World

Global economic leaders on Friday hailed China’s move away from its hardline zero-Covid policy, with the IMF chief saying the “decisive actions” would help revive growth both in the country and globally.

The relaxation would help to shore up a world economy struggling with the impact of the pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the head of the World Trade Organization said after a conference in the eastern Chinese city of Huangshan hosted by outgoing Premier Li Keqiang. 

Beijing on Wednesday announced a loosening of its zero-tolerance approach to coronavirus outbreaks, ending large-scale lockdowns and allowing some positive cases to isolate at home following widespread protests against the restrictions.

The decision indicated that the world’s second-largest economy is finally shifting towards living with Covid after years of grinding curbs stifled growth.

“We welcome very much the decisive actions taken by the Chinese authorities… to recalibrate the Covid policies so as to create a better impetus for the revival of growth in China,” International Monetary Fund managing director Kristalina Georgieva said at a press briefing with the heads of other major economic institutions.

The effort to boost vaccination rates and anti-viral treatments “is very good for the Chinese people, but also important for Asia and the rest of the world”, Georgieva added.

“China’s performance matters (not just) to China — it matters to the world economy as well.”

The global economy has been rocked this year, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine adding to a stuttering post-pandemic recovery and a cost of living crisis in many countries.

The retreat from zero-Covid “will help remove one set of uncertainties” in a world reeling from the impacts of the pandemic, the war in Ukraine and climate change, said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala at the same briefing.

Secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Mathias Cormann, said the “adjustments will support the strength of the recovery both in China and globally”.

Beijing’s step back from zero-Covid has helped to prop up global stock markets fearful of a looming recession in the United States, but analysts have warned that China’s route to a full reopening remains bumpy.

– Further relaxations –

Long criticised for disrupting business operations and global supply chains, the zero-Covid policy has acted as a constraint on China’s economy, with analysts expecting Beijing to miss its stated annual growth target of 5.5 percent.

Public frustration with snap lockdowns and mass testing boiled over last month as protesters took to the streets in cities around the country, with some calling for greater political freedoms in China’s most widespread demonstrations since 1989.

On Friday, China rolled back more restrictions, with the culture and tourism ministry announcing that visitors will no longer be required to show “health codes” when entering a range of venues.

A spokesperson for the National Health Commission (NHC) said at a press briefing that hospitals must not refuse care to coronavirus-positive patients, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

The move marks a further pivot away from China’s longstanding strategy of isolating all those who test positive and treating them in state-run quarantine facilities.

Some of those facilities will now be transformed into “sub-designated hospitals… equipped with certain treatment faculties” including 10 percent of berths reserved for “observation and care”, CCTV quoted the NHC’s Jiao Yahui as saying.

Demand for home treatments and personal protective gear has surged along with concerns over possible large-scale outbreaks, even though official statistics have reported a decline in new cases in recent days.

China’s market regulator said Friday that it would crack down on price gouging after the retail price of a traditional flu treatment as much as quadrupled in the first few days of December.

Meanwhile, an iPhone megafactory in central China announced it was ending months of a virus-secure “closed loop” system that had hit production of the Apple gadgets.

The Foxconn facility in Zhengzhou was in effective lockdown for 56 days, with workers only allowed to travel between their dormitories and the factory floor on shuttle buses after infections were discovered in October.

Foxconn said in a social media post that employees could now return to work with a negative Covid test taken in the last 48 hours, in line with the “further lifting of China’s epidemic control measures”.

Britain on Friday announced wide-ranging sanctions against 30 targets worldwide, including officials in Iran accused of pursuing “egregious sentences” against anti-regime protesters. 

The sanctions against the 10 people connected to Iran’s judicial and prison systems came after the clerical regime’s first execution of one such protester, which has triggered global condemnation.

“This includes six individuals linked to the Revolutionary Courts that have been responsible for prosecuting protestors with egregious sentences including the death penalty,” the government in London said.

Two of the Iranians now subject to a UK travel ban and assets freeze are former directors of the notorious Evin prison in Tehran: Ali Chaharmahali and Gholamreza Ziaei.

The sanctions, timed to mark world days for anti-corruption and human rights, hit individuals across 11 countries — “the most that the UK has ever brought together in one package”, the foreign ministry said.

