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In Nairobi, Kenya, Jihan Abbas has staked everything on her new business.

Already the CEO and founder of a tech platform enterprise, she is now branching out into digital insurance products.

In Jihan’s Venturefilmmaker Seydou Mukali plunges us into Jihan’s world of revenues and risk, supply chains and sales, growth and ambition, to see what it takes to make a business succeed.

Seydou Mukali is a writer and director based in Nairobi, Kenya, with more than a decade of production experience. His directorial debut, Vivewas licensed to Netflix and MNet and his documents have been screened worldwide.

Solomon Islands Prime Minister Manasseh Sogavare has been defending the security pact his government signed with China on Tuesday.

Sogavare told the agreement with Beijing was necessary to deal with the Solomon Islands’s “internal security situation”.

The Pacific island nation has long struggled with political unrest, most recently in November 2021 when the protesters targeted Honiara’s Chinatown and tried to storm Sogavare’s residence.

A contingent of Australian police helped restore stability following a request from the government. Australia had also led a 2003 multilateral mission following violence and a coup at the end of the 1990s.

Canberra raised alarm about the China pact when the draft was leaked online in March, and was trying to encourage Sogavare to rethink the plan. The United States and New Zealand have also expressed concern amid concerns it could lead to China setting up a military outpost in the Pacific.

What is the security situation in the Solomon Islands?

The Solomon Islands, with a population of less than 700,000, is a chain of hundreds of islands lying east of Papua New Guinea in the Pacific Ocean.

The capital, Honiara, is on the island of Guadalcanal, the site of a ferocious – and hugely significant – battle between US and Japanese troops in World War Two.

The one-time British colony has struggled with unrest since the late 1990s when ethnic tension erupted into violence and a coup brought Sogavare to power for the first time in 2000.

With the country a state of near political and collapse, Australia and New Zealand in economic stability, stability was restored and a peace accord signed.

The calm did not last.

In 2003, after the government requested assistance from the Pacific Islands Forum, the region’s main diplomatic grouping, a multinational Regional Assistance Mission to the Solomon Islands (RAMSI) was established with Australia leading the deployment.

RAMSI remained in the country for nearly 14 years, despite attempts by Sogavare to expel the mission whenever he was in power.

Sogavare was elected prime minister again in 2019 and months later moved to cut the Solomon Islands longstanding diplomatic ties with Taiwan in favor of Beijing.

The move was not popular with everyone in the Solomon Islands and Daniel Suidani, the premier of Malaita province, rejected the switch, saying he would push for independence for Malaita, the country’s largest province.

The riots in November also reflected the continued fallout from the decision to switch diplomatic ties.

Sogavare was not going to budget. He is invested in China & China invested in him. Does this bring Sols citizens under yoke of People’sLiberationArmy – Communist Party’s armed wing? While Sols sovereignty is respected, this has regional implications. What’s next in China’s sights? https://t.co/fuVNNejRT9

— Dr Shailendra B Singh (@ShailendraBSing) April 20, 2022

What is in the package?

A text of the patch has not been released.

The leaked draft suggested it would allow Chinese warships to stop in the Solomons, and Chinese police to be at the archipelago’s request to maintain “social order”. Neither party would be allowed to disclose the missions publicly without the written consent of the other.

“We intend to beef up and strengthen our police ability to deal with any future instability by properly equipping the police to take full responsibility of the country’s security responsibilities, in the hope we will never be required to invoke any of our bilateral security arrangements,” Sogavare explained to word on Wednesday, saying the pact complied with international and domestic law.

Sogavare has previously said that the Solomons has “no intention whatsoever… to ask China to build a military base” and on Wednesday stressed the deal was “guided by our national interests”.

Opposition leader Matthew Wale was sceptical.

“All the drivers of instability, insecurity and even threats to national unity in Solomon Islands are entirely internal,” the Solomon Star newspaper quoted Wale as saying on Wednesday. “This means that the deal, in giving opportunity to military posturing by China, has nothing to do with Solomon Islands national security. I doubt that the provision for this in the deal is inadvertent, rather it is calculated for geopolitical effect. On the part of Prime Minister Sogavare this is mercenary, on the part of China it is an opportunity too good to miss.”

Asked by Wale whether he would release the text of the agreement, Sogavare said he would talk to China.

What are the concerns of other countries?

Australia, which has had a security agreement with Honiara since 2017, has been the most vocal critic of the agreement, but other countries in the Pacific, including the US and New Zealand, have also voiced concern.

Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is in the midst of a general election campaign, said on Wednesday the signing of the patch indicated the “intense pressure” from China felt by Pacific island nations.

