Japan‘s Emperor Akihito has delivered his final New Year’s greeting before his abdication at the end of April, telling tens of thousands of flag-waving well-wishers that he was praying for peace.

The Imperial Palace said more then 72,000 people gathered at the royal residence in the capital, Tokyo, on Wednesday morning alone, with many more still arriving for a final chance to see the 85-year-old royal extending his traditional brief address this time every year.

Akihito will become the first Japanese monarch to abdicate in around two centuries when he steps down from the throne on April 30, ending his three-decade reign. His eldest son, Crown Prince Naruhito, is set to ascend the Chrysanthemum Throne a day later, continuing the rule of what is said to be the world’s oldest imperial family.

“I’m sincerely glad to celebrate the new year together with you under the clear sky,” Akihito told thousands of people, many shouting “Banzai” or “long live”.

“I pray for the peace and happiness of the people of our country and the world,” the soft-spoken Akihito added, flanked by Empress Michiko and other family members.

The emperor was expected to appear five times on Wednesday to address as many well-wishers as possible.

Some in the morning crowd yelled “Thank you very much” as the emperor waved from the balcony, while others sang the national anthem. One woman in the front row shed tears as she looked up at the balcony.

Well-wishers wave Japanese national flags during the appearance of Emperor Akihito at Tokyo’s Imperial Palace [Issei Kato/Reuters]

Akihito shocked the nation in 2016 when he signalled his desire to take a back seat, citing his age and health problems.

The status of the emperor is sensitive in Japan given its 20th century history of war waged in the name of Akihito’s father Hirohito, who died in 1989.

Akihito has keenly embraced the more modern role as a symbol of the state – imposed after World War II ended. Previous emperors, including  Hirohito, had been treated as semi-divine.

In a rare emotional address to mark his 85th birthday last month, Akihito pointed to the “countless lives” lost in the war.

“It gives me deep comfort that the Heisei Era (his reign) is coming to an end, free of war in Japan,” he said.

Akihito has used his speeches and travels to express his strong pacifist views, which are sharply at odds with the aggressive expansionism Japan pursued under his father’s rule.

Akihito has also worked to bring the royal household closer to the people and frequently visited the disadvantaged and families hit by natural disasters.

The origins of Japan’s monarchy are ancient and legend says that it is an unbroken line going back some 2,600 years.

It is deeply ingrained in the nation’s native Shinto religion and it comes with numerous ritual duties.

The emperor along with Empress Michiko, Crown Prince Naruhito and Crown Princess Masako [Issei Kato/Reuters]

Narathiwat, Thailand – Suraiya first noticed something was wrong with her two-year-old son, Atfan Kuning, when he couldn’t eat or keep any food down.

The possibility of measles came to mind early as she remembered the warning postings about the vaccine-preventable disease on TV and radio, as well as on billboards plastered around Narathiwat and throughout the southern Thai province.

“At first, I tried to think positively, I thought, maybe it’s not measles, maybe it’s something else,” says Suraiya, 26. “I thought, he got the first vaccine, so this can’t happen to him.”

But it did.

A local doctor diagnosed Atfan with measles – while rare, children can still become infected even after receiving the first of two injections.

Even though it’s widely accepted that the disease is close to being eradicated, here in Thailand‘s deep south, the virus has spread rapidly since September, affecting some 3,000 people out of the 4,000 reported cases nationwide and causing the deaths of at least 22 children.

Hearing that her son was infected shook Suraiya to the core. And later, when she learned that the disease was possibly deadly, it almost sent her into a panic.

“I was terrified,” she says. “My husband and I were in disbelief because we got him the first injection already, so we thought how could this be happening to us? I needed to know the worst-case scenario, and if it happens, then I needed to prepare myself.”

The biggest risk for the young boy was for the disease to spread to his lungs. But luckily for the family, this didn’t happen. Instead, Atfan started improving because of the first vaccine.

Many others, however, have not been as fortunate, with doctors warning that the measles outbreak has gone off the rails in the country’s south.

The region borders Malaysia in a cluster of provinces – Narathiwat, Pattani, Yala and Songkla – where tensions have been raging for years amid an ongoing conflict between separatists fighting for independence and the Thai military. Unsurprisingly, the area, albeit naturally beautiful, rarely sees tourists.

Experts say the recent measles outbreak is the result of a lack of adequate health education, high levels of child malnourishment and dangerous anti-vaccination narratives that have long plagued the area.

“Right now, the situation is really bad,” says Muhammadfahmee Talek, a local epidemiologist and lecturer at Prince of Songkla University Pattani campus, noting that the majority of those affected are children under the age of four.

