“There are already a dozen cases piling up against me,” she said. “I’m a journalist. One murder case is enough to frame me.”

Rupa, a former chief correspondent at privately owned broadcaster Ekattor TV, now faces nine murder cases. Her husband, Shakil Ahmed, the channel’s former head of news, is named in eight.  

A year ago, Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus took charge of Bangladesh’s interim government after Sheikh Hasina resigned and fled the country following weeks of student-led protests, during which two journalists were killed.

Yunus promised media reform and repealed the Cyber Security Act, a law used to target journalists under Hasina. But in a November 2024 interview with newspaper The Daily Star, Yunus said that murder accusations against journalists were being made hastily. He said the government had since halted such actions and that a committee had been formed to review the cases.

Still, nearly a year later, Rupa, Ahmed, Shyamal Dutta and Mozammel Haque Babu, arrested on accusations of instigating murders in separate cases, remain behind bars. The repeated use of such charges against journalists who are widely seen as sympathetic to the former regime appear to be politically motivated censorship.

In addition to such legal charges, CPJ has documented physical attacks against journalists, threats from political activists, and exile. At least 25 journalists are under investigation for genocide by Bangladesh’s International Crimes Tribunal – a charge that has been used to target figures linked to the former Hasina government. 

“Keeping four journalists behind bars without credible evidence a year on undermines the interim government’s stated commitment to protect press freedom,” said CPJ Regional Director Beh Lih Yi. “Real reform means breaking from the past, not replicating its abuses. All political parties must respect journalists’ right to report as the country is set for polls in coming months.”

A CPJ review of legal documents and reports found that journalists are often added to First Information Reports (FIRs) – documents that open an investigation – long after they are filed. In May, UN experts raised concern that over 140 journalists had been charged with murder following last year’s protests.

Shyamal Dutta’s daughter, Shashi, told CPJ the family has lost track of how many cases he now faces. They are aware of at least six murder cases in which he is named, while Babu’s family is aware of 10. Rupa and Ahmed’s family told CPJ that they haven’t received FIRs for five cases in which one or the other journalist has been named, which means that neither can apply for bail.

Shafiqul Alam, Yunus’s press secretary, and police spokesperson Enamul Haque Sagor did not respond to CPJ’s emailed request for comment. 

Violence and threats

In 2025, reporters across Bangladesh have faced violence and harassment while covering political events, with CPJ documenting at least 10 such incidents, most of which were carried out by members or affiliates of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and its student wing, Chhatra Dal. In several instances, journalists sustained serious injuries or were prevented from reporting after footage was deleted or phones seized, including Bahar Raihan, Abdullah Al Mahmud, and Rocky Hossain.

Responding to the allegations, Mahdi Amin, adviser to Acting BNP Chair Tarique Rahman, told CPJ that while isolated misconduct may occur in a party of BNP’s size, the party does not protect wrongdoers. 

Others have faced threats from supporters of different political parties and the student groups that led the protests against Hasina. Reporters covering opposition groups like Jamaat-e-Islami or its student wing, Islami Chhatra Shibir, have come under particular pressure. On June 9, Hasanat Kamal, editor of EyeNews.news, told CPJ he’d fled to the United Kingdom after being falsely accused by Islami Chhatra Shibir of participating in a violent student protest. Anwar Hossain, a journalist for the local daily Dabanol, told CPJ he’d been threatened by Jamaat supporters after publishing negative reports about a local party leader. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to Abdus Sattar Sumon, a spokesperson for Jamaat-e-Islami, but received no response.

Since Hasina’s ouster, student protesters from the Anti-Discrimination Students Movement (ADSM) have increasinglytargeted journalists they accuse of supporting the former regime, which in one case led to the firing of five journalists. Student-led mobs have also besieged outlets like Prothom Alo and The Daily Star. 

CPJ reached out via messaging app to ADSM leader Rifat Rashid but received no response.

On July 14, exiled investigative journalist Zulkarnain Saer Khan, who fled Bangladesh after exposing alleged high-level corruption under Hasina and receiving threats from Awami League officials, posted on X about the repression of the media: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.”

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Kunal Majumder/CPJ India Representative.

Transgender health care bans legislate Christian Nationalist view of gender

“The Supreme Court’s ultra-conservative justices are allowing Christian Nationalists and their allies to legislate a narrow, religious view of gender that will harm countless children and families. Not only has the court failed to protect America’s children, but this decision will encourage Christian Nationalists to further restrict any and all health care that doesn’t align with their narrow religious beliefs. LGBTQ+ people, women, religious minorities, the nonreligious and other traditionally marginalized communities are particularly at risk.

“Christian Nationalists have achieved yet another milestone in their decades-long effort to drag our country back in time. We need a national recommitment to church-state separation, which ensures freedom without favor and equality without exception. At Americans United, we will continue to fight for the right of all Americans to live as themselves and believe as they choose, as long as they do not harm others. That includes our gender-nonconforming and transgender family members, coworkers, friends, and neighbors.”

AU joined amicus brief opposing transgender health care ban

Americans United joined Kentucky parents of transgender children and civil rights groups in filing a friend-of-the-court brief in the case involving the Tennessee ban, explaining that transgender health care bans intentionally discriminate against transgender youth by denying them medications that are prescribed for other youth. These laws do not ban these medications for all minors, but only when they are prescribed for transgender minors. As a result of this discriminatory treatment, transgender youth are unable to obtain the only effective treatment for the severe distress caused by gender dysphoria.

AU’s brief was among more than 30 friend-of-the-court briefs in which bioethicists, medical providers, medical historians, family law professors, and additional families in states where care has been banned had urged the Supreme Court to rule against bans on essential medical care for transgender adolescents so that families can make the health care decisions that are best for their children.

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams and was authored by Newswire Editor.

The ghosts of Paul Weyrich, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, the OG’s (Old Guard) of the religious right are dancing these days. Since his inauguration, Trump has rewarded his religious right allies with executive orders creating a “Religious Liberty Commission” and a “Task Force to Eliminate Anti-Christian Bias.”

“Together they will put the force of the federal government behind the conspiracy theories, false persecution claims, and reactionary policy proposals of the Christian nationalist movement, including its efforts to undermine separation of church and state,” Right Wing Watch’s Peter Montgomery recently reported.

On May 1, members of the religious liberty commission were announced, and nearly all are ultra-conservative Christian nationalists with a huge right-wing agenda. The commission’s chair is Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, and its vice chair is Ben Carson.

Right Wing Watch profiled several of the commission’s members:

• Paula White, serving again as Trump’s faith advisor in the White House, has used her position to elevate the influence of dominionist preachers and Christian nationalist activists. A preacher of the prosperity gospel, White has repeatedly denounced Trump’s opponents as demonic. When Trump announced the Religious Liberty Commission, White made the startling assertion, “Prayer is not a religious act, it’s a national necessity.”

• Ryan Anderson, president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, who developed the Heritage Foundation’s “road map” for overturning marriage equality and was the face of Heritage’s anti-trans activism.

• Franklin Graham, the more-political son of the famous evangelist Billy Graham, is a MAGA activist and fan of Vladimir Putin’s anti-gay policies who backed Trump in 2016 as the last chance for Christians to save America from godless secularists and the “very wicked” LGTBT agenda. After the 2020 election Graham promoted Trump’s stolen-election claims and blamed the Jan. 6 violence at the Capitol on “antifa.”

• Eric Metaxas, a once somewhat reputable scholar who has devolved into a far-right conspiracy theorist and MAGA cultist, emceed a December 2020 “Stop the Steal” rally at which Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes threatened bloody civil war if Trump did not remain in power.

• Cardinal Timothy Dolan, who helped lead U.S. Catholic bishops’ opposition to legal abortion and LGBTQ equality, was an original signer of the 2009 Manhattan Declaration, a manifesto for Christian conservatives who declared that when it comes to opposition to abortion and marriage equality, “no power on earth, be it cultural or political, will intimidate us into silence or acquiescence.”

• Kelly Shackleford, president of First Liberty, who works to undermine church-state separation via the courts; Shackleford has endorsed a Christian nationalist effort to block conservative judges from joining the Supreme Court if they do not meet the faith and worldview standards of the religious right.

• Allyson Ho, a lawyer and wife of right-wing Judge James Ho, has been affiliated with the anti-abortion and anti-LGBTQ equality religious-right legal groups Alliance Defending Freedom and First Liberty Institute.

Other commission members include Bishop Robert Barron, founder of the Word on Fire ministry; 2009 Miss USA runner-up Carrie Prejean Boller; TV personality Dr. Phil McGraw; and Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.

Montgomery noted that “Advisory board members are divided into three categories: religious leaders, legal experts, and lay leaders. The list is more religiously diverse than the commission itself; in addition to right-wing lawyers and Christian-right activists, it includes several additional Catholic bishops, Jewish rabbis, and Muslim activists.”

Notable new advisory board members:

• Kristen Waggoner, president of the mammoth anti-LGBTQ legal group Alliance Defending Freedom, which uses the courts to make “generational” wins like the overturning of Roe v. Wade, has been named as a possible Supreme Court Justice by the Center for Judicial Renewal, a Christian nationalist project of the American Family Association’s advocacy arm. The ADF is active around the world.  

• Ryan Tucker, senior counsel and director of the Center for Christian Ministries with Alliance Defending Freedom.

• Jentezen Franklin, a MAGA pastor, told conservative Christians at a 2020 Evangelicals for Trump rally, “Speak now or forever hold your peace. You won’t have another chance. You won’t have freedom of religion. You won’t have freedom of speech.”

• Gene Bailey, host of FlashPoint, a program that regularly promotes pro-Trump prophecy and propaganda on the air and at live events. Bailey has said the point of FlashPoint’s trainings is to help right-wing Christians “take over the world.” FlashPoint was until recently a program of Kenneth Copeland’s Victory Channel.

• Anti-abortion activist Alveda King, a niece of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., once dismissed the late Coretta Scott King’s support for marriage equality by saying , ‘I’ve got his DNA. She doesn’t.”

• Abigail Robertson, CBN podcast host and granddaughter of Christian Coalition founder Pat Robertson.

Donald Trump claiming that he’s the front man for “bringing religion back to our country,” is as if the late Jeffrey Epstein claimed that he was working to end sex trafficking.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation called Trump’s religious liberty commission “a dangerous initiative,” that “despite its branding, this commission is not about protecting religious freedom — it’s about advancing religious privilege and promoting a Christian nationalist agenda”.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

The Inquisition held secretive interrogations; citizens were encouraged or compelled to report heretical behavior. By encouraging anonymity, Trump’s Task Force is emboldening workers to spy on each other; creating a culture of suspicion and fear. The Inquisition was religious intolerance and abuse of power on steroids. Sans brutality and physical initiation, nevertheless the impact of Trump’s Task Force – thus far limited to U.S. federal institutions — appears to be heading down a path of religious orthodoxy.

Trump is escalating its war on church-state separation. Led by Attorney General Pam Bondi, the new “Eradicating Anti-Christian Bias Task Force” — established by a Trump Executive Order 14202, issued February 6th, setting up a White House Faith Office headed by televangelist Paula White — recently convened a meeting of the Task Force at the Department of Justice. The room was packed with Christian nationalist cabinet members and framed as a defense against persecution.

Christians now, and since the founding, have held majority power in this country. Trump’s task force is not about ending bias—it’s about further institutionalizing power in favor of a single religion. And one way of consolidating power is by stoking fear.

In early April, the State Department ordered employees to report any instances of “anti-Christian bias.”

This week, the Department of Veteran Affairs sent out the following internal email titled “Message From The Secretary: Task Force on Anti-Christian Bias.” In the message, Secretary Douglas A. Collins encouraged all VA workers to spy on their co-workers and report any thing that a worker might claim to be anti-Christian bias. The memo from the VA’s chief makes no mention of bias against Muslims, Jews or any other religious believers other than Christians.

The 11-point e-mail “Message” declared that the Veterans Administration (VA) “is establishing its own Task Force to better effectuate the Department’s internal review. The VA Task Force now requests all VA employees to submit any instance of anti-Christian discrimination to vog.avnull@gnitropeRsaiBnaitsirhC-itnA.

