Hungary EU Presidency: Definitely Will Not Make Europe Great Again

Budapest is expected to stall the EU’s most important initiatives

28 June 2024
Vilmos Bábel



Hungary has set lofty ambitions for its time at the top of the European Council, but a lack of political goodwill and difficult timing – as the EU continues to transition into the next term – means Budapest is more likely to simply freeze the EU’s most important priorities.

“Make Europe Great Again.” That’s the motto of the Hungary’s EU Presidency of the Council of the EU, which begins on 1 July, but it is likely to mean just as little as the US version.

A puzzling relationship

MEGA doesn’t mean much on its own. It is an ambiguous maxim, whose meaning can be bent to mean whatever the government in Budapest decides it means on any given day. The only concrete interpretation is the obvious nod towards the Hungarian government’s like-minded friends across the Atlantic, as Viktor Orbán continues to bet on a Donald Trump autumn victory and resultant power reshuffle.

The Hungarian Presidency’s logo, on the other hand, serves as a great analogy for the upcoming six months.

It resembles the Rubik’s cube, a famous Hungarian puzzle, with the Hungarian flag on one side and 12 gold stars on a blue background on the other. The Rubik’s cube is made up of 27 elements, echoing the number of EU member states.

As Zoltán Kovács, Government Commissioner for the 2024 Hungarian presidency said at a press conference recently, “Although we often think in many different ways, the cube, once solved, gives us the opportunity to see both European unity and the will and interests of the member states and nations at the same time.”

Solving a Rubik’s cube, however, is a tedious game of luck without proper practice. For years, the Hungarian government has been reluctant to put in the hours. It does not function well in an environment based on compromise, because Orbán’s style of governing is that of conflict, of overcoming opponents rather than persuading them. Put simply: it is everything that EU decision-making is not.

It speaks volumes that Minister of European Affairs János Bóka, along with international spokesman Zoltán Kovács, takes every chance to emphasise that “As a presidency, we will be honest brokers working loyally with all member states and institutions.” Such intent has not been seen from Budapest since 2010, and that is unlikely to change despite such promises.

János Bóka has also outlined that the Hungarian presidency will have seven main priorities:acceptance of a New European Competitiveness Deal;
the reinforcement of the European defence policy;
a consistent and merit-based enlargement policy;
stemming illegal migration;
shaping the future of the cohesion policy;
a farmer-oriented EU agricultural policy;
and addressing demographic challenges.

If one considers that most of the Hungarian presidency will occur during the transition period, when the Commission will only be forming, these goals seem more than a little ambitious. It is far more likely Budapest will freeze the EU’s most important processes, whether deliberately or not.

Breaking down the Hungary EU presidency “priorities” – a mixed bag

Speaking at ECOFIN at the end of June, the Hungarian finance minister said they will develop a proposal aimed at boosting the EU’s competitiveness through the more efficient use of resources, particularly in taxation. He added that the Hungarian presidency will oversee the adoption of the “VAT in the Digital Age” proposal package.

One of the few success stories of the last 14 years of Orbán governments has been their tax policy. Not its content – the Hungarian VAT of 27% is the largest in the EU and objectively pejorative for society’s poorest – but there has been progress made in the way taxes are collected.

The whole system went through an extensive digitalisation process, which can be felt in two important ways: one can pay by card even in the most remote parts of the country, and there is no more wrangling with receipts. The presidency might just find some success in this area.

Defence policy is among the few things where Hungary is in line with the collective thinking of member states (of course excluding Ukraine-related topics), and the issue of illegal migration is just about the only thing where Europe has gradually aligned itself with Hungary. One can expect agreement on both subjects, but there is not much wiggle room for actual progress.

The enlargement policy is important for the Hungarian government, but only when it comes to its friends. Even though accession negotiations have started with Ukraine, this process is not likely to continue during Hungary’s EU Presidency, says Visegrad Insight Fellow Dorka Takácsy, an expert on the politics of the CEE region. She explains that the other member states have taken this into account and have taken steps to ensure that the Hungarian presidency doesn’t do too much damage.

The decision to give Ukraine candidate status was made some time ago, and the next aid package has also been cleared. “The next six months is just something we have to get through, and then we will get back to business as usual.”

Other enlargement plans – which Hungary may support by sending experts and providing training for officials from the region – include intergovernmental conferences with all five Western Balkan candidates, opening new chapters with Serbia, closing at least seven chapters with Montenegro, opening initial chapters with Albania, establishing a negotiation framework with Bosnia and Herzegovina and starting substantial talks with North Macedonia’s new pro-integration government.

The Hungarian presidency also wants to “address demographic challenges.” One can only guess what Budapest means by this, as no plans have been put forward, and the issue is something the member states regulate on their own. The official website of the Hungarian presidency does not list a single event that is centred around demography.

But demography is an important talking point of the Orbán government, at home as well as abroad. Elon Musk, for example, has praised the Hungarian government’s subsidies for large families. The issue of demography sells well, it is a universal problem, one that gets larger by the day, and the Hungarian government claims to know the solution: the more kids you raise, the more cash you get.

However, it does not take much research to show that this approach is throwing money out the window. Slovakian birth rates, for example, are almost identical to those in Hungary, even though the Slovakian government has never subsidised childbirth.

The same goes for “a farmer-oriented EU agricultural policy”. Orbán’s carefully cultivated “man of the people” image fits well with shaking the hands of farmers protesting against Ukrainian grain exports. Other than that, it is hard to see how anything substantial could be put forward in this area.

The Hungarian presidency will also hold talks on less high-profile issues, and these might actually see some progress. Cardiovascular health, for example, is high on the presidential agenda. The objective is to achieve progress in this field by bringing Europe’s leading experts together to contribute to a European action on combating cardiovascular diseases.

There will also be multiple high-level ministerial conferences on organ donation and transplantation and an event centred around gender mainstreaming. This last subject is not usually among the main talking points of the Hungarian government – the only government in Europe without a single woman among its ministers – but it goes to show that in the upcoming six months, they will try to at least act as if they cared for European values.

Don’t expect significant changes

As Takácsy says, the rotating presidency of the Council is a PR gift to every government in the EU. Politicians can communicate that they and their countries are at the centre of EU decision-making. This does not apply as much to the Hungarian government, however, whose usual line is that Brussels is something to fight against, or, most recently, something to conquer.

