The succession of Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama, is a thorn in China-India relations, the Chinese embassy in New Delhi said on Sunday, as India’s foreign minister prepares to visit China for the first time since deadly border clashes in 2020.
Ahead of celebrations this month for his 90th birthday that were attended by senior Indian ministers, the head of Tibetan Buddhists riled China again by saying it had no role in his succession.
Tibetans believe the soul of any senior Buddhist monk is reincarnated after his death, but China says the Dalai Lama’s succession will also have to be approved by its leaders.
The Dalai Lama has been living in exile in India since 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule in Tibet, and Indian foreign relations experts say his presence gives New Delhi leverage against China.
India is also home to about 70,000 Tibetans and a Tibetan government-in-exile.
Yu Jing, a Chinese embassy spokesperson, said on social media app X that some people from strategic and academic communities in India had made “improper remarks” on the reincarnation of the Dalai Lama.
Yu did not name anyone but in recent days, Indian strategic affairs analysts and a government minister backed the Dalai Lama’s remarks on his succession.
“As professionals in foreign affairs, they should be fully cognizant of the sensitivity of issues related to Xizang,” Yu said, using the Chinese name for Tibet. “The reincarnation and succession of the Dalai Lama is inherently an internal affair of China,” she said.
“(The) Xizang-related issue is a thorn in China-India relations and has become a burden for India. Playing the ‘Xizang card’ will definitely end up shooting oneself in the foot.”
Indian Parliamentary and Minority Affairs Minister Kiren Rijiju, who sat next to the Dalai Lama during the birthday festivities a week ago, has said that as a practising Buddhist, he believes only the spiritual guru and his office have the authority to decide on his reincarnation.
French President Emmanuel Macron has outlined plans for a big increase in defence spending, warning Europe’s liberty is facing a “greater threat” than at any time since the end of World War Two.
In a speech to the armed forces in Paris, he said “we are living in a pivotal moment” due to complex geopolitics.
Macron called for France’s defence spending to rise by €3.5bn (£3bn) next year and then by a further €3bn in 2027.
Referencing the threat from Russia, he denounced “imperialist policies” and “annexing powers”.
Fighting has raged since Moscow launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Macron pledged to double France’s military budget by 2027, three years earlier than originally planned.
In 2017, his country’s defence budget stood at €32bn and under the plans would rise to €64bn in two years time. The proposals still need to be approved by the French government.
“To be free in this world, you must be feared. To be feared, you must be powerful,” he said in the speech, which fell on the eve of Bastille Day.
Macron said the world was witnessing the return of nuclear power and the “proliferation of major conflicts”.
He also referenced the US bombing of Iran, fighting between India and Pakistan and what he called the “ups and downs in American support for Ukraine”.
Last month, Nato members agreed to commit to spending 5% of GDP annually on defence, up from the previous target of 2%.
The UK also announced its own defence review, with Defence Secretary John Healey saying it would send a “message to Moscow”.
On Friday, the head of the French army, Thierry Burkhard, said Russia saw France as its “main adversary in Europe”.
Russia posed a “durable” threat to Europe, Burkhard said, adding that the “rank of European countries in tomorrow’s world” was being decided in Ukraine.
France’s Prime Minister Francois Bayrou is expected to outline next year’s budget on Thursday.
Grace Wolstenholme wants people to be more mindful of disinformation on social media
A TikTok creator has urged social media users to be more aware of disinformation after a video claiming she was dead was watched 650,000 times.
Grace Wolstenholme, 22, has gained 1.3 million followers since 2021 for her videos which talk about living with cerebral palsy.
One of her most popular videos was used without her permission by an account appearing to sell pillows, and was captioned: “I lost my autistic sister today so I bought this pillow to imitate cuddling her.”
TikTok confirmed the video had been removed for violating its community guidelines. Despite numerous attempts, the BBC has been unable to contact the user who shared the video.
“There’s a lot of bad people on social media, so you do need to check the facts,” said Ms Wolstenholme, who splits her time between Essex and London.
Her original video, posted in 2021, has been liked 5.2 million times and shows her throwing a punch and falling over in a gym class while working with a personal trainer.
Ms Wolstenholme said she became aware of its reuse in the death hoax, uploaded in May, when someone she knows contacted her mum to pass on their condolences.
TikTok
The video featured footage of Grace falling over in the gym, which had previously gone viral via her own account
Ms Wolstenholme had been keeping a low profile online because she had been unwell for about three months, which she said made the hoax appear genuine.
“People were commenting saying ‘rest in peace, Grace. I love you’. People were severely devastated hearing I was dead.”
She said she had lost thousands of followers and seen a drop in views because of people assuming she was dead, which had reduced her income.
TikTok rewards its most popular creators by paying them based on video views and engagements.