“Submissions should include sufficient identifiers such as names, dates, and locations.”

Religion News Service’s Bob Smietana reported that “The email from Collins, a former Southern Baptist pastor and Air Force chaplain turned politician, lists 11 kinds of bias or discrimination — three of which specifically name Christianity — ranging from retaliation in response to requests for religious holidays or religious accommodations to discipline against chaplains in response to their sermons. The email also says the task force will “review all instances of anti-Christian bias” but makes no mention of how to report discrimination of any other faiths” (https://religionnews.com/2025/04/22/veterans-affairs-asks-employees-in-email-to-report-anti-christian-bias/).

According to The Guardian, “The email states that the department will review ‘all instances of anti-Christian bias’ but that it is specifically seeking instances including ‘any informal policies, procedures, or unofficially understandings hostile to Christian views.’

“In addition, the department is seeking ‘any adverse responses to requests for religious exemptions under the previous vaccine mandates’ and ‘any retaliatory actions taken or threatened in response to abstaining from certain procedures or treatments (for example: abortion or hormone therapy)’” (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/22/veterans-affairs-anti-christian-bias).

Soon after Trump’s executive order, Amanda Tyler, executive director of the Washington, D.C.-based Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty, “expressed concerns with the focus on anti-Christian bias but not religious liberty when Trump issued his executive order in early February.

“We have strong concerns that this new task force could be weaponized to enforce a theological conformity that will harm everyone’s religious freedom, including those of Christians,” she said. “Today’s action is consistent with inflaming the completely unfounded claims of rampant Christian persecution in a majority-Christian nation.”

The Inquisition enforced its mandate through brutality and intimidation. Trump’s Task Force, which encourages anonymous reporting of so-called anti-Christian bias, is fostering a culture of surveillance and fear. With the administration hell-bent on redefining religious freedom as privileges for Christians only, we’re no longer talking democracy—we’re talking theocracy. This isn’t about “religious freedom” — it’s about Christian supremacy.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Bill Berkowitz.

The Senate has confirmed former Fox News host Pete Hegseth as Trump’s defense secretary by just one vote. Hegseth has “very clear” ties to extreme Christian nationalism, as well as a history of alleged sexual assault and abuse. Logan Davis, a reporter in Denver, Colorado, who grew up in the same classical Christian educational movement that Hegseth is raising his family in, explains the problematic ideology that shapes it. Hegseth has endorsed leaders in the community and their beliefs that the church possesses supremacy over worldly affairs, antebellum slavery was a “beneficent American institution” and the U.S.'s global war on terror is a modern-day iteration of the medieval Crusades. Davis says Hegseth's lack of qualifications for his new role means he will likely be “leaning on these controversial faith leaders in his life more than someone with adequate experience” would be — bringing this extremist Christian nationalism into the mainstream.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Sheikh Hasina was the longest-serving prime minister in Bangladesh’s history. She was the prime minister from 1996 to 2001, and then from 2009 to 2024—a total of 20 years. This was a sharp contrast to her father Sheikh Mujib, who was assassinated in 1975 after four years in power, or General Ziaur Rahman who was assassinated in 1981 after six years in power. In a scene reminiscent of the end of Mahinda Rajapaksa’s rule in Sri Lanka, jubilant crowds of thousands crashed the gates of Ganabhaban, the official residence of the prime minister, and jubilantly made off with everything they could find.

Tanzim Wahab, photographer and chief curator of the Bengal Foundation, told me, “When [the masses] storm into the palace and make off with pet swans, elliptical machines, and palatial red sofas, you can feel the level of subaltern class fury that built up against a rapacious regime.” There was widespread celebration across Bangladesh, along with bursts of attacks against buildings identified with the government—private TV channels, and palatial homes of government ministers were a favored target for arson. Several local-level leaders in Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League have already been killed (Mohsin Reza, a local president of the party, was beaten to death in Khulna).

The situation in Bangladesh remains fluid, but it is also settling quickly into a familiar formula of an “interim government” that will hold new elections. Political violence in Bangladesh is not unusual, having been present since the birth of the country in 1971. Indeed, one of the reasons why Sheikh Hasina reacted so strongly to any criticism or protest was her fear that such activity would repeat what she experienced in her youth. Her father, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman (1920-1975), the founder of Bangladesh, was assassinated in a coup d’état on August 15, 1975, along with most of his family. Sheikh Hasina and her sister survived because they were in Germany at that time—the two sisters fled Bangladesh together on the same helicopter this week. She has been the victim of multiple assassination attempts, including a grenade attack in 2004 that left her with a hearing problem. Fear of such an attempt on her life made Sheikh Hasina deeply concerned about any opposition to her, which is why up to 45 minutes before her departure she wanted the army to again act with force against the gathering crowds.

However, the army read the atmosphere. It was time for her to leave.

A contest has already begun over who will benefit from the removal of Sheikh Hasina. On the one side are the students, led by the Bangladesh Student Uprising Central Committee of about 158 people and six spokespersons. Lead spokesperson Nahid Islam made the students’ views clear: “Any government other than the one we recommended would not be accepted. We won’t betray the bloodshed by the martyrs for our cause. We will create a new democratic Bangladesh through our promise of security of life, social justice, and a new political landscape.” At the other end are the military and the opposition political forces (including the primary opposition party Bangladesh National Party, the Islamist party Bangladesh Jamaat-e-Islami, and the small left party Ganosamhati Andolan). While the Army’s first meetings were with these opposition parties, a public outcry over the erasure of the student movement forced the Army to meet with the Student Central Committee and listen to their primary demands.

There is a habit called polti khawa or “changing the team jersey midway through a football match” that prevails in Bangladesh, with the military being the referee in charge at all times. This slogan is being used in public discourse now to draw attention to any attempt by the military to impose a mere change of jersey when the students are demanding a wholesale change of the rules of the game. Aware of this, the military has accepted the student demand that the new government be led by economist Muhammad Yunus, Bangladesh’s only Nobel Prize winner. Yunus, as the founder of the microcredit movement and promoter of “social business,” used to be seen as primarily a phenomenon in the neoliberal NGO world. However, the Hasina government’s relentless political vendetta against him over the last decade, and his decision to speak up for the student movement, have transformed him into an unlikely “guardian” figure for the protesters. The students see him as a figurehead although his neoliberal politics of austerity might be at odds with their key demand, which is for employment.

Students

Even prior to independence and despite the rural character of the region, the epicenter of Bangladeshi politics has been in urban areas, with a focus on Dhaka. Even as other forces entered the political arena, students remain key political actors in Bangladesh. One of the earliest protests in post-colonial Pakistan was the language movement (bhasha andolan) that emerged out of Dhaka University, where student leaders were killed during an agitation in 1952 (they are memorialized in the Shaheed Minar, or Martyrs’ Pillar, in Dhaka). Students became a key part of the freedom struggle for liberation from Pakistan in 1971, which is why the Pakistani army targeted the universities in Operation Searchlight which led to massacres of student activists. The political parties that emerged in Bangladesh after 1971 grew largely through their student wings—the Awami League’s Bangladesh Chhatra League, the Bangladesh National Party’s Bangladesh Jatiotabadi Chatradal, and the Jamaat-e-Islami’s Bangladesh Islami Chhatra Shibir.

Over the past decade, students in Bangladesh have been infuriated by the growing lack of employment despite the bustling economy, and by what they perceived as a lack of care from the government. The latter was demonstrated to them by the callous comments made by Shajahan Khan, a minister in Sheikh Hasina’s government, who smirked as he dismissed news that a bus had killed two college students on Airport Road, Dhaka, in July 2019. That event led to a massive protest movement by students of all ages for road safety, to which the government responded with arrests (including incarceration for 107 days of the photojournalist Shahidul Alam).

Behind the road safety protests, which earned greater visibility for the issue, was another key theme. Five years previously, in 2013, students who were denied access to the Bangladesh Civil Service began a protest over restrictive quotas for government jobs. In February 2018, this issue returned through the work of students in the Bangladesh Sadharon Chhatra Odhikar Songrokkhon Parishad (Bangladesh General Students’ Rights Protection Forum). When the road safety protests occurred, the students raised the quota issue (as well as the issue of inflation). By law, the government reserved seats in its employment for people in underdeveloped districts (10 percent), women (10 percent), minorities (5 percent), and the disabled (1 percent) as well as for descendants of freedom fighters (30 percent).

It is the latter quota that has been contested since 2013 and which returned as an emotive issue this year for the student protesters—especially after the prime minister’s incendiary comment at a press conference that those protesting the freedom fighter quotas were “rajakarer natni” (grandchildren of war traitors). British journalist David Bergman, who is married to prominent Bangladeshi activist lawyer Sara Hossain and was hounded into exile by the Hasina government, called this comment the “terrible error” that ended the government.

Military Islam

In February 2013, Abdul Quader Mollah of the Jamaat-e-Islami was sentenced to life in prison for crimes against humanity during Bangladesh’s liberation war (he was known to have killed at least 344 civilians). When he left the court, he made a V sign, whose arrogance inflamed large sections of Bangladesh’s society. Many in Dhaka gathered at Shahbag, where they formed a Gonojagoron Moncho (Mass Awakening Platform). This protest movement pushed the Supreme Court to reassess the verdict, and Mollah was hanged on December 12. The Shahbag movement brought to the surface a long-term tension in Bangladesh regarding the role of religion in politics.

Sheikh Mujibur Rahman initially claimed that Bangladesh would be a socialist and secular country. After his assassination by the military, general Ziaur Rahman took over the country and governed it from 1975 to 1981. During this time, Zia brought religion back into public life, welcomed the Jamaat-e-Islami from banishment (which had been due to its participation in the genocide of 1971), and—in 1978—formed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) on nationalist lines with a strong critical stance toward India. General Hussain Muhammad Ershad, who took control after his own coup in 1982 and ruled until 1990, went further, declaring that Islam was the state’s religion. This provided a political contrast with the views of Mujib, and of his daughter Sheikh Hasina who took the reins of her father’s party, the Awami League, in 1981.

The stage was set for a long-term contest between Sheikh Hasina’s centrist-secular Awami League and the BNP, which was taken over by Zia’s wife Khaleda Zia after the General was assassinated in 1981. Gradually, the military—which had a secular orientation in its early days—began to witness a growing Islamist mood. Political Islam has grown in Bangladesh with the rise of piety in the general population, some of it driven by the Islamization of migrant labor to the Gulf states and to Southeast Asia. The latter has steadily reflected growth in observance of the Islamic faith in the aftermath of the war on terror’s many consequences. One should neither exaggerate this threat nor minimize it.

The relationship of the political Islamists, whose popular influence has grown since 2013, with the military is another factor that requires much more clarity. Given the dent in the fortunes of the Jamaat-e-Islami since the War Crimes Tribunal documented how the group was involved on the side of Pakistan during the liberation struggle, it is likely that this formation of political Islam has a threshold in terms of its legitimacy. However, one complicating factor is that the Hasina government relentlessly used the fear of “political Islam” as a bogeyman to obtain US and Indian silent consent to the two elections in 2018 and 2024. If the interim government holds a fair election on schedule, this will allow Bangladeshi people to find out if political Islam is a dispensation they wish to vote for.

New Cold War

Far away from the captivating issues put forward by the students which led to the ouster of Sheikh Hasina are dangerous currents that are often not discussed during these exciting times. Bangladesh is the eighth-largest country in the world by population, and it has the second highest Gross Domestic Product in South Asia. The role it plays in the region and in the world is not to be discounted.

Over the course of the past decade, South Asia has faced significant challenges as the United States imposed a new cold war against China. Initially, India participated with the United States in the formations around the US Indo-Pacific Strategy. But, since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, India has begun to distance itself from this US initiative and tried to put its own national agenda at the forefront. This meant that India did not condemn Russia but continued to buy Russian oil. At the same time, China had—through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)—built infrastructure in Bangladesh, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, India’s neighbors.

