By Reuters August 25, 2024 Rapper Macklemore performs during the opening ceremony of the Invictus Games, in Duesseldorf, Germany, September 9, 2023. REUTERS/Thilo Schmuelgen/File Photo Purchase Licensing Rights DUBAI, Aug 25 (Reuters) - American rapper Macklemore said he has cancelled his October show in Dubai in protest over the United Arab Emirates' support for Sudan's paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), a warring party in the country's civil war . "The current situation in Sudan is urgent, horrific and it's going largely unnoticed globally. I'm following the lead of Sudanese organizers and activists who are trying to be heard,” he wrote in an Instagram post on Saturday explaining his decision to cancel the Oct 4 concert. "Until the UAE stops arming and funding the RSF I will not perform there." As the UAE’s glitzy political and tourism hub, Dubai frequently hosts international artists and sporting events. Macklemore's decision to cancel an engagement because of the country's politics is extremely rare. Neither the UAE's foreign ministry nor its global media office immediately responded to Reuters' request for a response to Macklemore's decision to cancel. Sudan's army has publicly criticised the UAE over its alleged support for the RSF, its rival in the war. The UAE denies the allegations, though U.N. experts have said they are credible. The allegations surfaced in a fiery back and forth at the U.N. security council in June. The war in Sudan began in April 2023 when competition between the army and the RSF, who had previously shared power after staging a coup, flared into open warfare. Efforts in pursuit of a ceasefire, including talks ongoing in Switzerland, have not eased the fighting, and half of Sudan's 50 million population lack food. Macklemore, a Grammy-winning artist, said in his post that the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza prompted him to reconsider how he earns money and his ability to use his artistic platform for activism. "If I take the money, while knowing it doesn't sit right with my spirit, how am I any different than the politicians I've been actively protesting against?" he wrote, urging other artists scheduled to play in Dubai to reconsider. Macklemore in May released Hind's Hall, a high-profile protest anthem in solidarity with pro-Palestinian activists occupying university campuses in response to the war in Gaza. Reporting by Andrew Mills Editing by Bernadette Baum © 2024 Reuters. All rights reserved

By Frank Gardner, BBC Security Correspondent Weapons dealers in Yemen are openly using the social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, to sell Kalashnikovs, pistols, grenades and grenade-launchers. The traders operate in the capital Sana’a and other areas under control of the Houthis, a rebel group backed by Iran and proscribed as terrorists by the US and Australian governments. "It is inconceivable that they [the weapons dealers] are not operating on the Houthis’ behalf," said the former British Ambassador to Yemen, Edmund Fitton-Brown, who now works for the Counter Extremism Project. "Purely private dealers who tried to profit from supplying, [for example] the government of Yemen, would be quickly shut down." An investigation by The Times newspaper found that several of the Yemeni accounts bore the blue tick of verification. Both The Times and the BBC have approached X for comment, but have not so far received any response. Most of the platform’s content moderators were laid off after the new owner Elon Musk bought the company in 2022. The advertisements are mostly in Arabic and aimed primarily at Yemeni customers in a country where the number of guns is often said to outnumber the population by three to one. The BBC has found several examples online, offering weapons at prices in both Yemeni and Saudi riyals. The words beside the weapons are designed to lure in the buyers. "Premium craftsmanship and top-notch warranty," says one advertisement. "The Yemeni-modified AK is your best choice." A demonstration video, filmed at night, shows the seller blasting off a 30-round magazine on full automatic. Another offers sand-coloured Pakistani-produced Glock pistols for around $900 each. Yet these advertisements are not hidden in the depths of the Dark Web, where guns and other illegal items are usually traded, they are in plain sight on X, openly accessible to millions of people. Commenting on this, UK-based NGO Tech Against Terrorism issued what it called an urgent plea to tech platforms to actively remove Houthi-supporting content on the internet and social media platforms. The Houthis, a mountain-based tribal minority, swept to power in Yemen in 2014, ousting the UN-recognised government. Since then, a seven-year military campaign led by neighbouring Saudi Arabia failed to remove them, while the country descended into civil war. In late 2023 the Houthis, who have an extensive arsenal of drones and missiles, many supplied by Iran, have been targeting commercial and naval shipping in the Red Sea. The Houthis say this is in support of Palestinians in Gaza, but many of the vessels have had no links to Israel. A US-led maritime force offshore has failed to stop the Houthis’ attacks on shipping, which have had a disastrous effect on trade passing through Egypt’s Suez Canal. Copyright 2024 BBC.

The Legal Fight Over the Meaning of ‘Genocide’ Debates over how to describe conflicts in Gaza, Myanmar and elsewhere are channeling a controversy as old as the word itself. The New York Times Magazine Aug. 20, 2024 By Linda Kinstler On Feb. 26, 2007, Smail Čekić stormed out of the Peace Palace, the seat of the International Court of Justice, carrying the decision the judges had just handed down. The case that concluded that day, Bosnia v. Serbia, was to determine whether Serbia had violated the Genocide Convention during the Bosnian War, when Bosnian Serb forces killed an estimated 100,000 civilians. Čekić, then the director of Sarajevo University’s Institute for Research of Crimes Against Humanity and International Law and a Bosnian victim of the war, had hoped the court, which is based in The Hague, would punish his compatriots’ deaths and acknowledge them as victims of genocide. Instead, the court declined to classify a vast majority of the Bosnian deaths as genocidal. For Čekić and other survivors, the ruling was a betrayal: They felt that the court had refused to recognize the true nature of the violence. Newspapers reported that  Serbia had been found not guilty of genocide;  a celebration was planned at the Serbian Embassy. Standing outside the I.C.J., the top court of the United Nations, Čekić tore the text of the judgment to pieces.   That day, the court ruled that over the course of the war, Serbia committed genocide only in one instance. During the 1995 Srebrenica massacre, Bosnian Serb fighters took roughly 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys to predetermined sites before killing them and throwing their bodies into mass graves. In a vast landscape of murder that, as the judges acknowledged, included horrors like the systematic torture, rape and beatings of Bosnians in detention camps and the expulsion of thousands of non-Serbs, this   episode alone appeared sufficiently genocidal to the judges. Only there did the perpetrators explicitly display the  dolus specialis , or specific intent, “to destroy, in whole or in part, the group as such” required for a killing to be considered an instance of genocide. Killings elsewhere in Bosnia may have been war crimes or crimes against humanity — acts that were equally grave — but the decision argued that wherever there were any other plausible reasons for why the killings took place, the court could not rule that genocide definitively occurred. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Awn Shawkat Al-Khasawneh of Jordan chastised his colleagues for failing to appreciate the “definitional complexity” of genocide by interpreting the intent requirement so narrowly. Marko Milanović, now a scholar of international law, was working as a clerk at the I.C.J. that day in 2007. He watched on TV as Čekić tore up the verdict in anger. For him, the episode heralded a rupture that by then was already underway. The moral force of the word “genocide” and the public understanding of the word had become fully detached from its relatively narrow legal meaning. Ever since the Polish lawyer Raphael Lemkin coined the word in 1944, by combining the Greek word  genos , meaning “race or tribe,” with the Latin  cide,  or “killing,” it has been pulled taut between languages — Greek and Latin, legal and moral.   