Asia Pacific

Flies hovered over the blackened and swollen bodies of men and boys, lying side-by-side on a piece of tarpaulin, in blood-soaked combat fatigues, amid preparations for a rushed cremation in the Tamu district of Myanmar’s Sagaing region, bordering India.

Quickly arranged wooden logs formed the base of the mass pyre, with several worn-out rubber tyres burning alongside to sustain the fire, the orange and green wreaths just out of reach of the flames.

Among the 10 members of the Pa Ka Pha (PKP), part of the larger People’s Defence Forces (PDF), killed by the Indian Army on May 14, three were teenagers.

The PKP comes under the command of the National Unity Government (NUG), Myanmar’s government-in-exile, comprising lawmakers removed in the 2021 coup, including legislators from Nobel Laureate Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy party.

It mostly assists the PDF – a network of civilian militia groups against the military government – which serves, in effect, as the NUG’s army.

The Indian Army said that on May 14, a battalion of the country’s Assam Rifles (AR) paramilitary force patrolling a border post in the northeast Indian state of Manipur, killed 10 men armed with “war-like stores” who were “suspected to be involved in cross-border insurgent activities”. The battalion, the Indian Army said, was “acting on specific intelligence”.

The Indian soldiers were stationed at the border in Chandel, a district contiguous with Tamu on the Myanmar side of the frontier. Manipur has been torn by a civil war between ethnic groups for the past two years, and Indian authorities have often accused migrants from Myanmar of stoking those tensions.

However, disputing the Indian version of the May 14 events, the exiled NUG said its cadres were “not killed in an armed encounter within Indian territory”. Instead, it said in a statement, they were “captured, tortured and summarily executed by” Indian Army personnel.

For nearly five years since the coup, political analysts and conflict observers say that resistance groups operating in Myanmar, along the 1,600km-long (994 miles) border with India, have shared an understanding with Indian forces, under which both sides effectively minded their own business.

That has now changed with the killings in Tamu, sending shockwaves through the exiled NUG, dozens of rebel armed groups and thousands of refugees who fled the war in Myanmar to find shelter in northeastern Indian states. They now fear a spillover along the wider frontier.

“Fighters are in panic, but the refugees are more worried – they all feel unsafe now,” said Thida*, who works with the Tamu Pa Ah Pha, or the People’s Administration Team, and organised the rebels’ funeral on May 16. She requested to be identified by a pseudonym.

Meanwhile, New Delhi has moved over the past year to fence the international border with Myanmar, dividing transnational ethnic communities who have enjoyed open-border movement for generations, before India and Myanmar gained freedom from British rule in the late 1940s.

“We felt safe [with India in our neighbourhood],” said Thida. “But after this incident, we have become very worried, you know, that similar things may follow up from the Indian forces.”

“This never happened in four years [since the armed uprising against the coup], but now, it has happened,” she told Al Jazeera. “So, once there is a first time, there could be a second or a third time, too. That is the biggest worry.”

‘Proactive operation or retaliation?’

On May 12, the 10 cadres of the PKP arrived at their newly established camp in Tamu after their earlier position was exposed to the Myanmar military. A senior NUG official and two locals based in Tamu independently told Al Jazeera that they had alerted the Indian Army of their presence in advance.

“The AR personnel visited the new campsite [on May 12],” claimed Thida. “They were informed of our every step.”

What followed over the next four days could not be verified independently, with conflicting versions emerging from Indian officials and the NUG. There are also contradictions in the narratives put out by Indian officials.

On May 14, the Indian Army’s eastern command claimed that its troops acted on “intelligence”, but “were fired upon by suspected cadres”, and killed 10 cadres in a gunfight in the New Samtal area of the Chandel district.

Two days later, on May 16, a spokesperson for India’s Ministry of Defence said that “a patrol of Assam Rifles” was fired upon. In retaliation, they killed “10 individuals, wearing camouflage fatigues”, and recovered seven AK-47 rifles as well as a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.

Five days later, on May 21, the Defence Ministry identified the killed men as cadres of the PKP. The ministry spokesperson further noted that “a patrol out to sanitise the area, where fence construction is under way along the [border], came under intense automatic fire”, with the intent “to cause severe harm to construction workers or troops of Assam Rifles to deter the fencing work”.

Speaking with Al Jazeera, a retired Indian government official, who has advised New Delhi on its Myanmar policy for a decade, pointed out the dissonance in the Indian versions: Did Indian soldiers respond proactively to intelligence alerts, or were they reacting to an attack from the rebels from Myanmar?

“It is difficult to make sense of these killings. This is something that has happened against the run of play,” the retired official, who requested anonymity to speak, said. The contradictions, he said, suggested that “a mistake happened, perhaps in the fog of war”.

“It cannot be both a proactive operation and retaliation.”

Al Jazeera requested comments from the Indian Army on questions around the operation, first on May 26, and then again on May 30, but has yet to receive a response.

Thura, an officer with the PDF in Sagaing, the northwest Myanmar region where Tamu is too, said, “The [PKP cadres] are not combat trained, or even armed enough to imagine taking on a professional army”.

‘Taking advantage of our war’

When they were informed by the Indian Army of the deaths on May 16, local Tamu authorities rushed to the Indian side.

“Assam Rifles had already prepared a docket of documents,” said a Tamu official, who was coordinating the bodies’ handover, and requested anonymity. “We were forced to sign the false documents, or they threatened not to give the corpses of martyrs.”

Al Jazeera has reviewed three documents from the docket, which imply consent to the border fencing and underline that the PDF cadres were killed in a gunfight in Indian territory.

Thida, from the Tamu’s People’s Administration Team, and NUG officials, told Al Jazeera that they have repeatedly asked Indian officials to reconsider the border fencing.

“For the last month, we have been requesting the Indian Army to speak with our ministry [referring to the exiled NUG] and have a meeting. Until then, stop the border fencing process,” she said.

Bewildered by the killings, Thida said, “It is easy to take advantage while our country is in such a crisis. And, to be honest, we cannot do anything about it. We are the rebels in our own country — how can we pick fights with the large Indian Army?”

Above all, Thida said she was heartbroken. “The state of corpses was horrific. Insects were growing inside the body,” she recalled. “If nothing, Indian forces should have respect for our dead.”

Border fencing anxieties

Angshuman Choudhury, a researcher focused on Myanmar and northeast India, said that conflict observers “are befuddled by these killings in Tamu”.

“It is counterintuitive and should not have happened by any measure,” he said.

The main point of dispute, the border fencing, is an age-old issue, noted Choudhary. “It has always caused friction along the border. And very violent fiction in the sense of intense territorial misunderstandings from groups on either side,” he said.

When New Delhi first moved last year to end the free movement regime, which allows cross-border movement to inhabitants, Indigenous communities across India’s northeastern states of Mizoram, Nagaland, Manipur and Arunachal Pradesh were left stunned. Members of these communities live on both sides of the border with Myanmar – and have for centuries.

Political analysts and academics note that the border communities on either side reconciled with the idea of India and Myanmar because of the freedom to travel back and forth. Erecting physical infrastructure triggers a kind of anxiety in these transnational communities that demarcation on maps does not, argued Choudhary.

“By fencing, India is creating a completely new form of anxieties that did not even exist in the 1940s, the immediate post-colonial period,” Choudhary said. “It is going to create absolutely unnecessary forms of instability, ugliness, and widen the existing fault lines.”

Last year, the Indian home minister, Amit Shah, said that border fencing would ensure India’s “internal security” and “maintain the demographic structure” of the regions bordering Myanmar, in a move widely seen as a response to the conflict in Manipur.

Since May 2023, ongoing ethnic violence between the Meitei majority and the Kuki and Naga minority communities has killed more than 250 people and displaced thousands. The state administration has faced allegations of exacerbating the unrest to strengthen its support among the Meitei population, which the government has denied.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government and the Manipur state government, also under the BJP, have blamed the crisis in Manipur in part on undocumented migrants from Myanmar, whom they accuse of deepening ethnic tensions.

Now, with the killings in Tamu, Choudhary said that Indian security forces had a new frontier of discontent, along a border where numerous armed groups opposed to Myanmar’s ruling military have operated — until now, in relative peace with Indian troops.

The deaths, he said, could change the rules of engagement between Indian forces and those groups. “Remember, other rebel groups [in Myanmar] are also watching this closely,” he said. “These issues can spiral quickly.”

Beijing says the US is touting Cold War mentality after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calls China a threat to the region.

China has warned the United States against “playing with fire” over Taiwan in response to US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth calling the Asian power a “threat to the region” at a high-profile summit in Singapore.

Speaking at the Shangri-La Dialogue on Saturday, Hegseth said China was “credibly preparing” for military action to shift Asia’s power balance, accusing Beijing of rehearsing a potential invasion of Taiwan.