It is perhaps not a coincidence that four governments in the region that had begun to collaborate with the BRI have fallen, and that their replacements in three of them are eager for better ties with the United States. This includes Shehbaz Sharif, who came to power in Pakistan in April 2022 with the ouster of Imran Khan (now in prison), Ranil Wickremesinghe, who briefly came to power in Sri Lanka in July 2022 after setting aside a mass uprising that had other ideas than the installation of a party with only one member in parliament (Wickremesinghe himself), and KP Sharma Oli, who came to power in July 2024 in Nepal after a parliamentary shuffle that removed the Maoists from power.

What role the removal of Sheikh Hasina will play in the calculations in the region can only be gauged after elections are held under the interim government. But there is little doubt that these decisions in Dhaka are not without their regional and global implications.

The students rely upon the power of the mass demonstrations for their legitimacy. What they do not have is an agenda for Bangladesh, which is why the old neoliberal technocrats are already swimming like sharks around the interim government. In their ranks are those who favor the BNP and the Islamists. What role they will play is yet to be seen.

If the student committee now formed a bloc with the trade unions, particularly the garment worker unions, there is the possibility that they might indeed form the opening for building a new democratic and people-centered Bangladesh. If they are unable to build this historical bloc, they may be pushed to the side, just like the students and workers in Egypt, and they might have to surrender their efforts to the military and an elite that has merely changed its jersey.

• This article was produced by Globetrotter.

This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.

Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump made headlines this week after suggesting the 2024 election could be the last U.S. election if he wins in November. We look at a secret organization of wealthy Christians called Ziklag that is backing Trump’s efforts by working to purge more than a million voters from the rolls in battleground states and mobilize Republican voters to back Trump. The news outlets ProPublica and Documented obtained thousands of Ziklag’s internal files and found the group has divided its 2024 activities into three different operations: Steeplechase, which uses churches to get out the vote; Watchtower, which aims to rally voters around opposition to transgender rights; and Checkmate, which is focused on funding so-called election integrity groups, explains ProPublica investigative reporter Andy Kroll.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

Novosti journalists have received dozens of insulting, hateful, intimidating, and threatening messages by email, letter, phone, social media comment section, and direct message since April, according to news reports and editor-in-chief Andrea Radak, who spoke with CPJ. Novosti is the most prominent Serbian minority language newspaper in Croatia and is based in the capital, Zagreb.

The wave of attacks began after the April parliamentary election, which brought Croatia’s nationalist right-wing party, Domovinski pokret (DP- Homeland Movement), into a coalition government. DP has campaigned to end state funding for Novosti, claiming the outlet fails to focus exclusively on minority issues.

Radak told CPJ that they filed a criminal complaint with the police and gave initial statements. As of Wednesday, the outlet has yet to receive an update on the investigation.

“Croatian authorities must investigate the dozens of threats received by journalists of the newspaper Novosti, hold the perpetrators to account, and ensure the safety of the outlet’s reporters,” said Attila Mong, CPJ’s Europe representative. “It is completely unacceptable to threaten journalists because of their work, and Croatian authorities must show that such actions have consequences. Ruling government coalition officials should encourage the work of journalists instead of discrediting them or threatening their funding.”

The messages included smears, insults, and indirect intimidation, such as championing Croatia’s fascist government during World War II, Radak told CPJ. They also included threats, such as saying those who conduct pro-Serbia reporting should be driven out of the country and warning that a second “Operation Storm” was coming — a reference to the strategic victory of the Croatian Army against the rebel Croatian Serbs, which helped the Yugoslav People’s Army and Serbian paramilitaries during the 1990s Yugoslav wars.

One of Novosti’s investigative journalists who covers far-right nationalism and requested anonymity, citing safety concerns, received a letter with insults calling his mother a Chetnik — a reference to members of a Serbian nationalist guerilla force during World War II — threats that “we will get you,” and ending with an intimidating salute of the country’s pre-World War II fascist Ustasha regime: “For the homeland — ready.”

Radak told CPJ that similar messages were sent to the independent trade union Croatian Journalists’ Association, as many Novosti journalists are union members, and the union issued a May 14 statement defending the journalists.

In a May 16 editorial, Radak said that Novosti will continue reporting despite threats, verbal attacks, and accusations of being “anti-Croatian.”

CPJ emailed the press office of the Zagreb Police Department and the DP party for comment but did not receive a reply.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Russian lawmaker Andrei Kartapolov told deputies in Moscow on January 25 that Ukrainian military intelligence had been given a 15-minute warning before the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane entered the Belgorod region in Russia, near the border with Ukraine, and that Russia had received confirmation the message was received.

Kartapolov did not provide any evidence to back up his claim and Ukrainian military intelligence spokesman Andriy Yusov reiterated in comments to RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that it had not received either a written or verbal request to secure the airspace where the plane went down.

Yusov said Ukraine had been using reconnaissance drones in the area and that Russia had launched attack drones. There was "no confirmed information" that Ukraine had hit any targets, he said.

"Unfortunately, we can assume various scenarios, including provocation, as well as the use of Ukrainian prisoners as a human shield for transporting ammunition and weapons for S-300 systems," he told RFE/RL.

Live Briefing: Russia's Invasion Of Ukraine

RFE/RL's Live Briefing gives you all of the latest developments on Russia's full-scale invasion, Kyiv's counteroffensive, Western military aid, global reaction, and the plight of civilians. For all of RFE/RL's coverage of the war in Ukraine, click here.

There has been no direct confirmation from Kyiv on Russian claims that the plane had Ukrainian POWs on board or that the aircraft was downed by a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has called for an international investigation of the incident, and Yusov reiterated that call, as "there are many circumstances that require investigation and maximum study."

The RIA Novosti news agency on January 25 reported that both black boxes had been recovered from the wreckage site in Russia's Belgorod region near the border with Ukraine.

The Investigative Committee said it had opened a criminal case into what it said was a "terrorist attack." The press service of the Investigative Committee said in a news release that preliminary data of the inspection of the scene of the incident, "allow us to conclude that the aircraft was attacked by an antiaircraft missile from the territory of Ukraine."

The Investigative Committee said that "fragmented human remains" were found at the crash site, repeating that six crew members, military police officers, and Ukrainian POWs were on board the plane.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov on January 25 called the downing of the Ilyushin Il-76 military transport plane a "monstrous act," though Moscow has yet to show any evidence that it was downed by a Ukrainian missile, or that there were Ukrainian prisoners on board.

While not saying who shot down the plane, Zelenskiy said that "all clear facts must be established...our state will insist on an international investigation."

Ukrainian officials have said that a prisoner exchange was to have taken place on January 24 and that Russia had not informed Ukraine that Ukrainian POWs would be flown on cargo planes.

Ukrainian military intelligence said it did not have "reliable and comprehensive information" on who was on board the flight but said the Russian POWs it was responsible for "were delivered in time to the conditional exchange point where they were safe."

Dmytro Lubinets, Ukraine's commissioner for human rights, said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, that "currently, there are no signs of the fact that there were so many people on the Il-76 plane, be they citizens of Ukraine or not."

Aviation experts told RFE/RL that it was possible a Ukrainian antiaircraft missile downed the plane but added that a Russian antiaircraft could have been responsible.

"During the investigation, you can easily determine which system shot down the plane based on the missiles' damaging elements," said Roman Svitan, a Ukrainian reserve colonel and an aviation-instructor pilot.

When asked about Russian claims of dozens of POWs on board, Svitan said that from the footage released so far, he'd seen no evidence to back up the statements.

"From the footage that was there, I looked through it all, it’s not clear where there are dozens of bodies.... There's not a single body visible at all. At one time I was a military investigator, including investigating disasters; believe me, if there were seven or eight dozen people there, the field would be strewn with corpses and remains of bodies," Svitan added.

Russian officials said the plane was carrying 65 Ukrainian prisoners of war, six crew members, and three escorts.

A list of the six crew members who were supposed to be on the flight was obtained by RFE/RL. The deaths of three of the crew members were confirmed to RFE/RL by their relatives.

Video on social media showed a plane spiraling to the ground, followed by a loud bang and explosion that sent a ball of smoke and flames skyward.

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

UFA, Russia -- A court in Ufa, the capital of Russia's Republic of Bashkortostan, has sentenced eight men to up to 14 days in jail for taking part in an unprecedented rally earlier this week to support the former leader of the banned Bashqort movement, Fail Alsynov, who has criticized Russia's full-scale aggression against Ukraine.

The Kirov district court on January 18 sentenced activists Salavat Idelbayev and Rustam Yuldashev to 14 and 13 days in jail, respectively, after finding them guilty of taking part in "an unsanctioned rally that led to the disruption of infrastructure activities and obstructed the work of a court" on January 15.

A day earlier, the same court sentenced Ilnar Galin to 13 days in jail, and Denis Skvortsov, Fanzil Akhmetshin, Yulai Aralbayev, Radmir Mukhametshin, and Dmitry Petrov to 10 days in jail each on the same charges.

The sentences were related to a January 15 rally of around 5,000 people in front of a court in the town of Baimak, where the verdict and sentencing of Alsynov, who was charged with inciting ethnic hatred, were expected to be announced. But the court postponed the announcement to January 17 to allow security forces to prepare for any reaction to the verdict in the controversial trial.

On January 17, thousands of supporters gathered in front of the court again, and after Alsynov was sentenced to four years in prison, clashes broke out as police using batons, tear gas, and stun grenades forced the protesters to leave the site. Several protesters were injured and at least two were hospitalized.

Dozens of protesters were detained and the Investigative Committee said those in custody from the January 17 unrest will face criminal charges -- organizing and participating in mass disorder and using violence against law enforcement.

Separately on January 18, police detained two young men in Baimak on unspecified charges. Friends of the men said the detentions were most likely linked to the rallies to support Alsynov.

The head of Bashkortostan, Radiy Khabirov, made his first statement on January 18 about the largest protest rally in Russia since Moscow launched its ongoing invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, saying he "will not tolerate extremism and attempts to shake up the situation," and promising to find the "real organizers" of the rallies.

It was Khabirov who initiated the investigation of Alsynov, accusing him of inciting ethnic hatred as well as calling for anti-government rallies and extremist activities and discrediting Russia's armed forces.

In the end, Alsynov was charged only with inciting hatred, which stemmed from a speech he gave at a rally in late April 2023 in the village of Ishmurzino in which he criticized local government plans to start mining gold near the village, as it would bring in migrant laborers.

Investigators said Alsynov's speech "negatively assessed people in the Caucasus and Central Asia, humiliating their human dignity." Alsynov and his supporters have rejected the charge as politically motivated.

Bashkortostan's Supreme Court banned Alsynov's Bashqort group, which for years promoted Bashkir language, culture, and equal rights for ethnic Bashkirs, in May 2020, declaring it extremist.

Bashqort was banned after staging several rallies and other events challenging the policies of both local and federal authorities, including Moscow's move to abolish mandatory indigenous-language classes in the regions with large populations of indigenous ethnic groups.

With reporting by RusNews

This content originally appeared on News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty and was authored by News - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty.

In Israel, nearly everyone is conscripted into the military when they turn 18, but Tal Mitnick refused. He became the first Israeli 18-year-old to conscientiously object to joining the Israel Defense Forces as nationalist sentiment soared during Israel’s assault on Gaza. In response, the government sentenced the teen to 30 days in prison, potentially with more if he continues to refuse. The sentence is out of step with the normal precedent: Many objectors in the past faced up to 10-day stints behind bars.

Like many so-called refuseniks, Mitnick also faces mass ostracization and threats in a society where objecting to serve is often seen as a national betrayal — made all the worse amid Israelis’ shock and the government’s fierce response to Hamas’s October 7 attack. Still, Mitnick was steadfast.

In September, things would have been different. Dissent was on the rise. The Israeli left and anti-government bloc had been growing over the past year, as hundreds of thousands took to the streets to protest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plan for a judiciary power grab. The protests had begun to include objection to Israeli authoritarianism, in particular against Palestinians in the occupied territories. Mitnick said his refusal to serve was about these very issues: “I do not want to take part in the continuation of the oppression and the continuation of the cycle of bloodshed, but to work directly for a solution.”

Whatever sentiment against the occupation had been unearthed during the protests, though, fell away after October 7 — especially for conscientious objectors seen to be abandoning their country.

“To refuse to serve is considered to be betraying your country — certainly now in a time of war,” said Mairav Zonszein, an Israeli American journalist and senior Israel–Palestine analyst with the International Crisis Group. “Even people who are even against the occupation, or who consider themselves to be leftist, they’ll argue that you’re leaving the difficult job of defending Israel’s borders to other people, and how could you, and 1,000,001 things that people will say is betrayal.”

“The process of conscientious refusal is not an easy one.”

Mitnick is not alone. He is part of a growing network of young Israelis refusing military service and encouraging others to join them — even as pressures mount after the October 7 attack. Along with some of the others, Mitnick is part of Mesarvot, Hebrew for “we refuse,” where young people support each other as they prepare their Israel Defense Forces, or IDF, refusals. Mesarvot provides conscientious objectors with support in preparing for imprisonment and legal cases, and, perhaps most importantly, by giving them a community.

“The process of conscientious refusal is not an easy one,” said Iddo Elam, who plans to refuse when his conscription date arrives a few months after graduation and is part of Mesarvot. “You can feel very secluded as an outsider. So this network basically gives a home to the people who decide to refuse. I even remember many talks with refusers that came back from jail before their next sentence, and talked with each other about how the past, for example, two weeks have been in prison. It raises their morale to go again, and to not give up.”

Anti-Occupation to Refusal

Elam’s views on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict were clarified by his activism, which had taken him to the occupied West Bank and brought him into contact with Palestinians, whom he befriended. His stances were hardened not only as he watched the Israeli military’s treatment of his new friends, but also in how the soldiers viewed him. “They treat me as a traitor. They laugh at my face when they see me with Palestinians,” he said. “I realized that this whole system is very corrupting.”

“They treat me as a traitor. They laugh at my face when they see me with Palestinians.”

As he concluded that he planned to refuse, Elam sought out others. Even Israelis who opposed the occupation sometimes didn’t understand: Some soldiers seek to not serve in combat units, but even were incredulous at the idea of full refusal. It wasn’t surprising: Israeli education laws require preparing students for IDF service.

The expectation that everyone serves is so pervasive that few register that this makes them part of a system that oppresses Palestinians. “A lot of the Israelis that do not consider that is because they were born into Israeli society, a society that from kindergarten teaches us about previous wars, about Israeli nationalist heroes,” Elam said. “I would almost say I cannot blame the people who do join the army. But at the end of the day, us refusing is us attempting to bring this up into conversation to make more people do it.”

Yona, another soon-to-be refusnik who asked The Intercept to withhold her last name because of the sensitivity of the issue, said that as more people over the past year have connected the erosion of democracy to the occupation, Mesarvot has played a pivotal role in providing community, demystifying refusal, and preparing young Israelis for the consequences.

“There are plenty of people who are, you know, at the level where they could afford to do it and just don’t consider it as a possibility or don’t consider it as something viable, as something worthwhile,” Yona said. “And that’s certainly something that Mesarvot helped change — bringing that voice, making people realize it exists. It’s something people do proudly, it’s something that is important, and it makes noise.”

Democracy and the Occupation

For Mitnick, Yona, Elam, and others, preparing for refusal with groups like Mesarvot doesn’t come without precedent, nor in isolation. The Israeli teenagers have spent much of the past year protesting the Israeli government’s anti-democratic moves, its treatment of Palestinians, and the occupation more broadly.

Last February, Mesarvot activists were present when protesters traveled deep into the West Bank villages of Masafer Yatta to protest the eviction of some 1,300 residents from their homes. The Israeli military had declared the area a closed “firing zone” — ostensibly for security and training purposes — decades before, with the aim of getting the Palestinian villagers out. With the push to expel residents last year, the activists showed up in violation of the law, since entering closed zones was forbidden.

The group also organized protests on Israel’s side of the Green Line, which roughly demarks Israel’s internationally recognized borders from the occupied territories. In May, Mesarvot activists gathered at Beit Sokolov, a building in Tel Aviv which houses the Israel Journalists Association, in honor of the anniversary of the IDF’s killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh.

The following month, as members of Mesarvot demonstrated in memory of Sarit Ahmed Shakur, an 18-year-old victim of a homophobic murder, a member of the group said an activist was attacked by undercover police officers who tried to confiscate a Palestinian flag. The group said the activist was arrested after he tried defending himself and was subject to “contemptuous and degrading treatment, misogynistic, homophobic and transphobic curses.”

With protests against the government’s seizure of the judiciary swelling nationwide, Mesarvot gained steam, connecting the refusal to serve with Israel’s anti-democratic turn. While the protests had come as a surprise for much of the outside world, the country’s left wing had long since warned that the occupation, holding millions of Palestinians in stateless subjugation, was bound to bring authoritarianism creeping back into Israel. Now Mesarvot activists were among the small minority of Israelis connecting the erosion of democracy with the occupation itself.

“The dictatorship that has existed for decades in the territories is now seeping into Israel and against us,” said a September letter by 230 Israeli teenagers announcing their forthcoming refusal to join the IDF. “This trend did not start now — it is inherent to the regime of occupation and Jewish supremacy. The masks are simply coming off.”

The teens had planned an event at a Tel Aviv high school to declare their refusal publicly, with the support of their principal. The school’s board of directors tried to block the protest by suspending the principal and canceling the event. The principal resigned in solidarity with the teens, and they hosted the event anyway, in front of a crowd with additional hundreds more. Since then, at least 50 more young Israelis have signed on to the refusal letter and, in recent months, some of the signatories burned their conscription orders as they announced their refusals.

“Very Militaristic”

Since October 7, Israel has maintained a widespread crackdown against dissenters, particularly against Palestinians. Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi pushed in October for the arrest of those deemed to be a threat to the “national morale.” Later, he tried to sanction Haaretz, a liberal daily newspaper, for its criticisms of the war effort in Gaza and for purportedly being a “mouthpiece for Israel’s enemies.” Israeli police chief Kobi Shabtai said in mid-October that there would be “zero tolerance” for anti-war demonstrators — threatening to send them to Gaza.

There was little tolerance. Officers arrested protesters at will, including those who’d lost family members in the October 7 attack. In early November, Israeli forces arrested former member of Parliament Mohammad Baraka, a Palestinian citizen of Israel, who was on his way to an anti-war protest, along with four other protesting Palestinian politicians. Meanwhile, Israeli police have pursued at least 250 prosecutions — largely against Palestinian students, largely for social media posts — targeting dissenters. This weekend, Israeli police cracked down on anti-war demonstrations in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, detaining a handful of protesters and throwing some to the ground.

This is the atmosphere, the post-October 7 world, that the activists of Mesarvot find themselves in. Yet few have wavered. Support, Elam and Yona both said, especially from the international community, played an encouraging role as they continued to tie their wider protests to their refusals. “It strengthens me, makes me feel less alone,” Yona said. And she sees their protests as part of a larger struggle for dignity and equality being led by Palestinians.

“Israeli society right now is very militaristic,” Elam added. “I want to say to the world that peace and anti-apartheid, anti-occupation activists do not feel safe. A lot of them have been attacked, have been doxxed, have been threatened, arrested.”

Elam singled out the arrests of Palestinian citizens of Israel, often for terror-related charges linked to little more than denouncing the Israeli war on Gaza. “Someone sees that the police arrest people because of online posts about this war, that is an issue that should bring up massive protests to the extent that we saw against Netanyahu,” Elam said. “We cannot say that we live in a democratic country when not only people are being silenced, but people are being actively arrested and oppressed for only saying stuff online.”

Now more than ever, the teenaged activists of Mesarvot see themselves as but one aspect of a movement, just one way to pierce the bubble of repression and nationalism surrounding Israeli society. They want their movement to grow and for the larger movement for democracy and justice to grow, too — to regain and then sustain the momentum they’d gotten before October 7.

Resistance is out there, Yona said. That’s what the refusals to serve in the IDF can show. She knows because it showed her a path to more than merely joining a movement. “It makes you feel like you’re not just taking on the mantle,” she said. “You’re doing something that is even more important in my eyes, which is working towards an equal society for everyone who lives between the river and the sea.”

This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Prem Thakker.

The MHP officials targeted Uludağ on X, formally known as Twitter, on October 10, following the journalist’s reporting on a controversial murder published by his employer, the Turkish service of the German Broadcaster Deutsche Welle. Uludağ received several online threats after the fact, according to reports and the journalist’s post on X.

“Politicians, in particular, have a responsibility to avoid online harassment of critical journalists which, unchecked, can quickly lead to violence,” the joint statement said and called on Turkish authorities “to guarantee that journalists are able to do their work free of intimidation and harassment.”

Read the joint statement here.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

The three-part drama, "Escape from the British Museum," shows the green-clad "teapot" personified as a young woman accost a Chinese man in the street, asking for help.

"I've been wandering around out here for ages, cousin," she tells him. "I'm lost, and can't find my way home."

The nationalistic drama has proved a hit with the online army of nationalist “little pinks,” and was released around the same time as a Global Times editorial calling for the return of Chinese artifacts from the scandal-hit British Museum, which fired a staff member last month after some of its collection was found for sale on eBay.

Never mind that the explanatory text about the teapot referenced in the film states it was actually made in 2011 by Suzhou master jade carver Yu Ting, who sent it to be displayed in the museum.

"While the British Museum proudly displays over 23,000 Chinese artifacts, most of which were obtained through improper channels, even dirty and sinful means, questions loom over their acquisition history and the larger issue of repatriation," Global Times said in an infographic on Sept. 4.

‘Bloody, ugly and shameful’

Earlier, the paper published an editorial calling the museum "the world's largest receiver of stolen goods."

"The UK, which has a bloody, ugly, and shameful colonial history, has always had a strong sense of moral superiority over others," it said. "We really do not know where their sense of moral superiority comes from."

In the web drama, the young man takes the eccentric teapot woman home to his elegant apartment, sleeping on the sofa and taking her on a whistle-stop tour of U.K. tourist spots including the white cliffs of Dover, before eventually telling her "Come on, we're going back to China." 

The couple then take in a military parade complete with goose-stepping soldiers on Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

"Thank you, Yong An," she tells the young man, whose character takes his name from a ceramic pillow emblazoned with the words "eternal peace for family and country" on display in the British Museum. "This has been the happiest and brightest time in my tiny world."

‘No. 1 robber’

The young producers, who also act in the film, told ruling Chinese Communist Party newspaper, The People's Daily, in an audio interview posted to Weibo on Sept. 8 that they decided to release the show early after seeing the news last month that the British Museum had sacked a member of staff and reported around 2,000 cultural relics missing to Scotland Yard.

“This is about the emotions we felt after a visit to the British Museum," one co-actor and producer who gave only the pseudonym Xiatian Meimei told the paper. 

"While we were filming at the British Museum, we ran into a lot of foreigners [sic] who didn't understand much about our cultural artifacts," director Zhang Jiajun, a Douyin blogger and film school graduate said. "They are Chinese treasures that carry a lot of Chinese culture."

"When they are overseas, people don't really understand them, because they lack the cultural genes to do so," he said, using a buzzword that has become popular under Chinese leader Xi Jinping. "We hope people will pay more attention to the issue of cultural artifacts overseas."

The drama drew a large number of nationalistic comments, with one comment saying "I'm going to cry myself to death," and another saying: "We must take back what belongs to China."

"The British Museum is the world's No. 1 robber," said another.

Returning relics?

Another article in the Global Times called on Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Secretary James Cleverly, who was visiting China at the time, to change the law preventing the return of artifacts in the museum.

The British Museum was established by an Act of Parliament in 1753 and is currently governed by the British Museum Act 1963.