In his book from that year, “Axis Rule in Occupied Europe,” Lemkin explains that he saw the word as describing “an old practice in its modern development.” In his view, genocide encompassed a broad array of crimes committed with the intent to destroy a national, religious, racial or ethnic group. A secular Jew who believed that every people carried its own distinct spirit, Lemkin argued that genocide included acts not just of physical obliteration but also of cultural annihilation. For him, the word described any attempt to stamp out a people’s essence from the earth. It included mass killings as well as actions to eliminate the “essential foundations of the life of national groups”: the destruction of language, traditions, monuments, artworks, archives, libraries, universities and places of worship. Lemkin’s hope was that coining the word, and persuading nations to recognize it as a crime, might somehow prevent it from recurring. He wanted his neologism to convert what Winston Churchill once called a “crime without a name” into an identifiable, obvious and abhorrent thing. But by the time the United Nations approved the Genocide Convention on Dec. 9, 1948, making genocide a crime under international law, only a shadow of Lemkin’s original idea survived. After years of contentious deliberation and diplomatic negotiation, the convention limited genocide to five categories of acts: killing members of a group; causing group members serious bodily or mental harm; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; forcibly transferring children from one group to another; and “deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.” Each one of these acts could constitute genocide only if and when committed with the specific intent to destroy a protected group. All state parties agreed to prevent and punish any instance of this crime. The convention was a momentous achievement, but it essentially “sat on a shelf” for 50 years before it was ever used in court, the international legal scholar Leila Sadat told me. Untested, the potential applications of the convention remained undeveloped. Today conflicts around the globe, including Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, Russia’s war in Ukraine and the persecution of Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority, are forcing a reappraisal of genocide’s legal definition. Dozens of states are now directly or indirectly involved in one of four genocide cases pending before the I.C.J. The most closely watched of these cases, and also the most controversial, are two pertaining to the war in Gaza: The first case, brought by  South Africa, accuses Israel of violating the Genocide Convention  through its indiscriminate attacks on Palestinian civilians. The second case, brought by  Nicaragua, accuses Germany of complicity in genocide  because of its continued export of arms to Israel. Final decisions in the suits are not expected for several years, but they’ve already altered an ongoing debate about whether the definition of genocide ought to be updated for the 21st century. For nearly 80 years, the word has been indelibly associated with the Holocaust. To invoke “genocide” is to immediately conjure up the memory of the destruction of the Jewish people and its associated architecture of murder: concentration camps and deportation trains, ghettos and gas chambers. This relation has at once augmented genocide’s moral force and undermined its legal uses. The Holocaust is viewed both as the awful standard against which all modern atrocities must be measured and as a supposedly unrepeatable catastrophe to which they must never be compared. The Genocide Convention effectively enshrined this paradoxical understanding of the Shoah and established a nearly impossible bar for genocidal intent based on its example. As a result, international courts have rarely recognized more recent mass killings as instances of the crime, and peoples seeking to have their suffering recognized as such have been bitterly disappointed. The suits brought by South Africa and Nicaragua aim to challenge this state of affairs and make the Genocide Convention the tool for prevention and protection that Lemkin wanted it to be.   When the United Nations  passed the Genocide Convention, Lemkin did not celebrate. It represented the triumph of many thankless years of work, but Lemkin was nowhere to be found.  The Times reporter A.M. Rosenthal  found him weeping inside the darkened assembly hall. A few days later, Lemkin was hospitalized for exhaustion, a condition he mordantly called “genociditis.” This anecdote is sometimes told as a story of how his long-fought victory overwhelmed him; it can also be read as evidence of just how profoundly the world had, by then, let him down. Raphael Lemkin, a Polish lawyer, coined the word “genocide” in 1944 and hoped that persuading nations to recognize it as a crime might somehow prevent it from recurring.Credit ...Bettmann/Getty Images Lemkin lost at least 49 members of his family in the Holocaust. He only narrowly escaped the same fate himself. Witnessing the systematic mass murder of European Jews sharpened his desire to codify a law against genocide, but his obsession with the legal problem that it presented predated World War II. As a young boy in Poland, he witnessed pogroms of the Jewish population, an experience that ignited his interest in cases of mass slaughter. Later, he read accounts of the Armenian genocide and wondered how it could be easier to punish someone for killing a single individual than to hold a state accountable for murdering millions. After escaping the Nazis, he was a presence in the halls of the Palace of Justice at Nuremberg, where he tried and failed to get the Allied judges to include the crime of genocide in their final judgment. Lemkin nurtured an almost-fanatical belief in law’s capacity to alleviate humanity’s worst afflictions. He knew that many people regarded him as a “pest” and that he was always at risk of wearing out his welcome wherever he appeared. Sometimes the seeming impossibility of his self-appointed task wore him down. “There were many days when he sat slumped in the cafeteria over a cup of coffee, barely able to lift it for the weariness in him and the rebuff,” Rosenthal   wrote.   He spent the last decade of his life traveling to diplomatic capitals, living off borrowed funds and haranguing United Nations delegates who eventually whittled down his expansive theory of genocide. The Soviets, fearing they could be held accountable for their own domestic mass killings, objected to the protection of political groups under the convention. The Americans worried about language that could be used to interpret a history of lynching and Jim Crow laws as a form of genocide. Major powers compromised in favor of a definition that was both narrow and opaque. By codifying genocide this way, the convention paradoxically made it far more difficult to identify and prove, amplifying the concept’s rhetorical power while leaving it to the courts to determine how it would be applied. Not long after it was adopted, genocide allegations began to flood diplomatic channels. In 1951, the American Civil Rights Congress presented a paper titled “We Charge Genocide” to the United Nations, arguing that the United States was indeed guilty of genocidal actions against African Americans. (In a letter to  The Times, Lemkin strongly rejected  the logic of this claim.) Arab nations argued that French colonial massacres in Algeria had been instances of genocidal violence. African nations argued that South Africa’s apartheid policies amounted to a genocide of its Black population and that Portugal had committed genocide in its colonial territories. After Israel captured and occupied the Gaza Strip and other territories during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, neighboring states increasingly accused it of genocide against the Palestinian people. None of these allegations were converted into formal proceedings. For decades to come, the jurisprudence of genocide remained conspicuously silent, while philosophical and colloquial uses of the word accumulated moral and political force. Lemkin died penniless and alone in 1959 and was buried in a modest plot in Queens. It was only in the 1990s that the convention was actually used in court, and even then the memory of the Holocaust limited its application. In 1994, the United Nations established the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda in order to try Rwandan officials on charges of genocide, which eventually resulted in convictions. (Until the International Criminal Court, or I.C.C., began operating in 2003, special tribunals — bespoke judicial outfits created to prosecute a specific group of perpetrators — were the only means by which individual offenders could be held accountable by international bodies.) “In the Rwanda tribunal, genocide was never really in question there,” the legal scholar William Schabas told me. “It was just obvious.” The manner of the killing — one ethnic group deliberately and systematically slaughtering another — closely resembled Nazi Germany’s genocidal campaign.   After Rwanda came the first wave of international genocide cases, each of which exposed the convention’s limitations. A similar tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, tried individual perpetrators of the Yugoslav wars. Struggling to classify the wars’ disparate and varied killings, it fell back on a strict interpretation of the Genocide Convention, finding that only in Srebrenica was genocidal intent the only possible motivation for the murders — an interpretation that the I.C.J. later emulated in its separate consideration of Serbian state responsibility. The resulting ruling in the Bosnia v. Serbia   case marked at once the beginning of genocide litigation at the I.C.J. and, for many years, its functional end. The strict legal interpretation of genocide has meant that courts might never recognize many of the worst atrocities of the past several decades as genocide. These include but are not limited to the  killing of some 300,000 people in the Darfur region of Sudan , the murder of more than a million during the  Nigeria-Biafra war , the Iraqi government’s mass deportation and  killing of an estimated 100,000 Kurds  in the late 1980s and the  Yazidi massacres by ISIS  in 2014. If Lemkin were alive today, he would most likely recognize the  Chinese effort  to indefinitely detain, re-educate, imprison and torture Uyghurs, and to destroy their mosques, confiscate their literature and ban their language in schools, as precisely the kind of cultural and physical genocide that he hoped his convention would eliminate. While China is a party to the Genocide Convention, it has refused — like the United States, France and Russia — to recognize the jurisdiction of the I.C.J., shielding itself from the court’s authority. The many catastrophes that have been publicly, but not legally, recognized as genocide underscore the outsize influence of the I.C.J.’s 2007 Bosnia v. Serbia decision.   