标签： Asia

A growing national outcry is mounting in India over the rapidly declining health of renowned educationist and activist Sonam Wangchuk, who has entered his 19th day of an indefinite hunger strike demanding sweeping changes to the country’s education system. The 59-year-old, an internationally recognized public figure from Ladakh, has subsisted only on salt water since the protest began, losing 9.1 kilograms and now suffering from extreme weakness that leaves him unable to stand unassisted, according to his close aides.

Wangchuk launched his hunger strike in solidarity with the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), an online satirical grassroots movement that rose to prominence following the cancellation of a critical national medical entrance exam in early May. The exam, a high-stakes test for aspiring doctors across India, was scrapped after widespread revelations of a major question paper leak. At the core of the CJP’s demands is the resignation of India’s Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, who protesters argue must take moral accountability for the security failure that upended the futures of thousands of young aspirants. To date, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s central government has refused to open dialogue with the movement, with Pradhan dismissing CJP and its backers as the “B-team of disruptive elements.”

A household name across India, Wangchuk is no ordinary activist. His pioneering work in education innovation earned him the 2018 Ramon Magsaysay Award, widely known as Asia’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize, and his life story served as the inspiration for *Three Idiots*, the 2009 blockbuster Bollywood film that remains one of the highest-grossing Indian movies of all time. He has also made high-profile public appearances, including a guest spot on *Kaun Banega Crorepati*, India’s iconic adaptation of *Who Wants to Be a Millionaire* hosted by Amitabh Bachchan.

As Wangchuk’s condition has deteriorated sharply over the past week, appeals from across India’s political, cultural and academic spheres have flooded in, urging the activist to end his fast. More than 1,800 artists, writers, academics and public figures have signed an open letter requesting Wangchuk to stop his protest, arguing that “the government does not have a heart or a conscience” to respond to his sacrifice. Leading opposition figures have added their voices to the calls: Samajwadi Party leader Akhilesh Yadav posted on X that “the nation is in great need of his moral strength,” urging him to prioritize his health to continue fighting for reform long-term. Congress party Member of Parliament Shashi Tharoor made a heartfelt appeal, noting that Wangchuk had already succeeded in “awakened the conscience of the nation” and that lawmakers would raise students’ demands in the upcoming parliamentary session, making a fatal fast unnecessary.

Legendary Bollywood actor Zeenat Aman also joined the plea, calling on the central government to open immediate dialogue. “We must not become a society that sits back and watches one of its greatest minds be sacrificed,” she wrote on Instagram.

Despite the widespread urgent appeals, Wangchuk has so far refused to end his hunger strike, telling the BBC this week that he intends to see his protest through to “its logical conclusion.” Viral footage circulating on social media this week showed the frail activist requiring assistance to walk, before clutching his leg in visible agony and sitting down.

A legal petition filed before the Delhi High Court is set to be heard Thursday, calling for urgent court intervention to force the government to provide immediate medical care to Wangchuk, warning that he could die within 48 hours without intervention. A separate plea has gone further, asking the court to order that Wangchuk be moved to a government hospital and force-fed to prevent his death. The petition argues that the government’s inaction treats Wangchuk “like a hardcore criminal, terrorist or traitor to the nation,” and that his death would be “a matter of great shame for the country and the world.”

Wangchuk is not the only protester risking his health at the demonstration site at Jantar Mantar, the iconic 18th-century public space in central New Delhi that has long been a hub for political protests. Several other activists and student organization members are also on hunger strike alongside him, with one already hospitalized earlier this week after a sudden decline in health. Protesters have called for a mass day of hunger strike on Thursday, the same day the Delhi High Court hears the petition, and are planning a large march to the Indian Parliament when its new session opens on July 20 to escalate their demands for education reform and accountability.

In a primetime national address delivered Thursday from Washington, former and current President Donald Trump centered his remarks on long-debunked claims of widespread election fraud, reviving his years-long campaign to deny his 2020 loss to Democratic opponent Joe Biden while offering no verifiable evidence to back his allegations.

Trump opened the speech by touting what he framed as key policy wins of his second term, before shifting to a stark warning about purported systemic flaws in U.S. electoral infrastructure. He announced he would declassify a set of previously sealed documents related to the 2020 presidential election and 2018 midterm contests — elections in which he lost the White House and his Republican party suffered significant congressional defeats. Concurrent with the address, the White House launched a public website hosting the declassified materials, which were released without broader contextual framing and consist of snippets from investigation files, intelligence memos, and internal correspondence.

