Global Pulse

标签： Asia

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  • UN expert Albanese says Khan’s removal ‘lines up neatly with fight to neutralise Netanyahu’s warrant’

    UN expert Albanese says Khan’s removal ‘lines up neatly with fight to neutralise Netanyahu’s warrant’

    In a landmark and unprecedented move that has sent shockwaves through international legal circles, 82 out of 125 member states of the International Criminal Court (ICC) voted in a secret ballot at a special New York session to remove sitting chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office over unproven misconduct allegations. This marks the first time in the court’s history that an incumbent chief prosecutor has been dismissed, and the move has already sparked fierce debate over its political motivations.

    Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, has publicly connected Khan’s removal to a coordinated global campaign to invalidate the ICC’s arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in the Gaza Strip. Writing on the social platform X on Saturday, Albanese emphasized that Khan’s ousting lines up perfectly with efforts to neutralize the outstanding arrest warrant, arguing that coincidence is not an acceptable explanation in the framework of modern international law. She added that the effort to remove Khan proves that accountability mechanisms genuinely threaten the apartheid regime in Israel and its allies, and called on legal practitioners and judicial bodies across the globe to step up their work for justice if the ICC itself is weakened by political pressure.

    Albanese’s remarks were made in direct response to an Israeli media report alleging that Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar led an intensive diplomatic campaign and oversaw a dedicated task force to push for Khan’s removal from his post. This effort began shortly after Khan made the landmark decision in May 2024 to seek arrest warrants for Netanyahu and former Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant over their roles in alleged war crimes in Gaza. The move immediately unleashed a widespread campaign of threats and economic sanctions against Khan and other ICC officials who supported the court’s investigation into potential crimes in Palestinian territories.

    This is not the first time Albanese has warned of a coordinated push to oust Khan. Earlier this year, after a panel of three independent judicial experts appointed by the ICC’s own oversight body unanimously cleared Khan of all misconduct allegations—finding that evidence from UN investigators failed to prove any breach of duty or professional misconduct—the Bureau of the Assembly of States Parties, an executive body of 21 diplomats, voted to set aside the panel’s clearing. In an additional move first revealed by Middle East Eye, the bureau altered voting rules ahead of the final dismissal vote, collapsing a planned two-stage voting process into a single motion and lowering the threshold required to remove Khan from office. Albanese warned back in March that despite the judicial clearing, the so-called pro-apartheid camp would still push for Khan’s removal, and called on supporters of international justice to block the attempt.

    Pressure against ICC officials has intensified steadily since the announcement of the arrest warrants, with the United States imposing sanctions on multiple ICC representatives. The Donald Trump administration placed sanctions on Albanese in July 2025, just days after she published a report naming more than 60 companies that she argued were profiting from Israel’s ongoing occupation of Palestinian territories. Khan became the first ICC official to be sanctioned under the same executive order in February 2025, and by the end of last year, 11 ICC officials—including both deputy prosecutors and multiple judges who ruled against Israel’s position on the Gaza investigation—had been targeted with sanctions. Currently, the two acting heads of the prosecutor’s office, Nazhat Shameem Khan and Mame Mandiaye Niang, were also sanctioned by the U.S. in August under the same executive order.

    The arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant remain active, as only ICC judges have the authority to withdraw them. Israel, which is not a state party to the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, has repeatedly called for the warrants to be scrapped and has launched multiple legal challenges to invalidate them, two of which are still pending before the court. Before Khan’s dismissal was officially confirmed, Saar repeated Israel’s long-debunked claim that the warrants were rushed and issued only to distract from the misconduct allegations against Khan, writing on X that “These warrants, issued against a country that is not even a member of the ICC, should never have been sought in the first place and should be revoked immediately.”

    In the aftermath of the dismissal vote, the ICC Office of the Prosecutor released an official statement confirming that its work, including the investigation into potential crimes in Palestinian territories, would continue without interruption. Elections to select a new permanent chief prosecutor will be held in the coming period, though the ICC’s governing body has not yet released an official timeline for the process.

  • Formula 1’s Bahrain Grand Prix rescheduled to take place in Malaysia in October

    Formula 1’s Bahrain Grand Prix rescheduled to take place in Malaysia in October

    In a major shift to the 2025 Formula 1 calendar triggered by escalating regional conflict in the Middle East, series organizers have confirmed the Bahrain Grand Prix will be relocated to Malaysia’s iconic Sepang International Circuit, marking the sport’s return to the Southeast Asian nation for the first time since 2017. The relocated race is currently scheduled for October 4, slotted into the existing calendar slot between the Azerbaijan and Singapore Grands Prix, pending final formal approval from the FIA World Motor Sport Council, the governing body of global motorsport.

    The decision comes after F1 called off planned races in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia earlier this year, which were originally set for March and April, as tensions between Iran and neighboring powers escalated into open military conflict. In a notable break from standard event organization, the relocated race will retain the official Bahrain Grand Prix branding despite being hosted on the opposite side of the Asian continent—more than 6,000 kilometers from Bahrain’s capital of Manama.

    Series leadership framed the move as a solution to preserve the full 2025 racing calendar while welcoming back a beloved historic venue. “Most importantly, this is fantastic news for our fans. They will continue to enjoy a full and exciting Formula 1 calendar, while also seeing the sport return to a great venue,” said Stefano Domenicali, F1 President and Chief Executive Officer, in an official statement Sunday. “Malaysia is an incredible country, and Sepang holds a special place in Formula 1 history. It will provide a spectacular setting for racing and an unforgettable experience for fans at the circuit and watching around the world.”

    Bahrain’s senior leadership also reaffirmed the country’s long-term commitment to Formula 1 amid ongoing regional instability. Salman bin Hamad Al Khalifa, Bahrain’s Crown Prince and Prime Minister, noted that the relocation decision underscores the kingdom’s ongoing dedication to the sport. “Amid ongoing regional challenges, Bahrain is proud to stand as a pillar of stability for Formula 1, and we will continue to do everything in our power to ensure a successful and memorable race for everyone involved,” he said.

    While this cross-border race rebranding is unusual, it is not without precedent in F1 history. For decades, the San Marino Grand Prix was hosted at Italy’s Imola circuit rather than in San Marino itself, with the race last running under that name in 2006. Germany twice hosted Grands Prix officially branded for Luxembourg, and France held a one-off Swiss Grand Prix early in the sport’s history. No prior example, however, has seen two host countries separated by the full geographic distance that divides Bahrain and Malaysia.

