Expertos denuncian que los derechos reproductivos de las camboyanas han sido olvidados por el tribunal que juzga a la guerrilla By Ana Salva Una joven camboyana en una de las cooperativas de trabajo de los setenta. GUNNAR BERGSTRÖMARCHIVOS DEL CENTRO DE DOCUMENTACIÓN DE CAMBOYA) Souk (nombre ficticio) fue obligada a casarse con un jemer rojo que no había visto nunca antes en una rápida ceremonia de masas que duró menos de cinco minutos. Tras el enlace nupcial, la mujer fue instada a entrar en una habitación para mantener relaciones sexuales con él y, ante su negativa, fue violada a punta de pistola por uno de los oficiales para que accediera a consumar su matrimonio. “Me dijo que si me violaba y gritaba me mataría a tiros”, declaró bajo un pseudónimo ante los magistrados del tribunal que juzga los crímenes cometidos por los líderes de esta guerrilla comunista en Camboya entre 1975 y 1979. La mujer debía ver a su marido cada 10 o 15 días bajo la vigilancia de los soldados que trataban de asegurarse de que mantenían relaciones maritales. “Después de esa advertencia, después de esa violación, tuve que cerrar la boca y aceptar vivir con mi nuevo esposo”. Souk dio a luz a finales de 1978. El tribunal, integrado por el Gobierno camboyano y las Naciones Unidas, denominado las Salas Extraordinarias de las Cortes de Camboya (ECCC por sus siglas en inglés), comenzó a escuchar los testimonios de las víctimas de los matrimonios forzados el pasado mes de agosto. Pero Souk es también víctima de los embarazos forzosos, una atrocidad que no va a ser investigada como un crimen distinto pero relacionada al de los matrimonios. No hay análisis acerca del consentimiento de la mujer, dejando en el olvido los derechos reproductivos de las camboyanas Las solicitudes de los abogados de las partes civiles han sido rechazadas por los jueces de instrucción para el caso 004 de la investigación [la última sección del tribunal, para el cual todavía se desconoce la fecha] citando cuestiones de legalidad, falta de tiempo y evidencias, una decisión que se hizo pública a mediados de junio de la mano de la Oficina de los Jueces de Instrucción. El tribunal ECCC es el único mecanismo legal que puede juzgar los crímenes cometidos por la guerrilla en los años setenta, incluidos los crímenes de género. Los líderes de los jemeres rojos, hoy octogenarios, están muriendo sin ser juzgados. Su líder, Pol Pot, murió en 1998 sin rendir cuentas. Cuando los jemeres rojos se hicieron con el poder, en 1975 evacuaron completamente las ciudades, abolieron la religión, la propiedad privada, el dinero y el sistema judicial. Las familias fueron separadas por género y edad a través de la vida completamente colectivizada y enviadas a los campos de trabajo donde debían trabajar de sol a sol para cumplir las inalcanzables cuotas de producción. Se estima que murieron alrededor de 1,7 millones de personas como consecuencia del hambre, las ejecuciones masivas o el trabajo forzado durante los cuatro años del régimen: una cuarta parte de la población. _______________________________________________________________________________ LAS VIOLACIONES QUE SUPUESTAMENTE NO SUCEDIERON La violaciones fuera de los matrimonios forzados se están investigando para próximo caso 004 del tribunal, pero los jueces de la investigación no han llegado a ninguna conclusión hasta la fecha. Durante años se pensó que apenas habían ocurrido debido a varios mitos. Por un lado, las relaciones sexuales fuera del matrimonio estuvieron prohibidas durante el régimen y clasificadas como actos inmorales. Ambas partes además podían ser ejecutadas de ser descubiertas. Por otro lado, los testigos y víctimas de violación no comenzaron a hablar hasta después de 30 años de las atrocidades como resultado de la abogacía. Según los estudios realizados por la investigadora Kasumi Nakagawa en 2008 y Katrina Natale en 2011, durante el régimen se llevaron a cabo violaciones en grupo, especialmente antes de las ejecuciones, así como violaciones en las cooperativas, a través de la explotación y esclavitud sexual. La gran mayoría de los crímenes reportados señalan a los oficiales jemeres rojos y no constan perpetuadores civiles. Los objetivos más comunes fueron los grupos de población perseguidos por el régimen como enemigos, en particular minorías étnicas como la vietnamita y en su mayoría mujeres. La gran mayoría de las declaraciones recogidas hasta la fecha por el tribunal y la organizaciones que trabajan con los supervivientes señalan que en este contexto cientos de hombres y mujeres, que no se habían visto nunca antes, fueron obligadas a casarse y pasar la noche juntos para consumar su matrimonio. Como resultado de estas uniones forzadas, que se celebraron en todo los pueblos del país, un alarmante número de matrimonios forzados dieron lugar embarazos, pero se desconoce el número concreto. _______________________________________________________________________________ “Un número estimado sería imposible, es un tema profundamente arraigado en la cultura camboyana y muchas mujeres no están dispuestas a compartir su historia de vida personal que todavía es percibida por la sociedad como una vergüenza”, expone Youk Chhang, director del Centro de Documentación de Camboya, que ha recolectado más de un millón de informes relacionados con el régimen de los jemeres rojos. Los fiscales y abogados de las partes civiles sostienen que los matrimonios forzados fueron diseñados en parte para asegurar que la población se duplicaría a 20 millones de personas en una década para conseguir fuerza de trabajo para el régimen y las filas revolucionarias. De este modo, podrían contrarrestar los millones de decesos que comenzaron en 1969 con el bombardeo de Estados Unidos en Camboya en el contexto de la guerra de Vietnam y la sangrienta guerra civil que tuvo lugar entre 1970 y 1975. Los abogados defensores de los líderes de los jemeres rojos Nuon Chea y Khieu Samphan, quienes ya recibieron sentencias de cadena perpetua en 2014 después de haber sido encontrados culpables de crímenes contra la humanidad, y cuyas sentencia fueron ratificadas el pasado 23 de noviembre, exponen sin embargo que la forma en que el régimen buscaba aumentar la población no fue a través del matrimonio forzoso, sino mejorando las condiciones de vida. Para Theresa de Langis, especialista en derechos humanos de las mujeres en situaciones de conflicto y postconflicto afincada en Camboya, afirmar que no hay información sobre el expediente que demuestre que la impregnación forzada existió como parte de la política de matrimonio forzado “es un ultraje”. “Los testimonios que se han escuchado hasta la fecha muestran los severos impactos en las salud y la psique de las mujeres como resultado de esta casi inimaginable carga añadida en una época de hambruna masiva, trabajo esclavo y niveles de enfermedad epidémica”. La Asociación Transcultural Psicosocial de Camboya (TPO por sus siglas en inglés), la única organización que trata los problemas mentales en el país, señala en un informe publicado en 2015 que muchas mujeres supervivientes sufren problemas ginecológicos y de salud como dolores o discapacidades, así como traumas que han tomado muchas formas, como ansiedad, depresiones, flashbacks o ataques de pánico. Los violaciones provocaron traumas en mujeres y hombres que sucumbían a violar a sus nuevas esposas bajo la amenaza de ejecución “El calendario de la solicitud está relacionado con la falta de voluntad del tribunal para escuchar todo el alcance de los crímenes de género que ocurrieron. Los defensores desde el principio han tenido que presionar para la inclusión de estos crímenes. Como resultado, el matrimonio forzado y las violaciones dentro de esos matrimonios se han escuchado en el caso 002/2”, expone la experta. La abogada e investigadora argentina María Lobato, quien trabajó en temas de violencia de género en Camboya y escribió un amplio informe sobre los embarazos forzados publicado en marzo de 2016, expone que juzgar los embarazos forzados como un crimen separado y relacionado a los matrimonios es “completamente posible” bajo las reglas internas del tribunal, pero el juicio “podría ser más controvertido”. Los embarazos forzados fueron reconocidos como crímenes de lesa humanidad por primera vez en el Estatuto de Roma de la Corte Internacional de 1998, mucho después de la caída del régimen de los jemeres rojos de los años setenta. Pero la ley cuenta con una cláusula que permite también juzgar como crímenes de lesa humanidad “aquellos actos no determinados específicamente en la ley y que pueden ser considerados como actos inhumanos” que está utilizando actualmente el tribunal para juzgar las deportaciones, desapariciones forzadas, detenciones arbitrarias, o incluso los matrimonio forzados, sostiene Lobato. La abogada considera que cada uno de estos crímenes requiere un análisis diferente y concurrente, pero las gestaciones parecen haber desaparecido de la atención tanto de las partes civiles como de los jueces. “Los embarazos forzosos han sido completamente invisibilizados, caracterizando la función reproductiva de la mujer como una consecuencia inevitable de los matrimonios”. Ningún tribunal híbrido o internacional ha perseguido este tipo de crimen hasta la fecha, expone en su informe. © EDICIONES EL PAÍS S.L.

