World News

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45649428

Archived

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Ultra cheap e-commerce platforms Temu and fast fashion brand Shein are selling products made from Chinese cotton despite the high risk of links to slavery.

More than 80 per cent of Chinese cotton is produced in the Xinjiang province where an estimated more than 800,000 Uighurs are enslaved.

This masthead has seen multiple examples of cotton products made in China available for sale on Temu and Shein, including clothing and bedding.

Australian Human Rights Institute director Justine Nolan said there was a heightened risk of slavery with any cotton products made in China.

“You just couldn’t say the risk is low when you’ve got over 80 per cent of cotton coming from Xinjiang,” she said. “That’s a high risk.”

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China produces about 20 per cent of the world’s cotton, with about 84 per cent coming from the Xinjiang province. The US banned cotton from the Xinjiang province in 2022 under the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act.

Ms Nolan said retailers and manufacturers would need to ascertain whether the cotton was produced in China or was sourced from a supply chain outside of China.

“The reality of actually finding that out is very difficult,” she said. “There’s a heightened risk for any cotton products coming out of China that they are tainted by forced labour.”

Conversely, Ms Nolan said Australia had a very strong cotton industry. “I would say cotton coming out of Australia is a hell of a lot safer than cotton coming out of China.”

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cross-posted from: https://scribe.disroot.org/post/5614691

Archived version

China’s exports of tomato paste to industry powerhouse Italy have collapsed this year after an outcry over alleged use of forced labour in Xinjiang and complaints about misleading origin labelling by some Italian companies.

The western Chinese region of Xinjiang dramatically increased tomato cultivation and processing in recent years, but slumping sales to Italy and other western European markets have left it sitting on a vast stockpile of unsold paste, industry analysts say.

Italian farming association Coldiretti has led a high-profile campaign to defend the national staple red fruit against an influx of Chinese paste costing less than half of that made from their farmers’ crops.

“This is an important victory,” said Francesco Mutti, chief executive of the eponymous maker of Italian tomato-based ingredients including passata, pulp and purée. “It is a very positive signal.”

Scrutiny of the tomato supply chain in Europe has heightened since some companies in Italy — the world’s largest exporter of finished tomato ingredients ready for consumers — were found to have mixed Chinese tomato paste into wares promoted as Italian.

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Tomato News, which tracks the global processing industry and trade, estimates China has a stockpile of 600,000 to 700,000 tonnes of tomato paste — equivalent to roughly six months of its exports.

While China’s total tomato paste exports by volume fell 9 per cent year-on-year in the third quarter of 2025, sales to western EU countries dropped 67 per cent, and Italy’s purchases were down 76 per cent, Tomato News said.

“Clearly Europe has become a difficult place to export to,” said Martin Stilwell, president of Tomato News. Chinese customs data shows the value of processed tomato exports to Italy plunged to less than $13mn in the first nine months of 2025 from more than $75mn in the same period of last year.

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China has turned Xinjiang, home to the mainly-Muslim Uyghur minority, into a low-cost, export-oriented tomato paste production hub spearheaded by large state companies, one of which is a subsidiary of the paramilitary Production and Construction Corps that helps run the region.

China processed 11mn tonnes of fresh tomatoes into paste in 2024, up from 4.8mn tonnes in 2021, according to Tomato News. With European demand collapsing, the Asian nation has more than halved the volume of the fruit processed to an expected 3.7mn tonnes this year, Stilwell said.

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“They are struggling to sell, which explains why they have to cut back — otherwise they would merely be building inventory in China,” he said.

Xinjiang’s tomato industry has been dogged by allegations of use of forced Uyghur labour

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The influx of Chinese tomato paste into Italy came under the spotlight in 2021 when the Carabinieri police raided a leading processing company and seized tonnes of canned tomato concentrate that included Chinese paste but was falsely labelled “100 per cent Italian”.

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Mining company BHP has been found liable for a 2015 dam collapse in Brazil, known as the country's worst-ever environmental disaster, by London's High Court.

The dam collapse killed 19 people, polluted the river and destroyed hundreds of homes.

The civil lawsuit, representing more than 600,000 people including civilians, local governments and businesses, had been valued at up to £36bn ($48bn).

The claimants' lawyers argued successfully that the trial should be held in London because BHP headquarters "were in the UK at the time of the dam collapse".

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/53082816

Protesters in Pokemon costumes stomped around the United Nations climate conference on Friday to send a message to Japan: end financing of coal and natural gas projects across Southeast Asia and other regions of the Global South.

“Japan is actually delaying the fossil fuel phase-out across Asia” by funding energy projects, mainly liquefied natural gas developments, in countries such as Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines, said Hiroki Osada with Friends of the Earth Japan, one of the protest organizers

The government-owned Japan Bank for International Cooperation financed $6.4 billion in loans for coal projects and $874 million in loans for gas projects from 2016 to 2024, according to a 2025 study by the Philippines-based research and advocacy organization Center for Energy, Ecology and Development based on public government and banking data.