Foreign Minister Marise Payne, in a joint statement with Zed Seselja, Minister for International, Development and the Pacific, said while Australia respected the Honiara’s “right to make sovereign decisions” it was “deeply disappointed” with the China pact.

“We are concerned about the lack of transparency with which this agreement has been developed, noting its potential to stability in our region,” the statement said, saying Canberra was seeking “further clarity” on the terms of the agreement, and its consequences for the region.

The opposition Labor Party, which hopes to unseat Morrison’s coalition, described it as the “worst failure of Australian foreign policy in the Pacific since the end of World War II”. Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong noted that Australia had ignored warnings from Wale as early as August last year about the potential security patch.

In a statement on Wednesday, officials from Australia, the US, New Zealand and Japan expressed “shared concerns about the security framework and its serious risks to a free and open Indo-Pacific”.

For the record, I’m worried about China’s visible presence in the Pacific. But Australia needs to fundamentally re-imagine how we understand and engage with Pacific states and peoples to address it: https://t.co/nNNKO3lnM2b

— Joanne Wallis (@JoanneEWallis) April 20, 2022

The official announcement of the patch comes as Kurt Campbell, the US’s National Security Council Indo-Pacific coordinator, and Daniel Kritenbrink, its assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, embark on an official visit to the Solomons, Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

The US has already announced it plans to reopen its embassy in Honiara, which has been closed since 1993.

What about China?

China is already the Solomon Islands’ top export destination, buying some 65 per cent of Honiara’s exports in 2019, followed by Italy at 9 percent. Australia is the destination of less than 1 percent of Solomons’ exports.

China is also the source of just less than a quarter of the country’s imports, followed by Australia with 13 percent.

In announcing the security deal, Beijing framed it as “normal exchange and cooperation between two sovereign and independent countries”.

Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin said Western powers were “deliberately exaggerating tensions” over the package.

China’s state media has cast Beijing as a benign power in the Pacific, suggesting it is the US that wants to build its military might in the region.

“The Solomon Islands should realize it is under the special attention of Washington because the US wants to use it as a pawn to contain China,” the tabloid Global Times wrote in an op-ed on Wednesday.

BANGKOK (AP) — With its ground troops forced to pull back in Ukraine and regroup, and its Black Sea flagship sunk, Russia’s military failings are mounting. No country is paying closer attention than China to how a smaller and outgunned force has badly bloodied what was thought to be one of the world’s most powerful armies.

China, like Russia, has been ambitiously reforming its Soviet-style military and experts say leader Xi Jinping will be carefully parsing the weaknesses exposed by the invasion of Ukraine as they might apply to his own People’s Liberation Army and his designs on the self-governed island of Taiwan.

“The big question Xi and the PLA leadership must be asking in light of Russian operations in Ukraine is whether a military that has undergone extensive reform and modernization will be able to execute operations that are far more complex than those Russia has undertaken during its invasion of Ukraine,” said M. Taylor Fravel, director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Russia’s armed forces have undergone an extensive process of reform and investment for more than a decade, with lessons learned in combat in Georgia, Chechnya, Syria and its annexation of Crimea helping guide the process. The Ukrainian invasion, however, has exposed weaknesses from the top down.

Experts have been collectively stunned that Russia invaded Ukraine with seemingly little preparation and lack of focus — a campaign along multiple, poorly-coordinated axes that has failed to effectively combine air and land operations.

Soldiers have been running out of food, and vehicles have been breaking down. With losses mounting, Moscow has pulled its bloodied forces away from the capital, Kyiv, to regroup. Last week, the guided-missile cruiser Moskva sank after Ukraine said it hit the ship with missiles; Russia blamed the sinking on a fire on board.

“It’s very hard to see success at any level in the way that Russia has prosecuted the campaign,” said Euan Graham, a senior fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies based in Singapore.

Story continues

President Vladimir Putin, who has been closely involved in Russia’s military reform, did not even appoint an overall commander for the operation until about a week ago, apparently expecting a quick victory and grossly misjudging Ukrainian resistance, Graham said.

“It’s a very personal war on his part,” Graham said. “And I think the expectation that this would be a cakewalk is obviously the biggest single failure.”

Putin’s decisions raise the question of whether he was given accurate assessments of the progress of military reform and Ukrainian abilities, or was just told what he wanted to hear.

Xi, also an authoritarian leader who has taken a personal role in China’s military reform, could now be wondering the same, Fravel said.

“Xi specifically may also wonder whether he is receiving accurate reports about the PLA’s likely effectiveness in a high intensity conflict,” he said.

China has had no recent major conflict by which to gauge its military prowess, having fought its last significant engagement in 1979 against Vietnam, said David Chen, a senior consultant with CENTRA Technology, a US-based government services firm.

