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Vietnamese government accused of abducting Melbourne human rights activist

Vietnamese authorities have detained three activists, including an Australian, on what have been described as “fabricated” charges. The Vietnamese government said the three confessed to being members of Viet Tan – a pro-democracy organisation – which it describes as a terrorist organisation. In a statement, Viet Tan said it “strongly condemns the abduction of two of its members in Cambodia and the fabricated charges issued by the Vietnamese communist authorities to cover up an act of transnational repression”. It is not clear if the third person is a Viet Tan member as well. Tran Hiep, a 50-year-old Vietnamese Australian democracy campaigner, was due to return to Bangkok, Thailand, to reunite with his wife, Chloe Dang, after a short trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, to meet with human rights defenders. Earlier, his wife implored the federal government to find him and bring him home after he failed to board his flight. He had not communicated with his wife since 18 September, leaving her worried for his safety. “My family and I are really worried about his safety, and we just only want to know where he is and what happened to him,” Dang said from Bangkok airport before boarding a flight to Melbourne. “My husband deserves protection, and I really hope the Australian government will continue to put pressure on Cambodia to do an investigation to find out where he is right now.” Hiep, a freelance IT professional who founded the Australian Alliance to Combat Human Trafficking, was travelling with another human rights activist Nguyen Duc Thuan, who is also Vietnamese and holds a Norwegian passport. The pair travelled to Cambodia to meet with dissident Vietnamese activists for training. Viet Tan says it aims to “overcome dictatorship and build the foundation for a sustainable democracy”, and that it was “committed to peaceful, nonviolent struggle”. “We are convinced that nonviolent means are most effective for generating maximum civic participation,” the organisation said on its website. Human Rights Watch has previously described Viet Tan as “an opposition political party … which operates openly and lawfully in many countries including Australia, but which Hanoi arbitrarily labels ‘terrorist’.” Vietnam in recent years has ramped up its crackdown on dissidents, with more than 55 activists arrested under broad criminal laws in 2025. On 18 September, Human Rights Watch said more than 160 political prisoners were currently locked up in Vietnam, and that activists faced “police harassment, intimidation, surveillance, and interrogation on a daily basis”. Viet Tan urged the Norwegian and Australian authorities to ask for access to the Hiep and Thuan, to “ensure their wellbeing and access to needed medication”. It said the pair had “no intention” of entering Vietnam and the claim they had done so illegally was a “blatant fabrication” to cover up their abduction. “Viet Tan is particularly concerned that To Lam’s police state is using its security apparatus to pursue and repress activists and foreign nationals even beyond Vietnam’s borders,” it said. “Meeting with, exchanging ideas with, and supporting human rights defenders, democracy activists, and civil society is a peaceful form of advocacy to advance freedom, democracy, and human rights in Vietnam.” Civil society groups and United Nations human rights experts have repeatedly warned of growing cooperation between Vietnamese authorities and neighbouring governments targeting advocates. Viet Tan, a pro-democracy diaspora political party, had earlier described the pair’s disappearance as concerning given previous cases involving Vietnamese dissidents vanishing in neighbouring countries and subsequently appearing in custody in Vietnam. “Their disappearance is not an ordinary ‘missing person’ incident. Both men are longtime human rights advocates and Viet Tan members,” the organisation said. Dang, 36, said fretting over her husband’s whereabouts had taken a psychological toll. “It’s been 11 days and I’m really in the dark,” she said, choking back tears. “I don’t know where he is and how he’s doing – it’s driving me crazy. “Everything is really uncertain.” The Australian government confirmed consular officials were in contact with Dang but declined to comment further. “The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is providing consular assistance to the family of an Australian reported missing in Cambodia,” a department spokesperson said on Monday. The families of the missing men have filed an appeal with the UN working group on enforced or involuntary disappearances.

