标签： Asia

THE HAGUE, Netherlands – The International Criminal Court (ICC) has officially scheduled the long-awaited trial of former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte to begin on November 30, judicial officials confirmed Wednesday. The landmark proceeding centers on allegations that Duterte oversaw systematic mass killings linked to his notorious nationwide anti-drug crackdown, a campaign that launched decades ago when he served as mayor of Davao City and expanded across the country during his presidential term from 2016 to 2022.

ICC prosecutors hold Duterte directly responsible for dozens of documented extrajudicial murders, part of a broader crackdown that has sparked global outrage over widespread human rights violations. Presiding Judge Joanna Korner emphasized that moving forward with the trial without delay is a top priority for the court, rejecting a request from the court registry to postpone the start date over reported shortages of qualified translators. Korner has directed court administrative staff to prioritize securing qualified interpretation services for Philippine languages, most notably Tagalog, to meet the court’s procedural obligations despite the official working languages of the ICC being English and French.

Duterte, who was taken into custody in the Philippines last year before being transferred to the ICC’s headquarters in The Hague, has repeatedly and unequivocally denied all charges leveled against him. The former leader has exercised his right to skip in-person court appearances for preliminary hearings, and judges only recently confirmed he is medically fit to proceed with trial, after an earlier preliminary hearing was delayed to address health concerns about the 79-year-old ex-president.

The scale of fatalities linked to Duterte’s anti-drug initiative remains heavily contested. Official data from the Philippine national police puts the confirmed death toll at just over 6,000, but leading international and local human rights organizations allege the actual number of extrajudicial killings could be as high as 30,000, with most victims being low-level drug users and small-time dealers. The case marks one of the highest-profile trials of a former head of state before the ICC in recent years.

In a related development that unfolded earlier this month, the ICC unsealed an existing arrest warrant for Ronald Marapon dela Rosa, who served as Philippine national police chief during Duterte’s presidency and was a key architect and enforcer of the anti-drug crackdown. Following an armed standoff at the Philippine Senate building that left multiple people injured, dela Rosa has gone into hiding. Philippine national authorities have launched a nationwide manhunt for the former police chief and have publicly pledged to detain him and transfer him to The Hague to face charges once he is apprehended.

A dramatic week-long rescue operation in central Laos has delivered a partial miracle, as rescuers have pulled five trapped villagers alive from a deep, waterlogged cave system, while search efforts continue for two remaining missing group members. The incident unfolded last Wednesday, when seven villagers from Xaysomboun Province ventured deep into the cave to hunt for gold deposits and wild game. Unforeseen heavy rain triggered sudden landslides that sealed off the cave’s entrance, cutting off the group’s escape route and leaving them stranded deep underground.

Teams of experienced rescuers from Laos and neighboring Thailand quickly launched a high-stakes recovery mission, navigating extremely challenging conditions to reach the stranded group. The complex cave network is not only hundreds of meters deep but also notoriously narrow, with some internal chambers measuring barely 50 centimeters (20 inches) across. Footage released by the rescue teams shows skilled cave divers inching on their hands and knees through murky, almost fully submerged passageways thick with mud.

In a hopeful update shared on social media, the Laotian rescue nonprofit Rescue Volunteer for People confirmed that five of the seven trapped villagers have been found alive and in stable condition. The discovery was made at 16:30 local time (09:30 GMT), according to Thai rescue team member Kengkach Bangkawong, who posted the update to Facebook. Kengkach is no stranger to high-profile cave rescue operations: he was among the first responders who pulled 12 young football players and their coach to safety in the iconic 2018 Tham Luang cave rescue in Chiang Rai, Thailand, where the group was trapped for two weeks in flooded underground chambers. That mission drew global headlines, mobilized more than 10,000 international experts, and has since been depicted in multiple major films and documentaries, including *Thirteen Lives* and *The Rescue*.

