‘I love my country. I don’t want to leave’: readers reflect on the exodus from New Zealand

In the past year, tens of thousands of New Zealanders have left the country, surpassing the last spike in 2012 and raising fears of a “hollowing out” of mid-career workers. Guardian readers share their experiences on why they left – or are thinking of moving out of New Zealand. I found a job in Australia in a week I was searching for employment for seven months back home. I have experience in my field, and was only getting bites here and there from hiring panels who were genuinely more overwhelmed than I was. I found a job in Australia within a week. I dream of scenes from my childhood: beaches, fish and chips, and the bright bloom of pohutukawa trees. But as vivid as those memories are, you can’t build a life on scenery alone. Adam New Zealand not the utopian ideal We are considering leaving for financial reasons and a failing healthcare system. It’s not the utopian ideal that The Hobbit and Air New Zealand sells to the rest of the world. Fifteen to 20 years ago it offered opportunity – a relaxed and balanced work/life (compared to the UK) – now it’s caught up and overtaken the UK in terms of failing social welfare, healthcare and a lack of infrastructure investment. Young people have no future here and only the wealthy … can afford to stay. Ant I wish I could have achieved this in New Zealand I’ve already left for higher level study and now work. I have a stable and well-paying job and stable housing, transport, food costs and other amenities. I could not attain this in New Zealand, nor would I be as successful in my career as I am now. [I feel] very sad. I wish I could have achieved this in New Zealand. Celine The scientific landscape feels uncertain I’m considering leaving – I think it’s quite likely that I’ll leave next year. Between the changes in government research funding, the ongoing amalgamation of the crown research institutes, and the current government’s apathy towards environmental restoration and climate action, the scientific landscape in New Zealand feels a bit uncertain at the moment. I’m worried about my prospects of finding a well-funded research position here and concerned about the cost of living. I love Aotearoa. I would miss my family and friends, the landscapes, and the sound of tui waking me up in the morning. Ultimately, though, I think a move overseas would be the best option for me, both in terms of career progression and my own personal growth. Anonymous It doesn’t feel like home [I’m] considering leaving, no hope for buying a house for the family, the cost of living is very high and housing prices are still insane, even after a slight drop. Too difficult to compete with all the investors who speculate with family homes. Moving is always difficult. But hope for the future is worth it. We are looking for rational house-to-income ratios. [It’s] sad, but the country has changed so much that it doesn’t feel like home. Anonymous I got a 30% pay rise in Australia [I] left NZ two years ago for significantly cheaper IVF treatment – about one-fifth of NZ – and significantly higher teacher salaries. I got a 30% pay rise by moving [to Australia]. A bit sad, but ultimately there aren’t enough good reasons to go back compared to what we’ve got here. The countries just seem to be going in opposite directions. Anonymous New Zealand gets too much grief now I am in the process of leaving for a graduate position in Australia next year. Even without the graduate position, I was already planning my move. I was actually volunteering overseas in 2024, and came back to NZ in early 2025. There were simply just no jobs that would take me. I have a master’s degree, experience with the UN, and found it difficult to even get a part-time job. In Australia, the opportunities are infinite compared to NZ. I can also at least attempt to begin saving for retirement with the superannuation scheme, and even owning some type of property seems more within reach. [I feel] quite sad. I don’t have any friends in the city I’ll be moving to, and most of my friends from NZ I have known since childhood. My parents moved to NZ when I was young, hoping to raise us in a nice, safe country. It still is honestly, and I think NZ is getting too much grief right now. I obtained NZ citizenship, as well as others in my family, in the hopes of really making roots here. So leaving feels like another punch in the gut, in that I feel as though I’m abandoning the country that raised me. Ian Buying a house feels impossible I was previously trained in software development, however, AI destroyed most entry-level jobs and was further exacerbated with the downturn in the economy, so I decided to pivot and train again as a school teacher. I’m considering leaving New Zealand primarily because of wages. It’s well understood one can make a third more in income generally. I know that after my teaching training I could get a lot more over there in income, which is a shame because I would love to stay in New Zealand, however, getting ahead, wanting a family and especially getting on the housing ladder feels near impossible here. I feel sad. I love my country. I don’t want to leave. I hope that things will change and will become easier for young people to get ahead, otherwise New Zealand will sink to an island of the haves and have-nots. Anonymous The mood here is bleak My partner and I have decided to move to Germany next June. Mostly, we just want an adventure; the “big OE” is pretty ingrained in the Kiwi cultural psyche and is basically a rite of passage for a lot of young people – although lately the vibe has definitely shifted where more people are leaving the country out of necessity, not choice. I love Aotearoa, but it’s a very physically isolating place to be from, and I want to experience life in a bigger, more well-connected place (the concept of a country with land borders is mind-bogglingly cool). New Zealand currently feels like it’s at a dead end; our heartless government has gutted our public sector, welfare system, indigenous rights and more, the cost of living is so expensive, and there just aren’t a lot of opportunities in general. While I’m pretty optimistic we’ll have a change of government at next year’s election, our problems won’t be solved overnight, and the overall mood here is a bleak one. I’m not being driven out of the country, but there’s also nothing keeping me here, either. I’m excited to leave; I’ve always wanted to live overseas … The world at large is in a precarious place, and Germany has its own set of problems; but I don’t think I’m any better off staying where I am. This government is failing us, and leaving feels like my own personal “fuck you”. The fact that there’s thousands of others just like me is enough of a statement itself. Anonymous

