OPINION

John Simpson: "I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025"

29 December 2025
John Simpson, BBC World Affairs Editor


John Simpson is the BBC's World Affairs editor, and one of its most experienced journalists. In this somber and candid article for BBC InDepth Simpson says "I've reported on 40 wars but I've never seen a year like 2025". commonspace.eu is republishing the article in full because of its importance:

I've reported on more than 40 wars around the world during my career, which goes back to the 1960s. I watched the Cold War reach its height, then simply evaporate. But I've never seen a year quite as worrying as 2025 has been - not just because several major conflicts are raging but because it is becoming clear that one of them has geopolitical implications of unparalleled importance.

Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky has warned that the current conflict in his country could escalate into a world war. After nearly 60 years of observing conflict, I've got a nasty feeling he's right.

Ukraine's President has warned that the current conflict in Ukraine could escalate into a world war

Nato governments are on high alert for any signs that Russia is cutting the undersea cables that carry the electronic traffic that keeps Western society going. Their drones are accused of testing the defences of Nato countries. Their hackers develop ways of putting ministries, emergency services and huge corporations out of operation.

Authorities in the west are certain Russia's secret services murder and attempt to murder dissidents who have taken refuge in the West. An inquiry into the attempted murder in Salisbury of the former Russian intelligence agent Sergei Skrypal in 2018 (plus the actual fatal poisoning of a local woman, Dawn Sturgess) concluded that the attack had been agreed at the highest level in Russia. That means President Putin himself.
This time feels different

The year 2025 has been marked by three very different wars. There is Ukraine of course, where the UN says 14,000 civilians have died. In Gaza, where Israel's prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu promised "mighty vengeance" after about 1,200 people were killed when Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October 2023 and 251 people were taken hostage.

Since then, more than 70,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli military action, including more than 30,000 women and children according to Gaza's Hamas-run health ministry – figures the UN considers reliable.

Meanwhile there has been a ferocious civil war between two military factions in Sudan. More than 150,000 people have been killed there over the past couple of years; around 12 million have been forced out of their homes.

Maybe, if this had been the only war in 2025, the outside world would have done more to stop it; but it wasn't.

"I'm good at solving wars," said US President Donald Trump, as his aircraft flew him to Israel after he had negotiated a ceasefire in the Gaza fighting. It's true that fewer people are dying in Gaza now. Despite the ceasefire, the Gaza war certainly doesn't feel as though it's been solved.

Given the appalling suffering in the Middle East it may sound strange to say the war in Ukraine is on a completely different level to this. But it is.

The Cold War aside, most of the conflicts I've covered over the years have been small-scale affairs: nasty and dangerous, certainly, but not serious enough to threaten the peace of the entire world. Some conflicts, such as Vietnam, the first Gulf War, and the war in Kosovo, did occasionally look as though they might tip over into something much worse, but they never did.

The great powers were too nervous about the dangers that a localised, conventional war might turn into a nuclear one.

"I'm not going to start the Third World War for you," the British Gen Sir Mike Jackson reportedly shouted over his radio in Kosovo in 1999, when his Nato superior ordered British and French forces to seize an airfield in Pristina after the Russian troops had got there first.

In the coming year, 2026, though, Russia, noting President Trump's apparent lack of interest in Europe, seems ready and willing to push for much greater dominance.

Earlier this month, Putin said Russia was not planning to go to war with Europe, but was ready "right now" if Europeans wanted to.

At a later televised event he said: "There won't be any operations if you treat us with respect, if you respect our interests just as we've always tried to respect yours".

Putin said Russia was not planning to go to war with Europe, but was ready "right now" if Europeans wanted to

But already Russia, a major world power, has invaded an independent European country, resulting in huge numbers of civilian and also military deaths. It is accused by Ukraine of kidnapping at least 20,000 children. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for his involvement in this, something Russia has always denied.

Russia says it invaded in order to protect itself against Nato encroachment, but President Putin has indicated another motive: the desire to restore Russia's regional sphere of influence.
American disapproval

He is gratefully aware that this last year, 2025, has seen something most Western countries had regarded as unthinkable: the possibility that an American president might turn his back on the strategic system which has been in force ever since World War Two.

Not only is Washington now uncertain it wants to protect Europe, it disapproves of the direction it believes Europe is heading in. The Trump administration's new national security strategy report claims Europe now faces the "stark prospect of civilisational erasure".

The Kremlin welcomed the report, saying it is consistent with Russia's own vision. You bet it is.

Inside Russia, Putin has silenced most internal opposition to himself and to the Ukraine war, according to the UN special rapporteur focusing on human rights in Russia. He's got his own problems, though: the possibility of inflation rising again after a recent cooling, oil revenues falling, and his government having had to raise VAT to help pay for the war.

US President Donald Trump and Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelensky clashed during a meeting at the White House in February 2025

The economies of the European Union are 10 times bigger than Russia's; even more than that if you add the UK. The combined European population of 450 million, is over three times Russia's 145 million. Still, Western Europe has seemed nervous of losing its creature comforts, and was until recently reluctant to pay for its own defence as long as America can be persuaded to protect it.

America, too, is different nowadays: less influential, more inward-looking, and increasingly different from the America I've reported on for my entire career. Now, very much as in the 1920s and 30s, it wants to concentrate on its own national interests.

Even if President Trump loses a lot of his political strength at next year's mid-term elections, he may have shifted the dial so far towards isolationism that even a more Nato-minded American president in 2028 might find it hard to come to Europe's aid.

Don't think Vladimir Putin hasn't noticed that.
The risk of escalation

The coming year, 2026, does look as though it'll be important. Zelensky may well feel obliged to agree to a peace deal, carving off a large part of Ukrainian territory. Will there be enough bankable guarantees to stop President Putin coming back for more in a few years' time?

For Ukraine and its European supporters, already feeling that they are at war with Russia, that's an important question. Europe will have to take over a far greater share of keeping Ukraine going, but if the United States turns its back on Ukraine, as it sometimes threatens to do, that will be a colossal burden.

If the United States turns its back on Ukraine, that will be a colossal burden for Europe

But could the war turn into a nuclear confrontation?

We know President Putin is a gambler; a more careful leader would have shied away from invading Ukraine in February 2022. His henchmen make bloodcurdling threats about wiping the UK and other European countries off the map with Russia's vaunted new weapons, but he's usually much more restrained himself.

While the Americans are still active members of Nato, the risk that they could respond with a devastating nuclear attack of their own is still too great. For now.
China's global role

As for China, President Xi Jinping has made few outright threats against the self-governed island of Taiwan recently. But two years ago the then director of the CIA William Burns said Xi Jinping had ordered the People's Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. If China doesn't take some sort of decisive action to claim Taiwan, Xi Jinping could consider this to look pretty feeble. He won't want that.

You might think that China is too strong and wealthy nowadays to worry about domestic public opinion. Not so. Ever since the uprising against Deng Xiaoping in 1989, which ended with the Tiananmen massacre, Chinese leaders have monitored the way the country reacts with obsessive care.

I watched the events unfold in Tiananmen myself, reporting and even sometimes living in the Square.

The story of 4 June 1989 wasn't as simple as we thought at the time: armed soldiers shooting down unarmed students. That certainly happened, but there was another battle going on in Beijing and many other Chinese cities. Thousands of ordinary working-class people came out onto the streets, determined to use the attack on the students as a chance to overthrow the control of the Chinese Communist Party altogether.

When I drove through the streets two days later, I saw at least five police stations and three local security police headquarters burned out. In one suburb the angry crowd had set fire to a policeman and propped up his charred body against a wall. A uniform cap was put at a jaunty angle on his head, and a cigarette had been stuck between his blackened lips.

It turns out the army wasn't just putting down a long-standing demonstration by students, it was stamping out a popular uprising by ordinary Chinese people.

