By Holly Scala Before gaining independence from France, Lebanon conducted a census in 1932 and established its representative confessionalism system. The system mandates proportional representation between Christians and Muslims by requiring a Maronite Christian President, a Sunni Muslim Prime Minister, and a Shi'a Muslim Speaker of Parliament. The 1989 Taif Agreement, which ended Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war, solidified the representative confessionalism system. From 1975-1990, Lebanon was embroiled in a bloody civil war between the Christian Lebanese Front and the Muslim and Arab National Movement, supported by Palestinian groups. The war resulted in the disappearance of 17,000 and the loss of over 150,000 lives. The government has failed to hold perpetrators of mass atrocities during the war accountable due to its enactment of a blanket General Amnesty Law in 1991, which pardoned all political crimes committed before that year. Many militias from the war have turned into political parties , and their leaders into politicians. During the 1982 Sabra and Shatila Massacre , the Lebanese Forces militia, also known as Phalangist militia, raped and murdered over 800 civilians in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps. Lebanon is vulnerable to spillover conflict from neighboring Israel and Syria, such as clashes and mass violence in 2012-2013 between Syrian opposition Sunni Muslims and Syrian government Alawite and Hezbollah forces. Protests began in October 2019 against new tax and austerity measures. They were reignited after the August 4, 2020 Beirut port explosion . Protesters call for an end to rampant government corruption. Security forces use torture against protestors. A report by Amnesty International revealed that former detainees experienced beatings, electric shocks on their genitals, and hanging in stress positions for long durations. Syrian and Palestinian refugees experience discrimination in Lebanon. Human Rights Watch reports that 73% of Syrian refugees in Lebanon lack legal status, so they cannot access healthcare, work or education. Lebanon also violates its non-refoulement obligations by deporting refugees, demolishing structures in unofficial refugee camps, and forcing refugees out of unused buildings. Discrimination against long-term Palestinian refugees is widespread, including denial of rights to register births, marriages and deaths for those without official identity documents, exclusions from public education and health services, restrictions on work eligibility, and exclusion from owning or inheriting property. The LGBTQ community in Lebanon suffers discrimination. Security forces are cracking down on LGBTQ individuals and organizations. Article 534 of the Penal Code criminalizes any sex which “contradicts the laws of nature”, making homosexual sex punishable by up to one year in prison. Lebanon criminalizes sex work. Women, especially migrant women, face systematic discrimination and violence under the “ kafala ” (sponsorship) system. This system restricts migrant women’s rights to freedom of movement, communication, education and healthcare. Migrant women also suffer from exploitative working conditions, denial of pay or compulsory deductions, deprivation of food and proper accommodation, and verbal, physical, and sexual abuse. The 1925 Nationality Law , grants citizenship only to children whose fathers are Lebanese. It inhibits refugee children's ability to enroll in public schools, and restricts their right to healthcare, work, and property ownership. It puts such children at high risk of statelessness. Because of its discriminatory practices towards women, the LGBTQ community, and refugees, Genocide Watch considers Lebanon to be at Stage 3: Discrimination . Because of its failure to seek justice for atrocities committed during the civil war, especially the Sabra and Shatila Massacres , Lebanon is also at Stage 10: Denial . Genocide Watch urges Lebanon to: · Change its discriminatory 1925 Nationality Law to confer citizenship on all persons born in Lebanon. · Repeal Article 534 and introduce legislation that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination. · Initiate a truth and reconciliation commission to investigate atrocities committed during the civil war. · Repeal the General Amnesty Law of 1991. Ban perpetrators of crimes from government roles.

By Holly Scala Summary This special report explores the recent increase in discrimination, harassment, and hate crimes perpetrated against Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in the United States. While anti-AAPI sentiments, discrimination, harassment, and hate crimes have scarred the United States since the late 19th century , the previous year and a half (2019-2021) has witnessed a surge in reported incidents, due largely to Donald Trump’s hateful rhetoric surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. In this report, Genocide Watch seeks to shed light on the underdiscussed and underreported oppression of AAPI communities in the United States. Demography Asian American and Pacific Islanders comprise the fastest-growing ethnic group in the U.S., with 20 million Asian Americans tracing their roots to East Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Indian subcontinent. Six of the largest Asian groups account for 85% of the Asian population in the U.S. (see Figure 1). While AAPI communities are often classified monolithically, there are major differences between them in income, education, and other key demographics . Ignoring differences between different AAPI identities and their needs is both dehumanizing and detrimental to effective policymaking. Figure 1: AAPI Demographics in the U.S. (Pew Research Center) Historical Treatment of AAPI Communities in the U.S. U.S. colonialism in the Philippines and war in Southeast Asia fostered an American imagining of Asia as a region to " dominate ." This attitude also resulted in the fetishization of Asian women. American GIs in Asia, particularly during the Vietnam War and Korean War, exploited Asian women in the sex industry . They contributed to a male mentality that Asian women’s bodies exist solely for white male pleasure. Discriminatory tropes against AAPI communities fit primarily into two categories: the “ model minority ” trope, which characterizes AAPI immigrants as ideal, submissive, and economically successful, and the “ yellow peril ” trope, which characterizes AAPI immigrants as dangerous, unclean, and unfit for western society. The “model minority” trope hinges on the false perception that most “Asians” are wealthy top earners, with children who are superior students and who gain admission into top universities, depriving white students of equal opportunities. The reality starkly contradicts this stereotype, with rising income inequality between the top 10% of Asian-Americans and the bottom 10%. (See Figure 2.) In fact, most Asian-Americans have fewer economic and political opportunities than white Americans. AAPI women experience an added layer of discrimination resulting from historical and persistent toxic fetishization, hyper-sexualization, and exoticization . Asian women are popularly characterized as submissive and servile. This fantasy about AAPI women makes them more vulnerable to violence, as evidenced by the March 2021 murders at several Atlanta-area spas. Despite the inseparability of sexism and racism, this intersectionality is seldom discussed or even noted in reports of violence against AAPI women. Codified racism against AAPI communities has been evident in U.S. legislation since the 19th century. The 1875 Page Act , effectively prohibited Chinese women from entering the U.S. The 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act barred all Chinese immigrants from entering the U.S. These laws followed popular reaction against the influx of thousands of Chinese laborers hired to build the American railroads. During World War II, 120,000 Japanese Americans were interned from 1942–1945. Their internment was even upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu v. U.S ., the court's most racist decision since Dred Scott v. Sandford and Plessy v. Ferguson . More recently, proposed legislation has demonstrated the persistent institutionalized racism against AAPI communities. For example, in June 2020, certain members of the U.S. Senate introduced the " Secure Campus Act of 2020 ”, which, if it were enacted, would prohibit Chinese nationals from obtaining visas to the U.S. for graduate or postgraduate STEM programs. In September 2020, President Trump signed the Newspeak named “ Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping ,” prohibiting the federal government and its contractors from hosting racial sensitivity training workshops. Precursors to Recent Violence and Discrimination A catalyst for recent anti-AAPI violence and discrimination has been the inflammatory, racist rhetoric spewed forth by former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic. Trump and his supporters continuously referred to the coronavirus as the “ China virus ” or “ Kung-flu ,” epithets that falsely and recklessly attributed blame for the pandemic to Asian countries and communities. Stop AAPI Hate conducted an analysis of 1,227 tweets about Asian Americans in the eight months preceding the 2020 election and reported that 10% included anti-Asian language (See Figures 3 and 4.) All of these tweets came from Republican politicians. Only half included language related to the pandemic, highlighting the more widespread nature of anti-Asian rhetoric. Trump, whose racist tweets were retweeted 1,213,700 times and liked 4,276,200 times, was the greatest propagator of this hate speech. The content of the Tweets ranged from directly blaming China for the pandemic to criticizing China for human rights abuses or U.S. trade dependence on China. Figure 3: Donald Trump Tweet from March 2020 (Stop AAPI Hate) Figure 4: 2020 Political Candidates and Stigmatizing Tweets (Stop AAPI Hate) Escalation of Discrimination and Violence: 2020-2021 In 2020, anti-Asian hate crimes increased by 149%, despite a 7% decrease in overall hate crimes against other minority communities (see Figure 5). Stop AAPI Hate, which runs the Stop AAPI Hate Reporting Center, reported 3,795 hate incidents between March 19, 2020 and February 28, 2021. (This does not account for the true number of incidents; only reported incidents.) Incidents occurred in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The largest number of cases occurred in California and New York , accounting for 44.6% and 13.6%, respectively. Most of the incidents occurred at businesses (35.4%), followed by public streets (25.3%), parks (9.8%), and online (10.8%). Figure 5: Anti-Asian Hate Crime Incidents Reported to Police in Select US Cities 2019–2020 (CSHE) Verbal harassment (68.1%) and shunning (deliberate avoidance) (20.5%) of AAPI individuals account for most incidents. Following these categories, by prevalence, are physical assault (11.1%); civil rights violations, including workplace discrimination, refusal of service, and barring from transportation (8.5%); and online harassment (6.8%). See Table 1 for examples of reported incidents in each category utilized in the Stop AAPI Hate report . Table 1: Incident Examples by Type Demographic differences among targets of attacks vary depending on gender, ethnicity, and age. Between March 2020 and February 2021, Asian women reported 2.3 times more hate incidents than men, often experiencing street harassment and exposure to men’s sexualized fantasies about Asian women. According to the 2020-2021 Stop AAPI National Report , harassment, violence, and