The Libyan interior minister says patrols will target 'strange' haircuts, enforce 'modest' clothing and require male guardians for women Libya's interior minister has announced the reintroduction of the morality police to the streets to enforce what he called "society's traditions" and restrict women's freedom of movement. On Wednesday, Emad al-Tarabulsi said the patrols would resume next month. They would target people with "strange" haircuts, ensure women wear "modest" clothing and prevent gender mixing in public spaces. He also suggested that women would be barred from travelling within the country without a male guardian, adding that those "seeking personal freedom should go to Europe". Libya has faced deep instability since a Nato-backed uprising overthrew longtime ruler Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. In 2014, the country split between eastern and western factions, each governed by rival administrations. The internationally recognised Government of National Unity (GNU), of which Tarabulsi is a minister, is based in the western city of Tripoli. A rival administration based in Benghazi refuses to recognise GNU Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibah, who was appointed through a UN-backed process in 2021. International diplomacy to resolve the conflict in Libya has focused on pushing for new elections to replace interim institutions such as the GNU. Dbeibah has said he will not cede power to a new government without national elections. Since 2011, Libya has seen a decline in religious freedoms in the predominately Muslim country. The circulation of non-Islamic religious materials, missionary activity and speech considered “offensive to Muslims” is illegal. In May, the GNU's General Authority of Endowments and Islamic Affairs established what it called the “Guardians of Virtue” to protect Islamic values. Non-Muslims and members of Muslim minority sects have faced persecution from both the state and armed groups in Libya. Copyright © 2014 - 2023 .  Middle East Eye. All rights reserved.

Rounded up, massacred and posted on social media: can Ethiopia bring justice for atrocities in Tigray? The country is about to start investigating crimes reported in a brutal regional war. But trust is at an all-time low and survivors feel forgotten By Fred Harter Meaza Teklemariam was seven months pregnant when the soldiers came to her home in January 2021, dragged her husband, Tsegaye, outside and bound his hands together, before taking him away with other men from their neighbourhood in the Tigray region of Ethiopia . “They said to him, ‘You are a fighter, you are a fighter’,” says Meaza, tears rolling down her cheeks. “He kept saying, ‘No, no. I’m a farmer, I’m a civilian.’” Videos filmed by the soldiers and posted on social media show what happened next. The soldiers gather dozens of men on a rocky clifftop. Then they lead them to the edge and shoot them with automatic rifles. The limp bodies are tossed into the valley below, as the soldiers fire rounds into anyone showing signs of life. At one point, before the slaughter begins, a smiling soldier with a rifle slung over his shoulder beckons to the camera. “Why don’t you go closer and film?” he asks. “You should film how these are going to die.” In another video a soldier identifies his name and military unit and then passes his phone to a comrade who films him shooting someone. Today, a modest stone monument stands at the massacre site in Mahbere Dego town in Tigray, where children graze herds of donkeys and cattle among the orange aloe vera flowers. A tally by local officials, reviewed by the Guardian, puts the number of people killed at 50. It was six months before relatives discovered their loved ones’ remains, when the soldiers withdrew from the area in the face of a rebel offensive. People were identified by their scattered belongings: tattered identity cards, charred shoes and bloodstained bits of clothing. Bones were collected in sacks as the sounds of battle echoed in the surrounding mountains, and buried in mass graves at two local churches. “It was heartbreaking,” says priest Gebremeskal Berhe, standing beside one of the graves at his church of Mahbere Tsadkan. “We don’t know the exact number of people buried here,” he says. “We can only guess.” This massacre is just one atrocity in the brutal war that engulfed northern Ethiopia from 2020 to 2022. About 600,000 people died, according to Olusegun Obasanjo, a negotiator for the African Union and former president of Nigeria. Many died from disease and hunger when aid was blocked to Tigray, prompting a UN investigation into accusations of Ethiopia’s government using starvation as a weapon. An estimated 100,000 women were raped, and UN investigators concluded all sides committed war crimes, including rebels from Tigray when they entered the neighbouring regions of Afar and Amhara . Now, two years after the war ended, Ethiopia is preparing to launch a transitional justice process. In April, its cabinet approved a policy setting up a special prosecutor and court to deal with the most serious abuses, as well as a truth commission with powers to grant reparations and amnesties to mend fractured community relationships. Their work will start in the coming months, covering not just the recent civil war, but all crimes committed in the country since 1995, when its constitution came into force. The transitional justice policy has drawn praise from donors such as the US and the European Union, which froze aid to Ethiopia during the conflict and demanded a transitional justice process before they normalised relations. But it has been criticised by international and national human rights groups, who question the government’s commitment to accountability. During the conflict, the government cut Tigray’s phone lines and officials downplayed or denied accusations its forces and allies committed abuses. Eritrean troops fought alongside Ethiopia’s military, but Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, denied their presence for months. The ministry of justice says it has carried out investigations but has released little information about findings, raising fears the transitional justice process will be similarly opaque. Laetitia Bader, Horn of Africa director at Human Rights Watch, says: “Time and time again, the government has demonstrated outright resistance to any international oversight, scrutiny and transparency. And we are seeing that again with this process.” A major concern is the lack of international participation in the process. A group of Ethiopian academics who helped draft the policy floated the possibility of including international experts as judges, investigators and commissioners, but the final policy limits them to training and advisory roles. The government has insisted on a nationally led process, under the banner of “African solutions to African problems”, and refused to cooperate with the UN investigation, whose mandate it lobbied hard to end. The investigation was allowed to quietly lapse last year, as the EU restored €600m (£500m) in frozen funding to Ethiopia, a move that seemed to indicate a shelving of its demands for accountability. “Europe is turning a blind eye because Ethiopia is an important partner in Africa,” alleges a European diplomat in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital. One senior member of the UN investigation says: “We left the process with the view Ethiopia was not serious about accountability, that this was something they were primarily doing for external consumption.” They describe this tactic as “quasi-compliance”. A government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment. There is still fighting in Amhara and Oromia, Ethiopia’s biggest regions, where security forces face accusations of abuses. This includes a massacre of dozens of civilians early this year, which the government is yet to investigate. Much of these regions are too dangerous for officials, so it is not clear how the transitional process will work there. Civil society groups say the ongoing atrocities cast doubt on the government’s commitment to accountability. The new special prosecutor will have powers to extradite suspects, but Eritrea sending men to face justice in Ethiopia is a remote prospect, with its president, Isaias Afwerki, calling allegations of war crimes in Tigray “a fantasy ”. Eritrean troops have been accused of committing some of the worst atrocities of the war. This includes the massacre of hundreds of men and boys in Axum , an hour’s drive north of Mahbere Dego through flat farmland. On 28 and 29 November 2020, Eritrean soldiers reportedly carried out a door-to-door killing spree after clashing with local militia in this ancient city, whose church is believed by Orthodox Ethiopians to house the Ark of the Covenant. At her home in Axum’s old town, Tirhas Berha recalls how gunfire rang through the city. Then a group of Eritrean troops barged in. She says they ordered her husband, Tamrat, into the street, lined him up with five other men and opened fire. When she eventually managed to drag him inside, Tamrat was still breathing. But he bled to death in front of her and their children two hours later. They could not leave their home to bury his decomposing body for three days. Trust in government institutions is low in Tigray. According to a recent survey , just 2% of people living there want domestic courts to adjudicate. This includes Berha, who has little confidence her husband’s killers will ever be prosecuted. “We need justice, but it’s been four years and nothing has happened. They have just forgotten about us,” she says. “No one can understand how I feel.” As she speaks, her young daughter wipes her tears away with a scarf and rubs her back. Leake Embaye helped to collect the bodies. He says they were fired upon by Eritrean troops while doing the work. At his barber shop, stripped bare by looting, he unfurls a large poster with the pictures and names of the dead from his neighbourhood. He says he too doubts there will be justice. “The government lied about what happened, they said Eritrean troops weren’t here at the time,” he says. In a recent interview, Ethiopia’s army chief downplayed what happened in Axum, saying Eritrean troops “were fired upon” and “took action against those who attacked them”. “In the midst of this, peaceful people might have been harmed,” he said. In the countryside around Mahbere Dego, wrapped in a white shawl, Kiros Berhe walks along a dirt path through fields teeming with crops ready for harvest, up to the church gate where her husband, Solomon, and other relatives lie buried. But she won’t go inside. “It is too painful,” she says. Despite losing six family members in the massacre at the cliff top, she considers herself “very lucky” because her only son survived. “I am sure God will punish them,” she says, “but I don’t trust the government. They are responsible for this.