That case marks the only instance in the court’s 79-year existence in which its judges have determined that genocide definitively occurred, as well as the only time the court has ruled that a state actively failed to prevent the crime from unfolding. The ruling established several critical elements about the law of genocide, including that states are obligated to prevent genocide even outside their own borders and that isolated instances of genocide can occur amid a broader field of crimes against humanity.   A Bosnian Muslim woman searching coffins in Potocari, near Srebrenica, in 2011. The Bosnian Serb army killed an estimated 100,000 civilians during the Bosnian War of 1992-95; the International Court of Justice declined to classify most of these deaths as genocidal. Credit...Dado Ruvic/Reuters Yet in its remarkable parsimony, the 2007 ruling also reinforced the status of “genocide” as a somewhat inscrutable and unimaginable crime, underscoring the gravity of the offense while establishing such a high bar for genocidal intent that it would become virtually impossible to hold states responsible. It effectively meant that unthinkable atrocities could fail to satisfy the convention’s requirements if they were not accompanied by an overt statement of intent to wipe out an entire people, such as the written plan for a “final solution” that the Nazis adopted at the 1942 Wannsee Conference. “It was the nail in the coffin of the Genocide Convention,” Sadat says of the Bosnia   decision. In her view, the ruling converted the Genocide Convention from an active mechanism for preventing and punishing the elimination of entire peoples into a memorial to the Holocaust and the world’s failure to prevent it from unfolding. Events in Srebrenica and Rwanda were deemed genocidal in part because they resembled episodes from the Holocaust in form and process. Instances that did not fit this neatly macabre protocol could not be deemed genocidal beyond a reasonable doubt.   Scholars point to the response to the Khmer Rouge slaughter of an estimated two million Cambodians as a telling case of how the convention failed. The tribunal examining the crimes found that a vast majority of the killings did not legally qualify as genocide, because they were mostly of intellectuals and political opponents, not ethnic or religious groups. In the 16 years before it disbanded in 2022, the  tribunal convicted only two individuals of genocide,  and those convictions applied only to the killing of minorities. “This very strict interpretation of genocide does a disservice to those like Lemkin who really fought for this treaty,” Sadat says. Alex Hinton, a genocide scholar, says that “ultimately, by not punishing certain sorts of crimes,” the convention “leaves a big hole in the legal architecture for preventing mass human rights violations.” For Milanovic, the 2007 Bosnia decision augurs how the I.C.J. will probably rule in the two cases it is currently considering regarding Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza. While the I.C.J. is not strictly bound to follow its own precedent, whatever judgments are eventually handed down are almost certain to build on that decision’s example and to disappoint those who might look to the court as a source of emotional recognition and moral authority. On April 30, the I.C.J. issued an initial order in the Nicaragua v. Germany   case. While the court was “deeply concerned about the catastrophic living conditions of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip,” it declined to order provisional measures in the case. Instead, it merely reminded all states of their obligation “to ensure respect” of rules governing the conduct of war and said that Germany (the largest supplier of weapons to Israel other than the United States) was obliged to use “all means reasonably available” to prevent the commission of genocide.   The lawyers John Dugard (left), Tembeka Ngcukaitobi and Adila Hassim at the International Court of Justice in The Hague before a January 2024 hearing in the genocide case against Israel brought by South Africa.Credit ...Hollandse Hoogte/Shutterstock In the  only dissenting opinion , Al-Khasawneh, who is serving as an ad hoc judge in the case, pointed out that Germany sent 3,000 anti-tank weapons to Israel after Oct. 7. “Anyone familiar with their use in civil wars would know or ought to know that, especially when employed against an enemy which does not have tanks, as is the case in Gaza, they are used to target homes and other buildings with the devastating effect of penetrating the building and indiscriminately incinerating everyone inside,” he wrote. By declining to take further action, the court betrayed the preventive function of the Genocide Convention. Not only was Germany surely aware of a possible genocide in the making in Gaza, he argued, but there was also an imminent risk that the possibility would soon become a reality: “There are none so blind as those who will not see.” The ongoing debate  over whether “genocide” describes the current Israeli violence in Gaza has become an occasion for politicians, scholars, activists and lawyers to reappraise the legal architecture — and the history — that we have all inherited and to begin to rethink how moral responsibility for the worst categories of crimes ought to be assigned. Over the past several months, as the I.C.J. has begun to weigh the two cases pertaining to Israel and Gaza, protesters around the world have offered their own judgments in advance. “Stop the Genocide,” their posters have proclaimed. “Let Gaza Live.” They have urged universities to divest from Israel’s arms suppliers and have called for a cease-fire, among other measures. Their signs and demands have sought to mobilize the rhetorical force that “genocide” has accrued.   They have many potential instances of the crime to point to. In December,  President Biden rebuked Israel  for its “indiscriminate bombing” of Gaza. Israeli attacks with the stated goals of targeting Hamas commanders or freeing hostages have resulted in tens of thousands of civilian casualties, deaths that are grouped under the military acronym “CIVCAS.” Half a million  Gazans are facing catastrophic levels of starvation ; earlier this month, the Israeli finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, suggested that allowing the entire Gazan population to die of hunger might be “justified and moral.” Palestinian communities in the West Bank have been  forcibly removed from their lands , and entire swathes of Gaza have been emptied and flattened — actions that are intended, the protesters would argue, to bring about (in the convention’s language) “conditions of life” that would result in the “physical destruction” of the Palestinian community there. But Israel argues that the continued presence of Hamas — a violent organization that aims to “obliterate” Israel — in Gaza necessitates such military action. This means that if the strict interpretation of the Genocide Convention prevails at the I.C.J., it is possible that none of these actions will meet the legal definition of the crime. But the protests underscored that the story will not end there. Just as previous generations levied claims of “genocide” to expose racial injustice, colonial violence and "ethnic cleansing" (forced displacement) around the world, today’s activists are grasping for language with which to describe the violence that they see unfolding. The word “genocide,” the international-affairs scholar Zachariah Mampilly says, is not meant to be precise. “It’s meant to serve a political, moral purpose, not to be a technical legal term,” he argues, and protesting students are recruiting this quality to their cause. Law is designed to move slowly, its gaze fixed firmly upon the past rather than the future. “Laws as they emerge are always fighting the previous war,” the legal scholar Sarah Nouwen told me. The Genocide Convention emerged as an immediate response to World War II. Today its terms are being renegotiated in real time as part of an effort to bring them up to date with the last 80 years of war. One likely effect of all this activity is that the court will relax its evidentiary requirements for proving genocidal intent. Last November, several nations, including Canada, Germany and Britain, filed a joint submission in the Myanmar   case arguing that the court should do precisely that, taking into account factors like the victimization of children, the commission of gender-based violence and the forced displacement of the Rohingya people as circumstantial evidence of genocide. There is also momentum building behind  a new convention  that would patch the loophole that the Genocide Convention exposed. Ever since the 2007 Bosnia ruling, a group of legal scholars led by Sadat has been working to advance a proposed crimes-against-humanity convention that would create a mechanism for states to bring actions against other nations for perpetrating such crimes. This proposed convention aims to rebalance the hierarchy of violence that has elevated genocide above all other violations. It could help end the regime of impunity that has allowed states to get away with acts of mass killing for far too long. In 2019, the United Nations International Law Commission submitted its own draft convention inspired by Sadat’s proposal. In early April, the U.N. Sixth Committee, which considers legal questions, held a series of hearings on the draft. This October, the committee will meet to decide whether the proposed convention should move forward into the formal negotiation phase. The crimes-against-humanity convention aims to carry forward Lemkin’s legacy and provide a sorely needed mechanism for innocent people to be protected from slaughter — or, at the very least, to seek legal recourse for their suffering.   