discrimination against Chinese individuals made up 42.2% of reported hate incidents, followed by Koreans (14.8%), Vietnamese (8.5%), and Filipinos (7.9%) (see Figure 6). Figure 6: Ethnicity of Reporting Individuals (Stop AAPI Hate) The New York Times reported that AAPI individuals over 60-years old were disproportionately targeted with physical violence. Barriers to Understanding the Full Scope of the Problem While these data demonstrate recent surges in anti-Asian hate, they suffer from several impediments to capturing the true scope of the problem. One impediment is poor data collection of hate crimes by law enforcement and subsequent lack of reporting to the FBI. Although the 1990 Hate Crimes Statistics Act requires law enforcement agencies to submit data on hate crimes to the FBI, more than 3,000 of the 18,000 agencies in the U.S. did not submit their statistics in 2019. Beyond this, law enforcement officers often do not receive adequate training in recognizing hate crimes, which results in under-reporting of hate crimes. For example, because attacks on Asian-run businesses are often coupled with other crimes, such as robbery or vandalism, law enforcement officers frequently categorize the crimes as crimes against property, glossing over hate-based motives and personal assaults against members of AAPI communities. The existence of barriers for reporting hate incidents is another impediment to gathering accurate data. Systemic violence and discrimination perpetrated against AAPI communities by law enforcement officers themselves have created a longstanding distrust of law enforcement. Language barriers and immigration status also lead to reluctance to report hate incidents. Finally, it can be a challenge for victims to recognize crimes committed against them as hate crimes. Victims often avoid asking themselves the difficult questions: Was a crime committed against them? Did bias or hatred motivate the crime? Attacks often lack an overt anti-Asian hate symbol, equivalent to the swastika against Jews or the white hood or noose against Blacks. Lack of physical symbolization makes crimes against Asian Americans hard to recognize as racially motivated. Often verbal expressions of hatred are the only signs of hateful intent. This lack of recognition is exacerbated by the fact that anti-Asian hatred in America is rarely discussed or confronted. Summary and Recommendations While Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in the United States have historically endured discrimination, harassment, and persecution, surges in violence in 2020-2021 underscore the magnitude of the AAPI communities’ plight. Because of the prevalence of anti-Asian hate incidents, including verbal and online harassment, physical assault, civil rights violations, and, in the case of Atlanta, a mass shooting resulting in the deaths of eight individuals, Genocide Watch considers the situation in the United States to include Stage 3 (Discrimination) , Stage 4 (Dehumanization) , and Stage 6 (Polarization) . Genocide Watch recommends: · Law enforcement agencies and the FBI should utilize disaggregated data to document anti-Asian hate crimes more accurately than they do at present. · U.S. policymakers should explicitly denounce hate crimes against AAPI communities. · Federal, state, and local governments and NGOs should establish public messaging campaigns encouraging reporting of hate crimes and providing recommendations for bystander intervention when hate crimes are observed. · Local community and church leaders should provide resources to the public and to congregations to make them conscious of discrimination against AAPI communities. · Law enforcement officials should provide police with proper training to recognize racially motivated crimes and intersectional prejudices, such as sexism, ableism, ageism, and racism. · Policymakers should invest in neighborhood resources for AAPI communities, and increase their access to education, housing, and public services.

By Hari Kumar, Mujib Mashal, and Suhasini Raj Hasina Fakhroo, whose house in Khargone was razed, said the authorities “took out their anger” through collective punishment. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Perpetual Violence’: India’s Dangerous New Pattern of Communal Tensions As a national campaign by right-wing groups inflames local tensions, Muslim communities are facing the harshest punishments, according to activists, analysts and retired officials. By Hari Kumar , Mujib Mashal and Suhasini Raj New York Times May 11, 2022 KHARGONE, India — The authorities sent bulldozers to the small city in central India within 24 hours of clashes between Hindus and Muslims that turned into a mob-fueled rampage. The Hindus said stones had been thrown from the direction of the mosque, where Muslims were breaking the Ramadan fast. The Muslims said the Hindu procession had moved toward them with provocative chants. Before any official investigation or court ruling, the home minister of the state, Madhya Pradesh, appeared to fault the Muslims and ordered demolitions — the same swift, one-sided punishments imposed in two other states over recent clashes. “The houses from where the stones were pelted, we will turn those houses into piles of stone,” said Narottam Mishra, the home minister. The communal tensions in Khargone, New Delhi and Gujarat — and the demolitions that followed in each — are part of a worrisome new pattern, according to analysts, activists and former civil servants. In the past, such clashes, while often deadlier, were usually set off by a local issue and would remain contained to a single area. The trigger for the 2002 Gujarat riots, which left more than 1,000 dead, was a train fire that killed dozens of Hindu pilgrims. The recent violence, the most widespread communal tensions in recent years, played out across several states, multiple clashes with the same characteristics and one-sided punishments. And they are rooted in the rhetoric of right-wing groups at the national level that are targeting Muslims through provocation, a campaign emboldened by the silence of the country’s top leaders . The concern, say analysts, activists, and former civil servants, is that the clashes will become more frequent, pushing the nation into a cycle of violence and instability . Residents protested the demolitions in a New Delhi neighborhood last month. Bulldozers continued razing property for nearly two hours after India’s chief justice issued an order to halt. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Backhoes at work demolishing buildings in New Delhi after the rioting there. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times The nationwide provocations by right-wing activists, which spread swiftly through social media, inspire local groups, who are increasingly turning religious occasions into political events promoting a Hindu-first vision of India that relegates minorities to second-class citizens. When the recent tensions spilled into violence last month, authorities in those places rushed to dole out punishment that fell disproportionately on Muslims and in ways that circumvented the legal process. After clashes in New Delhi, demolition, mainly of Muslim-run shops and kiosks, continued for nearly two hours after India’s chief justice issued an order to halt. Bulldozers swooped up tea stalls and ripped out staircases that left a family stranded without a way down. They destroyed the walls of a mosque before stopping short of a nearby Hindu temple. Officials in the three states justified the razing, saying that they were going after illegal encroachment. But the timing, along with speeches by local politicians calling for the demolitions, suggested a link to the clashes, activists and analysts say. “I fear that we are in the stage of perpetual violence,” said Asim Ali, a researcher who has studied the rise of Hindu nationalism, known as Hindutva. A market scene in New Delhi, in a neighborhood affected by last month’s communal violence. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times A shopkeeper in Khargone peering out of his shop a few days after the unrest in April. The authorities had imposed a curfew, and he was waiting for it to be relaxed so he could open for business. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times “Social media and 24/7 news channels mean that Hindutva groups, which are now very technologically savvy, graft into the local context any hot-button communal issue that takes place anywhere in the country,” he said. In an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, more than a hundred retired senior civil servants called for an end to hate and “vigilante violence” that they said had “embedded itself deep in the recesses of the structures, institutions and processes of governance.” “The administration of law, instead of being an instrument for maintaining peace and harmony, has become the means by which the minorities can be kept in a state of perpetual fear,” they said . Another group of retired officials countered with a letter in support of Mr. Modi, calling the concerns “empty virtue-signaling.” “What do you mean by provocation?” said Vinod Bansal, a spokesman for Vishwa Hindu Parishad, a right-wing group behind some of the recent processions. “These are false allegations levied by the perpetrators to save their skins and hide their sins,” he added. “Hindus are in fact victims in all such cases.” Khargone, a town of about 200,000 in Madhya Pradesh state where the worst of the communal violence happened on April 10, has a history of small-scale tensions. About three-quarters of the population is Hindu; in many neighborhoods, Hindus and Muslims share the same streets. Like other recent clashes, the Khargone violence centered on the birthday celebrations of a Hindu god, which overlapped with Ramadan this year. One procession ended peacefully. Authorities approved a second on a designated route to avoid the mosque at its busiest hour when Muslims gather to break their Ramadan fast. But that procession, which included hundreds of participants, took place later, at peak time. Among the chants repeated was one heard across other states, too: “If you are to live in this country, you have to hail Lord Ram.” Muslims in Khargone whose houses were demolished in April sought makeshift shelter in a tent. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Asha Pawar, in a room of her house that was set alight by a mob last month amid communal violence in Khargone. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Anil Gupta, an organizer, said the delay was unintentional, caused by participants’ late arrival. “We did not play any provocative music or songs,” he said. “To take the name of Lord Ram is not a crime.” Violence erupted. Mobs rampaged for much of the night, destroying property from both communities. Altogether 73 people, including the region’s senior most police officer, were injured. The police returned the body of a Muslim man to his family days later, with little explanation of how he died. After about a week, the police said they had arrested several Hindu men in connection with his death. An inquiry by a group of opposition parties contended that the police had initially withheld the victim’s identity so as to justify the government’s heavy-handed response to Muslims. In the past, officials and religious leaders put in place measures to avoid flare-ups, like assigning members to keep watch at sensitive spots. Such steps broke down in Khargone. Madan Lokur, a retired justice on India’s Supreme Court, said the police typically tried to forestall violence by garnering intelligence on potential trouble. Not doing so, he said, “will only embolden the aggressors.” In Khargone, in central India, where the authorities demolished buildings after communal violence erupted. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Arif Khan, a Muslim whose house was demolished by the authorities, inside a makeshift tent where he is living with his family in Khargone. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times “I see these events as a disturbing pattern which will lead, eventually, to injustice and further vitiate the atmosphere prevailing in some parts of the country and stoke fires and retaliation,” Mr. Lokur said. Concerns about the fairness of India’s law enforcement in dealing with communal tensions have intensified in recent years. An Amnesty International report found that after months of peaceful protests against a citizenship law seen as discriminatory toward Muslims turned violent in 2020 , the police in New Delhi arrested “Muslims on a mass scale immediately after the riots even though the minority community bore the brunt of the violence” and accused officers of“torturing people.” “If you try to defend yourself, the police will come for you with its full might,” said Mehmood Pracha, a lawyer who represented several Muslims accused in the 2020 riots. The Delhi High court, in a recent hearing, raised questions about why the police had not stopped a procession by a right-wing group that had led to the clashes in April. Instead, the court said, the police “were accompanying the said illegal procession.” Suman Nalwa, a spokeswoman for the New Delhi police, denied the accusations around the 2020 riots and rejected concerns over the April clashes. “The rhetoric and narrative against police is created by interested groups who want to vilify the police,” she said. In Madhya Pradesh state, where Khargone is, political leaders have taken a hard line on issues embraced by Hindu nationalist campaigns. Shivraj Singh Chouhan, the state’s chief minister, has supported cow protection and condemned interfaith relationships. A Muslim family in Khargone whose house was demolished by the authorities uses a plastic sheet as a wall partition in their makeshift home. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times “If anyone looks the wrong way toward any mother, sister and daughter, I will not only send you to jail but will destroy your life, your house, your shop — nothing will be left,” he said in a recent speech . Officials have followed his lead. After a complaint last month by relatives of a Hindu woman, alleging that a Muslim man had “kidnapped” her, a senior district official retweeted Mr. Chouhan’s speech. The official then tweeted pictures of bulldozers demolishing a shop and house of the man “accused in the kidnapping of a girl student.” A local court later ordered protection for the couple, describing them as “living together as per their own free will.” In the days after the Khargone clashes, nearly 150 people were arrested. Riyajuddin Sheikh, a local Muslim social worker, said community leaders compiled lists showing about 125 of the arrested were Muslim. Among the dozens of homes and shops destroyed by bulldozers, the majority belonged to Muslims. Anugraha P., the district magistrate in Khargone, denied the authorities had unfairly targeted Muslims or the police had done too little to prevent the clashes. “We have to ensure neutrality, and give a message to the people that hatred and fear should not be there,” she said. Hasina Fakhroo, a 56-year-old widow and mother of six whose house was razed, said the authorities “took out their anger” through collective punishment. She said that no stones had been thrown from her home or the immediate area. She provided documents to The New York Times showing that she paid property taxes and that her home’s construction was partly funded by a plan the prime minister had championed. But Ms. Fakhroo said she had been receiving notices that the house was on illegally occupied land. “I shouted ‘Allow me to die here, run the bulldozer over me, where will I go? I am a widow,’” Ms. Fakhroo recalled of the demolition. The tensions are prompting some to abandon the area. “My in-laws are pressuring me that we should leave this place,” said Rakesh Kale, a Hindu resident who has painted a “For Sale” sign on his wall. “How we can live here?” he asked “Violence took place in 2012, 2015, 2018 and now in 2022.” A scene in Khargone, where buildings were demolished in mostly Muslim neighborhoods in the wake of violent clashes. Credit...Anindito Mukherjee for The New York Times Hari Kumar is a reporter in the New Delhi bureau. He joined The Times in 1997. @HariNYT Mujib Mashal is The New York Times Bureau Chief for South Asia. Born in Kabul, he wrote for magazines such as The Atlantic, Harper’s, Time and others before joining The Times. @MujMash Suhasini Raj has worked for over a decade as an investigative journalist with Indian and international news outlets. Based in the New Delhi bureau, she joined The Times in 2014. @suhasiniraj A version of this article appears in print on May 12, 2022, Section A, Page 12 of the New York edition with the headline: Clashes in India Stoke Fears of ‘Perpetual Violence’. Copyright 2022 The New York Times Company

Accountability Needed for Death, Torture, Inhumane Treatment, Forced Labor The front gate of Koro Toro 2, as taken by a detainee on a hidden camera. © 2022 Private Chad’s military is responsible for the deaths in custody of several detainees en route to and at Koro Toro prison following the October 2022 protests over the extension of the transition government. Chadian military officials oversee a prison in which abuse runs rampant and are responsible for the deaths of protesters detained in the wake of the October 20, 2022 protests. The Chadian government should close one Koro Toro building and repair the other. Anyone held there without charge should be freed immediately. International partners should evaluate their support. (Nairobi) – Chad’s military is responsible for the deaths in custody of several detainees en route to and at Koro Toro prison in October 2022, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. The prisoners were unlawfully detained, mistreated, and denied basic supplies during the two to three days transit from the capital city to the prison. The 77-page report, “‘Worse Than Hell’: Death and Torture at Chad’s Koro Toro Prison,” documents in detail the detention of 72 people, several of whom were tortured or ill-treated at Koro Toro following the October 20 protests in the Chadian capital, N’Djamena, and in several other towns, to protest the two years extension of the transitional government. Security forces fired live ammunition at protesters. Hundreds were then taken to Koro Toro, a high security prison about 600 kilometers away. The transition ended in May 2024 with the election of Gen. Mahamat Idriss Déby. “Chadian military officials oversee a prison in which abuse runs rampant and are responsible for deaths of protesters detained in the wake of the October 20, 2022 protests,” said Lewis Mudge, Central Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The government should act to address the impunity for these abuses that has led many victims to give up all hope for justice.” The remains of those who died should be returned to their families for burial, and one of the main buildings at Koro Toro should be closed as it is unfit to be used as a detention center, Human Rights Watch said. Chadian authorities, the African Union, and United Nations bodies should immediately investigate unlawful detention and ill-treatment at Koro Toro and all deaths in custody. Human Rights Watch interviewed more than 150 people during 2023 and 2024, including 72 former detainees, family members of detainees who died en route to or at Koro Toro, government officials, and members of civil society. Human Rights Watch matched geographic features seen and verified from images obtained from former detainees with satellite imagery to locate the prison site. It used this material, along with sketches provided by victims, to construct diagrammatic models of the prison. Koro Toro is comprised principally of two prisons, known as Koro Toro 1, or Koro Toro Habré, and Koro Toro 2, or Koro Toro Déby, located about one kilometer apart. Koro Toro 1 is older than Koro Toro 2 and is in decrepit condition. Human Rights Watch found that it lacks even the most basic standards of care. Both compounds house suspects who have yet to be charged with a crime, pretrial detainees, and convicted prisoners. A sketch by a former detainee from Koro Toro and the corresponding satellite imagery as of May 4, 2023. Sketch © 2022 Private. Image © 2024 Planet Labs PBC. Graphic © Human Rights Watch The prison, which was designed to house “violent extremists,” is hundreds of kilometers from major urban centers and cut off from the outside world with no cell phone reception, making it practically impossible for family members and lawyers to visit. En route to Koro Toro, most detainees were denied food and – more important – water, over two to three days. One former detainee said that when it was clear the trucks would not stop for water, he and other detainees started to drink their own urine. “We had a few small bottles, and we passed them around to share urine to drink,” he said. Some detainees died in transit, presumably from delirium and hunger. Former detainees said the guards told them to throw the bodies out of the trucks. Human Rights Watch documented the deaths of at least four people en route to the prison, six others at the prison, and of one man whose death occurred in either of those places, although the real number of dead is most likely much higher. Relatives were not officially informed of the deaths, although some were told informally. Almost two years on, none of the remains have been released to their families. A clandestine photo showing goats and men at Koro Toro 1, taken and smuggled out by a former detainee. © 2022 Private Former detainees said that, while soldiers from the national army guarded the prison, day-to-day administration was managed by prisoners suspected of having links to the Islamist armed group Boko Haram. They punished and beat other detainees, oversaw food distribution, and ran a small market. Former detainees said that the soldiers gave these prisoners de facto authority to ill-treat and beat others. At least hundreds of people detained at Koro Toro in connection with the October 20 protests were “chained up” with iron rods around their ankles and attached to another iron rod for up to several weeks. Some were subjected to prolonged solitary confinement, a form of torture, and forced labor. Judicial proceedings for the detainees were held in the prison by the Tribunal of N’Djamena. Based on interviews with former detainees, the interrogations and judicial proceedings were hurried and fell far short of fair trial standards. Most of the accused were convicted and then pardoned. The Chadian government maintains that the October 20, 2022 protests amounted to an insurrection and that, given the seriousness of this crime, detention at Koro Toro was not extreme. In a July 2023 letter to Human Rights Watch, Chad’s justice minister stated that there was “no evidence relating to the violation of human rights related to [the] transfer or detention in Koro-Toro prison.” The Chadian government should immediately close Koro Toro 1 and ensure urgent repairs at Koro Toro 2 to make it adequate for holding prisoners, including installing a means for detainees to communicate with their families and lawyers. No one should be detained at Koro Toro prison without charges, and anyone currently so held should be released immediately, Human Rights Watch said. Failing a serious effort by the Chadian government to confront ill-treatment and torture at Koro Toro, Chad’s international partners should evaluate financial and other support, including training and capacity-building to institutions directly involved in these violations. “Mahamat Idriss Déby’s government should demonstrate its respect for the rule of law by closing down Koro Toro 1 and bringing conditions at Koro Toro 2 up to human rights standards,” Mudge said. “The authorities should immediately investigate detainee deaths both en route to and at Koro Toro and prosecute those responsible for this and other abuses in detention.” © 2024 Human Rights Watch

