标签： Asia

In an operation that has ignited international condemnation over its scope and location, Israeli naval commandos carried out a raid late Wednesday on a fleet of Gaza-bound humanitarian aid vessels, intercepting the craft hundreds of nautical miles from the blockaded Palestinian enclave in international waters off the Greek island of Crete.

The mission, organized by the Global Sumud Flotilla — a coalition of humanitarian and activist groups that describes this year’s expedition as the largest coordinated civilian maritime effort to break Israel’s 16-year siege of Gaza — confirms that at least 15 small vessels were boarded and seized during the operation. The organization says all people on board are currently held by Israeli forces, with communication cut off to multiple boats, and has described the detainees as “abducted.”

Israeli officials have pushed back on this framing, confirming via the Foreign Ministry that approximately 175 activists from more than 20 intercepted vessels are now in Israeli custody. According to the Global Sumud Flotilla’s official account, after Israeli forces boarded the vessels, they systematically disabled critical on-board systems before withdrawing, leaving dozens of activists stranded on dead-in-the-water craft directly in the path of an oncoming major storm. The group detailed that raiding forces destroyed vessel engines and navigation equipment, jammed all communications to prevent coordinated distress calls or requests for emergency assistance, and abandoned the civilians in dangerous open ocean conditions.

Witness accounts from activists on the flotilla note that the confrontation began shortly before the raid, when unmarked military speedboats approached the civilian vessels, identified themselves as Israeli units, and trained laser targeting devices and semi-automatic firearms on the people on board, ordering all activists to get on their hands and knees while communications equipment was disabled.

In a formal statement released after the raid, Global Sumud Flotilla organizers denounced the operation as an act of open piracy committed far beyond any recognized Israeli territorial boundary. “This is the unlawful seizure of human beings on the open sea near Crete, an assertion that Israel can operate with total impunity, far beyond its own borders, with no consequences,” the statement read. “No state has the right to claim, police, or occupy international waters. Yet, that is exactly what Israel has done, extending its regime of control outward, occupying the Mediterranean Sea off the coast of Europe.”

The expedition set sail from southern Europe earlier this month, with an estimated 58 vessels carrying roughly 1,000 international activists and hundreds of tons of desperately needed humanitarian aid bound for Gaza. The goal of the mission is to challenge the Israeli blockade that has turned the 365-square-kilometer enclave into what the United Nations has called the world’s largest open-air prison, and deliver life-saving aid that has been blocked from entering via land crossings.

Israeli officials have celebrated the raid as a successful enforcement of its blockade policy. Danny Danon, Israel’s ambassador to the United Nations, posted on social media platform X praising the operation: “Another provocative flotilla was stopped before reaching our area. Our brave IDF soldiers are acting with professionalism and determination dealing with a group of delusional attention-seeking agitators.” In an audio communication to the flotilla documented by activists, an Israeli soldier claimed the blockade of Gaza qualifies as a “lawful maritime security blockade” and that any attempt to breach it constitutes a violation of international law.

This raid marks the farthest distance from Gaza’s shore that Israeli forces have ever intercepted a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, with the operation taking place roughly 600 nautical miles from the enclave’s coast. Previous interceptions of similar activist missions have been carried out much closer to Gaza’s territorial waters. The operation comes amid a catastrophic ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza that has followed Israel’s 2023 military campaign, which has killed at least 72,500 Palestinians, left an additional 8,000 people missing and presumed dead under rubble, and has destroyed most of the enclave’s housing, hospitals, and educational infrastructure. Famine has already been declared in multiple northern Gaza governorates by global food security agencies, and even after a temporary ceasefire agreement, Israel has maintained sweeping restrictions on aid entry that have left the crisis largely unresolved.

Nearly seven years after the deadliest terror attack in New Zealand’s modern history, the country’s Court of Appeal has dealt a final blow to the white supremacist perpetrator’s attempt to overturn his convictions and life-without-parole sentence.

Brenton Tarrant, a 35-year-old Australian-born extremist, is currently serving the remainder of his life behind bars with no possibility of release for the 2019 Christchurch mosque shootings that left 51 Muslim worshippers dead and another 40 injured. The attack, carried out at two separate mosques — Al Noor Mosque and Linwood Islamic Centre — was partially live-streamed by Tarrant to his followers on fringe online platforms, marking a shocking moment of white supremacist violence that rippled across the globe.

