More than century on, descendants of survivors who returned home open a museum to celebrate and preserve their culture By Bethan McKernan Vakifli, a village in Hatay, the small wedge of Turkey sandwiched between the Mediterranean and the border with Syria, has the melancholy honour of being known as the country’s “last Armenian village”. These days, it is home to just 100 people, but Vakifli’s orange groves and traditional stone houses are rich with history. Every summer, thousands of visitors in search of a connection to their Armenian past descend on the tiny village to visit its church, buy locally made jams and soap, and listen to the West Armenian dialect. Lora Baytar, a journalist and art historian, decided a long time ago she wanted to create a dedicated exhibition space to celebrate the local Armenian culture. After five years of work, Vakifliköy Museum – the first such undertaking in Turkey – has just opened its doors. “Visitors to Vakifli just come for the day, they take a picture of the church, and they leave again,” she said. “I wanted to give people the opportunity to really understand and preserve our heritage.” Turkey’s reckoning with the past is long overdue: the government still refuses to recognise the events of 1915, in which up to 1.5 million Armenians were killed, as a genocide. Vakifli’s community is descended from Armenians who successfully resisted the Ottoman army’s attacks. The area’s 4,200 residents retreated to the nearby Mount Musa, holding out for 53 days before being rescued and evacuated by allied warships to Port Said in Egypt. When the first world war ended, they returned home. Baytar and her husband, Cem Çapar, are part of Vakifli’s church foundation, which maintains the village buildings, but the couple realised they’d need outside help and a much bigger budget for the museum. A first application for funding in 2015, made with the help of the Hrant Dink Foundation, didn’t lead anywhere, but a second attempt in 2018, with support from the nearby Hatay Archaeology Museum and the Armenian Patriarchate in Istanbul, successfully won a government grant. Vakifli’s residents then recorded oral history interviews and donated objects including clothes, traditional lacework, jewellery and photographs to create what Baytar calls a “story-driven” experience for visitors to the space in the existing cultural centre. Sections focus on religious traditions, cultural celebrations such as harisa, the summer grape festival, the impact of migration on the Armenian community and unique local architectural and agricultural practices. Baytar is particularly fond of a donation box from the now-destroyed Armenian church in Mersin, and a wedding dress and songbook from the 1920s owned by local figures. The Covid-19 crisis has delayed the official opening until the end of the year, or possibly next summer, but Baytar and Çapar are keen to welcome visitors before that. “Vakifliköy Museum shows the visitor how villagers speak, our beliefs, how we celebrate holidays, what we eat, how we succeed in agriculture and architecture, marriage traditions, music, photos, human and migration stories,” Baytar said. “When people come now they won’t just leave with one photograph. Their memories will be filled the same way ours are.” See full new article here. © The Guardian 2020

By Beth van Schaack As we reported earlier, recently confirmed Secretary of State Tony Blinken during his confirmation hearings (starting at 1:58) confirmed that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) campaign of persecution against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang, China, constitutes genocide under international law. Following a question from Senator Lindsay Graham as to whether or not Blinken agreed with former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s designation of the Chinese Communist Party as having engaged in genocide in Xinjiang, Blinken stated clearly “That would be my judgment as well.” Lindsay Graham then expressed his concurrence. This stance is consistent with earlier statements from President Biden during the campaign. At a Pacific Northwest fundraiser on August 14, 2020, then-candidate Biden made the following pledge: “Regarding the [Uyghurs], I’m going to work with our allies, at the U.N. and elsewhere to stand against the detention and repression and call it for what it is, it is: genocide.” On August 25, 2020, a spokesperson for the Biden campaign, Andrew Bates, further stated : The unspeakable oppression that [Uyghurs] and other ethnic minorities have suffered at the hands of China’s authoritarian government is genocide and Joe Biden stands against it in the strongest terms. If the Trump administration does indeed choose to call this out for what it is, as Joe Biden already did, the pressing question is what will Donald Trump do to take action. Bates also called for then-President Trump to apologize for condoning “this horrifying treatment.” This is an accurate characterization of the situation in Xinjiang given the dynamics of violence as we know them and the definition of genocide under international and U.S. law (see 18 U.S.C. § 1091 ). The evidence compiled in the aggregate suggests that a genocide is underway in Xinjiang Province through multiple genocidal acts committed by discrete sets of actors (including various national organs, regional officials, and CCP) with the intent to destroy the Uyghur people, in whole or in part. (For a longer discussion of these issues , see a report produced by Stanford Law School’s International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic: The Persecution of the Uyghurs and Potential International Crimes in China .) Despite this apparent agreement across the political spectrum in the United States on this issue, there is still some uncertainty as to whether the acts committed in Xinjiang constitute genocide. Not surprisingly, China has rejected this characterization, claiming instead to be engaged in counter-extremism and population control operations (and liberating Uyghur women from being “baby-making machines”). Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield noted today in her confirmation hearing (see 01:26:04) that the Biden administration is currently reviewing the description of CCP policies as genocide, to ensure the proper procedures were followed, though she voiced her horror at the policies. As the Biden administration reviews the determination, it will undoubtedly face continued resistance and obfuscation. Given this resistance, this article will articulate the legal definition of genocide and outline how the documented treatment of Uyghurs fits this definition. The Definition of Genocide Both China and the United States have ratified the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (“ Genocide Convention ”), which defines the crime of genocide, establishes obligations of prevention and punishment, and recognizes the possibility of establishing state responsibility for a campaign of genocide. The crime of genocide is defined by the Genocide Convention with respect to three constitutive elements: (1) the victims form part of a protected group (i.e., a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group), (2) the perpetrator(s) committed one or more enumerated acts against members of the group, and (3) the perpetrator(s) acted with the intent to destroy the protected group, in whole or in part. The enumerated acts ( actus reus in legal terms) are: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. The Genocide Convention prohibits the direct commission of any of these acts as well as engaging in a conspiracy to commit genocide, publicly inciting others to commit genocide, attempting to commit genocide, and complicity in genocide. All three elements are satisfied with respect to the multi-dimensional persecution underway in Xinjiang against the Uyghur people. To be sure, if a court of law were considering the responsibility an individual defendant, these elements would have to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. However, these political assessments of China’s genocidal policy proceed under lower standard. Protected Group The Uyghur Muslim minority plainly qualify as one of the Genocide Convention’s four protected groups: they are ethnically, racially, and religiously distinct from the majority Han Chinese population. Indeed, the Chinese government itself recognizes the Uyghur as a distinct ethnic minority within its census data . Constitutive Acts Actors representing the federal and provincial governments are responsible for the commission of many genocidal acts against Uyghurs, including within the network of internment camps whose scale, organization, and impact are so chillingly evocative of the Nazi enterprise. Although the prototypical genocide has historically involved the first enumerated act in the Convention—“killing members of the group”—evidence of the mass killing of Uyghurs has not emerged to date. Instead, the Chinese government is keeping most Uyghur detainees alive—and is cruelly incentivized to continue doing so in order to take advantage of the Uyghurs for no- or low-cost labor. Thus, forced labor in the present context operates differently than it did in the context of the Holocaust , where forced laborers were deliberately worked to death. Nevertheless, evidence of the commission of the other four acts of genocide abounds. For example, the torture, rape, and sexual violence committed against Uyghurs likely constitute genocide “by causing serious bodily or mental harm”—the second type of genocide recognized by the Convention. National legislation and international tribunal case law have expounded on the forms this serious harm can take. The U.S. genocide statute, for instance, includes here “the permanent impairment of the mental faculties of members of the group through drugs, torture, or similar techniques.” The International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (“ICTR”) elaborated upon this category of genocide in Prosecutor v. Akayesu , finding that it encompasses both mental and physical torture and “can be caused by the enslavement, starvation, deportation and persecution . . . and by [the victims’] detention in ghettos, transit camps and concentration camps in conditions which were designed to cause their degradation, deprivation of their rights as human beings, and to suppress them and cause them inhumane suffering and torture.” Many of these ways to cause serious physical or mental harm—including enslavement, persecution, and detention in degrading and inhumane camps—describe China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. Likewise, the deplorable living conditions of incarcerated Uyghurs may constitute genocide by “deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] physical destruction”—the third form of genocide. In particular, the CCP’s failure to provide adequate food, shelter, sanitation, and medical care to the legions of detained Uyghurs may trigger the concept of “slow death” as