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Islamabad — The government of Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif plans to seek a formal ban on Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, or PTI, the party of imprisoned former Prime Minister Imran Khan. “We feel we have very credible evidence that Tehreek-e-Insaf should be banned,” Minister for Information and Broadcasting Attaullah Tarar said at a press briefing in Islamabad on Monday. Alleging the party had received foreign funds and organized anti-state rioting, Tarar said the government would approach the Supreme Court of Pakistan to seek a ban. Khan’s party denies any wrongdoing.  The announcement followed a Supreme Court ruling that granted Khan’s party a share in seats reserved for women and non-Muslims across all legislatures. The decision gives PTI roughly 80 seats. It also deprives Sharif’s ruling coalition of a two-thirds majority in the National Assembly, the lower house of Pakistan’s bicameral parliament. On Monday, the government filed a petition seeking a review of the top court’s verdict. PTI leader Sayed Zulfikar Bukhari said the government’s plan to ban the party was “a sign of panic.” “They have realized the courts can’t be threatened and put under pressure,” Bukhari said in a statement to the media. Calling the decision unconstitutional and a blow to democratic norms, the independent Human Rights Commission of Pakistan urged the government to immediately withdraw the ban. “It will achieve nothing more than deeper polarization and the strong likelihood of political chaos and violence,” the commission said in a statement posted on social media platform X. The government will present the move to the Cabinet on Tuesday for approval, Tarar said. Grounds for ban Khan’s party emerged as the single biggest national party in the February 8 general elections. PTI-backed candidates, forced to run as independents after the party was stripped of its unified electoral symbol, won 93 seats. If the party is dissolved, it will not only lose the share of reserved seats granted by the top court, but its current lawmakers will also have to quit all the legislatures. Pakistan’s federal government can dissolve a political party but must refer the decision to the Supreme Court within 15 days for formal approval, explained Rashid Chaudhry, national coordinator of the Islamabad-based electoral watchdog Free and Fair Election Network. “If the Supreme Court upholds the reference, then the party is dissolved,” Chaudhry told VOA. The Supreme Court might turn down the government’s request, said Ahmed Bilal Mehboob, president of the Lahore-based Pakistan Institute of Legislative Development and Transparency. He cited major legal victories that various courts handed down to the former prime minister and his party recently, including a decision on Saturday acquitting Khan and his wife, Bushra Bibi, of engaging in an illicit marriage. “PTI supporters and those who are neutral already hold very negative views about the government and the military,” Mehboob said. “They will become even more critical, and sympathy for the PTI will increase.” Freedom eludes Khan Despite courts overturning nearly three decades’ worth of prison sentences in recent months, Khan has remained in jail since August 2023. He faces numerous charges, including corruption and violence against state institutions. Earlier this month, the Geneva-based Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, which reports to the U.N. Human Rights Council, said Pakistani authorities have “no legal basis” for Khan’s detention. Late last month, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution urging “the full and independent investigation of claims of interference or irregularities” in Pakistan’s election. Slamming that resolution as interference in the country’s internal matters, the Pakistani parliament passed a counter-resolution. Sharif’s government accuses PTI of seeking support from foreign capitals and lobbyists against Pakistan. It has also repeatedly rejected international calls to investigate the alleged manipulation of the February 8 vote.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Tripoli —  Libyan authorities on Monday ordered the arrest of an airline official on charges of helping to illegally transport migrants to the United States via Nicaragua.  The commercial director of Ghadames Air was under investigation for "committing an activity harmful to the interests of the country," said a statement from the Tripoli-based Attorney General's office, which did not name the suspect.  It said Ghadames Air had transported hundreds of people to the Central American country of Nicaragua, who intended to then illegally enter the United States.  Ghadames Air is a private airline founded in 2021 and headquartered in Tripoli, according to the company's website.   The carrier could not immediately be reached for comment.  "The company had engaged in an activity ... operating flights carrying hundreds of people from East Asian countries without taking into account the obligations of the air carrier and national legislation related to immigration," the Attorney General's office statement said.  It gave no further details on the origin countries of the migrants.  Oil-rich Libya plunged into chaos following the toppling of long-time ruler Moammar Gadhafi in a NATO-backed uprising in 2011. It has since become the main gateway for migrants trying to cross the Mediterranean to Europe. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

