Global News Podcast - Top criminal court condemns US sanctions on officials

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

The International Criminal Court has vowed to continue its work after Donald Trump imposed sanctions on its officials because it issued a war crimes arrest warrant against the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Alex Ritzen and at 14 Hours GMT on Friday, February 7th, these are our main stories. The International Criminal Court condemns Donald Trump's introduction of sanctions against its officials as supporters warn the global rule of law is at stake. The deepening human rights crisis caused by the rebel advance in eastern Congo sparks an emergency meeting at the UN. The leaders of European parties inspired by Donald Trump's MAGA movement

gather in Spain under the banner to make Europe great again. Also in this podcast, the UN's head of emergency relief gives us an eyewitness account of the grim reality of life in Gaza, language lessons for humpback whales and we go inside the city built on scams in Myanmar where the criminals don't normally welcome journalists. We've been taken all around this little enclave by Yatai's people and shown comfortable looking housing complexes, giant shiny casinos. What we've not been able to see is what really goes on behind these walls. A move that undermines the entire global criminal justice system. That's the criticism levelled at President Trump's latest

thunderbolt by the head of the European Council, Antonio Costa. He was referring to Mr. Trump's executive order issuing sanctions against the International Criminal Court for allegedly abusing its powers. The ICC rejects that out of hand and has called on the 125 countries that recognise it to stand united in defence of human rights. Donald Trump signed the executive order during a visit to Washington by the Israeli Prime

Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The court alleges that Mr Netanyahu and the former Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Galant have committed war crimes and crimes against humanity in Gaza. Mr Netanyahu has already thanked Mr Trump for his move. The decision to issue an arrest warrant against me, the democratically elected Prime Minister of the State of Israel, and our former Defense Minister, was made by a rogue prosecutor who's trying to extricate himself from sexual harassment charges,

and by biased judges who are motivated by anti-semitic sentiments. Sir Geoffrey Nice worked at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and led the prosecution of the former president of Serbia, Slobodan Milosevic. The case for the ICC, which has jurisdiction still over these territories, is that it is the only organisation that offers independent analytical assessment of crimes being committed contrary to the international criminal law. Our correspondent Anna Hooligan is in The Hague. I asked her how the order is likely to affect the court. It partly depends what the sanctions will actually entail. So he ordered the asset freezes

and travel bans against ICC officials, employees and their family members, along with anyone deemed to have helped the court's investigation. So the question there remains, which individuals and how wide will this net reach? So if we're talking about sanctioning organisations or people doing business with the ICC, for example, that could pose an existential threat to the court itself. And the ICC has already been preparing workarounds, paying staff in advance to try to minimise the disruption there. But then you have questions like will airlines start to deny staff boarding? Will companies like Microsoft or the translation providers pull out their support from the ICC, bring down the ICC systems? Will banks and other service providers find it too risky to do business with the court in case it exposes them to

sanctions? And you may remember in December the ICC's president warned that sanctions could rapidly undermine the court's operations in all situations and cases and jeopardise its very existence. So in short, we're in pretty unknown territory here. Whatever Donald Trump or Israel say though, the ICC sees its remit as being global, even in countries which don't accept it. Well, I mean, if you were talking about jurisdiction and you kind of heard Jeffrey Nice allude to it there, if you were talking about jurisdiction with the situation in Gaza, the state of Palestine recognised by the UN has accepted the ICC's jurisdiction and so therefore any nationals or any crimes committed within the territory of the West Bank and Gaza are subject to the ICC's jurisdiction under the Rome Statute which is signed by 125, which the court has now called upon to stand up

and support it. So in that sense, the jurisdiction exists there under the treaty, which underpins the ICC. And we heard from the ICC reaction today, condemning the sanctions accused Donald Trump of seeking to harm its independent and impartial judicial work. The court, it said, stands firmly by its personnel and pledges to continue providing justice and support to millions of innocent victims. We've also heard reassuringly for the court itself from the Netherlands where the court is based no sign that the ICC is going to be closed down by the Dutch government. Anna Hologun. It's taken the sight of bodies piling up in the streets of Goma and the east of the Democratic Republic of Congo.