Talek attributes the growing number of cases to the deep south’s high levels malnutrition – affecting, in some areas, up to 30 percent of children, according to UNICEF – and low vaccination coverage.

“The low vaccine rates are for a couple of reasons: one is that there’s a religious element that makes locals misunderstand vaccines. Some of it has to do with misinformation from religious leaders,” says Talek, who has been following the outbreak closely.

“Then there’s a second issue that there’s a ‘Zionist conspiracy’, or that vaccines are somehow a ‘Western invention’ that are dangerous.”

The predominant religion in Thailand’s deep south is Islam, and local adherents are mostly conservative. Although the vast majority have no issue with vaccines, some fundamentalist leaders have grievances with the fact that some vaccinations contain gelatin derived from pork. This is problematic because consuming any kind of pork conflicts with Islamic teachings.

Al Jazeera repeatedly contacted two prominent local Muslim leaders who are currently promoting anti-vaccination narratives. Both refused to speak.

But other Muslim leaders and local doctors are promoting a more enlightened approach and are working together to fight the outbreak.

A poster in Narathiwat urging residents to vaccinate their children [Caleb Quinley/Al Jazeera]

According to Talek, the locals’ vaccination fears began in 2010-2011, when a diphtheria outbreak killed 27 people. All of the deaths occurred within the most conflict-prone areas, leading many to believe that the disease was somehow weaponised by the military through the use of vaccinations.

Human Rights Watch (HRW) says it’s imperative that children have access to vaccinations and that children’s rights to health should be prioritised.

“The cause of this outbreak is because certain local Islamic teachers are preaching the vaccine is un-Islamic. With such disinformation, many parents decided not to bring their children to receive vaccination,” says Sunai Pasuk, Thailand researcher for HRW.

“Since the surge of armed insurgency in 2004, the separatist BRN movement has targeted the Thai government’s public healthcare services as symbolic of what they consider to be the Thai Buddhist state’s occupation of their homeland. Separatists burned down public health centres, murdered public health volunteers and hospital staff, and used a hospital for military purposes. Separatists and their supporters have also used false teaching to spread misperception among Muslims that public healthcare services, including vaccinations, are un-Islamic.”

But for Talek, the problem all comes down to the importance of health awareness and education.

“We need to improve the nutrition status of the kids here, and we also need to encourage the education of the parents. This is so important for the kids because immunisation saves countless lives,” he says, calling for the crisis to be contained.

“If our kids aren’t generally healthy, then they will be more susceptible to other illnesses in the future.”

There’s no doubt that vaccinations have made global progress. Research indicates that immunisations have resulted in an 80 percent drop in measles-related deaths between 2000 and 2017, and within that period, measles vaccinations thwarted an estimated 21.1 million deaths.

Yet for the families situated in the centre of the affected region, uplifting statistics aren’t too comforting. And with nearly two dozen confirmed deaths, not all families have been as lucky as Atfan’s.

“I’m so glad that he’s not in any danger any more,” Suraiya says, smiling. “I’m so overjoyed that he’s going to be OK. I’m just so happy.”

Chinese President Xi Jinping has said that no one can change the fact that Taiwan is “part of China”, adding that Beijing will not give up the use of military force as an option to ensure “reunification”.

Xi made the comments on Wednesday in a speech marking the 40th anniversary of a policy statement that eventually led to a thaw in relations with the self-ruled island.

“We are firmly against those who conspire behind the ideo of ‘Two China’, or ‘One China-One Taiwan’, or Taiwan Independence,” Xi said in a part of his first major speech addressing the people of what Beijing considers a breakaway province.

“We have achieved great victory on defeating any pro-independence or separatist activities. Nobody, and no party, can change the historical and legal that Taiwan is part of China and that both sides of the strait belong to China,” Xi said in Beijing.

China “reserves the option of taking all necessary measures” against outside forces that interfere with peaceful reunification and Taiwan independence separatist activities, he added.

Tsai says Taiwanese want to maintain self-rule

His speech came a day after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen called on China to seek a peaceful solution on their differences, insisting people on the island want to maintain self-rule.

“I would like to call on China to face squarely the reality of the existence of the Republic of China on Taiwan,” Tsai said in a New Year’s Day address, referring to the island’s formal name.

She added that the two sides of the Taiwan Strait needed a pragmatic understanding of the basic differences that exist between them in terms of values and political systems.

China “must respect the insistence of 23 million people on freedom and democracy, and must use peaceful, on parity means to handle our differences”, Tsaid said.

The Chinese government has heaped pressure on Tsai since she took office in 2016, cutting off dialogue, whittling down Taiwan’s few remaining diplomatic allies and forcing foreign airlines to list Taiwan as part of China on their websites.

