diplomatic tensions Archives

In tit-for-tat move, India asks Canada diplomat to leave country in 5 days

Canadian diplomat is ordered to leave hours after Ottawa expelled Indian diplomat over the killing of a Sikh separatist.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi (R) reads a joint statement as his Canadian counterpart Justin Trudeau looks on at Hyderabad House in New Delhi [File: Adnan Abidi/Reuters]

A senior Canadian diplomat has been ordered to leave India within five days, the Indian foreign ministry said, hours after Ottawa expelled an Indian diplomat in an escalating rift over the killing of a Sikh separatist earlier this year.

New Delhi’s decision reflected its “growing concern at the interference of Canadian diplomats in our internal matters and their involvement in anti-India activities”, the ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.

The duelling expulsions come as relations between Canada and India are tense. Trade talks have been derailed and Canada just cancelled a trade mission to India that was planned later this year.

Protests by pro-Sikh independence groups in Canada have angered Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government.

Ottawa on Monday said it was “actively pursuing credible allegations” linking Indian government agents to the murder of Sikh separatist leader Hardeep Singh Nijjar outside a cultural centre in Surrey, British Columbia on June 18.

Nijjar was reportedly organising an unofficial referendum in India for an independent Sikh nation at the time of this death.

India dismissed the Canadian accusation as “absurd and motivated” and urged it to instead take legal action against anti-Indian elements operating from its soil.

Sikh separatist movement
Last year, the Indian authorities announced a cash reward for information leading to Nijjar’s arrest, accusing him of involvement in an alleged attack on a Hindu priest in India.

The Sikh independence movement, commonly referred to as the Khalistan movement, is banned in India, where officials see it and affiliated groups as a national security threat. But the movement still has some support in northern India, as well as countries such as Canada and the United Kingdom, which are home to a sizable Sikh diaspora.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the parliament on Monday he brought up Nijjar’s killing with Modi at the Group of 20 (G20) summit in New Delhi last week. He said he told Modi that any Indian government involvement would be unacceptable and that he asked for cooperation in the investigation.

“Any involvement of a foreign government in the killing of a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil is an unacceptable violation of our sovereignty,” he said. “In the strongest possible terms, I continue to urge the government of India to cooperate with Canada to get to the bottom of this matter.”

On Tuesday, the MEA released a statement dismissing the allegation and saying Trudeau had made similar allegations to Modi.

“Such unsubstantiated allegations seek to shift the focus from Khalistani terrorists and extremists, who have been provided shelter in Canada and continue to threaten India’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” the statement said, referring to the proposed autonomous Sikh homeland.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/19/india-expels-canada-diplomat-after-india-envoy-expelled-in-sikh-killing-row

Niger coup supporters call for French ambassador, troops to leave country

Protesters rally outside a French military base, calling for the ambassador and about 1,500 soldiers to leave.

A protester holds a t-shirt reading ‘France Must Go’ as supporters of Niger’s military rulers demand withdrawal of French army. [AFP]

Thousands of people have rallied in the Nigerien capital, Niamey, demanding that France withdraw its ambassador and troops from the West African country as its new military rulers have accused the former colonial power of “interference”.

The protesters gathered near a military base housing French soldiers on Saturday after a call by several civic organisations hostile to the French military presence. They held up banners proclaiming, “French army, leave our country.”

Niger’s military government, which seized power on July 26, has accused French President Emmanuel Macron of using divisive rhetoric in his comments about the coup and seeking to impose a neocolonial relationship with its former colony.

Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Niamey, said demonstrators expressing frustration about there still being French presence in the country were beginning to take matters into their own hands.

According to security personnel, the protest was scheduled to begin about 3pm (14:00 GMT) but thousands of demonstrators had already gathered by 10am (09:00 GMT), taking police and security forces by surprise.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/9/2/niger-coup-supporters-call-for-france-ambassador-troops-to-leave-country

Fukushima: China’s anger at Japan is fuelled by disinformation

Restaurants in Beijing carry signs about the blanket ban on seafood imports from Japan

Rocks thrown at schools, threats of a boycott and hundreds of hostile phone calls – these are just some of the ways Chinese people have shown their displeasure with Japan in recent weeks.

The catalyst? Japan’s release of treated waste water from the damaged Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

Scientists largely agree that the impact will be negligible, but China has strongly protested the release.