Bounkham Luanglath, a representative from Rescue Volunteer for People, told the Associated Press that even amid the partial success of the operation, search efforts for the two missing villagers would not be halted. In an emotional voice message to reporters, he reflected on the grueling work of the past week, saying, “I’m still shaking. Our team made it happen.” Rescuers have warned that narrow passages and lingering floodwaters will continue to complicate the search for the remaining missing villagers as they press forward with the operation.

Hundreds of mountaineering professionals, climbing enthusiasts and government representatives convened in Kathmandu, Nepal this Wednesday for the first-ever Everest Summiteers Summit, a landmark gathering focused on tackling the growing set of threats facing the world’s highest peak as climbing booms and global warming reshapes its terrain. The convening comes amid what experts and local officials describe as the most crowded spring climbing season in Everest’s recorded history, with hundreds of climbers and their supporting Sherpa guides queuing to reach the 8,849-meter summit in just the first few weeks of the season.

This year, Nepal’s Department of Tourism issued a historic 494 climbing permits to foreign mountaineers, and preliminary estimates indicate that more than 900 people have already reached the summit — a new all-time high for the annual spring climbing window. Official final figures will be released after the season concludes later this month, but the unprecedented volume of climbers has already sparked urgent calls for reform from seasoned mountaineers who have spent decades on the mountain.

Kami Rita Sherpa, the Sherpa guide who just set a new global record for the most Everest summits with 32 successful ascents, used the summit to push for immediate government action to cap permit numbers. “Nepal should only allow no more than 250 climber permits issued for the Nepal-facing side of the mountain,” he told attendees. “A hard limit on numbers would be the best step forward to protect everyone on the mountain.”

Overcrowding is not a new issue, but viral images from recent climbing seasons have laid bare the severity of the problem: queues of hundreds of climbers clipped to fixed ropes, stuck in hours-long “traffic jams” waiting for their turn to reach the summit, a scenario that dramatically increases the risk of exhaustion, frostbite and fatal accidents at extreme altitude.

Beyond crowd-related safety risks, delegates also focused on the persistent challenge of waste management on the 29,032-foot peak. During the current season alone, roughly 3,000 people — climbers, guides, support workers and porters — are operating across Everest’s base camps and climbing routes. While Nepal has enforced strict regulations requiring climbers to carry out all of their waste under penalty of losing their $4,000 garbage deposit, tons of discarded equipment, food packaging and human waste still remain on the mountain’s slopes each season after climbing teams pack up their camps.

Renowned Chinese climber He Jing emphasized that preserving the Himalayas’ fragile ecosystem must remain a core priority for the global climbing community. “We should carry all our rubbish off the mountain, and we all have a responsibility to protect our Himalayas,” she said during the summit’s panel discussion.

Delegates also addressed another gap in current regulation: the lack of required experience for aspiring Everest climbers. Currently, any applicant can secure a permit by paying the $11,000 government fee, regardless of their prior high-altitude climbing experience. Many seasoned climbers say the rise of social media has fueled a boom in inexperienced climbers who underestimate the extreme danger of an Everest expedition.

Nathaniel Douglas, a seasoned climber from Seattle, who spoke to the Associated Press on the sidelines of the conference, noted that many first-time aspirants develop unrealistic expectations from curated social media content. “They really don’t understand what mountaineering actually demands, what it truly takes to summit Mount Everest and get back down safely,” he explained. In response to this gap, Nepal’s government is currently drafting new regulations that will require all permit applicants to document prior high-altitude climbing experience before being approved.

The final major risk highlighted by attendees is the growing instability of the mountain caused by rising global temperatures. British mountaineer Adriana Brownlee, the youngest woman to successfully summit all 14 of the world’s 8,000-meter peaks, explained that warmer temperatures are accelerating melt in glacial features like the Khumbu Icefall, a notoriously dangerous section of the popular southern route to Everest’s summit.