It has so far refused to return the Elgin Marbles from the temple of Athena to Greece, ceremonial items and other artifacts taken during 19th century military action to Ethiopia, the 900 Benin Bronzes to Nigeria or gold items belonging to the Asante people of Ghana, according to the BBC.

U.K.-based commentator Chen Liangshi said much of the anger over Chinese artifacts ignores the mass destruction of cultural items during the 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, and that many of the items now in overseas museums could have been destroyed if they had stayed in China.

He added that many of the artifacts in the British museum were bought rather than looted, or donated by collectors after changing hands several times.

U.K.-based Hong Kong historian Hans Yeung agreed, also citing the widespread destruction of the Cultural Revolution and the whipping up of nationalistic sentiment online.

"They went after the United States, then they went after Japan," he said. "Now they're done with Japan, they're going after the U.K."

U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has accused China of meddling in Britain’s democracy as he faces a government split at home over whether to formally designate China a threat to national security.

Meanwhile, a brief survey of publicly available information by Radio Free Asia found that more than 100 Chinese cultural artifacts came from the donated collection of Irish physician and naturalist Sir Hans Sloan, while thousands more were donated from the collection of antiquarian Sir Augustus W. Franks.

Many more were sold by Chinese aristocrats, officials and scholars for cash around the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911.

Against the flow

Not all Chinese media played along with the nationalistic angle.

The Guangzhou-based newspaper Southern Weekend published an article titled: "Is it really a good idea to mix up cultural relics with handicrafts to generate patriotic traffic?"

However, links to the article resulted in a 404 error message on Monday, and the article was criticized by at least two nationalistic commentators on social media.

British Chinese author Ma Jian said there are also question marks around the ownership of cultural artifacts from imperial China.

"The government may think it's all great fun when internet influencers stir up trouble like this, but Chinese officials won't really do anything, because it's not in their interest," Ma said.

"Returning items calls for expertise, and you have to ask them to specify which item they want ... then trace the provenance, and find out who the original seller was, and then decide who the item should be returned to," he said.

"This is a huge job, one that will take 10, 20 or hundreds of years, not just something that can happen because some online influencers casually call for it."

Translated by Luisetta Mudie. Edited by Malcolm Foster.

This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by By Amelia Loi for RFA Mandarin.

The complaint, which CPJ reviewed, was filed by Md Shahinur Islam, who identified himself to The Daily Star as a reporter for the newspaper Amar Somoy, which supports the ruling Awami League party. It accused the journalists and other unnamed members of the opposition Jamaat-e-Islami party and Bangladesh Nationalist Party of working together to commit “anti-state crimes” and disseminate “conspiratorial news” in a July 27, 2023, Dainik Fulki article.

That article, titled “Asia’s longest-serving prime minister is finally resigning,” covered the resignation announcement of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen but mistakenly used a photo of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, president of the Awami League. The next day, the newspaper published a correction and apology, which CPJ reviewed.

Haque left Dainik Fulki around 2019 and was not involved in the article, the journalist told CPJ.

Sakib said he believed he was being targeted to undermine his campaign in the election for Savar Press Club president, which is set to be held in the coming months. He is opposed by about five journalists who strongly support the Awami League, he said.

Similarly, Haque said he believed he was being targeted for his campaign to be the press club’s organizing secretary. He is opposed by two journalists who strongly support the ruling party, he told CPJ.

The Savar Press Club is a trade group in the Dhaka district that advocates for issues, including wage distribution, labor rights, and journalist safety.

Sakib and Haque said they do not know Islam. Islam told CPJ via messaging app that his complaint was “accurate” and claimed the two journalists were involved in “information terrorism.” Islam did not respond to CPJ’s follow-up question about his journalistic background. CPJ called, messaged, and emailed the Amar Somoy newspaper for comment, but did not receive any replies.

Separately, on July 30, Sakib received a notice from the Dhaka district deputy commissioner’s office, reviewed by CPJ, ordering the journalist to explain within seven days why Dainik Fulki’s license to operate should not be canceled following an application filed by Manjurul Alam Rajib, chair of a local government unit and an Awami League leader in Savar. The notice alleges that the July 27 article “achieved the task of tarnishing the image of the state.”

Sakib’s response, dated August 6 and reviewed by CPJ, denied that allegation, expressed regret over the “unintentional mistake,” and mentioned the published correction and apology. Haque told CPJ that he did not receive a similar notice at that time.

Bangladesh’s next national election is set for January 2024 and expected to be met with increasing violence. In late July 2023, police fired at opposition party protesters with tear gas, rubber bullets, water cannons, and beat them amid mass arrests of Bangladesh Nationalist Party leaders and activists.

In response to the government’s announcement on August 7 that the Digital Security Act will be replaced, CPJ called on authorities to ensure the new Cyber Security Act complies with international human rights law.

Hasan Mahmud, Bangladesh’s information minister and Awami League joint secretary, and Dipak Chandra Saha, officer-in-charge of the Savar Model Police Station, did not respond to CPJ’s requests for comment sent via messaging app. CPJ also contacted Rajib and Anisur Rahman, Dhaka district deputy commissioner, via messaging app for comment, but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

We speak with the parents of Mika Westwolf, a 22-year-old Indigenous woman struck and killed in March by a driver as she was walking home along the highway in the early morning hours. The parents and allies are on a “Justice to Be Seen” march to call for justice and an investigation. Westwolf was a member of the Blackfeet Tribe and was also Diné, Cree and Klamath. The driver has been identified as Sunny White, a suspected white nationalist whose children are reportedly named “Aryan” and “Nation” and were in the car at the time of the crash. White has not been charged in connection with Westwolf’s death, but it’s part of an apparent pattern in which many Indigenous people are killed or hit by vehicles along Highway 93. “They need to hear us and see us,” says Westwolf’s mother, Carissa Heavy Runner. “Listen to our stories and feel our pain and see our pain.” Erica Shelby, a tribal legal advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women, discusses the details of the case and how she is in Washington, D.C., to demand action from lawmakers. “Everybody has the same story about the same players, the same agencies, the same police, the same attorneys,” says Shelby. “Enough is enough.”

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

We look at the impact of the reelection of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Sunday in a tight runoff vote, extending his 20-year rule for a further five years. Erdoğan received just over 52% of the vote, beating challenger Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, an economist and former civil servant who unified a broad coalition but failed to unseat Erdoğan despite growing dissatisfaction with his governance and deep economic pain within the country. We speak with Cihan Tuğal, UC Berkeley sociologist and author of The Fall of the Turkish Model: How the Arab Uprisings Brought Down Islamic Liberalism.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.

He appointed three conservative Supreme Court justices who shocked the nation with rulings that dramatically took away rights. He sided with the racists who used “states’ rights” to push through undemocratic policies locally. And he’s the only American president who lost a reelection bid but returned to office in the following election.

Yes, I’m thinking of former New York governor and Democrat Grover Cleveland who first won the presidency in 1884, lost his reelection bid in 1888, only to successfully regain the presidency in 1892 against then-incumbent Benjamin Harrison.

In 2024, Donald Trump hopes to repeat that history in all its ugliness by becoming the second former president to recapture the White House. And mind you, the consequences of that second Cleveland administration were devastating. Three of his Supreme Court appointees — Melville W. Fuller, Rufus W. Peckham, and Edward D. White — were part of the majority in the crucial and devastating 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson case that would sanction racial segregation across the nation and so solidify an American apartheid system that didn’t end legally until the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision.

In a similar vein, it’s hard to imagine how destructive a second Trump administration would be, given his first time in office. In virtually every area of public policy, the Trump administration proved a setback for women, people of color, working-class communities, LGBTQ individuals, environmental advocates, and those fighting to expand human and democratic rights. His three hyper-conservative Supreme Court appointees helped overturn Roe v. Wade, taking away abortion rights for millions without hesitation, while there have also been significant setbacks in the areas of gun safety, religious freedom, workers’ rights, and more.

But in truth, it’s not the policymaking that Donald Trump truly longs for. Above all, he clearly misses the corruption, cruelty, and sense of power that came with his presidency. His dream of an authoritarian state in which he can punish his enemies endlessly without accountability (while enriching himself and his family) was thwarted in 2020 when voters rejected his candidacy. The bitterness of that loss still eats at his very being and drives his current presidential bid. As he himself stated, in a second term he seeks “retribution” against one and all.

For those still in the Republican Party, Trump is once again the overwhelming early favorite. While 61% of Americans don’t want him as president again — 89% of Democrats and 64% of independents — a whopping 76% of Republicans are Trumpian to the core, according to a March 2023 Marist poll. If impeachments, a slew of coming indictments, and a conviction for libel don’t deter his GOP supporters — indeed, they seem to have had the opposite effect — then it’s easy to see Trump winning the nomination in a landslide.

Yet, in a number of ways, as the Republican Party continues to move ever more to the right, MAGA has already evolved beyond him. Despite the media oxygen he continues to consume, the current moment is less about him than most of us believe. Just as Cleveland reflected the growing racial retrenchment of the white South in the late 1800s, Trump embodies the growing entrenchment of an ever more extremist wing of American politics.

As hyper-MAGA losing Pennsylvania senatorial candidate Kathy Barnette correctly stated, “MAGA does not belong to President Trump.” In referring to the ascendant far-right wing of the Republican Party last year, she claimed that “our values never, never shifted to President Trump’s values.” Rather it was “President Trump who shifted and aligned with our values.” What she neglected to add was that his conversion was completely transactional: he needed their support, and they needed his.

Once committed, Trump leaned fully into the politics of white supremacy and white Christian nationalism that still animate the base of the party and its most prominent leaders at the local, state, and federal levels. Before, during, and since his presidency, he’s hurled racist invective at every category of black Americans — black women, black women journalists, black athletes, black elected officials, black appointed officials, black law-enforcement officers, black election workers, black prosecutors, black youth, black countries, black historic figures, black activists, black-dominated cities, and black political leaders. In rallies and speeches, he regularly refers to any black person who holds him to account as a “racist,” tapping into the prejudices of his base, a crew who nominally contend that racism no longer exists.

Trump — and the most horrendous member of Congress, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene — have championed the January 6th violent insurrectionists. Only recently in a CNN town hall, he promised to pardon “a large portion” of them, if reelected, to the cheers of his supporters who conveniently ignore the fact that he didn’t pardon them in his last two weeks as president.

It should be noted that, in his time in office, he failed to keep any of the major promises he made on the campaign trail, including building that border wall, ending Obamacare, passing an infrastructure bill, and lowering the cost of prescription drugs. His one signature piece of legislation proved to be a tax cut that transferred billions of dollars to the already super-rich. His other big achievement, of course, was to stack the Supreme Court with those three ultra-conservative justices who have taken away rights, including the 50-year-old national right to an abortion.

Despite an impulse to hide the most draconian aspects of the GOP policy agenda, it can be glimpsed via Republican initiatives in Congress and those of governors and Republican-controlled state legislatures. At the moment, their far-right trek towards authoritarianism remains largely in sync with Trump’s political and personal aspirations for power.

The DeSantis Dilemma

There is remarkably little difference between Trump and his main challengers for the presidential nomination when it comes to the politics and policies of the contemporary Republican Party. Take Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

For much of the last year, the mainstream media focused its attention on a potential cage match between a resurgent Trump and the now politically deflating DeSantis. It was the undisciplined populist versus the inflexible ideologue, the former president’s ability to articulate the most dangerous far-right ideas against DeSantis’s proven ability to actually implement them.

For many on the left and in the progressive world, the debate has been over which of them would be worse, which would be quicker to destroy the country. Would DeSantis’s less chaotic approach ultimately be worse than that of the scandal-magnet Trump? Would a growing list of potential indictments benefit or harm Trump? Who would prevail in the battle of the brands — Make America Great Again (MAGA) or Make Florida America (MFA)?

In the end, the differences between the two of them are likely to prove superficial indeed. In the areas where Americans would be most severely affected, there’s hardly a fly’s hair of separation between them. Beyond the fact that both are mercurial, petty, narcissistic bigots, as well as textbook definitions of toxic masculinity, it’s in the realm of politics and public policy where they might take somewhat different roads that, unfortunately, would head this country toward the very same destination: an undemocratic, authoritarian state whose foundational creed would be racism and unrelenting bigotry.