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

A joint task force composed of Ethiopia’s federal army and Amhara regional security authorities must end the month-long arbitrary mass detention of thousands in the Amhara region, Amnesty International said today. Amnesty International research has found that since 28 September 2024 the task force has filled four makeshift detention camps across the Amhara region with thousands of civilians. “Ethiopia has entered a new era of disregard for national, regional and international human rights obligations. Over the past five years, arbitrary mass detentions have been used as political tools to silence peaceful dissent, often under the guise of sweeping state of emergency laws,” said Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Tigere Chagutah What is now being witnessed in the Amhara region shows that mass and arbitrary detentions have become a routine tactic -Amnesty International’s Regional Director for East and Southern Africa Tigere Chagutah The organization interviewed two people recently released from the makeshift camps, five family members of detained individuals, and nine authoritative sources familiar with the mass detention. “What is now being witnessed in the Amhara region shows that mass and arbitrary detentions have become a routine tactic.” Eight people who have documented different instances of mass arrest consistently reported to Amnesty International that thousands of people are currently detained in four major makeshift detention camps in the towns of Dangla, Seraba (Chilga), Chorisa (Kombolcha), and Shewa Robit. “The ‘clusters’ [different camps] are being used to detain people from specific nearby zones,” stated one source, who spoke on condition of anonymity for their security. An individual recently released from Dangla makeshift camp reported that there were approximately 1,610 detainees, with more people being detained as he was released. He also reported that authorities have been constructing additional detention rooms out of metal sheets in the Dangla camp due to overcrowding in existing spaces. Amnesty International has also verified that new structures were erected in October. Another witness who visited arrested individuals in the Chorisa Military camp said they have seen at least hundreds of people detained. Members of the Judiciary and Academics Targeted Members of the judiciary and prosecutors have also been arrested, particularly those who challenged executive interference in political cases, according to four interviewees. A judge who spoke with Amnesty International on condition of anonymity confirmed that nine judges and court staff from across the region remain detained, while four others were released on 20 October. “The majority of detained individuals [judges and court staff] were taken from court, while a few were arrested at home,” said a source within the judiciary. “All arrests are directly related to the detainees’ professional duties, with most serving as judges on criminal benches,” the source added. Similarly, a senior prosecutor told Amnesty International that at least 13 prosecutors have been detained across the region. In both cases, detainees have not been brought to court and have been held for between two weeks to a month without due process. An individual that served in the justice system for decades said, “I’ve never experienced or witnessed this level of lawlessness in my nearly 30 years of service in the justice system”. They added, “Previously, even with instances of illegal detention, people would be brought to court within a day or two. Detainees were at least told who was responsible for their detention, even if the reasons were fabricated. Now, no one knows who ordered the arrests or releases.” African and global human rights bodies, along with Ethiopia’s development partners, must publicly condemn these actions and engage with Ethiopian authorities to end this assault on the rule of law. Failure to act will only embolden authorities, fueling cycles of human rights violations not only in the region but across Ethiopia -Tigere Chagutah Others arbitrarily arrested are members of the academic community across the region. Amnesty International received a list of 11 academic staff members detained from Wollo University. A credible source stated that, after over a month in arbitrary detention at the Chorisa makeshift camp, these individuals were finally brought before a court this week. “This wave of arbitrary mass arrests has also targeted those who challenged executive interference in the judiciary, as well as a large number of academics. Alongside a recent surge in harassment of human rights defenders and journalists, these tactics are deeply alarming,” said Tigere Chagutah. “This dangerous trend further undermines efforts to monitor the toll of conflict on civilians in Amhara region, instilling fear in anyone who dares to uphold the law. African and global human rights bodies, along with Ethiopia’s development partners, must publicly condemn these actions and engage with Ethiopian authorities to end this assault on the rule of law. Failure to act will only embolden authorities, fueling cycles of human rights violations not only in the region but across Ethiopia.” Arrested Without Warrant or Explanation Two former detainees from different detention centers reported to Amnesty International that they were arrested by local police from their city administration without a warrant or explanation. One former detainee said, “They broke into my home with a rifle, arrested me in front of my children, and gave no explanation. I was helpless.” Another former detainee reported that the police officers expressed frustration, telling those they arrested that they had simply been handed a list and were unaware of who ordered the arrests. They broke into my home with a rifle, arrested me in front of my children, and gave no explanation. I was helpless. -Former Detainee “Police officers who detained others in the morning found themselves detained by the afternoon—I was held alongside many of them, including their commander,” he said. Several sources also told Amnesty International that authorities are running what they called “rehabilitative training” in these camps. One witness said, “I saw the ruling Prosperity Party’s leaders preparing to give the training in the camp”. A family member of a detained individual said detainees were told they will be released after completing the “rehabilitative training”. Background An armed conflict between the Ethiopian National Defense Forces (ENDF) and Fano militia broke out in August 2023 in the Amhara region. Since 28 September the ENDF and Amhara Regional security forces launched region-wide mass arrests.  A joint press conference by the ENDF and the Amhara regional government on 1 October referred to the mass detention campaign as “law enforcement, to stabilize the Amhara region and ensure peace.” Judges in the Amhara region do not have immunity from liability related to their judicial conduct. The Amhara Region Judges Association on 17 October 2024 issued a statement with a list of judges who were arbitrarily arrested as part of the ongoing mass arrest campaign. “Over the past year, harassment of judges has increased to the point of loss of life, and we recorded the arbitrary arrest of 35 judges, mainly due to their judicial conduct” reads the statement. © 2024 Amnesty International