‘Children are dying’: Fiji hopes declaring an HIV emergency will help it tackle crisis

On a recent Friday night, Dr Kesaia Tuidraki’s medical team parked its mobile clinic outside McDonald’s in downtown Suva, Fiji, and grabbed any kid they could to be tested for HIV. Of the 97 people screened, mostly teenagers – some on their way to get a burger, others to buy drugs – one in six tested positive. “Children are suffering, children are dying, and if that doesn’t move you I don’t know what will,” Tuidraki, country director of Medical Services Pacific, tells the Guardian. Fijian authorities this month called a national health emergency to deal with surging HIV cases, with an estimated one in 60 adults now living with the virus. It comes as new infections surge, with 2,016 new cases diagnosed in 2025 – rising by 27% in a year, and representing a 12-fold increase since 2010, according to UNAids. In a close-knit island nation of about 930,000 people, an estimated 9,100 are now living with the virus. But only a fraction of those are tested and access treatment, prompting the government to scale up its pandemic announcement – first made in February 2025 – and mobilise urgent measures to prevent its spread. Dr Jason Mitchell, the head of Fiji’s HIV epidemic response, said it could take between five and 10 years to get a handle on the virus, and in the meantime he would expect numbers to rise. Critics say moves to stem the spread of a disease that is being driven by cases in the young, with new diagnoses highest in those aged between 15 and 34, has been too slow. The crisis is complex and inextricably linked to the drug epidemic – more than 42% of new cases in 2025 were due to sharing contaminated needles or equipment. Health advocates and social workers say primary school-age children are among those injecting themselves and friends are using the same contaminated needle, a problem raised by advocates as far back as 2019. “I know these young boys, they ask me for syringes,” injecting drug user Rochelle*, who is living with HIV, tells the Guardian. “Whenever I have them I give them out. Someone has to give them, they’re already accessing the drugs.” Rochelle, 38, says she tries to tell the boys not to share. Sometimes the kids listen – but not always. Under current law, giving out syringes is technically considered aiding and abetting drug use. A concern among some politicians and medical professionals is that providing needles would encourage drug use – despite evidence from UNAids that this is not the case –and advocates are urging the government to let them distribute thousands of needles and syringes sitting untouched in a Suva warehouse. “It’s really sad, honestly. We can’t wait any more, there are boxes and boxes already here,” Tuidraki says. Mitchell says he expects a change to the HIV Act to be passed within the next two weeks, allowing public health workers to distribute needles. He adds that the government has been “cautious” in announcing the emergency, which his unit had been asking for since June. Those leading the response say increased powers arising from the emergency declaration will help to quell the rapid spread of HIV, including to vulnerable populations like mothers and babies, at an estimated extra cost of $23m FJD (US$10.2m) a year. “The immediate crisis right now is the spread of HIV, which is why the needle and syringe programme is critical,” UNAids, the UN agency that fights HIV and Aids, regional director Eamonn Murphy said. ‘People are scared’ The epidemic is complex but heavily linked to methamphetamine use. Fiji is a drug-running hub in the Pacific for methamphetamine bound for Australian and New Zealand markets, but use escalated during Covid when borders were closed and it began circulating domestically. While Fijians want the crisis addressed, there has also been a backlash. Only 39% of those living with HIV in Fiji know their status, according to UNAids, and some of those spoken to by the Guardian continued to live in denial or refuse testing. “There are people blaming the [queer] community, blaming women as irresponsible people, there’s a lot of cyberbullying. Minorities are being attacked online,” Mark Shaheel Lal, an advocate who lives with HIV, says. “Now it’s more like a scandal and people are scared.” UNAids is also concerned about the spread of the virus to the Pacific, with rising cases seen in Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. In November, Australia’s minister for foreign affairs, Penny Wong, announced A$48m for Pacific countries to fight HIV/Aids, while New Zealand committed NZ$4.2m to Fiji in July. The introduction of PreP – or pre-exposure prophylaxis – an HIV prevention drug, would be a “gamechanger,” says Mitchell, who adds that one injection could be offered every six months for those at higher risk. It would be especially important for women who are not able to push for safe sex practices with partners. Two in every 100 pregnant women now have HIV. “You can’t hide a bottle of pills, but you can get an injection,” says Michell. For now, women are already being offered three HIV tests during pregnancy and sexual reproductive hubs are operating at the three main hospitals. ________ “There’s no miracles in the HIV response, it does not happen overnight. Unfortunately people are thinking this is like Covid, it’s very much not,” Mitchell says. His team plans to open new clinics, integrate testing and treatment into GP services, work on harm reduction, and hire at least 100 more staff. He says that the increase in cases means more people are getting tested, which is a positive. “Burnout is a major concern – we didn’t just start working yesterday, we’ve been working for 21 months. It’s difficult, and the difficulty is that all of it is preventable. It should not be happening.” But in many areas, including rural localities, access to treatment continues to lag. Drug Free World Fiji founder and campaigner Kalesi Volatabu is still haunted by the 15-year-old girl she met when she started pushing for a safe needle programme six years ago. A drug mule who smuggled methamphetamine to New Zealand and Australia, she had names for the three main veins on the back of her hand; breakfast, lunch, and dinner. “We had no idea of the severity, of the depth of the drug trade in this country, of the HIV crisis. Even I was naive, at the beginning, and everything was unreported for the longest time. We failed to act then – will we now?” *Name has been changed