A Genocide Watch Report By Sabrina Nelson Joint UN-AU Delegation Visits IDP Camp in DRC , by   UN Women licensed under ( CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 ). The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has faced one of the world’s most serious humanitarian, insecurity, and human rights crises for decades. But the UN, US, and EU have abandoned millions of civilians to starvation, war, forced displacement, and genocide. Bintou Keita, Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General and Head of the United Nations Organization Stabilization Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO),   expressed his concern  that  “the rapidly escalating M23 crisis carries the very real risk of provoking a wider regional conflict.” There are also genocidal threats to civilians from terrorist militias like the FDLR,  composed of former Rwandan Hutu genocidists, the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) allied with the Islamic State Central Africa Province, and ethnic Lendu and Mai Mai  militias that target Congolese Tutsis such as the Hema and Banyamulenge . DRC: A country plagued by civil war and ethnic conflict Since 1996, when the First and Second Congo Wars broke out, the DRC has been plagued by civil war, resulting in approximately 6 million deaths .  Mass killing , extrajudicial executions, kidnapping of children , mass rape , other gender-based violence, torture by militias and government forces, and ethnic discrimination  have become endemic in the eastern DRC. In 1996 , the Tutsi-dominated Rwandan military invaded Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) to pursue Hutu militiamen, who had fled there after the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda. This intervention set off the First Congo War. The war led to the overthrow of Zaire's President Mobutu Sese Seko, with Laurent-Désiré Kabila declaring himself as the new President. In 1998, a rebellion against Kabila's government, supported by Rwanda and Uganda, sparked the Second Congo War, the deadliest  war since World War II. Anarchy and instability have persisted  in the DRC due to the continuing presence of heavily armed ethnic militias fighting for territory and resources. In 1999, the UN created MONUC,  a peacekeeping mission with the mandate  to bring about peace and stability in the DRC by monitoring a ceasefire and facilitating disarmament, demobilization, and reintegration of combatants. In 2010, MONUC was renamed MONUSCO , with an expanded mandate and 20,000 UN troops and police to bring peace and stability to the DRC. MONUSCO   failed  to bring peace and stability due to its inadequate mandate to protect civilians and its failure to act when militias attacked. Facing growing criticisms  about the mission’s ineffectiveness  and dissatisfaction  among Congolese politicians about the UN, President Felix Tshisekedi requested  that MONUSCO withdraw from the DRC by the end of 2024. Over 120 militias and armed groups  are actively operating in Eastern Congo. They may take over the eastern DRC when MONUSCO withdraws. “ M23 troops Bunagana ” by Al Jazeera licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . Since 2022, the Tutsi led rebel group M23 has committed numerous war crimes in Eastern DRC, including unlawful killings and mass rape . The Rwandan army has provided direct military and financial support to M23. The UN has not sanctioned Rwanda for this support. M23 has made significant territorial gains, seizing  strategic towns such as Kanyabayonga.  A growing displacement crisis According to the Norwegian Refugee Council’s annual report, the DRC has been ranked  as one of the countries with the largest displaced populations in the world for the past seven years. In April 2024 , the DRC had 7.3 million displaced persons. Armed attacks and clashes between armed groups have been the leading causes of this displacement. Tens of thousands live   in internally displaced persons (IDP) camps around the cities of Goma, Rutshuru and Luber, where they face attacks by ethnic militias. Nobel Peace Prize laureate Dr. Denis Mukwege  has criticized the West’s “negligence” toward DRC IDPs. “ Displaced people set camp in Goma outskirts ” by MONUSCO Photos , licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 . Due to ongoing attacks by armed militias, international aid organizations have had difficulty  reaching civilians, leaving them to face water and food scarcity . Currently, more than 25.4 million  people require humanitarian assistance, with the Eastern provinces being the most in need. Despite this crisis, humanitarian aid to IDPs remains drastically underfunded . Sexual Violence & Human Rights violations In 2024, there has been a significant rise in cases of sexual violence, especially against women and girls. According to UNICEF , during the first quarter of 2023, more than 38,000 cases of rape were reported, a 37% increase over 2022. Women and girls in IDP camps are especially vulnerable  to sexual assault perpetrated  by militias and DRCongo armed forces, including rape and sexual slavery. Personal accounts   have shown that many women and girls have been victims of rape when going outside the IDP camps to fetch supplies and firewood to cook. Multiple reports   show  that children in the DRC have been victims of sexual violence, including rape, gang rape and sexual slavery. Congolese children’s rights have been systematically violated through the active recruitment of child soldiers by armed groups. In 2023, 1,861  children were reportedly recruited in Eastern Congo for combat and transport of ammunition. “ Children Displaced by Conflict, DRC ”, by United Nations Photo , licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 . Attacks by the M23 rebels have resulted in a surge of ethnic-based discrimination  against the Tutsi and Banyamulenge communities. Attacks by militias against people of Tutsi background have more than doubled. While the DRC government has condemned ethnic-based violence and hate speech against Rwandaphone communities, few offences have been investigated or prosecuted. Almost nothing has been  done by the Congolese government to prevent the systematic targeting of the Banyamulenge , a Congolese Tutsi group - which Genocide Watch and other genocide experts consider a “ slow genocide ”. The world must react to the unfolding crisis in the DRC. The genocide unfolding in the DRC has been neglected for too long. The DRC has an ongoing genocide against Tutsi and other minority groups. It is driven by the same indigenous vs. invader ethnic mythology that drove the genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda. The UN, EU, AU, and US must act to stop it. MONUSCO must not withdraw from Eastern DRC before a new UN/AU Peacekeeping Mission is authorized, funded, and deployed. Providers of international humanitarian assistance must increase and deliver it to displaced persons and refugees to alleviate the suffering of millions of Congolese. The DRC is subject to international humanitarian and human rights law. Commanders, officials, and companies complicit or responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by armed forces and militia groups must be held accountable. This includes the Rwandan officials who have provided direct military assistance to the M23 rebel militia group. Protecting civilians and upholding human rights must remain the primary priority of the DRC government and of AU and UN forces. The AU and UN must assist the DRC government to protect the Banyamulenge  and other minority groups from war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide.

By Grant Peck An armed militant group fighting Myanmar's government on behalf of the country's Muslim Rohingya minority has issued a statement asserting its right to self-defense and denying links to any terrorist group. The statement, dated March 29 but released Tuesday through overseas sympathizers, is the first public announcement issued in the name of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which previously called itself the Faith Movement, or Harakah al-Yaqin. Analysts including the Brussel-based International Crisis Group say it has been carrying out armed resistance. The statement says the group "came forward to defend, salvage and protect Rohingya community in Arakan with our best capacities as we have the legitimate right under international law to defend ourselves in line with the principle of self-defense." Arakan is another term for Rakhine, the western state of Myanmar where most of the country's 1 million Rohingya live. The Rohingya face severe discrimination in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and were the targets of inter-communal violence in 2012 that killed hundreds and drove about 140,000 people - predominantly Rohingya - from their homes to camps for the internally displaced, where most remain. Most are denied citizenship because they are looked on as having migrated illegally from Bangladesh. The statement issued 20 demands to the government for ensuring Rohingya rights. In October last year, armed men killed nine Myanmar border guards, triggering a savage counterinsurgency sweep by the army in the Rohingya area of Rakhine. Alleged human rights abuses by the army, including rape and killing of civilians and the burning of more than 1,000 homes, caused international criticism and led to a U.N. Human Rights Council call last week for an independent international investigation. Harakah al-Yaqin has taken credit for the killings of the border guards, according to the International Crisis Group, and the government has accused them of being terrorists. "We do not associate with any terrorist group across the world," the Arakan group's statement said. "We do not commit any form of terrorism against any civilian regardless of their religious and ethnic origin as we do not subscribe to the notion of committing terrorism for our legitimate cause. " It said the group assures "the safety and wellbeing of all ethnic communities, their places of worship and properties" in Rakhine state. An extensive report issued last December by the International Crisis Group said the Harakah al-Yaqin "is led by a committee of Rohingya emigres in Saudi Arabia and is commanded on the ground by Rohingya with international training and experience in modern guerrilla war tactics. It benefits from the legitimacy provided by local and international fatwas (religious judicial opinions) in support of its cause and enjoys considerable sympathy and backing from Muslims in northern Rakhine state, including several hundred locally trained recruits." It said the group did not appear to have jihadist motivations. The report said that "the group apparently killed several informers." The group's statement was signed by its leader, Ata Ullah, who has appeared in several videos showing him proclaiming the group's positions while surrounded by armed followers. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ © 2017 The Associated Press.

