标签： Asia

Exclusive new data obtained by Middle East Eye (MEE) has uncovered a striking electoral trend from England’s 7 May local elections: candidates who publicly backed Palestinian rights outperformed nominees from most major established parties, only trailing the right-wing Reform Party in win rates for contested seats.

The data confirms that public opposition to ongoing British policy cooperation with Israel remains a deeply resonant political issue across England, and that running on a clear pro-Palestine platform has emerged as a measurable predictor of electoral success in dozens of local races.

All candidates who signed the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC)’s widely supported “Pledge for Palestine” secured victory in 27% of the seats they contested. By comparison, Reform candidates posted a 30% win rate, while the Labour Party — the current national governing party — won just 22% of its contested seats, and the Liberal Democrats followed closely behind at 21%.

More than 1,600 candidates across the political spectrum signed the pledge, which commits elected officials to use their local office to advance Palestinian human rights. Signatories vow to take all appropriate steps to uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people, and to support efforts to secure accountability for what the pledge frames as Israel’s crimes of genocide, military occupation, ethnic cleansing and apartheid.

The pledge also requires candidates to prevent their local councils from complicity in or normalization of Israel’s alleged violations of international law. Key commitments include divesting council pension funds and other publicly administered assets from companies that enable these violations, and aligning local procurement policies with these goals.

Signatures came from a broad cross-section of political groups: more than 1,000 Green Party candidates, over 200 Labour candidates, more than 200 independent and small local party nominees, as well as a number of Liberal Democrat and Conservative candidates. Pro-Palestine candidates were particularly likely to run and win in seats with large youth, student, ethnic minority and Muslim populations.

One of the most high-profile successes came in Hackney, east London, where 31 Green candidates signed the pledge, including mayoral candidate Zoe Garbett, who won her race. The Greens secured a dominant majority on Hackney Council, taking 42 of the body’s 57 total seats. In neighboring Haringey, north London, the Greens surged to 28 council seats, overtaking Labour and coming just short of a full majority, with 26 of the party’s successful candidates having signed the pledge. Across the Midlands, in Bradford and Birmingham, dozens of independent and Green signatories won their local council contests.

Jeanine Hourani, a representative of Palestinian Youth Movement Britain — a partner in the Vote Palestine grassroots coalition that backed the pledge campaign — emphasized that the results confirm Palestine is a critical local issue for voters across England. “In the months leading up to election day, 16 local campaigns were launched, spending thousands of hours canvassing and organising dozens of local action days,” Hourani said. She added that the outcome highlights how essential grassroots community organizing is to the pro-Palestine movement, while sending a clear warning to mainstream elected officials: “Pledge signatories collectively outperformed almost every political party, and their successes will only grow as we look towards the 2029 general election.”

Asma Alam, a newly elected Green councillor for Manchester’s Burnage ward, who won her seat after signing the pledge, framed Palestinian rights as an inherent local government responsibility. “If councils have power over pensions, procurement and public money, then Palestine is absolutely a local government issue,” she said. Alam pointed to Greater Manchester’s pension fund, the largest local government pension pool in England, valued at more than £31 billion. Campaigners have identified nearly £905 million in fund investments tied to companies that they say are complicit in Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. “We cannot pass motions, say the right things, and then carry on as normal,” Alam said. “For me, this is simple: I will not take a council pension while that pension is tied to Palestinian suffering. Divestment is not symbolic. It is about refusing to let public money bankroll injustice.”

The electoral success of pro-Palestine candidates comes against a backdrop of growing tension between the national Labour government and pro-Palestine activists within and outside the party. In January, Communities Secretary Steve Reed issued a warning to all Labour-run local councils that they could face legal action if they move to boycott Israeli businesses, directing councils to a 2016 national government ban on procurement boycotts targeting Israeli firms and companies that trade with Israel.

Over the past two years, dozens of local authorities have passed votes to boycott companies linked to Israeli war crimes, arms supplies to Israel, or economic activity in the occupied Palestinian territories. Multiple local council pension funds — including those in Islington, Lewisham, Wandsworth and Caerphilly — have already removed companies listed by the United Nations as operating in occupied Palestinian territories from their investment portfolios.

Prominent veteran pollster Sir John Curtis noted after the elections that the Green Party, which drew the largest share of pro-Palestine candidates, inflicted far more damage to Labour’s vote share across England than the Reform Party, a shift that experts attribute in part to the Green Party’s clear embrace of pro-Palestine policy.

MEE, which publishes independent, in-depth coverage of the Middle East, North Africa and global affairs, obtained the exclusive data for this report.