China considers Taiwan, a separately governed island, to be a part of its territory and has vowed reunification by force if necessary. Taiwan’s government rejects Beijing’s sovereignty claims, saying only the island’s people can decide their future.

Hegseth’s remarks provoked a swift rebuke from China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which stressed that Taiwan remains a domestic matter, warning foreign powers against using the issue as leverage. It described US actions in Asia Pacific as turning the region into a “powder keg”.

“The US should not entertain illusions about using the Taiwan question as a bargaining chip to contain China, nor should it play with fire,” it said.

Hegseth had called on allies in the Asia Pacific region, including key security ally Australia, to spend more on defence after warning of the “real and potentially imminent” threat from China.

Calling the US a “true destabilising” force in the Asia Pacific, Beijing accused Washington of deploying offensive weapons in the South China Sea and aggravating regional tensions.

Beijing accused Hegseth of “vilifying China with defamatory allegations” and promoting a “Cold War mentality”.

“Hegseth deliberately ignored the call for peace and development by countries in the region, and instead touted the Cold War mentality for bloc confrontation, vilified China with defamatory allegations, and falsely called China a threat,” the ministry said, adding that it had lodged a formal protest with the US over what it described as “inflammatory rhetoric”.

China and the Philippines contest sovereignty over some islands and atolls in the South China Sea, with growing maritime run-ins between their coastguards as both vie to patrol the waters.

Beijing also rejected US claims about threats to maritime navigation, insisting it has consistently promoted dialogue to resolve regional disputes and safeguarded its territorial rights within the bounds of international law.

“The US is the biggest factor undermining peace and stability in the South China Sea,” the statement read.

China’s Defence Minister Dong Jun skipped the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, with Beijing sending a delegation of lower-ranking representatives instead.

It was the first time since 2019 that China has not dispatched its defence minister to the high-level dialogue on regional defence, except when the event was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Tensions are already high between China and the US – the world’s two biggest economic powers – over Trump’s ongoing trade war and tariff threats.

US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth has warned that China is preparing to invade Taiwan. Hegseth made the comments at a global defence meeting in Singapore. Chinese officials rejected the allegations as ‘defamatory’.

Voters in South Korea are choosing a new president to replace Yoon Suk-yeol who was impeached and removed from office over his brief and ill-fated martial law bid in December.

The snap election on June 3 is pivotal, with implications for South Korea’s democratic future, as well as its ties with China, the United States and its nuclear armed neighbour, North Korea.

The winner – who will serve a single term of five-years – faces the task of addressing the fallout from the martial law decree, which lasted six hours but unleashed political chaos, including mass protests, a riot at a court and three caretaker leaders in six months.

The new president will also have to tackle a deepening economic downturn and manage tariff negotiations with the US, which has imposed a 25 percent levy on key exports such as steel, aluminium and automobiles.

Here’s what you need to know about the June 3 poll:

Who are the candidates?

There are six candidates on the ballot, but the main contenders are Lee Jae-myung of the opposition Democratic Party of Korea (DP), and Kim Moon-soo of the governing conservative People Power Party (PPP).

Who is expected to win?

Lee, 61, a human rights lawyer-turned-politician, is the clear frontrunner.

A Gallup Korea poll on May 28 showed 49 percent of respondents favoured the liberal candidate, while 36 percent said they would vote for Kim, 73, a staunch conservative who served as labour minister in Yoon’s government.

Trailing in third place is Lee Jun-seok of the conservative New Reform Party, at 9 percent.

What are the key issues?

Yoon’s botched martial law bid has cast a shadow over the race.

It put Lee, who lost the last election to Yoon in 2022, back on track for the presidency.

The leader of the opposition was instrumental in foiling the president’s plan. On December 3, when Yoon declared martial law – in a bid to quash the Democratic Party-dominated parliament, which he portrayed as “anti-state” and a “den of criminals” – Lee rushed to the National Assembly and climbed the walls of the building to avoid the hundreds of armed troops deployed there. He livestreamed his exploit, urging supporters to come to the parliament and prevent the arrest of legislators.

Despite the troop blockades, enough legislators managed to make it to the parliament and vote to end martial law. The assembly went on to impeach Yoon on December 14.

“This election would not have happened if not for the declaration of martial law by Yoon Suk-yeol and his impeachment,” said Youngshik Bong, research fellow at Yonsei University in Seoul. “These issues have sucked in all others like a vortex. Everything else is marginal.”

On the campaign trail, Lee has pledged to bring to justice anyone involved in Yoon’s failed bid and has also promised to introduce tighter controls on the president’s ability to declare martial law.

Where the candidates stand on the martial law attempt

Lee, the opposition leader, has also proposed constitutional changes to introduce a four-year, two-term presidency – at the moment, South Korean presidents are only allowed a single term of five years. Lee has also argued for a run-off system for presidential elections, whereby if no candidate secures 50 percent of the popular vote, the top two candidates take on each other in a second round.

“A four-year, two-term presidency would allow for a midterm evaluation of the administration, reinforcing responsibility,” he wrote on Facebook, calling for a constitutional amendment to enable the change. “Meanwhile, adopting a run-off election system would enhance the legitimacy of democratic governance and help reduce unnecessary social conflict.”

The PPP’s Kim has accepted Lee’s proposals for a constitutional amendment to allow a two-term presidency, but has suggested shortening each term to three years.

Yoon’s martial law bid, however, has left the PPP in crisis and disarray.

Infighting plagued the embattled party as it tried to choose the impeached president’s successor. Although Kim won the party primary, its leaders tried to replace him with former Prime Minister Han Duck-soo. On the eve of the party’s campaign launch, they cancelled Kim’s candidacy, only to reinstate him after party members opposed the move.

Bong, at Yonsei University, said the infighting as well as divisions in the conservative camp over Yoon’s decree has cost it support.

“Kim Moon-soo has not set his position clearly on the martial law declaration,” Bong said. “He has not distanced himself from the legacy of Yoon, but at the same time, he has not made it clear whether he believes the declaration of martial law was a violation of the constitution. So the PPP has not really had enough energy to mobilise its support bases.”

Still, Kim appears to have eroded what was a more than 20 percent point gap with Lee at the start of the campaign.

But he has failed to convince the third placed contender – Lee Jun-seok – to abandon his bid and back the PPP to improve its chances. The New Reform Party’s Lee, who is 40 years old, said on Tuesday there would be “no candidate merger” with “those responsible for the emergency martial law”.

What about foreign policy?

Although policy debates have taken a backseat, the outcome of the election could reorient South Korea’s approach towards North Korea. The two neighbours are technically in a state of war as the Korean War of 1950-1953 ended in an armistice rather than a peace treaty, and ties between them are at a new low.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has called for rewriting his country’s constitution to scrap the longstanding goal of unifying the war-divided nations and described Seoul as an “invariable principal enemy”. Pyongyang has also severed communication lines, and the two countries have clashed over balloons and drones carrying rubbish and propaganda.

Lee of the Democratic Party has promised to ease tensions if elected, including by restoring a military hotline, and committed to maintaining the goal of eliminating nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula.

Kim, however, has backed Yoon’s hardline approach, promising to secure “pre-emptive deterrence” through tools such as ballistic missiles and the redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons. He has said he would also seek a path for the country to pursue nuclear armament by securing the right to reprocess nuclear fuel, a key step towards building atomic weapons.

The two candidates also differ in their approach to the US, the country’s most important security ally, and to China, its biggest trading partner.

Lee, who espouses what he calls a pragmatic foreign policy, has said it is crucial to maintain South Korea’s alliance with the US and pursue security cooperation with Japan. However, he has pledged to prioritise “national interests” and said there’s “no need to unnecessarily antagonise China or Russia”.

Kim, meanwhile, has questioned Lee’s commitment to the US-South Korea alliance, and has promised to hold an immediate summit meeting with US President Donald Trump if elected to discuss tariffs.

“I have a very friendly and trusting relationship,” with the US leader, Kim has said.

He has also indicated a willingness to discuss sharing more of the cost of stationing US troops in the country, something Trump has demanded for years.

Lee Sung-yoon, board member of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, described the policy differences between the rival camps as “immutable” and referred to earlier comments by the Democratic Party’s Lee, because of which some view him as being soft on China and Russia.

“In the past, Lee has said South Korea should not get involved in China’s posture towards Taiwan, and just say thank you to both Beijing and Taiwan and stay out of the conflict. He has said of the trilateral defensive drills among US, Japan and South Korea as ‘a defence disaster’ and an ‘extremely pro-Japanese act’. And more than once he has said that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy incited Russia to invade because he was a political novice who said unfortunate things.”

The analyst said Lee has – over the course of the election campaign – tried to walk back some of his statements in a bid to appeal to more moderate voters.

