Global Pulse

分类： world

  • Magnitude 7.1 quake in Japan leaves several injured

    Magnitude 7.1 quake in Japan leaves several injured

    On a Tuesday afternoon local time, a powerful magnitude 7.1 earthquake jolted inland southwestern Japan’s Kumamoto City on Kyushu Island, triggering immediate emergency responses across the region. The seismic event hit at 16:27 local time (07:27 GMT), with a shallow epicenter just 10 kilometers below the Earth’s surface – a geological detail that has left national weather officials warning of potential strong aftershocks in the coming days.

    Shortly after the quake struck, authorities issued a temporary tsunami advisory for coastal areas of the island, but the alert was fully lifted within an hour. Despite the quick end to the tsunami warning, damage has already been documented across the affected region: national public broadcaster NHK aired raw footage showing fractured road surfaces, damaged bridge infrastructure, and multiple active structure fires in populated areas.

    As of the latest official updates, more than 150,000 residents have been ordered to relocate to designated emergency evacuation shelters. Dozens of people have been confirmed injured, with NHK reporting that 10 of those hurt are residents of a local elderly care facility, and at least 50 injured people are currently receiving inpatient care at regional hospitals. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi confirmed that emergency teams are still conducting widespread damage assessments to tally the full scope of injuries and property destruction.

    Critical public services have been disrupted across the hardest-hit zones: regional passenger rail services have suspended all operations, and power outages have cut electricity service to thousands of residential properties. Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara announced that multiple first responder units have already been deployed to the region, including personnel from the Japan Self-Defense Force, national fire services, and the Japanese Coast Guard.

    In a public statement, Kihara urged residents in high-severity shaking zones to remain vigilant. “We urge residents in areas where the shaking was particularly severe to pay close attention to evacuation information issued by local authorities via radio, television and the internet, and to act calmly,” he said.

    Japan’s location along the geologically active Pacific Ring of Fire makes it one of the most earthquake-prone nations on the planet, with an average of 1,500 detectable seismic events recorded annually. This latest quake comes on the heels of recent seismic activity in the country: a magnitude 7.5 earthquake that struck northeastern Japan last December left 30 people injured, and the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake – a magnitude 9 event off the country’s eastern coast – triggered a catastrophic tsunami that claimed more than 18,000 lives. Additional reporting for this story was provided by Chie Kobayashi in Tokyo.

  • A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shakes part of southern Japan and a tsunami advisory is issued

    A magnitude 7.1 earthquake shakes part of southern Japan and a tsunami advisory is issued

    A powerful preliminary magnitude 7.1 earthquake jolted the Kumamoto region on Japan’s Kyushu Island, the country’s southernmost main island, during late Tuesday afternoon, according to an official announcement from the Japan Meteorological Agency. Following the seismic event, authorities promptly issued a tsunami advisory for a coastal area adjacent to the quake’s epicenter.

    The warning specifically covers Ariake Bay, which sits along Kumamoto’s western shoreline. The affected region sits roughly 900 kilometers, or 560 miles, to the southwest of Japan’s capital city of Tokyo. In the immediate aftermath of the tremor, Japanese nuclear regulators launched urgent inspections of local nuclear energy facilities to assess any potential damage.

    Japan’s Nuclear Regulation Authority confirmed after preliminary checks that no irregularities or safety issues have been detected at three nuclear power plants located in the vicinity of the earthquake. The 2016 Kumamoto earthquake holds a grim place in Japan’s recent disaster history: that massive seismic event claimed the lives of more than 50 people, injured an additional 1,800 residents, and left tens of thousands of residential structures damaged or completely destroyed, leaving many communities displaced for months and years afterward.

  • UN says nearly 500 Afghan civilians have been killed in Pakistan-Afghanistan fighting since October

    UN says nearly 500 Afghan civilians have been killed in Pakistan-Afghanistan fighting since October

    Months of persistent cross-border hostilities between Pakistan and Afghanistan have left nearly 500 Afghan civilians dead and more than 1,200 injured between October last year and the end of June this year, the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA) confirmed in a major new human rights report released Tuesday.

    The devastating casualty count, compiled through UNAMA’s on-the-ground documentation, lays bare the human cost of a conflict that has persisted despite repeated international calls for de-escalation. One of the most striking examples of civilian harm documented in the report occurred in Afghanistan’s eastern Paktia Province on June 28, when two successive airstrikes hit a residential building. After the first strike killed several people, local residents rushed to the site to pull trapped survivors from the rubble. A second strike hit the area as the rescue effort was underway, killing 22 civilians – five of them children – and wounding 185 more, with most casualties coming from the second, unprovoked attack. “International humanitarian law provides special protections for medical personnel and humanitarian workers, including first responders. Attacks against them while performing their duties are strictly prohibited,” said Fiona Frazer, UNAMA’s human rights director.