South Africa’s intelligence services are investigating who was behind a chartered plane that landed in Johannesburg with more than 150 Palestinians from war-ravaged Gaza who did not have proper travel documents and were held onboard on the tarmac for around 12 hours as a result, the country’s president said Friday.

The plane landed Thursday morning at O.R. Tambo International Airport, but passengers were not allowed to disembark until late that night after immigration interviews with the Palestinians found they could not say where or how long they were staying in South Africa, South Africa’s border agency said.

It said the Palestinians also did not have exit stamps or slips that would normally be issued by Israeli authorities to people leaving Gaza.

The actions of South African authorities in initially refusing to allow the passengers off the plane provoked fierce criticism from non-governmental organizations, who said the 153 Palestinians — who included families with children and one woman who is nine months pregnant — were kept in dire conditions on the plane, which was extremely hot and had no food or water.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said there was an investigation to uncover how the Palestinians came to South Africa via a stopover in Nairobi, Kenya.

“These are people from Gaza who somehow mysteriously were put on a plane that passed by Nairobi and came here,” Ramaphosa said.

Palestinians being ‘exploited’

The Palestinian Embassy in South Africa said in a statement the flight was arranged by “an unregistered and misleading organization that exploited the tragic humanitarian conditions of our people in Gaza, deceived families, collected money from them, and facilitated their travel in an irregular and irresponsible manner. This entity later attempted to disown any responsibility once complications arose.”

It didn’t name who chartered the flight, but an Israeli military official, speaking anonymously to discuss confidential information, said an organization called Al-Majd arranged the transport of about 150 Palestinians from Gaza to South Africa.

The official said that Israel escorted buses organized by Al-Majd that brought Palestinians from a meeting point in the Gaza Strip to the Kerem Shalom crossing. Then buses from Al-Majd picked the Palestinians up and brought them to Ramon airport in Israel, where they were flown out of the country.

South African authorities said 23 of the Palestinians had traveled onwards to other countries, without naming those countries, but 130 remained and were allowed in after intervention from South Africa’s Ministry of Home Affairs and an offer by an NGO called Gift of the Givers to accommodate them.

“Even though they do not have the necessary documents and papers, these are people from a strife-torn, a war-torn country, and out of compassion, out of empathy, we must receive them and be able to deal with the situation that they are facing,” Ramaphosa said.

Reuters article is free: https://www.reuters.com/world/china/white-house-says-alibaba-is-helping-chinese-military-target-us-ft-reports-2025-11-14/

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday pushed back against criticism from some U.S. allies over the legality of the U.S. strikes in the Caribbean, saying Europeans don't get to dictate how Washington defends its national security.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/38798289

US reportedly carries out 20th attack on a vessel in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing four people with 'no survivors'.

United States Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has formally announced the launch of a US military operation to target so-called “narco-terrorists” as Washington’s large-scale build-up of troops, warships and fighter jets continues in Latin America.

“Today, I’m announcing Operation SOUTHERN SPEAR. Led by Joint Task Force Southern Spear and @SOUTHCOM, this mission defends our Homeland, removes narco-terrorists from our Hemisphere, and secures our Homeland from the drugs that are killing our people,” Hegseth said in a post on X.

“The Western Hemisphere is America’s neighborhood – and we will protect it,” he said.

SOUTHCOM is the acronym for US Southern Command, whose area of responsibility covers 31 countries through South America, Central America and the Caribbean.

In a post on social media, SOUTHCOM said US Marines were conducting artillery training onboard the USS Iwo Jima – an amphibious assault ship – in the Caribbean in support of US President Donald Trump’s “priorities to disrupt illicit drug trafficking and protect the homeland”.

Hegseth’s announcement late on Thursday followed a report that the US military had carried out its 20th attack on vessels in the Caribbean and Pacific, killing four people earlier this week.

US broadcaster CNN quoted an unnamed US Defense Department official who said there were “no survivors” from a strike on a suspect drug smuggling vessel, which took place on Monday.

The attack is the latest reported targeting of people travelling in boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. The US claims it is targeting drug smuggling, but has provided neither evidence nor legal justification for launching lethal attacks that have killed some 80 people so far.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio reacted on Wednesday to criticism of the US attacks by its G-7 allies, saying that Europeans will not dictate how Washington chooses to defend US national security.

Then they compared that spread to county-level health records of malaria in humans. They found a striking pattern: a fivefold spike in malaria cases after the fungus arrived and the frogs died. Lips, Springborn and their colleagues published the discovery in 2022 in the journal Environmental Research Letters.

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As Russia’s renewed attacks on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure cause rolling blackouts ahead of winter, a major embezzlement and kickbacks scandal involving the state-owned nuclear power company has put top officials under scrutiny.

It’s fast becoming one of the most significant government crises since Moscow’s full-scale invasion, with media reports implicating a close associate of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. 

Responding to a public backlash, Zelenskyy called for the dismissal of his justice and energy ministers amid the investigation. They later submitted their resignations, the prime minister said.

Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar’s forces have been providing smuggled fuel to the Sudanese paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) at the request the United Arab Emirates, a report by US-based watchdog The Sentry said on Thursday.

