World

SHANGHAI — At home in Pudong district, on reduced pay and playing computer games to lift the gloom, 25-year-old Chinese engineer Terry is in the locked-down half of Shanghai.

Across the Huangpu river which bisects the city, Maria is making the most of her diminishing freedom with dinners out before Friday when her side, Puxi — is also ordered indoors.

Shanghai, China's economic engine room and largest city with 25 million people, is being split in two as authorities conjure new ways to control a lingering virus which is challenging China like never before.

The city, the cradle of China's youth culture, fashion and international finance, is now also the heart of the country's worst COVID-19 outbreak in two years.

On Wednesday it recorded nearly 6,000 cases as the Omicron variant whips through, shaking China's stated "zero-COVID" strategy to crush clusters wherever they emerge.

From New York and London to Bangkok and Tokyo, many of the world's major cities are opening up and learning to live with the virus.

But China's most outward-facing hub is shutting down, albeit in slow motion, as authorities test the entire population, ring compounds with barriers and order people home.

"I can't leave the house, can't buy groceries, can't hang out with friends," Terry, who works for a state-owned firm, told AFP, using his Anglicised name.

Pudong closed on Monday following weeks of scattergun shutdowns of local neighbourhoods where virus cases emerged.

Those left harried residents panic buying at supermarkets, with no time to plan their next moves as they fell under short, sharp 48-hour stay-at-home orders.

Like many others, Terry has gone onto a lower pay rate while his office is closed. Yet, even if Pudong is reopened as planned on Friday, the city appears some way from defeating the virus.

The uncertainty is taking a toll, he said.

"I'm bored and in low spirits. I'm indoors for too long and can only watch TV, read books and play video games," he added.

In Puxi, the more populous historic core of the city, home to the Bund waterfront, chic shops and some of Asia’s glitziest nightlife, drinkers gathered this week, knocking back outdoor beers before Friday’s scheduled lockdown.

“I went out for dinner yesterday,” Maria, an American city resident, told AFP.

“I’m trying to do things to preserve my mental health before the lockdown, I know it’s going to be five days at the very least of not being able to leave my compound.”

On Anfu Road, where Puxi’s wealthy and fashionable meet for coffee, Shirley — a 42-year-old design worker — said she also planned to make the most of the days ahead.

“We’ll cook and invite friends over, walk the dog and enjoy life every minute before we lock down.”

Shanghai authorities have tried to limit the economic pain caused by the rolling lockdowns, offering tax breaks and handouts to small businesses.

But finance companies have taken matters into their own hands across the city, with reports of employees living in the office during the lockdown.

“Quilts and clothes will already be brought into offices,” says analyst Qian Qimin from brokerage Shenwan Hongyuan Group.

Many residents are sanguine in the face of the new lockdown, seeing it as a necessary evil after weeks of targeted measures with limited success.

“The number of cases continued to increase,” Frank Huang, a wine trader in Shanghai’s Pudong district, told AFP.

“I think this [new] policy will achieve very good results and let our lives return to normal.”

But elsewhere, frustration at China’s dogmatic approach to the virus is seeping out, with empty shop shelves testament to the anxiety of residents scrambling for fresh food, while social media hosts a mix of dry humour and increasingly caustic commentary.

“The whole world is returning to the right track,” one Weibo user posted this week. “[We are] the only country still waiting and living with the ghost of 2019.”

As Shanghai experiments with unconventional control measures, a weary public is again facing a pandemic which shapes their daily lives more than two years since it began.

“We thought it was basically over,” Miki Xiang, 31 and a freelance designer, told AFP. “Why did we start again?”

JOHANNESBURG — Amnesty International on Tuesday slammed “war crimes” in Ukraine, as the civilian toll continues to rise after Russia’s invasion, likening the situation to the Syrian war.

“What is happening in Ukraine is a repetition of what we have seen in Syria,” Agnes Callamard, secretary general of the global rights watchdog, told AFP.

She was speaking in Johannesburg at the launch of the rights group’s annual report on the state of human rights in the world.

“We are beyond indiscriminate attacks. We are in the midst of deliberate attacks on civilian infrastructure,” she said, accusing Russia of turning humanitarian corridors into “death traps”.

“We see the same thing here, just as Russia did in Syria”.

Amnesty’s Director in Eastern Europe Marie Struthers concurred, telling a separate briefing in Paris that researchers in Ukraine had “documented the use of the same tactics as in Syria and Chechnya”, including attacks on civilians and the use of arms prohibited under international law.

Comparing the besieged city of Mariupol, to Syrian city of Aleppo, bludgeoned by President Bashar Assad, with the help of Russian airpower, Callamard said the rights lobby group’s “observation at this point, is a rise in war crimes”, she said.

‘Shameful inaction’ 

The US government last week said public information and intelligence it has collected amounts to strong evidence that the Russian military has committed war crimes in Ukraine.

A senior Ukrainian official told AFP on Monday that around 5,000 people have been buried in Mariupol alone.

Russia was the main backer of the Syrian government’s in the war that erupted in March 2011.

Callamard blamed Russia’s “insolence” in the face of a “paralysed international system” and the “shameful inaction” of institutions including the UN Security Council.

“The UN Security Council would be more aptly named the UN Insecurity Council,” she said, adding it had repeatedly failed to act “adequately in the face of atrocities” in such places as Myanmar, Afghanistan and Syria.

She urged that there be no “neutrality” when dealing with Russia.

In a vote at a UN General Assembly on March 2, around 20 African countries refused to take a firm stand against Moscow in a resolution calling on Russia to ceasefire.

One of the continent’s diplomatic powerhouses, South Africa’s non-aligned stance is “weak, unhistorical and short-sighted”, said Callamard.

“Africa has a role to play,” in the rebuilding of the global multilateral institutions and systems as it has also hard hit by the impact of the conflict and the spike in wheat and fuel prices.

‘Betrayal and hypocrisy

After more than two years of the Covid-19 pandemic, Amnesty reported worrying attacks on human rights as 67 of 154 countries worldwide introduced new legislation to further restrict freedoms “often using the pandemic as justification”.

These include Cambodia, Egypt, the US, Pakistan and Turkey.

Protests were violently put down in countries such as Belarus, Cameroon, Ivory Coast, Chad and Eswatini.

“And when draconian laws and trumped-up charges failed, governments turned to brute force,” she said, urging the lifting of restrictions that have kept hundreds of thousands of children out of school.

The numbers of school drop-outs tripled in South Africa to 750,000 from 230,000.

Meantime, as the Covid pandemic killed more than 6 million people worldwide, new wars erupted and unresolved ones worsened in parts of the globe.

With numbers of new infections slowing and vaccination rates up, many countries have gradually scaled back on the pandemic restrictions.

But while Covid vaccination rates in Europe exceed 70 per cent, many in low-income countries are yet to receive a first dose.

Amnesty accused wealthy nations of colluding with pharma giants to deny many people from African life saving vaccines.

“From a human rights perspective, 2021 was largely a story of betrayal and hypocrisy in the corridors of power,” Amnesty concluded on vaccine inequality.

LONDON — Ailing Queen Elizabeth II on Tuesday made her first major public appearance in months, at a thanksgiving service for her late husband, Prince Philip, who died last year aged 99.

The monarch, who turns 96 next month, has not attended a high-profile event outside her homes since she spent a night in hospital last October.

Ill health, including a bout of COVID, and difficulties walking and standing forced her to pull out of the Commonwealth Day service at the last minute on March 14.

Buckingham Palace only confirmed her attendance at Prince Philip’s memorial service around two hours before it was due to start at Westminster Abbey in central London.

Unlike other members of her family and guests, she arrived by a side entrance and used a walking stick as she was helped to her seat by her second son, Prince Andrew, 62.

It was Andrew’s first public appearance since settling a US civil claim for sexual assault, and after public outrage at his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Andrew took up a seat in the front row alongside his younger brother, Prince Edward. His elder brother Prince Charles, sister Princess Anne, and the queen sat opposite.

The Duke of Edinburgh, to whom the queen was married for 73 years, died on April 9 last year, just a few weeks short of his 100th birthday, after treatment for a heart condition.

Coronavirus restrictions at the time meant long-rehearsed plans for his funeral were hastily revised, and just 30 mourners attended.

Health issues 

The sight of her alone at the service has become an enduring image of the pandemic.

Tuesday’s event in front of the 1,800-strong congregation was a chance to include elements of the original plan, including sermons, prayers and music he chose himself.

Much of the focus was on the straight-talking former naval officer’s charity work, particularly his Duke of Edinburgh Awards scheme for young people around the world.

The sight of royals and their foreign counterparts, dignitaries, a traditional Church of England service, plus crowds outside the abbey, gave the impression of a return to business as usual.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Boris Johnson said it was “welcome to see Her Majesty out today, continuing her incredible decades of service to the country”.

But it has been an eventful year in the storied history of the royal family, with the growing sense of the end of an era.

Much of the focus has been on the queen and her health since her unscheduled hospital stay was revealed, soon after she hosted world leaders at Windsor Castle and made a speech at the opening of the Welsh Assembly in Cardiff.

Doctors ordered her to rest and she cancelled a string of high-profile engagements, including hosting world leaders at the UN climate change summit in November.

She has held private audiences from her Windsor Castle home, mostly by videoconference.

On February 5, she met some members of the public at her Sandringham estate in eastern England, a day before the 70th anniversary of her accession to the throne.

Andrew and Harry 

She has complained of mobility issues, with reports she has been using a wheelchair — and even a golf buggy — in private.

Speculation has also been rife that she could soon spend more time at her Balmoral estate in Scotland, after claims that a stairlift has been installed.

Andrew’s lengthy legal battle has overshadowed the royal family, which has also faced claims from the queen’s grandson, Prince Harry, of racism.

He and his wife Meghan Markle quit frontline duties in 2020 and moved to the United States.

Harry, 37, who also criticised his father Prince Charles and brother Prince William in an explosive television interview last year, is currently battling the UK government in the courts over his security arrangements.

He stayed away from his grandfather’s service but has confirmed he will be at his Invictus Games for disabled veterans in The Netherlands in the coming weeks.

With eyes increasingly on the succession, there have been clear signs future issues loom, when William toured Belize, Jamaica and The Bahamas last week.

The visit was criticised for being a throwback to colonialism and afterwards William acknowledged calls for the British monarch to be replaced as head of state.

That has been seen as potentially fuelling similar movements in other Commonwealth countries, with Edward due to visit other Caribbean nations next month.

VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis on Monday heard first-hand the horrors of abuse committed at church-run residential schools in Canada, as Indigenous delegations pressed him for an apology.

Indigenous, Metis and Inuit survivors are visiting the Vatican this week for meetings with the pope on how to move forward after the scandal that rocked the Catholic Church.

“The Pope listened... [he] heard just three of the many stories we have to share,” Cassidy Caron, president of the Metis National Council, told journalists in front of St Peter’s Square.

The Catholic Church in Canada has apologised “unequivocally” to Canada’s Indigenous peoples for a century of abuses at church-run residential schools.

Francis has also expressed his “pain” at the scandal — but has not gone so far as to offer an apology himself.

“We really truly hoped that... [at] this meeting today, that the Pope would listen... and hopefully bring an apology when he does arrive in Canada,” Caron said after her delegation met the Pope.

According to Canadian bishops, Francis has indicated a willingness to visit Canada, though no date has yet been set.

Caron said the pope had echoed the Metis’ request for “truth, justice and healing”, saying she took that as a sign of “a personal commitment”.

Francis also held a private audience with representatives of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, and is due to receive those of the Assembly of First Nations on Thursday, before a final group meeting on Friday.

Martha Greig, a member of the Inuit delegation who attended one of the residential schools, said it would be “really meaningful for him to do an apology”.

“There has to be a point of forgiveness from both parts. If you don’t forgive, you don’t forget,” she told a separate press conference.

Both sides “needed to work hand in hand so that our people can rise from all the hurt that’s been done to them”, she added.

Some 150,000 Indigenous, Metis and Inuit children were enrolled from the late 1800s to the 1990s in 139 of the residential schools across Canada, as part of a government policy of forced assimilation.

They spent months or years isolated from their families, language and culture, and many were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers.

Thousands are believed to have died of disease, malnutrition or neglect. More than 1,300 unmarked graves have been discovered since last May at the schools.

A truth and reconciliation commission concluded in 2015 the failed government policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.

SHANGHAI — Millions of people in China's financial hub were confined to their homes on Monday as the eastern half of Shanghai went into lockdown to curb the country's biggest ongoing COVID-19 outbreak.

The move, announced late Sunday, caused a run on grocery stores by residents who have become exasperated with authorities' inability to snuff out the outbreak despite nearly three weeks of increasingly disruptive measures.

Authorities are imposing a two-phase lockdown of the city of about 25 million people to carry out mass testing.

The government had sought to avoid the hard lockdowns regularly deployed in other Chinese cities, opting instead for rolling localised lockdowns to keep Shanghai's economy running.

But Shanghai has in recent weeks become China's COVID hotspot, and on Monday another record high was reported, with 3,500 new confirmed cases in the city.

The area locked down on Monday is the sprawling eastern district known as Pudong, which includes the main international airport and glittering financial centre.

The lockdown will last until Friday, then switch to the more populated western Puxi section, home to the historic Bund riverfront.

The government said the steps were being taken to root out infections “as soon as possible”.

The unpredictable neighbourhood-level measures employed in recent weeks have left many citizens frustrated with repeated, brief confinements at home.

Some complained Monday that only several hours’ notice was given for the new, larger lockdown.

“We really don’t understand Shanghai’s management and control measures. There has indeed been some inconsistency,” said a 59-year-old man who gave only his surname Cao as he queued to buy groceries.

“After so much time, [the city] is not controlling the virus and the numbers are still going up.”

The government has not specified any impact on Shanghai’s main international airport or its bustling seaport.

‘Not optimistic’ 

China largely kept the virus under control for the past two years through strict zero-tolerance measures including mass lockdowns of cities and provinces for even small numbers of cases.

But Omicron has proven harder to stamp out.

China has reported several thousand new daily cases for the past two weeks.

Those numbers remain insignificant globally but are up sharply from fewer than 100 a day in February.

Tens of millions of residents in affected areas across China have been subjected to citywide lockdowns in response.

But as Shanghai has struggled, some cities have made progress.

The southern tech manufacturing hub Shenzhen, which locked down earlier in the current outbreak, announced that normal business activity was resuming on Monday as new cases have dropped.

“I didn’t think it will be so serious [in Shanghai],” said resident Guo Yunlong, 24.

“Every single detailed aspect of our lives from clothing, food, living and commuting has been affected. I don’t feel optimistic, to be honest.”

Some online posts complained of the impact on elderly Shanghai residents who may not know how to order supplies online.

Other users accused Shanghai, which is envied by other cities for its wealth and cosmopolitan image, of putting its desire to maintain normality over health concerns.

Chinese authorities have watched nervously as a deadly Hong Kong Omicron surge sparked panic buying and claimed a high toll of unvaccinated elderly before later surging in mainland China.

KYIV — Ukraine warned on Monday the humanitarian crisis in the pulverised city of Mariupol was now "catastrophic", as fighting surged around Kyiv ahead of new face-to-face peace talks with Russia in Turkey.

Russian attacks near Kyiv cut power to more than 80,000 homes, officials said, underscoring the peril facing the capital despite an apparent retreat in Moscow's war aims to focus on eastern Ukraine.

"The enemy is trying to break through the corridor around Kyiv and block transport routes," Ukraine's deputy defence minister Ganna Malyar said.

"The defence of Kyiv continues. It is very serious today," she said.

"It is extremely difficult for the enemy, but we must be honest about the fact that the enemy is trying to capture Kyiv, because to capture Kyiv is essentially a captured Ukraine, and this is their goal."

About 20,000 Ukrainians have been killed in Russia's month-old invasion and 10 million have fled their homes, according to Kyiv, and several cities are still coming under withering bombardment.

Humanitarian needs are direst in the southern port city of Mariupol, where Ukraine said that about 160,000 civilians remain encircled by Russian forces, desperate for food, water and medicine.

Ukraine's foreign ministry said the situation there was "catastrophic" and Russia's assault from land, sea and air had turned a city once home to 450,000 people "into dust".

Ukraine says that one Russian strike on a theatre-turned-shelter in Mariupol is feared to have killed some 300 people.

Local lawmaker Kateryna Sukhomlynova said the theatre death toll remained unknown because of poor communications, but witnessed terrible scenes in the city before she was able to escape west.

Unburied bodies line streets and residents cowering in basement shelters have been forced to eat snow to stay hydrated, she told AFP.

“People were calling out to me hysterically, asking me ‘Why aren’t we burying them?’ And I responded, ‘If I take care of the dead, the living that I can help will die’,” Sukhomlynova said.

Ukraine decided against any humanitarian corridors on Monday because of potential “provocations” by the Russians along designated routes, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

France, Greece and Turkey are hoping to launch a mass evacuation of civilians out of Mariupol within days, according to French President Emmanuel Macron, who is seeking agreement from Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Macron warned that any escalation “in words or action” could harm his evacuation efforts, after US President Joe Biden’s shock declaration in Poland that Putin “cannot remain in power”.

Biden himself rowed back on Sunday, denying to reporters that he had been calling for regime change, while Britain and Germany have joined France in distancing themselves from the remark.

Peace ‘without delay’ 

Russia has de-facto control over the southern peninsula of Crimea that it annexed in 2014, and the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Lugansk in the eastern Donbas region.

In the Lugansk city of Rubizhne, one person was killed and another wounded by overnight Russian bombardment, according to regional Ukrainian officials.

President Volodymyr Zelensky said the first round of in-person talks since March 10, due to open in Istanbul on Tuesday after near-daily video contacts, must bring peace “without delay”.

Ukrainian “neutrality”, and the future status of Donbas, could be in the mix for the Istanbul meeting. Ukraine’s delegation said it had been delayed and the talks would open on Tuesday.

“We understand that it is impossible to liberate all territory by force, that would mean World War III, I fully understand and realise that,” Zelensky said.

But he stressed: “Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity are beyond doubt. Effective security guarantees for our state are mandatory.”

Putin has called Moscow’s military goals “demilitarisation and denazification of Ukraine”, as well as the imposition of neutral status.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov named the primary goal as “ending the killing in the Donbas region that has lasted eight years”.

He rejected Zelensky’s demands to meet personally with Putin, but said: “We have an interest in these talks ending with a result that will achieve the fundamental aims for us.”

Russia last week appeared to scale back its campaign when senior Gen. Sergei Rudskoi said the first phase of the war was over and the “main goal” was now on controlling Donbas in the east.

Western analysts say Ukraine’s unexpectedly dogged resistance, coupled with logistical and tactical failures by the Russians, explain any reorientation by Moscow.

The Kremlin is taking no chances with domestic opposition to its war. A crackdown on independent reporting ensnared another victim on Monday after new warnings from Russia’s media regulator.

The Novaya Gazeta newspaper, whose chief editor Dmitry Muratov was last year awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said it was suspending publication until the end of the invasion.

Many foreign companies are giving up on Russia altogether, after a raft of Western sanctions. European brewers Carlsberg and Heineken joined the exodus on Monday.

Russia’s Korea solution? 

Many in Ukraine remain suspicious that Russia could use the talks as an opportunity to regroup and fix the problems bedevilling its military.

“After a failure to capture Kyiv and remove Ukraine’s government, Putin is changing his main operational directions,” intelligence chief Kyrylo Budanov said.

He was aiming now “impose a separation line between the occupied and unoccupied regions”, the Ukrainian official said. “It will be an attempt to set up South and North Koreas in Ukraine.”

The head of Ukraine’s Lugansk separatist region says it may hold a referendum on becoming part of Russia.