    The deadliest single incident of the cross-border fighting came in March, when a Pakistani airstrike targeted a drug treatment center in the Afghan capital Kabul, killing hundreds of civilians. Last week, global human rights group Amnesty International called for the bombing to be investigated as a potential war crime, a call Pakistan has since rejected. Islamabad has consistently denied targeting civilian infrastructure, asserting in its official response to UNAMA’s report that all of its military operations are directed exclusively at militant hideouts and infrastructure linked to groups that carry out attacks inside Pakistan. Pakistan’s foreign ministry also reiterated its longstanding claim that the Taliban-led Afghan government continues to allow militant groups to operate freely from Afghan territory, an accusation Kabul has repeatedly denied.

    Cross-border tensions between the two neighbors flared dramatically in February, after Afghan forces launched a cross-border retaliatory raid against Pakistan, which had carried out earlier airstrikes inside Afghanistan. Following the exchange, Islamabad publicly declared it was in an “open war” with Afghanistan. Pakistan’s core grievance centers on the presence of the Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), also known as the Pakistani Taliban, a militant group that has carried out thousands of deadly attacks across Pakistan over the past decade. The TTP maintains close ideological and operational ties to the Afghan Taliban, which seized control of Afghanistan in 2021 amid the chaotic withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition forces. UNAMA’s mandate only allows it to monitor casualties and human rights abuses inside Afghanistan, so the report does not include any tally of civilian casualties from the fighting on Pakistani territory.

    Beyond the cross-border conflict, the UN report also shines a light on the deepening human rights crisis inside Afghanistan, particularly for women and girls under Taliban rule. The Taliban government has imposed sweeping, draconian restrictions on women’s public life: a ban on secondary and higher education for girls, prohibitions on women working in most sectors, a mandatory full hijab rule that requires women to cover their entire bodies, including their faces, and a requirement that all women be accompanied by a male chaperone when in public. These rules are enforced by the Ministry for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice, and enforcement is often arbitrary, with varying interpretations of what counts as compliance leading to sudden detentions and punishment.

    In June, a crackdown on alleged dress code violations in the western Afghan city of Herat led to the arrest of at least 30 women. When rare public protests broke out against the detentions, security forces opened fire on the crowd, killing at least one protester and wounding multiple others. UN investigators also found that vice and virtue officials have been visiting health clinics and retail shops across the country, ordering staff to turn away any woman who arrives without a male chaperone. The report also notes that new marriage regulations in Afghanistan implicitly sanction child marriage, by arranging for marriage contracts to be legally recognized for underage minors.

  • Survivors rise to 48 with more missing after Vietnamese ship sinks in South China Sea

    Survivors rise to 48 with more missing after Vietnamese ship sinks in South China Sea

    A coordinated multinational search and rescue operation is underway in the highly contested Spratly Islands after a Vietnamese cargo vessel sank in rough weather over the weekend, with 48 crew members pulled from the water to date and 14 still unaccounted for, authorities confirmed Tuesday.

    The vessel, identified as the *Khoi Nguyen 18*, went down late Saturday near Fiery Cross Reef, a feature of the Spratly archipelago that China has reclaimed into a man-made island and military outpost. Vietnam refers to the broader waterbody where the incident occurred as the East Sea.

    Vietnamese officials announced Monday that three additional survivors had been rescued, bringing the total number of saved crew to 48 of the 62 people originally on board. No further operational details were released alongside that update. By Tuesday afternoon, search teams from Vietnam, China, and the Philippines remained actively scouring the area for the 14 missing crew members, rescue spokespeople confirmed.

    All 48 recovered survivors have already been transferred to Vietnamese jurisdiction, according to the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry. The agency added that survivors are receiving emergency medical attention before being transported back to the Vietnamese mainland. Vietnam launched rescue mobilization immediately after the sinking incident, the ministry noted, and has maintained close coordination with all international partners participating in the search.

    Philippine authorities confirmed their involvement Tuesday, saying they deployed a coastal patrol vessel and a search aircraft in response to an official assistance request from Hanoi. The Philippine Coast Guard emphasized that the operation is being conducted in full compliance with international maritime conventions and existing bilateral cooperation frameworks between Manila and Hanoi. Chinese rescue assets, including surface vessels and helicopters, also joined the search effort in the nearby area.