Tarrant originally pleaded guilty to all counts of murder and attempted murder in 2020, avoiding a prolonged public trial that would have forced survivors and victim families to relive the trauma of the attack. In his appeal, heard over a week-long session in February this year, Tarrant argued that his prison conditions at the time of his guilty plea amounted to “torturous and inhumane” treatment, which left him unable to make rational, legally sound decisions. He further claimed that he entered his guilty plea while in an irrational, compromised mental state, and asked the court to throw out both his convictions and his sentence.

On Thursday, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeal released a unanimous ruling rejecting Tarrant’s appeal in its entirety. The court wrote that the core facts of Tarrant’s crimes are “beyond dispute”, and that his legal arguments were “utterly devoid of merit”. Judges found that Tarrant’s claims of compromised mental capacity and coercive prison conditions were inconsistent on their face and unsupported by witness testimony, concluding that he had never been coerced or pressured to enter a guilty plea. “He has not identified any arguable defence, or indeed any defence known to the law. We have also rejected his claim that his guilty pleas were the product of him having an irrational state of mind induced by his prison conditions,” the ruling read.

For family members of the attack’s victims, Thursday’s ruling brings a long-awaited sense of closure after months of renewed trauma triggered by the appeal process. Aya al-Umari, who lost her older brother Hussein in the shootings, told the BBC she felt “pleased and relieved” by the court’s decision, and welcomed the confirmation that justice had been upheld. “I was confident that there were no solid grounds for the appeal, and the decision today confirms that,” al-Umari said. She added that while she had hoped the original sentencing would bring an end to the legal process and allow her and other families to begin healing, the appeal forced survivors to revisit the darkest moments of their trauma. “Hearing the outcome today really gives that reassurance and comfort around the right processes being followed,” she said.

Beyond the legal proceedings, the 2019 Christchurch attack sparked sweeping policy change across New Zealand. Within one month of the shootings, the country’s parliament passed legislation by an overwhelming majority to ban military-style semi-automatic weapons and key components used to modify prohibited firearms. The government also launched a large-scale gun buy-back scheme, offering financial compensation to owners who turned in newly outlawed weapons in a bid to reduce the country’s overall firearm stock.

Records of the case show Tarrant, who was born in New South Wales, Australia, relocated to New Zealand in 2017. Prosecutors have confirmed he began planning his attack on the country’s Muslim community shortly after moving. In the hours before he carried out the shootings, Tarrant posted a 74-page manifesto online that laid out his violent white supremacist and anti-Muslim ideology, and he had long engaged with far-right extremist communities on fringe online platforms.

Just 14 months ago, Myanmar’s military junta found itself on the brink of strategic collapse in the country’s brutal ongoing civil war. An alliance of veteran ethnic militias had pushed junta forces out of vast territories in northern Myanmar, while pro-democracy guerrilla groups and long-standing opposition factions forced the military into defensive positions across nearly every other region of the country. Today, that dynamic has flipped dramatically, reshaping the trajectory of a conflict that has displaced millions and killed tens of thousands since the 2021 military coup.

Fueled by a massive expansion of its ranks from tens of thousands of newly conscripted troops, the Tatmadaw – Myanmar’s official military – has clawed back significant swathes of territory it lost in 2023, and is now positioning to launch a broad new national offensive. In contrast, the anti-junta resistance movement has been crippled by key defections, internal factional infighting, and crippling supply shortages that have weakened its operational capacity across multiple front lines.

“I think we’re nearing a crescendo here where the Tatmadaw is going to reassert itself and the large-scale organized resistance movement is going to peter out,” explained Morgan Michaels, a Singapore-based analyst with the International Institute of Strategic Studies who leads the organization’s Myanmar Conflict Map project. “That doesn’t mean scattered armed resistance will disappear entirely – armed resistance will always continue in Myanmar until there’s a comprehensive, negotiated political solution. But the Tatmadaw has retaken the strategic initiative, and every major development now plays to its advantage.”

Five years of continuous conflict – a timeline that stretches back to the immediate aftermath of the 2021 coup that ousted the elected civilian government of Aung San Suu Kyi – has left both anti-junta fighters and the general public deeply war-weary. The conflict has claimed more than 8,000 civilian lives and forced more than 3 million people to flee their homes, according to UN estimates. “There are many saying that the local population doesn’t care much who will win the war, but just want the fighting to stop,” noted Aung Thu Nyein, a Myanmar-based political analyst who currently works in neighboring Thailand, in an interview with the Associated Press.

