Dear ST reader,
The biggest news hogging the headlines this week is Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s shocking allegation accusing India of assassinating an India-born Canadian citizen who was promoting Sikh separatism from his adopted country.
The diplomatic row isn’t just a bilateral issue; it puts the Indo-Pacific coalition – which includes the United States and Britain and is broadly aimed at countering China – in an awkward position. Britain itself has been struggling to chart a coherent path in its ties with Beijing, as a security crisis sparked by accusations of Chinese spying showed recently.
Over in China, talk has it that Defence Minister Li Shangfu, who hasn’t been seen in public for weeks, has been put under probe. Meanwhile, a law could be in the making to prosecute those who “hurt the feelings of the Chinese nation”.
In Sri Lanka a year after its popular uprising that forced the ouster of then-president Gotabaya Rajapaksa, a new, devastating crisis – not evident on the streets but deeply entrenched in many households – has surfaced.