Global Pulse

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  • Young Japanese artists turn school blackboards into a hit medium for creativity

    Young Japanese artists turn school blackboards into a hit medium for creativity

    In the city of Kumagaya, located just northwest of Japan’s capital Tokyo, a group of young art students at Kumagaya Girls High School are huddled together this July, brainstorming their entry for one of the country’s most unique student art competitions: Kokuban Art Koshien, the annual national chalk-on-blackboard art championship for middle and high school creators.

    Blending the Japanese word for blackboard, *kokuban*, with the name of Japan’s iconic high school baseball national tournament held at Koshien Stadium, the competition has grown steadily since its launch in 2015, drawing roughly 300 participating middle and high schools across the country every year. All works are created directly on classroom blackboards, typically during students’ summer break, and range wildly in scope and theme: from vibrant, dynamic renderings of dinosaurs, marine life and household pets, to reimaginations of classic manga scenes, reproductions of iconic masterworks from Hokusai’s Great Wave off Kanagawa to the Mona Lisa and Da Vinci’s Last Supper, and surreal original concepts like underwater classrooms. Even meta pieces depicting a person writing on a blackboard itself have made appearances. Every entry is a collaborative project, bringing together teams as small as two creators or as large as dozens of students, blending individual creativity with group coordination to bring a shared vision to life.

    Unlike many established fine art forms that prioritize permanent, individual work, Kokuban Art Koshien stands out for its experimental, accessible nature. Kazunari Minamishima, an art instructor at Saitama Prefectural High School of the Arts whose students have competed for years, explains that the medium gives young creators freedom that oil painting, sculpture and other traditional forms do not. “It’s still a work in progress,” he notes of the evolving art form itself.

    The competition was founded by Tokyo-based blackboard manufacturer Nichigaku Co., after company leaders spotted a viral, incredibly detailed replica of Da Vinci’s *Last Supper* drawn anonymously on a Japanese school blackboard. At the time, company president Tomohiro Yoshida explains, while casual chalk drawing was common in schools, there was no formal recognized genre of blackboard art. “Back then, there was graffiti, but there was no genre called blackboard art,” Yoshida says.

    While the contest is not designed as a direct marketing push — all Japanese schools already equip their classrooms with blackboards, after all — Yoshida says he is proud to see many past contestants go on to build careers as professional artists. Because full blackboards cannot be transported for in-person judging, organizers collect high-resolution photographs of each completed work to evaluate, with winners set to be announced this coming November.

    The unique medium of chalk on blackboard also allows for creative techniques that cannot be replicated with traditional paints. Artists dust loose chalk powder across the surface to create a soft, stardust-like glow, smudge pigment with fingers or tissue paper to build muted shadows and gradients, and can even replicate the translucent shine of a dragon’s eyeball with skilled shading. One past award-winning entry even mixed chalk pigment with water and sprayed it onto the blackboard in the style of abstract expressionist Jackson Pollock.

    Open to all Japanese schools, including international institutions, organizers have even expressed hopes of expanding the competition to international participants in coming years. Unlike unpermitted street graffiti common in Western countries, all blackboard art pieces for the competition are created with explicit school permission, reflecting Japan’s emphasis on respect for public spaces and collective order. For participating students, the collaborative process is the biggest draw, even more than winning awards.

    Kento Misumi, who competed in the contest as a high school student and now works for organizer Nichigaku, says the experience taught him far more than individual art creation ever could. “The challenge of trying to sort out the conflicting opinions of my two collaborators is the biggest memory about taking part in blackboard Koshien, as opposed to doing your own artwork,” he explained. Misumi recalled that even a single piece required multiple days of coordinated work from his team, a far more demanding process than many first-time competitors expect. “I want young people today to go through the experience,” he added.

    That spirit of collaborative growth is on full display at Kumagaya Girls High School, where a team of first-time competitors are preparing their 2026 entry, building on the legacy of older students who have won top national prizes in past years. “I see it as a chance to deepen my relationships with my schoolmates,” said Chiho Ninomiya, one of the student participants. “It’s our first time so I’m not sure we will be able to do a good job. But even if we don’t win, it’d have been worth it as long as we become better friends while doing it.”

    For this year’s entry, the team is brainstorming a playful concept: parody spinoffs of classic fine artworks by artists like Renoir, juxtaposed with vivid scenes of uniformed Japanese high school students capturing everyday campus life. Ninomiya notes that working with chalk on blackboard is a very different experience than drawing with pencils or paint, requiring constant adjustment, erasing, and reworking as the team learns the quirks of the medium.

    It is true that after the contest is photographed and judged, every labor-intensive piece will eventually be erased to make the blackboard usable for classes again. Proponents of the competition say this impermanence is part of its unique educational power: it teaches students a quiet lesson about the fragility of creation, the transient nature of life, and the courage to create even when a work will not last forever. For the community of Kokuban Art Koshien, a blackboard chalk drawing is only truly complete the moment it is erased.

  • After ‘testing ground’ in Kashmir, pellet guns used on student protesters in India’s capital

    After ‘testing ground’ in Kashmir, pellet guns used on student protesters in India’s capital

    On July 20, a crackdown on student-led demonstrators and journalists gathered at New Delhi’s iconic Jantar Mantar protest site has ignited national controversy, after evidence emerged that Indian security forces used controversial pump-action pellet guns—weapons that fire hundreds of jagged metal fragments—against the crowd, according to hospital and official records. The demonstration was part of a months-long movement demanding sweeping educational reforms and the ousting of India’s sitting education minister Dharmendra Pradhan, rooted in growing public anger over systemic failures in the country’s national examination system.

    In the aftermath of the crackdown, multiple prominent human rights organizations have called for independent inquiries into allegations of excessive force. Human Rights Watch documented that Delhi Police and the Central Rapid Action Force (RAF) deployed a range of aggressive crowd control tactics beyond pellet guns, including electric shock batons, tear gas, and stone attacks, while also imposing an internet blackout to cut off communication between protesters and the outside world. Local media reports confirm that medical records from Delhi’s Safdarjung Hospital confirm pellet entry wounds on the body of one journalist admitted after the crackdown, who was examined by three separate hospital departments.

    Initial official responses offered conflicting accounts. Delhi Police immediately dismissed claims of pellet gun use as “completely false and misleading” in a statement posted to X on July 21. But just four days later, an internal RAF investigation confirmed that excessive force had been used against the crowd. This incident marks the first documented use of pellet guns by Indian security forces to suppress dissent within the capital New Delhi, though the weapon has been a staple of counter-protest tactics in Indian-controlled Kashmir for decades. In 2018, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights labeled pellet guns “one of the most dangerous weapons used against protesters” by Indian security forces in the region.

