By Ewelina U. Ochab This picture taken on September 1, 2023, shows a view of destruction in a livestock market area in al-Fasher, the capital of Sudan's North Darfur state. The conflict between Sudan's army under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) commanded by Mohamed Hamdan Daglo spread in late August 2023 to North Darfur state, with at least 27 localities burned down by the RSF and allied Arab militias, according to the Humanitarian Research Lab at the Yale School of Public Health. (Photo credit: AFP via Getty Images) AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES On November 3, 2023, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concerns about the dire situation of women and girls in areas controlled by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) in Darfur, who are being “abducted, chained and held in inhuman, degrading slave-like conditions.” The reports follow the escalation in fighting between the Government’s Sudan Armed Forces (SAF) and RSF and heightened inter-communal tensions in the region. More than six months ago, the conflict between SAF and RSF plunged the country into a brutal civil war resulting in thousands of people being killed, more than 5.7 million displaced, and around 25 million having to rely on humanitarian aid. While the parties are meeting in Saudi Arabia for peace talks, news from the region adds to the urgency of putting an end to the hostilities. In its reporting, the OHCHR indicated that survivors, witnesses and other sources suggested that over 20 women and girls have been abducted, with the estimate being conservative. Furthermore, the OHCHR reported on new cases of conflict-related sexual violence in Darfur. Following the resumption of clashes between SAF and RSF on October 26, 2023, in Nyala (South Darfur), Zalingei (Central Darfur), El Fasher (North Darfur), and El Geneina (West Darfur), civilians have been heavily impacted, with thousands of people displaced, many killed or wounded. As the OHCHR stated, “As of Thursday, more than 50 incidents of sexual violence linked to the hostilities have been reported to the joint OHCHR-UNITAMS (the United Nations Integrated Transition Assistance Mission in Sudan) office in Sudan, impacting at least 105 victims – 86 women, one man and 18 children. Twenty-three of the incidents involved rape, 26 were of gang rape and three were of attempted rape.” Thirty-seven of the confirmed incidents of sexual violence have been attributed to men in RSF uniforms, eight to armed men affiliated with the RSF, two to men in unidentified uniforms, and one to the SAF. UNITAMS, a UN special political mission established to provide support to Sudan during its political transition to democratic rule, raised concerns over the escalation of hostilities in Darfur and its impact on civilians. UNITAMS called upon all parties to abide by international human rights and humanitarian laws, including ensuring the protection of civilians. The reports of conflict-related sexual violence are not new. On October 25, 2023, the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA) published a report on the issue of rape and sexual violence since the outbreak of war in Sudan on April 15, 2023. It emphasized that “Reports from Darfur and accounts by activists speak to ethnic targeting, particularly targeting the Masalit tribe. Many survivor accounts describe women being raped with their families forced to watch. Many parents have lost their lives defending their daughters, and women have also been killed for resisting rape.” The report further added: “Our records show that as of early October, the prevalence of sexual violence committed by the RSF continues to escalate significantly. This indicates that soldiers on the ground are becoming emboldened to commit sexual violence crimes, and this is a clear reflection that women’s bodies are being used as a tool of war. These circumstances are the direct result of policies and the behavior of agents of the state – represented by both the SAF and the RSF.” In August 2023, several UN experts, including Reem Alsalem, UN Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, raised alarm by reporting the widespread use of rape and sexual violence against women and girls by RSF in Sudan. Their statement indicated information about “consistent reports of widespread violations by the RSF, including reports that women and girls have been subjected to enforced disappearance and acts tantamount thereto, forced to work, and sexually exploited. Reportedly, hundreds of women have been detained by the RSF, held in inhuman or degrading conditions, subjected to sexual assault, and are vulnerable to sexual slavery.” It continued: “Sudanese women and girls in urban centers as well as in Darfur have been particularly vulnerable to violence. The lives and safety of migrant and refugee women and girls, primarily from Eritrea and South Sudan, have also been seriously affected.” The experts emphasized that some of the reported rapes appear to be ethnically and racially motivated. Also in August 2023, Human Rights Watch published a report finding that the RSF and allied militias in Sudan “raped several dozen women and girls in West Darfur’s capital, El Geneina, and those fleeing to Chad between late April and late June 2023, The assailants appear to have targeted people because of their Massalit ethnicity and, in some cases, because they were known activists.” The spike in the use of conflict-related sexual violence in Darfur is of high concern and requires urgent responses. The impunity for conflict-related sexual violence will only provide a fertile ground for further atrocities. The international community and Sudanese authorities must take immediate action to address these grave violations. This includes holding the responsible parties to account. Furthermore, victims and survivors must be provided with urgent assistance. The spike in atrocities cannot be ignored any more. © 2023 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

By Edward Wong Chinese officials in the western region of Xinjiang, an area troubled by occasional acts of ethnic violence and domestic terrorism, ordered paramilitary units and police officers to attend large rallies in the past week as a show of force. The rallies were the biggest in recent years, if statistics cited by official websites are accurate. About 10,000 police officers and members of the People’s Armed Police, a paramilitary force responsible for domestic security, attended a rally on Saturday in a central square in Urumqi, the regional capital, according to a report on the Xinjiang government’s official website. Hundreds of police vans and other official vehicles also filled the square. Similar rallies took place in Khotan on Thursday and in Kashgar on Friday, both oasis towns with predominantly Uighur populations along the old Silk Road. According to an official news report, the rallies had a common theme, “Showing power to intimidate, lining up the forces.” Xinjiang, which abuts Central Asia, is one of the largest regions in China. Parts of it are home to ethnic Uighurs, a Turkic-speaking people who mostly practice Sunni Islam. At least privately, many Uighurs criticize the rule of the ethnic Han, the dominant group in China. Bursts of violence have occurred in recent years. The most startling unfolded in Urumqi in 2009, when ethnic rioting led to about 200 deaths. The government said most of the victims were ethnic Han. Uighurs and international human rights groups criticized an intense security crackdown that followed. In 2013 and 2014, Chinese state-run news organizations reported on many attacks in Xinjiang, some involving groups of people in Uighur towns or neighborhoods who laid siege to police stations with knives, according to the news organizations. Chinese officials accused the attackers of being terrorists or religious extremists with ties to international jihadists, but they offered no evidence of organized terrorism groups at work in Xinjiang. Since then, open conflict in the region has ebbed, although violence occasionally flares. Last year, Chen Quanguo, the Communist Party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region, where ethnic tensions are also a chronic problem, was appointed to be the party chief of Xinjiang. His predecessor in Xinjiang, Zhang Chunxian, was seen by some central government officials as being