Ukraine war briefing: peace plan ‘fine-tuned’, Trump says, as president backs away from Thursday deadline

Donald Trump has said his plan to end the war in Ukraine has been “fine-tuned” and he’s sending envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Vladimir Putin, and Army Secretary Dan Driscoll to meet Ukrainian officials. Yet despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points as diplomatic efforts continued. Trump said his son-in-law Jared Kushner might join the Witkoff-Putin meeting. “Steve Witkoff is going over maybe with Jared. I’m not sure about Jared going, but he’s involved in the process, smart guy, and they’re going to be meeting with President Putin, I believe next week in Moscow,” Trump told journalists aboard Air Force One. Trump also backed away from his earlier Thursday deadline for Ukraine to agree to a US-backed peace plan, saying: “The deadline for me is when it’s over.” He played down the element of his plan that would require Ukraine to cede territory to Russia, suggesting Russian forces were already likely to seize the land they’re seeking. “The way it’s going, if you look, it’s just moving in one direction,” he said. “So eventually that’s land that over the next couple of months might be gotten by Russia anyway.” Trump has suggested he could eventually meet Putin and Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but not until further progress has been made in negotiations, Shaun Walker and Dan Sabbagh report. “I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after a day of negotiations involving US, Russian and Ukrainian officials in Abu Dhabi. Witkoff has advised a senior Kremlin official how to best pitch a peace deal to Trump, according to a recording of their conversation obtained by Bloomberg. In the 14 October phone call with Yuri Ushakov, the top foreign policy aide to Vladimir Putin, Witkoff told Ushakov to congratulate Trump and frame discussions more optimistically. The recording offers direct insight into Witkoff’s negotiating approach and appears to reveal the origins of the controversial 28-point peace proposal, Joseph Gedeon and Hugo Lowell report. Russian forces staged a mass drone attack on the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia late on Tuesday, triggering fires, injuring 12 people and badly damaging buildings and vehicles, the regional governor said. Ivan Fedorov, posting on the Telegram messaging app, said the attack had destroyed shops, damaged seven apartment blocks and other buildings and smashed cars. He said 12 people were being treated in hospital. The attack follows a missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure 24 hours earlier, killing seven and injuring 21 in Kyiv. Nato jets were scrambled to track two Russian drones that crossed into Romania on Tuesday. German Typhoon and Romanian fighter jets took off to follow the uncrewed aircraft. The first drone flew back into Ukrainian airspace, but the second was later found downed in Puieşti, about 70 miles (112km) from Ukraine. Officials said German pilots had been given orders to shoot down the second drone – but it appeared to have crashed, possibly because it had run out fuel, Dan Sabbagh reports. Leaders of Britain, France and Germany, after their “coalition of the willing” meeting on Tuesday, expressed support for Donald Trump’s efforts to end the war, emphasising that any solution must fully involve Ukraine. Keir Starmer, Emmanuel Macron and Friedrich Merz said they were “clear on the principle that borders must not be changed by force”. “This remains one of the fundamental principles for preserving stability and peace in Europe and beyond,” the leaders said in a joint statement. Russian authorities must consolidate the Russian language and identity in parts of Ukraine incorporated into the country since Moscow’s 2022 invasion, according to a document signed by Vladimir Putin and published on Tuesday. The document, entitled “Strategy of Russia’s national policy in the period to 2036”, appeared as a decree signed by the president. It calls for measures to ensure that 95% of the country’s population identify as Russian by 2036. French authorities have arrested three people on suspicion of spying for Russia and acting to promote its war propaganda, as part of a probe into a French-Russian association, prosecutors said on Tuesday. One of those detained, a 40-year-old Russian man, was seen on video surveillance footage putting up pro-Russian posters on the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the prosecutors’ office said. South African police are investigating allegations that a daughter of the former president Jacob Zuma tricked men into fighting for Russia in Ukraine by telling them they were travelling to Russia for a paramilitary training course. Rachel Savage reports that another of Zuma’s daughters, Nkosazana Zuma-Mncube, filed a police report on Saturday alleging that her sister Duduzile Zuma-Sambudla and two others, Siphokazi Xuma and Blessing Khoza, had recruited 17 men who are now trapped on the frontlines of the war in Ukraine. Zuma-Sambudla has now filed charges against Khoza, claiming she was duped into recruiting men for what she thought was a legitimate training programme, according to the local media outlet Daily News.

