The week at a glance...International

Moscow

Painful protest: A Russian performance artist known for his masochistic works was arrested after nailing his scrotum to the cobblestones of Red Square to protest “the apathy, political indifference, and fatalism of Russian society.” Pyotr Pavlensky staged his protest naked in near-freezing temperatures this week on Police Day. Over the past year, Russian President Vladimir Putin has criminalized peaceful assembly and most criticism of public officials, and forced civic groups to register as foreign agents. Past Pavlensky works include sewing his lips together to protest the jailing of the punk group Pussy Riot and wrapping himself in barbed wire while naked to symbolize government repression.

Beijing

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New security body: The Chinese government announced this week that it is creating a National Security Council. “Anyone who would disrupt or sabotage China’s national security should be nervous,” said Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang, who specifically cited “terrorists, extremists, and separatists.” The council, which will apparently report directly to President Xi Jinping, will coordinate police, intelligence, and military responses to ethnic uprisings in restive provinces such as Tibet and Xinjiang, as well as to attacks like the recent car bombing in Tiananmen Square. “Xi Jinping is now gathering even more reins of power in his hands,” said Willy Lam of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. “He has almost total control over the military, the police, and other similar forces.”

Pyongyang, North Korea

Mass execution: The North Korean regime publicly executed some 80 people by firing squad last week, some for watching banned South Korean soap operas. South Korea’s JoongAng Ilbo reported that the executions took place in seven cities across the country, and the public was assembled in stadiums to witness. In Wonsan, for example, some 10,000 people were present to see eight hooded people tied to poles and sprayed with machine-gun fire. “The regime is obviously afraid of potential changes in people’s mind-sets and is pre-emptively trying to scare people off,” said an official with North Korea Intellectual Solidarity, a website run by defectors.

Bangkok

No amnesty: Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra’s attempt to win amnesty for her brother backfired spectacularly this week, as tens of thousands of Thais clogged the streets in protest. The bill would have allowed former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to return to the country without facing charges of corruption stemming from his 2001–6 rule. Billionaire media mogul Thaksin, who has been called “Thailand’s Silvio Berlusconi” for his habit of forcing through laws favorable to his business interests and for his popularity among the rural poor, was ousted by the military and later fled the country to avoid a jail sentence for corruption. His sister was elected in 2011 with an absolute majority in the lower house of parliament, but the opposition-dominated upper house killed the amnesty bill this week.

North Waziristan, Pakistan

New Taliban leader: The Pakistani Taliban has abandoned all talk of peace negotiations and picked the hardest of hard-liners to replace slain leader Hakimullah Mehsud, who was killed in a recent U.S. drone strike. Mullah Fazlullah, known as “Radio Mullah” for his impassioned radio sermons, advocates overthrowing the Pakistani government and replacing it with a strict sharia regime. He is believed to have personally ordered the shooting of schoolgirl Malala Yousafzai, and he is thought to be covertly supported by Afghan intelligence, which has sought to punish Pakistan for backing the Afghan Taliban. “It is a danger for Pakistan,” top Pakistani cleric Hafiz Tahir Ashrafi told The Wall Street Journal. “Before, the [Pakistani Taliban] was only in North Waziristan and among the Mehsuds. Fazlullah wants to spread it all over.”

Dadaab, Kenya

Somalis must go: Kenya is pushing hundreds of thousands of Somalis out of the world’s largest refugee camp, fearing that it has become a terrorist breeding ground. Kenyan politicians allege that residents of Dadaab and other camps are being recruited by the Somali terrorist group al-Shabab, which claimed responsibility for the deadly attack on Nairobi’s Westgate mall in September. Under an agreement brokered this week by the U.N. refugee agency, half a million Somalis will be repatriated to Somalia over the next three years. Somalis fled en masse to Kenya after the Somali government fell in 1991; most current refugees were born in the camps and have never been to Somalia.