Fears Syrian government carrying out ‘degrading’ exhumations to erase identities and forensic evidence By Bethan McKernan and Ahmad Haj Hamdo Young people inspect the damage in a cemetery after a reported barrel bomb attack by Syrian government forces in Aleppo, Syria, in April 2015. Photograph: Zein Al-Rifai/AFP/Getty Images Fadwa Hallak’s memory of what happened the day her husband died is blurry. Ibrahim Rahawi was killed by shrapnel in either an airstrike or missile attack in 2015 during the siege of Aleppo – one of the bloodiest and most brutal chapters of Syria’s long war. Hallak and her two young children could not even mourn properly. Afraid of making themselves targets for more airstrikes carried out by the Syrian government and its Russian allies, the family decided not to erect traditional mourning tents to mark Rahawi’s death passing. “We lost the most important thing in our lives when we lost him, and after his death life became even harder,” she said. Hallak’s brother Ahmad added: “The condolences were limited to tributes on social media when Ibrahim died. But even then he wasn’t safe, we weren’t safe. The regime even bombed the garden we buried him in several times.” Ten years after the war began, what remains of the opposition, as well as jihadist groups, are contained to Syria’s north-west. Bashar al-Assad is back in control of most of the country, including Aleppo, but his is the ultimate pyrrhic victory. More than half of the city – once the jewel of Syria – still lies in ruins. Rebuilding remains a fantasy for those living under regime rule: the collapse of the Syrian lira has left more than 80% of the population living in poverty, unable to afford bread or oil for electricity generators. Even as the broken city struggles to come back to life, informal graveyards where thousands of civilians like Rahawi are buried remain, silent testimony to the crimes against humanity Aleppo suffered. But perhaps not for much longer. An estimated 31,000 people died by the time the regime retook east Aleppo in December 2016. Over four years, barrel bombs, cluster munitions and chemical weapons were dropped on civilians living in rebel-held parts of the city. Members of the Syria Civil Defence rescue children after an airstrike in al-Shaar neighbourhood of Aleppo in June 2014. Photograph: Sultan Kitaz/Reuters With communities cut off from each other by frontlines and roadblocks, and existing graveyards full, eventually there was nowhere left to bury loved ones killed in the violence. Parks, playgrounds, gardens – as Rahawi’s family found out, any usable space behind the siege line ended up becoming shallow and hastily dug resting places for the dead, many with only token headstone markers. Aleppo’s city council recently announced that bodies in one of the biggest of these makeshift graveyards, in a park next to the Salah al-Din mosque, will be relocated to a large state cemetery on the outskirts of the city. The statement called on people with relatives buried there to report to officials to help with the excavations and transfer of graves, warning that otherwise remains could be moved without notice. Displaced communities who cannot return to the city fear their loved ones’ bodies will not be identified correctly in the move, and even those still in Aleppo are afraid to draw the attention of Assad’s notorious security services, which are overseeing the process. Transferring the graves also has serious implications for the collection of forensic evidence for future war crimes investigations. “We know exactly where Ibrahim’s grave is. It’s right by the garden entrance. But it doesn’t have a headstone, so government workers won’t know who he is,” said Ahmad Hallak, who moved with the rest of the extended family to Syria’s north-west, now the last opposition-held province, after Aleppo fell to the regime. “It is a crime on top of all the other crimes committed against us.” “The news was such a shock. It was like the tragedy of Ibrahim’s death all over again,” Fadwa Hallak said. “We haven’t told the children yet. We haven’t figured out the right way to tell them.” According to Dr Mohamed Kaheel, who directed the Aleppo opposition’s forensic medicine commission before being displaced himself, there are at least 5,000 irregular graves, some of which have more than one occupant, dotted around the city. Many, like Rahawi, did not receive proper funerals when they died. The siege also meant stone and cement for more permanent graves was hard to come by, even if families could still afford it. The Aleppo authorities first began to relocate bodies from the city’s informal cemeteries in 2018, at the same time Assad announced efforts to rebuild the city had begun, but little progress was made on either front. Identifying and documenting the inhabitants of all of the irregular grave sites in particular proved to be a serious challenge which was soon abandoned. This time around, however, it appears the city council may be paying less attention to the dignity of the dead: unverified pictures circulated widely on social media show skulls and bones lying haphazardly among red soil, and graveyards left with earth and makeshift headstones disturbed. “The remains are exhumed in a degrading manner, sometimes not even completely, and transported in ways not worthy of respect for the dead. Relatives feel like it is a new violation,” said Kaheel. “The purpose of transferring the graves is not for any real reason: it’s so that in the future, when criminal investigations will be carried out, a lot of important forensic evidence is lost, and the families of the deceased will never know the full truth about why and how their children died.” Kaheel says he is willing to provide all the documentation he took with him when he left Aleppo to help with the process, and has asked UN bodies and the Red Crescent to act as a neutral supervisor in the transfer, but his concerns have not been heard. He now worries that the identities of up to 90% of Aleppo’s war dead will be lost. Graveyards have emerged as a highly sensitive and politicised issue in Syria’s war: the opposition has accused the regime of exhuming graves after the 2013 Ghouta chemical attack, and Homs’ city council embarked on a similar programme to Aleppo in 2018. Most recently, evidence emerged that the Syrian army’s feared Fourth Division had razed an opposition cemetery in southern Deraa province. “The importance of burial sites and other cultural heritage should not be underestimated … In addition to other major impediments to their return, many Syrians cite a growing sense of dissociation from their communities of origin,” according to a recent report from the Center for Operational Analysis and Research, a thinktank focused on Syria and Lebanon. “That the government of Syria may weaponise burial sites to punish opposition communities, obliterate the memory of the opposition, and efface any traces of resistance should be among the foremost concerns of donor-funded projects focusing on rehabilitation in conflict-affected areas like western Aleppo.” The Hallaks, for their part, are still trying to rescue Rahawi’s remains with the help of friends still in the city: Fadwa’s aim is to return one day with her children to visit their father. “We left Aleppo but it is still in our hearts,” her brother said. “But returning is out of the question while Assad remains.” © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

Originally published by AP News, on January 22, 2023 Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of North Macedonia, Bujar Osmani, right, shakes hands with his Bulgarian counterpart Nikolay Milkov in front of the hospital where Hristian Pendikov, the secretary of the Bulgarian cultural club in Ohrid, is hospitalised, Sunday, Jan. 22, 2023, Sofia, Bulgaria. The foreign ministers of Bulgaria and North Macedonia condemned on Sunday the assault on a Macedonian citizen who identifies himself as Bulgarian. (AP Photo/Valentina Petrova) SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — The foreign ministers of Bulgaria and North Macedonia paid a joint visit to a hospital Sunday where a North Macedonian citizen who identifies as Bulgarian is being treated after he was severely assaulted. Hristiyan Pendikov, an employee of a Bulgarian cultural center in Ohrid, North Macedonia, was transported to Sofia on a Bulgarian government plane with a severe brain injury, after he was attacked and beaten on Thursday. Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nikolay Milkov told reporters his country will not give up the protection of the rights of its community in North Macedonia. “Bulgaria firmly insists that the perpetrators of this act and other similar acts be punished with the severity of the law so that this atmosphere of impunity, which breeds new and renewed violence, comes to an end,” Milkov said. North Macedonia’s foreign minister, Bujar Osmani, said that his country “will do everything to make sure there is zero tolerance for violence as a response to any problems, especially the interethnic ones.” He added that his government will not allow anyone to insult the Bulgarian community there and stressed that the cycle of provocations and violence on both sides must be broken. Responding to a question about the three perpetrators of the assault, Osmani said they have been identified, one of them has been detained for 30 days and will be brought to justice, while the other two are still at large. The incident comes just weeks after Bulgaria requested that the prosecution of hate crimes against ethnic Bulgarians in North Macedonia become part of its accession negotiations with the EU. Sofia’s request followed the attacks on two Bulgarian cultural centers in North Macedonia including the one in Ohrid. Last month, the two Balkan neighbors agreed to avoid bilateral tensions, including hate speech and discrimination, which they believe are triggered by third countries. Although Russia was not mentioned, the permanent instability in the region is widely assumed to play into the hands of the Kremlin. Relations between Bulgaria and North Macedonia are poor, largely due to disagreements over regional history and culture that led Bulgaria to block its neighbor’s bid to join the European Union for a long time. Bulgaria lifted its veto last July, allowing North Macedonia to start EU accession negotiations, under EU-negotiated conditions that include adding the Bulgarians as a national ethnicity, along with Albanians, Turks and others, in the Macedonian constitution. All contents © copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

FILE – Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko speak during their meeting at the Bocharov Ruchei residence in the resort city of Sochi, Russia, Friday, June 9, 2023. Following an armed rebellion by a mercenary group in Russia, tensions are rising in and around neighboring Belarus, where the exiled leader of the force and some of its fighters are settling in. While authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko has offered them refuge, that isn’t sitting well with the Belarusian opposition and guerrilla activists, who call Wagner fighters a threat to the country. (Gavriil Grigorov, Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File) BY YURAS KARMANAU TALLINN, Estonia (AP) — The Belarus Red Cross has sparked international outrage after its chief told Belarusian state television that the organization is actively involved in bringing Ukrainian children from Russian-occupied areas to Belarus. Both Ukraine and the Belarusian opposition have decried the transfer as unlawful deportations, and there have been calls for international war crimes charges for the authoritarian Belarus leader, similar to the charges against Russian President Vladimir Putin. The actions of the Belarus Red Cross drew stern criticism from the International Federation of Red and Red Crescent Societies. Belarus has been Moscow’s closest ally since Russia’s invasion started in February 2022, with its leader Alexander Lukashenko allowing the Kremlin to use Belarusian territory to send troops and weapons into Ukraine. Lukashenko has also welcomed a Russian military presence in Belarus and the deployment of Russia’s tactical nuclear weapons there. Belarusian opposition figures have accused Lukashenko of facilitating the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children to Belarus, allegations Minsk angrily rejected. A report aired Wednesday by the state Belarus 1 TV channel showed Dzmitry Shautsou, the head of the Belarus Red Cross, visiting the Russian-held Ukrainian city of Lysychansk in the Luhansk region. In the footage, he says the organization was actively involved in bringing Ukrainian children to Belarus for “health improvement” purposes. “The Belarus Red Cross has taken — and is taking, and will be taking — an active part in it,” Shautsou said. Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba urged the International Criminal Court “to issue an arrest warrant” for Shautsou, saying that he “has publicly confessed to the crime of unlawful deportation of children from occupied areas of Ukraine.” The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, which brings together 191 national organizations, said it contacted the Belarus Red Cross to express its “grave concern” and to advise it to “stop any similar activity in the future.” Last month, Belarusian opposition activist Pavel Latushka said he has provided the ICC with material allegedly detailing the forced transfer of 2,100 Ukrainian children from at least 15 Russia-occupied Ukrainian cities to Belarus with Lukashenko’s approval. In May, the Ukrainian Prosecutor General’s office announced an investigation into the forced transfers. Belarusian authorities have confirmed hosting more than 1,000 children, aged 6-15, from Russian-held parts of Ukraine for health reasons. The first group of 350 children arrived in April, officials said, without providing further details. Shautsou from the Belarus Red Cross said he was working with a state-backed charity foundation to make “the children forget the horrors of the war and just rest, feel that there’s an island of happiness.” The Belarus Red Cross is the biggest humanitarian organization in Belarus and is part of the international Red Cross movement. The Geneva-based umbrella organization — the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies — said it had learned about Shautsou’s visit to Donbas through the media. it said it referred the issue to its compliance committee, which investigates any “alleged breaches of integrity.” “These actions risk damaging the trust of our work in supporting communities in need, whoever they are, and whichever side of the frontlines they are on,” the federation said in a statement sent to The Associated Press. It stressed that the Belarus Red Cross chief doesn’t speak on behalf of the federation “and his statements do not represent our views.” Latushka, who used to be a top official in Lukashenko’s government, insists that taking Ukrainian children to Belarus is illegal and violates international norms. He has called on the ICC to launch a probe as some of those “children are under the guardianship of the Ukrainian state, including orphans, children with disabilities and those whose parents were stripped of parental rights.” “We have evidence that after being taken Belarus, some Ukrainian children ended up in Russia, which must become a subject of an international probe,” Latushka told the AP, speaking over the phone. In March, the ICC issued warrants for both Putin and his commissioner for children’s rights, Maria Lvova-Belova. Judges in The Hague said they found “reasonable grounds to believe” that the two were responsible for the war crimes of unlawful deportation of children and unlawful transfer of children from occupied areas of Ukraine to Russia. Moscow has angrily rejected the move. European Parliament members on Tuesday called on the ICC “to consider a similar arrest warrant” for Lukashenkо. Associated Press writer Jamey Keaten in Geneva contributed to this report. © 2023 Associated Press

