 Hello and welcome to daily debrief brought to you by People's Dispatch, I am Shriya. In today's episode, Taiwan's President leaves for a 10-day trip to Central America. We also talk about UN fact-finding missions report on human rights violations in Libya and finally a history is made in women's cricket as the inaugural edition of Women's Premier League comes to an end. On Wednesday, March 29, Taiwan's President leaves for an official visit to Central American countries of Guatemala and Belize with stopovers in the United States, where she is expected to deliver a speech in New York. Taiwan's President's visit comes at an interesting time and shortly after Honduras announced opening ties with China, ending the long diplomatic relationship between the two countries. Guatemala and Belize also happened to be the only Central American nations left, which formally recognized Taiwan's sovereignty. Anish joins us now with latest updates on the story. Welcome back to this episode Anish, glad to have you with us. So why is this visit happening? Well, at this point in time, Taiwan, you know, what it represents itself, which is the so-called the Republic of China, is fast-losing allies around the world. It has now with Honduras' exit and it's reverting its relationship back to the People's Republic of China, which is, you know, the bigger one. Taiwan is definitely just trying to, you know, keep its allies intact and Guatemala and Belize, the country that Tsai Ing-wen is going to visit, are the last of the 13 countries now left that still recognizes Taiwan as the Republic of China. Now, the issue is that if it was just, you know, Taiwan, Taiwan's President visiting one of these countries that still recognizes it diplomatically speaking, that would have been fine. It is something, but China's issue here is the fact that it is happening with a transit in New York on her way to these countries and a transit through Los Angeles on her way back to Taiwan. So in both cases, there's definitely a significant amount of time left for her to make visits and even meet with officials in the United States. And that is the red line that China does not want the Taiwanese President or the United States to cross. Now, there are already rumors about that Tsai Ing-wen is scheduled to meet with Kevin McCarthy, the House Speaker of the US Congress, House of Representatives. And it might happen in Los Angeles or her transit through Los Angeles, so-called transit. So this is definitely something that is going to raise alarm bells because for one, this is not just some, you know, belligerent, two belligerent nations, why for influence? This is a this is a matter of basically sovereignty over Taiwan and over the rest of China as well. As far as China sees, it is its territory is the same as true for Taiwan, which through its constitution claims a whole of China for itself. So in both the cases, if you abide by the one China policy, you're recognizing sovereignty of one over the other as well by default. But the United States is not ready to go through that and is making these provocatives moves that is going to only heighten tensions in the region. Right, Anish, and you mentioned also about the significance of the, you know, the US stopovers and what, how is it likely to change the relationship that Taiwan and US have shared so far? I mean, there is a lot changing in the region. Will this relationship also change? It is very difficult to say what the United States intends to do with Taiwan. Obviously, we have seen over the past few years, under the Trump administration, now continued under the Biden administration, the US state machinery, the foreign policy machinery has taken this sort of a stand whereby it is trying to pretend that Taiwan is some kind of an independent nation in and by itself and that it has. And obviously, we have also seen recent legislations being passed by the US Congress that will necessitate any kind of US intervention, even military intervention, in case there is an armed conflict, in case an armed conflict breaks out between US, sorry, China and Taiwan. So, obviously, they are trying to change this relationship. But to what end is quite unsure? Obviously, the US officials are not forthcoming about what they think about Taiwan. They're not very clear if they support any kind of an independent or independent Taiwan as certain reactionary groups in Taiwan would like to go for or it thinks that Taiwan, the so-called Republic of China is the true representative of the whole of China. So, these factors need to be spelled out, but the US is refusing to do so in the kind of especially important because at a time of such brinkmanship, if you're going to fight for a cause, it has to be a very clearly defined one, but in the case of Taiwan, there is nothing of that sort. So, the relations we have, whether it is going to change any kind of relations between US and Taiwan and by extension China, we have to wait and see if Kevin McCarthy is going to meet with Tsai Ing-wen to begin with. But if it doesn't happen, obviously, it's a different thing, but if it does happen, we are going to see a very spiraling case of tensions in the region and we do not know what is going to be at store in the coming days. Right, thank you so much for joining us for this episode, Anish. The UN appointed independent fact-finding mission in Libya released a report on Monday, March 27 on the human rights violations that have