Global Briefs: Panama bids China bon voyage

Panama

President José Raúl Mulino on Feb. 6 moved to withdraw from Panama’s Belt and Road Initiative agreement with China. Panama signed the mutual pact in November 2017 and has since relied on China as its largest import and export trading partner. Mulino described the move as “a new stage for relationships” and said he would seek to increase U.S. investments in the country’s infrastructure. The concession, which followed a visit from U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, came amid heightened tensions between the Trump administration and Mulino over control of the Panama Canal. U.S. President Donald Trump claims China has exerted inappropriate influence over the canal. While trying to distance his country from the Belt and Road deal, Mulino also repudiated as “lies and falsehoods” a U.S. State Department suggestion that American vessels would cross the Panama Canal for free. —Carlos Páez

Fact Box Source: The World Factbook-CIA

Azerbaijan

Military court trials were ongoing in the capital city of Baku in early February for 16 ethnic Armenian leaders of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh region. The most prominent defendant is former Nagorno-Karabakh President Ruben Vardanyan, a billionaire whom Azeri authorities say financed the self-declared republic’s military forces. Azerbaijan accuses the men of “war crimes,” but international critics say the court is prejudiced and Azeri officials are themselves guilty of ethnic cleansing of Armenians in Azeri-controlled lands. Azerbaijan took control of ­primarily Armenian-ethnic Nagorno-Karabakh in September 2023 in a lightning invasion, and though it promised amnesty to citizens, nearly the entire population of 120,000 fled. Officials are seeking the death penalty for Vardanyan. —Jenny Lind Schmitt

John Macdougall / AFP via Getty Images

Germany

Just weeks ahead of national elections scheduled for Feb. 23, over 160,000 people marched in Berlin to protest collaboration between the center-right opposition party CDU and the far-right party AfD. CDU leader Friedrich Merz sought support from the AfD in order to pass a resolution refusing entry to undocumented immigrants. Protesters at the Feb. 2 march, however, denounced the move as breaking an unofficial taboo against working with the far right. Merz promised not to create a formal alliance with the AfD but insisted that restricting immigration is a priority. A series of violent crimes blamed on foreigners has intensified debate over Germany’s high immigration rate. —Evangeline Schmitt

South Africa

U.S. President Donald Trump on Feb. 7 ordered a halt to American aid to the country, citing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s new land seizure law, and said the U.S. would prioritize the resettlement of “Afrikaner refugees escaping government-­sponsored race-based discrimination.” The new property law allows the government to expropriate unused, undeveloped, or potentially hazardous land without compensation to the owner. Unequal land ownership in the racially divided country has continued even after South Africa held its first multiracial election in 1994, and advocates have called on the government to reform racial disparities exacerbated by years of apartheid. White South Africans, who make up just 7% of the country’s population, own 78% of private farmland. In 2023, the United States sent nearly $440 million in aid to South Africa. —Amy Lewis

Fact Box Source: The World Factbook-CIA

Thailand

To curb the proliferation of scam centers in Southeast Asia, Thailand has cut electricity, internet, and fuel supplies to five border areas in neighboring Myanmar, a Thai minister announced on Feb. 5. International pressure to clamp down on the centers increased after Chinese actor Wang Xing was trafficked from Thailand to Myanmar in January. Thai police rescued him from a compound across the border later that month. Thailand, forgoing about $17.8 million in annual revenue by cutting electricity to the areas, has suffered scams costing the nation hundreds of millions of dollars in damages. According to a 2023 United Nations report, criminal gangs have trafficked hundreds of thousands of people and trapped them in compounds in Southeast Asia to work in online fraud schemes. —Joyce Wu

Fact Box Source: The World Factbook-CIA

Tommy Robinson Mark Kerrison / In Pictures via Getty Images

United Kingdom

“Free Tommy” demonstrators took to the streets of London Feb. 1 to protest the solitary confinement of right-wing activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, aka Tommy Robinson. Counterprotesters, meanwhile, decried Robinson’s anti-Islamic stances, like co-founding the now-defunct English Defence League (EDL) to fight Islamic threats in the U.K. The 42-year-old, who has been jailed multiple times, was sentenced in October for contempt of court after authorities say he repeatedly libeled a teenage Syrian refugee. The situation escalated in January when Elon Musk tweeted for Robinson’s release and also called for Prime Minister Keir Starmer to resign, accusing Starmer of failing to sufficiently prosecute Pakistani-linked grooming gangs in the U.K. Robinson has more than a year left of his sentence. —Elisa Palumbo