By Cate Cadell BEIJING (Reuters) - China is pushing growing numbers of Tibetan rural laborers off the land and into recently built military-style training centers where they are turned into factory workers, mirroring a program in the western Xinjiang region that rights groups have branded coercive labor. Beijing has set quotas for the mass transfer of rural laborers within Tibet and to other parts of China, according to over a hundred state media reports, policy documents from government bureaus in Tibet and procurement requests released between 2016-2020 and reviewed by Reuters. The quota effort marks a rapid expansion of an initiative designed to provide loyal workers for Chinese industry. A notice posted to the website of Tibet’s regional government website last month said over half a million people were trained as part of the project in the first seven months of 2020 - around 15% of the region’s population. Of this total, almost 50,000 have been transferred into jobs within Tibet, and several thousand have been sent to other parts of China. Many end up in low paid work, including textile manufacturing, construction and agriculture. “This is now, in my opinion, the strongest, most clear and targeted attack on traditional Tibetan livelihoods that we have seen almost since the Cultural Revolution” of 1966 to 1976, said Adrian Zenz, an independent Tibet and Xinjiang researcher, who compiled the core findings about the program. These are detailed in a report released this week by the Jamestown Foundation, a Washington, D.C.-based institute that focuses on policy issues of strategic importance to the U.S. “It’s a coercive lifestyle change from nomadism and farming to wage labor.” Reuters corroborated Zenz’s findings and found additional policy documents, company reports, procurement filings and state media reports that describe the program. In a statement to Reuters, China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs strongly denied the involvement of forced labor, and said China is a country with rule of law and that workers are voluntary and properly compensated. “What these people with ulterior motives are calling ‘forced labor’ simply does not exist. We hope the international community will distinguish right from wrong, respect facts, and not be fooled by lies,” it said. Moving surplus rural labor into industry is a key part of China’s drive to boost the economy and reduce poverty. But in areas like Xinjiang and Tibet, with large ethnic populations and a history of unrest, rights groups say the programs include an outsized emphasis on ideological training. And the government quotas and military-style management, they say, suggest the transfers have coercive elements. China seized control of Tibet after Chinese troops entered the region in 1950, in what Beijing calls a “peaceful liberation.” Tibet has since become one of the most restricted and sensitive areas in the country. The Tibetan program is expanding as international pressure is growing over similar projects in Xinjiang, some of which have been linked to mass detention centers. A United Nations report has estimated that around one million people in Xinjiang, mostly ethnic Uighurs, were detained in camps and subjected to ideological education. China initially denied the existence of the camps, but has since said they are vocational and education centers, and that all the people have “graduated.” Reuters was unable to ascertain the conditions of the transferred Tibetan workers. Foreign journalists are not permitted to enter the region, and other foreign citizens are only permitted on government-approved tours. In recent years, Xinjiang and Tibet have been the target of harsh policies in pursuit of what Chinese authorities call “stability maintenance.” These policies are broadly aimed at quelling dissent, unrest or separatism and include restricting the travel of ethnic citizens to other parts of China and abroad, and tightening control over religious activities. In August, President Xi Jinping said China will again step up efforts against separatism in Tibet, where ethnic Tibetans make up around 90% of the population, according to census data. Critics, spearheaded by Tibetan spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, accuse the Chinese authorities of carrying out “cultural genocide” in the region. The 85-year-old Nobel Laureate has been based in Dharamsala, India, since he fled China in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese authorities. ELIMINATE ‘LAZY PEOPLE’ While there has been some evidence of military-style training and labor transfers in Tibet in the past, this new, enlarged program represents the first on a mass scale and the first to openly set quotas for transfers outside the region. A key element, described in multiple regional policy documents, involves sending officials into villages and townships to gather data on rural laborers and conduct education activities, aimed at building loyalty. State media described one such operation in villages near the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. Officials carried out over a thousand anti-separatism education sessions, according to the state media report, “allowing the people of all ethnic groups to feel the care and concern of the Party Central Committee,” referring to China’s ruling Communist Party. The report said the sessions included songs, dances and sketches in “easy to understand language.” Such “education” work took place prior to the rollout of the wider transfers this year. The model is similar to Xinjiang, and researchers say a key link between the two is the former Tibet Communist Party Secretary Chen Quanguo, who took over the same post in Xinjiang in 2016 and spearheaded the development of Xinjiang’s camp system. The Xinjiang government, where Chen remains Party boss, did not respond to a request for comment. “In Tibet, he was doing a slightly lower level, under the radar, version of what was implemented in Xinjiang,” said Allen Carlson, Associate Professor in Cornell University’s Government Department. Around 70% of Tibet’s population is classified as rural, according to 2018 figures from China’s National Bureau of Statistics. This includes a large proportion of subsistence farmers, posing a challenge for China’s poverty alleviation program, which measures its success on levels of basic income. China has pledged to eradicate rural poverty in the country by the end of 2020. “In order to cope with the increasing downward economic pressure on the employment income of rural workers, we will now increase the intensity of precision skills training ... and carry out organized and large-scale transfer of employment across provinces, regions and cities,” said a working plan released by Tibet’s Human Resources and Social Security Department in July. The plan included 2020 quotas for the program in different areas. Some of the policy documents and state media reports reviewed by Reuters make reference to unspecified punishments for officials who fail to meet their quotas. One prefecture level implementation plan called for “strict reward and punishment measures” for officials. As in Xinjiang, private intermediaries, such as agents and companies, that organize transfers can receive subsidies set at 500 yuan ($74) for each laborer moved out of the region and 300 yuan ($44) for those placed within Tibet, according to regional and prefecture level notices. Officials have previously said that labor transfer programs in other parts of China are voluntary, and many of the Tibetan government documents also mention mechanisms to ensure laborers’ rights, but they don’t provide details. Advocates, rights groups and researchers say it’s unlikely laborers are able to decline work placements, though they acknowledge that some may be voluntary. “These recent announcements dramatically and dangerously expand these programs, including ‘thought training’ with the government’s coordination, and represent a dangerous escalation,” said Matteo Mecacci, president of U.S. based advocacy group, the International Campaign for Tibet. The government documents reviewed by Reuters put a strong emphasis on ideological education to correct the “thinking concepts” of laborers. “There is the assertion that minorities are low in discipline, that their minds must be changed, that they must be convinced to participate,” said Zenz, the Tibet-Xinjiang researcher based in Minnesota. One policy document, posted on the website of the Nagqu City government in Tibet’s east in December 2018, reveals early goals for the plan and sheds light on the approach. It describes how officials visited villages to collect data on 57,800 laborers. Their aim was to tackle “can’t do, don’t want to do and don’t dare to do” attitudes toward work, the document says. It calls for unspecified measures to “effectively eliminate ‘lazy people.’” A report released in January by the Tibetan arm of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, a high-profile advisory body to the government, describes internal discussions on strategies to tackle the “mental poverty” of rural laborers, including sending teams of officials into villages to carry out education and “guide the masses to create a happy life with their hardworking hands.” MILITARY DRILLS AND UNIFORMS Rural workers who are moved into vocational training centers receive ideological education - what China calls “military-style” training - according to multiple Tibetan regional and district-level policy documents describing the program in late 2019 and 2020. The training emphasises strict discipline, and participants are required to perform military drills and dress in uniforms. It is not clear what proportion of participants in the labor transfer program undergo such military-style training. But policy documents from Ngari, Xigatze and Shannan, three districts which account for around a third of Tibet’s population, call for the “vigorous promotion of military-style training.” Region-wide policy notices also make reference to this training method. Small-scale versions of similar military-style training initiatives have existed in the region for over a decade, but construction of new facilities increased sharply in 2016, and recent policy documents call for more investment in such sites. A review of satellite imagery and documents relating to over a dozen facilities in different districts in Tibet shows that some are built near to or within existing vocational centers. The policy documents describe a teaching program that combines skills education, legal education and “gratitude education,” designed to boost loyalty to the Party. James Leibold, professor at Australia’s La Trobe University who specializes in Tibet and Xinjiang, says there are different levels of military-style training, with some less restrictive than others, but that there is a focus on conformity. “Tibetans are seen as lazy, backward, slow or dirty, and so what they want to do is to get them marching to the same beat... That’s a big part of this type of military-style education.” In eastern Tibet’s Chamdo district, where some of the earliest military-style training programs emerged, state media images from 2016 show laborers lining up in drill formation in military