分类： politics

When China’s Law on Promoting Ethnic Unity and Progress entered into force on July 1, after being approved by the National People’s Congress in March, it quickly triggered widespread pushback from Taiwan’s government, overseas ethnic communities, and Western governments over its sweeping provisions and unprecedented cross-border legal authority.

The legislation includes a series of broad mandates that touch every sphere of public and private life, both within China and beyond its borders. Article 14 requires all levels of Chinese government to embed Chinese cultural symbols and narratives of a unified Chinese nation into public infrastructure, urban development, geographic naming, and all state-sponsored public events. Article 20 mandates that parents and guardians teach children to express loyalty to the Chinese Communist Party, the People’s Republic of China, and the concept of a unified Chinese nation, banning any instruction deemed harmful to ethnic unity. For online platforms, Article 31 requires that providers prioritize and distribute content promoting ethnic unity, while mandating the immediate removal and reporting of any material deemed to incite ethnic tension or division. Article 53 prohibits any individual or group from using ethnic identity, cultural traditions, or religious belief as a basis for challenging state authority or disrupting public order.

Most controversially, Article 63 extends Chinese legal jurisdiction to organizations and individuals located entirely outside of China’s territory, holding them legally liable for any acts deemed to undermine ethnic unity or promote ethnic division. Critics note that the law provides no clear, formal definition of what counts as “undermining ethnic unity,” leaving Chinese authorities with unconstrained power to interpret violations on an ad hoc basis.

Taipei’s top leadership was among the first to sound the alarm over the new law. On July 2, Cho Jung-tai, Premier of Taiwan’s Executive Yuan, framed the legislation as another expansion of Beijing’s growing network of extraterritorial laws that already includes the Anti-Secession Law, Counter-Espionage Law, and Anti-Foreign Sanctions Law. Cho emphasized that the ultimate goal of this expanding legal framework is to coerce all Taiwanese people into accepting Beijing’s political claims over the island. In response, he announced that Taiwan’s government will establish a new inter-agency task force to counter what officials describe as transnational authoritarian repression, while deepening coordination with like-minded democratic allies. “When law becomes a tool of authoritarian rule, democracy must become the front line of freedom,” Cho stated.