And disinformation has only fuelled fear and suspicion in China.

A report by a UK-based data analysis company called Logically, which aims to fight misinformation, claims that since January, the Chinese government and state media have been running a coordinated disinformation campaign targeting the release of the waste water.

As part of this, mainstream news outlets in China have continually questioned the science behind the nuclear waste water discharge.

The rhetoric has only increased since the water was released on 24 August, stoking public anger.

In recent days, a rock was thrown at a Japanese children’s school in Qingdao, while another school in Shandong had several eggs hurled into its compound. A brick was also thrown at the Japanese embassy in Beijing this week.

While there have been no reports of Japanese nationals in China being hurt, or companies being damaged, Tokyo has demanded that Beijing ensures the safety of its citizens.

Japan’s foreign ministry even warned its citizens in China to be cautious and to avoid speaking Japanese loudly in public.

“China always protects the safety and legitimate rights and interests of foreigners in China, in accordance with law,” China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said in response to the demand, insisting that Beijing has considered the “so-called concerns of the Japanese side”.

The water discharge from Fukushima into the Pacific Ocean began on 24 August

Logically’s data also showed that, since the beginning of the year, state-owned media have run paid ads on Facebook and Instagram, without disclaimers, about the risks of the waste water release in multiple countries and languages, including English, German, and Khmer.

“It is quite evident that this is politically motivated,” Hamsini Hariharan, a China expert at Logically, told the BBC. She added that misleading content from sources related to the Chinese government had intensified the public outcry.

What are the concerns over Fukushima water release?
“This isn’t about food safety, China itself has had a lot of scandals regarding food safety. The Chinese narrative has often been positioning itself as an ‘alternate leader’ in the world order, and that the US and its allies propagate an unequal world order,” she noted.

Dozens of posts on Chinese social media Weibo showed panicked crowds buying giant sacks of salt ahead of the Fukushima water release. Some worried that future supply would be contaminated. Others believed – falsely – that salt protected them against radiation.

A restaurant in Shanghai, in an apparent effort to profit off the hysteria, advertised “anti-radiation” meals with errant claims of reducing skin damage and cell regeneration. A social media user asked wryly, “Why would I pay 28 yuan for tomato with seasoning?”

Still others online have criticised the Fukushima discharge itself. They also mocked Japan’s campaign to prove the safety of its seafood, which includes a video of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida eating what he called “delicious” raw fish.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-66667291

Russia warns of blocking G20 declaration if its views are ignored

Lavrov, who has served as President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, is due to represent Russia at the Sept. 9-10 meetof the Group of 20 countries.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov(AP)

Russia will block the final declaration of this month’s G20 summit unless it reflects Moscow’s position on Ukraine and other crises, leaving participants to issue a non-binding or partial communique, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday.

Lavrov, who has served as President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister since 2004, is due to represent Russia at the Sept. 9-10 meeting of the Group of 20 leading industrialised and developing countries in New Delhi.

Putin is not known to have travelled abroad since the International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for him in March on suspicion of war crimes in Ukraine.

“There will be no general declaration on behalf of all members if our position is not reflected,” Lavrov told students at the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations.

The Kremlin casts the Ukraine war, which began when Russia invaded in February 2022, as an existential battle with an arrogant West that Putin says wants to dismantle Russia and take control of its vast natural resources.

Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/world-news/russia-to-block-g20-declaration-if-its-views-are-ignored-foreign-minister-sergei-lavrov-101693577695330.html

At least 25 killed in Russian air raids on Ukraine cities

At least 25 civilians have been killed in a wave of Russian missile attacks on Ukrainian cities, as Kyiv said it was nearly ready to launch a huge assault to retake occupied land.

The attacks on the cities of Dnipro and Uman in the early hours of Friday were the first large-scale air raids in nearly two months.

Firefighters tackled a blaze at a residential apartment hit by a Russian missile in the central town of Uman and rescue workers clambered through a huge pile of smouldering rubble, searching for survivors and bodies as anxious people stood by. Officials said at least 23 civilians were killed there, including four children.

Rescue workers carried a body away on a stretcher. A man wearing a face mask sobbed as he watched and a woman came to comfort him.

“No one is left,” said Serhii Lubivskyi, 58, who survived inside a flat on the seventh floor. He was rescued by firefighters from the balcony where he escaped with his wife after the explosion blocked their front door.