Lemkin crafted the word “genocide” in an attempt to close the gap between our moral imagination and the constraints of our legal systems. His unflagging belief in the power of law ushered the Genocide Convention into being, yet it also produced its own set of intractable dilemmas. “He encouraged journalists to think of him as a total idealist, which made it easier to screen out harder questions about politics and law,” the historian James Loeffler told me. Lemkin created an important pathway for accountability, but in restricting his pursuit of justice to the courts, he largely avoided questions about how political power can hinder just outcomes. Today we have another chance to grapple with that problem. “What does justice look like for Palestine? What does justice look like for Israel? We haven’t really gotten to the point of thinking through what that would mean,” Loeffler says. “As the gap grows between those who are genuinely anguished by the violence they see unfolding, and this arcane maneuvering to lumber toward legal clarity — that can challenge the whole system.” The time for evading those hard questions ran out long ago. For Palestinians, Israelis, Ukrainians, Rohingya, Sudanese and so many others, no judicial decision can change the fact of destruction or undo the sheer volume of loss. Yet out of the debate over what “genocide” means in the courts and in the streets, a renewed sense of moral clarity may soon come. About the Author: Linda Kinstler is a junior fellow at Harvard’s Society of Fellows and the author of “Come to This Court and Cry: How the Holocaust Ends.” She has written extensively about legal history and the politics of memory.   A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 25, 2024, Page 20 of the Sunday NY Times Magazine  Copyright 2024 The New York Times Company

By Tesfalem Araia Berhane Abrehe - a former Eritrean finance minister and fierce critic of the country's president - has died in prison, his family say. The 79-year-old was Eritrea's longest serving minister of finance, but he was removed from his role in 2012 following clashes with President Isaias Afwerki. Six years later, he was jailed after releasing a book where he described the president as a "dictator" who needed to resign. His family told the BBC that the authorities, who rarely confirm the deaths of senior officials in custody, had notified them of Mr Berhane's death. The government also rarely shares where the bodies are buried but Mr Berhane's family have heard there is a plan to bury him in Asmara Patriots Cemetery. Only veterans of the Eritrean independence war, like Mr Berhane, or members of the national service can be buried there. His body has not yet been released, his family said, and it is not clear when and exactly how Mr Berhane died. He was never brought before a court of law. President Isaias has ruled the East African country, without holding national elections, since winning the independence war against Ethiopia in 1991. Political parties, civic organisation and independent media are all banned. The UN and human rights groups have long accused the Eritrean government of gross human rights violations, including torture, forced disappearance and the imprisonment of tens of thousands of people in inhumane conditions. Mr Berhane's fall-out with President Isaias began during the former's 12-year tenure as finance minister, in which he urged Mr Isaias for transparency on the country's budget. The budget is still inaccessible to the public today. In 2012, Mr Berhane was removed from his post and sidelined from politics. Three years later he secretly wrote a two-volume book named My Country, and sent it abroad to be published. Alongside calling his old boss a dictator and demanding he resign, Mr Berhane used the book to challenge Mr Isaias to a debate on national television. He also called for the reinstatement of the national assembly - Eritrea's parliament - which had been dissolved by the president in 2002. To this day, there is still no legislative body to hold the government accountable. In 2018, after Mr Berhane had published My Country, he was detained and imprisoned in an unknown location. By this time his wife was already in prison, although no reason was given. She was released in 2019. One of Mr Berhane's sons, who was also detained during the same period as his mother, previously described his family's ordeal to the BBC. “I am living with a dim glimmer of hope that my father who has health issues [will be out of prison one day],” Efrem Berhane said in 2020. The 31-year-old, who lives in the US after fleeing Eritrea, asked: “How can people be kidnapped by a government and disappear for years? Why do people show such cruelty on a fellow human like this?" But some people have been imprisoned for even longer. In September 2001, 11 senior ministers and generals who were part of a group known as the “G-15” were arrested after they criticised the president. The collective - which included three former foreign ministers, an education minister and a former armed forces chief of staff - have not been seen since. In Eritrea, political prisoners are often prohibited from contact with the outside world. In February, Ilze Brands-Kehris, United Nations Assistant Secretary General for Human Rights said "impunity persists" for human rights violations in Eritrea. "Our office continues to receive credible reports of torture; arbitrary detention; inhumane conditions of detention; enforced disappearances; restrictions of the rights to freedoms of expression, of association, and of peaceful assembly," she said. Born in Eritrea in 1945, Mr Berhane earned an MA degree in economics from a US university before joining the struggle for independence from Ethiopia. He is the father of four children. Copyright 2024 BBC. All rights reserved.

By  MARCOS ALEMÁN Updated 5:41 PM CDT, August 21, 2024 FILE - People detained by national police are transported to a detention center, in Soyapango, El Salvador, Oct. 7, 2022, during the state of the emergency declared to battle street gangs. Several nongovernmental organizations on Wednesday, Aug. 21, 2024, launched a registry of disappeared persons in El Salvador, a tool meant to help families with relatives who disappeared during the country’s extended state of emergency. (AP Photo/Moises Castillo, File) SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — Several nongovernmental organizations on Wednesday launched a registry of disappeared persons in El Salvador, a tool meant to help families with relatives who disappeared during the country’s extended state of emergency that was declared to battle street gangs. Under the state of emergency, originally declared in 2022 and still in effect , the government of President Nayib Bukele has rounded up more than 81,000 suspected gang members in sweeps that rights groups say are often arbitrary and based on a person’s appearance or where they live. Authorities have had to release about 7,000 people because of a lack of evidence. While the government is accused of committing mass human rights abuses in the crackdown, Bukele remains highly popular in El Salvador because homicide rates sharply dropped following the detentions. The Central American nation went from being one of the most dangerous countries in the world to having the lowest homicide rate in the region. Bukele rode that popularity to reelection in February , despite the country’s constitution prohibiting second terms for presidents. Last month, a human rights organization said that at least 261 people have died in prisons in El Salvador during the 2 1/2-year-old crackdown on street gangs. Among the eight NGOs supporting the registry is the Institute of Human Rights of the Catholic University of José Simeón Cañas. The organization said it hopes the registry will compile data to support the creation of policy and prevention programs, treatment and mitigation of social issues, and assist in the search for victims of forced disappearances. Family members of the disappeared persons can fill out a registry online with their relative’s details, creating a unique record that will help in the search for the missing family members. El Salvador has not had a single registry for disappeared persons that allows the standardization of data reported by the National Police, the Attorney General’s Office, the Institute of Forensic Medicine and other government agencies. This is an initial effort “to standardize the data and records of the cases,” said Silvia Elizondo, spokesperson for the NGOs. Data presented by the NGOs showed that between January and September 2023, the number of missing persons reported increased by 9.9%, compared to the same period in 2022. In their last report, the Attorney General’s Office reported 366 crimes of persons deprived of their liberty between June 1, 2023 and May 31, 2024, without giving any details about the circumstances. According to the most recent report from the Foundation of Law Enforcement Studies, a non-profit based in El Salvador, during the first three years of Bukele’s administration — he first took power on June 1, 2019 — the group registered approximately 6,443 reports of disappeared persons. More than one-third of those people have not been found. Moreover, the report also said that human rights organizations documented 327 reports of forced disappearances since March 27, 2022, when Bukele launched his crackdown on gangs. Rights groups have expressed concerns about abuses inside El Salvador’s prisons , and say that innocent people are being caught up in sweeps targeting the notorious violent street gangs. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Recent “unilateral acts” by rival sides in Libya have led to a rapid deterioration in political and economic stability coupled with rising insecurity, a senior UN official in the country told the Security Council on Tuesday.  Stephanie Koury, Deputy Special Representative and Officer-in-Charge of the UN Support Mission in Libya ( UNSMIL ), said these developments “have increased tension, further entrenched institutional and political divisions and complicated efforts for a negotiated political solution.” UNSMIL is working to promote de-escalation, and she stressed the need for the Council’s support. “The status quo is not sustainable,” she said . “In the absence of renewed political talks leading to a unified government and elections, you see where this is heading - greater political financial and security instability, entrenched political and territorial divisions, and greater domestic and regional instability.”   One Country, Two Governments Libya remains divided between two rival administrations.  The internationally recognized Government of National Unity (GNU) is based in the northwestern city of Tripoli and led by Prime Minister Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh, while the Government of National Stability (GNS) is based in the east. The GNU receives advisory support from the High Council of State (HSC), and the eastern government is backed by the House of Representatives (HoR) and the so-called Libyan National Army (LNA). Ms. Koury said the past two months have seen unilateral security moves by both the LNA and forces affiliated to the GNU, sparking mobilization by the other side. Heavy Armed Clashes Additionally, heavy clashes between two armed groups broke out in Tajoura, east of Tripoli, on 9 August, resulting in deaths, injuries to civilians and the destruction of property. Local mediation efforts were able to defuse the situation. “Unilateral actions by political and security figures are also undermining stability in other ways,” she added.  “Unilateral attempts to unseat the Central Bank Governor are met with countervailing attempts to maintain him.  Attempts to unseat the Prime Minister and his Government are met with attempts to maintain him.” Similar actions are also causing problems and instability in the economic sphere. Budget Battle Following months of efforts to develop a unified budget - with representatives from the east, west and south participating - the HoR adopted a supplementary budget allocation last month that was “submitted unilaterally by the House of Representatives-designated government,” she said, which western leaders denounced. She noted that efforts to change the Central Bank Governor continue. Libya’s Presidency Council recently issued a decision to name a new Governor and form a Board of Directors, which the HoR rejected. “These efforts are fueled by the perception that the Central Bank is not acting in a manner transparent and with fair governance to both east and the west in terms of allocation of resources,” she said. De-Escalation and Dialogue Ms. Koury reported that UNSMIL and UN Member States have been actively working to diffuse the situation. “As a first step, UNSMIL is working to help facilitate an overall de-escalation and is proposing talks to develop a set of confidence building measures between all parties to bring an end to unilateral actions and create a more conducive environment for resuming the political process,” she said. “Among other things, these types of measures would aim at ending unilateral actions and commitment to that, restoring confidence in the Central Bank, ensuring that moves by military and security actors are coordinated so as to prevent mobilization and fears among others.” Libyans Frustrated and Fearful Meanwhile, Libyans are frustrated with the status quo in their country and the toll it is taking on their lives. “Many express fear now about war once again erupting around clashes between armed groups. They also express fear about their ability to speak, share their political views, in a space free from threats. Youth do not see a future, except to try to leave.  This is not acceptable.” She told the Council that UNSMIL is using its good office’s role with focus on helping to de-escalate tensions, preserving stability and fostering confidence building measures, and preparing for the convening of Libyan-led political talks.  “Advancing the political process, while maintaining stability, is the key priority for UNSMIL”, she said, telling ambassadors, “I count on your support to take this forward.” Local Elections Progressing Despite the difficult context, local elections are moving forward and expected to take place in mid-October. Roughly 210,000 people have registered to vote and distribution of voter cards, as well as registration of candidates, began on 18 August.   “Unfortunately, female turnout remains relatively low, constituting only 30 per cent of the registered voters,” Ms. Koury said.  “I am also concerned there will be low participation of women as candidates,” she added, calling for more proactive measures to address the “many hurdles” they face, including intimidation, online violence and verbal attacks. Extremist Groups and Organized Crime Turning to other matters, Ms. Khoury said extremist organizations maintain access and presence in Libya by leveraging their connections with local and transnational organized crime.  This growing relationship is particularly concerning as weapons have reportedly been coming into the country, in violation of an arms embargo. On the humanitarian front, she reported that flooding in southwestern Libya on 16 August displaced an estimated 5,800 people.  The UN Country Team has responded, dispatching humanitarian supplies, in coordination with the authorities. The number of Sudanese refugees in Libya has also risen to 97,000 following the outbreak of war in April 2023.  Most are arriving in al-Kurfa, where they face challenging conditions, however a UN plan for the refugees is only 21 per cent funded.  Copyright © 2024 United Nations

BY  EVENS SANON Updated 4:33 PM CDT, August 19, 2024 A woman is affected by tear gas fired by police to disperse a protest demanding that police and the Prime Minister take immediate action against gangs in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, Monday, Aug. 19, 2024. (AP Photo/Odelyn Joseph) PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AP) — Police in Haiti’s capital tear-gassed hundreds of peaceful protesters Monday as they called on law enforcement to help them stop the gangs that have been violently seizing control of their neighborhoods. Protesters burned tires to show their anger over the police action and express their frustration as recent moves to quell rampant gang violence in Port-au-Prince have largely been unsuccessful. Protesters like 24-year-old phone repairman Marclin Jean-Pierre said he took to the streets “to express my anger towards the government, who isn’t listening.” “We’re vulnerable to the bullets being fired day and night. Everyone is scared to walk outside because we’ll be the next victims,” he said. “We’re asking them for help and they’re not coming.” Jean-Pierre lives in the hillside neighborhood of Solino, which since last year has become a battleground for gangs seeking to take over the area. Local media reported that the attacks were carried out by a coalition of gangs led by Kempes Sanon, a convicted kidnapper who escaped from prison in 2021, and notorious gang leader Jimmy Cherizier , also known as “Barbecue”. Since the killing of President Jovenel Moïse in 2021, gangs have consumed much of the country and currently control about 80% of the capital, Port-au-Prince. In Solino, the gangs sought to seize control of a strategic route, including the road leading to the capital’s international airport. Families in the area have been left terrorized and with few options left. Despite promises to prioritize security by recently appointed Prime Minister Garry Conille and the arrival of around 400 Kenyan police officers, part of a UN-backed mission, many in Haiti say they’ve felt no respite to the bloodshed. Just last week, another violent prison break left a dozen dead and hundreds of thousands have had to flee their homes over the years. Residents of the Solino neighborhood protested in hopes that their plight would be heard by officials and police would be sent to take on the gangs. Instead, marchers were blocked with barricades and sprayed with tear gas. It left many men and women running from the same forces they had hoped would protect them, and some like Jean-Pierre with a bitter taste in his mouth. “The international community is not pushing hard enough to stop the violence,” Jean-Pierre said. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