Academic analysts have outlined how the new law fits into Beijing’s layered strategy of political pressure on Taiwan. Hung Pu-chao, deputy director of Tunghai University’s Center for Mainland China Studies, explains that Beijing has now built three interconnected legal mechanisms targeting Taiwan, each operating at a distinct level of governance. The 2005 Anti-Secession Law sets the broad national strategic framework opposing Taiwanese formal independence. A 2024 regulatory opinion on punishing “Taiwan independence” separatist activity establishes targeted criminal accountability for individual political activists. The new Ethnic Unity Law, by contrast, codifies the ideological concept of a single unified Chinese nation into binding law, embedding this narrative into the core of China’s state governance.
Hung warned that the groups most immediately at risk are Taiwanese residents who travel frequently across the Taiwan Strait, operate businesses in mainland China, have cross-strait family ties, or work as academics, journalists, civil society leaders, or public commentators. “As long as people start adjusting their words and actions out of fear of being targeted, blacklisted, or barred from entering mainland China, Beijing’s political goal has already been achieved,” he noted, adding that the vague language of Article 63 leaves all final decisions on violations entirely in the hands of Chinese authorities.
Legal experts in Taiwan have also raised alarms about the law’s implications for cross-border rights. Chang Ching-ju, an attorney and executive committee member of Taiwan’s Judicial Reform Foundation, pointed out that the law enshrines strengthening Taiwanese people’s identification with the “Chinese nation” as an official state objective and requires all Taiwanese people to uphold Beijing’s vision of national unity. “Article 63 allows Chinese authorities to pursue legal action against any overseas organization or individual accused of undermining ethnic unity,” Chang told Taiwan’s Central News Agency. “We are currently conducting a review to assess whether Taiwan’s existing legal framework provides adequate protection for Taiwanese citizens against overreach by foreign cross-border jurisdiction and enforcement, and we aim to release our full findings by the end of this year.”
The ideological roots of the “Chinese nation” (Zhonghua minzu) concept stretch back to early 20th century Chinese political thought, but its modern application in the new law has amplified existing cross-strait tensions. Coined by exiled political theorist Liang Qichao in the early 1900s, the term originally referred exclusively to the Han ethnic majority, to distinguish them from the ruling Manchu Qing dynasty. Later, political thinker Yang Du expanded the concept into the “Five Races Under One Union” framework, grouping Han, Manchu, Mongol, Hui, and Tibetan peoples into a single national identity. Sun Yat-sen, founder of the Republic of China, adopted this framework, defining Zhonghua minzu as a unified nationality encompassing all five groups. After the Chinese Communist Party took control of the mainland in 1949 and the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan, both sides retained “China” or “Zhonghua” in their official state names. Tensions rose sharply after the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party took power in 2016; subsequent public opinion surveys show that a large majority of young Taiwanese now identify exclusively as Taiwanese, rather than Chinese, even as older generations with KMT ties maintain business and personal links to the mainland. Under the new law, KMT-linked business interests with operations on the mainland face implicit pressure to pressure their Taiwan-based relatives to adopt a Chinese national identity and avoid open support for the DPP administration.
Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te has already drawn formal criticism from Beijing for his public framing of Taiwanese historical identity. In a speech last June, Lai argued that Taiwanese people have a distinct historical origins, noting that Austronesian indigenous peoples inhabited the island prior to Dutch colonization in 1624, followed by rule under the Southern Ming, Qing Dynasty, and Japanese colonial rule, and stressed that the People’s Republic of China has never held sovereignty over Taiwan. A commentary in the state-run Beijing Daily hit back, accusing the Lai administration of deliberately smearing the new Ethnic Unity Law and Beijing’s cross-strait united front outreach, claiming the law is intended to build positive ties with Taiwanese people and unify the island’s population. The piece argued that Lai is only hyping a false “China threat” narrative to disrupt peaceful cross-strait exchanges, ahead of Taiwan’s November 28 local elections – a vote widely viewed as a key bellwether for the 2028 presidential election.
Beyond Taiwan, the law has sparked global concern over its impact on ethnic minority communities and political dissidents living outside China’s borders. Western governments and international human rights bodies have warned that the law will expand Beijing’s transnational repression campaign targeting exiled Uyghurs, Tibetans, Inner Mongolians, and Chinese dissidents. In March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk noted on social media platform X that the law’s broad provisions “could overly restrict freedoms of expression, belief and assembly” and warned that it risks penalizing the peaceful exercise of minority rights. In an April 30 resolution, the European Parliament strongly condemned China’s repressive assimilation policies and related human rights violations across Xinjiang, Tibet, and Inner Mongolia, and expressed grave concern over the new law, which it said formalizes assimilation policies and restricts cultural, religious, and linguistic freedoms for communities both inside and outside China. A U.S. State Department spokesperson called the law “problematic” for imposing sweeping legal obligations on individuals and organizations, including those based outside of China.
The controversy escalated in early July when a Tibetan exile activist, Pawo Lobga Rangzen, died following a self-immolation protest outside United Nations Headquarters in New York, held to oppose the new legislation. On July 14, dozens of Hong Kong diaspora and civil society groups released a joint statement condemning the law’s extraterritorial provisions, drawing parallels to Hong Kong’s 2020 National Security Law and 2024 Safeguarding National Security Ordinance – laws that activists say have already been used to target, harass, and intimidate Hong Kongers and other exiles living outside China. The groups called on democratic governments around the world to strengthen legal protections for exiled communities and counter Beijing’s transnational repression.

On a recent Monday, former U.S. President Donald Trump sparked immediate international backlash and sarcastic pushback from Iran after announcing he would renew the American economic blockade of Tehran and impose a 20 percent fee on commercial vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz, framing the charge as payment for U.S. security guarantees in the strategic waterway.

Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi turned Trump’s own words against him in a viral social media post, opening with sarcastic agreement: “POTUS is absolutely right. Whoever provides secure and safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz should be compensated for this service.” Araghchi doubled down on Iran’s long-standing claim to regional security responsibility, adding, “Iran has always been the GUARDIAN of the Strait and will remain so FOREVER. 20% is of course too much. We will be fair.”

The announcement originated during a Monday morning interview on Fox News’ *Fox & Friends*, where Trump framed the United States as “the guardian angel of the strait” and insisted the U.S. deserved compensation for its security role. Shortly after the interview, Trump repeated the proposal in a post on his social media platform Truth Social, writing that “the USA will be, from this point forward, known as ‘THE GUARDIAN OF THE HORMUZ STRAIT,’ but as such, and as a matter of FAIRNESS, will be reimbursed, at the rate of 20% on all cargo shipped, for any and all costs necessary to do the job of providing safety and security to this very volatile section of the World.”