China's political leadership, still unable to bury the memories of what happened 36 years ago, is constantly on the look-out for signs of opposition - whether from organised groups like Falun Gong or the independent Christian church or the democracy movement in Hong Kong, or just people demonstrating against local corruption. All are stamped on with great force.

I have spent a good deal of time reporting on China since 1989, watching its rise to economic and political dominance. I even came to know a top politician who was Xi Jinping's rival and competitor. His name was Bo Xilai, and he was an anglophile who spoke surprisingly openly about China's politics.

He once said to me, "You'll never understand how insecure a government feels when it knows it hasn't been elected."

As for Bo Xilai, he was jailed for life in 2013 after being found guilty of bribery, embezzlement and abuse of power.

John Simpson has spent a good deal of time reporting on China since 1989 (pictured in Tiananmen Square, 2016)

Altogether, then, 2026 looks like being an important year. China's strength will grow, and its strategy for taking over Taiwan - Xi Jinping's great ambition - will become clearer. It may be that the war in Ukraine will be settled, but on terms that are favourable to President Putin.

He may be free to come back for more Ukrainian territory when he's ready. And President Trump, even though his political wings could be clipped in November's mid-term elections, will distance the US from Europe even more.

From the European point of view, the outlook could scarcely be more gloomy.

If you thought World War Three would be a shooting-match with nuclear weapons, think again. It's much more likely to be a collection of diplomatic and military manoeuvres, which will see autocracy flourish. It could even threaten to break up the Western alliance.

And the process has already started.

source: commonspace.eu with BBC (London).

photo: John Simpson

The views expressed in opinion pieces and commentaries do not necessarily reflect the position of commonspace.eu or its partners

What is left of the Chinese Left?

Friday 26 December 2025, by Au Loong-Yu

With Trump in power, many parts of the world are swinging to the far right. This is the most pressing challenge we currently face. But what is the situation of the Left in China? And where is the Chinese far right?

The Left since 1989

About 25 years ago, at the turn of the century, the shock from the June 4th Massacre in Tinanmen Square in 1989 began fading away, and political life became slightly active again, especially among academia. Debates revived, with positions divided between the “Liberals” and the “New Left”. But the most vocal were neither liberals nor leftists. The former were more like neoliberals, interested in pushing for greater “marketisation”, rather than demanding liberal democracy. This was partly (and understandably) out of concern for their safety, and partly out of genuine belief in the (capitalist) market. The latter were mostly nationalists who defended the party state (after the massacre!) and saw it as the protector of the “national interest” or the “people’s” economic interest — but never their political rights).

On top of this, the age of the internet also brought forward voices from minjian, or “common folk”, from “Maoist” to “Trotskyist” or “Social-Democrat”. This was also the time of NGOs, which worked on and campaigned for different issues. Hong Kong’s academia and civil society organisations played a significant role in this process. Although these NGOs did not work on political campaigning, they were still closely monitored by the state (especially those working on labour issues), fearing they might radicalise.

The flourishing of political debates and of NGOs prompted many to believe that the age of liberalisation was coming. But the opposite was the case. In 2015, Xi Jinping rounded up and banned most of the labour NGOs in mainland China, and arrested human rights lawyers. In 2018 some Maoist students launched a solidarity campaign with workers at the Jasic factory, who wanted to found a workplace trade union. Soon they were arrested (or simply kidnapped), and this was followed by a ban on student-led “Marxism Societies” at various universities. In fact, targeting Maoists had begun more than 20 years ago, when some attacked the late president Jiang Zemin for giving party membership to capitalists. This in turn radicalised some Maoists, who founded the “Maoist Communist Party”. But before long, in 2009, their leader Ma Houzhi (馬厚芝) was sentenced to ten years in prison.

With the full-scale crackdown in Hong Kong in 2020, Beijing took revenge on its people for daring to resist Beijing’s extradition bill a year earlier. It exterminated all political opposition and social movements there, including trade unions and the small Left circles. Of the last players, the small Trotskyist group there was symbolic — it had been the CCP’s longest and most consistent Left opposition, dating back nearly a hundred years. Before the crackdown, the former colony had given a second chance of survival to a wide range of China’s political dissidents.

In the Mainland there has not been any organised opposition since 1949. From 1979, there was a strong liberal current, but it was not allowed to organise. From 2017, when Liu Xiaobo, the leading liberal advocate, died in prison, the liberals’ influence has dwindled under Xi’s repression, although it has managed to make noises occasionally. Only the nationalists have grown stronger and stronger, because they have the support of the regime. Nowadays, no visible Left current remains. Even more chilling: despite being persecuted for years, the Falun Gong remains the most vocal and organised current overseas (probably with an underground presence in China). As a religious cult which demands personal loyalty to its top leader, their political orientation is not helpful to working people.

What is this regime?

So how do we characterise a regime which suppresses all dissidents, from liberals to all shades of Left currents and independent civic associations? Before we give it a name, let’s briefly discuss its basic features:

1. State power is unlimited. Not only can all public affairs ultimately be controlled by the state, but also private lives as well, from women’s fertility, to holding a passport, to arresting young people enjoying Halloween.

2. The state is in turn under the absolute control of the party, which never bothers to hold free and open elections. And the party, in turn, is led by a top leader who can change the country’s constitution at will to make himself a lifelong autocrat.

3. There isThought control and indoctrination with the party’s ideology, whose essence is simple — tingdanghua, gendangzou (聼黨話，跟黨走), or “listen to the party and follow the party”.

4. Its Chinese nationalism is ethno-centric. It sees the nation as a homogenous whole and the party as its natural agent. Its Big Han chauvinism has now resulted in racism, including cultural genocide and mass incarceration of Tibetans and Uighurs.

5. The party also sees Chinese society as a homogeneous whole, so dissidents are a threat to the nation that need to be put down. Not only is organised opposition not allowed, but even individual opposition, once it becomes influential, is silenced.

6. To achieve the goal of zero political opposition, the party-state resorts to full-scale surveillance and the infamous social credit system. State-crafted digitalised money further enhances the Orwellian society.

7. Its economic strategy, since the mid-1950s, has always been to prioritise investment in infrastructure and heavy/advanced industries over people’s basic consumption and wellbeing, as the Great Leap Forward / the Great Famine have shown. Since 1979, the party has reintroduced capitalism to China, and along with it a massive influx of foreign capital. This has enabled the party to achieve the goals of both rapid industrialisation and feeding the people. Relative poverty (labour’s share of national income) has in fact risen, however, because the party bureaucracy has used its absolute power to grab and commercialise vital resources to enrich themselves. It is a bourgeoisified bureaucracy.

8. Its overseas investment has ranked in the top five of the world for many years, and it has sought commercial success and geopolitical power —this is not worse than other capitalist countries, but neither is it better. This has necessarily driven Beijing along the road of global economic expansionism. This has been followed by political expansionism, as it sees itself as the legitimate successor of imperial / Kuomintang (KMT) China, along with the “territory” it perceives to have belonged to it. This is why it has copied the KMT’s “nine-dash line” false claim over a big chunk of the South China Sea.

A far-right, imperialist regime

Only a far-right regime contains all of these features. While Trump is still in the first stage of autocratic engineering, Xi Jinping’s Orwellian autocracy has already advanced into its digitalised version, precisely because his party already has complete control. To see Beijing as something fundamentally more progressive than Trump’s administration is one of the greatest delusions.

In the midst of the trade war between the US and China, quite a few among the international Left feel happy about Beijing “standing up to Trump’s bullying”. While we are temporarily entertained by Trump’s failure, we must not forget that any Xi victory in his counter-offensive always requires the people to pay the price. And, in the face of both the trade war (an external pressure) and China’s internal of over-capacity / unemployment, Xi has resorted to accelerating China’s exports. This just shifts the problem elsewhere; it doesn’t solve it. In fact, it will magnify the global crisis.

Fundamentally speaking, Xi is not fighting imperialism. Rather, he is content with his personal agenda of haodaxigong (好大喜功) — a craving for greatness and glory, while serving the collective interest of the bourgeoisified bureaucracy. Whether Beijing has reached parity with US power is an important but secondary issue. The primary issue is that Beijing’s global expansionism has gone down the road of imperialism. Honest socialists do not wait until Beijing has fully achieved its goal before warning the world of this danger.

As a long-standing far right regime, with no checks on the state from within or from any opposition or social movement outside, Beijing poses grave dangers for the Chinese people and for the world. Yes, US imperialism is much stronger militarily and economically, and is now more harmful to the world. But China could potentially do immense harm as well. No one could stop Xi from starting an unjust war (just as Deng Xiaoping invaded Vietnam in 1979) or from prioritising his fight for hegemony over his people, just as Mao did. I have no answer to this mega challenge, but the least we can do is to call a Leviathan monster by its correct name.

First published in Amandla, December issue, 2025.

Attached documentswhat-is-left-of-the-chinese-left_a9328-2.pdf (PDF - 899.4 KiB)
Extraction PDF [->article9328]


Au Loong-Yu is a long-time Hong Kong labour rights and political activist. Author of China’s Rise: Strength and Fragility and Hong Kong in Revolt: The Protest Movement and the Future of China, Au now lives in exile.

Kyrgyzstan: Secret Police Raid, Police Fine Baptists For ‘Illegal’ Worship Meeting – Analysis

October 11, 2025 
By F18News
By Mushfig Bayram and Felix Corley


On 14 September, National Security Committee (NSC) secret police officers alongside officials of the regime’s National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations raided the Sunday worship service of the Council of Churches Baptist Church in the capital Bishkek. The Church was celebrating harvest festival that day. Officials filmed the service and seized religious literature for “expert analysis”.

Council of Churches Baptist congregations choose not to seek official registration in any country where they operate.

Ibrahim Akunov of the National Agency threatened church members with closure of the Church. “When the officials were filming the Church and the children playing outside in the yard of the Church, he threatened and shouted that he will close down this Church,” members of the Church, who wished to remain unnamed for fear of state reprisals, complained to Forum 18. “This scared some of us and particularly the children” (see below).

Akunov refused to explain why he raided the Baptist Church and threatened Church members. “I won’t talk to you. You can only write a letter to the Foreign Ministry,” he told Forum 18. NSC secret police Officer Major Aleksey Akulich – who led the raid – did not respond to Forum 18’s questions (see below).

Officials took the Church’s leader, Pastor Dmitri Golovin, and Aleksey Demchenko, a deacon of the Church, to the local police station. Officer Izzat Ozubekov of Bishkek’s Sverdlov District Police’s division for the struggle against extremism and illegal migration drew up a record of an offence under Violations Code Article 142, Part 7 (“Carrying out religious activity and using a facility for religious purposes without state registration”). He then issued summary fines to each of about two weeks’ average wage for those in formal work. Bishkek’s Sverdlov District Court is due to hear the men’s appeal against the fines on 17 October (see below).

Forum 18 asked Officer Ozubekov why he fined the Baptists for exercising their right to religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. “They violated the Religion Law, because they do not have registration,” he responded (see below).

National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations Deputy Director Kanatbek Midin uuly did not answer Forum 18’s questions on why the Baptists were raided, why religious communities cannot meet for worship without the obligatory registration, and why the Religion Law is so restrictive (see below).

The raid on the Bishkek Baptist congregation came 10 months after NSC secret police raids on members of the Bishkek congregation of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church in November 2024. Officers tortured four church members, including the leader, Pastor Pavel Shreider. In March 2025, a court banned the Church as “extremist”. A Bishkek court jailed the 65-year-old Pastor in July for 3 years and ordered his deportation at the end of his sentence (see below).

Prison officials transferred Pastor Shreider in September to a prison hospital in a serious condition (see forthcoming F18News article).

On 23 July, five United Nations Special Rapporteurs – including Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief – wrote to the regime about the “arrests, detentions and alleged torture” of members of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church, as well as the subsequent criminal prosecution of Pastor Pavel Shreider and ban on the Church (see forthcoming F18News article).

The Special Rapporteurs also reminded the regime of their earlier concerns about their “Concerns regarding the legal framework governing freedom of religion or belief”. “In particular, we reiterate that the mandatory registration of religious or belief organisations, and the criteria such as in relation to the size of the association itself, which govern the possibility of registration, can lead to the criminalisation of legitimate manifestations of religion or belief,” they wrote. They pointed out that this was incompatible with Article 18 (“Freedom of thought, conscience and religion”) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (see below).

The regime responded with a brief reply in Russian on 20 September, according to the UN Special Procedures communication website (see below).

On 1 September, the regime’s National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations announced on its website that it had suspended the activity of six Muslim and four Protestant Christian organisations. The ten organisations had been registered at various times between 1999 and 2017. The National Agency claimed that they had allegedly “systematically violated” the Religion Law. “The National Agency warns religious organisations to comply with the Religion Law,” it noted (see below).

Several Protestants told Forum 18 that they do not recognise the names of the four Churches whose activity the National Agency suspended. “They may have existed earlier, but merged with other Churches or stopped their existence,” some Protestants commented. “The Agency probably wants to clarify whether or not they are still active.” Others commented that this “may be a warning to all others to give their financial and other reports to the Agency. They want strict control of everybody” (see below).
Officials ban, target religious communities

Officials banned Ahmadi Muslims as allegedly “extremist”. They have not been able to publicly meet for worship since July 2011 after the National Security Committee (NSC) secret police told the then State Commission for Religious Affairs (now the National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations) that they are a “dangerous movement and against traditional Islam”.

“We do not meet publicly or privately for worship together,” Ahmadi Muslims, who asked not to be identified for fear of state reprisals, told Forum 18 in May 2025. “We stopped our common worship ever since we were banned. Our believers have been threatened several times in the past by local police in various localities of the consequences if we meet for worship.”

An association of the Falun Gong spiritual movement was registered in July 2004, but – under Chinese pressure – was liquidated as “extremist” in February 2005. In January 2018 the Chuy-Bishkek Justice Department in the capital Bishkek registered a Falun Gong association. However, in March 2018, less than eight weeks later, the Justice Department issued a decree cancelling the registration.

The NSC secret police opened a criminal case in December 2019 against so far unspecified representatives of the Jehovah’s Witness national centre in Bishkek on charges of inciting hatred. In November 2021, the then Deputy General Prosecutor Kumarbek Toktakunov sent a suit to Bishkek’s Birinchi May (Pervomaisky) District Court asking for it to ban 13 Jehovah’s Witness books and 6 videos as “extremist”. The court dismissed the suit the following month on technical grounds.

Jehovah’s Witnesses told Forum 18 in August 2025 that they do not know if the criminal case opened in 2019 is still active, “but have no reason to believe that it has been closed”.

The NSC secret police arrested the head of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church, Pavel Shreider in Bishkek in November 2024. They tortured him and at least three other church members. A Bishkek court jailed the 65-year-old Pastor in July 2025 for 3 years and ordered his deportation at the end of his sentence. He was transferred in September 2025 to a prison hospital in a serious condition (see forthcoming F18News article). On 19 March 2025, a court banned the True and Free Reform Adventist Church as “extremist” .

The list of 21 banned organisations on the website of the National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations, as of 10 October, does not include Ahmadi Muslims, the Falun Gong movement or the True and Free Reform Seventh-day Adventist Church.
Repressive new Religion Law

At the beginning of 2025, the regime adopted two new laws which continue to restrict freedom of religion or belief.

The new Religion Law – which came into force on 1 February – continues to ban all unregistered exercise of freedom of religion or belief and makes it impossible for communities with fewer than 500 adult citizen members to gain legal status (up from 200 in the previous Law). For the first time it required places of worship of registered religious organisations to also register. It bans sharing faith in public and from door to door.

