SEOUL: North Korea leader Kim Jong Un and Russian President Vladimir Putin exchanged letters on Tuesday (Aug 15) pledging to develop their ties into what Kim called a “long-standing strategic relationship,” Pyongyang’s state media KCNA said. The letters mark the 78th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule,Continue Reading
TOKYO: More than 180,000 residents in a western Japanese city were urged to seek shelter on Tuesday (Aug 15) as a tropical storm hit, swelling rivers and triggering landslide warnings. Downgraded from a typhoon, Lan roared in from the Pacific at around 5am (8pm GMT), soaking and buffeting the commercialContinue Reading
TOKYO: More than 800 flights were cancelled and tens of thousands of homes lost power as a slow-moving typhoon made landfall in western Japan early on Tuesday (Aug 15), prompting authorities to issue flood and landslide warnings, public broadcaster NHK said. Approaching from the Pacific Ocean, Typhoon Lan made landfallContinue Reading
Electricity was mostly restored in seven regions, but 15,600 households were still without power as of Tuesday afternoon, according to a local utility. Part of a pedestrian bridge was swept away in Kyoto and flying debris stopped local commuter trains. Express bullet trains were suspended as planned along with hundredsContinue Reading
A video taken by a passenger appears to show the man, who was wearing a backpack, threatening passengers and staff.
Police did not specify the nationality of the man though they said he is a resident of Canberra.
They had earlier stressed the incident posed no “impending threat to the community” – although it did cause 32 domestic flights to be cancelled and created lengthy delays of up to 90 minutes for others. No international flights were cancelled.
“In the interest of safety, the commander of the flight made a decision to return to Sydney,” said a Malaysia Airlines spokesperson in response to CNA’s queries on Monday night.
The airline added that other passengers and crew members completed disembarkation at 7pm.
The man has also been charged with one count of not complying with cabin crew’s safety instructions, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) added.
“The AFP will not divulge operational matters, however, an emergency response plan was enacted and an evacuation was initiated once it was deemed safe for passengers and crew.”
The man is expected to appear in court on Tuesday.
The offences carry a maximum penalty of 10 years imprisonment and a fine of over A$15,000 (S$13,200).
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) should work on carefully crafting their foreign policy amid a Sino-American competition in the region while equipping the younger generation with the essential skills needed to cope with future uncertainties, experts said.
Assoc Prof Jittipat Poonkham, Associate Dean for Academic and International Affairs of the Political Science Faculty at Thammasat University, said the rising tensions between two major powers will eventually force Asean, including Thailand, to take sides.
He was speaking during a recent panel discussion on “Asean and Thai Foreign Policy” to mark Asean Day on Aug 8 at the Foreign Affairs Ministry.
He said that Asean members are facing the same situation that occurred during the Cold War. Today, there is a rise of two major powers, putting an emphasis on geopolitics, he added. At the same time, he noted, Asean, including Thailand, faces a dilemma of who to side with.
Asean member states should instead stay and move forward together as a team, he said.
He likened Thailand’s foreign policy to bamboo that bends with the wind. In this sense, policies are adaptable, balanced and pragmatic, he said.
To develop Thailand’s foreign policy under the Asean context, Thailand should balance relations between the two powers and choose paths best for the country, he said.
“Thailand must have vision, political will and support to know where the wind will blow and where the powers will be,” he said.
Meanwhile, Asean should “lead from the middle”, meaning member states should focus on being a middle power to balance the two superpower countries, he said, adding collective leadership is required to revitalise Asean centrality.
When Asean moves as a pack, it will have strong political leverage, he said. At the same time, he said the pack is required to initiate regional political advocacy focused on reducing strategic uncertainty amid the competition between the two superpowers.
Piti Srisangnam, Asean Foundation Executive Director, said Asean is at a crossroads and must move forward and look 20 years beyond its Asean Community Vision 2025, which will end in two years.
In 2045, he said Asean is expected to be a community of youths and children. He said that while other countries may face becoming ageing societies, Asean, aside from Thailand and Singapore, will not have such problems.