Multiple independent and partisan reviews, including probes led by Republican officials and Trump’s own first-term attorney general, have repeatedly confirmed no widespread fraud or vote manipulation altered the 2020 election outcome. No credible intelligence has ever corroborated claims that foreign actors changed the final vote count in that contest. Notably, Trump declined to question the validity of his own 2016 and 2024 election victories.

Trump argued that current U.S. electoral systems fail to meet a standard of fairness and honesty, framing his push for strict federal voter ID legislation as an urgent response to the vulnerabilities he outlined. “America is back and doing really well, but we still have a major challenge that must be urgently addressed, because no country can be great without fair and honest elections,” he said. “Unfortunately, the system we have today falls catastrophically short of that standard.”

Experts and former intelligence officials have pushed back hard on Trump’s framing. Sue Gordon, who served as principal deputy director of national intelligence during Trump’s first term, described the address as “a dangerous speech about an incredibly important topic.” She told CNN that the intelligence community repeatedly warned Trump of foreign election interference during his first term, only to be dismissed and criticized by the president amid the investigation into his 2016 campaign’s ties to Russia. “He had an entire term to deal with it and I don’t know how you can believe how the same community that told him about it, that was excoriated about it wouldn’t warn him in 2020,” Gordon said.

Observers also highlighted a striking omission in Trump’s remarks: while he centered China as a primary foreign threat to U.S. elections, he made no mention of Russia, which U.S. intelligence agencies have repeatedly confirmed launched wide-ranging influence campaigns to support Trump in both the 2016 and 2020 presidential contests. He also declined to issue any criticism or warning to Chinese President Xi Jinping, a leader he has repeatedly praised throughout his political career.

Primetime presidential addresses to the nation are traditionally reserved for major national events or urgent national milestones, but Trump has increasingly used the platform for overtly political messaging in his second term. His April 2025 primetime address focused on the ongoing Iran war, where he claimed U.S. objectives would be completed “very shortly” — a prediction that has not held, as strikes between U.S. and Iranian forces have intensified in recent weeks.

Not all major broadcast networks chose to air the address live. ABC, NBC, and CNN declined to carry the live speech on their linear channels, opting instead to stream it in full on their digital platforms and cut into regular programming only if developments warranted it. CBS and MSNBC cut away from the address before Trump concluded his remarks, while Fox News aired the entire speech live. Trump hit back at the non-airing outlets, accusing them of participating in “a plot” to suppress his message.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt had pushed networks in advance to carry the address live, arguing “the mainstream media should air the president’s speech and allow the American people to draw their own conclusions from it.” Network decisions to decline live coverage are not unprecedented: in 2022, then-President Joe Biden’s primetime address warning of Trump’s extreme ideology was not carried live by major networks, and in 2014 major outlets opted to stick to scheduled entertainment programming rather than air then-President Barack Obama’s address on immigration reform.

Democratic lawmakers have warned that Trump’s revival of false 2020 election claims is a deliberate tactic to sow public distrust in electoral systems ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, where Republicans face challenging political headwinds. Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia called Trump’s claims “totally bogus,” noting in a social media statement that “our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that China did not even try to change a single vote in the 2020 election.” Rep. Joseph Morelle of New York, ranking Democrat on the House committee overseeing federal elections, said Trump is laying groundwork to discredit the 2026 results. “This is a pretext for the president, I think, calling into dispute the 2026 elections,” Morelle told C-SPAN, adding “we have secure elections.” Democratic Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware noted that “I heard no concrete allegations that foreign actors actually changed the results of an American election.”

When asked Thursday whether Trump would commit to accepting the results of the 2026 midterms, Leavitt declined to answer. Vice President JD Vance told reporters a day earlier that “of course we’re gonna support the results of the midterm elections,” but pushed back on questions about why Trump was prioritizing relitigating past contests rather than focusing on upcoming elections. The Associated Press contributed additional reporting from correspondents across Washington and New York.

In an unusual act of resistance against the routinely passed National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), every Democratic member of the U.S. Senate united on Tuesday to block the annual must-pass defense budget legislation, drawing a line in the sand over the Trump administration’s controversial policies toward Iran and Israel. The 50-46 vote fell far short of the 60 votes required to advance the bill, leaving the $1.162 trillion defense package stalled on Capitol Hill, with parallel negotiations also deadlocked in the House of Representatives.

The proposed bill allocates $1.1 trillion in core funding for the Pentagon, $41 billion for the U.S. Department of Energy’s nuclear weapons stewardship program, and an additional $11 billion for miscellaneous defense-related priorities. While the NDAA has a decades-long history of bipartisan passage, this year’s iteration has ignited fierce intraparty and interbranch debate over its new provisions deepening U.S.-Israeli military ties, as well as anger over the Trump administration’s unauthorized military escalation against Iran.

