering at a police station, too scared to name the perpetrators.

“Some of the bodies left in the night were taken by crocodiles into the swamp. We only saw the place where they were killed. There were heads chopped off,” Baugen said, adding that the attackers were hiding and there were no arrests yet.

U.N. Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk said in a statement Wednesday that the attacks happened on July 16 and July 18.

“I am horrified by the shocking eruption of deadly violence in Papua New Guinea, seemingly as the result of a dispute over land and lake ownership and user rights,” Turk said.

Turk said at least 26 people had reportedly died, including 16 children.

“This number could rise to over 50, as local authorities search for missing people. In addition, more than 200 villagers fled as their homes were torched,” Turk said.

The Royal Papua New Guinea Constabulary in the capital Port Moresby did not immediately respond to The Associated Press’s request for comment on Friday.

East Sepik Governor Allan Bird said violence across this diverse nation of more than 10 million people, who are mostly subsistence farmers, had escalated in the past decade. Police were under-resourced and rarely intervene, Bird said.

Papua New Guinea has more than 800 Indigenous languages and has been riven by tribal conflicts over land for centuries.

Most of the country’s land belongs to tribes rather than individuals. With no clear borders, territorial disputes never end.

These conflicts have become increasingly lethal in recent decades as combatants move from bows and arrows to assault rifles. Mercenaries are increasingly becoming involved.

Blake Johnson, an analyst at the Australian Security Policy Institute think tank, said while the East Sepik slayings appeared to be a “particularly gruesome event, it is not the first instance of mass murder this year” in Papua New Guinea.

“Escalation of violence between groups, often leading to retaliatory murder is, at best, culturally accepted and at worst encouraged,” Johnson said.

Law enforcement officers lacked the resources and training to police most of the country, he said.

“The country is took big, too harsh and too difficult to navigate, and we don’t even know how many people live in these places,” Johnson said.

Papua New Guinea’s tribal fighting attracted international attention in February, when at least 26 combatants and an unconfirmed number of bystanders were killed in a gunbattle in Enga province.

Ongoing conflict complicated an emergency response in May when a landslide in the same province devastated at least one village. The Papua New Guinea government said more than 2,000 people were killed, while the United Nations estimated the death toll at 670.

Internal security problems in Papua New Guinea, the South Pacific’s most populous country after Australia, has become a battle line for China’s struggle against U.S. allies for influence in the region.

Australia, Papua New Guinea’s former colonial master and its most generous provider of foreign aid, signed a bilateral security pact last year that targets its nearest neighbor’s growing security concerns, while Beijing also reportedly wants to ink a policing agreement with Port Moresby.

In 2022, China struck a secretive security pact with Papua New Guinea’s near-neighbor Solomon Islands in 2022, which included police aid and has raised concerns that a Chinese naval base could be established in the South Pacific.
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washington — This week, as Taiwan was preparing for the start of its Han Kuang military exercises, its air defense system detected a Chinese drone circling the island. This was the sixth time that China had sent a drone to operate around Taiwan since 2023.

Drones like the one that flew around Taiwan, which are tasked with dual-pronged missions of reconnaissance and intimidation, are just a small part of a broader trend that is making headlines from Ukraine to the Middle East to the Taiwan Strait and is changing the face of warfare. 

The increasing role that unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, play and rising concern about a Chinese invasion of democratically ruled Taiwan is pushing Washington, Beijing and Taipei to improve the sophistication, adaptability and cost of drone technology.

‘Hellscape’ strategy

Last August, the Pentagon launched a $1 billion Replicator Initiative to create air, sea and land drones in the “multiple thousands,” according to the Defense Department’s Innovation Unit. The Pentagon aims to build that force of drones by August 2025.

The initiative is part of what U.S. Admiral Samuel Paparo recently described to The Washington Post as a “hellscape” strategy, which aims to counter a Chinese invasion of Taiwan through the deployment of thousands of unmanned drones in the air and sea between the island and China.

“The benefits of unmanned systems are that you get cheap, disposable mass that’s low cost. If a drone gets shot down, the only people that are crying about it are the accountants,” said Zachary Kallenborn, a policy fellow at George Mason University. “You can use them at large amounts of scale and overwhelm your opponents as well as degrade their defensive capabilities.”

The hellscape strategy, he added, aims to use lots of cheap drones to try to hold back China from attacking Taiwan.

Drone manufacturing supremacy

China has its own plans under way and is the world’s largest manufacturer of commercial drones. In a news briefing after Paparo’s remarks to the Post, it warned Washington that it was playing with fire. 

“Those who clamor for turning others’ homeland into hell should get ready for burning in hell themselves,” said Senior Colonel Wu Qian, spokesperson for the Chinese defense ministry.

“The People’s Liberation Army is able to fight and win in thwarting external interference and safeguarding our national sovereignty and territorial integrity. Threats and intimidation never work on us,” Wu said.

China’s effort to expand its use of drones has been bolstered, analysts say, by leader Xi Jinping’s emphasis on technology and modernization in the military, something he highlighted at a top-level party meeting last week.

“China’s military is developing more than 50 types of drones with varying capabilities, amassing a fleet of tens of thousands of drones, potentially 10 times larger than Taiwan and the U.S. combined,” Michael Raska, assistant professor at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, told VOA in an email. “This quantitative edge currently fuels China’s accelerating military modernization, with drones envisioned for everything from pre-conflict intel gathering to swarming attacks.”

Analysts add that China’s commercial drone manufacturing supremacy aids its military in the push for drone development. China’s DJI dominates in production and sale of household drones, accounting for 76% of the worldwide consumer market in 2021.

The scale of production and low price of DJI drones could put China in an advantageous position in a potential drone war, analysts say.

“In Russia and Ukraine, if you have a lot of drones – even if they’re like the commercial off-the-shelf things, DJI drones you can buy at Costco – and you throw hundreds of them at an air defense system, that’s going to create a large problem,” said Major Emilie Stewart, a research analyst at the China Aerospace Studies Institute.

China denies it is seeking to use commercial UAV technology for future conflicts.

“China has always been committed to maintaining global security and regional stability and has always opposed the use of civilian drones for military purposes,” Liu Pengyu, spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, told VOA. “We are firmly opposed to the U.S.’s military ties with Taiwan and its effort of arming Taiwan.”

Drone force

With assistance from its American partners, pressure from China and lessons from Ukraine, Taiwan has been pushing to develop its own domestic drone warfare capabilities.

The United States has played a pivotal role in Taiwan’s drone development, and just last week it pledged to sell $360 million of attack drones to the Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office, or TECRO, Taiwan’s de facto embassy in Washington.

“Taiwan will continue to build a credible deterrence and work closely with like-minded partners, including the United States, to preserve peace and stability in the region,” TECRO told VOA when asked about the collaboration between Taipei and Washington. “We have no further information to share at this moment.”

The effort to incorporate drones into its defense is crucial for Taiwan, said Eric Chan, a senior nonresident fellow at the Global Taiwan Institute.

“The biggest immediate effects of the U.S. coming into this mass UAV game is to give Taiwan a bigger advantage to be able to, first, detect their enemy and, second, help them build a backstop to their own capabilities as well,” Chan said.

With the potential for China to consider using drones in an urban conflict environment, Taiwan is recognizing the importance of stepping up its counter-drone defense systems.

“After multiple intrusions of Chinese drones in outlying islands, the Taiwan Ministry of Defense now places great emphasis on anti-drone capabilities,” said Yu-Jiu Wang, chief executive of Tron Future, an anti-drone company working with the Taiwanese military.

The demand is one that Wang said his company is willing and ready to fill.
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