TAIPEI: Taiwan’s defense ministry said 37 Chinese aircraft were detected around the self-ruled island Wednesday as they headed to exercises with an aircraft carrier in the western Pacific.
China claims democratic Taiwan as part of its territory and maintains a near-daily presence of fighter jets, drones and warships around the island, which is located 180 kilometers (110 miles) from the southern Chinese coast.
It is also a crucial part of a chain of islands that military strategists say serve as a gateway from the South China Sea — which China claims in nearly its entirety — to the Pacific Ocean.
At around 9:30 am (0130 GMT) Wednesday, Taipei said that “since 0520 today, the Ministry of National Defense detected a total of 37 Chinese aircraft” around Taiwan, including fighter jets, bombers and drones.
Thirty-six of the aircraft crossed the sensitive median line of the Taiwan Strait — which bisects the narrow waterway separating the island from China.
“(The aircraft) headed to the Western Pacific via our southern and southeastern airspace to cooperate with the aircraft carrier the Shandong in conducting ‘joint sea and air training’,” the defense ministry said in a statement.
Defense Minister Wellington Koo told reporters the Shandong “did not pass through the Bashi Channel,” the area off Taiwan’s southern tip where Chinese ships typically transit en route to the Pacific Ocean.
Instead, it “went further south through the Balingtang Channel toward the Western Pacific,” he said, referring to a waterway just north of the Philippines’ Babuyan Island — about 250 kilometers south of Bashi.
The Chinese flights come a day after Japan’s Joint Staff Office said four PLA navy vessels — including the Shandong — were sailing 520 kilometers southeast of Miyako Island.
“On the same day, the Chinese navy’s Kuznetsov-class aircraft carrier ‘Shandong’ was observed landing and departing fighter aircraft and helicopters on board,” it said in a statement.
China has never renounced the use of force to bring Taiwan under its control and has ramped up military and political pressures on the island in recent years.
In May, days after Taiwanese President Lai Ching-te took office, China launched war games around the island as “punishment” for an inauguration speech that Beijing called a “confession of Taiwan independence.”
On Wednesday, Lai met with Raymond Greene, new director of the American Institute in Taiwan — the de-facto US embassy, emphasising their “solid partnership... in the midst of China’s repeated provocation and attempts to change the status quo in the Taiwan Strait.”
While the United States, like many other countries, does not officially recognize Taiwan diplomatically, it is Taipei’s key partner and major provider of weapons — a point of consternation for Beijing which has repeatedly called on Washington to stop arming the island.
Greene said Wednesday that Washington would continue to “strongly support Taiwan’s ability to defend itself.”
“We have a long-term and shared interest to maintain the peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait. This is vital to the prosperity of the Indo-Pacific region, as well as to global security,” he said during his meeting with Lai.
37 Chinese aircraft skirt Taiwan on way to drill: Taipei
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37 Chinese aircraft skirt Taiwan on way to drill: Taipei
- China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and maintains a near-daily presence of fighter jets, drones and warships around the island
- The Chinese flights come a day after Japan said four PLA navy vessels were sailing 520 kilometers southeast of Miyako Island
Russian car bomb suspect extradited from Turkiye
Evgeny Serebryakov, born in 1995, was detained in the Turkish city of Bodrum on Wednesday, hours after an unidentified explosive device tore apart a car in the north of the Russian capital.
“Serebryakov has been taken to Russia and handed over to investigators,” interior ministry spokeswoman Irina Volk said on Friday on Telegram.
The attack reportedly injured a Russian military officer. Officials have not confirmed the victim’s identity.
Serebryakov has been charged with attempted murder and the illegal acquisition or transportation of explosives.
In a video filmed by Russia’s FSB security service and aired on state media, Serebryakov said he was acting “on the instructions of a Ukrainian security services operative.”
Several Russian military and pro-Kremlin public figures have been targeted in car bombings since Moscow launched its offensive on Ukraine in February 2022.
Ukraine typically denies responsibility but often cheers attacks on Russian officials and military personnel.
Search for people missing after Ethiopia mudslides continues as death toll rises to 257
- Heavy rain triggered deadly slides on Sunday and Monday in a remote part of the country
- Many people were buried in the Gofa Zone of Kencho Shacha Gozdi district on Monday
ADDIS ABABA: Search teams were still digging at the site of deadly mudslides in southern Ethiopia on Friday, as the death toll rose to 257, according to the UN humanitarian office.