However, “I would venture to guess that people sitting in the councils of power in Washington, DC, or Tokyo or in Kyiv, Ukraine, are not overly jubilant at the prospect of a Lee administration,” he said.

When will we know the results?

Koreans overseas have already cast their ballots, and early voting took place on Thursday and Friday. Large numbers of people turned out for the early vote, including the two frontrunners.

According to the National Election Commission, some 44.4 million people in the country of 52 million are eligible to vote. On election day, which is a public holiday, polling stations will open at 6am (22:00 GMT) and close at 8pm (20:00 GMT).

Counting will begin immediately and the winner will be known that evening or in the early hours of the following day. The candidate who receives the most votes will be deemed the winner, even if they don’t win 50 percent of the votes.

Singapore – Of the many military officials darting across the lobby of Singapore’s Shangri-La Hotel this weekend, there has been one significant absence.

China’s Defence Minister Dong Jun skipped the annual Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security forum, with Beijing sending a delegation of lower-ranking representatives instead.

It was the first time since 2019 that China has not dispatched its defence minister to the high-level dialogue on regional defence, except when the event was cancelled in 2020 and 2021 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Beijing’s decision raised eyebrows in Singapore, coming at a time of heightened tensions between China and the United States – the world’s two biggest superpowers.

Dong’s absence meant there was no face-to-face meeting with his US counterpart, Secretary of Defence Pete Hegseth, who had the floor to himself on Saturday when he told the defence forum that the military threat posed by China was potentially imminent.

“It has to be clear to all that Beijing is credibly preparing to potentially use military force to alter the balance of power in the Indo-Pacific,” Hegseth told delegates in Singapore.

Pointing to China’s regular military drills around Taiwan as well as increasingly frequent skirmishes in the South China Sea, Hegseth said Beijing was proactively harassing its neighbours.

“There’s no reason to sugar-coat it. The threat China poses is real, and it could be imminent,” Hegseth said.

He also pointed to China’s growing military assertiveness as a reason for Asian nations to boost their defence spending, pointing to Germany, which has pledged to move towards spending 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on defence.

“It doesn’t make sense for countries in Europe to do that while key allies in Asia spend less on defence in the face of an even more formidable threat,” Hegseth said.

The defence chief also looked to reassure Asian allies that Washington was committed to Asia Pacific security despite strained ties in recent months as US President Donald Trump targeted some close allies with hefty trade tariffs.

“America is proud to be back in the Indo-Pacific, and we’re here to stay,” he said, opening his speech.

Some analysts were quick to play down the severity of Hegseth’s warnings about China.

“Short of a very few countries, not many in this part of the world see China as an imminent threat and would up their [defence] spending,” said Dylan Loh, assistant professor in the public policy and global affairs programme at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

China tight-lipped on defence chief’s absence

In previous years, the Shangri-La Dialogue had provided a rare platform for meetings between Chinese and US officials in the more informal surroundings that the summit could offer.

The structure of the schedule also allowed Beijing’s military chiefs to directly respond to the keynote speech from the US defence secretary and to present their narrative to other members of the Asia Pacific.

Beijing has remained tight-lipped on the reason for Defence Minister Dong’s absence from the forum, fuelling an information void that has been filled by speculation.

One theory is that China did not want to send a high-profile delegate to the event at such a sensitive time as Beijing navigates the tariff war with the Trump administration.

“Any sort of faux pas or comments that may go off script can be picked up and picked apart or misconstrued,” said Loh, of Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University.

“So the question is why take the risk when US-China relations are at a very delicate point at this moment,” Loh told Al Jazeera.

The Shangri-La Dialogue weekend has not always been the easiest occasion for Chinese defence ministers. In recent years, they have faced difficult questions from their counterparts in other countries, who are unhappy with Beijing’s increasing assertiveness in the Asia Pacific region.

Loh said this could be another factor in Dong’s absence from the high-profile event.

“Any Chinese defence minister coming to Singapore now will be exposing himself and the country to political risk,” he said. “Themes like the South China Sea and possibly Taiwan will emerge, which makes China a convenient target,” Loh added.

Dong was appointed as China’s defence minister in late 2023, after his predecessor, Li Shangfu, was removed from office.

Less than a year into the job, there was speculation surrounding Dong’s new position following media reports that he was under investigation as part of a wider investigation into corruption in the Chinese military. Beijing denied the reports, with the minister continuing to maintain a public profile despite the allegations.

There has also been intense scrutiny of China’s military, following reports of an apparent purge of top-level officials by President Xi Jinping.

One of Beijing’s most senior generals, He Weidong, was missing from a high-profile political meeting in April, adding to rumours surrounding a possible restructuring in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

Ian Chong, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie China research centre, said such speculation could be a factor in Dong’s no-show in Singapore.

“Because of the domestic turmoil with China’s senior military, they perhaps don’t want to, or the PLA itself feels that it’s not in a position to send somebody senior,” Chong told Al Jazeera.

Announcing Dong’s absence at a news conference before the summit, Chinese military spokesperson Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang maintained that communication channels were still open between defence officials in Washington and Beijing.

“China places great importance on US-China military ties, and is open to communication at different levels,” Zhang said.

China’s drills near the Scarborough Shoal came as South Korea announced finding new Chinese buoys in the Yellow Sea.

China’s navy has conducted “combat readiness patrols” near the disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, while South Korean officials separately announced the discovery of more Chinese buoys in contested waters in the Yellow Sea.

The Southern Theatre Command of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) conducted the drills in the “territorial waters and airspace of China’s Huangyan Island and surrounding areas”, state-run news outlet Xinhua reported on Saturday, using China’s name for the Scarborough Shoal.

The report said the PLA had been conducting drills in the area throughout May to “further strengthen the control of relevant sea and air areas, resolutely defend national sovereignty and security, and resolutely maintain peace and stability in the South China Sea”.

The Scarborough Shoal is a rocky islet claimed by The Philippines, located 220km (119 miles) west of Luzon, the nearest landmass. Beijing blockaded and seized the territory, a traditional fishing ground, from Manila in 2012.

The Chinese navy regularly carries out provocative military drills in the area as part of its claims of sovereignty over almost all of the South China Sea, despite a 2016 international tribunal ruling that Beijing’s claims had no legal basis under international law.

In late April, Manila accused Beijing of carrying out “dangerous manoeuvres and obstruction” after a Chinese naval ship damaged a Philippine coastguard ship with a water cannon near the shoal.

Tension in the Yellow Sea

Also on Saturday, South Korean officials announced they had recorded three new Chinese buoys installed near overlapping waters with South Korea, bringing the total number of such devices installed by China in the Yellow Sea to 13.

“[We] are closely monitoring activities within the provisional maritime zone [PMZ], including China’s unauthorised installation of structures, and will closely [cooperate] with relevant agencies to protect our maritime sovereignty,” a Ministry of Defence official said, according to South Korea’s official Yonhap news agency.

Two of the Chinese buoys – first detected in May 2023, but only announced this week – have been installed near the zone, according to Yonhap.

The third buoy is located inside the maritime zone, a contested area where the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) claims of South Korea and China overlap, Yonhap added.

China asserts its maritime boundary is based on a 1962 agreement signed with North Korea which cuts into waters South Korea considers part of its economic zone.

The Yellow Sea PMZ allows joint management of marine resources and prohibits activities beyond navigation and fishing.

However, tensions have grown between Beijing and Seoul as China has repeatedly erected installations in the waters, including 10 three-metre-wide and six-metre-tall observation buoys since 2018 and a fixed steel structure in 2022.

Last week, China declared three no-sail zones within the zone, in a move “believed to be for military training purposes”, according to the Korea Joongang Daily newspaper.

The no-sail declarations caused concern in Seoul over a potential uptick in Chinese military activity in the area.

Bokeo province, Laos – Khobby was living in Dubai last year when he received an intriguing message about a well-paying job working online in a far-flung corner of Southeast Asia.

The salary was good, he was told. He would be working on computers in an office.

The company would even foot the bill for his relocation to join the firm in Laos – a country of 7.6 million people nestled between China, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar.

With the company paying for his flights, Khobby decided to take the plunge.

But his landing in Laos was anything but smooth.

Khobby discovered that the promised dream job was rapidly becoming a nightmare when his Ghanaian passport was taken on arrival by his new employers.

With his passport confiscated and threats of physical harm ever present, he endured months working inside a compound which he could not leave.

The 21-year-old had become the latest victim of booming online cyber-scam operations in Southeast Asia – an industry that is believed to have enslaved tens of thousands of workers lured with the promise of decently paid jobs in online sales and the information technology industry.

“When I got there, I saw a lot of Africans in the office, with a lot of phones,” Khobby told Al Jazeera, recounting his arrival in Laos.