    Beyond the rescue operation, the incident spotlights the long-running territorial tensions surrounding the South China Sea, one of the world’s most geostrategically critical waterways. China claims sovereignty over nearly the entire South China Sea, a route that carries roughly $5 trillion in global maritime trade annually and is thought to hold massive untapped reserves of offshore oil and natural gas. Multiple other governments including Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, and Taiwan hold overlapping, competing claims to different parts of the waterway and its island features.

    This report was originally gathered by the Associated Press, whose climate and geopolitical coverage receives philanthropic funding from independent private foundations. The AP retains full editorial control over all its reporting, and a full list of supporters and editorial standards for philanthropic partnerships is available on the AP’s official website.

  • 6 refugees speak out as UN-backed treaty to help people fleeing war and persecution marks 75 years

    6 refugees speak out as UN-backed treaty to help people fleeing war and persecution marks 75 years

    GENEVA — Tuesday brings a landmark milestone: 75 years since the adoption of the 1951 Refugee Convention, the foundational global treaty forged in the aftermath of World War II’s catastrophic chaos to extend safety to people fleeing war, violence and targeted persecution. For three-quarters of a century, supporters of the agreement estimate it has saved more than 10 million lives, but rising anti-asylum policies across the globe have left the treaty’s core principles facing unprecedented pressure.

    Driven by the collective trauma of mass displacement that followed World War II, the 1951 Convention revolutionized global refugee protection by formalizing a universal legal definition of who qualifies as a refugee, outlining their inalienable rights, and setting binding standards for how signatory nations must treat people seeking safety. Today, nearly 150 countries are party to the agreement, which centers on the non-negotiable principle of non-refoulement — a rule prohibiting states from sending refugees back to territories where they would face credible threats of persecution, torture, or severe harm.

    “It codified a simple but powerful principle that people forced to flee persecution, conflict or violence must be able to find safety and protection,” explained Elizabeth Tan, director of international protection and solutions for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). “The entire framework rests on a universal truth: no community, no nation, is immune to the outbreak of war, the rise of persecution, or sudden, catastrophic upheaval.”

    Despite the convention’s decades of success, compliance has eroded sharply in recent years, as a growing number of nations have closed their borders to asylum seekers and rolled back long-standing protections. During the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump, the United States broke with decades of established policy to implement a controversial policy of forcing asylum seekers to wait out their claims in third countries, setting a global precedent that weakened the international asylum system.

    The urgency of upholding the convention has never been clearer: global data shows more than 41 million people around the world are currently forcibly displaced from their homes, with nearly 70% of this population hosted by low- and middle-income nations that often lack the resources to support large refugee populations. The International Committee of the Red Cross has documented more than 130 active armed conflicts across the globe, a number that experts warn could push millions more people to flee their homes in coming years.

    To mark the 75th anniversary, six refugees from across the globe shared their firsthand experiences of displacement and how the convention changed — and saved — their lives:

    ### Rohingya Fleeing Ethnic Cleansing in Myanmar
    Sayed Alom, a humanitarian aid worker, is one of the roughly 700,000 Rohingya who fled systematic violence and persecution carried out by Myanmar’s military in 2017, crossing the border into Bangladesh where he has remained confined to overcrowded refugee camps outside Cox’s Bazar ever since.

    Recalling the violence that forced his family to flee, Alom described atrocities that include mass rape, the burning of entire villages, and the killing of children. “We were persecuted until we could no longer live there,” he said. What he expected would be a temporary stay before returning home has stretched into years of limbo, made worse by rising crime including kidnapping for ransom, and recurring natural disasters that have destroyed camp infrastructure. “The situation has become imaginably worse,” he added.

    ### Escaping Nicaragua’s Deadly Government Crackdown
    Human rights lawyer Juan Carlos Arce counts himself among the millions of people whose lives have been saved directly by the 1951 Convention. In 2018, a brutal government crackdown on anti-government protesters left hundreds dead across Nicaragua. Arce worked for the Nicaraguan Center for Human Rights, which documented the state-led violence, leading President Daniel Ortega’s regime to label the organization a terrorist group.

    Arce fled Nicaragua on foot, first seeking asylum in Costa Rica. When attacks on Nicaraguan opposition figures and human rights defenders in Costa Rica turned deadly, he was resettled to Barcelona, Spain, last year through a joint UNHCR and International Organization for Migration program. “Feeling safe and protected, that is priceless,” he said during an interview in Barcelona.

