After the fall of the genocidal regime of the Khmer Rouge, the UN sent several monitors to Cambodia to try to get this Southeast Asian country to leave behind the bloody dictatorship and open up to the world with a new democratic system.. It was in 1985 when a young former commander who had taken refuge in Vietnam, Hun Sen, took the reins of the country under the promise of defending democracy, holding fair elections and sweeping away endemic corruption.

The idea was to give a complete facelift to this country with 16 million inhabitants located in a region prone to bumping into authoritarian governments that rely on the armies to maintain control.. Experiments in electoral democracy fail time and time again. And Hun Sen was not going to be the exception. He ended up becoming a tyrant, clinging to power and gradually eliminating the opposition, until he was one of the world's longest-serving leaders in office.

After serving 38 years as prime minister and winning his last elections on Sunday, Hun Sen (70 years old) has announced that he is retiring and passing the baton to his eldest son, Hun Manet (45 years old), who is currently the chief cambodian army. “I would like to ask people for their understanding in announcing that I will not continue as prime minister,” the outgoing leader said during a televised address on Wednesday.

The transfer of powers was an open secret. Hun Sen overtook him a couple of years ago and gradually paved the way for his son, opening a place for him in the powerful Central Committee of the ruling Cambodian People's Party (CPP).. In April this year, he was promoted to 4-star general, the highest military rank that gave him control of an army that is the armed wing of the CPP.

Hun Manet's resume stands out because he graduated from the prestigious West Point Military Academy, in the United States, and studied for a master's degree from New York University and a doctorate from the University of Bristol (United Kingdom).. Back in Phnom Penh, the capital of his country, he was appointed commander of the anti-terrorist special forces..

From the outside it could be interpreted that, with the western profile of the new leader, covered in his education by the Anglo-Saxon culture, the past democratic commitment could be redirected. An idea that is not shared by analysts who follow Cambodian politics, convinced that Hun Manet will not deviate from the authoritarian course of his father, who persecuted dissent, took control of the courts and closed down critical media.. In addition, the majority opinion is that Hun Sen will continue to pull the strings from the shadows..

Last May, the electoral commission prohibited the Partido de las Velas, the only party that could stand up to the ruling party at the polls, from participating in the elections.. A couple of months earlier, the government shut down one of Cambodia's last remaining independent newspapers, Voice of Democracy, while one of the most prominent opposition figures, Kem Sokha, was sentenced to 17 years of house arrest.

The Cambodian government was threatened after the 2013 elections, when an alliance of parties renamed the Cambodian National Rescue Party (CNRP) won more than 40% of the vote.. Since then, the repression against the opposition has increased, getting Parliament to approve the dissolution of any political party for “security reasons”, always under the sole criteria of the ruling party.. That year, the CNRP was banned and about a hundred of its members were prosecuted, leading several leading opposition politicians to flee abroad.

Hun Sen has tried to paint Cambodia as a healthy democracy outwardly, boasting of a pluralistic system where all parties fit.. After the CPP swept the elections on Sunday, taking 82% of the votes – obtaining 120 of the 125 seats in Parliament -, the leader highlighted the “democratic maturity” despite the criticism that fell on him from the United States and the European Union, which had refused to send observers on the grounds that the elections “lacked the conditions to be considered free and fair”. Supervising the elections, there were envoys from Cambodia's international allies such as China and Russia.

In addition to announcing that he will hand over power to his son, Hun Sen said on Wednesday that a “new generation” would take over many of the top ministerial posts within a new government that will be formed on August 22.

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In just three months, more than 130 people have died and tens of thousands have been displaced as a result of the ethnic battle that is shaking Manipur, a remote state in northeastern India.. Clashes with sticks and stones in the streets, police stations and government buildings burning. There have even been episodes of group sexual assaults.

A loop of daily violence that shakes politics in New Delhi, with a prime minister, the Hindu nationalist Narendra Modi, who has not even ruled on the clashes between the Hindu Meitei community, dominant in the region, and the Christian Kuki-tribes. Zomi, who live isolated in the mountains.

Loud protests are taking place all this week both inside and outside the Indian Parliament. But from the opposition, in an attempt to force Modi to make a move to try to stop the violence in Manipur, this Wednesday they have gone a step further by presenting two motions of censure against the Government.

It is the second time that the Indian leader has faced a vote of no confidence since he came to power in 2014.. It has been the strongest opposition parties, the Congress Party and the Bharat Rashtra Samithi, who have resorted to this control procedure knowing that, beyond the noise, it will not prosper in a vote because Modi's parliamentary group, the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has a large majority along with its allies in the legislature.

Next year general elections will be held in which Modi, whose popularity maintains his high quotas despite the most extremist religious turn of his party, is expected to revalidate a third term at the head of the South Asian giant that this 2023 has surpassed China as the most populous country in the world.