“Each person had 10 phones, 15 phones. That was when I realised this was a scamming job,” he said.

The operation Khobby found himself working for was in a remote area in northwest Laos, where a casino city has been carved out of a patch of jungle in the infamous “Golden Triangle” region – the lawless border zone between Myanmar, Laos and Thailand that has long been a centre for global drug production and trafficking.

He said he was forced to work long days and sleep in a dormitory with five other African workers at night during the months he spent at the scam centre in the Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone.

Khobby recounted the original message he received from an acquaintance encouraging him to take the job in Laos.

“My company is hiring new staff”, he said, adding that he was told the salary was $1,200 per month.

“He told me it was data entry.”

Casino city

The Golden Triangle Special Economic Zone (GTSEZ) where Khobby was lured to for work operates as an autonomous territory within Laos.

Leased from Laotian authorities by Chinese national Zhao Wei, whom the US government has designated the leader of a transnational criminal organisation, life in the GTSEZ is monitored by a myriad of security cameras and protected by its own private security force.

Clocks are set to Beijing time. Signage is predominantly in Chinese, and China’s yuan is the dominant and preferred currency.

Central to the GTSEZ city-state is Zhao Wei’s Kings Romans casino, which the United States Treasury also described as a hub for criminal activity such as money laundering, narcotics and wildlife trafficking.

During a recent visit to the zone by Al Jazeera, Rolls Royce limousines ferried gamblers to some of the city’s casinos while workers toiled on the construction of an elaborate and expansive Venice-style waterway just a stone’s throw from the Mekong river.

While luxury construction projects – including the recently completed Bokeo International Airport – speak to the vast amounts of money flowing through this mini casino city, it is inside the grey, nondescript tower blocks dotted around the economic zone where the lucrative online scam trade occurs.

Within these tower blocks, thousands of trafficked workers from all over the world – just like Khobby – are reported to spend up to 17 hours a day working online to dupe unsuspecting “clients” into parting with their money.

The online swindles are as varied as investing money in fake business portfolios to paying false tax bills that appear very real and from trading phoney cryptocurrency to being caught in online romance traps.

Anti-trafficking experts say most of the workers are deceived into leaving their home countries – such are nearby China, Thailand and Indonesia or as far away as Nigeria, Ghana, Uganda and Ethiopia – with the promise of decent salaries.

Online ‘butchering’

Khobby told how his “data entry” job was, in fact, a scam known in the cybercrime underworld as “pig butchering”.

This is where victims are identified, cold-called or messaged directly by phone in a bid to establish a relationship. Trust is built up over time to the point where an initial investment is made by the intended victim. This can be, at first, a small amount of the victim’s money or emotions in the case of fake online relationships.

There are small rewards on the investments, Khobby explained, telling how those in the industry refer to their victims as pigs who are being “fattened” by trust built up with the scammers.

That fattening continues until a substantial monetary investment is made in whatever scam the victim has become part of. Then they are swiftly “butchered”, which is when the scammers get away with the ill-gotten gains taken from their victims.

Once the butchering is done, all communications are cut with the victims and the scammers disappear without leaving a digital trace.

According to experts, cyber-scamming inside the GTSEZ boomed during the 2019 and 2020 COVID lockdowns when restrictions on travel meant international visitors could not access the Kings Romans casino.

In the years since, the cyber-scam industry has burgeoned, physically transcended borders to become one of the dominant profit-making illicit activities in the region, not only in the GTSEZ in Laos but also in neighbouring Cambodia and in conflict-ridden Myanmar.

Though not as elaborate as the GTSEZ, purpose-built cyber-scam “compounds” have proliferated in Myanmar’s border areas with Thailand.

The Center for Strategic and International Studies estimates that cyber-scamming in Southeast Asia generates tens of billions annually, while the United States Institute of Peace equates the threat to that of the destructive fentanyl trade.

“Cyber-scam operations have significantly benefitted from developments in the fintech industry, including cryptocurrencies, with apps being directly developed for use at [cyber-scam] compounds to launder money,” said Kristina Amerhauser, of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime.

“Victims and perpetrators are spread across different countries, money is laundered offshore, operations are global,” Amerhauser told Al Jazeera, explaining that the sophisticated technology used in cyber-scamming, along with its international reach, has made it extremely difficult to combat.

Complicit victims?

About 260 trafficked scam-centre workers were recently rescued in a cross-border operation between Thailand and Myanmar. Yet, even in rare instances such as this when trafficked workers are freed, they still face complications due to their visa status and their own potential complicity in criminal activity.

Khobby – who is now back in Dubai – told Al Jazeera that while he was coerced into working in the GTSEZ, he did actually receive the promised $1,200 monthly salary, and he had even signed a six-month “contract” with the Chinese bosses who ran the operation.

Richard Horsey, International Crisis Group’s senior adviser on Myanmar, said Khobby’s experience reflected a changing trend in recruitment by the criminal organisations running the scam centres.

“Some of the more sophisticated gangs are getting out of the human trafficking game and starting to trick workers to come,” Horsey said.

“People don’t like to answer an advert for criminal scamming, and it’s hard to advertise that. But once they’re there, it’s like – actually, we will pay you. We may have taken your passport, but there is a route to quite a lucrative opportunity here and we will give you a small part of that,” he said.

The issue of salaries paid to coerced and enslaved workers complicates efforts to repatriate trafficking victims, who may be considered complicit criminals due to their status as “paid” workers in the scam centres, said Eric Heintz, from the US-based anti-trafficking organisation International Justice Mission (IJM).

“We know of individuals being paid for the first few months they were inside, but then it tapers off to the point where they are making little – if any – money,” Heintz said, describing how victims become “trapped in this cycle of abuse unable to leave the compound”.

“This specific aspect was a challenge early on with the victim identity process – when an official would ask if an individual previously in the scam compound was paid, the victim would answer that initially he or she was. That was enough for some officials to not identify them as victims,” Heintz said.

Some workers have also been sold between criminal organisations and moved across borders to other scam centres, he said.

“We have heard of people being moved from a compound in one country to one in another – for example from Myawaddy to the GTSEZ or Cambodia and vice versa,” he said.

Khobby said many of the workers in his “office” had already had experience with scamming in other compounds and in other countries.

“Most of them had experience. They knew the job already,” he said.

“This job is going on in a lot of places – Thailand, Laos, Myanmar. They were OK because they got paid. They had experience and they knew what they were doing,” he added.

‘What are we here for? Money!’

High-school graduate Jojo said she was working as a maid in Kampala, Uganda, when she received a message on the Telegram messaging app about an opportunity in Asia that involved being sponsored to do computer studies as part of a job in IT.

“I was so excited,” Jojo recounted, “I told my mum about the offer.”

Jojo told how she was sent an airline ticket, and described how multiple people met her along the way as she journeyed from Kampala to Laos. Eventually Jojo arrived in the same scam operation as Khobby.

She described an atmosphere similar to a fast-paced sales centre, with Chinese bosses shouting encouragement when a victim had been ‘butchered’ and their money stolen, telling how she witnessed people scammed for as much as $200,000.

“They would shout a lot, in Chinese – ‘What are we here for? Money!’”

On top of adrenaline, the scam operation also ran on fear, Jojo said.

Workers were beaten if they did not meet targets for swindling money. Mostly locked inside the building where she worked and lived; Jojo said she was only able to leave the scam operation once in the four months she was in the GTSEZ, and that was to attend a local hospital after falling ill.

Fear of the Chinese bosses who ran the operation not only permeated their workstations but in the dormitory where they slept.

“They told us ‘Whatever happens in the room, we are listening’,” she said, also telling how her co-workers were beaten when they failed to meet targets.

“They stopped them from working. They stopped them from coming to get food. They were not getting results. They were not bringing in the money they wanted. So they saw them as useless,” she said.

“They were torturing them every day.”

Khobby and Jojo said they were moved to act in case it was their turn next.

When they organised a strike to demand better treatment, their bosses brought in Laotian police and several of the strikers – including Jojo and Khobby – were taken to a police station where they were told they were sacked.

They were also told they would not be paid what was owed in wages and their overseers refused to give their passports back.

Khobby said he was left stranded without a passport and the police refused to help.

“This is not about only the Chinese people,” Khobby said. “Even in Vientiane, they have immigration offices who are involved. They are the ones giving the visas. When I got to Laos, it was the immigration officer who was waiting for me. I didn’t even fill out any form,” he said.

With help from the Ghanaian embassy, Khobby and Jojo were eventually able to retrieve their passports, and with assistance from family and friends, they returned home.

The IJM’s Heintz, said that target countries for scammer recruitment – such as those in Africa – need better awareness of the dangers of trafficking.

“There needs to be better awareness at the source country level of the dangers associated with these jobs,” he said.