    ### A Palestinian Refugee Decades Waiting in Lebanon
    At 88 years old, Hussniyah Ahmad Ghozlan has lived in the Shatila Palestinian refugee camp in Beirut, Lebanon, for more than seven decades. She was a child when her family was forced to flee their village in what is now Israel during the 1948 war. Though she has never heard of the 1951 Convention — she never learned to read or write — she has built a life in the camp, raising children and sustaining her family through work. “We got by because we worked, raised our children and built our lives,” she said.

    ### A Jewish WWII Displaced Person Who Found Welcome in the U.S.
    Hershel Greenblat, now 85, was born in a cave in Ukraine in 1941, where his Jewish family hid from Nazi persecution during World War II. After the war ended, his family spent years in displaced person camps in Austria before being approved to immigrate to the United States in 1949. He still remembers his father waking him in the middle of the night to see the Statue of Liberty as their ship pulled into New York Harbor, and the welcome boxes filled with supplies packed by American middle schoolers for new refugee arrivals.

    Decades later, Greenblat, who has lived in Atlanta for most of his life, says refugees today face a drastically different reception. Though he had not previously heard of the 1951 Convention, he says all refugees deserve access to protection, work and education. “Refugees in the ’50s worked their butts off to get what they wanted, what we needed,” he noted.

    ### From South Sudanese Refugee to NBA and Olympic Basketball Star
    Wenyen Gabriel’s story is one of the most visible success stories enabled by the convention. Born in Khartoum, Sudan, in 1997 to parents who had fled civil war in southern Sudan, Gabriel and his family first sought refuge in Egypt before being resettled to New Hampshire in the United States when he was two years old.

    Standing 6-foot-10, Gabriel earned a basketball scholarship to the University of Kentucky before going on to play in the NBA. In 2024, he represented the newly independent nation of South Sudan at the Paris Olympic Games. Just this week, he was named a UNHCR goodwill ambassador. “We had to struggle and figure out how to become something inside of the United States,” he said. “It’s not easy to make something of yourself in a foreign country.”

    ### Syrian Swimmers Who Paved Their Own Path to Safety in Germany
    Yusra and Sarah Mardini’s story of escaping Syria’s civil war in 2015 captured global attention, becoming the subject of a major feature film. After fleeing first to Lebanon then Turkey, the two sisters paid smugglers to take them across the Mediterranean to Greece. When their overloaded motorboat began to take on water, the competitive swimmers jumped into the sea and pushed the boat to shore, saving everyone on board.

    After a dangerous trek through the Balkans, the pair received asylum in Germany, and Yusra was named a UNHCR goodwill ambassador in 2017. Though Syria’s civil war has formally ended, and roughly 1.3 million Syrian refugees have returned home, Yusra says healing and rebuilding will take time. “After such an ordeal, change doesn’t just happen overnight. You can’t just snap your fingers,” she said. “But I do believe that my country and its people are very strong, and that I’m going to contribute in the best way possible.”

    This report features contributions from AP journalists across five countries, with on-the-ground reporting from Barcelona, Beirut, Atlanta, and Cox’s Bazar.

  • Confronting gang members at the heart of Ecuador’s drug battle

    Confronting gang members at the heart of Ecuador’s drug battle

    Ecuador, a nation once celebrated for its peaceful reputation, is now locked in an escalating battle against brutal drug-linked gangs that have thrown the country into chaos. In recent months, violent organized crime connected to international drug trafficking has exploded across the nation, leaving a trail of death, fear, and instability that has forced security forces to adopt aggressive frontline strategies to regain control.

    BBC correspondent Orla Guerin recently gained exclusive access to accompany Ecuador’s national police on one of their regular patrols through territories that have become the epicenter of the country’s drug war, offering a rare on-the-ground look at the risks officers face every day. The patrol routes wind through neighborhoods where gang influence runs deep, and where police face constant threats of ambushes, targeted attacks, and open confrontations with heavily armed criminal groups.

    According to senior police officers Guerin spoke with during the patrol, the force has seen its workload skyrocket as drug crime surges. Gangs fighting over control of key smuggling routes to Europe and North America have engaged in daily street clashes, mass prison riots, and targeted assassinations of public officials, journalists, and rival gang members. The rapid growth of the crisis has stretched police resources thin, leaving officers under-equipped and overstretched even as they work around the clock to push back against criminal expansion.