By Ben Cohen Kurdish warnings that they face a potential genocide at the hands of the Iranian-backed forces that have swept through Iraqi Kurdistan over the last ten days “need to be taken seriously,” a leading expert on Kurdish affairs said on Wednesday. “There is a great fear among the Kurds that they could face another genocide at the hands of the Iraqi government and the Shia militia forces backed by Iran,” Julie Lenarz — the executive director of the Human Security Centre, a London-based think-tank with extensive contacts in Kurdistan — said on a conference call organized by The Israel Project, a US group that closely tracks Iran’s growing military power and support for terrorist proxies in the Middle East. Strongly criticizing US President Donald Trump’s policy of “neutrality” in the face of the Iranian onslaught that has resulted in the loss of 40 percent of the territory controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), Lenarz said there was a serious risk of US and Western “complicity” in a looming civil war “in which we will see the Kurds crushed again.” Lenarz was speaking hours after the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) — one of the main Kurdish political parties — issued a statement noting that “after defeating the Islamic State (ISIS), Kurds are now being drawn into a new wave of sectarian violence by certain radical Shia armed groups that want to impose themselves.” “If the United Nations, Iraq, and the US do not gain control of the situation, the flames of sectarian conflict might lead to the risk of a Kurdish genocide in the Kurdistani disputed areas,” the PUK warned, as it pleaded for urgent help for thousands of civilians in the Kurdish town of Tuz Khurmatu, which lies south of Kirkuk, the main Kurdish city conquered by Iran and its allies last week. Shalal Abdul, the mayor of Tuz Khurmatu, said in an interview with Kurdish broadcaster NRT TV that thousands of Kurdish homes and shops had been burned and looted by Iraqi troops and Shia fighters serving under the banner of the Hashd al-Shaabi militia — known in English as the Peoples’ Militia Units (PMU). The KRG’s Independent Commission for Human Rights has accused Hashd al-Shaabi of committing “war crimes” in areas under its control. Lenarz underlined that the presence of Gen. Qasem Soleimani — commander of the Qods Force of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) — in Iraqi Kurdistan over the last week was “no coincidence.” Soleimani is reported by some observers to have explicitly threatened the Kurds with the use of overwhelming force if they refused to withdraw from Kirkuk. “Wherever Solaimani goes, he leaves a trail of death and destruction, and it’s no different this time,” Lenarz said. Lenarz remarked that the Trump administration’s refusal to side with the Kurds meant that “Iran is laughing while a long term US ally is humiliated and defeated.” Meanwhile, she said, her Syrian Kurdish contacts have expressed fear that they are next in line to be abandoned by the US to the Iranians, now that Raqqa — the capital of the ISIS “caliphate” — has fallen to Kurdish and Syrian opposition forces. Lenarz also denounced the use of military equipment supplied by the US to the Iraqi government for external defense — including humvee military trucks and M1 Abrams tanks — in the assault on the Kurds. Earlier this week, hundreds of Kurds demonstrated outside the US Consulate in Erbil, the capital of the KRG, holding signs alerting Americans to “Iranian aggression with your weapons.” “It’s hard to overstate what the Iranians have pulled off over the last two weeks,” Lenarz remarked. “By denying the clear evidence of Shia militia activities on the ground, and by abandoning the Kurds, Washington effectively legitimized Solaimani’s scheme.” Originally promised independence by Britain and France at the end of World War I, the Kurds were instead divided between Turkey, Iraq, Iran and Syria in 1923. Since that time, their history has been marked by continued attempts to gain independence with little outside assistance, and often resulting in persecution, ethnic cleansing and genocide. In 1988, Saddam Hussein’s regime in Baghdad launched “Operation Anfal” in the same territories now occupied by Iranian-backed forces, using chemical weapons and high-explosive air attacks against the Kurdish population that left thousands dead, around 1.5 million destitute and more than 3,000 communities razed to the ground. Commenting on the Operation Anfal atrocities, the British historian David McDowall wrote that at the time, “the West was generally inclined to dismiss Kurdish claims of genocide, either because they were politically inconvenient, or because it was suggested such reports were probably wild exaggerations.” McDowell went on to note that evidence collected by human rights groups after the First Gulf War “showed that previous Kurdish claims were not only incontrovertible, but also in many cases an understatement of the ordeal through which Iraq’s Kurds were then passing.” The latest assault against the Kurds comes at the close of the military campaign against ISIS, in which Kurdish forces in both Iraq and Syria have played a critical role. On September 25, ninety-three percent of participants in an independence referendum in Kurdistan voted in favor of a sovereign Kurdish state. Kurdish leaders have now offered to “freeze” moves to implement the referendum in the hope of securing an end to the violence. ________________________________________________________________________________________ Copyright 2017 The Algemeiner

By Ben Cohen More than 300 American Jewish organizations and communal leaders have signed a letter urging the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to pass the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, which targets the Burmese military in particular for its ongoing atrocities against the Rohingya people. The letter, sent to the committee on Friday, argued that passage of the legislation “would send a powerful message to the Burmese military and the global community that the United States will not be silent or inactive in the face of mass atrocities.” “We are horrified by the Burmese military’s relentless persecution of the Rohingya,” the letter continued. “In the past four months, the Burmese military has engaged in a scorched earth campaign, razing entire Rohingya villages. Soldiers have indiscriminately massacred Rohingya men, women, and children, and an estimated 600,000 people have fled on foot or by boat — a three-day trek from their burned villages — to refugee camps in Bangladesh.” The letter declared: “We cannot remain silent as Jews, for whom the words ‘never again’ require us to act, nor as global citizens, in the face of senseless acts of brutality.” Among the communal leaders who signed the letter were Robert Bank, president and CEO of the American Jewish World Service; Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League; Mark Bane, president of the Orthodox Union; Rabbi Deborah Waxman, president of the Jewish Reconstructionist Communities; and Felice Gaer, director of the American Jewish Committee’s Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights. A number of rabbis, Jewish studies scholars and Jewish Community Relations Council heads also signed the call. The bill was introduced into the Senate last November by Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and co-sponsored by a bipartisan group of legislators, among them Sen. Ben Cardin (D-MD), the ranking member on the Foreign Relations Committee, and former vice-presidential candidate Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA.) The legislation spotlights the “systematic discrimination” against the Rohingya in Burma — a country also known as Myanmar. Members of the Rohingya, a Muslim group that has endured decades of persecution, currently face “torture, unlawful arrest and detention, restricted movement, restrictions on religious practices, discrimination in employment, and access to social services,” the legislation noted. Other religious groups have also been affected by the Burmese military’s operations against rebel factions. On Friday, the Christian news agency Morning Star News reported on a fresh offensive against rebels in Kachin state, where predominantly Christian, ethnic Kachin live, that displaced dozens of villagers and seriously injured two civilians on Christmas Eve. “They launched attacks when Christmas approached – it happens almost every year,” Sin Gau, an assistant pastor at a church in northern Kachin state, told the agency. American Jewish organizations have come together in the past to protest acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide around the world. In 2005, at the height of the genocide in Darfur, Sudan, hundreds of communal buildings and synagogues displayed “Save Darfur” banners, while a mass community rally in Washington, DC in April 2006 attracted several high-level speakers, including Hollywood star George Clooney and then presidential-hopeful Sen. Barack Obama. http://www.algemeiner.com/2018/01/05/citing-never-again-us-jewish-groups-unite-behind-legislation-aimed-at-burma-atrocities/ (c) 2018 The Algemeiner

A story of ethnic and sectarian conflict, international connivance, and above all civilian suffering By Andrew Tabler Seven years of horrific twists and turns in the Syrian Civil War make it hard to remember that it all started with a little graffiti. In March 2011, four children in the southern city of Der’a scrawled on a wall “It’s your turn, Doctor”—a not so subtle prediction that the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained ophthalmologist and self-styled reformer, would go down in the the manner of the Ben Ali regime in Tunisia, the Mubarak regime in Egypt, and eventually, the Qaddafi regime in Libya. But Syria’s story would turn out differently. The crackdown started small. Assad’s security services arrested the four graffiti artists, refusing to tell their parents where they were. After two weeks of waiting, the residents of Der’a—who are famously direct and fiery—held protests demanding the children’s release. The regime responded with live gunfire, killing several, and drawing the first blood in a war that’s now killed some half a million people. With every funeral came more opportunities for protests—and for the regime to respond with more violence. The protests quickly spread to other towns and cities—Homs, Damascus, Idlib, and beyond—engulfing what is nominally still the Syrian Arab Republic in flames. The underlying dynamic that drove the Arab uprisings—a rapidly growing youthful population and a rigid repressive regime incapable of change—was consistent across a number of countries. But the effects varied widely, and nowhere were they more ferocious than in Syria, where early hopes that Assad would go the way of other dictators have crumbled in the ruins of Syria’s ancient cities and the shattered lives of its people. The progression of the regime’s brutality, from deploying snipers to pick off protesters demanding freedom and dignity, to dropping chemical weapons on entire towns, has unfolded with the world watching in real time. And now the world has again observed, through snippets on social media, what appears to have been a chemical-weapons attack in a rebel stronghold. It has watched the retaliatory strikes of the United States and allies, and heard the Pentagon claim success in the bombing of three facilities associated with Assad’s chemical weapons program. How Syria moved from graffiti, to the near-toppling of its dictator, to that same tyrant’s reassertion of control over a broken country, is a story of ethnic conflict, international connivance, and above all civilian suffering. And it’s not ending now, but only entering a new and perhaps even more dangerous phase. * * * Decision-makers in Western capitals had long viewed the Assad regime as a grim model of Middle Eastern stability, but in 2011, they suddenly thought that “people power” would bring down Assad as it had other Arab despots. The Assad regime, however, had something the others didn’t. “Popular resistance” strategies work well against authoritarian systems whose leadership come from the country’s ethnic and sectarian majority, such as Egypt. Soldiers ordered to turn their guns on protestors are faced with a choice: Shoot their brethren among the protestors, or help get rid of those ordering them to do so. This causes a split in the army and security services, which can lead to a toppling of the government. Assad’s by contrast is a minority government with a kind of fortress of sectarian interests around it. Minority Alawites serve at the core, followed by concentric rings of