More than 1,000 Iranian girls in schools across the country appear to have suffered “mild poison” attacks since November, when the first cases emerged in the city of Qom, according to state media and officials.
The suspected attacks have been described by some observers as part of an extremist response – perhaps with tacit state endorsement – to the protests led by women and girls that have convulsed Iran since the death of Mahsa Amini in September.
But there are also suggestions that some of the cases may be evidence of mass sociogenic illness – symptoms without a biomedical cause – stemming from the repression of schoolgirls who have played a leading role in that movement.
One of the reasons why the suspected attacks have been so shocking is that girls’ education has been an accepted and fairly ordinary part of life in Iran. Since 2011, women have outnumbered men on university campuses; the World Bank says female literacy rose from 26% in 1976, before the Islamic Revolution, to 85% in 2021. While a 2012 policy restricted places for women at some public universities, the principle that girls are entitled to go to school is not a controversial one.
Here is a summary of what we know, and what the consequences may be.
What is causing the incidents?
Because of severe limits on press freedom on Iran, reporters face challenges to their ability to investigate the circumstances of the incidents – and there is no direct evidence of responsibility. But it is possible to put some details together.
“The attacks aren’t sophisticated at all,” said Deepa Parent, a human rights journalist who has been covering the story for the Guardian. “One doctor told me that based on the symptoms they’re seeing, it’s likely to be a weak organophosphate agent [widely used in agriculture as pesticide].” The doctor told Parent that the only people he had treated in the past with similar symptoms worked in agricultural or military settings.
In seeking to narrow possible responsibility, some have looked to the fact that the first incidents were in Qom, a highly religious city about 80 miles from Tehran. “While girls’ education is widely accepted, there are radical Islamists there who are against it,” Parent said.
Some have asked if the incidents may be sanctioned or enabled by the government as part of efforts to intimidate the protest movement that has gripped the country since September, when Amini, a young Kurdish woman, died in the custody of Iran’s “morality police”. Given the simplicity of the suspected raw materials, it is also possible the attacks were copycat incidents.
There have also been claims that at least some of the cases may be the product of “mass sociogenic illness”, where symptoms spread without a clear biomedical cause. Proponents of that argument note the harsh repression of protesters in Iran as a possible trigger.
A review of blood tests from some Iranian schoolgirls found no evidence of toxins, this BBC explainer notes – although it also says that the results are not sufficient evidence to rule out poisoning even in the cases under review. The Wall Street Journal reported that in one video posted on social media last week, a class appeared to fall ill after a girl with asthma suffered breathing difficulties, which prompted a teacher to ask if students had smelled anything.
While it is plausible that some cases could be explained this way, in some instances witnesses have reported seeing suspicious objects thrown into schoolyards. Dan Kaszeta, a chemical weapons expert at the Royal United Services Institute thinktank, told the BBC that poisonous substances can quickly degrade, making it very hard to draw firm conclusions. Some have also asked if similar incidents involving men or boys would have been subjected to the same scrutiny over the possibility of an “anxious” response.
Why might girls be targeted?
“After Mahsa’s death, it was mostly university students who took to the streets first,” said Parent. “But soon after, there were reports of three teenage girls who died from blows to the head: Setareh Tajik, Sarina Esmailzadeh and Nika Shahkarami.
“These deaths completely changed the situation. I started to see pictures of teenage girls showing their middle fingers on a private protest group, burning Ayatollah Khamenei’s picture – they started this in the classrooms. And then these girls started to bunk class and join the protests in the streets.”
While it is possible that extremists are taking advantage of the febrile political situation to act on their longstanding misogynistic view of women’s education, the incidents are widely viewed as a consequence of recent events.
“Nobody believes that it is coincidence that it has followed the protests,” said Parent. “What you hear from activists and on protest networks is that this is revenge on these girls, and on their families.”
How has the Iranian government responded?
After months of ignoring the incidents, a sharp recent upsurge in the number of cases appears to have forced the authorities’ hand. On Monday the country’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, spoke publicly on the subject for the first time, saying that if the incidents were deliberate then the culprits should be sentenced to death for committing an “unforgivable crime”.
