The Weekly Wrap for Saturday, 3 August 2019

Talking points The question is now when, not if, Beijing intervenes. PHOTO: Bloomberg Japan lifted a ban on human-animal hybrid research (???) Hamza bin Laden didn't last long in the family business A hack exposed 100 million Capital One customers' data More of Epstein's profoundly abnormal ideas were revealed The U.S. is set to withdraw thousands of troops from Afghanistan A China-U.S. trade deal slipped further from reach Indian coffee tycoon V.G. Siddharta was laid low by personal debt Finance workers and civil servants joined the Hong Kong protests 'Old Town Road' (an absolute bop) broke Billboard 100 records Sinn Féin plans a vote on Irish reunification if a no-deal Brexit occurs Deep Dive The accident that wasn't. PHOTO: AFP. Kuldeep Singh Sengar has a lot to answer for: a rape, a wide-ranging cover-up and a growing body count. The Indian politician, who is a member of India's ruling party, has long enjoyed the sort of impunity that is only afforded to men of status in India. But this week's events may have pushed matters just a little too far.   Unnao defiled    Two years ago, a 17-year-old girl in Kanpur was lured from her home and taken across the Ganges to the neighbouring city of Unnao. She went on the promise of a steady job, but instead found unimaginable trauma and tragedy. The girl was swallowed into a dark web of sex-traffickers and rapists. She was gang-raped repeatedly, passed between powerful men and their families behind the high walls of Unnao's private residences. One of the accused was the aforementioned politician, Kuldeep Singh Sengar. Weeks later, when the girl finally emerged from darkness, brutalised but still alive, she filed multiple complaints with the police. But the high-profile names of the accused appear to have deterred the police from doing their jobs: protocols weren't followed, leads weren't pursued, names weren't recorded. It looked an awful lot like a coordinated cover-up. A cover-up that would have succeeded, had the victim relented. She did not. And neither did her family: instead they wrote an open letter to the Chief Minister of their state, Yogi Adityanath.  Months passed without action, but the family's protestations did not stop. Then, in early April 2018, the victim's father was taken into police custody in Unnao and beaten to within an inch of his life. Before he succumbed to his wounds in a hospital bed a few days later, the father claimed that amongst his police assailants had been Kuldeep Sengar's own brother. One of the only witnesses corroborating the father's story also died in mysterious circumstances a few months later. As her father's life faded away, the girl committed one last act of desperate protest: dousing herself in paraffin and igniting it on the footpath adjacent to Yogi Adityanath's home. Once more, she survived. But this time something changed: India, and the world, started to listen.   A flicker of life    A string of arrests led to Sengar and several others finding themselves behind bars. In fact, the politician has been in remand and awaiting trial for more than a year now. But while the rape case against him has stalled, the victim's family has reported an increasingly brazen campaign of harrassment by the police. One of the victim's uncles – the family's public spokesperson after the father was beaten to death – was also arrested and jailed in a case of dubious legal provenance. He remains under lock and key in Rae Bareilly prison And that's where the girl was travelling this week. On Sunday afternoon, a truck was involved in a head-on collision with a small car on a remote road in Uttar Pradesh. The car, and its occupants, were deformed by the force of the crash. The truck driver – who had been speeding – was taken into custody for what the police say was a regrettable accident, despite the fact that the number plates had been blacked out. The official explanation defies belief, given that the occupants of the car were: the rape victim, her two aunts, and her lawyer. Both aunts are now dead. The victim and her lawyer are barely clinging to life in a pair of hospital beds in Lucknow. If all of this has made you angry, you're not alone. A paroxysm of rage has gripped the state of Uttar Pradesh (pop. 204 million). The rape victim's mother – who has watched her family being crushed by the vice of extrajudicial power – alleges a grand conspiracy. But it's one that only a febrile mind could disagree with at this point. This latest attempt to silence the victim was too-obvious; Sengar has been expelled (at long last) from the BJP and is now facing a murder investigation. The supreme court has intervened to move all the connected cases out of UP, to Delhi. And federal investigators have replaced state investigators on the case.   The same old story    As heinous as this story is, it's far from unique. It starts with a handful of famous men being involved in sex-trafficking and rape. It involves police who were either disbelieving or self-censoring. It involves people in power - senior police with connections to Sengar - waging a deadly campaign of intimidation. And it ends with courts that buckle under the same top-down pressure as the police: no one wants to investigate their boss. It is easy to write such tragedies off as products of a country with an appalling record on women's rights. And let's be clear: India has an appalling record on women's rights (another woman died of her wounds this week after self-immolating in Jaipur to protest her rape). But to judge this as a uniquely Indian problem would be incorrect. In Australia this week the ruling political party was rocked by allegations that it had tried to bury sexual assaults within its ranks (one victim was even gallingly asked whether she would make trouble if the party preselected her attacker for a parliamentary seat). The US too has had a its share of similar stories. In fact, cases like this – to varying degrees of severity – happen in every country on Earth. And that's because this is really about how power is wielded by those who have it, against those who don't. Worldlywise The world champion. PHOTO: AP The ever-widening world of sports On Sunday a 16-year-old became a champion of the world. To his family he's Kyle Giersdorf; to his rivals and fans, simply 'Bugha'. Whatever you call him, he's US$3m better off having