World

Former Pakistan prime minister Imran Khan accused the government Wednesday of “unacceptable” censorship after authorities apparently blocked national access to YouTube to prevent a rally speech from being broadcast live.

Khan retains widespread support despite his April ousting and has staged mass rallies across the country calling for early elections and railing against the government.

His speeches frequently draw top ratings on television, with highlights trending on social media in Pakistan.

On Tuesday night, however, YouTube was down across much of the country as Khan addressed a rally in Peshawar, with London-based internet outage monitor Netblocks confirming the disruption.

“Access was restored after the speech concluded,” Netblocks told AFP.

YouTube has not commented on the matter, while a representative of the Pakistan Telecoms Authority said they had “no idea about it”.

Last month the government’s media regulatory body banned Khan’s speeches from being broadcast live, on the grounds they were inciting unrest, but this week the high court ruled the order illegal.

Still, no TV channels broadcast Tuesday’s speech.

On Wednesday Khan accused the government of censoring him, saying the move would damage the country’s reputation.

“They are imposing complete blackout of my speeches not only from mainstream media but also by blocking YouTube,” he tweeted.

“This fascist govt of cabal of crooks & their backers are willing to harm the interests of Pakistan simply out of fear of (his party) PTI’s soaring popularity. Utterly callous & unacceptable.”

Last month ARY News, a pro-Khan television station critical of the current government, was taken off air but a court last week also ordered the ruling illegal.

Another private TV channel, Bol News, was suspended last week — ostensibly for operating with an expired licence — and insisted later it was being “punished for showing what the government doesn’t like”.

Free speech campaigners have long criticised the creeping censorship and control of Pakistan’s internet, printed and electronic media.

“It is digital martial law,” said Usama Khilji, a digital rights activist.

Khan is due in court on Thursday for a hearing on one of a slew of cases and charges brought against him since he was booted from office by a vote of no confidence in the national assembly.

The country has a history of those in power using the police and courts to stifle their political opponents, and current premier Shehbaz Sharif also has several pending cases from when he was in opposition.

Pakistan’s political crisis comes as the country grapples with the worst floods in its history, with some 33 million people affected by record monsoon rains that have left almost a third of the nation under water.

Burundi’s parliament on Wednesday approved the appointment of a new prime minister after President Evariste Ndayishimiye warned last week of a possible coup plot against him.

Security Minister Gervais Ndirakobuca has replaced Alain Guillaume Bunyoni as prime minister after a unanimous vote in parliament, the national broadcaster RTNB said.

Bunyoni’s departure came after Ndayishimiye, who has been in power for just over two years, had last week warned of a coup plot against him.

“Do you think an army general can be threatened by saying they will make a coup?  Who is that person? Whoever it is should come and in the name of God I will defeat him,” Ndayishimiye had warned at a meeting of government officials on Friday.

Ndayishimiye took power in the troubled nation in June 2020 after his predecessor Pierre Nkurunziza died of what the Burundian authorities said was heart failure.

The country had been plunged into deadly turmoil in 2015 when then president Nkurunziza launched a bid for a third term in office, despite concerns over the legality of such a move.

New PM Ndirakobuca was sanctioned in 2015 by the US for “silencing those opposed” to Nkurunziza’s third term bid.

Burundi’s history is littered with presidential assassinations, coups, ethnic massacres and a long civil war that ended in 2006 and left some 300,000 dead.

Emulating Indian independence hero Mahatma Gandhi, Rahul Gandhi was set Wednesday to begin a “long march” seeking to halt the seemingly inexorable slow decline of his once-mighty Congress party.

The Grand Old Party, which governed for decades after India’s 1947 independence from Britain, is a shadow of its former self, discredited and crushed under the electoral juggernaut of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

The BJP thrashed Congress at the last two elections, with Modi deriding Gandhi — descended not from the Mahatma but from India’s first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru — as an out-of-touch pampered princeling and playboy.

Before setting off on the trek Gandhi prayed at a monument in Sriperumbudur in the southern state of Tamil Nadu where in 1991 his father Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated — like his grandmother Indira seven years earlier.

“I lost my father to the politics of hate and division. I will not lose my beloved country to it too,” Gandhi, 52, said on Twitter.

He then headed to the southernmost tip of India, before traversing the nation, covering 3,500 kilometres (2,175 miles) across 150 days and ending in Kashmir — although it was unclear if he will actually walk all the way.

The aim, he said, is to highlight rampant unemployment, soaring inflation and growing polarisation between majority Hindus and religious minorities like Muslims under Modi, 71.

“I want to ask you whether price rises or hatred strengthens the country… Narendra Modi and the BJP are weakening the country,” Rahul told a rally in New Delhi on Sunday ahead of the mega march.