Lubivskyi wept as he took a deep drag from a cigarette and looked up at the smouldering gaps in the building where adjacent flats had been blasted away. “My neighbours are gone. No one is left,” he said. “Only the kitchens were left standing.”

Firefighters work to extinguish a fire after a Russian attack on a residential building in Uman, central Ukraine, [Bernat Armangue/AP]

Al Jazeera’s Charles Stratford reporting from Kyiv said that the attack, according to the Ukrainian government, was executed by one of “23 cruise missiles and so-called kamikaze drones that Russia fired in the early hours of Friday morning. Some were reportedly launched from as far away as the Caspian Sea,” he said.

The attacks show “Russia’s ability to strike targets across this country whenever and wherever it pleases”, he said.
The wave of Russian missile attacks overnight was the first since early March. Russia had launched such attacks almost weekly for most of the winter, but they tapered off as spring arrived, with Western countries saying Moscow was running out of missiles.

Moscow said the targets of its overnight attacks were locations of Ukrainian reserve troops, which it had struck successfully, preventing them from reaching the front. It supplied no evidence to support this.

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a missile struck a house, killing a two-year-old child and a 31-year-old woman, regional governor Serhiy Lysak said.

The capital Kyiv was also rocked by explosions in the early hours, as were the central cities of Kremenchuk and Poltava, and Mykolaiv in the south. Two people were wounded in the town of Ukrayinka just south of Kyiv, officials said.

Ukrainian counteroffensive
The war is coming to a crucial juncture after a months-long Russian winter offensive that gained little ground despite the bloodiest fighting so far. Kyiv is preparing a counteroffensive using hundreds of tanks and armoured vehicles sent by the West.

It wants to drive Russia out of the nearly one-fifth of Ukraine that it occupies and claims to have annexed.

“As soon as there is God’s will, the weather and a decision by commanders, we will do it,” Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleskii Reznikov told an online news briefing on Friday.

Ukraine was “to a high percentage ready”, he said, with new modern weapons to provide an “iron fist”.

Cruise missiles
Closer to the front, in Donetsk, an eastern city controlled by Russian proxies since 2014, a Russian-installed official said seven people, including a child, had been killed by Ukrainian shelling that hit a minibus.

Reuters was unable to independently verify the number of casualties or who was to blame. Ukrainian officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Ukrainian military said it had shot down 21 out of 23 cruise missiles fired by Russia. Moscow has said it does not deliberately target civilians. Kyiv says attacks on cities far from the front lines have no military purpose apart from intimidating and harming civilians, a war crime.

Source: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023/4/28/at-least-25-killed-in-russian-air-raids-on-ukraine-cities

Taiwan activist formally arrested for suspected ‘secession’ in China

Yang Chih-yuan, a Taiwanese political activist, has been formally arrested in China on secession charges.

A Taiwan political activist has been formally arrested on suspicion of “secession” in China, more than eight months after he was detained amid heightened tensions across the Taiwan Strait.

Yang Chih-yuan, a democracy campaigner and pro-independence politician, was detained by Chinese state security in Wenzhou in Zhejiang province last August, hours after then United States House Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrapped up her high-stakes visit to Taipei.

The visit infuriated Beijing, which retaliated by holding days of large-scale military drills and firing missiles over the self-governing island, pushing tensions to their highest in decades.

Yang’s fate remained unknown for months.

But on Tuesday, China’s Supreme People’s Procuratorate announced on social media that prosecutors in Wenzhou had approved the arrest of Yang on secession charges, after the city’s state security bureau concluded its investigation and handed the case to the prosecutors for “review and prosecution.”

The statement did not mention when Yang will appear in court.

Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council said they had repeatedly reached out to mainland authorities about Yang’s detention but had not received a direct response.

“The government reiterates that Yang is innocent and calls on the Chinese Communist Party to release Yang and allow him to return to Taiwan as soon as possible,” the council said in a statement to CNN Tuesday.

Yang, 33, has been active in Taiwan’s social movements for more than a decade and once contested for a seat in Taiwan’s legislature, which he did not win.

In 2019, he became the vice chairman of the Taiwan National Party, a fringe political party advocating Taiwan independence. The party is now defunct, according to Taiwan’s Ministry of the Interior.

China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported on August 3 last year that Yang was taken into custody by the state security bureau in Wenzhou for engaging in “separatist activities” supporting Taiwan independence and endangering national security.