    Since hosting its final original F1 race in 2017, Malaysia has shifted its focus to hosting international motorcycle racing events, but has maintained a prominent presence in the F1 paddock through state-owned energy giant Petronas, one of the longest-running primary sponsors of the dominant Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 Team.

    The relocation of the Bahrain Grand Prix has intensified ongoing uncertainty surrounding F1’s remaining scheduled races in the Gulf region. The series currently has two more races planned in the Middle East for the end of the 2025 season: the Qatar Grand Prix in November and the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in December. The status of both events remains uncertain, with organizers waiting to see if regional security conditions improve significantly before the scheduled dates.

    If Qatar and Abu Dhabi are forced to cancel their races, the popular Las Vegas Grand Prix scheduled for November 21 would become the official 2025 season finale. Multiple European venues, including tracks in Portugal and Italy, have been cited in media reports as potential alternative hosts for any canceled Gulf races, though late-season scheduling in Europe brings significant risks of bad weather that could disrupt racing conditions.

  • A US-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS

    A US-Russian space crew lands safely in Kazakhstan after an 8-month stint on the ISS

    After an eight-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS), a joint U.S.-Russian space mission has concluded with a successful, safe landing on the sun-baked steppes of Kazakhstan, marking another milestone in decades of continued orbital cooperation between the two nations. NASA astronaut Chris Williams and Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikaev touched down aboard their Soyuz MS-28 capsule Sunday, with the craft settling gently into a pre-designated landing zone southeast of the central Kazakh city of Dzhezkazgan, slowed by a large stabilizing parachute.

    For two of the three crew members, the 241-day orbital tour marked their first ever venture into space. Williams, the mission’s NASA representative, and Mikaev, one of the two Russian crew members, had never completed a long-duration spaceflight prior to this expedition, while Kud-Sverchkov was making his second visit to the orbiting outpost.

    Following the landing, recovery teams will airlift the crew by helicopter to the larger Kazakh city of Karaganda for initial post-landing medical checks and processing. From there, Williams will board a NASA charter flight bound for the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where he will reunite with family and undergo further post-mission debriefing and observation. The two Russian cosmonauts will return to their training facility at Star City, located just outside Moscow, to complete their own reintegration and post-flight procedures.

    The successful landing comes amid a unique geopolitical context for U.S.-Russian space collaboration. Once locked in a high-stakes Cold War space race that defined decades of global technological competition, the two nations have partnered on ISS operations and related space exploration projects for decades. While bilateral diplomatic relations deteriorated sharply following Russia’s 2022 full-scale military incursion into Ukraine, space cooperation has remained one of the few areas where the two powers have maintained consistent, uninterrupted work. To date, U.S. and Russian crews continue to rotate through the ISS, hitching rides on each nation’s crewed spacecraft to reach the orbital laboratory.

    The departing crew’s homecoming coincides with the arrival of their replacements, who began their own eight-month ISS mission last month. On July 14, NASA astronaut Anil Menon and Roscosmos cosmonauts Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina launched from the Russia-leased Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, docking successfully with the station shortly after to start their tour. Notably, the launch was attended by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, marking the first time a sitting NASA chief has visited the Baikonur launch site in eight years, a move that many observers see as a signal of continued commitment to bilateral space cooperation despite broader geopolitical friction.

    Menon, Dubrov and Kikina have now joined the Expedition 75 cadre aboard the ISS, alongside NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway, European Space Agency astronaut Sophie Adenot, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrei Fedyaev, as the team continues critical scientific research and maintenance operations on the orbiting platform.

  • Typhoon Noul weakens after making landfall, brings heavy rain to southern China

    Typhoon Noul weakens after making landfall, brings heavy rain to southern China

    After slamming into southern China’s coastline with destructive wind and torrential downpour, Typhoon Noul degraded into a tropical storm on Sunday as it pushed further inland across the region. According to Chinese meteorological services, extreme rainfall is still forecast across large swathes of southern Guangdong province and southeastern Fujian province, leaving local authorities on high alert for secondary disasters. As of Sunday, official state news agency Xinhua reported that more than 801,000 Guangdong residents have already been evacuated from high-risk zones to emergency shelters to guarantee their safety. In Hong Kong, the region’s key international transportation hub saw major disruptions to flight schedules. The Hong Kong Airport Authority confirmed that roughly 350 incoming and outgoing flights were scrapped on Sunday alone, leaving approximately 2,000 passengers stranded at the airport over the weekend. Local Hong Kong government data also shows that at least 21 people across the city sustained storm-related injuries during Noul’s passage. To address rising flood risks, Xinhua added that China’s Ministry of Water Resources has elevated its emergency flood response level for at-risk regions including Guangdong, specifically due to the elevated threat of sudden mountain floods triggered by accumulated rainfall. In a post-storm relief move, China’s National Development and Reform Commission announced it has earmarked 100 million yuan, equal to roughly $14.8 million, to fund post-typhoon recovery and reconstruction work across storm-ravaged areas of Guangdong. Noul marks the third typhoon to make landfall in Chinese territory within just a 30-day window, following closely on the heels of earlier tropical cyclones Bavi and Maysak. Chinese state media has also noted that Noul is the strongest storm to hit the country since the start of 2025. The typhoon’s destructive path did not stop at China: as Noul tracked across the Philippines earlier in its trajectory, the Southeast Asian nation’s disaster response agency confirmed at least three fatalities linked to storm-triggered flooding and heavy rain, with hundreds of local residents displaced from their homes. The storm system also dumped heavy rain across parts of Taiwan as it passed just south of the island, never making direct landfall there.

  • Cheaper, open and intelligent: Chinese AI models gain ground, as they make inroads in the US

    Cheaper, open and intelligent: Chinese AI models gain ground, as they make inroads in the US

    In a shifting global artificial intelligence landscape, Chinese AI models are emerging as unexpected heavy hitters in the U.S. market, drawing growing adoption from developers, corporate users, and tech industry insiders with their combination of competitive performance and far lower price points. What started as a niche alternative to U.S.-built frontier models has now reached a critical turning point, reshaping the U.S. AI market and fueling intensifying great power competition in one of the world’s fastest-growing strategic tech sectors.

    Raffi Krikorian, chief technology officer at Mozilla — the organization behind the widely used Firefox browser — is among the early converts to the new wave of Chinese AI. Just over a week after Chinese AI startup Moonshot launched its powerful new Kimi K3 model, Krikorian had already shifted the majority of his daily work tasks to the system. Comparing K3 to Anthropic’s higher-priced, widely acclaimed Claude Fable chatbot, Krikorian noted that the Chinese model “just seems snappier.” Before adopting Kimi K3, Krikorian already relied on another top-tier Chinese model, Z.ai’s GLM-5.2, for routine work such as calendar management, document processing, and email sorting.