Grace Wolstenholme
Grace Wolstenholme started posting videos on TikTok in 2021 and now has 1.3 million followers
Ms Wolstenholme said she was also frustrated by further disinformation.
“My disability isn’t autism, it’s cerebral palsy. So he got my disability wrong, and said I was dead,” she added.
Ms Wolstenholme said the fake video was taken off TikTok after she contacted someone on Instagram who had the same username.
But it was reposted on TikTok days later and the user sent a series of offensive messages to Ms Wolstenholme.
TikTok removed the video after it was contacted by the BBC, and said it had violated its community guidelines.
It did not comment on Ms Wolstenholme’s concerns around the sharing of disinformation on the platform.
‘Triggering’
Ms Wolstenholme said her followers were “deeply disgusted” by what had happened.
“It’s triggering for my followers to see because some of my followers suffer with their mental health,” she said.
A second video appearing to mock Ms Wolstenholme’s disability was posted by the same TikTok account.
The TikTok and Instagram accounts and their associated website are no longer active.
The name of the business was not that of any limited company registered at Companies House and the VAT number it displayed was not associated with any UK business.
The BBC called and emailed the shop using contact details found on its website but did not get a response, and unsuccessfully messaged the TikTok account and another profile which appeared to match the person in the videos.
Ms Wolstenholme reported the harassment to the Metropolitan Police, which confirmed it was exploring “several lines of inquiry”.
A police spokeswoman said: “The victim continues to be supported by officers. At this stage no arrests have been made.”
If you are affected by any of the issues in this story, details of help and support are available at BBC Action Line
The “humanitarian city” Israel’s defence minister has proposed building on the ruins of Rafah would be a concentration camp, and forcing Palestinians inside would be ethnic cleansing, Israel’s former prime minister Ehud Olmert has told the Guardian.
Israel was already committing war crimes in Gaza and the West Bank, Olmert said, and construction of the camp would mark an escalation.
“It is a concentration camp. I am sorry,” he said, when asked about the plans laid out by Israel Katz last week. Once inside, Palestinians would not be allowed to leave, except to go to other countries, Katz said.
Katz has ordered the military to start drawing up operational plans for construction of the “humanitarian city” on the ruins of southern Gaza, to house initially 600,000 people and eventually the entire Palestinian population.
“If they [Palestinians] will be deported into the new ‘humanitarian city’, then you can say that this is part of an ethnic cleansing. It hasn’t yet happened,” Olmert said. That would be “the inevitable interpretation” of any attempt to create a camp for hundreds of thousands of people, he said.
Olmert did not consider Israel’s current campaign was ethnic cleansing because, he said, evacuating civilians to protect them from fighting was legal under international law, and Palestinians had returned to areas where military operations had finished.
The “humanitarian city” project is backed by Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and Israel’s refusal to withdraw from the area Katz envisages for the camp is a sticking point in the faltering negotiations for a ceasefire deal, Israeli media have reported.
Olmert said that after months of violent rhetoric, including calls from ministers to “cleanse” Gaza and projects to build Israeli settlements there, government claims that the “humanitarian city” aimed to protect Palestinians were not credible.
Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, called extremist cabinet ministers ‘the enemy from within’. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
“When they build a camp where they [plan to] ‘clean’ more than half of Gaza, then the inevitable understanding of the strategy of this [is that] it is not to save [Palestinians]. It is to deport them, to push them and to throw them away. There is no other understanding that I have, at least.”
Israeli human rights lawyers and scholars have described the plan as a blueprint for crimes against humanity and some have warned that if implemented, “under certain conditions it could amount to thecrime of genocide”.
Other Israelis who have described the planned “humanitarian city” as a concentration camp have been attacked for invoking comparisons to Nazi Germany, when the government says it is designed to protect Palestinians. Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial centre, accused one journalist of “a serious and inappropriate distortion of the meaning of the Holocaust”.
Olmert, who led Israel from 2006 to 2009, spoke to the Guardian on the day funerals were held in the occupied West Bank for two Palestinian men, one an American citizen, who had been killed by Israeli settlers.
The latest deaths came after a campaign of violent intimidation that has forced the residents of several villages to flee their homes over the past two years.
The attacks were war crimes, Olmert said. “[It is] unforgivable. Unacceptable. There are continuous operations organised, orchestrated in the most brutal, criminal manner by a large group.”
The attackers are often called “hilltop youth” in Israel and described as fringe extremists. Olmert said he preferred the term “hilltop atrocities” to describe the young men whose campaign of spiralling violence was carried out with near-total impunity.
“There is no way that they can operate in such a consistent, massive and widespread manner without a framework of support and protection which is provided by the [Israeli] authorities in the [occupied Palestinian] territories,” he said.
