标签： Asia

On Saturday, thousands of far-right supporters gathered in central London for Tommy Robinson’s ‘Unite the Kingdom’ rally, a gathering marked by inflammatory rhetoric, hate messaging, and a massive coordinated police deployment that included the first use of live facial recognition technology for a UK public order operation. The event, organized by the convicted British far-right figure whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, drew attendees draped in Union Flags, alongside a wide array of symbols tied to both domestic extremism and international right-wing aligned movements.

Attendees at the rally carried numerous placards targeting UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, as well as materials carrying explicit anti-immigrant, Islamophobic, and antisemitic messaging. Beyond the official flags of the UK’s four constituent nations, attendees displayed Israeli flags and banners linked to the Iranian monarchist movement, one of several international political causes that drew support from the crowd. Video footage shared on social media showed participants carrying wooden crosses, with many banners featuring explicit Christian nationalist slogans.

In what was one of the largest UK police deployments in recent memory for a series of public events, approximately 4,000 officers were assigned to monitor three simultaneous major gatherings: Robinson’s far-right rally, a parallel pro-Palestine demonstration, and the FA Cup Final held between Manchester City and Chelsea at London’s Wembley Stadium. Law enforcement deployed armoured vehicles, surveillance drones, and helicopters, and introduced a new operational tool: live facial recognition cameras, marking the first time the technology has been used to manage a public order event in the UK.

Two arrests were announced by police early Saturday, carried out near Euston Station as the pair were traveling to the rally. In an official statement, police confirmed that one of the two men was taken into custody in connection with a high-profile earlier incident in Birmingham where a man was killed by being run over. The second arrested man was already wanted on an outstanding warrant for a separate charge of encouraging others to attack a police officer.

Robinson framed the 2026 rally as an attempt to match the turnout of his September 2025 demonstration, which drew an estimated 150,000 attendees to central London and pushed a toxic mix of anti-Muslim bigotry, white supremacism, and Christian nationalist ideology. Human rights watchdog Amnesty International issued a sharp rebuke of the Saturday gathering, saying the rally “brings racism, violence and fear to the streets of London.”

The event featured speeches from several high-profile conservative commentators, including former reality TV personality Katie Hopkins and Sharon Osbourne, wife of the late heavy metal icon Ozzy Osbourne. In his address to the crowd, Robinson called for his supporters to shift strategy from street demonstrations to systematic infiltration of mainstream and minor right-wing political parties. “We have to get political, we have to get involved,” he said. “I’m not going to tell you which political party you need to join. We’re a cultural movement. I’m going to tell you that you have to join a political party. I don’t care if it’s Reform, if it’s Advance, or it’s Restore, or it’s the Conservative party. We have to locally get involved in politics.”

The rally drew together a broad coalition of far-right and extreme nationalist actors from across global political movements. Some attendees wore ‘Mega hats’, a UK spin on former U.S. President Donald Trump’s ‘Make America Great Again’ movement, while many Iranian monarchist attendees publicly expressed support for exiled leader Reza Pahlavi and called for the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic Republic. Multiple attendees told on-site reporters they sought a return of the Pahlavi monarchy, echoing chants and messaging seen in recent Iranian opposition protests.

Robinson, who has multiple prior criminal convictions for violence, fraud, and contempt of court, had urged his supporters ahead of the rally to avoid wearing masks and to limit alcohol consumption during the event. The rally comes at a tense moment for UK politics, just one week after the right-wing anti-immigration party Reform UK secured major gains in local council elections across the country. Though Reform UK leader Nigel Farage has publicly distanced his party from Robinson and the rally, the timing of the event has raised concerns about the growing normalization of far-right ideology in UK mainstream political discourse.

Ahead of the gathering, the UK government confirmed that it had barred 11 ‘foreign far-right agitators’ from entering the country to attend the rally, among them Colombian-American anti-Muslim campaigner Valentina Gomez.

Fresh tensions have emerged across the Taiwan Strait following remarks by former U.S. President Donald Trump during a Beijing summit, where he cautioned Taiwan against moving ahead with a formal declaration of independence from mainland China. The comments, delivered after two days of high-level talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping, have reignited debate over the long-standing fragile balance of power in one of the world’s most geopolitically volatile regions.