    Krikorian is far from alone. A rising number of American technology professionals and companies are turning to Chinese AI systems, which have been gaining global market share thanks to their affordability and rapidly improving efficiency. Even major U.S. firms, including cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase, have announced shifts to Chinese AI models as a strategy to cut operational costs amid pressure to reduce AI spending.

    This growing popularity has created frustration for leading U.S. tech giants that have long dominated the global AI market. But unless Washington imposes an outright ban on Chinese AI systems, industry analysts note that these models will likely remain attractive to independent software developers across the U.S. and other global markets.

    The rising profile of Chinese AI comes amid escalating U.S. restrictions on Chinese tech access. Existing American-led trade controls already bar China from purchasing some of the world’s most advanced technologies, including cutting-edge AI chips. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has also warned that additional sanctions could be imposed to protect what Washington calls American intellectual property. Last Wednesday, the Trump administration accused Moonshot of using “covert” methods to develop K3 based on Anthropic’s Fable model, though the administration stopped short of labeling the activity illegal. A number of U.S. politicians and AI firms, including Anthropic itself, have claimed that Chinese startups engage in illicit “model distillation” to extract proprietary technology from U.S. models — a claim Beijing has repeatedly rejected as completely groundless.

    The rapid breakthrough of cutting-edge Chinese AI models in 2025 marks a new phase in the U.S.-China AI race, which has evolved significantly since early 2024, when Chinese startup DeepSeek upended the U.S. tech industry by launching a model that matched the performance of top U.S. alternatives at a far lower cost, putting China firmly on the global AI map.

    Industry experts confirm that the latest generation of models from Chinese startups — Zhipu (Z.ai)’s June release GLM-5.2, Moonshot’s July launch Kimi K3, Alibaba’s previewed Qwen3.8 Max model, and DeepSeek’s April V4 preview — all perform nearly on par with frontier models from U.S. leaders OpenAI and Anthropic. These Chinese models are already challenging the dominance of OpenAI’s GPT series and Google’s Gemini, with consistent quarterly advances that have steadily closed the performance gap.

    For most business and individual users, the Chinese models hit the sweet spot between performance and cost. Curt Meinhold, a North Carolina-based technology executive and founder of digital legacy platform LilyList, says he increasingly relies on DeepSeek for commercial tasks including generating sales leads and identifying new business opportunities. “At the end of the day, most of us, the vast majority of us, 90 plus percent, don’t need (Anthropic’s) Mythos or Fable,” Meinhold explained. “We just don’t need it, we need something good enough.”

    A July research report from U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs highlighted that Chinese AI models have now reached a “critical stage” for mass global adoption. This shift is being accelerated by a global boom in “agentic” AI usage, a development that requires AI systems to autonomously complete multi-step, complex tasks, driving sharp growth in demand for cost-effective AI solutions.

    AI pricing is calculated per million tokens for both input and output data, so the rise of AI agents dramatically amplifies cost differences between competing models, according to analysts including Alex Colville of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. Meinhold echoed that observation, noting that his testing found Chinese models perform nearly as well as U.S. alternatives for coding and research work. “If I can pay a handful of cents per million output tokens versus 30 bucks or 40 bucks or 50 bucks, then it’s good enough,” he said.

    Data from the past month shows just how far Chinese AI has come: on OpenRouter, a leading platform that aggregates usage data across AI models, the top five most popular models are all Chinese. Market intelligence firm Sensor Tower estimates that Kimi gained more than 930,000 downloads globally in the week following K3’s July launch, a 200% increase from the week before. In the U.S. alone, downloads jumped 387% to roughly 86,000 in that period. Demand for K3 grew so rapidly that Moonshot was forced to temporarily suspend new subscriptions after usage pushed the platform’s infrastructure close to its maximum capacity.

    Despite these gains, industry analysts note that Chinese AI still has clear limits. Anastasios Angelopoulos, co-founder and CEO of AI evaluation platform Arena, pointed out that while Chinese models have become serious competitors to U.S. offerings, they still lag behind leading American AI systems in overall full-spectrum capability. Yasir Atalan, a researcher at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, added that U.S. AI firms are already responding to the price competition by developing lower-cost alternatives of their own to retain market share.

    Ironically, some U.S. policy choices have ended up boosting adoption of Chinese AI models in the U.S. and global markets. Unlike most leading U.S. frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI, which are closed-source, the vast majority of Chinese AI models are released as open-source software, meaning any developer can examine the code and build new tools on top of the existing model. Lian Jye Su, a senior analyst at tech research firm Omdia, explained that Chinese AI vendors are expected to leverage their open-source positioning to drive global adoption. Mozilla’s Krikorian noted that as Chinese open-source models become nearly comparable in performance to leading U.S. closed-source systems, “the open frontier is becoming increasingly Chinese-built.” At the same time, even as Washington weighs restrictions on Chinese AI, a group of major U.S. tech firms including Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia recently published an open letter backing the development of open AI models, aligning indirectly with the Chinese approach.

    Other U.S. trade policies have also created unintended openings for Chinese competitors. Shortly after the Trump administration imposed export controls that took Anthropic’s Fable and Mythos models offline for more than two weeks, Chinese AI firm Z.ai launched its GLM-5.2 model to fill the gap. “Restricting an American model can immediately create an opening for a Chinese competitor,” Arena’s Angelopoulos said.

    Within China, domestic adoption of AI technologies has grown rapidly, supported by state policy and investment. Major Chinese tech firms including Huawei and Tencent are integrating AI into a wide range of consumer products, from smartphones and AI smart glasses to humanoid robots. Now, Chinese AI developers are setting their sights on global market dominance. At a major flagship technology summit in Shanghai, Chinese President Xi Jinping has publicly championed open-source AI development, emphasized the need for greater global equity in AI access, and pledged China’s support to help developing nations build up their domestic AI capabilities.

    As with many other Chinese industries, intense domestic competition has pushed leading AI startups to pursue global expansion to sustain growth. Top Chinese AI firms are now raising billions in new funding to support their international push, with several planning public share offerings to raise capital.

    Chelsey Tam, an analyst at investment research firm Morningstar, noted that both the U.S. and China are focused on encouraging widespread adoption of their own AI ecosystems, while protecting core technologies that could strengthen strategic rivals. “The competition is no longer simply the United States against China; the Chinese labs are also putting a lot of pressure on one another,” Arena’s Angelopoulos explained.

    Still, the huge capital requirements of AI development have raised questions about the long-term financial sustainability of many Chinese AI startups, mirroring similar concerns in the U.S. For example, Z.ai reported that its 2024 revenue surged 132% to 724 million yuan ($107 million), but its net loss jumped 60% to 4.7 billion yuan ($694 million) as heavy research and development spending weighed on profitability.

    For the immediate future, however, analysts expect Chinese AI models to continue expanding their presence, even in the U.S. market. Mozilla’s Krikorian summed up the view of many American tech professionals: “I would highly recommend anyone doing any serious AI load to at least evaluate it.”

  • Smash hit: How Alex Eala’s Wimbledon run made everyday Filipinos fall in love with tennis

    Smash hit: How Alex Eala’s Wimbledon run made everyday Filipinos fall in love with tennis

    For decades, sports culture in the Philippines has revolved around three dominant pillars: basketball, boxing, and beauty pageants. Decades of American influence cemented basketball as the nation’s top pastime, with a court in virtually every rural village and urban neighborhood, while a deep cultural love for rags-to-riches underdog narratives turned boxing into a national obsession and kept beauty pageants at the center of public attention. Today, however, a new tennis star is shaking up this long-standing status quo, sparking a nationwide surge of interest in a sport that has long been limited to the country’s elite circles.

    At 21 years old, Alexandra “Alex” Eala has made history as the first Filipina to reach the fourth round of a Grand Slam tournament, a milestone she achieved at this year’s Wimbledon. During her historic run, she pulled off a stunning upset by defeating defending champion Iga Swiatek of Poland, capturing the attention and admiration of the entire Filipino nation, which followed every match via social media and streaming platforms. This breakout success comes on the heels of her standout semi-final performance at the 2025 Miami Open, a run that first signaled her arrival on the global tennis stage.

    When Eala returned to Manila after her Wimbledon campaign, she received a hero’s welcome fit for the country’s newest sports icon. Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos hosted an official reception in her honor at Malacañang Palace, where Eala expressed her gratitude for the overwhelming public support. “I’m so grateful that I am able to share my triumphs, most especially my recent run at Wimbledon, with the country,” she said at the event. “As we say, this is our victory. I cannot begin to describe how overjoyed I am to see how my progress has been received by the Filipino people. This recognition makes me feel very seen.”

    For young aspiring tennis players across the country, Eala’s success has become a life-changing source of inspiration. One of these rising stars is 14-year-old Maristella Torrecampo, who traveled 13 hours by bus from her quiet hillside hometown in Iriga City to compete in a July tournament in Manila. With a limited crowdfunded budget that only covered two round-trip bus tickets and a few days of meals, Torrecampo could only bring her father along for the trip, leaving her mother and four siblings at home. Barely recovered from the exhausting cross-country journey, she defeated her Omani opponent in straight sets 6-1, 6-1 at Rizal Stadium, keeping her own dream of following in Eala’s footsteps alive. “Like Ate Alex, I want to win at Wimbledon, the WTA, and tournaments around the world,” Torrecampo said, using the Filipino term for elder sister to refer to her idol. “She inspired me so much. I’ve looked up to her since I was little. I love her attitude on and off the court—she’s so humble, and there are so many kids like me who see her as a role model.”

    Eala’s rise has not been without criticism, however. Critics have pointed to her privileged background: she trained at the elite Rafael Nadal Academy in Spain, her mother is a former telecommunications executive, and her father is a businessman from a prominent Filipino family. Eala has brushed off these critiques, noting that many commentators overlook the years of relentless hard work she has put in to reach the top of the sport.

    Beyond inspiring young athletes, Eala’s success has sparked a surge of interest in tennis among casual hobbyists across the Philippines. Celso Mugot, a 33-year-old accountant in Manila who has been training for three months to stay fit, said his determination to improve intensified after watching Eala’s run. “I was definitely inspired by Alex Eala. I saw her progress from a low-ranked player all the way to the top,” he told reporters. Rafael Santos, a 29-year-old IT professional who recently took up the sport, added that booking court time has become far harder since Eala’s breakout performance in Miami last year. “There are only a handful of courts in Manila, but hundreds of new people want to play and train,” Santos explained. “That’s been a bit of a letdown. We’ve also seen tennis shoes and apparel sell out across stores, and some retailers have hiked up racket prices dramatically.”

    These growing pains highlight a long-standing barrier to tennis accessibility in the Philippines: the sport’s high cost and limited infrastructure. For decades, tennis courts have been concentrated exclusively in wealthy, gated enclaves, and court rentals in Manila cost around 2,000 Philippine pesos ($32) per hour—equivalent to half a day’s work for minimum wage earners, and enough to cover a month of groceries for an average household. Jovy Barce, a veteran Manila tennis coach who grew up in poverty on the capital’s outskirts, knows these barriers firsthand. He started out as a six-year-old ball boy, earning 100 pesos per day to help his family buy groceries, before picking up a discarded racket from a court trash bin at age eight to start teaching himself to play. Later, a regular player gave him an old racket, a gift he still remembers vividly. “Up until this day, I couldn’t explain how happy I was when I got it,” Barce said. “I used it over and over until I became confident. No one taught me; I never had a professional coach. It was all self-study.” Barce worked his way through college on a sports scholarship, taking jobs at a hotel and as a motorcycle delivery rider before launching his coaching career with just 40 used tennis balls. “I started from nothing, but I tried my best to learn everything because I really wanted to become a coach,” he said.

    Urban planners note that limited available space is a core structural barrier to expanding tennis infrastructure across the country. Metro Manila, the national capital region, is home to nearly 16 million people and ranks among the most densely populated urban centers in the world. Renowned architect and urban planner Felino Palafox told reporters that expanding access will require rethinking how public space is allocated across the country’s 42,000 barangays, or villages. “Ideally, every barangay should have a tennis court, not just basketball courts,” Palafox said. “We are fighting for public space for new activities.”

    Despite the challenges, Eala’s success has already had a transformative impact on the sport in the Philippines, drawing tens of thousands of new players and creating a pipeline of young talent that many hope will reshape the nation’s sports landscape long-term. Thousands of fans turned out for public fan events in Metro Manila after Eala’s return, with some traveling for hours from neighboring provinces just for a chance to see her and get an autograph. Eleven-year-old Luca Ong, a young tennis player who attended one of the events, said his goal is to one day follow in Eala’s footsteps and represent the Philippines on the global stage.

    Now, Eala has left Manila to prepare for the US Open in August, where she will aim to build on her Wimbledon success and raise the Philippines’ profile in global tennis even further. In a social media post ahead of her departure, she wrote: “That’s a wrap on Manila. Thank you for welcoming me, my countrymen. Each and every one of your stories has touched me on a profound level. I leave with a refreshed memory of what I carry when I’m out there playing tennis. And wow, is it a privilege to be part of something bigger than myself. Never been prouder to represent home.”