Internal turmoil is not affecting the growing power of the prime minister, who last week made his first public reference to the situation in Manipur by denouncing a viral video showing two women forced by a mob to walk naked in the northern state.. The women were being groped and sexually assaulted while surrounded by a crowd of men, many of them brandishing long canes or clubs as weapons.

“My heart is full of pain and anger. The Manipur incident is shameful for any civil society. The law will take its course with all its might,” said Modi, who, beyond that statement about the episode of assault on women, continues to not break his silence on the violent conflict between ethnic communities.

Everything broke out in May after a protest against the request of the Manipur High Court to include the Meitei community, which represents almost 50% of the population of this state where 3.6 million people live, within the system of “scheduled tribes”. ” in India, which would allow its members access to greater health and education resources, as well as the possibility of applying for government jobs.

The rest of the state's ethnic groups, which are not officially registered, oppose the Meitei achieving a status that gives them access to benefits that are unattainable for other minority communities.. India reserves some public jobs, university admissions and elected seats, from village councils to parliament, for communities under the category that included Hindus.

Clashes broke out in the state capital, Imphal, after thousands of students, mostly from the Kuki tribe, took part in a demonstration against the majority ethnic community.

We will never know what Emmett Till was thinking when, in the sweltering, humid heat of Mississippi, he was woken at 2:00 a.m. by his uncle Mose Wright who told him that a white man with a gun wanted to talk to him.

till was 14 years old.

“Cry at home and fight outside”. This is how Estela de Carlotto, president and founder of the Grandmothers of Plaza de Mayo in Argentina, encouraged the Mexican mothers who are still looking for their disappeared people last week. In an act in Mexico City, the activist alluded to the Ayotzinapa case, also known as the Iguala case or the case of the 43 students. Nothing is known about these young people since September 26, 2014. Years of cumbersome investigation of which this Tuesday the Interdisciplinary Group of Independent Experts (GIEI) presented its latest report.

“Concealment and the insistence on denying things that are obvious” are the impediments that the organization found to carry out its work, mentioned the expert Carlos Beristain, in the presentation of the sixth report of the group, whose mandate ends this month and which has worked for more than eight years in this event that shocked the country.

“For the GIEI it is impossible to continue its mandate and since things do not change, we consider our work finished,” he continued.. “The risk is that lying is institutionalized as a response,” warned the Spaniard. “The muscle of the State was present, they acted and did not protect. They knew what happened, that has become a responsibility of the State in itself,” he concluded after an extensive presentation in which the contradictory versions were explained, that the Secretary of National Defense (Sedena) had constant communications with the different authorities the day of the disappearance of the young people -the experts exposed maps of the movements of the security forces with the information obtained from C4, a surveillance center that has records of calls-, that the military were “adapting the statements”, that there was manipulation of information and that the Navy was at the scene “on the 27th, not the 29th.”

Details were also given about the confusion about the whereabouts of the young people, who had been divided into several groups and who were not taken “neither to the same place, nor to the same scene, nor to the Cocula garbage dump,” said Ángela Buitrago, the other member of the GIEI who appeared at the presentation on Tuesday.

Beristain insisted on the “intentionality” behind the “denials” and “lies”. In addition to ensuring that “the case is not closed until there is a resolution of the fate and whereabouts of the young people”. Buitrago, responding to the journalists' questions, assured that this type of case can transcend the orbit of international justice, but that this already depends on the relatives, on whom he recognized the courage of those who have made a banner over these years and for those who asked the State for “attention”. “Comprehensive reparation must be carried out and avoid stigmatization,” the expert Buitrago requested in her recommendations, since “the survivors are victims of the events.”

For his part, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) promised to continue with the investigation after the GIEI march, although next year there will be elections in Mexico and, therefore, a change of government.

The GIEI was created by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) so that, in collaboration with the Mexican State and the representatives of the victims, assistance could be offered in the case.. The group is made up of specialists from various sectors (from doctors to lawyers) and nationalities.

The “historical truth”

The version given by the government of Enrique Peña Nieto at the time was that the students of the Ayotzinapa Rural Normal School had stolen some buses to go to a demonstration, which were intercepted by the Iguala police, who in turn handed over the youth to the criminals of Guerreros Unidos. Said group would have murdered them and cremated their bodies in the Cocula garbage dump. This narration of the events became known as “historical truth”, however it was not supported by the GIEI. When López Obrador came to power, he decided to create a Truth Commission for the case.

It was in August of last year that the greatest advance was apparently made, when Deputy Attorney General Alejandro Encinas recognized that what happened to those young people was “a State crime”, in which the Army and government officials would have played a relevant role.. However, the GIEI did not validate the screenshots of conversations between authorities and criminals presented by Encinas.. To date only three of the young men have been identified.

