New Amnesty report documents extrajudicial executions, mass detentions during security operations in Amhara and Oromia. A rights group has accused Ethiopian security forces of continuing to commit grave human rights violations, including extrajudicial executions and torture, since Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed took office in 2018. In its report on Friday, Amnesty International documented the arbitrary detentions of thousands of people and the forcible evictions of dozens of families from their homes, some of which were set alight, during security operations in response to attacks by armed groups and inter-communal violence in parts of the Amhara and Oromia regions. The report covers the period b
Violence in Sudan’s Darfur forces thousands to flee. From late December 2019 to January 2020, clashes between rival communities in El Geneina, in Sudan’s West Darfur State, forced over 16,000 refugees to cross into neighboring Chad. The majority of them are women and children. They arrived exhausted, traumatized and often with signs of malnutrition. Following an alert by authorities in eastern Chad, a joint mission comprising UNHCR, the World Food Programme (WFP), the Chadian national asylum authority CNARR (Commission Nationale pour l'Accueil et la Réinsertion des Réfugiés et des Rapatriés) and the Governor of the Ouaddai province was conducted along the border area to monitor the situation
On the first day of Colombia's quarantine, Carlota Isabel Salinas was shot dead outside her home. Ms Salinas played a leading role in a women's organization in Bolívar province in northern Colombia. The region had already seen an increase in violence carried out by right-wing paramilitaries in the months before the coronavirus pandemic. Since the start of the lockdown in late March, 28 activists and human rights defenders across Colombia have been murdered. The killings are not a new phenomenon: more than 800 activists have been murdered in Colombia since 2016, according to the think tank Indepaz. But community activists from different parts of Colombia have told the BBC that restrictions on
An MSF staffer and two other aid workers were also killed in the violence over the weekend in the Jonglei state. At least 287 people, including a Doctors Without Borders (MSF) staff member and two other aid workers, have been killed in the most recent spat of inter-communal violence in the eastern state of Jonglei in South Sudan, government authorities have told Al Jazeera. At least 300 people were wounded in the violence, which broke out between the Murle and Lou Nuer ethnic communities on Saturday, according to the government. Many suffered gunshot wounds and other trauma, according to health workers. Meanwhile, a patrol from the UN Mission to South Sudan has been sent to the town of Pieri
Genocide Watch summer interns in the Genocide Watch office, 2016 Genocide Watch will begin accepting applications for its 2020 Virtual Fall Internship Program on July 1, 2020. Applications are due August 1, 2020. Genocide Watch offers the following virtual internships: 1. Legal Associates (2) 2. Webmaster and Early Warning Analysts (4) 3. Alliance Against Genocide and Communications Coordinators (2) 4. Educational Research and Timestream Creators (4) To apply, please submit the following by the deadline. ○ Cover letter ○ Short writing sample (2-3 pages – an excerpt from a longer paper is fine) ○ Resumé, including foreign language skills ○ Transcripts (may be unofficial) Applications shoul
MOGADISHU (Reuters) - The governor of Mudug, a region in Somalia’s semi-autonomous state of Puntland, was killed with three of his bodyguards in a suicide car bombing on Sunday that was claimed by Islamist group al Shabaab, police said. “A suicide car bomb hit the governor’s car. Governor Ahmed Muse Nur and three of his bodyguards died,” police captain Mohamed Osman told Reuters. Al Shabaab has been fighting for years to topple Somalia’s western-backed central government and frequently carries out bombings in Somalia and elsewhere in the region. The group wants to establish its own rule in the Horn of Africa country, based on its own strict interpretation of Islamic sharia law. “We are behin
President Trump sees arms deals as jobs generators for firms like Raytheon, which has made billions in sales to the Saudi coalition. The Obama administration initially backed the Saudis too, but later regretted it as thousands died. A Saudi-led bombing of a funeral hall in Sana, Yemen, in 2016 killed at least 140 people and injured another 500. A bomb shard was linked to the American company Raytheon. Credit...AP Photo/Hani Mohammed Year after year, the bombs fell — on wedding tents, funeral halls, fishing boats and a school bus, killing thousands of civilians and helping turn Yemen into the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Weapons supplied by American companies, approved by American offic
Félicien Kabuga, 84, had been on the run for 23 years, since he was indicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda on multiple charges of genocide. A Nairobi newspaper in 2002 carried a photograph of the fugitive Felicien Kabuga. Credit...George Mulala/Reuters PARIS — He was behind the radio station whose hate-filled invectives turned Rwandan against Rwandan, neighbor against neighbor, even spouse against spouse. He was the man, it was said, who imported the hundreds of thousands of machetes that allowed countless ordinary people to act upon that hatred in one of the last genocides of the past century. One of the most-wanted fugitives of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, Félicien Kabug