They include five people from Russia and Russian-held Crimea amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine, which has attracted successive waves of UK sanctions against Moscow.

Others on the list, accused of violating human rights, are from Nicaragua, Pakistan and Uganda. 

The UK also highlighted orchestrated sexual violence in sanctioning two local officials in South Sudan, one jihadist group in Mali and three junta entities in military-ruled Myanmar.

Designated individuals from Kosovo, Moldova and Serbia were accused of corruption.

“Today our sanctions go further to expose those behind the heinous violations of our most fundamental rights to account,” Foreign Secretary James Cleverly said.

“We are committed to using every lever at our disposal to secure a future of freedom over fear,” he said.

For months, Russian forces have attacked the eastern Ukrainian city of Bakhmut with frontal assaults, artillery barrages and air strikes in a stubborn battle for a settlement deemed strategically irrelevant by many observers.  

Nonetheless, they have pushed forward.

As Russia continues to hurl what is left of its offensive power at entrenched Ukrainian positions in and around the city, experts have wondered whether the losses in manpower and equipment will match the potential prize. 

“We are scratching our heads,” a Western official told AFP this week when asked about Russia’s focus on Bakhmut. “We don’t know the answer.”

With Ukrainian forces pressing forward with counteroffensives, Russian troops have largely dug in along the meandering front in an effort to hold the line as winter weather sets in.

Bakhmut, however, remains one of the few areas where the Kremlin’s forces have fought to advance.

To gain control of the city, Russia is believed to have relied on mercenaries, prison conscripts, and newly mobilised soldiers to send waves of attacks against Ukrainian positions, resulting in brutal trench warfare and artillery battles that have flattened large portions of the city and its surroundings. 

The assault follows a well-worn pattern eked out by Russian forces in eastern Ukraine, where cities are pummelled under withering assaults at great cost until the Ukrainian military retreats. 

“Russian efforts around Bakhmut indicate that Russian forces have fundamentally failed to learn from previous high-casualty campaigns concentrated on objectives of limited operational or strategic significance,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a US-based think tank.

“The costs associated with six months of brutal, grinding, and attrition-based combat around Bakhmut far outweigh any operational advantage that the Russians can obtain from taking Bakhmut.”

– ‘Every metre counts’ –  

The think tank went on to suggest that the continued fixation with Bakhmut along with the resources needed to capture it has effectively given Ukraine the ability to conduct counteroffensives elsewhere.  

“Russian efforts to advance on Bakhmut have resulted in the continued attrition of Russian manpower and equipment, pinning troops on relatively insignificant settlements for weeks and months at a time,” the institute concluded.

In the past week, Russian forces have made incremental gains in the outskirts of the city, as freezing temperatures across Ukraine have hardened the once muddy ground and paved the way for harder fighting in the east. 

On Wednesday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky acknowledged the difficult inch-by-inch battle and other “hot spots” along the frontline in Donetsk. 

“There is a very tough confrontation, every metre counts,” the president said in his nightly address to the nation. 

“I thank all our guys who destroy the enemy there every day, every night, every hour.”

As seen by AFP reporters during a recent trip to Donetsk, Ukrainian forces continue to move large amounts of artillery around the area, while groups of reserve fighters are often visible along the roads leading to Bakhmut and the surrounding front.   

– ‘Meat grinder’ –

For some, the Kremlin appears desperate for a tangible victory on the battlefield following months of setbacks.

Russia’s last major victory in Ukraine came with the capture of the eastern cities of Severodonetsk and Lysychansk over the summer.

Since then they have steadily lost large swaths of ground.  

A lightning offensive in Kharkiv in early September shattered Russia’s northeastern flank followed by a retreat from Kherson in November, robbing Moscow of the only provincial capital they managed to capture during the course of the war. 

“Russians continue their offensive to shift the focus in the media from a series of Russian defeats this autumn,” said Mykola Bielieskov, a research fellow at National Institute for Strategic Studies in Kyiv, echoing similar assessments made by the Ukrainian high command.

Bakhmut also represents a small piece of a much larger political goal repeatedly stressed by the Kremlin — the capture of the entire Donbas region in eastern Ukraine.

“The Russian leadership wants control over Donetsk, and Bakhmut is the main gateway to Slovyansk/Kramatorsk,” Michael Kofman, the director of Russia studies at CNA, a US-based research institute, told AFP. 