    The current wave of Delhi protests traces its origins back to June, when the online satirical movement Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) launched demonstrations after Indian Chief Justice Surya Kant publicly labeled unemployed Indian youth “cockroaches” and “parasites.” The movement quickly gained momentum around demands for Pradhan’s resignation and accountability for the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), a critical medical entrance examination marred by repeated paper leaks, systemic corruption, and widespread inequity. The crisis has been linked to more than 20 suicides by aspirational students who lost opportunities due to the scandal. The protests grew into a mass movement after prominent Indian activist Sonam Wangchuk joined a 26-day hunger strike at Jantar Mantar, culminating in a large-scale march on India’s Parliament the week before the July 20 crackdown.

    Amid escalating public pressure, Pradhan announced his resignation on July 27—minutes after Delhi Police again attacked student protesters with batons and tear gas. But CJP organizers quickly confirmed that demonstrations would continue until all their remaining demands are met, including compensation for the families of students who died by suicide connected to the NEET scandal, and formal accountability for the July 20 police crackdown. In recent weeks, the protest movement has expanded far beyond its original demands for educational reform, with many participants now calling for broader government accountability and even the resignation of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

    State police forces across India have already responded with a widespread crackdown on participants. In Uttar Pradesh, police raided the home of Muslim CJP volunteer Mohd Junaid, detained his family members, and seized his official identity cards ahead of formal charges. Beyond state security forces, openly Hindu nationalist groups have also issued repeated public threats to disrupt protests and attack participants.

    The use of pellet guns in Delhi marks an unprecedented escalation, even as human rights groups have documented repeated human rights violations by Delhi Police during large-scale protests in recent years—most notably the 2019 Muslim-led student demonstrations against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. “This is the first recorded incident in the capital of what is known as the world’s largest democracy,” Tanvi Mishra, a cultural worker and active protest participant, told Middle East Eye. Mishra added that the normalization of repressive tactics in Kashmir has allowed the state to expand those same tactics to the capital. “Many would not have imagined an internet shutdown in the centre of the capital of India until now, but why is it that we are conditioned into accepting it as a state of normalcy in Kashmir?” she said, noting that the same repressive tactics honed in Kashmir are now being used to target Muslim communities across India.

    A Kashmiri writer and researcher, speaking to Middle East Eye under the pseudonym Eph for safety reasons, described Kashmir as a “testing lab” for tools of state suppression. “Once everything was tested and they experimented with ‘efficient’ ways to suppress a protest, they began exporting the tactics to other places,” she explained.

    Following the internal investigation into the Delhi crackdown, the RAF announced last Saturday that it would no longer deploy personnel who normally operate in “special operation zones” such as Indian-controlled Kashmir to manage civilian protests in other parts of India. RAF Inspector General Seema Dhundhia told Indian outlet The Print that personnel from conflict zones “possess a different work environment and operational perspective, but sectors such as Delhi, Bihar, Assam, and Maharashtra require a distinct and balanced approach to crowd control and public order management.”

    Eph emphasized that while the same playbook is being used, there remains a stark gap between the scale of repression in Delhi and Kashmir. “No three-year-old kid was killed in Delhi, but that was done in Kashmir. No students sitting in their homes got hit by pellet guns, but in Kashmir that had happened,” she said. She added that detained protesters in Delhi face only short-term detention, while detained Kashmiri activists are often held indefinitely without trial under the harsh Public Safety Act.

    Mariya, a South Asian anti-colonial urbanism researcher who asked to only use her first name for security, noted that the pellet gun incident in Delhi highlights long-standing blind spots in India’s progressive movement. “For decades, thousands have been subjected to pellet gun violence in Kashmir. The failure to interlink the two is extremely disingenuous and exposes the nature of these protests,” she said. She added that there has been a striking lack of meaningful discussion of the ongoing crackdown in Kashmir, where Indian security forces detained more than 3,500 Kashmiris in a single massive operation this week, one of the largest crackdowns in the valley in recent years, carried out after an attack that killed a local police official.

    Mishra confirmed that even as Delhi protesters have integrated calls for a range of progressive causes beyond educational reform, few have addressed the ongoing militarization of Kashmir. “We know many left-leaning liberals or even leftists, who will claim to be progressive [yet] … when it comes to the issue of Kashmir and self-determination, there is a faltering back towards traditional notions of nationalism,” she said. Still, Mariya argued that the decentralized nature of the current protest movement creates space for cross-issue solidarity, so long as participants are open to critical engagement. “A movement is not only its mass mobilisation but also the contradictions and debates that come out of it,” she said. “Failure to engage with it is to essentially kill the movement.”

  • Rights groups call for help stopping Israeli ‘pogrom’ against Palestinians in West Bank

    Rights groups call for help stopping Israeli ‘pogrom’ against Palestinians in West Bank

    A fresh wave of deadly violence in the occupied West Bank has prompted leading Israeli and Palestinian human rights organizations to issue an urgent plea for global intervention, warning that unchecked escalation could spiral into mass targeted violence against Palestinian communities.

    The unrest erupted Friday when armed Israeli settlers entered the Palestinian village of Tel, located near the northern West Bank city of Nablus. Clashes during the incursion left four Palestinians dead; in the confrontation, a local Palestinian seized a firearm from one of the settlers and returned fire, killing two Israeli men, one a soldier and one a settler.

    Following the incident, an initial Israeli military inquiry confirmed the settlers had entered a restricted area off-limits for civilian entry. Despite this finding, the Israeli government ordered the military to demolish the family home of the Palestinian accused of the fatal shooting, a controversial punitive measure widely criticized by international human rights monitors. The Israel Defense Forces also launched a large-scale arrest operation across Nablus, aiming to detain dozens of Palestinians said to have been involved in the confrontation.

    In a joint statement released after the violence, leading rights groups including Israel’s B’Tselem, Rabbis for Human Rights, and Palestinian-led Adalah called for immediate international pressure on the Israeli government to de-escalate the crisis. The groups warned that ongoing settler militia violence, which they say is actively enabled and backed by Israeli military forces, has reached dangerous new levels across the territory. In recent weeks, attacks have included the arson and complete destruction of Palestinian civilian property, and forced displacement of entire Palestinian families and communities from their land, the statement said.

    The organizations added that the persistent silence and inaction from most of the international community has created a permissive environment that allows this violence to continue and accelerate, putting countless civilian lives at imminent risk. They frame the current moment as a critical juncture, requiring urgent intervention to prevent what they describe as an impending pogrom against Palestinian communities in the West Bank.