Ukraine war briefing: Putin orders army expansion as Zelenskyy says more North Koreans to be deployed in Russia

Russian president Vladimir Putin has ordered ⁠an increase in the size ⁠of the army to 1.55 ⁠million active ‌servicemen, according ‌to a ‌presidential decree on Monday. The order comes as both Russia and Ukraine suffer mounting casualties in the more than four-and-a-half-year Ukraine war. The expansion, which follows a similar increase ordered in August, ‌will put the size of Russia’s armed forces at ⁠2,441,630. Of those are 1,550,000 active servicemen, an increase of 15,500. Ukrainian president ⁠Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on X on ‌Monday ‌there were now more than 8,000 ‌North Korean troops on ⁠Russian territory and preparations were under way to ‌deploy another 10,000 troops. Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un confirmed for the first time last year that North Korea had sent troops to fight for Russia in the war with Ukraine, with both leaders describing the soldiers as “heroes”. Citing “new data” on the deployment of North Korean troops to Russia, ⁠Zelenskyy said they were “being selected for training and subsequent deployment to Russia”. North Korea has sent an estimated 14,000 to 15,000 ⁠troops to support Russia’s war in Ukraine since 2024, according to Ukrainian and South Korean estimates, with most deployed in the Kursk region to help repel a ‌Ukrainian incursion. Explosions ⁠were heard in the Ukrainian capital of ⁠Kyiv early ⁠on Tuesday, a Reuters witness said, as Russia ⁠continues its near-daily attacks. Missile ‌debris fell in the ‌courtyard of a residential building, among other damage, and a non-residential building caught fire in another ‌part of the city, Kyiv mayor Vitali Klitschko said on Telegram. On Monday, Zelenskyy said nine ⁠people had been killed and more than 80 injured in Russian drone strikes throughout ‌the country, including in Kyiv. Pope Leo urged Russia and ⁠Ukraine to sit down and discuss how to end their war, hours after ⁠he had urged ⁠European leaders seeking to end conflicts to make concessions to achieve peace. Addressing a press conference aboard his flight to Rome on Monday after ‌a four-day trip ‌to France, Leo said the 1.4-billion-member Catholic church had an obligation ‌to call for peace and respect of human life. “The Church has a responsibility to promote these values, continually inviting leaders – from Russia and Ukraine, as well as other countries – to come together, sit down, engage ‌in dialogue,” the pope said. Nato’s top military commander said Russia’s sabotage campaign in Europe was failing to put countries off supporting Ukraine. “State-directed sabotage is growing increasingly brazen,” US general Alexus Grynkewich told a committee of EU lawmakers on Monday. Nato’s supreme allied commander for Europe cited recent incidents including the discovery of an explosive-laden drone at a German airport and a Russian naval ship firing flares at a Danish helicopter. “These are clear examples of attempts to instil fear and fracture our unified support to Ukraine. It isn’t working,” he said. Ukraine will postpone some spending commitments, including reconstruction work, because of delays in receiving aid from its foreign backers, Ukraine’s prime minister said. The government would carry out these projects eventually, “but for now, all resources must be directed toward critical areas”, Sergiy Koretsky said on Telegram on Monday. Russia’s offensive has battered Ukraine’s economy, causing billions of dollars in destruction and punching a huge hole in its neighbour’s finances. Putin has ordered the Russian assets of German retailer Metro AG to be placed under temporary administration, amid Russian-German tensions over the Ukraine war. The order, posted on Monday on the government website, did not state a reason. The step follows similar steps against the Russia businesses of global food company Nestlé and French retailer Auchan under a 2023 decree aimed at businesses associated with “unfriendly countries”. Temporary administration has led to local owners taking over the Russia businesses of French dairy concern Danone and Danish brewer Carlsberg at knockdown prices. A Russian jet-powered drone struck a Ukrainian village near the Polish border earlier on Monday, damaging a border checkpoint, a regional Ukrainian official said. The official did not give details about the nature of the checkpoint or extent of damage from the blast. Russia has launched multiple attacks near Ukraine’s border with Poland in recent weeks, drawing condemnation from Warsaw and its European allies.