29/10/2024 Natasha Booty BBC News Thousands of Sahrawi people are living in refugee camps in Algeria AFP France's President Emmanuel Macron has told Morocco's parliament that he believes Western Sahara should be under Moroccan sovereignty, and has pledged to invest French money there. Western Sahara is a territory on the north-western coast of Africa that has been the subject of a decades-long dispute. It was once a Spanish colony, and is now mostly controlled by Morocco and partly by the Algerian-backed Polisario Front - which says it represents the indigenous Sahrawi people and wants an independent state. France was the former colonial power in both Morocco and Algeria. It joins other nations including Spain, the US and Israel in backing Morocco's plan. Lawmakers rose to their feet and applauded Macron on Tuesday when he said, "for France, this territory's present and future fall under Morocco's sovereignty". His comments on Tuesday in Rabat echo surprise remarks he first made in July. Signalling a change in France's long-held stance on Morocco's plan to grant Western Sahara autonomy under Moroccan sovereignty, the French president said it was the "only basis" for a just and lasting political settlement. France's backing of Morocco's territorial claim angered Algeria, which responded to the news by withdrawing its ambassador to Paris. Algiers regards Morocco's presence there as an illegal occupation. Analysts say France's decision to back Morocco's claim is an attempt to repair relations between the two nations, which had soured after Rabat was accused of attempting to spy on President Macron and France tightened visa restrictions for visiting Moroccan nationals. Relations between Morocco and Algeria have become especially tense in recent years, with Algiers announcing in 2021 that it had severed diplomatic ties with its neighbour to the west. On Tuesday, Macron also addressed colonialism but stopped short of an apology. "Our common history also has dark parts. The time came for unequal treaties, when hubris and the mechanical force of European countries imposed themselves around the world, and when, even disguised as a protectorate, Morocco did not escape the ambitions and the violence of colonial history," he said. In a sign of closening ties, France and Morocco are reported to have struck deals on energy and infrastructure among other things. The AFP news agency says they have a total value of "up to €10bn", equivalent to $10.8bn or £8.3bn. On Tuesday, Macron also pledged an unspecified sum of "investments and sustainable support initiatives to benefit local populations" in Western Sahara. 'Significant' development Macron's invitation to Morocco came from King Mohammed VI, two months after his royal court hailed France's change of heart on Western Sahara as a "significant" development. But Algeria has expressed its deep disapproval, saying France is denying Sahrawi people their right to self-determination. The Polisario Front, meanwhile, has hit out at France for supporting what it says is a "violent and illegal occupation" by Morocco. Western Sahara was annexed by Morocco in 1975. A 16-year-long insurgency ended with a UN-brokered truce in 1991 and the promise of a referendum on independence, which has yet to take place because of disagreements over how it should be conducted and who should be eligible to take part. Today, the African Union is the only international organisation to recognise Western Sahara as a state in its own right. Copyright 2024 BBC. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Massis Post On November 1, 2024 the Conference of Parties (COP) will host its 29th session in Baku, Azerbaijan. COP is the decision-making body of the UN’s Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). World leaders, UN agencies, NGOs, climate activists, and energy corporations will attend COP29 to work towards a zero-carbon future. COP29 is titled “In Solidarity for a Green World.” Azerbaijan is an authoritarian petrostate , a major producer of fossil fuels. The goals of COP29 are directly opposed to the goals of the Azerbaijani economic system . Last year, Azerbaijan carried out a forced deportation and genocide in Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) of its Armenian population. Since September 2023, Azerbaijan has refused to allow Armenians to return to their traditional homes. Yet the UN promotes the COP’s decision to meet in Baku. Azerbaijan is not reducing its production of gas. President Aliyev said that the gas it does not utilize at home will be sold abroad. Azerbaijan has become a key supplier in gas to Europe. Its exports are predicted to grow exponentially along with a substantial increase in extraction. In fact, Azerbaijani refineries sell Russian oil and gas to the EU, bypassing and benefiting from sanctions on Russia. Azerbaijan’s policy is called “ greenwashing ” in which it exports fossil fuels while it claims to work against climate change. In late 2021, Azerbaijani state-supported “environmental activists” blocked the Lachin Corridor, beginning Azerbaijan’s forced deportation of the Armenians of Artsakh. Its siege even barred medicine and food imports. These state sponsored activists have never been arrested, a very different fate from legitimate environmental activists like the jailed Dr. Gubad Ibadoghlu. In Azerbaijan, civil society is repressed and freedoms of speech and expression are nonexistent. The region of Nakhichevan was historically Armenian, but was granted to Azerbaijan during the Soviet Union. Today, the region is touted as a “ Green Energy Zone ." 98% of Armenian cultural heritage sites have been destroyed . The same fate awaits occupied Artsakh . Azerbaijani officials have called criticisms about its human rights record “dirty propaganda.” Hikmet Hajiyev , an Azerbaijani foreign policy chief, claims that discussions about human rights “overburden” the COP29 agenda. Hajiyev’s comment contradicts previous UN statements about the interconnectedness between human rights and the environment. The UN itself recognizes the harms of greenwashing but continues to host COP meetings in authoritarian petrostates. Environmental activists, including Greta Thunberg , are raising awareness. Free Armenian Hostages and the Armor Coalition are calling for a boycott of the COP conference. Human Rights Watch , Freedom House , Amnesty International , the Center for Truth and Justice , and a group of US lawmakers all advocate using the COP conference to demand the release of Azerbaijan’s political prisoners. In the future, the UNFCCC should set a human rights requirement for the COP hosts. The campaign against climate change requires a free civil society, upholding human rights, and a real commitment to eliminating fossil fuels.

Relative and friends of slain journalist Mauricio Solis carry his coffin during his wake in Urupan, Mexico, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Armando Solis) MEXICO CITY (AP) — The U.N. human rights office in Mexico said Wednesday journalists in Mexico need more protection, after gunmen killed a man whose Facebook news page covered the violent western Mexico state of Michoacan. Journalist Mauricio Solís of the news page Minuto por Minuto was shot to death late Tuesday just moments after he conducted a sidewalk interview with the mayor of the city of Uruapan (ooh-roo-WAH-pan). State prosecutors said a second person was wounded in the shooting. Solís had just finished an interview on the street outside city hall with Mayor Carlos Manzo. Manzo told local media he had walked away and “two minutes later, I think, and just a matter of meters away, we heard gunshots, four or five gunshots.” “We sought cover because we thought the attack was aimed at us,” Manzo said. “After a few minutes we found out that Mauricio was the one they attacked.” Manzo said he could not rule out a connection between the interview and the killing. The U.N. rights office said Solís was at least the fifth journalist killed in Mexico this year. It said he had previously reported security problems related to his work. His Facebook page reported on community events and the drug cartel violence that has wracked the city. “His killing is a wake-up call to defend the right to information and freedom of expression in Mexico,” the office wrote. An increasing number of the journalists killed in Mexico have been self-employed and reported for local Facebook and online news sites. Uruapan is the nearest large city to Michoacan’s avocado-growing region, and it has been the scene of drug cartel extortions and turf battles between gangs. The cartels demand protection money from local avocado and lime orchards, cattle ranches and almost any other business. Solís was reporting on a suspicious fire at a local market just before the shooting. Gangs have sometimes burned businesses that refuse to pay extortion demands. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Indigenous groups take part in protest against a proposed constitutional amendment that threatens some of their land rights, in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. (AP Photo/Eraldo Peres) BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) — Bearing images of animals and covered in body paint, hundreds of Indigenous people marched Wednesday in Brazil’s capital, urging Congress to drop a proposed constitutional amendment that has the potential to paralyze and even reverse land allocations. The bill aims to add to the Constitution a legal theory, championed by the agribusiness caucus, that the date the Constitution was promulgated — Oct. 5, 1988 — should be the deadline for Indigenous peoples to have already either physically occupied claimed land or be legally fighting to reoccupy territory. Lawmakers from the caucus also claim it provides legal certainty for landholders. Indigenous rights groups have argued that establishing a deadline is unfair, as it does not account for expulsions and forced displacements of Indigenous populations, particularly during Brazil’s agriculture frontier expansion in the 20th century. “We are aware of the interests of mining companies, ranchers and oil companies in our lands. How many lives will be destroyed if this bill passes?” Alessandra Korap, an Indigenous leader of the Munduruku tribe, told The Associated Press. On Sept. 21, 2023, the Supreme Court rejected the deadline concept, which formed part of a lawsuit brought by Santa Catarina state. In the vote that secured the majority, Justice Luiz Fux argued that areas connected to Indigenous ancestry and traditions are protected by the Constitution, even if not officially recognized. It was a moment of widespread celebration among Indigenous communities and their advocates. One week after the ruling, pro-agribusiness lawmakers began pushing for congressional approval of the deadline. One initiative is the proposed constitutional amendment that the Indigenous movement fears will come up for a vote in the coming days. Congress also passed a law in December that established the 1988 deadline. The Indigenous movement and political parties appealed to the Supreme Court, which hasn’t yet issued a ruling on the matter. During a speech in Congress, the author of the constitutional amendment, Sen. Hiran Gonçalves, stated that his proposal aims to settle the issue definitively, thereby ending legal uncertainty. Dinamam Tuxá, head of the rights group Articulation of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, told the Associated Press that, if approved, the bill will lead to the suspension of Indigenous land demarcations, escalate socio-environmental conflicts and increase deforestation. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Ukrainians Tell of Brutal Russian Repression in Occupied Territories The New York Times Oct. 30, 2024 By  Carlotta Gall  and Oleksandr Chubko Moscow is employing a variety of tactics, including torture and forced Russian citizenship, to try to obliterate Ukrainian identity, former detainees and human rights groups say. Ukrainians at a registration center in Sumy, Ukraine, after arriving from Russian-occupied areas.Credit ...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times For months after the Russian military occupied his hometown in southern Ukraine, Yevheny made plans to leave. But each time, the 48-year-old lawyer said, he was thwarted, by warnings of gunfire on the roads and, once, when a hired driver disappeared. Then came the Russian soldiers, who searched his house, hauled him off to a nearby village and cast him into a dark cellar where he would undergo a violent, weeklong interrogation. Yevheny’s harsh treatment is just one example of a colonialist repression Russia is enforcing across the Ukrainian territory it controls, a system comprising a gulag of more than 100 prisons, detention facilities, informal camps and basements that is reminiscent of the worst Soviet excesses. Research by a team of reporters involving dozens of interviews with former detainees, human rights organizations and Ukrainian officials from the Office of the General Prosecutor, the intelligence service and ombudsmen, reveals a highly institutionalized, bureaucratic and frequently brutal system of repression run by Moscow to pacify an area of 40,000 square miles in Ukraine, roughly the size of Ohio. The abuses almost always occur unseen and unheard by the outside world, as Russia-controlled areas are largely inaccessible to independent journalists and human rights investigators. But human rights organizations and Ukrainian prosecutors and government officials have managed to monitor the situation closely, drawing on accounts from civilians who are either still living there or who have found a way to leave. The ultimate aim of Moscow’s efforts, rights advocates said, is to extinguish Ukrainian identity through such tactics as propaganda, re-education, torture, forced Russian citizenship and sending children to live in Russia. Billboards in Melitopol, Ukraine, this month dedicated to the anniversary of Russia’s annexation of the surrounding Zaporizhzhia region.Credit ...Reuters Russia occupies roughly a fifth of Ukraine’s territory, home to more than four million people, the United Nations says. The occupied territories include Crimea,  forcibly annexed by Russia  in 2014; parts of eastern Ukraine also seized in 2014; and a wide band of eastern and southern Ukraine conquered in 2022. The fate of Ukrainians in these areas is one reason Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, has said he would not accept a peace deal that would cede territory to Russia. “Ukraine does not trade its land, and does not abandon its people,” he said at a conference on Crimea in Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, in September. In addition, the Russian forces are holding about 22,000 Ukrainians, roughly 8,000 of them prisoners of war and the rest civilians, many of them on dubious charges, according to human rights organizations and Ukrainian officials. Ukrainians who have escaped Russian occupation said it was like living in a cage, where travel is restricted and many live in fear of arbitrary violence or detention. Information is controlled and inhabitants are subjected to  relentless propaganda  in the media, in schools and in the workplace. For many trapped there,  the Russian invasion of Ukraine  in February 2022 happened so fast that they had little or no time to react, let alone escape. Some did not have the means or transport to leave, and some trusted that the war would be short and would pass them by. At the time of the invasion, Yevheny, who, like others in this article, asked that only his first name be published for security reasons, was living by the sea in southern Ukraine. At first, he said in an interview earlier this year, Russian troops did not even enter his small coastal town. But 10 months later, in December 2022, eight masked, uniformed men came looking for him. In the subsequent interrogation, he said, he was punched, beaten with a crowbar and subjected to water boarding and near suffocation with a plastic bag. Yevheny, pictured in Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital, was living in the south of the country when he was interrogated and tortured.Credit ...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times For six weeks after that beating he could not lie down, and he could only sleep sitting up in a chair. “My legs, my buttocks, everything from the waist down was black,” he said. “All my limbs, all the muscles, were not working. The skin on my arms was all cracked.” It took him eight months to recover with the help of a local doctor, who told him he was not the only person to have been tortured in that basement, Yevheny said. Rights organizations and Ukrainian officials working in the southern regions said they had collected many similar accounts. Yurii Sobolevsky, first deputy chairman of the Kherson Regional Council, said he personally knew of dozens of cases of enforced disappearances, detentions and beatings in the occupied part of his region. The Kremlin has denied that its soldiers torture civilians. [As usual, Russian propagandists are lying.] When in April a local Ukrainian official warned Yevheny that the Russian military was planning to confiscate his house, he fled. “They wanted to detain me a second time,” Yevheny said. “That’s why I left.” He became part of an exodus that, earlier this year, numbered 50 to 100 people a day, including whole families who had abandoned their homes in occupied areas and traveled via Russia to cross into Ukraine-controlled territory. They crossed at the single functional border crossing between the two countries, near the city of Sumy in Ukraine’s northeast. The crossing was closed after  Ukraine invaded Russian territory  in August. But Ukrainians arriving this year said in interviews that they had left their homes because of the growing dangers in Russian-occupied areas. Ukrainians arriving in Sumy in May, after fleeing occupied territories.Credit ...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times They described increased pressure to adopt Russian citizenship and threats to seize their properties after Russian officials called for the expulsion of Ukrainians who were not sympathetic to Moscow’s rule. Others said they left because of shelling in frontline areas and the lack of utilities and medical care. Students were leaving to continue their educations in Ukraine, others to find work. Some left for fear of the Russian occupiers’ brutality. Ukrainian prosecutors and a United Nations special rapporteur have documented  hundreds of abuses  occurring under Russian occupation from enforced disappearances, summary executions of civilians, unlawful detention, torture and sexual violence. The  first cases of torture  of Ukrainians in detention emerged 10 years ago, when Moscow-backed separatists seized power in parts of the eastern provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk. Alice Jill Edwards, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, said last year that torture and sexual assault by Russian soldiers of Ukrainian civilians and soldiers had reached a level of a systematic, state-endorsed policy. Oleksandra Matviichuk, head of the Kyiv-based Center for Civil Liberties, which has documented human rights abuses since 2014 and was  awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2022 , said, “There is a clear goal to this violence, this cruelty,” noting that it was “a tactic of war, to keep the territorial occupation under their control.” Much of Russia’s official activities, including the  deportation of Ukrainian children  and the seizure of property, are published on Russian government online sites. Procurement contracts available in the