fatigues. In images published by state media in July this year, waitresses in military clothing are seen training at a vocational facility in the same district. Pictures posted online from the “Chamdo Golden Sunshine Vocational Training School” show rows of basic white shed-like accommodation with blue roofs. In one image, banners hanging on the wall behind a row of graduates say the labor transfer project is overseen by the local Human Resources and Social Security Department. The vocational skills learned by trainees include textiles, construction, agriculture and ethnic handicrafts. One vocational center describes elements of training including “Mandarin language, legal training and political education.” A separate regional policy document says the goal is to “gradually realize the transition from ‘I must work’ to ‘I want to work.’” Regional and prefecture level policy documents place an emphasis on training batches of workers for specific companies or projects. Rights groups say this on-demand approach increases the likelihood that the programs are coercive. SUPPLY CHAIN Workers transferred under the programs can be difficult to trace, particularly those sent to other parts of China. In similar mass transfers of Uighur people from Xinjiang, workers were discovered in the supply chains of 83 global brands, according to a report released by the The Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). Researchers and rights groups say transfers from these regions pose a challenge because without access they can’t assess whether the practice constitutes forced labor, and transferred workers often work alongside non-transferred counterparts. Tibetan state media reports in July say that in 2020 some of the workers transferred outside of Tibet were sent to construction projects in Qinghai and Sichuan. Others transferred within Tibet were trained in textiles, security and agricultural production work. Regional Tibetan government policy notices and prefecture implementation plans provide local government offices with quotas for 2020, including for Tibetan workers sent to other parts of China. Larger districts are expected to supply more workers to other areas of the country - 1,000 from the Tibetan capital Lhasa, 1,400 from Xigaze, and 800 from Shannan. Reuters reviewed policy notices put out by Tibet and a dozen other provinces that have accepted Tibetan laborers. These documents reveal that workers are often moved in groups and stay in collective accommodation. Local government documents inside Tibet and in three other provinces say workers remain in centralised accommodation after they are transferred, separated from other workers and under supervision. One state media document, describing a transfer within the region, referred to it as a “point to point ‘nanny’ service.” The Tibetan Human Resources and Social Security Department noted in July that people are grouped into teams of 10 to 30. They travel with team leaders and are managed by “employment liaison services.” The department said the groups are tightly managed, especially when moving outside Tibet, where the liaison officers are responsible for carrying out “further education activities and reducing homesickness complexes.” It said the government is responsible for caring for “left-behind women, children and the elderly.” © 2020 Thomson Reuters

By Cecile Mantovani Kafr Nabl hospital (pictured) was targeted in a Russian airstrike on 5 May 2020 (AFP/Getty) GENEVA (Reuters) - Bombing of civilians by Syrian and Russian armed forces during a campaign against the last rebel bastion in northwest Syria may amount to crimes against humanity, U.S.-based Human Rights Watch (HRW) said in a report on Thursday. The global rights group said it investigated dozens of “unlawful” air and ground strikes on civilian targets in the region around the city of Idlib between April 2019 and March 2020 that killed hundreds of civilians and displaced over 1.4 million people. HRW said its 167-page report, “Targeting Life in Idlib” used hundreds of photos and satellite imagery as well as flight spotter logs to examine 46 bombing incidents, a fraction of the air strikes and shelling that took place. The attacks involved repeated violations that were “apparent war crimes, and may amount to crimes against humanity”, the report said. “They hit hospitals, schools, markets, residential areas. Not just inadvertently, not while they were trying to target the so-called terrorist, but deliberately,” Kenneth Roth, the organisation’s global head, told Reuters TV. The aim of the 11-month military campaign “was to drive out civilians and make their lives unlivable in the hope that it then will be easier for Russian and Syrian armed forces to recapture the territory,” Roth said. Moscow and Damascus deny accusations of indiscriminate bombing of civilians in an area where three million people have found refuge during the nearly 10-year old conflict. The two allies say they only target radical militants who hold sway in the region. HRW said it had received no response to a summary of findings and questions to the Syrian and Russian governments. The campaign ended after a ceasefire last March between Turkey and Russia, which support opposing sides in the conflict. The HRW report named 10 senior Russian and Syrian officials including Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Russian President Vladimir Putin and their top military commanders who it said were “command responsible” and should be held responsible. “It’s really only by following up and ensuring that these people who have overseen these war crimes, do not get away with impunity, that there are consequences for pursuing this war crime strategy,” Roth said. Additional reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman; Editing by Tomasz Janowski © 2020 Reuters

Charis McGowan in Santiago Fri 29 Jan 2021 11.00 GMT Camilo Catrillanca, 24, was shot during a vehicle chase Case highlights treatment of largest indigenous group A demonstrator holds a banner picturing the late Mapuche community member Camilo Catrillanca on the first anniversary of his killing, in Santiago, Chile. Photograph: Orlando Barría/EPA A Chilean police officer has been jailed for killing a Mapuche farmer during a vehicle chase in a case that cast a harsh spotlight on the country’s treatment of its largest indigenous group. Camilo Catrillanca, the 24-year-old grandson of a prominent Mapuche indigenous leader, was shot in the back of the head in November 2018 in Temucuicui, a small community 600km south of the capital, Santiago. His death – and a subsequent attempted cover-up by police officers – caused widespread public outrage and reignited deep-seated grievances over the Chilean state’s treatment of the Mapuche. On Thursday, the police officer, Carlos Alarcón, was sentenced to 11 years in prison over Catrillanca’s death, with an extra five years for the attempted killing of a 15-year-old boy who was on a tractor with Catrillanca. Ingrid Conejeros, a Mapuche educator and human rights defender, hailed the sentencing as a “historic day” for Mapuche rights. “There have been cases of Mapuche killings that weren’t even investigated,” she said. Other human rights activists also welcomed the sentence, which came as the country’s police face accusations of widespread human rights violations – including rape and torture – during a nationwide wave of anti-government demonstrations in 2019. “It’s a light of hope. A first step,” said Vania Ortega, legal director of the police watchdog NGO Opip. But she stressed that police impunity would continue “unless these sentences stop becoming an exception, and start to become the general rule”. Chile’s national police force, known as the Carabineros, has faced broad condemnation for its heavy-handed response to protests over inequality that began in 2019 and left at least 30 civilians dead, hundreds blinded by shotgun pellets and thousands injured. Officers have long enjoyed reduced sentences with high impunity rates for their crimes. Rights defenders believe the historic ruling in the Catrillanca case may change the abusive nature of the institution. Chile’s National Human Rights Institute presented 2,520 legal complaints against armed forces a year after the social uprising – only 31 of them have been investigated. The Mapuche have long accused the Chilean state and private companies of appropriating their ancestral lands, plundering their natural resources and using indiscriminate violence against them. Alarcón was part of a controversial special forces unit called “the Jungle Commandos”, trained in anti-terrorism operations specifically related to internal armed conflict over land rights. The unit was disbanded after Catrillanca’s death, but armed confrontations and arson attacks have continued to escalate in La Araucanía, the southern province that is home to the majority of the Mapuche population. In January, a landowner, who was not Mapuche, was shot and killed outside his home by unknown assailants. His son demanded that the authorities take greater control of the region. The same day, eight police officers were injured and one was killed during controversial anti-narcotics raids on several Mapuche communities. Mourning the two unrelated deaths, President Sebastián Piñera vowed that “action will be taken”. Amid fear that armed police operations will intensify in light of the killings, the National Human Rights Institute encouraged authorities to engage in dialogue, stating that violence “exacerbates intercultural conflict” in southern Chile. See artifice here. © 2021 The Guardian