A new Amending Law in the Area of Religion – which also came into force in February – changed the 2021 Violations Code, the Political Parties Law, the Laws on Elections of and Status of Deputies of Local Keneshes [administrations], and the Law on Status of Deputies of the Zhogorku Kenesh (parliament). Among the Violations Code changes were sharply increased fines for violating the Religion Law.
Secret police raid Baptists’ worship meeting

On 14 September, National Security Committee (NSC) secret police officers alongside officials of the regime’s National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations raided the Sunday worship service of the Council of Churches Baptist Church in Bishkek, a church member told Forum 18. The Church was celebrating harvest festival. NSC secret police officers Major Aleksey Akulich, Senior Lieutenants N. Nazarov and T. Toguzakov and Ibrahim Akunov of the National Agency took part in the raid.

Council of Churches Baptist congregations choose not to seek official registration in any country where they operate.

The officials video filmed the worship service, despite the objection of the church members not to disturb the worship.

The officials demanded that Dmitri Golovin, the leader of the Church, show state permission for carrying out religious activity. Pastor Golovin explained to the officials that Council of Churches Baptist congregations do not seek state registration as they regard that as interference in their activity. He added that the Church has met at the same place since 1992 and never needed to register. He pointed out that Kyrgyzstan’s Constitution guarantees freedom of conscience and religion to its citizens.

The officials confiscated some of the religious literature for state “expert analysis”. They then called and summoned to the church building Officer Izzat Ozubekov of Bishkek Sverdlov District Police’s division for the struggle against extremism and illegal migration.

Akunov of the National Agency threatened church members with closure of the Church. “When the officials were filming the Church and the children playing outside in the yard of the Church, he threatened and shouted that he will close down this Church,” members of the Church, who wished to remain unnamed for fear of state reprisals, complained to Forum 18 on 8 October. “This scared some of us and particularly the children.”

NSC secret police Officer Major Akulich did not answer his phone on 10 October. Forum 18 sent written questions to his phone asking:

– why he raided the Baptist Church;
– why officials threatened the Church with closure;
– and why he thinks the Baptists have to ask officials for permission peacefully to gather for worship in private.

Major Akulich saw the questions but did not respond.

Akunov refused to explain why he raided the Baptist Church and threatened Church members. “I won’t talk to you. You can only write a letter to the Foreign Ministry,” he told Forum 18 on 10 October. He then put the phone down.
Police fine Baptist pastor, deacon

Officials took Pastor Dmitri Golovin and Aleksey Demchenko, a deacon of the Church, to the local police station. Officer Izzat Ozubekov drew up a record of an offence under Violations Code Article 142, Part 7 (“Carrying out religious activity and using a facility for religious purposes without state registration”). He then issued summary fines against the two men. Each was fined 200 Financial Indicators, 20,000 Soms (about two weeks’ average wage for those in formal work).

The Violations Code allows the police and the National Agency to issue summary fines for violating Article 142. The Amending Law which came into force in February 2025 sharply increased fines under this Article.

Forum 18 asked Officer Ozubekov on 10 October why he fined the Baptists for exercising their right to religious freedom guaranteed by the Constitution. “They violated the Religion Law, because they do not have registration,” he responded.

Forum 18 pointed out to Officer Ozubekov that officials demand registration from religious communities which would like to be and act as a religious organisation, while the Baptists do not wish to be a religious organisation as this would mean for them state interference in their internal matters of faith. Asked why religious believers cannot meet privately to worship and read their holy books together, he could not answer. “Well, we will meet them in the court,” he told Forum 18. He did not wish to talk further.

The Baptists told Forum 18 that they have not paid the fines. They filed an appeal to Bishkek’s Sverdlov District Court in mid-September soon after Officer Ozubekov issued the fines. They found out that Judge Tilek Toktosunov, Chair of the Court, will hear their appeals on 17 October.

The Court reception official (who did not give her name) passed Forum 18’s name and questions to Judge Toktosunov on 10 October why religious communities must ask for permission or register officially for gathering in private for worship and why the Religion Law is so restrictive. He did not respond.
Renewed UN concern over religious freedom restrictions

On 23 July, five United Nations Special Rapporteurs – including Nazila Ghanea, Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief – wrote to the regime (AL KGZ 4/2025) about the “arrests, detentions and alleged torture” of members of the True and Free Reform Adventist Church, as well as the subsequent criminal prosecution of Pastor Pavel Shreider (see forthcoming F18News article).

In their 23 July communication the Special Rapporteurs expressed concern over restrictions on exercising freedom of religion or belief.

“Concerns regarding the legal framework governing freedom of religion or belief in the Kyrgyz Republic have been the subject of previous communications from Special Procedures mandate holders,” the 23 July communication noted. It pointed to the Special Rapporteurs’ December 2023 communication about the then proposed new Religion Law (OL KGZ 6/2023). “We regret that no response was received.”

The 23 July communication reiterated these concerns over “the legal framework governing freedom of religion or belief and religious associations” in Kyrgyzstan. “In particular, we reiterate that the mandatory registration of religious or belief organisations, and the criteria such as in relation to the size of the association itself, which govern the possibility of registration, can lead to the criminalisation of legitimate manifestations of religion or belief in a manner incompatible with article 18 [(“Freedom of thought, conscience and religion”) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights] ICCPR”.

“We further reiterate that blanket prohibitions on the distribution of religious literature relying on the definition of ‘extremism’ do not satisfy the principles of legality, proportionality, necessity, and non-discrimination,” the Special Rapporteurs added.

The Special Rapporteurs pointed to the concerns over these legal restrictions raised by the UN Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in its September 2024 review of Kyrgyzstan (E/C.12/KGZ/CO/4). “We further observe that the term ‘extremism’ has no place in international legal standards, is irreconcilable with the principle of legal certainty and is incompatible with fundamental human rights (A/HRC/43/46, para. 14).”

The regime responded with a brief reply in Russian on 20 September, according to the UN Special Procedures communication website.

National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations Deputy Director Kanatbek Midin uuly did not answer his phone on 9 and 10 October. Forum 18 sent written questions on 9 October asking:
– why officials raided the Baptist Church in Bishkek;
– why religious communities cannot meet for worship without the obligatory registration;
– and why the Religion Law is so restrictive.
He read the questions, but did not answer.
“The National Agency warns religious organisations to comply with the Religion Law”

On 1 September, the regime’s National Agency for Religious Affairs and Interethnic Relations in the capital Bishkek announced on its website that it had suspended the activity of six Muslim and four Protestant Christian organisations. The ten organisations had been registered at various times between 1999 and 2017. The National Agency claimed that they had allegedly “systematically violated Article 36, Part 3 of the Religion Law”.

Religion Law Article 36, Part 3 states: “Religious organisations must provide the authorised state religious affairs agency information and annual report of its activity, including that of the facilities used for religious purposes, of their leaders, employees and students studying religion as well as documents of expenditure of funds, the use of other funds, including those received from international and foreign organisations, foreign citizens, and stateless persons.”

The National Agency suspended the activity of the ten religious organisations under Religion Law Article 37.

The National Agency warned that failure to comply with its order to eliminate the violations within 90 days will result in the liquidation of the religious organisations and religious educational institutions under the Religion Law. “The National Agency warns religious organisations to comply with the Religion Law,” it noted.

“They want strict control of everybody”

Several Protestants from various Churches from Bishkek and other regions, including some belonging to various Alliances of Churches, told Forum 18 that they do not recognise the names of the four Churches whose activity the National Agency suspended.

“They may have existed earlier, but merged with other Churches or stopped their existence,” some Protestants commented. “The Agency probably wants to clarify whether or not they are still active.” Others commented that this “may be a warning to all others to give their financial and other reports to the Agency. They want strict control of everybody.”