defined by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Prosecutor v. Tolimir as the “lack of proper food, water, shelter, clothing, sanitation, or subjecting members of the group to excessive work or physical exertion.” The International Criminal Court’s Elements of Crimes elaborates that “slow death” genocide can occur through the “deliberate deprivation of resources indispensable for survival, such as food or medical services, or systematic expulsion from homes.” Furthermore, coerced sterilization, the forced implantation of IUDs, the administration of drugs that cause sterilization and amenorrhea, and forced abortions may constitute the fourth method of genocide: “imposing measures intended to prevent births.” According to widely-cited research by Adrian Zenz , the result has been a precipitous drop in Uyghur birth rates. This category of genocide may also contemplate measures taken by the Chinese government to minimize births within the Uyghur group, such as the separation of Uyghur couples through detention or the coercion of Uyghur women into inter-ethnic marriages. To this point, the ICTR affirmed in Akayesu that this category of genocide “should be construed as sexual mutilation, the practice of sterilization, forced birth control, separation of the sexes and prohibition of marriages.” In patrilineal societies in particular, where group membership is determined by the identity of the father, the ICTR further noted that “an example of a measure intended to prevent births within a group [would be] the case where, during rape, a woman of the said group is deliberately impregnated by a man of another group, with the intent to have her give birth to a child who will consequently not belong to its mother’s group.” Although the Tribunal’s hypothetical is not directly analogous to the case at hand, the CCP’s separation of Uyghur couples through detention; the sterilization of older, married women; and the coercion of young, unmarried Uyghur women into marriages with Han Chinese men may share a similar goal of ensuring a new generation of children who do not belong, or appear not to belong, to the Uyghur group. Finally, when it comes to the fifth genocidal act recognized by the Convention, the systematic separation of Uyghur children from their families and into state care may be characterized as genocide by “forcibly transferring children.” As the ICTR noted in Akayesu , this category of genocidal acts sanctions not only direct acts of forcible transfer, but also “acts of threats or trauma which would lead to the forcible transfer of children from one group to another”—an interpretation that would encompass the cases of Uyghur parents who submit their children to state-run boarding schools under threat of being labelled suspicious and targeted for detention. "Biological Genocide" There is a lack of jurisprudence elaborating upon the requirements and weight of these last two forms of genocidal actus reus , which some have described as “biological genocide.” While there is no case law in which this conduct alone has sustained a genocide conviction, all genocide definitions suggest that the forced sterilization of Uyghur women—standing alone—could support a genocide finding. This includes early work by Raphael Lemkin, who first coined the term “genocide” and lobbied exhaustively for its penalization under international law, and the drafting history of the Genocide Convention. Indeed, after the Genocide Convention finally entered into force, Lemkin gave a speech at the New York branch of the American Jewish Congress that concisely summarized his views: [G]enocide is no longer a word, a promise, a hope . . . It is already a law which can be enforced. In practical terms, this law means no more extermination, no more mass killings, no more concentration camps, no more sterilizations, no more breaking up of families. Thus, the Xinjiang situation may also provide an opportunity for courts and tribunals to clarify the constitutive elements of these latter two forms of genocide. Indeed, a similar conversation is underway with respect to ISIS crimes against the Yezidi in Iraq. As noted by the Global Justice Center , and other scholars of genocide writing on these pages, systems of sexual slavery and forced pregnancy may constitute genocide against an ethno-religious group if both parents must be members of the group for the child to belong. (For a deeper discussion of so-called “biological genocide”—genocide through diminishing the ability of a group to reproduce itself—see this paper by Stanford Law’s Human Rights & International Justice Policy Lab). Genocidal Mens Rea (The Mental State) The biggest challenge to establishing the commission of genocide is the mens rea (or mental state) requirement that the perpetrator(s) not only intend to commit the underlying act(s), but that the acts are committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. The intent element is the hallmark of genocide and what distinguishes it from other international crimes, such as war crimes or crimes against humanity. The latter crimes are equally as prohibited under international law but there is special force to the concept of genocide given this devastating specific intent Furthermore, as these political determinations reveal, the attribution of state responsibility for genocide is an inquiry separate and apart from a determination of individual criminal responsibility. Determining state responsibility involves a conclusion that elements of the state have launched a campaign of genocide against a protected group. In some cases, such as in Nazi Germany or with respect to the Hutu Power movement in Rwanda, a perpetrator or regime will articulate an unequivocal genocidal intent in a policy platform or self-incriminating statement. The Islamic State, for example, undertook a deliberative theological inquiry that led to express articulations of an intent to destroy the Yazidi people in the imagined caliphate, because the Yazidi faith could not be reconciled with the Islamic State’s radical brand of Sunni Islam. By contrast, the Sudanese regime of Omar al-Bashir never issued any sort of genocidal manifesto—and yet he was indicted for genocide by the International Criminal Court, demonstrating that explicit avowal of genocidal intent is not required to establish mens rea . Indeed, despite these high-profile examples, explicit articulations of intent are relatively rare, and thus genocidal intent must often be inferred based on “all of the evidence, taken together” and that inference must be “the only reasonable one available on the evidence,” as noted by the ICTY in Tolimir . As summarized by the Yugoslav tribunal, relevant factors for such an analysis include the general context, systematically perpetrating other culpable acts against the group, the scale of atrocities, and the repetition of destructive and discriminatory acts. Furthermore, “[t]he existence of a plan or policy, a perpetrator’s display of his intent through public speeches or meetings with others may also support an inference” of the required genocidal intent. In the case of China’s treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang, while few explicit statements of intent have emerged, a number of clear indicators of such intent are present. For example, the general context of the violence, including the scale of the atrocities, number of victims, the repetition of culpable acts, and gravity of the harm caused all point to genocidal intent. Further, leaked documents confirm that the genocidal acts are borne of methodical planning on China’s part, with culpability going all the way to the top of Chinese and Party leadership. As regional expert Adrian Zenz describes it , there exists a “coordinated state campaign to promote … intergenerational separation,” as well as an interwoven system of policies designed to prevent births within the Uyghur community. Additional evidence of genocidal intent includes state propaganda conflating Uyghurs and terrorists; the CCP’s systemic attacks against Uyghur cultural, religious, and historical sites, including sacred burial places ; the creation of a surveillance state that enables Uyghurs to be continuously tracked based upon their biometrics; and the targeting of the group’s leadership in order to weaken the group but also remove individuals who could raise the alarm or engage with the international community. And although the Genocide Convention does not prohibit “cultural genocide” per se, efforts at the cultural erasure of a group can serve as evidence of genocidal intent as well. Taken together, the entire program of persecution undertaken in Xinjiang suggests a desire to undermine the very foundation for the continued existence of the Uyghur group. In sum, it is reasonable to conclude that there is strong evidence that the Chinese authorities are committing genocide against the Uyghur people, triggering obligations on the part of the international community to take steps to prevent and punish this terrible crime. Although the Genocide Convention does not contain specific obligations in this regard, this can include everything from humanitarian assistance to victims, accountability to perpetrators, diplomatic isolation, trade penalties, etc. Conclusion In closing, it should be noted that the international community’s response to mass atrocities need not hinge on the question of whether or not the violence constitutes genocide. If economic, political, or military responses to mass violence are being contemplated, then the time has passed for debating legal semantics about whether the violence meets the definition of genocide. Indeed, as I have written elsewhere , “the methodology necessary to determine the commission of genocide is inapt—and the surrounding discourse discordant—when people are being systematically killed and expelled from their homes through violence on a mass scale.” What matters is that the level of violence and the risk to humanity has reached a certain threshold. Furthermore, genocide is a crime of intent and not of results. As such, it is not necessary to wait for a group to be destroyed in whole or in part before declaring a campaign of violence to be genocidal if the requisite intent can be evinced before the threat of wholescale extermination is realized. As recognized by President Biden on this Holocaust Remembrance Day, this foresight ensures that the preventative potential of the Genocide Convention—the promise of “no more extermination, no more mass killings, no more concentration camps, no more sterilizations, no more breaking up of families”—can be realized. Image: Members of the Muslim Uighur minority hold placards as they demonstrate in front of the Chinese consulate on December 30, 2020, in Istanbul, to ask for news of their relatives and to express their concern after China announced the ratification of an extradition treaty with Turkey. – The Chinese parliament ratified on December 26, 2020 an extradition treaty signed in 2017 with Ankara, a text that Beijing wants to use in particular to speed up the return of certain Muslim Uyghurs suspected of “terrorism” and who are refugees in Turkey. But the head of Turkish diplomacy said on December 30, 2020 that Ankara was not going to return Muslim Uyghurs to China, despite Beijing’s ratification of an extradition treaty that worries the 50,000 members of this community who have taken refuge in the country. (Photo by BULENT KILIC / AFP) (Photo by BULENT KILIC/AFP via Getty Images) © 2021 Just Security