But finally, today, the United Nations Human Rights Council is meeting in emergency session to discuss the crisis. Almost 3,000 people are estimated to have been killed as a result of clashes between government forces and M23 rebels. Activists say terrible abuses have been committed both by the M23 rebels and by Congolese and Rwandan forces. The UN Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has been speaking at the session in Geneva. It's crucial to establish the facts and bring the perpetrators of offences to justice. We must therefore open up an independent, impartial investigation into human rights violations

and abuses of international humanitarian law. I reiterate the United Nations Secretary-General's call to the Rwanda Defense Forces to cease all their support for the M23 and to withdraw their soldiers from the DR Congo. I heard more about the meeting from our correspondent in Geneva, Imogen Folkes. Well, we've been hearing from the UN Human Rights Chief there the kinds of things that are being reported to his office.

I mean, killings of civilians, forced displacement, half a million people displaced in January alone, thousands of people killed, really appalling sexual violence, lack of life's basics like water, food and electricity, risk of disease. Let's not forget DRC had an Ebola outbreak not that long ago, WHO warning about the risk of disease, so really a very, very unstable, dangerous situation and an absolute crisis for civilians. And the UN really, really concerned. Absolutely, and not just because, as we know, I mean DRC has been unstable and seen violence for years and years now but we have this

threat of a wider conflict. It was the DRC who requested this meeting. Its ambassador this morning said Rwandan troops must leave his country. Rwanda's ambassador rejected that. He said the threat to Rwanda was there so even on the floor of the UN Human Rights Council we're seeing these dangerous signs that this conflict could, it's bad enough already but it could as the UN Human Rights Commissioner said, get much much worse. Are the rebels though going to take any notice of this meeting at all? Well the UN will order an investigation, I think that's pretty clear, an independent

investigation into violations and people dismiss these and say, ah, they have no legal power. That's right, they don't. But what they do do is shine a spotlight on violations. They can ratchet up the pressure on warring parties. And let's not forget, there are recourse for people. If you think of the victims of sexual violence in DRC, are they seeing any justice in their own country? No, they're not. And sometimes the evidence the Human Rights Council collects can go to the International Criminal Court for prosecutions. It's significant in the face of Trump's sanctions that the UN Human Rights Chief said today he would actually welcome the

ICC's involvement here. Imogen folks, the government in Thailand says it's trying to shut down the criminal scam compounds which have proliferated in recent years along its border with Myanmar. It follows the rescue last month of a Chinese actor and several other people who'd been abducted and forced to work in the scam centres. It's resulted in a frenzy of building on the Myanmar side of the border. The most ambitious of these projects is the newly built city of Shui, Koko. Until now, it's been off limits to journalists,

but our Southeast Asia correspondent, Jonathan Head, was granted limited access by the Chinese company which runs it. I'm crouched down in a small metal boat, crossing the narrow brown river that takes you to Myanmar's Karen states, to a brand new city that's emerged like a mirage in just the past few years. Sitting next to me is a group of young Chinese men and women clutching small wheelie suitcases. We've been told we're not allowed to talk to them, but almost certainly they're going to Shui Kok,

as the city's called, to work. We've been invited by the Chinese company which built this city. Hello, nice to see you. Chinese company which built this city. Hello, nice to see you. We were met by Wang Fugui, a former police officer from Guangxi, he told us, and a trusted lieutenant of Xuzi Zhang, a mysterious Chinese entrepreneur who did a deal with the local warlord controlling this part of Myanmar to build Shui Kok. Xie Zhejiang is being held in a Bangkok prison on a Chinese request to extradite him,

and his company, Yatai, stands accused of hosting global scam operations, money laundering and human trafficking. His colleagues hope that by letting journalists see their strange city set in a remote war zone, they might get their boss out of jail. So who lives in these places? Investors and also bosses. They rent the villas and the village. So people managing the businesses here? Rich people.

Rich people. Well, we've been taken all around this little enclave by Yatai's people and shown comfortable-looking housing complexes, giant, shiny casinos all lit up at night, shops, infrastructure. What we've not been able to see is what really goes on behind these walls. We know that scam centres were rife here, at least until recently. The company says it's cleaned them up. But if it's not running, scam centres, human trafficking, money laundering, all the things it's accused of, what other business could justify all this construction and investment

in such an isolated and war-torn part of Asia. The entire economy of that whole area has become a scam economy. Jason Tauer from the United States Institute of Peace, who's been researching illegal businesses along Myanmar's borders for years, does not believe Yatai's claims to have shut down the scams. I mean, there's not really any legitimate investors or companies going to locate in a zone like this. There's no sense of law or order in the area. You have the broader conflict in Myanmar

that is just kilometers away. And then you also have just this notorious reputation of Shui Coco known for human trafficking, for money laundering, online scams. It's really not going to attract other forms of businesses. Hello, brother. Hello, hello, hello. Mr Wang wanted us to hear directly from his boss, so from his villa in Shui Kok.

He called Xie Zhe Jiang inside his Bangkok prison. We didn't ask how this was possible. And Mr Xue told us a very different story, Zhang inside his Bangkok prison. We didn't ask how this was possible. And Mr. She told us a very different story, claiming he'd built Shui Kok as part of China's famous Belt and Road Initiative. But he said the Chinese state had turned on him for refusing to give it control of the city. And what about the scams, I asked him. We only do legitimate business, he told me. But with so many scam compounds in the area, it's very difficult to prevent those fraudsters

from coming to Shui Kok Hu. But we spoke to this young Burmese woman who'd been working at a scam centre just days before our visit, defrauding people all over the world of their savings. The whole city's doing these scams, she told us. Of course, Yatai knows about it. We finished our visit in a spectacular domed karaoke room covered in screens showing sharks swimming all around us.

But as in every other place we saw in Shwe Koku, there were few customers and no tourists. Jonathan Head. As we record this podcast, leading figures from far-right parties in Europe are gathering in Spain under the banner Make Europe Great Again. Inspired by Donald Trump's MAGA slogan, the Patriots for Europe group are gathering for two days in Madrid to map out their future strategy. The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban and Frances Marine Le Pen are among those expected to attend. I've been hearing more from our correspondent in Madrid, Guy Hedgeko.

Patriots for Europe is now the third biggest group in the European Parliament. You mentioned some of the names of the parties and the personalities who are in it. It also includes Italy's Liga with Matteo Salvini, obviously Spain's Vox party, which is hosting this event, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands PVV. So you've got most of the big far-right parties or radical right parties in Europe included in this group and they want to break what they see as the duopoly in the European Parliament and in European institutions exerted by the European Popular Party, the Conservatives and Social Democrats and they feel that they have enough momentum to do that so they want to break the control that those groups have

in all the European institutions and they feel that this is the beginning of that process. They're clearly playing on Donald Trump's successful MAGA slogan. Do they share policies with him? They do and they seem to have been very much buoyed by Donald Trump's return to the White House. I mean there are some very obvious areas where they have common ground with Donald Trump. One is immigration. I mean all of these parties want to clamp down on immigration in their own countries. They're also very critical of green policies.

That chimes with Donald Trump what they call climate change fanaticism and in particular they they don't like some policies where there are green Controls for example in agriculture and they say that that affects the economy Elsewhere there are other issues which perhaps have nothing to do with Donald Trump They're very critical of the European Union from inside it, critical of its institutions. They don't want to leave the European Union necessarily, but they do say it needs radical changes. So those are some of the main policy priorities for these parties.

Guy Hedgeco. Still to come, India's partially-cited athletes seeking to break boundaries at the Paralympics. We start the second half of this podcast with a focus on Donald Trump's decision, egged on perhaps by the world's richest man Elon Musk, to mothball the work of the world's biggest aid organisation, USAID. The move will undoubtedly have dire consequences for the poorest people in the poorest countries around the world, nowhere more so than in Gaza. Coupled with Israel's decision to ban all contact with the UN Agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, the American move could be a body blow for civilians already facing huge obstacles as they try to rebuild

their lives and homes. Tom Fletcher is the UN's Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator and currently visiting Israel and Gaza. He's already been to a kibbutz attacked by Hamas on October the 7th and is now in Deir al-Bala in central Gaza. He's been telling Amal Rajan what he saw as he travelled through the territory. Well, it's devastation. It's desolation. Yeah, I drove yesterday from the border in the north. You just drive through miles and miles of rubble. And you can't tell what was a home, what was a school, what was a hospital.

And you notice that the survivors are picking through the rubble looking for their loved ones. But you also notice that there are dogs picking through the rubble too. And the survivors are thin and the dogs are fat. I visited two hospitals in Alouda in the north was the one hospital that managed to stay open all the way through despite sniper attacks taking out doctors and medical workers. I met a grandmother outside who'd watched her son. Her son had been taking her in for cancer treatment. He was hit by one of these quadcopter sniper drones and bled out over four days.