In 2045, he said there will be more than 250 million Asean people aged between 15 and 35, or one-third of the entire population, which may exceed 800 million in the next two decades.
He said Asean should prepare the future generations.
The younger generation must develop empathy, strategic communication and the spirit of friendship, while youths should be equipped with digital technology, entrepreneurial, lifelong learning, language and industry-specific skills, he said.
“We have to bring ourselves to the year 2045 and think [of] what we want to have and consider what we should prepare,” he said. “The four things we should consider to make Asean prosper are people, time, budget and knowledge.”
“We are an emerging economy, so we should have a certain amount of budget to make our region go forward. However, people and knowledge are very important, and we still have many things to do to ensure the readiness of the people in our region,” he added.
Soontorn Chaiyindeepoom, Thailand Representative on the High-Level Task Force for Asean Community Vision of Post 2025, explained that to prepare for the future, Asean had to set up a high-level task force to draft the next Asean vision.
After discussions over the past 1.5 years, the task force now agrees to include the goals of Asean Community Vision 2025, he said. These include Asean unity, cohesion, resilience and becoming a rules-based community that is responsive and adaptive to current and future challenges, he said.
“We also agreed on making Asean a nuclear-weapons-free region and to contribute to global efforts on proliferation issues, protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms,” he said.
“We agree to enhance economic resilience and competitiveness while promoting social inclusivity,” he added.
Elderly face limits on who gets welfare
Critics have slammed the outgoing government for issuing a new regulation imposing income limits on the elderly receiving monthly allowances.
They say it should be left to the incoming government to decide on the matter while accusing the outgoing government of inefficiently categorising income groups.
The new regulation was signed by Interior Minister Anupong Paojinda and published in the Royal Gazette on Friday and became effective on Saturday.
The old regulation was for local administration organisations to pay universal monthly allowances of 600-1,000 baht to all elderly people, with 600 baht for people aged 60-69, 700 baht for people aged 70-79, 800 baht for people aged 80-89, and 1,000 baht for people aged 90 years and older.
Item 6 (4) of the new regulation states that from Saturday, only elderly people with no income or insufficient income to cover the cost of living are entitled to the monthly allowance from the state.
However, Item 17, a provisional clause in the new regulation, states that the new criterion for payment of the elderly allowance does not apply to people who registered for the allowance with local bodies before Aug 12, 2023, meaning those currently receiving the allowance are not affected.
Chaithawat Tulathon, secretary-general of the Move Forward Party (MFP), said the party disagrees with the new criterion.
“Everyone is entitled to welfare benefits. It is not about trying to prove people’s poverty. Changing a policy regarding welfare benefits is a major issue as it affects many people. It should not be carried out while a new government has not taken office yet,” he said.
“Whoever becomes the new prime minister should revise the new regulation,” Mr Chaithawat said while insisting that the party favours universal welfare coverage.
Wiroj Lakkhanaadisorn, an MFP list-MP, said the new criterion had replaced universal coverage for the elderly.
It will severely impact people reaching 60 in the future, he said. People turning 70, 80 or 90 looking forward to the larger allowance will also wonder if they will get it.
In addition, he said, it was unclear whether people turning 60, who still have enough income to live on and are not entitled to the allowance under the new criterion and who later find they cannot make ends meet, will be able to register for the allowance.
Mr Wiroj said Thailand now had about 11 million people aged 60 and older. If payment of the elderly allowance were based on the database for state-welfare cardholders, only 5 million would be entitled to the allowance.
The other 6 million would be left out in the cold by the government, he said.
“The database is unreliable. This information cannot be used as a criterion for paying the elderly allowance,” he said.
The MFP MP said Section 11 (11) of the Elderly People Act stipulates that payment of the elderly allowance must be made monthly and be universal and fair.
The requirement for the elderly to prove their poverty may prevent them from receiving state welfare, which breaches this law.
Mr Wiroj said people affected by this change could petition the Administrative Court. The MFP pledged a monthly allowance of 3,000 baht to all elderly citizens during campaigning for the general election.
Sustarum Thammaboosadee, a lecturer at Thammasat University’s college of interdisciplinary studies, said that all elderly people should be entitled to universal welfare coverage.