other minorities (Christians, Shia, etc.), and finally by coopted Sunnis who represent the majority in Syria. Minority army and security officers are therefore farther removed from the majority Sunni population, making them more likely to order fire against protestors than to topple their brethren in power. This has galvanized the Assad regime against the kind of splits that toppled Ben Ali and Mubarak. But this evidently wasn’t part of President Obama’s calculation when, in August of 2011, he declared that Assad should “step aside,” as if Syria’s strongman would magically leave on his own. To speed up the process, Obama organized European and Arab League allies to adopt similar language, as well as a raft of sanctions on the Assad regime, most notably a ban on purchases of Syrian crude oil, the regime’s lifeline. Totally missing was a plan for removing Assad in the event he didn’t go peacefully. And Assad wasn’t about to. In the autumn of 2011 and the first half of 2012, multiple UN initiatives failed to bring about sustainable ceasefires or a solution to the hostilities. While Western governments urged Syrians to keep the protests peaceful, the regime’s military escalation to include more snipers, minority militiamen dubbed “ghosts,” and rotary and fixed-wing aircraft caused death tolls to skyrocket. More and more Syrians picked up weapons to defend themselves, and hundreds of local militias were organized under the banner of the Free Syrian Army. The insignia included the old nationalist flag of Syria, but the FSA was more of a franchise than a true army. The uprising had morphed into a civil war. So when in the summer of 2012 Russia and the United States offered a transition plan to help stop the violence, both sides dismissed it, each one believing it could defeat the other militarily. If anything, it looked like the rebels were gaining the upper hand; one group managed to seize half of Aleppo, Syria’s largest city and industrial center, that July. At that point the pattern was set: When the regime faced serious losses, it resorted to extreme measures. In Aleppo Assad’s forces resisted, holding onto the western side of the city and firing Scud missiles at rebel bases—becoming the second largest user, after Najibullah in Afghanistan, to deploy these weapons against their own people. Death tolls and refugee outflows spiked. As the battle overshadowed diplomacy, the United States and its allies had hard decisions to make. First was what to do with the Syrian opposition, within which jihadist groups had rapidly sprung up, and which were poised to grow stronger in the absence of outside efforts to corral and arm the nationalist opposition. Obama, however, famously rejected plans to do so. Just as important, and ultimately disastrous, was an ancillary decision to allow U.S. regional allies to arm the opposition instead. Money from various Arab Gulf countries flowed into Syria, sowing even more division among those fighting Assad, and making Salafist and jihadist groups the strongest among them. The second issue, and one that would usher in another turning point in the Syrian war, concerned U.S. intelligence reports that Assad was preparing to escalate further, by using his chemical weapons stockpile, which at that time was estimated to be the largest in the region if not the world. In an August 20, 2012 press conference, Obama said “that a red line for us is we start seeing a whole bunch of chemical weapons moving around or being utilized.” As the war raged on that autumn, more and more reports and samples indicated the Assad regime had indeed begun using chemical agents in low concentrations. By then, death tolls were already skyrocketing, with the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) estimating around 50,000 dead by the end of 2012, and refugee outflows approaching a half million. Syria was melting down quickly. Evidence of chemical weapons use kept accumulating; refugees kept fleeing; and money kept flowing to jihadist groups, including what would ultimately become the Islamic State. And new combatants were entering the field. Hezbollah and other Iranian-backed militias were operating on the side of the Assad regime, while in the northeast, Kurdish fighters called the shots in an effort to secure their own autonomy. As the country fell apart, terrorist organizations filled up the vacuum on every side. By summer 2013, opposition groups gained more ground in and around the capital Damascus. Either out of military desperation or pure brutality, the Assad regime doubled down on chemical weapons use. On August 21, 2013, nearly a year to the day after Obama set his fated “red line,” the Syrian military launched sarin-filled rockets on the Eastern Ghouta pocket east of Damascus, an attack that the U.S. estimated killed around 1,400 civilians. As warships assembled off the Syrian coast for a possible retaliation, Obama backed down under pressure from Congress and his base, opting instead for a Russian proposed deal that would supposedly rid Syria of chemical weapons. This dramatic turn of events caused whatever remained of Syrian opposition support for the U.S. to evaporate. On a trip to southern Turkey that autumn, I spoke to representatives of the Syrian opposition who told me they were furious over the decision. Many believed Assad had used chemical weapons and gotten away with it. But most were surprised that Washington believed the deal would stop him from doing it again—a tragically prescient conclusion. Refugee outflows hit 2 million that September. And ISIS duly expanded throughout Syria and Iraq. In 2014, its territory was approximately the size of Great Britain, and the militants were suddenly threatening not just the Assad regime but also the Iraqi state Washington had spent billions cobbling together. It was at this point that the Obama administration decided to strike Syria. While international headlines focused on the horrific execution of Americans in ISIS captivity, more than 7,600 Syrians were killed in 2014 alone, the conflict’s highest yearly death toll, and 1.3 million more Syrians fled to neighboring countries. Hundreds of thousands were displaced inside Syria as well. * * * America was not then targeting Assad directly—though Obama had by that point begun a covert program to arm some of the rebellion—but the regime was contracting as the U.S.-backed rebels crossed deep into the Alawites’ heartland, threatening Assad’s sectarian base. This was perhaps why Assad began dragging his feet on the chemical-weapons deal, missing deadlines for moving stockpiles out of the country even as reports surfaced that it hadn’t fully declared all of them. Alarms were going off in Moscow, but over a different problem. The concern was not the pace of the deal’s implementation, but that its Syrian ally was in a dangerous position: It had limited deployable manpower, and was losing territory even with the support of Iranian-backed militias. Only days after the United States signed the Iran nuclear accord in 2015, Qassem Suleimani, the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps’ external operations wing, flew to Moscow; within about a month, Russia had established a base in the threatened Alawite stronghold of Latakia on the Mediterranean coast. Throughout the autumn of 2015, Russian aircraft dropped Vietnam-war era “dummy” bombs in support of Assad regime and Iranian forces throughout Syria, slowly reversing the regime’s losses in Latakia and allowing Assad and Iranian-backed groups to march north on Aleppo. A million more Syrians fled the country, with many fleeing beyond neighboring Turkey onward to Europe. Over 55,000 Syrians were killed in 2015 alone, bringing the overall total for the conflict to over a quarter million, with an estimated 100,000 more undocumented deaths. The United States, now saddled with defeating ISIS and supporting the Syrian opposition, buckled. It engaged both Russia and Iran in an attempt to establish ceasefires and talks to end the war—even as Russia continued to pound rebel positions, allowing what was left of Assad’s army and an array of Iranian-sponsored militias, including Hezbollah to push the rebels back. By summer 2016, this hybrid force surrounded and pulverized east Aleppo. And the U.S. was meanwhile seeing one of its allies challenged by another, as Turkey effectively invaded Syria to block U.S.-backed and Kurdish-dominated forces from consolidating their territory. Americans were focused on the outcome of the 2016 presidential election; Syrians, though, were focused on fleeing, with an estimated 11 million—half Syria’s prewar population—on the run either in neighboring countries or inside Syria. Aleppo fell by late December, sending thousands of oppositionists into Idlib province, where many pro-Assad commentators claimed they would be corralled for slaughter. As U.S. President Donald Trump took the reins in Washington, the Assad regime turned its attention to Idlib province and rebel-controlled areas of southwest Syria adjacent to Israel and Jordan. But a closer look at the force composition of those offensives showed a larger Iranian-supported and Hezbollah component than ever. U.S.-supported rebels fought back, pushing the regime south despite Russian air support. This was the context in which the Trump administration faced its first major instance of a chemical attack in Syria, in April 2017, in the village of Idlib’s Khan Sheikhoun. The United Nations ultimately confirmed it included the nerve agent sarin—a substance the Assad regime was supposed to have given up. This time, instead of trying to do a deal, Trump struck the airbase responsible for delivering the attack. And yet Washington also found itself fighting one of Assad’s enemies, ISIS. In the summer of 2017, the U.S., Russia, and Jordan managed to strike a deal to dramatically decrease the fighting in pockets of the country, allowing the Assad regime to launch an offensive against the jihadist group. Its army by now depleted, it relied in part on major contingents of Shia militias and Russian-organized units. Sunni areas liberated from ISIS afterward were expected to welcome the regime’s offensive, but the Assad regime’s brutality, combined with the Shia composition of the Iranian-backed forces coming to occupy Sunni Arab areas, caused most internally displaced persons to head toward the Kurdish-dominated zones. ISIS, however, was not the regime’s only priority, or even its primary one. In early 2018, the Assad regime launched an offensive to capture the Ghouta pocket—by then the opposition’s last major presence near the Syrian capital and site of the 2013 chemical weapons attack. The regime and associated Iranian-backed militias were able to cut the pocket in two as Russia attempted to broker an evacuation of civilians and fighters to other areas. When those talks broke down, the Assad regime launched a military assault to take Ghouta by force. For reasons of limited manpower, sheer brutality, or both, Assad appears to have resorted to chemical weapons once again, killing dozens and again stepping over Washington’s red line. And once again, American strikes followed against regime targets. On Friday night, Secretary of Defense James Mattis characterized these strikes as a “one-off” meant to deter the use of chemical weapons, but no matter what comes next, those weapons are but one gruesome part of settling the Syrian Civil War. The war is now arguably the world’s largest humanitarian disaster since World War II. The death toll now stands at nearly half a million, though the UN has stopped counting. Countless others are wounded and missing. A U.S. government report that the Assad regime is using a crematorium near the Saidnaya Prison outside Damascus indicates many of their remains may never be found. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates 13.1 million Syrians are in need of humanitarian assistance, with more than 6 million internally displaced and 5 million registered as refugees. Hundreds of thousands more remain unregistered. Estimates of the total number of Syrian refugees in Lebanon today surpass a quarter of the country’s population, with only slighter smaller figures for Jordan. This is horrible enough. But meanwhile, the way the Syrian Civil War is “winding down” is increasingly unacceptable to regional countries. Israel, worried about the spike in Iranian militias and influence in Syria, is bombing there like never before. Turkey, concerned about the growth of the Kurdish-dominated forces linked to Ankara’s archenemy, the PKK, has invaded northwest Syria, pushing Kurds out of one stronghold in Afrin with threats to do the same in another one, Manbij. Meanwhile, negotiations in Geneva and elsewhere have yet to produce viable ceasefires or anything resembling a political settlement. Like the civil war in neighboring Lebanon, the Syrian Civil War now threatens to morph into the Syria War—a regional conflagration which seems likely to burn for a generation. And civilians are cursed to live it, and die in it, every day. (c) 2018 The Atlantic https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/04/syria-chemical-weapons/558065/