Other voices in Russia have stressed that the fight for Bakhmut has little to do with the actual city. 

Yevgeny Prigozhin, the founder of Russia’s Wagner mercenary group that is helping lead the fight for Bakhmut, said his troops have primarily centred their efforts on demolishing the Ukrainian army there.

“Bakhmut is a large, well-fortified area with roads, suburbs, and water barriers,” said Prigozhin in a statement released last month by his company, Concord.

“Our task is not Bakhmut itself, but the destruction of the Ukrainian army and the reduction of its combat potential, which has an extremely positive effect on other areas, which is why this operation was dubbed the ‘Bakhmut meat grinder.'”

Britain’s media, the main focus of criticism so far in Netflix docuseries “Harry and Meghan”, on Friday hit back at the estranged prince and his wife, accusing them of lying and insulting Queen Elizabeth II.

The royal family was largely spared during the first three episodes of the show, which aired on Thursday, with the focus more on Harry’s early life and his resentment towards the media, which he blames of the death of his mother Diana.

But the prince did accuse the family of unconscious racial bias, and the royals will be braced for next week’s instalment, which threatens more revelations.

The saga dominated Friday’s newspaper front pages, which were largely critical of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex — Harry and Meghan’s formal titles.

“Harry the Nasty” said the headline of popular tabloid the Sun, which added the couple had “trashed the Queen’s legacy”, left Harry’s father King Charles III and his brother Prince William in a “state of sadness” and unfairly tarnished the whole country as racist.

The paper, along with many others, picked up on one scene in which Meghan performed a melodramatic curtsey as she recalled meeting Queen Elizabeth II for the first time.

“How low can you go?” asked the tabloid, adding that “mocking Meghan exaggerated a curtsey to poke fun at the royals — and compared their traditions to a tacky US medieval chain”.

– ‘Lies’ –

The Daily Mail, the right-wing newspaper that has clashed most often with the couple, led with the headline “palace anger at ‘assault on the Queen’s legacy’,” and carried almost 20 pages of coverage on the show.

Inside, one commentator took issue with their claim that Brexit had fuelled racism in the UK and contributed to their eventual split from the family, calling it “the most insulting distortion”.

Conservative MP Bob Seely said late Thursday that he plans to bring forward legislation to strip the couple of their royal titles. 

“There is a political issue,” he said. “As well as trashing his family and monetising his misery for public consumption, he is also attacking some important institutions in this country.”

The Mail also dedicated four pages to rebutting what it called the couple’s “fantasies and lies”, including their claims of an unrelentingly hostile media and stories about their first date and engagement.

It also claimed that the show had “cynically doctored” previous media interviews with the couple.

The broadsheets also dedicated their front pages to the show, with the centre-right Daily Telegraph also leading with the “‘direct hit’ on the queen’s legacy”.

The Times ran with the less polemic headline “Palace and Netflix clash over Sussexes soap opera”, although one commentator implored: “Please make it stop Netflix, I can’t take any more of this self-centred nonsense.”

The left-wing Guardian newspaper was more supportive of the couple, and focused on Prince Harry’s criticism that the royal family did not protect Meghan against racially charged reporting. 

The centre-left Daily Mirror, which is generally less critical of the couple than its right-wing counterparts, slammed the show, calling on its front-page to “stop this royal circus”.

“Just two months after our Queen died, Prince Harry is bemoaning his treatment again… Prince William is venting his fury again… Meanwhile, thousands of ordinary Brits are choosing between eating and heating.”

Iran faced international condemnation Friday after carrying out its first known execution over protests that have shaken the regime for nearly three months, leading to calls for even more demonstrations.

Protests have swept Iran since the death in custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died in mid-September after her arrest for an alleged breach of the country’s strict dress code for women.

Mohsen Shekari was hanged Thursday after being convicted for blocking a Tehran street and wounding a paramilitary on September 25, after a legal process that rights groups denounced as a show trial.

The judiciary said the 23-year-old was arrested after striking a member of the Basij — a paramilitary force linked to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — with a machete, a wound that required 13 stitches.

He was convicted last month of “moharebeh”, or “enmity against God” — a capital offence in the Islamic republic.

