Violence in Burma Means Going Home is No Option “Of course I want to go back home,” an elderly woman, a Rohingya refugee from Burma, told me last year when I visited a camp in Teknaf, near the Bangladesh-Burma border. “But it’s not safe there, so I fear I will be buried in this foreign land.” By Meenakshi Ganguly Members of Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) stand guard on the bank of Naf River near the Bangladesh-Myanmar border to preventRohingya refugees from illegal border crossing, in Teknaf near Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, November 22, 2016. © 2016 Reuters It has become even less safe now. Scores have been killed and over 1200 buildings destroyedin five villages in the predominately ethnic Rohingya areas near Maungdaw township during renewed violence since the October 9 attacks on border guard posts in Burma’s Rakhine State. There are allegations of serious abuses by Burma’s security forces, including arbitrary arrests, extrajudicial killings, and rape. Much of the impacted areas remain sealed to international aid organizations. The United Nations estimates that 30,000 people have been internally displaced by the violence. Many Rohingya are fleeing, some getting on boats or walking or swimming to seek sanctuary in bordering Bangladesh. The Bangladeshi government, however, says it doesn’t want more Rohingya refugees. While there are more than 30,000 registered refugees in the country, authorities estimate that 300,000 to 500,000 unregistered Rohingya are also already living in Bangladesh. The government has ordered the border guards, navy, and coast guard to secure sea and land access. “Rohingya infiltration is an uncomfortable issue for Bangladesh,” said Home Minister Asaduzzaman Khan. “We don’t want illegal Rohingya immigration.” Several hundred have already been pushed back. Those that have managed to cross have told the media they are escaping terrible abuses. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has pressed the Burmese government to provide immediate humanitarian access to provide aid to the Rohingya in accordance with international law and has asked Bangladesh to keep its border open to any civilians fleeing the violence. Bangladesh has long argued that it cannot afford to host the Rohingya, and it is of course imperative for the international community to provide necessary assistance. However, under customary international law, Bangladesh may not summarily reject at the border asylum seekers fleeing widespread human rights abuses or generalized violence. It is obligated to allow them to enter the country and seek protection. At the Teknaf camp, the Rohingya survive in abysmal conditions at barely subsistence levels. The condition of those unregistered is worse say local activists – they seldom approach the police to report crimes or visit hospitals, fearing that they will discovered, arrested, and possibly returned. Yet, more keep coming because the situation back home is a serious risk to their lives and liberty. As the elderly woman told me, “No one wants us. It feels like a sin to have been born.” © Human Rights Watch 2016

By Michael R. Gordon Russian military officials have vociferously denied that their airstrikes have killed civilians in Syria, going so far as to say that eyewitness accounts that a major hospital was bombed last year in the brutal fight to retake Aleppo were mere fabrications. But a new analysis that draws on satellite images, security camera videos, social media and even footage from the Kremlin-backed Russian television network has challenged Moscow’s claims that its airstrikes on behalf of the Syrian military were an exercise in prudent restraint. The analysis shows that the hospital, contrary to claims by a Russian general, was bombed multiple times. It indicates that Russian aircraft used incendiary munitions and cluster bombs, despite the Kremlin’s denials, and concludes that Syrian forces used chlorine gas on a far greater scale than is commonly believed. The analysis is presented in a report, “Breaking Aleppo,” which is to be made public on Monday by the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based policy research center. The report comes as President Trump has signaled an interest in forging better connections with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, which could include working more closely with the Russian military in Syria. “Throughout the entire length of the battle for Aleppo, there have been multiple claims of violations of human rights and multiple denials,” said Eliot Higgins, a senior fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. “What we have been able to present now is a wealth of evidence confirming the targeting of civilian structures, namely hospitals, which in certain cases has been denied by the Russian Ministry of Defense,” he added. “We have been able to confirm the use in civilian areas of a variety of indiscriminate weapons.” Syrian forces, backed by Hezbollah fighters, Iran’s paramilitary Quds Force and Russian air power, took Aleppo in late December. The capture of the city was an important milestone that gave the government of President Bashar al-Assad control over all of Syria’s major cities and strengthened Moscow’s hand in discussions over the country’s future. But while the Atlantic Council report acknowledges that his victory in Aleppo has solidified Mr. Assad’s hold on power, at least for now, it argues that the ruthless strategy and tactics used by the Syrian and Russian governments would make the Syrian president “a poor if not harmful partner” in efforts to defeat the Islamic State and other extremist groups. Experts at the Atlantic Council have long urged the United States to do more to protect civilians in Syria and support the moderate opposition. In the report, the group employs hard evidence, including satellite images from DigitalGlobe, a commercial satellite company, fresh accounts from Syrian activists on the ground and photography published by Russia’s Defense Ministry. Much of the analysis of the photos and social media was done by Mr. Higgins, a Britain-based researcher who founded the investigative website bellingcat.com. A reconstruction of one key episode — the July 16 bombing of another hospital, known as M2, in the Maadi district — was carried out by Forensic Architecture, a research organization at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was asked to take an independent look at the video and photographic evidence of the bombing. A reconstruction of the bombing of the hospital known as M2 in the Maadi district of Aleppo on July 16. It was prepared by Forensic Architecture, a research organization at Goldsmiths, University of London, which was asked to make an independent examination of the video and photographic evidence of the bombing. Video by AtlanticCouncil Aleppo was divided in July 2012 between government- and opposition-controlled areas. With the support of Russia, the Assad government began a major offensive in September of last year to take the city. Fragile and temporary cease-fires were used by the Syrians and their allies to prepare fresh offensives, which, despite Russian and Syrian denials, often targeted civilian areas. One claim that the Atlantic Council report challenges was issued by Lt. Gen. Sergei F. Rudskoi, the head of the operations directorate of the Russian general staff, who insisted in October that no damage had been done to the al-Sakhour hospital in a Russian bombing raid. To buttress his case, General Rudskoi displayed satellite photos that he said had been taken between Sept. 24 and Oct. 11. Eyewitness accounts to the contrary, he added, were “mere fakes.” But a comparison of DigitalGlobe satellite photos taken on Sept. 25 and Oct. 13, the Atlantic Council report notes, shows the emergence of a large bomb crater near the hospital, also known as M10, and damage to the hospital building. Security camera videos from inside the hospital offer corroborating evidence of an Oct. 3 attack, as does a photo from the street by a local resident. Security camera video of the Oct. 3 bombing of the M10 hospital in Aleppo. Video by bellingcat The report concludes that there were several reasons to think the attacks on the medical centers were deliberate, including the large number of strikes, the Assad government’s knowledge of the terrain, and the Syrian government’s practice of confiscating medical supplies from humanitarian aid convoys. The M2 hospital was damaged by air and artillery strikes at least a dozen times between June and December. Security camera video of the July 16 bombing of the M2 hospital in Aleppo. Video by مركز حلب الإعلامي AMC Other photographic evidence points to the use of incendiary munitions and cluster bombs. The Kremlin-backed television channel, Russia Today, provided some of the evidence in video footage it showed in June that had been taken at a Russian air base near Latakia, Syria. (The version of the report that was later uploaded to YouTube deleted the images of the weapons being mounted on a Russian warplane.) When a Russian team later entered eastern Aleppo to clear away unexploded ordnance, a photograph published by the Russian Defense Ministry showed the remains of cluster bombs, the Atlantic Council report notes. A variety of reports from victims and video on YouTube indicate that Syrian government attacks with chlorine gas increased in the final phase of the battle for Aleppo. One video “showed a chlorine gas cylinder with its labels intact,” the report said. The use of chlorine bombs by the Syrian government, Mr. Higgins said, continued even after reports confirming their use were made by the United Nations and an international watchdog organization in The Hague that enforces the ban on the use of chemical agents in war. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Mira Galanova An armed Miskito patrols the banks of the Coco River. Settlers have occupied Miskito-owned farms, preventing the community from accessing its agricultural resources. [Alex McDougall/Al Jazeera] March 1, 2017 Waspam, Nicaragua - The story that Lina Chale recounts in her native Miskito language is in stark contrast to the blue doves, a symbol of peace, painted on a white wall of a church behind her. "They killed him in such a ghastly way," says 52-year-old Chale. On August 18, 2016 , her younger brother Gerardo failed to return home from his farm in the mountains. He had been kidnapped along with another Miskito man from La Esperanza, a village on the Coco River. A few days later, indigenous rangers discovered their decapitated bodies . For the past two years, a string of violent attacks has plagued Nicaragua's Caribbean coast. According to CEJUDHCAN, a non-governmental organisation defending the rights of indigenous people in this region, 21 indigenous men have been killed since 2014, and dozens more wounded or kidnapped. Women have been raped. More people are still missing. Armed men have attacked several villages, including Polo Paiwas, which was burned to the ground in October 2015. The violence has been at its worst in the area of almost 4,000 square kilometres between the rivers Coco and Wawa, south of the border with Honduras. The Miskitos, the largest indigenous group on the Caribbean coast, with a population of up to 300,000, blame the attacks on "settlers" coming from other parts of the country and occupying their ancestral territories. Thousands of Mestizos, Nicaraguans of Spanish descent, have moved into the rainforests, lured by the promise of cheap, fertile land, precious timber and gold. Many are simple farmers or artisanal miners. The Miskitos have tried to force the newcomers out, but the settlers have been determined to stay. As tension has grown, a wave of violence has erupted, with killings on both sides of the dispute. The brutality of some attacks on the indigenous communities has fuelled suspicions that hired thugs are among the settlers. Fearing for their lives, almost 3,000 Miskitos have fled their homes since 2015, according to CEJUDHCAN . Many have taken refuge in neighbouring Honduras, where they live in makeshift huts, facing hunger and diseases. Others have stopped going to the mountains where they have farmed, hunted and fished for generations. "We have all our livelihood there, but we have abandoned it," says Chale, who lives in La Esperanza . "We are afraid that we could meet the same fate as my brother." Her family now has to rely on the generosity of fellow Miskitos with plots closer to the village to provide them with food. The state's absence Miskitos say the government has done little to stop the violence which has affected more than 40,000 people. According to CEJUDHCAN, the army was deployed only once - in December 2015 - and just for a few days, when three communities in the remote territory of Wangki Twi Tasba Raya were attacked in a single day. The military took up stations but did nothing more. On the day of the attacks, three men from one of these communities were kidnapped. The police ignored pleas to search for them. "The officer who answered the phone said their priority was to distribute Christmas toys for poor children," says CEJUDHCAN founder Lottie Cunningham. When Gerardo disappeared, the military base near the community of La Esperanza refused to help Chale search for her kidnapped brother. "They said they were not authorised." Miskitos claim that these crimes not only go uninvestigated but often, unrecorded. Neither the police nor the army responded to Al Jazeera requests for comment, but a government official speaking on the condition of anonymity confirmed that on a number of occasions the police have refused to receive complaints related to the land conflict. Miskitos see the lack of police and army action as the government siding with the Mestizos . Injustice for settlers The Mestizos, however, believe they have also suffered an injustice. In September 2015, a group of Miskitos, led by Steadman Fagoth, an indigenous ally of Nicaragua's ruling Sandinista National Liberation Front ( FSLN) party, forced dozens of settler families out of the Morobila gold mine. The miners say they had paid indigenous communities for mining rights. The police and the army allegedly ignored their calls for protection before the eviction and have failed to investigate the looting and violence that accompanied it. "When a Mestizo kills a Miskito, there is an outcry: Settlers! But when a Miskito kills a Mestizo nobody says anything," claims Alfredo Montiel, a member of a Mestizo farmers' association, formed in response to the land conflict. They're not usurpers, they say, but victims of a scam. "We have suffered a lot of abuse because of the Law 445," says the farmers' association vice-president Jose Boanerges, citing the legislation which reserves more than half the Caribbean coast for indigenous people. This law bans the sale of indigenous lands. There has been a widespread practice, however, of unscrupulous indigenous leaders selling land illegally to settlers, disguising the sales as permits to use the land. Settlers are often aware that they're making an illegal purchase, but they say the trouble occurs when Miskitos don't respect the sales. "Some farmers pay a fortune for land. Then other Miskitos come and say: 'This is our parcel, you have to pay us too'. This is why there are deaths," Montiel says, referring to how clashes happen. "If I go to the police with my documents and I tell them the Miskitos want to take my land, they say: 'You are stupid if you let them to do it.' Where is the law?" In September 2015 Mestizo farmers gathered in the town of Sahsa to show the local media hundreds of hoax permits, many of them stamped and signed by the president of the indigenous territory Tasba Pri, Waldo Muller. Boanerges, who bought a fake permit thinking he had purchased land, says Miskitos employ a simple ploy to evade the authorities. "The trick is that they never include the sum paid on a permit," Boanerges says. "We have informed the government about these anomalies. If it doesn't want to see it, then God knows what links there are between them." Shady land deals Miskitos affected by the land conflict admit that there is corruption in their midst and have called for an investigation. "If there are indigenous people involved in this, they should be punished," says Cunningham. "There shouldn't be a whole community suffering for five corrupt leaders. If the state had investigated the first reports of the land sales, if the perpetrators had been publicly detained, the land invasions would have been halted." In 2013, the government created an inter-institutional commission, chaired by the prosecutor-general, to tackle the issue. It has dismissed several public registrars and arrested lawyers and public notaries involved in the sales of indigenous lands. But it hasn't been enough. Miskitos believe that powerful groups and businesses are the real motor behind the settler invasion. The government would like to place the blame on the indigenous opposition party Yatama, but its own people are also involved. Gilles Bataillon, a French sociologist who has studied conflicts in the region, says that successive governors of the Caribbean coast, including Fagoth in the 1990s, have turned a blind eye on the land trafficking. Muller, who has signed numerous land sales, is a regional FSLN councillor and is allegedly in cahoots with the current governor, Carlos Aleman. "People within the military nuclei of the FSLN have had the courage to report these irregularities to the FSLN's most influential man in the region, Lumberto Campbell. He replied that no one would touch Muller or Aleman," Bataillon says. When interviewed by Al Jazeera, Muller and Aleman both denied being involved in illegal land sales. Unfulfilled promises Nicaragua was an international pioneer in granting significant land rights to native peoples. In 1987, indigenous communities gained autonomy over their ancestral territories on the Caribbean coast. In 2003, Law 445 bound the government to clear indigenous territories of people without proper land titles. President Daniel Ortega has publicly backed the Miskitos. "It is an invasion! It is a fraud!" he said in September 2015. "The police must act immediately to evict those who are occupying" indigenous lands, he stressed last October, only nine days before general elections. Fagoth, the government's indigenous ally, visited Miskito communities around the same time. "He said that if we vote for the FSLN, they would begin clearing our territory the day after the elections," says Mariano Zamora, a member of the Council of Elders, the indigenous administrative body in La Esperanza. "There have been many elections with pledges like this and nothing has happened." Fagoth denies this was pure electioneering. "The president is committed to clearing indigenous territories. But paperwork takes time," he says . Cunningham is sceptical about the government's will to proceed. "They don't want to discuss anything related to the land conflict. They hamper our work, don't let us access documents, or even enter their offices," she says. "They don't really want to clear the territory, because they need the settlers' vote to stay in power." Internationally, the government has initially denied any connection between the violence and the land conflict. "The government told the Inter-American Court of Human Rights that it has received no complaints regarding the land conflict and that all the 2,000 and something complaints registered in 2015 on the Caribbean coast were common crimes," Cunningham says. In a later statement to the court in December, the government blamed the insecurity in the region on incitement by Yatama and CEJUDHCAN. It failed, however, to provide any answers about how it protected the communities at risk. Meanwhile, there are fears of a new wave of violence. Weapons, including firearms imported by drug traffickers or left behind after the 1970s and 1980s wars in Nicaragua, are abundant on the Caribbean coast. "We don't know who to cry to," Zamora says. Tired of unfulfilled promises, his community ignored Fagoth's advice. "He said that if we don't vote for the Front [FSLN], we can suffer three more years. So now we are waiting for the punishment." (c) AlJazeera 2017