By Abdur Rahman Alfa Shaban The government of Ethiopia has started formal talks around ongoing political reforms with an exiled opposition group, the Oromo Democratic Front (ODF). A May 13 statement by the ODF confirmed that a high-level government delegation had met with its members and held fruitful discussions from May 11 – 12, 2018. “Pursuant to its longstanding public position, the ODF reiterated its commitment to deepening and broadening the reforms and democratization process,” the statement read in part. It did not mention which rank of government officials were in the delegation but added that the government accepted that it was ready to ‘engage all those espousing nonviolent means of struggle.’ ODF maintained that even though the move was a positive first step, there was more that needed to be done: “Both sides underlined that this discussion with the ODF is the beginning of a wider engagement,” they stressed. The statement said the party was ready and eager to play a role in enabling all stakeholders to carry out reforms that must lead to inclusive dialogue towards national reconciliation and consensus. They also announced that leading members will be returning to the country with the aim of kickstarting the process for more substantive talks. ODF will also undergo processes to register as a political party at home. The ODF was established in 2013 having broken away from the country’s oldest opposition political party, the Oromo Liberation Front (OLF). The other top opposition party is the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) led by Merera Gudina and Bekele Gerba, two leaders who were released earlier this year as part of political reform process. OFC is one of the biggest political groups particularly in the Oromia region – Ethiopia’s largest and most populous regional state. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed who is tasked with overseeing the reforms shortly after taking office met with opposition leaders from across the country. Gudina and Gerba amongst others were in attendance. ODF leader Lencho Leta has in the recent past confirmed that the party was in some level of talks with the ruling party in Oromia region – the Oromo Peoples Democratic Organization (OPDO) which is one of four parties under the ruling coalition, the Ethiopia Peoples’ Revolutionary Democratic Front (EPRDF). According to the Addis Standard news portal, March 2015, senior ODF representatives, including its founder Leencho Leta, made headlines when they were abruptly told by the government to leave their hotels in Addis Ababa. The party said it had come back into the country at the time to establish a “peaceful political struggle under the current Constitution.” (c) 2018 AfricaNews http://www.africanews.com/2018/05/13/ethiopia-govt-starts-formal-talks-with-exiled-opposition-group-odf/

‘Twenty-two months after the signature of the agreement, violence is at a level similar to what it was before.’ Written by Adrienne Surprenant Published by The New Humanitarian on December 1, 2020. Anti-balaka militias in Gamba in south-east CAR in 2017. (AFP/Alexis Huguet) Tensions are building ahead of presidential and legislative elections this month in Central African Republic, amid friction between rival candidates and increasing violence by armed groups that still control much of the country despite a peace agreement signed almost two years ago. Among the candidates who have applied to stand for president on 27 December is former leader François Bozizé, who returned to CAR in late 2019 after six years in exile following his ouster by rebels. Supporters of the incumbent president, Faustin-Archange Touadéra, claim Bozizé, who is under UN sanctions, cannot stand because he didn’t spend 12 consecutive months in the country prior to submitting his application to run, as is required by law. Bozizé’s team claim he entered CAR via neighbouring Cameroon before the deadline. CAR’s constitutional court is expected to announce a list of approved candidates on either 2 or 3 December. Many expect protests should it rule against 74-year-old Bozizé, who remains popular among some Central Africans and is considered a threat to Touadéra’s chance of a second term. This month’s ballot will be the second since widespread conflict broke out in 2013 when the mostly Muslim Séléka rebel alliance that overthrew Bozizé fought the mostly Christian and animist anti-Balaka milita, which the ex-president is accused of helping create. Groups that made up the anti-Balaka and the Séléka – whose former leader, Michel Djotodia, also returned to CAR last year after a lengthy exile – have since splintered into multiple, smaller factions – 14 of which signed a peace deal with the government in Sudan’s capital, Khartoum, in February 2019. But serious abuses against civilians by the rebel groups – which also regularly fight each other – have continued across the country, and one in four people remain either internally displaced or living as refugees in neighbouring states. Several opposition candidates are now tapping into popular discontent with the peace deal, which awarded rebel leaders positions in government – and access to various other perks – despite well-documented war crimes committed by their forces. “The [peace] deal has not had the expected impact,” said Hans De Marie Heungoup, a Central Africa analyst at the International Crisis Group. “Twenty-two months after the signature of the agreement, [violence] is at a level similar to what it was before.” What’s behind the electoral tensions? Touadéra initially wanted to delay the polls on account of the coronavirus pandemic, but his plan triggered opposition resistance and was eventually scuppered in June by CAR’s constitutional court. Armed group violence hindered voter registration operations in some parts of the country, while further delays in the process mean roughly 200,000 voting-age refugees will be unable to participate later this month. On 27 November, the constitutional court invalidated 78 candidates who had applied to stand in legislative elections. Among those disqualified were members of armed groups, who would have enjoyed parliamentary immunity should they have won seats. In a statement on 29 November, some groups claimed their exclusion went against the spirit of the peace agreement. Attention now turns to the constitutional court’s verdict on Bozizé, who also faces an international arrest warrant issued by the CAR authorities for crimes against humanity and incitement to genocide. Tensions are already high. Bozizé’s party, the KNK, claims its members were attacked during a meeting last month, while a separate skirmish broke out on 21 November between the ex-president’s security detail and soldiers from the presidential guard. Sébastien Wénézoui, a special advisor to Touadéra, told TNH he is arranging a meeting between the former and current presidents to try to resolve issues, but expressed concern over “uprisings and outbreaks of violence” among Bozizé’s supporters. Another presidential candidate, Anicet-Georges Dologuélé, who has formed an opposition coalition known as COD-2020 that includes Bozizé and other hopefuls, said the president’s supporters are spreading “talk about Bozizé hiding and preparing to attack” to delegitimise his opponent. Rival international powers, meanwhile, are hoping for different outcomes in the election, according to an October report by The Sentry, a Washington-based NGO that investigates corruption. Touadéra is allied to Russia and to the Wagner Group, a mercenary organisation linked to President Vladimir Putin, while France, CAR’s former colonial ruler, is hoping a change in power in Bangui will help restore its waning influence in the country. French and Russian networks have both built links to rebel groups to further their objectives, according to The Sentry, though the French foreign ministry said the accusation was “completely unfounded” . “The French-Russian rivalries aim to bring the Central African Republic under tutelage, to make this country a zone of geostrategic influence,” Nathalia Dukhan, a senior investigator at The Sentry, told TNH. What has changed since the peace deal? Government officials, police officers, and soldiers – most of whom withdrew from their posts as rebel groups extended their authority from 2013 onwards – have been slowly returning to locations across CAR. A criminal court set up in Bangui to investigate grave human rights violations, handed down its first ever conviction for crimes against humanity following the trial of several anti-Balaka militiamen in February. And in February 2021, the International Criminal Court in the Hague will begin a trial of the anti-Balaka leaders, Alfred Yekatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona, who are accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity. But impunity largely persists for armed groups, which continue to fight each other, traffic weapons, and expand territory even as their leaders enjoy government posts and political legitimacy through the peace accord. “The Khartoum deal has attributed a political and economic legitimacy to representatives of criminal groups,” said Dukhan of The Sentry. From July 2019 to June 2020, the UN documented 880 incidents of abuse affecting civilians – the vast majority by rebel groups – and more than 190 cases of conflict-related killings. In northwestern CAR, a rebel group called 3R has launched a series of attacks, displacing thousands of people over the past year. The UN’s peacekeeping mission, MINUSCA, launched its latest military operations against the group in June. The following month, one of its peacekeepers was killed in an ambush, and one of its vehicles struck a landmine. 3R’s spokesperson, General Sywo, denied it laid the mine in an interview with TNH, and said the UN’s operations have not impacted the group. MINUSCA’s spokesperson, Vladimir Monteiro, said that its military operations continue and conceded that “problems persist” in 3R territory. In the northeast, several armed groups that once made up the Séléka coalition have clashed throughout 2020, with civilians often the target. A recent report by the UN’s Panel of Experts on CAR stated that competition over territory, taxation opportunities, and ethnic rivalries were driving the violence. As part of the Khartoum deal, rebels and government troops were supposed to join forces in mixed military units tasked with providing security in different parts of the country. But progress has been slow : 3R rebels initially participated in the units only to withdraw and attack a training camp in June, while members of one mixed unit in the western town of Bouar recently went on strike to protest salary payment delays. What’s the humanitarian situation? CAR has some of the highest humanitarian needs per capita of any country in the world. According to the UN’s emergency aid coordination agency, OCHA, some 2.8 million people – out of a population of under five million – require some form of assistance, and 1.9 million people are food insecure. The UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, has helped facilitate 17,000 refugees to return home since 2019. But coronavirus border closures have hindered efforts , and more than 600,000 Central Africans remain in exile. CAR’s first coronavirus case was in March, but just 63 deaths have been reported since. The main impact of the pandemic has been economic: Supply chains from neighbouring Cameroon were choked by transport backlogs earlier this year , causing food prices to rise . Distributing aid is complex in the country, which has poor road networks outside Bangui. In some cases, communities have even destroyed bridges to protect themselves from armed groups. CAR is also among the world’s most dangerous places for humanitarians: Two aid workers were killed and 22 injured in 343 security incidents recorded in the first 10 months of 2020 – a 40 percent increase compared to the previous year. “The continued insecurity and increase in attacks on humanitarians is impacting multiple aspects of the response,” said Maria Rosaria Bruno, acting head of OCHA’s office in CAR. “When humanitarians are forced to withdraw due to serious incidents, it has an important impact on people's well-being.” The New Humanitarian © All rights reserved 2020.