Marine Le Pen hails RN senate surge as ‘milestone’ towards French presidency

The French far-right leader Marine Le Pen has said her 2027 presidential campaign will be boosted after her anti-immigration party, the National Rally (RN), and its allies improved to a record 14 seats in partial senate elections this weekend. Le Pen called the results a “historic victory” and a “major milestone” after her party cleared the 10-seat threshold to be able to form a senate group for the first time, after an indirect vote by local officials including mayors and councillors. The party’s progress in the senate will allow it higher visibility and more funding in the second house of parliament before next spring’s presidential election. Le Pen is polling high as Emmanuel Macron prepares to step down after 10 years in office. The French investigative website Mediapart reported on Monday that the RN party president, Jordan Bardella, allegedly made antisemitic comments in writing in 2013, when he was a young party member. The alleged comments in a chat, which Mediapart said it had authenticated, included: “The Jew has to dominate other peoples, crush them, and rob them; a Zionist is necessarily a Jew, and fundamentally so.” He was also alleged to have written “all the banks are owned by Jews”. Bardella responded on X that he “formally” rejected the allegations, which he described as “crude forgeries”, saying he would take legal action. The RN MP Sébastien Chenu called the senate gains “a boost for the presidential campaign” and said there was “no more glass ceiling” for the party. Edwige Diaz, who secured a large senate win for the RN in Gironde outside Bordeaux, told Le Parisien: “This will be very useful for us before the presidential election.” The 348-seat senate is France’s second chamber of parliament alongside the national assembly. Final results on Monday morning showed the senate remained dominated by the traditional right and centre right. The upper chamber’s president of more than a decade, Gerard Larcher, 77, from the rightwing party Les Républicains, is expected to be re-elected next week. Although the RN is now the biggest single opposition party in the national assembly and has the largest number of French members of the European parliament, it has until now never had a grouping in the senate, where its presence has been small. Nine RN senators were elected on Sunday, in addition to the three who won seats in 2023. The RN ally, Éric Ciotti’s Union of the Right for the Republic party, won two seats. The RN had entered the senate for the first time with two seats in 2014, when it was known as the Front National. The senate has an indirect voting system, with local elected officials choosing new senators for half the upper chamber every three years, each to serve a six-year term. Sunday’s vote by local mayors and councillors reflected the RN’s growth in support in medium towns at the last local elections in March. It also showed the party has support among independent rural mayors. Bardella called on politicians on the traditional right to join forces with his party. The Socialist senator Laurence Rossignol said a crucial question would be whether the right and centre right in the senate now moved closer to the RN and hardened their own stance on issues such as immigration and welfare benefits. She told Public Sénat TV: “Will there be a republican barrier against RN ideas? That will be key.” The right, the centre and the left’s Socialists remain the three major forces in the upper house. The radical left party La France Insoumise won a senate seat for the first time, with Gabriel Amard elected in the Rhône. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the party’s leader, who is the highest-polling left candidate for the presidency, said Amard’s win was a “good omen” for his own 2027 presidential campaign.