By Hannah Beech A Rohingya woman and her child returning to the Basara camp in Sittwe, the provincial capital of Rakhine State in Myanmar. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times SITTWE, Myanmar — The Buddhist abbot tucked his legs under his robes and began to explain. Rohingya Muslims do not belong in Myanmar, and they never have, he said. Their fertility allowed them to overwhelm the local Buddhist population. But now, somehow, many Rohingya seemed to be gone. “We thank the Lord Buddha for this,” said U Thu Min Gala, the 57-year-old abbot of the Damarama Monastery in Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine State in western Myanmar. “They stole our land, our food and our water. We will never accept them back.” An overwhelming body of published accounts has detailed the Myanmar Army’s campaign of killing, rape and arson in Rakhine, which has driven more than 600,000 Rohingya out of the country since late August, in what the United Nations says is the fastest displacement of a people since the Rwanda genocide. But in Myanmar, and even in Rakhine itself, there is stark denial that any ethnic cleansing is taking place. The divergence between how Myanmar and much of the outside world see the Rohingya is not limited to one segment of local society. Nor can hatred in Myanmar of the largely stateless Muslim group be dismissed as a fringe attitude. Government officials, opposition politicians, religious leaders and even local human-rights activists have become unified behind this narrative: The Rohingya are not rightful citizens of Buddhist-majority Myanmar, and now, through the power of a globally resurgent Islam, the minority is falsely trying to hijack the world’s sympathy. People gathering in the village of Sin Ma Kaw, which has banned Muslims from staying there.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times Social media postings have amplified the message, claiming that international aid workers are openly siding with the Rohingya. Accordingly, the Myanmar government has blocked aid agencies’ access to Rohingya still trapped in Myanmar — about 120,000 confined to camps in central Rakhine and tens of thousands more in desperate conditions in the north. The official answer to United Nations accounts of the military’s mass burning of villages and targeting of civilians has been to insist that the Rohingya have been doing it to themselves. “There is no case of the military killing Muslim civilians,” said Dr. Win Myat Aye, the country’s social welfare minister and the governing National League for Democracy party’s point person on Rakhine. “Muslim people killed their own Muslim people.” When asked in an interview about the evidence against the military, the minister noted that the Myanmar government had not sent any investigators to Bangladesh to vet the testimony of fleeing Rohingya, but that he would raise the possibility of doing so in a future meeting. “Thank you for advising us on this idea,” he said. The Rohingya, who speak a Bengali dialect and tend to look distinct from most of Myanmar’s other ethnic groups, have had roots in Rakhine for generations. Communal tensions between the Rohingya and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists exploded in World War II, when the Rakhine aligned themselves with the Japanese, while the Rohingya chose the British. Although many Rohingya were considered citizens when Myanmar, also known as Burma, became independent in 1948, the military junta that wrested power in 1962 began stripping them of their rights. After a restrictive citizenship law was introduced in 1982, most Rohingya became stateless. Even the name Rohingya, which the ethnic group has identified with more vocally in recent years, has been taken from them. The Myanmar government usually refers to the Rohingya as Bengalis, implying they belong in Bangladesh. The public tends to call them an epithet used for all Muslims in Myanmar: kalar. Daw Soe Chay, an ethnic Rakhine Buddhist from Myebon Township, was beaten and publicly shamed after her husband delivered aid to Rohingya Muslims in their camp in Sittwe. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times The nomenclature is so sensitive that in a speech this month, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and de facto leader of the government, referred only to “those who have crossed over to Bangladesh.” Some ethnic Rakhine politicians are hailing the Rohingya exodus as a good thing. “All the Bengalis learn in their religious schools is to brutally kill and attack,” said Daw Khin Saw Wai, a Rakhine member of Parliament from Rathedaung Township. “It is impossible to live together in the future.” Buddhist monks, moral arbiters in a pious land, have been at the forefront of a campaign to dehumanize the Rohingya. In popular videos, extremist monks refer to the Rohingya as “snakes” or “worse than dogs.” Outside Mr. Thu Min Gala’s monastery in Sittwe, a pair of signs reflected an alternate sense of reality. One said that the monastery, which is sheltering ethnic Rakhine who fled the conflict zone, would not accept any donations from international agencies. The other warned that multifaith groups were not welcome. The abbot claimed that the authorities in Rakhine had stopped a car owned by the International Committee of the Red Cross that was filled with weaponry destined for Rohingya militants who carried out attacks against the security forces in August. Mr. Thu Min Gala claimed that sticks of dynamite had been wrapped in paper with the Red Cross logo. The Red Cross denied these accusations. “We don’t trust the international society,” the abbot said. “They are only on the side of the terrorists.” At another monastery in Sittwe, an elderly abbot, U Baddanta Thaw Ma, halted my conversation with a young monk by slapping the air in front of my face. “Go! Go! Go!” he yelled in English, before switching to the local Rakhine dialect. “Go away, you foreigner! Go away, you kalar lover.” Public sentiment against Muslims — who are about 4 percent of Myanmar’s population, encompassing several ethnic groups, including the Rohingya — has spread beyond Rakhine. In 2015 elections, no major political party fielded a Muslim candidate. Today no Muslims serve in Parliament, the first time since the country’s independence. A couple of hours outside Yangon, the country’s largest city, U Aye Swe, an administrator for Sin Ma Kaw village, said he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s “Muslim-free” villages, which bar Muslims from spending the night, among other restrictions. “Kalar are not welcome here because they are violent and they multiply like crazy, with so many wives and children,” he said. Mr. Aye Swe admitted he had never met a Muslim before, adding, “I have to thank Facebook because it is giving me the true information in Myanmar.” Social media messaging has driven much of the rage in Myanmar. Though widespread access to cellphones only started a few years ago, mobile penetration is now about 90 percent. For many people, Facebook is their only source of news, and they have little experience in sifting fake news from credible reporting. One widely shared message on Facebook, from a spokesman for Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s office, emphasized that biscuits from the World Food Program, a United Nations agency, had been found at a Rohingya militant training camp. The United Nations called the post “irresponsible.” The Myanmar government, however, insists the public needs to be guided. “We do something that we call educating the people,” said U Pe Myint, the nation’s information minister. He acknowledged, “It looks rather like indoctrination, like in an authoritarian or totalitarian state.” A Buddhist woman and her son were staying at the Damarama Monastery, in Sittwe, after being displaced by violence in northern Rakhine. CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times In Yangon, Mr. Pe Myint this month gathered local journalists to discuss what he called “fabricated news” by foreign reporters and a “political war” in which international aid groups favored the Rohingya. Last month, a mob in Sittwe attacked Red Cross workers, who were loading a boat with supplies that locals believed would only go to the Rohingya. Even among officials who might otherwise champion human rights, frustration has been directed at foreign critics. Quietly, some defend Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s failure to call out the military and protect the Rohingya by saying it would be political suicide in a country where hatred of the Rohingya is so widespread. They see the recent international pressure, at best, as ignorant of domestic complexities and, at worst, as intent on hindering Myanmar’s development. “We ask the international community to acknowledge that these Muslims are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh and that this crisis is an infringement of our sovereignty,” said U Nyan Win, a spokesman for the National League for Democracy, which shares power with Myanmar’s military. “This is the most important thing with the Rakhine issue.” U Ko Ko Gyi, a democracy advocate who was jailed for 17 years by the military when it ruled Myanmar, also evoked national interest. “We have been human-rights defenders for many years and suffered for a long time but we are standing together on this issue because we need to support our national security,” he said. “We are a small country that lies between India and China, and the DNA of our ancestors is to try to struggle for our survival,” Mr. Ko Ko Gyi said. “If you in the West criticize us too much, then you will push us into the arms of China and Russia.” Sin Ma Kaw, where an official said "he was proud to oversee one of Myanmar’s “Muslim-free” villages.CreditAdam Dean for The New York Times Last month, those two permanent members of the United Nations Security Council shielded Myanmar from an attempt by other nations to condemn the Myanmar military for its offensive in Rakhine. The humanitarian situation has grown desperate within Rakhine while the official block on aid largely continues. Throughout the state, ethnic Rakhine have been warned by community leaders not to break the blockade. Last month in Myebon Township, in central Rakhine, women’s activists prevented international aid groups from delivering assistance to an internment camp where thousands of Rohingya have been sequestered since the 2012 sectarian violence, according to foreign staff. But U Tun Tin, a Rakhine trishaw driver, needed the money and delivered food to the Rohingya camp. Shortly after, his wife, Daw Soe Chay, said she was accosted by a crowd that forced her to a nearby monastery. Inside the religious compound, they beat her and sheared her hair. Then the mob marched her through Myebon, wearing a sign calling her a “national traitor.” Despite his wife’s ordeal, Mr. Tun Tin said he did not regret having sent supplies to the camp, where Rohingya say their rations are running low. “They are human,” he said. “They need to eat, just like us.