Parent said international attention may have prompted authorities to acknowledge the phenomenon.
“The foreign minister was at the UN human rights council, and he was scheduled to give an interview to Christiane Amanpour at CNN. That may have forced their hand,” she said. At the UNHRC, an Iranian diplomat said his country had “achieved greatly in empowering women and girls”.
Few observers will have confidence in any investigation. Besides questions over whether the authorities sanctioned any attacks, “Iranian authorities have a terrible record of investigating violence against women and girls”, Human Rights Watch said last week, pointing to the 2014 example of acid attacks on women in the city of Isfahan, which resulted in no arrests or prosecutions.
What does all this mean for the future of the protest movement?
Whatever the complexity of assessing the causes, the spate of incidents comes at a febrile moment. While there has been a period of relative quiet in protest recently – perhaps because of a sharp rise in executions – the incidents in girls’ schools have prompted a new sense of outrage, Parent said. “Protesters are telling me that they cannot allow this to happen to young girls.” On Wednesday – International Women’s Day – new protests are planned.
“These schoolgirls are seen as babies, there is a protectiveness,” Parent said. “It was the death of those 16-year-old girls that charged the movement early on, and the anger over the situation for young girls now may do the same thing again.”
Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Defence Minister, has visited Mariupol, the occupied Ukrainian city that was almost completely destroyed in a months-long siege by Russian forces.
It is rare for high-ranking Kremlin officials to visit occupied Ukrainian territory, and Gen Shoigu's visit, which was announced by the defence ministry on Monday, comes as Russian forces appear to be on the brink of victory in Bakhmut.
Ukraine's military said late on Sunday said Russian forces were attempting to advance on Bakhmut, shelling the city and nearby settlements of Ivanivske, Chasiv Yar, Kurdyumivka and Orikhovo-Vasylivka.
"The situation in Bakhmut can be described as critical," Ukrainian military analyst Oleh Zhdanov said in a video commentary.
But the founder of Russia's Wagner mercenary group, Yevgeny Prigozhin, says his troops urgently need more ammunition promised since February, the latest sign of tension between the Kremlin and the private militia chief, and Russia's front lines near Bakhmut could collapse.
To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.
By Joel Guinto & Marita Moloney
BBC News
Bangladesh authorities are investigating the cause of a massive fire in a Rohingya refugee camp which has left 12,000 people without shelter.
No casualties have been reported, but the fire on Sunday razed 2,000 shelters after spreading quickly through gas cylinders in kitchens, officials said.
Police are investigating if the fire was an act of sabotage. One man has been detained, local media reported.
The camp in the south-east is believed to be the world's largest refugee camp.
Most of its residents, Rohingya refugees, had fled persecution in neighbouring Myanmar.
On Monday, hundreds had returned to the Cox's Bazar area to see what they could salvage from the ruins.
The blaze had started at about 14:45 local time Sunday (08:45 GMT) and quickly tore through the bamboo-and-tarpaulin shelters, an official said.
"Some 2,000 shelters have been burnt, leaving about 12,000 forcibly displaced Myanmar nationals shelterless," Mijanur Rahman, Bangladesh's refugee commissioner, told AFP news agency.
The blaze was brought under control within three hours but at least 35 mosques and 21 learning centres for the refugees were also destroyed, he added.
Photos are now emerging that show the extent of the devastation.
Many of those who lived there can be seen picking through the charred area, where only metal struts and singed corrugated roofing remains.
STR/EPA-EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Hrusikesh Harichandan, from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, told the BBC there had been "massive damage" to the camp.
He said basic services such as water centres and testing facilities had also been affected.
"My shelter was gutted. [My shop] was also burnt," Mamun Johar, a 30-year-old Rohingya man, told AFP.
"The fire took everything from me, everything."
Reuters
Thick black clouds were seen rising above Camp 11, one of many in the border district where more than a million Rohingya refugees live.
It will be difficult to relocate the estimated 12,000 people affected by the fire - given the already overcrowded conditions in the "mega camp", said Hardin Lang from Refugees International.