“The wakeup call for (China’s) Central Military Commission is that there are more unknown factors involved in any such campaign than they may have anticipated,” Chen said.

“Russia’s experience in Ukraine has shown that what may seem plausible on paper at the Academy of Military Science or National Defense University becomes much more complicated in the real world.”

Xi, the son of a revolutionary commander who spent time in uniform himself, began undertaking military reforms in 2015, three years after assuming leadership of the Central Military Commission.

Total troop strength was reduced by 300,000 to just under 2 million, the number of officers cut by a third and a greater emphasis given to non-commissioned officers to lead in the field.

China’s military has a tradition of respect for initiative from lower-ranking soldiers dating from its revolutionary origins, said Yue Gang, a Beijing-based military analyst. By contrast, Russian forces in Ukraine have shown weaknesses where decisions had to be made on the front lines, he said.

“Chinese soldiers are encouraged to put forward their thoughts and views when discussing how to fight,” Yue said.

China’s seven military districts have been reorganized into five theater commands, the number of group armies reduced and the logistics system reorganized to boost efficiency. The ratio of support to combat units was increased and a greater emphasis placed on more mobile and amphibious units.

Xi has also sought to end rampant corruption in the military, going after two former top generals shortly after taking power. One was killed to life in prison and the other died before his case was concluded.

China’s military is highly opaque and outside the purview of civilian judges and corruption judicials, so it’s difficult to know how thoroughly the organization has been exorcised of practices such as the selling of commissions and kickbacks on defense contracts.

For Xi, the military’s primary mission remains to protect the ruling Communist Party, and he has followed his predecessors in fighting back hard against efforts to have the military shift its ultimate loyalty to the nation.

Xi’s overriding political focus could mean the lessons he draws from the Ukraine conflict are off base, Graham said.

“Xi Jinping will always apply a political solution because he’s not a military specialist or an economic specialist,” Graham said. “I think the military lessons have to go through a political filter, so I’m not sure that China will take the lessons that are abundant and on show for everyone to see.”

The stated goal of China’s military reform is to “fight and win wars” against a “strong enemy” — a euphemism widely understood to refer to the United States.

China has pumped huge amounts of money into new equipment, has initiated more realistic training exercises with force-on-force scenarios, and sought to reform its fighting doctrine by studying American engagements in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo.

Gen. David Berger, the commandant of the US Marine Corps, said in a forum in Australia last week that Beijing would be watching the Ukraine conflict closely.

“I don’t know what lessons they will learn but … they’re focused on learning, without a doubt, because they’ve been doing that for the last 15 years,” he said.

Berger stressed the need for strong coalitions in the Pacific as a way to keep China’s ambitions toward Taiwan in check.

China claims Taiwan as its own, and controlling the island is a key component of Beijing’s political and military thinking. In October, Xi again reiterated that “reunification of the nation must be realized, and will definitely be realized.”

Washington’s longstanding policy has been to provide political and military support for Taiwan, while not explicitly promising to defend it from a Chinese attack.

Like Putin’s assessment of Ukraine, Xi’s China does not appear to believe that Taiwan would try to put up much of a fight. Beijing routinely blames its problems with the island on a small group of hardcore independence advocates and their American supporters.

The entirely state-controlled Chinese media, meanwhile, draws on the imagined narrative that Taiwan would not willingly go to battle against what it describes as their fellow Chinese.

Now, the quick response by many nations to impose tough, coordinated sanctions on Russia after its attack on Ukraine, and the willingness to supply Ukraine with high-tech weaponry could make Xi rethink his approach to Taiwan, Fravel said.

With “the rapid response by advanced industrialized states, and the unity they have demonstrated, Xi is likely to be more ambitious over Taiwan and less emboldened,” he said.

Conversely, the Ukraine experience could prompt China to accelerate its timetable on Taiwan with a more limited attack, such as seizing an outlying island, as a real-world test of its own military, Chen said.

“A sensible course would be to mature the PLA’s joint institutions and procedures through ever more rigorous exercises,” Chen said.

“But as the world has witnessed, a central leader with a specific ambition and a shortening timeline may short-circuit the process in backless fashion.”

• An 2019 clip of a meeting between Volodymyr Zelenskyy and Donald Trump has re-surfaced.

• In the clip, Trump suggests that Zelenskyy “get together” with Putin to solve their “problem.”

• In response, Zelenskyy gives Trump a look of wide-eyed shock and disgust.

An old video has resurfaced on Twitter, showing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s look of alarm and disgust at then-President Donald Trump’s suggestion that he “get together” with Russian leader Vladimir Putin to solve their “problem.”