As the Mexican newspaper La Jornada recalls, the GIEI experts suffered obstacles to carry out the investigation. They had the opposition of the Ministry of National Defense (Sedena), the Peña Nieto Executive expelled them from Mexico after presenting their second report and they returned with López Obrador, but the coronavirus pandemic came to a standstill.. Its greatest achievements have been to banish the aforementioned “historical truth”, point the finger at the Army and facilitate the imprisonment of some culprits.

In spite of everything, the Sedena keeps secret fundamental clues, maintains the Mexican newspaper. In their five previous reports they gave evidence of torture, spying on students, cover-ups and, in the last one, in March, they denounced obstruction of the investigation and concealment of information.

disappearance problem

According to the latest Amnesty International report, 2022 closed in Mexico with more than 109,000 cases of missing and missing persons.. A pending issue for the country, according to the NGO, since the UN Committee against Enforced Disappearances exposed in a document the existing forensic crisis, stressing that the State had in custody more than 52,000 unidentified corpses. Last year was also the deadliest for the country's press.

Meanwhile, López Obrador predicted this Tuesday a 20% reduction in homicides at the end of his government. The country will hold presidential elections in 2024.

Mexico is not the only nation in the region where young people are the target of attacks. In Nicaragua, in the framework of the 2018 protests against the Sandinista government, students were injured and even died. The darkest chapter was the one lived in the Church of the Divine Mercy in Managua. Two young men who took refuge in the building along with other students, priests and journalists from the repression carried out by the police and paramilitaries died there.

The ball is now in the court of the Mexican institutions. “The fight continues,” shouted the relatives attending the presentation.

Ukrainian troops continued their gradual advance in the south of the country on Wednesday, waiting for a new consignment of US military aid for the counteroffensive to cover the entire front line.. “Ukrainian forces continue to carry out offensive operations in the direction of Melitopol and Berdiansk and gradually advance,” Ukrainian Deputy Defense Minister Hanna Maliar wrote on Telegram.

The offensive actions of Ukraine in the Zaporizhia region, which is home to the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, were recognized on Wednesday by the local authorities imposed by Moscow.

Thus, the Russian representative in Zaporizhia, Vladimir Rogov, admitted that the enemy forces managed to temporarily “embed themselves” in three points of the Russian defensive line, but “they did not enter (the village of) Robotyne”. He assured that “the attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces was repulsed.”

The Moscow-appointed governor of the region, Yevgeny Balitski, also warned of the Ukrainian offensive in the region that began at dawn and ran into Russian “strong resistance,” he said.. The situation in the area is “tense” and the enemy suffers “significant losses”, he added on Telegram.

The Russian Ministry of Defense assured for its part that all Ukrainian attacks in this area have been repelled.. “During the last day, an enemy attack was repelled on the Zaporizhia front, in the direction of Robotyne,” military spokesman Igor Konashenkov said in his daily report.

RUSSIA STRIKES BACK IN DONBAS

Konashenkov also reported that Russian troops were advancing for the second day in a row on the Liman front, in Lugansk.. On Tuesday, Russia announced the seizure of the Lugansk village of Serhiivka, which it had lost in autumn 2022.

Ukraine has not recognized the loss of control over that town and assured today that it continues to “stop the advance of Russian troops in the direction of Kupiansk and Liman.”

“The enemy clings to every meter of the occupied land, puts up strong resistance, uses reserves and suffers heavy losses,” Maliar said.

US ANIA AIR BATTERIES

Meanwhile, Washington reported the granting of a new military aid package to Ukraine worth 400 million dollars with anti-aircraft and anti-tank batteries, among other materials.

The US Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, indicated that with this aid the US wants to strengthen Ukraine on the battlefield, in addition to helping it retake the territory lost to Russia and defend its citizens.. From the Pentagon they specified that the aid also contains ammunition for Patriot batteries and the National Advanced Ground-Air Missile Systems, called NASAMS.

1,700 more drones for Ukraine

In addition, in Ukraine today they announced the prompt delivery of 1,700 new drones.. “We supported the counteroffensive by sending 1,700 drones to the front.. Among them, assault and reconnaissance devices,” the Minister of Digital Transformation, Mikhailo Fedorov, wrote on Telegram.

According to the minister, the unmanned vehicles are using artificial intelligence, which will make it possible to more effectively detect and neutralize enemy targets.

Simultaneously, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said the government will allocate some 40 billion hryvnias ($1 billion) this year to local drone manufacturers.

“War presents us with new challenges every day and one of the keys is military technology.. We must stay one step ahead of the enemy and protect each of our soldiers.. Drones provide those opportunities,” he said.

According to CNN, Moscow is also committed to these weapons and is building a factory in the Russian Republic of Tatarstan to produce Iranian Shahed drones on its territory, which have been used in Ukraine for almost a year.