Setting the Council’s agenda is the closest they will get to conquering Brussels, but it is more likely they will just try to keep things boring and get back to bashing “the bureaucrats in Brussels” as soon as possible.

In other words: they will give the Rubik’s cube a try, maybe solve one side, and then get back to yelling at it.

VISEGRAD / INSIGHT

The main Central European analysis and media platform. Visegrad Insight generates future policy directions for Europe and transatlantic partners. Established in 2012 by the Res Publica Foundation.

IRONY

RSF welcomes European Council’s decision to prioritise press freedom and the fight against disinformation


The European Council has included press freedom and the fight against disinformation in their priorities for the next five years. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) will continue campaigning to ensure their decision is translated into concrete progress.

In the first European Council meeting since the European elections, heads of state and government convened in Brussels on 27 and 28 June to set the EU’s new strategic agenda for the next five years.

The resulting document, which sets the course for future European policies, includes a pledge to strengthen the EU’s democracies by "protecting free and pluralistic media, tackling foreign interference and countering attempts at destabilisation, including through disinformation.”

“We will strengthen democratic discourse and ensure that tech giants take their responsibility for safeguarding democratic dialogue online,” it adds.

"It’s very good news that media freedom and the fight against disinformation are priorities for EU heads of state and government, especially considering that freedom of the press and the role of social media platforms were not mentioned in the previous strategic agenda. RSF has fought – and will continue to fight – to ensure that these priorities are translated into tangible progress.
Antoine Bernard
Director of Advocacy and Assistance, RSF

 Von der Leyen and Costa: Europe’s new dynamic duo

Four names. Two politicians. One power couple.

Despite their wildly dissimilar profiles, the two politicians appear to get along and to relish being part of a package deal. | Olivier Hoslet/EFE via EPA

JUNE 28, 2024 
BY AITOR HERNÁNDEZ-MORALES AND BARBARA MOENS

BRUSSELS — The EU’s official motto is “united in diversity.”

That optimistic slogan could also be used to describe the warm and fuzzy relationship between Ursula von der Leyen and António Costa, who EU leaders backed on Thursday to serve as the next presidents of the European Commission and European Council, respectively.

It’s a stark departure from von der Leyen’s past five years, which has been spackled with infighting with her current European Council counterpart, Belgian Charles Michel. From coordinating itineraries on international trips so the pair don’t overlap to holding meetings with foreign dignitaries, the relationship never took off. In recent weeks, the bloc’s institutions’ offices were filled with rumors that Michel was gunning to take down von der Leyen by offering up the Greek prime minister in her place.

It created a tense, dysfunctional environment for collaboration among two of the EU’s most critical institutions as they navigated a global pandemic and the biggest war in Europe since World War II in neighboring Ukraine.

In the lead-up to Thursday’s summit, negotiators representing the two largest political families in the European Parliament — the European People’s Party and the Socialists — settled on a new combo that could finally bring peace to the Brussels bubble. Von der Leyen got the greenlight to stand for a second term as Commission president and Costa was tapped to replace Michel.

“Von der Leyen and Costa are tied together,” said one EU official who, like others quoted in this piece, was granted anonymity to discuss the EU’s top leadership.

It’s also a dynamic that works among the unspoken and unwritten rules around the EU’s top jobs. Typically, the 27 heads of state and government consider geographic, political and gender diversity in their appointments for the roles. In the case of von der Leyen and Costa, the official said von der Leyen and Costa’s “team-up” works because it respects those criteria.

“She’s a woman who belongs to the [European People’s Party] and comes from the North and he’s a Socialist who represents the South,” the official added.

Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who the bloc’s heads of government selected to serve as the EU’s top diplomat, rounded out the mix by representing Eastern European liberals.

“Everyone is happy,” the diplomat said.

The pandemic pair

Despite their wildly dissimilar profiles, the two politicians appear to get along and to relish being part of a package deal.

Following the Council’s announcement on Thursday, both gushed while speaking about one another. Costa said he was delighted to be part of a team with von der Leyen, while she spoke at length about his professionalism and sense of humor.

Von der Leyen, the descendant of a long line of northern German jurists and civil servants, is a physician who became active in conservative politics relatively late in life. After a rocky stint as defense minister in Berlin, she was unexpectedly boosted to the Commission presidency in 2019 thanks to a backroom deal forged by French President Emmanuel Macron and then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Costa, a lawyer of Indo-Portuguese origin, is a lifelong socialist who got his start in local politics in Lisbon and steadily worked his way to the top. As Portuguese prime minister, he oversaw the country’s return from financial ruin. But his eight-year stint running the country ended in scandal, with his abrupt resignation in the midst of an influence-peddling probe

.

The roll-out of the vaccination campaign appears to have been crucial to cementing the good relations between the two politicians. | Carlos Costa/AFP via Getty Images

Despite belonging to rival political parties, von der Leyen and Costa appeared to campaign on each other’s behalf in the lead up to their Council confirmations.

In an interview with POLITICO earlier this year, Costa spoke glowingly about von der Leyen, whom he described as “an exceptional Commission president” who has had “an extraordinary tenure.”

Costa is known in Brussels as being able to get along with anyone, regardless of their political background. The socialist became so friendly with the center-right Merkel that he was one of the select foreign leaders invited to a farewell dinner she held before stepping down in 2021, and he’s one of the few European prime ministers to have always had good relations with Hungarian strongman Viktor Orbán.

But Costa described his relationship with von der Leyen as being “especially close,” and attributed that to the work they did together during the “intense period” when Portugal held the rotating presidency of the Council of the EU in 2021.

“We were still in the midst of the pandemic and during this period the war in Ukraine broke out, so we also had to deal with the energy and inflation crisis,” he recalled. “Von der Leyen and I worked together to overcome those challenges, and especially to move toward the launch of the large-scale vaccination process across the EU, which started during the Portuguese presidency.”

The roll-out of the vaccination campaign appears to have been crucial to cementing the good relations between the two politicians. Von der Leyen had staked her reputation on having 70 percent of the EU’s adults fully vaccinated by the end of summer 2021 and was under serious pressure to deliver. Costa put himself and the civil servants attached to his country’s Council presidency at the Commission president’s disposal to ensure she met that target.