Delivering basic services to those people in other parts of the camp would also be a challenge because many services - health clinics, schools - have been destroyed.
"This is in essence an acute incident on what was already a chronically very vulnerable and precariously poised population," he told the BBC.
The camps, overcrowded and squalid, have long been vulnerable to fires.
Between January 2021 and December 2022, there were 222 fire incidents in the Rohingya camps including 60 cases of arson, according to a Bangladesh defence ministry report released last month.
The refugee camp houses people who fled from Myanmar following a military crackdown against the Rohingya ethnic minority.
The Rohingya are Muslims in largely Buddhist Myanmar, where they have faced persecution for generations.
The latest exodus of Rohingya escaping to Bangladesh began in August 2017, after Myanmar's military brutally retaliated when a Rohingya insurgent group launched attacks on several police posts.
Ukrainian forces appear to be “conducting a limited fighting withdrawal” in eastern Bakhmut but continue to inflict high casualties on the advancing Russian forces, the US-based Institute for the Study of War says in its latest update.
Though the think tank says it is still too early to tell what Ukraine’s intentions are, the defence of Bakhmut “remains strategically sound” and that it may be pursuing a “gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare”.
Russian forces are unlikely to quickly secure significant territorial gains when conducting urban warfare, which usually favors the defender and can allow Ukrainian forces to inflict high casualties on advancing Russian units—even as Ukrainian forces are actively withdrawing.
The ISW said Russian forces will still need to fight through through Bakhmut city centre on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River, which is heavily defended and will favour Ukrainian forces.
Urban warfare in Bakhmut may further degrade already exhausted Russian mixed forces in a fashion similar to that caused by Ukraine’s fighting withdrawal from the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk line, which effectively ended Russian offensive operations in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in the summer of 2022.
The air alarm that was declared across all of Ukraine earlier has ended.
Most of Ukraine’s winter grain crops – winter wheat and barley – are in good condition and could produce a good harvest, Ukraine’s academy of agricultural science was quoted as saying on Monday.
“The analysis of the viability of winter wheat … showed that the vast majority of plants were in relatively good condition,” the APK-Inform consultancy quoted a report by the academy as saying, despite Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Reuters reports the winter wheat area sown for the 2023 harvest decreased to about 4.1m hectares from more than 6m sown a year earlier as a result of Russia’s fullscale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February last year.
Of the winter wheat sown last year, only 4.9m hectares were harvested in Ukrainian-controlled territory, as Russian forces occupied some areas.
Ukraine’s wheat harvest declined to 20.2m tonnes in 2022 from 32.2m tonnes in 2021. Overall grain output fell to around 54m tonnes from a record 86m in 2021.
Suspilne, Ukraine’s state broadcaster, is reporting that overnight “Russian troops launched a rocket attack on Kramatorsk and destroyed a school”, and that 15 apartment buildings were also damaged.
The claim has not been independently verified.
Oleksandr Syenkevych, mayor of Mykolaiv, has published to Telegram to say that the electricity, water and heating systems in the city are all functioning. He also writes that all public transport is running.
The BBC Russian service reports that “for the third day in a row”, Russia’s defence minister Sergei Shoigu is in the Russian occupied area of Ukraine, adding more details to earlier reports. [See 6.13 GMT]
The BBC writes:
In Mariupol, Shoigu “inspected the readiness of already commissioned facilities and the progress of work on the sites of buildings and structures under construction.”
The list of objects that Shoigu allegedly visited includes a medical centre, an emergency centre and “a new microdistrict of 12 five-story residential buildings.”
On Saturday, the Russian military department claimed that the minister visited the “forward command post” of one of the formations of the Vostok group of troops in the South Donetsk direction, where the commander of the group Rustam Muradova reported to him. On Sunday, there was a report about a meeting between Shoigu and the leaders of other groups at the “headquarters of the combined group of Russian troops.”
The exact geographical points of Shoigu’s trip were not indicated.
The air alert has been extended across all of Ukraine.