Nauru president accused in parliament of corruptly siphoning off millions of Australian funding

Nauru’s President David Adeang, a predecessor and other individuals have been accused in the Senate of corruptly siphoning off millions of dollars of Australian taxpayer money intended for the island’s arcane offshore processing regime. A previously unreleased report by Australia’s financial intelligence agency, Austrac, suspected Adeang of “corruption and money laundering” after detecting a “rapid movement of large volume and value of funds”, the Senate has been told. The Greens senator David Shoebridge read sections of the unreleased Austrac report into Hansard in the Senate on Tuesday night. He alleged that the Albanese government had signed a $2.5bn deal with Adeang to deport more than 350 people in the NZYQ cohort to the tiny Pacific nation, despite knowing of the agency’s suspicions of corruption and money laundering against him. The NZYQ cohort are a group of about 350 non-citizens who have had their visas cancelled on character grounds but who cannot be returned to their home countries, largely because they face persecution. Adeang visited Canberra last week for a series of meetings with government ministers, including the foreign and home affairs ministers. The report from the Australian government’s financial intelligence agency alleges suspicious transfers of millions of dollars reported by financial institutions in 2020 when Adeang was a member of parliament. The report also details suspicious activity by Lionel Aingimea, then the president of Nauru, now the foreign minister and minister for police. “Suspicious matter reports submitted by the Bendigo and Adelaide Bank Limited’s customer service agency in Nauru reported suspicious financial transactions by the president of Nauru [then Aingimea], his family and associates,” Shoebridge, reading from the Austrac report, told the Senate. “These transactions involve the movement of funds between personal and business accounts, transactions on behalf of others and activity indicative of money laundering and corruption. “These suspicious transactions occurred over a nine-month period from January to September 2020 in Nauru totalling over $2m in combined credits and over $1m in combined debits. “President of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea, first lady Ingrid Aingimea, brother of the president, David Aingimea and member of parliament, David Adeang, are linked to the reported suspicious activity.” Sign up: AU Breaking News email A further “suspicious matter report” from September 2020 “relates to rapid movement of large volume and value of funds by David Adeang, forming a suspicion of corruption and money laundering”, the Austrac report was said to have stated. Shoebridge said the suspicious matter reports indicated Adeang had received funds from a company called 1402 LRC Car Rentals and Construction, a company associated with Aingimea’s wife. The company held subcontracts with a Brisbane firm, Canstruct International, which was contracted by the Australian government to run Australia’s offshore processing regime, and its detention centre on Nauru. The Austrac report highlighted several transactions flagged by banks reportedly made by Adeang, including: 15 Osko payments, three of those from the Aingimea-linked 1402 LRC Car Rentals and Construction, totalling $113,797; 462 transactions associated with building and construction reference of payment totalling $248,888; 140 ATM withdrawals totalling $68,840; and one branch withdrawal of $700. The Austrac report also said: “[Adeang] was investigated in 2015 by Australian Federal Police for alleged bribery in relation to phosphate mining in Nauru.” Shoebridge told the Senate that Australia’s “cruel and corrupt offshore detention arrangements with Nauru must be torn down”. “Let me put this clearly, the Australian government has, at all times, known that the current Nauruan president and key members of his government are seriously corrupt, and they still signed a $2.5bn deal with him,” Shoebridge alleged in the Senate on Tuesday night. “Corruption follows cruelty and it breeds in secrecy, and that’s the Nauru deal and offshore detention all over. We must stop the rorts.” Shoebridge said payments to LRC Car Rentals and Construction had been made through the government’s major contractor between 2017 and 2022, Canstruct International. Canstruct made more than $1.8bn from a succession of expanding offshore processing contracts with the Department of Home Affairs, despite a litany of controversies and the exposure of consistent abuses of refugees and asylum seekers. Guardian Australia contacted Canstruct with a series of questions about alleged corrupt payments. Canstruct, which appears to no longer be operational, has not responded. The Guardian also put a series of questions to Adeang’s office, the Nauruan government and the Nauruan embassy in Canberra about the allegations of corruption but has yet to receive a response. A spokesperson for the home affairs minister said: “The government takes advice from our security, intelligence and law enforcement agencies, not from the Greens political party.” Subsequent to the Austrac reports, the Albanese government commissioned the former defence chief Dennis Richardson to conduct a review into allegations of corruption in Nauru in 2023. Examining multiple contracts and subcontracts, he found that some contractors suspected of drug smuggling and weapons trafficking had been handed multimillion-dollar offshore contracts but concluded that the Australian government “may have had no option but to enter into contracts with these companies” due to the high-risk environments of offshore processing. Guardian Australia put a series of questions to Austrac about the allegations made by Shoebridge but has not yet received a response. Australia’s secrecy over its dealings with Nauru, its former colony, have raised consistent criticism. Nauru itself has no free press and does not allow independent journalists to visit the country. The Australian government has refused to reveal the details of the $2.5bn agreement it has signed with Nauru to resettle members of the NZYQ cohort, as well as details of its offshore processing contract, worth nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars with a US private prisons operator. The government also refuses to say how much it is paying Papua New Guinea to hold asylum seekers and refugees formerly detained on Manus Island, which is part of PNG. Previous governments have refused to release details of offshore detention contracts, saying their disclosure would damage Australia’s international relations, as well as keeping secret the Australia-Nauru security partnership memorandum of understanding signed nearly a decade ago.