“Every year, the Khumbu Icefall grows more unstable because of global warming,” Brownlee said. “Meltwater under the ice is moving faster, which makes seracs — massive ice blocks — far more likely to collapse as the underlying structure shifts.” Last month, just before the start of the main climbing window, a massive unstable serac hanging directly over the route just above base camp forced officials to delay all climbs through the icefall for more than a week, a clear warning of the growing risks posed by a changing climate.

MANILA, Philippines — Nearly three years after Rodrigo Duterte stepped down from his six-year presidential term, a new independent fact-finding initiative led by one of the country’s top Roman Catholic leaders is breaking the long-standing silence surrounding the former president’s controversial and deadly anti-narcotics crackdown. On Wednesday, the coalition launched the non-governmental EJK Truth Commission, an independent body tasked with documenting witness testimonies, compiling physical evidence, and formalizing a public record of the thousands of extrajudicial killings tied to the drug war — work that will be made available to domestic and international prosecutors pursuing accountability.

The crackdown, which Duterte oversaw from 2016 to 2022, left an estimated thousands of mostly low-income suspected drug users and dealers dead, according to human rights monitoring groups. The campaign drew global condemnation from Western governments and human rights organizations over the scale of unlawful killings. Last year, Duterte was taken into custody to face charges of crimes against humanity before the International Criminal Court (ICC) based in The Hague, Netherlands. Ronald dela Rosa, Duterte’s staunch political ally and the former national police chief who first implemented the anti-drug crackdown, is named as a co-perpetrator in the ICC case and has an active arrest warrant against him. Philippine authorities have pledged to execute the warrant and transfer dela Rosa to the global court, but the senator has evaded capture and remains in hiding. Both Duterte and dela Rosa have repeatedly denied authorizing extrajudicial killings, though Duterte openly issued public death threats against drug suspects throughout his presidency.

To date, human rights groups note that the vast majority of police officers directly implicated in the killings have never faced formal investigation, with only a tiny number ever convicted on charges related to the crackdown. For many victim families, systemic delays and institutional cover-ups have prevented them from accessing justice for years. “This is long overdue,” Cardinal Pablo Virgilio David, the commission’s founder, told reporters during a Manila news conference. David emphasized that the new body is not focused solely on prosecution: it aims to provide closure for victims’ families, offer a pathway to accountability for repentant law enforcement officers, and support national healing. “This is an opportunity for a catharsis … so we can recover our dignity as a country,” David said. “Ultimately, what we aspire for is healing not only for the victims but also our institutions.”

Heading the commission’s fact-finding work is Raul Pangalangan, a highly respected Philippine legal scholar and former ICC judge. Pangalangan explained that the body’s core mission is to ensure the experiences of victims, survivors and bereaved families are not erased: “It was created to ensure that the stories of victims, survivors and families are heard, verified and preserved.” The commission plans to hold public hearings across the country to collect testimonies, breaking what Pangalangan called a years-long “conspiracy of silence” that allowed the killings to continue without accountability. “These things happened because everybody looked the other way,” he added.

The commission will share its verified findings with domestic and international justice and human rights bodies, enabling prosecuting authorities to use the evidence to advance cases against implicated officials and law enforcers. David has called on civil society organizations, academic institutions, religious groups and other stakeholders to support the initiative, noting that a large German charitable foundation has already committed funding to support the commission’s work.

Still, commission members acknowledge the work will face significant barriers, years after most of the killings took place. Raquel Fortun, a forensic pathologist at the state-run University of the Philippines and a commission member, told the Associated Press that many implicated law enforcement officials have actively taken steps to cover up evidence of unlawful killings. She gave the example of 13 exhumed remains of drug suspects, whose original death certificates issued during Duterte’s term listed natural causes such as heart attack and pneumonia as their cause of death. “When I examined the remains, I found that they were hit by gunfire,” Fortun confirmed. That pattern of falsified records, she added, underscores how difficult it will be to reconstruct an accurate account of the drug war’s death toll and responsibility for the killings.

DHARAMSHALA, India – On Wednesday, Penpa Tsering formally took the oath of office for his second consecutive five-year term as the elected president of the Central Tibetan Administration, the body that functions as Tibet’s government-in-exile based in the northern Indian hill town of Dharamshala. The 58-year-old leader first assumed the top executive post in 2021, after securing an initial victory in exile community elections, and won re-election in February’s vote that was open to Tibetans residing across India and other countries around the globe. Tsering’s long career in Tibetan exile governance stretches back to 1996, when he won his first seat in the Tibetan Parliament-in-Exile, and he went on to serve as the body’s speaker from 2008 until his election to the presidency.

Founded in 1959 after the 14th Dalai Lama fled into exile, the Central Tibetan Administration – formerly known as the Tibetan government-in-exile – operates as a full decentralized governance structure with separate executive, judicial, and legislative branches to serve the global Tibetan exile community, which numbers roughly 150,000 people around the world. This year’s February election marked the fourth direct vote for the exile leadership, a milestone that comes 13 years after the Dalai Lama, Tibet’s revered spiritual leader, formally devolved all governing authority to the elected leadership and stepped back from any formal role in the administration.

The swearing-in ceremony unfolded with traditional Tibetan Buddhist ritual, with the 89-year-old Dalai Lama escorted to the event venue by a procession of red-robed monks, accompanied by the sound of ceremonial drums and chanted prayers. In front of an audience of hundreds of monks, community leaders, and ordinary Tibetans, Yeshi Wangmo, Chief Justice Commissioner of the Tibetan Supreme Justice Commission, administered the oath of office to Tsering.

In his first public remarks after taking office, Tsering reaffirmed the exile administration’s longstanding commitment to the Middle Way Policy, a framework first articulated by the Dalai Lama that seeks a negotiated resolution of the Tibet issue through nonviolent means and bilateral dialogue with Beijing, with the goal of achieving a lasting mutually beneficial outcome for all parties. “Until a resolution is achieved, we will continue the back-channel communications with caution and steadiness with the Chinese government,” Tsering stated in his address.

The inauguration comes against a backdrop of long-running geopolitical and diplomatic tensions surrounding the status of Tibet. China maintains that Tibet has been an inalienable part of its sovereign territory since the mid-13th century, and that the Chinese Communist Party has administered the Himalayan region since 1951. However, a large share of the global Tibetan community rejects this claim, arguing that Tibet functioned as an effectively independent state for most of its modern history, and that Beijing has systematically exploited the region’s rich natural resources while eroding and suppressing its distinct cultural and religious identity.

The Chinese government does not recognize the legitimacy of the Central Tibetan Administration, and has not held formal dialogue with envoys representing the Dalai Lama since 2010. While India officially recognizes Chinese sovereignty over Tibet, it has allowed the Tibetan exile administration to maintain its headquarters in Dharamshala since the 1950s. Beijing has long accused the Dalai Lama of pursuing a secret agenda to separate Tibet from China, a claim the spiritual leader has repeatedly denied, noting that the Middle Way Policy does not seek full independence but rather genuine autonomy for Tibet within the Chinese constitutional framework. Still, a growing number of radical Tibetan community groups have pushed for full independence in recent years, as the lack of progress in talks with Beijing has left many exiles frustrated with the existing policy framework.

In the lead-up to this week’s inauguration, Yu Jing, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in New Delhi, issued a formal rejection of the exile body’s legitimacy, claiming that “it is not recognized by any sovereign country in the world” and has no authority to speak on behalf of the Tibetan people or oversee the future reincarnation process of the Dalai Lama. The question of the Dalai Lama’s succession has emerged as a major point of tension in recent years: on his 90th birthday last year, the spiritual leader publicly asserted that Chinese authorities would have no legitimate role in selecting his successor after his death, and that the centuries-old institution of the Dalai Lama would continue regardless of Beijing’s objections.