5 July, 2021 | By Christopher Sherman In the narrow, gang-controlled alleys of the Las Palmas neighborhood, struggling Salvadorans are untroubled by actions of their president that so infuriate his critics. They are not bothered by Nayib Bukele’s dictatorial maneuvers -- sending armed troops into congress to coerce a vote, or ousting independent judges from the country’s highest court, paving the way to control all branches of government. They praise his relentless attacks on the politicians who governed El Salvador for nearly 30 years before him, and the elites who benefited from their rule. In this neighborhood they are grateful for the boxes of food staples they’ve received from Bukele’s government during the pandemic. Adults proudly pat their shoulders and say they got both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine long before most other people in Central America. For all the observers and critics who condemn a dangerous concentration of power by a charismatic leader who sports down-home blue jeans and leather jackets, Bukele enjoys an approval rating of more than 90% among people who saw three of four previous presidents jailed or exiled for corruption. “They talk about democracy... I don’t know what else,” said Julio César López, 60, a street artist in Las Palmas. “It makes me really happy that they’re kicking out that class of people.” Bukele’s presidency so far is the story of one of Latin America’s newest populist autocracies in the making: spending big to hand out goodies, branding opponents as enemies, raising the profile of the military. Like former President Donald Trump, Bukele prefers social media over press conferences, so he can control the message, though he does not miss a good photo op to brandish his image. The president has convinced most Salvadorans that his government is on the move against poverty and gang violence, said Leonor Arteaga, program director at the Due Process of Law Foundation, a regional rule of law organization based in Washington. “No one can deny that he effectively has the support of the majority of the population and he is using that support and manipulating it to advance his agenda.” The residents of Las Palmas say they recognize Bukele’s concentration of power and initially, at least, they seem willing to trade democratic ideals for short-term solutions to their yawning needs. Rigoberto Castellanos, a 57-year-old construction worker in Las Palmas, says the previous opposition-controlled congress and ousted constitutional justices were thorns in Bukele’s side that needed to be removed. He noted that currently El Salvador’s constitution bans re-election, but if that were to change, “who wouldn’t like to have the president for another five years?” The 39-year-old Bukele, a non-ideological pragmatist, is the latest in a string of Latin American presidents from across the political spectrum who have used elections and their personal popularity to amass power. For nearly three decades, El Salvador was ruled alternately by the conservative Arena party and the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front formed in the wake of El Salvador’s brutal civil war. But the parties failed to deliver. Arena and the FMLN both had presidents who plundered El Salvador’s coffers and left a society with few economic opportunities, besieged by powerful street gangs that extorted and killed with impunity. Bukele, a former publicity executive, rose through the ranks of the FMLN from small town mayor to mayor of the capital, San Salvador, until the FMLN eventually booted him for refusing to toe the party line. It cemented his outsider status and he formed his own political party, New Ideas, winning the presidential vote in 2019. While elections in El Salvador have been considered free, critics of Bukele say the country can no longer be described as a functioning democracy. Bertha María Deleón, an organized crime prosecutor turned criminal defense lawyer, connected with Bukele on line when as mayor he retweeted some of her commentary. When he faced some legal trouble, he asked Deleón to join his defense team and she gradually became a close adviser, one of the few who would disagree with him during four years working together. “I knew that he is a very impulsive person, very immature ... like an eternal adolescent,” Deleón said. “But I always sensed that he was a man with good intentions.” She was interested in becoming his justice and security minister, but didn’t get the offer. Her patience with Bukele began to fade shortly after he took office in June 2019, when he started firing government bureaucrats via Twitter. Deleón says she warned him that the practice was unnecessarily humiliating for state employees who could challenge the actions in court. Bukele called her a “killjoy.” The last straw came Feb. 9, 2020. Bukele had been locked in battle with the opposition-controlled congress. He wanted lawmakers to approve funding for a security plan to control gangs, but they had refused to convene for a vote, saying they wanted more information. On that Sunday, heavily armed police and soldiers in tactical gear entered the Legislative Assembly with Bukele. Hundreds of supporters Bukele had rallied to pressure lawmakers waited outside. Sharpshooters took up positions on rooftops. Bukele took the seat of the body’s president and prayed. “If we wanted to press the button, we would press the button” and remove lawmakers from the legislature, he told supporters outside the building. “But I asked God and God told me: patience, patience, patience.” Deleón was stunned. She tweeted a photo of Bukele seated on the dais praying with a mocking message. “Pure manipulation of the masses. This is only a sample of what awaits us when he has the majority in the (congress).” The president blocked her on Twitter and attacks from Bukele supporters and trolls began. Some threatened rape, murder. Bukele’s office denied requests for an interview or to respond to questions and comment for this article. But Deleón’s reference to what would come if his party won a congressional majority was prescient. A year later, New Ideas won a supermajority in legislative elections. On May 1, the first day the new lawmakers were seated, they voted to remove and then replace the five justices of the Supreme Court’s Constitutional Chamber, and the attorney general. As the lawmakers prepared to vote, police surrounded the Supreme Court. A police patrol vehicle was parked outside the Supreme Court president’s home. The justices’ replacements, all with ties to Bukele or his party, were later escorted into the building by police. Bukele was pleased. “I know that most of the Salvadoran people eagerly await the second session,” he said. Arteaga, of the Due Process of Law Foundation, said “El Salvador is in a process of building authoritarianism. It is very clear, there are all the signs.” For the first two years of Bukele’s administration the constitutional justices had been a critical check on his power. His critics described a sinking feeling, realizing that there would now be nowhere to turn. In May, Deleón was called to appear at the Attorney General’s Office where she had worked for seven years. A new attorney general -- previously the personal attorney of Bukele’s national police chief -- had been installed. Now Deleón was informed they were moving forward with multiple investigations against her. “They resent the constant criticism I’ve been making of his governance,” she said, calling the cases baseless. “This is using the Attorney General’s Office to intimidate me.” Media and business leaders face similar threats. El Salvador’s award-winning independent news outlet El Faro also has suffered public attacks by Bukele and his supporters, a government audit and its staff has reported being followed by strangers. Last September, Bukele said on national television that there was an open money laundering and tax evasion investigation of El Faro. In January, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered El Salvador’s government to take steps to protect 34 members of El Faro’s staff and allow them to carry out their journalistic work. In May, at the Ibero-American Colloquium on Digital Journalism, El Faro co-founder and director, Carlos Dada said, “We have been threatened. We have been persecuted. We have been the subject of massive defamation campaigns.” In one of its first orders of business, the new congress eliminated a decades-old tax break on imported newsprint, a hit on the country’s traditional newspapers, which also have been critical of Bukele’s administration. Javier Simán, the president of El Salvador’s largest business association and an outspoken Bukele critic, said he has been subject to more than 100 government audits. His family owns a retail empire with its department stores in El Salvador and other parts of Central America, as well as other businesses. His critique has evolved from what he considered draconian lockdown measures early in the pandemic that pummeled El Salvador’s economy to Bukele’s more recent concentration of power. He said the Finance Ministry is hounding businessmen who criticize the government. “You can only have prosperity when you live in a democratic state, where the law is respected, where there is a separation of powers, where there is rule of law,” he said. ___ Rev. Andreu Oliva, rector of the Jesuit-founded Central American University in San Salvador, served previously in Honduras and Nicaragua. And he can’t shake the feeling that he has seen what is happening in El Salvador before, in Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua. Ortega took over the judiciary and first coopted, then jailed and exiled the opposition. “I have the fear, but well-founded I believe, that they are copying the Nicaragua playbook,” Oliva said. Mark Schneider, a senior adviser with the Americas Program and the Human Rights Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, says Bukele’s actions so far are still far removed from Ortega’s. “In Salvador, what you see is that you have to be concerned about the direction and you would hope that Bukele would listen, because he’s so popular in the country, he doesn’t have to violate the laws, he doesn’t have to violate the Constitution.” Ortega and Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro lead Latin America’s movement to autocratic rule. While Maduro has long-since eviscerated the opposition, in recent weeks Ortega locked up five presidential hopefuls and more than a dozen other opposition figures as he seeks a fourth consecutive term in November. Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Mexico’s Andrés Manuel López Obrador also have combative styles, although from opposite ideological bents. Both attack the press, judges and non-governmental organizations critical of their administrations. In contrast to El Salvador, their countries’ democratic institutions have so far managed to blunt some of their more aggressive impulses. Honduras and Guatemala’s leaders don’t enjoy the popularity of the others, but their parties have managed to erode judicial independence and operate with impunity. To different degrees, the autocrats use their militaries to amplify their power. In El Salvador, there is concern that Bukele is both expanding the role of the military in politics and working to ensure that they are more devoted to him than to the constitution. Besides sending soldiers into the Legislative Assembly last year, he has used them to deliver the boxes and sacks of food provided by the government. Outside the massive Hospital El Salvador that Bukele built at the start of the pandemic, the people directing traffic and guiding people coming to receive their COVID-19 vaccinations were soldiers. A retired high-ranking military officer, who requested anonymity because he feared repercussions for his family, noted that Bukele had tapped an obscure Navy officer, someone beholden to him, to be the defense secretary rather than someone from the more powerful army. “He is abusing the apolitical nature of the armed forces,” he said. ___ Bukele is fond of asking people to swear impromptu oaths of loyalty. He did it in his inauguration speech, days later during a military ceremony and most recently June 1 on the second anniversary of his inauguration, speaking to the new Legislative Assembly. He asked them to swear they would defend their victories, fight pacifically against any enemy or obstacle and “not allow that those who made us suffer so much ever return to power, to not let them plunder our country again.” The problem, critics say, is that Bukele is defining “the enemy” as all who oppose him and his policies. Experts say perhaps Bukele’s biggest challenge will be to continue his brand of populism while El Salvador’s financial resources dwindle. El Salvador’s debt grew more than 15% last year, much of it pandemic-related