By Madeline Roache A man carries flags of Crimean Tatars and Ukraine while celebrating Crimean Tatar Flag Day in Simferopol in 2014. Photograph: Max Vetrov/AFP/Getty Images Lawyers and human rights activists say Russian authorities in Crimea are increasingly imprisoning human rights activists in psychiatric hospitals and submitting them to psychological abuse. Since the annexation of the region three years ago many ethnic Tatar activists who oppose the occupation have been arrested and subjected to abuse and imprisonment in outdated mental institutions, said Robert van Voren, a Dutch human rights activist and political scientist. “The number of cases has increased considerably over the past few years, in particular against Crimean Tatars and Ukrainian activists who oppose Russia’s annexation,” he added. Emil Kurbedinov, a prominent Crimean lawyer, said that between December and March 10 Crimean activists had been forcefully sent to a psychiatric hospital in Crimea. Four of them remained there, while the other six had been transferred to prison. According to Kurbedinov, Crimean activists face appalling conditions in psychiatric hospitals. “Some are placed in isolation and are denied their basic needs, such as access to a toilet. Others are housed with multiple people suffering from severe mental health conditions. “The activists are interrogated about their alleged involvement in ‘extremism’ and their views of the government. They are also deprived of the right to speak with their family, or meet their lawyer on a one-to-one basis without a guard being present. All of this violates international law,” Kurbedinov said. All the Crimean activists were arrested on suspicion of involvement in the Hizb ut-Tahrir organisation, which Russia has declared a terrorist group. The Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group (KHPG) asserts that there is no evidence to suggest that the organisation is connected to terrorism, nor is there any proof that the men were involved in the group. According to KHPG, a further 19 Crimean activists are currently in custody, accused of involvement in Hizb ut-Tahrir. Memorial , a Russian human rights organisation, has described all the activists in custody as political prisoners. A new report presented on by Crimea SOS, a Ukrainian advocacy group, claimed a total of 43 Tatar activists have been abducted since the annexation – allegedly by Russian authorities. Of those, 18 are still missing and six have been found dead. On 26 January, Kurbedinov, a defence lawyer, was himself detained in Crimea and accused of “circulating extremist material”. Amnesty International said Kurbedinov was targeted because of his human rights work and called for his immediate release. Kurbedinov said his eventual release was due to the support of ordinary people, activists and colleagues who “showed me that civil society is alive; that people are not indifferent to the violations of human rights”. Last year, Kurbedinov defended Ilmi Umerov , a Crimean Tatar activist who openly opposed the Russian occupation and was forcefully confined in a psychiatric hospital last August. Human Rights Watch criticised the case, calling it “a shameful attempt to use psychiatry to silence him and tarnish his reputation”. Umerov was released 20 days after his confinement. In the later decades of the Soviet era, psychiatry was used to systematically confine and punish dissidents. Under the current Russian president, Vladimir Putin, various cases of alleged punitive psychiatry have resurfaced, leading many to believe that the Soviet-era practice has returned. The abuse of psychiatry in Russian criminal trials is not uncommon, according to Yuri Savenko, a psychiatrist and the head of the Independent Psychiatric Association (IPA) in Russia. “Psychiatry is now part of a frequent procedure in criminal trials where there is no concrete evidence. [Rather than gather evidence] it is more economical in terms of effort and time to acquire a psychiatric evaluation,” he said. (C) 2017 The Guardian

By Magdalena Grono The room housing refugees in the former Soviet sanatorium just outside Baku was getting a much-needed facelift: new black-and-silver floral wallpaper “to make it more attractive to the future in-laws of my daughter who are not displaced like us”, said Bayram, an Azeri veteran of the 1988-1994 Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Bayram remained steadfast in his support for Azerbaijan’s role in last spring’s violent clash with Armenia. “Of course I know what war is and what the consequences can be”, he explained. He pointed to his leg, maimed by artillery fire almost 25 years ago, and to the poor conditions of the refugee shelter where his family has lived for over twenty years. “But I have sent my eldest son to the army anyhow. He is an officer, and I have told him to fight – to take care, but to fight for his homeland.” Last year’s escalation in Nagorno-Karabakh, which began in the early hours of 2 April, killed up to 200 people. However, like many Azerbaijanis whose families have been displaced by the conflict, Bayram’s patriotic pride overtook his concern for lost lives. Bayram had hoped the fighting would result in the return to Baku’s control of Nagorno-Karabakh and its surrounding districts – held by ethnic Armenian forces since the 1994 ceasefire – so he could go back home. Across the Line of Contact (LoC), the militarised zone that has separated Armenian and Azerbaijani forces since 1994, conversations in Armenia’s capital Yerevan were like stepping through a mirror. “Don’t you understand that Baku lost last April?” a prominent Armenian expert remarked, challenging the mainstream analysis that Baku’s gaining control over two strategic heights was a significant first since 1994, if not in military terms, then certainly in terms of Azerbaijan’s posture. “We are now prepared and ready to inflict major harm on the Azerbaijanis if they attack, so they do not feel they can get away with this”, another Armenian analyst said. Such sentiments are even more sharply expressed in Nagorno-Karabakh itself, where people are deeply concerned for their security. Conversations on both sides of the divide reveal a new and dangerous situation: that renewed appetite for confrontation has engulfed a conflict once considered frozen but which – with clashes escalating since at least 2012 – is particularly dangerous now given both countries’ more powerfully equipped armies, and Armenia’s and Azerbaijan’s respective military commitments with Russia and Turkey. In 2015, Azerbaijan spent $3 billion on its military, strategically diversifying acquisitions, with weapons systems purchased from Russia, Turkey, Israel and Pakistan, among others. This sum was more than Armenia’s entire national budget that year, yet Yerevan still sought to catch up, benefiting from more advantageous tariffs and a credit from Russia. Armenia and Azerbaijan each finds the current status quo unacceptable for different reasons. Before committing to talks, Yerevan urgently wishes to see improved security, including for people whose daily lives are severely impacted by ongoing escalations along the LoC and the international border between the two countries. Baku wants to have guarantees that there will be substantive progress in settlement talks, including the return of districts surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh as a first step. The prevailing dynamic, compounded by an absence of confidence between the sides or in the settlement process, lends itself to further violent flare-ups that contain grave local and regional risks. There is a long-standing conflict settlement mechanism, the Minsk Group of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). But in the absence of a re-invigorated process with high-level backing from the three Minsk Group co-chairs – Russia, the United States and France – the conflict will remain a dangerous tinderbox in the heart of the South Caucasus, between Russia, Turkey, Iran and what the EU considers its Eastern Neighbourhood. Bayram, the Azeri veteran, said he was disappointed when a ceasefire was brokered by Moscow four days into the April 2016 fighting. Like many displaced people and other ordinary citizens in Azerbaijan, he felt elated that some small but strategically significant land fell into Baku’s hands as a result of the fighting, and that the widespread post-1994 myth of Armenian forces’ invincibility was broken. But he and others in Azerbaijan were also frustrated not to see “more progress”, even if it were to come with a much higher death toll and other costs. The high pain threshold of both parties in the quest for their desired outcome in the settlement of the conflict bodes ill for finding a political solution. Russia-led attempts to broker a deal last year revealed that a zero-sum logic continues to dictate not only the approach to the substance of the settlement process but also to the process itself. The gulf between Azerbaijani society on the one hand, and the Armenian and Armenian-Karabakh societies on the other, is widened by the lack of contact between parties. Only isolated civil society actors seek the construction of cultural or political bridges. In the year that has elapsed since April 2016, space for discussing mutual concessions has by and large closed. Yet last year’s conflict did briefly revive the all but moribund settlement process, as detailed in Crisis Group’s July report, “New Opening, or More Peril?”. Summits in Vienna last May and St. Petersburg in June agreed on an investigative mechanism and an increase in the number of OSCE monitors, as well as on proceeding with substantive talks. Yet by late summer, the process ground to a halt and deadly incidents have recurred with varying degrees of intensity. “We cannot talk when we are being attacked”, explained an official in Yerevan. “The only way to get to substantive talks is to have months of quiet on the Line of Contact”. Beyond the security imperative, Yerevan is reluctant to return lands around Karabakh unless other aspects of the settlement – including Nagorno-Karabakh’s future status – are clarified, guided by a principle of “nothing is agreed until everything is agreed”. Armenians fear losing strategic advantage if they do not secure their desired political outcome on the status of Nagorno-Karabakh, namely its self-determination outside of Azerbaijan. Indeed, the return of even some of the districts around the contested heartland would make Karabakh much harder to defend for the Armenians. For its part, Baku resents the current status quo on the ground and fears that any security arrangements insisted upon by Yerevan would only cement it. Officials in Baku say the increased number of monitors and the investigative mechanism agreed upon last summer are only acceptable if linked to broader substantive progress in the talks. With frustrations mounting on both sides and the process stalled, incidents along the LoCwill likely intensify. Baku in particular shows public readiness to use force to achieve its goals. Ministry of Foreign Affairs officials explain that Baku has renounced the use of force if the conflict is settled within the framework of Azerbaijan’s territorial integrity. Failing that, Azerbaijani analysts say, the threat of violence continues to be a legitimate means to put pressure on the adversary. Meanwhile, Armenian and de facto Armenian-Karabakh forces – two intertwined structures – have focused on new fortifications systems on the Armenian-controlled side of the LoC, as well as on an internal overhaul of command structures. Some Armenian voices, including inside Nagorno-Karabakh, even