Wannaphong Durongkaveroj, an economics lecturer at Ramkhamhaeng University, said that local authorities could not rely on the state-welfare card database to identify who is eligible for the allowance.
He said they must instead hold surveys in their localities before implementing the new regulation.
The Pheu Thai (PT) Party is confident its prime ministerial candidate will win endorsement from parliament in the next PM vote, a party source said.
However, the source said that before the vote, things may take an unexpected turn, and Palang Pracharath Party (PPRP) leader and PM candidate Prawit Wongsuwon could emerge as the new prime minister, with the support of renegade MPs from Pheu Thai.
The source said that all eyes are on whether parliament president Wan Muhamad Noor Matha will today issue a letter setting a date for the next PM vote. The voting session must be set three days in advance.
If the vote is to be held on Friday, the source said the letter must be issued by today.
The source went on to say that a team of Pheu Thai negotiators have now gathered enough support for its PM candidate, Srettha Thavinsin, from other parties.
The source said the senators are also likely to vote in his favour as Pheu Thai has turned its back on the Move Forward Party (MFP), whose policy to amend Section 112 of the Criminal Code, known as the lese majeste law, is opposed by the senators.
Prawit for PM?
But if the senators still refuse to vote for Mr Srettha, this means Pheu Thai is deceived and is being used as a springboard for Gen Prawit to become the next prime minister, the source said.
Some believe senators may not vote for any of Pheu Thai’s three candidates but choose to support those from the “conservative” camp as it attempts to secure the premiership.
Anutin Charnvirakul, leader and PM candidate of the Bhumjaithai Party, or Gen Prawit, may benefit from this situation.
The other two Pheu Thai PM candidates are Paetongtarn Shinawatra, daughter of former PM Thaksin Shinawatra, and Chaikasem Nitisiri.
Srettha: May not receive Senate support
“If Pheu Thai decides to become a stepping stone for Gen Prawit, this will spell doom for it,” the source said.
“Pheu Thai executives must make a wise decision as the stakes are high. During the campaign for the May 14 election, we promised that we would not work with the ‘uncle’ parties [referring to parties linked with military leaders involved in the 2014 coup],” the source said.
The “uncles” refer to Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha, the former UTN chief adviser and its prime ministerial candidate, and Gen Prawit.
The source said Pheu Thai earlier cited “a unique political situation” as a reason to end rivalry among parties from opposite ends of the political spectrum for the sake of unity.
But the party should have mentioned this before the May 14 election so voters could decide whether they agreed with it, the source said.
“Speaking about the issue right now is like an excuse for doing all it can to form a government,” the source said.
The source said that a group of 40 MPs from the PPRP earlier promised to vote for Pheu Thai’s PM candidate, even though the PPPR has not yet announced a formal decision.
However, the red-shirt supporters still disagree with the idea of working with the PPRP because Gen Prawit remains the PPRP’s leader, the source said.
The only way for Gen Prawit to become the leader of a new government with the support of a House majority is to poach renegade MPs from Pheu Thai, the source said.
“There has also been concern that if Mr Srettha’s bid for prime minister fails in the next vote and Pheu Thai still cannot form a government, this can pave the way for an ‘outsider prime minister’ to be nominated,” the source said.
Under the constitution, if a joint sitting of parliament fails to select a new premier from party candidate lists, Section 272 would trigger an alternative route.
In such a situation, half of the 750 MPs and senators can initiate a motion to suspend the rule requiring that PM candidates come from party lists, paving the way for an outsider to be selected.
Old guard vs new one
Sukhum Nuansakul, a political analyst and former rector at Ramkhamhaeng University, said he believed that Pheu Thai’s PM candidate, Mr Srettha, would not get the support from the senators in the next PM vote.
“I don’t think the candidate’s PM bid will succeed because the senators are close to the old power group, and they will not vote in his favour,” he said.
“Actually, their real aim is to help Gen Prawit secure the premiership. If things turn out this way, street demonstrations can be expected,” he said. “The old power group wants Gen Prawit to become the next prime minister. They want to maintain the old political system and don’t want any change.”