In the years since then, von der Leyen may have fondly recalled the Portuguese politician’s willingness to work together as she struggled to coexist with her Belgian counterpart across Rue de la Loi.

While there has always been some tension between the Commission and the Council, previous holders of the highest offices have made a concerted effort to be productive together. José Manuel Barroso and Herman Van Rompuy, for example, met for lunch every week. But von der Leyen and Michel were never able to achieve such cordial relations. EU leaders reportedly took that toxic dynamic into account when discussing names for the top jobs package this time around.

Peace in our time?

At home in Lisbon, Costa has long demonstrated his ability to avoid drama and work well with his political counterparts. During his eight years as prime minister, the socialist politician deftly sidestepped confrontations with Portugal’s charismatic president, Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, a constitutional law expert and former television commentator with a talent for making controversial statements.

Costa’s ability to avoid confrontations in Brussels is likewise well-known, and his popularity with other heads of government made him an early favorite for the Council post. Indeed, the interest in his potential candidacy stood in stark contrast to that of Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, whose name was also floated for the post, but who inspired far less enthusiasm among her European counterparts.

Even after Costa’s resignation last November, European leaders like Germany’s Olaf Scholz pushed to keep Costa in the running for the Council presidency. Many saw his selection to be one of the keynote speakers at the Commission’s ceremony honoring the late Jacques Delors in February as von der Leyen’s own attempt to ensure he remained visible at the EU level.

The Commission president has everything to gain by having a valued partner in the Council, one who is capable of ushering in a new period without public incidents that reflect negatively on the EU institutions. But his permanence in the post could be imperiled if von der Leyen’s reappointment is scuppered when her candidacy goes to a vote in the European Parliament, throwing off the delicate balance of candidates for the top jobs.

EU leaders have appointed Costa to an initial, two and a half year term as Council president. While all of his predecessors have served for two consecutive terms — occupying the office for a total of five years — the Portuguese socialist may have a difficult time remaining in the post if von der Leyen fails in her quest to remain in office.

“It would be hard to replace her with another female EPP member from Northern Europe,” said the diplomat, who argued that if the alternate candidate was a male politician from the south, it would undermine Costa’s shot at being Council president for two terms.

“This is a package deal,” the diplomat insisted, implying the political marriage between the German conservative and the Portuguese socialist would be for better or for worse.

EU leaders pick von der Leyen for second term as Commission chief • FRANCE 24 English

European Union leaders agreed to nominate Ursula von der Leyen of Germany for a second five-year term as president of the European Commission, the EU's powerful executive body. At a summit in Brussels, the bloc's 27 national leaders also picked former Portuguese premier Antonio Costa as the future chair of their European Council meetings and selected Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as the next EU foreign policy chief.

Meloni abstains on VDL, votes No to Costa and Kallas

Voters' will ignored, wd be disgrace if we were made to pay - PM

ROME, 28 June 2024
ANSA English Desk

Giorgia Meloni al Consiglio Europeo © ANSA/AFP

Premier Giorgia Meloni abstained in the EU summit vote that nominated former German defence minister Ursula von der Leyen for a second term as European Commission chief while voting No to former Portuguese premier Antonio Costa as new European Council chair and to Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas as new EU foreign policy chief.

The Italian leader said the pre-summit deal between von der Leyen's European People's Party (EPP), Costa's Socialists and Democrats (S&D) and Kallas's liberal Renew Europe to nominate the trio was "wrong in method and substance".

She also reiterated her view that the agreement between the European Parliament's biggest pro-European groups flew in the face of the European electorate's will expressed in the recent European elections where the right made gains and her European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) group narrowly overtook the liberals as third biggest force in the EP.

"The proposal formulated by the popular, socialist and liberal parties for the new European summits is wrong in method and substance," said the leader of Italy's ruling rightwing Brothers of Italy (FDI) party on X.

"I decided not to support it out of respect for the citizens and the indications that came from those citizens in the elections.

"Let us continue working to finally give Italy the weight it deserves in Europe".
Meloni also said it would be "shameful" if the European establishment penalised Italy because of her choice to abstain on von der Leyen and vote against the other two top job nominations.

"I don't agree that a contrary vote puts at risk our position in the EU," she said.
"It would be disgraceful if they made us pay", Meloni said after the summit ended late into the night after a long dinner on Friday morning.

Meloni's ally Viktor Orban voted against von der Leyen, in favour of Costa and abstained on Kallas.

The approval of only 15 of the 27 members states was enough to secure approval for the nominations but it may be a different story in the European Parliament next month when secret voting could bring down the majority of the EPP, S&D and Renew on the triumvirate.

The majority may be broadened to avoid so-called 'sniping' to include the Greens, although Italy has been pushing for the ECR to be included in the majority at the expense of the Greens despite a veto from the Socialists to what it called a "far right" grouping.

Kremlin says outlook for EU-Russia ties is bad after von der Leyen, Kallas nominations

Estonia's Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, European Council President Charles Michel, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Belgium's Prime Minister Alexander De Croo walk to a press conference during a European Union leaders' summit in Brussels, Belgium June 28, 2024. REUTERS/Yves Herman

JUN 28, 2024


MOSCOW - The Kremlin said on Friday that the outlook for EU-Russia ties was bad after EU leaders nominated Ursula von der Leyen for another term as European Commission president and picked Estonia's Kaja Kallas as the next EU foreign policy chief.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that the bloc's decision to nominate Germany's von der Leyen for a second five-year term would not change anything.

"Mrs von der Leyen is not in favour of normalising relations between the EU and Russia. That's how we know her, that's how we remember her. Nothing changes in this respect," said Peskov.

Though sometimes riven by divisions, the EU has mobilised to try to help Kyiv against Russia financially and militarily since President Vladimir Putin sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in 2022. Brussels has also imposed multiple packages of sanctions on Moscow to try to force it to withdraw its forces.

Commenting on the choice of Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas for EU foreign policy chief, Peskov said she was known for her anti-Russian rhetoric.

"Mrs Kallas has not demonstrated any diplomatic inclinations so far either, and is well known in our country for her absolutely intransigent and sometimes even openly anti-Russian statements," he said.


"Therefore, we do not think that European diplomacy will contribute in any way to the normalisation of relations. The prospects, in terms of relations between Moscow and Brussels, are bad." 