US to send envoy to Moscow to discuss proposals to end Ukraine war

Donald Trump said he would send special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet Vladimir Putin in Moscow to discuss developing proposals to end the Ukraine war, but despite White House optimism there was little sign of progress on core sticking points. The US president said negotiations had left “only a few remaining points of disagreement” but there was no breakthrough on the issues of territorial control and security guarantees and he dampened expectations of immediate peace summits. “I look forward to hopefully meeting with President Zelenskyy and President Putin soon, but ONLY when the deal to end this War is FINAL or, in its final stages,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform after a day of negotiations involving US, Russian and Ukrainian officials in Abu Dhabi. The Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, said he would be willing to meet Donald Trump as soon as possible to discuss the final details of an agreement. Ukrainian officials said they were close to accepting the framework of a deal, but that some details could only be discussed at presidential level. However, Trump said he would instead dispatch Dan Driscoll, the US army secretary, to Ukraine for further discussions. The official, who has suddenly taken a central role in the peace negotiations, is expected in Kyiv later this week, according to Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Andriy Yermak. In his nightly address, Zelenskyy said Ukrainian officials had been working “on the text of the document” prepared in a previous round of talks in Geneva and said that “the principles in this document can be developed into deeper agreements”. But there was no suggestion that the revised US-Ukraine agreement discussed in Geneva on Sunday would be something to which Russia would agree. Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said that any amended peace plan would have to reflect the “spirit and letter” of what Donald Trump and Putin discussed at their summit in Alaska in August, after which Trump had appeared to conclude that Ukraine should make territorial concessions to Russia. Moscow meanwhile continued its nightly assaults on Ukrainian cities. Russian forces fired 22 missiles and 464 drones at Ukraine on Tuesday night, primarily at targets in and around Kyiv. Seven people were killed. Earlier, senior Ukrainian officials said they hoped Zelenskyy would meet Trump during this week’s US thanksgiving holiday to discuss the revised agreement and talk directly about territory. Russia continues to want Ukraine to cede the 30% of Donetsk province it has not captured, which Ukraine has said is unacceptable. A Ukrainian official told AFP that the new US-Ukraine proposal was “significantly better”. The revised term sheet raised a proposed cap on the country’s future military forces from 600,000 to 800,000 members – close to the current number of personnel on active service. “Our delegations reached a common understanding on the core terms of the agreement discussed in Geneva,” the secretary of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov, wrote on Facebook on Tuesday. “We look forward to organising a visit of Ukraine’s president to the US at the earliest suitable date in November to complete final steps and make a deal with President Trump.” Zelenskyy said on Tuesday evening that any talks with Trump should include European allies, and told 40 allies that “security decisions about Europe must include