In the House, where Republicans hold only a razor-thin governing majority, the bill has also failed to move past opposition from cross-party critics. A bipartisan amendment spearheaded by Democratic Representative Ro Khanna and Republican Representative Thomas Massie, designed to remove the most contested new provision of the bill—Section 219, which creates the U.S.-Israel Defense Technology Cooperation Initiative—did not pass. However, it drew more than 100 votes from House Democrats, a sign of deep unrest within the Democratic caucus over the legislation’s approach to the Middle East. The intra-party split was on full display from California Democratic Representative Brad Sherman, who took to social platform X to condemn the amendment, arguing it “sends a clear signal to the enemies of America that we are willing to abandon our allies and our own security,” labeling the measure “anti-Israel, pro-terror.”

In the Senate, progressive Democrats led the opposition, centering their criticism on the unchecked expansion of military collaboration with Israel and claims that Israeli influence pushed the Trump administration to launch its February 28 war against Iran—a move that many lawmakers argue violates federal law requiring congressional authorization for major military conflict. “Not only does this effectively green light Trump’s illegal Iran war, it also gives the Israeli government immense leverage over our national security,” Maryland Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen posted on X ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Following the vote, Vermont independent Senator (and caucus-aligned Democrat) Bernie Sanders echoed that frustration, noting: “At a time when millions struggle to pay the bills, virtually every Senate Republican voted… for the illegal and immoral war in Iran and a special provision to provide even more weapons to Israel with almost zero oversight. It’s time to invest in the American people, not endless war.”

Even Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat who has long supported close U.S.-Israel ties and has taken a less hardline stance against the Iran conflict than progressive colleagues, backed the unified opposition. Schumer stated publicly that Trump “is dragging America deeper into a war in Iran with no authorization, no plan, and no exit strategy. Democrats will not go along.”

Section 219, the provision at the heart of the debate, is a novel addition to this year’s NDAA that would formalize expanded, deeply integrated military technology cooperation between the U.S. and Israel across all defense sectors, from missile defense systems to artificial intelligence and next-generation emerging military technologies. Once implemented, the framework is structured to be largely irreversible, making its adoption a permanent shift in the bilateral military relationship. That permanence, combined with shifting voter attitudes, has turned the provision into a flashpoint: consecutive public opinion polls show Democratic voters have grown increasingly critical of Israel’s actions in the region, putting pressure on party lawmakers to push back on expanded military ties.

The Senate’s move to block the bill has been widely celebrated by progressive advocacy groups focused on Middle East policy. The American Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee issued a statement praising the “every senator who voted no [and] who demanded scrutiny of provisions that would permanently intertwine the U.S. and Israeli military and intelligence apparatuses,” adding that the original bill would have “severely compromised America’s independence and its ability to pressure Israel to stop its military expansions and genocides of the Palestinian and Lebanese people.” The National Iranian American Council also applauded the blockade, stating: “We applaud those Senators who acted and demonstrated that Congress will not stand by while the President openly defies the law. Blocking the NDAA sends an unmistakable message: if the President refuses to obey the law, Congress can and must bring the Washington war machine’s business to a halt.”

Despite the current stalemate, congressional leadership still projects that a revised version of the NDAA will pass before lawmakers depart for their annual August recess, with compromises likely on the controversial provisions to win enough bipartisan support for advancement.

NEW DELHI — On a recent humid afternoon, the open-air student protest camp at New Delhi’s Jantar Mantar slowly stirred awake, as demonstrators rolled up rain-soaked bedding after another night sleeping under the open sky. At the center of the gathering, inside a simple canvas tent, 59-year-old activist Sonam Wangchuk rests, his gaunt frame bearing the physical toll of three weeks on a continuous hunger strike. For Wangchuk, this deliberate act of peaceful civil disobedience is the only acceptable alternative to violent public unrest.

“If not fasting, what? Riots in the streets? That’s what we don’t want to do. So this is a peaceful way to take your voice to the government,” Wangchuk explained to reporters, as a steady stream of worried supporters stopped by to check his condition.

What started as a spontaneous online backlash against an offhand judicial comment has grown into a grass-roots movement that is testing the Modi government’s willingness to engage with public dissent from young Indian voters. The unlikely face of this youth-driven mobilization is Wangchuk, a well-known climate activist who has lent his high-profile credibility to the Cockroach Janta Party, the movement that emerged two months ago and rapidly gained traction following widespread allegations of college entrance exam leaks on social media.