    This latest escalation comes amid a longer-term trend of soaring casualty rates, particularly among Palestinian children, according to research from B’Tselem. Last month, the group reported that Israeli forces are killing Palestinian children in the occupied West Bank at a rate not seen since the 1967 occupation began. Already in 2025 alone, 54 Palestinian children have been shot and killed by Israeli forces in the territory. Since the start of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war in October 2023, B’Tselem found that nearly one in four Palestinians killed by Israeli forces in the West Bank has been a minor — the highest share of child fatalities recorded in the 58-year history of the occupation.

    Crucially, the group confirmed that no Israeli security personnel or settlers have faced legal accountability for these child killings to date. There are no public indictments connected to any of the fatalities recorded after October 2023. B’Tselem rejects the framing of these deaths as isolated mistakes or rogue violations of military protocol. Instead, the organization argues the rising death toll is the deliberate outcome of official Israeli policy: a policy that establishes loose rules of engagement for forces operating in the West Bank, systematically categorizes all Palestinians as terrorist suspects, and grants legal immunity to soldiers and settlers who use lethal force against Palestinian civilians.

    The original incident report was first published by Middle East Eye, an independent media outlet covering the Middle East and North Africa region, in a post to social media on 24 July 2026.

  • ICC member states remove prosecutor Karim Khan by majority vote

    ICC member states remove prosecutor Karim Khan by majority vote

    In a watershed moment marking the first such action in the 24-year history of the International Criminal Court (ICC), a majority of member states voted Friday during a special session at United Nations headquarters in New York to oust sitting chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office over allegations of professional misconduct. The dismissal takes immediate effect, with elections to select a new chief prosecutor slated to follow in the coming period.

    Secret ballot results released by diplomatic sources show that 82 of the court’s 125 member states supported the motion to remove Khan, easily clearing the 63-vote absolute majority threshold required for the decision. Thirteen member states voted against dismissal, while 15 opted to abstain from the vote.

    The allegations against Khan center on claims of a sexual relationship with a junior staff member in his office, which the complainant has described as non-consensual. The disciplinary process was initiated after the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties (ASP)—the ICC’s governing executive body—concluded that evidence proved “beyond reasonable doubt” that Khan had engaged in the relationship, arguing that the inherent power imbalance between a sitting chief prosecutor and a subordinate staff member made such a relationship inherently inappropriate regardless of context.

    Khan has repeatedly and forcefully denied that any sexual relationship occurred, while the complainant reaffirmed her allegations of non-consensual conduct in her first public interview on the case with CNN last week. Ahead of the vote, Khan had already stated that if removed, he would immediately appeal the decision to the International Labour Organization’s administrative tribunal, the body with jurisdiction over employment-related appeals for ICC personnel.

    The historic vote has unfolded against a charged geopolitical backdrop, with heavy scrutiny over claims that the entire disciplinary process has been politicized. The removal comes just months after Khan’s office moved to request arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, and three Hamas leaders over alleged war crimes committed in the ongoing Gaza conflict, a step that triggered fierce pushback from major powers including the United States. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio recently issued extraordinary threats to “dismantle the ICC brick by brick, if necessary,” and the U.S. has already imposed sanctions on most of the court’s senior judges and prosecutors, including Khan, over the court’s war crimes investigations into actions in Palestine and Afghanistan.

    Widespread criticism has also been leveled at how the ASP Bureau managed the investigation into the allegations. A panel of independent ICC judges appointed to review the evidence unanimously concluded that no misconduct had been proven, but the ASP Bureau chose to disregard this binding legal opinion. More than 180 Palestinian civil society and human rights organizations signed an open letter last week arguing that the disciplinary process had been “reduced to a political referendum following the national interests of individual States Parties.”

    A timeline of the allegations shows the alleged non-consensual conduct began in March 2023 and continued for nearly a year, with incidents reported on overseas missions and at the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague. The allegations were first brought to Khan’s attention by his own senior staff on May 2, 2024. The ICC’s internal oversight body launched an inquiry the following week, but closed it days later after the complainant refused to cooperate with internal investigators. Eighteen days after the allegations first emerged, Khan’s office formally submitted the request for arrest warrants for Israeli and Hamas leaders, leading some media outlets to suggest he moved forward with the request to shore up political support amid the scandal. However, an investigation by Middle East Eye later confirmed that the decision to pursue the warrants had been finalized six weeks before the allegations against Khan were ever made public, and the application was submitted only after the first internal inquiry had concluded.

    The allegations reemerged in global media and on social media in October 2024, prompting a second internal inquiry that again closed when the complainant declined to cooperate. The ASP then commissioned an external investigation led by the United Nations Office of Internal Oversight Services (OIOS), which spent more than a year compiling evidence and presented a 150-page report plus 5,000 pages of supporting evidence to the independent judicial panel in December 2024. After nearly three months of review, the panel issued its unanimous March 2025 ruling that the evidence presented by UN investigators did not meet the “beyond reasonable doubt” standard to establish misconduct or a breach of professional duty.

    Despite this independent ruling, a majority of ASP Bureau members voted to disregard the panel’s findings weeks later, advancing the motion to find Khan guilty of serious misconduct and suspend him from office. In another break with established protocol, the ASP Bureau altered the voting rules for the full member state session, changing the process from a two-stage vote—one on whether misconduct occurred, a second on whether removal was warranted—to a single up-or-down vote on a motion that combined both the finding of serious misconduct and the order for dismissal. This change lowered the threshold for removal, drawing further allegations of procedural manipulation.

    A British barrister, Khan was elected as the ICC’s third chief prosecutor in February 2021, taking office two decades after the court was founded in 2002. During his tenure, he pursued high-profile investigations and arrest warrant requests against a number of global leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin, former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte, Myanmar’s ruling junta leadership, and Taliban officials in Afghanistan, in addition to the Israeli and Hamas leaders targeted in the Gaza warrants.

  • ‘It eats away at my body’: The human cost of S Korea’s ultra-convenient overnight deliveries

    ‘It eats away at my body’: The human cost of S Korea’s ultra-convenient overnight deliveries

    Six years ago, 27-year-old Jang Deok-jun collapsed unconscious in his bathtub after working more than a year of overnight warehouse shifts for Coupang, South Korea’s largest online retail platform. He was pronounced dead of a heart attack shortly after arriving at the hospital, and a subsequent investigation by South Korea’s state-run workers’ compensation insurer Comwel officially ruled his death a work-related fatality caused by chronic overwork.

