Polling stations opened at 0700 local time (1200 GMT) for roughly 27 million eligible voters, as no candidate appeared close to securing the more than 50% required to win outright. The likely second-round vote on June 7 could extend uncertainty in the world’s third-largest copper producer amid rising crime and shifting geopolitical dynamics.

Voters expressed frustration with the political class. “Peru is a mess, and there’s no candidate worth voting for,” said Lima resident Gloria Padilla, reflecting widespread disillusionment after years of turmoil.

Since 2018, Peru has had eight presidents, a rapid turnover driven by impeachments, corruption scandals and fragile governing coalitions that have hindered policymaking.

Analysts say the instability has deepened distrust in Congress and other institutions.“People really despise the current Congress,” said Martin Cassinelli of the Atlantic Council, adding that many voters hold lawmakers responsible for prolonged political chaos.

The fragmented field reflects a broad anti-establishment mood, with candidates ranging from experienced political figures to outsiders. Conservative Keiko Fujimori, making her fourth presidential bid after reaching three prior runoffs, has campaigned on restoring order and economic stability, appealing to voters concerned about rising crime.

Her candidacy remains polarizing due to her political legacy and past legal challenges.Ricardo Belmont, a former Lima mayor running on a center-left platform, has surged into contention after a late rise in support, while comedian Carlos Alvarez has gained traction with a tough-on-crime message.

On the right, businessman and former mayor Rafael Lopez Aliaga has promoted socially conservative policies, though his support has fluctuated.Public security has dominated the campaign, with increasing homicide and extortion rates linked partly to drug trafficking and illegal mining.

Leading candidates have proposed expanding the military’s role in domestic security.The election also carries broader geopolitical implications. Peru’s economic ties with China, its largest trading partner and a major investor in mining and infrastructure, have drawn attention from the United States, which has increased engagement in the lead-up to the vote.

Whoever advances to the runoff will face a divided Congress and a newly reinstated Senate, complicating legislative efforts and potentially raising the risk of further political confrontation.

Polls are set to close at 5 p.m. local time (2200 GMT), with preliminary results expected shortly afterward.

The latest escalation, triggered amid a broader regional conflict involving Iran, is widely seen as potentially the most destabilising crisis since Lebanon’s 1975–90 civil war, exacerbating long-standing fractures across its multi-sectarian society.

Israel bombardment and evacuation orders across southern Lebanon, Beirut’s southern suburbs and eastern strongholds have displaced more than one million people, the majority from the Shi’ite community aligned with Hezbollah.

Many have sought refuge in Christian and Druze-majority areas, where tensions have risen sharply, with some residents blaming Hezbollah for provoking the conflict in support of Tehran. Local authorities have tightened vetting procedures for displaced families seeking accommodation, citing fears that individuals linked to Hezbollah could become targets for Israeli strikes.

Clashes have already been reported. In one incident, residents in a predominantly Christian area north of Beirut confronted displaced families after debris from an intercepted Iranian missile landed nearby.

A foreign official described the displacement crisis as “a ticking bomb,” warning that prolonged inability for displaced populations to return home could severely strain communal relations.

Tensions between Hezbollah and the Lebanese state are intensifying. The government led by Prime Minister Nawaf Salam and President Joseph Aoun has banned Hezbollah’s military wing, called for talks with Israel and demanded the departure of Iran’s ambassador.Hezbollah officials have responded with sharp rhetoric.

Senior figure Mahmoud Qmati accused the government of acting like collaborators, drawing comparisons to Vichy France during World War Two, and warned of potential escalation, though he later said his remarks were misinterpreted.

Druze lawmaker Wael Abu Faour said political divisions and “defiant rhetoric” were heightening fears for internal stability.

Military pressure and strategic stakesIsrael has threatened to inflict Gaza-like destruction and signalled plans to establish a “security zone” extending to the Litani River, effectively preventing large numbers of displaced Shi’ites from returning to southern areas until northern Israel’s security is assured.

An Israeli military official said evacuation orders had focused on Shi’ite villages, while Christian areas remained largely unaffected, a distinction critics say risks reinforcing sectarian perceptions of the conflict.Israeli authorities maintain their operations target only Hezbollah and reject accusations of acting against specific civilian groups.

Meanwhile, Hezbollah retains a military capability that surpasses Lebanon’s national army, complicating efforts by the state to assert control. The group’s rapid redeployment to southern frontlines has further undermined confidence in government authority.