The movement’s origins trace back to May, when Supreme Court Chief Justice Surya Kant compared unemployed young Indians to “cockroaches” during a unrelated court hearing. Rather than rejecting the insult, movement supporters reclaimed the label as a badge of collective resilience, turning the name into a satirical political brand that amassed more than 21 million Instagram followers in just 48 hours. What began as online outrage quickly translated to on-the-ground action, with the first major mass rally held in New Delhi in early June. Today, thousands of supporters have joined protests at universities and public squares across multiple Indian cities.

The movement’s core demands are clear: the immediate resignation of Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan over the ongoing exam leak controversy, sweeping systemic reforms to India’s competitive entrance exam system, and financial compensation for the families of students who died by suicide linked to exam stress or leak-related disruptions. For millions of young Indians, access to government jobs and elite medical college spots hinges entirely on performance in these high-stakes entrance exams, making the integrity of the testing system a matter of life-altering importance.

Unlike established national political parties, the Cockroach Janta Party has no formal hierarchical structure, and all supporters cover their own travel and accommodation costs to join the New Delhi camp, which is located at Jantar Mantar, India’s long-designated public space for peaceful protest. Local police have not moved to shut down the demonstration, which has drawn support from a broad cross-section of Indian society beyond current students. Thirty-three-year-old IT professional Ajay Zingade is one of many non-student supporters who joined the camp, driven to action by repeated cycles of exam paper leaks that have eroded public trust in India’s institutional systems.

“I am just exercising my fundamental right of dissent,” Zingade said.

In recent weeks, the protest has gained growing high-profile support, with opposition political leaders across multiple parties and several Bollywood celebrities visiting the camp or publicly endorsing the movement’s demands. Still, on-the-ground turnout in New Delhi has remained modest compared to the movement’s massive online following: most days draw a few hundred demonstrators for the ongoing sit-in, with evening crowds swelling to roughly 1,000. Many participants have endured weeks of heavy monsoon rain, living in basic tent accommodation throughout their protest.

Protest organizers say the movement has expanded beyond exam reform to become a broader call for institutional accountability, as young Indians have lost trust in key national bodies including the judiciary, political establishment, and mainstream media. “The system needs a complete overhaul because the current system is no longer accountable or even taking basic responsibility,” said Abhijeet Dipke, a Boston University student and founder of the Cockroach Janta Party.

To date, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government has not acknowledged the movement’s demands nor opened any negotiations with organizers. The national education ministry did not respond to requests for comment from the Associated Press. Senior government leaders have largely dismissed the protest, with Pradhan accusing movement members of working against national interests, while other officials have argued that while students’ concerns merit review, there is no reason for the government to enter formal talks with the group.

This government silence has only hardened protesters’ resolve, organizers say, as Wangchuk’s hunger strike enters its third week. “In a democracy the government is supposed to listen to the people, to have a dialogue with the people, and more importantly to be answerable to the people. I don’t know why the government isn’t doing that,” Dipke said.

For Wangchuk, the hunger strike is intended to channel widespread public anger over institutional failure into a disciplined, peaceful act of civil disobedience that aligns with India’s long history of nonviolent protest. “It’s to demand accountability, which is important in any government,” he said.

Organizers are now preparing to escalate their campaign with a planned march to India’s Parliament building next Monday, an action designed to deliver their demands directly to sitting lawmakers. Wangchuk says he hopes the government will choose to engage with the movement’s peaceful tactics rather than force protesters to adopt more confrontational methods.

“We hope that government is sensible enough to reward peaceful ways rather than wait for not-so-peaceful ways,” he said.

Dipke added that the movement is prepared to sustain its protest for as long as necessary, pushing back against government assumptions that the youth-led campaign would quickly fade. “The government was thinking that maybe if they ignore us: These are kids, they will go back home. But I think we have proved that we are here for the long battle, and we are not going to go back home,” he said.

On Wednesday, two prominent U.S.-based organizations advocating for Palestinian rights took legal action in a New York federal court, asking for an injunction to halt the Trump administration’s aggressive enforcement of sanctions against any individuals or groups that engage with the International Criminal Court (ICC).

The plaintiffs in the case are Democracy for the Arab World Now (DAWN), an organization founded by assassinated Saudi-American journalist Jamal Khashoggi, and the Taxpayer Alliance Against Genocide (TAAG). The groups moved quickly to file suit following a provocative opinion piece published earlier this week by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, in which he openly threatened to dismantle the international tribunal “brick by brick.”