ASTANA, KAZAKHSTAN — At a high-stakes summit of the Russia-led Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU) held Friday in Central Asia’s capital, top leaders from the bloc have issued a stark warning to member state Armenia: move forward with plans to seek European Union membership, and face immediate suspension from the Moscow-dominated economic alliance. The public rebuke amplifies already simmering tensions between the Kremlin and Armenia’s pro-Western government, just days ahead of a critical national parliamentary election that will shape the small Caucasus nation’s future geopolitical alignment.

Russian President Vladimir Putin was joined by the heads of state of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan — the four full voting members of the 2015-founded single market bloc — in issuing the demand. The group emphasized that Armenia’s formal bid for EU membership creates “significant systemic risks” to the collective economic security of all EAEU members, who enjoy tariff-free movement of goods, capital, and labor across their shared market. They instructed top regional officials to prepare a comprehensive policy report by December detailing the procedural and economic implications of suspending Armenia’s EAEU membership.

In an unusual step that goes beyond standard bloc diplomacy, the four leaders also called on Armenian authorities to put the geopolitical choice to a national public vote: let Armenian voters decide between pursuing integration with the EU or retaining full membership in the Eurasian Economic Union. That call has already been rejected by Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan, who has led the country since the 2018 Velvet Revolution and is currently campaigning to retain his office in the June 7 parliamentary election.

The escalation from EAEU leaders is no coincidence: it comes just over a week before Armenians head to the polls, with Pashinyan’s government having spent the past two years steadily shifting Armenia’s foreign policy away from Moscow and toward Western institutions. Last year, Yerevan signed a US-brokered peace deal with neighboring Azerbaijan, ending decades of armed conflict over the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Since then, Pashinyan has openly declared his government’s intention to pursue full EU membership, and already suspended Armenia’s participation in the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), the Moscow-dominated regional security bloc.

This deliberate westward pivot has enraged the Kremlin, which has long viewed Armenia as a key ally in the South Caucasus. Putin has repeatedly warned Pashinyan that moving closer to the EU would bring severe economic consequences for Armenia. In recent weeks, Moscow has already taken preliminary punitive steps: it has threatened to cut off supplies of heavily subsidized natural gas — a critical energy input for Armenia’s economy — and imposed a full ban on imports of Armenia’s signature brandy, as well as fresh fruit and vegetable products. Analysts widely view these measures as direct interference in the upcoming election, designed to turn voters against Pashinyan and his pro-Western agenda.

Putin doubled down on that position Friday, stressing that Armenia cannot maintain membership in both blocs simultaneously. He warned that if Armenia withdraws from the EAEU, the country could see its total gross domestic product drop by as much as 14% as it loses access to the large, tariff-free Eurasian market. In comments that carried clear historical weight, Putin also drew a direct parallel between the current standoff with Armenia and the 2014 crisis in Ukraine. At that time, Ukraine’s decision to move forward with an association agreement with the EU led to the ouster of Moscow’s allied president, Russia’s annexation of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, the outbreak of a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, and ultimately the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 — the largest European military conflict since World War II.

Pashinyan has pushed back against the Kremlin’s warnings, arguing that for the immediate future, Armenia can balance its existing EAEU membership with deepening political and economic cooperation with the European Union. As campaigning enters its final stretch, the election is set to deliver a clear verdict on whether Armenians will back their government’s push westward, or pivot back to closer alignment with Russia.

Across the sidewalks outside Tunis’s Court of First Instance, small, steady gatherings have become a routine sight in recent weeks. demonstrators from varying walks of life gather here: some demand safeguards for the democratic freedoms Tunisians have long fought for, while others push back against what they label arbitrary administrative suspensions that target their work. What unites all these protesters is a shared concern: the steady erosion of civic space in Tunisia, a shift that many activists and regional observers warn is growing into a permanent new reality.

Over the past 24 months, dozens of non-governmental organizations across this North African Maghreb nation have been hit with 30-day administrative suspensions and court-ordered threats of full dissolution. The crackdown has accelerated in recent months, with some of the country’s most prominent and respected civil society groups landing in authorities’ crosshairs.

Among the targeted organizations is the Tunisian League for Human Rights (LTDH), Africa’s oldest human rights group and a core member of the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet. That quartet was awarded the 2015 Nobel Peace Prize for its foundational work steering Tunisia through its post-uprising democratic transition. Also targeted is Belgium-based Lawyers Without Borders (ASF). The Al Khatt foundation, owner of award-winning independent investigative media outlet Inkyfada, has also faced the same punitive measures. Inkyfada was initially suspended for 30 days and is now facing full dissolution, with a critical court hearing scheduled for Monday.

“It all started in October 2025 with a sudden, one-month suspension designed to silence our publications,” Manel Lassoued, Inkyfada’s editorial director, told Middle East Eye. “But we didn’t stop. We kept working and appealed the decision, trusting in our fundamental right to a defense and an impartial justice system.”

