World

The UN Human Rights Council on Thursday voted against holding a debate on alleged widespread abuses in China’s Xinjiang region after intense lobbying by Beijing, in a major setback for Western nations.

The United States and allies last month presented the first draft decision targeting China to the UN’s top rights body, seeking as a bare minimum a discussion on Xinjiang.

The move came after former UN rights chief Michelle Bachelet released her long-delayed Xinjiang report, citing possible crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in the far-western region.

Western countries thought that by going no further than simply seeking to talk about the findings, enough other nations would not block putting it on the agenda.

But in a moment of drama, countries on the 47-member council in Geneva voted 19-17 against holding a debate on human rights in Xinjiang, with 11 nations abstaining.

Amnesty International branded the vote farcical, while Human Rights Watch (HRW) said it betrayed abuse victims.

“The United States condemns today’s vote preventing a discussion about Xinjiang,” US ambassador to the council Michele Taylor tweeted.

Inaction “shamefully suggests some countries are free from scrutiny and allowed to violate human rights with impunity”.

– China says being ‘targeted’ –

The nations voting against a debate were Bolivia, Cameroon, China, Cuba, Eritrea, Gabon, Indonesia, Ivory Coast, Kazakhstan, Mauritania, Namibia, Nepal, Pakistan, Qatar, Senegal, Sudan, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan and Venezuela.

Argentina, Armenia, Benin, Brazil, Gambia, India, Libya, Malawi, Malaysia, Mexico and Ukraine abstained.

China’s ambassador Chen Xu said the push to discuss the issue was “taking advantage” of the United Nations “to interfere in China’s internal affairs”.

“The draft decision is not pro-human rights but for political manipulation,” he told the council.

“Today China is targeted; tomorrow any other developing country could be targeted.”

The draft decision was put forward by the United States, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden and Turkey, among others.

One Western diplomat stressed that regardless of the outcome, “the number one objective has been fulfilled” in putting Xinjiang in the spotlight.

– ‘Dreadful message’ –

Bachelet’s report, published minutes before her term ended on August 31, highlighted “credible” allegations of widespread torture, arbitrary detention and violations of religious and reproductive rights.

It brought UN endorsement to long-running allegations that Beijing detained more than one million Uyghurs and other Muslims and forcibly sterilised women.

Beijing vehemently rejected the charges, insisting it running vocational training centres in the region to counter extremism.

Amnesty secretary general Agnes Callamard said Thursday’s vote was a “dismaying result that puts the UN’s main human rights body in the farcical position of ignoring the findings of the UN’s own human rights office”.

“For council member states to vote against even discussing a situation where the UN itself says crimes against humanity may have occurred makes a mockery of everything the Human Rights Council is supposed to stand for.”

HRW’s China director Sophie Richardson called it an “abdication of responsibility and a betrayal of Uyghur victims”.

The International Service for Human Rights’ China advocate Raphael Viana David said: “Council members sent today a dreadful message: China remains so far untouchable.”

– Muslim countries’ position ‘shameful’ –

ISHR executive director Phil Lynch said it was “shameful” that “Muslim countries… have overwhelmingly failed to even support a UN discussion on rights abuses against Uyghurs.”

Indonesian ambassador Febrian Ruddyard said, “As the world’s largest Muslim country and a vibrant democracy, we cannot close our eyes to the plight of our Muslim brothers and sisters”.

But, as China did not consent, a discussion “will not yield meaningful progress”, hence Indonesia voted ‘no’.

The sentiment was echoed by Qatari ambassador Hend Al-Muftah.

China launched an all-out offensive to dismiss Bachelet’s report.

African countries, where China is the leading creditor after making massive infrastructure  investments, faced particularly heavy lobbying, observers said.

In the end, only Somalia voted ‘yes’ out of 13 countries.

Britain’s ambassador Simon Manley said the close result nonetheless showed Beijing that “a significant number of countries will not be silenced when it comes to egregious human rights violations”, whoever the perpetrator.

Indonesia’s police chief on Thursday said six people had been charged over a football stadium disaster that killed 131 at the weekend.

“Based on the investigation and sufficient evidence, we have determined six suspects,” national police chief Listyo Sigit Prabowo told a press conference.