taken place in the country since 2016. According to investigators, the European Union and its member countries have provided monetary and material aid to Libyan authorities and armed militias that have been responsible for widespread human rights violations including war crimes and crimes against humanity. We now joined by Abdul from People's Dispatch who has more details on this story. Welcome to this episode, Abdul. First off, can you tell us what are the details of this UN report? The report basically is quite detailed in the fact that it claims that more than 100 victims and the witnesses have been interviewed and it also had talked with different officials on the ground and with that the report talks about various parts of human rights violations, various kinds of human rights violations in Libya. It says that the Libyan authorities have been involved in arbitrary detention, torture, murder, rape, even sexual slavery for women and most of these things are primarily related to the treatment of the migrants. As it is well known now that how Libya has become a kind of a transit point for people from different parts of the world coming there in order to kind of migrate further to European countries and this is primarily because of the chaos and anarchy which has been created because of the Nettolite invasion in 2011. So since then there is a systematic, you can say, there has been no system, report indicates that there has been no system in place in Libya which basically can implement rule of law. So because of the absence of rule of law, absence of authorities which have influenced all over Libya, there are regional forces and all the regional forces have basically used their military power to make basically oppress whatever descent is emerging in Libya and to make money out of the migration crisis. So this is the primary finding of the report and it basically talks about how the detention centers for migrants in particular are, have been the primary space where different kinds of human rights violations are happening. For example, in Tripoli, even in Tripoli, capital Tripoli, there were reports about how the conditions, migrations are kept in are really bad, there is no food, enough food available for them, there is no sanitation, overcrowded sales, sales are there in which most of, in some times, migrants are, there are reports of migrants dying because of suffocation, because of starvation, because of the health related issues. So the report basically clubs all these findings in last five or six years and says that the Libyan authorities have been responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity. So it is basically, it talks about the severity of law and order situation in Libya and talks about how it can be improved as well. Right and Abdul there is also an element in the report about the European Union's simplicity, can you tell us what is that about? Well, that is the most important part of the report, as I said earlier that Libya has become a kind of hub for human trafficking where people from different parts of the world are brought in with the, with the, with promises that they will be, there will be a facilitation of their further migration into European Union, given the fact that most of the countries in Africa and in Asia are suffering from economic crisis, from wars of different kinds, most of these wars are the results of the imperialist interventions, particularly in Africa. So people are trying to find better ways of living. That particular condition is exploited by the human traffickers and a large number of people are brought in Libya. The report says that within one year from last March till this, last April till this March means April 2022 till March 2023, they found that around 400,000 such migrants were available, were present in Libya. So it says the scale, the wide scale at which this particular thing is happening. But Europeans have a very strict border control laws. They have invested heavily in their front-ex which basically controls the movement of migrants through the sea and they also provide a lot of money to Libyan authorities to prevent any attempt of sea crossing, which basically leads to a large number of deaths in sea because boats which carry the migrants across the Mediterranean Sea are stranded there. Sometimes they are overcrowded and therefore they sink in the sea and so on and so forth. So every year, thousands of migrants die in this because of the European border control policies and their funding to the Libyan authorities. The report also says that the detention centers in Libya, different parts of Libya, basically and the forces which basically maintain these detention centers are funded by European countries. They are also provided weapons and boats and other equipment to control the movement of people into the sea. It means in direct or indirect way, European Union and the European countries have been involved with the Libyan authorities knowing very well that these Libyan authorities are involved in heinous criminal activities and in violations of human rights of people. Despite knowing that, they have been basically continued. They have continued their financial support and support through the equipment to Libyan authorities. Thank you so much for joining us, Abdul. In our final story of this episode, a landmark development takes place in the world of women's cricket. The inaugural edition of Women's Premier