The announcement sparked an international outcry and warnings from human rights groups that more hangings were imminent.

Amnesty International said it was “horrified” by the execution, which followed Shekari’s condemnation in a “grossly unfair sham trial”.

“His execution exposes the inhumanity of Iran’s so-called justice system” where many others face “the same fate”, it added.

Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam, director of Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights (IHR), urged a strong international reaction to deter the Islamic republic from carrying out more executions.

“Mohsen Shekari was executed after a hasty and unfair trial without a lawyer,” he said.

– Calls for more protests –

Shekari’s body was buried 24 hours after his execution in the presence of a few family members and security forces in Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery, the 1500tasvir social media monitor reported.

His execution has triggered fresh protests and calls for more demonstrations.

Overnight, protesters took to the street where Shekari was arrested, shouting, “They took away our Mohsen and brought back his body,” in a video shared by 1500tasvir.

Elsewhere, chants of “Death to the dictator” and “Death to Sepah” were heard at a demonstration in Tehran’s Chitgar district, in reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.

Hamed Esmaeilion, an Iranian-Canadian activist who has organised mass protests in Berlin, Paris and other cities, said more demonstrations would be held at the weekend.

“Regardless of belief and ideology, let’s join these gatherings in protest against the brutal execution of #MohsenShekari,” he tweeted.

– ‘Contempt for human life’ –

1500tasvir said Shekari’s execution happened with such haste that his family had still been waiting to hear the outcome of his appeal.

It posted harrowing footage of what it said was the moment his family learnt the news outside their home in Tehran, with a woman doubled up in pain and grief, repeatedly screaming the name “Mohsen!”

Western governments also expressed anger.

Washington called Shekari’s execution “a grim escalation” and vowed to hold the Iranian regime to account for violence “against its own people.”

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni expressed indignation at “this unacceptable repression” which, she said, would not quash the protesters’ demands.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock had a similar message.

“The threat of execution will not suffocate the will for freedom,” she tweeted, criticising a “perfidious summary trial”.

“The Iranian regime’s contempt for human life is boundless,” Baerbock added.

Germany also summoned the Iranian ambassador, a diplomatic source said, without providing further details.

UK Foreign Secretary James Cleverly expressed outrage and urged the world not to ignore “the abhorrent violence committed by the Iranian regime against its own people.”

The office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights said it deplored Shekari’s hanging.

According to rights group Amnesty International, Iran executes more people annually than any nation other than China.

IHR, which says the security forces have killed at least 458 people in the protest crackdown, this week warned Iran had already executed more than 500 people in 2022, a sharp jump on last year’s figure.

At least a dozen other people are currently at risk of execution after being sentenced to hang in connection with the protests, human rights groups warned.

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A fire the size of a football pitch ravaged a sprawling shopping centre near Moscow killing one person, officials said Friday, adding that it had been put out.

“The open blaze was put out at 10:45 am (0735 GMT),” Sergei Poletykin, the head of the Moscow region emergency services told Russian media. 

Social media footage showed people running out of the Mega Khimki shopping centre in a northern Moscow suburb as the building caught fire and partially collapsed. 

Russia’s Investigative Committee said it had information that one person had been killed and was clarifying if there were other victims. 

“Investigators and forensics experts are on the scene,” it said. 

Emergency services said the fire in the suburb of Khimki was spread over 7,000 square metres (75,300 square feet).

The shopping centre is about seven kilometres (four miles) from Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport. 

More than 70 firefighters and 20 fire trucks were at the site, emergency services said, adding that their work was hampered due to the design of the building. 

“Due to the collapse of the roof, the fire spread instantly to a large area,” the Moscow region’s emergency services said on Telegram. 

Russian news agencies quoted sources in emergency services as saying that “arson” was suspected but state news agencies later quoted sources as saying that safety violations were more likely the cause. 

Russia, which frequently has a lax approach to safety rules, has seen a number of deadly fires at entertainment venues in recent years.

Last month, a fire killed 13 people at a bar in the city of Kostroma. A drunk man had reportedly fired a flare gun indoors but inadequate fire safety regulations caused the large number of deaths, authorities had said. 

In 2018, a fire killed 60 people in a shopping mall in the Siberian city of Kemerovo.

In 2009, another blaze at a nightclub in the Urals city of Perm killed 156 people.