The video was taken during a meeting on September 25, 2019, between Zelenskyy and Trump, on the sides of the United Nations General Assembly. At the time, the meeting made the news for other reasons — namely, the release of a shocking memo of a call between the two during which Trump pressured the Ukrainian leader to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden.

Initially posted by journalist Aaron Rupar in 2019, the video was re-posted by historian and Boston College professor Heather Cox Richardson on Tuesday.

As of press time, the tweet had been retweeted over 6,000 times and liked around 26,000 times. The original video from Rupar has now been viewed more than 2.4 million times.

In the clip, Trump leans toward Zelenskyy and loudly says: “I really hope that you and President Putin can get together and solve your problem.”

At the time, Russian troops were involved in smaller-scale military skirmishes in the Donbas region of Ukraine.

“That would be a tremendous achievement,” Trump said. “And I know you’re trying to do that.”

Zelenskyy responds to Trump with a look of wide-eyed shock and disgust at the suggestion and does not reply to the US leader.

Zoomed-in versions of the 2019 clip were also widely-retweeted on Twitter, showing a clearer picture of Zelenskyy’s response.

During the same session at the UN, Trump also, on record, urged Zelenskyy to investigate Joe and Hunter Biden. Zelenskyy later responded to press questions, saying that he had an “independent country” and couldn’t “push anyone” to carry out investigations.

Trump was impeached for the first time several months after this meeting, in December 2019, for attempting to solicit Ukraine’s interference in the 2020 election while withholding essential military aid to the country.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Medan, Indonesia – Even by the standards of a justice system known for drama, a US court’s latest ruling in a case pitting Indonesian villagers against one of the world’s most powerful oil companies was unusual enough to raise eyebrows.

John Doe versus ExxonMobil, which has dragged through the courts in the District of Columbia for two decades, took a dramatic turn after a judge ruled last week that the oil giant pay $288,900.78 in legal fees and expenses to the plaintiff’s counsel following a disastrous deposition two years ago

“Sanctions are a very big deal,” Michel Paradis, a human rights lawyer and lecturer at Columbia Law School in New York, told Al Jazeera. “They are rare and often reflect a judge’s genuine frustration with how an attorney or a party has acted.”

In 2020, Mark Snell, ExxonMobil’s Asia Pacific regional general counsel, “severely, repeatedly, and perversely obstructed his own deposition” and refused to answer questions, wasted time and provided inaccurate and evasive answers about whether he was reading from his notes and who prepared them, according to court documents.

The case was filed in the District Court for the District of Columbia in 2001 after allegations the Indonesian villagers were subject to human rights abuses, including sexual assault, torture, rape and wrongful death in and around the ExxonMobil Oil and Gas Plant in Lhoksukon, Aceh Province during the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Born of a 1999 merger between Mobil Oil Indonesia and Exxon, the company was generating more than $1bn in annual revenue at the end of the 1990s when it contracted members of the Indonesian army to guard its facility in Aceh at a cost of $500,000 per month . At the time, Aceh was embroiled in a protracted civil war between the government and the Free Aceh Movement (GAM), a separatist group demanding autonomy from the rest of the country.

The 11 plaintiffs in the case, some of whom are represented by their families, allege that soldiers contracted by ExxonMobil conducted sweeping raids aimed at rooting out suspected separatists, torturing and murdering innocent members of the local populace in the process.

ExxonMobil has strenuously denied knowing about any abuses by contractors under its supervision.

‘Beating about the bush’

Andreas Harsono, a researcher at Human Rights Watch Indonesia, said the court’s latest ruling should prompt ExxonMobil to stop “beating about the bush” and engage with the substance of the case.

“The Indonesian security forces used Exxon company funds for military operations designed to crush dissent in Aceh and to increase capacity to engage in repressive tactics against Acehnese militants,” Harsono told Al Jazeera.

A spokesperson for ExxonMobil declined to comment on the latest development.

Terry Collingsworth, who filed the case and is representing the plaintiffs, told Al Jazeera he could not comment “other than to confirm that this was an award to plaintiffs’ counsel for time and expenses in forcing Exxon to comply with discovery obligations”.

Several of the plaintiffs, who are listed in the court documents as John and Jane Does in order to protect their identities, said they welcomed the sanction and that it exposed a double standard around the deposits.

“I was open with my evidence and I told Exxon’s lawyers everything,” one plaintiff told Al Jazeera. “We have always answered all their questions. We are just simple people, but I have become braver over the years and I’m not afraid to stand up for my rights.”

Another plaintiff, who alleges that soldiers under contract to ExxonMobil attacked him with a bayonet leaving him scarred for life, said the alleged victims in the case had consistently behaved better than the defendants.

“I replied to all their questions in full at the deposition,” he told Al Jazeera.