Poland scrambles military aircraft in response to Russian strikes on western Ukraine – as it happened

And, on that note, we will be closing the blog for today. A Russian jet-powered drone crashed near the Polish-Ukrainian border checkpoint in Dorohusk-Jagodzin (17:39), after Poland’s government centre for security issued an urgent alert against “threat of an air attack” and told residents in eastern Poland to shelter (17:11). The warning has since been lifted. Earlier, Nato’s supreme allied commander Alexus G. Grynkewich warned the global security environment is “unsettled,” “complex” and “likely to become even more so over the next several years,” as he briefed EU lawmakers on the latest incidents and threat assessments (16:04). His comments came just hours after another deadly Russian drone strikes on Ukraine, including the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv (13:22, 13:42, 14:05, 14:17, 15:17). Separately, EU’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas warned that the EU needs to “rearm more quickly” to meet its 2030 targets, adding that Russia appears to be “not interested in peace at all” (12:55, 13:07, 13:19). Separately, Pope Leo has said negotiators seeking to end war in Europe must be willing to sacrifice “some ⁠positions” to achieve peace, as ⁠efforts to end Russia’s war in Ukraine continue to fail (17:04). In a wide-ranging speech on Europe’s Christian heritage, Pope Leo also called for a “new and creative” rediscovery of the continent’s roots as he called out the culture of “boasting of lies and deceit” (12:48). If you have any tips, comments or suggestions, email me at jakub.krupa@theguardian.com. I am also on Bluesky at @jakubkrupa.bsky.social and on X at @jakubkrupa.

Trump asked Xi Jinping if China would like to buy US weapons, American ambassador says

Donald Trump offered to sell weapons to China while hosting its leader, Xi Jinping, last week, the US ambassador to China said on Sunday. David Perdue told Fox News on Sunday: “President Trump continues to say, hey, we sell arms to other people around the world. He actually asked President Xi, would he like to buy some at one point.” On Monday, Chinese state media praised the “extraordinary level of courtesy” that Trump had shown Xi on the Chinese leader’s visit to Washington. The extraordinary claim came during an interview about US policy on Taiwan, which has been waiting for months for Trump to approve a new arms sales ⁠package worth $14bn (£10.5bn), after a record multibillion-dollar deal was announced in December last year. Trump’s level of commitment to protecting Taiwan has previously been questioned. At a meeting with Xi in Beijing in May, ⁠Trump said he was keeping the $14bn Taiwan arms sales package in abeyance, describing it as a “very good negotiating chip” in dealings with China. Washington has long maintained a strategically ambiguous stance on whether it would defend Taiwan in the event of an invasion. But under the decades-old Taiwan Relations Act, it is required to provide Taipei with sufficient military equipment to defend itself. Beijing has repeatedly said it “resolutely opposes” Washington’s arms sales to the island democracy, which it regards as a breakaway province, despite never having ruled it, and has not renounced the use of force to take it. During their Washington meeting last week, Xi urged Trump to oppose “Taiwan independence”, according to a readout from the official Chinese news agency Xinhua. After Perdue’s interview, the White House told the New York Times the US had no plans to sell arms to China, while the state department said: “US law prohibits arms sales to China and there is no offer or plan to sell arms to China.” China is a net exporter of weapons. Of the arms that it does import, most come from Russia, but the volume is rapidly falling thanks to advances in China’s own military manufacturing capacity. China’s arms imports fell by 72% between 2021 and 2025 compared with the previous five years, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Before the interview, the Taiwanese deputy foreign minister, Chen Ming-chi, spoke of the severe military threat China posed. “Taiwan faces a severe situation in the Taiwan strait. Even though China’s economy is declining, it continues investing more resources into building military capacity. Under ‌this context, the US very much understands our defence needs,” he told reporters in Taipei. On Sunday, a Taiwanese official, Shen Yu-chung, also pushed back on what he said was an attempt by Beijing to “falsely claim that the Chinese Communist party and the US were allies” in the second world war. A fact sheet released by the White House after the Trump-Xi summit had said China and the US “fought side by side to win” in the war. China’s government during the second world war was the Republic of China led by Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang’s government fled to Taiwan in 1949 after losing the Chinese civil war to the communists, who established the People’s Republic of China in 1949. In recent years Taiwan has sought to emphasise its history of fighting alongside western democratic allies as it hopes to bolster international support against aggression from Beijing. Trump has not mentioned the sale ‌since last week’s summit, saying ‌only on Saturday that Xi understands his position on Taiwan. Perdue told CNBC on Friday that there had been no change in Taiwan policy by Trump, including on arms sales. Reuters contributed to this report

