South Asia
The United States State Department’s spokesperson, Ned Price, expressed his support towards India and Pakistan’s bilateral dialogue on “issues of concern.” However, he refused to be drawn on the Pakistani cabinet’s decision to deny its top economic body’s call to withdraw import bans on Indian sugar and cotton. [NDTV]
According to Reduction in Violence, an Afghani war monitoring group, violent incidents in the country over the past 24 hours resulted in over 59 deaths. This, the group said on Twitter, included 30 civilians, 38 Taliban terrorists, and seven security forces. [ANI]
Central Asia and the Caucasus
Kazakhstan has ramped up its crackdown on members of the banned Koshe party, after a Kazakh court sentenced an activist for having links to the party. The move comes after several supporters of the banned outfit have been arrested over the last few months. The activist, Erkin Sabanshiev, was sentenced to one year of “freedom limitation”, which means that he is banned from using the media and internet for political or social activities. [RFE/RL]
Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, has signed a decree allocating $8 million for constructing a highway leading to Karabakh’s Khojavand region. The funds for the project will be allocated from the country’s 2021 budget reserves and it is expected that the highway will connect four settlements with around 14,000 inhabitants. Aliyev’s announcement comes at a time when Turkish construction companies have vowed to help Azerbaijan rebuild the Nagorno-Karabakh region. [Azer News]
East and Southeast Asia
Taiwan said that it may shoot down the Chinese drones that have been spotted circling the Taipei-controlled Pratas Islands if they “stray” too close. “After it enters, it will be handled under the rules. If we need to open fire, we open fire,” said Lee Chung-wei, the head of the Ocean Affairs Council. [The Straits Times]
On Wednesday, Myanmar’s ambassador to the United Kingdom (UK), Kyaw Zwar Minn, accused a political figure of the military of occupying the embassy and barring him from entering the Burmese embassy in London. “When I left the embassy, they stormed inside the embassy and took it…They said they received instruction from the capital, so they are not going to let me in…Diplomacy is the only response and answer to the current impasse,” the pro-democracy diplomat said. [Channel News Asia]
Europe
Czech Health Minister Jan Blatny was sacked on Wednesday due to his opposition to the country’s attempts to purchase Russia’s Sputnik V COVID-19 vaccine in the absence of its approval from the European Medicines Agency (EMA). Blatny has now been replaced by the director of Prague’s University Hospital Vinohrady, Petr Arenberger, who becomes the country’s fourth health minister since the beginning of the pandemic. [Al Jazeera]
Attorneys representing jailed Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny have said that the leader’s health is deteriorating rapidly due to his hunger strike and made worse by the prison authorities’ refusal to provide him with proper medical care. Navalny reportedly has two herniated disks in his back and has started to lose feeling in his hands. [RFE/RL]
Greenland’s left-wing Inuit Ataqatigiit (IA) party won the parliamentary election on Wednesday with 37% of the votes and pledged its opposition to a large rare-earth mining project on the Arctic island. The pro-mining Siumut party, which has almost exclusively been in power since 1979, secured 29% of the votes. [Reuters]
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen expressed concern over Turkey’s decision to exit the Istanbul Convention. She warned Turkish authorities that “human rights issues are non-negotiable”. [DW]
Latin America and the Caribbean
After saying on Monday that he wouldn’t take the COVID-19 vaccine because he had sufficient antibodies from when he contracted the virus in January, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador has now backtracked and said that he will, in fact, be taking the vaccine in order to “set an example”. The Mexican leader has been criticised for failing to implement adequate measures to curb the spread of the virus and has been seen without a mask in public on several occasions. Just last week, Mexico’s Health Ministry released data that suggests that the country’s real coronavirus death toll is at least 61.4% higher than the 205,000 deaths that have been officially confirmed so far. [Al Jazeera]
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has once again refused to allow vaccines from the World Health Organization's COVAX initiative into the country, as the deal to secure 12 million doses was made by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, whom many Western countries see as the legitimate leader of Venezuela. Although the reason for refusing the deliveries hasn’t been specified, the Maduro administration has previously said that it does not want to be seen as “begging” or “panhandling”. At this stage, Maduro has secured 650,000 doses of the Russian Sputnik V vaccine and the Chinese Sinopharm vaccine. [Latin American Herald Tribune]