    For young players like Torrecampo, the journey to that same goal continues. Her father and coach, Delfin Torrecampo, says the family’s limited resources have not stopped them from chasing their dream, a message he wants to share with other aspiring athletes facing similar barriers. “To people who are in the same situation as us, know that poverty is not a hindrance for you and your family’s dreams,” he said. “The people who keep on fighting and persevering are the same people who have the chance to win. You may not win today or tomorrow, but your win will come one day as long as you keep on fighting.”

  • ‘We want to see blood’: Israeli political leadership and settler groups call for revenge against Palestinians

    ‘We want to see blood’: Israeli political leadership and settler groups call for revenge against Palestinians

    A wave of violent tensions has swept the occupied West Bank in 2026, following a fatal clash in the Palestinian village of Tell that left one Israeli settler and four members of a local Palestinian family dead. In the aftermath, senior Israeli political leaders and prominent settler organizations have issued explicit calls for violent revenge, including demands to raze entire Palestinian communities and displace their civilian populations.

    Bezalel Smotrich, Israel’s far-right Finance Minister and leader of the Religious Zionism party, announced Friday that the villages of Tell, Iraq Burin and Beit Furik should be destroyed, saying the communities should be left in the same state of ruin as large areas of Nablus and Tulkarm that were heavily damaged in recent Israeli military operations. Smotrich added that all civilian residents of the targeted villages should be forcibly evacuated, and called on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to reassign control of the entire area from the Palestinian Authority to Israeli administration.

    Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, echoed the hardline stance, arguing that for every Israeli killed, Palestinian communities must forfeit land and residential property. He went further, demanding that Israel implement the same strategy of leveling entire residential areas that it has employed in the Gaza Strip across occupied West Bank Palestinian communities.

    The inflammatory rhetoric comes shortly after armed Israeli settlers, escorted by uniformed Israeli military personnel, carried out a large raid on Tell, where settler violence has surged in recent months. The clash that sparked the current unrest left four members of the Palestinian Saifi family dead by Israeli gunfire; Israeli military officials claim one member of the family seized a settler’s weapon and killed the settler before dying in the subsequent gunfight.

    Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Health underscores the escalating violence in the territory this year: as of this latest unrest, at least 87 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire across the West Bank in 2026, 21 of whom were killed by direct settler attacks.

    Zvi Sukkot, another lawmaker from Smotrich’s Religious Zionism party, amplified the calls for destruction Friday, telling Israeli Channel 14 that Tell must be left in ruins, and posting a blank black image captioned only “Revenge” to his public Facebook page. The radical settler militia Hilltop Youth, which has a long record of violent attacks on Palestinian communities and property, quickly endorsed the calls for retaliation.

    Private group chat messages reviewed by Middle East Eye show settler activists demanding immediate action to “erase the village of Tell” within hours of news of the settler’s death breaking. “We want revenge. Not settlements, not promises of more housing units,” one message read. “We want to see blood. There is no comfort without revenge,” the message added, alongside an attached graphic depicting a river of blood. Elchanan Groner, a leading high-profile hilltop settler, declared in a public tribute to the deceased settler that “the village of murderers, Tell, must be erased now” and vowed to avenge what he called the settler’s “pure blood”.

    Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to the violence with hardline pledges of his own, posting to his social media platform X that “we will pursue terror everywhere” and that Israel “will settle accounts with them” for the attack. He confirmed he had instructed the Israeli military to demolish the family home of the Palestinian man who killed the settler, and order swift, forceful military action against other villages in the area. Netanyahu also announced he had ordered officials to speed up the legalization of existing unapproved settler outposts and approve the establishment of new outposts — the same sites from which most recent settler attacks, including the Tell raid, originate.

    Following the prime minister’s orders, the Israeli military mobilized additional troops to the West Bank for a large-scale security operation centered on the Nablus region in the northern occupied territory, Israeli daily Haaretz reported Friday. Palestinian news agency Wafa has confirmed that Israeli forces have arrested 66 Palestinians across the West Bank to date, 30 of whom are civilians detained directly in Tell. As of Saturday morning, Haaretz added, the military has closed all access points to Tell and nearby Burin, and imposed a full siege on the city of Nablus.

    Israeli troops have carried out widespread raids on private Palestinian homes across multiple West Bank communities, carrying out searches, detaining civilians, and leaving widespread property damage in their wake, according to Palestinian local reports. The Quds News Network also reported Friday that Israeli forces raided a major hospital in Nablus to arrest two Palestinian men they claim were involved in the earlier Tell clashes.

    As military operations have expanded, settlers have launched coordinated retaliatory attacks on Palestinian communities across the West Bank, acting on the earlier calls for revenge from political and settler leaders. The Palestine Red Crescent Society (PRCS) reported Friday that eight Palestinians were injured, one critically, during a settler attack on the village of Far’ata near Qalqilya, where local residents say settlers set fire to residential homes and threw stones at civilian property. Three more Palestinians were injured Friday during a settler raid on the town of Sarra, near Nablus, with settlers again setting homes on fire and damaging civilian property, PRCS confirmed.

    Quds News Network documented additional violent settler attacks across multiple hotspots, including Masafer Yatta south of Hebron, and the Nablus-area villages of Awarta and Urif, where settlers set fire to Palestinian land and property and uprooted hundreds of olive trees — a core source of income for many local Palestinian families. In the town of Qarawat Bani Hassan near Salfit, settlers seized control of an empty private Palestinian home and raised the Israeli flag over the building, the outlet added.

    Wafa reported similar attacks in Birin east of Hebron, Abu Njeim southeast of Bethlehem, and targeted damage to local water infrastructure in Kafr Malik in the Ramallah governorate. Haaretz also confirmed additional attacks on the Nablus-area villages of Jit, Iraq Burin and Tell, and reported that settlers stabbed and wounded a Palestinian man in Wadi al-Mu’arrjat in the Jordan Valley.

  • What next for the ICC and the Palestine investigation after Karim Khan’s removal?

    What next for the ICC and the Palestine investigation after Karim Khan’s removal?

    In a historic first for the International Criminal Court (ICC), member states voted Friday at a United Nations session in New York to remove sitting chief prosecutor Karim Khan from office over alleged misconduct. The secret ballot saw 82 of the court’s 125 member states back the dismissal, bringing an 18-month long disciplinary process to a dramatic end. This unprecedented action marks the first time a sitting ICC prosecutor has been removed in the court’s 24-year history, a move critics already decry as a politically motivated power play.