    Jang’s death was not an isolated incident. Between 2000 and May 2026, Comwel has attributed 46 work-related deaths of warehouse and delivery workers to stroke or heart disease, conditions widely linked to excessive overwork. Today, his mother Park Mi-suk has spent six years carrying on a relentless advocacy campaign to ban overnight deliveries, the working practice she blames for robbing her of her son.

    South Korea’s delivery sector has exploded into a massive industry built on the promise of unrivaled speed and convenience. In the country’s hyper-connected digital economy, customers who place orders before midnight are guaranteed delivery by 7 a.m. the next day – a service that relies entirely on an sprawling network of overnight warehouse staff and delivery drivers. Coupang, founded by a Korean-American entrepreneur, has dominated this market since expanding its overnight fresh produce delivery in 2015, now employing nearly 100,000 workers across its nationwide logistics network.

    But this industry-defining convenience has come at a steep hidden cost to frontline workers, public health experts and labor advocates warn. The UN International Agency for Research on Cancer classifies overnight work as a probable human carcinogen, and research from South Korea’s Catholic University of Korea professor of occupational medicine Kang Mo-yeon adds that mounting evidence also links irregular night shifts to elevated risks of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and chronic mental illness.

    Unlike the UK, which caps overnight delivery driving at 10 hours per 24-hour period, South Korea imposes no legal limits on overnight working hours, creating a regulatory gap that has allowed extreme working conditions to become normalized. The debate over overnight delivery also reveals deep divides among workers themselves: while the national delivery workers’ union has called for a full ban on overnight deliveries since 2025, many drivers opt for night shifts voluntarily, drawn by higher pay and the flexibility to care for children or ill family members during the day.

    One subcontracted Coupang driver, who spoke to the BBC on condition of anonymity, explained that he earns roughly 7 million won ($4,600) per month – nearly double South Korea’s national average income – working 10-hour overnight shifts five to six days a week. “I know this is destroying my body long-term, but the pay makes it worth it,” he said. “Critics who call for banning overnight deliveries aren’t listening to the choices we’ve made to support our families.” Still, he acknowledged the constant pressure: drivers are paid per package, and failure to complete all deliveries by the 7 a.m. deadline can result in losing their assigned delivery route to a competitor, leaving no time for scheduled breaks. His wife, he added, still worries he will fall asleep at the wheel during long shifts.

    Park argues that as demand for faster deliveries grows, the sacrifice of these frontline workers has been rendered invisible to the consumers who benefit from their labor. In Jang’s case, she says, holding the company accountable was an uphill battle: South Korean law places the burden of proving overwork on grieving families, and Coupang was only required to share Jang’s work records and CCTV footage with Comwel, not with Park. It took months of lobbying lawmakers and government agencies for her to obtain the documents that confirmed Jang’s working hours met the legal threshold for overwork-related death: his shift count met the standard of an average 60-hour workweek over 12 weeks, with overnight hours weighted 30% more heavily under Comwel rules.

    The controversy deepened in 2025, when local media published leaked chat logs allegedly between Coupang’s chairman Bom Kim and a former chief privacy officer, showing Kim ordering staff to remove references to Jang “working hard” from internal reports. Coupang has dismissed the claim as groundless, alleging the leak came from a disgruntled former employee, but labor unions filed a criminal complaint alleging evidence tampering, and South Korean police launched a formal investigation into the company in December 2025. Coupang maintains it has fully cooperated with all investigations and submitted all requested documentation to regulators.

    Jang’s case was followed by another high-profile death that renewed public anger: 34-year-old Oh Seung-yong, a driver for a Coupang-contracted logistics firm, died after crashing his truck into a pole during an overnight delivery run. Comwel also ruled Oh’s death work-related. His sister told parliament that Oh had worked six days a week, clocking more than 11 hours per shift almost entirely overnight – and even continued working for four hours after his father’s sudden death before traveling to the hospital to be with his family. Coupang says it enforces a 52-hour weekly cap for all employees, gives subcontracted drivers a full weekend off every two weeks, provides free health screenings for all direct and contracted staff, and claims it holds the best safety record in the global logistics industry with no recorded industrial accident deaths. Unions argue that safety rules are rarely enforced by third-party subcontractors.

    In December 2025, Coupang CEO Harold Rogers was summoned to South Korea’s national parliament to answer questions about the deaths of Jang and Oh, as well as the country’s largest ever data breach that exposed the personal information of 37.5 million Coupang users, resulting in a record $410 million fine against the company. During the televised hearing, Park publicly demanded Chairman Bom Kim be held criminally liable for her son’s death, while Oh’s sister pressed Rogers for a formal apology. Rogers offered “deepest condolences” and said he was sorry for the families’ loss, but remained silent when pressed for further comment.

    The controversy has also put pressure on South Korean President Lee Jae Myung, who made reducing workplace injuries and deaths a top campaign priority, capitalizing on his own experience of a disabling factory injury earlier in life. South Korea has long struggled with one of the highest workplace fatality rates among developed nations, and the government has already passed major labor reforms: capping overall weekly work hours at 52, and introducing legislation that allows for jail time for executives found negligent in workplace death cases. Ironically, the governing party recently proposed new legislation to relax overnight delivery restrictions for smaller retailers to weaken Coupang’s market monopoly, a move that has angered unions and activists, including Park, who argue the core problem is unregulated overwork, not just Coupang’s market dominance.

    Six years after her son’s death, Park’s advocacy has upended her own life. She was forced to close her small furniture-making business after spending years navigating legal battles for compensation and accountability, and moved from her longtime home to a small rental apartment in Daegu. She still keeps all of Jang’s belongings, including his collection of action figures, stored in a box in her home – not ready to let go, and not ready to end her fight.

    Jang once compared his job to a seesaw: if he stepped down, his overworked colleagues would be left struggling to cover his load. Today, Park reframes that analogy for South Korea’s delivery industry: Jang and thousands of workers like him hold down one end of the seesaw, so consumers can enjoy the convenience of fast, early-morning deliveries on the other. “I hope we never become a society that closes our eyes to other people’s sacrifice just for a little bit of convenience,” she says.

  • Israeli settlers kill four Palestinians in West Bank attack

    Israeli settlers kill four Palestinians in West Bank attack

    On a Friday morning in the occupied West Bank, a violent, deadly confrontation unfolded in the village of Tel, located southwest of Nablus, leaving four Palestinian residents dead and another Israeli settler killed in the crossfire, according to multiple on-the-ground accounts and official statements. The violence has sent already fraught regional tensions soaring, with top Israeli officials calling for harsh retaliation and Palestinian leaders decrying the attack as part of a systemic state-backed displacement campaign.