Policy analysts and critics have been quick to point out the significant contradictions in the Trump proposal, noting that the 20 percent toll is exponentially higher than the 1 to 2 percent fee Iran has previously sought for shipping through the strait. Many experts warn that Trump’s move has inadvertently strengthened Iran’s argument that it is entitled to charge its own fees for navigation security in the waterway.

The contradiction also directly undermines recent public statements from senior U.S. leadership. Just weeks before Trump’s announcement, current U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio reaffirmed long-standing U.S. policy to reporters, stating that “no country is allowed to charge tolls or fees on an international waterway. That’s existing international law. That’s the way it is in international waterways all over the world, and that’s the way we expect it’ll be here. So I don’t think we have anybody to convince around here in that regard. I think all the countries in this region would agree with us.”

The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the world’s most critical chokepoints for global energy trade, with roughly a fifth of all global oil consumption passing through its waters on a yearly basis. Disputes over navigation rights and security in the strait have been a core point of tension between the U.S. and Iran for decades.

BEIJING – Months after a catastrophic gas explosion at a Shanxi province coal mine claimed 82 lives, China’s top anti-corruption watchdog has announced that the region’s leading mine safety regulator is facing formal investigation for suspected graft and serious violations of disciplinary and legal rules. The Central Commission for Discipline Inspection (CCDI) confirmed in a public notice released Monday evening that Hu Haijun, who holds dual roles as director of the Shanxi Bureau of the National Mine Safety Administration and the bureau’s Communist Party chief, is the subject of the ongoing probe. The short announcement posted to the CCDI’s official website did not disclose further details about the specific violations alleged against Hu. Per reporting from Caixin, a leading Chinese independent business publication, Hu marks the highest-ranking official swept into the expanding investigation into governance and safety practices across Shanxi’s coal mining sector, one of the world’s largest concentrated coal production hubs. The deadly May accident, which stands as China’s deadliest industrial mining disaster in several years, prompted Chinese authorities to launch a sweeping, province-wide blanket safety inspection of all operating coal mines in the region. While China has made consistent, measurable progress in reducing mining fatalities and improving overall worksite safety over the past decade, systemic gaps in mine oversight and industrial safety regulation remain persistent challenges for national regulators. The mine where the explosion occurred is operated by Shanxi Tongzhou Coal & Coke Group, which was formally listed as a high-risk, disaster-prone operation by the National Mine Safety Administration earlier this year in 2024. Even as China accelerates its global-leading buildout of wind and solar renewable energy capacity, coal continues to anchor the country’s national energy mix, accounting for more than half of China’s total annual energy consumption. As China’s preeminent coal-producing province, Shanxi is home to roughly 800,000 coal mining workers and churned out 1.3 billion tons of coal in 2023 alone – nearly one-third of the entire country’s total annual coal output. The probe into Hu comes as Beijing continues to push a years-long national campaign to crack down on corruption across critical regulated industries, with safety oversight highlighted as a priority for anti-graft efforts following high-profile industrial accidents.

In a stark public challenge to the International Criminal Court (ICC) just months after it issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has formally announced the Trump administration’s deliberate campaign to dismantle the global judicial body “brick by brick”.

Rubio laid out the administration’s hardline stance in a candid opinion piece published in *The Wall Street Journal* on Monday, framing the ICC’s oversight of U.S. military and law enforcement activities as an unprecedented overstep of institutional authority that poses an existential threat to American national sovereignty. “The ICC’s interfering with American military and law enforcement operations isn’t just a grave overreach of its purported authorities. It would mean the death of the U.S. as a sovereign and independent nation,” he wrote.

“Using all the tools at our government’s disposal, working beside every ally with whom we can make common cause, we will dismantle the ICC – brick by brick, if necessary,” Rubio added. He doubled down on this position in a pre-recorded monologue released to social media platform X the same day, arguing the court seeks to strip American citizens of their long-held legal right to be tried under domestic law by a jury of their peers. “But today powerful people in far away places want to take that away from us. They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life – and they don’t care whether or not you agree,” he stated in the video.