speak of seizing more territories if they are attacked, in order to increase the security belt and have more to trade in future negotiations. With both sides now poised to retaliate quickly to any escalation, and without the element of surprise, renewed fighting would likely exceed the unprecedented levels seen last year. Moscow’s Uncertain Role On the international diplomatic front, for the last decade, Moscow has de facto been the prima inter pares in the Minsk Group, and it was Moscow that brought about a cessation of hostilities in April 2016. Moscow is the only one of the three co-chair countries which currently seems to have the bandwidth and interest to invest high-level political capital into the conflict. Diplomats talk about another push for progress in the talks, which Moscow is ostensibly preparing in the foreseeable future. A meeting of Foreign Ministers after the Armenian parliamentary elections on 2 April – coincidentally, the first anniversary of the escalation – should ideally lay the groundwork for a summit of the two Presidents. One desirable approach that is apparently being considered by the Minsk Group co-chair countries would include a combination of a possible declaration of both parties; an expression of support by the Minsk Group co-chairs; and a potential UN Security Council Resolution, according to diplomats based in the region. However, agreement on the details would still be needed at the Presidential level. With Russia’s long history of rule over the Caucasus region, and a continued sense that the South Caucasus is a sphere of privileged Russian interest, Moscow’s influence has many facets. Russia is the leading supplier of weapons to both Armenia and Azerbaijan. Russia also has close cooperation with Armenia through the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation and the Eurasian Economic Union, of which Armenia is a member. While Moscow has not formally said it is interested in having peacekeepers in the region, a Russian official informally said that “of course [sending peacekeepers is in] our interest and we are pursuing it”. According to a gentlemen’s agreement in the context of the settlement process no co-chair or neighbouring country should provide peacekeepers. Baku and Yerevan share a deep reluctance to accept Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh. Both see this scenario as the ultimate loss of sovereignty and a return to their once subservient role within the Soviet Empire. “We have been able to keep Russia out of our domestic politics”, a former Azerbaijani politician said. “Having their boots in Karabakh would mean they would have a very different say over our internal issues”. Likewise, an opposition-minded figure in Yerevan pointed out it was a paradox that while Armenia hosts a Russian military base, no one in Armenia wants to see Russian peacekeepers in Karabakh itself A decade or more ago, Armenian analysts often referred to the Balkans – where Operation Storm restored Croat control over Srpska Krajina though it violated the mandate of the UN peacekeepers deployed on the ceasefire line – as an example for why international security arrangements may not be reliable. Today, notwithstanding the role of Russia as Armenia’s primary strategic partner, Crimea’s 2014 annexation by Russia is causing concern that the use of force cannot be excluded, even if international guarantees are in place Baku, on the other hand, has seized on the biting sanctions imposed by the U.S. and its European partners on Russia to pursue in various international fora Azerbaijan’s de jure claim to the territory it sees as occupied, referring also to UN Security Council resolutions of the early 1990s. “After Crimea, the international community’s reluctance to use the term occupation and impose sanctions against Armenia is becoming untenable,” a pro-government Azerbaijani analyst said. No Alternative to Political and Diplomatic Solution A year on from the April 2016 flare-up, positions have significantly hardened. Both sides seem prepared to engage only on their own terms and neither society is ready to consider mutual concessions. Any discussion in Baku of the settlement process and its basic principles automatically assumes the determination of the future political status of Nagorno-Karabakh within Azerbaijan – something Armenians say is unacceptable. On the other hand, discussions in Armenia over the return of lands surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan have been difficult and, since last April, have become a non-starter. Although, Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan in the past has said this remained a negotiating chip In fact, the distinction between Nagorno-Karabakh proper and the surrounding districts held by Armenians has been largely effaced in the discourse, especially in the months since April 2016. Armenia’s former president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, remains a lone voice urging Armenians to proceed with the return of the districts around Nagorno-Karabakh, but few agree with him. The Karabakhi activist living in Yerevan explained simply: “This would lead to civil war” Against the backdrop of political deadlock, risks of escalation on the battlefront are growing dangerously. Most Western diplomats agree that the risks are high, yet they also stress that none of the regional powers are interested in a conflict that could ultimately ensnare them. Russia and Turkey's current geopolitical cooperation regarding the war in Syria increases the chances that they would work to minimise any misunderstandings that might lead to a wider conflagration in the Caucasus theatre Even a medium-scale intensity conflict between Baku and Yerevan is likely to have disastrous humanitarian consequences. Given the close proximity of civilians to the front lines, heavy casualties would be likely from shelling or other military deployments. Both sides alleged that the other engaged in atrocities during the April 2016 escalation, which Minsk Group co-chairs condemned in their December 2016 statement. Humanitarian agencies in the region are beefing up their capacities and developing contingency plans The destructive potential of renewed conflict should compel both parties back to the negotiating table. If the mooted new meeting between the presidents of Armenia and Azerbaijan materialises, it could help inject new impetus into the stalled process. Baku and Yerevan have already, in theory at least, committed to the basic principles for the settlement developed by the OSCE Minsk Group. The elements, as formulated by Minsk Group co-chairs countries, include: “the return of the territories surrounding Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijani control; an interim status for Nagorno-Karabakh providing guarantees for security and self-governance; a corridor linking Armenia to Nagorno-Karabakh; future determination of the final legal status of Nagorno-Karabakh through a legally binding expression of will; the right of all internally displaced persons and refugees to return to their former places of residence; and international security guarantees that would include a peacekeeping operation” In spite of divergent interpretations of a number of those elements by each party, the OSCE Minsk Group should redouble its efforts to galvanise substantive talks while pushing for implementation of the measures agreed in Vienna. Russia will likely play a leading role in this, but needs the support of the U.S. and France. Washington and Paris should back up these efforts at highest levels, despite the Trump presidency’s apparent disengagement from the region and France’s electoral preoccupations. The EU should use its bilateral relations with each of the countries to reiterate not only the unacceptability of the status quo, but also the unacceptability of a repeat of last April’s hostilities. The EU has long sought to support pro-peace discourses in both societies. This kind of investment should be a renewed priority so that people like Bayram, as well as his Armenian counterparts, do not depersonalise each other A lasting settlement will mean living side by side, taking into account the needs of both parties. For now though, there is a wide gap between what outside mediators see as a fair formula and what seems acceptable to local communities. Until this gap closes, the risks of war will remain very high. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 International Crisis Group

By Lucia Benavides Candles, shoes and banners sit on the ground at a protest camp set up by women who are holding a demonstration to show opposition to gender-based violence in Madrid [Sergio Barrenechea/EPA] Women are protesting as rates of violence against them rise, forcing the government to act. Madrid, Spain - Hours before Ana Gomez was murdered by her husband, she had been sent home by the local women's shelter in Lugo, Galicia. She was told by workers there to ask for a divorce, but when she confronted 29-year-old Jose Manual Carballo on February 11, 2016, he refused to let her leave. He took a shotgun and killed her, later turning himself in to the authorities. Gomez's two children from a previous relationship, a 16- and 17-year-old, were present at the time of the murder - the youngest was wounded by a bullet that went through Gomez. Today, the two brothers are under the custody of their aunt, Martina Gomez, 48. She says the system failed to protect her sister, who was 40 at the time of her death. "Professionally trained people should know how to detect a dangerous situation," said Martina. "They should have never let her return home that day." A bad year for women This year started out with some of the worst figures of gender-related murders in Spainsince 2008: as of March 2, according to official records, 16 women had been killed at the hands of partners or ex-partners. And the public outcry echoes these figures. Seven women from the Asociación Vel-la Luz, a Galicia-based organisation working with domestic violence survivors, organised a 25-day hunger strike in Madrid's Puerta del Sol that started on February 7. For International Women's Day on March 8, millions of women marched in cities across Spain, demanding an end to gender violence. "The situation is getting worse," said Gloria Vazquez, president of Vel-la Luz, who claims that one woman is murdered every three days in Spain as a result of gender violence. "There may be other countries with worse figures, but we're tired of having to stand for 'not as bad'. We want the best situation." Their hard work paid off: as of early March, the Spanish central government has put into action a bipartisan sub-commission, which will bring together and hear input from politicians, activists, domestic violence survivors, judges, police officers and the community at large on how to combat gender violence. Their goal is to make the issue a government priority, revising an existing domestic violence law and discussing how to use state funds more efficiently. The government will also hold a bi-monthly panel discussion, in which Vel-la Luz will take part, examining the 25 measures that the organisation presented as part of their protest. "We were able to open up channels that weren't there before," said Vazquez. "We have a voice in the Senate now." 