Europe” in a virtual meeting of the coalition of the willing, countries willing to contribute to a post-war peacekeeping force. The issue of territorial concessions was not covered by the US-Ukraine agreement, according to Keir Starmer. “My understanding is this is not a new agreement, it is Ukraine confirming they are happy with the draft that emerged in Geneva yesterday, which of course doesn’t cover the question of territory,” the UK prime minister told parliament on Tuesday. On Monday night, Driscoll met a Russian delegation in Abu Dhabi, and talks continued into Tuesday. “The talks are going well and we remain optimistic. Secretary Driscoll is closely synchronised with the White House ... as these talks progress,” his spokesperson told Reuters. Ukraine’s military intelligence chief, Kyrylo Budanov, was also expected to participate in the Abu Dhabi talks, the Financial Times reported, though it was not clear whether there would be direct talks with Moscow’s representatives or separate bilateral talks with Driscoll. Nor was it immediately clear who was in the Russian delegation. “I have nothing to say. We are following the media reports,” Vladimir Putin’s spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, told Russian state media. European leaders are struggling to stay engaged in the process as US officials take the lead. Finland’s president, Alexander Stubb, who had emerged as one of Trump’s main interlocutors among European leaders in recent months, said on Tuesday that the coming days would be decisive in attempts to find a peace settlement, after speaking by phone to Zelenskyy and the Nato secretary general, Mark Rutte. “Zelenskyy gave an overview of the latest situation. The future of Ukraine is for Ukraine to decide, and European security is for Europe to decide,” Stubb wrote on X. Zelenskyy also spoke to Starmer and the German chancellor, Friedrich Merz, on Tuesday. Meanwhile, the French president, Emmanuel Macron, cautioned against a peace deal that would be a “capitulation” for Ukraine. “What was put on the table gives us an idea of what would be acceptable for the Russians. Does that mean that it is what must be accepted by the Ukrainians and the Europeans? The answer is no,” Macron said. The US plan was originally made up of 28 points and was based on discussions between Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, and the Kremlin aide Kirill Dmitriev, reportedly with input from the head of Ukraine’s security council, Rustem Umerov. The proposal would have involved Ukraine ceding territory occupied by Russia and other areas it would have been expected to surrender voluntarily. It would also have put limits on the size of the Ukrainian army and given all participants in the conflict an amnesty for war crimes. Driscoll, who is a university friend of the US vice-president, JD Vance, then travelled to Kyiv to brief Zelenskyy on the plan and demand he sign up to it within days. The pressure, combined with the leaking of the plan, took Ukrainian and European officials by surprise. Zelenskyy said on Friday that the country was facing one of the most difficult moments in its history and was being forced to choose between “losing our dignity or losing a key ally”. Driscoll then briefed Nato ambassadors on the plan in Kyiv. One person present said it had been “a nightmare meeting” and that European ambassadors had been shocked by the content and tone of Driscoll’s delivery. Washington then rowed back on its ultimatums and said the 28-point plan was an opening point for discussion.