Middle East and North Africa (MENA)
Turkey and its allied local Syrian militias are building a settlement for Arabs and Turks in Kurdish land in the city of Afrin in northern Syria, according to a report by Rudaw. Local sources told the news outlet that Turkey has built 247 housing units and established several settlement camps in nearby villages, while also bulldozing trees in the area. In January 2018, Turkish backed Syrian forces launched Operation Olive Branch against Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) in Afrin, in order to push the Kurdish unit from Turkey’s border with Syria. Ankara’s aggressive policy towards the YPG is the result of its belief that the Syrian Kurdish outfit is allied with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which Turkey views as a “terrorist group.” [Rudaw]
On Wednesday, A Turkish court sentenced 22 ex-soldiers to life in jail over their participation in the failed 2016 coup which sought to remove President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan from power. Since the failed attempt to depose Erdoğan, Ankara has led a crackdown against former soldiers who participated in the coup. [Al Jazeera]
Iran’s Foreign Ministry has said that an Iranian ship, Saviz, has been attacked in the Red Sea. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Saeed Khatibzadeh mentioned that “the vessel was a civilian ship stationed there to secure the region against pirates.” The incident comes after a series of tit-for-tat attacks between Iran and Israel as part of their covert conflict which has been raging on for years. Israeli officials have declined to comment about the incident so far. [Reuters]
North America
The Canadian government on Wednesday announced that it will invest up to $200 million over seven years in Grand Challenges Canada (GCC) “to improve access to quality health services through innovative projects that both contribute to the pandemic response and advance broader health priorities.” GCC is a Canadian non-profit organisation primarily funded by the federal government which invests in novel, local innovations that address critical global health, humanitarian, and Indigenous community challenges in Canada and low-resource countries. [Global Affairs Canada]
The US on Wednesday announced its plans to resume financial assistance for the Palestinian people, after former President Donald Trump slashed all aid funding in 2018. According to the State Department, this will include $75 million in economic and development assistance in the West Bank and Gaza, $10 million for peacebuilding programs through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), and $150 million in humanitarian assistance for the UN Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA). Israel has slammed the US’ decision, arguing that restoring funding to UNRWA will only perpetuate the conflict. [US Department of State, The Jerusalem Post]
Oceania
New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern once again criticised Australia for its deportation policy, which she has previously described as Australia exporting its problems to New Zealand. To this end, in a television programme, she said, “Where we take issue is that we’ve had a large proportion, about a third of those who have been deported have not been in New Zealand for the last 10 years,” adding, “In some cases, they’ve never even been to New Zealand.” She went on to say, “If we have an Aussie who comes to New Zealand and lives here for 10 years and then commits a crime, we will treat them as our own. All we’re asking is Australia does the same.” [Stuff]
Sub-Saharan Africa
The Indian High Commission in Abuja, Nigeria announced that India had delivered 100,000 doses of the Covishield vaccine to Nigeria. [Vanguard]
Commemorating the 1994 Tutsi genocide on Wednesday, African Union Commission Chairperson Moussa Faki Mahamat remarked, “May the tragedy experienced by Rwanda 27 years ago, help Africa to protect itself against the recurrence of such a phenomenon and serve as an impetus to build an Africa, where ethnic diversity will be considered as a wealth and no longer as a weakness.” [The New Times]
The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and World Food Programme (WFP) reported that 27.3 people in the Democratic Republic of Congo face “acute food insecurity”, which they say is driven by enduring conflict and political instability. [UN News]
World News Monitor: 8 April, 2021
A quick look at events from around the globe.
April 8, 2021
Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro SOURCE: AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES