In Yumbo, the alarm remains in the face of reports of threats against four members of opposition parties.
One of them is Alianza Verde, which has been the target of political violence in recent years in this industrial town in Valle del Cauca.
They are four councilors who fear for their lives and insist that the authorities implement a greater security device to preserve their integrity.
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They are opposition lobbyists William Henao, from Alianza Verde; Fernando David Murgueitio, from Cambio Radical; William Jaramillo, from MAIS, and Andrés Cruz, from ASI.
According to Alianza Verde, councilor William Henao “received anonymous threats on his WhatsApp account, related to his political control activities that he carries out as a member of the opposition caucus before the mayor’s office of that municipality, especially with the public denunciations by the (alleged) excessive number of contracts for the provision of services during electoral times”.
According to the party, they far exceed what happens in other mayors’ offices in larger municipalities in Valle del Cauca.
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The mayor of Yumbo, Jhon Jairo Santamaría, said that he accompanies the complaint so that the Prosecutor’s Office investigates.
“The function of the councilors is covered by justice, the law and the Political Constitution, therefore, I respect their function and their actions focused on the respective controls and complaints,” added the president.
Valley with risks due to violence and fraud in elections
In the Electoral Observation Mission (MOE) they worked on a map of electoral risks in Cali with members of the Awamuy research hotbed, from the Javeriana University.
The information threw risks due to fraud and violence in 24 polling stations in Cali, some in communes 13, 14 and 15 of Aguablanca. But they would be greater in 14. There would also be risks in commune 21, also in the east, and in 20, where Siloé is, on the hillside.
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Another municipality in the Valley with factors indicative of electoral fraud and factors of violence is Buga.
The Cairo municipality, in the north, has a medium risk of fraud in Chamber elections due to fraud, while Versailles, for Senate.
Municipalities at risk of violence, with a high and extreme risk index are Cali, Yumbo, Bolívar and Buenaventura. In this list of high risks, according to the EOM, Buga, Florida, Jamundí and Tuluá also appear.
For the regional coordinator of the EOM, Alejandro Sánchez, it is necessary that institutional efforts be concentrated in such a way that irregularities can be detected.
China’s failure to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is undermining its own long-standing defense of sovereignty and territorial integrity on the world stage, according to U.S. officials and experts.
“It’s not in China’s interest to endorse a devastating conflict in Europe and defy the principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity it claims to hold dear,” a senior U.S. administration official told reporters Thursday.
“We’re obviously clear-eyed about how China operates,” the official said, “but the fact is that Russia’s aggressive actions here carry risks for China along with everyone else.”
The U.S. State Department also dismissed a new Russian offer — endorsed by China — to negotiate a solution to the crisis with Ukraine. Diplomacy cannot take place “at the barrel of a gun,” a spokesperson said.
Russian President Vladimir Putin told Chinese President Xi Jinping in a Friday phone call that Moscow was ready to send a delegation to Minsk for negotiations with representatives of Ukraine.
In Beijing, a Chinese statement said, “China supports Russia in resolving the issue through negotiation with Ukraine.”
A visitor to a Ukrainian restaurant holds Chinese and Ukraine flags as she poses for a photo, Feb. 24, 2022, in Beijing. China’s customs agency on Thursday approved imports of wheat from Russia, a move that could help to reduce the impact of Western sanctions imposed over Moscow’s attack on Ukraine.
‘Not real diplomacy’
But State Department spokesperson Ned Price pointed out that the offer came on the second day of a massive invasion, with Russian troops and tanks closing in on the Ukrainian capital.
“This is not real diplomacy. Those are not the conditions for real diplomacy,” Price said at a regular briefing. “Moscow’s rockets, mortars, artillery target the Ukrainian people.”
Analysts, including Seth Jones, director of the International Security Program at the Washington-based Center for Strategic and International Studies, are skeptical that any China-brokered diplomacy can halt Putin’s military offensive in Ukraine.
“I don’t actually think China has the power to back Putin off,” Jones told VOA.
“Does the Biden administration realistically expect diplomacy, including bringing Beijing into discussions or additional sanctions, is going to deter, further deter or even coerce Moscow in Ukraine? The answer is no,” he said.
Some observers said China’s support for Russia in the Ukraine crisis could muddy its historic insistence that Taiwan is part of China and its fierce rejection of any suggestion it could become independent from the mainland.