During post-summit comments, Trump clarified that he had made no binding commitments one way or the other regarding the self-governing island, which Beijing has consistently claimed as an inalienable part of its sovereign territory and has never ruled out seizing by military force. The U.S. leader also noted he would soon make a final decision on a long-awaited $11 billion arms sales package to Taiwan, a deal that has drawn fierce opposition from Beijing.

The United States is legally obligated under the Taiwan Relations Act to provide the island with the means to defend itself, but successive U.S. administrations have had to balance this unofficial security commitment with the need to maintain formal diplomatic and economic ties with Beijing, which adheres firmly to the one-China principle.

In response to Trump’s remarks, Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te reaffirmed his long-held position that the island already views itself as a sovereign, independent state, meaning no formal declaration of independence is necessary. On Saturday, Lai’s spokesperson, Karen Kuo, emphasized that Taiwan’s status as a “sovereign, independent democratic country” is self-evident. However, she added that Taipei remains committed to upholding the long-standing cross-strait status quo, under which the island neither moves toward formal independence nor accepts unification with mainland China.

Public opinion data consistently shows that while a large majority of Taiwan’s population identifies as separate from China, most favor retaining the current status quo over any abrupt change to cross-strait relations. Washington’s long-standing official policy remains unchanged: it does not support Taiwanese independence, and its formal relationship with Beijing is based on recognition of a single Chinese government.

Trump told Fox News in an interview following his meetings with Xi that U.S. policy toward Taiwan had not shifted, and stressed he had no interest in provoking conflict with Beijing. “I’m not looking to have somebody go independent,” he said. “You know, we’re supposed to travel 9,500 miles to fight a war. I’m not looking for that. I want them to cool down. I want China to cool down.”

Speaking to reporters on his return flight to Washington, Trump added that he and Xi had spoken extensively about the Taiwan issue, but declined to answer questions about whether the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan in the event of an attack. He noted that Xi holds extremely strong views on the issue of the island, saying “[Xi] doesn’t want to see a movement for independence.”

Beijing has repeatedly denounced Lai as a separatist “troublemaker” who undermines cross-strait peace, and has ramped up large-scale military drills around Taiwan in recent years. These exercises have significantly raised regional tensions and tested the delicate balance of power that Washington has sought to maintain for decades.

Trump added that he planned to discuss the pending arms sales deal directly with Taiwan’s leadership, though he avoided referring to Lai by his official title, a long-standing convention for U.S. presidents due to the lack of formal diplomatic relations between the two sides. U.S. presidents traditionally do not hold direct public talks with Taiwan’s sitting leader, as such a step would almost certainly trigger a major diplomatic crisis with Beijing.

Despite the warning on independence, Taipei expressed gratitude for Trump’s long-standing security support. “Our nation is grateful to President Trump for his continued support for security in the Taiwan Strait since his first term in office,” Taiwan’s presidential spokesperson said. “Taiwan will continue to deepen co-operation with the US to achieve peace through strength, ensuring that peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait are not threatened or undermined, which serves the common interests of Taiwan, the US, and the global democratic community.”

Central London is preparing for an extraordinary day of overlapping public events this Saturday, as tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators gather to mark the 78th anniversary of the Nakba, a separate far-right rally convened by controversial activist Tommy Robinson gets underway nearby, and one of English football’s biggest annual fixtures kicks off just miles north. The convergence of three high-profile, potentially divisive gatherings has prompted London’s Metropolitan Police to launch what it describes as an unprecedented public order operation, deploying more than 4,000 officers to separate the opposing protest groups and prevent violent confrontation.

The annual Nakba Day march, organized by a broad coalition of advocacy groups led by the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, commemorates a defining historical turning point for the Palestinian people. In 1948, as the state of Israel was established, more than 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their ancestral lands, and an estimated 13,000 more were killed by Zionist militias — a catastrophe that Palestinians have memorialized annually for decades. Organizers have issued clear guidance to participants, urging them to avoid any confrontation with the opposing far-right demonstration.