“Pheu Thai knows about their purpose, but it still plays into the hands of the old guard when it comes to forming a government,” Mr Sukhum said.
If the so-called uncle parties are part of the Pheu Thai-led government, Pheu Thai will lose credibility, he said.
“The current situation is a battle between the existing political establishment seeking to maintain the status quo and a new generation calling for change,” Mr Sukhum said.
Asked whether it will be possible for Pheu Thai to come back to working with the MFP, Mr Sukhum said that this depends on a Constitutional Court ruling on parliament’s rejection of the renomination of MFP leader Pita Limjaroenrat.
The court is scheduled to rule tomorrow on whether to accept for consideration a petition seeking its ruling on whether Mr Pita’s rejected renomination is constitutional.
If the court rules in Mr Pita’s favour, Mr Pita can be renominated, Mr Sukhum said.
Jatuporn Prompan, former chair of the red-shirt United Front for Democracy against Dictatorship, slammed Pheu Thai over its move to include the PPRP and the UTN as part of the coalition. “Such a move has left people baffled as to what is true or false regarding the formation of a government,” he said.
During the election campaign, Pheu Thai leader Cholnan Srikaew, Ms Paetongtarn and Mr Srettha said the party would not work with the uncle parties, Mr Jatuporn said.
“Dr Cholnan said he would resign as party leader if Pheu Thai teamed up with those parties. How will he explain to the people?” he said.
Getty ImagesMany Afghan refugees have been “let down” by the UK, with some living in hotels for up to two years and now facing eviction, a think tank has said.
More in Common said lessons needed to be learned so future refugees were better supported.
It comes on the anniversary of the UK’s evacuation programme and the fall of Kabul to the Taliban on 15 August 2021.
Minister Johnny Mercer admitted there had been “challenges” but said he was determined to make Afghan schemes work.
Operation Pitting saw the UK airlift around 15,000 people out of Kabul – including British nationals, as well as people who worked with the UK in Afghanistan and their family members.
Those who had nowhere to live were placed in government-funded hotels. This was supposed to be temporary accommodation but by the end of March, there were still around 8,800 Afghans living in hotels.
The government has imposed a deadline of the end of August for Afghans to be moved out of hotels, but councils have warned some are facing homelessness as they cannot find anywhere else to live.
More In Common, an organisation founded in the wake of the murder of Labour MP Jo Cox, surveyed 132 Afghans in the UK.
It was told of failures in communication with local authorities and the Home Office on housing, rental applications being repeatedly rejected, and unsuitable homes being offered, sometimes hundreds of miles away.
One example saw a refugee living in temporary accommodation in Bristol, where they had family, offered permanent housing in Northern Ireland.
Amir Hussain Ibrahimi was evacuated from Afghanistan by the UK two years ago and has been living in a hotel in Southend-on-Sea, Essex, ever since.
The 24 year old, who was a journalist and photographer in Afghanistan, said he was forced to leave his family behind after he was arrested and attacked by the Taliban.
“The first days when I was in the hotel we had a lot of promises – the government told us that you’re going to stay three months or four months or five months,” he told BBC News.
“It is quite hard because you don’t know what is the next step for your life.”
“Sometimes you want to feel a place is like a home,” he said, adding that he had felt depressed at times since coming to the UK.
Mr Ibrahimi said he was relieved the council had finally found him a permanent home, after being rejected by more than 10 landlords. He is now waiting to see if this landlord will accept him as a tenant.
However, he said he knew many other families who had not managed to find homes.
Mr Ibrahimi acknowledged there were challenges as other Afghans did not have experience working in the UK and often had large families. However, he said the government needed to do more to help.
Cabinet Office minister Mr Mercer, who served in Afghanistan during his time in the military and is responsible for the resettlement scheme, acknowledged “things could always have been done differently” and that Afghan families had been in hotels “for far too long”.
He told the PA news agency the deadline for people to leave hotels by the end of August had been “a controversial move” but it was done “with compassion in mind”.
He said 440 Afghans had been matched to homes in the past week “and I couldn’t have generated that momentum without putting that hard deadline in there”.
