01/09/2025

MONDAY | SEP 1, 2025

READ OUR

HERE

8

Malaysian Paper

/thesun

Xi, Modi present united front

Wife of suspect urges husband to surrender SYDNEY: The wife of an Australian man wanted in connection with the killing of two police officers urged her husband to surrender, in a statement sent to Australian media yesterday. The heavily armed 56-year-old suspect, Dezi Freeman, fled into the bush on Tuesday after opening fire on a team of 10 police officers at his home in the northeast of Victoria state. The “horrific” shooting in the rural town of Porepunkah killed 59-year-old detective Neal Thompson and 35-year-old senior constable Vadim De Waart, police said. The suspect’s wife, Amalia Freeman, urged her husband yesterday to call the police and surrender, through a statement shared with media via her lawyer. “We echo the requests of the Victoria Police for the swift and safe conclusion of this tragedy,” she said in the statement. “I lend my full support to Victoria Police in their search for my husband and will co-operate with Victoria Police in any way that I can. “Please Dezi, if you see or hear this, call 000 and arrange a surrender plan with the police.” The 42-year-old said she and her children “share our deep sorrow for the loss of the lives”of the two officers killed. A third officer was also wounded in the lower body, but was expected to recover, police said. More than 450 police officers had been involved in the search for Freeman, who was believed to have bush survival skills and a good knowledge of the area. Amalia Freeman said she and her children “respect the important work of Victoria Police and do not hold anti-authority views”. She was arrested alongside her 15-year-old son late on Thursday, as part of the investigation into the killings, and both were released after being questioned. – AFP Archbishop criticises deportation plans LONDON: The Archbishop of York, Stephen Cottrell, has criticised the leader of Britain’s populist Reform UK party, Nigel Farage, describing his plans for mass deportations of asylum seekers as an “isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk” response. Cottrell, the Church of England’s second most senior clergyman who is performing some functions of the Archbishop of Canterbury while a new head of the Church is selected, told Sky News that Brexit veteran Farage was “not offering any long-term solution to the big issues”. He said in a pre-recorded interview aired yesterday that people should “actively resist the kind of isolationist, short-term, knee-jerk ... send them home” policies. Reform UK’s deputy leader, Richard Tice, said “the role of the Archbishop is not actually to interfere with international migration policy that is determined by the government”. Cottrell’s criticism is the latest in a growing row in Britain over how to deal with the large numbers of asylum seekers arriving in boats, an issue which has seen weeks of summer protests outside hotels where some of them are housed. The Labour government says it is tackling a problem left by Conservative administrations by trying to process asylum claims more quickly and brokering return deals with other nations. Reform UK, which has a commanding lead in opinion polls before an election expected to take place in 2029, took the initiative to lead on the issue last week when Farage unveiled his party’s plans to remove asylum seekers by repealing or disapplying treaties used to block forced deportations. Cottrell said those plans did little to address the main issue of why asylum seekers wanted to travel to Britain, and “so if you think that’s the answer you will discover, in due course, that all you have done is made the problem worse”. – Reuters

TIANJIN: Prime Minister Narendra Modi said New Delhi was committed to improving ties with Beijing in a key meeting with President Xi Jinping yesterday, as both countries resolved to put aside differences from a years long border standoff. Modi is in China for the first time in seven years to attend a two-day meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, along with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other leaders from Central, South and Southeast Asia and the Middle East in a show of Global South solidarity. “We are committed to progressing our relations based on mutual respect, trust and sensitivities,” Modi told Xi during the meeting on the sidelines of the summit, according to a video clip posted on the Indian leader’s official X account. The bilateral meeting took place five days after Washington imposed punishing 50% tariffs on Indian goods due to New Delhi’s purchases of Russian oil. Analysts say Xi and Modi are looking to present a united front against Western pressure. Modi said an atmosphere of “peace and stability” has been created on their disputed Himalayan border, the site of a prolonged military standoff after deadly troop clashes in 2020, which froze most areas of cooperation between the nuclear-armed strategic rivals. He said an agreement had been reached between both nations regarding border management, without giving details. “We must ... not let the border issue define

o Leaders reach agreement on border issues

China had agreed to lift export curbs on rare earths, fertilisers and tunnel boring machines this month during a key visit to India by Foreign Minister Wang Yi. China opposes Washington’s steep tariffs on India and will “firmly stand with India”, Ambassador to India Xu Feihong said this month. For decades, Washington painstakingly cultivated ties with New Delhi in the hope that it would act as a regional counterweight to Beijing. In recent months, China has allowed Indian pilgrims to visit Buddhist sites in Tibet, and both countries have lifted reciprocal tourist visa restrictions. “Both India and China are engaged in what is likely to be a lengthy and fraught process of defining a new equilibrium in the relationship,” said Manoj Kewalramani, a Sino-Indian relations expert at the Takshashila Institution think tank in Bengaluru. – Reuters

the overall China-India relationship,” Chinese state media outlet Xinhua reported Xi as saying. China-India ties could be “stable and far reaching” if both sides focused on viewing each other as partners instead of rivals, Xi added. Both leaders had a breakthrough meeting in Russia last year after reaching a border patrol agreement, setting off a tentative thaw in ties that has accelerated in recent weeks as New Delhi seeks to hedge against renewed tariff threats from Washington. Direct flights between both nations, which have been suspended since 2020, are “being resumed”, Modi added, without providing a timeframe.

Xi (third from right) meeting Azerbaijan President Ilham Aliyev (third from left) ahead of the summit in Tianjin yesterday. – AFPPIC

Australia condemns anti-immigration rally SYDNEY: Australia’s centre-left government condemned an anti-immigration rally held in Sydney yesterday, which it said sought to spread hate and had links to neo-Nazis. Australia Rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony,” Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television, when asked about the Sydney rally.

coalition spokesperson said in a statement. Organisers said hundreds attended the event. A large March For Australia rally was under way in central Melbourne, the capital of Victoria state, ABC aerial footage showed. Veteran lawmaker Bob Katter threatened a reporter at a press conference on Thursday when the topic of his attendance at a March for Australia was being discussed. The founder of the small, populist Katter’s Australian Party, shook his fist and said he had previously punched people for mentioning his Lebanese heritage. Katter attended a March For Australia rally in Queensland yesterday, a party spokesperson said. Laws banning the Nazi salute and the display or sale of symbols associated with terror groups came into effect this year in response to attacks on buildings and cars since the start of Israel’s military offensive. – Reuters

The March For Australia rally in the country’s most populous city was one of several anti-immigration demonstrations scheduled for state and regional capitals across the country, according to the group’s website. “Mass migration has torn at the bonds that held our communities together,” it says. The group posted on X on Saturday that the rallies aimed to do “what the mainstream politicians never have the courage to do: demand an end to mass immigration”. Australia, where one in two people is either born overseas or has a parent born overseas, has been grappling with a rise in right-wing extremism, including protests by neo-Nazis. “We absolutely condemn the March For

“We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,” Watt said, asserting they were “organised and promoted” by neo Nazi groups. March for Australia organisers did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the neo-Nazi claims. Some 5,000 to 8,000 people had assembled for the Sydney rally, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported. A counter-rally by the Refugee Action Coalition, a community activist organisation, took place near the Sydney march. “Our event shows the depth of disgust and anger about the far right agenda of March For Australia,” a