public domain reveal how occupied Ukrainian prisons and detention facilities have been renamed and integrated into the Russian detention system. A rally in Kyiv in 2022 to protest a deadly Russian strike on a prisoner camp in Olenivka, eastern Ukraine.Credit ...Laura Boushnak for The New York Times The Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian rights organization, has mapped more than  100 formal places of detention  in the occupied territories and in Russia where Ukrainians are being held. Other groups, including the Ukrainian government’s Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War, have collected information of abuses on a similar scale. Yet there are many more unofficial places of detention and cases of people being abducted and later being found dead, Ms. Matviichuk said. Oleksii, 43, a Ukrainian welder, was held in three separate places of detention in Donetsk in 2015. After a week of brutal beatings by different groups he was left for dead outside the city. He told his story after crossing the border into Ukraine in April with his wife, Olena, 39, their five children and their dog, Czar. Twice displaced in the last decade, they first fled occupied Donetsk in 2015. Oleksii sent the family ahead to live in a Ukraine-controlled region, but was detained by the local police before he could follow them. He was held for a week, he said, repeatedly beaten into unconsciousness. But he remembers his last interrogator, a Russian with a red beard, who removed the hood covering from Oleksii’s head and offered him a last wish. Oleksii asked for a call to his relatives and a cigarette. “He gave me a cigarette but no call,” Oleksii said. “Then he said, ‘This is it.’ He broke my fingers, broke my nose. Only two ribs were not broken,” Oleksii added. When he regained consciousness, Oleksii found himself in the half light of dawn or dusk, he could not tell which, in a sprawling field surrounded by dead and decaying bodies. “There were dozens of them,” he said. “They had been there for a long time.” Oleksii, right, with two of his children at a dormitory for internally displaced people in Sumy in April.Credit ...Mauricio Lima for The New York Times Unable to walk, he began to crawl out of the dumping ground and surprised a woman collecting bottles in a wheelbarrow. She screamed and ran off but returned the next day with her husband and daughter. They took him to their home in the wheelbarrow and nursed him back to health. A week later, volunteers helped him escape to Ukrainian-held territory. Oleksii and his family made a new home in a village in the Zaporizhzhia region, but during the invasion of February 2022, Russian troops took control of that area, too. To avoid trouble, Oleksii barely went out of the house and made excuses to keep the children out of the Russian language school. When Ukrainian classes became available online, the children secretly began studying at home, with their mother, Olena, on the lookout. “If the dog was barking, we would look out of the window in case someone was dropping by and would find the children online,” she said. In April, when Olena heard that the school’s former principal and his wife had been detained and not been seen since, they decided to flee. “It was no life,” Olena said. “There was a constant fear that you would be taken away.”   Yurii Shyvala contributed reporting from Sumy, and Stanislav Kozliuk from Kyiv. A team of reporters worked for months in the Ukrainian cities of Kyiv, Sumy, Odesa and Kherson, interviewing dozens of people who had lived under Russian occupation as well as officials, prosecutors and human rights organizations. Carlotta Gall  is a senior correspondent, covering the war in Ukraine.  More about Carlotta Gall A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 31, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Russia Installs Regime of Fear In Seized Areas    Copyright 2024 The New York Times Company

Human Rights Watch Justice Department Should Investigate, Properly Charge Implicated Officials Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte speaks in Bulacan province, Philippines, on June 12, 2021. (Manila) –  Philippine authorities should fully investigate and appropriately prosecute new revelations of extrajudicial killings involving former and current officials during the previous administration of Rodrigo Duterte, Human Rights Watch said today. Since August 2024, the Philippine House of Representatives have held joint hearings that have examined extrajudicial killings in the “war on drugs” and whether money from drugs and illegal gambling were used by the Duterte administration to finance killings by the police. Witnesses to the hearings have testified to killings allegedly ordered by government officials, including at least four murders by the  former head of the country’s lottery office and a current commissioner of the National Police Commission. “The revelations of the Philippine congressional hearings on extrajudicial killings are downright horrifying,” said  Bryony Lau , deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Philippine prosecutors should investigate the allegations and file appropriate charges against those responsible no matter their former or current position or rank.” In a hearing on September 27, a  witness alleged that Royina Garma, a former colonel in the Philippine National Police and CEO of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, which runs the country’s  lottery directly under the Office of the President, had ordered the  murder of Wesley Barayuga , the charity’s board secretary. Barayuga had been  slated to testify about  anomalies in the lottery office allegedly committed by Garma. Police Lt. Col. Santie Mendoza , an anti-narcotics officer, testified that a superior in the police, Col. Edilberto Leonardo, ordered him in 2019 to plan and execute the plot against Barayuga, claiming that Barayuga was involved in illegal drugs. Mendoza alleged that Leonardo was carrying out an order from Garma. At that time,  “drug war” killings by the police numbered in the thousands, with most victims accused of involvement in illegal drugs. Mendoza claimed that he had no choice and so arranged for an associate who in turn hired the gunman who carried out  the murder in July 2020 . Mendoza testified that Garma had provided the vehicle Barayuga used and then relayed to Leonardo the details about the truck, which Leonardo then passed onto Mendoza and then the gunman. Garma and Leonardo  denied the allegations during the hearing. Garma is a known  close associate of Duterte from the time that he served as mayor of Davao City. She was a commander of police units there, and both she and Leonardo were  implicated in the so-called  Davao death squad , which was linked to many illegal killings of suspected criminals by the local police. She was later appointed police chief of the central Philippine city of Cebu despite  opposition by the mayor . As Cebu police chief, Garma enforced Duterte’s  “war on drugs”  campaign that has killed hundreds in that city since 2016. Human Rights Watch documented some of the killings there while Garma was police chief. In 2019, Garma retired early from the Phlippine National Police to become general manager and chief executive officer of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office. It was reported during the hearing that while Barayuga served as the office’s board secretary, he allegedly learned about corruption allegations against Garma. Congressman Johnny Pimentel said at the hearing that Barayuga was about to expose Garma’s alleged corruption before he was killed. A number of allegations of wrongdoing were made against Garma during the hearings. In August, two witnesses testified that Garma had ordered the  2016 murder of three alleged Chinese druglords detained at the Davao Prison and Penal Farm. Garma allegedly tasked her boyfriend,  Senior Police Officer 4 Arthur Narsolis , to carry out the murders. Bureau of Corrections Senior Superintendent Gerardo Padilla testified that then-President Duterte called to “ congratulate ” him on the killings of the three men, which Duterte referred to as “a bloodbath.” The hearings also revealed the Duterte administration’s misuse of so-called drug watch lists to eliminate political enemies, among them  local officials .  Jed Mabilog , former mayor of  Iloilo City , testified in September that he was forced to flee the country in August 2017 and sought asylum in the United States for fear of his life after Duterte included him on the list. In the case of Barayuga, his name was added to the “drug watch list” after the murder to justify the killing, Mendoza said at the hearings last week. Accountability for “drug war” killings has been insignificant: only four cases out of thousands have resulted in court convictions. The current administration of President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. has not taken significant measures to address the lack of prosecutions. The International Criminal Court is  investigating extrajudicial killings that occurred when the Philippines was still a party to the Rome Statute until March 2019 when a withdrawal ordered by Duterte took effect. “The Marcos administration needs to address the congressional testimony implicating senior officials in the police and other government agencies,” Lau said. “The Philippines’ international partners need to impress upon President Marcos that bringing past abuses to light won’t end them unless there is genuine justice.”