    Khan has firmly denied all wrongdoing, and his legal team has announced plans to challenge the dismissal through every available legal channel. The immediate removal, which went into effect the moment the vote was finalized per ICC rules, has stripped Khan of his post and removed him from all active investigations, including the high-stakes inquiry into alleged crimes in Palestine that put him at the center of global geopolitical tension.

    The disciplinary process that led to the vote has long faced accusations of procedural irregularity and political bias. In March, a three-judge expert panel appointed by the ICC Assembly of States Parties (ASP) bureau unanimously ruled that findings from UN investigators did not prove misconduct or breach of duty under the court’s governing framework. The bureau subsequently voted to set aside this panel’s conclusion, and MEE exclusively confirmed this month that the bureau altered voting procedures to streamline the removal: merging a two-stage approval process into a single motion, effectively lowering the threshold required to oust Khan. These procedural changes are expected to be core to Khan’s coming legal challenge.

    Khan had previously indicated he would bring his appeal to the International Labour Organization Administrative Tribunal (ILOAT), the body that handles employment disputes for UN and international organization staff. Former International Court of Justice judge Abdul Koroma has assessed Khan’s chances of a successful appeal as “considerable,” but the legal path remains untested. ICC scholars Ezequiel Jimenez and Sergey Vasiliev point out that ILOAT case law is structured for standard international organization labor disputes, and it remains unconfirmed whether the ASP plenary’s political decision to remove an elected prosecutor falls within the tribunal’s jurisdiction. Even if Khan wins a favorable ruling, years of ILOAT proceedings mean a successor could already be in place by the time a decision is issued, making reinstatement functionally impossible.

    Geopolitical fallout from the vote has already begun, centered on the unprecedented arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, which the ICC issued under Khan’s leadership in 2024. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar called Khan’s removal “long-delayed,” and immediately demanded the court withdraw the warrants “immediately.” He repeated Israel’s already debunked claim that the warrants were rushed to distract from the misconduct allegations against Khan.

    Khan has also been the target of U.S. sanctions since the warrants were issued: he was the first individual designated under Executive Order 14203, signed by former U.S. President Donald Trump in February 2025 as retaliation for the warrants. The order froze Khan’s U.S. assets, revoked his visa, and barred his family from entering the United States. While there is precedent for delisting — the Biden administration revoked sanctions on Khan’s predecessor Fatou Bensouda in 2021 over her Afghanistan investigation — that delisting followed a change in U.S. administration, not the departure of the prosecutor from office, and there is currently no indication the current U.S. administration will lift sanctions on Khan. The U.S. State Department has not responded to requests for comment on the dismissal.

    The ICC’s Office of the Prosecutor (OTP) has stated that its ongoing work across all active cases will continue without interruption. The court currently manages more than a dozen open situation investigations beyond Palestine, including cases in Ukraine, Darfur, Libya and Afghanistan. However, the dismissal creates significant uncertainty for the future of the Palestine probe, particularly for pending arrest warrant requests for senior Israeli officials Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben Gvir, which MEE has exclusively reported were prepared before Khan’s 2025 leave but were shelved for months due to threats of additional U.S. sanctions. Legal analysts note Khan’s departure may shift the OTP’s prioritization of these requests and its willingness to resist external pressure.

    Khan made advancing the Palestine investigation a central priority of his tenure after taking office in 2021, dedicating new resources to the inquiry that had stalled for 15 years under his two predecessors, who never advanced to requesting arrest warrants for Israeli officials. While the existing warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant remain active and will not be automatically withdrawn following Khan’s departure — only ICC judges can withdraw warrants, and they have repeatedly declined to do so — Israel has already signaled it will push to argue the warrants are tainted by Khan’s removal.

    Israel has multiple ongoing legal challenges to the warrants. The most significant challenges the court’s very jurisdiction over Israeli citizens, as Israel is not a party to the Rome Statute. In April 2025, the ICC Appeals Chamber sent the claim back for a full ruling after finding the lower court had incorrectly dismissed it as premature. No decision has been issued more than a year later, and any ruling will almost certainly be appealed again, pushing a final outcome to 2027 at the earliest.

    A second challenge, filed in November 2025, sought to disqualify Khan over alleged bias and cancel the warrants. The disqualification request becomes moot with Khan’s removal, but Israeli officials have already publicly raised the argument that the warrants are invalid because they were secured by a prosecutor found guilty of misconduct, leaving the future of that claim uncertain. Two other Israeli challenges have already been rejected: in December 2025, the Appeals Chamber threw out a claim that state referrals filed after October 7, 2023 amounted to a new investigation requiring fresh notification to Israel, and in July 2025, judges rejected a request to suspend the warrants while the jurisdiction dispute is resolved, ruling the warrants remain in force pending a final decision.

    Since Khan took leave in May 2025, the OTP has been jointly led by deputy prosecutors Nazhat Shameem Khan of Fiji and Mame Mandiaye Niang of Senegal, who will continue to lead the office following the dismissal. Neither holds the title of acting prosecutor, however, and the court has now operated without an elected chief prosecutor for more than a year. Both deputies were also sanctioned by the U.S. in August 2025 for upholding the Netanyahu and Gallant warrants after taking over interim leadership.

    Per Article 42 of the Rome Statute, Khan’s removal triggers a new election for the role, only the fourth such election in the court’s history. The chief prosecutor is elected by a secret absolute majority vote of ASP member states for a nine-year non-renewable term, though states can opt for a shorter term to finish the remainder of Khan’s tenure. The next regular ASP session is scheduled for December 2026 at UN Headquarters in New York, where six judges are already set to be elected. ICC expert Ezequiel Jimenez told MEE the most likely paths are either adding the prosecutor election to the December session or convening a special resumed session in early 2027, and he expects the ASP to form a working group to organize the vote, with a new bureau taking office in December to shape the process.
    Jimenez noted that nothing in court rules bars either sitting deputy from being nominated by a member state, and he has suggested the ASP could narrow the field to the two deputies to speed up the selection process, granting the winner the remaining four years of Khan’s original term ending in 2030, rather than holding a contest for a full nine-year term. That outcome would require consensus, however, as any member state can put forward its own candidate. The 2020 election that selected Khan deviated from the ASP’s agreed process when member states abandoned the vetting committee’s official shortlist, unlike the 2011 consensus election of Bensouda, who was a sitting deputy at the time.