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Dr. Gregory Stanton People take part in a rally in support of Myanmar's stateless Rohingya minority in the Chechen capital of Grozny, Russia,on September 4, 2017. PHOTO: Reuters The UN calls the Myanmar army's aggression against the Rohingya “ethnic cleansing”. “Ethnic cleansing” is a term invented by Slobodan Milosevic. It's a euphemism for forced displacement and genocide. It's an insidious term because there is no international treaty law against it, whereas there are international laws against forced displacement and genocide. “Ethnic cleansing” is not a crime under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court. It has no legal meaning in international law. Another term without legal meaning is “atrocities”. Genocidal massacres are acts of genocide. Genocide is defined as acts intended to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group. They include killing, causing serious bodily or mental harm, and inflicting conditions of life on a group calculated to bring about its physical destruction, in whole or in part. Over 600,000 Rohingya have fled into Bangladesh in the past three months to escape systematic massacres by the Myanmar army that has slaughtered thousands of Rohingya and burned over 500 Rohingya villages to the ground. The killings continue today. Genocidal massacres are precisely what the Myanmar army and Rakhine militias are committing against the Rohingya. Myanmar is committing both “ethnic cleansing” [forced displacement] and genocide. The crimes often go together. Genocidal massacres are used to terrorise a victim group into fleeing. Why does the so-called “international community” avoid using the word “genocide”? Many people think “genocide” requires millions of deaths. Thousands aren't enough. But the Genocide Convention outlaws intentional destruction “in part” of ethnic or religious groups. Lawyers have gutted the word “genocide” by insisting on proof of “specific” intent beyond a reasonable doubt. Some even claim that only a court can invoke the word “genocide”. This view is profoundly wrong. It ignores the very name of the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Courts judge genocide after it's over—when it's too late for prevention. Myanmar's systematic campaign of mass murder and destruction is surely enough proof of specific intent to destroy part of the Rohingya people. Those who ignore the power of words argue that “ethnic cleansing”, “crimes against humanity” or “atrocities” are just as terrible as genocide. They're wrong. “Genocide” is a much more powerful word. Three epidemiologists and I studied the impact of using the words “ethnic cleansing” rather than “genocide” in four genocides: Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, and Darfur. We counted the number of times “ethnic cleansing” and “genocide” were used in The New York Times, UN statements, major law journals, and reports by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch. Our study concluded: - Use of the terms has no relationship to the number of people killed. Eight thousand killed at Srebrenica was ruled “genocide” by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Yet a UN Commission of Inquiry held that over 50,000 killed in Darfur (now over 300,000) was a “crime against humanity” but not genocide. - The term chosen is determined by the willingness to take forceful action to stop the killing. - It was not until “genocide” became the dominant term, that force was used to stop it. This tipping point occurred three months into the genocide in Rwanda. The US State Department finally admitted on June 10, 1994 that “acts of genocide” in Rwanda are the same as “genocide”. But recognition of “genocide” came too late. Eight hundred thousand Rwandans were already dead. The same denial emerged in Bosnia. The UN and press called the massacres “ethnic cleansing” from 1992 until the Srebrenica massacre in July 1995. A NATO meeting on July 21 called it “genocide”. NATO bombing of Serb forces followed on August 30. Milosevic agreed to a ceasefire, division of Bosnia, and NATO peacekeeping. The Bosnian genocide stopped. Kosovo was called “ethnic cleansing” until US Ambassador David Scheffer noted “indicators of genocide” on April 7, 1999. Bombing of Belgrade followed immediately, with Serb surrender and NATO occupation of Kosovo. Darfur is the exception that proves the rule. The UN refused to invoke the G word: “genocide”. No military forces were sent to stop the crimes. Instead the African Union and UN sent “monitors” to observe them. The Darfur genocide continues to this day. The UN avoids the word “genocide” because world leaders avoid military action to stop it. Genocide is not a sacred or magic word. But when the word “genocide” is used, force to stop it becomes possible. Weaker words like ethnic cleansing, crimes against humanity, or atrocities mean that no force will be used to stop the massacres. Will the UN send troops to protect the Rohingya when they are forced to return to Myanmar? Not if the UN denies that Myanmar is committing genocide against the Rohingya. World leaders will again fail to stop the Crime of Crimes. ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Daily Star

By Hannah Beech and Saw Nang BANGKOK — Two journalists arrested last week in Myanmar had obtained photographs from residents of a village in which, the country’s army chief has said, a mass grave was found. The area is in northern Rakhine State, where a military campaign against Rohingya Muslims has raged for more than three months. The Reuters reporters U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo were arrested on Dec. 12 after meeting with police officers in Yangon, the country’s commercial capital. At the time, Myanmar’s Ministry of Information said the journalists had tried to illegally procure information about Rakhine State, where international human-rights monitors say Myanmar’s military has killed and raped thousands of Rohingya. Ethnic Rakhine Buddhists, who compose the state’s ethnic majority, have also been accused of participating in the bloodletting and burning of Rohingya villages. Three days after the reporters were arrested, five ethnic Rakhine residents of the village of Inn Din, in northern Rakhine, were detained, including the principal of the local school and three teachers. A relative of one of the detained teachers said the five were arrested because they gave some photos and documents to the reporters from Reuters. The person, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, did not specify what the photos showed. On Monday, a post on the Facebook account of Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the commander in chief in Myanmar, said that the military was carrying out an investigation into unidentified “people being killed and buried” in a cemetery in Inn Din. “Strong legal action will be taken if any member of security forces are involved,” the Facebook post said. During the wave of arson that has spread across the region since late August, many houses in Inn Din, an ethnically mixed community, were destroyed. But satellite evidence collected by Amnesty International showed that only Rohingya neighborhoods in Inn Din had been razed by fire. The relative of the detained Inn Din villager accused the government of wanting to hide the evidence shown in the documents. U Myint Kyaw, a member of the independent Myanmar Press Council, said he believed the arrests of the reporters and the Rakhine villagers were connected. Myanmar officials say that the office of the president, which is part of the country’s civilian leadership, has authorized the police to proceed with the case against the reporters. “Now it will be hard to stop the case against the journalists,” Mr. Myint Kyaw said. “The government should have done an investigation first,” into the existence of the mass grave, he added. A week after the reporters’ arrest, high-level members of Myanmar’s civilian government said they had no further information about why the two were arrested. “Regarding this case, we don’t actually know what’s going on,” said U Pe Myint, the country’s minister of information. “We can only do something when we know what’s going on.” Reuters declined to comment on the specifics of what its reporters were pursuing. “Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo are journalists who perform a crucial role in shedding light on news of global interest, and they are innocent of any wrongdoing,” Stephen J. Adler, president and editor in chief of Reuters, said in a statement. Mr. Wa Lone and Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo were charged under Myanmar’s Official Secrets Act. The colonial-era law stipulates up to 14 years in jail for offenders. Two police officers were also arrested when the journalists were detained. Both journalists had reported on the exodus of an estimated 650,000 Rohingya Muslims from northern Rakhine State to Bangladesh during the past three and a half months. While the Rohingya have been persecuted for decades by the Myanmar military, the latest campaign against the Muslim minority began after Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar security posts in late August. With the exception of carefully controlled government-led trips, local and foreign reporters have been barred from visiting northern Rakhine. Reuters has published witness accounts from the region provided by people that the news agency did not identify by name. Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo is from Rakhine, and Mr. Wa Lone reported from the region. Doctors Without Borders estimated last week that at least 6,700 Rohingya, including 730 children, had died in violence in Myanmar in the month after the crackdown began. Among the many unanswered questions is what happened to the bodies of those believed to have been killed by the military and by aligned ethnic Rakhine mobs. In September, reporters on an escorted government trip were shown bodies of dozens of Hindu villagers that the Myanmar military said had been killed by Rohingya insurgents. Hindu survivors, who fled to central Rakhine and to Bangladesh, have provided conflicting reports of who attacked their community. Some say that black-clad Rohingya militants orchestrated the assault, while others blamed the Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known. No Rohingya corpses have been shown to the media. It is not clear what ethnic group the Inn Din mass grave might hold. In November, the Myanmar military released the results of an internal inquiry that cleared all soldiers in Rakhine of any misconduct. Not a single innocent civilian had been raped or killed by the security forces, the report said. On Tuesday, Human Rights Watch published a 30-page report detailing a massacre in the village of Tula Toli, believed to be one of the worst-hit Rohingya hamlets. “Soldiers and Rakhine villagers burned the bodies in deep pits dug in the sand, in an apparent effort to destroy evidence of the killings,” the report asserts. Human Rights Watch also released satellite images showing that 40 Rohingya villages had been burned in October and November, meaning that at least 354 Rohingya communities have been affected by arson. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the leader of Myanmar’s civilian government, has said that the military ceased “clearance operations” against Rohingya insurgents in early September. Although Myanmar held general elections in 2015 that ushered in a civilian government led by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, the military that ruled for nearly five decades still controls most of the important levers of power. Critics of Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, say that while she has no authority over the armed forces, her public defense of the military has provided a moral shield for possible war criminals. Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, the United Nations’ human rights chief, has said that the campaign against the Rohingya may constitute genocide, which could lead to calls for international legal action against those responsible. The United States has labeled the military campaign in Rakhine “ethnic cleansing.” During Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s tenure, Myanmar’s news media, which has only recently emerged from decades of censorship, has faced renewed challenges. High-profile journalists have been arrested on various charges. In October, two foreign journalists, a local reporter and their driver were arrested on charges of illegally flying a drone in Naypyidaw, the country’s capital. Meanwhile, the families of Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo and Mr. Wa Lone say they have no idea where the reporters are being held. “I went to the police station, and they said they didn’t know where my husband is,” said Mr. Wa Lone’s wife, Ma Pan Ei Mon. “The level of our worry is to the moon and back.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/19/world/asia/myanmar-reuters-grave.html?