REUTERS

Climate Change Boosted Deadly Saudi Haj Heat By 2.5 C, Scientists Say

THEN THERE IS RADIANT HEAT FROM BODIES AND STONES

The heatwave in Saudi Arabia blamed for the deaths of 1,300 people on the haj pilgrimage this month was made worse by climate change, a team of European scientists said on Friday.

Temperatures along the route from June 16 to 18 reached 47 degrees Celsius (117 degrees Fahrenheit) at times and exceeded 51.8 C at Mecca’s Great Mosque.

The heat would have been approximately 2.5 C (4.5 F) cooler without the influence of human-caused climate change, according to a weather attribution analysis by ClimaMeter.

ClimaMeter conducts rapid assessments of the role of climate change in particular weather events.

The scientists used satellite observations from the last four decades to compare weather patterns from 1979 to 2001 and 2001 to 2023.

Although dangerous temperatures have long been recorded in the desert region, they said natural variability did not explain the extent of this month’s heatwave and that climate change had made it more intense.

The assessment also found that similar past events in Saudi Arabia occurred in May and July, but now June experiences more severe heatwaves.

“The deadly heat during this year’s haj is directly linked to fossil fuel burning and has affected the most vulnerable pilgrims,” said Davide Faranda, a scientist at France’s National Centre for Scientific Research who worked on the ClimaMeter analysis.

Climate change has made heatwaves hotter, more frequent and longer lasting. Previous findings by scientists with the World Weather Attribution group suggest that, on average globally, a heatwave is 1.2 C (2.2 F) hotter than in preindustrial times.

Medical authorities generally do not attribute deaths to heat, but rather to the heat-related coronary or cardiac illnesses exacerbated by high temperatures. Still, experts said it is likely that extreme heat played a role in many of the 1,300 haj deaths.

“The idea that an activity so central to the Muslim faith is now so dangerous needs to be a wake-up call,” said Mohamed Adow, director of nonprofit Power Shift Africa. “Saudi Arabia is one of the biggest oil producing nations in the world and they often act to frustrate and delay climate action. They need to realise their actions have consequences.”

Saudi Arabia is the world’s second-largest oil producer, after the United States, and state oil firm Saudi Aramco is the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas-emitter. It is responsible for more than 4% of the world’s historical carbon emissions, according to a database of emissions from carbon majors.

(Reuters)

How prepared are we for human bird flu?

Government stocks up on vaccines as risk of new pandemic is 'plausible and imminent'


We 'must take steps now' to 'minimise the number of times we roll the dice on a new pandemic'
(Image credit: Illustration by Stephen Kelly / Getty Images)


BY CHAS NEWKEY-BURDEN, THE WEEK UK

TODAY

The UK government has ordered tens of thousands of doses of a bird flu vaccine to boost immunity against the deadly H5N1 virus.

This comes after the European Commission signed a deal for 40 million doses of a bird flu vaccine. Finland has also announced it will be the first country to administer bird flu vaccines to people, with farm workers receiving two jabs from next month.

Although the risk to humans is currently classified as "low" because the virus can only be passed on from affected animals, said the inews site, the move "marks a stepping-up of readiness" for a "possible new pandemic" if the virus makes the "genetic leap" to human-to-human transmission.

A former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told NewsNation that "it's not a question of if, it's a question of when" a bird flu pandemic will break out. And two flu experts warned in the British Medical Journal that "the risk of a major outbreak" is "large, plausible and imminent".

What did the commentators say?

With the Covid pandemic still fresh in our minds, we "must take steps now" to "minimise the number of times we roll the dice on a new pandemic", said Dr Thom Rawson, a maths modeller from Imperial College London, in The Telegraph.

Between 2003 and 2022 there were 868 reported cases of human infection with the "particularly nasty" H5N1 variant, which is currently sweeping through the US dairy industry. The "alarming" 53% human mortality rate shows that "something needs to be done", but "exactly what isn't so simple".

"In an ideal world," Dr Jayna Raghwani, a biologist from the UK's Royal Veterinary College, told the BBC, there would be more surveillance for the virus close to farms.

We could "do more general monitoring of wildlife close to places we know outbreaks are occurring and more in domestic animals," she said, "to better understand how the virus changes between species."

Reducing flock sizes would be impossible because of current demand levels, and giving birds more space to reduce the threat of infection would require "sheds as big as Windsor Castle", said Rawson. Enhanced biosecurity measures are already in place.

But as consumers we can "educate ourselves more on exactly what the stickers on chicken carcasses mean" and choose products with labels that "indicate a greater level of oversight into bird health while rearing". If "consumers demonstrate a willingness to pay for those increased costs associated" more suppliers will "adopt" the practices.

What next?

The UK government agency risk assessment still regards outbreaks among humans not linked to contact with infected birds or animals as between "highly unlikely" (10-20%) and "unlikely" (25-35%).

This rating is "still a long way off" from level 6, when there would be sustained human-to-human transmission, the point at which the government would have to make official public health announcements to the population, said inews.

But the "good news" is that, unlike when Covid first emerged, there are already tailored vaccines in production, so if there were an outbreak in the UK, jabs would be "rolled out quickly".

Summing up the danger, Dr Ed Hutchinson, from the MRC-University of Glasgow Centre for Virus Research, told the BBC that "it's not February 2020" but the threat "does demand our close attention".

WAPO EXPOSES WAPO'S NEW BOSS

Post publisher’s role in hacking response comes into sharper focus

Former U.K. prime minister Gordon Brown calls for William Lewis to be criminally investigated. Lewis says he “did nothing wrong.”

LONG READ


By Aaron C. Davis, Greg Miller, Sarah Ellison and Isaac Stanley-Becker
June 28, 2024 
WASHINGTON POST

LONDON — In late January 2011, just days after Scotland Yard launched a major new investigation of illegal phone hacking by British journalists, a computer technician working inside Rupert Murdoch’s media conglomerate sent an email describing an unexpected halt in his assignment.

After days spent helping to delete emails by the millions from the company’s archives, the technician wrote to his bosses that “all decisions to continue” were now “frozen.” The technician was awaiting word on whether to halt the purge, press on, or reverse course and “restore all archives already deleted (!!)”