Heavy rain triggered deadly slides on Sunday and Monday in a remote part of the country. The UN humanitarian office, known as OCHA, said in an update Thursday that the death toll could rise to as many as 500, citing local officials.
“More than 15,000 affected people need to be evacuated” from the area, it said.
Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed is expected to visit the remote area on Friday. Mudslides there have been triggered by heavy rainfall in recent days. Abiy said earlier in the week that he was “deeply saddened by this terrible loss.”
Photos from the scene show residents standing over the shrouded bodies of mudslide victims who are being pulled, one by one, from the muddy earth. Diggers have been using hand shovels to pick through the mud.
Many people were buried in the Gofa Zone of Kencho Shacha Gozdi district on Monday, as rescue workers searched the steep terrain for survivors from mudslides the previous day.
Landslides are common during Ethiopia’s rainy reason, which started in July and is expected to last until mid-September.
Deadly mudslides often occur in the wider East African region, from Uganda’s mountainous east to central Kenya’s highlands. In April, at least 45 people were killed in Kenya’s Rift Valley region when flash floods and a landslide swept through houses and cut off a major road.
ASEAN diplomats meet with China as friction mounts over Beijing’s sweeping maritime claims
- ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all have conflicts with China over its claim of sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea
VIENTIANE, Laos: Top diplomats from Southeast Asia met Friday in Laos with China’s foreign minister for talks that come as friction escalates over Beijing’s growing effort to press its sweeping maritime claims in the South China Sea.
Several members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations have territorial disputes with China, which have led to direct confrontations that many worry could lead to broader conflict.
“One wrong step in the South China Sea will turn a small fire into a terrible firestorm,” Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said ahead of the talks with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.
ASEAN members Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all have conflicts with China over its claim of sovereignty over virtually all of the South China Sea, one of the world’s most crucial waterways for shipping. Indonesia has also expressed concern about what it sees as Beijing’s encroachment on its exclusive economic zone.
The United States and its allies, meanwhile, have regularly conducted military exercises and patrols in the area to assert their “free and open Indo-Pacific” policy, including the right to navigate in international waters, drawing criticism from China.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken was to arrive Saturday to attend the ASEAN foreign ministers’ meetings and was expected to meet with Wang on the sidelines.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov is also attending the meetings, and already held direct talks with Wang.
China is a key ally of Russia’s in its war against Ukraine, and Wang emphasized the “deepening strategic coordination” between the two nations, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported.
Josep Borrell, the European Union’s top diplomat, urged the ASEAN ministers not to ignore the European conflict as they hold their meetings.
“I am aware that the Russian aggression against Ukraine may seem far away from ASEAN, but its consequences, be it in inflation or increase in food and oil prices, are also felt by our populations, even if Russia works hard to spread disinformation,” Borrell said.
This year, tensions between the Philippines — an American treaty ally — — and China have escalated. In June, a Chinese vessel and a Philippine supply ship collided near the disputed Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, sparking alarm.
The ASEAN members — Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Myanmar, Cambodia, Brunei and Laos — emphasized in their opening meetings Thursday that it’s important they don’t get drawn in as both China and the US look to expand their influence in the region.
Following the talks, Marsudi said the group stressed that it should not be a proxy for any power, otherwise “it will be difficult for ASEAN to become an anchor for regional stability and peace.”
Wang did not mention the South China Sea in his opening remarks as he met with the ASEAN ministers Friday, instead emphasizing Chinese economic and trade ties.
But the issue did come up, with Indonesia imploring China to “participate in maintaining peace, stability and prosperity in the region,” Indonesia’s Foreign Ministry said.
The ASEAN ministers emphasized the importance of completing ongoing work with China on preparing a South China Sea code of conduct, as issues there continue to be a “stumbling block” in ASEAN relations with China, the ministry said.
“Indonesia’s position is consistent, namely that all claims must be resolved peacefully through direct dialogue between the parties concerned,” it quoted Marsudi as saying.
China and the Philippines said Sunday they had reached a deal that they hope will end their confrontations, aiming to establish a mutually acceptable arrangement for the disputed area without conceding each side’s territorial claims.
There are divisions within ASEAN on how to deal with China’s maritime claims and the Philippines has been critical over a perceived lack of support from the bloc.