THE VIRUS OF HATE AND STEVE BANNON’S DECLARATION OF WAR The ‘NEVER AGAIN’ Association has echoed the United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres’ warning against ‘the tsunami of hate and xenophobia’ sparked by the coronavirus pandemic. The Warsaw-based organization has published its latest REPORT ‘The Virus of Hate: Brown Book of the Epidemic’. The report documents acts of racism, xenophobia and discrimination which have occurred in the context of the coronavirus in Poland in recent weeks and months. Steve Bannon on Polish TV The authors of the report recorded cases of assaults on members of minorities who are unjustly blamed for spreading the virus, as well as numerous examples of hat
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's public use of the insult "the leftovers of the sword" in referring to survivors of the massacres of Christians in his country is alarming on many levels. The phrase not only insults the victims and the survivors of the massacres but also endangers the safety of Turkey's dwindling Christian community, who are often exposed to pressures that include physical attacks. (Photo by Chris McGrath/Getty Images) "Leftover of the sword" (kılıç artığı in Turkish) is a commonly used insult in Turkey that often refers to the survivors of the Christian massacres that mainly targeted Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians in the Ottoman Empire and its successor, Turkey. The
Genocide Watch has published its first Timestream presentation, a new educational tool created by Ntrepid LLC. Timestreams on other genocides will follow. The Rohingya Timestream covers the history of the genocide and forced displacement of the Rohingya in Myanmar. It explores key events leading up to the Gambia's case against Myanmar in the International Court of Justice. View the Timestream presentation here . .
NIGERIA (BP) -- Militant Fulani herdsmen killed at least 25 Christians in several attacks in Nigeria's Middle Belt in April as the local government did little to intervene, Morning Star News reported. The unfettered attacks could lead to a regional civil war in Nigeria's Middle Belt, religious liberty advocate International Christian Concern said Tuesday (May 5). "A full-blown civil war between the Fulani people and the rest of the indigenous people around them could very well happen," said Nathan Johnson, International Christian Concern's regional manager for Africa. "The Nigerian government has turned a blind eye daily to these attacks. At some point it's got to give, and the government, i
Turkish soldiers on tank in in the border town of Akcakale in Sanliurfa province, Turkey, Oct. 11, 2019. Photo by REUTERS/Murad Sezer. Turkey’s transfer of Syrian families to Tell Abyad from Afrin has reignited worries of demographic engineering in northern Syria. Turkey has transferred hundreds of people to the northeastern Syrian town of Tell Abyad from the Turkish-controlled Operation Euphrates Shield region, stunning many families displaced from the town that have been hoping to return to their villages in the area, which fell under Turkish control during a military operation in November 2019. A new round of population transfers is reportedly underway. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdo
Rights groups decry relocation of people picked up at sea after fleeing camps in Cox’s Bazar Hundreds of Rohingya Muslims, including children, have arrived at “a de facto detention island” in Bangladesh after being stranded at sea for weeks. Rights groups had warned that the refugees, who had been turned away from other countries in the region, were at risk of starvation and abuse by people traffickers. It is believed that other boats remain adrift. Bangladesh confirmed on Thursday that a boat carrying 280 people was being towed to Bhasan Char, an uninhabited silt island off the southern coast. The country’s foreign minister, Abdul Momen, had earlier said that refugees rescued at sea would b
Allow Public Debate on Security, Covid-19 Responses (Nairobi) – Somali authorities have been stepping up their intimidation of journalists as the country faces a growing number of Covid-19 cases. Since mid-April 2020 alone, authorities arbitrarily detained three journalists, accused two of various crimes, and prohibited a local radio station from broadcasting in a local dialect. As of April 30, Somalia had 601 confirmed Covid-19 cases and 28 deaths reported. The country is also scheduled to hold general elections in late 2020 or early 2021, possibly the country’s first open election in 50 years. Somali authorities should use World Press Freedom Day, May 3, 2020, to commit to ending arbitrary
At least three boats carrying Rohingya refugees have been adrift for more than two months. As of this week, rights groups that had been tracking the boats lost sight of them. The belongings of Rohingya refugees lying on the shore last month as their boat remained anchored nearby in Teknaf, Bangladesh.Credit...Suzauddin Rubel/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images BANGKOK — Somewhere in turquoise waters, perhaps where the Bay of Bengal meets the Andaman Sea, wooden boats filled with Rohingya refugees are listing, adrift now for more than 10 weeks. They were prevented from docking in Malaysia, their preferred destination, and Bangladesh, their port of origin. As of this week, rights groups that h