won the solo title of the Fortnite World Cup in New York. The 40 million (yes, 40 million) entrants into the eSports championship competed for an unbelievable US$30m total prize pool – a figure not far off tennis's Grand Slam winnings. A winner in the Duo's category, 15-year-old Jaden Ashman, became an instant hero for gaming children everywhere when he revealed that his mother had thrown out his Xbox console and snapped his headset in the lead up to him winning $1m at the World Cup. That same day Egan Bernal became the first Colombian to win the Tour de France. At the tender age of 22, he's also the Tour's youngest winner in a century. Handily for his legions of fans a hemisphere away, his yellow jersey matched the yellow of their national football team. It was a memorable win for the high-powered Team Ineos (formerly Team Sky) in which another of their riders, the Welshman Geraint Thomas, took second place. Also on Sunday, Max Verstappen emerged victorious from a chaotic German Grand Prix. The 21-year-old navigated a wet track and multiple collisions with greater deftness than his more-experienced rivals. His victory at Hockenheimring makes it two wins in his last three starts, marking the beginning of a mid-season charge at Lewis Hamilton's position at the top of the leader board. The Mercedes driver lowered his colours on Mercedes' home turf: Hamilton's race ended when he aquaplaned off the same turn that claimed four other drivers during the race. Unlikely victims of the Second World War. PHOTO: Lee Jae-Won / Reuters The legacy of Japanese Korea Washington and Beijing continue to exchange blows in their trade war of attrition. Just this week Trump proceeded with a 10% tariff on an extra $300b worth of Chinese goods (everything, essentially). Both sides have settled in for a long, boring and very damaging fight. This whole fuss isn't just the backdrop to everything happening in East Asia right now – it's actually obscuring a fascinating smaller trade dispute between Japan and South Korea. Just yesterday Tokyo struck Seoul from its list of preferred trading partners, an extraordinary decision considering the deep trade ties (and proximity) of the two countries. South Korean petrol stations are now refusing to fill up Japanese cars, and a growing number of travellers from each country are boycotting the other. The first action in this dispute was Tokyo's decision to place export restrictions on three materials (including hydrogen fluoride gas and a number of chemicals called photoresists) that are critical for the production of semi-conductors in Korea's enormous chipmaking industry. It was a calculated and devastating blow to their neighbour. The obvious question is: why? The less-obvious answer is: the actions of the occupying Imperial Japanese Army in Korea from 1910-1945. The brutality of the Japanese armed forces during that period is the stuff of nightmares (see: Nanking), but one of the less-explored features of Japan's imperial rule was the use of hundreds of thousands of Korean men as slaves in Japanese factories and hundreds of thousands of Korean women as sex slaves. These appalling crimes created psychic injuries that the normalisation of ties in 1965 simply didn't fix. And the South Korean supreme court has ruled that Japanese companies that profited from the slavery must pay reparations to survivors and the families of the dead. But this is not a legacy that modern Japan wishes to explore – hence the trade fight.   The Best of Times Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed get his hands dirty. PHOTO: Evening Standard Well treed One of the increasingly-evident imperatives of life on our burning and sinking world is to plant more trees. It's not a quick-fix, nor a comprehensive one, but they sequester carbon like little else. All praise to Ethiopia – led by it's vibrant young president Abiy Ahmed – for its plan to plant 4 billion trees across the country this year. Over the course of a single day this week some 350 million saplings took root.   Tiger, tiger, burning bright  After decades of decline, India's tiger population is finally leaping again. The encroachment of rapidly-urbanising settlements pushed the count of these beautiful big cats down to a paltry 1,411 a little over a decade ago. But the latest pentennial survey has revealed that there are now just shy of 3,000 Sher Khans stalking in the jungle. There are still concerns about the fact that the burgeoning tiger population is squeezed into an insufficient amount of wild land but that's for another Wrap. The Worst of Times A South African hero. PHOTO: AFP The saga continues The courtroom travails of Caster Semenya have taken yet another turn. Switzerland's highest court this week reversed an earlier decision to lift the IAAF (International Association of Athletics Federations) ban preventing her from competing without intrusive and untested hormone therapy. As a result, she will unfortunately not be able to defend her 800m record at the world championships in Doha this year.    An royal injunction The estranged wife of the ruler of Dubai (clarification: she is one of six) has filed for marriage protection and non-molestation orders in British courts. Princess Haya – originally of Jordan – fled the alleged abuse of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum in June. She is just the latest woman to escape the suffocating social order of many Gulf families; but she has resources that most do not.  Weekend Reading Quote of the week "I think the secret of 107... I never got married" –  107-year-old Louise Signore reveals the secret to a long and happy life.   Headline of the week Killing plants is a gardener's rite of passage – The Guardian (phew!)   Special mention This charming and thoughtful bottlenose dolphin that took a baby melon-headed whale calf under her flipper. It's believed to be the first recorded instance of a dolphin adopting a whale.   Some choice long-reads   The Economist gives a clear-eyed description of what has been done to the world's most-important carbon sink in the name of business (a must-read for any oxygen fans out there)   Businessweek discovers just how indebted China's Generation Z is to the nation's ubiquitous credit apps, and   Texas Observer visits Nuevo Laredo to count the cost of the Trump administration's 'Remain in Mexico' border policy Tom Wharton @trwinwriting