What's the situation, Tom, in terms of basic amenities and utilities, electricity, gas, power, water? Oh, hopeless. I mean, nine in 10 people in the north don't have homes to go to. It's literally just rubble everywhere. Very little fuel, so they're cooking what they have on open fires. Very little medicine. We've got a couple of the wells open in the north and people are walking miles to get that water. Grandfather, former doctor, mid-70s, he was angry with me and why wouldn't

he be? And he waved his jerry can at me and he he said all I have in the world left is this jerrycan and the water that's in it. The big need at the moment, Alan, is tents because a lot of people are going back to the rubble and they're trying to start to rebuild. But we're just scratching the surface. We need to do this. We need the ceasefire to hold so we can carry on delivering at that rate. Yeah, what's, what is the, I mean, in terms of on the ground, that situation is as far as you can tell, is the ceasefire holding to the extent that there has been a transformative change in the amount of aid getting in? Yes, without doubt. So before the ceasefire, you know, we were getting in, you know, tens

of lorries at a time if we if we were lucky, we were facing all sorts of restrictions. Now you know, these massive convoys of aid are getting through. So that makes a real difference. For those who don't understand how the world of aid works, Tom, what will be the real world impact in the place where you are in Gaza of the radical cutting, the closure really of US aid by Elon Musk and President Trump? You know, the US has been a humanitarian superpower, their aid would have served tens of millions of lives. But this isn't just about human solidarity. It's not just about ethics. It's not just because it's the right thing to do. It's because if we fail to put out these fires,

then they'll spread. It's cheaper to stop wars before they start than to deal with the consequences of them. You know, terrorism is incubated in poverty and international crime, pandemics, conflicts, the climate crisis, they're not going to respect borders or walls. And if you fail to lead in that space, then others will step forward to lead in that space. And ultimately, you don't build a golden age by retreating from the world. Tom Fletcher. One person who knows better than most how the decision by President Trump and Elon Musk to gut USAID is likely to affect relief efforts around the world is Gail Smith, who served

as the organisation's head under Barack Obama. She's been telling James Coughnell that the Trump administration's move is wildly counterproductive. If you look at something like the global initiative to fight HIV and AIDS that President Bush started, that was continued and expanded by President Obama, that President Trump, quite frankly, in his first term, tried to cut, but that both parties in Congress maintained, that's the kind of thing that I think means a great deal to people about who the United States is. It's to the benefit of the United States. It's a way for us to play on the world stage that is really, really meaningful. It may be harder to quantify, but I've seen it in my lifetime serving three administrations and as head of USAID. It's

enormously important. You could extend that certainly too to food aid, could you not? I know you've lived and worked in Sudan in the past. Sudan depends hugely on food aid right now, famine in many parts of the country. Stopping that has huge impact. It has huge impacts in that people are going to die. And for decades, the United States has been the first and the fastest to arrive when a humanitarian crisis strikes, whether it's an earthquake, whether

it's these chronic humanitarian emergencies like we see in Sudan. And when you pull all of that out, you send some very dangerous messages. The US is signaling that we don't frankly care whether people live or die and that we're not a reliable partner. Former USAID Director Gail Smith. One grassroots organisation that finds itself caught in the crosshairs of President Trump's decision to axe the work of USAID is NFAC, an NGO that works to combat the spread of HIV in Kenya. Its work was partly funded by USAID, but its director Nelson Otwomo told us the American move is already having an impact. I think we are going to see AIDS back. AIDS is going to come back because people are now

going to miss their treatment. Already we have what we call advanced HIV disease for people who delay going for treatment and people who interrupt treatment. We are also going to see new HIV infections particularly among children because right now mother-to-child transmission that need close monitoring and also need close discussion with clinical officers is not happening. This information from Trump has caused a lot of fear and anxiety and devastation. And there has been massive job layoffs from people supported by CDC and people supported by USID. So you go to where they dispense airways for people with HIV, there are no staff to dispense it.

So this is really devastating. People have lost jobs and people who cannot continue to take their medication and mothers who cannot have support to go to facilities have been affected. We don't know what tomorrow brings and we are seeing that there is a limited waiver but the challenge with that limited waiver is that USID still is not in a position to give any communication because the USID headquarters in America is shut down and the USID Kenya then cannot operate so things have ground to a halt. Nelson Otwoma. New research suggests that whale song is closer to human language than previously

thought. The study led by the University of St Andrews in Scotland revealed a previously undetected language-like structure in whale song that was thought to be unique to humans. Here is some of the sound they used for the research. Whale sound. Ellen Garland co-authored the report. With humpback whale song, it's only the males that are singing and the song functions in something to do with sexual selection, whether they're displaying to attract a female or to tell rival males, you know, I'm big, I'm strong.