    Regional and demographic considerations are expected to factor into the nomination process. The post of chief prosecutor has been held by representatives from Latin America (Luis Moreno Ocampo), Africa (Fatou Bensouda), and Western Europe (Karim Khan), with no representative from Asia Pacific or Eastern Europe ever holding the role. “Will western Europe ask for their ‘turn’ again? Or will it be someone from Asia or Eastern Europe? These factors will be part of the new election,” Jimenez noted.

  • In the cradle of Tunisia’s revolution, anger gave way to apathy. Then Gaza happened

    In the cradle of Tunisia’s revolution, anger gave way to apathy. Then Gaza happened

    Fifteen years ago, a small act of desperation in a central Tunisian city rippled across the Arab world and reshaped modern Middle Eastern history. In Sidi Bouzid, street vendor Mohamed Bouazizi doused himself in gasoline and lit himself ablaze, after corrupt local officials repeatedly harassed him, publicly humiliated him, and seized the only fruit cart he relied on for survival. That devastating act of protest ignited the 2011 Jasmine Revolution, which ousted Tunisia’s 23-year authoritarian ruler Zine El Abidine Ben Ali and sent a wave of uprisings across the entire Middle East and North Africa.

    Today, the covered market of Sidi Bouzid hums with the same surface routines it has held for decades: traders call out their goods, haggle over prices, and restock piles of citrus and leafy greens, while customers pick through produce slowly, calculating every dinar spent as rampant inflation pushes basic food out of reach for many. On the surface, life looks unremarkable. But dig beneath that routine, and residents are quick to say the city’s mood has shifted dramatically – and not for the reasons many might expect. Tunisia’s crippling economic crisis has not softened, and public trust in national politics remains as broken as it has been for years. Instead, the change traces to a conflict more than 2,000 kilometers away: Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza.

    For countless residents of Sidi Bouzid, solidarity with the Palestinian people has become deeply intertwined with their own simmering anger over deepening poverty and a political system that has left ordinary people completely disenfranchised. Most surprisingly of all, the conflict has done what few political analysts would have predicted: after years of fading public political discourse, drained by widespread apathy and President Kais Saied’s growing authoritarian consolidation of power, the crisis in Gaza has given Tunisians a renewed reason to speak openly about their grievances.

    “Our leaders betrayed us,” Wajdi, a fruit seller working in the same market where Bouazizi once traded, told Middle East Eye. “What have any Muslim leaders done for Palestine? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. We hear every day that Tunisia stands with Palestine, but what has our government actually done to back that up? All the president does is talk. He had every opportunity to take practical steps, to push for change internationally, to pressure other governments that back Israel, but instead we’ve seen nothing. We’re tired of his empty words.”

    For Wajdi and dozens of other Tunisians interviewed by MEE across Sidi Bouzid, Gaza has emerged as a sharp new political flashpoint that cuts directly into long-simmering domestic tensions. It has become a stark measure of the growing gap between the Tunisian government’s rhetorical commitments and its actual inaction, reopening public political conversations that had gone mostly silent since July 2021. That was when Saied suspended the elected parliament, sacked the sitting prime minister, seized unilateral prosecutorial authority, and invoked a national emergency – a move widely labeled a coup by international human rights groups and Tunisian political opposition leaders.

    When Saied first consolidated power, many residents of Sidi Bouzid welcomed the move, hopeful that a strong, centralized presidency would break the years of crippling political deadlock that had paralyzed the country in the decade after the revolution. But as economic hardship deepened year after year, most Tunisians lost all faith that political change could improve their daily lives. Voter turnout plummeted to historic lows in subsequent elections, public political debate faded from public spaces, and conversations between friends and neighbors increasingly centered solely on how to make ends meet.

    Fifteen years after it set off a regional revolution, Sidi Bouzid remains one of Tunisia’s poorest governorates. Promised investments from the government and international donors never materialized, unemployment remains stuck at stubbornly high rates, and for most young people, dangerous irregular emigration across the Mediterranean, not domestic political reform, is seen as the only viable path to a better future. With inflation running in double digits, turning routine grocery shopping into a careful calculation of limited funds, traders report that customers who once bought enough produce to last a week now only buy what they can eat over a couple of days. “Everyone has become poorer,” Wajdi said, as he watched shoppers move slowly between his and neighboring stalls.

    When Israel launched its large-scale military campaign in Gaza after the October 7 attacks by Hamas, mass demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinians spread rapidly across Tunisia. Tens of thousands of protesters took to the streets of the capital Tunis and other major cities, and Sidi Bouzid once again saw residents gathering in public around a shared political cause. Palestinian flags appeared across the city in unprecedented numbers, and marches drew crowds of people who had not joined any public demonstration in years. For many residents, these demonstrations became one of the only spaces where they once again felt comfortable sharing political opinions openly, after years of self-censorship and shrinking space for public debate.

    But as the Palestinian death toll in Gaza climbed into the tens of thousands, many Tunisians began asking why their government’s support for Palestine stopped at rhetorical condemnation. While Saied has repeatedly issued public statements condemning Israeli actions, residents say they have seen little effort to turn that rhetoric into meaningful diplomatic action or regional leadership on the issue.

    “I don’t think Tunisia has done anything meaningful at all,” said Oumaima, a 26-year-old housewife from Sidi Bouzid. “We haven’t seen serious diplomatic efforts or attempts to build a united international coalition to pressure Israel. Why wasn’t Tunisia leading efforts at the International Criminal Court or working to bring all African countries together around a common position against what’s happening?” Oumaima pointed instead to South Africa, which filed a landmark case accusing Israel of genocide at the International Court of Justice that won widespread acclaim and support across the Global South. “Other countries stepped forward while Tunisia, despite all its statements about supporting Palestine, stayed on the sidelines,” she said. “I expected much more from our government.”

    Dozens of residents echoed that frustration, arguing that the government’s response to the crisis has been defined far more by empty rhetoric than tangible action. They question why Tunisia has not worked to rally African governments around a unified stance or pursued legal avenues against Israel at international bodies, while other middle-income and developing states have pushed the issue onto the global agenda. That contradiction feels even starker when looking at domestic policy, they say.

    While Tunisian officials regularly frame the country as an unwavering supporter of Palestinian statehood and Palestinian rights, authorities have launched a widespread crackdown on independent pro-Palestinian activists, including organizers involved in the Global Sumud Flotilla campaign that aimed to break Israel’s blockade of Gaza. The wave of arrests has fueled accusations that the Saied regime is seeking to monopolize solidarity with Gaza, only allowing pro-Palestinian expression that stays within state-approved boundaries, while treating independent grassroots activism as a direct political threat.

