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Activists stage a protest against China on June 16 in
Bhopal, India. (Sanjeev Gupta/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock)
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High in the
Himalayas, things have taken a worrying turn. After weeks
of squabbling and brawling along their long-disputed border, hundreds of
Indian and Chinese soldiers engaged in a
deadly clash Monday in a river valley that’s part of the region
of Ladakh. Indian authorities reported at least 20 soldiers killed, the
first time since 1975 that any Indian soldiers have been slain in border
skirmishes with China. Military officials in Beijing acknowledged
the incident and an unspecified number of Chinese casualties.
Reports in the Indian media said at least 43 Chinese
soldiers were wounded or dead.
The details remain murky, given the remoteness of the location and the
absence of independent ways to corroborate military reports. The rugged
mountainous border between the world’s two most populous nations — and
nuclear-armed neighbors — has seen the almost-routine flaring of tensions
over the decades. But past spats cooled down after withdrawals and rounds
of hurried diplomacy between New Delhi and Beijing.
This week’s events mark a major inflection point, ending a period of
almost half a century where lingering animosities never translated into
bloodshed. “Chinese troops have crossed several kilometers into territory
that India claims at several points, according to analysts
and media
reports,” my
colleagues wrote. “In particular, reports say, they have
occupied an area in the Galwan River valley that overlooks a strategically
crucial road for India.” Chinese authorities, meanwhile, blamed the
escalation on “provocative attacks” by Indian troops.
Though it seems no shots were fired, scuffles between Indian and Chinese
forces hurling stones at each other and wielding improvised melee weapons
like clubs and iron rods reportedly led to a situation where dozens of
soldiers fell down a gorge and died of injuries and their exposures to the
elements.
“Sino-Indian relations can never go back to the old normal,” said Ashley
Tellis, an India scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace. “They will reset with greater competitiveness and in
ways that neither country had actually intended at the beginning of the
crisis.”
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A map locating Galwan Valley along the Himalayan border
between India and China
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Tensions are rising on the 38th parallel, as well. On Tuesday,
North Korea destroyed the liaison office it jointly operates with South Korea
in the city of Kaesong, just north of the demilitarized zone that separates
the two countries. The move was seen as the latest indication of
Pyongyang’s declining interest in the diplomatic thaw engineered by center-left
South Korean President Moon Jae-in, as well as exasperation with the peace
process pushed by President Trump.
The facility, which operated as a de facto embassy for both sides to meet, had
been closed since January with the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. “It’s
hard to see how such behavior will help the Kim regime get what it wants
from the world, but clearly such images will be used for domestic
propaganda,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha
Womans University in Seoul, told my colleague Min Joo Kim. “So, Seoul needs to impose
additional costs demonstrating to Pyongyang that its threats are
counterproductive.”
Another escalation is likely. “Under the cover of its increased nuclear
capabilities, Pyongyang may seek to torment Seoul for concessions and
leverage,” wrote analyst Ankit Panda. “In this sense, the demolition
of the inter-Korean liaison office may be the start of a much darker period
in the inter-Korean story.”
The smoldering atmospherics provide an uneasy backdrop for Secretary
of State Mike Pompeo, who on Wednesday will meet his Chinese
counterpart Yang Jiechi for a rare face-to-face sit-down in Hawaii. Not much is expected from the meeting, given the depth of ill will between Beijing and the Trump administration,
which has made China-bashing a signature theme in its reelection campaign.
Pompeo and Trump have largely abandoned talk of making further
breakthroughs in trade negotiations with China, while it looks like Trump’s
“historic” summits with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un may ultimately be
remembered as largely ineffectual photo-ops.
Chinese President Xi Jinping, meanwhile, is at the helm of a state
that’s growing more aggressive, from its hostile rhetoric toward Taiwan to its clampdowns on civil
liberties in Hong Kong, to its assertive stance in the Himalayas.
“China must decide whether to try to get its way as an unencumbered
major power, prevailing by dint of its sheer weight and economic strength —
but at the risk of strong pushback, not just from the United States but
from other countries, too,” Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien-Loong
wrote in a June essay for Foreign Affairs. “This approach is
likely to increase tensions and resentment, which would affect China’s
standing and influence in the longer term.”