F18News

Forum 18 believes that religious freedom is a fundamental human right, which is essential for the dignity of humanity and for true freedom.

This far-right publication ran over 17,000 articles 'fawning over' a Chinese dance group — here’s why

GULAN FONG

The Shen Yun Symphony Orchestra at Kennedy Center in 2013 (Wikimedia Commons)

Alex Henderson

December 30, 2024

ALTERNET 

The far-right Epoch Times, according to the New York Times, has, since 2009, published more than 17,000 articles promoting Shen Yun — a touring Chinese dance group. And New York Times reporters Nicole Hong and Michael Rothfeld explain why in an article published on December 30.

The Epoch Times, a Chinese publication based in New York City, is affiliated with the Falun Gong religious movement. And Shen Yun is associated with Falun Gong.



According to Hong and Rothfield, the Epoch Times has repeatedly praised Shen Yun, using words like "heavenly" and "flawless" to describe their performances.

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"The fawning coverage was not a product of quirky editorial judgment or an unusual commitment to chronicling the arts," the New York Times reporters explain. "Rather, it was part of a deliberate strategy to promote Shen Yun — a huge moneymaker for the Falun Gong religious movement — while relentlessly attacking its critics, records and interviews show."



















Hong and Rothfield add, "The strategy has emanated from the edicts of Falun Gong's founder, Li Hongzhi, whose followers run The Epoch Times and who oversees Shen Yun from his movement's guarded headquarters northwest of New York City."

Hongzhi, according to Hong and Rothfield, considers Shen Yun "the most important project in his religion."

"He has urged followers to persuade as many people as possible to see Shen Yun shows, which he says can spread Falun Gong’s message and save audiences from a coming apocalypse," the Times journalists report. "But he has also presided over a dance group that former performers say has discouraged them from seeking medical care and subjected them to years of emotional abuse."
by Taboola
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The Epoch Times' coverage of U.S. politics has been overtly favorable to President-elect Donald Trump.

"The Epoch Times has long been known to have ties to Falun Gong," Hong and Rothfield note. "It rose to national prominence after 2016 by promoting right-wing conspiracy theories and the policies of Donald J. Trump. Kash Patel, Mr. Trump's pick for FBI director in his second administration, had a show on the outlet’s streaming site, EpochTV, where he conducted an interview with Mr. Trump in 2022."


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Read the full New York Times article at this link (subscription required).

Canada sanctions 8 Chinese officials for human rights violations

The measure comes at a time when Western governments are increasingly using sanctions to hold violators to account.

By RFA Tibetan and by Gulchehra Hoja for RFA Uyghur2

024.12.11

Chen Quanguo, Communist Party secretary of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, speaks at the meeting of the Xinjiang delegation on the sidelines of the National People's Congress in Beijing, March 12, 2019. (Jason Lee/Reuters)

Canada imposed sanctions on eight former and current senior Chinese officials on Tuesday, citing their involvement in grave human rights violations in Tibet and Xinjiang and against Falun Gong followers.

The sanctions attempt to freeze the assets of the individuals by prohibiting Canadians living inside and outside the country from providing financial services to them or engaging in activities related to their property.

“Canada is deeply concerned by the human rights violations in Xinjiang and Tibet and against those who practice Falun Gong,” Foreign Minister Mélanie Joly said in a statement. “We call on the Chinese government to put an end to this systematic campaign of repression and uphold its international human rights obligations.”

Joly visited China in July and met with her Chinese counterpart, Wang Yi, to discuss relations, human rights and global and regional security issues.

The announcement comes at a time when Western governments — particularly Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union — are increasingly turning to sanctioning individuals in China involved in the persecution of Tibetans in Tibet, Muslim Uyghurs in Xinjiang and practitioners of Falun Gong, a religious group banned in China.

Probably the most prominent of those sanctioned is Chen Quanguo, Chinese Communist Party Committee Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016 and of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region from 2016 to 2021.

Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joly speaks during a press conference in Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 2, 2024. (Valentyn Ogirenko/Reuters)

Also sanctioned was Wu Yingjie, Communist Party Secretary of Tibet from 2016 to 2021.

Wu, 67, was expelled from the Chinese Communist Party and removed from other public positions for disciplinary violations following a corruption probe, Chinese officials announced Tuesday. They said he failed to implement the Central Committee’s strategy for governing Tibet, and intervened in engineering projects allegedly for personal gain, according to an article in the state-run China Daily.

Others who were sanctioned include:Erkin Tuniyaz, deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Committee and chairman of Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Shohrat Zakir, chairman of Xinjiang and deputy secretary of the Chinese Communist Party Xinjiang Committee from 2014 to 2021
Peng Jiarui, vice chairman of Xinjiang and vice chairman of the Xinjiang Regional Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, who previously served as commander of Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a paramilitary organization
Huo Liujun, party secretary of Xinjiang’s Public Security Department since March 2017
Zhang Hongbo, former director of Tibet’s Public Security Bureau
You Quan, former director of the United Front Work Department and a former secretary of the Secretariat of the Chinese Communist Party

‘Ongoing atrocities’

The Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project based in Canada submitted the names of six of the individuals to the Canadian government for sanctions consideration in December 2022, said Mehmet Tohti, the group’s executive director.

Tibetan and Falun Gong organizations provided the other two names, he said.

Adrian Zenz, senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation in Washington, said the measure was long overdue.

“Great to see Canada do this,” he said. “The Europeans are now far behind; they have not even sanctioned Chen Quanguo yet.”

“Sanctioning Tuniyaz is very important in terms of showing to the world that the atrocities in the Uyghur homeland are ongoing,” said Zenz, who is an expert on Xinjiang.

The most prominent individual is Chen Quanguo because he was the person behind China’s suppression of Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities in Xinjiang that first drew international attention in 2017, said Charles Burton, a former Canadian diplomat who worked in China.

Wang, who is retired, has said he no foreign assets, family abroad or desire to travel, so the sanctions are symbolic but not substantive, Burton said.

The same likely applies to the others who played a part in the repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang, including Erkin Tuniyaz, Peng Jiarui, Huo Liujun and Shohrat Zakir, he said.

Wu Yingjie, Communist Party secretary of the Tibet Autonomous Region, attends the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in Beijing, Oct. 19, 2017. (Aly Song/Reuters)

“But Canada’s action sends out a clear signal of support for Uyghurs in the PRC and their families in Canada and elsewhere,” Burton added, referring to the People’s Republic of China. “It also makes clear to Chinese Communist Party officials that they will be held accountable for their complicity in violations of international law.”

‘False allegations’

On Wednesday, Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said the Canada government “made false allegations against China in the name of human rights and imposed illicit sanctions on Chinese personnel.”

“This is gross interference in China’s internal affairs and a serious violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations,” she said. “China firmly opposes and strongly condemns this.”

RFA contacted Canada’s foreign ministry for additional comment, but had not received a response before publication time.

The United States previously imposed sanctions on all eight officials for their connections to serious human rights violations.

The Washington-based Uyghur Human Rights Project welcomed the move.

“This decision by Canada is a significant step toward accountability for the architects of mass repression in East Turkistan,” Omer Kanat, the group’s executive director, said in a statement, using Uyghurs' preferred name for Xinjiang.

“Targeted sanctions send a clear message that perpetrators of atrocity crimes cannot act with impunity.”

Translated by Mamatjan Juma for RFA Uyghur. Edited by Roseanne Gerin and Malcolm Foster.

China urges Canada to cease interfering in its internal affairs

Xinhua, December 11, 2024

China urges Canada to reflect on its own situation and cease its interference in China's internal affairs, foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said on Wednesday, referring to recent Canadian sanctions on Chinese personnel.

Mao made the remarks at a regular press briefing when asked to comment on sanctions levied against certain Chinese individuals for alleged human rights violations that Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs Mélanie Joly announced on Tuesday.

"Without any factual basis, the Canadian government has made false allegations against China in the name of human rights and imposed illicit sanctions on Chinese personnel," Mao said.