Reflecting on what led him to work up the courage to lead a strike in the scam centre, Khobby considered his childhood back in Ghana.

“I was a boy who was raised in a police station. My grandpa was a police commander. So in that aspect, I’m very bold, I have that courage. I like giving things a try and I like taking risks,” he said.

Jojo told Al Jazeera how she continues to chat online with friends who are still trapped in scam centres in Laos, and who have told her that new recruits arrive each day in the GTSEZ.

Her friends want to get out of the scam business and the economic zone in Laos. But it is not so easy to leave, Jojo said.

“They don’t have their passports,” she said.

Sejong, South Korea – By the standards of South Korea’s teeming metropolises, Sejong is not much of a city.

With a population of 400,000 people, Sejong, a planned city located about 100km (62 miles) south of Seoul, does not even crack the top 20 urban centres.

But if South Korea’s likely next president has his way, Sejong could soon become the country’s “de facto” capital.

Lee Jae-myung, the overwhelming favourite in Tuesday’s presidential election, has pledged to relocate the presidential office, legislature and numerous public institutions to Sejong as part of a renewed push to establish a new administrative capital.

“I will make Sejong the de facto administrative capital and Daejeon a global science capital,” Lee said in the run-up to the election, referring to the nearby central city.

“I will also push for the complete relocation of the National Assembly and presidential office to Sejong through social consensus.”

Sejong was conceived of in 2003 by late President Roh Moo-hyun, who believed that moving the capital would achieve the twin aims of reducing congestion in Seoul and encouraging development in South Korea’s central region.

Roh’s ambitions for Sejong were dealt a setback the following year when the Constitutional Court ruled that Seoul should remain the capital.

While the prime minister’s office and about a dozen ministries have moved to Sejong over the years as part of successive governments’ decentralisation efforts, Seoul has remained not only the official capital but also the centre of political, economic and cultural life.

Greater Seoul is home to about 26 million people – half of South Korea’s population – and most of the country’s top companies, universities, hospitals and cultural institutions are clustered in the region.

On a recent Friday afternoon, Sejong’s wide streets were mostly quiet, a world away from the bustling alleyways of downtown Seoul.

At the city’s express bus station, a number of government workers were waiting on a bus to take them to the capital.

Kevin Kim, a 30-year-old civil servant, travels to Seoul for the weekend at least twice a month.

“My family, friends and girlfriend are in Seoul,” Kim, who has lived in Sejong for nearly two years, told Al Jazeera.

“I have to go to Seoul, as all the big hospitals are there.”

Lee Ho-baek, who works for a start-up in Sejong, also visits Seoul several times a month.

“There just isn’t enough infrastructure or things to do in the city for us,” he told Al Jazeera, explaining that he is not sure if he will stay much longer despite having moved to Sejong only a year ago.

After years of roadblocks to Sejong’s development, including concerns about costs and constitutional legitimacy, candidate Lee’s pledge has stirred tentative signs of growth in the city.

In April, real estate transactions increased threefold compared with the same period the previous year.

But with Sejong’s fortunes so closely tied to the changing whims of politicians, there are concerns about its long-term sustainability.

During discussions about the possible relocation of the presidential office and legislature by Lee Jae-myung’s Democratic Party in 2020, apartment prices jumped by 45 percent – only to decline in the following years.

In Sejong’s Nasung-dong, a central neighbourhood surrounded by parks, shopping centres and flashy apartments, the streets were quiet as Friday afternoon turned into evening.

M-Bridge, a highly anticipated multifunctional mall designed by global architect Thom Mayne’s firm, was largely empty.

According to the Korea Real Estate Board, Sejong has a 25 percent vacancy rate for mid- to large-sized shopping centres, the highest rate in the country.

Few draws for young people

“In our city, the weekdays are busier than the weekends,” Jace Kim, a restaurant owner who came to Sejong in 2015, told Al Jazeera.

“Most public workers who work within the city spend their time and money outside of the city limits. Our city is relatively small and newly built, so it’s ideal for mothers and children. But we don’t have any universities or major companies that will attract young people to come here.”

Moon Yoon-sang, a research fellow at the Korea Development Institute (KDI), said Washington, DC, could be a model for Sejong’s growth and development.

“If the centre of the government moves to Sejong, it’s the hope that conventions and important meetings will happen there instead of in Seoul,” Moon told Al Jazeera.

“Today, there are only two major hotels in the city, but people are expecting a monumental effect with the moving of the National Assembly.”

Park Jin, a professor at KDI’s School of Public Policy and Management, said he supports Sejong becoming the official capital.

After the 2004 Constitutional Court ruling, relocating the capital would require an amendment to the constitution, which would need to be approved by two-thirds of the National Assembly and half of voters in a referendum.

In a 2022 survey by Hankook Research, 54.9 percent of respondents said they approved of moving the capital to Sejong, but 51.7 percent disapproved of moving the National Assembly and the president’s office out of Seoul.

“As all of the country’s talent pool and key infrastructure are staying within Seoul, the country needs to invest in developing our other major cities,” Park told Al Jazeera.

“For Sejong, this means combining with neighbouring Daejeon to become the nation’s centre for administration and research.”

Park believes that the country’s five major cities outside the greater Seoul area should have at least 4 million residents to maintain healthy urbanisation.

Busan, South Korea’s second-largest city, has 3.26 million people. Last year, the Korea Employment Information Service officially categorised Busan as being at risk of extinction due to record-low birth rates and a declining young workforce.

Population declines in regional parts of the country have been further exacerbated by internal migration to Seoul. More than 418,000 people moved to the capital region last year.

Sejong has a goal of reaching 800,000 residents by 2040, roughly double its current population.

“Today, many people won’t think about moving to Sejong. In an age where it’s expected for both members of married couples to be working, it’s very difficult for both members to find jobs outside of Seoul,” Moon said.

“Maybe in the next 10 years, we might see differences in how people view Sejong.”

Park said developing a city from scratch is not a short-term project.

“But with the relocation of the capital, we can expect some real changes to happen,” he said.

Rescuers have already pulled a dozen injured people from the debris during a gruelling search effort at the site.

At least 10 people have been killed after a stone quarry collapsed in Indonesia’s West Java province, with the country’s disaster agency saying search efforts are ongoing to find missing people buried beneath the rubble.

The collapse took place early on Friday at Gunung Kuda mining site in Cirebon, West Java. Footage from the scene of the accident shows excavators moving large rocks and emergency workers placing victims in body bags in an ambulance.

Footage circulating online showed rescuers struggling to retrieve a body from the devastated area. Another showed people scrambling for safety as thick dust rose from a pile of rocks and soil that had collapsed.

Indonesia’s National Agency for Disaster Countermeasure (BNPB) said at least 10 people had been killed, but gave no estimate on the number of people missing. It said heavy machinery – including three excavators – were buried and rescue operations would continue throughout Saturday.

Rescue teams have already pulled a dozen injured people from the debris during a gruelling search effort, according to Cirebon district police chief, Sumarni, who uses a single name.

Sumarni said authorities are investigating the cause of the collapse, adding that the owner and quarry workers have been summoned for questioning. He said police, emergency personnel, soldiers and volunteers – supported by five excavators – are trying to locate any further trapped workers. Rescue efforts are being hampered by unstable soil, risking further slides, he added.

On his Instagram account, West Java governor Dedi Mulyadi said the site was “very dangerous” and did not “meet safety standards for workers”. The governor added that the mine was opened before he was elected and he “didn’t have any capacity to stop it”.

Mulyadi said he has taken action to close the Gunung Kuda mine and four others in West Java considered to be endangering lives and the environment.

Illegal mining operations are commonplace across Indonesia, providing a tenuous livelihood to low-wage workers while coming with a high risk of injury or death due to landslides, flooding and tunnel collapses. Much of the processing of sand, rock or gold ore also involves workers using highly toxic materials like mercury and cyanide with little or no protection.

In May, torrential rain triggered a landslide and floods near a small mine run by local residents in the Arfak Mountains in Indonesia’s West Papua province, killing at least six people.

Last year, a landslide also triggered by torrential rain struck an unauthorised gold mining operation on Indonesia’s Sumatra island, killing at least 15 people.

United States President Donald Trump has accused China of violating an agreement to mutually roll back tariffs and trade restrictions for critical minerals, as he suggested China was in “grave economic danger” until he agreed to cut a deal earlier this month.

Posting on his Truth Social platform on Friday evening, Trump said he made a “fast deal” with China for both countries to back away from triple-digit tariffs for 90 days to “save” Beijing from a “very bad situation”.

The US leader said his tariffs of up to 145 percent on Chinese imports had made it “virtually impossible” for China to trade with the US market, resulting in closed factories and “civil unrest” in the country.

“China, perhaps not surprisingly to some, HAS TOTALLY VIOLATED ITS AGREEMENT WITH US. So much for being Mr. NICE GUY!” Trump added.