An air alert has just been declared across several regions of Ukraine including Mykolaiv, Dnipro, Zaporizhzhia, Odesa and Kherson in the south, as well as in Lviv in the west.
It was BorisJohnson who declared, in November 2021, four months before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, that “the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on the European landmass … are over”. Today, dozens of destroyed Russian tanks dot Ukraine’s eastern Donbas fields near Vuhledar, smashed, rusting emblems of a traditional heavy warfare that has returned to Europe.
Events have moved fast since Russia invaded last February, but it is worth restating how far planning for conventional war had gone out of fashion before then. Although it was recognised that Russia was a threat, the dominant military thinking was that the goal of authoritarian regimes was “to win without going to war”, as then chief of general staff SirNickCarter said in September 2020.
It was not just a UK assumption; the idea was widespread that future conflicts would be economic, or fought in cyberspace; by mercenaries or simply deniably in the way Russia’s first incursions into Ukraine in 2014 were led by separatist rebels infiltrated by Moscow’s forces. War, in short, would be less bloody – and much cheaper.
For more on how these and other assumptions have been upended by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, read the full story by DanSabbagh.
Russia’s premier tank force is expected to be re-equipped with Soviet-made T-62 tanks first fielded in 1954 to make up for combat losses, the UK Ministry of Defence says.
In its latest update the ministry says there is a “realistic” possibility” that the 60-year-old tanks will be supplied to units including the 1st Guards Tank army, which had been expected to receive the next-generation T-14 Armata main battle tank from 2021.
The ministry said approximately 800 T-62s have been pulled from storage since 2022 and have been retrofitted for use in the conflict but lack modern explosive reactive armour.
Ukraine’s MartaKostyuk won her first WTA title Sunday with victory over Russia’s VarvaraGracheva and dedicated it to her country and “all the people who are fighting and dying”.
The 20-year-old Kostyuk collapsed to the court sobbing after winning the final of the ATX Open in Austin, Texas 6-3, 7-5.
The 52nd-ranked Kostyuk told the victory ceremony:
Being in the position that I am in right now, it’s extremely special to win this title.
I want to dedicate this title to Ukraine and to all the people who are fighting and dying right now.
After applause and cheers, Kostyuk added: “Obviously it’s a very special moment, no matter when it happens.”
Kostyuk has previously been outspoken about the tennis world’s response to the Russian invasion of her homeland, saying anti-war platitudes weren’t enough.
At the Australian Open in January, Kostyuk said it had been “very upsetting” to see NovakDjokovic’s father, Srdjan, posing alongside a Russian flag with President VladimirPutin’s face on it.
Kostyuk refused to shake hands at the US Open with VictoriaAzarenka of Belarus.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February last year saw them and allies Belarus become outcasts in world sport.
- AFP
A British-led £520m international fund to provide fresh weapons for Ukraine and intended to be “low bureaucracy” has been plagued by delays, with only £200m allocated amid warnings that the rest of the funding will not provide arms at “the front until the summer”.
Bidders complain that the process, run by the UK’s Ministry of Defence, working with six other European countries, has been frustrating with deadlines missed – and the MoD conceded that awarding contracts “inevitably took time”.
Launched last August, the International Fund for Ukraine was intended to be “a flexible low-bureaucracy fund” that would provide new kit, training and money for repairs for Ukraine’s armed forces as Kyiv battles the Russian invasion.
For more on how a frustrating bureaucratic process is impeding weapons supplies for Ukraine, read the full report by Dan Sabbagh.
Three Ukrainian missiles have allegedly been shot down by air defence in Russia’s Belgorod region overnight.
VyacheslavGladkov, mayor of the Belgorod region, confirmed the strike in a post to his Telegram channel and said authorities were working to understand what had occurred.
One man has allegedly suffered shrapnel wounds to his arm and been taken to hospital by ambulance. Additional damage had been done to powerlines and the facades of nearby buildings.
Russian defence minister SergeiShoigu has visited Mariupol, the city in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region captured by Russian forces last year after a months-long siege, the defence ministry said on Monday.