too lenient. Mr. Chen, an ethnic Han known for tough policies in Tibet, has tried to project an uncompromising image in Xinjiang. James Leibold, a scholar of Xinjiang and China’s ethnic policies at La Trobe University in Australia, said the recent rallies seemed disproportional to the current threat level. “The new regime of Chen Quanguo not only wants to look tough on terror in the eyes of the Han and Uighur population of the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, but also wants to send a message back to Zhongnanhai that his regime is going to take a more hard-line stance on terror when compared to his predecessor Zhang Chunxian,” Professor Leibold said. Zhongnanhai is the name of the Communist Party’s leadership compound in central Beijing. Mr. Leibold said Mr. Chen was “clearly angling for a Politburo seat at the 19th Party Congress,” an important political meeting that is expected to take place in Beijing in the fall. Mr. Leibold, who has recently written on security forces in Xinjiang, said his research showed that the Xinjiang government had recruited more than 30,000 new police officers to be present at streetside mobile stations since Mr. Chen took power last year. Under Mr. Chen, officials held several rallies earlier this winter, as they did in the years of Mr. Zhang. But there were no signs indicating that any of those rallies under Mr. Chen or Mr. Zhang were attended by as many as 10,000 security officers. Vanessa Piao contributed research. (C) 2017 The New York Times

By Ellen Barry Rohingya from Myanmar at a refugee camp in Teknaf, Bangladesh, in December. An estimated 65,000 Rohingya have fled across the border, according to the International Organization for Migration. CreditA.M. Ahad/Associated Press KUTUPALONG CAMP, Bangladesh — When the Myanmar military closed in on the village of Pwint Phyu Chaung, everyone had a few seconds to make a choice. Noor Ankis, 25, chose to remain in her house, where she was told to kneel to be beaten, she said, until soldiers led her to the place where women were raped. Rashida Begum, 22, chose to plunge with her three children into a deep, swift-running creek, only to watch as her baby daughter slipped from her grasp. Sufayat Ullah, 20, also chose the creek. He stayed in the water for two days and finally emerged to find that soldiers had set his family home on fire, leaving his mother, father and two brothers to asphyxiate inside. These accounts and others, given over the last few days by refugees who fled Myanmar and are now living in Bangladesh, shed light on the violence that has unfolded in Myanmar in recent months as security forces there carry out a brutal counterinsurgency campaign. Their stories, though impossible to confirm independently, generally align with reports by human rights organizations that the military entered villages in northern Rakhine State shooting at random, set houses on fire with rocket launchers, and systematically raped girls and women. At least 1,500 homes were razed, according to an analysis of satellite images by Human Rights Watch. The campaign, which has moved south in recent weeks, seems likely to continue until Myanmar’s government is satisfied that it has fully disarmed the militancy that has arisen among the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic group that has been persecuted for decades in majority-Buddhist Myanmar. “There is a risk that we haven’t seen the worst of this yet,” said Matthew Smith of Fortify Rights, a nongovernmental organization focusing on human rights in Southeast Asia. “We’re not sure what the state security forces will do next, but we do know attacks on civilians are continuing.” A commission appointed by Myanmar’s government last week denied allegations that its military was committing genocide in the villages, which have been closed to Western journalists and human rights investigators. Officials have said Rohingya forces are setting fire to their own houses and have denied most charges of human rights abuses, with the exception of a beating that was captured on video. Myanmar’s leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, the recipient of a Nobel Peace Prize, has been criticized for failing to respond more forcefully to the violence. ASIA PACIFIC By SHANE O’NEILL and MALACHY BROWNE 1:38 Rape, Fire and Death in Myanmar The crackdown began after an attack on three border posts in Rakhine State in October, in which nine police officers were killed. The attack is believed to have been carried out by an until-then-unknown armed Rohingya insurgent group. A destroyed house near Maungdaw in Rakhine State. At least 1,500 homes have been razed, according to Human Rights Watch. CreditNyien Chan Naing/European Pressphoto Agency The military campaign, which the government describes as a “clearing” operation, has largely targeted civilians, human rights groups say. It has sent an estimated 65,000 Rohingya fleeing across the border to Bangladesh, according to the International Organization for Migration. “They started coming in like the tide,” said Dudu Miah, a Rohingya refugee who is chairman of the management committee at the Leda refugee camp, near the border with Myanmar. “They were acting crazy. They were a mess. They were saying, ‘They’ve killed my father, they’ve killed my mother, they’ve beaten me up.’ They were in disarray.” Soldiers were attacking villages just across the Naf River, which separates Myanmar from Bangladesh, so close that Bangladeshis could see columns of smoke rise from burning villages on the other side, said Nazir Ahmed, the imam of a mosque that caters to Rohingyas. He said it was true that some Rohingya, enraged by years of mistreatment by Myanmar forces, had organized themselves into a crude militant force, but that Myanmar had dramatically exaggerated its proportions and seriousness. Rohingyas are “frustrated, and they are picking up sticks and making a call to defend themselves,” he said. “Now, if they find a farmer who has a machete at home, they say, ‘You are engaged in terrorism.’” An analysis released last month by the International Crisis Group took a serious view of the new militant group, which it says is financed and organized by Rohingya émigrés in Saudi Arabia. Further violence, it warned, could accelerate radicalization among the Rohingya, who could become willing instruments of transnational jihadist groups. In interviews in and around the Kutupalong and Leda refugee camps here, Rohingya who fled Myanmar in recent weeks said that military personnel initially went house to house seeking adult men, and then proceeded to rape women and burn homes. Many new arrivals are from Kyet Yoepin, a village where 245 buildings were destroyed during a two-day sweep in mid-October, according to Human Rights Watch. Bangladeshi border guards at a common transit point for the Rohingya on the banks of the Naf River, which separates Myanmar from Bangladesh. CreditA.M. Ahad/Associated Press Muhammad Shafiq, who is in his mid-20s, said he was at home with his family when he heard gunfire. Soldiers in camouflage banged on the door, then shot at it, he said. When he let them in, he said, “they took the women away, and lined up the men.” Mr. Shafiq said that when a soldier grabbed his sister’s hand, he lunged at him, fearful the soldier intended to rape her, and was beaten so severely that the soldiers left him for dead. Later, he bolted with one of his children and was grazed by a soldier’s bullet on his elbow. He crawled for an hour on his hands and knees through a rice field, then watched, from a safe vantage point, as troops set fire to what remained of Kyet Yoepin. “There are no homes left,” he said. “Everything is burned.” Jannatul Mawa, 25, who is from the same village, said she crawled toward the next village overnight, passing the shadowy forms of dead and wounded neighbors. “Some were shot, some were killed with a blade,” she said. “Wherever they could find people, they were killing them.” Dozens more families are from Pwint Phyu Chaung, which was near the site of a clash between militants and soldiers on Nov. 12. According to Amnesty International, the militants scattered into neighboring villages. When army troops followed them, several hundred men from Pwint Phyu Chaung resisted, using crude weapons like farm implements and knives, the report said. A Myanmar army lieutenant colonel was shot dead, and the troops called