Rubio further accused the ICC of actively waging a campaign against the U.S., noting that most American citizens have no familiarity with the court’s judges, prosecutors, or leadership — and that they “shouldn’t have to”. He emphasized that opposition to the court crosses U.S. party lines, a longstanding position dating back to the ICC’s founding in 2002, when the body was established to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes following mass atrocities in Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia.

Notably, Rubio avoided any direct reference to the 2024 arrest warrants issued by the ICC for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, who stand accused of crimes against humanity in the Gaza Strip, where the Gaza health ministry reports more than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since conflict resumed in October 2023. The court also issued arrest warrants for senior Hamas leaders over the October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel that killed roughly 1,200 people; all Hamas leaders named in the warrants have since been assassinated by Israeli forces.

Rubio framed the administration’s campaign against the court through a nationalist lens, positioning the effort as a defense of state sovereignty against what he calls overreach by global institutions. “The U.S. is launching a diplomatic campaign with a simple message – sovereign states over globalism,” he said. Drawing a parallel to the American Revolution, he added: “Our forefathers fought a revolution against a foreign power transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences. Independence is our birthright. We don’t intend to trade it for rule by a self-appointed priesthood of ‘international law’.”

He reminded audiences of the ICC’s 2020 investigation into alleged war crimes committed by U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, warning that the court could eventually extend its probes to U.S. Border Patrol agents and Marine Corps personnel. “The ICC is backed and run by a powerful network of leftist nongovernment organizations, smug globalists, and hostile Third World governments united by their enmity toward the U.S,” he claimed. In his X video, he pushed back against the court’s founding mandate, arguing that while it was billed as a tribunal to prosecute severe crimes when national courts are unable to act, it has become an unaccountable body of unelected officials with near-unlimited claims to power.

In reality, the ICC counts 125 member states, including all member nations of the European Union. Major global powers have historically opposed the court, largely to avoid submitting their own personnel to its jurisdiction. The U.S.’s primary geopolitical rivals, Russia and China, are not ICC members.

U.S. opposition to the court stretches back more than two decades: in 2002, then-President George W. Bush formally withdrew U.S. signature from the court’s founding Rome Statute and signed the American Servicemembers’ Protection Act (ASPA), a law that restricted any U.S. cooperation with the ICC. The legislation even authorized the use of military force to rescue any U.S. personnel detained by the court, earning it the popular nickname the “Hague Invasion Act”. At the time, Washington also pressured dozens of countries around the world to sign bilateral immunity agreements barring them from surrendering U.S. citizens to the ICC.

Analysts view Rubio’s broadside as confirmation that the U.S. and its closest allies have launched a full diplomatic assault on the ICC specifically because of its efforts to hold Israeli leadership accountable for alleged war crimes in Gaza, a situation that the United Nations, leading human rights organizations, and prominent genocide scholars have formally designated as a genocide.

This campaign is not new: last year, former U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order imposing sanctions on ICC judges over their investigation into senior Israeli officials. According to previous reporting from Middle East Eye, these sanctions have severely impacted judges’ ability to travel, threatened their personal security and that of their families, and restricted their access to basic financial services. MEE has also exclusively reported on a parallel pressure campaign led by former UK Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who privately threatened ICC Chief Prosecutor Karim Khan in April 2024 that the UK would defund and withdraw from the court if it moved forward with arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.

The U.S. did play a role in the ICC’s early founding: then-President Bill Clinton signed the Rome Statute in 2000, but the agreement was never sent to the U.S. Senate for ratification amid widespread bipartisan fears that the court would eventually prosecute U.S. military personnel and government officials for alleged war crimes in conflicts including Afghanistan and Iraq. Notably, the ICC has also issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for alleged war crimes connected to the invasion of Ukraine.

Rubio closed his video monologue with a sharp warning to the ICC and its supporters: “This administration will not sit by as the ICC and its allies seek to threaten our people. If they believe they can deprive us of our sovereignty, we will teach them the full meaning of American resolve.”

In the heart of India’s capital New Delhi, at the historic Jantar Mantar protest ground, 59-year-old Sonam Wangchuk – an award-winning educationist, climate innovator and revered public figure – has entered the 16th day of an indefinite hunger strike, his resolve unshaken even as his health deteriorates to alarming levels.