The Home Office says it has provided £285m funding to help move Afghans into permanent homes.
A spokesperson for the Local Government Association said councils had worked “incredibly hard” to support Afghan families but had faced challenges including a shortage of housing.
It accepted there were lessons to be learned but blamed a “delay in funding and guidance from government for creating a lot of uncertainty”.
Meanwhile, charities have criticised resettlement schemes for being too slow and leaving many people who want to come to the UK stuck in Afghanistan.
Since the original evacuation, the numbers arriving under the Afghan Citizens Resettlement Scheme (ACRS) have been low, with only 40 refugees who have fled Afghanistan to neighbouring countries being resettled in the UK up to the end of March, while only 14 members of at-risk groups have been resettled directly from Afghanistan.
A further 9,059 people, who arrived in the UK under Operation Pitting, have also been resettled under the ACRS, while 11,398 have been brought to the UK under a scheme for Afghans who worked for or with the UK government.
In the meantime others have taken dangerous routes like crossing the Channel in small boats, with Afghan the most common nationality recorded among those arriving this way so far this year.
Human rights organisation Justice said the schemes had been marked by “significant delays, lack of transparency and lack of consistency”.
It called for quicker processing times and better communication with applicants.
Mr Mercer acknowledged some people had been left behind after the Taliban takeover and had still not been brought to safety.
However, he said he was determined to make resettlement schemes “work properly” and that the UK should be “proud” of its efforts to rescue people.
A Home Office spokesperson said the UK had made “one of the largest commitments of any country to support Afghanistan” and there was “no need for Afghans to risk their lives by taking dangerous and illegal journeys”.
Nava Jamshidi/BBC“We are going to allow women to study and work within our framework. Women are going to be very active in our society,” the Taliban announced in their first press conference shortly after seizing power on 15 August 2021.
Two years on, these assurances have been firmly demolished by the Taliban government’s actions. The suppression of women’s rights under their rule is the harshest in the world, brought in through a relentless series of religious decrees from the Taliban leadership, and regional rulings that have been steadily imposed across Afghanistan.
During each of these moments, the BBC has been on ground speaking to Afghan girls and women – documenting grief, fear, hope and resolve as their lives and world have shrunk.
The first indication of the Taliban’s attitude to women came a month after the takeover. Secondary schools opened for boys following a ministry of education statement which made no mention of girls.
“Locally, we were told not to attend classes,” a 17-year-old female student told us in Kabul at the time. “For 11 years, despite the risk of violence, I worked hard so I could become a doctor. I’m devastated,” she wept, as she waved goodbye to her brothers heading off to school.
In the same week, female employees of the Kabul city administration were told by the mayor to stay at home, with only those who performed jobs which couldn’t be done by men, allowed to continue.
But still, some women felt hope. “They’ve kept universities open, so I think they will change their policy soon,” one university student told us.
At the time, we visited the headquarters of the Taliban’s moral police, the Ministry of the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. It had been set up in the same compound where the Ministry of Women’s Affairs of the former regime once was – a government department scrapped by the Taliban weeks after taking power.
We were told women were allowed into the ministry, but we didn’t see any.
“Why have you closed schools for girls?” I asked a Taliban spokesman sitting in the compound, surrounded by Taliban fighters.
“Girls themselves aren’t going to school,” he replied.
When challenged, he said: “We will open schools for girls across the country. We are working to improve the security situation.”
Women responded to the restrictions by marching on the streets of Afghan cities, demanding the right to work and study. They were violently stopped by the Taliban government on multiple occasions.
“I was lashed with electric cables,” one protester told us in a discreet meeting in one of her friend’s homes. She’d been moving from place to place, fearing she’d be caught.
In January 2022, at least four female activists were detained – they were held for weeks and beaten in custody.
Restrictions were being brought in incrementally. In December 2021, the government’s virtue and vice ministry ordered that women travelling distances longer than 72km (45 miles) must be accompanied by a close male relative.
Then suddenly, there was a glimmer of hope.
On 21 March 2023, the Taliban education department announced “all students” would be able to return to school at the start of the new academic term.