“Nobody here knows because this is coming from the top,” wrote the technician, Nigel Newell, according to a court record of his communication. Police had recently asked the company to preserve evidence.

Three days later, the internal halt was lifted. An executive relayed word to the IT team that lawyers had given the “green light” to proceed with the “email migration process.” In the ensuing days, another 15 million emails were wiped from the archives, according to an accounting from Murdoch’s lawyers in a 2017 civil case.

That message to proceed was sent by William Lewis, who was then an executive at Murdoch’s U.K. company, and who last year was named CEO and publisher of The Washington Post.

The Feb. 3 email is among the indications that Lewis played a key role in events at the heart of a fierce legal dispute: whether News International intentionally deleted years of emails — ultimately some 30 million, of which 9 million were never recovered — to thwart an active police investigation.

Victims of phone hacking claim that those deletions were part of an effort to cover up executives’ awareness that Murdoch journalists had illegally obtained voicemails of thousands of people, including politicians, royals and even a murdered teenager. Murdoch’s company has said in court filings the company’s emails conformed with a data-retention policy and were deleted for “commercial, IT and practical reasons” and not as part of a plan to conceal evidence. The company has spent a reported $1.5 billion to settle more than a thousand phone-hacking claims, with settlements continuing into this year.

Lewis has denied wrongdoing while declining to answer detailed questions about his actions. He told The Post: “I know I did nothing wrong, and these allegations are untrue.” He has previously called his assignment at the time “crisis management” and said he worked to “preserve journalistic integrity.”

Lewis speaks to employees of The Washington Post on Nov. 6, soon after being named the organization's new CEO and publisher. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post)

A Washington Post review of documents and interviews with key players found that News International’s actions in response to the hacking scandal left some police investigators and IT workers concerned that the company was obstructing the investigation. Some now say their concerns have only grown with time.

While the broad outlines of the hacking scandal and Lewis’s management of the crisis were previously known, details about his involvement in how the company handled emails amid the criminal investigation have recently come into public view through a long-running civil case. In recent weeks, questions about Lewis’s actions deepened after reports he sought to discourage The Post from covering developments in the civil case, an allegation he has denied.

Lewis himself is not the direct target of any legal action. But a British judge recently cleared the way for Prince Harry and others to air allegations in a trial scheduled for January that Lewis helped conceal evidence related to phone hacking. News Group Newspapers, a Murdoch entity, is the defendant in the case.

Former British prime minister Gordon Brown, himself a victim of alleged hacking, last month urged London’s Metropolitan Police Service — widely known as Scotland Yard — to reopen its criminal investigation, citing revelations from the court case.

This week, in a statement to The Post, Brown for the first time called on police specifically to investigate Lewis’s conduct and that of his former boss, longtime Murdoch executive Rebekah Brooks.

“Rebekah Brooks and William Lewis were involved in the destruction of millions of emails vital to the criminal investigation into phone hacking,” said the former Labour leader, who served as prime minister from 2007 to 2010. Murdoch executives “who claimed they were doing the cleanup may have instead been engaged in a coverup.”

A spokeswoman for Murdoch’s U.K. publishing company, now called News UK, said Brown was “relying on a one-sided and incomplete picture of the evidence” and accused him of harboring “enmity” toward the company.

As the decade-old controversy has been thrust back into the news, some people who were involved in the events — which led to a wave of resignations and jail terms for several journalists including a former top editor — are revisiting misgivings they felt at the time.

An IT worker who participated in meetings with Lewis said he “came to feel the deletions were driven by an effort to hide information.” The worker said his assessment was “based on what we were asked to do, the way it was done and everything that was going on in the bigger picture at the time,” a reference to deletion instructions that he said went against standard protocols and came amid the Scotland Yard probe. Like some others interviewed for this report, the worker spoke on the condition of anonymity because of ongoing litigation.

The News UK spokeswoman said the company “strenuously denies that there was any plan to delete emails in order to conceal evidence.” The spokeswoman said critics of the Murdoch company, including police officials, fail to understand these events in part because the company has yet to present its side in court.

The spokeswoman also called the allegations historical. She noted that Brooks was acquitted in a 2014 trial on charges of conspiracy related to phone hacking, a case that dealt in part with email deletions, and pointed to a 2015 statement issued by Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service after a years-long investigation saying it had seen “no evidence to suggest that email deletion was undertaken in order to pervert the court of justice.”

Some police officials involved in the investigation, however, still harbor doubts.

“There are legitimate reasons for companies to delete emails,” Sue Akers, who led the Scotland Yard investigation of the phone-hacking scandal, said in an interview with The Post. When a company presses forward with deleting files “literally at the beginning of our investigation,” she said, “a more cynical view might be that they wanted to clear some stuff that might not be very helpful.”

Asked how much Post leadership knew about Lewis’s role in the phone-hacking fallout when he was hired last year, Patty Stonesifer, the former interim publisher and a longtime adviser to Post owner Jeff Bezos, said she and a search firm “completed a detailed review of Will’s career, background and references.” She added, “I can assure you of our deep consideration and complete alignment on Will’s leadership.”

Pieces of paper

Lewis, an accomplished reporter and editor, arrived as general manager of Murdoch’s U.K. publishing operation in September 2010, during a moment of crisis for the company. That same month, British actress Sienna Miller took a preliminary step to sue the conglomerate for the actions of its best-selling tabloid, News of the World, initiating a lawsuit that would expose evidence incriminating a high-level editor in hacking activity. The legal threat came after the sentencing of one of the tabloid’s reporters for phone hacking and news articles that suggested the practice had continued

The company soon began its first large wave of email deletions, removing more than 4 million messages from its archive, according to Murdoch lawyers. The company has said the deletions were not made in response to Miller’s legal claim.

After years of resisting pressure to open a broad investigation, Scotland Yard sent a letter to News International in the early days of 2011 saying authorities would no longer accept the company’s claims that hacking was the work of rogue reporters. Detectives sought “any material which could be potential evidence of phone hacking” by any staff member, police wrote, according to court records.

Former News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks arrives at Central Criminal Court in London in 2013. She was later acquitted on charges of conspiracy related to phone hacking. (Lefteris Pitarakis/AP)

That weekend, Brooks, then the News International chief executive, and members of the company’s board were in contact with the company’s chief information officer, Paul Cheesbrough, about a preexisting plan to “migrate” emails.