“We were the victims and we have cooperated throughout the process. Exxon doesn’t want to take responsibility for what they did. We spoke to Exxon’s lawyers at our deposition and told them everything about what happened to us. How can they say now that they don’t remember anything?”

“For 20 years we have been saying the same thing, We were beaten and carved up and we have proof,” he added.

Judge Royce Lamberth slapped ExxonMobil with the $288,999 penalty after last year admonishing ExxonMonil’s counsel, Alex Oh, for describing her opposing counsel as “unhinged” and “agitated and combative” as a result of Snell’s botched deposition.

Ohed from a new role as the head of the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s enforcement division in April last year after less than a week in the job following the judge’s rebuke, saying in her resignation letter that she could not, “address this development without it becoming an unwelcome distraction to the important work of the division.”

“The latest sanction won’t directly affect the outcome of the case,” said Paradis, the Columbia Law School lecturer.

“Good federal judges – and I would definitely include Royce Lamberth among these – have seen a lot and can compartmentalise. So you won’t see him ruling against Exxon out of spite,” Paradis said, noting however that ExxonMobil might be less likely to get the benefit of the doubt in the case going forward.

“It is impossible to know how that will play out,” he said. “But the last thing you ever want as a litigator is to get to the point where a court cannot rely on what you say.”

US President Joe Biden seems determined to keep the “terrorist” designation on Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, which is demanding to be removed before it returns to a deal on curbing its nuclear program.

“Each side is just hoping that the other would blink first,” Ali Vaez, an Iran expert from the International Crisis Group, a conflict-prevention think tank, told AFP.

Negotiations opened a year ago in Vienna to revive the landmark 2015 agreement that was supposed to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.

Under the presidency of Donald Trump, the United States walked out of the agreement in 2018 and reinstated economic sanctions against Tehran, which response in shrugged off restrictions imposed on its nuclear activities.

Biden wants Iran to return to the agreement, provided that Iran resumes those commitments.

Despite early hopes, the talks are deadlocked and the emissaries have not been in the Austrian capital since March 11.

However, a draft compromise is still on the table, after resolution of most of the thorniest issues.

The fate of the Guards is the final obstacle blocking the talks: the Islamic Republic is demanding the removal of its elite ideological force from the US blacklist of “foreign terrorist organizations.”

– Change of direction –

The Iranians argue that it was only added to the list by Trump to increase pressure on them after the US exit from the 2015 agreement, also known by its acronym, the JCPOA.

But the Americans have a shot back that the subject is in no way related to the nuclear issue.

“If Iran wants sanctions lifting that goes beyond the JCPOA, they’ll need to address concerns of ours that go beyond the JCPOA,” State Department Spokesman Ned Price said this week.

He added that Iran should negotiate in “good faith” and reciprocity.

The United States has said it does not negotiate in public and had avoided making any clear statement on the fate of the Revolutionary Guards’ status.

Story continues

But Price’s comments appeared to confirm that the Biden administration was hardening its position against removing the designation after a split between its diplomatic fringe, allied with part of the military, and the political wing of the White House.

The former had favored some kind of gesture toward the Guards on the grounds that dropping the group from the blacklist would have few real-world consequences, while the latter feared criticism from Republicans before the November midterm elections.

Questioned at the beginning of April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken gave a first indication of indeed a toughening stance by saying that the Revolutionary Guards were, in his eyes, a “terrorist organization.”

“I’m not overly optimism at the prospects of actually getting an agreement to conclusion,” he told NBC News.

Influential Washington Post columnist David Ignatius then reported that Biden was preparing to rule out the organization’s removal from the blacklist.

– ‘Crucify’ –

“I don’t think the final decision has been taken yet, but the president is certainly leaning in that direction,” said the Crisis Group’s Vaez.

Vaez hopes, without harboring any illusions, that a compromise might be found by delisting the Guards while keeping their overseas branch, the Quds Force, on the blacklist.

But privately, US officials are suggesting that even such a compromise as that may no longer be on the table.

Vaez recognizes that any gesture Iran on such a sensitive issue toward “would be used by the opponents and to crucify the Biden administration” by denouncing its weakness in the face of such critics of a sworn enemy of the United States.

Making matters worse, the Revolutionary Guards back other US foes — such as Hezbollah in Lebanon, or the Yemeni Huthi rebels, or even some Iraqi militias — and have been blamed for numerous attacks against US soldiers or interests in the Middle East.

Several elected officials within the president’s own Democratic camp are also opposed to their removal from the blacklist.

“And that is the political cost that I think the president is reluctant to pay,” said Vaez, who, however, warns that a failure to reach a deal will also exact a high political cost.