FEBRUARY 12, 2021 12:31 Image Source “The desecration of any memorial is extremely unacceptable, moreover the kind of memorials which are related to the minorities living in the city," said the mayor of the city. The "To Live and Not Forget" Holocaust memorial in the Armenian city of Yerevan was desecrated with paint sprayed all over the Hebrew writings. The memorial was built to honor both the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide victims and consists of two primary pillars, with “To Live and Not Forget: To the Memory of the Victims of the Genocides of the Armenian and Jewish Peoples” written in Armenian on the right pillar and Hebrew on the left pillar. Yerevan Mayor Hayk Marutyan’s spokesperson Hakob Karapetyan strongly condemned the desecration, noting that such incidents must be ruled out in Yerevan “where representatives of various nations are living side by side as Yerevantsis.” “The desecration of any memorial is extremely unacceptable, moreover the kind of memorials which are related to the minorities living in the city. I think this problem should be solved through cooperation with the law enforcement agencies,” Karapetyan said when asked about actions for ruling out similar incidents in the future, given the fact that this is already the second time this particular memorial is targeted by vandals in the last few months, the Armenian Press website reported. Vice Speaker of Parliament Alen Simonyan from the ruling My Step bloc strongly condemned the desecration of the Holocaust and Armenian Genocide memorial in central Yerevan, the Armenian Press website also reported. “We strongly condemn the desecration of the memorial of the Genocides of the Jewish and Armenian Peoples located in the Yerevan Circular Park,” Simonyan said in a statement. “This manifestation of vandalism is nothing else but a crime against universal values, and it should be properly investigated, and those who committed this crime should be held to account in order to rule out and prevent the repetition of such incidents in the future,” Simonyan said. The World Jewish Congress reacted to the desecration on Twitter, calling it "vile antisemitic graffiti." Among the many people who posted pictures on Twitter of the vandalized memorial, Rabbi Zamir Isayev shared his consternation. Yerevan Police said an investigation was launched to identify the vandals. Link to Original Article

By Bob Silverman Secretary of State Antony Blinken has declared that China is committing genocide against an ethnic Muslim minority, the Uyghurs. Such declarations do not deter murderers unless followed by specific actions. American citizens should lead the way in not allowing genocide declarations to devolve into rhetorical statements devoid of meaning. What happens after the United States announces that a genocide is occurring? Yazidis in Iraq were seeking an answer after the 2016 genocide declaration. Today, Uyghurs in China are asking the same question. Unfortunately, the short answer to date is nothing. Under U.S. law, declaring a genocide doesn’t obligate the U.S. to do anything. As a political matter, the Obama and Trump administrations treated genocide declarations as rhetorical rather than actual calls to action. The jury is out on whether the Biden administration will follow the same practice. I was working at the State Department in March 2016 when Secretary Kerry declared the Islamic State was committing genocide by mass-murdering Yazidi men and enslaving and mass raping Yazidi women. I proposed in internal meetings pragmatic actions such as increased humanitarian relief and refugee admission for Yazidis and restored U.S. war crimes and forensics training for Iraqi prosecutors. Then Deputy Secretary Blinken (who coordinated refugee efforts) and then U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Powers refused. Those steps would have required sustained coordinated action in Iraq that the administration was seeking to pivot away from. The administration was in its last year, and anyway, their staffs said, continuing the existing military effort against IS was the best step — though the U.S. refused under Obama to target IS oil truck convoys that were generating the funds to keep the genocide going. Regarding the Uyghurs, the gist of the genocide case is the ongoing forced sterilization and abortions of Uyghur women held in detention camps, one of the enumerated acts under the 1948 Genocide Convention specifically “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group.” If history is a guide, we are in the early stages of this genocide. In the 1930s, the Nazis began their careers in genocide with mass detention and sterilization of an ever-widening range of persons deemed physically, mentally, or racially inferior. Applying the principles of racial hygiene, the Nazis claimed to be following the science of the day. Today the Chinese Communists claim to be liberating Uyghur women from being “baby-making machines.” What has the U.S. done in response to the Uyghur genocide? Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, on the last full day of the Trump administration, declared that China was committing genocide, kicking any consequences to the incoming administration. Pompeo’s State Department had laid the groundwork in congressional testimony for a genocide declaration more than two years earlier. The Biden administration endorsed Pompeo’s declaration in Secretary Blinken’s Senate confirmation hearing and first press conference. President Biden says he raised the Uyghurs in his first telephone call with President Xi Jinping. But to date, no specific measures are forthcoming. The American public shouldn’t passively wait for our government to take action. We must lead in taking “Never Again” seriously. What can we do today as American citizens? Here are three suggestions: First, lobby our political leaders. Taking tough steps against China for genocide is complicated and involves coordinated planning and implementation within the U.S. Government and with our allies. The best way to ensure any of that happens is to keep after our leaders and, if need be, name and shame: · Secretary of State Tony Blinken, who often cites his family history with the Holocaust and who has publicly declared the China genocide; · USAID Administrator Samantha Power, who built a journalistic career denouncing U.S. inaction on previous genocides and who could use her powerful charisma to push good policies in the bureaucracy; and · National Security Council coordinator for Asia Kurt Campbell, whose strategic advisory firm The Asia Group has worked in China. Second, boycott Chinese companies. Chinese law requires all private-sector companies to be guided by the Communist Party. Companies trading on U.S. stock exchanges have been implicated in the oppression of Uyghurs. Americans should call on pension funds, companies, and individual investors to divest on moral grounds. Third, use our civic organizations to call on our and other nations’ Olympic Committees to boycott the 2022 Winter Games in China. If we believe China is committing genocide, why would we want to repeat the mistake of 1936 by participating in an Olympic Games which glorify a genocidal regime? Both Republican and Democratic administrations have now declared that China is committing genocide. The time of rhetoric is well past, and the hard work of policy is overdue. We must not allow our leaders to continue treating genocide as a box-checking press statement. When people commit genocide, we must reflect the horror and brutality of those actions with tough, meaningful counteractions. Access the full article here . Bob Silverman is a former senior U.S. diplomat and former president of the American Foreign Service Association. He is currently President of IJMA – Inter Jewish Muslim Alliance and a lecturer at Shalem College in Israel. The Hill © 2021

Constitutional Amendment would permit confiscation of property without compensation Photo: https://southasianad.com/ad/land-for-sale/ SOUTH AFRICA: ANC AND EFF PROPOSE "STATE CUSTODIANSHIP " Daily Friend, South Africa June 3, 2021 By Anthea Jeffery, South African Institute for Race Relations An early IRR warning of nationalisation via ‘custodianship’ Seven years ago, back in 2014, the IRR warned that the ANC would seek to nationalise all the country’s land without compensation. It would do so by taking ‘custodianship’ of land and then claiming that no expropriation had occurred (as explained below) and so no compensation need be paid. The IRR’s warning was dismissed by the government, Agri SA, and the Institute for Poverty, Land, and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), respectively, as unwarranted, ‘unlikely’, and ‘scaremongering’. Now, however, the ANC and the EFF have agreed that the draft bill to amend Section 25 of the Constitution to allow expropriation without compensation (the EWC Bill) should be revised to include a commitment to ‘state custodianship’ over all land. ANC and EFF proposals on state custodianship The ANC’s proposal is contained in a new subsection 25(5), which reads as follows: ‘The state must take reasonable legislative and other measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable state custodianship and for citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis’. The EFF’s proposal is much the same, though it wants the italicised words to be deleted. In practice, this change would mean little. The EFF also seeks a new subsection 25(4A), saying: ‘Land is a natural resource and the common heritage, which belongs to the people as a whole, under the custodianship of the democratic state.’ The ANC’s preferred wording is similar, for it thinks subsection 25(4A) should provide that ‘the land belongs to and is the common heritage of all South Africans’. Either subsection, if inserted, would point to the supposed rationale for land custodianship. But the key wording is in subsection 25(5) – and would suffice to require new legislation that ‘enables state custodianship’ and gives people ‘access’ to land in the form of land-use licences to be ‘equitably’ allocated by the state. Earlier this week, the ANC’s Vuzumusi Xaba tried to play down the significance of state custodianship by suggesting that this would apply solely in the ‘period between acquisition and redistribution’. However, there is nothing in the wording of subsection 25(5) to limit state custodianship in this way. Mr Xaba’s reassurance, if it is to be taken seriously at all, also overlooks the government’s State Land Lease and Disposal Policy (SLLDP) of 2013. Under this policy, land acquired for redistribution must be retained by the state and leased to land reform beneficiaries for a period of 50 years before an option to buy may be granted. On this basis, the ‘state custodianship’ that Mr Xaba sees as applying only ‘temporarily’ could last for half a century. Despite some minor points of difference, the ANC and EFF have thus agreed to include state custodianship of all land in the EWC Bill. Their consensus on this key point is what matters – not the insignificant issues on which their further concurrence is now being sought. Little real divergence on courts and compensation There is also little real divergence between the ANC and EFF on the role of the courts or the payment of compensation. The EWC Bill, as initially gazetted for public comment in December 2019, said that ‘a court’ would decide whether ‘nil’ compensation should be paid for ‘land and any improvements thereon’ that were expropriated for land reform purposes. The initial EWC Bill also said that new legislation to be adopted in the future would set out the circumstances in which ‘a court’ might decide that compensation on land expropriation would be nil. The ANC wants to omit these specific references to the courts. However, it also proposes that the courts should retain their current powers to ‘decide or approve’ on the compensation payable on expropriation if the parties cannot agree on this. By contrast, the EFF wants to exclude all reference to the courts. It also wants to omit any entitlement to compensation on the expropriation of property of any kind. Is this a significant point of contestation between the ANC and the EFF? Not really. For the ANC plans to use expropriation relatively seldom and to rely in many instances on the concept of ‘deprivation’, as contained in subsection 25(1). Expropriation versus deprivation According to Mr Xaba, ‘the Constitution provides two ways in which the state may interfere with property rights, which are deprivation and expropriation’. It is only expropriation that requires the payment of compensation, whereas deprivation does not. What is the difference between the two? In the ANC’s perspective, if the state takes ownership of property, then expropriation has occurred and compensation must be paid. By contrast, if the state instead assumes the custodianship of property for the benefit of others, then this is merely a ‘deprivation’ for which no compensation is payable at all. In practice, of course, the state’s powers of control over property are very much the same irrespective of whether it takes ownership or custodianship. The distinction between the two concepts is thus entirely artificial. It has nevertheless already served the ANC well. Take the example of the country’s mineral resources, two thirds of which used to be privately owned. If the ANC had taken ownership of these resources under the Mineral and Petroleum Resources Development Act (MPRDA) of 2002, billions of rands in compensation would have had to be paid to the erstwhile owners of these resources. But because the MPRDA instead vested all mineral resources in the custodianship of the state, the ANC argued that this was a mere deprivation for which no compensation was due. This argument was upheld, moreover, by the flawed majority ruling of the Constitutional Court in the Agri SA case in 2013. Nationalisation via custodianship The custodianship concept is now to be deployed to nationalise all land, as the revised EWC Bill makes clear. This holds enormous dangers, for it could make the vital agricultural sector as ‘uninvestable’ as mining has become under the MPRDA. Its ramifications for the property market and the banking sector (to name but two examples) are also massive but unclear. Worse still, the custodianship concept – or some similar mechanism for property ‘deprivation’ – could also be used to extend nationalisation way beyond land to important pools of private capital. This process will be facilitated by subsection 25(4), which defines ‘property’ as ‘not limited to land’ and is not to be amended by the EWC Bill. All medical scheme reserves, for example, could in time be vested in the custodianship of the proposed National Health Insurance Fund, which will then use these funds to help provide the same (limited) healthcare benefits to everyone. All pension funds could similarly be vested in the custodianship of the proposed National Social Security Fund, which would use them to help provide much the same (small) payouts to all pensioners. All bank savings might in time be vested in the custodianship of a new state bank, which would use them to fund infrastructure projects unlikely to be any more successful than Eskom’s disastrous new-build programme. According to the ANC, there would be no expropriation in such custodial takings, so none would merit compensation. This explains why the ruling party sees little risk in retaining the Constitution’s current wording on ‘just and equitable’ compensation, which the EFF would prefer to jettison. The effective nationalisation of private capital is thus a crucial part of what lies ahead – and what the EWC Bill is intended to allow. State control will help divert these funds to socialist objectives and so advance the National Democratic Revolution (NDR). State control will also, as tax revenues diminish, help grease the ruling party’s patronage machine and so maintain its fragile unity and hold on power. Can the EWC Bill be stopped? The Ad Hoc Committee responsible for drafting the EWC Bill was supposed to finish its work by 31st May 2021 but failed to reach agreement on the revised text. It is thus seeking a 30-day extension to finalise the measure. Its ANC and EFF members, along with committee chair Dr Mathole Motshekga, have discounted a legal opinion from Parliamentary Legal Services which warns that most of the proposed changes to the EWC Bill are ‘substantial’ amendments that: exceed the committee’s mandate to ‘make explicit what is implicit’ in Section 25; need to be advertised for public comment; and must be referred to relevant government departments, the nine provincial administrations, and the National House of Traditional and Khoi-San Leaders. Dr Motshekga seems determined to finalise the EWC Bill within 30 days. He also wants the National Assembly, which will be in the middle of a 10-week recess, to convene a special sitting to deal with the committee’s report. It will be up to the National Assembly to decide what to do if the committee has in fact exceeded its mandate, he says. Whether there is any need for further public consultation will also be determined in due course. The EWC Bill is extremely urgent, adds Dr Motshekga, for ‘the government cannot tell people to build a new economy if they do not have anywhere to live’. Moreover, ‘there is unrest and land invasions all over because people are impatient and want access to land… Failure to resolve the land question will be tantamount to planting a time bomb in one’s own house…and bring[ing] the whole house down’. However, this alleged urgency cannot be used to circumvent the need for proper procedures, as set out by Parliamentary Legal Services. In addition, a comprehensive socio-economic impact assessment is still needed to help inform the public consultation process – rather than the EWC Bill’s bland assertion that its ‘financial implications for the state’ are ‘none’. Earlier this week, the chair of Agri SA’s Centre for Excellence: Land, Willem de Chavonnes Vrugt, cautioned that land custodianship without compensation would ‘give control over all private land to the state, [which] would be a recipe for an economic and humanitarian disaster and an invitation to large-scale corruption’. This echoes the IRR’s long-standing warnings but does not go far enough. For it assumes that custodianship will stop at land, whereas the ANC intends to take its deprivations very much further – to private sector capital and other forms of property too. This article first appeared in the Daily Friend on 3 June 2021 and is republished with the kind permission of Dr Anthea Jeffery and the South African Institute for Race Relations. 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Gregory Stanton was categorical that these warning signs did not mean that it had begun in the country By Anita Joshua | New Delhi | 20 January 2022 Clips from the Haridwar event, held from December 17 to 20, were circulated on social media and drew sharp criticism from eminent persons. Genocide Watch president Gregory Stanton, who had warned of the Rwandan genocide five years before it happened, on Wednesday said the early warning signs were visible in India and that a genocide could well happen here. He added that democracy was no insurance against genocide. But he was categorical that these warning signs did not mean that genocide had begun in India. “We don’t say that the next stage — that is extermination — has begun yet. Our view is that it is a huge danger in India because it won’t be the State that carries out any genocide, it will be mobs. It will be the same kind of mobs that carried out double genocide at the time of Partition,” Stanton said. Calls for a genocide against Muslims were sounded at a conclave of sadhus in Haridwar last month. In an interview to news portal The Wire a week after he addressed a congressional briefing in the US on the calls for genocide of Muslims in India, Stanton told Karan Thapar: “Our view at Genocide Watch is that a lot of the early warning signs of genocide are (visible) in India.” He added: “We’ve learned over the years that we should not ignore these early warning signs. We knew that there were very early warning signs, for instance, in Rwanda five years ahead of the time when the genocide there happened. We warned, no one did anything about it. We tried to even warn the President of the country. “The reason we try to warn is (that) our objective is prevention. If you warn after the genocide is over, it’s too late. Unfortunately, that’s usually been the response of most of the international community.” Genocide Watch, which claims to have predicted every genocide in the world since its inception in 1999, is trying to have a congressional hearing by the Lantos Human Rights Commission pass a resolution asking Washington to make it its policy to prevent a genocide in India. “President Joe Biden should tell Prime Minister Narendra Modi that if a genocide occurs in India, it will require us to reassess all of our relations with India, including trade,” Stanton said. But given the India-US dynamic, he did not appear particularly optimistic. Genocide Watch will also try to get the European Parliament to adopt a similar resolution on the genocide calls in India. Stanton said Genocide Watch had a model called the “10 Stages of Genocide” and India was already well down the road towards a genocide according to its parameters. “The first is classification, in which you distinguish between ‘us’ and ‘them’, you ‘other’ people. In