in air support from two attack helicopters. Mumtaz Begum, 40, said she was awakened at dawn when security forces approached the village from both sides and began searching for adult men in each house. She said she and her daughter were told to kneel down outside their home with their hands over their heads and were beaten with bamboo clubs. Mumtaz Begum, 40, told of members of her family who were arrested, beaten, shot in the leg or killed. Her daughter described being grouped with young women to be raped.CreditEllen Barry/The New York Times She said her 10-year-old son was shot through the leg, her daughter’s husband was arrested, and her own husband was one of dozens of men and boys in the village who were killed by soldiers armed with guns or machetes that night. Villagers, she said, “laid the bodies down in a line in the mosque and counted them.” Ms. Begum’s daughter, Noor Ankis, 25, said the next morning soldiers went from house to house looking for young women. “They grouped the women together and brought them to one place,” she said. “The ones they liked they raped. It was just the girls and the military, no one else was there.” She said the idea of trying to escape flickered through her head, but she was overcome by fatalism. “I felt there was no point in being alive,” she said. Ms. Ankis pulled her head scarf low, for a moment, removing a tear. She said she had been thinking about her husband. “I think about how he took care of me after we got married,” she said. “How will I see him again?” Sufayat Ullah, 20, a madrasa student, said that he was home with his family on the morning of the attack and that the first thing he registered was the sound of gunfire. He realized quickly, he said, that he could only survive by escaping. “When they found people close by, they attacked them with machetes,” he said. “If they were far away, they shot them.” Mr. Ullah ran from the house and bolted for the creek at the edge of town, and he dived in, swimming as far as he could. He said he spent much of the next two days underwater, finally scrambling onto the bank near a neighboring village. Only then did he learn that his mother, father and two brothers had burned to death inside the family house. “I feel no peace,” he said, covering his face with his hands and weeping. “They killed my father and mother. What is left for me in this world?” © 2017 The New York Times Company Maher Sattar contributed reporting. A version of this article appears in print on January 11, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: Myanmar’s Rohingya Tell of Death, Ruin and Rape by Troops.

By Emma Graham-Harrison Toxic political rhetoric with echoes of 1930s hate speech is stirring up violence worldwide – including in the UK and US, Amnesty International has warned. Kerry Moscoguiri, Amnesty UK’s director of campaigns, said that campaigning for the Brexit referendum “was a particular low point, with all too real consequences” – pointing to a 57% spike in reported hate crime the week after the vote. She accused the British government of “creating a hostile climate for refugees and migrants” as it shirked its responsibilities to them, particularly unaccompanied children. But the UK was not alone in seeing vicious rhetoric targeting the most vulnerable, as 2016 saw leaders worldwide peddling “the dangerous idea that some people are less human than others”, according to Amnesty’s director of crisis research Tirana Hassan. She pointed particularly to violence stirred up by Donald Trump, right-wing Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán, who called a controversial referendum on refugees, and the Philippines leader Rodrigo Duterte who has launched a war on drugs that has cost thousands of lives. “This report documents the very real human consequences of politicians like Trump, Orbán, Duterte, wielding a toxic agenda that hounds, scapegoats and dehumanises entire groups of people,” Hassan said. The attacks threaten not just human lives but the value system enshrined in international law after the second world war, warned the NGO. “When language around ‘taking our country back’ and ‘making America great again’ is coupled with proposals to treat EU migrants like bargaining chips or to ban refugees on the grounds of religion, it fosters deep hatred and mistrust and sends a strong message that some people are entitled to human rights and others aren’t,” said Kate Allen, Director of Amnesty International UK. “Have we forgotten that human rights protections were created after the mass atrocities of the second world war as a way of making sure that ‘never again’ actually meant ‘never again’?” It was a year filled with contempt for those ideals, Amnesty warned, from the almost “routine” bombing of hospitals in Syria and Yemen, to violent suppression of dissent and attacks on refugees and migrants. Worldwide, 36 countries broke international law and forced refugees back into conflict zones or places where their rights were at risk, it said. The report was particularly damning of the failure to halt the brutal bombing of rebel-held east Aleppo, in the final stages of a Russian-backed campaign, when chemical weapons and bunker-buster bombswere used against civilians. That inaction “called to mind similar failures in Rwanda and Srebrenica in 1994 and 1995”, the report said, and was a damning indictment of major powers and the UN, paralysed by their rivalries as civilians suffered. “Never have these failures been as apparent as in December 2016, when we all witnessed the graphic and brutal bombardment of Aleppo, when war crimes were essentially beamed into our living rooms,” Moscogiuri said. The British government is criticised in the report for stepping up digital surveillance with the new “snooper’s charter”, which allows the state disturbing access to private lives of its citizens. “By introducing one of the broadest regimes for mass surveillance of any country in the world, the UK took a significant step towards a reality where the right to privacy is simply not recognised,” the report said. It was not all bleak. Amnesty also noted how fierce repression had inspired courage and resistance around the world, from the people of the Gambia who threw off 22 years off dictatorship in a peaceful election, to the Olympic protest of Ethiopian marathon medallist Feyisa Lilesa, and the young “clown of Aleppo”. Lilesa drew attention to the struggles of his Oromo tribe by crossing his arms over his head as he reached the finish line, a gesture of defiance that could potentially have cost him the medal. The 24-year-old entertainer Anas al-Basha chose to stay in besieged Aleppo to bring some distraction and relief to its children, and died there in an airstrike in December. “Ultimately, the charge that human rights is a project of the elite rings hollow,” the report said. “People’s instincts for freedom and justice do not simply wither away.” ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Guardian

By Edward Wong Buddhist monks at Larung Gar last year. A half-dozen United Nations experts have condemned the expulsions of monks and nuns from two Tibetan religious enclaves, Larung Gar and Yachen Gar.CreditGilles Sabrie for The New York Times A half-dozen United Nations experts who investigate human rights abuses have taken the rare step of banding together to condemn China for expulsions of monks and nuns from major religious enclaves in a Tibetan region. In a sharply worded statement, the experts expressed alarm about “severe restrictions of religious freedom” in the area. Most of the expulsions mentioned by the experts have taken place at Larung Gar, the world’s largest Buddhist institute and one of the most influential centers of learning in the Tibetan world. Officials have been demolishing some of the homes of the 20,000 monks and nuns living around the institute, in a high valley in Sichuan Province. The statement also cited accusations of evictions at Yachen Gar, sometimes known as Yarchen Gar, an enclave largely of nuns that is also in Sichuan and has a population of about 10,000. “While we do not wish to prejudge the accuracy of these allegations, grave concern is expressed over the serious repression of the Buddhist Tibetans’ cultural and religious practices and learning in Larung Gar and Yachen Gar,” the statement said. It was signed by six of the United Nations experts, or special rapporteurs, who come from various