Olmert described extremist cabinet ministers who backed violence in Gaza and the West Bank – where they have authorised major settlement expansions and control law enforcement with a view to expanding the borders of Israel – as a greater threat to the country’s long-term security than any external foe. “These guys are the enemy from within,” he said.
Extreme suffering in Gaza and settler atrocities in the West Bank were fuelling growing anger against Israel that cannot all be written off as antisemitism, Olmert said.
“In the United States there is more and more and more expanding expressions of hatred to Israel,” he said. “We make a discount to ourselves saying: ‘They are antisemites.’ I don’t think that they are only antisemites, I think many of them are anti-Israel because of what they watch on television, what they watch on social networks.
“This is a painful but normal reaction of people who say: ‘Hey, you guys have crossed every possible line.’”
Attitudes inside Israel might start to shift only when Israelis started to feel the burden of international pressure, he said, calling for stronger international intervention in the absence of serious political opposition at home. He also criticised the Israeli media for its failure to report on violence against Palestinians.
Olmert said he could not refrain ‘from accusing this government of being responsible for war crimes’. Photograph: Quique Kierszenbaum/The Guardian
Olmert backed the initial campaign against Hamas after the 7 October 2023 attacks. But he said that, by this spring, when the Israeli government “publicly and in a brutal manner” abandoned negotiations for a permanent end to fighting, he had reached the conclusion his country was committing war crimes.
“Ashamed and heartbroken” that a war of self-defence had become something else, he decided to speak out. “What can I do to change the attitude, except for number one, recognising these evils, and number two, to criticise them and to make sure the international public opinion knows there are [other] voices, many voices in Israel?” he asked.
He attributed what he called war crimes to negligence and a willingness to tolerate unconscionable levels of death and devastation, rather than an organised campaign of brutality. “[Did commanders] give an order? Never,” Olmert said.
Instead, he believes the military looked away when things were done that would inevitably “cause the killing of a large number of non-involved people”. He said: “That is why I cannot refrain from accusing this government of being responsible for war crimes committed.”
Despite the devastation in Gaza, as the last Israeli premier to seriously attempt to reach a negotiated solution with Palestinians, Olmert still hopes that a two-state solution is possible.
He is working with the former Palestinian foreign minister Nasser al-Kidwa to push for one internationally, and even believes that a historic settlement could be in reach – an end to the war in Gaza in exchange for normalisation of ties with Saudi Arabia – if only Netanyahu was able or willing to take it.
Instead Olmert was stunned to see Netanyahu, a man who has an arrest warrant for war crimes from the international criminal court, nominating Donald Trump for a Nobel peace prize.
A UN summit on a two-state solution for Palestine and Israel – postponed by the Israel-Iran war – has been rescheduled for 28 and 29 July, but it is not expected that the French president, Emmanuel Macron, will attend, making it less likely that it will trigger a series of high-profile announcements on recognition of a Palestinian state.
Macron, who last week told UK parliamentarians a two-state solution was “the only way to build peace and stability for all in the whole region”, has been trying to build momentum for recognition of a state of Palestine by a wide group of countries, but the lack of movement in ceasefire negotiations between Hamas and Israel is making such decisions more complex.
Israel and the US both oppose recognition of a Palestinian state, and have been advising UN delegations not to attend the UN conference in New York. Israel has said that recognition would be seen as a reward for Hamas terrorism.
The conference originally slated for June was postponed when the Israeli attack on Iran created a security crisis across the Middle East. The conference has a set of working parties that are designed to ease the path to a two-state solution, including plans for future Palestinian governance, economic renewal and challenging the narratives of hate.
French sources insisted decisions on recognition had not been made, and a subsequent event in Paris would provide the platform.
Recognition was discussed last week at the Anglo-French summit, where Macron made two public appeals without setting a timetable. Macron called for recognition in his speech to UK parliamentarians and in his closing press conference. “With Gaza in ruin and the West Bank being attacked on a daily basis, the perspective of a Palestinian state has never been put at risk as it is,” he told MPs.
“And this is why this solution of the two states and the recognition of the state of Palestine is … the only way to build peace and stability for all in the whole region.”
The joint declaration issued by Macron and the UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, simply reaffirmed their commitment to “recognising a Palestinian state, as a contribution to a peace process”. And they pledged to “work together to support its development and the realisation of a two-state solution”.
Le Monde reported at the weekend that neither Macron nor the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman, would attend the UN conference, and that the summit would instead be led by foreign ministers.
That does not preclude Macron making his long-trailed announcement at a different point. The French preference has been to make the historic recognition announcement jointly with the UK, and possibly Canada.
