By CARA ANNA NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The head of the U.S. Agency for International Development expressed concern Wednesday about the “dehumanizing rhetoric” used by Ethiopia’s leaders amid the nine-month conflict in the Tigray region, whose forces last month were described as “weeds” and “cancer” by the country’s Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister, Abiy Ahmed. FILE - In this Tuesday, March 23, 2021 file photo, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power testifies before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee to be the next Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), on Capitol Hill in Washington. Power landed Saturday, July 31, in Khartoum, aiming to support Sudan’s fragile transition to democracy before travelling to Ethiopia to press the government there to allow humanitarian aid to the war-torn Tigray region. (Greg Nash/Pool via AP, File) Samantha Power spoke to reporters after pressing Ethiopia’s government to ease a blockade of humanitarian aid to Tigray, where hundreds of thousands of people face famine in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Just 10% of targeted aid has reached the region since mid-July, she said — 153 trucks as of two days ago, while the United Nations has said 1,500 trucks were needed during that time. Ethiopia’s government in recent weeks has accused aid groups of arming Tigray forces, without providing evidence, and suspended the work of two international aid groups while accusing Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council of “disseminating misinformation.” Meanwhile, Power said, “desperate humanitarian needs are growing more acute with every passing day” in Tigray, where more than 5 million people need help after Ethiopian and allied forces pursuing Tigray fighters were accused of looting and destroying food supplies. Tigray remains cut off from the outside world, with communications links down and just one road available for aid convoys, which have faced numerous checkpoints and searches. While the West is said to be exploring the possibility of a humanitarian aid corridor from neighboring Sudan into western Tigray, the head of Ethiopia’s national disaster risk management commission this week rejected that idea. A USAID spokesman did not respond when asked whether Power, who visited Sudan before Ethiopia, discussed the idea with Sudanese leaders. Power also noted the increasingly heated talk by both sides in the conflict and said the kind of “virulent” language used by the prime minister and other officials, also seen on social media in Ethiopia, “often accompanies ethnically motivated atrocities.” She called for an immediate cease-fire and dialogue. Chances of dialogue appear slim as Ethiopia’s government has declared the Tigray forces a terrorist group. The war started in November after a political falling-out between the Tigray ruling party, which had dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades, and the current prime minister. Now the Tigray forces say they want Abiy out as a precondition to talks. Power also warned that the resurgent Tigray forces’ presence near key roads “is going to obstruct access” as well. She said some 76,000 people have been displaced in the neighboring Afar region and 150,000 in the Amhara region after the Tigray forces entered those areas in recent weeks. Separately, Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke Wednesday with Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok about the “expansion of armed confrontation in the Amhara and Afar regions of Ethiopia, the deteriorating humanitarian situation in the Tigray region, and reports of Eritrean troops re-entering Ethiopia, all of which impact regional stability,” the State Department said. Witnesses in Tigray have alleged widespread abuses by soldiers from Eritrea, which shares a border with the region and fought on the side of Ethiopian forces. Abiy for months denied their presence. © copyright 2021 The Associated Press.

By MOHANED AWAD and CARA ANNA WAD EL HILU, Sudan (AP) — From time to time, a body floating down the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan was a silent reminder of a war conducted in the shadows. But in recent days, the corpses became a flow. In this photo taken from a video shot on Wednesday, Aug. 4, 2021 in Wad el-Hilu, Sudan, a man washes in the Setit river, known in Ethiopia as Tekeze River. Locals and refugees have pulled dozens from bodies from the river separating Ethiopia’s troubled Tigray region from Sudan in the past week, many with bullet wounds and their hands bound. Witnesses say that they are ethnic killings committed by Ethiopian government forces of Tigrayans, and that the bodies are being dumped to conceal the evidence. There was no immediate comment from the Ethiopian government but it has denied ethnic killings in the past. (AP Photo/Mohaned Awad) Bloated, drained of color from their journey, the bodies were often mutilated: genitals severed, eyes gouged, a missing limb. The Sudanese fishermen who spotted them, and the refugees from Tigray who helped pull them to shore, found many corpses’ hands bound. Some of them had been shot. The Associated Press reported dozens of bodies floating down the Tekeze River earlier this week and saw six of the graves on Wednesday, marking the first time any reporters could reach the scene. Doctors who saw the bodies said one was tattooed with a common name in the Tigrinya language and others had the facial markings common among Tigrayans, raising fresh alarm about atrocities in the least-known area of the Tigray war. “They are from Tigray,” said Garey Youhanis, a Tigrayan who helped bury several bodies found on Sunday. With a piece of red cord, he demonstrated how their hands were tied behind their backs. He squatted on the rock-strewn shore, crossed himself and prayed. The deaths are the latest massacre in a nine-month war that has killed thousands of civilians and is now spilling into other regions of Ethiopia, Africa’s second most populous country and the anchor of the often-volatile Horn of Africa. Though Tigray forces in June reclaimed much of the region as Ethiopian and allied forces retreated, western Tigray is still controlled by authorities from Ethiopia’s neighboring Amhara region, who have cleared out many ethnic Tigrayans while saying the land is historically theirs. Witnesses have told the AP of watching mass expulsions. More than 60,000 Tigrayans fled to Sudan, where thousands remain in makeshift camps a short walk from the river in the hope of hearing news from those who still arrive. Some scrutinized the bodies in the river for clues, and they have asked Sudanese police and the United Nations to exhume them for autopsies. “In the last one week, 43 bodies were buried around this river,” the surgeon from the nearby Tigray town of Humera, Tewodros Tefera, told the AP. He and other refugees believe the bodies were dumped into the river at Humera, which has seen some of the worst violence since the war began in November. “Some had amputated limbs and legs,” Tewodros said. “There was a man which we buried yesterday, his genital area was completely severed. ... So this is the kind of trauma that we’re seeing of western Tigray.” He told the AP they hadn’t heard of any new bodies since Tuesday, when at least seven were found. But he believes an active search along the river could reveal “many, many more,” perhaps hundreds. Ethiopia’s government has accused the rival Tigray forces of dumping the bodies themselves for propaganda purposes. A “fake massacre,” the spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, told reporters on Thursday. But the discovery has increased international pressure on the prime minister, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, at a time when his government is already accused by the U.N., the United States and the European Union of besieging Tigray and blocking food and other aid to millions of people. Hundreds of thousands face famine conditions in the world’s worst hunger crisis in a decade. Ethiopia’s prime minister in recent days referred to the Tigray forces as “weeds” and a “cancer,” bringing a warning from the U.N. special envoy on genocide prevention that such dehumanizing language “is of utmost concern.” Ethiopia’s government has said such talk is not meant to describe ordinary Tigrayans. But the bodies in the river brought new fears of ethnic cleansing, or the forcing of a population from a region through expulsions and other violence. “We are deeply concerned by the latest developments,” the U.N. refugee agency in Sudan said on Thursday. It confirmed seeing one of the bodies pulled from the river along with “what appear to be several fresh graves.” It said it was unable to confirm the identifies of the dead or how they died. Like other international aid organizations, the U.N. agency said it has no access on the Ethiopian side of the border region. Underlining that absence, the U.N. humanitarian agency on Wednesday tweeted a map showing no foreign aid group active in western Tigray. One that had worked there, the Dutch section of Doctors Without Borders, had its operations suspended by Ethiopia on July 30, accused by the government of spreading “misinformation” and illegally using satellite radio equipment. Ethiopia’s government has alleged that aid groups are arming and supporting the Tigray forces, without evidence. “Those who want corridors for weapons and non-humanitarian goods to be brought into them continue to try to manipulate the realities on the ground in an attempt to convince the world that unfettered access is not happening” in Tigray, the prime minister’s spokeswoman said. She called the Tigray forces, who dominated Ethiopia’s repressive government for years but were sidelined when Abiy took office, a “terrorist organization that has hijacked the well-being of the people of Tigray.” Phone, internet and banking services remain down across the Tigray region of some 6 million people, and the U.N. says more than 5 million need help now. The Tigray forces, who have pushed into the neighboring Afar and Amhara regions and displaced more than 200,000 people, have said restoring basic services is a precondition to negotiations to end the war. Tigray forces on Thursday entered the Amhara town of Lalibela, a UNESCO World Heritage site for its rock-hewn churches, a resident told the AP. While they entered peacefully, “yeah, we’re scared,” he said, worried about damage to what residents call the “new Jerusalem.” He estimated thousands of fighters were there and “many people are running away.” He spoke on condition of anonymity for his safety. With the Tigray forces pushing south after threatening to go as far as the capital if needed, the U.N. humanitarian chief and the USAID administrator in visits to Ethiopia this week urged a cease-fire and talks. Sudan has offered to play a role in mediation. Sudan also could be a direct aid corridor to Tigray. But the prime minister’s spokeswoman called Ethiopia’s relationship with Sudan “a bit tricky,” pointing to a border dispute. “That element needs to be thoroughly addressed before Sudan can be entertained as a credible party in negotiations,” she said. For the refugees in Sudan, each body found in the river is a reminder of loved ones trapped in the fighting. Horrified, refugees in the Sudanese border community of Hamdayet spotted one body that looked familiar. Like most of the Tigrayans killed in the war, it was a young man. “How can I not feel the death of my brother and friend?” said one of the Tigrayans who buried him, Awet, who gave only his first name. “I’m very sorry.” The dead man’s name was Robel, the surgeon Tewodros said. By the water’s edge, his fingers tapping his graying temple in anxiety, he checked his phone for news of other bodies found. © copyright 2021 The Associated Press.

© 2021 The Associated Press Elisa Xolalpa. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme) MEXICO CITY (AP) — Elisa Xolalpa has had three daughters and found a job she enjoys since a former boyfriend tried to destroy her life by tossing acid on her when she was 18. Two decades later, she is still seeking justice. Survivors of acid attacks like Xolalpa are banding together and raising their voices in Mexico despite the country’s high rates of violence, which often targets women, and staggering levels of impunity. “I thought I was the only one,” said the 38-year-old, who grows flowers on Mexico City’s south side. “But we’re not alone anymore.” Elisa Xolalpa shows the burn marks at her greenhouse. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme) Earlier this year, the Carmen Sánchez Foundation formed here to provide support and lobby for legal reforms for survivors of acid attacks. It has registered 29 such attacks so far, five already in 2021, but believes that is only a fraction of the real number. Survivors want the attacks classified as attempted femicide, aid with the innumerable surgeries that follow and psychological support. They want to be seen even though their faces hurt. “Mom, what is acid?” 9-year-old Daniela asked Xolalpa one day. For a moment Xolalpa was silent. Then she told her daughter that it was a liquid they used in the greenhouse that is dangerous. Another day Daniela left school in tears. “Some kids told me you’re ugly, Mom, and it’s not true,” Xolalpa said her daughter told her. Xolalpa has a sweet gaze. She enjoys growing flowers in the chinampas — fertile islands interlaced by canals in the capital’s Xochimilco borough — like her ancestors did. She recognizes that one day she will have to explain to her three daughters, product of another relationship, the attack that changed her life and for a time left her wanting to die. These days she is focused on preparing herself mentally for a new court hearing for her attacker, who was finally arrested in February. She has made three complaints to authorities and suffered constant threats from him. For now he only faces a domestic violence charge, but Xolalpa hopes that will hold him long enough to pursue an attempted femicide charge. Her attacker’s lawyer has been dismissive. “He says I’m alright because I was able to have a family,” she said indignantly. She entered the relationship with the father of her three daughters “to feel that I could please someone despite the scars,” Xolapa said. “It was a mistake, I’m still damaged.” Dousing someone in acid means wanting to dissolve a person physically and psychologically. It is always premeditated, according to the United Nations. In Xolalpa’s case, she was tied to a post. The acid dissolved the ropes, but also her clothes and her body as she ran half-naked for help. She has had 40 surgeries to repair her body. Carmen Sánchez, who started the foundation that bears her name, was eating breakfast with her mother and sisters at home in 2014 when her partner entered and threw acid on her face. He fled with a driver who was waiting outside as Sánchez’s chin melted to her chest and her cell phone dissolved in her hand. It took years before Sánchez turned to activism. Carmen Sanchez, who survived an acid attack by her ex-partner seven years ago when she was 30, poses for a portrait in Mexico, Sunday, May 30, 2021. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme) One day in 2017, Sánchez called Gina Potes, a Colombian survivor, whose collective “Rebuilding Faces” helps other women who have survived attacks. Potes happened to be on her way to a doctor’s appointment. “She told me about all her pain, she cried, she talked to me about her surgeries,” Potes recalled. When Potes got to the doctor, “I told Carmen, ‘Look, I’m going to strip, but we’ll keep talking, don’t worry.’” Seeing Potes bare her scars without any shyness shook Sánchez. She understood that trying to hide what had happened didn’t help. So while she sought justice in her case and underwent operation after operation — she’s up to 61 — she began to talk with other survivors, seek out donors, psychologists and doctors. “From the beginning I only had two options: let myself die, something she considered many times, or look at my scars, inside and out, and understand that that was my new reality,” Sánchez told lawmakers in late July when she received a prize from Mexico’s lower congressional chamber. Sánchez made it clear to the lawmakers that women like her face not only violence from their aggressors, but also the “indifference and impunity of the state, revictimization by the media and social and labor exclusion and discrimination.” Martha Avila, who survived an acid attack by her former son-in-law four years ago when she was 59, embraces herself as she poses for a portrait at her home in the state of Mexico, Mexico, June 13, 2021. Avila’s attack happened on International Women’s Day in 2017 while she was at work, two years after her daughter had left her partner and was in hiding from him, burning her hands, face, neck and chest. The attack came after two incidents when he had thrown acid on the family car outside their home. After 15 surgeries, she expects to undergo more to help regain mobility. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme) There are children and men among the victims of acid attacks, but 80% are women, according to The Acid Survivors Trust International (ASTI). They are usually attacked by partners or former partners or people paid by them out of jealousy or revenge, according to U.N. Women, the United Nations’ gender equality entity. ASTI documents about 1,500 acid attacks per year, but says the real number could be higher. Acid attacks aren’t limited to any particular part of the world, certain religions or cultures, but rather to conservative institutions and “the deep economic and social inequalities of gender that exist,” said Jaf Shah, the organization’s director. “Many attacks may not be reported,” Shah said. “If they are reported there is a chance that they could be classified under a different offense.” Sayuri Herrera, Mexico City’s special prosecutor for femicides, said that more acid attacks are being registered in Mexico. Her office is currently reviewing older cases that were originally classified as serious injuries to see if they can be reclassified as attempted femicide like Xolalpa’s. Only two of Mexico’s 32 states have classified acid attacks on women as attempted femicide. Violence against women in Mexico extends far beyond acid attacks making it more difficult to gain attention. In the first half of the year, 1,879 women were murdered in Mexico and ore than 33,000 injured, according to federal government data. More than 10,000 rapes were reported and nearly 24,000 cases of domestic violence. “They consider us their property and act under the reasoning that ‘if you’re not going to be mine, you’re not going to be anyone’s,’” Herrera said. In June, Xolalpa and other women protested in front of the capital’s prosecutor’s office to pressure for resolution of their cases. Meanwhile, new cases keep surfacing. Ximena Canseco, a co-founder of the Carmen Sánchez Foundation, recalled one day, July 29, when they learned of a survivor from an attack 30 years ago and they found a message asking for help on Facebook from the mother of a girl who had just had acid tossed on her from someone on a passing motorcycle. That same day, Canseco learned a 30-year-old woman who had recently shared her story had died of COVID-19. “She never made it public, she had lost everything and was still receiving threats,” Canseco said. “We talked for an hour.” Xolalpa said we can’t allow the violence to be normalized and that’s a message she wants to teach her daughters. “I have to turn this pain into something else,” she said. For now, that means demanding justice and not being silent. Elisa Xolalpa poses for a portrait inside her greenhouse. (AP Photo/Ginnette Riquelme)

By Aurora Alemndral Men and children sleeping in front of a church in the Tondo district in Manila. The church served as a safe haven from police raids. Credit: Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times MANILA — Every morning before dawn, Rosario Perez checks to make sure her sons are still alive. The three brothers, all in their 20s, sleep at the houses of friends and relatives, moving regularly, hoping that whoever may have been assigned to kill them won’t catch up with them. They are not witnesses on a mob hit list, or gang members hiding from rivals. They are simply young men living in the Philippines of President Rodrigo Duterte. “How could I not send them to hide?” said Ms. Perez, 47, after peeking in on two of her sons and phoning the third. “We can barely sleep out of fear.” Nearly a year into Mr. Duterte’s violent antidrug campaign, in which more than 4,000 people accused of using or selling illegal drugs have been killed and thousands of other killings are classified as “under investigation,” fear and mistrust have gripped many neighborhoods of Manila and other cities. Residents are cobbling together strategies to hide and survive. Many young men are staying indoors, out of sight. Others have fled the urban slums, where most of the killings occur, and are camping out on farms or lying low in villages in the countryside. The Roman Catholic Church has vocally opposed Mr. Duterte’s deadly campaign, and an underground network of churches and safe houses is offering sanctuary — quietly, to avoid the attention of the vigilantes responsible for much of the killing. In the most heavily targeted slums, neighbors are wary of talking to each other, unsure who among them are police informers. Most try not to get involved if they hear someone is in trouble, not wanting to be blamed if the person ends up dead. One man said that just talking to the wrong person could be fatal. “What we’re seeing here is the rule of law being replaced by a system of fear and violence,” said Jose Manuel Diokno, a human rights lawyer in Manila. According to a recent survey by Social Weather Stations, a local polling firm, 73 percent of Filipinos are either “very worried” or “somewhat worried” that they or someone they know will be killed in the antidrug campaign. Those who have gone into hiding are often people who think their names are on government watch lists of drug users. The lists are compiled by local officials using information supplied by the police and by informers, and include people who have surrendered to the authorities. They are not public, and it is unclear how some on them are marked for death. Two of this woman’s sons were beaten and detained by the police. One is still in prison, and the other is hiding in a rural village. Credit: Jes Aznar for The New York Times Many on the lists are past or current users of shabu, the local name for the methamphetamine at the heart of Mr. Duterte’s antidrug campaign. Many others are not. Ms. Perez, for instance, says that two of her sons have never used drugs but that the third once did. He surrendered to the police, hoping that he would be spared, and she has required all of them to take drug tests and has shared the results with neighborhood officials. Still, she has been told that all three of their names are on a watch list, and a photo of her home has circulated with it. “With just a name and a photo, they’ll kill you,” she said. The death threats are often passed along in whispered warnings between neighbors, anonymous text messages or handwritten notes. Most people hiding from the police or vigilantes are reluctant to talk because they are afraid of disclosing their location and being killed. But several dozen people spoke to The New York Times about their lives on the run, or those of their neighbors or loved ones, on the condition of anonymity. One young man who was picked up by the police, beaten and then released after a month and a half in detention said he had moved to his grandmother’s house in a different district of Manila to hide. When he returned to visit his neighborhood, one of his friends told him that vigilante gangs were looking for him. It was a warning he took seriously. One of his friends had already been killed. “I was afraid,” he said, adding that he has had trouble sleeping at night. “I thought they were going to kill me.” His mother worried that if he stayed in Manila, he would be shot, so she made him move again, to a rural village of bamboo huts, dirt roads and banana trees in the northern Philippines. He texts with his friends, but tells them that he is in a different part of the country, just to be safe. His mother said she had voted for Mr. Duterte, but now wishes she could take her vote back. The clergy providing sanctuary, part of a coalition called Rise Up, operate in secret, fearing the church’s protection will not be enough to keep vigilantes from coming after them. “The most vulnerable are always an easy target, even if they are under our sanctuary,” said Jun Santiago, a lay brother of the Congregation of the Most Holy Redeemer and a member of Rise Up. “We don’t know who the killers are.” Crime investigators examining the body of a suspect killed in Caloocan, north of Manila, in a “buy-bust” operation by the authorities. Credit: Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times One recent evening, at a convent at the edge of Manila, a teenager who was the only surviving witness to a massacre that left seven people dead slept on a narrow bed on the rooftop under clotheslines and a tattered plastic tarp. A priest, the Rev. Gilbert Ballena, said the boy had been hiding in the convent for four months, using an assumed name, keeping busy by painting small canvases of the baby Jesus and the Virgin Mary and by grinding turmeric, which Rise Up sells for extra cash. The teenager texts with his girlfriend, but he is afraid to go see her or his family. For his safety, and for a change of scenery, he recently moved to a different church, where he changed his name again. At another church in Manila, most people seeking sanctuary spend a few nights on spare mattresses before they are moved to safe houses or helped to leave Manila, staff members said. This church has sheltered more than 30 people so far, they said: people under immediate threat, witnesses to a family member’s death and others who have filed complaints against the police. Mr. Santiago said he had received threats for his work with survivors. “That will not be the reason to silence us,” he said. “It is our mission to help the needy.” Another person who believes he is on a death list is a skinny young man with crude tattoos on both arms. He said he had used drugs and had surrendered to the police in November. Since then, he said, he has lived in fear that he will be killed. Whenever the police or men in balaclavas walk his neighborhood, he climbs a tree and hides in the branches until they leave. He would not say whether he still used drugs. Whether you quit or not, he said, “they’ll still kill you.” In the single-room, concrete-block home she shares with her husband and two granddaughters, Ms. Perez catches sight of a news clip on a muted television playing in the background. Another killing: the thin, loose limbs of a young man zipped into a body bag, a woman collapsed against a vehicle, crying hysterically. Her eyes well up with tears, and her voice trembles. “That’s what I don’t want to happen to my sons,” she said. Correction: June 6, 2017 Because of an editing error, a picture caption on Monday with an article about Filipinos who are fleeing their government’s violent crackdown on drugs misidentified, in some copies, the woman shown silhouetted. She is a mother who asked not to be identified, one of whose sons is hiding in the northern Philippines; she is not Rosario Perez, another mother mentioned in the article. A version of this article appears in print on June 5, 2017, on Page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: On the Run From Duterte’s Drug Crackdown. (C) 2017 The New York Times

By CARA ANNA NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Small children are among those held amid a new wave of detentions of ethnic Tigrayans suspected of supporting Tigray forces in Ethiopia’s growing war, one detainee says, while witnesses and a human rights watchdog describe fresh disappearances in recent weeks. FILE - In this Tuesday, May 11, 2021 file photo, mother Roman Kidanemariam, 35, holds her malnourished daughter Merkab Ataklti, 22 months old, in the treatment tent of a medical clinic in the town of Abi Adi, in the Tigray region of northern Ethiopia. The United Nations secretary-general Antonio Guterres said Thursday, Aug. 19, 2021 that humanitarian conditions in Ethiopia are "hellish" as the nine-month Tigray conflict spreads in Africa's second most populous country. (AP Photo/Ben Curtis, File) In an interview with The Associated Press on a hidden phone, one of those detained described grim conditions in which more than 700 Tigrayan military members, their families and retirees are held at a camp in Ethiopia’s Oromia region. Readily giving his military ID number but speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, the non-combatant said that two detainees died after beatings and another died from lack of medication for a pre-existing condition. “They call us cancers and tell us they will destroy us,” the detainee said, describing how military personnel overseeing the detainees threatened to shoot “each and every one of you” if anyone tried to escape. New detainees continue to arrive, he said, and they have not appeared in court. He listed five children detained who are under 3 years of age. His account reveals worse conditions than those described in AP interviews with more than a dozen detainees and their families earlier this year before the resurgent Tigray forces retook much of the Tigray region in June and the Ethiopian military retreated. His account could not be verified as Ethiopian authorities have not granted the press access to detention facilities. A spokeswoman for the International Committee for the Red Cross confirmed that the group started visiting detainees in July, months after being made aware of them, but she could not comment on the conditions in which they’re held. What began as a political dispute between the current prime minister and Tigray regional leaders who dominated Ethiopia’s government for nearly three decades has killed thousands of people since the fighting began in November. The war has spilled into Ethiopia’s Amhara and Afar regions in recent weeks and displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Millions of people in the Tigray region remain cut off from the world, and some have begun to starve to death. Ethiopia’s government, on the defensive, last week called on all able citizens to stop the Tigray forces “once and for all,” while urging people to watch for suspected collaborators. Although the government has repeatedly said it is targeting the Tigray forces and not ordinary Tigrayan civilians, numerous witness accounts allege otherwise. An Ethiopian military spokesman, Col. Getinet Adane, did not respond to a request for comment on the detainee’s account or a question about why small children are allegedly being held. Outside the military, thousands of ordinary Tigrayans have been targeted. In a new report on Wednesday, Human Rights Watch said Ethiopian authorities have carried out “rampant arbitrary arrests and enforced disappearances” of Tigrayans in the capital, Addis Ababa, since the stunning turn in the war in June, when Ethiopia announced a unilateral cease-fire. The rights group cited interviews with eight current and former detainees plus relatives, witnesses and lawyers of 23 others whose whereabouts are unknown. Several people said they later saw detained civilian relatives or friends in state media broadcasts claiming to show captured Tigray forces. “The government should immediately stop its ethnic profiling, which has cast unjustified suspicion on Tigrayans,” Human Rights Watch researcher Laetitia Bader said. The report comes as United States special envoy Jeffrey Feltman visits Ethiopia in the latest effort to press the government and Tigray forces to immediately stop the fighting. It appeared that Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, a Nobel Peace Prize winner, would not be meeting the U.S. special envoy, as he traveled to Turkey on Wednesday to meet with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The Turkish president said his country would be willing to act as a mediator in Ethiopia’s tensions with neighboring Sudan over a disputed border area. Among the newly detained in Ethiopia is Hailu Kebede, an official with the Salsay Woyane Tigray opposition party who has briefed diplomats on the war. His lawyer, Kirubel Gebregziabher, confirmed that he is accused of participating in the war and “misinforming” about a deadly airstrike by Ethiopia’s military on a crowded market in Tigray in June. His next court appearance was delayed until Thursday in what supporters called an attempt to block any meeting with the U.S. envoy. While the war is said to be popular among Ethiopians, some have expressed distress at the treatment of Tigrayans in their communities. Last week a government worker, who described his ethnicity as Amhara and Oromo, wept as he told the AP that police and local authorities were going around government housing in his city in the Oromia region and telling Tigrayan families they had hours to clear out. “Without any legal paper, without any reason,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation. “These are Ethiopians,” he said. “It’s horrible. ... I’m a patriotic person, but that doesn’t mean I support the government to do something unacceptable against Tigrayans.” Ethiopia has 6 million Tigrayans. “What will the country do with them?” he asked. ___ Suzan Fraser in Turkey contributed. ___ This version corrects to say the Turkish president’s mediation offer was for Ethiopia’s tensions with neighboring Sudan over a disputed border area. © copyright 2021 The Associated Press.

Associated Press August 25, 2021, 8:33 PM Activists and environmentalists in Nicaragua charge that settlers have again attacked Indigenous communities in the Bosawas nature reserve on the Caribbean coast, killing a dozen members of the Miskito and Mayangna peoples. Sauni As Territory, Bosawás Biosphere Reserve, January 2021. International Federation for Human Rights. MANAGUA, Nicaragua -- Settlers have again attacked Indigenous communities in Bosawas nature reserve on Nicaragua's Caribbean coast, killing a dozen members of the Miskito and Mayangna people, activists and environmentalist charged Wednesday. The reserve has been hit by illegal mining and logging despite its status as a protected area, and activists have reported several attacks on Indigenous people. Environmentalist Amaru Ruiz, director of the Del Río Foundation, blamed the latest assault on settlers who have invaded indigenous lands. “It was a massacre," Ruiz said. “Residents have so far confirmed the deaths of nine Miskito people and three Mayangnas." The Center for Legal Assistance to Indigenous Peoples said in a statement that Indigenous residents were attacked “with machetes and guns, and were tortured. They hung their bodies from a tree.” The Nicaraguan government had not confirmed the killings. Ruiz said authorities had not been to the remote community where they occurred. One resident told a local radio station that neither the army nor the police had responded. A request for comment from the army went unanswered. Indigenous activists say the government of President Daniel Ortega has not done enough to address the problems on the jungle-clad coast, something his administration denied. Human rights lawyer María Luisa Acosta said the latest attack was the fourth this year on Indigenous communities in the Bosawas area. The Center for Justice and Human Rights on the Atlantic coast of Nicaragua said at least 49 Indigenous people have been killed by settlers since January, and many others were forced to flee. Activists say many of the settlers moving onto the lands are former soldiers linked to timber and illegal logging interests. In March, Indigenous groups complained to the InterAmerican Commission on Human Rights about land takeovers and killings that have hit the Miskito and Mayangna communities. The commission is part of the Organization of American States. One of the worst attacks came in January 2020, when settlers burned 16 houses in the Indigenous community of Alal and killed at least four inhabitants. Last March 4, an attack on the Mayangna community of Kimak Was left one person wounded and another missing. © The Associated Press

By Austin Ramzy More than 70 people were killed on Friday in clashes between militants and security forces in Rakhine State in western Myanmar, which outside observers called a worrying upsurge of violence in the troubled region. The dead included at least 12 members of the security forces and at least 59 Rohingya insurgents, according to a statement from the office of Myanmar’s de facto leader, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi. Myanmar’s armed forces said the militants used knives, small arms and explosives in coordinated early-morning attacks on several police and military posts around Buthidaung and Maungdaw, near Myanmar’s border with Bangladesh. Rakhine is home to about one million Rohingya, a predominantly Muslim minority group that faces repression in Myanmar, where they are largely confined to camps and denied full citizenship rights. Last October, a group of Rohingya militants killed nine police officers, escalating the level of violence in a long-running conflict. Rohingya and international human rights groups say security forces responded to those attacks by locking down the area and carrying out a far-reaching crackdown, killing hundreds of people and forcing tens of thousands to flee. This week, the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, which was formed last year by Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, and headed by Kofi Annan, a former secretary general of the United Nations, submitted its final report. It called for urgent action to improve the citizenship status, freedom of movement and human rights of Muslims in Rakhine. Failure to act would risk further “violence and radicalization,” Mr. Annan wrote in an introduction to the report. On Friday, Mr. Annan issued a statement saying, “I am gravely concerned by, and strongly condemn, the recent attacks in Rakhine State.” “The alleged scale and gravity of these attacks mark a worrying escalation of violence,” he added. He also called on security forces to ensure that innocent civilians were not harmed. A militant group called the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army claimed responsibility for the attacks, which it said were in response to recent raids by security forces. The group, formerly known as Harakah al-Yaqin, is believed to have hundreds of fighters and to be led by Rohingya based in Saudi Arabia, according to an International Crisis Group report. A United Nations report in February said the military crackdown on the Rohingya had led to gang rapes, the killing of hundreds of civilians and the forced displacement of as many as 90,000 people, acts that it said were most likely crimes against humanity. The military and Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi have generally denied allegations of ethnic cleansing or a campaign of targeted violence against the Rohingya. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times

Cara Anna and Amanda Seitz | Associated Press Los Angeles Times, Nov. 3, 2021, 3:43 PM PT Facebook removes Ethiopian prime minister’s post for inciting violence. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed speaks at a final campaign rally at a stadium in the town of Jimma in the southwestern Oromia region of Ethiopia in June 2021. (Mulugeta Ayene / Associated Press) NAIROBI, Kenya — Facebook says it has removed a post by Ethiopia’s prime minister that urged citizens to rise up and “bury” the rival Tigray forces who now threaten the capital as the country’s war reaches the one-year mark. Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s post on Sunday violated the platform’s policies against inciting and supporting violence, said Emily Cain, spokeswoman for Facebook’s parent company, Meta. It was taken down Tuesday morning, she said. “The obligation to die for Ethiopia belongs to all of us,” Abiy said in the post, which called on citizens to mobilize “by holding any weapon or capacity.” Abiy is still regularly posting on the platform, on which he has 3.5 million followers. The United States and others have warned Ethiopia about “dehumanizing rhetoric” after the prime minister in July described the Tigray forces as “cancer” and “weeds.” Facebook has removed posts from world leaders before, although in rare circumstances. This year, the company deleted a video from then-President Trump in which he peddled false claims about election fraud after the deadly insurrection on Jan. 6 at the U.S. Capitol by a group of his supporters. Facebook said at the time that the video contributed to “the risk of ongoing violence.” Just last week, the tech platform yanked a live broadcast from Brazil President Jair Bolsonaro because he made false claims about the COVID-19 vaccines. Cain did not say how Facebook was made aware of the Abiy post, which the Nobel Peace Prize-winning prime minister made as Tigray forces took control of key cities over the weekend that put them in position to move down a major highway toward the capital, Addis Ababa. Alarmed, Abiy’s government this week declared a national state of emergency with sweeping powers of detention and military conscription. The prime minister on Wednesday publicly repeated his call to bury the Tigray forces as he and other officials marked one year of war. Meanwhile, Ethiopia’s highly polarized social media this week saw a number of high-profile posts targeting ethnic Tigrayans, some even suggesting they be placed in concentration camps. Thousands of people have been killed in the war between Ethiopian and allied forces and Tigrayans who long dominated the national government before Abiy took office. The United Nations human rights chief said Wednesday that she had received reports of thousands of ethnic Tigrayans being rounded up for detention in recent months. Former Facebook product manager-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen last month singled out Ethiopia as an example of what she called the platform’s “destructive impact” on society. “My fear is that without action, divisive and extremist behaviors we see today are only the beginning,” she told the Senate consumer protection subcommittee. “What we saw in Myanmar and are seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it.” Meta spokeswoman Cain declined to say how many staffers it has in Ethiopia or how many are dedicated to detecting violent speech in Ethiopia on its platform, but she said the company has the capability to review posts in Somali, Amharic, Oromo and Tigrinya. She also said it has a team that includes people from Ethiopia or who have spent time in the country. But Berhan Taye, a researcher in digital rights based in neighboring Kenya who tracks social media on Ethiopia and regularly “escalates,” or reports, questionable posts to Facebook, told the Associated Press last week the platform wasn’t moderating in the Tigrinya language as recently as April. Overall in Ethiopia, “if you report [posts] on the platform, it’s very highly likely to get no reply at all,” she said. “From the amount we escalate, and the number of replies we get, that tells you their internal system is really limited.” Copyright © 2021, Los Angeles Times

By Cara Anna People sit on steps next to a sculpture in the shape of Amharic words reading "Addis Ababa" in the Piazza old town area of the capital Addis Ababa, Ethiopia Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021. Urgent new efforts to calm Ethiopia's escalating war are unfolding Thursday as a U.S. special envoy visits and the president of neighboring Kenya calls for an immediate cease-fire while the country marks a year of conflict. (AP Photo) Ethiopia’s government marked a year of war by lashing out Thursday in response to international alarm about hate speech, comparing the rival Tigray forces to “a rat that strays far from its hole” and saying the country is close to “burying the evil forces.” The statement from the government communication service, posted on social media and confirmed by a government spokesman, came amid urgent new efforts to calm the escalating war as a U.S. special envoy arrived and the president of neighboring Kenya and others called for an immediate cease-fire. The war that has killed thousands of people and displaced millions since November 2020 threatens to engulf Ethiopia’s capital, Addis Ababa. Tigray forces seized key cities in recent days and linked up with another armed group, leading the government of Africa’s second-most populous country to declare a national state of emergency with sweeping detention powers. The spokeswoman for Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, Billene Seyoum, did not say whether Abiy was meeting with U.S. special envoy Jeffrey Feltman, who this week insisted that “there are many, many ways to initiate discreet talks” toward peace. United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he spoke with Abiy “to offer my good offices to create the conditions for a dialogue so the fighting stops.” Uganda’s president called for a meeting of East African leaders, and the European Union warned of “fragmentation and widespread armed conflict.” But so far, such efforts have failed. Last week a congressional aide told The Associated Press that “there have been talks of talks with officials, but when it gets to the Abiy level and the senior (Tigray forces) level, the demands are wide, and Abiy doesn’t want to talk.” Instead, the prime minister has urged citizens to rise up and “bury” the Tigray forces who long dominated the national government before he came to power. On Wednesday, Facebook said it had removed a post by Abiy with that language, saying it violated policies against inciting violence. It was a rare action against a head of state or government. The government statement on Thursday took aim not only at Facebook, accusing it of showing its “true colors,” but also at media, humanitarian groups and others allegedly “working hand in hand with the enemy in propagating its false narrative.” It warned it would take action over “destructive behavior.” But Ethiopia’s government aimed its harshest language at the Tigray forces. “TPLF and its puppets are being encircled by our forces. As the saying goes, ‘a rat that strays far from its hole is nearer to death,’” the statement said, referring to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front. The U.N. special adviser on the prevention of genocide, Alice Wairimu Nderitu, told an online event Thursday that dehumanizing speech in Ethiopia is “of extreme concern,” and she warned that the risk exists of the war spilling across borders and “becoming something completely unmanageable.” She warned that ethnic-based militias are “so dangerous in this context.” Kenya increased security along its borders amid fears of a wave of Ethiopians fleeing as one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises spreads, while its foreign ministry said statements inciting ordinary citizens into the conflict “must be shunned.” Tigray forces spokesman Getachew Reda claimed they had “joined hands” with another armed group, the Oromo Liberation Army, to seize the city of Kemisse, which is even closer to the capital. “Joint operations will continue in the days and weeks ahead,” he tweeted. A security source confirmed that the two armed groups had linked up to control Kemisse and said Tigray forces were pushing east as well as south toward the capital. The source spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to journalists. All sides in the war have committed abuses, a joint U.N. human rights investigation said Wednesday, while millions of people in the government-blockaded Tigray region are no longer able to receive humanitarian aid. The U.N. says no aid has entered Tigray since Ethiopian military airstrikes resumed there on Oct. 18, and 80% of essential medication is no longer available. The Tigray forces say they are pressuring the government to end the blockade, but the spreading insecurity as they push south through the neighboring Amhara region has hampered aid delivery to hundreds of thousands of hungry people. A university staffer who fled the Amhara town of Woldiya before Tigray forces arrived weeks ago said friends who stayed were climbing nearby hillsides to call the outside world with reports of low food supplies and people drinking from rivers, while electricity is cut. There is no aid in the occupied areas, Alemayehu said, giving only his first name for his security. “I wish the war ends before it moves to the capital, that’s my prayer to God,” he said, adding that he opposes the Tigray fighters. With the government statements and the new state of emergency, ethnic Tigrayans in the capital told the AP they were hiding in their homes as authorities carried out house-to-house searches and stopped people on the streets to check identity cards, which everyone must now carry. One lawyer, speaking on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, estimated that thousands have been detained this week, citing conversations with “many people from the four corners of the city.” He said Tigrayan lawyers like him were powerless to help because of their ethnicity. “Our only hope now is the (Tigray forces),” said one young woman, Rahel, whose husband was detained on Tuesday while going to work as a merchant but has not been charged. “They might not save us, to be honest. I’ve already given up on my life, but if our families can be saved, I think that’s enough.” Another Tigrayan, Yared, said his brother, a businessman, was detained on Monday, and when he went to the police station, he saw dozens of other Tigrayans. “It’s crazy, my friends in Addis, non-Tigrayans, are calling me and telling me not to leave the house,” Yared said. “They go through your phone, and if you have some material about the Tigray war that would be suggesting supporting the war, they would just detain you,” he said. “The past four days have been the worst by far, the scope at which they’re detaining people, it’s just terrorizing. We don’t feel safe in our homes anymore.” © copyright 2021 The Associated Press

By Caitlin Dickerson On Feb. 20, a young woman named Mirian arrived at the Texas border carrying her 18-month-old son. They had fled their home in Honduras through a cloud of tear gas, she told border agents, and needed protection from the political violence there. She had hoped she and her son would find refuge together. Instead, the agents ordered her to place her son in the back seat of a government vehicle, she said later in a sworn declaration to a federal court. They both cried as the boy was driven away. For months, members of Congress have been demanding answers about how many families are being separated as they are processed at stations along the southwest border, in part because the Trump administration has in the past said it was considering taking children from their parents as a way to deter migrants from coming here. Officials have repeatedly declined to provide data on how many families have been separated, but suggested that the number was relatively low. But new data reviewed by The New York Times shows that more than 700 children have been taken from adults claiming to be their parents since October, including more than 100 children under the age of 4. The data was prepared by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, a division of the Department of Health and Human Services that takes custody of children who have been removed from migrant parents. Senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security, which processes migrants at the border, initially denied that the numbers were so high. But after they were confirmed to The Times by three federal officials who work closely with these cases, a spokesman for the health and human services department on Friday acknowledged in a statement that there were “approximately 700.” Homeland security officials said the agency does not separate families at the border for deterrence purposes. “As required by law, D.H.S. must protect the best interests of minor children crossing our borders, and occasionally this results in separating children from an adult they are traveling with if we cannot ascertain the parental relationship, or if we think the child is otherwise in danger,” a spokesman for the agency said in a statement. But Trump administration officials have suggested publicly in the past that they were, indeed, considering a deterrence policy. Last year, John F. Kelly, President Trump’s chief of staff, floated the idea while he was serving as homeland security secretary. If approved, the plan would have closed detention facilities that are designed to house families and replaced them with separate shelters for adults and children. The White House supported the move and convened a group of officials from several federal agencies to consider its merits. But the Department of Homeland Security has said the policy was never adopted. Children removed from their families are taken to shelters run by nongovernmental organizations. There, workers seek to identify a relative or guardian in the United States who can take over the child’s care. But if no such adult is available, the children can languish in custody indefinitely. Operators of these facilities say they are often unable to locate the parents of separated children because the children arrive without proper records. A woman was reunited with her 7-year-old daughter in Chicago in March after they had been separated for four months in immigration detention. Credit Hope Hall/Aclu Once a child has entered the shelter system, there is no firm process to determine whether they have been separated from someone who was legitimately their parent, or for reuniting parents and children who had been mistakenly separated, said a Border Patrol official, who was not authorized to discuss the agency’s policies publicly. “The idea of punishing parents who are trying to save their children’s lives, and punishing children for being brought to safety by their parents by separating them, is fundamentally cruel and un-American,” said Michelle Brané, director of the Migrant Rights and Justice program at the Women’s Refugee Commission, an advocacy group that conducts interviews and monitoring at immigration detention centers, including those that house children. “It really to me is just a horrific ‘Sophie’s Choice’ for a mom.” Mirian has pinballed across Texas, held at various times in three other detention centers. She is part of a lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union on behalf of many immigrant parents seeking to prohibit family separations at the border. Her son’s name, along with Mirian’s surname, are being withheld for their safety. But in a declaration she filed in that case, she said she was never told why her son was being taken away from her. Since February, the only word she has received about him has come from a case manager at the facility in San Antonio where he is being held. Her son asked about her and “cried all the time” in the days after he arrived at the facility, the case worker said, adding that the boy had developed an ear infection and a cough. “I had no idea that I would be separated from my child for seeking help,” Mirian said in her sworn statement. “I am so anxious to be reunited with him.” Protecting children at the border is complicated because there have, indeed, been instances of fraud. Tens of thousands of migrants arrive there every year, and those with children in tow are often released into the United States more quickly than adults who come alone, because of restrictions on the amount of time that minors can be held in custody. Some migrants have admitted they brought their children not only to remove them from danger in such places as Central America and Africa, but because they believed it would cause the authorities to release them from custody sooner. Others have admitted to posing falsely with children who are not their own, and Border Patrol officials say that such instances of fraud are increasing. As the debate carries on, pressure from the White House to enact a separation policy has continued. In conversations this month with Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, Mr. Trump has repeatedly expressed frustration that the agency has not been aggressive enough in policing the border, according to a person at the White House who is familiar with the discussions. Officials presented Mr. Trump with a list of proposals, including the plan to routinely separate immigrant adults from their children. The president urged Ms. Nielsen to move forward with the policies, the person said. But even groups that support stricter immigration policies have stopped short of endorsing a family separation policy. Jessica M. Vaughan, the director of policy studies for the Center for Immigration Studies, one such group, said that family separation should only be used as a “last resort.” However, she said that some migrants were using children as “human shields” in order to get out of immigration custody faster. “It makes no sense at all for the government to just accept these attempts at fraud,” Ms. Vaughan said. “If it appears that the child is being used in this way, it is in the best interest of the child to be kept separately from the parent, for the parent to be prosecuted, because it’s a crime and it’s one that has to be deterred and prosecuted.” Ron Nixon and Michael D. Shear contributed reporting. (c) 2018 The New York Times https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/20/us/immigrant-children-separation-ice.html?smid=fb-nytimes&smtyp=cur

