标签： Asia

Fresh mass demonstrations have resumed in India’s capital New Delhi, just 24 hours after a violent police crackdown on supporters of the youth-led Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a grassroots movement demanding sweeping national education reforms and the resignation of Union Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan.

The unrest unfolded on Monday, when tens of thousands of young demonstrators from across the country defied a pre-existing police ban to march toward India’s Parliament during the opening of the monsoon legislative session. What began as a peaceful mass mobilization quickly escalated into widespread chaos in Central Delhi, when security forces deployed batons and tear gas to disperse the crowd. Official police accounts confirm that at least 60 protesters and 118 police personnel were injured during the operation, while 70 demonstrators remain in police custody. Officers also cleared the movement’s long-standing protest encampment at the historic Jantar Mantar observatory, tearing down the main stage and all makeshift shelters set up by participants.

Multiple on-the-ground accounts from protesters, shared with international media, confirm that even female demonstrators were not spared from the use of force. Social media footage, circulated once local internet access was restored after a full-day blackout, shows uniformed and plainclothes security officers beating fleeing protesters, with multiple people left unconscious on the ground. Eyewitness reports describe panicked crowds scrambling over police barricades to escape, with demonstrators suffering severe head wounds and broken bones that required emergency treatment from volunteer medics.

The CJP, an unregistered satirical political movement, traces its origins to a controversial comment made earlier this year by India’s Chief Justice, who infamously described unemployed young people entering journalism and activism as “cockroaches”. After the remark sparked national outrage, the justice clarified he was only referring to people holding what he called “fake and bogus degrees”, but the label was adopted reclaimed by young activists as a badge of protest against systemic failures in India’s education sector.

The movement had maintained a peaceful encampment at Jantar Mantar for more than a month, drawing global attention when prominent education activist Sonam Wangchuk joined the protest on June 28 and launched an indefinite hunger strike to back the CJP’s demands. Wangchuk was forcibly removed from the protest site by police just two days before Monday’s march and transported to a local hospital, where he has continued his fast. What began as a focused demand for education reform has since grown into one of the most significant displays of public dissent against Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government in recent years.

In advance of Monday’s march, senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Health Minister JP Nadda met with CJP representatives to discuss their demands. CJP spokesperson Saurav Das described the 10-minute meeting as unproductive, noting that while the government promised to review the group’s concerns, no concrete commitments were made. Other CJP leaders criticized the meeting as a hollow gesture, after being forced to wait four hours for the discussion that produced no results. Early indications suggested the movement might agree to stand down after the meeting, but organizers hardened their stance once internet access was restored and footage of the police crackdown spread widely online.

Shortly after the meeting, as protesters learned of the violence, security forces moved in to clear the entire Jantar Mantar site. Authorities used loudspeaker announcements to repeatedly order demonstrators to evacuate, claiming the protest was officially over. By Monday evening, however, CJP activists had reclaimed the protest site and issued a public call for renewed support, writing in a social media post: “Despite the police brutality, the brave protestors of CJP are back. Delhi, come out and join us at Jantar Mantar – this is now or never! Dharmendra Pradhan Must Resign!”

In an official statement following the crackdown, Delhi Police claimed the operation was justified because protesters had engaged in “unruly, aggressive and violent behaviour”, violated prohibitory orders, attacked officers with stones, breached barricades, and damaged public and government property. The CJP has forcefully rejected this account, accusing police of being the unprovoked aggressors. CJP founder Abhijeet Dipke issued a public apology to supporters, particularly women who were beaten by male officers, writing on X: “We could have done better. I could have done better to protect you from the inhumane actions of the Delhi police.” Dipke also confirmed one young female protester remained in critical condition in a Delhi hospital.

The CJP’s core demands center on a full overhaul of India’s education system, with a specific focus on increasing accountability for repeated high-stakes exam paper leaks. The call for Pradhan’s resignation gained momentum following the leak of the National Eligibility cum Entrance Test (NEET), the country’s mandatory entrance exam for medical school. Nearly 2.28 million candidates sat for the May 3 exam, which was canceled just days later after confirmed reports of widespread cheating and paper leaks. A re-test was held weeks later, but the scandal has already been linked to more than 20 student suicides, with families saying their children were left devastated by the disruption to their academic futures. Pradhan has rejected all calls for his resignation, dismissing the CJP and its supporters as a “B-team of disruptive elements” aligned with the political opposition.

Major opposition parties, farmer union leaders, prominent activists, and even Bollywood celebrities have publicly thrown their support behind the movement. Rahul Gandhi, leader of the main opposition Indian National Congress, has called the protesters’ demands “legitimate” and labeled Modi “the most anti-youth prime minister India has ever had”. As of Tuesday, thousands of demonstrators had returned to Jantar Mantar to renew their protest, ensuring the youth-led movement will remain a major political challenge for Modi’s government in the coming weeks.