Zelenskyy says Ukraine ready to move forward with US plan and discuss ‘sensitive points’ with Trump - as it happened

Here’s a wrap-up of the day’s key events: Donald Trump said that he has directed US special envoy Steve Witkoff to meet with Vladimir Putin in Moscow and Army secretary Dan Driscoll will be meeting with the Ukrainians. In his post on Truth Social on Tuesday afternoon, he added that an original 28-point peace plan, which was drafted by the US, has been fine-tuned with additional input from both sides and that there are only a few remaining. In a statement on X on Tuesday, EU Commission president Ursula von der Leyen said that the “Coalition of the Willing” will continue exerting pressure on Russia since “pressure remains the only language Russia responds to.” She added on X: “We need strong transatlantic cooperation. Because it delivers. Take the significant impact of our coordinated and successive waves of sanctions against the Russian economy. They are shrinking the resources Russia has to wage its war of aggression.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Tuesday that Kyiv was ready to move forward with a US-backed peace deal, and that he was prepared to discuss its sensitive points with US president Donald Trump in talks he said should include European allies. In a speech to the ‘coalition of the willing’, a copy of which was seen by Reuters, Zelenskyy urged European leaders to hash out a framework for deploying a “reassurance force” to Ukraine and to continue supporting Kyiv for as long as Moscow shows no willingness to end its war. Axios reported that Zelenskyy had expressed a desire to meet Trump “as soon as possible” – possibly over Thanksgiving – to complete a joint US-Ukrainian agreement on the terms for ending the war. It cited the infomation as coming from Zelenskyy’s chief of staff Andriy Yermak. The ‘coalition of the willing’ call on Tuesday, co-hosted by UK prime minister Keir Starmer, was attended by US secretary of state Marco Rubio, in a rare example of American involvement in the coalition’s discussions. French president Emmanuel Macron and Nato secretary general Mark Rutte were also among the participants in the virtual meeting. Macron told Tuesday’s ‘coalition of the willing’ call that efforts to draw the Russia-Ukraine conflict to an end were now at a “crucial juncture”. During the same call, Starmer said talks on a potential ceasefire in Ukraine were “moving in a positive direction” but urged leaders of the coalition to “firm up” their commitments to a potential peacekeeping operation in Ukraine. Talks between US army secretary Dan Driscoll and Russia delegates on a US plan to end the conflict with Ukraine were “going well,” his spokesperson said on Tuesday. Driscoll reportedly met Russian and Ukrainian officials for talks in Abu Dhabi today. Russia launched a massive missile and drone attack on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure overnight, killing seven and injuring 21 in Kyiv. A total of 22 missiles, including four hypersonic Kinzhals, and 464 drones, were fired by Russia in attacks that principally targeted Kyiv and the surrounding area, according to Zelenskyy.