10 Years After ISIS Genocide, Christians Are Under Threat Woodrow Wilson Center August 19, 2024 By  Nadine Maenza   While Christians mark 10 years since the ISIS genocide in Nineveh, US-Sanctioned Rayan Al-Kildani and his Babylon Brigade are taking over, displacing Christian officials, and fostering corruption. Local leaders resisting his influence demand fair representation and protection of their community. Christians fleeing from Qarakosh, Nineveh Plain, Iraq 2014 credit Google Images In the coming weeks, the Iraqi Federal Court is expected to rule on the illegal removal of the Nineveh Provincial Council on July 2 and replacement of 15 mayors and directors. If this action stands, it will remove the last independent Christian mayors outside of the Kurdistan Region and have a devastating impact on the historic Syriac, Assyrian, and Chaldean Christian cities of Bartella, Qaraqosh, Tel Kef, and the Yazidi homeland of  Sinjar .  Before the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq that toppled Saddam Hussein, there were 1.5 million Christians in Iraq. US policy unfortunately increased sectarianism, which, in turn, hurt religious and ethnic minorities. By the time ISIS arrived, only 700,000 Christians remained, and under Islamic State rule Christians were  subject ed to “forced transfer, persecution, pillage, sexual violence and slavery, and other inhuman acts such as forced conversions and the intentional destruction of cultural heritage.” Now, reports suggest between  150,000  and  250,000  remain.  The Struggle for Qaraqosh   The largest Christian city in Iraq, Qaraqosh (Bakhdida) in the Al-Hamdaniya District, was captured by ISIS on August 6, 2014. Because the community was aware of the horrific crimes in Sinjar and Mosul, most of the 60,000 residents fled to Erbil in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq (KRI). By the time Qaraqosh was liberated on October 19, 2016, with $135 million in damages, churches and homes destroyed, 40% of Christian residents had already emigrated abroad or had decided to stay in the KRI.    On July 18, 2019, the United States  sanctioned  Rayan Al-Kildani, the leader of the 50th Brigade militia, for human rights abuses, including intimidation, extortion, and harassment of women. With accusations of systemic looting and illegally seizing land, the US said, “The 50th Brigade was reportedly the primary impediment to the return of internally displaced persons to the Nineveh Plains.” Immediately upon the district’s liberation, Iranian-aligned militias began seizing lands, preventing many residents from returning.  The 50th Brigade is now known as the Babylon Brigade or  Kataib Babiliyoun  (KB). While they are supported by Iran and close to Iran’s Quds Force, they fall under the Government of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) or “Hashd al-Shaabi.” While Kildani claims it is a Christian group and calls himself “Rayan the Chaldean,” most members are Shia from Southern Iraq who have relocated to the Nineveh Plains to build Kildani’s political strength. The political arm is known as the Babylon Movement.  Unfortunately, the consequence of ignoring this deadline has cost Iraqis enormously, especially religious minorities.  After the fall of ISIS, Iranian-aligned militias filled the vacuum in the Nineveh Plains, particularly in disputed territories claimed by both the Governments of Iraq and Kurdistan, neither of which adequately invested in its governance or security. In fact,  Article 140  of the 2005 Iraqi Constitution lays out a process to resolve the disputed territories with a deadline of 2007. Unfortunately, the consequence of ignoring this deadline has cost Iraqis enormously, especially religious minorities.  Despite accusations of bribing and threatening voters, Rayan and his Iran-backed Babylon Movement  won  four of the five seats reserved for Christians in the 2021 Iraqi parliamentary election, exploiting loopholes in election laws. Kildani relied on support from Iranian-backed Shia groups to elect his candidates instead of giving Christians their promised voice in the parliament. During  provincial  elections in 2023, Kildani repeated his success by winning four seats reserved for Christians in the provincial elections in Basra, Baghdad, Kirkuk, and Nineveh. While initially Kildani lost the Basra seat to a church-backed candidate, he brought a legal case against him with accusations of being in the Baath party, leading to his elimination. Kildani’s candidate was his replacement.   In July 2023, it was  reported  that Kildani pressured the President of Iraq, Abdul Latif Rashid, to revoke a decree recognizing Cardinal Louis Sako as Patriarch of the Chaldean Catholic Church, the  largest Christian denomination  in Iraq (67%) and in full communion with the Roman Catholic Church. This led to Cardinal Sako withdrawing his headquarters from Baghdad and fleeing to Erbil. Kildani even  faked  a meeting with the Pope to try and gain legitimacy. While I was with Cardinal Sako days after he arrived in Erbil, he shared his fear for the future of the church in Iraq under such threats. Fortunately, in April 2024, Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani reinstated the decree, with Cardinal Sako immediately returning the church headquarters to Baghdad.   Resistance to Kildani   The Christian residents and leaders of Qaraqosh have refused to allow Kildani to take political control, although they endure regular harassment going through the militia checkpoints, especially women. On  March 11, 2023 , Kildani’s brother, Osama, who now commands the Babylon Brigade militia while Rayan focuses on the political movement, attempted to take over the base of the Christian Nineveh Plains Protection Units ( NPU ) in Qaraqosh, a force of 500 men organized for their protection.   Archbishop Younan Hanno and all the top Christian leaders, along with residents, marched towards the Babylon Brigade convoy to force the militia out of town. On August 5, the Council of Qaraqosh Archbishops, along with five Syriac, Assyrian, Chaldean political parties, held another  protest  against ongoing land theft, corrupt security forces, unfair elections for Christians, frustration with the demographic change, and anger at efforts to remove their political leadership and replace them with Kildani loyalists.    On September 26, a  devastating fire  broke out at a wedding reception in Qaraqosh, quickly igniting the entire building, killing 134 people, and injuring over 250, devastating the close-knit Syriac Catholic community. Just weeks after the fire, I was able to visit the reception hall and spend time sitting with families who were dealing with unimaginable grief. It seemed every family I met had lost at least one immediate family member, often a teenager, while also losing sisters, brothers, cousins, and parents.   Syriac Catholic Priest Father Adris Hanna, who spent time ministering to this community,  wrote  that “Exhaustion has taken its toll on the people, and thoughts of migration now loom large. The residents of Qaraqosh have faced persecution and expulsion, driven from their homeland due to their ethnicity and faith.” Many returned to rebuild after 2014, but even they are contemplating emigration due to constant threats.   With rumors that the wedding hall owner is affiliated with Kildani and angry with Kildani’s efforts to remove Christian officials, residents refused to let Kildani and his Babylon-affiliated Member of Parliament Duraid Jamil Eshoo to attend a mourning ceremony. Kildani  threatened  to attack a church if he was not allowed entry, and Duraid said, “If 100 died now, we’ll make them 200 next time , and we’ll break the bishop’s crosier on his head,” referring to Archbishop Hanno’s traditional staff. All of these comments were caught on video and shared with authorities.   The power grab    On July 2, 2024, Kildani finally convinced (or coerced) a majority of the Nineveh Provincial Council to make the drastic decision to remove 15 government officials in Qaraqosh, Bartella, and Tel Kef, and the strategically important Yazidi homeland of Sinjar.   Kildani’s pro-Iranian Babylon Movement controls 16 of the 29 members of the Nineveh Provincial Council , a huge surprise since this is a majority Arab area. He is part of the Nineveh Future Alliance, along with the Coordination Framework, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, and those holding minority quota seats.   The Opposition Alliance comprises the United Nineveh Alliance (9 seats) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party (4 seats). The opposition suspended its membership in the council, calling for the  Council President  to be removed, and  filed a complaint  with the federal court. The council’s decision brought stunning unity from five Christian political parties,  saying  the actions “exceeded the law and constitutional powers” and would have “serious negative consequences in society.” All changes are on hold until the court decides the case.   Kildani was also a leader in the alliance that took over the  Kirkuk  Provincial Council, voting on August 10 to replace the Governor and council speaker positions, leading to widespread news coverage and protests.    