Riyadh, Saudi Arabia Inside the evangelical mission to build the first church in Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, where preaching the Bible can land you in jail BUSINESS INSIDER FEB 8, 2021 BY BILL BOSTOCK ·Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam, has outlawed churches and punished Christian worship for decades. ·The kingdom’s 1.4 million Christians meet in secret, but authorities are signalling more openness. ·This is the inside story of the American mission to woo MBS to build the kingdom’s first church. On a sunny, cloudless October morning in 2019, twenty-five American Christians gathered at the base of Jabal al-Lawz, an umber-coloured mountain in northwest Saudi Arabia. Jabal al-Lawz Credit: Destinotes Their leader, the evangelical author and preacher Joel Richardson, took out a Bible he’d brought from back home in Kansas, and started to read out loud. Soon after, he and his congregation began singing hymns, while their hired Saudi tour guides pulled out their smartphones, and started to film. Richardson was leading the first-ever Christian tour to Saudi Arabia, the home of Islam where the public practice of any other religion is famously forbidden. Still, the preacher was taken aback when his phone rang that evening. It was the State Department with a message: “Be careful.” Richardson is to this day bemused. “I guess some of the videos went viral on Saudi social media or something,” he told Insider in a recent interview. Saudi Arabia is liberalizing, but Christians still worship underground. The scene at Jabal al-Lawz, which some Christians believe to be the true location of Mount Sinai, illustrates the rapid social change underway in Saudi Arabia, as well as the dangers that still face the 1.4 million Christians living there. In the past decade, those caught in the act of worship have been punished, arrested, jailed, or deported, and the sight of Christians brandishing Bibles and singing hymns in broad daylight would have riled many devout Muslims. In 2014, the kingdom’s religious police deported 12 Ethiopian Christians caught worshipping in Dammam in February, and raided a home in September after hearing it was used for church services, the State Department said . In 2011, 35 Christians were arrested at a private gathering in Jeddah, Human Rights Watch reported , adding that 29 women among them were “subjected to arbitrary body cavity searches.” Rosenberg and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Franck Fife/Getty; MBS by Embassy of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia/AP; iStock; Skye Gould/Insider Joel Saudi Arabia’s millennial crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman - known also by his initials, MBS - has reformed his country since taking power in 2017. Yet advances in religious freedom have come slowly, clearly posing a more existential issue for the crown prince to tackle than mass tourism , Hollywood blockbusters , or music festivals . “There are no churches here,” one Christian who has lived in Saudi Arabia all her adult life told Insider. “We choose to lay low in respect to their culture and religion.” The person requested anonymity over fears for her safety, but her identity is known to Insider. As more non-Muslim expats arrive for work, the kingdom has increasingly turned a blind eye to their faith - neutering the religious police in 2016 - while maintaining that Bible preaching or proselytizing Muslims is unacceptable. But MBS has also enforced a near-total silencing of opposition to his rule, comprising arbitrary detentions , bot armies , alleged assassinations , alleged murder , and widespread efforts to spy on or hack opponents at home and abroad . The State Department’s warning to Richardson was clear: As a Christian in Saudi Arabia, tread carefully. A years long courtship The US government has for years asked Saudi Arabia to end the ban on churches, with little success. “I have gone there and talked to top leaders about opening up a church for these people and they have always said, ‘Saudi Arabia is different and it is the land of the two holiest shrines of Islam,'” Nina Shea, a former US Commissioner on International Religious Freedom, told Insider. “The whole country is a shrine, in a sense, and therefore they cannot have a church built.” David Rundell, a former chief of mission at the US Embassy in Riyadh, added: “It’s something that we have spoken to the Saudis about on numerous occasions.” Since MBS’s ascension, a group of US evangelical heavyweights have taken the baton. In October 2018, Joel Rosenberg, one of America’s prominent evangelical authors, accepted an invitation from the prince to meet him in Riyadh. With Rosenberg came the Rev. Johnnie Moore, a religious advisor to President Donald Trump, and a string of other televangelists . (Trump’s 2016 victory was largely thanks to evangelical support, and top officials like Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, who is an evangelical, have close ties to Rosenberg.) It was the first time a group of American evangelicals had entered a Saudi royal court in 300 years and, in a two-hour meeting conducted off the record, MBS “discussed virtually every controversial issue,” Rosenberg later wrote for Fox News , without specifying. Rosenberg said he also asked MBS when he would let a church be built. “Not now,” MBS replied, as Rosenberg later told Israel’s i24News . “This would be a gift to al-Qaeda,” the prince added, referencing the fact that the terrorist group has often targeted Christians and churches . As Saudi Arabia’s leaders, Crown Prince Mohammed and his father King Salman are tasked with defending Islam, and the feasibility of a church on their land concerns a disputed saying of the Prophet Muhammad: That no two religions should exist on the Arabian peninsula. Some clerics have argued that the rule only applies to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina. According to Rosenberg, MBS also told the 2018 meeting he had “asked my scholars” to define the Arabian peninsula. Not deterred, Rosenberg and his group returned to Saudi Arabia in 2019, and left once again with evidence that change was afoot. The delegation was briefed about the historic existence of churches on the peninsula, Moore told Insider recently, adding: “It is a very significant thing - open conversations about archaeological evidence of churches that existed at the time of the Prophet.” There, MBS also acknowledged that the Prophet had “lived peacefully among Jews and Christian monks,” wrote attendee Skip Heitzig, the senior pastor of Calvary of Albuquerque, in a subsequent blog post . The delegation was set to visit MBS once again in 2020, but the pandemic put an end to those plans, a representative for Rosenberg told Insider, adding that a 2021 trip may be derailed for the same reason. Despite the hurdles, the group have kept steady pressure on Saudi officials. On September 28, 2020, Rosenberg and seven other evangelicals from the 2018 and 2019 trips travelled to McLean, Virginia, to dine at the home of Princess Reema bint Bandar al-Saud, the Saudi ambassador to the US, the representative said. The Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia in Washington, DC, did not respond to Insider’s request for comment for this article. A possible location Though efforts to secure a church in Saudi Arabia have seemed fruitless to date, experts say it is a matter of when, not if. “Definitely, I think it’s coming,” Prince Abdullah bin Khaled al-Saud, a Saudi academic, told Insider. “Especially in the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh or Neom.” Neom is a $US500 million, carbon-neutral, 10,230-square-mile megacity due to be completed in 2025, and MBS’s pet project. Promotional brochures shared with Insider show Neom would have a diverse population “from a mix of homelands, religions and backgrounds,” and a “progressive law compatible with international norms.” The site of Neom in Tabuk Province, Saudi Arabia. Credit: NEOM Ali Shihabi, a member of Neom’s advisory board, told Insider: “The issue has been mentioned for Neom,” adding that a church was “certainly on the to-do list of the leadership.” Rundell, the former diplomat in Riyadh, told Insider that Neom is a feasible location for the first church due to the unique nature of the legal system. “Neom is creeping toward being a non-Saudi entity in many regards,” he said. However, others think placing a church in Neom will be meaningless. “It’s going to be a PR stunt,” Ali al-Ahmed, a Saudi analyst, told Insider. “You need to have one where most of the Christians living in the big cities are: Jeddah, Riyadh.” Shea, the former US commissioner on religious freedom, said that while most Christians living in those cities would find little use for a church hundreds of miles away, “it would be helpful to have a symbol of tolerance … that isn’t a mosque in Neom.” “It’s something.” While Neom is believed to be the leading contender for the first Saudi church, Shihabi said the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh is another likely setting. “That allows an element of ‘diplomatic cover’ for public consumption,” he said. For religious leaders like the Catholic bishop Paul Hinter, whom Pope Francis appointed last May as Apostolic Administrator for the Northern Vicariate of Arabia, it is important that the flock in Saudi Arabia have a church that they can actually access. “My wish is that such churches or worship places be located where the expat workers and employees are living,” he told Insider, “and not only in the future showcase city or cities.” Rosenberg has not publicly commented on the feasibility of a church in Neom. However, during the 2019 visit, he was taken to see the site, telling Arab News he was “eager to come back and bring others when the time is right.” The quest for a church in Saudi Arabia is long and contentious Rumours that Christian leaders of various denominations have negotiated with the Saudis for a church have swirled for decades, long before MBS’s rise. Each Christian denomination has its own house of worship, and the ultimate goal is for each to have their own church in Saudi Arabia. In 2008, Catholic Archbishop Paul-Mounged el-Hashem told The Guardian that “discussions are under way” about building a church. And in 1973, Pope Paul VI sanctioned the building of the first Saudi-funded mosque in Rome, believing a reciprocal gesture would come from the kingdom. It did not. In Washington, the necessity for securing a church in Saudi Arabia has gone in and out of fashion as different administrations passed through the White House. “It was quite an important issue during the Bush administration because they had a strong domestic constituency amongst religious conservatives,” Rundell said, adding the issue was also important to the Trump administration. President Joe Biden’s plans are less clear. Unlike his predecessor , he has promised to hold Saudi Arabia accountable for its actions, vowing during his election campaign to make the kingdom “the pariah that they are.” The State Department declined to comment. MBS has shown greater willingness to embrace different religions, having already met with Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros al-Rai, Coptic Bishop Ava Morkos, Catholic Cardinal Jean-Louis Pierre Tauran, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby. Crown Prince Mohammed meeting with Lebanese Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros l-Rai in Riyadh