World

In a small Indonesian fishing village, a man with a fake rhino head perched atop his own puts on a puppet show for a group of eager children.

Former teacher Samsudin is educating the kids about the plight of the critically endangered Javan rhino –- the world’s rarest –- using cardboard figures, comical expressions and exaggerated voices to spread his message of conservation one story at a time.

The 50-year-old asks the children in the West Javan village of Indramayu to mimic the animals, and teaches them the importance of guarding the forest and the wildlife unique to it.

“I want them to know rhinos need pristine forest and that human beings are not the only creatures on earth,” he told AFP.

“I want children to love nature and grow up into people who are aware and care about our natural resources.”

Javan rhinos –- one-horned mammals that can weigh up to two tonnes and have folds of loose skin that resemble armour plating –- once numbered in the thousands across Southeast Asia.

But they are now barely clinging to existence, having been hit hard by rampant poaching and human encroachment on their habitats.

After years of population decline, there are believed to be just 75 of the mammals left at the Ujung Kulon sanctuary –- their last remaining wild habitat –- on the westernmost tip of Java island. 

– ‘Before it’s too late’ –

Samsudin, who like many Indonesians uses only one name, decided to dedicate his time to the conservation of Javan rhinos and other endangered species in 2014 after learning about their precarious situation.

Since then, he has travelled across the archipelago on an old bicycle, performing free puppet shows at stops along the way to teach children about the animals. 

“I want them to know about rhinos before it’s too late. I don’t want them to only see rhinos from textbooks or cartoon movies,” Samsudin said. 

Samsudin makes his puppets out of cardboard because it’s readily available, and because he opposes the use of leather — which is used in traditional Javanese puppet theatre shows — for conservation reasons.

The use of visual storytelling makes the message easier for children to digest and creates a stronger bond between him and his young audience, he said.

“Children have a short attention span; I have to be creative to distract them from their gadgets,” he said. 

Rhino conservation is especially difficult because of the animals’ long gestation period and their tendency to roam, which often leaves males and females separated during the mating period. 

Samsudin is also determined to challenge cartoon depictions of rhinos as being lazy and dumb. 

“Rhinos are very shy and they have an unusual appearance, but there are only a few of them left in the world, so I want to lift their image and make them special and wise creatures,” he said.

– ‘Follow in my footsteps’ –

After coronavirus temporarily brought the curtain down on his act, Samsudin is now back on the road performing for children.

His show casts the Javan rhino as the main character, with a macaque and a Sumatran tiger for sidekicks, and a hunter as the villain.

One happy audience member was Gelar Dwi Titar Syahputro, a primary school student who watched the puppet show with his friends. 

“It was fun and hilarious. I learned something new. The story told me not to litter and to promise to guard nature,” Syahputro said.

Samsudin wants his young audience members to emulate him one day, joining his mission to spread awareness about the environment through folklore.

“I hope among hundreds of children I’ve met, one or two will follow in my footsteps and join me to spread messages about conservation,” he said.

Lebanon’s LGBTQ community, long among the most vocal and visible in the Middle East, has been targeted by a crackdown that has seen queer activists harassed and Pride gatherings cancelled.

It has heaped pressure on a community that already lost many of its safe spaces in the devastating 2020 Beirut port explosion and been depleted by an exodus driven by Lebanon’s severe economic crisis. 

An icy chill went through the crisis-tested community when the interior ministry in a June 24 letter instructed security forces to clamp down on events “promoting sexual perversion”.

“It feels very intimidating and quite scary to be a queer person in Lebanon right now,” said Tarek Zeidan, head of the Beirut-based Helem association, considered the preeminent Arab group defending LGBTQ rights.

“We are afraid these signals are only the beginning of further attempts to restrict the individual, civil and political rights of LGBTQ people.” 

Lebanon has never been a safe haven for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people. But the community has long been visible and outspoken, defying arbitrary crackdowns on its bars, nightclubs and community centres. 

Annual efforts to host LGBTQ gatherings have regularly been banned, or cancelled over threats. 

But the state’s latest directive — condemned by human rights groups as unlawful — deepens the multilayered crisis that members say now threatens the very survival of the community. 

The ministry argued that LGBTQ events violate customs, traditions and “principles of religion” in Lebanon, where political power is split along faith lines between Shiite and Sunni Muslim, Christian, Druze and other groups.

– Death threats –

Lebanon’s LGBTQ community in 2018 scored a success when a court ruled that same-sex conduct is not unlawful, but since then it has seen more setbacks than victories.

The Beirut port blast heavily impacted an inner-city district with many gay-friendly spaces, also destroying the Helem offices which have only recently reopened. 

LGBTQ people have also featured disproportionately in Lebanon’s snowballing population exodus that is generating an epidemic of queer isolation.