For the first time in nearly 16 years, a sitting Lebanese president is set to step into the Oval Office for a high-stakes meeting with a U.S. head of state, marking a historic turning point for Lebanese-U.S. relations and the implementation of a new ceasefire deal between Lebanon and Israel. Joseph Aoun, a former commander of the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), will meet U.S. President Donald Trump on Tuesday, just one month after Washington mediated a trilateral framework agreement between Israel, Lebanon, and the United States aimed at ending a months-long conflict that has claimed more than 4,000 Lebanese lives.

The first phase of the agreement officially launched on Monday, with the Trump administration confirming that so-called “pilot zone operations” have commenced in the southern Lebanese villages of Froun, Srifa, and Zawtar Al-Gharbiya. These operations are being overseen by the newly established U.S.-led Military Coordination Group for Lebanon. Under the terms of the framework, Lebanese armed forces will deploy to southern areas to take over security control as Israeli forces withdraw, with the core mission of disarming the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah. The conflict erupted in March, when Hezbollah launched rocket attacks into northern Israel in support of its ally Iran, prompting a large-scale Israeli incursion that has left roughly one-fifth of Lebanese territory under Israeli occupation to date.

Key questions remain about the feasibility of the LAF’s assigned mission. The Lebanese military is already under-equipped compared to Hezbollah, which retains superior military capabilities across Lebanon and has not agreed to disarm itself. Washington has moved to shore up the LAF with a new $30 million funding boost last month, on top of a previously announced $100 million package of humanitarian aid for conflict-affected communities in the region, but analysts warn structural challenges could derail implementation.

At a Monday media briefing hosted by the Tahrir Institute for Middle East Policy, Sami Halabi, policy director and co-founder of regional consultancy Triangle, outlined the conflicting incentives facing Hezbollah. “If the framework fails, Hezbollah gains politically, because continued Israeli occupation proves its argument that diplomacy cannot deliver for Lebanon and that its armed arsenal is necessary for national defense,” Halabi explained. “At the same time, the group and its political allies want Israeli forces to withdraw, particularly from territories that are home to their core electoral and community constituencies.”

Halabi also pointed to a critical structural flaw in the deal’s security annex: the agreement frames Israeli movement as conditional redeployment rather than full withdrawal, with no binding timeline for completion and no automatic consequences for Israeli delays. “This creates a fundamental asymmetry between Lebanon and Israel,” he noted. Despite these concerns, U.S. officials have framed the framework as a landmark diplomatic breakthrough. U.S. State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott called the deal a “milestone” in a Monday statement, adding that it grew directly out of recent Israel-Lebanon talks in Rome and that Washington would remain actively engaged to see the agreement through to full implementation. The Israeli military confirmed the process is underway in a post on X, warning it would “respond forcefully to any violation of the agreement.”

Aoun’s Washington visit, which began Saturday when he arrived in the U.S. capital with his wife, marks the first time a Lebanese president has visited the White House since Michel Sleiman met then-President Barack Obama in 2009. Aoun has not previously held one-on-one talks with Trump, and has little of the close rapport other regional leaders like Syria’s Ahmed al-Sharaa have built with the U.S. president. Still, like all Arab leaders, Aoun shares the widespread assessment that only Trump can exert meaningful pressure to rein in Israeli expansion.

In a break from standard diplomatic protocol, Aoun held a separate meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio at the State Department on Sunday ahead of his White House audience. The move, which notably saw Lebanon’s foreign minister Youssef Rajji skip the trip entirely, sparked public outrage across segments of Lebanese society, with many critics framing the snub of their top diplomat as a national humiliation. Rubio characterized the discussions as “very positive” following the meeting, telling reporters that “President Aoun will be able to return to Lebanon and say to the people of Lebanon that he is the one getting positive results” for the country. He also emphasized that Washington recognizes Aoun’s government as the sole legitimate authority in Lebanon, “not Iran, not Hezbollah.”

The trilateral framework was finalized last month after five rounds of U.S.-hosted talks, with Rubio calling it “the beginning of the beginning” ahead of the official signing. Beyond the $30 million in support for the LAF and $100 million in United Nations-coordinated humanitarian aid, Rubio said the deal creates a clear, structured pathway to restore Lebanese sovereignty over its southern territory, disarm Hezbollah, dismantle the group’s military infrastructure, and allow Israel to secure its northern border once security threats are eliminated. “For Lebanon, this Framework provides a genuine pathway out of a long crisis. For Israel, it creates a verifiable path to removing the persistent threat on its northern border,” he said.

Lebanese Ambassador to the U.S. Nada Hamadeh Moawad described the ongoing Washington negotiations as “long and difficult.” In a post on X, Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam welcomed the framework as a step toward “restoration of the state’s sovereignty” but emphasized that Lebanon will not take on any new obligations beyond those already outlined in UN Security Council Resolution 1701 and the 2024 ceasefire agreement. Salam also reaffirmed that “Only the legitimate forces are authorized to bear arms in Lebanon.”

While Hezbollah refused to join direct negotiations with Israel, reports indicate the group maintained backchannel communications with the Trump administration throughout the mediation process. The militant group remains the most powerful military actor in Lebanon, with firepower that far outpaces that of the official Lebanese armed forces, leaving lingering uncertainty about whether the disarmament mandate at the core of the U.S.-brokered deal will ever be fully implemented.