The predominantly Hui Muslim town of Nagu in China's Yunnan province saw street-fighting between residents and police over planned demolition of the dome of the locality's historic mosque. Orders were issued in 2020 to demolish the dome, which had recently been expanded, as part of President Xi Jinping's campaign for the "Sinicization" of Islam in China. The campaign mandates that mosques in what is deemed an overly "Arabic style" must be "rectified." The order for "rectification" of Nagu's 13th-century Najiaying Mosque went unenforced until May 27, when a crew of workers with cranes, scaffolds and bulldozers arrived unannounced, accompanied by some 400 riot police. Clashes ensued when residents spontaneously mobilized to defend the mosque. Authorities responded by flooding the town with up to 5,000 police and military troops, and cutting off the internet in the area. Dozens of protesters have been arrested, and authorities in Tonghai County, where Nagu is located, have issued an ultimatum for accused instigators to turn themselves in by June 6. (Bitter Winter, Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC News, The Guardian, India Today)

A tankie agent carried out "false flag" vandalism of a synagogue and other Jewish targets in Detroit, attempting to blame it on the Azov Battalion and tar Ukrainians. She turns out to have been a member of the retro-Stalinist Workers World Party and a staff writer for openly dictator-shilling MintPress News—which has itself engaged in "false flag" disinformation, blaming the Syrian rebels for chemical attacks against their own strongholds by the Bashar Assad regime. MintPress has also received funding directly from the Assad Lobby. In Episode 176 of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg examines this ultra-cynical propaganda nexus, and asks whether such agents are mere "useful idiots" for the Kremlin, or actual conscious assets operating in the "gray zone"—the sphere of "hybrid warfare" in which the line between state and non-state actors is blurred. Listen on SoundCloud or via Patreon.

The chairman of Hong Kong's Civic Party, Alan Leong, announced May 27 that the pro-democracy party is disbanding following a resolution by a majority of members. The Civic Party, one of the few remaining pro-democracy parties in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, was founded in 2006. Since Beijing passed the controversial national security law in 2020, multiple Civic Party members have been charged with "subversion." Party members were also accused of organizing and participating in an unauthorized primary election in July 2020.

Within just five years, the Amazon rainforest could lose half the total forest cover that it lost in the first 20 years of this century, a recent study has revealed. Deforestation rates continue to accelerate in nearly all of the nine Amazonian countries, but especially in Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia—mostly due to road development, agricultural expansion and mining.

Peru's Congress on May 19 voted 70-33 with four abstentions to approve Legislative Resolution 4766, authorizing US troops to be stationed on the national territory from June 1 to Dec. 31. Lima lawmaker Alfredo Azurín, president of the Commission on National Defense, Internal Order & Anti-Drug Struggle, said the soldiers will carry out training missions and joint exercises with Peru's armed forces and National Police. He named several regions where the troops will be mobilize, including Loreto, San Martín, Huánuco, Ucayali, Pasco, Junín, Huancavelica, Cuzco, Ayacucho and Apurímac. Azurín assured that there is no intention to establish a US military base in Peru, and that the congressional decision has no effect on the country's national sovereignty. (Congreso Noticias)

The Supreme Court of Russia on May 25 ordered the liquidation of the People's Freedom Party (PARNAS) at the request of the country's justice ministry, according to state news agency TASS. The Ministry of Justice contended that the number of the party's regional offices dropped by seven, from 47 to 40, and law requires parties to have representative offices in half of the regions of the Russian Federation. According to the independent Mediazona, whose reporters were in the courtroom, PARNAS leaders responded that the party still had 44 offices, and was only considered out of compliance with the law because the court counted Russian-occupied territories in Ukraine as Russian administrative regions.

At a May 25 meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) in Minsk, Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu and Belarusian Defense Minister Viktor Khrenin signed documents allowing Russian tactical nuclear weapons to be deployed on Belarusian territory. Shoigu and Khrenin cited a "sharp escalation of threats on the western border of Russia and Belarus." Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union in Moscow, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko implied to an interviewer that the nuclear weapons may "already" be stationed in Belarus.

Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) Minister of Justice Rose Mutombo filed an International Criminal Court (ICC) complaint against Rwanda on May 23 over its alleged involvement in the theft of natural resources in the DRC. The minister charged that the Rwanda Defense Forces (RDF) have been collaborating with the M23 rebel group, which has taken control of areas in Northern Kivu province near the DRC's border with Rwanda. The complaint accuses the "RDF-M23 coalition" of "systematic and large-scale plundering of ...natural resources" in the rebels' zone of control. There has been an open ICC investigation into eastern DRC since 2004. (Jurist, AfricaNews)