Jair Bolsonaro ordered to start 27-year prison term for plotting Brazil coup

Brazil’s former president, Jair Bolsonaro, has been ordered to start serving his 27-year sentence in a 12 sq metre bedroom in a police base in the capital, Brasília, after his conviction for plotting a coup. The far-right populist, 70, who governed Latin America’s largest democracy from 2019 until 2022, was handed the punishment in September after the supreme court found him guilty of leading a criminal conspiracy to stop his leftwing rival, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, taking power. The plot – which involved a plan to assassinate Lula and his running mate, Geraldo Alckmin – foundered after military chiefs refused to take part and the court later convicted Bolsonaro and six accomplices of trying to “annihilate” Brazilian democracy and plunge the country back into dictatorship. On Tuesday, the supreme court justice Alexandre de Moraes ruled that Bolsonaro should start serving his sentence after the case formally ended following a period for appeals. Bolsonaro has been living under house arrest since August and was taken into preventive custody on Saturday after unsuccessfully trying to cut off his electronic ankle tag with a soldering iron. Bolsonaro’s six co-conspirators were also ordered to start their sentences. The former defence minister Gen Paulo Sérgio Nogueira de Oliveira, and the former minister for institutional security Gen Augusto Heleno were arrested and imprisoned in the Planalto Military Command in Brasília. They received sentences of 19 and 21 years respectively. The former navy commander Adm Almir Garnier Santos, who received a 24-year sentence, was reportedly arrested by navy officials and held on a navy base. Bolsonaro’s former defence minister, Gen Walter Braga Netto, who received a 26-year sentence, was already in custody having been arrested last December. The former justice minister, Anderson Torres, who received a 24-year sentence, was expected to be sent to a penitentiary for police officers and other “special” prisoners in Brasília called Papudinha. The former spy chief Alexandre Ramagem received a 16-year sentence, but recently fled to the US to avoid jail. Bolsonaro’s incarceration has sparked jubilation among progressive Brazilians who remember his four-year government as a calamitous spell of environmental devastation, international isolation and hostility to minorities. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians died during a Covid outbreak Bolsonaro was accused of catastrophically mishandling with his anti-scientific stance. Mustafa Baba-Aissa, the owner of a Rio de Janeiro record store, has marked the historic occasion by decorating its facade with a white banner announcing: “Bolsonaro’s in jail!” “He’s a contemptible man who has done nothing with his life apart from living off public money … I’ve no idea how he was elected,” said the business owner, who plastered his shop’s windows with homemade posters celebrating Bolsonaro’s downfall. Bolsonaro supporters condemned the jailing of their leader, a paratrooper-turned-politician who was elected in 2018 and posed as South America’s answer to Donald Trump. “He’s been kidnapped,” complained Ronny de Souza, a 43-year-old Bolsonaro activist, as he stood outside the federal police base where the politician was taken last weekend after being arrested amid suspicions he was about to abscond to a foreign embassy. Lenildo Mendes dos Santos Sertão, a politician from the Amazon who uses the nickname Delegado Caveira (“Police chief Skull”), claimed his ally was the victim of a witch-hunt. “He fought against the system and now the system has unfairly and illegally incarcerated him,” Sertão said. Bolsonaristas vowed to battle on, even with their movement’s helmsman in prison and out of the political game. “He represents millions of people in our country,” said Souza, predicting that large numbers of followers would flock to Brasília to protest Bolsonaro’s plight. But so far there has been no sign of mass protests or unrest, with only small groups of Bolsonaristas demonstrating and praying outside the federal police compound where he has spent the last three nights. Experts say the former president’s influence has waned dramatically in recent months, particularly after Bolsonaro was arrested for tampering with his ankle tag. Camila Rocha, a political scientist who studies Brazil’s new right, said recent polls revealed a clear decrease in support for Bolsonaro – both in the streets and social media. One study found that only 13% of voters now supported Bolsonaro “no matter what”. Last month, a rally in Brasília organized by Bolsonaro’s family drew about 2,000 people – far smaller than the huge crowds the former president mobilized when at the peak of his powers. “Could there be more protests? Sure. But I think this declining trend is established,” said Rocha, who saw Bolsonaro in “a dead-end situation”. Rocha believed Bolsonaro’s arrest was good news for the rightwing politicians hoping to inherit his votes, as well as for voters hoping to see “a reduction in anti-democratic extremism” in Brazil. Not all of the pro-Bolsonaro schemers sentenced over the coup could be imprisoned on Tuesday. Ramagem, the former head of Brazil’s intelligence agency, Abin, recently skipped the country despite having his passport cancelled. “I’m safe in the US,” Ramagem announced in a social media video on Monday, urging Bolsonaristas to take to the streets to defend “our greatest leader”. On Tuesday afternoon, as the plotters began to serve their sentences, there was no immediate sign citizens would heed his call. After visiting his father earlier in the day, Carlos Bolsonaro told reporters: “He’s psychologically devastated.”

UK accused of caving-in to British Virgin Islands over access to companies register