- Reuters
Within the first hours of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on February 25, 2022, the Ukrainian armed forces blew up a Soviet-era dam on the Irpin river to slow the Russian advance on Kyiv by flooding the surrounding area, turning it into a swampy quagmire.
A year on, the town of Demydiv is reeling from the flood that struck over 60 houses in the area.
Here are a few images from the town as residents grapple with their flooded community, the effects of winter and the ongoing war.
- AFP/GETTY
Ukrainian forces repelled more than 95 attacks by Russian forces on Sunday in several areas of Luhansk and Donetsk.
According to the latest update by the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, Russian forces launched 27 air strikes and four missile strikes in the last 24 hours and continue to target civilian infrastructure.
It reports that assaults on Bakhmut and surrounding settlements remain ongoing with 21 settlements in Donetsk enduring hostile shelling and that Russian forces have been moved near Nova Kakhovka in Kherson and in Crimea as a feint. It is believed this has caused frustration among Russian troops due to fuel shortages and a lack of faith in the effectiveness of such a manoeuvre.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainian airforce conducted 12 strikes on Russian forces, with artillery and missile forces striking three control points, four “focus areas” and one air defence system.
It is also claimed that the Russian military has set up a base in Volnovakha in the Donetsk region where students from a local technical school have been forced to repair damaged equipment and vehicles.
Russia’s failure to advance according to its stated timeframes is likely to lead to increasing frustration amongst the wars strongest supporters, the Institute for the Study of War says.
The ISW says the grinding campaign to capture Bakhmut has forced millbloggers to shift to more conservative expectations for advancing Russian troops informed by “nine months of ‘highly attritional, slow Russian advances in the Bakhmut.”
Despite these lowered expectations the ISW says cost of taking Bakhmut and stalling advances elsewhere “suggests that Russian campaigning to capture all of Donetsk Oblast would be a year’s-long effort’”.
Russian forces currently do not have the manpower and equipment necessary to sustain offensive operations at scale for a renewed offensive toward Kramatorsk and Slovyansk, let alone for a years-long campaign to capture all of Donetsk Oblast. Meaningful Russian offensives around Vuhledar or elsewhere in western Donetsk Oblast are also highly doubtful.
Russia will have to mobilize considerably more personnel and fundamentally transform its military industry to be able to support such operations. The Russian military‘s likely continued failure to achieve a decisive victory in Donetsk Oblast will likely draw increasing ire from Russia’s ultranationalist pro-war community.
Ukraine’s defence of Bakhmut is inflicting heavy losses on Russian forces, setting the stage for a future Ukrainian counteroffensive, according to the latest update by the Institute for the Study of War.
The attrition experienced by Russian forces in Bakhmut, and stalling offensives elsewhere, mean “the Russian military will likely struggle to maintain any subsequent offensive operations for some months”, the think tank says.
The ISW says the “significant numbers” of mobilised personnel near Vuhledar and in other operations suggest “Russian forces likely lack the capability to further reinforce the Bakhmut area significantly without pulling forces from another area of the front due to the lack of untapped reserves”.
Even if the Russian military take Bakhmut, the ISW says it would likely not be able to capitalise on this win and, combined with the “stalling Russian offensive” in Luhansk, circumstances are “likely setting robust conditions for a future Ukrainian counteroffensive”.
The Russian effort against Bakhmut does not further the Russian military’s operational or strategic battlefield aims, and significant Ukrainian defenses in the surrounding area undermine any tactical significance that capturing Bakhmut likely has for Russian forces. Ukrainian forces will likely have a window of opportunity to seize the battlefield initiative and launch a counteroffensive when the Russian effort around Bakhmut culminates either before or after taking the city.
Ukrainian forces appear to be “conducting a limited fighting withdrawal” in eastern Bakhmut but continue to inflict high casualties on the advancing Russian forces, the US-based Institute for the Study of War says in its latest update.
Though the think tank says it is still too early to tell what Ukraine’s intentions are, the defence of Bakhmut “remains strategically sound” and that it may be pursuing a “gradual fighting withdrawal to exhaust Russian forces through continued urban warfare”.