That argument is hard to reconcile with what is happening in Ukraine, where Putin set the stage for his invasion by decreeing that the eastern Ukraine regions of Luhansk and Donetsk are independent states.
Abstention at UNSC
In apparent recognition of its intellectual dilemma, China abstained Friday from a vote at the U.N. Security Council condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, rather than join Moscow in a veto.
Wang Wenbin, the spokesperson for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was asked Friday whether his government would recognize the Donetsk and Lugansk people’s republics.
“We hope relevant parties, in accordance with the purposes and principles of the United Nations Charter, are committed to resolving differences through negotiation, addressing the legitimate concerns of all parties and avoiding further escalation of the situation,” Wang said without directly answering the question.
Wang also refrained from calling Russia’s military actions in Ukraine “an invasion,” saying China “understands Russia’s legitimate concerns on security issues.”
The Rand Corporation’s senior defense analyst, Derek Grossman, said China was not looking at Putin’s declaration that Luhansk and Donetsk are independent as some kind of precedent for Taiwan, a self-ruled democracy.
“Beijing is likely to simply ignore inconvenient precedents and world events in order to maintain maximum flexibility in dealing with Taiwan,” Grossman told VOA. “Beijing almost certainly wouldn’t acknowledge” its contradictory message to Taiwan.
‘Awkward position’
China is “actually in a somewhat awkward position,” said professor Yeh-chung Lu, who chairs the Department of Diplomacy at Taiwan’s National Cheng-chi University. “Beijing should reconsider and limit its support of Moscow, if it is serious in seeking improved ties with Washington and the West,” Lu told VOA.
This week marks the 50th anniversary of former U.S. President Richard Nixon’s visit to China, a move seen as driving a wedge between the two most significant communist powers at that time, Russia and China. Nixon’s visit also opened the door for the United States to switch its diplomatic recognition from the Republic of China (Taiwan) to the People’s Republic of China.
Residents use a bridge near the Russian Embassy in Beijing, Feb. 24, 2022. China repeated calls for talks to resolve the crisis in Ukraine on Thursday while refusing to criticize Russia’s attack and accusing the U.S. and its allies of worsening the situation.
The State Department has no plans to issue a statement to commemorate that anniversary, at least for now.
The State Department’s Price was asked Wednesday if President Joe Biden’s administration was “embarrassed by it [the Nixon visit] now and think that it should never have happened.”
“Certainly not,” said Price. “I’m not sure that I would equate not putting out a formal statement with ignoring it,” he added.
Some experts said the Biden administration was downplaying the significance of Nixon’s visit five decades ago because of the Ukraine crisis, the growing partnership between China and Russia, and its own strained U.S.-China relations.
It certainly sends “the message to Beijing that Washington sees no need to highlight the cooperative history of U.S.-China relations,” said Grossman, adding that “extreme competition” is the main feature of current bilateral relationship.
“We’re in a very different place today,” CSIS’s Jones told VOA. “The more you highlight that [Nixon’s visit to China], the more it potentially shows diplomatic failures today.”
China is watching with growing interest as Russia and the West face off over Ukraine. With more than 100-thousand Russian troops deployed on the Ukrainian border, there is growing concern among Western nations that the Kremlin is planning an imminent invasion. Moscow has denied any such plans.
Western nations have threatened unprecedented economic sanctions against Moscow if it invades Ukraine. If cut off by the West, could Russia look east, to China, for help? Professor Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies, says Beijing is ready to step in.
“China under Xi Jinping has a clear policy of making the world safe for autocrats. And China under Xi Jinping also believes itself to be a leading socialist country now and it has a soft spot for former socialist countries. So, Russia under (President Vladimir) Putin ticks two boxes that make Russia very deserving of Chinese support.”
WATCH: China Weighs Risks, Rewards of US-Russia Standoff Over Ukraine
“The policy I think China is likely to take is to do whatever they can to help the Russians to face up to the economic sanctions that the U.S. and Europeans may impose on Russia. (However) I think economic links between Russia and China are not really strong enough to replace any break of economic links between Russia and Europe,” Tsang told VOA.
Moscow-Beijing coordination
Beijing is engaged in its own territorial disputes in Asia and has offered political support for Moscow.