'Murdered for being women' The issue of femicide in Spain - defined as the killing of a woman by a man on account of her gender - isn't new. In 2004, the Spanish government passed a law intended to reduce domestic violence cases, establishing a network of courts specialising in the matter and funnelling funds into programmes aimed at supporting survivors. But while the law was initially regarded as exemplary, activists say it falls short. Since then, 796 women have been killed as a result of gender violence - although many claim the number is actually much higher, as the law takes into account only murders committed by partners or ex-partners. "We need legislation that really addresses femicide, that really gives it the importance it needs," said Isabel Muntane, director of the Master's Program on Gender and Communication at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. "Women are being murdered for being women, and it seems that society is immune to these murders. We always say that if it were football players being murdered, there would be a social revolution." Documenting femicide According to the activist-run site Feminicio.net, which compiles an unofficial count of femicide murders not exclusive to romantic partnerships, the number of women killed since 2004 as a result of gender violence is closer to 1,500. So far this year, the site says 29 women have been killed, as opposed to the 16 recognised by the government. "The official femicide count doesn't include the murders of minors, sex workers, murders done by family members, trans-phobic murders," said Muntane. "If we're not aware of the reality of all femicides, we're not aware of the magnitude of the problem." Domestic violence programmes have also been hit by cuts to social programmes after the 2008 economic crisis. Since 2004, government funds allocated to dealing with the issue of gender violence have seen a decline of 29 percent. And activists say the current law isn't doing enough to keep women safe from their aggressors: In 2016, almost half of the 44 victims of gender violence murders officially recognised by the government had previously gone to the police. Organisations such as Val-la Luz and other women's rights activists are hoping this year's bipartisan sub-commission, which is expected to have legislative proposals on combating gender violence by June, will tackle a few issues in particular: a more comprehensive definition of gender violence, better legal assistance for domestic violence survivors and their families, and the expansion of educational programmes on gender equality. A movement's awakening At the end of February, the Valencia City council launched a sub-commission of their own, bringing together politicians, organisations, feminists and community organisers to develop a plan for eradicating gender violence at the local level. A couple of weeks later, on March 11, the president of the autonomous region of Andalusia asked for the nationwide bipartisan sub-commission, which was originally scheduled to wrap up its work by April, to be expedited. She added that the femicide issue in Spain "is not normal". "Public institutions will keep asking for the participation and involvement of all sectors of society, because there's only one way to make the elimination of gender violence a reality, and that's to make everyone conscious that we're all responsible," said Angeles Carmona, president of the Domestic and Gender Violence Observatory, a government entity that analyses gender violence sentences and suggests legislative modifications. "We've been pushing for this sub-commission to take place for years," she added. But while the gender violence sub-commission begins to take shape, Vazquez says she isn't counting on the Spanish government to solve the issue on their own. Vel-la Luz will continue to meet politicians, organise protests and ensure that their voices are heard. "We've awakened something within young people, we've generated a movement," she said of their February hunger strike, which gained international attention. "I keep getting calls from people saying, 'Are you aware of what’s happening?'" Muntane says the creation of a sub-commission on gender violence is something that has been building up for a long time. "Women have gotten tired of what's happening, because things don't seem to be moving forward," she said. "I think we've arrived at a critical moment, and it seems society is ready for this change." ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) Al Jazeera News 2017

By Muhammad Jambaz and Sarah Sirgany Irbil, Iraq (CNN) - The bodies of between 1,300 and 1,500 members of the Yazidi minority have been discovered near the northern Iraqi town of Sinjar since it was retaken from ISIS in 2015, a Kurdish official told CNN Tuesday. It's the first time an official has estimated the total number of Yazidis found in grave sites littered around Sinjar since Iraqi forces pushed the terror group out more than two years ago. Thirty-five mass graves along with 100 individual graves have been unearthed, according to Hussein Hassoun, the spokesman of the Higher Committee to Introduce Yazidi Kurds. An Iraqi man inspects a mass grave near Sinjar in February 2015. Source: CNN "The mass graves are about 5 to 10 kilometers apart," Hassoun told CNN. Between 300 and 500 bodies were found in the past few months. A new mass grave was recently found in the Hardan area of Sinjar, the town's mayor told Rudaw news agency. Most of the bodies have been left in their graves, so officials can only give an estimate of the total number of dead discovered thus far. Due to limited resources, only 65 bodies have been exhumed, Fouad Othman, the spokesman of the Martyrs Ministry in Kurdistan, told CNN. Source: CNN Map ISIS swept into the Sinjar area in August 2014 , displacing, killing and enslaving thousands of Yazidis -- an ancient ethnic and religious minority who are descendants of Kurds and call modern-day Iraq home. A 2016 United Nations report found that ISIS committed "genocide" against Yazidis . ISIS was driven out of Sinjar in 2015, and Kurdish officials believe more mass graves will be found as more territory is seized from the terror group. A US-led coalition has mounted an aggressive campaign to recapture ISIS-held territory in recent months. ISIS currently controls less than 7% of Iraqi territory, Iraq's military says -- down from nearly 40% of the country in 2014. Hassoun said intelligence reports indicate that there could be up to 12 mass graves in the village of Kocho, which remains under ISIS control. The village is among two identified by the UN report as sites of large mass killings, which the report defines as more than 20 men and boys killed at the same time. Hassoun told CNN that his committee lacked the funds to conduct DNA tests needed to match the dead with family members looking for their loved ones' remains. He said more international support would be needed to determine the true scale of ISIS' atrocities against Yazidis. (C) 2017 CNN

By Megan Specia MBYO, Rwanda — They awoke early and gathered along a plot of land here in this Rwandan village made up of a handful of homes. Together, they began hacking away at a grass-bare patch with long-handled garden hoes. The mission: Dig a drainage ditch alongside a row of homes that had been continuously flooding during rains. Scenes like this one were playing out across Rwanda on this Saturday — a monthly day of service known as Umuganda. The premise is simple and extraordinary in its efficient enforcement: Every able-bodied Rwandan citizen between the ages of 18 and 65 must take part in community service for three hours once a month. The community identifies a new public works problem to tackle each month. “We never had Umuganda before the genocide,” said Jean Baptiste Kwizera, 21, wiping sweat from his brow as he took a break from the project here in Mbyo, about an hour’s drive from Kigali, the capital. Though the genocide ended a year before Mr. Kwizera was born, it is deeply ingrained in the lives of even the youngest Rwandans. This compulsory work is emblematic of a broader culture of reconciliation, development and social control asserted by the government. Each local umudugudu — or village — keeps track of who attends the monthly projects. Those who fail to participate without being excused risk fines and in some cases arrest. Setting an example and seizing an opportunity to publicize the service on this Saturday, the country’s president, Paul Kagame, helped break ground for a new elementary school in the country’s northeast while dozens of photographers snapped photos. “Umuganda is about the culture of working together and helping each other to build this country,” Mr. Kagame told reporters. Rwanda has been a unique experiment in national reconciliation and assiduously enforced social re-engineering in the more than two decades since its devastating genocide, when thousands in the country’s Hutu ethnic majority unleashed unspeakable violence on the Tutsi minority and moderate Hutu countrymen who refused to take part in the slaughter. In just 100 days, nearly one million people perished. Umuganda was revived and dozens of other nation-rebuilding exercises were conceived under Mr. Kagame, who came to power after the genocide and has held the presidency since 2000. A recent constitutional amendment paved the way for him to seek a third term in office, and in August he plans to do just that. While many of his administration’s programs have lowered poverty and child mortality rates, Mr. Kagame remains a controversial figure. Many political analysts and human rights groups say Mr. Kagame has created a nation that is orderly but repressive. Laws banning so-called genocidal ideology that were adopted to deter a resurgence of sectarian or hate speech are also used to squelch even legitimate criticism of the government. Against this backdrop, it is difficult to gauge sentiment about the effectiveness of reconciliation efforts, including