The six people charged with negligence causing death include three police officers and three people responsible for the match and its security, including the head of Arema FC’s organising committee and one of the club’s security officers, he said.

Two of the police officers under investigation ordered colleagues to fire tear gas, he said. 

The third police officer under investigation knew about FIFA’s safety regulations that prohibit the use of crowd control gas at pitchside but did not prevent tear gas being used by colleagues, he said.

The suspects face a maximum sentence of five years in prison if found guilty. Prabowo said more people could be charged.

The Indonesian football association had earlier banned the Arema FC organising committee chief and a security officer from football for life.

The announcement came as anger grew over the police response to a pitch invasion.

Officers reacted by firing tear gas into packed stands as fans of Arema FC tried to approach players following their defeat to fierce rivals Persebaya Surabaya on Saturday evening.

The police chief said 11 officers in total fired tear gas “to prevent more spectators from taking to the field” but caused spectators “to panic and… try to immediately leave the arena.” 

They fired eight canisters into the stands and three onto the pitch, according to the police investigation.

– ‘Not opened completely’ –

Hundreds of people fled for small exits, resulting in a crush that left many trampled or suffocating to death. Witnesses said the gates were closed.

Prabowo said the “doors were not opened completely…and the stewards were not in place” when the match ended.

In the crush, “most of the dead victims suffered from asphyxia”.

League organiser PT LIB also “did not verify” the safety of the stadium since 2020 and the organising committee of Arema FC “did not prepare an emergency plan”, he said. 

Police described the pitch invasion as a riot and said two officers were killed, but survivors accused them of overreacting.

Officers responded with force, kicking and hitting fans with batons, according to witnesses and footage, pushing the spectators back into the stands where many would die after tear gas was fired.

Several witnesses said police stood by and refused to help victims. 

Instead, bystanders rushed to help.

– ‘Negligence’ –

Kiosk owner Edy Tanto said he saw people begin to pour out of the stadium when chaos erupted. 

He rushed to provide water from his shop to victims whose eyes were stung with the tear gas, which witnesses said police had fired into the stands.

“I couldn’t think straight,” Tanto told AFP as he sat cross-legged on the floor of his shop. 

“I just thought of helping them.” 

Indonesian President Joko Widodo announced an investigation after the tragedy and called for a safety review of all stadiums.

The Malang police chief was replaced Monday, nine officers were suspended and 19 others were put under investigation, according to police.

But organisers of the match and club officials have also been blamed for the chaos.

Indonesia’s football association also moved Tuesday to sanction Arema FC, fining the club 250 million rupiah ($16,420) on top of the life bans for two of its officials.

Maike Ira Puspita, the association’s deputy secretary-general, told AFP it had imposed sanctions on the club and its officials “due to the… negligence of the whole situation”. 

The association has declined to comment on the police response to a pitch invasion, which has come under increasing fire since the tragedy unfolded.

The Indonesian government has suspended the country’s national football league until the investigation concludes.

IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva urged global policymakers Thursday to take concerted action to avoid a “dangerous ‘new normal,'” as the risks of a worldwide recession are driven ever higher by repeated economic shocks.

In a speech ahead of the fund’s annual meetings next week, the IMF’s managing director said it was critical to “stabilize the global economy by addressing the most immediate challenges” — including rampant inflation.

Policymakers need to act together to “prevent this period of heightened fragility from becoming a dangerous ‘new normal,'” Georgieva said.

But she warned the process will be painful — and that if central banks move too aggressively to tamp down price pressures, it could trigger a “prolonged” economic downturn.

Finance ministers and central bank governors from more than 180 nations will gather next week in Washington for the first fully in-person meeting of the International Monetary Fund and World bank since 2019, prior to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Faced with the “darkening global outlook … the risks of recession are rising,” Georgieva said — announcing that the crisis lender plans to once again downgrade its 2023 forecast for the world economy, in the forecasts due to be published next week for the annual meeting.

One-third of countries are expected to see at least two quarters of contraction, and “even when growth is positive, it will feel like a recession” because of rising prices eroding incomes, she said.