A dive into the policy wasteland of both reveals a distinctly unsurprising convergence. DeSantis has become infamous for the anti-woke initiatives that have roiled Florida’s education system from elementary school to college. Books have been (figuratively and perhaps literally) burned, teachers fired, school boards overthrown, and — from English and history to math and social science — curriculums revamped to fit a right-wing agenda. Almost singlehandedly, the governor has pushed through “anti-woke” policies and signed legislation aimed at reconstructing the state’s education system from top to bottom.

It should be recalled, however, that Trump was no slouch when it came to attacking wokeness. On September 4, 2020, he ordered the White House Office of Management and Budget to issue a memorandum that directed federal agencies “to begin to identify all contracts or other agency spending related to any training on ‘critical race theory,’ ‘white privilege,’ or any other training or propaganda” that might suggest the United States is a racist country. The goal was to cut funding and cancel contracts related to programs or training supposedly employing such concepts.

In September 2020, with only two months left in office, in a move likely meant to counter the actions of DeSantis, Trump launched a “1776 Commission” whose purpose was to develop a curriculum that would promote a “patriotic education” about race and the nation’s history. This was a pathetic effort to refute the New York Times’s“1619 Project” that argued slavery and racism were central to the birth of the nation, a theory that has driven conservatives into a frenzied state of panic.

Cynically, that commission issued its “1776 Report” on Martin Luther King Jr. Day — January 18, 2021 — only two days before Trump left office in humiliation. It would be soundly criticized for its host of inaccuracies, its right-wing ideological bent, and even plagiarism that whitewashed American history, its founders, and their racism. A second Trump administration would undoubtedly go all in to put DeSantis in the shade by presenting a distinctly falsified, though politically useful version of that history.

Suppressing the Vote and Cheering Street Violence

DeSantis’s ideological opposition to abortion is in sync with Trump’s transactional one. While some GOP big names are calling for a national ban, both DeSantis and Trump are trying to find a sweet spot where they can build support, especially among evangelical extremists, while still retaining some possibility of winning educated white suburban women. Unlikely as that is, in a distinctly cowardly move, DeSantis signed his extreme Florida anti-abortion law late on a Thursday night behind closed doors, while Trump continues to fume and worry (legitimately) about paying the cost for losing women voters in a general election.

DeSantis loves to highlight the work of his Gestapo-like election police unit as his contribution to enforcing “voter integrity.” Established in 2022, the unit operates out of Florida’s Office of Election Crimes and Security (OECS) and includes a statewide prosecutor. It will undoubtedly shock no one that most of those arrested in its initial months were overwhelmingly people of color. Virtually all of them were dealing with a confusing election system that had restored voting rights to some but not all ex-felons. (That system had, in fact, actually issued voter ID cards to former felons who weren’t eligible.) DeSantis proudly praised the arrests, no matter that most of them were later tossed out of court. In fact, local prosecutors refused hundreds of OECS referrals.

In terms of voting rights, though, has DeSantis topped Trump’s effort to throw out millions of black votes, attack black election workers, and have his Justice Department support every voter-suppression policy passed by GOP state legislatures? Not yet, he hasn’t. And don’t forget that Trump also created an ill-fated, disingenuous Presidential Commission on Election Integrity within months of taking office in 2017. Its real purpose was to collect state election data and weaponize it against Democratic voters. That effort, however, proved so clumsily fraudulent that even Republican-controlled states refused to submit information and the Commission was dissolved within seven months. Six years later, with the clear aim of suppressing Democratic and black voters, Trump has been calling for same-day-only in-person voting with paper ballots.

And finally, don’t forget how both Trump and DeSantis (as well as Texas Governor Greg Abbott) have brazenly celebrated the street violence perpetrated by armed white men. Trump hosted Kyle Rittenhouse at Mar-a-Lago in November 2021. Rittenhouse had shot and killed Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, while wounding Gaige Grosskreutz, during racial-justice protests in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in 2020. He became a cause célèbre of the far-right media and the MAGA movement and was eventually found not guilty, leading to Trump’s invitation. The former president has also loudly pledged to pardon charged or convicted violent January 6th insurrectionists.

Not to be outdone, DeSantis recently praised Daniel Penny who killed Jordan Neely, a slim, young black man having a mental health crisis on a New York City subway car. Penny, a trained ex-Marine, applied a chokehold for many minutes. Neely’s death was ruled a homicide and Penny has now been arrested for it. Far-right Republicans were quick to issue statements of solidarity and to support fundraising for his legal case. DeSantis referred to Penny as a “good Samaritan” and shared a link to his fundraising page, while somehow associating the incident with that number one billionaire scoundrel for conservatives, George Soros.

By their behavior and words, Trump and DeSantis provide a permission zone for white nationalist violence.

In the end, the two of them aren’t so much highlighting their differences as competing to see who can be the most extreme, issue by issue. As Trump made clear in his recent CNN town hall — functionally, a Trump rally — he has no intention of tacking towards the middle. Quite the opposite, as he heads for Election Day 2024, his hurricane of lies will only grow more extreme, shameless, and dangerous, while the GOP base cheers him on.

DeSantis has, so far, been reduced to running against Trump on the issue of “electability.” He claims Trump can’t win in a general election – possibly true (if the economy doesn’t go into recession) – and is calling on GOP voters to put aside their Trumpian passions and be more practical. Essentially, this is the same argument being made by other soon-to-be also-rans like former Trump U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, former Trump Vice President Mike Pence, and Senator Tim Scott. They all cower when it comes to really going after Trump, becoming instead the political equivalents of passive-aggressive 13-year-olds. Even former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, who may join the race and has gone from frenemy to all-out never-Trumper, has shown little divergence from the former president’s most basic policies.

Trump Misses the Corruption, Cruelty, and Power

What distinguishes DeSantis from the rest of the pack and aligns him more fully with The Donald is that they both have an urge to be cruel for no other reason than that they can be. Few political leaders have ever been quite as thin-skinned as Trump. His pettiness is legendary, while it clearly gives him pleasure to inflict pain on others. DeSantis has a similar personality. His treatment of immigrants, the way he describes LGBTQ individuals, and his press releases and speeches against any perceived opponent are filled to the brim with invective and venom.

DeSantis’s Make Florida America, or MFA, is a genuine threat and his own version of a MAGA move. A Trump or DeSantis administration would ensure at least four long years of brutal retaliation and murderous policies through the prism of white nationalist Great Replacement rhetoric.

Sadly, the problem isn’t just Trump — or rather it’s not only Trump — or DeSantis either. The horror of our moment is the way the base of the contemporary Republican Party has come to embrace the most extreme views and policies around.

So, here’s a final question for this difficult moment: In a forest of fascism, does it matter which tree is the tallest?

This column is distributed by TomDispatch.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Clarence Lusane.

The post From Nationalist Isolation to Global Citizenship appeared first on CounterPunch.org.

This content originally appeared on CounterPunch.org and was authored by Lawrence Wittner.

On March 15, police assaulted at least nine journalists on the court’s premises in the capital city of Dhaka after clashes broke out between lawyers supporting the ruling Awami League party and the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party, and police charged into the crowd swinging their batons, according to multiple news reports and five of those journalists, who spoke with CPJ.

The deputy commissioner of the Dhaka police’s Ramna division told news website Bdnews24.com later on March 15 that “journalists got caught up in the turmoil” when officers attempted to break up the unrest, and police were investigating the attacks.

On March 16, Dhaka police officials expressed regret over the incident in a meeting with local journalists but, as of March 29, have not held any of the officers involved in the attacks to account, the journalists told CPJ. 

“The recent apology by the Dhaka police over officers’ attacks on at least nine Bangladeshi journalists is a welcome but insufficient response,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director. “Bangladeshi authorities must hold the officers who attacked journalists to account, return any equipment confiscated from reporters, and ensure that police are thoroughly trained so they can help, rather than imperil, members of the press covering newsworthy events.”

Two officers with the police Public Order Management Division slapped Zabed Akhter, a senior reporter for the privately owned broadcaster ATN News, shoved him to the ground, and kicked him as he repeatedly identified himself as a journalist and told them he suffered from a nerve condition, Akhter told CPJ by phone.

Police also pushed Jannatul Ferdous Tanvi, a senior reporter for the privately owned broadcaster Independent Television, as she tried to help him, Akhter said.

Later that day, Akhter received medical treatment for internal injuries to his waist and back at a hospital, where the two officers apologized to the journalist, Akhter said, adding that those officers had not been held to account for the incident as of March 29.

A group of 10 to 15 officers kicked and used a bamboo stick to beat Md. Humaun Kabir, a senior camera operator for the privately owned broadcaster ATN Bangla who was filming the unrest, knocking him to the ground, Kabir told CPJ by phone. Officers continued to slap him as he ran away, according to a video of the incident reviewed by CPJ. Kabir sustained a head injury for which he took painkillers. 

Five or six officers beat Maruf Hasan, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Manab Zamin, in the head and back while he identified himself as a journalist, he told CPJ via messaging app.  Officers also insulted him with vulgar language and confiscated his microphone, which they had not returned as of March 29, Hasan said.

He told CPJ that he sustained painful injuries to the areas that were beaten.

About five police officers also beat Mohammad Fazlul Haque, a senior reporter for the privately owned news website Jago News, according to Haque, who told CPJ via messaging app that he had been beaten but then did not respond to additional questions seeking details.  

According to those news reports and the journalists who spoke with CPJ, police also attacked Nur Mohammad, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Ajker Patrika; Ibrahim Hossain, a camera operator for the privately owned broadcaster Boishakhi Television; Kabir Hossain, a reporter for the privately owned newspaper Kalbela; and Mehedi Hassan Dalim, a reporter for the privately owned news website The Dhaka Post.

CPJ contacted those journalists via messaging app seeking additional details but did not receive any replies.

Suvra Kanti Das, a senior photojournalist for the privately owned newspaper Prothom Alo, told CPJ by phone that he was also covering the elections when an officer grabbed him by the shirt, demanded to see his media identification card, insulted him with vulgar language, and ordered him to leave the premises, which he did.

CPJ’s calls and messages to Roy Niyati, a spokesperson for the Dhaka Metropolitan Police, did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Dainik Dinkal suspended operations on February 20 after the Bangladesh Press Council, a quasi-judicial, government-funded body headed by a former High Court judge, rejected its appeal against a government shutdown order, Biswas told CPJ.

“The shutdown of Dainik Dinkal is a blatant attack on media freedom ahead of Bangladesh’s January 2024 national election,” said Carlos Martinez de la Serna, CPJ’s program director, in New York. “Closing a newspaper violates the democratic principles purportedly espoused by the Awami League-led government, and we call on the Bangladesh Press Council to review its order and uphold the free flow of information.”  

The district administration in the capital, Dhaka, accused Dainik Dinkal on December 26 of violating local law on grounds that its publisher was a convicted criminal, but the publisher named in the order resigned the post in 2016, Biswas said.

Biswas told CPJ that the newspaper had filed documentation before the Press Council’s ruling that Tarique Rahman, acting chair of the opposition Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP), was no longer Dainik Dinkal’s publisher. Rahman has been convicted of several criminal and money laundering charges, and lives overseas.  

Dainik Dinkal covers BNP activities and has frequently criticized the ruling Awami League party, including the arrests of BNP politicians and supporters in what rights groups have characterized as a crackdown ahead of elections next year. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina has said the polls will be “fair and free.”

CPJ emailed Mohammad Mominur Rahman, the Dhaka deputy commissioner who filed the government order, and Mohammed Nizamul Huq Nasim, head of the Bangladesh Press Council and its three-member appeal board, but did not receive any replies.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Arlene Getz/CPJ Editorial Director.

Ross Douthat confesses to having an obsession with the so-called “baby bust.” The New York Times columnist has brought up the supposed perils of low birthrates in countless columns (e.g., 12/14/22, 3/27/21, 12/2/12), and it played a prominent role in his 2020 book The Decadent Society.