Beyond internal fatigue, the resistance has also been undermined by shifting geopolitical pressure from China, which holds massive economic and strategic stakes in Myanmar. Myanmar is a critical supplier of rare earth elements and other key natural resources to Beijing, which has invested billions of dollars in cross-border infrastructure including oil and gas pipelines, mines, and connectivity projects. China is also one of the Tatmadaw’s two largest arms suppliers, alongside Russia, and maintains significant influence over ethnic paramilitary groups that operate along the Sino-Myanmar border.

Initially, Beijing supported the major October 2023 anti-junta offensive launched by the Three Brotherhood Alliance, a coalition of three ethnic armed organizations (EAOs), because it was angered that the military government had allowed rampant transnational organized crime to spread in border regions. But that support quickly evaporated: China cut off all arms and ammunition supplies to the alliance and pressured its members to halt offensive operations. Today, two of the alliance’s three core members – the Myanmar National Democratic Alliance Army and the Ta’ang National Liberation Army – have signed Chinese-brokered ceasefires with the Tatmadaw, leaving only the Arakan Army still active in combat in western Rakhine State.

The anti-junta resistance is split between two broad blocs: the long-standing ethnic minority EAOs that predate the 2021 coup, and newer pro-democracy People’s Defense Forces (PDFs) that formed after the coup, most of which are affiliated with the National Unity Government (NUG), a shadow administration formed by ousted members of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy. Resistance leaders warn that persistent divides between these groups have left them vulnerable to the Tatmadaw’s renewed momentum.

“Although there is a shared understanding of the need to overthrow the military dictatorship and move toward a future federal union, there are still gaps and differences in overall grand strategy and tactics,” said the Burma Liberation Democratic Front, a pro-democracy resistance group active in Sagaing and Mandalay regions, in a written statement to AP. “There are still differences in positions, perspectives, and approaches. Many continue to hold onto ethnic, regional, and organizational interests and attachments.” The group added that the Tatmadaw is actively exploiting these rifts, pursuing a classic divide-and-conquer strategy to fuel divisions between the public and revolutionary forces, across ethnic lines, and between separate resistance factions.

On the political front, the Tatmadaw has recently consolidated its international standing, most notably after holding a contested general election earlier this year. The election was widely dismissed by UN experts and Western governments as neither free nor fair, with all major opposition candidates barred from running, but it allowed junta leader Min Aung Hlaing – the senior general who led the 2021 coup – to be sworn in as president earlier this month, adding a veneer of democratic legitimacy to his authoritarian rule. China, which publicly supported the election, was quick to congratulate Min Aung Hlaing and dispatched its foreign minister for an in-person meeting just days after his inauguration. The election also freed up thousands of troops who had been deployed to provide poll security, allowing the Tatmadaw to reallocate those forces to front-line combat operations, Michaels noted.

One of Min Aung Hlaing’s first acts as president was to announce a new offer of peace talks to all armed resistance groups, including both EAOs and PDFs, though the NUG was deliberately excluded from the invitation. The NUG immediately rejected the offer, denouncing it as a tactic to prolong military rule. The junta’s offer, published in the state-run *Global New Light of Myanmar*, set a July 31 deadline for groups to join talks, and included a caveat that resistance groups may not bring “unrealistic demands” to the negotiating table. No details were provided on consequences for groups that refuse the invitation, and the junta did not respond to requests for comment from AP.

Even as it extends the offer of talks, the Tatmadaw has continued to press offensive operations across multiple fronts. It is currently conducting a large-scale assault in Sagaing Region aimed at retaking the northern city of Indaw, which fell to PDF forces backed by the Kachin Independence Army last year. At the same time, the military remains on the defensive in eastern Myanmar, where the Karen National Liberation Army is advancing on a key junta stronghold near the Thai border.

Analysts say Min Aung Hlaing’s peace offer is likely an attempt to revive the decade-old Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement, which brought relative calm to parts of Myanmar by signing on roughly half of the country’s EAOs. For now, however, incremental, localized ceasefires appear to be the junta’s immediate goal. “In the short term if you can agree to ceasefires with some groups, then you can redirect your resources toward other groups that are either unwilling to agree to a ceasefire or that the Tatmadaw is unwilling to agree to a ceasefire with,” Michaels explained. “The Tatmadaw can always accept some degree of opposition and, in fact needs some level of active armed resistance to justify its rule and justify its behavior. But the current level of widespread armed resistance across the country is not tenable for the junta.”