spending, and in 2020 the ratio of debt to GDP was 89.9%. The new congress has approved heaps more since May 1. Some believe Bukele’s shocking announcement last month that El Salvador would make the volatile cryptocurrency bitcoin official tender along with the U.S. dollar could be a play to increase his room to maneuver financially. Questions also are arising about whether he can sustain the substantial drop in the murder rate. When Bukele took over the murder rate was about 50 per 100,000 population, said Carlos Carcach, the research coordinator at the Higher School of Economics and Business in San Salvador. Now it is in the low 30s per 100,000, a rate not seen in 15 years and a far cry from the peak of more than 100 murders per 100,000 seen in 2015. The reasons for the drop are unclear. The pandemic could be a factor. Bukele credits his Territory Control Plan to pressure gangs through raids, arrests, seizures, a cut in communications between jailed and free gang-leaders, and the use of soldiers in policing. Others believe it could be the result of a secret agreement between the government and the dominant street gangs to reduce the killing, although Bukele has denied this and was highly critical of a similar truce reached by a previous administration. “It’s a mystery,” Carcach said. Whatever the reason, Bukele touts it as one of his government’s biggest accomplishments. Carcach said the gangs continue to control territory, extorting businesses and individuals, but killing less often. “The gang wins because the people know that the government service, basically the food packages, get into the community because the gang allows it,” Carcach said. ___ However popular Bukele remains domestically, he faces unfriendly reaction from abroad. The Biden administration has been more wary of Bukele than was Trump, who seemed content with him as long as the number of Salvadorans migrating to the U.S. border kept falling. Administration officials publicly criticized the May 1 removal of judges and the attorney general. Last week, Bukele’s chief of staff, a New Ideas party leader and others close to the administration were included on a U.S. State Department list of figures either corrupt or who undermine democracy. The same day Bukele announced he would push for a 20% increase in the minimum wage. The U.S. Agency for International Development announced it would shift all aid from El Salvador’s government agencies to civil society organizations. The agency’s chief, Samantha Power, came to San Salvador and gave a speech on democracy on Oliva’s campus. Bukele has responded by trying to improve El Salvador’s relationship with China. But with a quarter of El Salvador’s population living in the U.S. and sending home about $6 billion in remittances last year, no one believes China could begin to replace the deep ties to the United States. Late on May 1, as international condemnation began to pour in over the ousting of the judges and attorney general, Bukele was defiant. “To our friends in the international community: we want to work with you, trade, travel, get to know each other and help where we can,” he tweeted. “Our doors are more open than ever. But with all due respect: We are cleaning our house ... and that is not your responsibility.” ©2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

By Choe Sang-Hun Newly released photos of two North Korean men being deported under Moon Jae-in have revived accusations of a potential “crime against humanity.” President Moon Jae-in, left, and President-elect Yoon Suk-yeol in March of this year, soon after Mr. Yoon defeated the incumbent.Credit...Yonhap/EPA, via Shutterstock The video footage and photos captured their final moments in South Korea: two North Korean fishermen taken against their will to the border. One of them was so resistant to being deported to North Korea that South Korean officials had to drag him. The other appeared resigned to his fate. The footage and 10 photos of the men, newly released by the South Korean government, were taken in 2019. At the time, the South Korean government called the men “murderers” who had killed 16 fellow North Korean fishermen. The men, though acknowledging the killings, said they wanted to defect. The case triggered outrage back then, because it was the first time South Korea rejected a North Korean request to defect and forced someone back across the border unwillingly. In releasing new material, the conservative government of President Yoon Suk-yeol has revived the issue, accusing his predecessor’s government of violating human rights. “The essence of the case is that the fishermen fleeing North Korea were returned there to their death, as the North wished, when they should have been accepted into South Korea and dealt with in accordance with our​ own law,” said Choi Young-bum, Mr. Yoon’s chief spokesman. Mr. Yoon’s office has called the case a potential “crime against humanity.” The accusations against the government of Moon Jae-in, Mr. Yoon’s predecessor, are part of a recurring pattern in South Korea, where previous leaders have often been ensnared by investigations after leaving office. Of the four former presidents who have governed the country in the past two decades, one — Roh Moo-hyun — killed himself while being investigated for possible corruption. Two — Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye — ended up in prison for corruption. A group of conservative lawyers are now asking prosecutors to investigate Mr. Moon for murder and abuse of power in the case of the two North Koreans. If the prosecutors act on the​ request, Mr. Moon will become the latest ex-president ​to face a criminal inquiry in South Korea. “It’s the beginning of ‘politics by other means,’” said Ahn Byong-jin, a political scientist at Kyung Hee University in Seoul. Mr. Moon’s opposition Democratic Party, in turn, has accused Mr. Yoon, who served as prosecutor general under Mr. Moon​, of revisiting the case to distract from the president’s falling approval ratings and to cast doubt on Mr. Moon’s legacy. Many of Mr. Moon’s former top aides who were involved in the case of the two North Koreans are already under investigation by prosecutors. “Yoon​’s views on politics remain in his prosecutor days,” said Mr. Ahn. “He considers politicians potential criminals.” Going after his predecessor ​could be a political gamble for Mr. Yoon. When Mr. Moon left office in May, his approval ratings were higher than Mr. Yoon’s are this month.​ Mr. Yoon, who won ​the election by a razor-thin margin, has recently seen his approval ratings dip to around 33 percent amid deepening anxiety over rising consumer prices and a host of scandals involving ​his cabi​net appointees,​ his ​presidential staff and ​his wife, Kim ​Keon-hee. This month the president denied ​a political motive, saying that inquiries into past governments have been routine in South Korea. Since taking office, Mr. Yoon has forged ahead with reversing some of Mr. Moon’s key ​policies. He has ordered his government to start building nuclear power plants, throwing out Mr. Moon’s plan to phase out nuclear energy. He is working to reduce real-estate taxes Mr. Moon introduced to contain housing prices. His government ​has also moved to mend ties with Japan that had frayed under the previous administration.​ The aggressive effort to undo Mr. Moon’s policies could fuel domestic tensions at a time when ​South Korea desperately needs bipartisan support to manage a cooling economy and to help Washington contain North Korean threats. “A less divided South Korea could also be a more effective ally to the United States,” said Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international relations at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “But paths to domestic unity are narrowing​.” Along with that of the two North Korean men, Mr. Yoon is also drawing attention to a case from 2020, when a South Korean fisheries official disappeared from his ship and was later found in North Korean waters. South Korea accused the North of killing the official and burning his body at sea. It said at the time that the official, Lee Dae-joon, was trying to defect. Under Mr. Yoon, the ​South Korean ​Coast Guard reversed its conclusion last month, saying it found no evidence that the official was trying to ​​defect. Mr. Yoon’s governing camp said the Moon government portrayed the official as a defector in order to mitigate the outcry over his killing and to rescue Mr. Moon’s flagging efforts for dialogue with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. In the 2019 episode, South Korean officials said then that the two North Koreans were on the run after “murdering” the captain and 15 other fishermen in a high-seas mutiny when their boat was captured by South Korean navy commandoes. Mr. Moon’s government considered them neither defectors nor refugees, ​but “heinous criminals” who should be returned to North Korea. ​Mr. Yoon’s aides say that the two North Korean men should have been accepted as defectors since, according to South Korea’s Constitution, all Koreans should be treated as equal citizens. They said the men should have been tried in a South Korean court or at the very least been granted a hearing and a chance to appeal the government’s decision to deport them to the North, where many experts believe they were executed.​ “The two men’s desperate resistance to being forced back that is so apparent in those photos shows that they understood they were fighting for their lives,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director for Human Rights Watch. “Moon Jae-in and his officials knew that too, and yet still they sent them back in what was a disgusting and callous disregard for human rights.” Seoul’s Unification Ministry initially defended the government’s decision under Mr. Moon. It has reversed itself under Mr. Yoon, calling the decision “wrong” last week.​ Last week, prosecutors raided the office of the National Intelligence Service; the agency has accused two former directors who served under Mr. Moon of ​ordering a premature end to the 2019 investigation and of ​destroying intelligence on the killing of the South Korean fisheries official. Mr. Moon’s office said that the former president had no comment. Mr. Moon’s former top aides, as well as his Democratic Party, which holds a ​parliamentary ​majority, said that intelligence gathered from the intercepted communications of the North Korean military ​had ​made it clear in 2020 that the fisheries official was trying to defect to the North. In the other case, they called the two North Korean men “macabre murderers” who ​would have been a threat to South Koreans. Even if the two were tried in ​a ​South Korea​n court​, prosecutors would have had no choice but to let them walk because all criminal evidence was in North Korea, said Youn Kun-young, a senior presidential aide under Mr. Moon who is now a lawmaker.​ Both men, he said, had confessed to the crime. The North Korean state propaganda website Uriminzokkiri last week said that Mr. Yoon’s conservative government was attacking the Moon administration to divert attention from its “ignorance and incompetence.” © 2022 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.

JIECH, SOUTH SUDAN — Writhing in agony on the dirt floor of his hut, Bob Wol traced the recent gunshot wounds on his thigh and back with his fingers. "I was trying to get food and my government tried to kill me," the 29-year-old told The Associated Press. It's been almost 25 years since more than 1 million people were on the brink of starvation in southern Sudan, a crisis captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of a vulture poised near a starving little girl. Today, people in what was known as the "famine triangle" say the situation has only deteriorated. "Before, only the hunger was killing you," said Lony Toang, who survived the earlier famine in Ayod County. "Now it's worse because we have hunger and we're killing people." As South Sudan enters its fifth year of civil war, 1.25 million people are facing starvation, according to the latest analysis by the United Nations and the government. The U.N. warns that if fighting continues famine will spread to several places across the country by early next year and almost half the population of 11 million will be severely food insecure. During a visit this month to Ayod County, the AP spoke with some who were already hungry. In a desperate attempt to feed his wife and five small children, who hadn't eaten in days, Wol went in search of help. After six days of walking, eating fruit picked from trees, he reached government-held Ayod town, where he said soldiers wary of rebels ambushed him. "When I got shot I was just thinking that I didn't want to die before I got food for my family," Wol said, staring despondently at the floor. "We're locked in here and we can't get out." Ayod is one of two counties in South Sudan currently in catastrophe, with 8,000 people experiencing extreme hunger. During a visit to Ayod's rebel-held headquarters in Jiech town, dozens of residents said that without food aid they would starve to death. Remote, barren and sealed off from the rest of the nation, the county of roughly 160,000 people in Jonglei State has been devastated by fighting. South Sudan's army rejected people's accounts of brutality as negative propaganda by the opposition, saying it is not government policy to prevent civilians from reaching aid. "What sense does it make for the government forces to kill its own citizens looking for food?" said Col. Domic Chol Santo, the army's acting spokesman. Yet across South Sudan allegations are rife of both the government and the rebels using food as a weapon of war. On a visit last month to the Equatoria region, the AP spoke with people in Yei and Lainya towns who said the army was arbitrarily detaining, raping and killing civilians trying to cultivate their fields, amid suspicions that they were part of the opposition. Lainya resident Mary Yata said four government soldiers in September tried to steal cassava when she was tending her fields. "They said if I didn't leave now they'd kill me," she said. Days later she saw the soldiers selling her cassava at the market. Advocacy groups are calling on the warring sides to stop holding South Sudan's people hostage. "The civilians are caught in a deadly circle and they're certainly not being protected," said Donatella Rovera, Amnesty International's senior crisis response adviser. With nowhere to go, Ayod residents said they will continue relying on handouts by the U.N.'s World Food Program. At a food distribution last week, the desperation was palpable as 11,000 malnourished people poured in from the surrounding bush. Some had walked overnight to receive bags of sorghum, beans and cooking oil. Although the WFP has increased its distributions in Ayod from every 90 days to every 60 days, aid workers on the ground say the food is enough for just one month. "I saw old people collecting grains that fell on the ground out of the bags," said Ewnetu Yohannes, team leader for Catholic Relief Services, the organization overseeing the distribution. "If WFP wasn't here it'd be a catastrophe." Wiping breast milk from the cheek of her 10-month-old daughter, Jiech resident Elizabeth Nyakoda blamed the hunger on the years of fighting. Unable to register in time for the aid distribution and too scared to cultivate her fields, the 35-year-old mother of five has been begging her family for food. She rubbed her hand over her daughter's protruding rib cage as the baby began to wail. Shrugging her shoulders, Nyakoda looked away. "When the child cries from hunger, what can I do for her?" she said. "There are no options." https://www.voanews.com/a/civil-war-is-pushing-south-sudan-closer-to-starvation/4173127.html (c) 2017 Voice of America

EL-ARISH, Egypt – Suspected Islamic militants gunned down a Christian man inside his home in northern Sinai, officials and a priest said Friday, the latest in a string of sectarian killings there that has sent hundreds of Christians fleeing and raised accusations the government is failing to protect the community. The militants stormed the home of Kamel Youssef, a plumber, on Thursday and shot him to death in front of his wife and children in the town of el-Arish, said two security officials and the priest. The officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters, as did the priest, fearing retaliation by militants. The priest said initial reports that the man's daughter was kidnapped and killed turned out to be incorrect. No militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But Egypt's Islamic State group affiliate, which is based in the Sinai Peninsula and which in December carried out a devastating suicide bombing against a Cairo church, vowed in a video earlier this week to step up attacks against the embattled Coptic Christian minority. It described them as "infidels" empowering the West against Muslims. That stoked panic among Christians, who before Thursday's death had already seen six members of their community killed in recent weeks. Over the past two days, around 75 Christian families — hundreds of people — have arrived from Sinai in the city of Ismailia on the Suez Canal, according to Mina Thabet, a researcher with the Egyptian Commission for Rights and Freedoms who visited the families. They brought suitcases of clothes, but left most of their belongings behind, hoping to be able to return soon. Some reported receiving death threats on their cell phones. "The scene here is really painful," Thabet said. Christians in northern Sinai have been fleeing in waves over recent years because of militant threats, and the community that before 2011 numbered up to 5,000 people has now dwindled to fewer than 1,000, said the priest. There are no official statistics on the number of Christians in cities or across the country. But the priest, who also left el-Arish, said the flight in recent days is unprecedented in size. He blamed lax security. "You feel like this is all meant to force us to leave our homes," he said. "We became like refugees." The displacement underscores what many rights activists said the failure of the Egyptian government in providing the minimum level of security to the Christians in this volatile region of northern Sinai, where the military has been battling for years against militants. "This was a test to the government. It failed and its management of the crisis was terrible," Thabet said. He pointed to the failure to step up security for Christians despite public threats by IS or help them as they fled. After pressure on social media, authorities agreed to put up the fleeing Christians in government housing in Ismailia. A day before Youssef's killing, militants killed a Christian man and burned his son alive, then dumped their bodies on a roadside in el-Arish. Three other Christians in Sinai were killed earlier in drive-by shootings or attacks on their homes and shops. Youssef Tawfiq said his father Gamal, a teacher, was shot to death on Feb. 16 by two masked gunmen 200 meters (220 yards) from a heavily fortified army post in el-Arish. He said no government official or agency provided any support to the family after his father's death. "I feel like I am carrying a mountain over my shoulders," he said. "We loved our country but our country doesn't love us." The Coptic Church issued a brief statement Friday and, as it traditionally does, stuck close to the government's line in the war on terrorism. "They aim to strike our national unity ... in the face of terrorism, which has been exported to Egypt from abroad," it said. The military's fight against the Sinai militants, who vowed allegiance to the Islamic State group, has been bitter. Hundreds of troops have been killed, the military has razed hundreds of houses to stop alleged militant infiltration through tunnels from neighboring Gaza, and President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi in 2014 declared a state of emergency and curfew there after suicide bombings killed more than 30 soldiers. Still, the insurgency has shown little sign of calming. The northern part of the Sinai Peninsula, bordering the Gaza Strip and Israel, has been a battleground since 2011, when the region sank into lawlessness during the 18-day uprising that led to the ouster of longtime autocratic President Hosni Mubarak. But the militant campaign accelerated after the military — then led by el-Sissi — overthrew elected Islamist President Mohammed Morsi in 2013. Christians, mainly belonging to the Coptic Orthodox Church, make up an estimated 10 percent of Egypt's population and have suffered decades of discrimination and attacks by Islamic militants. Those attacks increased after 2013. A total of 30 Christians in northern Sinai, including Copts in the military and two priests, have been killed since 2013, said the priest. In December, an IS-affiliated suicide bomber blew himself up inside a landmark Cairo church, killing around 30 worshippers, mostly women. (c) Associated Press 2017