countries. They each specialize in a single aspect of human rights, including cultural rights, sustainable environment and peaceful assembly. It is unusual for so many of them to collaborate in this manner. The statement was sent to the Chinese government in November, but was made public only in recent days, before the start of this year’s session of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva. The session began Monday and is scheduled to end on March 24. The United Nations experts have asked Beijing to address the reports of evictions and demolitions. The release of the statement before the session in Geneva puts more pressure on China to explain the actions taking place at the two Tibetan Buddhist institutions. China says matters related to Tibet are internal affairs, but Chinese officials in Beijing have privately expressed some concern over outside perceptions of the demolitions and evictions at Larung Gar and related Western news coverage. Over the summer, Chinese officials began deporting monks and nuns living at Larung Gar who were not registered residents of Garze, the prefecture where the institution is. Since then, hundreds of clergy members have been forced out, and workers have demolished small homes clustered along the valley walls. One day last fall, I watched workers tearing and cutting apart wooden homes, sometimes using a chain saw. Official reports have said the demolition is part of a project to improve safety in the area because people live in such tight quarters there. In 2014, a fire destroyed about 100 homes. Residents said the government planned to bring the population down to 5,000 from 20,000 by next year. The government evicted many clergy members once before, in 2001, but people returned. The encampment was founded in 1980 near the town of Sertar by Jigme Phuntsok, a charismatic lama, and is now run by two abbots. Those abbots have not protested the demolitions or evictions. The United Nations experts said in the statement that while they awaited China’s response, they “urge that all necessary interim measures be taken to halt the alleged violations and prevent their reoccurrence.” (c) New York Times 2017

By Elliot Ackerman In the lead-up to Turkey’s constitutional referendum on April 16, Selahattin Demirtas, the co-chair of the opposition pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), sits in prison on charges of terrorism. With his voice effectively muzzled, he has taken to writing short stories, the latest of which is “Aleppo Mince,” where one of his characters muses, “I wonder if in reality death is altogether commonplace, normal, and we are the ones who exaggerated it, made it into something extraordinary.” To understand the politics of Turkey’s upcoming referendum, one must understand its last general election in 2015 and the past two years in which, as Demirtas writes, violence has become commonplace. Turkey has been wracked by political instability since Demirtas and the HDP won an unprecedented electoral victory in June 2015, exceeding 10 percent of the popular vote, which allowed them for the first time to create an HDP voting bloc in parliament and which also led to the first electoral defeat for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) since 2002. To undercut this electoral victory, Erdogan and his allies have used violence to create the conditions necessary to consolidate power. Meanwhile, the United States and Europe haven’t just remained silent — they have been complicit. Erdogan had only assumed the office of president one year before the 2015 elections, after finishing his third term as prime minister, the maximum number of terms he could hold that office under Turkish law. The presidency had, in the past, been a limited role, largely ceremonial in nature. However, prior to the June 2015 parliamentary elections, Erdogan was already maneuvering to extend his tenure in power by rewriting the constitution to create an executive presidency that he could hold for at least a decade. In that election, many Turks who opposed Erdogan’s consolidation of power registered their protest by supporting members of the HDP who, if they exceeded 10 percent of popular support nationwide, could block Erdogan’s AKP from forming a governing majority and thus force them into a power-sharing coalition government. This was the outcome on election day when, for the first time in more than a decade, the AKP did not receive a governing majority. It was an outcome that would be challenged that summer. As Demirtas and his 79 colleagues from the HDP prepared to sit in the Turkish parliament, negotiations to form a coalition government began. However, as stipulated by Turkish election law, if no coalition government formed by August, a snap election would be scheduled for that November. Subject to this restriction, negotiations to form a government were doomed from the start. Under Erdogan’s leadership, the AKP opted out of a power-sharing arrangement with any other party and chose to return to the polls. But to successfully win a governing majority, political conditions inside of Turkey needed to change to the AKP’s advantage. And this is what the AKP set out to accomplish that summer. How would the AKP change the political landscape in Turkey before the November elections? It found the answer by resuming the war against the Kurds, eroding their support among Turks who months before had registered protest votes with the pro-Kurdish HDP as a way to check Erdogan’s power. In response to fighting in predominately Kurdish cities like Diyarbakir and Cizre that had led to a stream of dead Turkish soldiers, and terrorist bombings in Ankara and Istanbul that killed hundreds of people, President Erdogan resumed Turkey’s war against its Kurdish population. The Turkish government began flying sorties against Kurdish targets out of Incirlik Air Base, breaking a cease-fire that Erdogan himself had played a key role in brokering two years before and which had been one of the crowning achievements of his tenure as prime minister. The United States had supported the cease-fire but remained largely silent throughout this resumed war, aside from the occasional statement of support for the Turks. “We have strongly condemned the #PKK’s terrorist attacks in #Turkey and we fully respect our ally Turkey’s right to self-defense,” presidential envoy Brett McGurk tweeted on July 25, in one example, after a Turkish bombing run against the Kurds. One reason is that Erdogan had just won Washington’s favor by giving it something it had wanted. Prior to the June elections, the U.S. government had been lobbying Turkey to use Incirlik Air Base to launch sorties into Syria in its war against the Islamic State. For months the Turkish government had denied these requests and refused to enter the U.S.-led coalition against the Islamic State. But within two weeks of Turkey’s June elections, the Turks agreed not just to allow American warplanes to base out of Incirlik but themselves launched airstrikes against the Islamic State. Erdogan had also found transactional ways of buying Europe’s silence. Leaders of European Union nations proved hesitant to criticize the Turkish government’s internal politics given Turkey’s role in stanching the westward flow of nearly 3 million Syrian refugees. Turkey’s military operation against the Kurds, and the parallel election campaign, produced a tumultuous summer and autumn for Turkey. Erdogan argued to the electorate that the stability provided by a strong AKP majority was the safest course for Turkey. He chose not to emphasize that his own policies had largely created this instability. When Turks returned to the polls on Nov. 1, 2015, the result was a governing majority for Erdogan’s AKP and a succession of political purges targeting the media, academia, the judiciary, and the military that would culminate in the failed July 15, 2016, coup, after which President Erdogan declared a state of emergency that remains in place to this day and which could extend almost indefinitely if he’s able to win the referendum on April 16. Erdogan’s dreams of an executive presidency and new constitution have been the central problem in Turkish political life for the past three years. The United States and Europe have played an important role in enabling Erdogan’s excesses by pursuing shortsighted policy objectives — single-minded prosecution of the war against the Islamic State in the case of the United States and stemming refugee flows in the case of Europe — at the expense of their other professed goals and values. By pursuing short-term interests, the West is seeding long-term problems by enabling an authoritarian government and sabotaging one of the region’s few democracies. The silence of the world’s great democracies as the Middle East’s one great democracy slips toward authoritarianism has been deafening for Turks. Inside of Turkey, members of the HDP and other opposition parties have organized a “no” campaign to counter Erdogan’s referendum, but they have received little support from the West. Although the polls are close, it is hard to be optimistic about the outcome. Based on the experience of June 2015, it’s hard to believe that Erdogan will accept a defeat. What will the reaction be among the international community if Turkey devolves into an authoritarian state? It’s hard not to hear Demirtas’s prediction in the lines of his story, which deals with a bomb’s explosion in Aleppo: “[P]eople rushing to work still won’t have heard the news. They’ll hear it soon enough, but most of them will regard it as an ‘ordinary’ explosion, not even worth reading about.” _____________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Foreign Policy

By Elisabetta Povoledo PALERMO, Sicily — Sicily’s Jews were banished from this island in 1492, the victims of a Spanish edict that forced thousands to leave and others to convert to Roman Catholicism. More than 500 years later, a nascent Jewish community is planting fresh roots in the Sicilian capital, reclaiming a lost, often painful, history, this time with the aid of the local diocese. Palermo’s archbishop, Corrado Lorefice, has granted the emerging community the use of an unused oratory, to be transformed into Palermo’s first stable synagogue in five centuries. And for many, it’s about time. “The Jewish community is a part of Palermo, part of its history; Jews were here for 15 centuries,” said Evelyne Aouate, an Algerian-born, Parisian-raised transplant whose deepening exploration of her own roots drove the efforts to find the community a home. Aptly enough, that home will be located in what once was known as the Giudecca, Palermo’s ancient Jewish quarter. The downtown warren of yet-to-be-gentrified ramshackle buildings is filled with narrow streets whose names still recall some of that history, like Piazza Meschita, the Arabic word for both synagogues and churches, or Via dei Calderai, for the tinkers and coppersmiths whose shops have lined the street practically forever. A few years ago, trilingual street signs — in Italian, Hebrew and Arabic — were put up as markers in the area in a nod to the city’s rich past. But “the Hebrew is wrong, it’s botched”— a transliteration that doesn’t read right, according to Maria Antonietta Ancona, a retired anesthetist who goes by her Jewish name, Miriam. “They didn’t translate, but just substituted Italian characters with the Hebrew characters, so it doesn’t make sense,” she said. She should know, she began studying Hebrew 10 years ago as part of her conversion to Judaism. Like other members of the nascent Palermo community, Ms. Ancona, who was raised as a Roman Catholic though her father was Jewish, began recovering her roots 30 years ago as part of a “pressing necessity” to embrace her Jewish identity. Later, between 1601 and 1782, the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri — today part of the University of Palermo — served as the prison and tribunal of the Inquisition. Its walls preserve the anguished scratched scrawls of past inmates, including some in Hebrew. Just over three years ago, Hanukkah candles began to be lighted at Palazzo Steri, a tangible sign of the university and the city’s commitment to the Jewish community. The community’s spiritual leader, the Rabbi Pierpaolo Pinhas Punturello, who is an emissary of Shavei Israel, an organization based in Jerusalem that assists those searching for their Jewish heritage, said that he had noticed a growing interest in the Jewish heritage of Sicily and other parts of southern Italy. “Every time I go there I meet new people curious about their origins, who want to explore them,” the rabbi said. The synagogue was the natural next step and in June last year, Ms. Aouate, Ms. Pepi and Ms. Ancona asked the archbishop whether an unused church might be available. Three weeks later, Archbishop Lorefice called to offer the oratory. The Rev. Pietro Magro, who is responsible for inter-religious dialogue for the archdiocese of Palermo, said that the archbishop had been pleased to reach out to the community in their search for a place of prayer. “The church of the Virgin of the Saturday seemed right because it’s in the Jewish quarter, and we hope it will be ready soon,” Father Magro said. The restoration is expected to begin shortly; the city will cover most of the costs. The community has another long list of expenses, from the ark for the Torah scrolls to a sophisticated security system, Ms. Aouate said. “And we would like a beautiful Menorah!” The new synagogue — on the Vicolo Meschita, part of an area once occupied by Palermo’s Great Synagogue — will be housed in a former Baroque oratory known as Santa Maria del Sabato, or Holy Mary of Saturday. It is an unusual name for a church, noted Luciana Pepi, who teaches Hebrew language, culture and philosophy at the University of Palermo, and is also a convert and active member of the local Jewish community. “Some scholars have hypothesized that the name might be related to the memory of the celebration of Shabbat,” the weekly Jewish day of rest, she said. On a recent spring morning, Ms. Pepi, Ms. Ancona and Ms. Aouate — who spearheaded the efforts to open a synagogue — fussed at the entrance to the oratory, fumbling with a padlock on a cast-iron gate. Using an oversize key, with some effort, they finally opened a tall, paneled wood door. The three women paused at the entrance, taking in a softly lit nave, where dilapidated wooden seats and peeling yellow paint betrayed decades of neglect. The ornate altar was still in the apse, but sundry statues and crucifixes had already been removed. “Here it is!” said Ms. Aouate, her happiness palpable. “It’s beautiful, but there is still a lot to do.” That includes reacquainting Palermo citizens with a history that many didn’t even know they had. For many years “history books skipped over the city’s Jewish presence, as if trying to cancel it,” Ms. Ancona said. Ms. Pepi added: “Palermo didn’t know its own history.” That has been changing, mostly as a result of Ms. Aouate and a small group of enthusiasts, including Catholics, who 25 years ago founded the Sicilian Institute for Jewish Studies, dedicated to recovering the island’s Jewish identity. “A little at a time we are trying to renew that memory,” Ms. Aouate said. Scholarship, too, has filled in many of the missing blanks of Sicily’s Jewish past. Documents show that Jews were in Sicily at least since the first century A.D., and remained on the island until the 1492 edict. At one point, there were 51 communities here, Palermo being the largest and most important. Historians say the edict affected at least 35,000 Sicilian Jews, including at least 5,000 in Palermo. Some Jews decided to stay, converting to Catholicism against their will. Some — known here as Marranos — continued to practice Judaism in secret. Palermo’s municipal archives — whose late-19th-century grand hall may have been inspired by the Great Synagogue — recently exhibited mementos of more recent affronts to Sicily’s Jews. They included documents from the years following Mussolini’s 1938 racial laws, showing how the city’s Jews were unceremoniously fired from jobs at the local university and City Hall, in order to “defend the Italian race,” one document read. It took time for the community to rebuild. “I first arrived here in 1959, and for 20 years I thought I was the only Jew in Palermo,” Ms. Aouate said. Over the years, she met other Jews and in time her elegant Palermo apartment became a point of reference for the community during the holidays. The number of Jews currently living in Palermo remains unclear. “It depends, because if you think of all the people born of a Jewish mother or a Jewish father, then it’s numerous,” but not everyone considers themselves Jewish, she said. Until now, in any case, there