    Eyewitnesses confirm that a contingent of armed Israeli settlers pushed into residential homes and agricultural plots on Tel’s outskirts in the pre-dawn hours. Village resident Mahmoud al-Hindi told Middle East Eye that local residents assembled quickly to push back the incursion, turning a targeted incursion into a full-scale confrontation. The clash pitted unarmed Palestinian villagers against heavily armed settlers backed by uniformed Israeli troops, with violence escalating rapidly when Israeli forces and settlement security personnel opened fire on the assembled Palestinian group.

    The Palestinian Ministry of Health confirmed that four Palestinian men were killed in the shooting, with four additional people wounded, most by gunshots to the upper body. Three of the wounded remain in critical condition as of the latest updates. All four fatalities were members of the extended Saifi family: brothers Ibrahim Hussein Ali Saifi and Jawad Hussein Ali Saifi, their cousin Farouq Adnan Ali Saifi, and relative Imran Ahmed Ali Saifi. Al-Hindi noted that land grabs and incursions by settlers are a regular occurrence in the area, but Friday’s attack marked the most violent episode residents have ever experienced.

    Video footage published by Quds News Network on social media platform X (formerly Twitter) documents the attack unfolding under the direct protection of Israeli occupation forces, confirming witness accounts of military backing for the settler incursion. Israeli state media, by contrast, has confirmed that one Israeli settlement security guard was killed in the clash, with three other settlers sustaining injuries.

    The Israeli military has offered an alternate narrative of the incident, claiming the group of settlers was engaged in a recreational hike through the area when clashes erupted with local residents. According to the military’s account, settlers fired only warning shots before troops arrived to de-escalate the standoff. They claim a Palestinian attacker seized a weapon from a settlement guard, killed the guard and wounded three other settlers, before being shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. The military added that the deaths of the three other Palestinian victims remain under active investigation.

    That account was immediately rejected by Nablus governor Ghassan Daghlas during an interview with Al Araby TV. Daghlas refuted the Israeli military’s claim, confirming that settlers intentionally stormed the village, attempted to set residential structures on fire, and opened fire on residents who gathered to oppose the incursion. Witnesses who spoke to Middle East Eye added that after the shooting, Israeli forces escorted all involved settlers out of the village before launching a full raid on the community, closing all military checkpoints leading into Nablus and imposing a strict security lockdown across the entire region.

    In the hours following the initial clash, follow-up violence erupted as additional Israeli settlers launched coordinated attacks on multiple Palestinian villages near Nablus and Qalqilya. Local reports confirm that settlers set fire to dozens of civilian cars and agricultural land, and assaulted local residents who attempted to intervene. Settlers also took to social media to issue open calls for revenge and further targeted attacks against Palestinian communities across the occupied territory. The Israeli military acknowledged it was bracing for widespread retaliatory settler violence across the West Bank in the wake of the incident.

    Top far-right Israeli officials, key figures in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition, have issued incendiary calls for harsh collective punishment against Palestinian communities in the area. Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, who resides in an Israeli settlement near Nablus, called for aggressive military action, comparing the targeted villages to refugee camps in Nablus and Tulkarm that were subjected to widespread destruction by Israeli forces in 2025. Smotrich also confirmed he would ask Netanyahu to approve construction of a new Israeli settlement directly on the site of Friday’s confrontation. National Security Minister Itamar Ben Gvir, a far-right settler based in Hebron, went further, saying Palestinian villages in the occupied West Bank should be destroyed to match the level of devastation inflicted on Beit Hanoun, a northern Gaza town that has been almost entirely leveled by Israeli military operations. “For every Jew killed, the enemy must bear the loss of land and homes,” Ben Gvir stated.

    Netanyahu’s office confirmed the prime minister held an emergency meeting with Israel’s defense minister and Israel Defense Forces chief of staff to coordinate a formal response to what the office described as a Palestinian “attack” on Israeli settlers. “We will act forcefully against the terrorists and those who send them, and we will not allow terrorism to resurface in the West Bank,” Netanyahu said in a post-meeting statement. The Israeli military later announced it would reinforce its presence across the occupied West Bank by deploying five additional infantry companies to the region.

    Palestinian leaders have condemned the attack and called for urgent international intervention. Palestinian Vice President Hussein al-Sheikh said he had held urgent diplomatic talks with officials from multiple countries, urging world powers to take immediate action to protect Palestinian civilians from what he labeled joint settler and Israeli military “terrorism.” The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) said the four killings in Tel were a direct reflection of long-standing “official Israeli policy” of forced displacement, carried out in coordinated fashion by the Israeli military and extremist settler groups.

    Friday’s deadly clash comes amid a years-long surge in settler violence against Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank, a trend that has accelerated dramatically since the outbreak of the Gaza war in October 2023. Today, settlers carry out near-daily attacks on Palestinian communities, including arson, property vandalism, physical assaults, and coordinated campaigns to force residents off their land. These attacks almost always proceed with the explicit protection of Israeli military forces, according to on-the-ground monitoring groups.

    Just three days before the Tel clash, two Palestinian men were killed by Israeli fire during another military-backed settler incursion in the town of Deir Jarir, northeast of Ramallah. Palestinian health ministry data shows that at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire in the occupied West Bank since the start of 2026, 21 of whom were killed directly by settlers. The Colonization and Wall Resistance Commission, a Palestinian body that monitors settlement expansion and violence, confirms that deadly settler attacks have increased year over year since 2023. Eleven Palestinians were killed by settlers in 2024, a number that rose to 14 in 2025, and has already hit 21 in the first seven months of 2026. The commission notes that most victims die from direct gunfire from settlers, while others are killed in assaults, from tear gas inhalation, or from denied access to medical care during attacks — a trend that underscores the growing scale and brutality of settler violence across the occupied territory.