It fears Tsai wishes to push for Taiwan’s formal independence, though Tsai says she wants to maintain the status quo. Beijing has regularly sent military aircraft and ships to circle the island on drills.

China’s interference in the island’s political and social development is “Taiwan’s biggest challenge at the moment”, Tsai said on Tuesday..

Beijing denies any interference in Taiwan’s internal affairs. It views Taiwan as a wayward province, to be brought under its control by force if needed, with no right to international recognition as a separate political entity.

Democratic Taiwan has shown no interest in being ruled by autocratic China.

Liu Jieyi, head of China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, said in his new year’s message they had not wavered last year in the face of “deliberate provocations” from Taiwan’s government.

“Although the way ahead won’t all be plain sailing, we have the confidence and the ability to vanquish risks and challenges,” he said in a statement on the office’s website.

Key policy statement

Xi’s speech marked 40 years since a message sent to Taiwan in 1979, in which Beijing called for unification and an end to military confrontation., 

In January 1979, Beijing declared an end to what had been routine artillery bombardment of Taiwan-controlled offshore islands close to China and offered to open up communications between the two sides, after decades of hostility.

Chiang Kai-shek fled with defeated Nationalist forces to Taiwan in December 1949 after losing a civil war to the Communists.

Despite the deep business, cultural and personal links which exist today, no peace treaty or formal end to hostilities has been signed

Taiwan is gearing up for presidential elections in a year’s time. Tsai’s pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party suffered stinging losses to the China-friendly Kuomintang in mayoral and local elections in November.

A cross-party group of UK parliamentarians and international lawyers has asked to visit detained female activists in Saudi Arabia to investigate allegations that they are being tortured and denied legal representation and family visits.

In a letter to the Saudi ambassador to Britain, MP Crispin Blunt, the head of the group’s detention review panel, asked Prince Mohammed bin Nawwaf bin Abdulaziz to assist them in arranging a visit to Dhahban prison near Jeddah to speak to the activists held there.

“We hope to be able to gather direct testimony from the detainees during our visit in Saudi Arabia,” Blunt wrote on Wednesday, adding the group wanted to also “meet and interview officials responsible for and tasked” with the activists’ detention.

Several international human rights groups, including Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, have alleged that eight female activists who had campaigned for the right for women to drive have been tortured with electric shocks and whipped with an “egal”, a rope that keeps a male headscarf in place.

The groups’ reports have also alleged that the women were subjected to sexual harassment, threatened with rape and prevented from accessing lawyers.

“The allegations made and recorded by these human rights advocates are extremely damaging to the credibility of the progressive reforms announced recently by the Saudi Arabian government,” the letter said.

Riyadh has rejected the accusations.

“The government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia categorically and strongly denies the allegations made by them. The wild claims made, quoting anonymous ‘testimonies’ or ‘informed sources’, are simply wrong,” the Ministry of Media said in a statement in November.

The detained activists have been identified as Loujain al-Hathloul, Aziza al-Yousef, Eman al-Nafjan, Nouf Abdelaziz, Mayaa al-Zahrani, Samar Badawi, Nassima al-Saada, and Hatoon al-Fassi.

‘Urgency’

The letter comes as the Saudi government still grapples with the international fallout over the case of Jamal Khashoggi, a Saudi journalist and critic of the country’s leadership who was brutally murdered in the kingdom’s consulate in the Turkish city of Istanbul on October 2.

“The Khashoggi tragedy was obviously a total and utter disaster for Saudi Arabia,” Blunt told Al Jazeera.

“It would seem that the people who are responsible for the Khashoggi operation were also responsible for the detention of these Saudi Arabia women’s rights activists at exactly the same time that Saudi Arabian women were getting the right to drive and major steps forward in their own personal freedom, with freedom from the so-called guardian laws ,in a way that was a huge step internationally and rightly paraded as such.”

Women in Saudi Arabia were finally allowed to drive in June 2018.

The detention review panel said it also wants to collect testimonies from male supporters of the women activists, including Ibrahim al-Modaimegh, Abdulaziz Meshaal and Mohammed Rabea.

Their letter went on to say that following the panel’s review, they would be able to support Saudi Arabia in “regaining confidence from the international community that its commitment to progressive reform and the protection of the rights of peaceful pro-reform activists is both credible and sincere”.

The group requested the Saudi ambassador to respond by January 9 “in light of the urgency of this matter”.

The review panel consists of ITN solicitors, as represented by the firm’s partner Tayab Ali; Dr Tim Moloney QC, the deputy head of Doughty Street Chambers; MP Layla Moran; and MP Dr Paul Williams.