    Despite the constant danger, officers told Guerin they remain committed to reclaiming communities from gang control. The patrol Guerin joined stopped at multiple checkpoints, searched vehicles for weapons and drug shipments, and conducted targeted stop-and-searches of individuals matching suspect descriptions. Each step of the operation was carried out with heightened vigilance, a reflection of the ever-present risk that any routine stop could turn violent.

    The on-the-ground reporting underscores the depth of Ecuador’s current security emergency: what began as small-scale local gang activity has evolved into a full-blown drug conflict that threatens the country’s long-term stability, and challenges police to find new ways to stem the tide of violence.

  • On the front line of Ecuador’s drugs war, police fight gangs, guns and corruption

    On the front line of Ecuador’s drugs war, police fight gangs, guns and corruption

    Deep in the violence-plagued coastal city of Durán, Ecuador, police captain Jean Carlos Bustamante confronts an enemy on two fronts: ruthless drug-trafficking gangs that terrorize local communities, and widespread corruption embedded within the very institutions meant to stop them. At 34, a former special forces operator and the oldest member of his hand-picked, trusted team, Bustamante knows the cost of this fight all too well — he has already lost three close colleagues to gang violence, and lost his own fear years ago, even as his parents live in constant dread for his safety.

    On a recent operation at dusk, Bustamante led his unit into the core of Los Aguilas (The Eagles) gang territory, a gritty neighborhood where homes are secured with iron bars and residents stay silent out of deadly fear. Acting on a tip that illegal weapons were stashed in an abandoned property, the team lined up against an exterior wall, breached the door with a battering ram, and seized two handguns and assault rifle ammunition — a small but critical win, as Bustamante notes, that removes two deadly weapons from criminal circulation. Still, he acknowledges it is a minor victory in a grinding war of attrition: gangs hold far more firepower and financial resources than the underfunded state security apparatus can match.

    Ecuador, once a peaceful South American tourist haven, has transformed into a global hub of cocaine trafficking in less than a decade. According to President Daniel Noboa, roughly 70% of all cocaine bound for Europe and North America now transits through the country. Colombian and Peruvian producers, the world’s top two cocaine suppliers, ship product into Ecuador, where local gangs with ties to Mexican cartels and Albanian organized crime syndicates coordinate onward smuggling. These criminal networks exploit the country’s poorly patrolled long Pacific coastline, weak border management, and under-resourced security services to move millions of dollars worth of narcotics every year. Last year alone, Ecuador recorded more than 9,200 homicides, one of the highest murder rates globally, despite a harsh two-year government crackdown on organized crime.

    Critics argue the hardline crackdown has backfired. While top crime leaders have been taken into custody, the fragmented gang landscape has only spawned more small, violent factions competing for territory and smuggling routes. Many Ecuadorians have grown convinced that the war on gangs can never be won — but Bustamante refuses to stop fighting. In a second operation, he used a surveillance drone to spot three suspected micro-traffickers selling small quantities of drugs on the edge of a local playground. The team quickly tracked the suspects to a residential address, breached the door, and detained all three, discovering tiny $1 packets of an addictive heroin mix stashed in a flowerpot. Though one suspect was formally charged, the other two were released — a common outcome, according to senior police, who blame systemic corruption in the judiciary and prosecutor’s office for undermining their work.

    Durán police deputy commander Colonel Santiago Gavilanes sums up the frustration: “We imprison them, and they release them. We know because when we carry out raids, we recapture them. Some of those who are released kill people and leave orphans behind.” Gavilanes says gangs have the capital to “buy laws, judges, and politicians,” a claim verified by an anonymous officer who told the BBC he had twice been offered a life-changing bribe to cooperate with criminal networks. After turning the offer down, he learned gangs had detailed information on his work and location, leaked by a corrupt colleague. “You never know who is watching,” he said — a sentiment repeated by almost every officer interviewed in Durán.

    Local police claim incremental progress: the city’s murder rate has fallen by half in the first six months of the year, streets are no longer completely deserted after 7 p.m., and public dismemberments of rival gang members, once common, have become far rarer. Colonel Gavilanes says the force has managed to contain gang activity, but full control will be a slow, medium-term process. That progress, however, is constantly undermined by institutional corruption. In an interview arranged through a contact on gang-held territory an hour outside Durán, a mid-level gang leader who goes by the pseudonym Jonathan openly admitted he pays four local police officers between $1,500 and $2,000 per month for advance warning of upcoming raids. “Whenever they’re going to do an operation, they call me,” he said. “They tell me to hide things, and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing.”