The U.N.-backed Cambodian tribunal trying Khmer Rouge leaders for atrocities committed while they ruled the country acknowledged Monday that only a handful of former high-ranking officials will face justice for their crimes. The tribunal explained in a statement the dismissal in February of a case against Im Chaem, a middle-ranking Khmer Rouge district chief whom prosecutors had charged with crimes against humanity, including murder, extermination and enslavement. The statement said the court’s co-investigating judges concluded that Im Chaem was not high-ranking enough to fall into the category of senior leaders, and she also did not qualify for prosecution as a person “most responsible” for atrocities, because the evidence of specific crimes attributed to her did not meet acceptable legal standards. It pointed out, however that dismissal of the case against Im Chaem, who is in her 70s, “does not equate to a statement that no crimes were committed by a charged person.” As a district chief in the northwestern province of Banteay Meanchey, Im Chaem allegedly ran a forced labor camp to construct an irrigation project and was accused of responsibility for the deaths of possibly thousands of laborers. The tribunal’s statement also said that under the agreement that was negotiated to establish the tribunal, no other Cambodian courts have jurisdiction over human rights violations committed by members of the communist Khmer Rouge, whose harsh 1975-79 rule is generally considered responsible for the deaths of 1.7 million people from execution, overwork and neglect of medical care. The absence of an alternative court to try such cases means “only a certain small group of people will ever be prosecuted in the courts of Cambodia for the atrocities” during Khmer Rouge rule, it said. “It is undoubtedly difficult for the public and the victims to accept that even the soldiers who routinely killed small children by bashing their heads against trees or who had competitions about who could kill the greatest number of people, should not face justice,” the statement said. “In many domestic criminal justice systems such conduct would attract a whole life sentence without parole and in some countries possibly even the death penalty for each individual act of each individual offender.” The agreement to limit such cases to the U.N.-assisted tribunal “was a conscious political choice during the negotiations, balancing the call for integration of the remaining Khmer Rouge into society against the desire for some form of judicial closure for the horrendous suffering of the victims,” the statement said. The tribunal has already convicted two high-ranking Khmer Rouge leaders, Khieu Samphan, the 85-year-old Khmer Rouge head of state, and Nuon Chea, the 90-year-old right-hand man to the group’s late top leader, Pol Pot. A second trial of the two on separate charges was recently concluded and is awaiting a verdict. Also convicted earlier was the head of its prison system, who ran a torture center in Phnom Penh. Cases against a handful of other suspects are in the judicial pipeline. The head of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which has collected massive amounts of detailed evidence about the Khmer Rouge, said he was disappointed with the statement’s explanation. Its redaction of the evidence against Im Chaem — based on the rule of presumption of innocence — means that the public at large is unable to judge the correctness of the decision to dismiss the case, Youk Chhang said in an email. He accused the co-investigating judges of “compromising justice.” The tribunal’s statement said the evidence collected by the center dealing with the charges against Im Chaem could not be taken into account because it was gathered in a manner not suitable for legal purposes. _______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Associated Press

Tens of thousands have sought safety in Sudan, where they gave accounts to Times journalists of a devastating and complex conflict that threatens Ethiopia’s stability. By Abdi Latif Dahir Ethiopian refugees sharing a shelter in Hamdayet, Sudan, the first stop for new arrivals after crossing the border from Ethiopia. Photographs by Tyler Hicks. HAMDAYET, Sudan — The armed men who stopped Ashenafi Hailu along the dirt road dragged him by a noose so they could save bullets. Mr. Ashenafi, 24, was racing on his motorcycle to the aid of a childhood friend trapped by the Ethiopian government’s military offensive in the northern region of Tigray when a group of men on foot confronted him. They identified themselves as militia members of a rival ethnic group, he said, and they took his cash and began beating him, laughing ominously. “Finish him!” Mr. Ashenafi remembered one of the men saying. As they tightened the noose around his neck and began pulling him along the road, Mr. Ashenafi was sure he was going to die, and he eventually passed out. But he said he awoke alone near a pile of bodies, children among them. His motorcycle was gone. Ashenafi Hailu was attacked by a group of Fano militia members. After they learned that he was ethnic Tigray, they robbed him, tied a noose around his neck and dragged him until he passed out. Mr. Ashenafi and dozens of other Tigrayan refugees fled the violence and settled outside the remote and dusty town of Hamdayet, a community of just a few thousand people near the border, where I spoke to them. Their firsthand accounts, shared a month after Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, declared war on the Tigray region, detail a devastating conflict that has become a grisly wellspring of looting, ethnic antagonism and killings. Many of the refugees have lingered here rather than moving on to the more established refugee camps farther into Sudan, staying closer to home so they can get any news about their towns or missing loved ones. But little information is getting out, with mobile networks and the internet blocked for weeks by the Ethiopian government. Nearly 50,000 have fled to Sudan so far, in what the United Nations has called the worst exodus of refugees Ethiopia has seen in more than two decades. And their accounts contradict the repeated claims from Mr. Abiy, who won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for ending the border conflict with neighboring Eritrea, that no civilians are being hurt. The Tigrayans describe being caught between indiscriminate military shelling and a campaign of killing, rape and looting by government-allied ethnic militias. Several told me that they saw dozens of bodies along the route as they fled their shops, homes and farms and took to the long road to the border with Sudan, in stifling heat. Tigrayan refugees routinely visit the river that runs between Sudan and Ethiopia to bathe, gather water and wash clothes. As the fighting in Tigray continues, it is degenerating into a guerrilla war that could unravel both Ethiopia’s national fabric and the stability of the entire Horn of Africa region. That includes Eritrea, which is allied with Ethiopia against the Tigray and has been shelled by the rebel forces; and Sudan, which has heavily deployed its army along its restive border with Ethiopia even as it has allowed refugees to cross. The Tigray make up about 6 percent of Ethiopia’s 110 million people, and they were the arbiters of power and money in the country from 1991, when they helped dismantle a military dictatorship, until 2018, when anti-government protests catapulted Mr. Abiy to power. Mr. Abiy had sought to emphasize national unity and diversity in a multiethnic Ethiopia, even as he began methodically excluding Tigrayan figures from public life and condemning their abuses while they were in power. Now, the conflict stands at stark odds with the legacy he was seeking, and with the stability of the entire country. Ethiopian refugees often wait for many hours hoping to receive supplies from a United Nations compound. Many are turned away, empty-handed. If Mr. Abiy’s aim was to unite an increasingly divided country, then “this conflict has made that harder to achieve, and so increased the likelihood of serious ongoing political instability,” said William Davison, a senior Ethiopia analyst with the International Crisis Group who was recently expelled from the country. Adding to the deadly mix are the involvement of rival ethnic militia groups. One of them is the Fano, a militia from the Amhara ethnic group. Along with Amhara regional government security forces, Fano took part in the intervention in Tigray, Mr. Davison said. While Fano is a term loosely used to refer to young Amhara militias or protesters, Mr. Davison added that it is also “the name given to youthful Amhara vigilante groups that become more active during times when there is perceived to be insecurity that is not being managed by the authorities.” Tigrayan refugees in Sudan said that Fano fighters attacked and maimed them, ransacked their properties and extorted them as they sought to flee. Many of the Tigrayans, including Mr. Ashenafi, said that they were afraid of going back and that the experience had left them sleepless and scarred. Nearly 50,000 have fled to Sudan so far, in what the United Nations has called the worst exodus of refugees Ethiopia has seen in more than two decades. After Mr. Ashenafi awoke and saw the bodies around him, he trudged through a nearby forest to reach the home of his friend, Haftamu Berhanu, who took him in. Photos taken by Mr. Haftamu and seen by The New York Times showed Mr. Ashenafi lying on his back, white skin peeled away around his neck from the noose. For days afterward, Mr. Ashenafi could not talk or swallow anything and communicated with his friend through pointing or writing things down. “It was heartbreaking,” Mr. Haftamu said of the days caring for his friend. “I didn’t expect in our life that our government would kill us,” Mr. Ashenafi