But what we do know is that all males in a population are singing the same song. The song constantly changes from breeding season to breeding season and they're learning these changes from each other. So we have this big culturally transmitted, culturally evolving display, but what's really cool is in the South Pacific where I work, different songs are passed from one population to the next, and when the song turns up it just completely takes over that population. so we have a song Revolution so each population is nice little song evolution small changes And then when these song revolutions come in these really big

Changes basically they throw their current song out the window and they learn this brand new song rapidly and the only analogy that we have For this is the rapid learning and change that we see with human fashion. They really like these novel new song types and all the males will switch to these. That's a lot of learning to be able to learn all of the content, all of that patterning so rapidly. It's all about the social learning from each other and that takes a lot of memory potentially. So I'm really interested in how do they actually go about doing this. Alan Garland on some of the findings of her eight-year investigation into humpback whale

song. Visually impaired athletes need dedicated guide runners who can match their pace, rhythm and style. In India, however, awareness of guide running is minimal, with few resources or incentives to train athletes as guides. Divya Arya reports on efforts being made to change that. In a stadium in Bangalore, India, athlete Rakshita Raju runs full throttle, determined to push her limits. She crosses the finish line, but not alone. Blind from birth, she relies on Rahul, a guide runner, bound to her with a tether on her right side, steering her safely towards the finish line. I can't see anything.

I can't see anything. I can't see anything. So I believe in my guide runner more than myself. I have a lot of confidence in my tether. The guide and I hold on to the tether and that protects me when I fall. Simran Sharma is a partially sighted athlete. In 2021, she became the first visually impaired Indian woman to qualify for the 100-meter race at the Tokyo Paralympics.

But when she ran, she couldn't follow her line. Her vision had deteriorated. The 100-meter track is a straight line, but in the middle there is a line that bends. Three or four times it happened to me that when I ran, I ran to the left. Like in the Tokyo Paralympics, I didn't know that I had moved into the lane next to mine. As soon as I realized what had happened, I came back to my lane. But they said, now you need a guide runner. An athlete and guide runner's personal bond runs deep.

But every guide runner I spoke with highlighted the need to be treated by sports bodies at the same level as the athlete. For example, to be entitled to government-guaranteed sports quotas in jobs in the public sector. Rahul Balakrishna is Rakshita's guide runner. Now, I am running for this athlete, he will be getting a medal and certificate and everything, whatever, cash award and everything. We won't get any cash award or any job also. Satya Narayan is the national coach for para athletes in India and had brought Rahul into this community. But says the government body, the Paralympic Committee of India, doesn't have a plan to

give any incentives to guide runners. I asked the government to treat guide runners as coaches. I wrote to them explaining that coaches get a cash payment from the government that is equivalent to 50% of the athletes cash prize. And the same should be given to guide runners. Then again the athlete should share their prize money with the guide runners too some percentage of it. For athletes Simran and Rakshita their chance to prove themselves to the world came at last year's Paris 2024 Paralympics.

Rakshita and Rahul sadly missed out on a medal this time, but Simran and her guide Abhay brought back bronze in the 200 metres, making history as the first Indian woman with visual impairment to win at the Paralympics. Divya Aaya And that's all from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News podcast later. If you want to comment on this podcast, all the topics covered in it, you can send us an email. The address is globalpodcast.bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on x at BBC World Service and find the hashtag globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Mark Pickett

and the producer was Mark Duff. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Roots and until next time, goodbye. Yoga is more than just exercise. It's the spiritual practice that millions swear by. And in 2017 Miranda, a university tutor from London, joins a yoga school that promises profound transformation. It felt a really safe and welcoming space. After the yoga classes I felt amazing. But soon, that calm, welcoming atmosphere leads to something far darker.

A journey that leads to allegations of grooming, trafficking and exploitation across international borders. I don't have my passport, I don't have my phone, I don't have my bank cards, I have nothing. The passport being taken, the being in a house and not feeling like they can leave. World of Secrets is where untold stories are unveiled and hidden realities are exposed. In this new series we're confronting the dark side of the wellness industry, where the hope of a spiritual breakthrough gives way to disturbing accusations. You just get sucked in so gradually and it's done so

skillfully that you don't realize. And it's like this the secret that's there. I wanted to believe that you know that whatever they were doing, even if it seemed gross to me, was for some spiritual reason that I couldn't understand. Revealing the hidden secrets of a global yoga network. I feel that I have no other choice. The only thing I can do is to speak about this and to put my reputation and everything else on the line. I want truth and justice and for other people to not be hurt, for things to be different in the future.

To bring it into the light and almost alchemize some of that evil stuff that went on and take back the power. World of Secrets, season six, The Bad Guru. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.