haven’t been enough men to form a regular minyan, the quorum of 10 or more adult male Jews required for communal worship, as is the case in Orthodoxy, the only recognized Jewish stream in Italy. Dedicated tourism may change that because Palermo offers various Jewish sites around town, some harboring signs of past suffering. A mikvah, or Jewish ritual bath, was found below the courtyard of Palazzo Marchesi, which in the 16th century housed the offices of the Inquisition. Later, between 1601 and 1782, the Palazzo Chiaramonte-Steri — today part of the University of Palermo — served as the prison and tribunal of the Inquisition. Its walls preserve the anguished scratched scrawls of past inmates, including some in Hebrew. Just over three years ago, Hanukkah candles began to be lighted at Palazzo Steri, a tangible sign of the university and the city’s commitment to the Jewish community. The community’s spiritual leader, the Rabbi Pierpaolo Pinhas Punturello, who is an emissary of Shavei Israel, an organization based in Jerusalem that assists those searching for their Jewish heritage, said that he had noticed a growing interest in the Jewish heritage of Sicily and other parts of southern Italy. “Every time I go there I meet new people curious about their origins, who want to explore them,” the rabbi said. The synagogue was the natural next step and in June last year, Ms. Aouate, Ms. Pepi and Ms. Ancona asked the archbishop whether an unused church might be available. Three weeks later, Archbishop Lorefice called to offer the oratory. The Rev. Pietro Magro, who is responsible for inter-religious dialogue for the archdiocese of Palermo, said that the archbishop had been pleased to reach out to the community in their search for a place of prayer. “The church of the Virgin of the Saturday seemed right because it’s in the Jewish quarter, and we hope it will be ready soon,” Father Magro said. The restoration is expected to begin shortly; the city will cover most of the costs. The community has another long list of expenses, from the ark for the Torah scrolls to a sophisticated security system, Ms. Aouate said. “And we would like a beautiful Menorah!” __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

By Emanuel Stoakes The ruins of a village market that was burned to the ground, near Maungdaw in Myanmar’s Rakhine state. Photograph: Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters Photographs have emerged that show Rohingya refugees, some of them children, bearing bullet wounds and burn scars apparently sustained during a Myanmar army crackdown. The new evidence, documented by humanitarian agencies and rights organisations, adds credence to claims that Myanmar’s military committed atrocities against ethnic Rohingya communities during a counterinsurgency campaign that ended this year. The material surfaced after Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s de facto civilian leader, told journalists during a visit to the EU last week she did not support a fact-finding mission into alleged abuses against the Rohingya. The UN human rights council mandated an inquiry in a March resolution. Government and military officials have repeatedly rebutted allegations of widespread abuse. Violence flared up in Myanmar’s restive Rakhine state in October last year after coordinated armed attacks on three border guard posts by a previously unknown Rohingya militant movement. Nine security personnel were killed in the unrest. Myanmar’s military and parts of the police force subsequently undertook “clearance operations” against the rebels in an area north of Maungdaw, a town close to the border with Bangladesh. A YouTube screen grab shows a policeman kicking a villager sitting among fellow Rohingya in Kotankauk last November. Photograph: Zaw Myo Htike/AFP/Getty Images Amnesty International and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the UN’s human rights watchdog, allege that these military sweeps involved widespread and systematic abuse of Rohingya communities, including gang rape, torture and murder. The campaign prompted more than 75,000 Rohingya to flee across the border into the Cox’s Bazar region of Bangladesh and displaced tens of thousands within Myanmar. Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, and Yanghee Lee, the UN’s special rapporteur on Myanmar, have both claimed Myanmar’s security forces are probably responsible for “crimes against humanity”. Officials from the UN agencies believe more than a thousand Rohingya could have been killed during the crackdown. Photographs of wounded Rohingya seen by the Guardian appear to strengthen claims that serious abuses occurred. The images support allegations made in a UN report (pdf) that included interviews with hundreds of Rohingya refugees who recently fled Myanmar for Bangladesh. The report’s authors said that “the army deliberately set fire to houses with families inside” and “in other cases pushed Rohingya into already burning houses”. The photos were obtained by the Burmese Rohingya Organisation of the UK, a London-based advocacy group, for a forthcoming report. One image showed a seven-year-old boy with severe blistering on both thighs. The boy and his mother claim the military were responsible for his injuries, which are consistent with burn wounds. “When the military burnt my house,” said the boy’s mother, “I could not prevent my son from being burnt.” Another image appeared to show a bullet wound in the leg of a seven-year-old boy. He claims he was injured when the Myanmar military conducted a raid on his village: “I saw the military, and was shot as I fled.” Other children with serious wounds include a five-year-old girl with a “deep burn” on the skin around her fingers, an injury she received when she had been pushed into fires by the military, according to her mother. Her life was saved by the intervention of a bystander. “Someone pulled my child from the flames. She was unconscious for three days afterwards,” said the girl’s mother. Four other organisations claim to have seen similar scarring on the bodies of Rohingya refugees who arrived in Bangladesh during the violence. A spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Bangladesh said: “It is known to our staff that there were people with such reported injuries as gunshot wounds and burns among those who were seeking assistance from the registered refugees inside the camps. They were generally adults and teenagers. They were referred as quickly as possible for medical attention through NGOs and local hospitals.” The photographs have prompted renewed calls for Myanmar to cooperate with the UN’s fact-finding mission. The OHCHR said: “Given the compelling nature of the testimonies collected by various credible groups, if the area remains closed off to investigators it will add to suspicions that the authorities would prefer to let impunity reign than to achieve meaningful accountability.” The government of Myanmar has not yet responded to requests for comment. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

By Edith Lederer U.S. Ambassador Nikki Haley denounced Myanmar's government Tuesday for continuing to make life for Rohingya Muslims "a death sentence," citing the reporting of mass graves by The Associated Press and other news organizations. She started her speech to the Security Council by recounting how a Rohingya refugee in Bangladesh, Noor Kadir, told AP about surviving an attack by soldiers on 14 friends trying to choose sides for a local soccer-like game in the village of Gu Dar Pyin in Myanmar's Rakhine state. Haley said only Kadir and two friends survived, and six days later he found teammates partially buried in mass graves — reportedly among five mass graves. Survivors reported that more than 200 soldiers descended on the village, shooting and burning homes, she said. Myanmar's government "regularly denies the existence of massacres and mass graves and claims to be fighting 'terrorists,'" Haley said. "But what Kadir found that day indicated that the military knew what it was doing was wrong and didn't want the world to know." She also cited evidence of "another massacre and mass grave" in the fishing village of Inn Din, discovered by two Reuters reporters who are now imprisoned. Haley said they reported that police ordered villagers "to participate in the killing, dismemberment and burial in a mass grave of 10 Rohingya men and boys." She