China’s ruling Communist Party claims Taiwan as its own territory, despite having never controlled it, and has refused to rule out the use of force to “unify” the island with mainland China.

Under leader Xi Jinping, China has stepped up crackdown against perceived threats from both within and outside the country, arresting Chinese and foreign nationals for endangering “national security” – a broadly and vaguely defined concept under Chinese law.

Non-mainland Chinese citizens have also been imprisoned for national security crimes. Taiwanese human rights activist Lee Ming-che, for example, was sentenced in 2017 to five years in prison for “subverting state power.” Lee was released last year after serving his full sentence.

Handcuffed and escorted

CCTV said Yang had long advocated the idea of “Taiwan independence” and founded the Taiwan National Party to push for Taiwan to become an independent, sovereign country and a member state of the United Nations.

The broadcaster aired footage showing a handcuffed man purported to be Yang being held by two officers, as the police went through his phone, wallet and other personal belongings.

In a subsequent report, CCTV said Yang had been placed under “residential surveillance at a designated location” from August 4 – a form of secrete detention frequently applied to national security cases in China that United Nations human rights experts say tantamount to enforced disappearance.

Authorities in Beijing and Taipei have not given any explanation as to why Yang had traveled to the mainland.

However, Taiwan’s Mainland Affairs Council reminded Taiwan citizens to evaluate the risks before traveling to mainland China, citing the “repeated occurrence of similar cases recently,” without elaborating on the incidents.

“When the epidemic on both sides of the strait is gradually slowing down and people on both sides are hoping to resume normal exchanges, the mainland arbitrarily arrested Taiwanese people, seriously harming the rights and interests of our people and creating fear,” it said in a statement to CNN. “This is bound to be detrimental to the exchanges and interactions across the strait.”

News of Yang’s formal arrest comes as concerns are mounting for a Taiwan-based book publisher, who reportedly has been detained in China since March, according to Taiwan’s Central News Agency (CNA).

Source: https://edition.cnn.com/2023/04/25/china/taiwan-activist-arrest-secession-charges-china-intl-hnk/index.html

Taliban kill Islamic State leader who masterminded Kabul airport bombing that left 13 US service members dead

The blast outside the airport in 2021 took place as thousands of Afghans tried to board crowded flights to flee the country during the chaotic US-led withdrawal.

US marines at Abbey Gate before the bombing in Kabul on 26 August 2021. Pic: Department of Defense via AP

The Tailban have killed an Islamic State group leader who masterminded the Kabul airport suicide bombing that left 13 US service members dead.

The US military informed the families of the 11 marines, the sailor and the soldier killed in the blast during the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan.

About 170 Afghans were also killed in the bombing outside Hamid Karzai International Airport on 26 August 2021.

Family members of the US personnel shared the information in a private messaging chat group, according to one marine’s mother.

The account from the families was confirmed by US officials, who spoke to the Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

The IS leader, whose identity has not yet been released, was killed in southern Afghanistan in early April.

The Taliban were conducting a series of operations against the Islamic State group, according to one of the officials.

At the time, the Taliban were not aware of the identity of the person they killed, the official added.

Coffin with the remains of Marine Corps Staff Sgt. Darin T. Hoover is carried at Dover Air Force Based in Delaware. Pic: AP

‘It’s not going to bring Taylor back’

The attack at Abbey Gate took place as thousands of Afghans tried to board crowded flights to flee the country after the Taliban’s takeover.

At the time, the UK, the US and other nations were carrying out the evacuation of thousands of citizens.

Darin Hoover, the father of staff sergeant Darin Taylor Hoover who died in the attack, said the killing of the unidentified Islamic State group leader does nothing to help them.

He said: “Whatever happens, it’s not going to bring Taylor back and I understand that.

“About the only thing his mom and I can do now is be an advocate for him. All we want is the truth. And we’re not getting it. That’s the frustrating part.”

His son was among service members who were screening thousands of Afghans trying to board one of the flights out of the country.

Mr Hoover said he and his son’s mother, Kelly Henson, have spent the past year and a half grieving the death of the 31-year-old and praying for accountability from Joe Biden’s administration for the handling of the withdrawal.

Source: https://news.sky.com/story/taliban-kill-islamic-state-leader-who-masterminded-kabul-airport-bombing-that-left-13-us-service-members-dead-12866492