Trump did not specify in his post how China had violated the agreement – made following trade talks in Geneva, Switzerland, in mid-May – or what action he planned to take at their alleged failure to comply with its terms.

Asked by reporters about the China deal later on Friday in the Oval Office, Trump said: “I’m sure that I’ll speak to [China’s] President Xi [Jinping], and hopefully we’ll work that out.”

Trump’s deputy chief of staff, Stephen Miller, told reporters that China’s failure to fulfil its obligations “opens up all manner of action for the United States to ensure future compliance”.

Miller added that Trump hoped China would open up to American business in a similar manner to the way the US has been open to Chinese business “for a very long time now”.

China’s embassy in Washington said Beijing has maintained communication with its US counterparts since the Geneva talks, but said they had concerns about recently imposed US export controls.

“China has repeatedly raised concerns with the US regarding its abuse of export control measures in the semiconductor sector and other related practices,” embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu said in a statement.

“China once again urges the US to immediately correct its erroneous actions, cease discriminatory restrictions against China and jointly uphold the consensus reached at the high-level talks in Geneva,” Liu added.

Broken promises

Earlier this week, media reports suggested the Trump administration had ordered US firms offering software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups.

On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the US Department of Commerce confirmed that it was reviewing exports of strategic significance to China, and “in some cases … suspended existing export licences or imposed additional licence requirements while the review is pending”.

On Friday, shortly after lamenting China’s lack of compliance with the Geneva agreement, President Trump also announced plans to increase tariffs on foreign imports of steel from 25 percent to 50 percent on June 4.

The agreement two weeks ago dialling back tariffs for 90 days prompted a massive rally in global stocks, as it effectively lowered the US tariff rate on Chinese goods to the mid-teens from about 25 percent in early April.

As part of the deal, China also agreed to lift trade countermeasures restricting exports of critical metals needed for production by US semiconductors, electronics and defence industries.

But Trump administration officials have publicly stated that China has been slow to adhere to their Geneva commitments and have so far failed to comply.

The Reuters news agency also reported on Friday that global auto executives are sounding the alarm on a looming shortage of rare-earth magnets from China that could force car factories to close within weeks.

“Without reliable access to these elements and magnets, automotive suppliers will be unable to produce critical automotive components, including automatic transmissions, throttle bodies, alternators, various motors, sensors, seat belts, speakers, lights, motors, power steering, and cameras,” the Alliance for Automotive Innovation said in a letter to the Trump administration.

Pakistan has become the fourth country to appoint an ambassador to Kabul, after China, UAE and Uzbekistan.

Pakistan has announced it will designate an ambassador to Afghanistan, the first since the Taliban re-entered and captured Kabul in 2021, in a move aimed at improving previously strained relations between the neighbouring countries.

In a statement on Friday, Pakistani Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar said relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan have improved since his visit to Kabul in April. “To maintain this momentum, I am pleased to announce the decision of the Government of Pakistan to upgrade the level of its charge d’affaires in Kabul to the level of ambassador,” he said.

Dar’s announcement comes a week after he met his Afghan counterpart, Amir Khan Muttaqi, alongside their Chinese counterpart Wang Yi during a trilateral meeting in Beijing.

Dar expressed hope that the decision would strengthen economic cooperation, boost bilateral trade and enhance joint efforts to combat terrorism.

Pakistan-Afghanistan relations are on positive trajectory after my very productive visit to Kabul with Pakistan delegation on 19th April 2025. To maintain this momentum, I am pleased to announce the decision of the Government of Pakistan to upgrade the level of its Chargé…

— Ishaq Dar (@MIshaqDar50) May 30, 2025

Tensions between the two countries have long been strained over Pakistan’s accusations that Kabul provides a haven to the Pakistan Taliban, who are known as Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan or TTP and are allies of the Afghan Taliban.

TTP is a separate group and has been emboldened since the Afghan Taliban returned to power four years ago.

There was no immediate comment from Kabul on the latest development. However, Pakistan had earlier signalled that the two sides were considering an upgrade in diplomatic relations.

Another critical dynamic is the presence of Afghan refugees and migrants in Pakistan. Islamabad has ramped up forced mass deportation, with some tens of thousands having crossed the border, in April, back to an uncertain future in Afghanistan, the United Nations International Organization for Migration (IOM) reported.

Nearly three million Afghans in Pakistan, many who have been there for decades as wars plagued their nation, face deportation after Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif announced in October a three-phase plan to send them back to their home country.

Pakistan and the Afghan Taliban currently have embassies in each other’s capitals, but they are led by charges d’affaires, a lower level than an ambassador.

Pakistan has become the fourth country to designate an ambassador to Kabul, after China, the United Arab Emirates and Uzbekistan.

No country has formally recognised the Taliban administration, with foreign powers saying they will not do so until it changes course on women’s rights.

Diplomats and experts say, however, that having an ambassador officially present their credentials represents a step towards recognition of the Taliban’s government.

Former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner was sentenced on Thursday to two years in prison for role in 1MDB scandal.

Malaysia’s Commodities Minister Johari Abdul Ghani has called a two-year prison sentence for a former Goldman Sachs banker implicated in the multibillion-dollar 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) corruption scandal too lenient.

On Thursday, New York judge Margo Brodie sentenced German-born banker Tim Leissner, a former chairman for Goldman Sachs in Southeast Asia, to two years in prison for his role in the scandal.

Leissner, who previously pleaded guilty to US bribery and money laundering counts, faced a maximum sentence of 25 years.

During sentencing, Brodie described Leissner’s conduct as “brazen and audacious”. Visibly emotional as he read out a statement in court, Leissner offered a “sincere apology to the people of Malaysia” and said he “deeply regret[s]” his actions.

Ghani, chairman of the 1MDB asset recovery taskforce, said on Friday that Leissner should have been given the maximum jail sentence as he was “one of the masterminds” of the scheme, which saw billions of dollars in public money siphoned off Malaysia’s investment fund.

The 1MDB fund was created as a vehicle to attract foreign investment for energy and infrastructure projects in Malaysia, but was pilfered by officials and bankers.

Malaysian and US authorities estimate that around $4.5bn was stolen in total, in an elaborate scheme that spanned the globe and implicated high-level officials, including former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, who was jailed in 2022.

In 2018, Leissner pleaded guilty to bribery and money laundering counts in relation to his role in the scandal, including paying roughly $2bn in bribes to foreign officials and splitting another $1bn in kickbacks with others in the scheme.

A US Department of Justice spokesperson said he will begin serving a 24-month sentence in September.

US prosecutors had called for leniency due to the “extraordinary” assistance he had provided the probe. Leissner served as the star witness in the 2022 trial of his former colleague and Goldman Sachs Managing Director Roger Ng.

Judge Brodie sentenced Malaysian national Ng to 10 years’ imprisonment in March 2023 for, among other crimes, “conspiring to launder billions of dollars embezzled” from 1MDB and paying more than $1.6bn in bribes.

Leissner also provided details regarding the involvement of Low Taek Jho, the Malaysian financier known as “Jho Low”, who stands accused of stealing billions from the fund but remains at large.

Tokyo and Beijing are closing in on a deal to allow Japanese seafood exports to resume following 2023 ban.

China and Japan are closing in on a deal that would see the return of Japanese seafood imports to the Chinese market following a nearly two-year trade ban.

Tokyo said on Friday that the two sides are finalising details following a successful meeting in Beijing this week.

Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi told reporters that officials had “reached an agreement on the technical requirements necessary to resume exports of fishery products to China”.

“Exports to China will resume as soon as the re-registration process for export-related facilities is completed,” Hayashi said, hailing the pending deal as a “milestone.”

China banned Japanese seafood imports in August 2023 after Japan released more than 1 million metric tonnes of treated radioactive wastewater from the former Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. The power plant was destroyed during Japan’s infamous 2011 earthquake and tsunami, when three of its six nuclear reactors collapsed.

While the safety of the wastewater release was backed by the International Atomic Energy Agency, the move was controversial with neighbours like China.

China’s General Administration of Customs said on Friday that exports will resume once the “necessary procedures” are completed after “substantial progress” was made during negotiations.

The deal lays out several new procedures for Japan, whose fish processing facilities will be required to register with China.

Exporters will also need to include certificates of inspection guaranteeing that seafood has been checked for radioactive material, according to Japanese officials.

Chinese restrictions will remain on agricultural and marine exports from 10 Japanese prefectures due to concerns dating back to the 2011 accident.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa said Tokyo would continue to push China to lift any remaining restrictions.

Hong Kong leader John Lee Ka-chiu said the body’s status would be on par with the UN’s International Court of Justice.