called for the reporters' immediate release, saying "unhindered media access is vitally important." During the council meeting, many countries including Britain, Netherlands, France, Kazakhstan and Sweden raised the reports of mass graves and the imprisoned journalists. "Numerous reports of systematic widespread and coordinated acts of violence strongly indicate that crimes against humanity have been committed in Rakhine," said Sweden's deputy U.N. Ambassador, Carl Skau. Buddhist-majority Myanmar doesn't recognize the Rohingya as an ethnic group, insisting they are Bengali migrants from Bangladesh living illegally in the country. It has denied them citizenship, leaving them stateless. The recent spasm of violence began when Rohingya insurgents staged a series of attacks Aug. 25. Myanmar security forces then began a scorched-earth campaign against Rohingya villages that the U.N. and human rights groups have called a campaign of ethnic cleansing. Myanmar Ambassador Hau Do Suan told the council that AP and BBC reports of mass graves in Gu Dar Pyin were investigated by a 17-member team. He said that "no mass grave was found" and that village elders "confirmed there were no such incidents," but the state government "is extending the investigation to nearby villages." As for the mass grave in Inn Din, Suan said the military's investigation found that 10 members of the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army — the Rohingya insurgent group that carried out attacks on security forces Aug. 25 — were arrested Sept. 1. He said the next day they were executed and buried. Suan said 16 people including army and police officers and some villagers are facing unspecified "action" for violating "standard operating procedures and rules of engagement." Haley said powerful forces in Myanmar's government have denied ethnic cleansing in Rakhine, and "to make sure no one contradicts their preposterous denials, they are preventing access to Rakhine to anyone or any organization that might bear witness to their atrocities, including the U.N. Security Council." She posed a challenge for Myanmar's leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, the Nobel laureate celebrated in the past "for her commitment to peace and her fellow man." "If any of that love of humanity can be found in the government," Haley said, the least it can do is allow humanitarian groups to get "food to the starving, medical care to the wounded, and psychological services to the sexually abused" Rohingya still in Rakhine state. https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2018-02-13/us-says-myanmar-makes-life-for-rohingya-a-death-sentence (c) 2018 Associated Press

By Elise Thomas The Australian defence department plans to spend almost $400,000 on English lessons, event attendances and training courses for members of the Myanmarmilitary in 2017-18, documents released under freedom of information laws show. Myanmar’s armed forces, also known as the Tatmadaw, has faced international condemnation and accusations of ethnic cleansing in recent months for perpetrating a fresh wave of attacks against the country’s minority Rohingyapopulation. About 688,000 Rohingya refugees have fled over the border to Bangladesh since August 2017. Yanghee Lee, a UN human rights investigator, has said the situation bears “the hallmarks of a genocide”. In 2017-18 the defence department will spend $398,000 (a $126,000 increase on last year’s spending) on English lessons and on funding Myanmar’s participation in the Pirap Jabiru multilateral military exercises in the region that Australia cohosts with Thailand. Aung San Suu Kyi, Myanmar’s leader, is due to visit Sydney this month for the Asean-Australia special summit. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said on Thursday the Myanmar government’s treatment of the Rohingya people is expected to be discussed. Australian allies including the US, UK, Canada, France and the EU have cut ties with Myanmar’s military over the violence. The US and Canada have imposed targeted sanctions against Myanmar military leaders. In recent months the Myanmar military has also courted controversy through purchases of fighter jets from Russia and ballistic missiles from North Korea. A briefing note produced by the defence department says: “Defence has a modest program of engagement with Myanmar in non-combat areas, with a focus on humanitarian assistance and disaster relief, peacekeeping training and English language training. This engagement is designed to expose the Tatmadaw to the ways of a modern, professional defence force and highlight the importance of adhering to international humanitarian law.” The briefing note, anticipating a challenge on why the UK and the US have acted differently, says: “Each country needs to make its own decision on engagement with the Tatmadaw.” While an arms embargo, introduced in 1991, remains in place, Australia has so far diverged from its allies and resisted calls from groups such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch to suspend military cooperation with Myanmar. Australia held its first bilateral defence cooperation talks with Myanmar in 2017, and plans to hold further talks this year. “Australia’s bilateral defence engagement with Myanmar is limited to humanitarian and non-combat areas such as disaster relief, peacekeeping, aviation safety and English-language training,” a defence department spokesperson said. “Maintaining this engagement has enabled senior Australian military officials to directly raise concerns on Rakhine with their Myanmar counterparts.” Last year the defence department offered Tatmadaw officers English lessons and study places in Australia for courses on aviation safety, maritime security, operational law, joint warfare and peacekeeping. One Tatmadaw officer received a scholarship from the defence department to study for a master of peace and conflict at the University of Sydney. In June 2017 Australia gave Myanmar advice on how to carry out an air accident investigation following the deaths of 122 people when a Y-8 military plane crashed. The spokesperson gave the example of Lieut Gen Angus Campbell’s meeting with Min Aung Hlaing, commander-in-chief of the Tatmadaw army, at the Pacific armies chiefs conference in Seoul in September 2017. Diana Sayed, Amnesty International’s crisis campaigns coordinator, said the Australian government’s strategy of continued engagement and careful diplomacy cannot be justified given the extent and extremity of the crisis. “This business as usual approach is unacceptable, and is only going to further damage Australia’s international reputation, especially as Australia takes up its seat on the UN human rights council,” Sayed says. “The decisions of the US, the UK and the EU to cut military ties, and the recent sanctions imposed by Canada all show that Australia is out of touch with the rest of the world when it comes to this crisis.” It is not known if members of the Tatmadaw who are directly implicated in the violence against the Rohingyacould benefit from Australian-funded training. The defence spokesperson said subject to course requirements and visa processes, “the Tatmadaw nominates personnel to fill Australia-based training positions”. The department did not provide a response to questions about what steps the department is taking to identify individuals implicated in perpetrating the violence. Talking points written for the Australian defence minister Marise Payne’s meeting with her Myanmar counterpart Lieut Gen Sein Win in October 2017 advise her to acknowledge the Myanmar government’s narrative that “the current violence was sparked by attacks on government forces”. The minister is advised that Australia “strongly condemns” the attacks on security outposts by Rohingya militants, in which 11 police officers were killed, but stops short of condemning the government’s own violence against the Rohingya people in which an estimated 6,700 civilians were killed in only the first month. Instead the talking points express Australia’s “deep concern” over the displacement of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh, saying that “these reports divert attention away from the legitimate security threat posed by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army [and] harm the Myanmar military’s international reputation”. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/mar/06/australia-to-train-myanmar-military-despite-ethnic-cleansing-accusations (c) 2018 The Guardian