“The Republicans are bound to condemn him of allowing Iran to become a virtual nuclear weapons state under his watch now,” predicted the expert.

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Since March, the military regime in Myanmar has announced the termination of citizenship of 33 high-profile dissidents, a move critics have described as an abuse of human rights and a breach of international law.

Those targeted include diplomats refusing to work for the military, members of a parallel government set up in opposition to last year’s coup, outspoken celebrities and prominent celebrities. Three separate notices in state media said their citizenship was terminated because they committed “acts that could harm the interests of Myanmar”.

The military seized power in February 2021, after the National League for Democracy (NLD) under Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide reelection victory, which the military refused to recognise. The coup sparked a political crisis – hundreds of thousands of civil servants went on strike, millions took to the streets to protest and peaceful demonstrations transformed to take up arms following brutal military crackdowns.

Among those stripped of citizenship is Kyaw Moe Tun, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Nations, who declared his continued loyalty to the overthrown government shortly after the coup. He has been allowed to retain his seat at the UN as the military struggles for formal recognition internationally. Other diplomats stripped of citizenship include Myanmar Ambassador to the United Kingdom Kyaw Zwar Minn, and Thet Htar Mya Yee San, a second secretary at the Myanmar embassy in the United States.

The policy has also targeted prominent members of the National Unity Government – ​​a rival cabinet set up by some politicians elected in the November 2020 polls.

“The junta’s desperate attempts to harm us and make us stateless are totally illegal and will not deter me, nor my colleagues from our work for the brave people of Myanmar who have suffered so much for so long. Indeed, it strengthens our resolve,” Dr Sasa, NUG spokesperson and minister of international cooperation, told Al Jazeera.

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, says the policy is just the latest example of the military “using citizenship as a weapon”.

“There are still many from previous generations of democracy protesters in the 1990s and early 2000s who still have not had their Burmese citizenship restored,” he adding that these issues are unlikely to be resolved until the democracy is restored.

Emerlynne Gil, deputy regional director for research at Amnesty International, says terminating citizenship is “inconsistent with international law” if it leaves the victims stateless.

“This is the likely potential for those targeted by the Myanmar military since the country does not allow dual citizenship,” Gil said.

She adds that the citizenship terminations “appear to be part of a climate of retribution in the country, where military authorities use any means no matter how cruel or to silence opposition” to the coup.

Sasa notes depriving people of their nationality has long been a tactic for the “genocidal” Myanmar military.

“Hundreds of thousands of Myanmar people, particularly our Rohingya brothers and sisters have suffered the same fate. Living stateless in the country they were born in. The only country they have ever known,” he said.

Many in the NLD previously defended the military’s violent 2017 crackdown on the Rohingya, which the US recently declared a genocide.

Many within the pro-democracy movement labeled the primarily Muslim Rohingya as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in an attempt to justify their lack of citizenship rights and treatment that Amnesty International once described as “apartheid”. Aung San Suu Kyi even defended the military at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

But following the coup, the NUG has reversed its approach and has committed to protecting Rohingya human rights and recognising their citizenship in Myanmar.

Passports canceled

Myanmar’s generals are not the only ones to use citizenship as a weapon against their opponents and critics.

Activists and politicians in other Southeast Asian countries have also faced authoritarian restrictions on their citizenship rights.

In 2019, Cambodia’s foreign affairs ministry canceled the passports of 12 prominent opposition politicians, seemingly in an attempt to prevent them from returning to the country. Thailand’s foreign affairs ministry similarly reportedly revoked passports of political local in 2021, apparently to stop them from fleeing the country.

Robertson says Cambodia and Thailand had violated “rights to freedom of movement, and the right to enter and leave one’s country” and called for these practices to “be halted immediately”.

“It’s a small step from canceling passports to what Myanmar has done in stripping citizenship, and in both cases, exiles are prevented from returning to their home country,” he said.

Mu Sochua, vice president of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP) and a dual US citizen, was among the Cambodians to have her passport revoked.

“There’s nothing more devastating than to be stripped of your nationality and the right to return to our place of birth,” Sochua told Al Jazeera. She fled the country in 2017 after CNRP President Kem Sokha was arrested and charged with treason, in a case widely dismissed as politically motivated. She was prevented from returning in 2019.

“I left overnight Cambodia leaving behind a home, a nation, the people under my care and most important my husband’s ashes that I brought back to Cambodia after he passed in the US,” Sochua said.

She said before she left Cambodia, she would visit her husband’s chedi, or tomb, on holidays and other important events to light incense and ask for his spiritual support.

Denied access to Cambodia, she can no longer perform these important rituals.