Lebanese politicians warn that the war could reshape the country’s political order. Christian lawmaker Alain Aoun said the longstanding coexistence between state institutions and Hezbollah’s armed wing may be nearing its end.

“The coexistence between the state and Hezbollah arms which we witnessed for decades is nearing its end in one way or another,” he said, pointing to potentially far-reaching consequences for Lebanon’s political system.

Hezbollah officials, however, signal they expect the government to reverse its decisions once the conflict subsides, framing the confrontation with Israel as a priority over internal disputes.

With Israeli officials indicating operations could continue beyond the wider regional conflict, and proposals under discussion involving curbs on Iranian support to Hezbollah, Lebanon’s trajectory remains closely tied to developments across the Middle East.

Co-Author SM Faiyaz Hossain

Under the current interim regime, extrajudicial violence has not merely been tolerated; it has been routinized.

Once lionized as the “banker to the poor,” Mohammad Yunus the microcredit mythologist now presides—directly or symbolically—over a Bangladesh in slow-motion disintegration. Over the past fourteen months, the mounting crises—economic, legal, social and political—no longer speak of mere instability; they shout systemic collapse and kleptocracy. Yunus’s promise of reform now rings hollow amid daily horrors.

The promise reflects his longstanding fictitious tales of donor friendly rhetoric and fundraising manuals pertaining to three zeros; and sending poverty to museums. 

Economic Stagnation and Social Collapse

Bangladesh’s long-praised growth trajectory has lost traction. In FY 2024–25, growth fell to 4.1 %, the weakest since the COVID era, per World Bank assessment. If the investment drought deepens, projections suggest a drop toward 3.3 % in 2025.

Over 100 garment factories have shuttered over the past year, costing tens of thousands of jobs (Daily Industry BD). Official unemployment hovers at 4.6 %, but a deeper reckoning of underemployment, youth joblessness, and hidden labor markets suggests far higher human cost (Daily Observer). Nearly 85 % of workers remain informal—no contracts, no social protection (Dhaka Tribune).

In industrial belts like Gazipur, police acknowledge many arrested for petty theft or street mugging are recently laid-off factory workers (New Age). When the state fails to provide, survival becomes the only logic, and crime swells to fill the void.

Theories of Yunus delivered to convince his Western philanthropists have failed to make financial relevance with Global investors. Yunus doesn’t just lack political acumen, he was too naïve to begin his step in the game. 

Lawlessness, State Terror, and Mob Carnage

Justice no longer exists as a concept, only as a performative façade masking systemic brutality and institutional collapse. Under the current interim regime, extrajudicial violence has not merely been tolerated; it has been routinized. In the first quarter of 2025 alone, at least 8 extrajudicial killings and 19 deaths in custody were documented.

Between August 2024 and March 2025, human rights monitors recorded 20 such killings, involving torture, beatings, and summary executions. Mob lynchings have surged with terrifying ferocity: between mid-2024 and mid-2025, at least 637 people were lynched—representing a twelvefold increase from the 51 deaths recorded in 2023.

This wave of vigilante violence has been met with state indifference—if not tacit encouragement. Simultaneously, religious minorities have been subjected to a coordinated campaign of persecution: between August 2024 and June 2025, 2,442 hate crimes—including arson, sexual assaults, desecration of temples and churches, and targeted killings—were recorded, underscoring a culture of impunity that has metastasized into open terror.

These are not isolated incidents but symptoms of a regime where law is weaponized, justice is ornamental, and human life is expendable.

Since Muhammad Yunus assumed office, there has been a disturbing rise in alleged political persecution through the legal system: arrests, false lawsuits, and invented murder charges serving as tools of harassment rather than justice. Beyond the courts, thousands have been detained under Operation Devil Hunt, with over 11,300 arrests reported by late February 2025, many allegedly including people with only tenuous or no links to criminal acts. 

Yunus never had, never tried for public mandate. Employed by the protesters of July uprising is far from being a democratic mandate. Yunus never had the courage to face a public referendum to justify his throne. He preferred to enjoy the authority, ban political parties without referendum and promote divisive rhetoric among the masses. 

Women, Children, and the Machinery of Cruelty

The sexual violence statistics are a national disgrace. In the first half of 2025, 481 rape cases were reported—nearing the total for all of 2024 (The Daily Star). Child rape cases, in just one seven-month span, rose by 75 % (The Daily Star).