Sectarian Massacres in Benue State Illustrate Christian Genocide Truth Nigeria October 24, 2024 By Mike Odeh James and Olikita Ekani Makurdi IDP camp shows families sheltering under mosquito net shelters. Credit: Mike Odeh James. Catholic Parishes in Benue Bear Brunt of Attacks (Makurdi) Whereas Nigeria’s military has battered radicalized bandit-terrorist camps in Nigeria’s Northwest for a year, the Northcentral State of Benue State remains embroiled in a dire sectarian crisis, according to sources interviewed by TruthNigeria. According to a disturbing report by the Observatory for Religious Freedom in Africa (ORFA), Fulani militias have killed approximately 50,000 people in Nigeria over the past four years. In Benue State alone, the numbers are staggering: 2,673 Christians were killed from 2019 to 2023, while only 12 Muslims lost their lives. These alarming statistics underscore the sectarian nature of the violence and prompt urgent questions about the Nigerian government’s response to the crisis. The International Committee on Nigeria has called the phenomenon  a Christian Genocide. Dede Laugesen, executive director of Save the Persecuted Christians, speaking at Faith Clinic Church International in Hyattsville, MD. Dede Laugesen, Executive Director of Save the Persecuted Christians (STPC), expressed concern over alarming data from ORFA regarding sectarian violence in Benue, Nigeria. “The numbers reported by ORFA are appalling,” Laugesen said. “The violence experienced in Benue is religious-based and not caused by community clashes or climate change. It is well past time for the international community to acknowledge the root cause of attacks in Benue is jihad against Christians, and in particular, Catholic Christians.” Laugesen emphasized that recognizing the true nature of the violence is crucial to preventing further violence and Nigeria’s potential descent into civil war. Save the Persecuted Christians continues to advocate for Nigeria to be designated as a country of particular concern and subject to sanctions, Laugesen said. “The people of Benue demand justice and protection from the state of Nigeria,” she added. “If the false narrative of farmer-herder violence, bought and paid for by the Nigerian government’s lobbyists, continues to be amplified by the U.S. Department of State and others in the international community, the violence will increase, thousands more will die, and Nigeria will devolve into civil war.” Laugesen told TruthNigeria.     Rev Father Emmanuel Ejeh, courtesy of Fr. Ejeh.   The Hard-Hit Areas The Catholic Diocese of Otukpo has been particularly hard hit, with areas such as Apa, Agatu, Otukpo, Obi, and Oju Local Government Areas bearing the brunt of the attacks. Rev. Fr. Emmanuel Ejeh, Coordinator of the Justice Development and Caritas Foundation (JDCF), the humanitarian arm of the Catholic Diocese of Otukpo, agrees with the ORFA report but notes that the numbers are understated. “Over 25,000 people have been killed since 2013, with more than 11,000 of our Catholic faithful lost,” Fr. Ejeh said. “Additionally, 250,000 people have been displaced, forced to flee their ancestral homes,” he added. Fr. Ejeh listed eight villages as abandoned due to attacks: Oweto, Akwu, Enogaje, Ichokolugu, Abugbe, Igagisu, Okpancheyi, and Ogbolokuta. Fr. Ejeh’s Diocese encompasses Benue South Senatorial District which includes 9 local government areas (LGAs), namely: 1 Ado LGA 2 Apa LGA 3 Agatu LGA 4 Obi LGA 5 Oju LGA 6 Okpokwu LGA 7 Otukpo LGA 8 Ohimini LGA 9 Gwer East LGA The dominant ethnic groups in Benue South are: 1 Idoma 2 Igede The dominant churches or religious denominations in Benue South are: 1 Catholic Church 2 Pentecostal/Protestant churches (e.g., Anglican, Methodist, Presbyterian) 3 African Churches Rep. Ojotu Ojema, a lawmaker representing Agatu/Apa Federal Constituency in Abuja, concurred. “Agatu and Apa (Local Government Areas) counties are the worst affected by Fulani terrorism due to their proximity to the River Benue,” Rep.  Ojema said. Some deserted houses, outgrown by weeds in Ugbobi. Photo credit: Steven Kefas/Truth Nigeria Impacts of Fulani Terrorist Attacks on Benue South Communities “The impacts of these attacks are staggering. Thousands have been killed, properties worth billions destroyed, and villages devastated, leading to hunger and displacement.” More than 100,000 people from Agatu and 30,000 from Apa have been displaced, with many squatting with relatives in safe places,” Rep. Ojema said. “The sheer number of lives lost is heartbreaking. More than 15,000 people from Agatu and 5,000 from Apa have lost their lives since the attacks began,” the lawmaker added. The worst genocidal attack was staged on May 17, 2015, when Fulani terrorists ambushed church worshippers at St. Michael Catholic Church, Methodist, Apostolic Church, Deeper Life Church, and Steward Church Egba Community, killing 105, including 50 Sunday School children, according to the lawmaker. Almost all residents of Agatu and Apa are farmers or fishermen, with more than 90,000 displaced. “Our people can no longer go to their farms due to fear of attacks,” Ojema explained. “This has led to food scarcity and economic hardship.” Fulani terrorists occupying Christian land in Agatu Despite government assurances, the security situation remains dire. Fulani terrorists occupy many riverine communities of Agatu ethnic territory. Pastor Ojema noted that the government’s efforts have failed to stop the Fulani terrorists from occupying many riverine communities. “As I speak, Fulani terrorists are currently occupying many of the Riverine communities in Agatu (LGA) county, including Akile, Ejima Gega, Ejima Geche, Ogbumogbo, Okpokpolo, and Ikpelle,” he said. The motivations behind these attacks are clear: land-grabbing and imposition of their religion on Benue people. “The main goals of Fulani terrorists are to send our people away from their ancestral homes, take over their land, subjugate them, and impose their evil doctrine,” according to Ojema. Similarly, Fr. Ejeh tells TruthNigeria that the aim of the Fulani’s is clear. “They want to eject the Idoma’s, Tiv’s, and Igede’s, who are over 90 percent Catholics, grab their lands, and declare a Fulani Caliphate. “They also want the fertile agricultural lands of Benue and the waters from our numerous rivers,” the cleric noted. As the humanitarian situation deteriorates, Ojema urges the federal government to take decisive action. “We need a comprehensive approach to address the root causes of these attacks and to protect our people.” "The international community must join forces to demand action from the Nigerian government to prevent a full-blown humanitarian crisis." “Enough is enough,” Pastor Ojema concluded. “We will not be silenced. We will continue to cry out for justice and protection.” Benue South Senator Abba Moro Decries Insecurity, Displacement Senator Abba Moro, representing Benue South Federal Constituency, expressed concern over the escalating killings and displacement in his constituency. Moro, through his media aide Emmanuel Eche Ofun, told Truthnigeria that farmers can no longer access their farms due to sustained attacks, leading to food scarcity in Benue South. “Farmers can no longer go to their farms because of the sustained attacks, and this is causing serious food scarcity in Benue South,” Moro said. He added that poor hygiene and lack of medicines in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps have resulted in cholera outbreaks and increased deaths. “We don’t have the exact figures, but large numbers of farmers and fishermen have been displaced from their ancestral homes by the invaders,” Moro noted. The senator criticized the federal and state governments for inaction, stating, “There hasn’t been any visible and deliberate effort… to end the insecurity in the area despite repeated calls and appeals.” Mike Odeh James and Olikita Ekani are Conflict Reporters and report for Truthnigeria. They are indigenes of Benue State Related articles in TruthNigeria Farmer–Herder Crisis in Benue is Politicized, Says Former Vice Chancellor A former vice-chancellor of the Federal University of Agriculture in Makurdi, the capital city of Benue, Daniel Uza, said the unprovoked wave of attacks in Nigeria’s Middle Belt state of Benue since 2013 have continued because the crisis between herders and farmers in the state has been politicized. Benue, known as Nigeria's… March 18, 2024 Benue State Under Terrorist Invasion: UN Terror Tracker March 14, 2024   Snapshot of State Capture By Force:  Nigeria’s Benue State October 10, 2024   Copyright 2024 TruthNigeria Donations Save Lives! If you enjoy or benefit from Truth Nigeria's reporting, then consider giving to keep our work possible!