said. “I am frightened so much. I am not sleeping at night.” Many of the refugees who made it to Sudan have been resettled to the Um Rakuba camp about 43 miles away from the border. But many are also staying around a refugee transit point in Hamdayet, hoping to return home or reunite with their families once it is safe. Refugees are registered at Um Rakuba, one of several camps set up for a wave of Ethiopian refugees who fled into Sudan from the Tigray region in Ethiopia. In this dusty outpost, the refugees convene every morning at the Tekeze River, a natural border between Ethiopia and Sudan, to shower, collect water and clean whatever clothes they brought with them. On a recent afternoon, as children dived into the flowing river and Ethiopian music played from a nearby phone, the refugees recounted scenes of horror that they witnessed. Many told me that they came from Humera, an agricultural town of about 30,000 people near both the Sudanese and Eritrean borders. Thousands suddenly fled the town with whatever they could carry when shelling began around midnight from what the refugees said was the direction of Eritrea. Some gathered first at nearby churches, but after hearing that other churches had been shelled, they started the hourslong journey on foot to Sudan. They said that militia fighters began streaming in. The Tigray make up about 6 percent of Ethiopia’s 110 million people, and they were the arbiters of power and money until 2018. “The Amhara militia cut people’s heads,” said a Humera resident named Meles, who wanted to be identified by only his first name out of fear of retribution. Meles, who owned a small cafe, said that the Fano’s reputation preceded them and that just as he feared, he encountered many dead bodies along the way to Sudan. As he spoke to me, a crowd gathered near him on the banks of the river, many nodding and verbally affirming his account as he told it. At least 139 children are among those who arrived in Sudan unaccompanied, many of whom are now at risk of abuse and discrimination, according to the organization Save the Children. With the Tigray region sandwiched between the Amhara region and Eritrea, which is aligned with the Ethiopian national government, Meles said he was glad that refugees like him had another outlet for escape. “Thank God there’s Sudan for us to turn to,” he said. “I had to speak my fluent Amharic to survive,” said Filimon Shishay, a 21-year-old Tigrayan who said he encountered the Fano and had to part with the $5 he had with him. “They hate us,” he said. Tigrayan refugees in Sudan said that Fano fighters attacked and maimed them, ransacked their properties and extorted them as they sought to flee. There has long been enmity between the Tigray and Amhara. When Tigrayan rebels seized power in 1991, Amharas claimed that the Tigray People’s Liberation Front, which governed the region, occupied land that historically belonged to them. “The widespread assumption is T.P.L.F. wanted to annex these areas in order to have a border with Sudan and to tap into the fertile land for economic development,” Hone Mandefro, an Ethiopian analyst and a doctoral candidate in sociology and anthropology at Concordia University in Canada, said in an email. Mr. Davison of the International Crisis Group said that with Amhara security and militia forces active in Tigray in recent weeks, and with some Amhara administrators put in place there, “it appears to be a de facto Amhara occupation of territory they claim the T.P.L.F. annexed.” The move is likely to lead to violent Tigrayan reprisals, he said, as may have already occurred in the town of Mai Kadra, where human rights groups have said forces loyal to the liberation front massacred as many as 600 people, most of them Amhara. Refugees can purchase basic supplies in a makeshift open market in Hamdayet. Many refugees in Hamdayet blamed politicians, and particularly Mr. Abiy, for pitting civilians against one another. “The Amhara and the Tigray are one,” Negese Berhe Hailu, a 25-year-old engineer, said. Hadas Hagos, 67, fled her home in Humera — which is part of the larger West Tigray area the Amharas claim — and worried she wouldn’t be able to go back or see the family members she left behind. Other refugees who arrived later informed her that her home had been looted. “We fought for freedom and democracy,” said Ms. Hadas, breaking into tears as she recounted how she and her family fought against the Marxist regime in the 1980s, and how she lost her brother to the war. “We don’t deserve this kind of life.” Refugees sleep in makeshift tents — or simply on the ground, until buses transport them to camps in other areas. © 2020 The New York Times Company

by Calla Wahlquist The UN special rapporteur on Indigenous rights says Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people feel ‘helpless’ and ‘frustrated’. Photograph: Jonny Weeks for the Guardian Australia’s Indigenous incarceration rates are among the worst in the developed world but it is in the increasing rates of child removal that Australia stands out as being particularly behind other nations, the UN special rapporteur on Indigenous rights has said. In a preliminary report delivered to the government on Monday after a 14-day visit, the special rapporteur, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, highlighted the growing Indigenous incarceration rate as an area of serious concern. She told Guardian Australia that child protection policies, which saw Indigenous children removed from their families at almost 10 times the rate of non-Indigenous children, contributed to the numbers in detention. “The thing that makes it different in Australia is this child protection system where they are taken away from their parents and brought to other families, I think that’s the one that I find quite different compared to what I have seen for instance in the US,” she said. “I think that’s quite unique here in Australia.” Tauli-Corpuz toured the Cleveland youth detention centre in Townsville and Bandyup women’s prison in Perth as part of her visit and said both the rates of incarceration and the crimes for which people were being incarcerated were alarming. “Some of the reasons for them being incarcerated are very petty,” she said. “I went to Cleveland, I spoke with the young children there, and one boy was like 12 years old, he just stole a fruit, and on that basis he was incarcerated and then he just kept going back.” Tauli-Corpuz is the second Indigenous special rapporteur to conduct an official visit since Australia signed the declaration on the rights of Indigenous peoples in 2008. She said she found it “disturbing” that so few of the recommendations made by her predecessor in 2009 had been implemented, and that the bulk of recommendations made by both the 1991 royal commission into Aboriginal deaths in custody and the 1996 Bringing Them Home report, among other recommendations, had also not been enacted. She also made a number of her own recommendations, including introducing justice targets to the Close the Gap goals and refunding the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples, both of which she said would be necessary for Australia to win a seat on the human rights council. “If those actions are taken then maybe they have the justification to sit in the human rights council,” she said. “But if there are no good, serious efforts to implement some of the repeated recommendations then I think it’s not … it doesn’t speak well of having a country being there.” The visit coincided, rather awkwardly, with the parliamentary vote on abolishing section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, in which the Turnbull government sought to remove protections against insulting, harassing or humiliating people on the grounds of their race. The proposed change was stopped in the Senate, but Tauli-Corpuz said the highly publicised debate, which in another awkward piece of timing began on Harmony Day, sent a message to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people about their position and value in Australian society. It’s no wonder, she said, that many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are frustrated. “What they really feel is so, so, helpless,” she said. “They feel so frustrated … “There are all these different recommendations for royal commission reports, etc, and they are looking up to the implementation of these recommendations, but nothing is happening … “And in everything they have to push, they have to fight for it, nothing ever comes to them. They have to fight for every little bit of their rights.” In intensely bureaucratic processes such as securing native title or obtaining funding under the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, where the system is already stacked against them, that lack of faith can turn to despair, Tauli-Corpuz said. “I think there are many positive things happening within Indigenous communities with them taking up the cudgels and dealing with the issues themselves,” she said. “But the way that they are being regarded is like they are wards of the state: they don’t have the agency themselves to address these issues … [and] the services that they need are not really shaped in a manner which is structurally competent.” It’s a model used by governments across the world, she said, to curtail the rights of Indigenous peoples while still outwardly appearing to comply with international law. “The thing that governments do generally is to really bureaucratise the system … they put in place very complex bureaucratic processes that Indigenous peoples will not be able to hurdle,” she said. Tauli-Corpuz particularly criticised the Indigenous advancement strategy, introduced by the Abbott government in 2014, which she said undermined the right to self-determination by promoting a shift towards service delivery in Indigenous