Wangchuk, who traces his protest philosophy to Mahatma Gandhi’s principles of nonviolent resistance, told the BBC on Monday: “I’m weak from the outside, but I’m strong from inside.” A Monday morning health bulletin confirms the activist has lost 8.2 kilograms (18 pounds) since beginning his fast, with his blood pressure registering at 107/70 and blood sugar dropping to a dangerously low 67. Thousands of supporters across the country have pleaded with him to end his fast, but Wangchuk says he will see his protest through to its conclusion: “I have to take what I’ve begun to its logical conclusion.”

The hunger strike is part of a broader protest organized by the online satirical activist group Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), which is demanding sweeping accountability and reform in India’s education sector. The movement’s immediate demand is the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, following the cancellation of a major national medical entrance exam in early May after a widespread paper leak scandal. Protesters argue Pradhan must accept moral responsibility for the systemic failure that led to the leak. The minister has rejected the call, dismissing CJP and its allies as “the B-team of disruptive elements” who oppose the country’s progress.

A native of the remote Himalayan region of Ladakh, Wangchuk is far more than a protest figure. A trained mechanical engineer, he has earned international acclaim for his work in both education innovation and climate adaptation. His most famous invention, the ice stupa – an artificial cone-shaped glacier modeled after Buddhist religious structures – stores glacial meltwater during winter and releases it in late spring, when mountain communities and farmers face critical water shortages. The innovation has transformed water access for Ladakhi communities, earning Wangchuk the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, widely recognized as Asia’s highest honor. He also gained nationwide fame as the inspiration for the lead character in Aamir Khan’s 2009 Bollywood blockbuster *Three Idiots*, and has been a household name across India for decades. This is not his first run-in with authorities: last October, he was arrested on charges of inciting unrest, which he denied. He spent 170 days in detention before authorities dropped all charges and released him.

Even amid soaring Delhi summer temperatures that hit 38 degrees Celsius on Monday, with a “real feel” of 46 degrees, hundreds of supporters have maintained a continuous vigil at Jantar Mantar to stand in solidarity with Wangchuk and the CJP’s demands. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke, who has led the movement from its start, says organizers are gravely concerned about Wangchuk’s declining condition. “Today is the 16th day of his hunger strike and his blood sugar level and blood pressure have dropped and whenever he tries to sit or stand, he feels very dizzy,” Dipke told the BBC. “He’s finding it difficult to even walk to the washroom. He’s really struggling. He’s in a lot of pain but whenever I try to tell him to end his hunger strike, he scolds me and says that ‘don’t you worry about me’.”

Medical teams have warned Wangchuk that continuing the fast poses severe risks to his life, and Dipke says he receives thousands of messages daily from people urging him to convince the activist to end his fast. Even fellow protesters and supporters are increasingly calling on Wangchuk to stop. Animesh Sahu, a 29-year-old engineer from Hyderabad who traveled to Delhi to join the vigil, said: “I’ve grown up watching his videos and I have an emotional connect with him. I’m feeling very concerned about his health. The government must pay attention to him.” Satyaprakash Bharadwaj, a farmer who joined the protest, called Wangchuk “a diamond” sacrificing himself for India’s younger generation: “I’m praying that he will call off his hunger strike. He can fight for our children only when he’s strong.”

Prominent educationist Professor Nandita Narain echoed those concerns, saying it is tragic that a figure of Wangchuk’s standing has to resort to extreme hunger strike to force government action. “It’s very sad that someone like Wangchuk, who has made such outstanding contribution to public life has to resort to a hunger strike to get the government to act,” she said. “I would also appeal to Wangchuk to end his fast because his life is in danger. We have a battle to fight which will go on for much longer. We need a sustained protest and the movement has to be sustained. It’s important that he lives to fight the battle.”

Since Wangchuk began his fast, dozens of opposition lawmakers, prominent activists and social media influencers have visited the protest site to express support. But Dipke says no representatives from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have reached out or agreed to enter dialogue over the protesters’ demands. “I don’t know why the government is so dismissive of the citizens of this country. We have been simply asking for accountability,” Dipke said. “We are not saying make us or Sonam Wangchuk the education minister. All we are asking for is to fix accountability and to change the person who has failed to conduct exams properly as an education minister.”

With no government response forthcoming, protesters have announced their next step: a mass march to India’s Parliament on July 20, when the next monsoon session of the legislature is set to begin. “We have been sitting here for the last 24 days and Sonam sir has been on hunger strike for 16 days. Despite that, the government has not intervened, they have not even initiated a dialogue with us,” Dipke said. “So we thought maybe it’s time to go to the government, go to the parliament of India and keep our demands there.”