Lassoued’s outlet is far from alone. The Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, Aswat Nissa, Nawaat, the International Commission of Jurists and the World Organisation Against Torture are just a handful of the additional groups that have received court-ordered suspensions. The crackdown comes against a backdrop of steady erosion of the political and civil liberties gained after the 2011 Tunisian uprising, a shift that began five years ago when President Kais Saied seized sweeping executive power.

On 25 July 2021, Saied dissolved the sitting government, froze parliamentary activity, and began ruling by decree—a move that rights organizations have characterized as a steady slide toward authoritarian rule. He later pushed through a new constitution that vastly expanded presidential authority, while increasing pressure on independent institutional checkpoints including the Supreme Judicial Council, which has been effectively stripped of all regulatory and oversight powers.

This sweeping institutional overhaul has been paired with a wide-ranging campaign of arrests and administrative harassment targeting civil society groups working across nearly every sector, from human rights documentation and migration policy to anti-corruption investigation and social justice advocacy. Current reports indicate that roughly 600 organizations are now under formal government investigation.

Tunisian authorities justify the crackdown by framing the measures as a crackdown on suspicious foreign funding and a defense of national interests. But international rights groups including Amnesty International dismiss this framing as a transparent excuse to intimidate independent NGOs and further narrow space for civic action.

Amnesty’s analysis finds that what began as low-level intimidation, arbitrary regulatory restrictions, asset freezes and politically motivated prosecutions of NGO staff has now escalated into a coordinated effort to use the country’s judiciary to shutter independent civil society organizations entirely. Under current Tunisian law—specifically Decree-Law No 88, which regulates association activity—groups face a three-step punitive process: an initial administrative warning, followed by temporary suspension, and ultimately full dissolution. Multiple prominent organizations have already reached the final, permanent dissolution stage, including Inkyfada and Mnemty, a Tunis-based anti-racism association. Mnemty’s founder, Saadia Mosbah, has been in detention for two years and was recently sentenced to eight years in prison on financial misconduct charges that supporters call politically motivated.

Lamine Benghazi, head of advocacy for the Euro-Mediterranean region at ASF, told Middle East Eye that the crackdown extends far beyond individual organizations. “The entire institutional framework inherited from the democratic transition has been targeted,” he explained. “But it is not only about institutions: these authorities want to erase the entire political system. They are trying to erase an entire political ecosystem – one that includes the media, associations and trade unions.”

The April 2026 suspension of LTDH sparked widespread public outrage, with hundreds of demonstrators gathering on Tunis’s central Avenue Bourguiba to protest the decision. LTDH was one of the last independent organizations still granted access to Tunisian prisons, where dozens of dissidents, journalists and political opponents are currently detained.

“We consider the suspension to be a political decision disguised as a judicial one as it comes within a context of restricting civic space and targeting independent organisations that are fighting for human rights in Tunisia,” LTDH president Bassem Trifi told Amnesty International. “Beyond targeting human rights organisations, human rights and freedoms are being severely undermined, especially the rights to freedom of expression, association and assembly.”

Sihem Bensedrine, one of Tunisia’s most prominent veteran civil society leaders and a journalist who previously led the post-2011 Truth and Dignity Commission (IVD), was among the protesters who turned out to support LTDH. The IVD was the independent body tasked with investigating systemic human rights abuses committed under former presidents Habib Bourguiba and Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali, as well as crimes committed during the 2011 uprising that ousted Ben Ali. Bensedrine was arrested in August 2024 on charges of falsifying the IVD’s final public report. She was released only in February 2025, after a months-long hunger strike that severely damaged her health. She still carries the physical and psychological scars of what she calls unjust detention, and currently faces multiple additional trials linked to her work with the IVD.

“They are using new repressive techniques: they do not directly shut down associations, they suspend them,” she told Middle East Eye. “And this is even more insidious than simply banning activities, because it aims to spread fear and create a reflex of self-censorship.”
Bensedrine, who has been politically active since the Bourguiba era and has survived multiple periods of detention under past authoritarian regimes, says authoritarian control has reached unprecedented levels under Saied. “I had the feeling that, for the current regime, imprisoning people who are considered troublesome has become a kind of royal lettre de cachet: they lock you up and you never get out,” she said. “I felt that I could remain there for a very long time. At a certain point I told myself: ‘No, I cannot accept this any more.’ There was absolutely no reason for me to be in prison.”

As Bensedrine faced prosecution, a wider wave of arrests swept up other leading civil society and media figures, including prominent lawyer and television commentator Sonia Dahmani, and veteran columnist and radio commentator Mourad Zeghidi. In both cases, authorities relied on Decree-Law 54 of 2022, a controversial law the government has repeatedly used to prosecute people accused of spreading “false information” deemed harmful to public security. Their arrests have become emblematic of the government’s growing reliance on the judiciary to silence critical public voices.