In Thursday’s talks, the Philippines pushed for the inclusion of June’s collision in the joint communique to be issued at the end of the meetings. Cambodia and Laos, which are close to China, opposed the wording, according to a senior Southeast Asian diplomat who was involved in closed-door negotiations and spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the matter freely.
Manila’s proposal stated that a recent incident in the South China Sea caused “damage to properties” and “caused injuries” without mentioning specific details like the name of the shoal and the contending state forces, the diplomat said.
The increasingly violent civil war in ASEAN member state Myanmar is also one of the main issues being taken up, and the group supported Thailand taking a broader role, Thai Foreign Minister Maris Sangiampongsa said.
Thailand, which shares a long border with Myanmar, has already been involved in providing humanitarian assistance. Maris announced another $250,000 will be donated to the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management that is overseeing a plan to deliver aid into Myanmar.
The army in Myanmar ousted the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in February 2021 and suppressed widespread nonviolent protests that sought a return to democratic rule, leading to increasing violence and a humanitarian crisis.
ASEAN has been pushing a “five-point consensus” for peace, but the military leadership in Myanmar has so far ignored the plan, raising questions about the bloc’s efficiency and credibility.
It calls for the immediate cessation of violence in Myanmar, a dialogue among all concerned parties, mediation by an ASEAN special envoy, provision of humanitarian aid through ASEAN channels, and a visit to Myanmar by the special envoy to meet all concerned parties.
Myanmar has been blocked from sending political representatives to ASEAN meetings and is instead represented by Aung Kyaw Moe, the permanent secretary of Myanmar’s Foreign Ministry.
China, which also shares a long border with Myanmar, also plays an important role in that it supports the military regime while also maintaining close contacts with several of the powerful ethnic armed groups that are currently fighting against it.
In his opening statement ahead of talks between ASEAN and China, Aung Kyaw Moe had effusive praise for Beijing, pledging that the bloc would continue to work to deepen cooperation with China in all areas.
Pakistan using ‘terrorism, proxy war’ to stay relevant, says India PM Modi
- Nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors share an uneasy relationship
- India accuses Pakistan of backing Islamist militants fighting its rule in Kashmir
NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday that Pakistan is trying to stay relevant through “terrorism” and “proxy war” but its “unholy plans” will never succeed.
The nuclear-armed South Asian neighbors share an uneasy relationship and India has, for decades, accused Pakistan of backing Islamist militants fighting its rule in Kashmir, the Himalayan region both claim in full but rule only in part.
Pakistan denies the accusations, saying it only provides diplomatic and moral support to Kashmiris seeking self-determination in the Muslim-majority region.
Modi’s comments came at an event to mark the 25th anniversary of India’s short military conflict with Pakistan in the Himalayan region of Kargil. The arch rivals have also fought three wars, two of them over Kashmir.
They also come in the aftermath of a spate of militant attacks in the Hindu-majority Jammu region of Jammu and Kashmir — as the territory is formally called — with almost a dozen Indian soldiers killed this year.
Modi said Pakistan was humiliated whenever it tried to further its plans but had “not learned anything from its history.”
“I want to tell these patrons of terrorism that their unholy plans will never be successful...Our brave (forces) will squash terrorism, the enemy will be given a befitting reply,” he said.
Pakistan’s foreign ministry did not respond immediately to a request for comment.
India-Pakistan relations have been largely frozen as the two countries downgraded their diplomatic ties in tit-for-tat moves in August 2019 after New Delhi scrapped Kashmir’s special status and split it into two federally administered territories.
Ties were further strained after a suicide bombing of an Indian military convoy in Kashmir was traced to Pakistan-based militants, prompting India to carry out an airstrike on what it said was a militant base in Pakistan.
Earlier this year, Pakistan said there was credible evidence linking Indian agents to the killing of people on its soil — accusations that India termed “fake.”
Indian Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said last month that India would look for a solution to cross-border terrorism, which “cannot be the policy of a good neighbor.”
A mysterious pile of bones could hide evidence of Japanese war crimes, activists say
- Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities
- Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and parts of other skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989
TOKYO: Depending on who you ask, the bones that have been sitting in a Tokyo repository for decades could be either leftovers from early 20th century anatomy classes, or the unburied and unidentified victims of one of the country’s most notorious war crimes.