As blockbuster director Christopher Nolan prepares to release his highly anticipated new film *The Odyssey* to global audiences this Friday, a growing movement of Sahrawi activists, journalists and filmmakers is demanding a widespread audience boycott, sparked by Nolan’s decision to shoot key scenes in Dakhla, a city located in Morocco-occupied Western Sahara.

For nearly 50 years, Morocco has maintained military and political control over Western Sahara, a disputed territory where the indigenous Sahrawi population has long campaigned for full self-determination. Activists argue that Nolan’s production choice actively normalizes Morocco’s decades-long occupation, turning a contested, occupied homeland into a scenic backdrop for a Hollywood blockbuster without any acknowledgment of the territory’s fraught political reality.

Mamine Hachimi, a Sahrawi journalist and documentary filmmaker who is leading the boycott call, emphasized that the campaign is not an attack on artistic expression — it is a demand for ethical accountability from global cultural creators. Hachimi co-directed *Three Stolen Cameras*, a 2017 short documentary that chronicled the risks faced by independent Sahrawi media collective Equipe Media as they documented human rights abuses against local populations under Moroccan rule. The film was pulled from its scheduled Beirut premiere after the Moroccan government applied diplomatic pressure, and multiple Equipe Media members have faced ongoing arrest and harassment from Moroccan authorities.

Hachimi pointed to the ongoing incarceration of two of his colleagues as evidence of the stark double standard at play: Abdallah Lhafaouni is serving a life sentence, while Bachir Khadda is serving a 20-year sentence, both detained solely for documenting human rights violations in occupied Western Sahara. “It is deeply disturbing that while Sahrawi journalists are imprisoned for exposing abuses, an international film production can use our homeland as a cinematic backdrop without addressing the reality of the occupation,” he said.

While much of the mainstream public conversation around *The Odyssey* has centered on manufactured controversy stirred up by far-right online trolls targeting lead actor Lupita Nyong’o’s casting as Helen of Troy — a controversy Nolan has dismissed as irrelevant — Sahrawi activists insist this is a distraction from the far more substantive ethical scandal of the film’s production location. They note that the same Moroccan security forces responsible for routine violence and repression against Sahrawi pro-independence campaigners directly facilitated Nolan’s shoot in Dakhla. Moroccan Culture Minister Mohamed Mehdi Bensaid has even publicly embraced the production, posing for selfies with Nolan and saying he hopes the film will raise Dakhla’s profile as a global filming and tourism destination.

Despite a high-profile open letter from global public figures including Oscar-winner Javier Bardem, legendary filmmaker Pedro Almodovar and climate activist Greta Thunberg calling for all Dakhla-shot scenes to be cut from the final film, Nolan has refused to publicly address the demands. Requests for comment from Universal Pictures and Nolan’s production company Syncopy Inc. have also gone unanswered.

Mohamedsalem Werad, a Sahrawi documentary filmmaker who gained international acclaim for his work on the life of iconic Sahrawi singer Mariem Hassan, called Nolan’s silence deeply disappointing. “Choosing to film in occupied Western Sahara was not a politically neutral production decision — it meant operating with the permission of the occupying power in a territory where the indigenous Sahrawi people have long been denied the opportunity to exercise their right to self-determination,” he explained. For Werad, a widespread audience boycott is the only clear way to send a message that creators cannot expect viewers to ignore choices that legitimize illegal occupation.

Another Sahrawi filmmaker, Abidin Mohamed Hamudi, went further, accusing the entire *The Odyssey* production team of complicity in the subjugation of the Sahrawi people. He framed Hollywood’s choice as the most extreme expression of a longstanding pattern: capitalist Western economies exploiting the land and resources of the Global South for profit. “Shame on them — history will put everyone in the place they deserve, and they will be in the dustbin of history, remembered as nothing but cultural parasites,” Hamudi said.

With a reported $250 million production budget and riding high on the critical and commercial success of Nolan’s Oscar-winning *Oppenheimer*, *The Odyssey* is projected to be one of the summer’s biggest blockbusters, set to draw millions of viewers looking to escape into a mythic world of ancient gods, epic battles and fantasy. But behind the glitz and marketing hype, Sahrawi activists say, lies a stark, underreported reality that both Hollywood and the international community have chosen to ignore for decades.