By Elias Meseret A man waves an Oromo flag during a gathering in Addis Ababa. The attack occurred in Ethiopia’s restive Oromia region. Photograph: Yonas Tadesse/AFP via Getty Images ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia (AP) — Survivors of a massacre by rebels in western Ethiopia on Sunday counted 54 bodies in a schoolyard, the latest attack in which members of ethnic minorities have been deliberately targeted, Amnesty International said Monday. Human rights groups are asking why federal soldiers left the area just hours before attackers moved in and targeted ethnic Amharas. Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, denounced the killing of people based on identity, adding that security forces had been deployed to the area and “started taking measures.” Ethnic violence in Ethiopia is posing the greatest challenge yet to the prime minister, who was last year’s Nobel Peace Prize winner for his sweeping political reforms. “Ethiopia’s enemies are vowing either to rule the country or ruin it, and they are doing everything they can to achieve this,” Abiy said in a Facebook post. “One of their tactics is to arm civilians and carry out barbaric attacks based on identity. (For me) this is heartbreaking.” Ethiopia’s government blamed a rebel group, the Oromo Liberation Army, for the attacks in the far western part of Oromia, in an area bordering South Sudan and a few hundred kilometers from the capital, Addis Ababa. The head of the Oromia region police commission, Ararsa Merdasa, told the state broadcaster the death toll was 32 and “some 200 families have fled the area.” Survivors of the attack in Guliso District of West Wellega Zone told Amnesty International that federal troops had withdrawn unexpectedly and the rebels arrived hours later, identifying themselves as the OLA and announcing that they now controlled the area. “Militants gathered people who did not manage to flee, mainly women, children and the elderly, and killed them,” the Amnesty statement said. Survivors hid in a forest nearby. One told the human rights group he found the bodies of his brother, sister-in-law and three children in the schoolyard with bullet wounds. “The fact that this horrendous incident occurred shortly after government troops abruptly withdrew from the area in unexplained circumstances raises questions that must be answered,” said Amnesty International’s regional director Deprose Muchena. The Ethiopian Human Rights Commission in its own statement noted the government’s death toll of 32 but said preliminary evidence it obtained “indicate the number is very likely to exceed that tally.” Attackers numbered up to 60, the commission said, citing sources. Ethnic Amharas “were dragged from their homes and taken to a school, where they were killed.” The commission urged the federal government to “shed light on the reasons behind the military’s withdrawal from an area long known to be vulnerable to attacks” and to make sure civilians are protected. Amharas are the second most populous ethnic group in Ethiopia after Oromos. They also have been targeted by gunmen in the Western Benishangul Gumuz and Southern regions in recent weeks, leaving several dozen dead. The Oromia region’s communications office in a statement called the latest assault a “brutal terror attack.” Getachew Balcha, the region’s spokesman, said it was aimed at creating havoc and putting psychological pressure on citizens. “The armed group gathered 200 people for a meeting around 5 p.m., and then started shooting at them,” the Amhara region’s affiliated broadcaster, Amhara Mass Media Agency, quoted one survivor as saying. The survivor said a school and some 120 houses were burned. “The government has failed in its duty to protect the safety of citizens,” Dessalegn Chanie, a senior member of the opposition National Movement of Amhara party, told The Associated Press, adding that Ethiopia’s language-based federal system is the main cause for the killings: “Ethnic Amharas residing outside of the Amhara region are being labeled as outsiders and are exposed to repeated attacks.” Under the system, Afan Oromo speakers generally live in Oromia, Amharic speakers generally live in the Amhara region and so on. The structure gives locals more say in local affairs. The Oromo Liberation Army hasn’t commented on the attack allegations. It has denied similar reports in the past. The rebel group, a splinter wing of the Oromo Liberation Front party, has used the western Oromia region as its base since its members returned to Ethiopia after Abiy shortly after taking office in 2018 invited once-banned groups to return home from exile. © 2020 The Associated Press

By Edward McAllister DAKAR (Reuters) - Cameroonian soldiers opened fire on villagers during a weekend raid in the country’s southwest, killing up to nine people, including civilians, and injuring others, witnesses, health workers and a human rights lawyer said on Wednesday. An army spokesman denied there were civilian casualties during the incident on Sunday in the village of Mautu in the South West region, home to a separatist insurgency. He called the accusation “propaganda”. For four years the army has clashed with Anglophone separatist fighters among the forests and cocoa farms of western Cameroon. Over 3,000 people have died in the violence, which has intensified since the start of this year. Sunday’s attack was described to Reuters by three villagers who said they fled into nearby cocoa plantations or cowered at home while soldiers rifled through their belongings. They said they saw nine dead people, including a child and an old woman. None of the dead were separatist fighters, they said. Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it was treating four people from the village, all with gunshot wounds: a young child, two elderly patients and a young woman. “This incident is the latest in a significant upsurge in violence since the year began,” said Gisa Kohler, MSF’s emergency coordinator in South West Cameroon. Unverified videos shared by sources with knowledge of the attack showed several dead bodies with gunshot wounds, including a woman and a child laid out on a bamboo stretcher, as well as several young men. “This is an unconventional conflict,” said human rights lawyer Agbor Balla, who said he had confirmed at least eight deaths in Mautu on Sunday, based on his own sources. “Civilians were killed. It was done by the military. We don’t know if others killed were separatists.” In a statement on Monday, the military said it was conducting a raid on separatist positions when it came under fire and had killed what it labelled “terrorists”. It did not say how many died. In response to Reuters questions about the incident, army spokesman Atonfack Guemo on Wednesday dismissed the witness accounts. “Small terrorist groups and their foreign supporters have engaged in a battle of disinformation. We will not give in,” he said. The army has struggled to uproot the insurgency, which is made up of dozens of small armed groups and has become a thorn in the side of President Paul Biya’s 40-year rule. BULLETS FLYING The violence in Mautu comes as three soldiers face trial for their alleged involvement in the killing of 21 civilians last year in a village in the North West region. The separatists have committed their own abuses, including attacks on police and the army, and school kidnappings. Louis, a cocoa farmer, said he was sitting outside when the soldiers opened fire in Mautu. “Bullets were flying everywhere,” said Louis, who like other witnesses did not want to use his last name for fear of reprisal. “They chased me into the bushes and kept shooting.” Fellow resident Enow said he was in a church meeting when the gunfire began. He ran into the surrounding bushes and hid. Not everyone got away. One 60-year-old farmer was at home when soldiers broke down his door searching for fighters and weapons. They found neither, and smashed his television, he said. None of the witnesses said they saw separatists that day. They all said that a woman and her young granddaughter were killed by the military. “They were people I knew,” the farmer said. “What have they done that they can be killed in this way?” Reporting by Edward McAllister, Editing by Joe Bavier and Rosalba O’Brien © Reuters 2021