Robinson, the far-right organizer whose legal name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, will lead his own Unite the Kingdom rally on the same day. His last major event, held in September 2025, drew more than 150,000 attendees, but ended in chaos: far-right participants attacked police officers, chanted virulently anti-Muslim slogans, and left 23 people arrested on public order offences. This Saturday, Robinson’s rally is scheduled to proceed from Kingsway to Trafalgar Square, while the Nakba 78 rally, which was denied permission to march to Trafalgar Square after applying for the route, will travel from Kensington to Pall Mall. Police have structured the plans to keep the two groups on entirely separate routes to avoid clashes.

Adding to the complexity of the operation, the FA Cup final between Chelsea and Manchester City will kick off at 3pm at Wembley Stadium in north London, requiring additional police resourcing to manage crowds and security for the match.

To support the massive policing operation, officers have been granted extraordinary stop-and-search powers that allow them to search any individual without reasonable suspicion of a crime. For the first time ever in a UK public order policing operation, live facial recognition technology will also be deployed, though police confirmed the technology will not be used along the official march routes themselves.

In comments ahead of the protests, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman outlined a hardline approach to provocative expression at the gatherings. “We are committed to taking a more assertive approach to chanting and the displaying of phrases on placards or banners that incite hatred or indicate support for terrorism or other forms of extremism,” Harman said Wednesday. He added that in recent months, multiple people have been arrested and charged for calling for intifada at previous protests, with a number of those cases currently working through the UK court system.

The 78th Nakba Day march marks the first major pro-Palestinian demonstration in the UK since Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s controversial April 30 statement calling for the prosecution of protesters who chant the phrase “globalise the intifada”, a move that drew widespread condemnation from pro-Palestinian advocacy groups across the country. Starmer made the comment in the wake of a April 29 stabbing attack in Golders Green, north London, where two Jewish men and one Muslim man were injured by an assailant who did not use the phrase during the attack. “If you stand alongside people who say globalise the intifada, you are calling for terrorism against Jews,” Starmer said at the time.

In response, more than 50 prominent British Palestinian and Arab public figures released a joint statement Thursday calling on Starmer to guarantee equal protection for Palestinian and Arab communities from hate crimes during Saturday’s demonstrations. “It is painful to feel that our fears are treated as secondary, or worse, that our peaceful commemoration is viewed only as a policing problem,” the statement read, highlighting widespread concern that the rights of peaceful pro-Palestinian protesters are being disproportionately restricted amid heightened political tensions.

In the immediate aftermath of U.S. President Donald Trump’s high-stakes 2025 diplomatic visit to Beijing, newly public comments from the commander-in-chief have sent waves of anxiety through Taiwan, the self-governing democracy that China claims as an integral part of its territory. Speaking in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier that aired immediately after Trump’s return from Beijing, the president framed long-planned U.S. arms sales to Taiwan as a bargaining leverage tool for Washington’s negotiations with Beijing.

When asked whether he would approve a long-delayed $14 billion arms package for the island, Trump made the decision explicitly contingent on Chinese concessions. “I’m holding that in abeyance and it depends on China. It’s a very good negotiating chip for us, frankly. It’s a lot of weapons,” he told Baier.

This framing of Taiwan as a bargaining tool has triggered deep alarm on the island. For decades, U.S. policy has operated under the Taiwan Relations Act, a domestic law that legally requires Washington to provide Taiwan with the defensive capabilities necessary to protect itself from external aggression, and the U.S. has formally committed to viewing any threat to the island as a matter of grave national concern. Unlike many countries that maintain formal diplomatic ties with Beijing, the U.S. does not officially recognize Taiwan as a sovereign state, but it has remained the island’s closest international partner and largest arms supplier for decades.

William Yang, Northeast Asia senior analyst at the International Crisis Group, notes that Trump’s choice to tie arms sales progress to unrelated negotiations with Beijing plays directly into what Taipei has long viewed as a worst-case outcome: Taiwan being sidelined from talks while its fate is decided by outside powers. “Taiwan, instead of being at the negotiating table, is on the menu,” Yang explained.