The minority “has suffered greatly over the past three years and is already made hyper-vulnerable by the socioeconomic discrimination it has been facing,” said Zeidan, 38.

But the latest decision, he said, “is really exacerbating that feeling of anxiety and that feeling of fear living in Lebanon”.

The state move triggered an avalanche of homophobic slurs and threats from politicians, religious authorities and radical activists, as security forces banned even private workshops and movie screenings.  

Anti-queer protesters demanded the criminalisation of the LGBTQ status, and conferences discussed “risks and treatments” for homosexuality.

Rasha Younes of Human Rights Watch called it “definitely the most general ban we have seen in recent years”, adding that it lacked any a legal framework and set “a dangerous precedent”. 

Activists now report receiving phone calls from state security officers “inviting them for a chat over coffee and making it clear that they are monitoring their social media accounts”, Younes said.

Last week, LGBTQ activists planned a sit-in protest outside the interior ministry, but they called it off after receiving death threats. 

– ‘Abuse of power’ –

The ministry’s decision came after a Christian group calling itself the “Soldiers of God” live-streamed a video of its members tearing apart a Beirut billboard featuring blooming flowers in the colours of a rainbow flag.

Marked #LoveAlwaysBlooms, the billboard had been created by Beirut Pride, a collaborative platform that was founded in 2017 to advocate for the decriminalisation of the LGBTQ status.

Hadi Damien, its 33-year-old initiator, said the billboard had been their first major offline project since October 2019.

The angry backlash is not new, he said, sitting in a Beirut cafe, but he argued that it is all the more intense at a time Lebanon is gripped by a broader crisis and has seen the near-total collapse of the state. 

“When institutions are weakened, we go to a very primitive way of governing people,” he said. “It means abuse of power is rampant, it means that any person can pretend to be law enforcement and crack down on a venue.”

Damien argued that the state’s latest move amounts to a “pure diversion” from Lebanon’s grinding malaise and “is nothing but performative politics”.

“When so much is going on, you need to show that you are doing something. So you always hit the people who seem like the easiest target.”

The heads of MI5 and the Federal Bureau of Investigation warned Wednesday about China’s commercial espionage thrust in the West, in a rare joint address at the British intelligence service’s London headquarters.

Speaking to an audience of officials and business executives in Thames House, MI5 Director General Ken McCallum and FBI Director Chris Wray said the threat from Chinese spies is paramount in both countries and only continues to grow.

McCallum said MI5, the British domestic intelligence service, had sharply expanded its China-focused operations.

“Today we’re running seven times as many investigations as we were in 2018,” he said.

“We plan to grow as much again, while also maintaining significant effort against Russian and Iranian covert threats.”

He said Chinese intelligence takes a slow and patient approach to developing sources and gaining access to information, and few of those targeted recognised themselves as such.

“Hostile activity is happening on UK soil right now,” he said.

“By volume, most of what is at risk from Chinese Communist Party aggression is not, so to speak, my stuff. It’s yours — the world-leading expertise, technology, research and commercial advantage developed and held by people in this room, and others like you.”

Wray said China’s threat was a “complex, enduring and pervasive danger” to both the United States and Britain, as well as other allies.

China is “set on stealing your technology, whatever it is that makes your industry tick, and using it to undercut your business and dominate your market,” he added.

The two also warned that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan, which Beijing views as its territory, would cause a massive disruption to global commerce and industry.

They urged businesses to stay alert and report possible threats.

“The Chinese Communist Party is interested in our democratic, media and legal systems. Not to emulate them, sadly, but to use them for its gain,” said McCallum.

Beijing rejected the accusations, describing them as “completely groundless”.

“The so-called cases they listed are pure shadow chasing,” the spokesperson of the Chinese embassy in Britain said in a statement posted on the mission’s website.

“They spread all kinds of lies about China in order to smear China’s political system, stoke anti-China and exclusion sentiment, and divert public attention in order to cover up their own infamous deeds.”

The evacuation of desperate civilians from Sloviansk pressed on Wednesday as Russian troops pushed towards the eastern Ukrainian city in their campaign to control the Donbas region.

Sloviansk has been hit by heavy bombardment as Russian forces advance westwards on day 133 of the invasion.

“Twenty years of work; everything is lost. No more income, no more wealth,” Yevgen Oleksandrovych, 66, told AFP as he surveyed the site of his car parts shop, destroyed in strikes on Tuesday.

AFP journalists saw rockets slam into Sloviansk’s marketplace and surrounding streets, with firefighters scrambling to put out blazes.

Around a third of the market appeared to have been destroyed, with locals inspecting what was left among the charred ruins.

The remaining part of the market was functioning, with a trickle of shoppers buying fruit and vegetables.

– Sloviansk mayor defiant –

“I will sell it out and that’s it, and we will stay home. We have basements, we will hide there,” said 72-year-old greengrocer Galyna Vasyliivna.