In Ross Douthat’s imagining (New York Times, 3/27/21) of different ways “the developed world” can “stop growing ever-older,” the words “immigration” and “immigrants” never appears.

Many would argue that a declining birthrate is a good thing. It follows when childhood mortality rates decrease, and economic security and women’s rights increase. And fewer people on the planet—particularly in fossil fuel-guzzling countries like ours—means less pressure on the Earth’s natural resources.

But in his most recent return to the subject, Douthat (1/21/23) argues that such folks have it all backwards:

There are two kinds of people in the world: those who believe the defining challenge of the 21st century will be climate change, and those who know that it will be the birth dearth, the population bust, the old age of the world.

That’s a boldly certain statement from someone without any particular expertise in either climate science or demography, and it flies in the face of repeated assertions of the urgency of the climate crisis from global experts.

But Douthat explains—citing Roger Pielske, Jr., who’s been called the “single most disputed and debunked person in the science blogosphere” (Climate Progress, 3/3/14)—that “some of the worst-case scenarios for climate change have become less likely than before.” Meanwhile, Covid pushed birth rates down faster; therefore, the baby bust takes the crown in this competition you didn’t know was being waged.

To support his claim, Douthat names the threats to “rich and many middle-income nations”: “general sclerosis, a loss of dynamism and innovation, and a zero-sum struggle between a swollen retired population and the overburdened young.” In other words, a population decline in these countries would be bad for the economy, and bad for the quality of life of either the old or the young.

Frankly, that sounds like a lot less of a “defining challenge” than current scientific concerns that “even less-than-extreme increases in global temperatures will intensify heat and storms, irreversibly destabilize natural systems and overwhelm even highly developed societies” (Washington Post, 1/6/23).

And, of course, poorer countries will fare even worse from climate disruption. That Douthat believes—sorry, “knows”—that economic stagnation in middle- and upper-income countries is a more dire threat than destabilized natural systems that could overwhelm all societies, but disproportionately impact poor ones (not to mention nonhuman species), offers your first clue that behind Douthat’s birthrate obsession lurks something much more tied to right-wing nativism than he will ever openly admit.

‘Rules’ for an ‘aging world’

First, it’s highly debatable that a population bust is even an economic problem—and it’s certainly not an unsolvable one. As economist Dean Baker (CEPR.net, 1/17/23) points out, Japan’s population has been decreasing for more than 10 years, yet its standard of living continues to grow. Baker argues that increasing productivity can offset demographic changes, and that governments have many other economic policy tools to deal with such changes successfully, just like Japan has done.

Meanwhile, the costs of climate change already total an estimated $2 trillion since 1980 in the United States alone, and are estimated to reach upwards of $23 trillion globally by 2050. Small island nations face the steepest challenges: The IMF estimates that they will endure costs of up to 20% of their GDP for the next 10 years. And developed nations consistently fail to meet the targets scientists say are necessary to stave off the worst outcomes. So, really, which is the more certain crisis?

Douthat’s “rules for an aging world” (New York Times, 1/21/23) read like a right-wing wish list.

But assuming the primacy of a population decline “crisis” conveniently offers Douthat a springboard to ignore urgent climate policies and instead promote several policies from the conservative wish list. In his recent Times column, he offered some of these in the form of “rules” for this “aging world.” Too many old people? Trim their entitlements. Not enough innovation? Clear away pesky regulatory hurdles.

Douthat’s third rule—”Ground warfare will run up against population limits”—is exactly what you fear it sounds like: “Vladimir Putin’s mobilization efforts aren’t what they presumably would be if his empire had more young people.” That’s right, one of the problems with the so-called population bust is that there won’t be enough bodies to sacrifice to hawkish governments’ military adventures.

Rule Four is where it starts to get even more interesting. That rule, according to Douthat, is that countries with higher birthrates will have “a long-term edge” over the others. (Notice he’s concerned with birthrates specifically here, not just population growth rates. I’ll come back to that in just a minute.)

This takes us to Rule Five: “The African Diaspora will reshape the world.” Here Douthat offers up a curious fact: “Africa’s population is still on track to reach 2.5 billion in 2050, and reach 4 billion by 2100.” But wait! If the population of Africa, which currently stands at about 1.4 billion, could nearly triple by the end of the century, do we really have a population bust on our hands?

No global ‘birth dearth’

You wouldn’t know it from Douthat’s incessant hand-wringing, but the human population isn’t projected to start shrinking for another 54 years. Before then, it’s expected to grow from just over 8 billion today to nearly 10-and-a-half billion, due to continued growth in Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

In other words, there is no global “birth dearth,” the planet is not in an “age of demographic decline,” and we are not experiencing “the old age of the world”—all phrases he uses in this column—unless you erase a large chunk of that world, which just so happens to be a predominantly Black and brown one.

The global population continues to swell, which means that even if we believed the argument that a country with a declining population will suffer economically, there’s a straightforward solution to that problem (assuming you’re not interested in forcing women to bear more children—which, notably, Douthat is) that would immediately kick the can down the road a good 50 years, something no serious person believes can be done with climate change. That solution is to welcome more of the many migrants seeking entry to such countries, who are instead largely demonized, criminalized and denied their basic human rights.

But Douthat doesn’t see those Black and brown migrants as solutions. If “even a fraction of this population” migrates, he warns ominously,

the balance between successful assimilation on the one hand, and destabilization and backlash on the other, will help decide whether the age of demographic decline ends in revitalization or collapse.

‘Fear of a Black continent’

Truth be told, Douthat himself (New York Times, 10/20/18) seems plenty worried about African babies.

Lest you think that by including the possibility of “revitalization” in there, Douthat is somehow signaling an openness to such migration, a look back at other columns he’s written about immigration will quickly dispel that notion.

In Europe, he argued (10/1/22):

The preferred centrist solution to both economic stagnation and demographic diminishment, mass immigration, has contributed to Balkanization, crime and native backlash—even in a progressive bastion like Sweden.

He was even more blunt in a column (10/20/18) headlined “Fear of a Black Continent”—subtitled “Why European elites are worrying about African babies.” In it, Douthat warned of the dangers of increasing African migration to Europe, but said that  attempts to slow the African birthrate would be “cruel”—so, instead,

anyone who hopes for something other than destabilization and disaster from the Eurafrican encounter should hope for a countervailing trend, in which Europeans themselves begin to have more children.

If that sounds eugenics-like, it’s because it is. Concerns about differential birth rates were common in the early 20th century anti-immigrant eugenics movement; Teddy Roosevelt famously blamed “American” women who chose not to have children for “race suicide” in the context of record levels of immigration. Douthat never describes dark-skinned immigrants as inferior, but he does repeatedly paint them as a threat linked to crime, distrust, destabilization and disaster.

In a column (11/6/16) crediting Donald Trump’s rise to white families not having enough children (which he in turn blames on the “social revolutions of the 1970s”), Douthat suggested that “mass immigration…exacerbates intergenerational alienation, because it heightens anxieties about inheritance and loss.” Read: Old white people who don’t have at least 4.4 grandchildren worry they have no legacy in an increasingly diverse country.

While this is no doubt true to a certain extent, blaming the “ethno-racial anxiety” of white Republicans on immigration and women’s rights gives a big fat get-out-of-jail-free card to misogynists and nativists like Trump who stoke those bigotries.

White anxiety

Making the right seem respectable is Douthat’s main job at the New York Times (1/27/18)—and that means making white nationalists, who play such a large part in the modern right, respectable too.

In fact, in another eyebrow-raising column (1/27/18), Douthat even urged Democrats to give a seat at the immigration policy table to Trump adviser Stephen Miller, architect of Trump’s barbaric and unconstitutional family separation policy. Douthat concluded that it’s “reasonable” to want, like Miller, to reduce immigration, because “increased diversity and the distrust it sows have clearly put stresses on our politics.”

Douthat tried to draw a distinction between immigration restrictionists who are “influenced by simple bigotry,” and the “real restrictionists” like Miller (who presumably have nobler motivations, like opposing “increased diversity”). Comprehensive immigration reform has failed, according to Douthat, because immigration advocates have insisted on excluding people like Miller from the table, thinking

that restrictionists can eventually be steamrolled—that the same ethnic transformations that have made white anxiety acute will eventually bury white-identity politics with sheer multiethnic numbers.

Here’s your friendly reminder that Miller is a white supremacist who sent hundreds of emails to Breitbart News (Southern Poverty Law Center, 11/12/19) promoting

white nationalist websites, a “white genocide”–themed novel in which Indian men rape white women, xenophobic conspiracy theories and eugenics-era immigration laws that Adolf Hitler lauded in Mein Kampf.

Nationalist opposition to “mass immigration” doesn’t have to be racist, Douthat (7/8/17) argued elsewhere:

It can just be a species of conservatism, which prefers to conduct cultural exchange carefully and forge new societies slowly, lest stability suffer, memory fail and important things be lost.

What are those important things, exactly? Douthat made his ideal—and disappearing—society clear in a paean to WASP rule (12/5/18) upon the death of George H.W. Bush. In that (also roundly criticized) column, headlined “Why We Miss the WASPs,” he wrote:

​​Americans miss Bush because we miss the WASPs — because we feel, at some level, that their more meritocratic and diverse and secular successors rule us neither as wisely nor as well.

Douthat (New York Times, 12/5/18) says “we” miss the white Anglo-Saxon Protestant elite because “a ruling class should acknowledge itself for what it really is, and act accordingly.”

No matter that they were also “bigoted and exclusive and often cruel”—after all,

for every Brahmin bigot there was an Arabist or China hand or Hispanophile who understood the non-American world better than some of today’s shallow multiculturalists.

That column, notably, drew on the same concept of “trust” he routinely brings up in his arguments against immigration. Douthat argued that the ruling WASPs “inspired various kinds of trust (intergenerational, institutional) conspicuously absent in our society today.” It’s not clear what kind of trust Douthat imagines this white ruling class, constructed on a foundation of slavery, inspired in Black and brown Americans. More likely, Douthat is incapable of imagining the experiences of such Americans. Bush himself rode to victory on the infamously racist Willie Horton ad, and escalated the racist “war on drugs,” damaging social cohesion in ways immigration can scarcely dream of.

Douthat seems to want to believe that racism and sexism were incidental to WASP power rather than fundamental to its rise and maintenance. That you can defend a white nationalist and advocate modern-day positive eugenics without bearing any responsibility for racist, xenophobic extremism. If we were to take Douthat’s advice to ignore the climate crisis and pursue high birth rates in developed countries, we would increase the stress on the imperiled planet for no clear purpose—other than trying desperately to keep the world as white as possible.

ACTION ALERT: You can send a message to the New York Times at letters@nytimes.com (Twitter: @NYTimes). Please remember that respectful communication is the most effective. Feel free to leave a copy of your communication in the comments thread.

The post Douthat’s Birthrate Obsession Launders White Nationalist Anxieties appeared first on FAIR.

This content originally appeared on FAIR and was authored by Julie Hollar.

Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore is widely expected to blow out his Republican opponent Dan Cox. But that won’t stop Moore from welcoming support wherever he can get it. Lately, the list of Moore’s supporters even includes the leaders of two organizations founded to support former President Donald Trump.

Last month, Moore, a political newcomer, and his running mate, former state Del. Aruna Miller, held a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of Jasdip “Jesse” Singh, the founder of Sikhs for Trump. The event was co-hosted by one-time Trump adviser Sajid Tarar, who founded Muslims for Trump and delivered a prayer for the then-candidate at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Singh and Tarar have strong connections to the current Republican governor, serving on his commission for South Asian issues.

The fundraiser was also organized in part by Dr. Sudhir Sekhsaria, a local allergist who referred to himself at the event as one of the campaign’s “finance chairs” and has given at least $12,000 to Moore and Miller since January. Sekhsaria had previously helped Miller as treasurer during her unsuccessful congressional run in 2018, soliciting thousands of dollars in donations from people affiliated with Hindu nationalism.