The Western Sahara International Film Festival (FiSahara), which is hosted annually in Sahrawi refugee camps in southwestern Algeria — where hundreds of thousands of displaced Sahrawis have lived since being forced from their homeland by Moroccan forces — has emerged as a key organizer of the boycott. FiSahara Executive Director Maria Carron pointed out that Nolan’s crew relied on security support from the same Moroccan military and police forces that routinely target Sahrawi filmmakers and activists just kilometers from the Dakhla filming location. Local resisters face beatings, arbitrary arrest, and confiscation of equipment for simply documenting daily life under occupation, Carron noted. During filming last year, FiSahara and a coalition of Sahrawi creators and activists publicly protested, urging Nolan and Universal to suspend production, leave the territory, and refuse to include Dakhla footage without the explicit consent of the Sahrawi people. Their appeals were rejected.

“FiSahara calls for a general audience boycott of the film and for Nolan to be held accountable for personally benefiting from an illegal occupation by collaborating with Moroccan authorities to enter and film the territory and then by using images of Western Sahara without the consent of their rightful and legal owners, the Sahrawi people — an act that amounts to plunder,” Carron said.

In a sudden shift that risks unraveling years of tentative calm in Yemen, the Houthi movement announced Sunday it was formally ending its de-escalation agreement with Saudi Arabia, pledging swift retaliation over what it claims was an unprovoked Saudi airstrike on Sanaa International Airport.

Yahya Saree, the official spokesperson for Houthi-aligned Yemeni armed forces (officially known as Ansar Allah), confirmed that the alleged strike marks the end of all bilateral efforts to maintain a ceasefire between the two warring parties. “The targeting of Sanaa Airport ends the de-escalation phase,” Saree stated in a public address, emphasizing that “the strike will not pass without retribution.”

As of Sunday evening, Saudi authorities had not issued any immediate public response to the Houthi allegations or confirmation of the reported airstrike. Additional layers of complexity emerged alongside the escalation, with Reuters reporting that Yemen’s internationally recognized Information Minister Moammar al-Eryani has accused Houthi forces of detaining an International Committee of the Red Cross aircraft and its flight crew at Sanaa Airport. The Houthis have not yet commented on this accusation.

In a formal statement from its foreign ministry, the Houthi movement held Saudi Arabia fully accountable for restarting open hostilities in the country. “Saudi Arabia has announced the start of the war and bears full responsibility for it and for any consequences of this step,” the ministry said. The group added that the alleged airstrike was carried out “without any justification”, characterizing it as both a violation of Yemeni national sovereignty and a clear breach of the 2022 ceasefire agreement that paved the way for de-escalation talks.

The sudden escalation comes just days after a Houthi delegation returned from Iran, where members attended funeral ceremonies for Iran’s late former President Ebrahim Raisi (correction from original text context: Iran’s current Supreme Leader is Ali Khamenei, the late official was Raisi). Houthi-affiliated media circulated footage showing senior Houthi official Nasr al-Din Amer aboard an Iranian Mahan Air flight prior to departure from Tehran. The Houthi movement claims Saudi Arabia attempted to block the aircraft from landing in Yemeni territory, though separate video footage later confirmed the plane touched down safely at Hodeidah Airport along Yemen’s Red Sea coast.

This breakdown in calm threatens to erase progress made under a United Nations-backed truce that has held for nearly two years, drastically cutting cross-border attacks and opening a pathway for negotiations to end Yemen’s nearly decade-long civil war. The Houthis form a core component of Iran’s “Axis of Resistance”, an alliance of regional armed and political groups that includes Lebanon’s Hezbollah and pro-Iran factions in Iraq, and has long positioned itself as a key military ally of Tehran in regional standoffs with the United States and Israel.

The latest breakdown in Yemen comes against a backdrop of rapidly escalating tension across the broader Middle East. Over the past week, the U.S. and Iran have exchanged targeted airstrikes following a series of attacks on commercial and military shipping in and near the Strait of Hormuz. Iranian forces have also launched recent drone and missile strikes targeting U.S.-affiliated military assets in the Persian Gulf and commercial shipping transiting the strategic strait.

This report was compiled from independent on-the-ground and regional sourcing, consistent with open Middle East reporting standards.