Protests led by women or students are met with torture, rape threats, solitary confinement (Human Rights Watch). Ibtedayi teachers demanding job recognition were beaten, tear-gassed, and dispersed in January 2025 (JMBF).

Prisons continue to serve as killing grounds. Deaths in custody are frequent; euphemisms like “heart attacks” or “natural causes” mask systematic violence.

Corpses in Rivers: the Floating Dead

A macabre trend haunts Bangladesh’s waterways. River police data show that in 2025, an average of 43 bodies each month have been pulled from rivers, up from 36 per month in 2024. From January to July 2025 alone, 301 bodies were recovered; 92 remain unidentified. Narayanganj recorded 34 recoveries, Dhaka 32 (Daily Star).

In one case, a woman and a child were found floating in the Buriganga River, both strangled before being dumped, according to autopsy (Financial Post BD). In late August, a headless body was recovered from the Shitalakkhya River in Narayanganj; the victim was later identified as a 27-year-old man (Financial Post BD).

In Keraniganj, the bodies of a man and woman were discovered tied with a 50-kg rice sack, and another victim in a burqa drifted nearby (Financial Post BD).

In Netrokona District (March 2025), the bodies of three fish poachers were found in the Dhanu River after clashes involving community groups (bdnews24). In Chandpur, two older men were retrieved from the Dakatia River—one with visible stab wounds and a severed leg vein (Dhaka Tribune)¹⁷.

In Khulna, over 50 bodies were pulled from various rivers between August 2024 and September 2025; 20 remain unidentified (Khulna naval police). In Chandpur’s Meghna River, seven bodies from an Al Bakhira cargo vessel murder were handed over to families—and a probe committee was formed (BD Pratidin).

Notably, the body of journalist Bibhuranjan Sarkar—after threats and intimidation—was recovered from the Meghna River in Munshiganj in August 2025 (IFJ / BMSF).

These are not accidents or drownings; they are executions turned invisible, pollution turned weapon, rivers made into graveyards without funeral. 

Passport, Visas, and Global Shame

Bangladesh’s passport value has eroded, visa rejections are multiplying, and global watchdogs—HRW, Odhikar, UN human rights bodies—have flagged Dhaka for systemic violations.

The moral capital of the country is bankrupt. Investors and donors hesitate to engage with a government intertwined with terror, silence, and complicity.

Disasters as Symptoms, Not Anomalies

The October 13, 2025 garment-chemical factory fire in Dhaka, which killed 16 workers, was not a random accident — it was a preventable massacre. Locked rooftop escape doors and unchecked toxic gas turned the building into a sealed crematorium.

Days later, the Yunus government has failed to launch any credible investigation, identify the factory owners, or bring those responsible to justice.

No arrests have been made, no compensation schemes publicly disclosed, and no structural safety audits initiated. Instead, the administration has issued vague statements and deflected responsibility, shielding business interests at the expense of workers’ lives. This silence is not mere negligence — it is complicity. 

This is not a standalone incident, rather a pattern. The handling of the Gazi Tire Factory fire tragedy reflects a troubling pattern of negligence and institutional disregard for accountability.

Despite the devastating loss of life and clear safety failures, Yunus—under whose interim government the incident unfolded—failed to ensure a thorough, transparent investigation or meaningful compensation for victims’ families.

This inaction not only denied justice to the workers but also signaled an alarming indifference to labor rights and workplace safety. In the past 13 months, similar negligence has been observed in incidents such as the Hazaribagh factory fire (2024) and the Chittagong shipbreaking yard accidents (2024-2025), where victims were met with inadequate investigations and stalled compensation efforts.

By neglecting to pursue corporate responsibility and systemic reform, Yunus reinforced the vulnerability of industrial workers in Bangladesh, deepening mistrust between the state and its most exploited laborers. His failure to act decisively in the aftermath stands as a stark contradiction to his international image as a champion of social justice.

Over the past 13 months of the Yunus regime, Bangladesh’s labour sector has been trapped in a cycle of grand promises, fragile protections, and cynical neglect. The government’s repeated declarations of “historic reforms” amounted to little more than political theatre, as factory floors across the country continued to mirror a grim reality of wage theft, unsafe workplaces, and repressed voices.

