16/09/2026

WEDNESDAY | SEPT 16, 2026

8

Boost Arctic role, EU urged

Tribunal sentences to death seven Hasina-era leaders DHAKA: A court here sentenced seven senior leaders of the former ruling party, including two ex-ministers, to death in absentia yesterday for their role in trying to crush the 2024 uprising. The seven men, members of ousted leader Sheikh Hasina’s Awami League, were convicted of crimes against humanity including murder, as well as instigating and provoking killings. They include the party’s former general secretary, Obaidul Quader, as well as fellow former minister Mohammad Ali Arafat. They were sentenced by a three-member tribunal headed by Justice Nazrul Islam Chowdhury. “We are happy with the verdict,” said prosecutor Md Aminul Islam. As many as 1,400 people were killed between July and August 2024, according to the United Nations, when Hasina’s government attempted to suppress the student-led uprising. Hasina’s 15-year rule ended in August 2024, when she fled her palace by helicopter to India. She was sentenced to death by hanging in absentia in November 2025. State-appointed defence lawyer M Hasan Imam said the seven men were not directly involved in the killings and that the court could have handed down a lesser sentence than death. “They were not directly involved in the killings, they have been convicted due to their fellow activists and supporters,” he said. The other five men are AFM Bahauddin Nasim, Sheikh Fazle Shams Parash, Mainul Hossain Khan Nikhil, Saddam Hussain and Sheikh Wali Asif Enan. The court also ordered that half the assets of five of the men be distributed as compensation to the families of those killed or injured in the uprising. Yesterday’s sentencing brings the total number convicted in trials connected to the 2024 protests to 68. Of those, 22 have been sentenced to death, though only four are in custody. – AFP Stop preparing for war in space, China tells US BEIJING: China urged the United States yesterday to “stop preparing for war” in space, after the US Space Force confirmed it had deployed weapons into orbit for the first time. Beijing and Washington are key geopolitical rivals and have long sought to expand their interests – and strategic footprints – in space. The US Space Force said on Monday that it had deployed “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending ... against hostile adversary action”, without providing specifics. China’s Foreign Ministry opposed the move, warning against the “weaponisation of outer space, turning it into a battlefield”. “We urge the US side to stop expanding its military capabilities and preparing for war in outer space,” ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told a news briefing. The US Space Force singled out China as a threat in its announcement, saying Beijing “develops and operates space and counterspace capabilities as part of a military modernisation strategy”. It also named Russia, another geopolitical rival, which it said “believes space supremacy will be a decisive factor in future conflicts”. The militarisation of space is as old as the space race itself; as soon as the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, into orbit in 1957, Washington and Moscow began exploring ways to both arm and destroy such spacecraft. The biggest worry was once about nuclear weapons in space, but the superpowers and other countries signed the Outer Space Treaty in 1967, banning weapons of mass destruction in orbit. – AFP

o Leaders see Russia’s ambitions as a threat

ROVANIEMI: Twelve European countries meeting in Finland on Monday urged the European Union to beef up its presence in the Arctic, a geopolitical battleground caught between Russia and US President Donald Trump. “We call for the European Union to take on a more strategic and proactive role in the European Arctic,” the countries’ leaders wrote in a joint statement following a European Arctic Summit in the town of Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland, attended by Denmark, France, Germany, Greece and Sweden. The EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas said the bloc was in need of icebreakers, but it was not immediately clear if she was proposing joint acquisition or urging member states to bolster their own capacities. Given “the situation that we are in, and the opening of maritime routes, we need icebreakers or ships that are able to navigate in these very difficult” conditions, Kallas told reporters. EU chief Ursula von der Leyen has suggested the EU could direct part of its surge in defence spending on a “European icebreaker capability”, which is traditionally considered a civilian capability, among other equipment vital to Arctic security. Interest in the Arctic has grown substantially since the adoption in 2021 of the EU’s latest policy strategy for the region. Trump’s repeated threats to bring Greenland, a vast, autonomous Danish territory, under US control have since then triggered a diplomatic crisis among Washington’s allies. While his tone has cooled since the beginning of the year, EU countries are determined to increase their presence in the region, well aware of a super power on the other side of Finland’s long eastern border. Pointing to “the significant and long-term threat Russia poses”, countries said Moscow’s ambitions to increase its influence in the Arctic and its “hostility towards Europe, including the increase in hybrid activities, highlight the need to strengthen the EU’s Arctic policy”. Officials present included Germany’s Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, EU foreign policy chief Kallas and EU Council President Antonio Costa, as well as leaders from countries such as Romania and Greece. “What happens here is not a regional story. It is a European one,” Costa said. No formal decisions were to be taken at the summit. But it comes as the European Commission

Kallas and Orpo in Rovaniemi on Monday. – AFPPIC

be incarcerated or die in custody than others. Hanson also said she was sorry if she had offended Prime Minister Anthony Albanese with recent comments in which she disparaged the leader’s late mother for living in public housing. Albanese condemned the “mean and nasty” remarks, which sparked calls from an opposition lawmaker to “leave mums out of it”. Hanson’s long history of provocative comments appears to have done little to dent her popularity. An opinion poll conducted by Resolve Strategic on behalf of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age newspapers released on Sunday showed 27% of Australians would vote for Hanson’s party – one percentage point behind the ruling Labor Party. – AFP was adopted in 2021, reflected in the number of high-level guests from non-Arctic countries. The Arctic region is warming nearly four times faster than the global average, according to experts, leading to severe consequences for both the environment and local livelihoods. As sea ice melts, countries such as Russia, China and the United States have been ramping up activity in the region, racing to claim natural resources and new maritime routes. China and South Korea sent container ships to attempt to transit the Northern Sea Route in Russian waters in August, testing its viability as the passage remains free of ice longer each year. – AFP

is expected to present a new Arctic strategy in a matter of weeks, which will steer the union’s approach to the Arctic over the coming years. Countries and leaders can still have a say on the final document, “so in that sense this is a timely meeting”, said Tuomas Tikkanen, senior adviser on European Affairs to Finnish Prime Minister Petteri Orpo, who initiated the summit. “The idea is essentially to strengthen the EU’s common strategic approach to the Arctic in this situation, where the geopolitical and economic significance of the region is growing considerably,” he said. Interest in the region has increased significantly since the EU’s last Arctic policy

Hanson sorry over ‘primitive’ comments SYDNEY: Australian far-right leader Pauline Hanson offered a rare but qualified apology yesterday after she described the country’s indigenous people as “primitive”. separate interview with News24 that she was “not the most eloquent speaker”. “I’ve always put my foot in my mouth in the way I come out and say things,” she said.

“I regret saying that because I don’t want to upset people. That wasn’t my intention to hurt people.” Indigenous Australians, whose ancestors have lived on the continent for more than 60,000 years, have average life expectancies about eight years shorter than the rest of the population. Several factors contribute to the disparity, with chronic health issues, higher poverty rates, limited access to healthcare in some communities and complex socio-economic causes often blamed. Indigenous people are also far more likely to

For years a political outsider, Hanson’s One Nation has surged this year to become one of Australia’s most popular parties, according to opinion polls. Long known for racist and inflammatory statements about minorities, Hanson drew outrage from across the political spectrum on Monday for describing indigenous Australians in a podcast as the “most primitive race on Earth”. She told reporters in Canberra yesterday that “if I’ve offended people by using that, then I will apologise for that”. The senator for Queensland said in a