“What we can do? We have nowhere to go, nobody needs us.”

Mayor Vadym Lyakh said around 23,000 people out of a population of 110,000 were still in Sloviansk but claimed Russia had been unable to surround the city.

“Since the beginning of hostilities, 17 residents of the community have died, 67 have been injured,” he said.

“Evacuation is ongoing. We take people out every day.” Many of the evacuees were taken by bus to the city of Dnipro, further west.

“The city is well fortified. Russia does not manage to advance to the city,” the mayor said.

Vitaliy, a plumber, said his wife and their daughter, who is six months pregnant, were evacuated from Sloviansk on Wednesday.

“I am afraid for my wife,” he told AFP. “Here, after what happened yesterday, they hit the city centre.

“I sent my wife (away), and I have no more choice: tomorrow I will join the army.”

The eastern Donbas is mainly comprised of the Lugansk region, which Russian forces have almost entirely captured, and the Donetsk region to its southwest — the focus of Moscow’s attack and the location of Sloviansk.

The fall of Lysychansk in Lugansk on Sunday, a week after the Ukrainian army also retreated from the neighbouring city of Severodonetsk, has freed up Russian troops.

Donetsk governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said Russian forces killed five civilians and injured 21 in the region on Tuesday.

The governor of Lugansk, Sergiy Gayday, insisted Russia did not control the entire Lugansk region, saying: “Fighting still keeps going in two villages.”

– Irish PM sees ‘evil’ –

Irish Prime Minister Micheal Martin was in Ukraine Wednesday to voice Dublin’s solidarity. He visited Borodyanka and Bucha outside Kyiv, two towns that have become symbols of the alleged war crimes committed by Russian soldiers.

“In the 21st century, to see such evil — very, very difficult to comprehend,” he said before talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

In his evening address Zelensky hailed new heavy Western artillery for boosting Ukraine’s firepower.

“The weapons we have received from our partners have started working very powerfully. Their accuracy is exactly as it should be,” he said.

“Our defenders inflict notable blows on warehouses and other points which are important for the logistics of the occupiers. And this significantly reduces the offensive potential of the Russian army.”

– Russia toughens laws –

The EU on Wednesday set out a harder focus on energy given Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“We need to prepare for further disruptions of gas supply, even a complete cut-off from Russia,” European Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen told the European Parliament.

The EU has launched a 300-billion-euro ($310-billion) plan to wean itself off Russian fossil fuel supplies.

Russia’s parliament on Wednesday introduced harsh prison terms for acting against national security, and for “confidential” cooperation with foreigners and helping them to act against Russia’s interests.

Rights activists fear the new legislation will be used to snuff out any last vestiges of dissent.

Lawmakers also approved legislation to create a patriotic youth movement, in a move reminiscent of Soviet-era youth organisations.

Meanwhile former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev invoked the possibility of nuclear war if the International Criminal Court moves to punish Moscow for alleged crimes in Ukraine.

“The idea to punish a country that has the largest nuclear arsenal is absurd,” said Medvedev, a close ally of President Vladimir Putin.

“And potentially creates a threat to the existence of mankind.”

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Swedish police said Wednesday that a woman in her 60s had been killed in a daylight stabbing on the island of Gotland, where the country’s top politicians are gathered for an annual event.

Just before 2 pm (1200 GMT) in central Visby, which is currently hosting a gathering of the country’s political parties, a man attacked a woman with a sharp weapon, according to police.

Newspaper Expressen reported that the suspect was believed to have links to the neo-Nazi group NMR, but police would not confirm this.

The victim was given emergency care at the scene before being taken to a nearby hospital.

“Unfortunately I can report that the woman has succumbed to her wounds,” Fredrik Persson, chief of Gotland police, told a press conference.

Persson said that a 33-year-old man had been arrested shortly after the incident close to where the attack took place, and was currently suspected of murder. 

“Currently there is an intense investigation under way. Part of that is to establish a motive and background of the arrested,” the police chief said.

He added that there were a series of questions they were looking into “since it happened in a very public place, where there was a lot of people in central Visby in the middle of the day”.

Police did not want to comment on a motive, though Persson conceded that a political motive could not be ruled out at such an early stage of the investigation.

However, police also said they did not believe the incident was linked to the Almedalen Week, an annual event gathering most of Sweden’s elite where political parties often present new policy and launch campaigns.

The Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions (SALAR) later confirmed that the victim was Ing-Marie Wieselgren, a 64-year-old psychiatrist working as a project manager and coordinator with the organisation.

“We have lost an appreciated and cherished co-worker, colleagues have lost a good friend and all of Sweden has lost one of its strongest voices for mental health,” Carola Gunnarsson, president of SALAR, told AFP in a written comment.