分类： politics

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.

The United Kingdom is moving forward with a landmark and divisive plan to formally label Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) a national security threat, using a sweeping new anti-state threat law that entered into force just last week.

UK Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood will leverage the newly enacted National Security (State Threats) Bill to outlaw all public and organized support for the IRGC, a core institutional branch of Iran’s national armed forces that answers directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. This action marks the UK’s official full proscription of the group, which British authorities accuse of carrying out death threats and systematic intimidation campaigns against targets on British soil.

In a formal written statement released to parliament, Mahmood detailed that nearly any form of support for the IRGC – from public expressions of favorable opinion to logistical or practical assistance – will now count as a criminal offense in the UK, carrying a maximum penalty of 14 years imprisonment.

The new legislation will also be used to target two additional groups: Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya (Hayi), a faction British authorities claim is aligned with Iran and has been linked to antisemitic attacks across the UK, and the volunteer wing of Russia’s foreign military intelligence agency, the GRU.

While the UK has not formally joined any open US-Israeli military conflict against Iran, it has already permitted the United States to access British military bases to launch offensive strikes against Iranian targets, aligning London with Washington’s regional pressure campaign against Tehran.

The path to this proscription action began in April, when current UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer pledged to fast-track the State Threats Bill through parliament. With the bill now law, official draft regulations for the proscription designation are ready to be laid before parliamentary representatives for formal process.

Critically, the new legislation grants Mahmood broad, unchecked authority to designate any state-affiliated organization as a national security threat if she judges it runs counter to the UK’s “safety and interests.” It criminalizes any individual found to “support, assist and obtain material benefits” – including information sharing – from groups listed as terrorist or threat-aligned organizations.

Independent experts who review UK terrorism legislation have issued stark warnings about the bill’s broadly worded provisions, noting that the vague language creates a major risk of criminalizing journalists and non-governmental organization workers who engage in routine contact with designated organizations, potentially exposing them to the same 14-year prison sentences applied to group supporters.

Home Office Minister Angela Eagle defended the proscription in an official statement, arguing the IRGC’s role far outpaces that of a conventional military force. “The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps is a central component of the Iranian state’s security apparatus, answerable directly to Iran’s Supreme Leader. Its role extends far beyond that of a conventional military force. It encompasses intelligence activity, the use of proxy actors, and the projection of influence designed to advance Iranian state objectives,” Eagle said.

Prime Minister Starmer framed the move as a necessary step to protect domestic security, stating: “We will never let Britain be a playground for states who want to spread fear, division and violence on our streets. We have already taken tough action against the Iranian regime and those linked to it, and against Russian operatives and networks targeting our country. These new powers will make it easier to prosecute and lock up anyone carrying out their dirty work here in Britain.”

As of the announcement, independent news outlet Middle East Eye has reached out to the Home Office to request additional comment and clarification on how the IRGC proscription will operate in practical terms, with no further details released publicly to date.

Israeli media has broken news of a controversial planned funding transfer: Israel’s Ministry of National Security, led by far-right politician Itamar Ben Gvir, is set to disburse 4 million shekels, equivalent to roughly $1.31 million, to Ahavat Gilad — an organization already sanctioned by multiple Western governments for its ties to illegal settler activity in the occupied West Bank.

The group was placed on sanctions lists in June this year by France, the United Kingdom, Canada, Norway, Australia and New Zealand. The international sanctions came after investigations confirmed Ahavat Gilad played a key role in enabling and funding a sharp rise in violent attacks by Israeli settlers against Palestinian communities in the occupied territory. Specifically, the organization was found to channel donations from the Farms Union, a body that provides financial and logistical support to settler agricultural operations, directly to unauthorised, illegal settler outposts that are established outside of Israeli government-approved boundaries.

According to documents obtained by Israeli newspaper Haaretz, which were submitted to relevant bodies by the Ministry of National Security, the allocated funding is officially framed as a resource to “reduce incidents of violence” and build “a network of mentors to accompany youth staying on farms throughout Judea and Samaria” — the Israeli term for the occupied West Bank. The 4 million shekel sum will be distributed over an 18-month period, with a built-in option to extend the funding agreement if the ministry chooses to do so.

This controversial funding move follows the Israeli government’s approval of a “national plan” in May, launched to address what officials described as a “negative phenomenon among youth” in the occupied West Bank. The announcement of the plan came as the country has faced growing international pressure to rein in the escalating wave of settler violence targeting Palestinian civilians and property. The national plan itself was officially designed to “prevent youths from entering cycles of violence”, according to official documents.

Per the ministry’s paperwork, Ahavat Gilad was selected as the recipient of public funds specifically because of its deep existing connections to “farmers, the army, the police and government ministries” operating in the West Bank. In a statement justifying the selection, the ministry argued that “providing an effective response to the youth requires relying on ‘responsible adults’ who come from the field, are figures familiar to the youth, share their living space with them and hold their trust”.

The ministry added that the initiative is intended to build a “professional system” that aligns on-the-ground conditions in the West Bank with the policy priorities of the National Security Ministry, a step it says is necessary “to ensure effective prevention” of youth violence.

Responding to Haaretz’s reporting on the funding allocation, the ministry pushed back against criticism. It stated: “It is very unfortunate that instead of praising the ministry for leading the move to reduce and prevent violence and risky behaviors among youth, Haaretz newspaper (which ironically would have attacked the ministry if such a plan had not been implemented at all) chooses to rely on baseless claims by anti-Israel elements”.