Associated Press | The Guardian Mon 1 Nov 2021, 02.29 EDT Eight pro-democracy activists including the prominent businessman had been charged under national security laws Democracy advocate Jimmy Lai Photograph: Vincent Yu/AP The trial of eight pro-democracy activists, including Apple Daily newspaper founder Jimmy Lai, who were charged over their roles in an unauthorised Tiananmen vigil last year began on Monday. Lai and the seven others, including Lee Cheuk-yan, the former chairman of the now defunct Hong Kong Alliance in Support of Patriotic Democratic Movements of China, face charges of organising, participating and inciting others to take part in the unauthorised candlelight vigil commemorating the bloody 1989 crackdown on protesters in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. The trial for eight pro-democracy activists, including Lee Cheuk-Yan (centre) began on Monday. They are charged with inciting others to take part in last year’s unauthorised Tiananmen vigil, amid a crackdown on political dissent in Hong Kong. Photograph: Kin Cheung/AP On Monday five of the group, including Lee, pleaded guilty, according to the South China Morning Post. Lai, activist Gwyneth Ho, and former alliance vice-chair, Chow Hang-tun, pleaded not guilty. Chow told the court she understood “every word being uttered” in the reading of the charges against her, “but I do not understand why it constitutes an offence”. “That is why I plead not guilty,” she said. The eight previously pleaded not guilty. The trial is expected to last 10 days. Police last year banned the annual vigil for the first time in three decades, citing public health risks from the coronavirus pandemic. Critics believe the ban is part of the crackdown on opposition in the semi-autonomous Chinese territory after months of anti-government protests in 2019. More than a dozen activists turned up at the 4 June vigil in 2020 despite the ban, and thousands followed suit, breaking through barriers in spite of police warnings. They set up around Victoria Park to light candles and sing songs. Police later arrested and charged 26 activists over the vigil, including members of the Hong Kong Alliance that organises the annual vigil. The Hong Kong Alliance disbanded in September, amid accusations from the government that the organisation was working for foreign interests. Leaders of the alliance categorically denied the accusations. Of the 26 activists arrested, 16 of them including prominent Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong have pleaded guilty and were handed jail sentences ranging between four and 10 months. Three were given suspended sentences. Two other activists in the case, Nathan Law and Sunny Cheung, have fled the city. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

A supporter holds a banner showing the Bosnian Serb member of the tripartite Presidency of Bosnia Milorad Dodik that reads: "Never Again!" during a protest against the government in Banja Luka, in the Serb-dominated part of Bosnia, in October. Radivoje Pavicic/AP file photo He was once described in Washington as an anti-nationalist "breath of fresh air" in the murderous, genocide-scarred Balkan morass of ethnically divided Bosnia. How times change. This week Bosnian Serb political leader Milorad Dodik, now a genocide-denying secessionist, was slapped with new U.S. sanctions for alleged corruption. He responded in typical style, saying the days when the United States and other Western democracies "modeled Bosnia to their taste" are long gone. Accusations he corruptly amassed vast wealth for himself, his relatives and associates, are "monstrous lies," Dodik claimed. "The U.S. is a great power, but they are also big liars," he said. Dodik maintains the West is punishing him for championing the rights of ethnic Serbs in Bosnia — a dysfunctional country of 3.3 million that's never truly recovered from a fratricidal war in the 1990s that became a byname for ethnic cleansing and genocide. The sanctions, Dodik boasted, will just help the Serbs break free of Bosnia into the eager embrace of their "true friends" — Russia, China, the champions of illiberal democracy within the European Union, and neighboring Serbia. The 63-year-old political science graduate first came to prominence in 1998, as a moderate reformist narrowly elected regional prime minister of Republika Srpska, one of Bosnia's two postwar administrative units. NATO-led peacekeepers surrounded key buildings held by police loyal to Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic — later convicted of wartime genocide and crimes against humanity — to ensure Dodik could take control. Shortly after he was elected regional prime minister of Republika Srpska, one of Bosnia's two postwar administrative units, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said she "felt like a breath of fresh air had blown through the room." Al Behrman/AP file photo Shortly after, then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright met him and "felt like a breath of fresh air had blown through the room," according to her spokesman at the time. But in 2001, after losing a presidential election in Republika Srpska, Dodik changed course, refashioning himself as a nationalist hardliner and secessionist. He gradually gained control of all levels of Republika Srpska's government, and in 2009 managed to expel foreign judges and prosecutors from Bosnia's court system — amid reports he was under investigation for corruption and erosion of democracy. The 1995, U.S.-brokered Dayton Peace Accords, which ended Bosnia's more than 3 1/2 years of bloodshed, established two separate governing entities — Republika Srpska and one dominated by mostly Muslim Bosniaks, over half of Bosnia's population, and Catholic Croats. They're linked by shared, state-wide institutions, and all actions at a national level require consensus from all three ethnic groups. In the immediate postwar years, the international community kept Bosnia on a reform course, pressuring its leaders to abandon hate speech and accept painful compromises in return for financial and other support. But over a decade ago the international focus shifted to other global crises. Only 600 of the 60,000 international peacekeepers deployed in 1995 now remain. Bosnia was mostly left to its own devices, exposed to the growing influence of Russia, China and Turkey, and to widespread corruption and economic decline. Over the years, Dodik weathered countless accusations by national and international rights and media freedom groups of curbing media independence and popularizing vile rhetoric against political opponents of all ethnic stripes. He notoriously defended the 2008 approval, by a regional development bank, of a favorable $2 million loan to a firm co-owned by his son, saying that "was better than letting (the young man) get addicted to drugs." His family's net worth is hard to estimate, but in 2019 Dodik reported annual income and assets worth over 1.2 million euros ($1.36 million), including an 800,000-euro villa in Serbia's capital, Belgrade. Dodik says claims about his children's wealth are maliciously overblown by his political opponents. One of the fiercest of them, Drasko Stanivukovic, mayor of Banja Luka, Republika Srpska's biggest city, retorted that the family has stakes in at least 70 companies — including ones owned by their "relatives, friends and business associates." Dodik regularly downplays the 1995 massacre, by Bosnian Serbs, of over 8,000 Bosniak men and boys in the eastern enclave of Srebrenica, even dismissing it as "a fabricated myth." In recent months he has repeatedly voiced hope that Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Hungary's populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban will serve as his bulwark against the "tyranny" of Western democracies, warmly welcoming Orban's December contention that the EU's main challenge on Bosnia is "how to manage the security of a state in which 2 million Muslims live." After serving for 15 years as Republika Srpska's president or prime minister, in the fall of 2019 Dodik was elected to Bosnia's multi-ethnic presidency that also includes a Bosniak and a Croat official. Last summer, with tacit support from Moscow and Belgrade, Dodik spearheaded the Serb walkout from Bosnia's multi-ethnic institutions — thus blocking decision-making — to protest the international High Representative in Bosnia's move to outlaw genocide denial. Dodik and Serb officials under his control say they will no longer respect decisions by the High Representative, a post created under the Dayton agreement with broad powers, including to impose laws or dismiss officials who undermine the fragile postwar ethnic balance. This winter, Dodik intensified his secessionist campaign, pledging to form an exclusively Serb army, judiciary and tax system. He described Bosniaks as "second-rate people" and "treacherous converts" who sold their "original (Orthodox Christian faith) for dinner." U.S., British, German and other western officials recently started accusing Dodik of stoking ethnic tensions to distract from his and his cronies' corrupt practices. But Dodik says sanctions won't discourage him from "fighting for the rights of Republika Srpska." "Regardless of what they do, they cannot stop me," he said. © 2022 npr