India is one of
those countries that is starting to push back. “India is
anxious over China’s growing economic and political clout on India’s
periphery — in Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka — and over
the influx of Chinese warships into the Indian Ocean,” the
Economist’s Shashank Joshi explained. “In response, successive
Indian governments have tilted closer to America, with which India signed a
$3.5bn arms deal in February, and China’s rivals in Asia, such as Vietnam.”
There is a “new edge” to China’s attitude, Nirupama Rao, a former Indian
ambassador to China, said to my
colleagues. “This assertiveness, this readiness to throw [away]
internationally accepted behavior to advance their claims and interests,
it’s worrisome for so many countries.”
“Best case, this incident on the disputed India-China border — the
bloodiest in over half a century — shocks both governments into initiating
a process to resolve the border once and for all,” tweeted Vipin Narang, an
MIT professor and analyst of Asian geopolitics. “Worst case, the
nationalists on both sides double down and pressure for serious
escalation.”
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Talking Points
• Amid mass police
accountability protests across the United States, the U.N.
Human Rights Council, which America withdrew from two years ago, is planning to hold a rare “urgent debate” Wednesday
on human rights in the United States. And African countries are circulating
a draft resolution calling for high-level investigation into U.S. racism
and police violence.
• Ever since the
border between between the United States and Canada closed
to nonessential travel in mid-March because of the novel coronavirus, many
cross-border couples were blocked from being together. Some of them have found a work around:
a ditch just off 0 Avenue, a heavily patrolled road in British Columbia
that divides the two countries.
• A new set of U.S.
sanctions on Syria are set to take effect Wednesday,
targeting anyone who aids the government of President Bashar al-Assad or
provides assistance to certain industries operating inside government-held
territory. The measure aims to force the government to stop the
bombardment carried out during Syria’s nine-year civil
war and halt widely documented human rights abuses. My colleague Sarah
Dadouch explains more, including who is subject to the new sanctions and
what exactly they’re trying to achieve.
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Top of The Post
By
Matt Zapotosky, Abigail Hauslohner, Hannah Knowles and Katie
Shepherd ● Read more »
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Viewpoints
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A tragic loss
“The sky is sweeter than the earth! And I want the sky, not the earth,”
30-year-old queer Egyptian Sarah Hegazi wrote Saturday, in her final
Instagram post, from exile in Canada. These were among her last words. Hegazi took her own life later that
day in Toronto, where she sought asylum in 2018 after her arrest — and
alleged torture and sexual assault — for raising a rainbow pride flag at a
concert in Cairo.
“To my siblings — I tried to find redemption and failed, forgive me,”
Hegazi wrote in a handwritten
note found after her death. “To my friends — the experience
was harsh and I am too weak to resist it, forgive me.
“To the world — you were cruel to a great extent, but I forgive.”
Hegazi’s death,
preceded by two suicide attempts, has reverberated across the Middle East
and beyond. The young software developer was yet another
victim of Egyptian President Abdel Fatah al-Sissi’s well-documented
crackdown on free expression: Human rights groups say Sissi’s abuse is the
worst repression in decades and has ensnared tens of thousands of Egyptians
in prison, disappeared hundreds more and forced countless independent
thinkers, such as Hegazi, into exile.
Her story is also
part of a broader pattern of violence inflicted on the bodies and minds of
LGBTQ people around the world. “We are born into trauma,
and we carry it with us wherever we go,” Lebanese musician and LGBTQ rights
activist Hamed
Sinno wrote Monday on Facebook. “That is what trauma does to the
body. That is what hate does to the body.” — Miriam Berger
Read on: She raised the pride flag in Egypt. The price was
torture, exile and her life.
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1,000 Words
Brazil has so far registered more than 888,000 coronavirus cases
and nearly 44,000 deaths, second on both counts only to the United States.
But while other countries have been through steep curves and are now
focused on preparations for a possible second wave, Brazil can’t even get
past its first. What’s happening in Brazil appears to be unique on a
global level. Despite soaring numbers, officials never
implemented measures largely successful elsewhere in the world. There has
been no national lockdown. No national testing campaign. No agreed-upon
plan. Insufficient health-care expansion. (Adriano Machado/Reuters)
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Afterword
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Email 