    Now 37, Jonathan joined a gang at 18 to earn enough money to feed himself. He walks openly through neighborhood streets in daylight, armed alongside his crew, which includes teenagers as young as 17. He admitted to killing eight people, saying he only targets rival gang members who try to seize his territory, and has no regrets about recruiting underage members or selling drugs in the community. Human rights workers confirm that gangs in Ecuador often recruit boys as young as 12, training them to work as hitmen by the time they turn 15. Jonathan is blunt about the persistence of the drug trade: “If they shut us down, another gang will come along, and if they shut that one down, there will be another.” He expects to die violently, like most gang leaders: “Death is paid by death. But if they come to kill me, I won’t make it easy for them.”

    Back in Durán, just two nights later, the cycle of violence played out as usual. Under flashing police lights, the body of a young man lay next to a motorbike, killed in a revenge killing by a rival gang. A witness, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, described how two attackers on a motorbike shot the man six times, finishing him with a bullet to the head after he fell. “We are used to this now because it happens every day,” the witness said. “You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet. You can’t even go out or talk to friends or family because someone could shoot you.” He echoed the widespread doubt that the government’s campaign will ever change things: “Criminals are like ghosts. They pop up wherever they please.” As the forensic team loaded the body into a refrigerated van, another corpse was already waiting inside — another chapter in Ecuador’s endless, bloody war on drug-fueled organized crime.

  • Hong Kong activist allowed to stay in UK after deportation threat

    Hong Kong activist allowed to stay in UK after deportation threat

    A weeks-long entry uncertainty for former Hong Kong pro-democracy opposition leader Wu Chi-wai has reached a resolution, with UK border authorities reversing an initial deportation order and approving a six-month stay for the 63-year-old to reunite with his family already based in the country.

    Wu, who stepped down as leader of the now-disbanded Democratic Party and was one of the most prominent figures in Hong Kong’s 2019 pro-democracy movement, arrived at London Heathrow Airport last Wednesday. He told BBC Chinese that upon landing, border officials detained him for nearly 10 hours and initially blocked his entry. After initial processing, officers gave him only a one-week temporary leave to remain, ordering him to report back to the airport ahead of a scheduled deportation.

    In a turn of events on Monday, Wu confirmed that UK Border Force had reversed its initial decision, approving his entry under the standard visa-free terms for eligible travelers and granting the full six-month stay he was originally due to receive.

    Wu is one of the 47 high-profile pro-democracy figures collectively known as the “Hong Kong 47”, who were convicted in a widely debated national security trial following the 2019 protests. He was released from prison in June this year after serving more than five years behind bars on charges including subversion.

    The veteran opposition figure’s goal for the trip has long been family reunification: his wife and son relocated to the UK in 2022 and 2023 respectively, and Wu told reporters he had only been able to connect with them via monthly letters and phone calls since their departure. Ahead of his travel, Wu said he contacted staff at the British Consulate General in Hong Kong to confirm whether his entry would face any barriers related to his criminal record. He added that consular representatives assured him there would be no issues, and agreed to pre-notify UK Border Force of his criminal history and travel itinerary.

    Despite early media speculation that Wu planned to seek political asylum in the UK, he has repeatedly denied that claim. Initial border pushback came after officials questioned whether he qualified as a “genuine visitor” solely entering the country to see family, Wu said.

    Human rights advocacy group Hong Kong Watch, which had publicly called on UK authorities to approve Wu’s entry, welcomed the final decision in a Monday statement. “This is the right outcome, and it should never have taken this long,” said Megan Khoo, the group’s policy director. “He should never have faced the prospect of removal back to the city that jailed him.”

    Wu entered the UK using a British National (Overseas) passport, a special travel document issued to Hong Kong permanent residents before the city’s handover to Chinese rule on July 1, 1997. BNO passport holders are typically eligible for six months of visa-free entry to the UK under existing rules.

    In 2021, following the Chinese central government’s implementation of the Hong Kong National Security Law and a sweeping crackdown on pro-democracy activism that saw dozens of opposition figures jailed or forced into exile, the UK government launched a special BNO visa pathway. The program allows eligible BNO holders to gain the right to live, work and study in the UK, with a clear path to British citizenship after a multi-year residency period.

    Official UK government data shows that as of recent reports, more than 230,000 Hong Kong BNO holders have been approved for the special visa, with nearly 170,000 already completing their relocation to the UK.