on November 14, 2017. Credit: Saudi Royal Court But before MBS, religious authorities in the Middle East had little success in engaging their Saudi counterparts on the issue. Bishop Paul Hinder, who as a Catholic envoy in the region visited Saudi Arabia every year from 2004 to 2011, told Insider it was “almost impossible to get in touch with civil or/and religious authorities” at the time. The kingdom is now showing willing, Hinder said, though adding that the reality for Christians remains “far from being ‘normal.'” Moore added: “I personally believe religious freedom is possible in Saudi Arabia and I didn’t believe that before.” MBS will make the call, but some will object If MBS ends the ban on churches, it will not go unopposed. “Is there going to be a pushback? I definitely think there will be,” Prince Abdullah, the academic, told Insider. “[But] are they going to be violent? I doubt that because of the efficiency and strength of the security apparatus in the kingdom.” One opponent is Sheikh Assim al-Hakeem, a leading Saudi cleric. “Do you see any mosques in the Vatican? No. Likewise, we are not allowed to have any churches,” he told his YouTube channel . “These lands are holy lands.” A labour of love Christian tours to Saudi Arabia, like Richardson’s in October 2019, are growing in popularity as the kingdom becomes more tolerant. Living Passages, a leading Christian tour company, is already offering four trips in 2021 , while others are seizing the moment. “This could be one of the top [Christian] tourist sites in the world, especially in the northwest where they’re trying to develop the Neom project,” said Ryan Mauro, who leads Christian tours to Saudi Arabia. A church is coming for Saudi Arabia, experts are sure, but the timeline is unclear. Even Rosenberg, who spent hours pressing MBS on religious freedom, is hopeful but not holding his breath. “The crown prince’s plan, after all, is Vision 2030, not Vision 2020,” he wrote after his 2019 visit. For the Christian community, the quest for a church is a labour of love. “I should be happy on the day when the hundreds of thousands of Catholics living in Saudi Arabia will have their churches and the possibility to gather and pray in freedom,” Bishop Hinder said. HTTPS://WWW.BUSINESSINSIDER.COM.AU/US-EVANGELICALS-MISSION-SAUDI-ARABIA-FIRST-CHURCH-2021-1 Copyright 2021 Business Insider

The International Criminal Court (ICC) building in The Hague in 2019. © 2022 OSeveno / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0). The International Criminal Court (ICC) on Thursday unsealed a warrant for the arrest of former Central African Republic government minister and rebel leader Mahamat Nouradine Adam. Prosecutors accused him of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including torture, imprisonment, persecution, enforced disappearance and cruel treatment at detention centers run by the then-ruling regime. The warrant was first issued under seal in January 2019. Adam was a leader of the mainly Muslim Seleka group, which seized power and ousted President Francois Bozize in 2013. He was made minister of state in charge of security and intelligence. Mainly Christian militias known as anti-Balaka later fought back, targeting civilians and sending most of the Muslim residents of the capital, Bangui, fleeing in fear. Fighting between the groups left thousands of people dead and displaced hundreds of thousands. Adam not the only C.A.R. rebel leader on the ICC's list Mahamat Nouradine Adam, better known by his alias Nourreddine Adam, is now the leader of the Popular Front for the Rebirth of the Central African Republic (FPRC). The former Seleka militia is now one of the country's main remaining rebel groups. The FPRC was one of two groups that refused to put down their weapons last year in response to a ceasefire offer by C.A.R. President Faustin-Archange Touadera. Adam's case is linked to another suspect already in custody at the ICC, Mahamat Said Abdel Kani. Kani, an alleged Seleka commander, is also accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity, and his trial is due to open in September. Patrice-Edouard Ngaissona and Alfred Yekatom, who led anti-Balaka militias, are currently on trial at the ICC for war crimes and crimes against humanity. © 2022 AllAfrica

The military government and over 40 rebel groups in Chad signed a pledge in Doha, Qatar on Monday committing to a cease-fire ahead of talks later this month that are planned in N'Djamena, the capital of Chad. Civil society groups demonstrate against Chad's transitional military government © DW/ Blaise Dariustone. The national reconciliation talks are planned for August 20. Ahead of those talks, the military government in Chad vowed to "not take any military or police operations against the signing groups" in countries neighboring Chad. Mahamat Zene Cherif, foreign minister for the interim military government, said more than 1,500 representatives would attend those talks, which he hoped would lead to lasting peace. "This national, inclusive dialogue is a forum for all Chadian people," Cherif said. What happened during the signing ceremony? Qatari Foreign Minister Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al Thani told those at the ceremony that "other groups will join the march of reconciliation and peace, with a view to achieving the aspirations and dreams of the Chadian people." "The initial peace agreement we are celebrating today will be an important turning point towards stability and prosperity for the Chadian people," Al Thani said. In a video message played prior to the signing ceremony, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said the event was "a key moment for the Chadian people," but noted that future talks would have to be "inclusive" for success to be achieved. Twenty rebel groups walked out of the talks in July, accusing Mahamat Idriss Deby, the 38-year-old son of the late president who is now heading a military government, of "harassments, intimidation, threats and disinformation." Rebel groups have called for Deby not to run in an eventual election, whereas the military government has said only national reconciliation talks can solve that contentious dispute. Monday's pledge did not include anything about whether Deby could or should run for president. Diplomatic observers said it would be a race to usher in a democratic transfer of power by holding an election by the October deadline. Deby took power in April 2021, following battles with rebel groups. Details about monitoring and enforcement were not part of the document signed in Doha on Monday. What could impede the pledge's success? The largest rebel group in Chad, the Front for Change and Concord in Chad, did not participate. Known by its French acronym, FACT, it has been blamed for the death of the former president, Idriss Deby Itno, in 2021. He had been in power since 1990 and according to Chadian authorities, died commanding troops on the front line. The absence of FACT at the table puts the agreement in immediate jeopardy, as it is unclear whether any pledge taken without their participation can hold. There is, however, some hope that the 18-month transition from military rule is winding down. Officials at the talks said 42 of the 47 groups that participated would be signing the accord. FACT said in a statement ahead of the ceremony that it "rejects the accord that will be put to signatories on Monday," calling for a new committee to organize new talks and saying participants in the national dialogue would not be treated equally. "However, FACT remains available for dialogue anywhere and anytime," the group said. Thirty years of rule by Deby's father led to unrest and the formation of fragmented rebel groups. The former French colony - bordered by Cameroon, the Central African Republic, Libya, Niger, Nigeria and Sudan - is in an insecure neighborhood with porous borders. Many rebel groups have found shelter and common cause by operating across national boundaries. © 2022 AllAfrica

Addis Abeba – The United Nations has reported the tragic killing of humanitarian worker Yared Melese in Ethiopia’s Amhara Region. According to a statement released by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), Yared, an employee of the Action for Social Development and Environmental Protection Organization (ASDEPO), was abducted for ransom and subsequently murdered by an unidentified armed group operating within the Dawunt district of North Wollo Zone. The statement described Yared, a nutrition officer, as “a brave and dedicated humanitarian worker who was ready to assist civilians in need under extremely challenging circumstances.” OCHA stated that this incident brings the number of aid workers killed in Ethiopia this year to eight, with six of those deaths occurring in Amhara. The organization also reported 14 kidnappings of aid workers for ransom in 2024, primarily in the Central and North Gondar zones. Dr. Ramiz Alakbarov, Humanitarian Coordinator in Ethiopia, condemned the incident, stating, “We condemn in the strongest terms the kidnapping for ransom and subsequent killing of our colleague, Mr. Yared Melese, by criminals, while he was serving in the line of duty.” OCHA emphasized the need for a swift investigation into these and previous incidents, stating they have “engaged with respective government institutions regarding the speedy investigation and the necessary process to bring perpetrators of these and previously committed crimes to justice.” This incident follows a concerning trend of violence against aid workers in Ethiopia. In a previous report released in early February , OCHA disclosed that four Ethiopian aid workers had lost their lives since the beginning of 2024. Two of these fatalities occurred in the Amhara region, with the others in the Afar and Gambela regions. The February report also revealed a broader pattern of danger for humanitarian workers in the country. According to OCHA, a total of 46 aid workers have been killed in Ethiopia since 2019, with 36 of these deaths directly linked to conflicts in northern Ethiopia. © Copyright 2024, All Rights Reserved Addis Standard