Early in his current presidential term, Donald Trump signed Executive Order 14203, which grants federal officials broad authority to impose economic sanctions on any foreign national that supports ICC probes into alleged war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed by U.S. and Israeli citizens. The order also codified a new federal criminal offense, penalizing any person that provides or receives a “service” to or from a sanctioned individual or entity. The Trump administration has framed the ICC’s investigations as a national emergency, arguing the court has no legal jurisdiction over acts committed by U.S. and Israeli personnel during armed conflict.

Washington’s fraught relationship with the ICC dates back decades. While the U.S. played a role in the court’s early founding and signed the landmark Rome Statute in 2000 under the Bill Clinton administration, it never submitted the treaty to the U.S. Senate for ratification, driven by longstanding fears that the tribunal could prosecute U.S. military personnel and government officials for alleged war crimes committed during the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq.

To date, the Trump administration has used the sweeping powers of Executive Order 14203 to sanction multiple ICC prosecutors and judges, as well as three leading Palestinian human rights groups: al-Haq, al-Mezan, and the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights. In a high-profile move that drew widespread international condemnation, the administration also sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories.

In a public statement outlining the lawsuit, DAWN warned that the vague, overbroad wording of the executive order puts the organization and TAAG at severe risk of civil and even criminal penalties. Because the term “service” can be interpreted by the government to cover almost any activity that provides a benefit to a recipient, routine advocacy work that many rights groups conduct could become illegal. For example, DAWN noted it could face legal consequences for submitting an amicus brief to the ICC encouraging investigations into potential crimes, or even simply sharing evidence and analysis with sanctioned Palestinian rights groups or with Albanese.

Facing this pervasive legal threat, DAWN and TAAG — along with many other U.S.-based advocacy groups — have already been forced to censor their own work. Multiple organizations have paused all projects related to the ICC and cut off professional ties with the sanctioned Palestinian groups and Albanese, the statement added.

Joe Pace, the lead attorney representing the two organizations, told reporters during a Wednesday press briefing that Trump’s sanctions regime is a “textbook infringement” on First Amendment protections for free speech. “The Constitution does not permit the government to pick and choose what topics American citizens can discuss amongst themselves or with foreign parties,” Pace emphasized.

Rubio’s broad attack on the ICC has reinforced the view shared by many critics that the U.S. and its closest allies are waging an all-out diplomatic campaign against the tribunal specifically because it is moving to hold Israel accountable for alleged war crimes in Gaza. The military campaign in Gaza has been labeled a genocide by multiple United Nations human rights bodies, independent human rights organizations, and leading genocide scholars.

In his opinion piece published by The Wall Street Journal on Monday, Rubio argued that the ICC’s investigation into actions by U.S. military and law enforcement personnel represents a dangerous overreach of the court’s authority. He claimed allowing the ICC to exercise jurisdiction over U.S. citizens would fundamentally undermine American sovereignty, writing “It would mean the death of the US as a sovereign and independent nation.”

Rubio also released a pre-recorded monologue addressing the issue on the social platform X on Monday, where he claimed the court is attempting to strip U.S. citizens of their right to be tried under American law by a jury of their peers. “But today, powerful people in far away places want to take that away from us. They believe that they should be in charge of your laws, of your country, your life – and they don’t care whether or not you agree,” he said in the video. He added that American voters do not know the identities of the ICC’s judges, prosecutors, and leadership, and “they shouldn’t have to,” while repeating his accusation that the tribunal is waging a deliberate campaign against American sovereignty.

Rubio claimed that opposition to the ICC’s activities enjoys bipartisan support in the U.S. The court was established in 2002 in response to mass atrocities and genocides in conflict zones including Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. Notably, however, Rubio made no direct mention of the ICC’s outstanding arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant. The pair are wanted on charges of crimes against humanity committed during Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza, which has killed more than 73,000 Palestinians since October 2023, according to local health authorities. The ICC also issued arrest warrants for three senior Hamas leaders for alleged war crimes committed during the group’s October 7, 2023 attack on southern Israel; all three have since been assassinated by Israeli forces.

DAWN, for its part, has a long history of submitting evidence and legal filings to the ICC. Past submissions include a 2022 filing calling for sanctions on the Israeli military’s ultranationalist Netzah Yehuda Battalion, a 2023 submission naming senior Israeli military commanders implicated in the ongoing Gaza campaign, and a 279-page filing in January 2025 asking the ICC prosecutor to open an investigation into former U.S. President Joe Biden and his top cabinet officials for aiding and abetting war crimes and genocide in Gaza.