“The Congress party, on the other hand, unites the country. We erase hatred and when hatred is erased, the country moves faster.”

– Reluctant leader –

Mahatma Gandhi famously trekked some 380 kilometres (240 miles) in 1930 to protest a salt tariff imposed by British rulers, in a seminal moment in the independence struggle.

But Rahul, dubbed an “empty suit” in leaked 2005 US diplomatic cables, is seen as a reluctant leader despite being the great-grandson, grandson and son of three past premiers of the world’s biggest democracy.

Gandhi quit as party president after the 2019 election debacle and was replaced on an interim basis by his mother Sonia Gandhi, 75, widow of Rajiv.

If he returns as president, which remains unclear, he faces a huge battle to revive the party, in power in just two out of 28 states and in coalition in four others. 

Analysts say Congress lacks Modi’s common touch and is missing a counter-narrative to the BJP’s politics which is infused with a heavy dose of “Hindutva” — an ideology that believes in making India an exclusive Hindu state.

The march “is not a gimmick. Rahul Gandhi sincerely believes in religious harmony. But the people are not interested. So, it will fail,” said political analyst Parsa Venkateshwar Rao Junior. 

“Rahul and Congress would have to work hard on the ground, find out the problems people are facing in different parts of the country,” he told AFP.

“(The people) need someone to voice their dissatisfaction.”

A group of French lawmakers landed in Taiwan on Wednesday, the first high-level European delegation since China conducted huge war drills to protest a visit to the island by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The trip came as Taiwan held two days of live fire drills on a strategic island that lies between its coast and China.

The democracy exists under constant threat of an invasion by authoritarian China, which claims the self-ruled island as part of its territory to be seized one day.

Beijing lashes out at any diplomatic action that might lend Taiwan legitimacy, and has responded with growing anger to visits by Western officials and politicians.

The delegation of five French lawmakers is being led by Senator Cyril Pellevat, Taiwan’s foreign ministry said, adding it was the fourth visit by French politicians in the past 12 months.

Last month China sent warships, missiles and fighter jets into the waters and skies around Taiwan in a show of opposition to Pelosi’s presence — its largest and most aggressive exercises since the mid-1990s.

Pelosi, a veteran Beijing critic, was the most senior US politician to visit Taiwan in 25 years. She was followed by multiple separate US delegations in August.

China’s huge war drills triggered widespread support in the United States for solidarity with Taiwan, which already has rare bipartisan support on Capitol Hill.

Many European powers have also grown more vocal in support of Taiwan in recent years, while Russia invading Ukraine has deepened fears China might do the same to its neighbour.

Politicians from European countries regularly visit the island.

Beijing has adopted an increasingly bellicose approach to Taiwan under President Xi Jinping, China’s most authoritarian leader in a generation.

Xi, who is on the cusp of securing an unprecedented third term, has hitched Taiwan’s fate to his landmark “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation” policy.

Like most nations, the United States and France officially recognise Beijing over Taipei. 

But they both remain key allies of Taiwan and maintain de facto diplomatic ties with the island.

Washington’s official policy opposes both Taiwan declaring independence and China forcibly changing the island’s status.

– ‘Prepare but not seek war’ –

On Tuesday Taiwanese troops carried out dramatic nighttime live fire drills on the island of Pingtung, which lies between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan and would need to be seized in any invasion.

Tanks were illuminated by sudden flashes of flame as they fired shells while tracer rounds arced across the night sky.

“We will prepare for war but will not seek war,” Huang Jing-feng, Battalion Commanding Officer, told reporters. 

“We will carry on training to elevate each soldier’s combat skills.”

The drills continued Wednesday — with tanks, combat helicopters and mobile missile launchers conducting firing exercises. 

The head of Hong Kong’s journalist union was arrested on Wednesday, a police source said, just weeks before he was set to leave the city and begin an overseas fellowship.

Ronson Chan, president of the Hong Kong Journalists Association (HKJA), was arrested for allegedly obstructing a police officer and disorder in a public place, a police source told AFP.

Channel C, the online news outlet Chan works for, said the veteran reporter was taken away by police officers who asked to check his identity while he was reporting on a meeting of public housing flat owners.

Chan was set to leave Hong Kong at the end of September for the six-month Reuters Institute fellowship programme at Oxford University.

Authorities have used a national security law and colonial-era sedition charges to crack down on dissent in Hong Kong after democracy protests three years ago.

Local media deemed critical of the government have faced a surge in police investigations and the city has plummeted down global press freedom rankings.