“It’s a very profitable method to tap into the Hindutva sectors of the community.”

Sajid Tarar, left, founder of Muslims for Trump, and Jasdip “Jesse” Singh, right, head of Sikhs for Trump, arrive at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 5, 2017.

Photo: Albin Lohr-Jones/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

“Our ask is return the money and really assure us that these people will not have access in any way, shape, or form to the administration.”

Aruna Miller speaks with a reporter after the Labor Day parade in Gaithersburg, Md., on Sept. 5, 2022.

Photo: Bryan Woolston/AP

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Rashmee Kumar.

Maryland’s Democratic gubernatorial candidate Wes Moore is widely expected to blow out his Republican opponent Dan Cox. But that won’t stop Moore from welcoming support wherever he can get it. Lately, the list of Moore’s supporters even includes the leaders of two organizations founded to support former President Donald Trump.

Last month, Moore, a political newcomer, and his running mate, former state Del. Aruna Miller, held a high-dollar fundraiser at the home of Jasdip “Jesse” Singh, the founder of Sikhs for Trump. The event was co-hosted by one-time Trump adviser Sajid Tarar, who founded Muslims for Trump and delivered a prayer for the then-candidate at the 2016 Republican National Convention. Singh and Tarar have strong connections to the current Republican governor, serving on his commission for South Asian issues.

The fundraiser was also organized in part by Dr. Sudhir Sekhsaria, a local allergist who referred to himself at the event as one of the campaign’s “finance chairs” and has given at least $12,000 to Moore and Miller since January. Sekhsaria had previously helped Miller as treasurer during her unsuccessful congressional run in 2018, soliciting thousands of dollars in donations from people affiliated with Hindu nationalism.

“It’s a very profitable method to tap into the Hindutva sectors of the community.”

Sajid Tarar, left, founder of Muslims for Trump, and Jasdip “Jesse” Singh, right, head of Sikhs for Trump, arrive at Trump Tower in New York City on Jan. 5, 2017.

Photo: Albin Lohr-Jones/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images

“Our ask is return the money and really assure us that these people will not have access in any way, shape, or form to the administration.”

Aruna Miller speaks with a reporter after the Labor Day parade in Gaithersburg, Md., on Sept. 5, 2022.

Photo: Bryan Woolston/AP

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This content originally appeared on The Intercept and was authored by Rashmee Kumar.

Turkey’s parliament, known as the Grand National Assembly, started discussing the draft bill on Tuesday evening and is set to finish voting this week, according to multiple news reports and tweets from an official account. The bill includes amendments to press and internet laws and the penal code and, if approved, will criminalize the act of “spreading false information,” according to those reports.

“Turkish parliamentarians are about to vote on a dangerous bill that, if approved, will hinder freedom of the press and speech, not only for members of the media but of Turkish society who may have opinions that authorities disagree with. Criminalizing the spreading of so-called false information under such vague terms is plain censorship no matter what you call it,” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “While this law is expected to pass, there is still a chance for Turkish parliamentarians to reverse course and prevent this historical step backward for the country’s democracy and protect press and speech freedoms.”

Lawmakers already voted on and passed the first two articles of the 40-article bill, reports said. The first 28 articles of the bill introduce a new category for online journalists who are not currently recognized as members of the media by Turkey’s Press Law; Article 29 updates the penal code. The bill was introduced by the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and its ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), in May, and was approved by a parliamentary commission by June before being considered by the Grand National Assembly this week.  

The AKP and MHP, which control the necessary majority in the legislature, plan to approve all articles by Friday, the reports said. If passed, the bill will go into effect if President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signs it within 15 days.

If the penal code change is approved, those found guilty of publicly spreading false information to cause concern, fear, or panic would face sentences of one to three years in prison, and the penalty would increase for offenders who hide their identity or act on behalf of a criminal group, but what constituted misleading information or who would make that determination was not clear, according to CPJ’s review of the bill.

The bill’s authors wrote in the introduction that the change to the penal code is designed to protect Turkish citizens’ rights online while combating “disinformation” and “illegal content” produced by “false names and accounts”; they argued that this action falls in line with regulations in the United States and European countries, such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom.

The bill also expands restrictions on social media first passed in 2020; that law requires social media platforms with over one million users to open local offices and assign local representatives. Under the bill, a representative of a social media platform will be required to reside in Turkey, which would allow the Turkish authorities to prosecute them if they choose. The proposed amendments also provide more detail of existing obligations of social media companies and make it easier for Turkish authorities to remove content from the internet.

In recent months, local press freedom groups have protested the proposed law, describing it as “the heaviest censorship in the history of the press” that would “suffocate” journalism in Turkey.

CPJ emailed the Turkish president’s office and Grand National Assembly for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

On May 27, lawmakers from Turkey’s governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) and their ally, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), introduced the draft law, which would amend the penal code and press and internet laws, according to multiple news reports.

The bill would add an article to the penal code that would sentence those found guilty of publicly spreading misleading information to between one and three years in prison and would increase the penalty for offenders who hide their identity or act on behalf of a criminal group, according to CPJ’s review of the bill. However, the bill did not define what constituted misleading information or say who would make that determination.

The AKP and MHP control the necessary majority in the legislature to pass the bill; however, as of June 1, a date has not been set for a vote. If passed, the bill will be enacted if President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan signs it within 15 days.

“Turkey has many vague laws already used to prosecute and imprison members of the media. This addition of prosecuting disinformation within the Turkish legal system will only function as a similar tool. Who will decide what is and is not ‘disinformation’? More importantly, how?” said Gulnoza Said, CPJ’s Europe and Central Asia program coordinator, in New York. “The Turkish authorities should not adopt the proposed law, should restrain from criminalizing so-called disinformation, and stop seeking more control over the internet.”

The bill also expands restrictions on social media first passed in 2020; that law made it obligatory for social media platforms with over a million users to open local offices and assign local representatives, as CPJ documented.

Under the bill, the representative of these platforms will be required to reside in Turkey, which would allow the Turkish authorities to prosecute them if they so choose. The proposed amendments also bring more detail to the existing obligations of social media companies and make it easier for the Turkish authorities to remove content from the internet.

In a joint statement, local press freedom groups called for the bill’s withdrawal, saying the proposed changes could bring about “one of the heaviest censorship and self-censorship mechanisms” in Turkey’s history.

The bill’s authors wrote in the introduction that it is designed to protect Turkish citizens’ rights online while combating “disinformation” and “illegal content” produced by “false names and accounts” and argued that this action falls in line with regulations in the U.S. and European countries such as Germany, France, and the United Kingdom, according to CPJ’s review.

Of the 40 articles in the bill, 28 of them introduce a new category for journalists working for online outlets in Turkey who are not currently recognized as members of the media by Turkey’s Press Law, according to CPJ’s review. The articles will recognize online outlets as news outlets and allow them to benefit from government advertising funds–which until now have been unavailable to them–and will enable online journalists to obtain a press card, which brings benefits such as early retirement and free or discounted public transportation.

However, CPJ has documented how Erdoğan’s government has used Turkey’s press card system to restrict critical reporting.

CPJ emailed the Turkish president’s office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

This content originally appeared on Committee to Protect Journalists and was authored by Committee to Protect Journalists.

Far-right French presidential candidate Marine Le Pen is closing in on President Emmanuel Macron's lead, according to poll numbers released ahead of Sunday's first-round presidential election.

Polling data collected by French journalist Alexandre Léchenet this week showed that as of Thursday, centrist Macron is leading the presidential field with more than 25% of respondents saying they would support him on Sunday, while Le Pen's support hovers in "the low 20s."

"There was a clear strategy to hide what is brutal in her program. Her fundamentals have not changed: It's a racist program that aims to divide society and is very brutal."

In polls placing Macron in a matchup with only Le Pen, the president has just a two-to-eight point lead.

By contrast, in early March, Le Pen was 10 points behind the president, who beat her by more than 30 points in the 2017 runoff election.

After Sunday's first round, a runoff on April 24 is likely this year, as no candidate is currently expected to win a majority of the vote on Sunday. According to The Economist, Macron has a 98% chance of making it to the runoff while Le Pen has a 93% chance of advancing.

While Le Pen's party is as committed as it was in 2017 to its anti-immigrant and nationalist views and policies, the party's leader has campaigned on issues affecting working French families, who are paying record prices for fuel and are having to cut back on participating in their local economies, according to a recent report by France24.

Le Pen has called for tax cuts on energy, increases to people's pensions, and maintaining the current retirement age of 62—in contrast to Macron's proposal to raise it to 65.

"She's more human, and we understand her when she talks" compared to her aggressive campaign style in the previous election, a waitress named Sophie told the BBC Friday.

Le Pen has attempted to distance herself from her past praise of Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose war in Ukraine has killed more than 1,400 civilians and displaced more than 10 million people, including more than four million who have fled the country. She was quick to welcome Ukrainian refugees, a position which differentiated her from her far-right rival, political commentator Éric Zemmour, who is polling below 10% according to Léchenet.

"I would say that [Zemmour's] campaign was destroyed by Ukraine," Gilles Paris, an election specialist for French daily Le Monde, told the BBC. "His pro-Russian attitude was a burden, while Marine Le Pen was smart enough to pivot to a more moderate point of view. She was ready to accept refugees [immediately], while it took two days for Zemmour to understand that these refugees were well accepted in France."

Despite the welcome for Ukrainian refugees, Le Pen is proposing strict limits on immigration, a ban on headscarves for Muslim women and girls, and a "French-first" system limiting immigrants' access to housing and other benefits, but her focus on economic issues has appeared to contrast with Macron's policies, according to analysts.

"There was a clear strategy to hide what is brutal in her program," Macron told Le Parisien on Friday. "Her fundamentals have not changed: It's a racist program that aims to divide society and is very brutal."

In addition to pushing for a higher retirement age, the president eliminated a wealth tax after taking office as well as reducing social spending and proposing a gas tax hike, which earned him the nickname "president of the rich" and led to nationwide protests in 2018.

Le Pen could be even closer to becoming France's next president than polls are making it seem, according to FiveThirtyEight:

The average error between the poll margin two weeks before the election and the runoff result has been about 4.6 points in French presidential elections from 1969 to 2017, and polling averages produced by Politico and Reuters each put Macron's runoff lead at six points. In other words, a slightly larger-than-normal error could make Le Pen France’s next president. And there's still time for the race to tighten further, as the likely runoff will take place two weeks after the first round.

While Macron is in the lead, wrote France-based journalist John Lichfield at The Guardian on Friday, "the opinion polls suggest that if enough leftwing voters stay at home in the second round, refusing to choose between Macron ('the president of the rich') and a seemingly 'kinder, gentler' Le Pen, then she could win."

A Le Pen presidency would leave the French living under an economic program that is "an incoherent mess," Lichfield wrote. "Her European policy is Frexit by stealth—unilaterally reducing payments to the E.U. budget and breaking E.U. laws she does not like. She also wants to ban all Muslim women from wearing veils in public—not just the burqa, which was outlawed in 2010. She plans to discriminate against foreigners, including E.U. nationals, with regards to eligibility for benefits."

Macron "can still win the election," he added. "But it is going to be a scary two weeks for anyone who cares about the wellbeing of France or Europe."

This content originally appeared on Common Dreams - Breaking News & Views for the Progressive Community and was authored by Julia Conley.

Far-right nationalist prime minister and longtime Putin-ally Viktor Orbán won his fourth consecutive election in Hungary, aided by biased media coverage and campaign regulations that favored the sitting prime minister. We speak to historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat about the future of Hungary under the Fidesz party, which, aside from passing anti-LGBTQ legislation and stoking xenophobia, has also been an important ally for Russian President Vladimir Putin. “He’s very much a conduit for the infiltration and spread of Putin ideas in a more palatable frame,” says Ben-Ghiat. She also discusses how Orbán has become a model for many Republicans in the United States, and notes the Conservative Political Action Conference will be held in Istanbul next month.

This content originally appeared on Democracy Now! and was authored by Democracy Now!.