To complete this work, News International called in Essential Computing, an IT company based near Bristol, England. The contractors were told their task was to migrate News International from an outdated system to Gmail, according to interviews and a statement given to police.

But when they arrived on Jan. 11, the orders changed, according to statements and previously unreported notes taken by someone present. Rather than overseeing a customary systemwide switch, Newell, the lead technician, was handed a piece of paper with a list of “top up” executives, these documents say. Newell was told to start by making a secure copy of those individuals’ email records to be placed on a laptop, according to a statement he would later provide to police.

More slips of paper followed, including one titled “special people.”

Then came instructions that Newell viewed as so unusual — and concerning — that he refused to carry them out, according to his statement. Told to delete any data associated with those lists from the company’s archives, he balked and insisted that one of Murdoch’s own IT managers be the one to hit the “delete” button, an episode first reported by British journalist Nick Davies in Prospect magazine.

James and Rupert Murdoch speak to a committee in the House of Commons about the phone-hacking scandal in 2011. (PA Wire)

In part, he had technical concerns that the secure copy on the laptop might not be complete because he said the company had bypassed usual tests and reliability measures, according to his statement to police and people involved in the operation. These people said he and others also expressed concerns about the legality of their task as police were investigating.

In late January, as the phone-hacking scandal gained greater attention in the British press, Essential Computing dispatched a more senior executive to News International to oversee the email operation. At this stage, Essential “was quite concerned about the legal implications” of the job it had been hired to do, a company official said in an interview. The manager sent to London, David Kellett, was put in an isolated area of the company’s offices and instructed “not to tell anyone what I was doing,” according to a witness statement Kellett gave to police.

Newell and Kellett declined to comment on the previously unreported notes and the witness statements.

The News UK spokeswoman said there was nothing untoward about the way the company chose to store archived messages or the instructions given to computer specialists. The company has said in court that the laptop was used to retain messages needed to fulfill legal obligations. The handling of the laptop and its contents became a focus of police, according to court documents, and has been a point of contention in lawsuits.

Brooks did not respond to inquiries, but the News UK spokeswoman denied that Brooks and others devised a plan to conceal evidence. The spokeswoman said Murdoch’s U.K. publishing company had a “strained” relationship with Essential, which she said installed the troubled email archive system.

Legal implications

On Jan. 12, with a fresh round of deletions about to begin, Lewis issued criteria for whose messages should be saved, according to excerpts of the guidance contained in court files. The full document has not been publicly released.

Police came to see the company’s approach in this time period as part of an effort to “hang out to dry” certain journalists while “steering the investigation away from other journalists and editors,” Barney Ratcliffe, a senior Scotland Yard investigator, said in a 2015 witness statement obtained by The Post and reported this week by the New York Times. The statement, which does not mention Lewis, was filed in a separate case.

The News UK spokeswoman denied that characterization and said the company was working to preserve email records that were important for the investigation and ongoing litigation.

On. Jan. 26, News International turned over three emails from 2007 to police considered possible evidence linking phone hacking to a senior editor, according to court records and interviews. Scotland Yard that day opened a broad new investigation code-named Operation Weeting, with Akers in charge. Lewis sent the “green light” message on Feb. 3.

Sue Akers, who led the Scotland Yard investigation of the phone-hacking scandal, arrives at Parliament in 2011 to answer questions. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Six days later, a News International IT manager wrote to a supervisor at Essential asking for an update on the “deletions being done yesterday,” according to filings and people familiar with the discussions.

Later that day, a group of News International executives that did not include Lewis met again with Scotland Yard investigators. The two sides disagreed about how much evidence the company would turn over, according to Ratcliffe’s statement.

To protect journalistic integrity and legitimate communications with sources, police had refrained from seizing evidence outright, instead relying on an arrangement in which the company would voluntarily provide material requested by investigators.

Police were “very keen to secure as much information as possible,” Ratcliffe said in his sworn statement. Murdoch executives, he said, indicated that they had expected their cooperation to be limited to a narrow set of emails involving a small number of News of the World employees.

In fact, the executives said during the meeting, they had little more to share, telling police there was “no data” in its email archives prior to January 2008, as another detective recalled in a statement cited by plaintiffs. What the company did not reveal, according to the Ratcliffe statement and other people familiar with the timing, was that technical work associated with deletions had continued into the previous evening.

The News UK spokeswoman said that company leaders were transparent at the Feb. 9 meeting, divulging that many emails no longer resided on archives because of deletions carried out for a necessary migration.

One police officer involved in the investigation said, however, “There is a big difference between disclosing some deletions and mass deletions, and the fact that they continued” after the start of the police investigation.

‘Jaw-dropping moment’

As tensions worsened in 2011 between News International executives and investigators, the company turned to Lewis to improve the relationship with police.

That summer, the company announced a newly created Management and Standards Committee to take over interactions with police and appointed to key positions Lewis and a public relations expert he had known since childhood, Simon Greenberg. Greenberg died in 2021.

Lewis and Greenberg “came as a pair and they said, ‘We’re here now. Cut the lawyers out and deal with us,’” said a former senior Scotland Yard official. The two made a positive impression, in contrast to the contentious approach of the Murdoch attorneys.

Lewis also handled encounters with some victims of phone hacking. David Blunkett, home secretary in the Labour government in the early 2000s, said Lewis was his main interlocutor when the company offered him an out-of-court settlement.

David Blunkett, center, who was home secretary in the Labour government in the early 2000s, is seen in 2005. (Jane Mingay/AP)

Around that time, Blunkett recalled, “He came to me and said, ‘Can we settle?’” Blunkett agreed, he said, out of a desire to avoid opening his life to the kind of scrutiny associated with a high-profile lawsuit of the sort Prince Harry and others are now pursuing. Of his interactions with Lewis, Blunkett said, “We had a respectful, professional interchange.”

In those same months, court records show, investigators began to piece together just how many of the company’s emails had been deleted, many after the start of the investigation. On June 29, Lewis and Cheesbrough, the chief information officer, attended a meeting that included Kellett, the senior manager with Essential Computing, and Ratcliffe, the police detective.

The session took a dramatic turn when police asked the IT experts on hand whether there was any way that deleted files could be recovered, according to court records and interviews with people present.