But resistance in besieged Mariupol is the main obstacle preventing Moscow from gaining unbroken control of land from the Donbas to the Crimea.

In the southern town of Mykolaiv, under heavy assault for weeks, the bombardments appeared to be easing.

That was a welcome respite for locals like 13-year-old Sofia, who suffered shrapnel injuries to her head during shelling in early March near Mykolaiv.

“Now I can move my arms and legs a little,” she said, after undergoing three operations. “I still can’t get up without my mother’s help, but hopefully I can leave soon.”

KABUL — The Taliban have ordered airlines in Afghanistan to stop women from flying unless accompanied by a male relative, in the latest crackdown on basic human rights by the country’s new rulers since seizing power.

The hardline Islamists have imposed sweeping restrictions on freedoms, mostly targeting Afghan girls and women, and on Sunday also ordered local television channels to stop broadcasting BBC news bulletins.

Over the weekend, they also decreed that men and women could not visit parks in the capital on the same days.

After returning to power in August the Taliban promised a softer version of the harsh rule that characterised their first stint in power, from 1996 to 2001, but restrictions have crept back — often implemented regionally at the whim of local officials.

Women are increasingly being shut out of public life — barred from high schools and most government jobs, and ordered to dress according to the Taliban’s strict interpretation of the Koran.

In their latest crackdown, the Taliban ordered Afghanistan’s Ariana Afghan Airlines and Kam Air to stop women from boarding flights unless they were escorted by a “mahram”, or adult male relative.

The decision was taken after a meeting on Thursday between representatives of the Taliban, the two airlines, and Kabul airport immigration authorities, aviation officials told AFP.

“No women are allowed to fly on any domestic or international flights without a male relative,” said a letter by a senior Ariana official to his staff, a copy of which was obtained by AFP.

A spokesman for the Taliban’s religious enforcers, the Ministry for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, denied ordering the flight ban, but two travel agents told AFP they had stopped issuing tickets to solo women travellers.

‘God’s order’

The edict was not expected to affect foreigners, although aviation officials reported that an Afghan woman with a US passport was prevented from flying last week.

“Some women who were travelling without a male relative were not allowed to board a Kam Air flight from Kabul to Islamabad on Friday,” a passenger on the flight told AFP.

The Taliban have already banned inter-city road trips for women travelling alone.

The flight ban came as the vice ministry ordered that men and women should not visit parks in Kabul on the same days.

Women are now permitted to visit parks only on Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays, while the remaining days are reserved for men, a ministry notification said.

“It is not the Islamic Emirate’s order but our God’s order that men and women who are strangers to each other should not gather at one place,” Mohammad Yahya Aref, an official at the vice ministry, told AFP.

The new restriction on women follows Wednesday’s shutdown of all girls’ secondary schools just hours after they were allowed to reopen for the first time since August.

Tens of thousands of girls had flocked back to class, but officials ordered them home just hours into the day, triggering international outrage.

Taliban sources said that the decision was taken after a closed-door meeting of the movement’s leaders last week in Kandahar, the de facto power centre of the group.

‘Screws tightening’

Several Afghan women activists have warned of nationwide protests if the schools were not open within a week.

Heather Barr, Human Rights Watch associate director for women’s rights, said the latest restrictions were “scary”.

“We see the screws tightening on women and girls every day now,” she said.

“They have abandoned — at least for now — any effort to reach an accommodation with the international community, and that leaves them with nothing to lose.”

The Taliban appear to have also set their sights on local media networks, which flourished under the previous US-backed regimes.

On Monday, Taliban intelligence agents raided four radio stations in Kandahar and detained six journalists, sources said. 

The raids come a day after the authorities ordered the BBC’s television partners in Afghanistan to stop broadcasting its news bulletins.

“Since the foreign TV channels are broadcast from abroad, the Islamic Emirate has no access to control their contents, especially when it comes to journalists’ uniforms and dresses,” government spokesman Inamullah Samangani told AFP.

The Taliban have already ordered women journalists working in Afghan television networks to wear hijabs, and stopped channels from broadcasting foreign dramas.