    When contacted by BBC Chinese for comment on Wu’s case, the UK Home Office, which oversees the Border Force, said it does not issue public comments on individual immigration cases. It added that “the UK government remains steadfast in its support for the Hong Kong community in the UK.”

    A spokesperson for the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) government also told the outlet that the administration has not received any request for consular assistance from Wu related to the trip.

  • A fugitive colonel is finally jailed in Chilean Víctor Jara’s murder case, decades after the crime

    A fugitive colonel is finally jailed in Chilean Víctor Jara’s murder case, decades after the crime

    After more than 50 years of waiting for accountability, Chilean authorities have taken the last convicted perpetrator of the high-profile 1973 murder of iconic folk singer-songwriter Víctor Jara into custody. Eighty-year-old retired Colonel Nelson Haase Mazzei, who had evaded a 25-year prison sentence for three years after his conviction was finalized, was located and arrested by Chilean national police over the weekend, marking a long-delayed milestone in the country’s reckoning with the human rights abuses of Augusto Pinochet’s military dictatorship.

    Haase Mazzei was first convicted of the kidnapping and murder of Jara alongside former prisons director Littré Quiroga Carvajal back in 2018. His sentence was extended in 2021 during a broader appeals process that also reaffirmed convictions for six other co-conspirator military officers. When the sentence was finalized, the former colonel fled before he could be taken into custody, remaining at large until this weekend’s operation. Judge Paola Plaza of the Santiago Court of Appeals issued an order for “immediate imprisonment” following his capture, and Chile’s judicial branch confirmed Haase Mazzei is the final person convicted in Jara’s killing to begin serving his court-ordered term.

    Víctor Jara was far more than a celebrated musician: a leading voice in the 1960s Nueva Canción Chilena (New Chilean Song) movement that intertwined folk music with left-wing social advocacy, he was also an outspoken supporter of socialist President Salvador Allende, a professor at Chile’s State Technical University, and a member of the Communist Party of Chile. Just five days after Pinochet’s U.S.-backed military coup overthrew Allende’s democratically elected government on September 11, 1973, Jara was arrested on his university campus and transported to Santiago’s Chile Stadium, which was later renamed Víctor Jara Stadium in his honor.

    Investigative records document the brutal treatment Jara endured at the hands of military agents. He was separated from the roughly 5,000 other political detainees held at the stadium, taken to an isolated holding area alongside Quiroga, repeatedly tortured, and ultimately executed. Forensic analysis later confirmed Jara suffered dozens of bone fractures from the torture before he was shot 44 times. His killing quickly became one of the most recognizable symbols of the systemic brutality that defined Pinochet’s 17-year authoritarian rule.

    In a public statement released Sunday night, Amanda Jara, Jara’s daughter and current head of the Víctor Jara Foundation, acknowledged the arrest but said the family cannot view this step as full justice. “We learned that retired Colonel Nelson Haase Mazzei, who had been a fugitive from justice since 2021, was found and imprisoned. We appreciate this news,” she wrote. “Yet it is difficult to consider this justice, after more than half a century of impunity for crimes against humanity.” She closed her statement calling for continued law enforcement action against all remaining fugitives convicted of dictatorship-era human rights violations: “We hope that the police will manage to find all those who fled for crimes against humanity.”

    Chile’s decades-long process of transitional justice began in earnest shortly after Pinochet stepped down and democracy was restored in 1990. The first official National Commission for Truth and Reconciliation confirmed within a year that Jara had been the victim of a deliberate political execution, classifying his murder as a severe violation of international human rights law. The commission also documented 890 extrajudicial killings in the first three months after the 1973 coup alone.

    Official estimates place the total number of human rights violation victims during Pinochet’s rule at roughly 40,000, including more than 2,000 confirmed executions, 1,469 enforced disappearances, and thousands of survivors of systematic torture. Chilean courts have convicted hundreds of former state agents and civilian collaborators for these crimes, though no centralized national database exists to track the total number of people who have been sentenced. In 2024, the government launched a new National Search Plan designed to unify fragmented victim records and establish a formal framework for locating the remains of disappeared detainees, a long unmet demand that has been driven for decades by grassroots family member advocacy groups.

    While Haase Mazzei’s arrest closes a chapter in the case of Jara’s murder, it also underscores the long, incomplete path toward full accountability for the widespread violence that reshaped modern Chile, with many victims’ families still waiting for answers and full justice decades after the end of the dictatorship.