Umuganda. The government’s National Unity and Reconciliation Commission has twice released a “reconciliation barometer,” which looks at dozens of factors to determine how well people are living together. In 2015, the last year for which the figures are available, the country deemed reconciliation in Rwanda was at 92.5 percent. On this morning in Mbyo, none of the villagers openly questioned Umuganda or the wider reconciliation process. “We needed security, and we found it because of our government,” Mr. Kwizera said, praising a government he sees as essential for charting a path forward. “I was in the part which was being hunted,” he explained, describing his family’s ethnic identity without ever saying the word Tutsi. Like others in this generation, who have been taught from their earliest school days to suppress any sense of ethnic identity, he considers himself simply Rwandan. But in Mbyo, acknowledgment of past divisions is inescapable. Mbyo is one of seven “reconciliation villages” established by Prison Fellowship Rwanda, a Christian organization that facilitates the small cluster of homes for those convicted of carrying out the violence and those who suffered at their hands. Pastor Deo Gashagaza, who helped found the organization, created a process to connect Rwandans who had been imprisoned for participating in the slaughter with the families they harmed, and encourage dialogue through community-centered activities. “Rebuilding the nation requires everyone to help,” Mr. Gashagaza said. “We still have a lot of things to do for our communities, for social cohesion. It’s painful, but it’s a journey of healing.” In these villages, reconciliation is not just a moment. It is a way of life. On a patch of property shaded by yellow flowering trees, Jacqueline Mukamana and Mathias Sendegeya sat side by side shelling peanuts and tossing them into a metal pan. At first glance, the pair could be mistaken for husband and wife, leaning against each other with ease as they shucked the nuts. They were neighbors before the genocide and have known each other most of their lives, after growing up in a nearby village. In 1994, Ms. Mukamana was 17. Her father, six brothers, five sisters and nine uncles were killed that April. She fled to Burundi. When she returned, her family home was destroyed. Mr. Sendegeya was among the group that killed her father and four other members of her family, a fact that both speak about frankly but without much detail. While Mr. Sendegeya takes responsibility for the murders, he believes that the political leaders of the past orchestrated the killings and that without that influence, his life would have been very different. “That was the fault of the then government that pushed us to kill Tutsis,” he said, his eyes gazing steadily ahead as he echoed a sentiment heard throughout the community from both perpetrators and survivors. “We massacred them, killed and ate their cows. I offended them gravely.” When he was in jail, he was waiting for death, and reconciliation never crossed his mind, he said. Mr. Sendegeya re-entered society through a program that allows perpetrators to be released if they seek forgiveness from their victims. While in prison, he had reached out to Ms. Mukamana through Prison Fellowship Rwanda. “He confessed and asked for forgiveness. He told me the truth,” Ms. Mukamana explained. “We forgave him from our hearts. There is no problem between us.” But the healing process has taken years. At first, Mr. Sendegeya feared for his safety. He thought that the genocide survivors living in Mbyo would kill him for what he had done. At the first community meeting that brought all of the residents together, he found it difficult to sit across from them, or even raise his eyes from the ground. After moving to Mbyo, Ms. Mukamana had her own fears. She knew what the perpetrators had once been capable of, and imagined that Mr. Sendegeya would one day kill her. Both said living in this facilitated community had allowed them the space to gradually come to a place of trust and forgiveness. They are now raising a new generation of Rwandans. Mr. Sendegeya has a wife and nine children — six who were born before he went to prison and three who were born after he came back. Ms. Mukamana and her husband have four children. She has taught them about the history of the genocide, and she said that they knew the role that Mr. Sendegeya had played in killing members of their family, but that they had never feared him. “Our children have no problem among them,” Mr. Sendegeya said. Her children will go to his home to make meals, and she sometimes asks him to look after her children when she is away. “This is the entrance of my home,” Ms. Mukamana said, gesturing to her front door, steps away from where the pair sat together. “Whenever he encounters problems, he may call me and ask for help, and it is the same thing for me.” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Munnza Naqvi Bollywood actress Shabana Azmi, right, joins other to protest against a spate of violent attacks across the country targeting the country’s Muslim minority, in Mumbai, India, Wednesday, June 28, 2017. (AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool) Thousands of Indians gathered in several cities Wednesday to protest recent violent attacks across the country targeting minority Muslims. Carrying placards saying "Not in my name," the protesters decried the silence of the Hindu nationalist government in response to public lynchings and attacks on at least a dozen Muslim men and boys since it took power in 2014. In New Delhi, thousands of people, including the elderly and parents with young children, sang songs and lit candles. In Mumbai, hundreds, including some Bollywood actors, gathered under umbrellas in pouring rain. Protests were also reported in several other cities. Last Friday, about 20 men attacked four Muslims on a train in the outskirts of New Delhi, fatally stabbing a teenager and seriously injuring two others. The Muslim men said an argument over seats quickly turned into a brutal attack, with the mob accusing them of being "beef-eaters." Many members of the Hindu majority consider cows sacred. The slaughter of cows and eating of beef is illegal or restricted across much of India. Much of the recent violence has been focused on cows. Several fringe Hindu groups, apparently emboldened by the stunning political rise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Bharatiya Janata Party, have attacked Muslim cattle traders and dairy farmers. Muslims constitute about 14 percent of India's 1.3 billion people, while Hindus comprise 80 percent. Rights groups say government officials, including the prime minister, have been slow to strongly condemn the attacks and that police action against perpetrators has been inadequate. Five of the killings, almost all of them in broad daylight and in busy public areas, have taken place in the last three months. On April 1, Pehlu Khan, a Muslim cattle trader, was lynched by a mob in the western state of Rajasthan as he transported cattle he had bought at an animal fair back to his home state of Haryana. Khan and his family were small dairy farmers. In May, two Muslim men were beaten to death over allegations of cattle theft in India's northeast. Over the last two years, vigilante groups, who call themselves cow protectors, have become active in small towns and cities across India. Even lower-caste Hindus who carry out undesirable tasks such as skinning dead cattle have faced mob violence. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Associated Press

By Lilia Blaise A hair salon in Tunis. A new law aimed at protecting Tunisian women has been lauded by human rights groups. CreditMauricio Lima for The New York Times Tunisia has long been regarded as a pioneer for women’s rights in the Arab world, but the day-to-day life of many Tunisian women is still one of abuse and harassment. So when Parliament passed a measure last week outlawing violence against women, some burst into ululation and passed around bouquets of jasmine. The new law makes it easier to prosecute domestic abuse, and it imposes penalties for sexual harassment in public spaces. It says that citizens are entitled to notify the police if they witness violence against women, and that children should be educated in schools about human rights. And it calls for both the police and judges to be trained on how to handle violence against women. Tunisia already stood out among Islamic countries because of its legal arsenal of protections for women. Its code of personal status, adopted in 1956, allows divorce and outlaws polygamy, for example. But women’s rights associations and human rights groups say the new law is a major step forward, in part because it so broad, outlawing not just physical violence but psychological abuse and even economic discrimination. “This is why the new law is so important, because it also takes care of the preventive side of violence against women in general, not only the reform of the criminal side,” Monia Ben Jemia, president of the Tunisian Association of Democratic Women, said in an interview. Still, change may be slow to come to a culture in which many women experience domestic and public abuse daily. In 2016, the Ministry of Women, Family and Childhood reports, 60 percent of Tunisian women were victims of domestic violence. And 50 percent of women said they had experienced aggression in a public area at least once in their lives. Another study published the same year by the Center for Research, Study, Documentation and Information on Women, a Tunisian group that works with the United Nations, found that 70 percent to 90 percent of women had been victims of sexual harassment, mostly on public transportation, from 2011 to 2015. Picking tomatoes in Kairouan. Tunisian women say sexual harassment in public places is common.CreditFethi Belaid/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images When women speak out, it is often to little effect. “We had too many reports over the years from victims of domestic abuse who said they were not taken seriously by the police when they filed a complaint,” Ms. Ben Jemia said. During Tunisia’s years of dictatorship, many women who were political activists or simply had ties to the opposition endured violence, including sexual assault, at the hands of the police. Legislators drafting the new protections also joined a movement across the Middle East to do away with so-called marry-your-rapist laws, which allow men who wed their victims to escape prosecution. Although that part of the Tunisian penal code had largely fallen from use, last year a judge ordered a 13-year-girl who had been raped and become pregnant to marry her attacker. The case stirred up a national controversy and led to a push to change the law. “We finally managed to amend this in the final version of the law, and this is a victory, because apart from one small party, there was a general consensus on the need to change this,” said Bochra Belhaj Hmida, a member of Parliament. Mrs. Belhaj Hmida recalled the years after the Arab Spring when the Islamist party Ennahda was o n the rise and women worried that their rights would be rolled back. Four years ago, Ennahda suggested that women were “complementary” to men, not their equals. The debate on the law just passed by Parliament shows that there has been improvement, Mrs. Belhaj Hmida said. “It was completely different this time,” she said. “I felt that every woman agreed on the need of this law. The debate was more heated between men and women than between parties or political ideologies.” Parliament also agreed to raise the age of sexual consent to 16, from 13. The new legislation also enacted fines and jail time for people who employ minors as housemaids; last year, Tunisia ratified a law on human trade. And workplace discrimination is now punishable by a fine of up to $800. But for women’s rights associations, the hard work is only beginning. Human Rights Watch, while praising the new law, urged the Tunisian authorities to allocate money to enforce it. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) The New York Times