She noted that this constitutes gross interference in China's internal affairs, and is a serious violation of international law and the basic norms governing international relations. China firmly opposes and strongly condemns Canada's actions, she said.

The Chinese government follows a people-centered development philosophy and attaches absolute importance to respecting and protecting human rights, Mao said. The fact is that China has achieved enormous progress in the field of human rights and made important contributions to the global human rights cause, and this is impossible to deny without bias, she stressed.

She indicated that Canada is facing its own list of human rights issues, and that its human rights record is far from spotless. Even today, Canada's indigenous population faces systemic racial discrimination and unfair treatment.

"Instead of dealing with this, Canada has chosen to slander and vilify other countries, and is spreading lies about China's alleged human rights issues. This move is like a thief crying 'Stop, thief!' and will not convince the world," Mao said.

The facts have laid bare Canada's double standards and hypocrisy, she said. Canada is in no position to lecture others on human rights or point fingers at human rights situations in other countries, and it does not have any right to act as a judge and impose sanctions arbitrarily.

China strongly urges Canada to reflect on its own situation, cease interfering in China's internal affairs, stop undermining China's interests and image under the pretext of a human rights cause, end its crude political stunt, and lift its unlawful sanctions on relevant Chinese personnel immediately, Mao stressed.

"We will take all necessary measures to defend our sovereignty, security and development interests firmly," she said.

AMERIKA

‘Expect war’: leaked chats reveal influence of rightwing media on militia group

Jason Wilson

THE GUARDIAN
Mon 28 October 2024

A man in Washington DC holds leaflets falsely claiming that Trump won the 2020 presidential election, in November 2020.Photograph: NurPhoto/Getty Images

Leaked and public chats from Arizona-based “poll watching” activists aligned with a far-right militia group show how their election paranoia has been fueled by a steady drumbeat of conspiracy theories and disinformation from rightwing media outlets and influencers, including Elon Musk.

The materials come from two overlapping election-denial groups whose activists are mostly based in Arizona, one of seven key swing states that will decide the US election and possibly end up at the center of any disputed results in the post-election period.

Chat records from a public-facing channel for the America First Polling Project (AFPP) were made available to reporters by transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets (DDOSecrets). The activist who leaked those materials to DDOSecrets provided the Guardian directly with an archive of the Arizona 2022 Mid-Term Election Watch (A22) chat channel.


Related: The far-right megadonor pouring over $10m into the US election to defeat ‘the woke regime’

The materials offer a window into the way in which the rightwing information environment – and the unverified, distorted or false information it proffers – erode faith in elections, and encourage those who would violently disrupt them.
From the media to far-right conspiracy

The materials underline previously reported links between poll watching groups and the American Patriots Three Percent (AP3) militia, such that the militia provided “paramilitary heft to ballot box monitoring operations”.

At least half a dozen pseudonymous activist accounts are present across all of the chats, and early posts in the AFPP chat show activists at “tailgate parties” that brought together election denial groups and militia members ahead of the 2022 midterms election.

They also show the broad cooperative effort among a range of election denial groups, whose activities were fueled by disinformation from high-profile conservative activists.

On 6 October 2022, in one of the first archived messages on the semi-private A22 chat, a user with the same name as the channel (Arizona 2022 Mid-Term Election Watch) announced to the group that they had “heard back from the cleanelectionsusa.org so I might try to coordinate between the two efforts”. They added: “In any case I will schedule a couple of zoom calls so we can connect.”

Two days later, the same account updated: “There are 13 drop box only locations in Maricopa county of which only 2 are 24 hour locations,” adding: “We will need help with getting these watched. I have also been able to connect with cleanelectionsusa and am coordinating with those folks.”

Clean Elections USA, founded by Oklahoman Melody Jennings, is one of a number of election denial groups that sprang up in the wake of the 2020 election, after Trump and his allies mounted a campaign to reverse that year’s election result on the basis of false claims that the vote was stolen.

During the 2022 election season, the organization was slapped with a restraining order over its ballot monitoring – some of it carried out by armed activists – that the federal Department of Justice described in its filing as “vigilante ballot security efforts” that may have violated the Voting Rights Act. That lawsuit was settled in 2023.

The organization’s website has shuttered; however, archived snapshots indicate that the organizers were motivated by discredited information from long-running election denial organization True the Vote and 2000 Mules, the title of a conspiracy-minded book and accompanying documentary by rightwing provocateur Dinesh D’Souza.

The book and film repeated True the Vote’s allegations that paid “mules” had carried illegal ballots to drop boxes in swing states in 2020. D’Souza’s publisher in June withdrew the book and film from distribution and apologized to a man whom D’Souza falsely accused of criminal election fraud.

The “mules” falsehoods were treated as baseline reality in the A22 chat. On 9 November, a user named “trooper” sought to account for Republicans’ unexpectedly poor showing with the claim “275k drop-off ballots – meaning the mules flooded the system on election day while the disaster distraction was in play”, adding that “they swarmed the election day drop boxes like fucking locusts”.

The pro-democracy Bridging Divides Initiative (BDI) at Princeton University recently published research indicating elevated worries about harassment on the part of local officials, including election officials. BDI’s research backed up findings from the Brennan Center indicating that 70% of election officials said that threats had increased in 2024, and 38% had personally experienced threats, up from 30% last year.

Shannon Hiller, BDI’s executive director, said: “We continue to face elevated threats and risk to local officials across the board,” however in 2024, “there’s been a lot more preparation and there’s a clearer understanding about how to address those threats now.”

Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) said that talk of election fraud using drop boxes had returned in 2024. “I can’t think of an election-denying organization, whether it’s Mike Lindell, True the Vote, or more local outfits in various states that aren’t talking about patrolling drop boxes and watching voters while they’re voting”, she said.
From disinformation to violent threats

Beirich’s warnings are reflected in ongoing AFPP Telegram chats, where any prospect of a Harris victory is met with conspiracy theories, apocalyptic narratives, and sometimes threats.

The Guardian’s review of the materials found many instances in which disinformation or exaggerated claims in the media or from rightwing public figures led directly to violent rhetoric from members of the chat.

On 13 March, a user linked to a story in the Federalist which uncritically covered a claim by the Mississippi secretary of state, Michael Watson, that the Department of Justice was “using taxpayer dollars to have jails and the US Marshals Service encourage incarcerated felons and noncitizens to register to vote” on the basis of Biden’s March 2021 executive order aimed at expanding access to voting.

A user, “@Wilbo17AZ”, replied: “If we don’t fight this with our every waking breath, we are done. Expect war.”

On 24 June, a user posted an article from conspiracy-minded, Falun Gong-linked news website Epoch Times, which reported on the supreme court’s rejection of appeals from a Robert F Kennedy-founded anti-vaccine non-profit,

The court declined to hear the appeals over lower court’s determinations that the non-profit had no standing to sue the Food and Drug Administration over its emergency authorization of Covid-19 vaccines during the pandemic.

In response, another user, “cybercav”, wrote: “I do not see any path forward for our Republic that doesn’t include ‘Purge and Eradicate’ being the general orders for both sides of the next civil war.”

In January, the @AFPP_US account posted a link to an opinion column on the Gateway Pundit by conspiracy theorist Wayne Allyn Root. Root characterized cross-border immigration as an invasion in the piece, and concluded by telling readers to “Pray to God. Pray for a miracle. Pray for the election in November of President Donald J Trump.”
Fueling paranoia

Over the summer, overseas events fueled the paranoia of chat members.

On 6 August the @AFPP_US account posted a link to Guardian reporting on anti-immigrant riots that took place in the UK over the summer.

The article described the riots as “far-right violence”; @AFPP_US captioned the link “‘Far Right’ = ‘Stop raping women and stabbing children’”.

The next day, the same account apparently attempted to link the riots to UK gun laws, which are more restrictive than the US.