  • Inside the struggle to ‘stop the game’ between Ireland and Israel

    Inside the struggle to ‘stop the game’ between Ireland and Israel

    For months, a grassroots movement demanding Ireland cancel its upcoming UEFA Nations League matches against Israel has continued to gain traction, showing no signs of fading even after the Football Association of Ireland (FAI) announced a compromise to play the fixtures on neutral territory. In early July, FAI delegates passed a motion to relocate the September 27 and October 4 matches—originally scheduled for Dublin and Tel Aviv—to Hungary and Serbia respectively, a move the association framed as a resolution to the months-long controversy. But pro-Palestine campaigners say the shift in venue does not address their core demand: that Ireland refuses to compete against Israel entirely amid its ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

    Rebecca O’Keefe, a former Irish international basketball player and leading figure with Irish Sport For Palestine (ISFP), which has spearheaded the campaign since early 2024, emphasized that the movement remains unshakable. “I think it’s only going to gain strength,” O’Keefe said. “We really, really remain resolute in stopping these games. The facts haven’t changed; we’re still witnessing genocide, we’re still witnessing the total impunity of a genocidal regime.”

    The “Stop the Game” campaign, which counts among its supporters League of Ireland fan groups, multiple domestic clubs, trade unions, and civil society organizations, has already deployed a range of tactics to pressure the FAI. After the FAI’s relocation vote, members of League of Ireland Fans for Palestine confronted FAI president Paul Cooke directly, and the following day activists staged a high-profile protest on the roof of the association’s Dublin headquarters. The group has also openly raised the possibility of disruptive action, including blockading Irish airports to prevent the national team from traveling to the matches.

    Ken Powell, a spokesperson for the League of Ireland Fans for Palestine group, made clear that the venue change was never the goal of the campaign. “There was never any issue with the location,” Powell said. “It’s who is playing the game. Israel has killed 566 footballers in Gaza alone, since 7 October 2023. So our message remains the same: no game, not here, not anywhere.” The group has already announced plans to extend protests to Ireland’s intervening Nations League fixture against Austria in Dublin, which will be held between the two Israel matches, and ISFP has confirmed it is coordinating with pro-Palestine civil society groups in Austria to organize joint actions.

    Not all campaigners share the same level of optimism about stopping the fixtures, however. Stuart Gilhooly of the Professional Footballers’ Association of Ireland (PFAI), a union that has publicly supported a boycott, said he believes the matches will go forward as scheduled. “Realistically, I think the games will proceed. I don’t see where we can go from here unless the players take a stand and I don’t see that happening,” Gilhooly noted. The PFAI only represents domestic Irish league players, very few of whom earn call-ups to the senior national team, limiting the union’s ability to influence the outcome.

    The controversy grew out of February 2024’s Nations League draw, which placed Ireland in Group B3 alongside Israel, Austria, and Kosovo. The FAI initially confirmed it would host Israel in Dublin, a decision that drew immediate backlash, despite the association having previously submitted a motion to UEFA calling for Israel’s suspension from international football. The movement gained widespread public traction, amplified by longstanding broad solidarity with Palestine across Irish society, though Ireland also maintains deep economic ties to the United States, which has backed Israel’s military campaign.

    The FAI’s decision to reject a full boycott came amid significant institutional vulnerability. The association is currently carrying €38 million ($43 million) in debt, relies on UEFA funding to remain operational, is cutting 25% of its staff, and has publicly acknowledged it lags far behind peer international federations in resources and development. In a letter to members after the vote, the FAI board warned that refusing to play the fixtures would carry severe consequences: an initial €5.5 million revenue loss, a projected further €10.3 million in additional costs, automatic relegation from the Nations League division, and potential suspension of all Irish teams from UEFA competitions. The association also noted its hosting commitments for Euro 2028—for which Ireland is a co-host—and its bid to stage the 2029 Women’s Champions League Final in Dublin as additional factors shaping its decision.

    Campaigners have pushed back on the FAI’s financial warnings, arguing the risk of sanctions has been exaggerated. O’Keefe noted that all potential UEFA penalties are hypothetical, and that any sanctions could be challenged at the Court of Arbitration for Sport. She pointed to the coordinated boycott of Russian national teams after the 2022 invasion of Ukraine, where individual federations refused to play Russia before governing bodies implemented a formal suspension, as a precedent for action.

    The controversy has already created deep rifts within Irish football. Joanna Byrne, a Sinn Fein Member of Parliament and former co-chair of League of Ireland Premier Division side Drogheda United, says she was forced out of her voluntary role by the club’s U.S.-based ownership group Trivela Group after she publicly called for the matches to be canceled. Trivela has denied the allegation. In May, during a friendly international against Qatar at Dublin’s Aviva Stadium, pro-campaign fans disrupted the match by throwing tennis balls wrapped in Palestinian colors printed with the #stopthegame slogan onto the pitch. International players have also acknowledged the pressure the dispute places on squads: veteran Irish captain Seamus Coleman noted that the issue should be resolved by governing bodies, not players, saying “It is very difficult for us players, difficult for the manager, and all the staff that we are dealing with this… But of course, you know our feelings as human beings.”

    Some Irish politicians who support the boycott have criticized UEFA for failing to act on its own statutes, which prohibit member associations from violating the organization’s core principles. Dublin Labour Party MEP Aodhan O Riordain, who has led calls for a full sporting boycott, said: “The FAI shouldn’t be in this position. Uefa should have made the decision a long time ago. Israel are in breach of Uefa and Fifa statutes, and Israel should not be competing at all. It’s just the intensity of what’s happening in the Middle East – the presentations we as politicians are getting week in week out in the European parliament. Nobody is standing up, nobody is exercising any kind of sanction or veto.”

    While the Irish government and FAI have framed the relocation of the matches to neutral territory as a resolution to the controversy, campaigners say it only removes the issue from Irish soil without addressing their core demand. The dispute over the matches is part of a broader wave of pro-Palestine activism targeting Irish sporting institutions: activists are currently pressuring the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) to end its 30-year National League sponsorship deal with insurer Allianz, after Allianz was named in a June 2025 UN Special Rapporteur report for profiting from Israel’s military presence in Gaza. The football controversy also follows an earlier dispute in Irish basketball, where activists called for a 2023 EuroBasket qualifier against Israel to be boycotted; the match was eventually relocated to Riga and played amid heavy pressure.

    Both O’Keefe and O Riordain have pushed back against growing pressure on individual Irish international players to refuse to play, noting that governing bodies bear responsibility for making the decision, not athletes. O Riordain, who is pessimistic the matches will be canceled at this stage without a mass player boycott, said the broader campaign for Palestinian solidarity should now focus on Ireland’s ongoing six-month presidency of the European Council. “The bigger responsibility is that we use our presidency to push the agenda of ending the EU-Israel Association Agreement, which would be disastrous for Israel, because the EU is Israel’s biggest trading partner,” he said.