Kellett then stunned those gathered by disclosing that in January his team had made a backup copy of the News International email archive, according to Ratcliffe’s sworn statement. The backup didn’t contain all the email data, said a person familiar with its contents, but preserved metadata information including dates and the names of senders and recipients.

“Cheesbrough appeared to be totally shocked by this development,” Ratcliffe wrote. He added that it was a “jaw-dropping moment for most of the attendees because we had previously believed” that emails more than six months old “had been expunged forever.”

The revelation was made more surprising, he wrote, because “it had not been the company that had volunteered the information.”

The News UK spokeswoman said executives were surprised because the company had asked a separate contractor to create a backup before deletions in 2011, but that measure failed. She said the email system was unstable and in need of upgrades before Cheesbrough arrived.

Using the metadata map that Kellett produced, about 21 million emails were ultimately recovered from a trove of about 30 million removed from the company’s archive, according to court records.

Lewis faced having to explain why the company had purged so much data from its email archive after the launch of the Operation Weeting probe without informing investigators.

Internal ‘threat’

A meeting scheduled for July 8, 2011, loomed as a showdown with police over this revelation.

For the first time, Lewis outlined an alleged internal threat that company executives said affected how emails had been handled, according to meeting participants and police notes.

Lewis and Cheesbrough said the company had been told that a former employee had accessed emails involving Brooks — who had served as editor of the News of the World tabloid in the midst of its phone-hacking era — and funneled that information to Brown, the former British prime minister, as well as Tom Watson, a close Brown ally who was then a member of Parliament and now sits in the House of Lords.

“This added to our anxieties,” Lewis said, according to police notes. Cheesbrough said it “contributed to our need to secure data away from the old archive.”

According to the plaintiffs’ court filings, Cheesbrough had first laid out the alleged threat in a Jan. 22 email to Brooks and Lewis, her direct report at the time. A contractor was soon asked to help them look for the alleged leaker, according to email excerpts and people familiar with the events.

Months later, when Lewis and Cheesbrough told police of the alleged threat, they said they had found no proof the plot existed. “We have our suspicions but we don’t have any evidence,” Lewis said, according to police meeting minutes. He also expressed remorse for not having revealed it earlier, saying, as first reported by the New York Times, “We apologize for hiding this piece of work from you.”

In a statement provided to The Post, Watson, who is a plaintiff in a lawsuit against the company, said he believes it “falsely scapegoated me and the former Prime Minister Gordon Brown to create an entirely untrue narrative … to justify its mass deletion of millions of emails.”

The News UK spokeswoman called Watson’s characterization “unfounded and wrong” and said the company has disputed it in court. “The security threat did not provide a rationale for the deletions, but it did affect the approach that NI took to extracting and preserving materials,” she wrote.

Two days after the tense meeting, News of the World abruptly published its last edition. “Thank you & goodbye,” the cover read.

The last edition of the News of The World was published in 2011. (Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images)

Lewis continued to serve on the Management and Standards Committee for another year, before ascending to the upper ranks of the Murdoch company. In 2014, he was named CEO of Dow Jones and Company and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, a position he held until 2020.

Last fall, when he was named CEO and publisher of The Post, Lewis said he would have no further comment on the phone-hacking fallout.

“I took a view very early on that I’m never going to talk about it,” he told a Post reporter last year. “And it’s either right or wrong that I’ve done that.”

Davis reported from Washington. Cate Brown, Alice Crites and Elahe Izadi contributed to this report.

Second U.S. service member in months charged with rape in Japan's Okinawa: "We are outraged"

RAPES HAVE BEEN OCCURING SINCE US OCCUPATION 70 YRS AGO


June 28, 2024  / CBS/AP

Tokyo — Japan's government protested Friday to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo over at least two sexual assault cases involving American servicemembers on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa that were only recently made public.

In one case, an Air Force member is accused in March of assaulting a teenage girl in December, while the other, which dates from May, involves a Marine accused of assaulting a 21-year-old woman.

The case involving the assault of the teenager is a reminder to many Okinawans of the high-profile 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemembers, which sparked massive protests against the heavy U.S. troop presence on Okinawa. It led to a 1996 agreement between Tokyo and Washington on a closure of a key U.S. air station, though the plan has been delayed due to protests at the site designated for its relocation on another part of the island

.

This picture taken on August 24, 2022 shows anti-base activist Suzuyo Takazato (bottom left) taking part in a protest outside the Henoko U.S. base in Nago, Okinawa Prefecture.

PHILIP FONG / AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

Some 50,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Japan under a bilateral security pact, about half of them on Okinawa, whose strategic role is seen increasingly important for the Japan-U.S. military alliance in the face of growing tensions with China. Japan's southwestern shift of its own military also focuses heavily on Okinawa and its nearby islands.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Friday it was "extremely regrettable" the two alleged sexual assaults occurred within months. Japan "takes it seriously" and Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano conveyed regrets to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, requesting disciplinary and preventive measures, Hayashi said.

"I believe that the U.S. side also takes this matter seriously," Hayashi said. "Criminal cases and accidents by U.S. military personnel cause great anxiety to local residents, and they should never occur in the first place."


The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo declined to confirm details of the meeting between Emanuel and Okano and how the ambassador responded, citing diplomatic rules.

Hayashi said Japanese prosecutors in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, had pressed nonconsensual sex and assault charges against the Marine on June 17, which were only announced Friday. Both suspects were handled by the Japanese authorities.

An Okinawa police spokesperson told Agence France-Presse the Marine is accused of "assaulting the victim for the purpose of sexual intercourse and injuring her," adding that, "The fact that he used violence for that purpose and wounded her constitutes non-consensual sex resulting in injury."

The woman was "bitten in the mouth" and took two weeks to fully recover, he said. Media reports said she was also choked.


The two cases have sparked outrage and echo Japan's fraught history with US troops, including the 1995 gang rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemen.


The Naha District Prosecutors' Office refused to confirm indictments in the two cases over the phone with anyone who is not a local press club member. Okinawa prefectural police said the two cases were never made public out of consideration for the privacy of the victims.

Okinawa residents and the island's governor, Denny Tamaki, have long complained about accidents and crime related to U.S military bases and expressed anger over the alleged crime and lack of disclosure.