The UK government has been accused of caving-in to pressure from the British Virgin Islands by allowing it to limit access to a register of company share ownership to only those deemed to have a legitimate interest. The restriction, to be discussed at talks starting on Tuesday between Foreign Office ministers and leaders of the British overseas territories (BOTs) in London, is in defiance of legislation passed by the UK government as long ago as 2008 that would make the register available to all. Public registers of beneficial share ownership have long been seen as the best means to expose corruption and tax evasion in overseas territories. The backsliding by the BOTs has led an all-party group of MPs to urge ministers to recognise that the talks this week represent “the last chance” to clamp down on embarrassing corruption in the UK’s own back yard before the Foreign Office holds a high-profile international anti-corruption conference next year. The conference was announced by the previous foreign secretary, David Lammy. A letter coordinated by the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on anti-corruption and responsible tax, Phil Brickell, urges ministers to ensure certain jurisdictions, including the BVI and Cayman Islands, introduce long-promised transparency measures. It warns that this week’s joint ministerial council gathering “represents the last chance to put the [BOTs’] house in order before next year’s much-anticipated Global Illicit Finance Summit, a flagship event central to the government’s vision of making the UK ‘the anti-corruption capital of the world’”. Brickell said: “This has gone on for long enough. Time and time again promises have been broken and Britain’s reputation as a clean and fair place to do business has been dragged through the mud. “Those overseas territories which continue to block and frustrate the will of parliament are letting the rest of the British family down, including those jurisdictions which have already acted in good faith and opened up their books.” The government’s anti-corruption champion Margaret Hodge visited the BVI in September and said she hoped the joint ministerial council would be the occasion where an agreement on registers was reached. Lady Hodge was instrumental in passing the original laws requiring all BOTs to make registers publicly available. At the last council meeting in 2024, all BOTs that had not already done so agreed to design and implement open corporate registers by June 2025. The UK originally set a deadline of December 2023 for the preparation of public registers, giving them more than five years since the original legislation was passed. In defining those with a legitimate interest, the BVI includes anyone seeking to investigate, prevent or detect money laundering, terrorist financing or proliferation financing, but it also states the registrar can deny access if it believes it is in the public interest of the BVI to do so. The relevant company would have to be notified if a request was being made. The BVI is thought to have 12 companies registered for every individual BVI citizen. The Financial Action Task Force grey-listed the BVI in June 2025, citing its lack of transparency surrounding beneficial ownership. Transparency International said the BVI rules meant “legitimate interest users will only see a subset of data, rather than what is being submitted to the register. This means users will most likely end up seeing the name of nominee shareholders or trustees holding the company on behalf of a hidden beneficiary.”

Protests erupt in China’s Guizhou province over cremation mandate

Protests have erupted in China’s southern Guizhou province, the latest in a string of rural demonstrations that have seen incidents of unrest increase by 70% compared with last year. The protests in Shidong town started over the weekend in response to a directive from local authorities that people should be cremated rather than buried after their death. Guizhou is a poor, rural province away from the urban hubs of Shenzhen and Shanghai. In unverified footage from the protests shared on X by the protest-tracking account Yesterday Big Cat, a villager can be heard shouting: “If the Communist party is digging up ancestor’s graves, go dig up Xi Jinping’s ancestral tombs first”. Another video collected by China Dissent Monitor (CDM), a project run by Freedom House, which tracks unrest in China, showed dozens of villagers surrounding a police car. The local area has a high proportion of people of the Miao ethnicity, an ethnic minority for whom tradition dictates that the deceased should be buried rather than cremated. On Tuesday, as the protests continued, the local government published a notice stating that the directive to promote burial rather than cremation was based on a 2003 law. It said that cremation was necessary to preserve land resources and promote a “frugal new funeral style”. In recent years China has struggled with crowded cemeteries and the government has encouraged people to consider alternative funeral practices, such as sea burials. But for many rural people, traditional burials are a core part of their culture. One villager from Xifeng county, the administrative district for Shidong town, posted on social media that his grandfather had been cremated earlier in the year because of pressure from local officials. He said that his family was warned that failure to comply would lead to negative consequences for three generations. Many comments on Douyin, a video-sharing app, were supportive of the protesters. “Yes everyone, let’s stand up and support traditional burial practices!” wrote one user. This year CDM has recorded 661 rural protests in China, a 70% increase on the whole of 2024. In the third quarter of 2025, CDM logged nearly 1,400 incidents of unrest, a 45% increase on the same period in 2024. Many protests appear to be driven economic struggles and related grievances. But in some cases, such as the cremation protests in Guizhou, the initial trigger can be the state’s intrusion into what many people see as a deeply personal matter. Kevin Slaten, the research lead for CDM, said that the protests in Guizhou were unusual for the fact that they have lasted several days. “Protests are more likely to be large scale and last longer if it involves something very personal. Whether that is a major hit to someone’s economic livelihood … or something like that’s their heritage or dealing with ancestors. People are much more likely to feel motivated to take the risk of protest.” In August, a protest in Sichuan province over a school bullying incident spiralled into a multi-day clash between hundreds of locals and the authorities. The Xifeng local government declined to comment. Additional research by Lillian Yang