Speaking about the issue at length to parliament’s foreign affairs select committee, the UK foreign secretary, David Lammy, referred to the country’s role in shaping the Middle East through the Balfour declaration, saying: “I would prefer that the United Kingdom is part of a process, particularly if you look at the history, including our relationship with Balfour and the two communities that were effectively brought together at the birth of the Israeli state.”
He added: “A ceasefire might be the beginning of a process, and I suspect that our French colleagues are also waiting to see whether there is a ceasefire in the next few days. That would be the beginning of something, particularly if it is a permanent ceasefire and not a pause.”
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Lammy said the decisions of some European countries to recently recognise a Palestinian state had not led to changes on the ground in the West Bank and Gaza, but he admitted it was a judgment call and said he had some sympathy with those who argued that the pace of building Israeli settlements on the West Bank was putting the existence of a Palestinian state in question.
He stressed he did not see a wider normalisation between Saudi Arabia and Israel taking place unless Israel made some concession on the recognition of Palestine.
“From my conversations with the Saudis and the Saudi foreign minister, normalisation will be impossible to achieve until there is a ceasefire and unless there is tangible progress on two states. Frankly, I commend my Saudi counterparts for holding true to that,” he told MPs.
Separately, foreign ministers from Israel and Palestine are expected to attend a dinner in Brussels on Monday.
The Israeli foreign minister, Gideon Saar, and his Palestinian counterpart, Varsen Aghabekian, have both confirmed their attendance at an EU-Southern Neighbourhood ministerial meeting, but it is not clear if they will meet or talk to one another. The aim of the Brussels meeting is to strengthen relations between the EU and its 10 partner countries in the Mediterranean region.
Russia and China’s foreign ministers on Sunday discussed their relations with the United States and the prospects for ending the war in Ukraine, Russia’s foreign ministry said in a statement.
President Vladimir Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, in Beijing on Sunday. Lavrov is due to attend a meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) foreign ministers in China.
“The parties also discussed relations with the United States and prospects for resolving the Ukrainian crisis,” the foreign ministry said.
Read More: US, China hold ‘positive’ talks in Malaysia during ASEAN meeting
“The importance of strengthening close coordination between the two countries in the international arena, including in the United Nations and its Security Council, the SCO, BRICS, the G20 and APEC, was emphasized,” the ministry said.
China and Russia declared a “no limits” partnership in February 2022 when Putin visited Beijing, days before he sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine. Putin has sometimes described China as an “ally”.
The US casts China as its biggest competitor and Russia as its biggest nation-state threat.
LONDON: Relatives of flyers who died in the June 12 Air India crash have slammed the preliminary probe as a “cover-up” to protect the Tatas-owned airline, Boeing and the Indian government.“This report is wrong. We don’t accept it,” said Ameen Siddiqui, whose British brother-in-law and Gloucestershire resident Akeel Nanabawa, died alongside his wife Hannaa Vorajee and their daughter Sara in the June 12 crash of the Ahmedabad-London flight.Speaking to the UK’s The Telegraph from Surat, Siddiqui alleged that “they want to blame dead pilots who can’t defend themselves”. Siddiqui added that he had rejected Air India’s compensation offer and would take the airline to court for “killing our family members”.UK law firms are already representing families of dozens of passengers who died in the AI 171 crash and considering legal action against Boeing and Air India.Tushar Joge, whose male cousin’s in-laws, Vallabh Nagji Agheda and wife Vinaben Vallabh Agheda, both in their 70s, died in the crash, echoed the claim that the probe report was a “cover-up” for Air India and Boeing.“We were pre-empting that they would start blaming the pilots. Why are they not looking for a mechanical fault? How qualified are the people in the Indian Air Accident Investigation Bureau? The FAA (US aviation regulator) gave an advisory in 2018 to check the potential disengagement of the fuel control switch locking feature. Shouldn’t they have made this a mandatory requirement rather than an advisory?” Joge asked.The Agheda couple were coming to the UK to spend time with their youngest daughter and her family in Reading. Speaking to TOI from Vadodara, their son-in-law said: “It does not look like it’s the pilot’s fault. It could be Boeing’s design fault with the switches, or it could be Air India’s maintenance issues. Most of the families believe it’s a problem withthe aircraft. Air India is helping us with compensation but we are more concerned about getting the right report. We want the truth to make sure another disaster doesn’t happen.”Imtiyaz Ali Syed, whose London-based brother Javed died with his wife and two children lamented that the probe report was replete with “aviation jargon praising Boeing’s systems” while saying “nothing conclusive”. “Everyone, Air India, Boeing, government, has something to protect. But we have lost our entire families. How can we move on without the truth?” Imtiyaz asked.Sameer Rafik, cousin of crash victim Faizan Rafik from Leicester, told the BBC he did not trust the Indian government. “Until the airline provides the cockpit recording to us, I’m not going to believe the report,” Rafik said.