By Gerry Shih Nobody knows what happened to the Uighur student after he returned to China from Egypt and was taken away by police. Not his village neighbors in China's far west, who haven't seen him in months. Not his former classmates, who fear Chinese authorities beat him to death. Not his mother, who lives in a two-story house at the far end of a country road, alone behind walls bleached by the desert sun. She opened the door one afternoon for an unexpected visit by Associated Press reporters, who showed her a picture of a handsome young man posing in a park, one arm in the wind. "Yes, that's him," she said as tears began streaming down her face. "This is the first time I've heard anything of him in seven months. What happened?" "Is he dead or alive?" The student's friends think he joined the thousands — possibly tens of thousands — of people, rights groups and academics estimate, who have been spirited without trial into secretive detention camps for alleged political crimes that range from having extremist thoughts to merely traveling or studying abroad. The mass disappearances, beginning the past year, are part of a sweeping effort by Chinese authorities to use detentions and data-driven surveillance to impose a digital police state in the region of Xinjiang and over its Uighurs, a 10-million strong, Turkic-speaking Muslim minority that China says has been influenced by Islamic extremism. Along with the detention camps, unprecedented levels of police blanket Xinjiang's streets. Cutting-edge digital surveillance systems track where Uighurs go, what they read, who they talk to and what they say. And under an opaque system that treats practically all Uighurs as potential terror suspects, Uighurs who contact family abroad risk questioning or detention. The campaign has been led by Chen Quanguo, a Chinese Communist Party official, who was promoted in 2016 to head Xinjiang after subduing another restive region — Tibet. Chen vowed to hunt down Uighur separatists blamed for attacks that have left hundreds dead, saying authorities would "bury terrorists in the ocean of the people's war and make them tremble." Through rare interviews with Uighurs who recently left China, a review of government procurement contracts and unreported documents, and a trip through southern Xinjiang, the AP pieced together a picture of Chen's war that's ostensibly rooting out terror — but instead instilling fear. Most of the more than a dozen Uighurs interviewed for this story spoke on condition of anonymity for fear that Chinese authorities would punish them or their family members. The AP is withholding the student's name and other personal information to protect people who fear government retribution. Chen and the Xinjiang regional government did not respond to repeated requests for comment. But China's government describes its Xinjiang security policy as a "strike hard" campaign that's necessary following a series of attacks in 2013 and 2014, including a mass knifing in a train station that killed 33. A Hotan city propaganda official, Bao Changhui, told the AP: "If we don't do this, it will be like several years ago — hundreds will die." China also says the crackdown is only half the picture. It points to decades of heavy economic investment and cultural assimilation programs and measures like preferential college admissions for Uighurs. Officials say the security is needed now more than ever because Uighur militants have been fighting alongside Islamic extremists in Syria. But Uighur activists and international human rights groups argue that repressive measures are playing into the hands of the likes of al-Qaida, which has put out Uighur-language recruiting videos condemning Chinese oppression. "So much hate and desire for revenge are building up," said Rukiye Turdush, a Uighur activist in Canada. "How does terrorism spread? When people have nowhere to run." In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, children play in the old city district where Chinese national flags are prominently hung in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region. 'Thought police' The government has referred to its detention program as "vocational training," but its main purpose appears to be indoctrination. A memo published online by the Xinjiang human resources office described cities, including Korla, beginning "free, completely closed-off, militarized" training sessions in March that last anywhere from 3 months to 2 years. Uighurs study "Mandarin, law, ethnic unity, de-radicalization, patriotism" and abide by the "five togethers" — live, do drills, study, eat and sleep together. In a rare state media report about the centers, a provincial newspaper quoted a farmer who said after weeks of studying inside he could spot the telltale signs of religious extremism by how a person dressed or behaved and also profess the Communist Party's good deeds. An instructor touted their "gentle, attentive" teaching methods and likened the centers to a boarding school dorm. But in Korla, the institutions appeared more daunting, at least from the outside. The city had three or four well-known centers with several thousand students combined, said a 48-year-old local resident from the Han ethnic majority. One center the AP visited was, in fact, labeled a jail. Another was downtown on a street sealed off by rifle-toting police. A third center, the local Han resident said, was situated on a nearby military base. While forced indoctrination has been reported throughout Xinjiang, its reach has been felt far beyond China's borders. In April, calls began trickling into a Uighur teacher's academy in Egypt, vague but insistent. Uighur parents from a few towns were pleading with their sons and daughters to return to China, but they wouldn't say why. "The parents kept calling, crying on the phone," the teacher said. Chinese authorities had extended the scope of the program to Uighur students abroad. And Egypt, once a sanctuary for Uighurs to study Islam, began deporting scores of Uighurs to China. Sitting in a restaurant outside Istanbul where many students had fled, four recounted days of panic as they hid from Egyptian and Chinese authorities. One jumped out a window running from police. Another slept in a car for a week. Many hid with Egyptian friends. "We were mice, and the police were cats," said a student from Urumqi, Xinjiang's regional capital. All who returned were intensely grilled about what they did in Egypt and viewed as potential terror suspects, the students said. Many were believed held in the new indoctrination camps, while some were sentenced to longer prison sentences. The young man from Korla rarely went out in the two years he spent studying Islam in Egypt. He played some soccer — a beloved sport among Uighurs — but wasn't particularly athletic or popular. Instead, he kept to himself in an apartment that he kept fastidiously clean, steeped in his studies at the revered Al Azhar University, the 1,000-year-old seat of learning in Sunni Islam. He freely discussed Quranic verses with his Uighur friends but mostly avoided politics, one friend said. He spoke of one day pursuing a Ph.D. in comparative religion. "He had big dreams," said the friend who is now hiding in Turkey to avoid being sent to China. "He wanted to be a religious scholar, which he knew was impossible in China, but he also wanted to stay close to his mother in Korla." He was fluent in Arabic and but also in Chinese. When they huddled around a smartphone to watch a Taiwanese tear-jerker about a boy separated from his mother, he would be the one weeping first. When homesickness got to him, he would tell his friends about how his mother doted on him, and about Korla and the big house he grew up in. And when he gets married, God willing, he would say, he'd start a family in that house, too. "If my wife doesn't agree, then we don't marry," he declared. He returned to China when he was called back in 2016 and taken away in February, according to three students and a teacher from Cairo. They say they heard from reliable sources in China — but cannot prove — that he died in detention. In this Nov. 4, 2017, photo, residents walk past a statue showing Mao Zedong near billboards with the words for "Welcome 19th Congress," "Patriotism" and "Democracy" near a square in Kashgar in western China's Xinjiang region. Show of force Southern Xinjiang, the vast desert basin from where many of the students came, is one of the most heavily policed places on earth. Deep in the desert's southern rim, the oasis town of Hotan is a microcosm of how Chen, the Xinjiang party boss, has combined fearsome optics with invisible policing. He has ordered police depots with flashing lights and foot patrols be built every 500 yards— a total of 1,130, according to the Hotan government. The AP saw cavalcades of more than 40 armored vehicles including full personnel carriers rumble down city boulevards. Police checkpoints on every other block stop cars to check identification and smartphones for religious content. Shopkeepers in the thronging bazaar don mandatory armored vests and helmets to sell hand-pulled noodles, tailored suits and baby clothes. Xinjiang's published budget data from January to August shows public security spending this year is on track to increase 50 percent from 2016 to roughly 45 billion yuan ($6.8 billion) after rising 40 percent a year ago. It's quadrupled since 2009, a watershed year when a Uighur riot broke out in Xinjiang, leaving nearly 200 members of China's Han ethnic majority dead, and security began to ratchet up. Adrian Zenz, a researcher at the European School of Culture and Theology who tracks Chinese public security staffing levels based on its recruiting ads, says Xinjiang is now hiring 40 times more police per capita than populous Guangdong Province. "Xinjiang has very likely exceeded the level of police density seen in East Germany just before its collapse," Zenz said. "What we've seen in the last 12 to 14 months is unprecedented." But much of the policing goes unseen. To enter the Hotan bazaar, shoppers first pass through metal detectors and then place their national identification cards on a reader while having their face scanned. The facial scanner is made by China Electronics Technology Group (CETC), a state-owned defense contractor that has spearheaded China's fast-growing field of predictive policing with Xinjiang as its test bed. The AP found 27 CETC bids for Xinjiang government contracts, including one soliciting a facial recognition system for facilities and centers in Hotan Prefecture. Hours after visiting the Hotan bazaar, AP reporters were stopped outside a hotel by a police officer who said the public security bureau had been remotely tracking the reporters' movements. "There are tens of thousands of cameras here," said the officer, who gave his name as Tushan. "The moment you took your first step in this city, we knew." The government's tracking efforts have extended to vehicles, genes, and even voices. In February, authorities in Xinjiang's Bayingol prefecture, which includes Korla, required every car to install GPS trackers for real-time monitoring. And since late last year, Xinjiang authorities have required health checks to collect the population's DNA samples. In May, a regional police official told the AP that Xinjiang had purchased $8.7 million in DNA scanners — enough to analyze several million samples a year. In one year, Kashgar Prefecture, which has a population of 4 million, has carried out mandatory checks for practically its entire population, said Yang Yanfeng, deputy director of Kashgar's propaganda department. She characterized the checkups as a public health success story, not a security measure. "We take comprehensive blood tests for the good of the people, not just record somebody's height and weight," Yang said. "We find out health issues in citizens even they didn't know about." A biometric data collection program appears to have been formalized last year under "Document No. 44," a regional public security directive to "comprehensively collect three-dimensional portraits, voiceprints, DNA and fingerprints." The document's full text remains secret, but the AP found at least three contracts referring to the 2016 directive in recent purchase orders for equipment such as microphones and voice analyzers. Meiya Pico, a security and surveillance company, has won 11 bids in the last six months alone from local Xinjiang jurisdictions. It won a joint bid with a DNA analysis company for 4 million yuan ($600,000) in Kargilik and has sold software that automatically scans smartphones for "terror-related pictures and videos" to Yarkent. Meiya and CETC declined comment. Prying eyes To monitor Xinjiang's population, China has also turned to a familiar low-tech tactic: recruiting the masses. When a Uighur businessman from Kashgar completed a six-month journey to flee China and landed in the United States with his family in January, he was initially ecstatic. He tried calling home, something he hadn't done in months to spare his family unwanted police questioning. His mother told him his four brothers and his father were in prison because he fled China. She was spared only because she was frail. Since 2016, local authorities had assigned ten families including theirs to spy on one another in a new system of collective monitoring, and those families had also been punished because he escaped. Members from each were sent to re-education centers for three months, he told the AP. "It's worse than prison," he said. "At least in prison you know what's happening to you. But there you never know when you get accused. It could be anytime." A document obtained by U.S.