While MoLE boasted of upcoming amendments to labour laws, millions of workers — especially in the sprawling informal sector — remained invisible to the legal system. Inspection bodies were underfunded and toothless, allowing factory owners to operate with impunity as thousands were laid off illegally, denied benefits, and silenced when they protested.

Unionization was stifled, particularly in Export Processing Zones, where rights existed only on paper, and “social audits” became nothing more than PR rituals for global brands. Worker unrest exploded repeatedly, from delayed Eid allowances to unpaid salaries and unsafe conditions, yet the government responded with empty press briefings and tokenistic committees.

The much-touted October 2025 labour law reform deadline became a symbol of inertia, tangled in corporate resistance and bureaucratic gamesmanship. The past year has laid bare a bitter truth: under Yunus’s leadership, labour rights were not defended — they were traded off, delayed, and dismissed, leaving workers to fight alone against a system designed to exploit them.

From Savior Icon to Enabler of Decay

Mohammad Yunus once embodied a hopeful alternative—microcredit, grassroots empowerment, moral leadership. Yet under his interim leadership, Bangladesh is unravelling in every direction: economic collapse, mob justice, sexual violence, extrajudicial killings, rivers flooded with corpses, and institutional impotence. From Teachers to slums, the elites to poets all have suffered under the Yunus’ reign of Terror. 

Yunus may not have physically ordered every atrocity, but he now presides over a regime that normalized them. His Nobel halo cannot conceal the inferno beneath. Rebuilding a nation demands more than symbolic leadership—it demands justice, accountability, and courage. Today, Bangladesh has none. Yunus had the opportunity to unite the nation and develop a social contract among the political parties. Instead what Yunus has contributed had cemented a pipeline for cycle of violence to multiply in the future. 

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not reflect Milli Chronicle’s point-of-view.

Taha’s comment encapsulates the global concern surrounding Sudan’s military leadership. He writes, “Just when we thought Hamas might finally free the hostages, Sudan’s Islamist-run army (SAF), hijacked by the Muslim Brotherhood, proudly declared it will send weapons and troops to serve Hamas and destroy Israel.” This public commitment from Sudan’s military escalates the tensions in an already volatile region, and it signals that the country is choosing to align itself with violent extremist factions under the guise of political support.

Sudan’s army, which has long been a source of concern due to its ties with regional powers like Iran, is now facing increasing scrutiny for its actions. Taha points to Sudan’s recent history of questionable alliances, particularly its acquisition of drones from Iran and its controversial decision to hand over control of its ports to China. He describes this as the military’s disregard for Sudan’s sovereignty, labeling it as a dangerous pattern of behavior where “national sovereignty is overrated.”

The situation is made even more complex by the leadership at the helm of Sudan’s army. Omar al-Bashir and Ahmed Haroun, both indicted war criminals by the International Criminal Court (ICC), are among the key figures controlling the military and foreign ministry. Taha does not mince words when describing them: “These two clowns are not in hiding; they’re running the army and the foreign ministry, like it’s some twisted comedy.” Al-Bashir and Haroun are infamous for their roles in orchestrating genocide and contributing to the deaths of over half a million people in the Darfur conflict, a dark chapter in Sudan’s history that still looms large over the country’s future.

In a surprising twist, Sudan’s military leadership has now set its sights on the UAE, a country known for its peaceful diplomacy and efforts to promote tolerance in the Middle East. Taha contrasts Sudan’s violent approach with the UAE’s commitment to peace, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood, which is banned and labeled a terrorist group in the UAE, has made increasingly aggressive statements against the Gulf nation. Taha’s scathing critique draws a comparison between Sudan’s actions and absurdities in other contexts: “It’s like watching a thief sue the bank for installing security cameras, only dumber.”

While Sudan’s military continues to align itself with extremist factions, Taha concludes with a stark reminder of the true nature of such behavior: “When terrorists dress up their violence in legalese, they’re not being clever, they’re just writing their confessions with a pen instead of a rifle.” His words highlight the false veneer of legitimacy that often accompanies violent ideologies, underscoring the need for the international community to be vigilant in identifying and confronting these threats to peace and stability.

Taha’s final message is a call for reason and peace in the face of mounting global tensions. He reminds us that “peace doesn’t shout. It builds,” encouraging a path forward based on collaboration, diplomacy, and a rejection of the violent ideologies that continue to disrupt global harmony.

As the situation in Sudan develops, the international community must pay close attention to the growing influence of extremist groups within the country and their far-reaching consequences for regional and global security.