Like many now-shuttered civil society groups and pro-democracy unions, both Chan and the HKJA have faced repeated criticism from media outlets that answer to Beijing’s Liaison Office in the city.

Police action often follows such media coverage. 

Local tabloid Apple Daily and online news platform StandNews — which Chan used to work for — were forced to close last year after executives were charged with national security violations, leaving hundreds of journalists out of work.

When Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released its annual press freedom ranking in May, Hong Kong had plunged 68 places to 148th in the world.

In RSF’s first report in 2002, Hong Kong had some of the freest media in Asia and ranked 18th worldwide.

The Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Hong Kong gave up Asia’s largest annual human right press awards earlier this year, citing risks posed by the security law — a decision that caused controversy among many journalist members.

The club recently published a watered-down statement on press freedom on its website. 

One of the removed sentences from the statement read: “Facing unprecedented attacks on the media, never has our club’s role been more vital -– nor our commitment been stronger.”

Britain’s new prime minister Liz Truss convenes her senior ministers for an inaugural cabinet meeting on Wednesday on her first full day in office, before she faces a barrage of questions in parliament.

Truss, who officially became leader Tuesday at an audience with head of state Queen Elizabeth II in Scotland after the resignation of Boris Johnson, is set to meet her top team at a morning meeting. 

They include the most diverse top team in British history ever: Kwasi Kwarteng as Chancellor of the Exchequer, James Cleverly as foreign secretary and Suella Braverman as interior minister.

They face a daunting in-tray of issues, most notably decades-high inflation and how to deal with energy bills set to rise by 80 percent next month and then  again in January.

Meanwhile, the Bank of England has tipped the country to fall into recession later this year.

She must also navigate the combustible issue of post-Brexit trading arrangements in Northern Ireland, and in one of her first calls with a foreign leader late Tuesday, she agreed with US President Joe Biden “on the importance of protecting” peace in the province.

In its readout of the call, the White House also said Truss and Biden addressed “the challenges posed by China (and) preventing Iran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon.” 

But Truss was bullish as she entered Downing Street for the first time as premier, narrowly avoiding a heavy downpour.

“I am confident that together we can ride out the storm,” she said.

Her new ministers may be asked to sign off immediately on a plan to freeze energy bills for the coming winter, possibly longer, a measure that would cost tens of billions of pounds, according to reports.

Tax cuts and diverting some health funding to social care could also reportedly be on the agenda.

“I will cut taxes to reward hard work and boost business-led growth and investment,” Truss promised, while also vowing “action this week” on gas and electricity bills and broader energy policy.

– ‘Almost ungovernable’ –

After Cabinet, Truss will travel to the House of Commons to spar with opposition Labour leader Keir Starmer, in the rival pair’s first Prime Minister’s Questions session.

The often rowdy weekly session, which sees the prime minister quizzed by MPs, will test Truss’s political mettle and rhetorical skills as well as her level of Conservative support.

The 47-year-old won an internal ballot of Tory members on Monday, securing 57 percent of the vote, after a gruelling contest against former finance minister Rishi Sunak that began in July.

But the initial stage of the contest saw her net the support of less than a third of the parliamentary party.

She now faces a tough challenge reuniting the ruling Tories following a bitter leadership battle.

Conservative MPs are “almost ungovernable” and have “no appetite to cope with difficult decisions,” according to a government insider quoted by the Financial Times on Monday.

“They did for Boris and they may do for Liz, too,” the source told the paper.

Truss will likely face a volley of hostile questions from Starmer and the Labour ranks, as they look to capitalise on months of Tory disarray.

Labour has opened up a double-digit lead in the polls but may have to wait two years for the next general election. 

Truss vowed Monday to lead the Conservatives to victory “in 2024”, with an election due by January 2025 at the latest.

– ‘Dreadful policy’ –

Truss, who pitched herself to the Tory grassroots as a tax-cutting free-trade champion ready to slash taxes immediately to turbo-charge growth, faces warnings that these moves could make inflation worse.

The UK has already seen prices rise this year at their steepest rate for four decades, driven by spiralling energy costs.

Under her mooted plans to tackle the situation, gas and electricity bills for both households and businesses would be capped near current levels for the coming winter at least.

The government would lend or guarantee private sector loans to energy providers to make up the difference they pay with soaring global wholesale prices.

It remains unclear whether the government will pay for the plan through extra borrowing or ask consumers to pick up the tab over the next two decades through levies on their energy bills.

Paul Johnson, of the respected Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) think-tank, said it was “a dreadful policy” but likely necessary. 

“Hugely expensive, untargeted, increases risk of shortages,” he noted on Twitter. 

But he warned the scale of the problem “means there may just be no practical alternative.”