It’s important to note that Kildani is not a rogue player, but working closely with other Iranian-backed militia and political leaders such as former Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, PMF leader Falih al-Fayyad, and Qais al-Khazali, who in June  warned  that if the US continues its support of Israel “then America should know that it will put all its interests in the region, particularly in Iraq, at risk and make them a target.”    In fact, it is difficult to find any negative articles about Kildani in local news any longer, showing his enormous power and the fear he instills.   Kildani immediately took credit for the council’s actions on  Alawla TV  saying, “but today we have restored rights to the people of Nineveh…” While there are dozens of articles about this vote, no local news covered Kildani’s involvement. In fact, it is difficult to find any negative articles about Kildani in local news any longer, showing his enormous power and the fear he instills.   Protecting Iraq’s minorities   The Government of Iraq should challenge the Nineveh Provincial Council’s decision to  replace officials with Kildani loyalists, giving him and Iranian-backed militias control of most of the Nineveh Plains. Harassment of religious and ethnic communities at checkpoints by Kildani’s Babylon Brigade or others should not be allowed or tolerated. Those that violate the law should be prosecuted.   Federal authorities must investigate and charge those like Kildani who engage in vote-buying and other election fraud.   Election rules must be changed to protect the political representation of Christians, Yazidis, and other religious and ethnic minorities in parliament so only minority community members can vote for their own representation. Federal authorities must investigate and charge those like Kildani who engage in vote-buying and other election fraud.   The US and the international community still have the political might to press for positive changes to protect these fragile religious minority communities, but they must act now.     The views represented in this piece are those of the author and do not express the official position of the Wilson Center.    About the Author Nadine Maenza Global Fellow;President, International Religious Freedom Secretariat Wilson Center Middle East Program The Wilson Center’s Middle East Program serves as a crucial resource for the policymaking community and beyond, providing analyses and research that helps inform US foreign policymaking, stimulates public debate, and expands knowledge about issues in the wider Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.  https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/10-years-after-isis-genocide-christians-are-under-threat Copyright 2024 Nadine Maenza and The Wilson Center

Nearly 300 people aged 19 and under were killed by Bahian security forces in 2023, making it Brazil’s highest rate Tiago Rogero in Recife, 14 AUG 2024 People protest anti-Black police violence for Maria Bernadete Pacífico, a Black community activist who was killed in Bahia on 24 August 2023. Photograph: Carla Carniel/Reuters Activists have raised the alarm over police violence in the Brazilian state of Bahia, as new figures revealed that more children and adolescents are killed by the region’s security forces than anywhere else in the country. Two hundred and eighty-nine people aged 19 and under were killed by police in Bahia last year, up from 242 in 2022, according to a new report by the United Nations Children’s Fund (Unicef) and the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety. Last year, one in every three child victims of homicide in Bahia was killed by the police, the figures show. Bahia is Brazil ’s fourth-most populous state and the centre of the country’s Black culture. For the past 17 years it has been ruled by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s Workers’ party (PT). The new figures are likely to pile pressure on the party, which has failed to stop both police killings and the rise in general violence. Although it ranks second in rate per 100,000 inhabitants – behind the Amazon state of Amapá – Bahia saw the largest total number of police killings last year. “Bahia is the clearest example of how the left has no plan for public safety,” said Pablo Nunes, a political scientist and coordinator of the Center for Security and Citizenship Studies. “In fact, what exists in Bahia is a public safety policy that aligns with all the most harmful experiences we’ve seen in recent years from so-called far-right governments,” he added. In 2022, Bahia’s state police became the most violent in the country – taking over a position that had historically belonged to Rio de Janeiro. Bahia’s 313% increase in police killings occurred between 2015 and 2022 , during the governorship of Rui Costa, a prominent PT figure who went on to become Lula’s chief of staff and one of his top ministers. Samira Bueno, executive director of the Forum on Public Safety, said the figures suggested that police in Bahia were accustomed to excessive use of force. Although the new report did not detail the victims’ racial profiles by state, a 2022 study coordinated by Nunes showed that 94.76% of police victims, both adults and youths, were Black – a disproportionately higher rate compared with the state’s population, which is 80% Black. “It’s a very lethal police force which exacerbates violence in poor areas, especially targeting Black boys and young people,” said Nunes. Black children and adolescents were also disproportionately represented among victims of violence across the country: a Black boy is 4.4 times more likely to be murdered than a white boy. “Race is a determining factor in the outcome of death across all age groups,” said Ana Carolina Fonseca, a protection officer at Unicef Brazil, noting that there was a disparity even among the very youngest members of society. Of homicide victims aged four and under, 64.3% were Black. “There is a process of denying rights to the Black population in Brazil, starting in early childhood, excluding them from school and the protection system as a whole, which then repeats in violence,” she said. The study also confirmed shocking data on sexual violence, which continues to rise significantly across the country: rape cases increased from 53,906 in 2022 to 63,430 last year. The vast majority of the victims were girls (87.3%). “And these are certainly underreported cases,” said Bueno, noting that a recent study showed only 8.5% of cases are reported to the authorities. “People fail to report for a number of reasons: fear, embarrassment or because often the victim is unable to recognise that they are being subjected to violence … Bringing this issue into the public debate is a first step towards addressing the problem of underreporting and developing strategies that will effectively change this reality.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

ICC prosecutors are monitoring Venezuela, where security forces are cracking down on dissent Mike Corder, 12 AUG 2024 Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro speaks to the press before leaving the Supreme Court where he arrived for procedures related to the court's audit of presidential election results in Caracas, Venezuela, Friday (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — International Criminal Court prosecutors said Monday that they are “actively monitoring” events in Venezuela, where security forces have launched a crackdown on the opposition in the aftermath of the nation’s disputed presidential election. Forces loyal to President Nicolás Maduro have rounded up more than 2,000 people for demonstrating against the president or casting doubt on his claims that he won a third term in the July 28 election despite strong evidence he lost the vote by a more than two-to-one margin. In a written statement to reporters, the office of ICC Prosecutor Karim Khan said it is “actively monitoring the present events and has received multiple reports of instances of violence and other allegations following the presidential election of 28 July in Venezuela.” The statement said that Khan’s office has “engaged with the Government of Venezuela at the highest-level to underline the importance of ensuring that the rule of law is adhered to in the present moment and emphasize that all persons must be protected from violations that may constitute Rome Statute crimes.” The Rome Statute is the court’s founding treaty and outlines the crimes over which it has jurisdiction. Maduro has called on Venezuelans to denounce election doubters via a government-run app originally created to report power outages. He also said the government was refurbishing two gang-dominated prisons to accommodate an expected surge in jailing of opponents. “There will be no mercy,” Maduro said on state TV. The ICC has an ongoing investigation into violence that followed Venezuela’s 2017 election but has so far not sought any arrest warrants. Khan, announced in late 2021 that he was opening the investigation after a lengthy preliminary probe and an official referral — a request to investigate — in 2018 by Argentina, Canada, Colombia, Chile, Paraguay and Peru. His office said Monday that “those investigations are continuing with focus.” It highlighted an online portal where potential evidence can be filed. “Should any individual or organization have information that may be relevant to this ongoing investigation, we would welcome you to submit this,” the prosecution statement said. © 2024 The Associated Press.