  • Israeli election campaign billboards in Cyprus spark debate

    Israeli election campaign billboards in Cyprus spark debate

    A controversial campaign billboard for Israeli opposition leader Gadi Eisenkot placed near Larnaca Airport in Cyprus has ignited widespread outrage, stirring debates over foreign political influence and national sovereignty on the Mediterranean island. The out-of-home ad, printed entirely in Hebrew for the upcoming Israeli national elections, greets passengers exiting the airport with the message: “Israelis, enjoy! You deserve it!” alongside a portrait of Eisenkot. A second billboard, positioned for travelers heading to departures, reads: “Have fun? Now come back and win!”

    The incident was first brought to public attention by Cypriot Member of the European Parliament Fidias Panayiotou, who shared photos of the billboards on social media on July 26, 2026. “This photo was not taken in Israel, but in my country, Cyprus,” Panayiotou wrote in his post. “This is simply not right. We must defend Cyprus’s sovereignty.” In a follow-up TikTok video, Panayiotou described the move as “particularly concerning” and “unacceptable,” and has proposed new legislation that would ban non-European Union countries from running domestic election campaign advertisements on Cypriot soil.

    The controversy comes amid shifting demographic and economic trends that have already fueled local unease. Cyprus has long been a top vacation spot for Israeli travelers, who made up the island’s second-largest group of international visitors in 2025. Following Israel’s military campaigns in Gaza, Iran and Lebanon, the island has recorded a sharp rise in both Israeli tourism and permanent relocation, with a growing number of Israelis purchasing residential and commercial property across coastal regions including Limassol, Paphos and Larnaca. The spread of Hebrew-language real estate advertising across public spaces has already drawn quiet concern from local communities, and the political campaign billboard has pushed those anxieties into the public mainstream.

    Melanie Steliou, a Cypriot actress and political activist, framed the debate as a question of reciprocal norms. “At a time when concerns are growing over the large-scale purchase of land and property by Israelis in Limassol, Paphos and Larnaca, this image raises legitimate questions about the limits of foreign economic and political influence in the public space of the Republic of Cyprus,” she wrote. “Would anyone expect to see a campaign billboard for a Cypriot or Greek politician on a motorway in the UK, Germany, Spain or Ireland?”

    Critics of the billboards are not limited to Cypriot communities. The ad has also drawn pushback from Israeli social media users, many of whom have criticized Eisenkot for bringing Israeli domestic political campaigning onto foreign territory. One Hebrew-language post commented: “This sign is… only fueling the conspiracy that Israel is ‘conquering’ Cyprus. Take down the sign.”

    In a statement on the incident, Niche Advertising, the Cypriot company that owns and leases the billboard space, clarified that it does not endorse Eisenkot or his political party, noting that the booking was processed as a standard commercial transaction.

    For context, Eisenkot is a former chief of the Israeli Defense Forces and previously served as a cabinet minister in Benjamin Netanyahu’s government between 2023 and 2024. He is best known as the architect of the widely condemned Dahieh Doctrine, a military strategy that advocates for the use of disproportionate force against civilian populations and infrastructure in areas where armed groups are believed to operate. Eisenkot launched his campaign for prime minister in June 2026 as the leader of the new Yashar (Straight Ahead) party, running on a platform that criticizes the Netanyahu government’s handling of security after the October 7 2023 Hamas attacks, promises a formal public inquiry into the attacks, and calls for universal mandatory military service that would end longstanding exemptions for ultra-Orthodox Jewish men and extend service requirements to Israeli Palestinian citizens.

    Recent polling has positioned Eisenkot as the frontrunner in the upcoming October elections: a Channel 12 survey found that 43 percent of Israeli voters view him as their preferred prime minister, compared to just 34 percent supporting incumbent Netanyahu. Forecasts project Yashar will take 23 seats in the 120-member Knesset, while Netanyahu’s Likud party is projected to win 22 seats. Last week, Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the Netanyahu administration is exploring measures to restrict voting access for Israeli citizens residing abroad, over fears that this demographic will overwhelmingly back opposition parties. With the election race tightening, courting Israeli voters traveling or living abroad has become a key strategic battleground for both major factions.

    Cyprus and Israel have deepened bilateral political, security and economic ties in recent years. The two nations signed a trilateral military cooperation agreement with Greece earlier in 2026, and Cyprus grants the Israeli military access to its airspace for training exercises. The growing Israeli economic presence on the island, particularly in the real estate sector, has become an increasingly divisive issue among Cypriot voters in recent months.

    As of publication, Middle East Eye had not received a response to requests for comment from Eisenkot’s campaign or the Cypriot High Commission in London.