The Chinese government has signed a convention establishing an international mediation organisation located in Hong Kong, with Beijing hoping it will rival the International Court of Justice (ICJ) as the world’s leading conflict resolution body.

The Convention on the Establishment of the International Organisation for Mediation (IOMed) was signed into law on Friday, in a ceremony presided over by Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs Wang Yi in Hong Kong.

The ceremony was attended by representatives from several countries, including Indonesia, Pakistan, Laos, Cambodia and Serbia. Representatives from 20 international bodies, including the United Nations, also attended the ceremony, according to Hong Kong’s RTHK public broadcaster.

A video shown at the signing ceremony said the scope of cases handled by the body would include disputes between countries, between a country and nationals of another country, and between private international entities.

Beijing plans for the body to cement Hong Kong’s presence as a top global mediation hub, as it hopes to bolster the city’s waning international credentials.

In an un-bylined opinion piece published in China’s state-run Global Times newspaper, IOMed was described as the “world’s first intergovernmental international legal organisation dedicated to resolving international disputes through mediation”.

IOMed would fill a “critical gap in mechanisms focused on mediation-based dispute resolution”, it said.

“The establishment of the International Organisation for Mediation marks a milestone in global governance and highlights the value of resolving conflicts in an ‘amicable way’,” it added.

The ICJ – the principal judicial organ of the UN, also known as the World Court – is currently the top body for solving legal disputes between member states in accordance with international law. It also provides advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by UN bodies.

Hong Kong Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu said this week that IOMed’s status would be on par with the UN bodies the ICJ and the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague.

Lee said it would also help bring “substantial” economic benefits and job opportunities, as well as stimulate various sectors including hospitality and transport, to Hong Kong.

Hong Kong has experienced sustained economic stagnation since its handover back to Chinese rule in 1997 after more than a century and a half as a British colony.

Investor confidence has been rocked by Beijing’s increasing control over all aspects of life in the territory – including the economy – while gloom also persists about the state of China’s post-pandemic recovery.

In an opinion piece published in the South China Morning Post, Hong Kong’s Justice Secretary Paul Lam said IOMed would help Hong Kong cope with challenges presented by “hostile external forces” that are “attempting to de-internationalise and de-functionalise” it.

“To cope with such a challenge, Hong Kong needs to make good use of the IOMed headquarters as a focus for strengthening the city as an international dispute resolution centre, so as to give full play to its institutional advantages under the ‘one country, two systems’ framework,” Lam said, referring to China’s model of governing Hong Kong, which nominally allows it a level of autonomy.

The IOMed headquarters, due to open by the end of this year or in early 2026, will be located at a former police station in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district.

They’ve long been hedging their bets.
But Southeast Asian nations are caught in the dispute between the United States and China.
The trade-dependent countries are under threat from Trump’s tariffs, too.
They face a delicate balancing act between economic survival and strategic neutrality.
The message was clear at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations – ASEAN’s recent summit in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur.
Member countries are recalibrating their economic partnerships to insulate their economies.
That includes a push to deepen trade ties with China and Gulf countries.

Why is the price of Japanese rice rocketing?

Plus, should older people work longer?

It is the latest move by the Trump administration in a campaign against US universities and international students: a decision to revoke the visas of Chinese students, who number in the hundreds of thousands in the United States.

The US secretary of state has also announced the suspension of interviews for new student visa applicants – and an increase in the vetting of their social media postings.

With China being the second-biggest source of international students in the US after India, the reduction in revenues for American schools and universities is expected to be heavy.

US President Donald Trump has already cut funding to Harvard University.

How are academia and research likely to be affected in the US – and around the world?

Presenter:

James Bays

Guests:

Clay Harmon – Executive director of the Association of International Enrollment Management

Alexandra Miller – Immigration lawyer and senior adviser to Vecina, a non-profit group advocating for immigrant justice

Josef Gregory Mahoney – Professor of politics and international relations, East China Normal University

Washington, DC – For Anson, hearing the news that Chinese student visas were the latest target of US President Donald Trump’s administration was “heartbreaking”.

The Chinese graduate student, who is studying foreign service at Georgetown University, told Al Jazeera that he feels uncertain about the future of students like himself after US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the US would begin to “aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

“There is definitely a degree of uncertainty and anxiety observed amongst us,” Anson said, asking that only his first name be used.

The Trump administration has offered little further clarity on which students would be affected, with some observers seeing the two-sentence announcement, which also vowed to “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny” for future visa applicants from China and Hong Kong, as intentionally vague.

While 23-year-old Anson said he understood the US government had concerns about foreign influence and national security when it came to China, he was confused as to why the Trump administration’s new policy was potentially so wide reaching.

Most students from his homeland, he said, were just like the other more than one million students who study every year in the US, a country that is known both for its educational opportunities and for its “inclusivity and broad demographics”.

“It is heartbreaking for many of us to see a country built by immigrants becoming more xenophobic and hostile to the rest of the world,” he said, adding that he and other Chinese students in the US were still trying to decipher the policy shift.

‘Greater and greater suspicion’

It is not the first time the Trump administration has taken aim at Chinese students, with the US Department of Justice in 2018, during Trump’s first term, launching the so-called “China Initiative” with the stated aim of combatting “trade secret theft, hacking, and economic espionage”.

An MIT analysis instead showed the programme focused predominantly on researchers and academics of Chinese descent, in what critics said amounted to “racial profiling and fear mongering”. It was discontinued in February 2022 by the administration of former US President Joe Biden.

Since then, there has only been “greater and greater suspicion in the US, almost on a bipartisan basis, of various aspects of Chinese technology, actions by Beijing around the world, and now these concerns about surveillance and spying within the US”, according to Kyle Chan, a researcher on China at Princeton University.

That included a Republican-led congressional report in September 2024 that claimed hundreds of millions of US tax dollars – funneled through US-China partnerships at universities – helped Beijing develop critical technologies, including those related to semiconductors, artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons, and nuclear capabilities.

But Chan, while acknowledging “genuine security concerns” exist, said the broad announcement from the Trump administration did not appear to actually address those concerns.

Instead, it has sent “shock waves of fear throughout university campuses across the country”, he said.

That uncertainty has been compounded by Trump’s recent pressure campaigns on US universities, which most recently involved a since-blocked revocation of Harvard University’s ability to enrol international students.

“I think the vagueness is part of the [Trump administration’s] strategy, because it is not about a concrete policy,” Chan told Al Jazeera. “I don’t think it’s really, at the end of the day, about national security and trying to find the few individuals who may pose a genuine risk.”

Instead, he saw the move as aimed at Trump’s political audience, those sitting at an “overlap between people who are very anxious about immigrants in general, and people who are very anxious about China”.

‘Tremendous disruption’

The administration has offered little clarity on the scope of the visa revocations, or how it will define students with “connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields”.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce gave few further specifics, saying only that the department “will continue to use every tool in our tool chest to make sure that we know who it is who wants to come into this country and if they should be allowed to come in”.

“The United States, I further can say here, will not tolerate the CCP’s exploitation of US universities or theft of US research, intellectual property or technologies to grow its military power, conduct intelligence collection or repress voices of opposition,” she said.

Despite the dearth of clarity, the eventual shape of the policy will determine just how “disruptive” it could be, according to Cole McFaul, a research analyst at the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University.

He pointed to “real concerns about research security and about illicit IP [intellectual property] transfer” when it comes to Beijing, noting there have been a handful of documented cases of such activity in recent years.

“My hope is that this is a targeted action based on evidence and an accurate assessment of risk that takes into account the costs and the benefits,” McFaul said.

“My worry is that this will lead to broad-based, large-scale revocations of visas for Chinese students operating in STEM subjects,” he said, referencing the abbreviation for science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

McFaul noted that about 80 percent of the estimated 277,000 Chinese students who study in the US annually are in STEM subjects, in what he described as “an enormously important talent pipeline from China to the United States for the past 40 years”.

A vast majority of Chinese PhDs in STEM subjects – also about 80 percent – tend to stay in the US after their studies, in what McFaul described as another major benefit to the US.

“The question is, what counts as someone who’s working in a critical technology? Are life sciences critical? I would say ‘yes’. Are the physical sciences critical? I’d say ‘yes’. Is computer science critical? Is engineering critical?” McFaul said.

“So there’s a world where the vast majority of Chinese students are disallowed from studying in the United States, which would be an enormous loss and tremendous disruption for the United States science and technology ecosystem,” he said.

‘Generating unnecessary fear’

As the policy remains foggy, Chinese students in the US said they are monitoring the often fickle winds of the Trump administration.

Su, a 23-year-old applied analytics graduate student at Columbia University, said she swiftly changed her plans to travel home to China this summer amid the uncertainty.

“I was afraid if I go back to China, I won’t be able to come back to the US for when classes begin,” said Su, who asked to only use her last name given the “sensitive” situation.