The fund in July slashed its growth forecast for this year to 3.2 percent, and for next year to 2.9 percent — the third consecutive downgrade.

– ‘Shock, after shock’ –

The meetings come at a difficult time for the global economy, with the pandemic largely under control, but soaring inflation and rising interest rates now threatening to reverberate around the globe and choke off nascent recoveries.

“In less than three years we lived through shock, after shock, after shock,” Georgieva said in her speech at Georgetown University.

Global supply snarls already were a challenge as demand surged following the pandemic slowdown, fueling inflation worldwide, and strains worsened in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine — which Georgieva called a “senseless war” — sending food and food prices soaring.

“Far from being transitory, inflation has become more persistent,” and acting before high prices become entrenched is a key challenge for policymakers, Georgieva said — warning that “the cost of a policy misstep can be enormous.”

“Not tightening enough would cause inflation to become deanchored and entrenched,” but moving “too much and too fast — and doing so in a synchronized manner across countries — could push many economies into prolonged recession,” she said.

Despite the risks, central banks need to continue “act decisively.”

“This is not easy, and it will not be without pain in the near term,” she cautioned. “But the key is to avoid much greater and longer-lasting pain for everyone later on.”

– Debt distress –

Georgieva stressed the need for fiscal policies to help the most vulnerable segments of society, but warned that efforts must be targeted “with a laser-sharp focus on lower-income households,” to avoid acting against the current of monetary policy.

She cautioned against relying on price controls which are not affordable nor effective.

The pandemic forced many countries to take on more borrowing, and now many are already facing or at risk of debt distress amid rising interest rates. That “raises the risk of a widening debt crisis” which could further harm global growth.

To reduce the risk “large creditors such as China and private-sector creditors have a responsibility to act,” she said, calling for “faster and more predictable” action on debt restructuring.

Ukraine said Thursday that it had wrested Russian troops out from swathes of the southern Kherson region, pushing a counter-offensive that has undermined the Kremlin’s claim to have annexed the territories.

The announcement came after a barrage of devastating Russian bombardments of the city of Zaporizhzhia that left several civilians dead in an attack Kyiv said was a deliberate attempt to “sow fear” among the population.

Ukraine’s military has not only said it was reclaiming territory in the south, but also in the eastern Lugansk and Donetsk regions, that have been partially controled by Kremlin proxy forces since 2014.

“The Armed Forces of Ukraine have liberated more than 400 square kilometres of the Kherson region since the beginning of October,” Ukrainian southern army command spokeswoman Natalia Gumeniuk said in a briefing online.

She later added that the recaptured territory was home to nearly 30 towns and villages that had been occupied by Russian forces for months.

Kherson, a region with an estimated pre-war population of around one million people, was captured early and easily by Moscow’s troops after their invasion launched February 24. 

Russian-installed officials have renewed a call for residents to remain calm, with deputy pro-Moscow leader Kirill Stremousov saying Kremlin forces were holding back the advance.

– ‘No panic’ –

“At this stage, nothing has changed and there is no panic,” he said in a video-statement to residents.

Ukrainian forces have in particular made gains on the west bank of the river Dnieper that cuts through Kherson, but the Russian military in a briefing said Thursday that its forces rebuffed “repeated attempts to break through our defences” in the area.

Further west, on Ukraine’s contact line with Russian forces from the Mykolaiv region — where Kyiv’s forces had been hunched in fox holes for months and pounded by Russian artillery — the mood was shifting along with frontlines.

Bogdan, 29, from northwest Ukraine re-enlisted in the military this year and has spent most of the summer holding the line some four kilometres (2.5 miles) from the dug-in positions of Moscow’s forces.

“We see that our comrades, our ‘horde’ as we call them, are working. We see their successes and it inspires us. If some thought before that we weren’t moving fast enough, well now that’s not the case!” he said. 

“There is light at the end of the tunnel,” said commander Yaroslav, a sturdy 39-year-old man wearing a black cap.

The Ukrainian push deeper into Kherson is putting further strain on the Kremlin’s announcement last week that it had annexed the territory — alongside three others — and that its residents were would Russian “forever”.