Investigating how fuel smuggling in Libya has escalated into “a major national crisis” that costs the North African country around $6.7bn per year, the report shows how the illegal activity is also enabling the deadly conflict in neighbouring Sudan between the Sudanese army and the RSF.

According to investigative organisation The Sentry, Haftar "has been a key fuel supplier to the RSF" since the start of the Sudanese civil war in April 2023, reflecting his "deep loyalty to the Emirati government".

Border police cited a lack of Israeli exit stamps on passengers' passports for the ordeal. The Palestinians were reportedly fleeing the war in Gaza.

Prosecutors in Milan have opened an investigation into Italians who allegedly paid members of the Bosnian Serb army for trips to Sarajevo so that they could kill citizens during the four-year siege of the city in the 1990s.

The snipers were perhaps the most feared element of life under siege in Sarajevo because they would pick off people on the streets, including children, at random, as if it was a video game or a safari.

Groups of Italians and other nationalities, so-called “sniper tourists”, are alleged to have participated in the massacre after paying large sums of money to soldiers belonging to the army of Radovan Karadžić, the former Bosnian Serb leader who in 2016 was found guilty of genocide and other crimes against humanity, to be transported to the hills surrounding Sarajevo so that they could shoot at the population for pleasure.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/45599434

Archived

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A new investigation by People of Baikal reveals another tactic the Russian military has employed to stem personnel losses: torturing the friends and family of deserters. Journalists reporting from the Transbaikal region spoke to Olga Vtorushina, the mother of a 24-year-old man named Pavel.

On November 2, 2025, masked men kidnapped her son, drove him outside of town, and tortured him with a stun gun, demanding that he help them locate his cousin Pyotr, who’d recently failed to return to his unit. The men who abducted and tortured Pavel wore camouflage uniforms and masks, but Olga said she’d seen them around town and had recognized one as a member of the local military police. She told journalists that the men beat her son and shocked him repeatedly with a stun gun until he passed out several times. Pavel wasn’t released until he telephoned Pyotr and lured him to a meeting where he was later apprehended.

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A 25-year-old contract soldier who deserted his unit when the military ordered him back to duty after he sustained a head injury [...] escaped to his hometown and spent several months in hiding. To find the missing soldier, masked men tracked down his father and tortured him with a stun gun. They also beat his friend. The soldier’s mother told journalists that the assailants were not military police but a search group from her son’s military base. Her son is now in the army’s custody.

[...]

Military police officers tracked down 36-year-old Viktor at his friend’s home. They tased him, broke his nose, stuffed him in the trunk of a car, and drove him 300 miles away. Viktor had failed to return to his unit on time, staying at home to assist his wife, who was expecting their third child any day. She gave birth a week later. Viktor’s mother told People of Baikal that the men who took her son are the same ones who tortured Pavel on November 2.

Similar raids have been reported in towns throughout the Transbaikal region. In Ushmun, for example, masked men were spotted patrolling the streets. According to a local newspaper, these were military police officers. Authorities in Trubachevo and Novoshirokinsky confirmed to People of Baikal by phone that locals had been subjected to “measures of force.”

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cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/41777220

• 10 regimes account for nearly 80 % of all transnational repression cases, including China, Türkiye, Tajikistan, Russia, Egypt, Cambodia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Iran and Belarus
• The text highlights that more than 1,200 direct physical incidents have been recorded, in 103 countries, over the past decade.
• EU sanctions and a ban on exports of spyware and dual-use goods to countries engaging in transnational repression are necessary responses

New technologies, in particular artificial intelligence, malicious data communication and spyware, are increasingly important vectors of current transnational repression, say MEPs. They call on member states and the EU to recognise, prevent and tackle digital forms of transnational repression, including disinformation campaigns targeting human rights defenders, and to ensure that private actors in the technology sector are held accountable, by publishing transparency reports, and setting up effective grievance mechanisms.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.zip/post/53028588

European lawmakers have backed the weakening of flagship EU environmental and human rights rules as part of a drive to slash red tape for businesses. The move will free many corporations from the obligation to fix human rights and environmental issues in their supply chains or face EU fines.

the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (CSDDD) was hailed by green and civil society groups but criticised by businesses.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz and French President Emmanuel Macron had called for the CSDDD to be scrapped altogether

Denmark has slashed asylum numbers by granting only short-term status and by targeting ‘ghettoes’, which critics say has damaged the country’s values

Of all the measures introduced to deter people from seeking asylum in Denmark over the last decade, it is the impermanence of refugees’ status that is often cited as the most effective.

Before 2015, refugees in Denmark were initially allowed to stay for between five and seven years, after which their residence permits would automatically become permanent. But 10 years ago, when more than a million people arrived in Europe fleeing conflict and repression, largely from Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq and Eritrea, the Danish government dramatically changed the rules.

Since then, temporary residence permits have only been granted for one to two years at a time and there is no longer any guarantee of getting a permanent visa. In order to gain permanent status, refugees have to be fluent in Danish and are also required to have had a full-time job for several years.