Dahmani was released in November 2025 after 18 months in detention, but was again sentenced to two years in prison earlier this week; she has filed an appeal against the new ruling. Zeghidi remains behind bars, facing additional charges including money laundering and corruption that his legal team describe as baseless and politically motivated.

The steady erosion of press freedom in Tunisia is reflected in the 2026 World Press Freedom Index published by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which ranks Tunisia 137th out of 180 countries, down seven spots from its 2025 ranking of 129th. “This decline reflects a deeper trend that RSF has been systematically documenting,” Oussama Bouagila, RSF’s regional advocacy officer and deputy bureau chief for North Africa, told Middle East Eye. “RSF recorded 39 prosecutions against journalists based on laws unrelated to journalism. President Saied has repeatedly called on public media to align themselves with what he describes as a war of national liberation.”
Bouagila noted that the 2011 revolution opened an unprecedented era of media freedom in Tunisia, but that progress was abruptly halted after the July 2021 power grab and the subsequent concentration of all political authority in Saied’s hands.

The case of Inkyfada stands as one of the most visible examples of this ongoing crackdown. Widely recognized across Tunisia and the international community for its hard-hitting investigations into Tunisian politics and society—including groundbreaking reporting on abuses targeting the sub-Saharan migrant community after Saied labeled migrants a “demographic threat”—the outlet remains a rare independent space for thousands of Tunisian readers.

Ahead of Inkyfada’s 1 June dissolution hearing, Lassoued emphasized that the outlet has complied fully with all Tunisian regulatory requirements. “Looking ahead to 1 June, let us be clear: we have by no means broken the law or the norms of civil society work in Tunisia. We have done everything by the book, including the consistent declaration of all foreign funding. We expect nothing less than justice,” she said. Lassoued added that the crackdown represents a fundamental shift in the country’s political trajectory: “What we are witnessing in Tunisia is no longer just a shift in attitude; it is a systematic, structural crackdown on independent media and civil society.”

One of the most iconic religious institutions in China, the 1,500-year-old Shaolin Temple — globally renowned as the birthplace of Shaolin kung fu — has been rocked by a high-profile corruption case that concluded with a lengthy prison sentence for its former top leader. Shi Yongxin, who served as the temple’s abbot for more than two decades before his ousting, has been handed a 24-year jail term after being convicted of multiple serious crimes including embezzlement and bribery, according to official court announcements from China’s Henan Province.

The Dengfeng People’s Court, based in the central Chinese province where the mountain-side Shaolin Temple is located, detailed that over a 22-year period spanning from 2003 to 2025, Shi misappropriated approximately 282 million yuan ($42 million) in assets belonging to the temple. Beyond the large-scale embezzlement, the court found that Shi exploited his influential position as abbot to secure unlawful profits worth millions of yuan from temple construction and development projects. The verdict also confirmed that he engaged in bribery, offering substantial illegal payments to government officials to advance his personal interests.

As reported by China’s official state news agency Xinhua, Shi, whose legal birth name is Liu Yingcheng, had already pleaded guilty to the charges against him prior to the court’s final ruling. Following the announcement of the 24-year sentence on Friday, Shi confirmed that he would not challenge the verdict through an appeal, closing the legal chapter of one of the most high-profile religious corruption cases in recent Chinese history.

Shi took control of the Shaolin Temple as abbot in 1999, and quickly gained international attention for his unconventional approach to expanding the temple’s global footprint. Often nicknamed the “CEO monk” for his corporate-style branding strategy, Shi transformed the little-known mountain temple into a globally recognized cultural brand. Under his management, Shaolin Temple opened dozens of martial arts schools across multiple continents, launched a world-famous touring kung fu performance troupe, and turned the temple into one of China’s top cultural tourist attractions, drawing hundreds of thousands of pilgrims and visitors from China and abroad every year.

This case is not the first time Shi has faced public scrutiny. Back in 2015, he faced initial allegations of embezzlement and violating family planning regulations by fathering multiple children. At the time, he was cleared of all charges, and he dismissed the claims in a 2015 interview with BBC Chinese, stating, “If there were a problem, it would have surfaced long ago.” It was not until recent years that a renewed investigation uncovered the extensive corruption that led to his conviction. In 2025, the China Buddhist Association officially defrocked Shi, stripping him of his religious status months before the court handed down its guilty verdict.

Beyond its religious and martial heritage, Shaolin Temple holds a unique place in global pop culture. The temple gained widespread Western attention after the release of the 1982 hit film *Shaolin Temple* starring martial arts legend Jet Li. It has since been referenced in tracks by iconic American hip-hop group Wu-Tang Clan and even inspired a spin-off of the popular fighting video game franchise Mortal Kombat, cementing its status as a globally recognized cultural icon.