Islamabad — Authorities in northwestern Pakistan said Monday that a suicide bomber drove an explosive-laden vehicle into a military compound, followed by several armed insurgents storming it, resulting in the death of at least three soldiers and injuries to 12 others. The pre-dawn raid occurred in the garrison city of Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, which borders Afghanistan. Local police officials and witnesses reported that the intensity of the blast had also shattered nearby civilian homes, injuring at least six people. Security sources told VOA that Pakistani soldiers quickly “cornered” the assailants in a part of the building, killing four of them in the ensuing heavy gunfight. They said that army commandos were conducting a “clearance operation” to neutralize the threat and secure the compound completely.  A spokesperson from the military's media wing, the Inter-Services Public Relations (ISPR), told VOA they are waiting for further details. Militants linked to the globally designated terrorist group, Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP, took responsibility for staging Monday’s assault. Bannu and surrounding districts have routinely experienced TTP attacks, mostly targeting military and police forces. Pakistan maintains TTP leaders and fighters orchestrated the violence from their sanctuaries on Afghan soil and are being increasingly facilitated by the neighboring country’s Taliban government.  The Foreign Ministry spokesperson reiterated Islamabad’s concerns at a regular news conference on Thursday, saying “this very serious issue” has been the subject of bilateral discussions with Afghanistan for the last several months.  “Pakistan is concerned about the terror threat that we face from individuals and entities which have support and sponsorship from across the border in Afghanistan,” Mumtaz Baloch said. “We urge Afghanistan to take concrete and effective action against these entities and to ensure that the Afghan territory is not used to foment terror attacks inside Pakistan,” she added.  The Taliban government has dismissed the charges, saying TTP is an internal problem for Pakistan to deal with. UN findings TTP, also known as the Pakistani Taliban, is known to have publicly pledged allegiance to Afghanistan’s Taliban leaders. It has provided shelter and recruited for the Afghan Taliban to help them wage insurgent attacks against the U.S.-led NATO troops for years until U.S. and international forces withdrew from Afghanistan in 2021.  A new United Nations report released earlier this month described TTP as “the largest terrorist group” operating in Afghanistan and noted it had intensified its terrorist activities in Pakistan since the return of the Taliban to power in Kabul three years ago.  “TTP continues to operate at a significant scale in Afghanistan and to conduct terrorist operations into Pakistan from there, often utilizing Afghans,” said the report by the U.N. sanctions monitoring team. It estimated that TTP had “6,000-6,500” fighters based in Afghan territory.  “Further, the Taliban have proved unable or unwilling to manage the threat from Tehrik-e Taliban Pakistan…Taliban support to TTP also appears to have increased,” the U.N. report stated. “The Taliban do not conceive of TTP as a terrorist group: the bonds are close, and the debt owed to TTP is significant,” the report added.  Taliban government spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid rejected the U.N. report in a statement over the weekend. He claimed that no "foreign groups” operate in the country, nor are "any individuals or entities" being allowed to threaten other countries from Afghanistan. 

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.

DAMASCUS — Syrians were voting for members of a new parliament in an election Monday that was expected to hold few surprises but could pave the way for a constitutional amendment to extend the term of President Bashar Assad. The vote is the fourth in Syria since mass anti-government protests in 2011 and a brutal crackdown by security forces spiraled into an ongoing civil war and comes as an economic crisis grips the country, fueling demonstrations in the south. Syria's 2024 parliamentary election excludes rebel-held northwest Syria and the country's northeast under U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces. The number of eligible voters hasn't been announced either, and unlike presidential elections, the millions of diaspora Syrians — whose numbers have ballooned since the civil war — are not qualified to vote for the legislators. Western countries and Assad's critics say the polling in government-held areas in Syria is neither free nor fair. This year, 1,516 government-approved candidates are running for the 250-seat People's Assembly. Some 8,151 polling stations were set up in 15 voting districts in government-held areas, with results expected to be announced Monday night or the following day. In the last round of elections in 2020, the outcome was delayed for days due to technical issues, according to officials. Assad's Baath Party won 166 seats, in addition to 17 others from allied parties, while 67 seats went to independent candidates. The poll is taking place as Syria's economy continues to deteriorate after years of conflict, Western-led sanctions, the COVID-19 pandemic and dwindling aid due to donor fatigue. Meanwhile, the value of the country's national currency against the dollar has reached new lows, sparking food and fuel inflation. The government has also partially rolled back its subsidy program almost a year ago while at the same time doubling public sector and pension wages. Voters told The Associated Press that fixing Syria's hobbling economy is a key issue. "We hope that our trust in these new legislators will bring good to the country and improve conditions," said Ahmad al-Afoush, 40, after voting in Damascus. Shirine al-Khleif hopes the new parliament will proactively take measures to improve the living situation in Syria. "I don't want to say that the predecessors weren't good. We just want things to improve," the 47-year-old engineer said. In the Druze-majority southern province of Sweida, where anti-government protests have been taking place regularly for nearly a year due to economic misery, many called for a boycott of the polls. Videos posted online by Suwayda24, a local activist media collective, and others showed protesters grabbing ballot boxes off a truck in an attempt to stop them from reaching the polling stations. Elsewhere, campaigning was low-key as candidates focused mainly on general slogans such as national unity and prosperity. Vladimir Pran, an independent adviser on transitional political and electoral processes, said the competitive part of the Syrian election process comes before the polling starts, when a voted-on list of Baath Party candidates is sent to the party's central command, allowing them to run in the election. "Elections are really already finished... with the end of the primary process," he said. Once the Baath party list is completed, "you can check the list and the results, and you will see that literally all of them will be in the Parliament." The number of incumbents who made the final list this year was relatively low, suggesting a reshuffling within the Baath party. Maroun Sfeir, a consultant on transitional electoral and political processes, said the 169 candidates put forward by the Baath party alone go past the margin of 167 MPs needed to propose a constitutional amendment, protect the president from being accused of treason and veto legislation. In addition, 16 candidates from Baath-allied parties are also running on the same list, he said. "You're only three MPs short of three-quarters of the parliament, which is required for (passing) a constitutional amendment." While that leaves 65 slots open for independent candidates, Sfeir said they should not be expected to present a real opposition bloc. "They are all pre-vetted ... to ensure that they're all loyal or without any threat," he said. With Assad facing term limits that would end his presidency in 2028, the next parliament is widely expected to try to pass a constitutional amendment to extend his term.