India, as we well know, Hindus are distinguished from Muslims, Christians and members of other religions,” he said. “Classification itself is not an act of genocide. In fact, it’s normal human behaviour. It’s how we classify the world. But when it is used in a harmful way to classify an entire group as ‘other than us’ — as aliens, for instance — then it can become one of those processes that lead to genocide. “The second thing is symbolisation. You can recognise people by their clothes, the places they worship, their rituals, their rules for marriage…. Again, that doesn’t necessarily lead to genocide. It’s only when those symbols are used to facilitate genocide in ID cards, for example, or in markings (on) houses or making people wear a yellow star….” Jews in Nazi-occupied territories were made to wear a yellow star as a mark of identification. “The third thing — discrimination – we can see in the Citizenship Amendment Act, which gave preference for asylum in India to refugees from specific religions… but it deliberately excluded Muslims,” Stanton said. “The next is dehumanisation, in which you have the home minister of India calling Muslims ‘termites’… Bangladeshi Muslim refugees are called foreigners or aliens…. “We also have organisation, the RSS — and it’s been neo-Nazi since its beginning. In fact, the founder of the RSS was a great admirer of Hitler. We also, of course, have the leader of the BJP, Mr Modi himself, who is a member of the RSS.” “When he was chief minister of Gujarat, a massacre of Muslims occurred in which at least 1,000, probably more than that, were massacred. And he did nothing…. “We have polarisation, we have the false propaganda of a love jihad, we have laws against conversion, which are a direct violation of freedom of religion. We have lynchings, we have a census law that has been passed in India to make people prove their citizenship. When you make people prove their citizenship to strip them of their citizenship, that’s the NRC. “We also have persecution, we have lynchings, we have attacks on churches, we have attacks on mosques, we have arrests of Bengali Muslims in Assam, we have arrests of Kashmiri Muslims. All of those early warning signs are already there.” Stanton said democracy did not insulate India from genocide. “I even believe that genocide is possible in the US. After all, we committed genocide against our own Native Americans; we committed genocide against African Americans during the slave trade…. ” On the Prime Minister’s silence over the genocide calls in Haridwar, Stanton said: “Although it is State authorities who need to arrest the inciters to genocide, he as PM is the leader of the country and has a moral obligation to denounce this kind of hate speech, just like Biden has been denouncing hate speech in the US.” Stanton interpreted Modi’s silence in terms set by Martin Luther King who said: “We will know who is against us not by what they have said but their silence.” Stanton said Genocide Watch was not alone in warning of a possible genocide in India. “The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which has a Genocide Prevention Centre, is also warning that India is, in fact, the second most likely to have genocide in this coming year.” © 2020 The Telegraph

22 March 2022 | By Sam Anwari Source: Supplied/Mohammadmir Norozi Taliban fighters arrested and tortured a Hazara man because of his Australian-based brother’s efforts to raise funds for refugees fleeing Afghanistan in the years leading up to the fundamentalist group's takeover of the country in August last year. Activist and president of the Hazara Community Organisation in Geelong, Mohammadmir Norozi, spoke to SBS Dari about how his own fundraising back in Australia had led to his brother’s torture at the hands of the Taliban in Afghanistan earlier this year. Mr. Norozi says the Taliban’s intelligence unit commander in Jaghori District of Ghazni province arrested his 45-year-old brother Zahir Norozi near his mechanical workshop in the district’s west on February 5 and “severely tortured” him for 11 days. “When (Taliban chieftan) Anas threatened my brother and family, he said that 'we have the ability to kill your brother in Australia. You are nothing to us and everywhere you go, we can hunt you down and eliminate you’,” he said. The Taliban accused Zahir of taking in the distribution of Australian aid among the group's opponents. Supplied/Mohammadmir Norozi Mr. Norozi said the Taliban accused Zahir of helping to distribute Australian aid among the group's opponents during its 2018 assaults on the Hazara districts of Jaghori and Malistan. The Taliban launched an assault on the two previously safe districts in the central province of Ghazni in November 2018 before being pushed back by the Afghan military and local resistance fighters. Thousands of civilians fled their homes during the clash. Mr. Norozi helped Australian charity organisation Baba Mazari Foundation raise funds for providing humanitarian relief to the refugees and victims. “In the Taliban’s attack on the Malistan and Jaghori districts in 2018, during which many families were displaced from these two areas, most human rights organisations, particularly the Shahid Baba Mazari Foundation in Australia, opted to raise funds to provide immediate humanitarian relief to those impacted by the Taliban’s war,” he said. “I was involved in the fundraising efforts. “They (the Taliban) accused my brother of being involved in the fundraising and helping the Taliban’s opponents as well as distributing the aid. However, he wasn’t involved at all.” Mr Norozi said that the Taliban intelligence commander in Jaghori, known by the single name of Anas, raided his family home twice during the 11 days of Zahir’s captivity, searching for weapons, threatening his father at gunpoint and trying to arrest Zahir’s 13-year-old son and Mr Norozi’s second brother, Noor Mohammad Norozi. Ransom secured brother’s release According to Mr Norozi, when community elders pressured the Taliban’s governor for Ghazni, Anas secretly moved Zahir to the Gelan district where he blindfolded him and threatened to kill him several times before leaving him at the back of a fruit and vegetable shop in freezing conditions one night. Taliban fighter arrested the 45-year-old near his mechanical workshop. Supplied/Mohammadmir Norozi He claimed that Anas had initially asked for US$25,000 (AUDS33,000 AUD) in ransom, but under pressure from his superiors, finally agreed to release Zahir for 500,000 Afghanis (about AUD$8000) on February 19. He said Anas had further threatened his brother to keep the payment a secret or risk the death of all his family members. Anas told my brother ‘if you tell anyone that money was paid, we will shoot your whole family’. Locals greeting Zahir after his release. Supplied/Mohammadmir Norozi In a recorded phone conversation heard by SBS Dari, Mr Norozi's other brother asks a local Hazara man, who appears to have brokered the ransom deal for a receipt for the payment. However, the "middle man" then insists that it will be best that the money wasn't mentioned in Zahir's release papers. In addition to that, Mr. Norozi claimed that the Taliban also seized his brother’s vehicle on February 10. Fleeing the country after buying freedom After buying his freedom, Mr. Norozi said his brother along with 24 other family members fled to a neighbouring country. While Mr Norozi said he was relieved that the family had managed to escape Afghanistan under difficult conditions after paying a large sum of money to people smugglers, he hadn’t stopped worrying about them. The photos were taken several days after Zahir’s release as he was threatened not to show them to anyone, Mr. Norozi said. Supplied/Mohammadmir Norozi “Unfortunately, their place is not safe, and we’re worried about their futures,” he said. He said the Taliban’s local forces in the districts had no regard for the so-called “general amnesty” declared by the group’s leader in August 2021 and were arbitrarily harassing and torturing people. “They’re not bound by the general amnesty declared by themselves and the Taliban leadership at all,” Mr. Norozi said. “Unfortunately, they continue to harass and torture people without any reason as was the case for my brother and my extended family.” Family in Australia remains traumatised Mr. Norozi said he and his family had gone through mental torture during his brother’s captivity and the ordeal had taken a huge toll on them. "Unfortunately, we have been severely traumatised, and at the moment, the mental state of my family and myself is not very good." “From the day my brother was released until they left Afghanistan, we were in the worst condition thinking that at any moment we might hear horrific news from inside Afghanistan, that all of our family members had been shot dead.” The family is now considering applying for Australia’s protection visas, joining a long queue of about 145,000 people. But so far progress on processing more than 32,500 Afghan visa applications had been sluggish, Mr. Norozi said. According to the latest government data, seven months after the Taliban takeover, only about 1000 of the 15,000 visas allocated to people from Afghanistan have been granted. © SBS 2022

By Betwa Sharma Student activist Afreen Fatima's home in Prayagraj was demolished by the UP government on 12 June 2022. Courtesy: Afreen Fatima's Facebook page New Delhi: “You mentally prepare yourself but when the storm hits, you feel like there is nothing that you can do,” Afreen Fatima told Article 14 at 12:30 am on 12 June 2022, as she answered questions from a relative’s phone, speaking to us from an undisclosed location having left her house in anticipation that it might be demolished. “My mind just went blank,” said Fatima, 24, a student activist, a postgraduate in linguistics from Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), and a vocal critic of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and its online right-wing ecosystem. “I felt paralysed when it happened. I didn't know what to do or whom to call. It felt like a nightmare.” Twelve hours after she spoke with us, Fatima’s nightmare came true, as municipal backhoe excavators arrived at her home in the city of Prayagraj in Uttar Pradesh (UP) and began demolishing it. Officials removed the family’s belongings, as pro-government television channels rummaged in the debris and displayed flags and posters found within. “When injustice becomes law rebellion becomes duty,” read one. The police accused Fatima’s father Javed Mohammad, a member of the Jamaat-e-Islami Hind and a prominent face of civil society in the city, of organising the protests in Prayagraj and arrested him. It was one of many towns and cities where Indian Muslims protested, sometimes violently , against slurs made by former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma against Prophet Mohammad during a television debate. Fatima said she believed she was mentally prepared for the backlash that she knew her outspokenness