Children forced to give up school for work as fighting upends daily life in Yemen

In the mornings, 13-year-old Muneer Farie went to school, and in the afternoons he helped his father feed the livestock. He took his studies seriously, dreaming of becoming the first teacher in his family of farmers. As fighting approached his village in al-Wazeyah district in Taiz, Yemen, two weeks ago, Muneer’s focus started to drift from his lessons. The classroom echoed with the distant sounds of explosions and gunfire. His home was suddenly on the frontline of renewed fighting between the Iran-aligned Houthis and the Saudi-backed Yemeni government. “We heard there was fighting in surrounding areas but we didn’t expect it would reach our village that fast,” Muneer said. “As soon as the sounds of clashes approached our village, we took our livestock and important belongings and fled home early in the morning.” He and his family fled south-west, moving to a camp set up for displaced people in al-Shimayateen, Taiz. They arrived penniless and lacking even the most basic supplies. Muneer and his family are some of the more than 130,000 people displaced by recent fighting in Yemen, which started in September when the Houthis launched a renewed military campaign and rapidly moved south-west, seizing control of towns along the Red Sea coast. The Houthis’ campaign interrupted years of relative calm that had prevailed over Yemen, with frontlines remaining broadly static since a UN-mediated ceasefire came into force in 2022. The Houthis are now battling government forces and a Saudi air campaign to seize strategic highlands and supply lines on the outskirts of Taiz. Civilians have been driven out of their homes by the fighting, fleeing airstrikes and missiles. Muneer and his brother, instead of studying, now sell socks and other cheap products in the markets outside his displacement camp. His classroom has been replaced by a small tent where he and his five siblings and parents crowd together in the humid night air. He joins the more than 3.2 million children whose studies were interrupted by Yemen’s civil war prior to this month’s escalation. “Studying is important, but not in a situation like this where we are struggling to get enough food, water and other necessities,” he said. “For now, I will keep working until the war ends.” His father, Ghaleb Farie, has been forced to ask his sons to work so that the family can scrape together enough to survive life in the displacement camp. Farie hopes the camp will be only a temporary home and that he can soon return to his village, but he is not optimistic as new displaced people arrive every day. “What I was told by neighbours who have been displaced for longer is that the first few months are difficult and I will adapt,” Farie said. Life has also grown harder for those who have remained in their homes. Abdulwasea Abdu, the principal of Musaab Ibn Umayr school in Taiz, tried to keep the doors of his school open for as long as possible to give children a sense of normality. But that normality was shattered two weeks ago when a missile fell nearby, exploding in sight of the students. “On the day the missile struck, we witnessed severe panic among them, with crying and screaming due to the explosions. Some children showed psychological trauma as a result of the intensity of the blasts,” Abdu said. The school was forced to close its doors, depriving the more than 600 pupils of their education. Abdu watches the battlefield developments closely, searching for a let-up that will let him resume classes, but so far the situation has been too chaotic. “The area faces fighting from multiple fronts – south, west and north – which makes it difficult to take any steps toward resuming classes at the moment,” Abdu said. He fears that many of the children out of school and displaced will be forced into child labour. The resumption of fighting has upended life for residents of south-west Yemen. Clashes severed the main road between the now Houthi-controlled port city of Mocha and government-controlled Taiz. The road is a vital artery for goods as it is one of the only in the area wide enough for large trucks and passenger buses. Interrupted commerce has increased the price of basic goods, compounding the crisis, particularly for displaced people. “It is civilians who bear the cost of military escalation, and it seems that we in Taiz are paying a particularly heavy price, as commodities no longer reach us easily,” said Essam Nabil, a 56-year-old carpenter in Taiz city. He added many people had begun giving up meat and resorting to cheaper foods. The fighting has disrupted other, more mundane facets of daily life. Asaad, an expatriate who works in Saudi Arabia and asked to be identified only by his first name, can no longer take a direct trip back from Yemen. “This reminds me of the early years of the war in Taiz, when the main roads were blocked and we had to travel through Aden before heading to Saudi Arabia,” Asaad said. “Now, we are repeating the same expensive and arduous journey.”