#myanmar-coup

#myanmar-coup

Safety is never guaranteed, says Khun Sue Reh, 23, who on Monday was among the group graduating with the specially designed three-year nursing qualification. Alongside the usual coursework and exams, the students face airstrikes on the hospitals where they are training, government spy drones overhead, roadblocks and internet blackouts.

A South Korean court on Thursday sentenced the former president Yoon Suk Yeol to life imprisonment with labour over his failed martial law declaration in December 2024, finding him guilty of leading an insurrection and making him the first elected head of state in the country's democratic era to receive the maximum custodial sentence. Under South Korean law, the charge of leading an insurrection carries three possible sentences: death, life imprisonment with labour, or life imprisonment without labour.

Scam compounds have flourished in Myanmar's lawless borderlands, part of a multibillion-dollar illicit industry. The centres are typically staffed by foreigners including many Chinese with many saying they were trafficked and forced to swindle people online. Beijing has stepped up cooperation with Southeast Asian nations in recent years to crack down on the compounds, and thousands of people have been repatriated to China.

The group had established industrial parks in Myanmar's Kokang region bordering China, from where they allegedly ran gambling and telecom scam operations involving abductions, extortion, forced prostitution, and drug manufacturing and trafficking. They defrauded victims of more than 29 billion yuan ($4.2bn) and caused the deaths of six Chinese citizens and injuries to others, the court said. The defendants appealed the verdict, but the Guangdong Provincial High People's Court dismissed their applications, it added.

On 1 February 2021, Myanmar's democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup. There were mass protests against the military seizing power and many people were arrested for criticizing the new leadership. Frequent military airstrikes killed civilians and destroyed schools, hospitals and places of worship. According to the UK government, nearly 20 million people in Myanmar now need humanitarian aid.

The Chinese government has executed 11 members of the Ming family crime syndicate. This comes after investigations into the criminal empire uncovered "intentional homicide, intentional injury, illegal detention, fraud, and operating gambling dens", as well as other penalties. In the announcement, which has been translated, the Supreme People's Court has confirmed that the group, led by Ming Guoping and Ming Zhenzhen, working alongside the "telecommunications fraud syndicate" led by other members, had conspired or committed various crimes.

A spate of recent attacks has amplified fears among the country's religious minorities ahead of the February 12 vote, even though the government insists most incidents have been ordinary crimes. Dhaka, Bangladesh Sukumar Pramanik, a Hindu teacher in Rajshahi city about 250km (155 miles) from Bangladesh's capital, Dhaka says the country's upcoming national election could be his final test of trust in politics.

Sir Keir Starmer is only one of the middle power leaders trekking to Beijing to renew relations. No one has forgotten China's increasing international forcefulness, its handling of the pandemic and its closer relations with Russia as war engulfed Ukraine. But the wildness of Donald Trump's first year back in power is spurring Canada, France and others to hedge their bets. This, not whisky tariff cuts, is what the British prime minister sought.

That era of fear, many Bangladeshis believed, had ended with Hasina's ouster in the popular student-led uprising, which forced her to flee to India on August 5, 2024. But while the interim government of Nobel Laureate Muhammad Yunus, who replaced Hasina, is not accused of orchestrating any such excesses, political violence in Bangladesh is surging again ahead of the upcoming vote.