By HOGIR ABDO Updated 5:32 PM EDT, October 29, 2024 FILE - Mazloum Abdi, the commander of the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces, speaks during a news conference in Hassakeh, Syria, Nov. 26, 2022. (AP Photo/Baderkhan Ahmad, file) QAMISHLI, Syria (AP) — The leader of the U.S.-backed Kurdish forces in northeast Syria in an interview with The Associated Press called for international mediators to continue pushing for diplomatic solutions to the complex web of conflicts in the Middle Eastern country, including the escalating Turkish bombardment of Kurdish areas. Turkey has intensified its airstrikes in northern Iraq and northeastern Syria following an Oct. 23 attack on a defense company in Ankara that killed five people and wounded more than 20. Turkish airstrikes targeted dozens of sites believed to be linked to or affiliated with the Kurdistan’s Workers’ Party (PKK), which claimed responsibility for the attack. Mazloum Abdi, commander-in-chief of the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), said that the attack in Ankara served as an excuse for a long-planned Turkish operation in Syria. “The Turks claim that these attacks are a response to the recent activity in Ankara. But that is not the reason, because the type and continuity of the attacks now entering their sixth day show that this is not a mere response. The Ankara incident was just an excuse,” Abdi told the AP in an interview Monday evening. He alleged that the Turkish strikes, which have damaged electricity and oil facilities and bakeries, have had severe consequences for civilians and are part of a broader strategy by Turkey to force a demographic shift by pushing Kurdish residents out of the area. The strikes killed at least 18 people, mostly civilians, and injured more than 60. Abdi said in some cases Turkish strikes had targeted emergency teams responding to the initial strike. Turkish bombardment hinders fight against Islamic State group Despite the strikes, Abdi said: “We are open to dialogue with all parties, including Turkey, even though their attacks persist.” He appealed to the U.S.-led coalition, formed to fight the Islamic State militant group, and to other mediators to continue to push for diplomatic solutions. “We hope that these dialogues that we are talking about, which are taking place through mediation, will continue and reach results,” Abdi said. He also expressed support for reported efforts to jumpstart peace talks between Turkish authorities and the PKK, saying that if their issues are “resolved, it will have a positive impact on the Kurdish issue in Syria as well.” The PKK is considered a terror organization by Turkey’s Western allies, including the United States. Turkey and the U.S., however, disagree on the status of the Syrian Kurdish groups, which have been allied with Washington in the fight against IS in Syria. Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan visited the site of last week’s attack at Turkish Aerospace Industries (TUSAS) on Tuesday. “We will not hesitate to use all the means, tools, and resources at our disposal to end terrorism,” Erdogan declared to TUSAS employees, gathered for the unveiling of a new domestically produced helicopter. “Such treacherous and nefarious actions are the last gasps of the separatist organization,” he said. “They have no place in the future of our region or our country.” However, also on Tuesday, Erdogan expressed tacit approval for recent comments by Nationalist Movement Party leader Devlet Bahceli suggesting that imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands the organization. The escalation in northern Syria comes as the United States has agreed to a gradual troop reduction in Iraq, part of a larger drawdown expected to conclude by the end of 2026. While the withdrawal applies solely to Iraq, with no immediate plans to exit Syria, Abdi expressed concern over how the coalition’s diminishing presence in the region could affect operations in Syria. “We, along with coalition forces, conduct daily activities to neutralize ISIS cells, and if the coalition withdraws, the threat level would rise across the region,” Abdi said. He added that Turkish bombardment has hindered the SDF’s ability to conduct anti-IS operations, delaying two planned campaigns against cells in Syria. U.S. officials have yet to announce any specific timeline for troop reductions in Syria, though discussions continue amid rising tensions. Analysts have said that a U.S. departure could lead to increased pressure on the SDF from both Turkish and Syrian government forces, exacerbating the region’s security vacuum and the conflict’s toll on civilians. Talks are ongoing between SDF and Assad’s government Abdi said that dialogue between the SDF and the government of Bashar Assad in Damascus has been ongoing since the early years of the 13-year-old Syrian uprising that turned into a civil war, though these discussions have yielded limited progress. “We have made numerous attempts to reach an agreement with the Syrian regime, but they have yet to produce results,” he said. The main sticking point, he said, has been the Syrian government’s reluctance to recognize the SDF’s administrative and military autonomy in the region. The Kurdish forces have called for a constitutional change that formalizes the SDF’s role in security and governance after more than a decade of self-administration. “For us, there are some red lines,” Abdi said. The prospect of reconciliation between Turkey and the Syrian government presents additional challenges. There have been several attempts at a rapprochement between Damascus and Ankara that so far have not progressed to an agreement. According to Abdi, Turkey is pushing for a deal that would dismantle the existing self-administration in northeastern Syria. “The Turkish government said clearly that they would reconcile with the Syrian regime on the basis of eliminating the existing status of this region, which makes us their target,” he said. The proposed reactivation of the 1998 Adana Agreement between Turkey and Syria, aimed at addressing security concerns along their shared border, could have serious ramifications for the Kurdish region. ___ Associated Press writers Stella Martany in Irbil, Iraq, and Robert Badendieck in Istanbul contributed to this report. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Hundreds Killed in Days as War in Sudan Surges The New York Times October 26, 2024 Paramilitary forces ransacked villages and killed hundreds of people, activists said, hastening calls for the United Nations to deploy a mission to protect civilians. Airstrikes sent smoke billowing above Khartoum, Sudan’s capital, this month as the Sudanese Army attacked positions held by paramilitaries.Credit ...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images By  Abdi Latif Dahir , Declan Walsh  and Abdalrahman Altayeb A major surge in fighting in Sudan has taken a searing toll on civilians, killing hundreds of people in aerial bombings and revenge attacks in the past week, as  Africa’s largest war  shifts into a higher gear after the end of seasonal rains. Territory has changed hands, a prominent commander has switched sides and retreating fighters have sexually assaulted, kidnapped and killed villagers as they have moved through contested countryside, according to activists, democracy groups and accounts on social media. A military cargo plane slammed into the desert in the western region of Darfur, with at least two Russian crew members on board, offering direct  evidence of the growing role of foreign contractors  in the fighting. And Sudan’s military, after  losing control  of vast areas of Sudan, has finally seemed to  regain the advantage  over the Rapid Support Forces, the powerful paramilitary group that it has been battling for the past 18 months. Both sides face a barrage of war crimes accusations from the United States and rights groups, although only the R.S.F. has been accused of ethnic cleansing. “The fighting season has just restarted, and both sides want to jostle for an early advantage,” said Kholood Khair, the founding director of Confluence Advisory, a policy think tank. The escalating violence comes against  a vast tableau of suffering . Over 10 million have been forced from their homes,  famine is raging  and diseases like cholera and dengue fever are rapidly spreading.   