A group of activists, historians and other experts who want the government to investigate links to wartime human germ warfare experiments met over the weekend to mark the 35th anniversary of their discovery and renew a call for an independent panel to examine the evidence.
Japan’s government has long avoided discussing wartime atrocities, including the sexual abuse of Asian women known as “comfort women” and Korean forced laborers at Japanese mines and factories, often on grounds of lack of documentary proof. Japan has apologized for its aggression in Asia, since the 2010s its been repeatedly criticized in South Korea and China for backpedalling.
Around a dozen skulls, many with cuts, and parts of other skeletons were unearthed on July 22, 1989, during construction of a Health Ministry research institute at the site of the wartime Army Medical School. The school’s close ties to a germ and biological warfare unit led many to suspect that they could be the remains of a dark history that the Japanese government has never officially acknowledged.
Headquartered in then-Japanese-controlled northeast China, Unit 731 and several related units injected prisoners of war with typhus, cholera and other diseases, according to historians and former unit members. They also say the unit performed unnecessary amputations and organ removals on living people to practice surgery and froze prisoners to death in endurance tests. Japan’s government has acknowledged only that Unit 731 existed.
Top Unit 731 officials were not tried in postwar tribunals as the US sought to get ahold of chemical warfare data, historians say, although lower-ranked officials were tried by Soviet tribunals. Some of the unit’s leaders became medical professors and pharmaceutical executives after the war.
A previous Health Ministry investigation said the bones couldn’t be linked to the unit, and concluded that the remains were most likely from bodies used in medical education or brought back from war zones for analysis, in a 2001 report based on questioning 290 people associated with the school.
It acknowledged that some interviewees drew connections to Unit 731. One said he saw a head in a barrel shipped from Manchuria, northern China, where the unit was based. Two others noted hearing about specimens from the unit being stored in a school building, but had not actually seen them. Others denied the link, saying the specimens could include those from the prewar era.
A 1992 anthropological analysis found that the bones came from at least 62 and possibly more than 100 different bodies, mostly adults from parts of Asia outside Japan. The holes and cuts found on some skulls were made after death, it said, but did not find evidence linking the bones to Unit 731.
But activists say that the government could do more to uncover the truth, including publishing full accounts of its interviews and conducting DNA testing.
Kazuyuki Kawamura, a former Shinjuku district assembly member who has devoted most of his career to resolving the bone mystery, recently obtained 400 pages of research materials from the 2001 report using freedom of information requests, and says it shows that the government “tactfully excluded” key information from witness accounts.
The newly published material doesn’t contain a smoking gun, but it includes vivid descriptions — the man who described seeing a head in a barrel also described helping to handle it and then running off to vomit — and comments from several witnesses who suggested that more forensic investigation might show a link to Unit 731.
“Our goal is to identify the bones and send them back to their families,” said Kawamura. The bones are virtually the only proof of what happened, he says. “We just want to find the truth.”
Health Ministry official Atsushi Akiyama said that witness accounts had already been analyzed and factored into the 2001 report, and the government’s position remains unchanged. A key missing link is a documentary evidence, such as a label on a specimen container or official records, he said.
Documents, especially those involving Japan’s wartime atrocities, were carefully destroyed in the war’s closing days and finding new evidence for a proof would be difficult.
Akiyama added that a lack of information about the bones would make DNA analysis difficult.
Hideo Shimizu, who was sent to Unit 731 in April 1945 at age 14 as lab technician and joined the meeting online from his home in Nagano, said he remembers seeing heads and body parts in formalin jars stored in a specimen room in the unit’s main building. One that struck him most was a dissected belly with a fetus inside. He was told they were “maruta” — logs — a term used for prisoners chosen for experiments.
Days before Japan’s Aug. 15, 1945 surrender, Shimizu was ordered to collect bones of prisoners’ bodies burned in a pit. He was then given a pistol and a packet of cyanide to kill himself if he was caught on his journey back to Japan.
He was ordered never to tell anyone about his Unit 731 experience, never contact his colleagues, and never seek a government or medical job.
Shimizu said he cannot tell if any specimen he saw at the 731 could be among the Shinjuku bones by looking at their photos, but that what he saw in Harbin should never be repeated. When he sees his great-grandchildren, he said, they remind him of that fetus he saw and the lives lost.
“I want younger people to understand the tragedy of war,” he said.