The four territories — Donetsk, Kherson, Lugansk and Zaporizhzhia — create a land corridor between Russia and the Crimean peninsula, which was annexed by Moscow in 2014.

– ‘Sow fear’ –

Together, the five regions make up around 20 percent of Ukraine.

Russia hit back against Ukraine with strikes that battered the central city of Zaporizhzhia in fatal attacks that tore through high-rise buildings and left a toddler injured.

AFP journalists on the scene saw rescue workers in helmets clearing mounds of rubble with their hands, searching for people trapped beneath the debris.

And firefighters were working to extinguish a blaze from a collapsed section of a building with pieces of jagged metal protruding.

Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said after the strikes that left three people dead that Moscow’s forces “keep deliberately striking civilians to sow fear”.

“Russian terror must be stopped — by force of weapons, sanctions and full isolation”, he said.

The overnight attacks follow gruesome shelling last week that Ukrainian officials said killed 30 people after a convoy of civilian cars in the Zaporizhzhia region.

In addition, the presidency said Thursday morning that over the past day 14 people were killed in attacks in the Donetsk region.

The UN nuclear agency chief was due in Kyiv Thursday to discuss creating a security zone around Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia atomic plant — the largest in Europe — after Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to take it over.

A former police officer shot dead at least 37 people, most of them children, when he stormed a nursery in Thailand on Thursday in one of the kingdom’s deadliest mass killings.

Following the attack, gunman Panya Khamrab went home and killed his wife and child before taking his own life, police said. 

Armed with a shotgun, pistol and knife, Panya opened fire on the childcare centre in northeastern Nong Bua Lam Phu province at about 12:30 pm (0530 GMT).

National Police Chief Damrongsak Kittiprapat told a news conference the gunman killed 37 people, including 23 children and his own family, and wounded 12 others.

Nanthicha Punchum, acting chief of the nursery, described harrowing scenes as the attacker barged into the building.

“There were some staff eating lunch outside the nursery and the attacker parked his car and shot four of them dead,” she told AFP.

“The shooter smashed down the door with his leg and then came inside and started slashing the children’s heads with a knife.”

Footage after the incident showed distraught parents weeping in a shelter outside the nursery, a yellow single-storey building set in a garden. 

The 34-year-old gunman was a former police sergeant suspended in January and sacked in June for drug use, Damrongsak told reporters.

“As far as I know he was due in court tomorrow for a drug-related trial,” he said.

He said the attacker was in a manic state but it was unknown whether it was drug-related.

“We have to test his blood for drugs,” he said.

“What happened today will be a lesson to prevent this happening again in the future.”

Damrongsak said the pistol used had been purchased legally and was a privately owned weapon, not police property.

Witness Paweena Purichan, 31, said the attacker was well known in the area as a drug addict.

She told AFP she encountered Panya driving erratically as he fled the scene.

“The attacker rammed a motorbike into two people who were injured. I sped off to get away from him,” she said. 

“There was blood everywhere.”

Video Paweena posted online showed a woman lying injured in a roadside bush after apparently being knocked off her motorbike by Panya.

Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-O-Cha ordered the national police chief to “fast-track an investigation” and said he would travel to the scene of the attack on Friday.

“This should not happen. This absolutely should not happen,” Prayut told reporters.

“I am extremely sorry for those who were injured and lost (their loved ones).”

Thailand forms part of Southeast Asia’s so-called Golden Triangle which has long been an infamous hotspot for the trafficking and abuse of drugs.

Surging supplies of methamphetamine have sent street prices crashing in Thailand to all-time lows, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime.

– Mass shootings rare –

The mass killing comes less than a month after an army officer shot dead two colleagues at a military training base in the capital Bangkok.

While Thailand has high rates of gun ownership, mass shootings are rare.

But in the past year, there have been at least two other cases of shooting murders by serving soldiers, according to local media.

In 2020, in one of the kingdom’s deadliest incidents in recent years, a soldier gunned down 29 people in a 17-hour rampage and wounded scores more before he was shot dead by commandos.

That mass shooting, linked to a debt dispute between gunman Sergeant-Major Jakrapanth Thomma and a senior officer, triggered public anger against the military.

The soldier was able to steal assault rifles from an army depot before embarking on his killing spree, posting live updates on social media as he did so.