People from the Darfur region of Sudan near a refugee camp in Chad. Millions have been forced from their homes in Sudan.Credit ...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Diplomatic efforts to end the war have stalled, with neither side showing much willingness to  compromise on anything, much less reach a cease-fire . Support is growing among activists, peacekeeping experts and  human rights groups  for the United Nations to deploy a mission to protect civilians, but many are skeptical such a force could be mustered. “We fear it is on the road to becoming a repeat of the 1994 Rwanda genocide,” Roméo Dallaire, who led the U.N. mission in Rwanda during the genocide,  wrote in Foreign Policy  on Friday. In the past week, the army, led by Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, captured territory in the breadbasket states of El Gezira and Sennar, which the  paramilitary forces seized  starting last December. Those gains came in part thanks to  the defection  of Abu Aqla Kaykal, a local militia leader in El Gezira State who, until recently, was fighting with the Rapid Support Forces. Experts said his defection gave the military a political boost and would cut off the paramilitary group’s ability to recruit from the large Shukria tribe. By publicizing the defection, Ms. Khair said, “the military are trying to assert their claim that they are on the right side” and that their wins are “a victory for the people of Sudan.” The paramilitaries, who are led by Lt. Gen. Mohamed Hamdan, launched retaliatory attacks  in villages  across El Gezira, local activists reported. At least 300 civilians  were killed  when fighters rampaged through Tambul village, Elmubir Mahmoud, the secretary general of the Al Jazeera Conference, a volunteer group in the state, said in an interview. Gunmen looted homes, took hostages and sexually assaulted women, he said. Fifty more civilians were  killed  in a nearby village on Friday morning, he said, and 200 were wounded. Entire families fled with nothing but their clothes, he said. Others  posted handwritten lists of the dead . The New York Times could not independently verify the lists or the figures. Video footage and photographs from the area that were shared on social media showed villagers standing over dozens of bodies wrapped in funeral shrouds. The footage and photographs could not be immediately verified. “The situation is very tragic,” Mr. Mahmoud said.   A Sudanese soldier in a deserted neighborhood of Omdurman, Sudan, near the capital.Credit ...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times The R.S.F.  denied  killing civilians, saying those killed had been fighting alongside the military. “Immediately you carry a gun and raise it, then your civilian status ends,” Omran Abdullah, a senior adviser to General Hamdan,  said this past week in an interview  with the Arabic-language broadcaster Al Jazeera. Clashes continued  in Khartoum, the capital , where the army recently recaptured several bridges along the Nile. Shelling in the city killed at least 24 people this past week, according to the  Emergency Response Rooms , a youth-led volunteer group that was among the favorites for this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, which was awarded this month to a  Japanese group of atomic bomb survivors . Fighting also  raged in the western region of Darfur , both around  the besieged city of El Fasher  in North Darfur and in the deserts to the north, along the border with Libya and Chad. Dozens of people  were killed  in the state in attacks  on displacement camps, hospitals and markets , according to the Yale School of Public Health’s Humanitarian Research Lab. It said the damage was consistent with aerial bombardment, artillery and arson. On Monday, a Sudanese military plane crashed about 90 miles north of El Fasher, killing two Russian crew members and several Sudanese fighters, according to Sudanese media reports. The paramilitaries, who claimed to have shot down the plane, posted a video of the burning wreckage, with jubilant fighters holding aloft two Russian passports and other identifying documents said to be found amid the debris. An aviation official with knowledge of Sudanese military operations said the plane was one of two Ilyushin-76 planes bought last year by the Sudanese military, which has claimed that it was delivering supplies to besieged troops in El Fasher when it crashed. But the official said the plane had also been used to carry out “barrel bomb” raids against the R.S.F., flinging crude improvised bombs, as part of the military’s escalating campaign of aerial bombardment. The aviation official spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive military details. A spokesman with Sudan’s military did not respond to questions for comment.   A satellite image on Tuesday showing an area thought to be where a Russian cargo plane went down, north of El Fasher, Sudan.Credit ...Planet Labs Inc In a statement, the Russian Embassy in Sudan said it was investigating whether its citizens were on board the plane, which only last year belonged to a company that had been supplying the other side in the war. Documentation found in the plane wreckage indicated that its tail number, EX-76011, corresponded with a plane that was previously operated by New Way Cargo, a cargo airline based in the United Arab Emirates. Only last January, the same airline delivered support to the Rapid Support Forces through a base at Amdjarass in eastern Chad, according to a recent report by the Sudan Conflict Observatory, a research body funded by the State Department. The Emirates has been running an extensive covert operation to supply the R.S.F. through the Amdjarass base, under the guise of providing humanitarian aid,  The New York Times  and U.N. inspectors have reported. The Red Cross says it is investigating whether its emblem was misused as part of the operation. The Emirates denies supporting the R.S.F. Documents found on the plane identified one of the Russians as Anton Selivanetz, who appears to have previously worked with the United Nations in Africa, according to a U.N. official and photographs posted to his personal Instagram account. The other man, Viktor Granov, was previously linked to arms trafficking in Africa by Amnesty International, as well as to the famous arms dealer Viktor A. Bout. Mr. Granov’s South African driver’s license was among the debris from the downed cargo plane. The plane crash highlighted the outsize role of foreign contractors in the worsening conflict, pushing both local and global leaders  to call for the United Nations to deploy a mission  to protect civilians. “This is very much a multiregional war of different actors,” Ms. Khair said. By no means, she added, “can it be resolved locally.”   Abdi Latif Dahir reported from Dakar, Senegal; Declan Walsh from Juba, South Sudan; and Abdalrahman Altayeb from Port Sudan, Sudan. Malachy Browne and Sanjana Varghese contributed reporting. Abdi Latif Dahir  is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts.  More about Abdi Latif Dahir Declan Walsh  is the chief Africa correspondent for The Times based in Nairobi, Kenya. He previously reported from Cairo, covering the Middle East, and Islamabad, Pakistan.  More about Declan Walsh A version of this article appears in print on Oct. 27, 2024, Section A, Page 13 of the New York edition with the headline: Hundreds of Civilians Are Killed in Sudanese Villages as Fighting Surges Copyright 2024 The New York Times Company