By Megan Specia Rohingya refugees this month near the Naf River, which separates Myanmar and Bangladesh. Villages in Myanmar burned in the background. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times A military crackdown against the Rohingya ethnic group has driven hundreds of thousands of men, women and children from their homes in Myanmar. The Rohingya have faced violence and discrimination in the majority-Buddhist country for decades, but they are now fleeing in unprecedented numbers from violence that the United Nations human rights chief, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, has called “a textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Here’s how an old and bitter dispute has managed to become even more charged. Who are the Rohingya? The Rohingya are a Muslim ethnic group that practices a form of Sunni Islam and have lived in Rakhine, one of Myanmar’s poorest states, for generations. Before the latest exodus, an estimated one million Rohingya lived there, but even then they were a minority in the state. The group has its own language and cultural practices. Some trace their origins there to the 15th century, an assertion the government disputes. Their name itself refers to the area they claim as home, according to the Council on Foreign Relations: Rohang derives from the word Arakan, the former name of Rakhine State, in the Rohingya dialect, and ga or gya means from. Myanmar doesn’t recognize Rohingya as citizens and sees them instead as immigrants from Bangladesh who came to Rakhine under British rule. The country’s first census in 30 years, carried out in 2014, didn’t count the Rohingya; those who identify as part of the group were told to register as Bengali and indicate that their origins were in Bangladesh. The government’s stance makes them one of the largest stateless groups in the world. Many live in squalid conditions similar to refugee camps. Violence against the Rohingya in Rakhine is part of a “longstanding pattern of violations and abuses; systematic and systemic discrimination; and policies of exclusion and marginalization” that have persisted for decades, according to the United Nations human rights agency. Myanmar has passed discriminatory laws. Since a 1962 coup in Myanmar, the country’s successive governments have significantly limited the rights of the Rohingya. A law passed in 1982 denied them citizenship, leaving them off a list of 135 ethnic groups formally recognized by the government. This limited the Rohingya’s access to schools and health care and their ability to move in and out of the country. The government in Rakhine at times has also enforced a two-child limit on Rohingya families and has restricted interfaith marriage. Tasmida, front, an 18-year-old Rohingya refugee, crossing the Naf River. She spent eight days walking and hiding to reach the border. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times Waves of violence have been occurring for years. Tensions in Rakhine have often erupted into violence, prompting hundreds of thousands to seek refuge in Bangladesh and Pakistan in different waves over the decades. In May 2012, the rape and murder of a Buddhist prompted a series of revenge attacks against Muslims. The violence quickly intensified. The military began a wide-ranging crackdown, and hundreds of thousands fled. In October 2013, thousands of Buddhist men carried out coordinated attacks on Muslim villages throughout Rakhine. Human rights groups say the violence that erupted in 2012 and continued into 2013 amounted to ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity. A 2013 Human Rights Watch report said violence in Rakhine was a “coordinated campaign to forcibly relocate or remove the state’s Muslims.” The response from world leaders, however, has been limited. Last October, an armed Rohingya insurgency came to light when militants from the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, then known as Harakah al-Yaqin, attacked three border guard posts. Over the four months that followed, Myanmar’s army, known as the Tatmadaw, and the police killed hundreds, gang-raped women and girls, and forced as many as 90,000 Rohingya from their homes. How did the latest bloodshed begin? On Aug. 25, the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army attacked again, targeting police posts and an army base. Security forces cracked down on the wider population, and rights groups accused them of killing, raping, burning villages and shooting civilians from helicopters. The exodus into Bangladesh began: At least 400,000 Rohingya have fled. Residents of Bangladesh handed out food aid to Rohingya refugees after they crossed the border from Myanmar. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times An additional 12,000 people, mainly ethnic Rakhine Buddhists and other non-Muslims, are also displaced within the state, according to Human Rights Watch. Myanmar has halted humanitarian aid to Rakhine, leaving those still in the state with limited access to food and water. Myanmar has framed the actions as a necessary counterinsurgency operation. What has Aung San Suu Kyi done about it? Governments from several predominantly Muslim countries, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Pakistan and Turkey, have expressed concern about the most recent violence. Malala Yousafzai of Pakistan and Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa have both called on their fellow Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto leader, to do something about the bloodshed. Rohingya refugees from Myanmar waited to receive bamboo poles and tarpaulins to build homes at a new camp near Kutupalong, Bangladesh. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who leads Myanmar’s civilian government but does not control the military, has largely avoided public statements about the crackdown and the flight of refugees. But during a phone call last week with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, she complained of “a huge iceberg of misinformation calculated to create a lot of problems between different communities and with the aim of promoting the interest of the terrorists,” according to her office. (On Wednesday, her office said she had canceled a planned visit to the United Nations General Assembly.) Analysts have said that it would be politically difficult for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi to denounce the crackdown, given the military’s political power and the unpopularity of the Rohingya among the country’s Buddhists. Her critics say she has a moral obligation to speak out, and some have called for her Nobel to be withdrawn. A Rohingya refugee prayed as a Bangladeshi border guard moved other refugees into a holding area after they crossed the border. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Magdalena Grono Washington is considering providing Kyiv with lethal weapons, worrying many residents of eastern Ukraine – and not just separatist rebels or pro-Russian sympathisers. “Most people here don’t think about what these weapons would mean in practice – but of course I am scared”, an outspoken city council member generally loyal to Kyiv told me in Severodonetsk. The town has been Kyiv’s administrative centre for the Luhansk oblast since 2014 when its main city and former administrative centre, Luhansk, fell into Russia-backed rebel hands. Another new dimension to the international struggle over Ukraine are competing proposals from Moscow and Kyiv for a new UN peacekeeping operation that would keep armed forces apart in the main conflict areas in eastern Ukraine. So far, however, it is unclear whether these are schemes designed to sow confusion or genuinely intended to lead to a separation of forces. Not much is known either about what weapons the U.S. might provide to Ukraine, although media reports suggest it could be a $50 million package featuring shoulder-mounted Javelin anti-tank missiles. U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis reconfirmed U.S. backing for Ukraine’s territorial integrity on a visit to Kyiv on 24 August, a welcome signal of support after the uncertainties of the early days of the Trump administration. At the same time, Mattis said the U.S. was reviewing the provision of lethal weapons. President Trump’s approval of any arms deal would be a sharp change of direction after years of refusal by the Obama administration. Opinion is sharply divided over what impact – military or political – the provision of lethal weapons would have on a war that has killed more than 10,000 people since 2014. Sceptics in this highly polarised debate cannot be written off merely as Russia appeasers; the military and political pressure such an arms deal could provide is limited. This is why it is all the more important to consider how the lethal arms provision would affect the humanitarian situation on the ground. Meaningful Defence or Pouring Oil on the Fire? In military terms, those in favour say the weaponry would be solely defensive and would improve Kyiv’s chances to push back against Russia’s continued aggression in eastern Ukraine. They say