-based activists and reviewed by the AP show Uighur residents in the Hebei Road West neighborhood in Urumqi, the regional capital, being graded on a 100-point scale. Those of Uighur ethnicity are automatically docked 10 points. Being aged between 15 and 55, praying daily, or having a religious education, all result in 10 point deductions. In the final columns, each Uighur resident's score is tabulated and checked "trusted," ''ordinary," or "not trusted." Activists say they anecdotally hear about Uighurs with low scores being sent to indoctrination. At the neighborhood police office, a woman who gave her surname as Tao confirmed that every community committee in Urumqi, not just Hebei Road West, needed to conduct similar assessments. She said there were no statistics on how many residents had been deemed "not trusted," nor were there official procedures to deal with them. "What is happening is every single Uighur is being considered a suspect of not just terrorism but also political disloyalty," said Maya Wang, a researcher at Human Rights Watch who is studying how Chinese police are using technology to track political dissidents as well as Uighurs. This month, Xinjiang announced it would require every government employee in the region to move into a Uighur home for a week to teach families about ideology and avoiding extremism. What pains most, Uighurs abroad say, is the self-imposed barrier of silence that separates them from loved ones, making efforts to say happy birthday or find out whether a relative is detained risky. When Salih Hudayar, an American Uighur graduate student, last called his 70-something grandfather this summer, he spoke in cryptic but reassuring tones. "Our phones will not work anymore," his grandfather said. "So, don't try calling and don't worry about us. We'll be fine as long as you're all fine." He later heard from a cousin in Kyrgyzstan that his grandfather had been sent to re-education. A Uighur student who moved to Washington following the crackdown this summer said that after his move, his wife, a government worker still in Urumqi, messaged to say the police would show up at her home in 20 minutes. She had to say goodbye: after that she would delete him permanently from her contacts list. A month later he received calls on WhatsApp from a man who introduced himself as Ekber, a Uighur official from the international cooperation office of the Xinjiang regional public security bureau, who wanted him to work for them in the U.S. — and warned him against saying no. "If you're not working for us then you're working for someone else. That's not a road you want to take," he snapped. A week after that, he couldn't help himself placing one last call home. His daughter picked up. "Mom is sick but she doesn't want me to speak to you. Goodbye," she said. Unanswered question For the past year, Chen's war has meant mass detentions, splintered families, lives consumed by uncertainty. It has meant that a mother sometimes can't get an answer a simple question about her son: is he dead or alive? A short drive from Korla, beyond peach plantations that stretch for miles, the al-Azhar student's mother still lives in the big house that he loved. When the AP arrived unannounced, she said she had not received any court notices or reasons about why her son and his father were suddenly taken months earlier. She declined an interview. "I want to talk, I want to know," she said through a translator. "But I'm too afraid." AP reporters were later detained by police, interrogated for 11 hours, and accused of "illegal reporting" in the area without seeking prior permission from the Korla government. "The subjects you're writing about do not promote positive energy," a local propaganda official explained. Five villagers said they knew authorities had taken away the young student; one said he was definitely alive, the others weren't sure. When asked, local police denied he existed at all. http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-china-uighur-disappearances-20171217-story.html (c) 2017 Chicago Tribune

By Adrian Blomfield To be born an English speaker in a world where the language remains the lingua franca of trade and diplomacy is normally to draw first prize in the linguistic lottery of life. But in one corner of Africa, having English as a mother tongue has proved a curse thanks to a colonial anomaly that left a seething Anglophone underclass in a slither of overwhelmingly French-speaking Cameroon. For the past four months, the two English-speaking regions of western Cameroon have risen up against a perceived decades-long assault by the Francophone elite on their language and British traditions, staging a campaign of general strikes, demonstrations and the occasional riot. A ruthless response by the government, characterized by the killing of protesters and a two-month internet shutdown in English-speaking regions, has hardened antagonisms, pitching the West African country into deep crisis and raising questions about its survival as a unified state. Amid growing secessionists mutterings, Britain has become more active in recent days in attempting to defuse the confrontation. Last week Brian Olley, the British High Commissioner to Cameroon, met Paul Biya, the country’s 84-year-old president, and is understood to have called on him to end the use of force against protesters. “We have raised our concerns with the government of Cameroon and will continue to raise these issues, including allowing access to the internet,” a Foreign Office spokeswoman said. But such quiet diplomacy has also angered some Anglophone activists, who accuse Britain of abandoning its responsibilities in the former British Southern Cameroons, which united with the much larger French Cameroons in 1961. “Britain made us what we are and now most people in Britain don’t even know we exist,” an activist involved in the demonstrations said. Despite the anger, Anglophone Cameroonians, who make up less than a fifth of the county’s 23m people, remain stubbornly loyal to their colonial traditions. To the bewilderment and often the derision of French speakers, they insist on forming orderly queues, referring to bars as “off-licences” and dressing up their judges and lawyers in powdered wigs. Both British common law and the GCE O-and-A-level syllabus remain deeply cherished. It is a loyalty that has rarely been reciprocated by Britain. The British Cameroons were made famous by the writings of naturalist Gerald Durrell, who visited in the Forties to search for the elusive hairy toad. He was memorably assisted by an uproarious Anglophone king, the Fon of Bafut, a gin-and-bitters-swilling pidgin speaker with a large retinue of drum-playing, bosom-jiggling wives whom Durrell taught the Conga. But Britain generally wanted little to do with the place. William Gladstone turned down a plea for annexation from local kings in 1884, allowing Bismark to take it for Germany. After the First World War, Britain turned over five-sixths of the territory to France, agreeing to an arbitrary border line drawn up by Francois Georges-Picot, the French diplomat jointly responsible for the Middle East’s controversial modern boundaries. Heartbroken local kings, like the Sultan of Bamum, protested in vain. “I wish to follow the King of England and to be his servant, together with my country, so that we may be freshened with dew,” the sultan wrote in a letter to George V “who puts the evil men to flight and the troublesome to prison.” After independence in 1960, the British Cameroons were wooed into union with the much larger French Cameroons by a promise that they would be equal members of a federal, bilingual state — a pledge broken when the federal constitution was abandoned in 1972. Since then, English speakers say they have been shut out of jobs, denied fair political representation and deprived of revenues from oil, much of which is extracted from former British territory. Matters came to a head in November when a group of lawyers staged a small protest outside the courthouse in Bamenda, Cameroon’s largest Anglophone city, to demand the withdrawal of judges who spoke no English and had no understanding of British common law. The protest was broken up with tear gas. The authorities must have assumed that, as in the past, the protests would peter out. Instead, the movement grew, drawing in Anglophone teachers, angered by state attempts to replace them with French speakers with knowledge of neither English nor the GCE syllabus. Students joined in too, only to see their halls of residence raided and female students beaten and sexually abused by the police, according to activists. The government admits to six protester deaths, though activists say the true toll is much higher. With force alone appearing to fail, Mr Biya has since January attempted to seal off Anglophone Cameroon from the outside world by cutting off internet access to the two regions. An absolutist gerontocrat who has clung to power through a series of controversial elections, there are signs that even French-speakers are finally losing patience with a leader who spends so much time in Europe his people view him as an absentee landlord. Last October a Cameroonian stood outside the Intercontinental Hotel in Geneva, where the president is said to have spent most of the Summer, and hurled insults at Mr Biya through a loud-hailer. Since then the president has shown signs of increasing paranoia. He was mocked by even French speakers after the present Miss Cameroon was stripped of her crown in January, allegedly for calling on the government to listen to Anglophone concerns. So far, however, there is little sign that Mr Biya will relent. Most of the leaders of the protest movement have been arrested in recent weeks and charged with “terrorism, hostility against the fatherland, secession, revolution, contempt of the president… group rebellion, civil war and dissemination of fake news.” Facing the death penalty, their trial before a military tribunal has shown Cameroon’s problems in microcosm. Bewigged defence lawyers, seated across the room from bare-headed Francophone prosecutors, struggled to follow proceedings conducted in French. When an interpreter was eventually provided the translation was so poor that few were any the wiser. It is a sign, Anglophone Cameroonians say, that they will never be understood or accepted by the French speaking majority. “The Anglophones are a people,” Henry Ngale Monono, a barrister, wrote recently in a Cameroonian newsletter. “We have a common culture, a common language. The Francophones want is to think like them behave like them, act like them — which is not possible.” (C) 2017 The Telegraph