Multiple Taliban officials told us that girls’ schools would reopen.
Two days later, a BBC team watched female students filter into the Sayed ul Shuhada school, wiping dust off their desks, chattering excitedly as they returned to their classrooms. But within minutes, the mood had turned.
A local Taliban education official had forwarded the headteacher a WhatsApp message, saying girls’ secondary schools would remain closed until further notice.
Many students burst into tears. “What kind of country is this? What is our sin?” one called Fatima said.
The Taliban government itself has been guarded when explaining its actions – calling them a return to traditional Islamic and Afghan values. Meanwhile, many ultra conservative clerics, tribal elders and their followers are part of the government’s support base which helped them seize power in Afghanistan, and we’ve been told there are fears within the government that it could lose that support if it makes any move that goes against the elders’ beliefs
Less than two months later, on 7 May 2022, the government announced a decree endorsed by its supreme leader Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada, mandating head-to-toe clothing for women.
“Those women who are not too old or young must cover their faces, except the eyes,” it read.
It also ordered that male family members should ensure that women and girls comply, or they would face action.
On the ground we could see a change in how many women were visible on the streets, and how they were dressed.
Women who had worn long colourful tunics, a hijab, jeans and high heels told us they had begun to wear loose black abayas (gowns), a hijab, a surgical mask to cover their faces and trainers or boots.
More women also began to wear black burkas.
“We don’t care what we have to wear if that means they allow us to study and work,” one explained.
While women began to disappear from public life, the number of destitute women, who had been denied the right to work and the ability to feed their families, were increasingly visible on the streets begging for help.
We began to hear of more and more girls being forced into early marriages by their families, because they were not able to get an education or a job.
By October 2022, a few months had passed without any major new restrictions. When they allowed girls, including those who had not completed their last year of school, to sit for university entrance exams, hopes began to be rekindled.
During our conversations with Taliban leaders, it had become clear that there were divisions within the Taliban on the issue of women’s education.
“Some religious scholars have problems with girls going to schools. The government is trying to build a consensus and resolve the matter,” Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid told us during an interview.
But the Kandahar-based top leadership continued to harden its stance, significantly shrinking women’s freedoms by the end of the year.
In November, a vice and virtue ministry spokesman told us that women had been banned from Kabul parks because they were not following Sharia [Islamic law].
We have often seen that such rulings announced for one city are invariably implemented across Afghanistan – as was the case with the parks ban.
This time when we visited the ministry, we were told women were no longer allowed inside – we were only exempted as foreigners.
Nearby, from the roof of a restaurant overlooking an amusement park in Kabul, we saw fathers with their children, Taliban fighters, and groups of boys enjoying an evening out, with no women in sight.
Women were also barred from gyms, swimming pools and public baths.
“Every day, as girls in Afghanistan, we wake up to new restrictions,” one female student told us. “I was lucky I finished secondary school before the Taliban came. But I’m scared now that universities might also be closed for women.”
And she was right. On 20 December 2022, the Taliban higher education minister ordered that all public and private universities immediately suspend all female education until further notice.
Four days later, came another harsh blow. The Taliban’s Ministry of Economy told all local and international NGOs operating in Afghanistan to ask their female employees to stop coming to work or have their permits revoked.
The last few spaces where women could gather away from Taliban scrutiny were hair and beauty salons.
But the Taliban government’s announcement on 4 July to shut these down didn’t come as a surprise to most people.
Some 60,000 women were estimated to have been employed in salons.
“It was the only source of income for my family. My husband has health issues and cannot work. How will I feed my children?” one salon owner told us.
Despite the risks, she’s decided to run a salon from home because she says there is no other option.
Pushed indoors, we have seen some women finding ways to live their lives amid restrictions. Underground secret schools are running in parts of the country. Some NGOs still employ women who try to slip under the radar.
Women are allowed to work in security, public health, arts and craft and a few other areas.
And every once in a while, despite the very grave risk of detention and violence, groups of Afghan women continue to march on the streets, raising their voices.
One of them told us: “We are not the same women the Taliban suppressed 20 years ago. We have changed and they will have to accept it, even if we have to give up our lives for it.”