The stimulus was a story on the riots by conspiracy broadcaster Owen Shroyer, an employee of Alex Jones who was sentenced to two months in prison for entering a restricted area at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021.

@AFPP_US wrote: “UK is a failed state and possession of the Calaphite [sic]. The imperialists have become the Imperiled. This is what just a few generations of disarmament and pussification hath wrought.”

One major vector of bad information in the A22 chats is the Gateway Pundit, a pro-Maga website operated by Jim Hoft. That website has been a noted source of election disinformation for years. Earlier this month Hoft’s organization settled a defamation suit with two election workers that it had falsely accused of election fraud. Accountability non-profit Advance Democracy Inc reported in August that in the first nine months of 2024 Hoft had published at least 128 articles referencing election fraud and election workers.

Gateway Pundit articles were shared many times in the chat.

On 21 January, the @AFPP_US account shared a Gateway Pundit story by Hoft in which he claimed that liberal philanthropist and chair of the Open Society Foundation, Alexander Soros, had posted a coded message advocating the assassination of a re-elected President Trump.

The basis was that Soros’s post carried a picture of a bullet hole and a hand holding $47. But those pictures came from a story in the Atlantic, about falling crime rates, that Soros was linking to in the post.
‘Millions of illegals’

On at least one occasion, the Gateway Pundit was quoted in the group because it was amplifying the claims of another major source of disinformation for A22: Elon Musk.

The Gateway Pundit article posted to the chat in January was titled “JUST IN … Elon Musk Rips Mark Zuckerberg for Funding Illegal Voting Vans in 2020 Election”. It highlighted Musk’s false claim that Zuckerberg’s funding of county-level voting apparatuses in 2020 was illegal.

As elections approached, AFPP members added more of Musk’s pronouncements into the stew of disinformation on the site, with a particular emphasis on anti-immigrant material.

On 7 September, as rightwing actors stoked panic about Haitian immigrants, @AFPP_US posted a link to a Musk post quote-posting a video of Harris addressing the need to support Haitian migrants with the comment: “Vote for Kamala if you want this to happen to your neighborhood!”

On 29 September, the AFPP lead account linked to a Musk post that claimed “Millions of illegals being provided by the government with money for housing using your tax dollars is a major part of what’s driving up costs”.

On 1 October, the @AFPP_US account shared an X post in which Musk asserted that “if Trump is NOT elected, this will be the last election”, and wove that claim into a narrative resembling the “great replacement” conspiracy theory, claiming that “Democrats are expediting” the conversion of “illegals” to citizens in an attempt to make America a “one-party state”.

The Guardian reported in 2021 that a separate AP3 website leak, which exposed the paramilitary organization’s membership list, showed that at that time members included serving military and law enforcement officers.

In August, ProPublica reported on an earlier leak of AP3 materials from the same source, showing that AP3 had carried out vigilante operations on the Texas border, and had forged close ties with law enforcement officers around the country.

Beirich said that chatter monitored by the organization has obsessively focused on the narrative of illegal immigrants voting in a “rigged” election. “Non-citizens voting is the big fraud that they’re talking up,” she said.

Earlier this month, Wired reported that the current leak showed evidence of plans to carry out operations “coordinated with election denial groups as part of a plan to conduct paramilitary surveillance of ballot boxes during the midterm elections in 2022”.

 

US confirms release of American pastor David Lin from China prison

George Macauley | U. Toronto Faculty of Law, CA

SEPTEMBER 18, 2024 

The US State Department confirmed in a press conference on Monday that David Lin, an American pastor the US alleges was wrongfully detained since 2009, has been released. US State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller stated that Lin returned to the US for the first time in almost 20 years after he was released from prison in China.

Lin’s release comes after Jake Sullivan, the current US State representative, wrapped up a three-day trip to Beijing, China to meet with top Beijing officials. While Miller did not confirm if the release was a result of negotiations during the trip, he stated that the US Secretary raised David Lin’s case whenever he met with Chinese officials. Miller also said that the US State Department would “continue to push for the release of other Americans.”

Lin was originally arrested in 2009 after he attempted to create a Christian training center in Beijing, where he was then arrested and sentenced to life on the charge of “contract fraud”. According to rights organization Dui Hua Foundation, contract fraud charges are “frequently used against Church house leaders who raise funds to support their work”. The foundation previously wrote:

Dui Hua found that the 1997 revision to the criminal law placed “cult” trials into the purview of district courts, resulting in less transparency and attention [to] such cases. By 1999, trials of Article 300 cases—for those accused of organizing and using superstitious sects, secret societies [] and religious organizations to undermine the law—soared, largely due to the ban on Falun Gong.

Digital Apartheid in Gaza: Big Tech Must Reveal Their Roles in Tech Used in Human Rights Abuses

By Paige Collings, Sparky Abraham 

August 18, 2024

Source: EFF


Image via EFF



This is part two of an ongoing series. Part one on unjust content moderation is here.

Since the start of the Israeli military response to Hamas’ deadly October 7 attack, U.S.-based companies like Google and Amazon have been under pressure to reveal more about the services they provide and the nature of their relationships with the Israeli forces engaging in the military response.

We agree. Without greater transparency, the public cannot tell whether these companies are complying with human rights standards—both those set by the United Nations and those they have publicly set for themselves. We know that this conflict has resulted in alleged war crimes and has involved massive, ongoing surveillance of civilians and refugees living under what international law recognizes as an illegal occupation. That kind of surveillance requires significant technical support and it seems unlikely that it could occur without any ongoing involvement by the companies providing the platforms.

Google’s Human Rights statement claims that “In everything we do, including launching new products and expanding our operations around the globe, we are guided by internationally recognized human rights standards. We are committed to respecting the rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and its implementing treaties, as well as upholding the standards established in the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs) and in the Global Network Initiative Principles (GNI Principles). Google goes further in the case of AI technologies, promising not to design or deploy AI in technologies that are likely to facilitate injuries to people, gather or use information for surveillance or be used in violation of human rights, or even where the use is likely to cause overall harm.”

Amazon states that it is “Guided by the United Nations Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights,” and that their “approach on human rights is informed by international standards; we respect and support the Core Conventions of the International Labour Organization (ILO), the ILO Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work, and the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”

It is time for Google and Amazon to tell the truth about use of their technologies in Gaza so that everyone can see whether their human rights commitments were real or simply empty promises.
Concerns about Google and Amazon Facilitating Human Rights Abuses

The Israeli government has long procured surveillance technologies from corporations based in the United States. Most recently, an investigation in August by +972 and Local Call revealed that the Israeli military has been storing intelligence information on Amazon’s Web Services (AWS) cloud after the scale of data collected through mass surveillance on Palestinians in Gaza was too large for military servers alone. The same article reported that the commander of Israel’s Center of Computing and Information Systems unit—responsible for providing data processing for the military—confirmed in an address to military and industry personnel that the Israeli army had been using cloud storage and AI services provided by civilian tech companies, with the logos of AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure appearing in the presentation.

This is not the first time Google and Amazon have been involved in providing civilian tech services to the Israeli military, nor is it the first time that questions have been raised about whether that technology is being used to facilitate human rights abuses. In 2021, Google and Amazon Web Services signed a $1.2 billion joint contract with the Israeli military called Project Nimbus to provide cloud services and machine learning tools located within Israel. In an official announcement for the partnership, the Israeli Finance Ministry said that the project sought to “provide the government, the defense establishment and others with an all-encompassing cloud solution.” Under the contract, Google and Amazon reportedly cannot prevent particular agencies of the Israeli government, including the military, from using its services.

Not much is known about the specifics of Nimbus. Google has publicly stated that the project is not aimed at military uses; the Israeli military publicly credits Nimbus with assisting the military in conducting the war. Reports note that the project involves Google establishing a secure instance of the Google Cloud in Israel. According to Google documents from 2022, Google’s Cloud services include object tracking, AI-enabled face recognition and detection, and automated image categorization. Google signed a new consulting deal with the Israeli Ministry of Defense based around the Nimbus platform in March 2024, so Google can’t claim it’s simply caught up in the changed circumstances since 2021.