would inevitably trigger, but when the reaction came late on the night of 11 June 2022, she was at a loss about what to do and whom to call. In her five years as a student activist, Fatima said she had envisioned many scenarios, even joking with her father, Javed Mohammad, a leader of the Welfare Party of India and a fellow critic of India’s current government, what they would do if the authorities came for them. The government did come for not just her father and her but her mother and teenage sister as well, in what she described as “retribution”, when police arrived at the doorstep of her family home in Prayagraj, formerly known as Allahabad before it was renamed by chief minister Yogi Adityanath of the BJP in October 2018. The charges against Mohammad are unclear, and there are unconfirmed reports that he is lodged in Naini central prison in Allahabad. There are also conflicting reports on whether her mother and sister are still in police custody. Govt Charge That Home Was Illegal ‘A Complete Lie’ When Fatima spoke with us from her relative’s phone after midnight on 12 June, she said that more than 24 hours had passed but she did not know for sure where her father was being held, and she had only just found out where her mother and sister were being questioned. Denying they had received official notice about her family house being an “ illegal construction ”, as officials alleged, and was scheduled for demolition, Fatima said it was a “complete lie”. The family had never been told before the notice was stuck on their door on 11 June and was reported in the media for the first time. Fatima expressed her “deep anguish” by the manner in which she felt her family were being targeted because she and her father were Muslims critical of the BJP and its treatment of minorities. Fatima had over the last few years consistently protested Hindu majoritarianism, and the Citizenship Amendment Act , 2019, a law criticised for being unconstitutional and making religion the basis of granting Indian citizenship to refugees from certain countries by excluding Muslims. When she spoke with us, Fatima said she expected her home to be demolished. There was no word on what her father’s alleged crime was and the demolition of their home was the latest in illegal demolitions in many UP towns after the recent protests and many more this year in four BJP-ruled states across India. As Article 14 reported on 25 April 2022, it has become the norm in these states to bulldoze the properties of protestors and those accused of crimes by claiming them to be illegal encroachments without due process, without establishing guilt, disproportionately impacting Muslims. Fatima denied that her father was behind the protests, and even if he were, it was, she noted, illegal to arrest people without a warrant or notice or to take women to the police station in the middle of the night. “I feel like this is a vendetta, not just against me and my politics, or my father and his politics, but our whole family,” she said. “For them to take my mother and sister is very crushing for me.” “The only thing I want right now is to know where my father is and to know that he is safe. I want my mother and sister back,” she said. By 1:00 pm on 12 June, videos posted on Twitter showed a bulldozer demolishing Javed’s home. Javed Mohammed, A ‘Key Conspirator’: Police Prayagraj superintendent of police, Ajay Kumar, on 11 June, told the media that Javed was one the “key conspirators” of the violence that erupted, and he was “propagating Bharat bandh (shut down India), gave a call to assemble in Atala area in the city”. Kumar also reportedly said Javed’s daughter (Fatima) studied at JNU and was “involved in notorious activities". The officer said: “The father-daughter duo together propagate propaganda.” The website NewsClick on 11 June reported that about 5,000 people have been named in three FIRs registered in Prayagraj, of which 68 had been arrested. The police had a list of 10 “key conspirators” including leaders of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), the Samajwadi Party, student activists, Left party workers, and those who protested against the CAA. One FIR invokes 24 sections of the Indian Penal Code , 1860, including sections 307 (attempt to murder) and 120B (criminal conspiracy). The Press Trust of India on 12 June reported that 227 people from various districts in the state including 68 in Prayagraj, 50 in Hathras, 48 people in Saharanpur, 28 in Ambedkarnagar, 25 in Moradabad and eight in Firozabad. The UP police say they are using CCTV footage and video clips to identify the culprits. Protests in Prayagraj turned violent, with the national media reporting stone pelting, vehicles being set on fire, and policemen sustaining injuries, and the authorities using tear gas and lathis (batons) to disperse the mob. “Strictest action will be taken against the anti-social elements involved in the chaotic efforts to spoil the atmosphere in various cities in the past few days,” CM Adityanath has said . “There is no place for such anti-social people in a civilised society. No innocent should be harassed, but not a single guilty should be spared.” Mrityunjay Kumar, the media advisor to the chief minister, in a tweet in Hindi, said, “Remember, every Friday is followed by a Saturday,” and posted a photo of a bulldozer demolishing a building. In Ranchi, two young Muslim men died after succumbing to gunshot wounds sustained after protests in Jharkhand—governed by an alliance of the Congress Party, the Jharkhand Mukti Morcha and the Rashtriya Janata Dal— turned violent, with many more injured and at least a dozen policemen and CRPF personnel have been injured. A ‘Nightmare’ Unfolds On Friday night, Fatima was at her family home with her 19-year-old sister, mother, an elderly aunt, her sister-in-law and her young children, when the police arrived and on the pretext of questioning her father took him away to a station. Three hours later, as per Fatima, the police came and took away her mother and teenage sister—once again on the pretext of questioning. When the police came for the third time—at around 2:30 in the morning as per Fatima—and asked for her and her sister-in-law to come with them, they both refused, asking why they were being summoned. They said it was impossible for them to leave behind the young children and their elderly aunt who was extremely disoriented. When they refused to leave, as per Fatima, a policewoman said that even if they did not come with the police, they should leave the house because it was on a “hit-list”. When the news of the authorities planning to demolish her house appeared in the news, Fatima said she connected the dots. “When the police came, they were asking questions like, ‘How many people are in the house? How many children?’” she said. “They were recording the whole time.” What struck her about the policemen who took her father away, Fatima told us, was how polite they were, calling him ‘Javed sahab’ and promising that he could return after a brief conversation with them. Fatima said that her father went with the police on his own scooty. “They were so polite. I don't know how he went from ‘Javed sahab’ to criminal mastermind in one night. I don't know what happened,” she said. “What criminal mastermind goes with the police on his own scooty.” As for her mother and sister leaving with the police a few hours later, Fatima said she was upstairs when it happened. “I came down to see my mother and sister leaving with the police,” said Fatima. “I was so angry with my mother that she did, but I don't think she was thinking straight. All she thought of was wearing her abaya and leaving.” Fatima said that her father had a wide circle of supporters, including lawyers who were helping them. Shortly after he was arrested, she said they believed him to be at the Kotwali police station but lost track after that, making inquiries at different police stations without success. “My father is a diabetes patient and he needs his insulin injection every day,” said Fatima. “It has been more than 24 hours and we don't know where he is,” Shortly before she spoke with us, Fatima said that her sister-in-law had received a call from her mother who she said had called them from the Civil Lines police station in Prayagraj. Noting that she had considered filing a missing person report and a case of kidnapping to find them, Fatima said, “They used my sister and mother as hostages to make us vacate the house?” ‘No Notice Was Ever Given’ A letter from the Prayagraj Development Authority, dated 10 June 2022, said that Javed was informed his house was an illegal construction on 10 May and told to come for a hearing on 24 May, but he was not present. The decision to demolish the house was taken on 25 May, and he was given time till 9 June to make any representation which he failed to do. He was told to vacate the house by 11 am on 12 June. Fatima’s supporters say the letter was “vague”, appeared to be hastily written, did not have a time stamp, and was hastily written over the weekend, and not in the name of the actual property holder, Javed’s wife, whose ancestral property it stands on. Article 14 could not independently verify the claim of ownership. The notice was issued on 10 June but stuck to the family home late at night on 11 June. Fatima said they were never sent the notice. “No notice was given to my father,” said Fatima. “They just stuck it an hour ago.” “They basically want to demolish the house and they have been pestering and intimidating us into leaving our house, vacating our house since last night,” said Fatima. “The third time they came to detain me and my sister-in-law and when we refused to go with them, they said you have to leave your house. Because we refused, they have now come up with this notice.” Her lawyers have reportedly moved the Allahabad High Court against the “illegal demolition,” stating “Any attempt by the District & Police admin to demolish the house will be against the basic principle of law and a grave injustice to the wife and children of Javed Mohammad.” As for the support she has received on social media, Fatima said that she was tremendously appreciative, but it didn't change her current reality or the legal black hole that her family would be pulled into or the fear that has descended over Prayagraj, where she said the police were deployed “everywhere”. “It is a very tense situation,” she said. “Living like this is very scary.” When we asked Fatima what her years of activism meant through the lens of her father’s arrest, she said. “The whole exercise suddenly feels very futile to me.” ‘It doesn't feel like my story alone. It feels like the story of any Muslim family in India today,” said Fatima. “Any Muslim family today feels like if they speak out, the police may walk in and arrest a loved one." Link to the source: https://article-14.com/post/-it-could-happen-to-any-muslim-family-a-student-activist-on-her-father-s-arrest-demolition-of-her-home-62a5e50c79ac1 Article 14. All Rights Reserved.