communities by mainstream, centralised services. She called for the government to reinstate all funding cut under the strategy and accused it of abandoning its public commitment to support the self-determination of Indigenous peoples. She also criticised the federal government’s decision not to fund political advocacy work traditionally undertaken by organisations such as Aboriginal legal services. “How will these discriminatory or racist policies be rectified if the people who are directly affected are not even provided support to do that? “It costs a lot of money to do advocacy work, to get people to analyse the law, to get people to go and meet with the members of parliament or the members of government. It requires a lot of resources and by not giving the resources you are basically capping the ability of organisations to influence the reforms that are very much needed.” Other draft recommendations included immediately reinstating funding for Aboriginal legal services, increasing funding to Aboriginal family violence services, establishing national strategies for reducing the overrepresentation of Aboriginal children in both the justice system and out of home care, developing a national charter of human rights, and urging the government to act on the recommendations of the joint parliamentary committee on human rights. The Indigenous affairs minister, Nigel Scullion, defended the Indigenous Advancement Strategy, which he said increased the number of Indigenous organisations delivering services from 30% to 45%. “The Coalition government is absolutely committed to working with Indigenous Australians to deliver better outcomes – and this can be seen in a range of areas, from the stunning success of our procurement policy to our remote school attendance strategy that is getting more kids to school,” he said on Monday. He said that while he welcomed Tauli-Corpuz’s visit and her preliminary report, it skipped over more positive developments. “I thank the special rapporteur for her initial findings and reflections as captured in her statement released today but note there is only a passing reference to the many positive things occurring in Indigenous affairs in this country,” he said. Tauli-Corpuz, who met Scullion before handing down her preliminary findings, said he had acknowledged the importance of engaging local community-led services but suggested that could be difficult in areas that are under state control, including law and order. “That kind of response really allows for the abdication of the federal government in terms of their responsibilities in complying with the international human rights obligations to the conventions they have ratified,” she said. The final report is due in September. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 Guardian News and Media Limited

By Baba Ahmed BAMAKO, Mali — At least 20 people have been killed in an airstrike on a village in central Mali where Islamic extremists had confronted a wedding party, witnesses said Tuesday. The French military said “several dozens” of extremists were killed in a Sunday afternoon airstrike led by French fighter jets close to the village of Bounti. There was no immediate comment from the Malian government. A French military spokesman, Col. Frederic Barbry, denied a connection between the strike and a wedding party, saying such a link “does not correspond to information collected prior to the airstrike.” Barbry told the Associated Press the operation followed an intelligence mission of several days that showed a “suspicious gathering of people.” The French military was able to conclude it was a “terrorist armed group” based on individuals’ attitudes, their equipment and other intelligence information, he said. The airstrike was part of a larger operation by French troops aiming at fighting Islamist extremists in Africa’s Sahel region. Several French soldiers were killed in Mali last week when an improvised explosive device hit their armored vehicle. A man wounded in Sunday’s strike told The Associated Press that the extremists had approached a group of civilians who were celebrating a wedding and demanded that the men in attendance separate from the women. “We were in the process of carrying out the orders when I heard the sound of an airplane and immediately a strike from above. Afterward, I didn’t see anything because I was unconscious,” the man said from a health center in Douentza, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. Hamadoun Dicko, leader of one of the largest ethnic Peuhl organizations in Mali, said witnesses described two air raids on Jan. 3 in the village. Sylvie Corbet in Paris contributed to the story © The Associated Press 2021

The move in Yangon by the ruling junta came after dozens of people protesting a military coup last month were killed by security forces. Protestors in Yangon on Sunday set up a line in an attempt to prevent security forces from advancing into their neighborhood. Credit...The New York Times YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar’s ruling junta has declared martial law in six townships in Yangon, the country’s largest city, after security forces killed dozens of protesters over the weekend in an increasingly lethal crackdown on resistance to a military coup last month. The state broadcaster MRTV said Monday that the Yangon townships of North Dagon, South Dagon, Dagon Seikkan and North Okkalapa had been put under martial law. An initial announcement was made late Sunday saying two other townships — Hlaing Thar Yar and neighboring Shwepyitha — were being placed under martial law. At least 38 people were killed Sunday and dozens were injured in one of the deadliest days of the crackdown on protesters, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, an independent group tracking the violence. Several estimates from other sources gave higher figures. Complicating efforts to organize new protests as well as media coverage of the crisis, mobile internet service has been cut, though access is still available through fixed broadband connections. Mobile data service has been used to stream live video coverage of protests, often showing security forces attacking demonstrators. The blockage of internet service forced postponement of a court hearing in the capital, Naypyidaw, for Myanmar’s detained leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, who was supposed to take part via a video conference, said her lawyer, Khin Maung Zaw. Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi and President Win Myint were detained during the Feb. 1 military takeover, and have been charged with several criminal offenses that their supporters believe are politically motivated to keep them locked up. Assisting an injured man during a confrontation with security forces in Yangon on Sunday. At least 38 people were killed and dozens injured in one of the deadliest days since the start of the coup. Credit...The New York Times Since the takeover six weeks ago, Myanmar has been under a nationwide state of emergency, with its civilian leaders ousted and detained, and military leaders in charge of all government. But Sunday’s announcement was the first use of martial law since the coup and suggested more direct military control of security, instead of local police. The announcement said that the State Administrative Council acted to enhance security and restore law and order, and that the Yangon regional commander has been entrusted with administrative, judicial and military powers in the area under his command. The orders cover six of Yangon’s 33 townships, all of which have suffered major violence in recent days. Thirty-four of the deaths were in Yangon. Video from Hlaing Thar Yar township showed people running away after gunfire was heard at nighttime. Those fleeing carried one injured person and tried to revive two others, one who seemed to be dead or dying, the footage from the independent Democratic Voice of Burma showed. Hlaing Thar Yar was the location of 22 civilian deaths Sunday, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, which said that more than a dozen civilians were wounded and described a large number of junta forces engaged in the township. Four other deaths were reported in the cities of Bago, Mandalay, and Hpakant, according to the association and local media. In a new tactic, demonstrators used the cover of darkness to hold mass candlelight vigils in various parts of Yangon over the weekend, including some that took place after 8 p.m., when a curfew imposed by authorities starts. The protest movement has been grounded in nonviolent civil disobedience, with marches and general strikes among its main features. Protestors burned tires to block security forces from passing through a major traffic hub in Yangon on Monday. Credit...The New York Times The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners’ tally of victims of the crackdown raised the number of civilians killed by security forces since the coup to over 100. Confirmation of the number of casualties is nearly impossible due to the security situation and a crackdown on independent media in Myanmar, but various groups have compiled tallies with similar figures. The actual death toll is likely higher, as police apparently have seized some bodies, and some victims have had serious gunshot wounds that medical staff at makeshift clinics would be hard-pressed to treat. Many hospitals are occupied by security forces, and as a result are boycotted by medical personnel and shunned by protesters. Police have also aggressively patrolled residential neighborhoods at night, firing into the air and setting off stun grenades as an intimidation tactic. They have also taken people from their homes in targeted raids with minimal resistance. In at least two known cases, the detainees died in custody within hours of being hauled away.