“A passport for someone living abroad is your only tie to home. To any citizen of any nation it is your legal and national identity. Even your pride. More than anything else it is your constitutional right to possess a passport,” she said. While Sochua also has US citizenship and travel documents, she says at least five of her colleagues now have no travel documents at all.

Sochua says she has been in contact with Sasa about the situation in Myanmar. “Autocratic regimes learn from each other. They belong to the same club,” she said, adding that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations has failed in “many ways” to deter member states from taking such actions.

Others warn that Western governments may have also set a bad example by stripping citizenship from nationals who joined or were linked to ISIL (ISIS).

A recent study from the Institute of State and Inclusion found an “alarming gravitation towards the securitisation of citizenship” (PDF) and deprivation powers were noted part of nationality laws in many European countries, as well as the Middle East.

Although data was scant, it found that while Bahrain had banished the most people in the past 20 years, the United Kingdom was “a global leader in the race to the bottom”, with 212 people deprived of citizenship in the same period.

“Western countries’ actions to strip citizenship of their citizens who have joined ISIS fighters in Syria and elsewhere has created a slippery slope that dictators like the Myanmar generals can use to justify their illegitimate actions,” Robertson warned.

While ISIL (ISIS) fighters may strike a less sympathetic figure than pro-democracy local, experts say there is no legal difference in the act of leaving somebody stateless.

“Governments across the board should stop resorting to targeting citizenship just because they don’t like what an individual is doing,” Robertson added.

Dissidents like Sasa, meanwhile, reject the military’s ability to define their identities.

“This land, this culture, this identity, this heritage, I take with me in my heart. It cannot be taken from me, it cannot be beaten out of me, and I will never let it go. My identity is not defined by a hateful and bigoted military,” he said.

A top State Department official appeared to negate any chance of a diplomatic solution to the Ukraine crisis, saying in a Tuesday interview that he sees no hope for negotiations to end the war given that President Vladimir Putin’s forces seem intent “on bringing as much violence to Ukraine as they possibly can.”

“I wish I saw an opening for diplomacy right now, but I don’t,” said State Department Counselor Derek Chollet in an interview with Yahoo News’ “Skullduggery” podcast.

Chollet has been one of Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s top advisers during a whirlwind period in which Russia’s invasion has spurred an international crisis and led to allegations of war crimes by US officials, including President Biden.

Chollet noted that placing diplomacy front and center was among “the foundational principles” of the Biden administration’s approach to foreign policy and “and, boy, we tried really hard before the invasion to find a diplomatic way out of this.”

But, he said, Russian officials spurned US efforts and the on-again, off-again talks among Russian and Ukrainian negotiators have gone nowhere.

“They have not progressed to this point in a way that I’m optimism about having some sort of diplomatic solution,” he said. “I think the Russians seem very intent on basically bringing as much violence to Ukraine as they possibly can.”

The comments by Chollett, who served as an assistant secretary of defense for international security during the Obama administration, are especially noteworthy given that he now serves at the senior undersecretary level at State, the department whose primary mission is to conduct diplomacy.

But the path to any kind of diplomatic off-ramp has been complicated by the brutality of the Russian invasion combined with continued uncertainty about what Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s government would accept as part of a negotiated settlement.

“I mean, this is the Russians perpetrating these actions, right? Perpetrating these atrocities,” Chollett said. “So that’s why our position has been, we are going to do whatever we can to support the victims of this invasion, the Ukrainians.”

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Asked if US officials would back a settlement that accepts the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and a possible referendum in the eastern regions of the country in exchange for a Russian withdrawal, Chollett replied: “First, it’s not clear to me what the Ukrainians are going to accept. And I think, first and foremost, this is not for us to dictate the terms to the Ukrainians on what they should accept in terms of defending their own country. … They’re going to have to make decisions as a sovereign state about what they would accept.”

Moreover, Chollett said, he believes Putin’s original aim went far beyond control of Donbas, the eastern region of the country where the Russians have mounted a major new offensive. Instead, he said, it was “to take down the Ukrainian government.”

White House says new rule will restore community safeguards in reviews of pipelines and other major US projects.

US President Joe Biden’s administration is restoring federal regulations that require rigorous environmental review of large infrastructure projects such as highways, pipelines and oil wells — including likely impacts on climate change and nearby communities.

The longstanding reviews were scaled back by the Trump administration in a bid to fast-track projects and create jobs.

A US rule finalized on Tuesday will restore key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act, a bedrock environmental law designed to ensure community safeguards during reviews for a wide range of federal proposals, including roads, bridges and energy projects authored in the $1 trillion infrastructure law Biden signed in November, the White House said.

The White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) said the new rule, which takes effect in late May, should resolve challenges created by the Trump-era policy and restore public confidence during environmental reviews.