the arms package would allow Ukraine’s armed forces to face the volatile situation along the line of separation with more confidence and the most optimistic argue the mere presence of such weaponry would deter any attempts by Russian and separatist forces to shift the front line and acquire more territory. The newly-appointed U.S. Special Representative for Ukraine, Kurt Volker, has dismissed the Obama-era argument that supplying weaponry to Kyiv would likely provoke an escalation by the Kremlin, calling the logic “backwards” and stressing deterrence. Those who oppose such a move warn it would give Kyiv little military advantage or deterrence capability. First, they point to the current situation on the ground. The conflict generally is stable: positions along the line of separation are static and neither side is pushing for more territory, even if the sides have moved farther into the so-called grey zone over the past months. But there are still frequent and heavy exchanges of fire, which claim both military and civilian casualties. Some fear that this deadly stalemate could settle into protracted conflict, as in other disputes in Russia’s neighbourhood. But providing lethal weapons would do little if anything to change the situation on the ground or deter the most frequent kind of military action now taking place, the tactical use of rockets and other artillery to test the adversary’s resolve. The most commonly discussed weapon – Javelin anti-tank missiles – illustrates this point. Kyiv first asked its partners for these portable missiles in 2014 when battles were raging and they arguably could have strengthened Ukraine’s positions. But today, provision of Javelins would constitute little more than political symbolism. As a Western diplomat commented: “Kyiv wants a decisive show of support from the West. Whether this is the right form now is not relevant: Ukraine has been wedded to this request for the past three years, so backing down is politically inopportune. Getting the weapons will be a powerful signal”. Opponents of the lethal weapons package point to another issue, which relates to broader strategic calculations. Pouring $50 million worth of lethal arms into an already heavily militarised conflict zone likely will be met by matching Russian support for the rebels. The result would be an increasingly militarised zone of conflict, and more fighting. This is why Europeans generally have pushed against such a decision, with the exception, among NATO allies, of Lithuania, though many provide other forms of military aid. One could argue that the West should give Kyiv the weaponry it needs to take on the rebels and their Russian supporters. But this would be a risky, costly and uncertain gamble, and something for which few if any Western countries have an appetite. That Ukraine has the right to defend itself is beyond dispute. Kyiv has been understandably unhappy about its Western partners’ emphasis on strengthening the government’s long-term resilience rather than its military arsenal. “We feel left alone with Russia and don’t see the focus on resilience as something that is helping us”, a Ukrainian security analyst told me in June. But tactical military escalation is hardly the answer to a conflict that has no military solution. Under the circumstances, the West can be most effective by maintaining sanctions on Russia while helping Ukraine build robust institutions and professionalise its armed forces. Encouraging Negotiations or More Conflict? The political, not the military, impact of providing lethal weapons is the real issue. Here too there are stark differences between assessments of how it would affect negotiations. Supporters claim provision of these weapons would strengthen Ukraine’s hand in the Normandy Format and Trilateral Contact Group negotiations, the main settlement venues for the conflict, giving Kyiv a better chance to achieve stronger security and political outcomes. But others consider this too optimistic. Critics, and not only pro-Russian ones, warn that providing lethal weapons could further aggravate a zero-sum negotiation process that has failed to address issues central to a future settlement. “Power and perceptions of power are used as a negotiating chip in the talks”, commented a senior diplomat involved with the process, adding that neither side can afford to give in to a show of force and therefore each would respond with counter-measures of its own. Indeed, ever since active fighting for territorial gains ceased, the application of force by one side or the other has never helped efforts to end the conflict. Such a logic arguably could change if the balance of power were to shift substantially. But that does not appear to be in the cards for the foreseeable future. A lethal weapons package that Russia could easily match is unlikely to have any political impact. It will not address the imbalance between Ukraine’s and Russia’s military capacities, nor the mismatch between the level of Western and Russian interest in Ukraine. The West does not want to engage in an armed proxy confrontation with Russia over Ukraine, a reality both Moscow and Kyiv understand. While the provision of lethal weapons could boost Ukraine’s confidence and tactical posture in the talks, it is unlikely to change their course, even if accompanied by a strong push by the West for diplomatic progress. “Beating down the Temperature” The conflict’s centre of gravity is not in eastern Ukraine, but that is where the situation is most unstable. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission reports anything from dozens to thousands of ceasefire violations each day. Ceasefire commitments periodically are renewed – at Christmas, Easter, for the harvest or the start of the school year – to give those living in the conflict zone a sense of normalcy. But these pauses invariably fizzle out, making way for new hostilities. Constant insecurity aggravates the humanitarian situation. Front line villages are especially vulnerable given the intermixing of civilians with armed actors on both sides. Shelling of vital infrastructure is common. Interruptions of water and electricity supplies heighten the crisis, especially in the summer and winter months. Infrastructure also suffers from tremors caused by recurrent shelling and needs frequent repair. “Windows of silence”, or humanitarian ceasefires, have been hard to negotiate, although they periodically allow repair teams to weld leaking pipes or reconnect broken wires. Recent rounds of talks offer hope for establishing safety zones around key infrastructure hubs, such as the Donestk Filtration Station that provides water to over 345,000 people. Negotiating these safety zones or implementing the last of three agreed disengagement areas would improve civilian lives in parts of the war zone, but these are small steps. Destructive weaponry still would remain within firing range, and the disengagement areas do not cover the most pernicious hotspots along the line. The systemic malaise would remain unaddressed. A diplomat involved with the settlement talks said: “We are beating down the temperature”, not healing the illness. Focusing on the Bigger Picture In this context, adding lethal U.S. weaponry risks shifting the focus away from what ought to be the priority: fashioning short- and long-term steps to settle or at least manage the conflict. While a comprehensive political solution is not within immediate reach, much could be done to minimise the conflict’s human cost. The greatest immediate danger is the deployment of weapons systems and hostile forces close to the line of separation. Ceasefires are already hard to arrange and implement. They require all sides to make tough decisions, pass orders to all forces in the field and discipline those who do not comply. A diplomat told me that when Ukrainian soldiers were asked how they heard about the latest ceasefire, called ahead of the start of the school year, some answered that they had learned about it from TV. Although Moscow bears significant responsibility for the conflict, Ukrainian authorities also need to take difficult steps to stabilise the east and better manage the humanitarian situation. Demonstrating full commitment to the ceasefire, disengaging forces, and formulating an inclusive vision for the reintegration of the divided region’s populations would be a good start, particularly as positions harden on both sides. Kyiv’s Western partners need to press Ukraine to implement such measures before the country’s 2019 presidential election. In the run up to that poll, Kyiv also should redouble its reform efforts, especially regarding systemic and high-level corruption. While maintaining sanctions is important to convince Moscow its engagement in eastern Ukraine is costly and dangerous, the U.S. and the European Union (EU) also need to increase pressure on the Russian Federation, including in the OSCE, to allow monitoring of the Russian-Ukrainian border in rebel-controlled areas. This would allow the movement of weapons and supplies across those border segments to be tracked. The debate in the UN over different draft proposals by Moscow and Kyiv for a peacekeeping force in Ukraine is also a good opportunity for Ukraine’s Western partners to insist that Moscow allow for transparency along the Russian-Ukraine border as a first step. Meanwhile, Moscow should press its allies in rebel-held areas to urgently comply with their ceasefire commitments and withdraw heavy weapons. The idea of a peacekeeping operation is well worth pursuing, even if Moscow’s intentions appear to be to create a diversion rather than seek a genuine solution. Though likely to stumble on difficult issues such as mandate, area of deployment and composition – to cite just a few – it ultimately could help “unzip” the line of separation and facilitate a genuine disengagement of forces. Providing lethal weapons to be deployed in the conflict zone should not be a priority for Kyiv’s partners. Such a step could upend the status quo, which, however imperfect, is preferable to escalating violence; nor would it produce substantive progress toward settlement. In Kramatorsk, a local humanitarian worker showed me pictures of Soviet-era shells, recently fired at front-line villages, enhanced in makeshift ways for more lethal impact. He said the sides were copying one another in their use. New weapons in the area are unlikely to affect the sides’ broader calculations, but are sure to impact or even end the lives of those who live along the line of separation. This can and should be avoided. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 International Crisis Group