Stefano Pozzebon and Tara John , 15 AUG 2024 Opposition leader Maria Corina Machado looks on with a hand in her chest during a protest against the result of the presidential election on July 30, 2024 in Caracas, Venezuela. Alfredo Lasry R/Getty Images In a poor Caracas neighborhood, the letter “X” is appearing on people’s homes – crude chest-high slashes of paint that residents say amount to a threat. Residents living in 23 de Enero, once the stronghold of the late Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, believe pro-regime paramilitary groups are behind the spray paint. The groups, known as colectivos , are marking people who had protested the outcome of July’s presidential election, residents told CNN. “There are some fifty homes in my street, and thirty-two have been marked,” said one resident, who asked to use the alias “Pablo”, due to fear of retaliation for speaking out. The Xs appeared in Pablo’s neighborhood days after Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro claimed victory at the polls on July 28 – a result disputed by the opposition and questioned by foreign observers. Members of a Venezuelan paramilitary unit took photos of his neighbors as they stood outside their homes and called for Maduro to step down by banging pots. The next morning, “we woke up and all the houses were marked with a cross,” Pablo said. Pablo told CNN he could hear the painting on his own door in the middle of the night, the rattle and spray waking him up from his sleep. “The following days, they would ride around the street saying this mark is for cowards and that they would come back with guns if anyone protested,” he said. Paramilitary groups have historically been used by the Maduro regime to intimidate or attack opposition supporters. In many of Caracas’ poorest neighborhoods, they are the only law. CNN is attempting to contact Valentin Santana, the leader of one of the most notorious colectivo , La Piedrita, for comment. Another resident of the same neighborhood said her home was not grafittied, but that she is now too intimidated to join planned anti-government protests on Saturday. She is fearful of a crackdown by the government, which has already detained hundreds of opposition supporters for protesting against Maduro or casting doubt about his disputed victory. She says that paramilitary groups have installed surveillance cameras in her area, and she does not know who to trust. The Venezuelan government recently repurposed an app originally intended to report public administration malfunctions to allow anonymous charges against opposition supporters. “This is the app to snitch on the fascists,” Maduro himself told a recent rally, presenting the new service. It has since been blocked on Apple’s App store but is still available on Google Play. She believes that about 80% of the area she lives in would be in favor of Venezuela’s political opposition – but are too intimidated to make their voices heard. “A couple days after the election, two young protesters were taken away, there’s no trust among neigbhbors also because of the app,” Valentina said. A pattern of repression Venezuelans have felt this fear before. In 2019, when opposition leader Juan Guaido declared himself to be the interim president of Venezuela, with widespread popular support, motorcycle riding colectivo members terrorized anti-government rallies with gunfire and prevented opposition lawmakers and journalists from entering the National Assembly. That pattern of repression appears to be ramping up today. Pablo accuses colectivo members of making threats, such as being taken to prison, blacklisting for vital government benefits for cheap gasoline and food handouts. There have also been threats of overt violence in the past few days, though he maintains he will keep protesting. “Going to jail, that is scary, because at my age that almost certainly means dying in jail. But I don’t want to stop, people are angry… I am very angry, furious,” Pablo, who is in his seventies, told CNN. Such accounts echo the warnings of opposition leader María Corina Machado, who told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Tuesday that Maduro is “exercising violence on innocent people” in the aftermath of the disputed vote. “Young people are [taken] out of their houses, houses are marked with a cross at their doors.  Journalists have been detained, four of them have been accused of terrorism. This is happening as we speak,” she said. Since the contested election, Maduro has been at the forefront of the government crackdown, ordering the opening of two new prisons to accommodate detained protesters and openly calling for everyone in the streets to be imprisoned. Maduro has also endorsed what is informally referred to as “Operation Knock-Knock,” that has seen security services knocking at opposition members’ doors. “Knock Knock! Don’t be a crybaby… You’re going to Tocorón (a jail)” Maduro shouted at a rally last week. Even after Venezuela’s electoral and judicial authorities announced the victory of Maduro, they have not shown detailed results and electoral records to support it, prompting anger and concern across the country and abroad. Meanwhile, the team of opposition candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia  has released independently collected polling station data  that, although partial, appears to suggest that Maduro lost. Numerous countries say they will not recognize the official election result until the vote tallies are published in full. In a report shared Tuesday, a panel of experts from the United Nations said the presidential election lacked “basic transparency and integrity.” They also strongly criticized the National Electoral Council (CNE) for announcing the winner without revealing the tabulated results from each of the country’s polling stations, saying it had “no precedent in contemporary democratic elections.” “The note … from the UN is giving us a lot of hope. The world must know that we have a neo-Nazi for president,” Pablo said. © 2024 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company.

By Rebecca Ratcliffe | The Guardian Witnesses say people killed in artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians fleeing violence. People mourn near the bodies of Rohingya refugees who drowned in the Naf River last week. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images Many dozens of Rohingya people, including children, were killed in an artillery and drone attack that targeted civilians as they tried to flee Myanmar last week. Civilians were trying to escape violence in Maungdaw town, Rakhine state, by crossing the Naf River into Bangladesh when they were targeted last Monday. Videos shared on social media, which appeared to have been taken in the aftermath of the attack, showed bodies and bags strewn across the ground. Nay San Lwin, the co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, who spoke to survivors, said the victims had travelled from villages including Maung Ni, Myoma Taung and Myoma Kayin Dan to try to cross the border. The drone attacks began at about 5pm the same day, he said. “They told me several dozen, at least three to four dozen, drone bombs were dropped there. They are saying at least more than 200 were killed and around 300 injured. There is nobody to collect the dead bodies. Everyone is running to save their lives. Some are already in Bangladesh,” Nay San Lwin said. Survivors who spoke to Reuters said they believed more than 200 people had been killed. A survivor who spoke to Associated Press said 150 people had been killed and many others wounded. The Arakan Army, one of the armed groups seeking to overthrow the junta, has seized large areas of Rakhine state from the military in recent months. The militia and Myanmar’s military blamed each other for the attack. Activists said they believed the Arakan Army was responsible, allegations the group denied. The activists said that for months the group had been targeting Rohingya people with killings, village torchings and forcible recruitment of young men. The military has also been accused of atrocities against civilians. It already faces a genocide case in The Hague over its brutal crackdowns against Rohingya in 2016 and 2017. The minority group has long been persecuted in Myanmar, where people are denied citizenship and basic rights, such as freedom of movement. “The Arakan Army is trying to finish the business of the Myanmar military,” said Nay San Lwin. Rahim, a witness to the attack who asked not to give his real name, told the Guardian drones flew from a village that was under the control of the Arakan Army, and repeatedly struck civilians. His family escaped the violence because they had been staying in a nearby village while he tried to arrange a boat to take them to Bangladesh. The family managed to cross the border at 4am on Tuesday. “We decided we can’t stay in this town and in this country, we also will be killed. So we managed [to take] a boat and crossed the border that morning. The dead bodies were here and there, everywhere at that place,” he said. “No one could go to that place to help the injured people. “When we are coming through that place, some people are still alive, but there was not any help. I am still hearing a voice, one person is telling [us]: ‘I am still not dead, please help me’, like this. But no one goes to help them because everyone is rushing to save their own lives and their own families.” Survivors waited desperately for boats to try to flee to safety. Rahim said one of his friends boarded a small boat to try to escape but it became overloaded with people. His friend’s five children died when it sank. “We have the right to live as a human being,” he said. “We just need to live simply as a human being in our own place, own country, own town.” An Arakan Army spokesperson told Reuters: “According to our investigation, family members of terrorists tried to go to Bangladesh from Maungdaw and the junta dropped the bomb because they left without permission,” referring to Muslims who have joined Rohingya armed groups fighting against the Arakan Army. Médecins Sans Frontières said that as of 10 August, its staff in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, had treated 50 patients who had fled Myanmar, including 18 children. Many of the patients had mortar shell injuries and gunshot wounds. The number of arrivals peaked on 6 August, MSF said, when it treated 21 people. It said the patients had described a desperate situation in Rakhine state. “Some reported seeing people bombed while trying to find boats to cross the river into Bangladesh and escape the violence. Others described seeing hundreds of dead bodies on the riverbanks. “Many patients spoke of being separated from their families en route to safer areas and of loved ones being killed in the violence. Many people said they were fearful that family members remaining in Myanmar would not survive.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)