By Becky Ferreira AN IMAGE FROM THE XINJIANG POLICE FILES SHOWS DETAINEES GUARDED BY CHINESE POLICE IN A DETENTION CENTRE. PHOTO: HANDOUT / THE VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION / AFP Mehray Mezensof’s life came crashing down in April, when a message from a contact in China’s far northwestern region of Xinjiang confirmed her worst nightmare. The 28-year-old had been waiting for news about her husband, Mirzat Taher, who was appealing against what she believed was his trumped-up terror conviction. Taher, 31, was hauled off by Chinese authorities in 2020, a fate that befell many Uyghurs—an ethnic group who are predominantly Muslims—in their neighborhood in Xinjiang’s capital city of Urumqi since 2017. Sitting at her current home in Australia, where he was supposed to join her, Mezensof trembled as she translated the text in the message word by word. It was a prison admission document that sealed his fate in black and white: Her husband, whom she described as easygoing and who ran a kebab shop, was sentenced to 25 years in prison on terrorism and separatism charges. “I just couldn't get those words out of my head. I felt like I lost a part of myself,” Mezensof told VICE World News. Taher is among more than a million estimated Uyghurs who have disappeared into China’s vast internment camps in Xinjiang. Beijing’s brutal crackdown on ethnic minorities in the region hold “a serious risk of genocide,” the European Parliament declared last week. Like many Uyghurs abroad who are searching for their family members back home, Mezensof had placed her hopes in Michelle Bachelet when the United Nations human rights chief in March announced her long-awaited visit to Xinjiang. “We had hoped that she would be the hero we are all seeking,” said Rayhan Asat, a Uyghur human rights lawyer based in the United States, whose brother has also been held by Chinese authorities since 2016. To their utter disappointment, instead of seeking accountability, the UN High Commissioner appeared to endorse China’s policies in a cautious statement at the end of her mission last month, which critics say did more harm than good to the Uyghurs’ cause. As the top envoy dragged her feet on a UN report on Xinjiang, her silence has drawn new scrutiny to China’s growing influence in the UN, which experts fear is undermining the credibility of the international body itself. “The stark reality is that the UN Human Rights officials are always working in the shadow of power,” said Richard Gowan, UN director of the Brussels-based think tank International Crisis Group. MEHRAY MEZENSOF AND HER HUSBAND MIRZAT TAHER IN XINJIANG, BEFORE HE WAS SENTENCED BY CHINESE AUTHORITIES TO 25 YEARS IN JAIL. PHOTO: COURTESY OF MEHRAY MEZENSOF Bachelet, whose itinerary in China was tightly controlled by Beijing, did not have unhindered access for an independent review. The former president of Chile, Bachelet has defended her contentious trip as an opportunity to establish dialogues with Chinese officials. But critics, including the Biden administration, argued that by agreeing to China’s terms, Bachelet has allowed herself to be manipulated. Her statement, delivered at a press conference in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou when her trip ended on May 28, confirmed their fears. The envoy started with lengthy praises of China’s efforts to alleviate poverty and improve gender rights. When she finally mentioned the operations in question, she framed them as law and policies to “counter terrorism and radicalism,” borrowing a term China has routinely used to justify its mass detention camps. Instead of condemning the measures, she encouraged the Chinese authorities to undertake a review to ensure they are not “applied in an arbitrary and discriminatory way.” “Hearing her words just felt like a complete punch to the gut,” Mezensof said. “She played right into China’s hands.” Bachelet’s statement stood in stark contrast with new evidence that came to light during her visit. Published by a media consortium, the Xinjiang Police Files is a trove of information allegedly obtained by hackers from law enforcement servers that includes police reports and briefings and speeches by Chinese officials. The revelations added to mounting evidence of China’s repression of Uyghurs in the region, which goes far beyond extralegal confinement—the only aspect addressed by Bachelet. It includes forced labor, child separation, and forced birth control, as revealed by satellite images, government documents, and testimonies from survivors. State documents from the files also lend weight to the conclusion that the orders came from the top of the Chinese Communist Party, said James Millward, a professor at Georgetown University who studies Chinese and Central Asian history. Most unsettling among the leaked files were the photographs of thousands of detainees from one county of the Kashgar prefecture in Xinjiang alone, where 12.1 percent of all ethnic adults were behind bars in 2018. Many were arrested on dubious terrorism charges merely for practicing their religion and listening to scriptures. “By adopting the People’s Republic of China’s talking points, Michelle Bachelet has muddied the waters,” Millward said. “Anyone who looks at those pictures, particularly of small children, would realize that this is not about counter terrorism. Rather it is a massive collective punishment on Uyghur people.” Rian Thum, a senior lecturer at the University of Manchester who studies the history of Muslims in China, called Bachelet’s trip a “propaganda victory” for the Chinese government. Thum and Millward are among 38 scholars that signed a joint letter last week urging Bachelet to incorporate their findings and release her report on Xinjiang “without political interference or further delay.” In a motion passed by a landslide margin on Thursday, the European Parliament expressed regrets that Bachelet failed to clearly hold the Chinese government accountable for its abuses and weighed in on calls for the envoy to immediately publish her findings. On Friday, more than 40 UN experts and special rapporteurs issued a joint letter , urging China to grant full access to independent experts and renewing calls for the Human Rights Council to convene a special session on China. In a statement to VICE World News on Thursday, the UN Human Rights office said the report is being updated and will be shared with the Chinese government for comments before it is published. It does not have an updated timeline. The office also acknowledged the in-depth research many academics and others have undertaken on Xinjiang. “We have taken into account relevant information in making our own assessment of the human rights situation,” it wrote. AN IMAGE FROM THE XINJIANG POLICE FILES SHOWS DETAINEE ILHAM ISMAYIL IN A DETENTION CENTRE IN THE XINJIANG REGION OF WESTERN CHINA. PHOTO: HANDOUT / THE VICTIMS OF COMMUNISM MEMORIAL FOUNDATION / AFP Before her recent trip in May, Bachelet first said in September last year her office was finalizing its assessment on the allegations of human rights violations in Xinjiang with a view to making it public. While it is well known that the UN can slow pedal politically sensitive reports for long periods—and even middle powers such as Saudi Arabia have successfully intervened in UN writing processes to remove criticisms—the report has been stalled for so long it is turning into a scandal, Gowan said. “If she doesn’t use this moment to put the report out, it will look like she is once again ducking a challenge to China,” he added. Dozens of human rights groups have demanded Bachelet’s resignation in a public letter last week, accusing her of “whitewashing the Chinese government’s human rights atrocities.” Given all the signs, few at this point expect Bachelet to deliver a highly critical report, but it remains an important text for Uyghurs who are building their case. “For all its weaknesses, a report from the UN still carries a degree of credence internationally that very few other reports can carry,” Gowan said. Despite the broad consensus among scholars and human rights groups on the scale and gravity of China’s crackdown on ethnic minorities, it remains a subjective issue in the UN world. China has constantly dismissed criticisms from the West as a plot to hinder its development and contain its rise. Although Washington designated China’s repression of Uyghurs as a genocide in July last year, the context of the move lessened its impact. “When it’s done by an outgoing Trump administration essentially as a final fuck you gesture to China, that doesn’t resonate very well with countries in Latin America or Africa,” Gowan said. Large swathes of the world, including many Muslim states, have not voiced any objection to China’s actions in Xinjiang. Some international companies, including Tesla, have shrugged off concerns of forced labor and continued to operate in the region. German car manufacturer Volkswagen has recently defended its presence by dismissing the Xinjiang Police Files as “desktop-only” research. A damning UN report could be the turning point Uyghurs need to turn the tide. UNITED NATIONS HIGH COMMISSIONER FOR HUMAN RIGHTS MICHELLE BACHELET DELIVERS A SPEECH AT THE OPENING OF A SESSION OF THE UN HUMAN RIGHTS COUNCIL IN GENEVA ON FEB 28. PHOTO: FABRICE COFFRINI / AFP More concerning, however, is the power play inside the UN system, where China has used its clout to rally other member states in the General Assembly to its side. In 2019, shortly after 22 countries, including Australia and Canada, condemned China’s treatment of Uyghurs in a letter to the UN Human Rights Council, China responded with a counter-letter , where 37 states, including Russia, North Korea, and Syria, endorsed its policies. “The common denominator among those signatories was their own atrocious human rights record,” Millward said. “It's quite ironic given that China often rejects what it calls the rules-based international order, it's now very keenly using certain international organizations to promote its message.” There are many vulnerability points across the international organization, which China could leverage to exert influence. For one, there is suspicion that Bachelet would be interested in succeeding António Guterres as UN Secretary General. “If this process ends up with her fundamentally out of favor with China, then China can always veto her selection as a Secretary General,” Gowan said. In addition, it could use its diplomatic strength to cut off financing to UN activities or block the reform efforts that Gutierrez was leading. Her office did not respond directly to a question on whether she intends to seek a second term after her mandate ends in August. “It’s ultimately a crisis where the structure of power in the UN system makes it impossible for the UN to act meaningfully,” Gowan said. “What is fundamentally broken about the UN is that powerful countries like China were able to shape the rules at the UN for the past few years, and just buy the silence of the vast majority of countries,” said Asat, who is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, the Washington-based think tank. For instance, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, having denounced China’s treatment of Uyghurs as early as 2009, has in recent years abandoned public criticism of China’s policies and cracked down on local Uyghur activists as Turkey strengthened economic ties with China. Similarly, Pakistan, which received billions in loans from China, has also looked the other way when it comes to Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang across the border, even though its leader, Imran Khan, frequently speaks out against Islamophobia in the West. “If we’re not vigilant about it, I’m worried that the entire UN system would totally undermine its own credibility because you’re creating a system that is only applicable for smaller states when it comes to human rights,” Asat said. Ironically, the UN's failure to hold China accountable could serve its own purpose. As people have been waiting for years for it to act, if the report turns out to be a damp squib, it could take away the possibility of counting on the international organization and galvanize coalitions of countries or civil society into action, Gowan said. As for Mezensof, this faint silver lining is the hope that keeps her going, no matter how frustrated she is with each setback. “I will try to do everything I possibly can to make a difference,” she said. “At the end of the day, I am the only one who can be a voice for my husband.” © 2022 VICE MEDIA GROUP