“Restoring these basic community safeguards will provide regulatory certain, reduce conflict and help ensure that projects get built right the first time,” said CEQ Chair Brenda Mallory. “Patching these holes in the environmental review process will help projects get built faster, be more resilient and provide greater benefits to people who live nearby.”

Former President Donald Trump overhauled the environmental reviews in 2020 in a bid to accelerate projects he said would boost the economy and provide jobs.

The rule change imposed that year restricted the timelines for environmental reviews and public comment and allowed federal officials to disregard a project’s role in cumulative effects, such as climate change.

Environmental groups and African American, Latino and Indigenous had protested the Trump-era rule change, saying it would increase pollution in areas already reeling from oil refineries, chemical plants and other hazardous sites.

The Biden administration has made addressing such environmental justice issues a key priority.

The move comes as the Supreme Court reinstated a separate Trump-era rule that curtails the power of states and Native American tribes to block pipelines and other energy projects that can pollute rivers, streams and other waterways.

In a decision that split the court 5-4 earlier this month, the justices agreed to halt a lower court judge’s order throwing out the Trump rule. The decision does not interfere with the Biden administration’s plan to rewrite the Environmental Protection Agency regulation.

Contrary to frequent assertions by Trump and others in his administration, Mallory said a more rigorous environmental review will actually speed up the completion of crucial projects since they will be more likely to withstand a legal challenge by environmental groups or states.

Many Trump-era environmental decisions were reversed or delayed by courts after findings they did not undergo sufficient analysis.

Environmental groups hailed the rule change, which they said restores bedrock environmental protections under NEPA, a 1970 law that requires the government to accept public comments and take environmental, economic and health impacts into consideration before approving any major project.

“NEPA plays a critical role in keeping our communities and our environment healthy and safe, and Donald Trump’s attempts to weaken NEPA were clearly nothing more than a handout to corporate polluters,” said Leslie Fields, the Sierra Club’s national director of policy, advocacy and legal affairs.

The White House action “reestablishes essential NEPA safeguards and ensures they will continue to protect people and communities today and in future generations”, she said.

Business groups and Republican legislators criticizing the rule change, saying it would slow down significant infrastructure developments.

“Important projects that address critical issues like improving access to public transit, adding more clean energy to the grid and expanding broadband access are languishing due to continued delays and that must change,” said Chad Whiteman, vice president for environment and regulatory affairs for the US Chamber of Commerce.

Boris Johnson on Tuesday night accused the BBC and the Archbishop of Canterbury of being more critical of the Rwanda migrants plan than Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Mr Johnson told Conservative MPs that the BBC and the Archbishop were “less vociferous” in their criticism of the Russian president than they were of plans to send asylum seekers to Rwanda.

Addressing Tory backbenchers at a private meeting, he said the Rwanda deal was a good policy and claimed it had been “misconstrued” by the BBC and senior members of the clergy.

The Archbishop led the Church of England’s attack on the policy, saying it raised “serious ethical questions” and “cannot stand the judgment of God” or “carry the weight of our national responsibility as a country formed by Christian values”.

In the sermon, the archbishop said “sub-contracting out our responsibilities, even to a country that seeks to do well, like Rwanda, is the opposite of the nature of God who himself took responsibility for our failures”.

He also used his sermon to call for a “Russian ceasefire, withdrawal and a commitment to talks”, adding that “this is a time for resetting the ways of peace…let the darkness of war be banished”.

He did not mention Putin by name, but said dictators who “rule by fear, violence and cruelty” will lose.

On the same morning, the Archbishop of York joined the Archbishop of Canterbury in criticizing the plan to send migrants to Rwanda.

In his Easter Sunday sermon at York Minster, Stephen Cottrell said he had found it “so depressing and distressing this week to find that asylum seekers fleeing war, famine and divestment from deeply, deeply troubled parts of the world that will not be treated with the dignity and compassion that is the right of every human being, and instead of being dealt with quickly and efficiently here on our soil will be shipped to Rwanda.”

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Former prime minister Theresa May on Tuesday said she does not support the policy of sending migrants who arrive by unauthorized means 4,000 miles to East Africa.

And she questioned the “legality, practicality and efficacy” of the widely-criticised plans.

But senior Tory Dame Andrea Leadsom criticized as “absolutely abhorrent and inexplicable” criticism from people like Mr Welby.

Meanwhile, addressing the Prime Minister after his speech, the Tory MP for Colne Valley, Jason McCartney, was heard accusing labor leader Sir Keir Starmer of a “whipping up of hysteria” and of using language that showed a “visceral hatred” of the Prime Minister.

Mr Johnson replied that there had been a “coarsening of the debate that does our politics no favours”.