_r=0 (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Hannah Beech Rahima’s father never wanted her out of his sight. She and her sister were too young, too pretty, too vulnerable to be trusted among the men of her village in western Myanmar, not to mention the soldiers who roamed the region. “My father would beat us if we dared to go out by ourselves, or he’d beat our mother for allowing us to go out,” said Rahima, a 15-year-old Rohingya Muslim. “He used to say there were bad men everywhere, and it was his duty to protect us.” But there was no protection for any of her family in September, when Myanmar troops burned their village in Rakhine State and sent them running for their lives. Her mother never made it out, her throat sliced by the blade of a Buddhist vigilante. Somewhere amid the chaos of flames, bullets and machetes, Rahima also lost her sister. Then, as Rahima ran through a forest on the way to neighboring Bangladesh, three uniformed Myanmar soldiers grabbed her. For two nights, they kept her in a jungle clearing and gang-raped her, smoking methamphetamine to sustain the torture, she said. Rahima asked to be identified only by her first name. Today, she lives alone in Kutupalong, the world’s largest refugee settlement, part of a sprawling network of camps in southeastern Bangladesh that has taken in more than 655,000 Rohingya since late August. The assault is still imprinted on her face: a soldier’s bite, each tooth mark indented, on the apple of her cheek. “I don’t know why he bit me,” Rahima said, her hand hovering over the scar. “There are many things I don’t understand.” Denied citizenship by Myanmar’s government and targeted by what the United States calls ethnic cleansing, the Rohingya are among the most mistreated people on earth. And within this traumatized population, women are uniquely vulnerable. All too often, a Rohingya woman is fated to be passed, like chattel, from man to man — father to husband, soldier to sex trafficker — even in the supposed safety of the refugee camp. The mostly stateless Rohingya have been sequestered and preyed upon by Myanmar’s military for years. Human rights groups have long accused the Tatmadaw, as the country’s security forces are known, of regular assault of Rohingya girls and women. (The security forces have been accused of that pattern with women of other ethnic minorities as well.) But the latest campaign of gang rape against the Rohingya has been so brutal and systematic that Pramila Patten, a United Nations special representative on sexual violence in conflict, deemed it “a calculated tool of terror aimed at the extermination and removal of the Rohingya as a group.” Myanmar’s government has denied any instances of sexual assault. Several officials have suggested that Rohingya women are too unattractive to merit attention from Tatmadaw soldiers. As these survivors of sexual violence flood across the border into Bangladesh — the fastest outflow of refugees in a generation — they often arrive bruised and alone. Thousands of Rohingya men were killed on the spot or rounded up by Myanmar’s soldiers, and some others are believed to have stayed behind to join the Rohingya insurgent movement. Doctors Without Borders estimated this month that at least 6,700 Rohingya men, women and children met violent deaths in Myanmar from late August to late September. Nearly 70 percent of the victims died of gunshot, the medical aid group said, adding that its mortality figure was almost certainly an underestimation. With so many men missing, single mothers now head 17 percent of Rohingya households in refugee camps in Bangladesh, according to the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Januwara’s husband died in the village of Tula Toli, where hundreds of Rohingya are believed to have been massacred by the Tatmadaw in late August and early September. She escaped to Bangladesh with her 4-year-old daughter and 18-month-old niece, whose parents were also killed. Her story, like that of others, is based on her personal testimony but was vetted by international agencies and is consistent with accounts from other Rohingya. There is no money to buy milk powder or other essentials, and the fact that the children are girls is “a burden,” said Ms. Januwara, who uses only one name. “If they were boys, I could send them out to work,” she said. “But girls, all they can do is become servants when they reach 10 years old. Then they will only get enough money to feed themselves, not me.” Rahima, the girl scarred by a soldier’s bite, has no one at all. Nobody else from her family made it to Bangladesh; her father, who had vowed to protect her at all costs, died of hepatitis before the soldiers’ attack came. Although she is receiving some support from international aid groups like Save the Children, she fetches water and firewood on her own and jostles for handouts of rice and cooking oil. “I know my father loved me very much, but because he was so restrictive I don’t know how to do many normal things,” Rahima said. “I’m struggling to survive.” With such a systematic campaign of rape in Myanmar, women and girls are arriving in Bangladesh pregnant from the attacks. Certain clinics report that they have quietly performed abortions, particularly for girls. But some clinics require consent from adult relatives before performing any procedures, and girls are often too embarrassed or ignorant to ask for help. For Rohingya women, who rarely left their rural homes because of religious traditions, the density of the refugee camps can be disorienting. “In certain parts of the camps, you have 90,000 people living in one square kilometer, which means a complete lack of physical access to privacy,” said Mohammed Abu Asaker, a spokesman for the United Nations refugee agency in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. “We’ve heard of women who are avoiding eating because they feel they don’t have proper access to toilets. At the same time, women feel vulnerable about going alone to a forest to collect firewood, especially if they are dealing with the trauma of sexual violence.” Even those women who left Myanmar with their families intact are not guaranteed security. Domestic abuse is rife among the Rohingya, say experts working in the camps — a product of both conservative customs and a society scarred by decades of state-sponsored violence and more recent displacement. Over one six-day period in October, United Nations staff recorded 306 incidents of gender-based violence in the camps. Of those attacks, 96 percent required a referral to emergency medical services, officials said. “In any refugee setting, we tend to see a rise in domestic violence because this is a pressured environment,” said Fiona MacGregor, a public information officer in Cox’s Bazar for the International Organization for Migration, a United Nations agency. Rohingya men can be forthright about their impulses. “Of course I beat my wife,” said Sadrul Ameen, who arrived in a Bangladeshi refugee camp three months ago with his pregnant wife and child. Their other two children, he says, were killed in Myanmar, the 7-year-old stabbed in a rice paddy as the family fled. “I beat my wife to keep her on track,” Mr. Ameen added. “I beat her if she does not listen to me. There are many reasons to beat her.” Many Rohingya girls are forced to marry in their early teens, arranged marriages that tether them to much older men. While such child unions were historically common, their recent resurgence is partly a response to decades of persecution by Myanmar’s military. “Child marriage is a strategy adopted by the Rohingya community to prevent women from being raped by the Myanmar Army,” said Lailufar Yasmin, a professor at the University of Dhaka who has studied Rohingya gender issues. “The community strategizes that if women are married in puberty and became pregnant immediately, they will be not be targeted by the army.” Professor Yasmin said that the high fertility rate among the Rohingya, which was estimated at 3.8 children per woman in 2012, was another survival mechanism. “The fear of going extinct makes the Rohingya community want women to get married at an early age and have as many children as possible,” she said, acknowledging the role scant education and widespread poverty also play in driving large family sizes. “This is a highly patriarchal society, and they see only one role for women, which is the biological role, in which their value lies in producing the next generation.” Pregnancy and early marriage, however, were no defense against the Tatmadaw’s recent campaign. And once victims of sexual violence reach the camps, they are particularly susceptible to the sex trade because they are seen by their families as damaged goods. Another Rohingya woman, Rahima Khatun grew up in a refugee camp, part of an earlier wave of Rohingya who escaped to Bangladesh. Her story is as bleak as it is common. She married when she was 12. Her husband, far older than she, beat her and raped her, she said. A son was born, but when he was 2 months old, Ms. Khatun’s husband left her for another wife — and another dowry, which funded his emigration to Malaysia. Never once did he send her money, she said. To survive as a single mother, Ms. Khatun, now 21, works as a prostitute. Her customers aren’t violent, for which she is grateful, she said, but they also refuse to use condoms. In a good day, she can earn $25, far more than her previous jobs sorting fish and grinding spices. “Everyone has their self-respect, and no one will sell their body willingly,” she said, as her 9-year-old boy sidled up and wrested her cellphone for a game of Candy Crush. “I’m doing all this for my son,” Ms. Khatun said. “I am lucky because he is not a girl.” https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/23/world/asia/rohingya-women-abuse-myanmar.html (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Hannah Beech Jehora Begum was a fast runner, racing through rice paddies and splashing through canals. But how can a 12-year-old girl outrun a bullet? When Myanmar’s military and Buddhist vigilantes descended on Rohingya Muslim villages in late August, burning homes and spraying gunfire, 14 members of Jehora’s family — including her mother, her father and four of her siblings — couldn’t run quickly enough. They all died, according to witnesses and human rights groups investigating the massacre in Maungdaw Township. Jehora was shot as she waded through a canal, the bullet lodging near her pelvis. Still, she and her younger brother, Khairul Amin, made it to safety in southeastern Bangladesh, where refugee camps now house far more Rohingya than remain in their homeland in Rakhine State in Myanmar. “I have nightmares that the military is chasing me,” Jehora said. “I wake up, and I think of my parents, and then I stay awake for a long time.” Of the more than 655,000 Rohingya who have fled to Bangladesh since the Myanmar military began its crackdown in late August, around 380,000 are minors, according to Save the Children, the international aid organization. At least 30 percent of the refugee population is younger than 5. Children are everywhere in the camps, fighting for aid handouts, wading through sewage and balancing jugs of water or bundles of firewood on their heads. Some are dressed in improbable combinations of donated clothes: a tiny tuxedo jacket paired with basketball shorts. Many wear nothing but dust. More than anything, the soundtrack of the Rohingya refugee camps is a child’s wheezing cough, followed by a prolonged sniffle. The prospects of these young refugees, say child development experts, are grim. “What we’re seeing is the perfect breeding ground for a massive mental health crisis for children,” said Lalou Rostrup Holdt, a mental health adviser for Save the Children. “You have trauma on a huge scale, children seeing brutal killings and being forced to leave home with nothing,” Ms. Holdt said. “You have hunger. You also have significant developmental delays due to malnutrition and understimulation that predate the recent trauma. It’s absolutely devastating for an entire community.” Ms. Holdt, who has been working in the camps for two months, said that many Rohingya children are living in a state of near constant “fight or flight” arousal, a hyperstressed condition that can change the architecture of their brains. Yet the children who made it to the camps are the lucky ones. Doctors Without Borders estimates that at least 730 Rohingya children younger than 5 were killed in Myanmar between late August and late September, mostly by gunshot, according to a survey released in December. Nearly 10 percent of those children were burned in their homes, while 5 percent were beaten to death. The international medical charity cautioned that its estimate was conservative and probably understated the true mortality figures. Although the governments of Bangladesh and Myanmar say they will proceed with a voluntary repatriation scheme in the coming weeks, there is little enthusiasm among Rohingya refugees for returning to the site of what Western governments have labeled ethnic cleansing. The Myanmar government has stripped most Rohingya of citizenship and considers them to be illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. The likelihood, then, is