Russian forces are unlikely to quickly secure significant territorial gains when conducting urban warfare, which usually favors the defender and can allow Ukrainian forces to inflict high casualties on advancing Russian units—even as Ukrainian forces are actively withdrawing.
The ISW said Russian forces will still need to fight through through Bakhmut city centre on the western bank of the Bakhmutka River, which is heavily defended and will favour Ukrainian forces.
Urban warfare in Bakhmut may further degrade already exhausted Russian mixed forces in a fashion similar to that caused by Ukraine’s fighting withdrawal from the Severodonetsk-Lysychansk line, which effectively ended Russian offensive operations in Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts in the summer of 2022.
Hello and welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war in Ukraine – this is RoyceKurmelovs bringing you the latest developments.
An update from the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) on Monday morning suggests Ukrainian forces may be conducting a “limited fighting withdrawal” from eastern Bakhmut. Ukrainian forces are continuing to inflict high casualties against advancing Russian units but ISW says it is still too early to know how the situation is developing and the defence “remains sound”.
During his nightly address, Ukrainian president VolodymyrZelenskiy hailed fighters in the Donbas region, describing the defence of Bakhmut as “one of the toughest battles. Painful and challenging”. Ukraine’s armed forces continue to hold on in Bakhmut but are coming under increasing pressure as Russian forces move to contest lines of communication and prevent resupply.
On Sunday Zelenskiy said the armed forces had repelled “more than 130 enemy attacks”.
Meanwhile, a Ukrainian special forces unit, known as Kraken, has taken credit for an attack on a Russian observation tower in the city of Bryansk which was destroyed using a kamikaze drone. There were also reports of air raids overnight with anti-aircraft batteries responding in Kiev, Dnipropetrovsk, Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk.
In other developments:
Zelenskiy also said “the world was strong enough to punish Russia for the war”. Ukraine would spend the next six months working to shore up the country’s energy supply against Russian attack, he said.
Exiled mayor of Melitopol, Ivan Fedorov, has claimed “hundreds” of Russian solders were killed in a Ukrainian strike on the city. There was no confirmation from Ukraine’s Ministry of Defence and the Guardian could not independently verify the claim.
The Russian army hit a command centre of the Ukrainian forces’ Azov regiment in the south-eastern Zaporizhzhia region, the Russian defence ministry said on Sunday. The Guardian could not independently verify this.
Turkishforeign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu said on Sunday that Ankara was working hard to extend the UN-backed Black Sea grain initiative. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson indicated Moscow was unhappy with aspects of the deal, which allowed Ukraine to export grain from ports blockaded by Russia following its invasion.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz told CNN it was “necessary” for Russian president Vladimir Putin to understand he will not win the Ukraine war, so negotiations to end the conflict can begin. “If you look at the proposal of the Ukrainians, it is easy to understand that they are ready for peace,” he added.
The death toll from a Russian missile strike that hit a five-storey apartment block in the southern Ukrainian city Zaporizhzhia on Thursday has risen to 13, a local official said on Sunday.
A woman and two children were killed in Russian mortar shelling of a village in the southern Ukrainian region of Kherson, the head of Ukraine’s presidential office said on Sunday.
UkraineMP Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze told Sky News on Sunday that tens of thousands of Ukrainian children could have disappeared in what she described as “genocide”. Klympush-Tsintsadze said the children were potentially deported to Russia.
China has set a target of 5% GDP growth in 2023, its outgoing premier has said in a speech to the ruling party’s rubber-stamp parliament – a goal that is at the lower end of analysts’ expectations and follows a 2022 figure that came in far below target.
The “work report” speech on Sunday also touched on foreign affairs and re-emphasised the Chinese Communist party’s (CCP’s) aim to annex Taiwan. Budget papers confirmed another consecutive rise in defence spending of 7.2%, slightly up on last year’s rise of 7.1%.
This year’s meeting is particularly significant as it marks the rollover of one political term to the next, after Xi’s precedent-breaking third term at the helm of the party was reaffirmed in October.