Military top brass were at pains to portray the killer as a rogue soldier.

The US embassy in Bangkok expressed condolences to the victims and their families after the latest tragedy, while Amnesty International said “hearts go out” to those affected.

“I am shocked to hear of the horrific events in Thailand this morning. My thoughts are with all those affected and the first responders,” British Prime Minister Liz Truss tweeted.

The United Nations children’s agency added: “Early childhood development centres, schools and all learning spaces must be safe havens for young children to learn, play and grow.”

French author Annie Ernaux, known for her deceptively simple novels drawing on personal experience of class and gender, was on Thursday awarded the Nobel Literature Prize.

Ernaux, 82, was honoured “for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory”, the jury said.

Interviewed on Swedish television immediately after the announcement, the feminist icon called it a “very great honour” and “a great responsibility”.

Her more than 20 books, many of which have been school texts in France for decades, offer one of the most subtle, insightful windows into the social life of modern France.

Ernaux is the second woman among the eight Nobel laureates honoured so far this year, with women vastly under-represented in the history of the prizes.

French President Emmanuel Macron hailed the award, calling Ernaux’s voice “that of the freedom of women and of the forgotten”.

Personal experiences are the source for all Ernaux’s work and she is the pioneer of France’s “autofiction” genre, which gives narrative form to real-life experience.

Above all, her crystalline prose has excavated her own passage from working-class girl to the literary elite, casting a critical eye on social structures and her own complicated emotions.

“Ernaux consistently and from different angles, examines a life marked by strong disparities regarding gender, language and class”, the Swedish Academy noted.

– ‘Special voice’ –

“Her work is uncompromising and written in plain language, scraped clean”, it said.

“And when she with great courage and clinical acuity reveals the agony of the experience of class, describing shame, humiliation, jealousy or inability to see who you are, she has achieved something admirable and enduring”.

The chairman of the Nobel Committee, Anders Olsson, told AFP the Academy was taken with her “frankness”.

“She is direct and brief and that is something that you never forget. That is very specific to her, it’s her special voice”, he said.

He told Swedish news agency TT that Ernaux had been under consideration “for many years”.

She debuted with the novel “Cleaned Out” in 1974, a cool-eyed but harrowing account of an abortion she went through while a student and which she had kept secret from her family.

But it was her fourth book, “A Man’s Place” from 1983 — a dispassionate portrait of her father and the social milieu that formed him — that started her literary breakthrough.

She went on to write a portrait of her mother in 1987, “A Woman’s Story”, which with “severe brevity” was a “wonderful tribute to a strong woman”, the Academy noted.

Outside France, recognition has come more recently, notably after the English translation of her key 2008 work, “The Years”, which was nominated for the prestigious Man Booker International Prize in 2019.

In it Ernaux used family photographs as well as scraps of popular culture to recall her life and explore the impact of bigger historical events.

– Diversity pledge –

The film “The Happening”, based on another 2000 account of her abortion, won the Golden Lion at last year’s Venice Film Festival.

The Nobel Prize comes with a medal and a prize sum of 10 million Swedish kronor (about $911,400).

Ernaux will receive the award from King Carl XVI Gustaf at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 10, the anniversary of the 1896 death of scientist Alfred Nobel who created the prizes in his last will and testament.

Ernaux is the 17th woman out of 119 literature laureates since the first Nobel was awarded in 1901.

The Swedish Academy has in recent years pledged to make the prize more diverse, after a 2017-2018 #MeToo scandal led to a revamping of the venerable body.

Famed — and lambasted — for its Eurocentric Nobel picks dominated by men, the jury has repeatedly maintained, however, that its prize is neither political nor subject to gender or ethnic quotas.

It has insisted that its only criteria is the quality of a writer’s body of work.

But perhaps it is no coincidence that the revamped Academy gave the nod to Ernaux, who has been a strong voice supporting the #MeToo movement.

The movement took longer to take off in France, with the likes of actress Catherine Deneuve initially defending male “gallantry” and men’s right to hit on women.

“In France we hear so much about our culture of seduction, but it’s not seduction, it’s male domination”, Ernaux has said.