    “The regime displays hyper-sensitivity towards any street mobilisation, even when protesters raise officially endorsed slogans like supporting Palestine,” Khalil Lahbibi, a Tunisian activist involved with the Global Sumud Flotilla, told MEE. “It refuses to allow the public to organize independently or outside official, directed mobilization frameworks. Because young activists and civil society organisations have the capacity to mobilize and shape public opinion, the regime treats them as direct political threats and potential rivals. Saied is seeking to strike down the very idea of independent collective action.”

    Mohammed, a 22-year-old unemployed high school graduate in Sidi Bouzid, questioned why Tunisia has largely confined itself to verbal condemnation, rather than leading any meaningful regional or international campaigns against Israel’s actions. “The government says it supports Palestine, but its actions tell a completely different story,” he said. “It has arrested activists – people who were actually trying to show solidarity with Palestinians. How can you claim to defend Palestine while criminalizing those who are standing up for it? That’s a betrayal of the cause.”

    Mohammed added that Saied’s speeches condemning Israel now carry almost no weight without concrete political action to back them up. “If he was truly serious, he would have worked with Algeria, Libya and other African countries to find ways of stopping weapons from reaching Israel, whether by sea or by air,” he said. “Instead, we’ve only heard words while Gaza continues to suffer.”

    It remains unclear whether the public anger sparked by the Gaza war will mark the beginning of a broader political reawakening across Tunisia. Years of economic hardship, political repression, and broken promises have left most residents of Sidi Bouzid wary of predicting another mass uprising like the one that began here in 2010. Few speak openly of repeating that revolution today. But what is certain, they say, is the blanket silence that settled over the city’s public life in recent years has been broken.

    “The people will no longer be silent,” Mohammed said. “This government hasn’t done anything for Palestine or any Muslim causes. They now either need to step aside or step up, because the people have had enough. We will not back down.”

  • India’s ‘cockroach’ protest called off after education minister quits

    India’s ‘cockroach’ protest called off after education minister quits

    In a landmark victory for grassroots youth dissent in India, embattled Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan has stepped down from his post, prompting jubilant celebrations among protesters and leading the movement that forced his ouster to end its five-week campaign. The unexpected outcome marks one of the most significant blows to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s ruling administration in recent years, born from a viral satirical movement that evolved from an online joke into a powerful vehicle for widespread public discontent.

    The movement behind the protest, known as the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), is not a registered political party. It traces its origins to a controversial comment from India’s Chief Justice, who labeled unemployed young people entering activism and independent journalism as “cockroaches.” Though the justice later clarified he was only referring to individuals holding fake academic credentials, the term was reclaimed by young activists, who transformed the once-insulting label into a symbol of resilience and defiance against systemic failure. Led by 30-year-old political communications strategist and former Boston University student Abhijeet Dipke, the movement quickly amassed a massive online following, now boasting 26 million followers on Instagram, and channeled widespread youth anxiety over broken education systems, high unemployment, and repeated exam paper leak scandals into tangible street action.

    The CJP’s core demands centered on comprehensive education reform, accountability for recurring exam paper leaks, and Pradhan’s resignation. The protest gained global momentum when prominent Indian activist and educationist Sonam Wangchuk joined the movement on June 28 and launched an indefinite hunger strike to back the group’s demands. As Wangchuk’s health declined, police forcibly removed him from the main protest site at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar last Saturday and transferred him to a hospital, where he continued his fast. He only ended his strike early Friday after receiving official assurances from the government that his demands would be reviewed.

    Tensions escalated dramatically this week, when a peaceful march by protesters to India’s Parliament was met with a violent police crackdown that left dozens injured, hundreds hospitalized, and around 70 protesters arrested (most of whom have since been released on bail). Images and footage of the crackdown spread rapidly across social media, amplifying public anger and putting unprecedented pressure on Modi’s administration. For nearly five weeks, the government had ignored the protest, but the fallout from the police violence forced a rapid shift in strategy: on Thursday, Modi broke his silence, announcing plans to establish fast-track courts for anyone involved in exam paper leaks, and releasing a video message stating that a strict new law targeting paper leaks was already in draft form and would soon be introduced to parliament. The announcement failed to defuse tension, with social media flooded with memes and mocking posts turning the prime minister’s attempt to quell anger into viral jokes.

    Hours before the CJP called off its protest, Pradhan announced his resignation in a Hindi-language post on the social platform X. In his statement, Pradhan wrote that he “respected the aspirations, dreams, and expectations of the youth” and was “pained by the events” of the preceding days. He framed his resignation as a step to “prevent anti-national forces from exploiting” the unrest, preserve national unity, and ensure that no Indian student’s future becomes “entangled in legal complexities,” allowing young people to return to their studies and career building.

    As news of the resignation broke, celebrations erupted immediately at Jantar Mantar. From the protest’s makeshift stage, an emotional Dipke shouted to the crowd, “We have done it,” sparking deafening cheers. Protesters sang, danced, chanted slogans, and distributed sweets to mark the win. Even after CJP leadership announced the end of the protest and left the site hours later, thousands of jubilant supporters remained gathered at the venue deep into the night. Many told reporters they had waited weeks for the outcome and were not ready to leave without full celebration. Large numbers of police were deployed around the protest site, but officers confirmed they would only intervene if laws were broken.

    Dipke called Pradhan’s resignation a clear win for democracy, but emphasized that the movement’s work is far from finished. In a post-resignation statement on X, he said the CJP would continue advocating for compensation for the families of students who died by suicide after a key medical exam was canceled over leak concerns. He also renewed calls for accountability against police officers accused of using excessive force during the July 20 crackdown on the parliamentary march, ending his statement with a defiant warning: “Remember, do not mess with [the] cockroach.”

    Political analysts note that while the protest only explicitly demanded Pradhan’s resignation, it has already dealt a severe blow to Modi’s political brand and his long-held aura of invincibility. Since taking power in 2014, Modi’s government has rarely tolerated public dissent and has typically cracked down heavily on large-scale protests, making this climbdown all the more notable. This is not the first time the administration has backed down in the face of widespread public action: in 2021, the government repealed controversial agricultural laws after a year-long mass protest by Indian farmers.

    The youth-led movement has resonated across broad swathes of India’s middle class, cutting across divisions of religion, caste, and industry to unify people around shared anger over limited educational opportunities and stagnant job growth. Many protesters who spoke to reporters revealed they had once supported Modi but had since abandoned the prime minister, accusing his government of dividing communities along religious lines instead of addressing pressing economic and social issues. On Saturday, opposition leaders across India welcomed Pradhan’s resignation, widely framing it as a victory for India’s young people and grassroots democratic action.