Xi’s consolidation of power has seen rivals purged and loyalists elevated in the ranks of the CCP. The removal of Li, who was a member of a rival faction, from his No 2 rank in the party was interpreted by some as a sign of the power play.
Li’s speech, delivered to an audience of almost 3,000 NPC delegates and Xi, was heavily focused on promoting China’s “full economic recovery” after being battered for several years by the pandemic, the impact of Xi’s strict zero-Covid policy and a flailing property and development sector. In 2022 China’s GDP grew just 3%, far below the government’s 5.5% target.
Li began the speech saying Covid-19 and other domestic and international factors had affected the country’s economy “beyond our expectations”.
He announced the government would aim to create about 12m urban jobs, but left room to move with unemployment rates – keeping the urban target at 5.5%, which it was most recently reported as being in December.
Prof Victor Shih at the University of California, San Diego, told the Guardian the targets were “not overly ambitious”, and allowed the government and its incoming new premier a potential “easy victory”.
“They don’t call for any massive stimulus, and that partly stems from a recognition that exports – a main engine of growth for China’s economy in the last three years – will likely not be so strong this coming year,” he said.
The speech also pledged to resolve housing issues for young people, improve welfare provisions to elderly people and “improve the birth support system”. In recent weeks, the CCP has unveiled a number of policies that aim to reverse the declining birthrate by encouraging people to have more children.
Shih said welfare increases and stimulating consumption – another focus of Li’s speech – would require sizeable government funding.
“So a lot of this wording sounds to me like an empty promise in a sense, because it’s unclear where the money would come from unless growth miraculously comes in way beyond expectations.”
Li’s speech went for a little under an hour, and also touched on the so-called “Taiwan question”, a key priority and concern for the CCP.
The CCP claims Taiwan as a province of China and has vowed to annex it, ideally peacefully but by force if necessary. Taiwan’s government and people overwhelmingly object to the prospect and are boosting military defences with weapons support from the US.
Li encouraged “both sides of the Taiwan Strait” to “jointly promote the Chinese culture and advance Chinese rejuvenation”, while reiterating Beijing’s resolve to “take resolute steps to oppose Taiwan independence and promote reunification”.
Wen-ti Sung, an expert on China and Taiwan from the Australian National University said Li’s comments on Taiwan suggested Beijing is “shooting for incremental progress, rather than quick results, on Taiwan”.
“Li still lists ‘oppose Taiwan independence’ ahead of ‘promote unification’, which suggests China is playing defence on Taiwan during Taiwan’s presidential campaign year,” Sung said. Beijing has also prioritising keeping the situation stable while it tackles domestic economic woes, he added.
China’s military has been told to be prepared for conflict over Taiwan, but analysts note that timelines for readiness – frequently posited as around 2027 – refer only to capability and not intention.
On Sunday the NPC announced a 2023 defence budget of 1.56tn yuan (US$226bn), rising 7.2% from the previous year. The growth in China’s defence budget has risen steadily over recent years.
Shih said the increase was nominal and coincided with a time of high inflation, so was expected given the military’s goal to modernise.
This weekend the NPC and a political advisory body called the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference began their concurrent annual meetings, known as the “two sessions”.
Sunday’s event was one of the few NPC meetings open to the public. Legislative and constitutional changes will be discussed behind closed doors until next weekend. Most decisions have already been made at prior meetings of senior Party officials, and the week is seen as largely ceremonial.
New appointments to government positions, including premier, will be announced this week, and there is widespread speculation that major changes to government departments will see some state organs subsumed into party equivalents, further boosting the power of the Xi-led party over China and its government operations.
Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis has asked for forgiveness from the families of the 57 victims of this week's train crash.
In a Facebook message, Mr Mitsotakis said that "in the Greece of 2023... two trains heading in different directions cannot run on the same line and no-one notice".
Protests have continued for days.
Clashes with police were reported on Sunday as thousands joined a demonstration in the capital Athens.
Police estimated 12,000 people attended the protest.
They said seven officers were hurt and five arrests were made, the AFP news agency reports.