Alongside Project Nimbus, an anonymous Israeli official reported that the Israeli military deploys face recognition dragnets across the Gaza Strip using two tools that have facial recognition/clustering capabilities: one from Corsight, which is a “facial intelligence company,” and the other built into the platform offered through Google Photos.
Clarity Needed

Based on the sketchy information available, there is clearly cause for concern and a need for the companies to clarify their roles.

For instance, Google Photos is a general-purpose service and some of the pieces of Project Nimbus are non-specific cloud computing platforms. EFF has long maintained that the misuse of general-purpose technologies alone should not be a basis for liability. But, as with Cisco’s development of a specific module of China’s Golden Shield aimed at identifying the Falun Gong (currently pending in litigation in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit), companies should not intentionally provide specific services that facilitate human rights abuses. They must also not willfully blind themselves to how their technologies are being used.

In short, if their technologies are being used to facilitate human rights abuses, whether in Gaza or elsewhere, these tech companies need to publicly demonstrate how they are adhering to their own Human Rights and AI Principles, which are based in international standards.

We (and the whole world) are waiting, Google and Amazon.

Paige Collings is the Senior Speech and Privacy Activist at EFF. As a lawyer, digital policy activist and community organiser, she works to dismantle systems of oppression and advance collective liberation. Paige focuses on highlighting how state surveillance and corporate restrictions stifle marginalized communities and perpetuate historic injustices and harm. She has worked with activists across the globe to facilitate systemic change by speaking truth to power and creating spaces for alternative imaginations for justice for all. Paige is a board member of the European Digital Rights (EDRi) network. Paige holds a Master’s degree in Law, Master’s degree in Political Science, and a Bachelor’s degree in Politics and History.

 

Scandal at Trump-backer Epoch Times: Biden and U.S. Establishment Getting Desperate Over Election?

Digging up dirt using a money-laundering scandal makes perfect sense. Muzzling a pro-Trump media outlet is a bonus too.

by Finian Cunningham / June 19th, 2024

With the U.S. presidential election only four months away, the incumbent Joe Biden White House and the Democrat Party are getting desperate. They can’t seem to close the gap in poll numbers showing Republican rival Donald Trump having a strong chance of regaining the presidency.

Such is the political crisis in the United States from voter indifference to both candidates that anything could happen. With Trump threatening a “bloodbath” if he loses in November, the prospect of national chaos either way is looming.

An increasingly frail Biden is calling on Hollywood A-listers to boost his flagging campaign. A recent $30 million fundraiser by Tinseltown big names including Julia Roberts and George Clooney warned of the “scariest” outcome if Trump were returned to the White House.

What’s of concern to the political and media establishment – which largely votes Democrat – is that Trump’s popularity seems immune to damage from scandal and legal prosecutions for financial corruption. His fundraising is also set to grow more robustly after the Republican Congressional leaders put aside any misgivings to bless his campaign.

The high stakes may explain the “big news” crackdown on alleged corruption by the chief financial executive at the conservative news outlet, The Epoch Times.

Its Chief Financial Officer Weidong “Bill” Guan is in court this week facing federal charges for money laundering and bank fraud to the tune of $67 million. Guan denies the charges but if convicted he is facing a 20-30 year stretch in jail.

The Epoch Times is a major supporter of “The Donald”. The weekly newspaper is published in 35 countries and 22 languages. It was founded 25 years ago and is affiliated with the Falun Gong movement, a secretive quasi-Buddhist religion that claims to have millions of followers in the U.S. and worldwide. The spiritual leader is China-born multimillionaire Li Hongzhi who lives in exile. Falun Gong is banned in China by the Chinese government which accuses it of cult practices and extortion of followers.

Following the arrest of Bill Guan by U.S. authorities earlier this month, the Falun Gong leader wrote two articles for Epoch Times, denouncing shady practices and partisan politics. The newspaper has denied any wrongdoing and has suspended its chief financial officer pending the outcome of the fraud trial.

The New York-based Epoch Times has been a useful proxy for U.S. governments since its foundation in 2000 following the exile of Li Hongzhi from China to the United States where “he found his American Dream”, according to the Wall Street Journal. Apart from its zany content which borders on superstition and sensationalism, the upside for the U.S. establishment is the publication is vehemently hostile towards the People’s Republic of China in its editorial line. It reflects the “anti-communist” views of the Falun Gong leader and in that way can be seen as a useful propaganda tool for Washington to drum up “anti-China” sentiments.

However, during the last Trump administration, The Epoch Times adopted a stridently pro-Trump line. It ran stories popular among the MAGA movement such as the Covid-19 virus being a plot by the Chinese Communist Party to destroy the United States, as well as QAnon conspiracy claims about Satanic corruption among the U.S. establishment.

When Trump lost in 2020 to Biden, the paper promoted the false claims that the election was “stolen” by Democrat-orchestrated voter fraud. Many Republican voters still believe that their man was cheated out of a second consecutive term by the deep state.

Nailing its editorial colors to the Trump electoral mast was a profitable move for The Epoch Times. Under the stewardship of Bill Guan – a protégé of Falun Gong guru Li Hongzhi – the media group’s revenues skyrocketed from $4 million a year to over $120 million. The Department of Justice indictment alleges that Guan raked in the proceeds through fundraising online scams using cryptocurrency and personal identity theft.

The association of Trump’s campaign with an alleged massive fraud operation run by a media group that can be easily painted as a weird cultist whack job seems to be the latest effort by the Democrat-supporting political establishment to tip the scales in favor of Biden.

There has been widespread American corporate media coverage of the fraud scandal implicating The Epoch Times and its Falun Gong network. The Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, and CNBC, among others, have been having a field day on the subject.

It appears odd that the U.S. establishment, which has indulged the Falun Gong movement and its anti-China news outlet for so many years, should abruptly ramp up negative coverage.

But bear in mind that Biden’s campaign is in deep trouble. His administration’s embroilment in the Gaza genocide perpetrated by the Israeli regime has earned bitter recrimination from Democrat voters and students who would have normally voted for Biden.

Another worry for the Democrat Party is Biden’s increasingly obvious physical and mental frailty. Even pro-Democrat media are openly commenting on how Biden’s mental health is failing as he stumbles from one public gaff or misstep to another. There is a sense of dread that when Trump and Biden go head to head in a live TV debate later this month, the incumbent president will be made look decrepit and unfit for office.

The Democrat campaign is amplifying attention on Trump’s conviction for fraud over hush payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels and his other forthcoming court trial over abuse of classified documents. It’s also talking up Trump’s dodgy financial accounts and business dealings as a former real estate magnate.

The scandal at The Epoch Times and allegations of defrauding millions of Americans through money laundering comes at a time when the Biden campaign needs all the help it can get to pile the dirt on Trump.

A legal crackdown on the newspaper’s financial dealings seems long overdue. Banks and tax authorities were flagging suspicious accounts from at least 2021, according to reports. Former employers of The Epoch Times have also commented publicly on the surprising delay in investigating the media outlet and its fundraising operations.

It seems strange that federal indictments are being brought now with much-hyped media coverage if the case were assessed merely on legal concerns about finances.

If the intensity of politics is factored though and the U.S. establishment’s fears that Trump might just pull off a spectacular reelection – with all the chaos that such a return to the White House will elicit – then digging up dirt using a money-laundering scandal makes perfect sense. Muzzling a pro-Trump media outlet is a bonus too.

• First published in Strategic Culture FoundationFacebookTwitterReddit

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Finian Cunningham is a former editor and writer for major news media organizations. He has written extensively on international affairs, with articles published in several languages Read other articles by Finian.