“When Trump announces something, we never know if it’s going to be effective or not,” she told Al Jazeera. “It’s always changing”.

Deng, a graduate student at Georgetown who also asked that his full name not be used, said he broadly agreed that reforms were needed to address issues related to Chinese influence in US academia.

Those included intimidation of political dissidents, the spread of nationalist propaganda, and “oligarchy corruption”, he said.

But, in an email to Al Jazeera, he said the administration’s approach was misguided.

“The current measures not only do not achieve such goals,” he said, “but [are] also generating unnecessary fear even among the Chinese student communities that have long been fully committed to the development and enrichment of US society.”

Cambodian and Thai officials claim soldiers from other side opening fire first in latest deadly border clash between the neighbours.

Cambodia’s leader has called for calm in the country a day after a soldier was killed in a brief clash with troops from neighbouring Thailand, in a disputed zone along the Thai-Cambodia border.

In a written statement on Thursday, Prime Minister Hun Manet said people should not “panic over unverified material being circulated”, and reassured the country that he did not want a conflict between Cambodian and Thai forces.

“For this reason, I hope that the upcoming meeting between the Cambodian and Thai army commanders will produce positive results to preserve stability and good military communication between the two countries, as we have done in the past,” said Hun Manet, who is currently on a visit to Tokyo.

“Even though I am in Japan … the command system and hierarchy for major military operations such as troop movements remain under my full responsibility as prime minister,” he added.

Cambodia’s Ministry of National Defence said on Wednesday that one of its soldiers was killed in a brief firefight with Thai troops, in a disputed border region between the country’s Preah Vihear province and Thailand’s Ubon Ratchathani province.

The ministry accused Thai soldiers of opening fire first on a Cambodian military post that had long existed in the contested border zone.

However, Thailand’s Minister of Defence Phumtham Wechayachai said Cambodian forces in the area had opened fire first, adding they had previously dug a trench in the area in an effort to assert Cambodia’s claim over the disputed territory, local media reported.

“I have been informed that the return fire was necessary to defend ourselves and protect Thailand’s sovereignty. I have instructed caution. Although the ceasefire holds, both sides continue to face each other,” the minister said, according to Thailand’s The Nation newspaper.

The Nation also reported that Thailand’s Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra spoke with her counterpart, Hun Manet, and both were working to lower the temperature on the dispute.

“We don’t want this to escalate,” the Thai prime minister was quoted as saying.

Cambodia and Thailand have a long history of disputes along their mutual border, including armed clashes that broke out in 2008 near Cambodia’s Preah Vihear Temple, which was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site that year. Fighting also broke out along the border in 2011.

The Associated Press news agency reports that in February, Cambodian troops and their family members entered an ancient temple along the border and sang the Cambodian national anthem, leading to a brief argument with Thai troops.

The incident was recorded on video and went viral on social media.

Chinese state media says the mission aims ‘to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids’ and the Earth.

China has successfully launched a spacecraft as part of its first-ever mission to retrieve pristine asteroid samples, in what researchers have described as a “significant step” in Beijing’s ambitions for interplanetary exploration.

China’s Long March 3B rocket lifted off at about 1.31am local time (18:30 GMT) on Thursday from the Xichang Satellite Launch Centre in southwest China’s Sichuan province. It was carrying the Tianwen-2 spacecraft, a robotic probe that could make China the third nation to fetch pristine asteroid rocks.

Announcing the launch, Chinese state-run news outlets said the “spacecraft unfolded its solar panels smoothly”, and that the China National Space Administration (CNSA) had “declared the launch a success”.

Over the next year, Tianwen-2 will approach a small near-Earth asteroid some 10 million miles (16 million km) away, named “469219 Kamoʻoalewa”, also known as 2016HO3.

The spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the asteroid, which researchers believe is potentially a fragment of the Moon, in July 2026. It will then shoot the capsule with rock samples back to Earth for a landing in November 2027.

If successful, China would become only the third country to carry out such a mission after Japan first fetched samples from a small asteroid in 2010, followed by the United States in 2020.

The People’s Daily state-run newspaper described the mission’s purpose as an “endeavour to shed light on the formation and evolution of asteroids and the early solar system”.

The newspaper quoted Shan Zhongde, the head of the CNSA, as saying that the mission represented a “significant step in China’s new journey of interplanetary exploration”. He added that the mission was expected to yield “groundbreaking discoveries and expanding humanity’s knowledge of the cosmos”.

The mission has multiple goals over the “decade-long expedition”, according to Chinese state media, including “collecting samples from near-Earth asteroid 2016HO3” and “exploring the main-belt comet 311P”.

It will also aim to measure the “physical parameters of the two celestial targets”, including their “orbital dynamics, rotation, size, shape and thermal properties”.

The samples will be used to determine the “physical properties, chemical and mineral composition and structural characteristics” of asteroids, according to researchers working on the project.

As a quasi-satellite of Earth that has orbited the Sun in a synchronised path with the Earth for nearly a century, 2016HO3 has a diameter of between 120 feet (40 metres) and 300 feet (100 metres).

China has swiftly expanded its space programmes and embarked on several landmark missions in recent years, including landing robots on the far side of the Moon and collecting humankind’s first-ever samples from the area in June last year.

China is also running its own Tiangong space station in orbit – the only operational space station other than the International Space Station (ISS) – after the US barred it from participating in the ISS.

In April, three crew members landed back in the country’s north after spending six months on board Tiangong in what was the longest-ever mission in space by Chinese astronauts.

Beijing has also invested heavily in planned crewed missions to the Moon that would see Chinese astronauts on the lunar surface by 2030.

The US has also stated its aim to put astronauts back on the Moon for the first time since 1972, with NASA planning to launch its Artemis 3 mission in 2026 at the earliest.

UN Office on Drugs and Crime says ‘explosive growth’ in synthetic drug trade led to record seizures of methamphetamine in East and Southeast Asia in 2024.

Drug production and trafficking has surged in the infamous “Golden Triangle“, where the borders of Myanmar, Laos and Thailand meet, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) has warned in a new report on the scale of the regional trade in synthetic drugs.

The UNODC said a record 236 tonnes of methamphetamine were seized last year in the East and Southeast Asia regions, marking a 24 percent increase in the amount of the narcotic seized compared with the previous year.

While Thailand became the first country in the region to seize more than 100 tonnes of methamphetamine in a single year last year – interdicting a total of 130 tonnes – trafficking of the drug from Myanmar’s lawless Shan State is rapidly expanding in Laos and Cambodia, the UNODC said.

“The 236 tons represent only the amount seized; much more methamphetamine is actually reaching the market,” the UNODC’s acting regional representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, Benedikt Hofmann, said in a statement.

“While these seizures reflect, in part, successful law enforcement efforts, we are clearly seeing unprecedented levels of methamphetamine production and trafficking from the Golden Triangle, in particular Shan State,” Hofmann said.

Transnational drug gangs operating in East and Southeast Asia are also showing “remarkable agility” in countering attempts by regional law enforcement to crack down on the booming trade in synthetic drugs.

Myanmar’s grinding civil war, which erupted in mid-2021, has also provided favourable conditions for an expansion of the drug trade.

“Since the military takeover in Myanmar in February 2021, flows of drugs from the country have surged across not only East and Southeast Asia, but also increasingly into South Asia, in particular Northeast India,” the report states.

The UNODC’s Inshik Sim, the lead analyst for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, said countries neighbouring Myanmar are becoming key trafficking routes for drugs produced in the Golden Triangle.

“The trafficking route connecting Cambodia with Myanmar, primarily through Laos PDR, has been rapidly expanding,” Sim said, using the acronym that is part of Laos’s official name, the People’s Democratic Republic.

“Another increasingly significant corridor involves maritime trafficking routes linking Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, with Sabah in Malaysia serving as a key transit hub,” he said.

Evolving, cell-based transnational organized crime groups based in East and #SoutheastAsia are increasingly adopting technologies across the entire drug supply chain while converging with other organized crime activities.

Read more in our latest report: https://t.co/oL416cuZJ3 pic.twitter.com/pqUfX5FmnF

— UNODC Southeast Asia-Pacific (@UNODC_SEAP) May 28, 2025

The UNODC report also notes that while most countries in the region have reported an overall increase in the use of methamphetamine and ketamine – a powerful sedative – the number of drug users in the older age group has grown in some nations.

“Some countries in the region, such as Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand, have reported consecutive increases in the number of older drug users, while the number of younger users has declined,” the UNODC report states, adding that the age trend needed to be studied further.

The UNODC’s Hofmann said the decline in the number of younger drug users admitted for treatment may be due to targeted drug use prevention campaigns.

“It will be key for the region to increase investment in both prevention and supply reduction strategies,” he added.