Tamaki, who opposes the heavy U.S. troop presence on Okinawa, said he was "speechless and outraged." He stressed the need to "reconstruct" the communication system in case of crime and accidents involving American service members.

"I'm deeply concerned about the severity of this allegation and I regret the anxiety this has caused," Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans, Commander of the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, who visited the Okinawa prefectural government with several U.S. officials, said on Thursday, though he did not apologize.

He promised the US military will fully cooperate with the investigation by the local authorities and the courts.

Okinawa Vice Gov. Takekuni Ikeda told Evans and other officials that the alleged assaults were serious human rights violations against women. "We find them absolutely unforgivable, and we are outraged," he said.


Ikeda also protested the delayed notification of the criminal cases, saying they caused anxiety for residents near the U.S. bases. He said the prefecture was only notified this week about the December case, when the suspect was indicted in March, and only after inquiries by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Japan protests sex assault cases involving US military on Okinawa and their delayed disclosure

Japan’s government has protested to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo over at least two sexual assault cases involving American servicemembers on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa which have only recently been made public

ByMARI YAMAGUCHI Associated Press
June 28, 2024,


TOKYO -- Japan’s government protested Friday to the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo over at least two sexual assault cases involving American servicemembers on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa which were only recently made public.

In one case, an Air Force member is accused of assaulting a 16-year-old girl in December, while the other, which dates from May, involves a Marine who is accused of assaulting a 21-year-old woman.

The case involving the assault of the teenager is a reminder to many Okinawans of the high-profile 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. servicemembers, which sparked massive protests against the heavy U.S. troop presence on Okinawa. It led to a 1996 agreement between Tokyo and Washington on a closure of a key U.S. air station, though the plan has been delayed due to protests at the site designated for its relocation on another part of the island.

Some 50,000 U.S. troops are deployed in Japan under a bilateral security pact, about half of them on Okinawa, whose strategic role is seen increasingly important for the Japan-U.S. military alliance in the face of growing tensions with China. Japan's southwestern shift of its own military also focuses heavily on Okinawa and its nearby islands.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters Friday it was “extremely regrettable” the two alleged sexual assaults occurred within months. Japan “takes it seriously” and Vice Foreign Minister Masataka Okano conveyed regrets to U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel, requesting disciplinary and preventive measures, Hayashi said.

“I believe that the U.S. side also takes this matter seriously,” Hayashi said. “Criminal cases and accidents by U.S. military personnel cause great anxiety to local residents, and they should never occur in the first place.”

The U.S. Embassy in Tokyo declined to confirm details of the meeting between Emanuel and Okano and how the ambassador responded, citing diplomatic rules.

Hayashi said Japanese prosecutors in Naha, the capital of Okinawa, had pressed charges of nonconsensual sex and assault charges against the Marine on June 17, which were only announced on Friday. Both suspects were handled by the Japanese authorities.

The Naha District Prosecutors' Office refused to confirm indictments in the two cases over the phone with anyone who is not a local press club member. Okinawa prefectural police said the two cases were never made public out of consideration for the privacy of the victims.

Okinawa residents and the island's governor, Denny Tamaki, have long complained about accidents and crime related to U.S military bases, expressed anger over the alleged crime and lack of disclosure.


Tamaki, who opposes the heavy U.S. troop presence on Okinawa, said he was “speechless and outraged." He stressed the need to “reconstruct” the communication system in case of crime and accidents involving American service members.

”I'm deeply concerned about the severity of this allegation and I regret the anxiety this has caused," Brig. Gen. Nicholas Evans, Commander of the 18th Wing at Kadena Air Base on Okinawa, who visited the Okinawa prefectural government with several U.S. officials, said on Thursday, though he did not apologize.

He promised the US military will fully cooperate with the investigation by the local authorities and the courts.

Okinawa Vice Gov. Takekuni Ikeda told Evans and other officials that the alleged assaults were serious human rights violations against women. “We find them absolutely unforgivable, and we are outraged," he said.

Ikeda also protested the delayed notification of the criminal cases, saying they caused anxiety for residents near the U.S. bases. He said the prefecture was only notified this week about the December case, when the suspect was indicted in March, and only after inquiries by the Japanese Foreign Ministry.

Tight security in place as Hindu pilgrimage begins in Kashmir

Last year, nearly half a million people visited Himalayan cave shrine

KASHMIR IS INDIA'S GAZA

28/06/2024 Friday

AA

The annual Hindu pilgrimage to a Himalayan cave shrine in the Indian administered 

Kashmir began Friday amid tight security measures involving layered deployment 

of thousands of paramilitary troopers and police.

Tens of thousands of Hindus trek, horse-ride or take a chopper ride to the Himalayan cave named Amarnath, located at an altitude of about 3,888 meters (12,756 feet). Hindus believe a naturally occurring ice stalagmite in the cave, believed to have been discovered by a Muslim shepherd in the nineteenth century, to be a manifestation of Hindu deity Shiva.

Before the 90s, the pilgrimage was a low-key affair lasting for 15-30 days, but after 1990, when the raging anti-India insurgency started, the number of pilgrims has been growing steadily, especially after the formation in the year 2000 of a board that oversees the conduct of the pilgrimage.

The rush has been aided by the state-sponsored infrastructure build-up, some of it in environmentally fragile areas, which has sparked concern from environmentalists and which had triggered an agitation in 2008 after 50 acres of state forest land was transferred to the board. The land transfer order was then withdrawn and the agitation led to the fall of then local coalition government.

In 2005, the board extended the yatra (pilgrimage) to two months, but weather sometimes forces the authorities to curtail the duration.

Last year, 450,000 Hindus from various parts of India visited the cave. This year's pilgrimage will end on Aug. 19. The local government has set up several transit accommodations along the two routes of the pilgrimage, where pilgrims stay before embarking on the travel towards the cave.

This year's pilgrimage is taking place against the backdrop of an attack on a bus carrying Hindu pilgrims in Jammu province on June 9. The bus had plunged into a gorge after the driver lost control over it following firing by suspected militants, leading to death of nine and injuries to dozens of the passengers.

The government forces conducted mock security drills near the camps housing the pilgrims and along the pilgrimage routes. Jammu and Kashmir Lt. Governor Manoj Sinha visited one of the two main base camps in Kashmir and directed officials to “coordinate with each other for better security and management.”