By Colin Zwirko Images obtained by NK News show notice posted at pharmacies warns violators' families will also be forcibly relocated. A Pyongyang pharmacy at night | Image: KCNA (May 26, 2022) North Korean authorities have threatened severe punishment — including the death penalty — for citizens who mishandle emergency medicine, according to images obtained by NK News of a notice posted outside a Pyongyang pharmacy in May, just days after state media announced the country’s first COVID-19 outbreak. The decree (포고), released by the Ministry of Public Security on May 14, states family members of violators will also be punished under the principle of guilt by association. It defines violations as involving “stealing or selling emergency medicines and raw materials on the black market” as well as producing or selling “fake or faulty medicines.” Those who “shake public sentiment by raising prices of foodstuffs and commodities just for the pursuit of money” will also be subject to punishment, it says. The decree, along with remarks by leader Kim Jong Un criticizing pharmacies in May, suggest North Koreans were privately buying, selling or bartering medicine away from state price and distribution controls, and that authorities initially struggled to manage the situation. According to the notice, “any violation of this decree will be regarded as an anti-state and anti-popular act that challenges the national maximum emergency anti-epidemic system and will be severely punished regardless of position, affiliation or merit according to the law of war.” “Those who commit especially severe violations of this decree will be subject to harsh punishment up to and including the death penalty, and family members living together with them will be subject to relocation and expulsion.” The notice separately addresses groups of workers and officials involved in each step of the process of supplying and delivering medicine, warning each segment against “favoritism” and distributing medicine to “personal” contacts. It says “loss and waste” of supplies will also be considered a crime. Two days before the notice was published, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un told officials to “mobilize reserve medical supplies” to fight the country’s first large-scale outbreak of COVID-19. He ordered the military to take over the job of stocking pharmacies and organizing medical deliveries in Pyongyang a few days later, after visiting pharmacies in the capital and criticizing them as ineffective as state media said over a million people had fallen ill in a short span nationwide. Echoing the decree detailed above, state media at the time said Kim condemned the director of the Central Public Prosecutors Office for “failing to stem various negative phenomena” in the implementation of new drug distribution policies. Soon after the army was mobilized, state media began a propaganda campaign showing soldiers delivering painkillers and treating suspected COVID-19 patients in their homes. The coverage suggested authorities were supplying the medicine to patients for free, but state media has not declared all such provisions are free of charge. NK News also obtained images of lists of medicine and their prices — nearly 700 different types — displayed outside Pyongyang pharmacies in the weeks after the initial outbreak, indicating customers are expected to pay out of pocket. The list appears to be of all government-approved medicines nationwide and their prices, with individual pharmacies marking which items are in stock and available without a doctor’s prescription. This may have been part of efforts to rein in sales of medicine “at high prices,” an act explicitly outlawed in the decree. Reports previously emerged in summer 2019 of a similar notice warning the death penalty would be used to deter the production and sale of fake medicine and alcohol. NK News also released a full translation of North Korea’s shoot-to-kill orders at the border introduced in early 2020 after Pyongyang closed the country to prevent the spread of COVID-19. Seung-Yeon Chung contributed to this report. Edited by Arius Derr. © 2022, Korea Risk Group (NK Consulting Inc.). All Rights Reserved

Taliban in Daikundi Province, Afghanistan have murdered at least 13 civilians. Credit: Amnesty International The brutal killing of my family members by the Taliban in Daikundi Province, Afghanistan By Abdul Rauf Hakimi I, Abdul Rauf Hakimi, call upon the United Nations, human rights organizations, civil society groups, and the United States and Australian Governments to condemn and take action to investigate the mass atrocity crimes in Sewak Shebar village in Daikundi province, Afghanistan. The tragic killing of my family members is part of the Taliban’s genocidal campaign against the Hazaras. On 24 November 2022, eight members of my family, including women and children, were murdered by the Taliban. Taliban forces killed each one in the mass shooting with over 60 bullets in their bodies. It was impossible to do ritual body washing of the deceased. Their bodies were wrapped in shrouds and buried in soaked blood. The victims include the following three children, a woman, and four civilian men: 1. Aminullah Mali Hakimi, an ethnic Hazara, 63 years old, was my elder brother. He is survived by his wife, two sons, and four daughters, aged between 6 and 27 years. 2. Ibrahim Yaqubi, an ethnic Hazara, 28 years old, was my nephew (my sister’s son). 3. Mohammad Alam Jafari, an ethnic Hazara, 45 years old, was still alive after the shooting, but was killed with a blow on the head from the butt of a gun that sliced his head open. 4. Mehdi Jafari, an ethnic Hazara, 14 years old, son of Mohammad Alam, was killed by the Taliban. 5. Shir Mohammad Jafari, an ethnic Hazara, 36 years old. 6. Mohammad Jafari, an ethnic Hazara, 11 years old son of Shir Mohammad Jafari. 7. Amir Jafari, an ethnic Hazara 40 years old. 8. Enayatullah Jafari, an ethnic Hazara, 12 years old, son of Amir Jafari. 9. Marwari Jafari, 38 years old, an ethnic Hazara, wife of Amir Jafari, was wounded from direct shots and seriously injured. On the morning of 24 November 2022, over 200 armed Taliban forces – consisting of local Taliban and Taliban from other provinces, and armed with light and heavy weapons, including Kalashnikovs, rockets, tanks, and grenades – surrounded the house of Amir Jafari. Marwari, the wife of Amir Jafari, witnessed the first shot at her home during the Morning Prayer and saw hundreds of Taliban forces around their house. They were given no chance to engage in discussion with these forces. The armed operation was unexpected and had no conceivable justification. Amir Jafari was involved in a land dispute with another family in the village. Land disputes are endemic in Afghanistan among families, tribes, and ethnicities. Those with whom Mr. Jafari was in dispute used their ties to the Taliban to prompt the Taliban to take military action against Mr. Jafari and his family. Months before, the Taliban had summoned the Jafari brothers to the provincial center concerning the land dispute. The last instruction from the Taliban was to ask the Jafaris to remain in their village until further notice. The presence of large Taliban military forces created a dangerous environment for all villagers. The Jafaris were fearful for their lives and locked themselves in their home. Aminullah Mali Hakimi, my brother, a well-known elder in the village, was a longtime local contact for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). He was a candidate from Daikundi province for the 2018 parliamentary elections. My brother came to the site to mediate with the Taliban. He assured the Taliban that his nephew and their cousins were harmless and unarmed. He asked the Taliban forces to take his nephews and their cousins for investigation at the provincial capital and leave the village with armed forces as they had caused fear and distress to the villagers. My nephew, Ibrahim Yaqubi, staying at the house of his cousins, the Jafaris, was handed to the Taliban as a mediation measure for investigation. He was the first person to be shot. The Taliban started a mass shooting and killed him on the spot with over 40 bullets. My brother, Aminullah Mali, ran towards the victim to see if he was alive. Mali was shot from behind in a burst of fire and killed immediately. Mali only intended to mediate and prevent the emergence of harmful tension in the village. The three Jafari brothers and their three children, all in their homes, were brought out and shot dead one by one. Anyone who resisted and tried to run away was hit with more bullets. After the massacre of all eight individuals, the family home was rocketed and demolished. All their belongings, including their animals, crops, and food, were destroyed. As more people arrived on the scene, including my two other nephews, they were captured and chained by the Taliban forces. Five men are still in Taliban custody, and one is missing. We do not know their whereabouts. No one can visit the de facto authorities in the provincial center, fearing imprisonment and killing. My second and only living brother is now on the run with his family. I am fearful for their lives, and for the lives of Mali’s family, my nephew’s surviving families, and the family members of the Jafaris who have lost everything. My remaining family members cannot survive under the Taliban regime, especially since the news of the Taliban massacre has broken out on international media and the situation in the village is very tense, insecure and unpredictable. There is no rule of law in Afghanistan, no due process, no legitimate authorities, and no transparent institutions to which my family and I could make complaints, pursue demands for justice, or hold the Taliban forces accountable for their brutal massacre. Land disputes are not typically resolved by mass killings. Therefore, it seems overwhelmingly likely that the ethnic identity of my extended family was the reason for the heinous attack in Daikundi that murdered civilians, including children, in such brutal ways. I am seeking help from the UN, US, Canada, the EU, and Middle Eastern countries to bring my remaining family members to safety. I am the only immediate family member in a safe place, and I need help from the international community to prevent another massacre against my family members and my village. While the corpses of my family members are still bleeding in their graves from the Taliban’s bullets, I request in the strongest language possible that the international community, human rights organizations, and civil society groups around the world take the following effective steps to bring justice for my family: 1. I respectfully request the international community and human rights organizations to condemn the mass atrocity crimes against Hazara families in Daikundi province. 2. I call upon them to act immediately to pressure the Taliban authorities to release my two nephews and their three cousins from Taliban custody that could lead to their murder. 3. I call upon the United Nations Office of Richard Bennett, the Special Rapporteur on the situation of Human Rights in Afghanistan, to investigate the murders of my family members by Taliban forces. As a helpless surviving family member, I seek justice for the massacre of my family. Abdul Rauf Hakimi Melbourne, Australia 30 November 2022 For inquiries please email: inquiryhakimi@gmail.com

By Armenian National Committee of America STEPANAKERT, REPUBLIC OF ARTSAKH – On Tuesday, December 27th - the 17th day of Azerbaijan's brutal blockade of Artsakh - ANC Artsakh's Gev Iskajyan sat down with Artsakh State Minister Ruben Vardanyan to discuss the power and resiliency of the Artsakh people in the face of Azerbaijan's escalating aggression, and the vital role of the Armenian diaspora to ensure Artsakh's survival. Watch the video, then visit anca.org/blockade to write, text, and tweet your the White House, your U.S. Senators and Representative to condemn Azerbaijan and: 1) Enforce Section 907 and stop all U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan 2) Impose sanctions on Azerbaijan, using Magnitsky laws and all other applicable legal instruments 3) Send emergency humanitarian assistance - by air or land - to the 120,000 Armenians suffering a humanitarian crisis. ©️ANCA