Trump has not publicly outlined specific concessions he is seeking from Beijing in exchange for blocking the arms deal, but public records show the president has repeatedly pressed China to increase purchases of American manufactured and agricultural goods, and to cooperate more aggressively on international pressure campaigns against Iran’s nuclear program. This is not the first time a Trump administration decision on Taiwan arms sales has sparked friction: in December 2024, Trump and Congress approved a separate $11 billion arms package for Taipei, a move that triggered fierce pushback from Beijing, which responded by staging large-scale live-fire military drills in waters surrounding the island.

During his summit with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing, Xi delivered one of his strongest public warnings on the Taiwan issue to date, framing the question of Taiwan as the most sensitive core issue in U.S.-China relations. Xi explicitly warned Trump that mishandling the dispute could lead to “clashes and even conflicts” between the two global powers. The summit, which wrapped up last week, is set to be followed by a high-profile visit from Russian President Vladimir Putin to Beijing next week, a trip that has underscored deepening strategic alignment between Moscow and Beijing.

In Taipei, government officials moved quickly over the weekend to de-escalate tensions emerging from Trump’s comments, issuing a statement emphasizing that “the consistent U.S. policy and position toward Taiwan remain unchanged.” “The Republic of China is a sovereign, independent, democratic country; this is self-evident, and Beijing’s claims are therefore without merit,” said Presidential Office Spokesperson Karen Kuo. She added that the island remains grateful for bipartisan U.S. support, and stressed that U.S. arms sales to Taiwan are required by longstanding U.S. law.

The arms sales comments are not the only statement from Trump that has stoked unease across Taiwan. In the same Fox News interview, Trump repeated a longstanding call for Taiwan’s world-leading microchip industry to relocate a majority of its advanced manufacturing operations to the United States. Taiwan currently produces more than 90% of the world’s most cutting-edge semiconductors, components critical to everything from consumer smartphones and artificial intelligence systems to advanced military hardware.

“I’d like to see everybody making chips over in Taiwan come into America,” Trump told Baier, describing such a mass relocation as “the greatest thing you can do for the United States.” The president also repeated a years-old accusation that Taiwan “stole” its microchip manufacturing industry from the United States decades ago. This pressure is not new: Taiwan’s industry leader TSMC has already committed $165 billion to build a massive advanced semiconductor manufacturing campus in Arizona, and the Taiwanese government pledged a total of $250 billion in U.S.-based semiconductor investment as part of a broad bilateral trade agreement with Washington earlier this year.

Beyond trade and arms sales, many analysts have also flagged that Trump appears to have adopted key parts of Beijing’s own narrative surrounding Taiwan’s current government. During the summit with Xi, Trump did not alter formal U.S. policy wording on Taiwan, a outcome that many regional observers had feared would see major shifts in Washington’s longstanding position. However, his public comments aligned closely with Beijing’s framing of current Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te, who Beijing has labeled a “diehard Taiwan independence separatist” that threatens to drag the region into war.

Historically, while top U.S. officials do not hold formal public meetings with Taiwanese leaders, the U.S. has signaled quiet support for the island’s government through gestures such as allowing transit stops for Taiwanese leaders on U.S. soil during international trips. Lai, who is set to mark his second year in office in May, has yet to be permitted a transit stop on the U.S. mainland, a shift many analysts interpret as a rollback of U.S. support for the Taiwanese government under the Trump administration.

In his Fox News interview, Trump echoed Beijing’s framing, stating that he does not support a change to the cross-strait status quo, but added, “But they have somebody there now that wants to go independent. They’re going independent because they want to get into a war and they figure they have the United States behind them.” He added that he has no interest in fighting a war with China over Taiwan thousands of miles from U.S. soil.

Wen-Ti Sung, a fellow with the Atlantic Council’s Indo-Pacific Security Program, argues that Trump’s inflammatory comments are consistent with his long history of transactional, deal-focused rhetoric on global security issues. “What matters more is the substance, which Taiwan is holding its collective breath for,” Sung noted. For now, Taipei and regional observers remain on edge waiting to see whether Trump’s comments signal a substantive shift in longstanding U.S. policy toward the island, or just another example of the president’s unconventional negotiating style.