    Still, campaigners argue that an Irish boycott would act as a catalyst for other European federations to take similar action, pointing to vocal public support for Palestine in larger UEFA members including Spain, Norway, and the Netherlands. Norway’s football association has already donated to Gaza relief efforts and reportedly been working behind the scenes to diplomatically isolate Israel in global football. O Riordain noted that regardless of the outcome of the current campaign, the decision to boycott would carry long-term symbolic weight. “We don’t know, but in 50 years, 100 years’ time, if we decided not to play these games, we don’t know what kind of a domino effect that would have had. And I think if they had decided not to go ahead with the games, they certainly would have gotten a lot of credit for it.”

  • Jenny Shin leads the Women’s Scottish Open by 5 strokes after two rounds

    Jenny Shin leads the Women’s Scottish Open by 5 strokes after two rounds

    TROON, Scotland — The second round of the co-sanctioned Ladies European Tour and LPGA Tour Women’s Scottish Open held at Dundonald Links delivered a dramatic shift in the leaderboard on Friday, with South Korean golfer Jenny Shin expanding her position to a commanding five-stroke advantage over the rest of the field.
    Shin entered Friday’s play tied for the top spot at six under par, but her round got off to a rocky start with an opening bogey. Rather than letting the early mistake derail her performance, the South Korean star rallied quickly, carding six birdies over the course of the round — including a standout birdie on her final hole — to finish the day with a five-under 67. That performance pushed her overall tournament total to 11 under par, giving her a substantial gap over her closest competitor.
    Friday’s play saw a dramatic fall from co-leader Lauren Coughlin, the American golfer who already notched two tournament wins this season: a victory at the Aramco Championship in April and a title at the 2024 Scottish Open. Coughlin struggled through her second round, finishing two over par for the day, which dropped her down the leaderboard to a tie for fourth place at four under par alongside Japan’s Erika Hara.
    The closest contender to Shin’s lead is German golfer Esther Henseleit, who turned in a stellar round on Friday. Henseleit carded a four-under 68, boosted by two birdies and an eagle that lifted her into second place on the overall leaderboard.
    South Korea’s A Lim Kim held onto her position in third place, even after a steady even-par round that included two birdies and two bogeys, leaving her at five under par overall.
    One of the most surprising outcomes of the day involved world No. 1 Nelly Korda, who struggled significantly throughout her round. Korda closed out her day with four consecutive bogeys, finishing with a 76 that put her at four over par for the tournament — two strokes above the projected cut line, putting her status for the weekend in serious jeopardy.

  • Luxembourg will not renew approval for Israeli war bonds, finance minister confirms

    Luxembourg will not renew approval for Israeli war bonds, finance minister confirms

    Luxembourg’s financial regulator will not extend its approval of Israel Bonds for sale across the European Union when the current authorization expires on 31 August, the country’s finance minister Gilles Roth has confirmed.

    In an interview with domestic broadcaster RTL, Roth clarified that the non-renewal decision was reached two months ago, in May, exclusively by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), Luxembourg’s independent financial watchdog. Rejecting criticism of the regulator’s process, Roth emphasized that the CSSF operated strictly in line with EU regulatory standards, framing the outcome as a compliance matter rather than a response to political pressure from campaign groups.

    This official narrative, however, clashes with the timeline of mounting advocacy against the bond program. May marked the peak of coordinated legal and political campaigning targeting Israel Bonds’ presence in Luxembourg, and the final decision aligns exactly with the core demand that activists have pushed for months. The confirmation also comes just weeks after a high-profile 21 July statement from Amnesty International warning that all EU member states, including Luxembourg, risk complicity in Israel’s ongoing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza if they continue to permit the bonds’ sale.

    Unless another EU member state steps forward to assume regulatory hosting for the program, Israel Bonds will no longer be available for purchase by investors across the entire bloc. Unlike standard sovereign debt issued directly by the Israeli government, these retail bonds are distributed through the U.S.-based Development Corporation for Israel (DCI), marketed under the slogan “Stand with Israel. Israel is at War.” They are sold primarily to retail investors, religious institutions, and local public funds, often leveraging global Jewish diaspora networks and appeals to political solidarity with Israel.

    Official DCI data shows the program has raised $7.7 billion for the Israeli government since October 2023, a period marked by Israel’s military operations in Gaza, Lebanon, and cross-border strikes on Iran. All proceeds flow as unrestricted general revenue into Israel’s state treasury, at a time when the country’s military spending has surged from roughly 20% to more than 30% of total government expenditure. Between 2022 and 2024, Israel’s military budget has grown from 4.2% to 8.3% of gross domestic product, pushing the country’s annual deficit to nearly 7% of GDP.

    Luxembourg’s role as the EU’s regulatory host for the program only emerged last year after a similar campaign forced Ireland to end its own approval. For years before Brexit, the United Kingdom served as the bloc’s regulatory gateway for Israel Bonds, a role that transferred to Ireland after the UK’s departure from the EU. Sustained pressure from Irish parliamentarians and civil society groups, which linked bond sales to financing Israeli military operations in Gaza, pushed Irish Central Bank governor Gabriel Makhlouf to confirm in September 2023 that Ireland would not renew its authorization. On the very same day, the CSSF approved a new 12-month prospectus for the bonds without consulting Luxembourg’s Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs, a move that placed the program under Luxembourg’s oversight for the past year. From that point forward, the Luxembourg government repeatedly maintained that it had no authority over the matter, stating consistently that the CSSF was the sole competent decision-making body.

    Pressure on Luxembourg reached a fever pitch in May 2024, when Amnesty International Luxembourg and the Committee for a Just Peace in the Middle East hosted a capital conference bringing together legal experts, economists, parliamentarians, and international law specialists to examine the legal and financial risks of hosting the program. The conference released a detailed legal report concluding that Luxembourg’s approval of the bonds violated the country’s obligations under the UN Genocide Convention and the International Court of Justice’s July 2024 advisory opinion on the occupied Palestinian territories. The report also raised investor protection concerns, noting that DCI’s marketing material obscures significant financial and legal risks associated with the bonds: despite Israel’s ongoing war and large fiscal deficit, the bonds offer yields of less than 4%, far below the market rate investors typically demand for high-risk wartime sovereign debt.

    Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, told the conference that “the sale of these bonds is illegal under international law because it goes directly to funding the genocide. It is morally and legally wrong to sell these bonds.” Dr. Shahd Hammouri of Law for Palestine, a co-author of the legal report, added that the CSSF had the discretionary authority under EU prospectus regulation to reject approval when the program poses systemic risks to public interest and peace, and failed to exercise that power. Irish Senator Alice-Mary Higgins, who led advocacy that forced the program out of Ireland, clarified the stakes of Luxembourg’s non-renewal: “There is no other placement: unless we agree to transfer it as the home state, and another country agrees to take it, Israel cannot sell its bonds within the EU.”