that hundreds of thousands of Rohingya children will grow up both stateless and homeless — an untethered life of displacement that bodes ill for a people already wounded by decades of military persecution in Rakhine State. “There have been other recent crises in places like Congo where children saw their families slaughtered or mothers being raped,” said Benjamin Steinlechner, a spokesman for the United Nations Children’s Fund, or Unicef, in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. “But the scale of what has happened with the Rohingya is so much greater than what we’ve seen in other places. We have no idea how all these children are going to process this trauma.” For now, aid workers in the camps in Bangladesh are preoccupied with more immediate matters of life and death. Unicef says that 7 percent of children in the camps are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, a condition from which they will die unless they get proper care. That figure is three times higher than in other recent humanitarian emergencies. Even as international organizations scale up their aid efforts, parents wander the camps cradling infants with emaciated limbs and oversized eyes bulging out of skeletal faces. Children who look like toddlers turn out to be 6 or 7 years old — although their cauterized expressions have an adult’s hardness. Outbreaks of communicable diseases, such as measles and diphtheria, are sweeping through the overcrowded camps, which, with the recent influx, now house more than 800,000 Rohingya. At least 60 percent of water wells in Rohingya refugee settlements are contaminated with fecal matter from latrines that have been dug too close to drinking sources. Children suffer disproportionately from diseases that fester in refugee camps. At a Doctors Without Borders clinic near Kutupalong, which now ranks as the world’s largest refugee camp, Noor Kadar, 4, lay feverish and short of breath, suffering from measles and pneumonia. Noor’s father, Abul Bashar, said that two of his other children were also sick, but the expense and effort it would have taken to bring them to the clinic overwhelmed him. “I don’t know what these diseases are,” he said. “I don’t know how many of my children will die.” The longer-term consequences for Rohingya children are nearly as daunting. Chronic malnutrition stunts not only physical growth but intellectual development as well. Few youth in the camps have any idea how old they are. Most children who fled to Bangladesh experienced significant trauma, whether witnessing relatives being killed or waiting for military raids to engulf their villages. Even hearing stories about massacres, a common currency in refugee camps, brings its own distress. “When we got to Bangladesh, my grandmother described how my parents had been chopped to death,” said Mohammed Ismail, 13, most of whose family members were killed in a village in northern Maungdaw Township, according to fellow villagers. “I can never forget what she told me.” And the suffering began long before the latest military campaign. For years now, most Rohingya children in Rakhine had no access to government health care or schools. College is all but out of the question. Mohammed Rafique was majoring in history at Sittwe University, in the state capital, but was forced to abandon his studies when tensions between Rohingya Muslims and ethnic Rakhine Buddhists exploded in 2012, after which many Rohingya were moved into camps or prevented from leaving their villages. “We have no education and no job prospects in Rakhine,” he said, sitting in front of his shelter in the Balukhali refugee camp in Bangladesh. “Rohingya youth have no future.” Shut out of the state education system, some Rohingya children attended private madrasas in Rakhine instead. But after Rohingya insurgents attacked Myanmar security posts last year, soldiers forced the closure of many of those Islamic schools as well. “If we cannot teach Islam to our children, then we have nothing left to pass on to them,” said Said Hossein, an imam whose mosque in the town of Taung Bazar was shut down by the military. Two weeks after he arrived in Bangladesh, Mr. Hossein opened a temporary mosque in Balukhali by binding stalks of bamboo with a piece of tarpaulin. Between prayer times, he is teaching children again. But experts on Islamic militancy in Bangladesh worry that some of these makeshift schools, which have received funding from both local and Middle Eastern extremist groups, could become centers of religious radicalism or Rohingya militancy. “I teach the children that in our Quran it is permissible to use weapons to fight if someone attacks you or your property,” said Abul Osman, a teacher at another madrasa in Balukhali. For most Rohingya children, a life studying holy texts — or waging jihad — is far beyond their imagination. Child labor is a fact of life for the Rohingya, as it is with communities across Myanmar. Soon after they learn to walk, children are expected to fetch water, gather firewood and work the rice paddies. Today, at least 5,600 households in the Bangladesh camps are headed by children who arrived unaccompanied by adult family members, according to the United Nations refugee agency. Even in families with a mother or father, a high birthrate — it is not uncommon for Rohingya to have six or seven children — means that parents struggle to feed their families. To survive, some have begun offloading their girls to work as maids for middle-class Bangladeshis, or in the local garment industry. Helping the Rohingya A partial list of aid groups working to ease the humanitarian crisis in Myanmar and Bangladesh. “Children and adolescents are super vulnerable to being trafficked, whether for sexual exploitation or for household work,” said Mr. Steinlechner of Unicef. “Right now we are still busy delivering aid, but we are aware that trafficking is happening under our noses.” By puberty, many Rohingya girls are married off, freeing a family from having to subsidize another child. By the time the average teenage girl arrives in the camps, she has two to four children of her own, according to United Nations estimates. Rohingya boys have other options, like working in tea shops or providing manual labor for construction sites and road crews. (Unlike girls, they also can use their free time to play soccer with a ball of rags or fly tattered kites.) Sayed Alam, 12, who arrived in Bangladesh nearly four months ago from Myanmar, makes $1.20 a day pulling in fishing nets on a beach not far from the refugee camps. It’s a job he also worked in Rakhine, he said, just like his father and grandfather before him. He has never attended school. What does Sayed hope to do when he grows up? “I don’t have any dreams,” he replied. “I will take whatever job I can find.” Preparing the ground to set up a tent in the hills at the edge of Balukhali camp. CreditTomas Munita for The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/31/world/asia/rohingya-children-myanmar.html?mtrref=www.google.com (c) 2018 The NEw York Times

By Hannah Beech and Saw Nang Two journalists for the Reuters news agency were formally charged in Myanmar with obtaining state secrets, prosecutors said Wednesday, in a case seen as a key test of the country’s nascent political freedoms. The reporters, U Wa Lone and U Kyaw Soe Oo, have been accused of violating the Official Secrets Act, a law dating to the British colonial period that carries a maximum punishment of 14 years in prison. The journalists were brought to court in Yangon, Myanmar’s commercial capital, where they were arrested on Dec. 12, almost immediately after being given unidentified documents by members of the police. Before their arrest, the journalists had been investigating the existence of a mass grave in Rakhine State, where a military campaign against Rohingya Muslims has sent more than 655,000 members of the persecuted minority fleeing to Bangladesh over the past four and a half months. While the United States and the United Nations have called the campaign against the Rohingya ethnic cleansing, the Myanmar government has blocked independent investigators and journalists from the epicenter of violence, making it difficult to gather proof of atrocities. On Wednesday evening, the military released the results of its investigation into the mass grave in the village of Inn Din, which the Reuters journalists had been investigating. A statement on the Facebook page of the military’s commander in chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, said that the 10 bodies there were of Muslims who had been taken to the cemetery and killed by villagers and security forces “because they were terrorists.” The army crackdown on the Rohingya began after Rohingya insurgents attacked security posts in late August. Rohingya in Bangladesh refugee camps have given consistent accounts of rape and murder at the hands of the Myanmar military and Buddhist vigilantes. Satellite images collected by human rights groups document the destruction by fire of hundreds of Rohingya villages in northern Rakhine. Negotiating a scrum of journalists gathered in front of the Insein courthouse in Yangon on Wednesday morning, Mr. Wa Lone struck a defiant pose, raising his cuffed hands and later flashing a thumbs-up sign. “We are not doing anything wrong,” Mr. Kyaw Soe Oo told journalists after the hearing. “Please help us by uncovering the truth.” A lawyer for both journalists, U Than Zaw Aung, said that Mr. Wa Lone is suffering from a hernia and back pain but has received no medical treatment while in detention. The next court appearance for his clients will be on Jan. 23, he said. “The situation is very unclear,” said Ma Pan Ei Mon, Mr. Wa Lone’s wife. “I’m hoping all the time that he will be released soon.” In a statement, Stephen J. Adler, the president and editor in chief of Reuters, called the move to prosecute the reporters “a wholly unwarranted, blatant attack on press freedom,” adding, “We believe time is of the essence and we continue to call for Wa Lone and Kyaw Soe Oo’s prompt release.” The United States and the European Union both called for the men’s release on Wednesday. “For democracy to succeed and flourish, journalists must be able to do their jobs,” the embassy said in a statement. Although Myanmar now has a civilian government, led by Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the military that ruled the country for nearly half a century still controls the most important levers of power. The Tatmadaw, as the military is known, runs the Home Ministry, which administers Myanmar’s internal affairs, including its prisons and police. Human rights groups have accused the police of entrapping the two Reuters journalists by giving them documents that were then deemed state secrets. Ms. Pan Ei Mon said her husband never had a chance to look at the papers before he was arrested. Myanmar’s elected civilian government has been accused of acquiescing to a crackdown on the media that belies the commitment to democratic values once espoused by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s governing party, the National League for Democracy. Since the party took power in 2016, at least 32 journalists have been charged with various crimes, according to We Support Journalists, a local media watchdog. Many of the journalists have been imprisoned after reporting on abuses taking place in Myanmar’s ethnic frontier lands, where the military has been fighting various ethnic guerrilla groups for decades. U Swe Win, a veteran journalist and former political prisoner who is himself facing defamation charges that could return him to jail, noted that the news media, which had been muzzled during military rule, enjoyed a renaissance during a period of transitional governance from 2011-15, when U Thein Sein, a former junta general, led the country. Dozens of new publications emerged from the shadow of censorship in those years. But today, local reporters are uncertain whether their investigations, particularly into military malfeasance, might land them in jail. “Now we don’t have transparency, and we don’t know what’s happening inside the government,” Mr. Swe Win said. “All we know is that we journalists are always facing problems with the military, which means the civilian government has no power.” https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/10/world/asia/myanmar-reuters-reporters.html?smid=tw-nytimesworld&smtyp=cur (c) 2018 The New York Times