On Wednesday, a groundbreaking international conference focused on phasing out fossil fuels drew to a close in the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia, marking a historic shift in global climate policy conversations. For the first time in three decades of formal climate negotiations, delegates from 56 countries gathered to directly address the question of how to wind down oil, gas, and coal production — the primary driver of anthropogenic global warming — rather than debating whether such a transition is necessary. What began as an exploratory dialogue has laid the foundation for ongoing global cooperation, with financing for developing nations emerging as the most pressing obstacle to a just, widespread transition.

The gathering brought together a diverse cross-section of stakeholders beyond national government negotiators, including climate advocates, financial experts, Indigenous community leaders, youth representatives, and subnational authorities. Unlike formal United Nations climate conferences (known as COPs), which are often rigid and marked by pre-negotiated positional stances, participants described the Santa Marta meeting as having an unusually open, collaborative atmosphere. Former Irish President Mary Robinson, a leading voice for climate justice, noted that the tone of dialogue set this gathering apart from traditional UN talks, with participants engaging in more human, cooperative problem-solving rather than sticking to inflexible official lines.

Prior global climate negotiations have long centered on cutting end-use emissions rather than targeting the root of the climate crisis: fossil fuel extraction and production itself. This landmark meeting reoriented the conversation to tackle the full scope of the transition, including coordination between fossil fuel producing and consuming nations, support for workers shifting out of fossil fuel sectors, and managing the broader economic impacts of winding down production. While the conference did not produce legally binding commitments, it delivered tangible initial outcomes: agreements for ongoing cross-country collaboration, the establishment of dedicated working groups focused on financing and just labor transitions, and renewed momentum for future global negotiations to coordinate a coordinated fossil fuel phaseout.

Discussions repeatedly centered on financing as the single most urgent barrier to progress. Many low- and middle-income nations in the Global South face unsustainable debt burdens, high global borrowing costs, and limited access to affordable capital for renewable energy development, even as renewables have become cheaper than fossil fuels in most parts of the world. Tzeporah Berman, founder and chair of the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, explained that many developing countries are pushed to expand new fossil fuel projects solely to service their existing debt, trapping them in a cycle of dependency that is incompatible with climate action. Participants also highlighted how restrictive domestic fiscal policies and structural inequities in the global financial system slow transition progress, noting that traditional macroeconomic responses to inflation can inadvertently hamper investment in the clean energy transition. Ana Toni, CEO of the upcoming COP30 hosted by Brazil, called for greater engagement from finance ministers to develop targeted solutions to the fiscal challenges of the transition.

The conference also forged a new, inclusive alliance that brings together major economies and the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, a dynamic that participants said has been missing from many prior climate efforts. While the U.S. federal government was not invited — organizers framed the gathering as a space for nations already aligned on the goal of phasing out fossil fuels — a senior official from California attended as an independent observer, noting that clear policy and regulatory certainty is critical to unlocking private sector investment for the transition.

Indigenous participants raised important questions about inclusive decision-making, noting that Indigenous communities have long been frontline stewards of forest ecosystems that absorb carbon, but their knowledge and voices are often sidelined in global climate processes. Patricia Suárez, an adviser to the National Organization of Indigenous Peoples of the Colombian Amazon, emphasized that any just transition must center Indigenous territorial rights and acknowledge the critical role these communities play in addressing the climate crisis, while calling for meaningful representation in all upcoming transition initiatives.

In a moment that drew resounding applause from delegates, attendees announced that the next fossil fuel transition conference will be co-hosted by Tuvalu, a low-lying Pacific island nation extremely vulnerable to sea-level rise, and Ireland. The pairing of a climate-vulnerable developing state and a wealthy developed European nation reflects a deliberate effort to bridge global divides in perspective and responsibility for the transition. Tuvalu’s Minister of Home Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Maina Vakafua Talia noted that hosting the conference will highlight the lived, on-the-ground impacts of fossil fuel emissions, and that future talks will prioritize delivering concrete, actionable outcomes rather than non-binding statements. “If we are to address the climate change issue, we have to address the root cause, and the root cause is the fossil fuel industry,” Talia said, adding that delegates are eager to put concrete solutions and actionable steps on the table at the next gathering.

Senior policy observers noted that the conference signals a growing global appetite for moving beyond broad climate pledges to targeted, practical action on the core driver of climate change. “Santa Marta has delivered something valuable: a genuine demonstration that climate action remains a priority, and real appetite for specific solutions,” said Vance Culbert, senior policy adviser at the International Institute for Sustainable Development, adding that the initiative will help give the global fossil fuel transition a more coherent, powerful foundation.