Some demonstrators set fire to rubbish bins and threw petrol bombs. Police responded firing tear gas and stun grenades, clearing the central Syntagma Square of the protesters within a few minutes.
The protesters also reportedly released hundreds of black balloons into the sky in memory of the dead, with some holding signs reading "Down with killer governments".
On the night of 28 February, a passenger train and a freight train that were travelling in opposite directions ended up on the same track.
The first four carriages of the passenger train were derailed, and the first two caught fire and were almost completely destroyed.
The train crash has been widely attributed to human error.
A 59-year-old station master in Larissa, who was charged with manslaughter by negligence, appeared in court on Sunday and has been taken into custody.
His lawyer Stefanos Pantzartzidis said the station master had admitted to having a share of responsibility in the accident. He faces between 10 years and life in jail if convicted.
But many in Greece see the crash as an accident that had been waiting to happen, and the railway workers' union blamed successive governments' "disrespect" towards Greek railways for leading to this "tragic result".
A government minister told the BBC that the lack of funding was the direct result of the strict terms of international bailouts imposed after the 2010 debt crisis.
Reuters
Union members were joined by residents of Athens and Thessaloniki in taking to the streets throughout the past week, shocked by the scale of the disaster. The protests were also attended by many students - several of the passengers on board one of the trains were students in their 20s returning to Thessaloniki after a long weekend celebrating Greek Orthodox Lent.
"The rail network looked problematic, with worn down, badly paid staff," Nikos Savva, a medical student from Cyprus, told AFP news agency.
Train drivers in Greece have said there have been long-running problems with the electronic systems that are supposed to warn them of danger ahead.
The transport minister, Kostas Karamanlis, also resigned as a "sign of respect" for the people who had died. Mr Karamanlis he was taking responsibility for the government's failure to modernise the country's railways in the three-and-a-half years it had been in power.
Immediately after the accident, the Greek government declared three days of national mourning and said the cost of the victims' funerals would be paid for from the public purse.
BBC Europe correspondent Nick Beake says the crash seems to be becoming a defining political issue for Greece as it prepares to face a general election in the spring.
Media reports have given 9 April as a possible date, but analysts say that date may now be pushed back.
Xi Jinping will hike military spending to its fastest pace in four years because of what China perceives to be escalating foreign threats.
Spending on defence will increase by 7.2 per cent to 1.55 trillion Yuan (£187 billion) this year, which is the sharpest rise since 2019 when defence spending rose by 7.5 per cent to 1.19 trillion yuan.
The announcement on Sunday comes amid rising tensions between Washington and Beijing, territorial spats in the South China sea, border disputes with India, and its threat to invade Taiwan.
Highlighting the renewed focus on defence spending, outgoing prime minister Li Keqiang set a more modest target for economic growth of around 5 per cent for this year.
It’s the lowest growth target in more than a quarter of a century despite the economy being battered by three years of strict Covid rules.
“[E]xternal attempts to suppress and contain China are escalating," he said at the annual session of China’s rubber-stamp parliament.
“We remained committed to the Party’s absolute leadership over the people’s armed forces.”
President Xi Jinping walks past delegates
Credit: AFP
The economy grew just three per cent – its second-worst performance since 1976, the final year of Mao Zedong’s disastrous Cultural Revolution.
This year’s increase on military spending will mark the eighth consecutive year of single-digit percentage point increases in what is now the world’s second-largest military budget.
It comes as Beijing asserts itself abroad with a foreign military base in Djibouti and a naval base in Cambodia’s Ream Naval Base that could give it at least a semi-permanent presence on the Gulf of Thailand facing the disputed South China Sea.
The moves have prompted concerns among the US and its allies, particularly over Taiwan, the self-governing island democracy that China claims as its territory to be brought under its control by force if necessary.
Along with Taiwan, tensions have been rising with the US over China’s militarisation of islands in the South China Sea, which it claims virtually in its entirety, and most recently, the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon over the US east coast.
“The people’s armed forces intensified efforts to enhance their political loyalty, to strengthen themselves through reform, scientific and technological advances, and personnel training, and to practice law-based governance,” Li said.