“This foreign policy coordination will definitely increase,” says analyst Dmitry Suslov of Russia’s National Research University in Moscow. “Because from the Russian perspective, intensification of the military partnership between Russia and China is precisely one of the major pains which Russia can inflict to the United States and NATO in order to compel them to compromise,” Suslov said at a recent panel discussion on Ukraine, organized by the London-based policy group Chatham House.
NATO states are mulling increased troop deployments in eastern European member states to deter Russia. The United States has put further 8,500 troops on alert for possible deployment to Europe.
Taiwan
China is closely watching NATO and America’s response to any Russian invasion, says security analyst Julie Norman of University College London. “Even though there’s these troop deployments to Eastern European states, no states are talking about directly sending troops into Ukraine itself to defend it. And of course, China’s taking note of that, with some of their own territorial disputes in their own areas,” Norman told VOA.
Taiwan is China’s biggest territorial dispute — and there is a risk of miscalculation as Beijing watches events unfold in Ukraine, says Steve Tsang.
“The Chinese seeing the Americans and the Europeans talking big but not doing very much about it… would embolden them over Taiwan and potentially miscalculate what the American response to a crisis over Taiwan might be.”
China’s Belt and Road
Despite their mutual rivalry with the United States, China’s and Russia’s interests don’t always align. China has also invested billions of dollars in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which could be at risk in the event of any conflict.
Beijing’s multitrillion-dollar “Belt and Road” initiative’ cuts through several former Soviet bloc states, including Ukraine. A direct rail and ferry freight link opened in 2016, linking China with Illichivsk port on Ukraine’s Black Sea coast via Georgia, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan, bypassing Russia.
Ukraine is a major exporter of grains to China. By 2025, Beijing and Kyiv aim to increase bilateral trade by 50 percent, to $20 billion per year. China has also funded infrastructure projects, including a new metro line for Kyiv. If Russia invades Ukraine, could Beijing’s investments in the region be at risk? For now, China is showing little concern, says Tsang.
“The more immediate impact on the Belt and Road initiative would in fact be the Russian military intervention in Kazakhstan. And the Chinese government have actually shown that they are quite relaxed and comfortable with that. To them, it’s more important to support authoritarian states and autocrats to stay in power than for some of them to be closer to Russia than to China, at the moment. Over the longer term, things may change,” Tsang said.
In the short term, analysts say, China is keen to keep a lid on the simmering tensions for at least the next few weeks, as it prepares to host the Winter Olympics starting February 4.
China is watching with interest as Russia and the West face off over Ukraine. Beijing is engaged in its own territorial disputes and has offered political support for Moscow. But as Henry Ridgwell reports, China has also invested billions of dollars in Eastern Europe and Central Asia, which could be at risk in the event of any conflict.
The United States issued an advisory Wednesday warning of the increased risk of conducting business in Myanmar nearly a year after a military coup in the Southeast Asian country, which is also known as Burma.
The advisory from the U.S. State Department warned it was especially risky for “individuals, businesses and financial institutions and other persons” to be associated with business activity in Myanmar “that could benefit the Burmese military regime.”
The advisory cited the possibility of exposure to illegal financial and reputational risks by doing business there, and using supply chains controlled by the military.
“The coup and subsequent abuses committed by the military have fundamentally changed the direction of the economic and business environment in Burma,” the advisory said.
Former de factor leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) led Myanmar since its first open democratic election in 2015, but Myanmar’s military contested the November 2020 election results, claiming widespread electoral fraud, largely without evidence.
FILE – This handout photo taken May 24, 2021, and released by Myanmar’s Ministry of Information May 26, shows detained civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi, left, and detained president Win Myint during their first court appearance in Naypyidaw.
The military removed the NLD government in a coup on Feb. 1, 2021, detaining Suu Kyi and President Win Myint.
Since then, the military government has used deadly force in clampdowns on protests while escalating efforts to neutralize ethnic minority armies and newly formed militias allied with the NLD government. Wednesday’s advisory said the military “has killed more than 1,400 innocent people” since its takeover.
The advisory said state-owned enterprises were of greatest concern, as well as the gems and precious metals, real estate, construction and defense industries, noting that they have been identified as providing economic resources for the junta.
The advisory was issued after oil giants Chevron Corporation and TotalEnergies said last week the worsening humanitarian situation prompted them to withdraw from the country, where they were working together on a major gas project.