    Under EU rules, Israel now has the right to seek a new regulatory host among the bloc’s 27 member states. The Stop Israel Bonds campaign, which has coordinated cross-border advocacy across Ireland, Luxembourg, and the wider EU, has already announced its next goal: preventing the program from being transferred to Germany or any other willing EU government.

    Political economist Shir Hever, who spoke at the May conference, told Middle East Eye the Luxembourg decision could mark a major turning point for Israeli financing of its military operations. “Israel finances its wars with debt,” he explained. “Bonds raise money which keep the war machine marching at the cost of a growing debt.” Hever argued that sustained pressure from the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement and global civil society groups drove the outcome. “If no EU member states step in after Luxembourg, it could force Israel to default on some of its debt, and at the very least will crash the value of the bonds,” he said. “Anyone who was stupid enough to buy the bonds will lose some or all of their investment. It could mean a tipping point for Israel’s economy as well. A state in default cannot import weapons and ammunition.”

    Amnesty International has echoed this call, urging former host Ireland to reject any future transfer request and pressing all other EU member states to refuse to approve a new prospectus. “It is a political choice to allow these bonds to be sold in Europe,” Steve Cockburn, Amnesty’s regional director for Europe, said in the organization’s July statement. “One of the most obvious and effective ways to end Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip is to stop financing it. By continuing to facilitate the sale of these bonds, EU member states risk complicity in Israel’s international crimes against Palestinians.”

    Middle East Eye has reached out to the CSSF and Luxembourg’s Ministry of Finance for additional comment on the terms and timeline of the non-renewal decision.

  • UN human rights chief faces opposition in vote to extend his term for another four years

    UN human rights chief faces opposition in vote to extend his term for another four years

    The United Nations General Assembly is set to hold a high-stakes vote Friday on whether to reappoint incumbent U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk to a second four-year term, with the Austrian lawyer facing escalating pushback from major governments and human rights advocates over his policy stances on the Gaza war and China’s treatment of Uyghur minorities.

    The nomination process itself has already sparked controversy. U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres privately put forward Türk’s name for reappointment after closed-door consultations with member states, bypassing any open public debate before scheduling Friday’s vote. The fast-track process has drawn fierce criticism from multiple parties, starting with the U.S. State Department, which has labeled the rushed vote a clear demonstration of the United Nations’ systemic corruption and institutional incompetence.

    In an official statement, the State Department accused Türk of ignoring documented atrocities around the world to advance a fringe ideological agenda, adding that Washington would not support rewarding what it called an unqualified political ally of Guterres with a new term. Israel’s Foreign Ministry has echoed that criticism, calling Guterres’ push for Türk’s reappointment the secretary-general’s most recent moral failure. The ministry emphasized that the selection of a new human rights chief should be left to Guterres’ successor, arguing that Türk has a years-long record of anti-Israel bias that demands accountability, not an extended tenure.

    Russia has also thrown a wrench into Guterres’ plan, proposing a compromise that would only extend Türk’s term through the end of December — matching the end date of Guterres’ own second five-year term as secretary-general. The Russian U.N. mission noted that no previous high commissioner has completed two full terms since the position was created in 1993, calling Guterres’ push for a full four-year extension unprecedented. A short-term extension would leave the appointment of a permanent new high commissioner to the next U.N. secretary-general, a post currently contested by six candidates. Beyond these major powers, multiple Latin American nations including Nicaragua, Argentina and Paraguay have also raised objections to Türk’s reappointment, while the African regional bloc has stated it has no objections to the nomination.

    The role of U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights has long been defined by its inherent tension: the holder is mandated to publicly call out human rights violations committed by U.N. member states, a requirement that almost guarantees pushback from powerful governments. Türk, a veteran U.N. diplomat who previously worked closely with Guterres at New York headquarters, has not shied away from all criticism — he strongly condemned Russia’s full-scale 2022 invasion of Ukraine, for example. But it is his approach to two of the most divisive human rights issues in global politics that has sparked the current backlash.

    On China, Türk has raised public concerns over a range of issues, from the detention of high-profile individuals including artist Gao Zhen, lawyer Yu Wensheng and Hong Kong media magnate Jimmy Lai, to assimilation and counterterrorism policies targeting ethnic minority communities in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia and Tibet. Critics argue that Türk has failed to adequately follow up on a 2022 report from his predecessor, former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet, which concluded that China’s mass detention of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang may constitute crimes against humanity.

    Ken Roth, former executive director of Human Rights Watch, has emerged as one of Türk’s most prominent critics, calling the high commissioner a disaster for the role and arguing that his failure to hold China accountable for Uyghur rights abuses is the biggest stain on his tenure. “This is the most severe state persecution of a community in the world today, and Türk has simply ignored it,” Roth said. He rejected the U.N. human rights office’s explanation that Türk combines private diplomatic engagement with Beijing and limited public advocacy, arguing that this approach amounts to sidelining the Uyghur people’s plight while pretending to take action. “The job of high commissioner is to build public pressure through tough, timely, provocative criticism,” Roth noted. “Türk has taken one of the most powerful positions in global human rights and rendered it largely harmless, speaking about abuses in terms so bland they put audiences to sleep.”

    The Chinese government has repeatedly denied allegations of mass persecution of Uyghurs, maintaining that its policies in Xinjiang are designed to root out terrorism and religious extremism following years of deadly violence in the region.

    On the Gaza conflict, Türk has drawn criticism from both sides for his middle-ground approach. He has openly condemned Israeli military attacks on Gaza during the war against Hamas, which drew anger from Israel and its allies. But he has also declined to join independent U.N. human rights experts who have formally accused Israel of committing genocide against Palestinian civilians in Gaza — a position that has drawn criticism from pro-Palestinian advocates and many Global South nations. Israel has forcefully rejected all genocide allegations.

    U.N. officials have defended the nomination process, rejecting claims of a rushed, opaque process. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric told reporters Friday that Guterres is strictly following the 1993 resolution that established the high commissioner post, which explicitly allows for a second term. “The secretary-general is acting fully within his authority, following established rules, and the process has been transparent,” Dujarric said. “Consultations were held with member states and regional groups prior to scheduling the vote.”

    A spokesperson for Türk’s office confirmed that the high commissioner is prepared to serve a full second term if confirmed, noting that the core mandate of the role is to promote and protect human rights across all countries, which requires engagement with every U.N. member state regardless of political differences.