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Taipei, Taiwan — The shooting at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday quickly became a trending topic on China’s social media platforms Sunday. The Chinese foreign ministry released a statement on its website Sunday, indicating that the country is closely following the incident involving Trump. “President Xi Jinping has expressed sympathies to former President Trump,” the Chinese foreign ministry said in its statement. The FBI said Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, a resident of Bethel Park, Pennsylvania, was the suspect in the attempted assassination of Trump. As of noon, Beijing time Sunday, the Weibo entry "Trump was shot" had garnered more than 300 million views, making it the top trending topic on the platform. Weibo, a Chinese social media platform similar to X, formerly Twitter, mirrors trends seen on international platforms like X, which is banned in China. Not only did the entry "Trump was shot" dominate Weibo's trending topics, but at one point, half of the top 20 searches were related to the shooting. Updates such as "Trump's right ear was shot through by a bullet," "One person died at the scene," and "The shooting suspect was killed," along with U.S. President Joe Biden's responses, also garnered significant attention. Fast reaction came also from Chinese businesses: By noon Sunday in Beijing, shopping websites like Taobao and Pinduoduo listed T-shirts featuring images of Trump raising his arms after being injured. Some internet commenters jokingly remarked, "This is the speed of Chinese e-commerce." Major state media outlets, including Xinhua News Agency and CCTV, extensively covered the shooting. Many Chinese experts interviewed said they believed that the assassination attempt was genuine and speculated that it could positively influence Trump's campaign. Chinese social media was also rife with speculation that the shooting was "self-directed and self-staged." Notably, Jin Hao, former executive editor of Xinhua News Agency's "World Military," commented on Weibo, saying that, after looking at the clips from the scene and observing Trump’s “remarkably swift” reaction, “he [knew he] was shot as soon as he touched his ears and immediately crouched down.” Jin remarked, "This isn’t something that ordinary people can react to." Some Weibo users also echoed that "it has been practiced hundreds of times." However, this conspiracy theory faced criticism from many bloggers, and others who argued that Trump’s ear injury was just a few centimeters away from the brain. Even Jin Canrong, a professor at the School of International Relations at Renmin University of China, known for his strong anti-American stance, bluntly stated in an interview with the Shanghai-based media Observer Net that this incident was “an assassination.” Jin noted that in the photos from the scene, the injured Trump raised his hands in a fighting gesture, surrounded by Secret Service agents and the American flag, effectively creating a heroic image for himself. Currently based in California, Albert Chiu, a political science professor at Taiwan's Tunghai University, said in an interview with VOA that Trump was shot during a live broadcast, and the shooter was killed on the scene, making it hard for any "conspiracy theory" to take hold. He emphasized that the ongoing culture of political assassination in the United States warrants more attention. According to He Yue, a member of the National Union of Journalists in the United Kingdom, the enthusiasm of Chinese netizens for discussing the shooting reflects daily restrictions on free speech, where "domestic politics is off-limits." They can only engage openly when negative topics related to American democracy arise, He Yue said. Because "Chinese netizens really cannot discuss Chinese politics, when it comes to other countries' political events, like the shooting, it feels like they've found an outlet to vent,” he told VOA. “The most heated discussions revolve around whether this is a ploy and who orchestrated it. Chinese people have lived in a world of falsehoods for too long; everything feels fake, so they use this mindset to judge foreigners.” Taiwan’s reaction On Sunday, Chen Shui-bian, former Taiwanese president who was shot while campaigning for reelection two decades ago, pointed out in interviews with several Taiwanese media outlets that the locations of both shootings — his in Tainan, in southern Taiwan, and Trump’s in Butler, Pennsylvania — can be seen as "sacred places of democracy" for both countries. Each attack resulted in minor injuries to presidential candidates, which he characterized as "a striking coincidence.” One day before the 2004 Taiwan presidential election, the "319 shooting incident" occurred. President Chen was shot while campaigning in a jeep in Tainan. The bullet only caused a minor abdominal injury after penetrating his clothing. The Presidential Office of Taiwan stated Sunday, "President (Lai Ching-te) extends sincere concerns to former President Trump and prays for his speedy recovery." Lai strongly condemned any form of political violence and expressed his deepest condolences to all victims. Eric Chu, chairman of the China-friendly opposition Kuomintang party, also stated in an interview that he promptly expressed condolences to the U.S. side, hoping for former President Trump's swift recovery, and emphasizing the party's condemnation of political violence.

Give us 5 minutes, and we'll give you the world. Around the clock, Voice of America keeps you in touch with the latest news. We bring you reports from our correspondents and interviews with newsmakers from across the world.