League concluded on Sunday, March 26, heralding a new beginning for the game and its players. Senior journalist Sharda Ugra now joins us for the story. Glad to have you with us for this very special episode Sharda and my first question is that this is the biggest cricket league in terms of the audience, audience receptions and it's been taking place in other countries, for example, US, Australia. But it took a lot of time for a women's version of the Indian Premier League to launch here in India. What is the context and why did it take for such a long time? It's very difficult to give an official answer to why it took a long time. It just tended to be a little bit of sluggishness on the part of the administrators. They will say that look, there was a court case that was going on and therefore we couldn't get things into motion, but they did manage to hold the IPL regardless of court cases and so on. So there has always been, from the BCCI until about say 2013-2014, there had always been a little bit of lack of interest in the women's game. After 2013-2014, you see that the contracts have been introduced from the first time. You have women's academies that are functioning. You get to know about them. But this whole league happened. This is my theory. It is based on nothing but just a journalist's mind. At the moment, the Pakistan Cricket Board announced that they are going to start a Pakistan Super League for the women. I think there became a little bit of unease and almost urgency on the part of the BCCI to say listen, we need to get the IPL started. There had always been interest in it from franchises in the IPL that wanted to have women's teams. They held this women's challenge three, four matches for the last two, three seasons, just almost like cursory, a little bit of what shall we call it breadcrumbs, which even the women were very happy to take part in and just share the experience. So when this actually began, if you look at it, it literally took a couple of months for everything to happen very quickly one after the other. They said they are going to announce it. They released the franchises. They got the media rise. They announced the franchises that were there. They did the bidding. They got the sponsors and the tournament was done in three weeks. So look at the speed with which it's happened and you're thinking that if this could be done so quickly now, why not earlier? Right. And for a first tournament, can you also highlight for us what were some of the positives that can be positive takeaways from this first tournament and how are they likely to shape the game in the coming future? I think the first tournament, the biggest takeaway for the women's game is the fact that they had people come to watch and take interest in and follow on television. We are not sure what the exact numbers are. I mean, some numbers have been shared. They've said 50 million. You know, you don't know whether that's a combined viewership or what it is. But incredible numbers, incredible popularity in the sense of the fact that people are coming to the stadium. They'll say, oh, that's because the tickets are free. But ticket buying in India is such a complicated for a cricket match is such a complicated experience that when it was sort of streamlined, you look at the way people turned up to watch. The support from the Mumbai fans was incredible. That was the big, the quality of the cricket that we saw was also excellent. There were a lot of women involved in the game itself. You had umpires, the match referees that were there. So there was, it was almost a women's ecosystem was working alongside the BCCI's male sort of working system. And another thing it showed you, you know, look at the quality of the turnaround with which you're able to do this event. It's not easy to do it, even though they had restricted it to two cities and one city, two venues and three weeks. I mean, they still managed to put it off and fairly, fairly smoothly. So those are the big ones. Very interesting to watch on television, the kind of advertising that it generated. You had ads that were specifically targeted, they're featuring women that were there. Whether it was about sunscreen, whether they had cars, whether they had things about jewelry, gold, big ads from the gold council. So an interesting stream of ads which shows you that there is another parallel market for women's sport. You know, and it doesn't have to be something unlike what happens in, I mean, that's different. I mean, it could be different in terms of a material, what is in front of you, but it's not any less. What will always happen now will be the comparison. Oh, look at the men's IPL, it's crazy, it's crazy, but it's been going for 15 years. And why the women's IPL could have been started earlier, we have no idea. If the women would not have made the 2017 final of the 50 World Cup in England, I don't think any of this would have happened. But I think that that has been one catalyst that just sort of set things in motion. Really good, really good outcomes, some really good performances, some sort of not so great performances from particularly star Indians, but a really good feel good about this event all pretty much all around. Thank you so much for joining us, thank you so much for your time. And that's all we have for today, for more such stories, keep following peoplesdispatch.org. You can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.