Relatives of victims of alleged war crimes in military-run Myanmar seek justice in Philippines By Jim Gomez Burmese relatives of victims of deadly attacks by their government's military hold slogans after filing a criminal complaint against Myanmar's top generals at the Department of Justice in Manila, Philippines on Wednesday Oct. 25, 2023. Relatives of victims of alleged war crimes committed by Myanmar’s military filed a criminal complaint in the Philippines against their nation’s ruling generals in a desperate attempt to test whether such a case could succeed outside the violence-wracked country.(AP Photo/Aaron Favila) MANILA, Philippines (AP) — Relatives of victims of alleged war crimes committed by Myanmar’s military filed a criminal complaint in the Philippines against their nation’s ruling generals as they increasingly seek to hold them accountable in courts outside the violence-wracked country. Human rights lawyers representing five Myanmar nationals, who filed the joint complaint before the Department of Justice, contend that a 2009 Philippine law that promotes human rights obligates the Philippines to prosecute war crimes committed elsewhere in the world under the principle of universal jurisdiction. Those named in the complaint are Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, the head of Myanmar’s ruling military council, eight of his military commanders and a state minister. Myanmar and the Philippines are both members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a conservative 10-nation bloc that has a policy of not intervening in each other’s domestic affairs. Critics say such an approach has allowed human rights atrocities to persist in the region. Philippine government prosecutors have 90 days to approve or dismiss the complaint. The legal effort underscores the desperation of many in Myanmar, where at least 4,155 people have been killed and more than 19,600 others remain in detention, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a group that keeps detailed tallies of arrests and casualties since the military overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi’s elected government in February 2021. Myanmar has been wracked by civil strife since then, with many opponents of military rule taking up arms and large parts of the country embroiled in bloody conflict. A group of investigators established by the United Nations said in August it found strong evidence that the army and affiliated militias indiscriminately and disproportionately targeted civilians with bombs, carried out mass executions of people detained during operations and large-scale burning of civilian houses. It said it is collecting evidence that can be used in future prosecutions of those responsible. The actions of Myanmar’s generals also are under investigation by the International Criminal Court and in a genocide case at the International Court of Justice, also known as the World Court. In November 2021, courts in Argentina agreed to investigate allegations of genocide and crimes against humanity against senior Myanmar officials under the universal jurisdiction principle. “My father and his friend were murdered,” said Zing Raltu, one of the complainants, who wept during a news conference in Manila. “We will never get justice through the Burmese courts. We pray that the Philippines will hear our cry for help.” Myanmar is also known as Burma. The 47-year-old mother of two, who later escaped to Canada, said army troops gunned down her father, a Christian community leader, and his friend two years ago while attempting to deliver medicine to displaced villagers in Myanmar’s western Chin state. Another complainant, Salai Za Uk Ling, said at least 350 people had been killed in army artillery bombardments and airstrikes in Chin, the only predominantly Christian state in Buddhist Myanmar where armed struggle for greater autonomy has raged for decades. He said more than 2,000 houses and buildings, including about 60 Christian churches, had been destroyed since the army seized power and attacks intensified. “Justice is something we cannot achieve inside the country because the military junta ruling the country does not allow for any kind of democratic process,” said Ling, who also fled from Myanmar. “There is no rule of law and they perpetuate human rights abuses with complete impunity.” One of the Philippine lawyers for the complainants, Gilbert Andres, said that by accepting the case, the Philippines would showcase its democratic tradition by helping fight military impunity in Myanmar. “This is an opportunity for the Philippines to show the world a difference face. A Philippines, which is rooted in the rule of law, in decency, in democracy and in Christian values,” said Chris Gunnes of the Myanmar Accountability Project, a London-based rights group helping victims of violence in Myanmar get justice. Human rights groups have also accused former President Rodrigo Duterte of encouraging thousands of killings of suspected drug dealers under his brutal police-enforced crackdown. Duterte, whose turbulent six-year term ended in 2022, denied ordering extrajudicial killings but had openly threatened suspects with death. The killings are being investigated by the International Criminal Court as a possible crime against humanity. ___ Associated Press journalists Joeal Calupitan and Aaron Favila contributed to this report. JIM GOMEZ Gomez is The AP Chief Correspondent in the Philippines. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By MAGGIE HYDE This photo provided by Organization for the General Coordination of Camps for Displaced and Refugees, smoke rises from Abu Zar camp for displaced persons in West Darfur, Sudan, on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. The death toll from tribal violence in Sudan’s Darfur region climbed as sporadic clashes continued on Tuesday, a local medical group and aid worker said. The violence poses a challenge to efforts by Sudan’s transitional government to end decades-long rebellions in areas like Darfur, where conflict often falls along ethnic lines. (Organization for the General Coordination of Camps for Displaced and Refugees via AP) CAIRO (AP) — The death toll from tribal violence in Sudan’s Darfur region climbed to at least 56 as sporadic clashes continued on Tuesday, the U.N. said. The violence poses a challenge to efforts by Sudan’s transitional government to end decades-long rebellions in areas like Darfur, where conflict often falls along ethnic lines. The latest clashes grew out of a shooting on Saturday that killed two people from the Masalit tribe in a camp for displaced people in Genena, the capital of West Darfur province, according to the U.N. humanitarian affairs agency. Two others from the Masalit tribe were wounded in that shooting, it said. Fighting ensued between the Rizeigat and the Masalit tribes, with both mobilizing armed men. Gunfire could still be heard in Genena late Monday, the U.N. said. Authorities have declared a state of emergency in West Darfur. The Sudanese doctors’ committee in West Darfur, said that at least 132 people were wounded in the clashes, with some of them needing to be evacuated to the capital, Khartoum, for more advanced medical care. It also said that medical workers were facing difficulties in transporting the wounded due to the presence of armed groups. Adam Regal, a spokesman for a local organization that helps run refugee camps in Darfur, said there were sporadic clashes on Tuesday, after relative calm overnight. The U.N. also said shooting was heard Tuesday across Genena, which suffered power outages after the local power plant was destroyed in the clashes. The U.N. said Monday that all humanitarian activities were suspended as roads around the southern part of Genena were blocked. It said more than 700,000 people have been affected by the clashes, since Genena serves as a hub for aid delivery to the conflict-wrecked region. Violence in Darfur often falls along religious and ethnic lines, with tribes claiming Arab heritage, like the Rizeigat, fighting with those of African descent, such as the Masalit. Earlier this year, tribal violence in West Darfur and South Darfur provinces killed around 470 people. It also displaced more than 120,000 people, mostly women and children, including at least 4,300 who crossed into neighboring Chad, according to the U.N. Sudan is on a fragile path to democracy after a popular uprising led the military to overthrow longtime autocratic President Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. A military-civilian government now rules the country. The Darfur conflict broke out when rebels from the territory’s ethnic central and sub-Saharan African community launched an insurgency in 2003, complaining of oppression by the Arab-dominated government in the capital Khartoum. Al-Bashir’s government responded with a scorched-earth campaign of aerial bombings and unleashed militias known as janjaweed who are accused of mass killings and rapes. Up to 300,000 people were killed and 2.7 million were driven from their homes. The International Criminal Court charged al-Bashir, who has been in jail in Khartoum since his 2019 ouster, with war crimes and genocide for allegedly masterminding the campaign of attacks in Darfur. © Copyright 2021 The Associated Press

By Samya Kullab and Illia Novikov MYKOLAIV, Ukraine (AP) — They recognized the TV repairman. The residents of Oleshky in Russian-occupied southern Ukraine could not identify many of those they buried after a catastrophic dam collapse in June sent water coursing through their homes and shattered their lives. The bodies were too bloated and discolored, volunteer rescuers and health workers said. They described seeing faces that resembled rubber masks, frozen in that last frenzied gasp for air. But to those secretly keeping count of the drowned, Yurii Bilyi was no stranger. The cheerful 56-year-old was a town fixture. He had serviced many homes and spent his days working from a shop just across the street from the churchyard where he was buried, in a hurriedly dug mass grave, The Associated Press has learned. Anastasiia Bila, his daughter, remembers his last words clearly over the unstable phone connection. “Nastya,” he affectionately called her, hoping to soothe her anxieties as flood waters rose quickly, inundating 600 square kilometers (230 square miles), submerging entire towns and villages along the banks of the Dnipro River, the majority in Russian-occupied areas. “I’ve seen worse under occupation.” Over six months since the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region, an AP investigation has found Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war. Russian authorities took control of the issuance of death certificates, immediately removing bodies not claimed by family, and preventing local health workers and volunteers from dealing with the dead, threatening them when they defied orders. “The scale of this tragedy, not just Russia, but even Ukraine doesn’t realize,” said Svitlana, a nurse who initially oversaw the process of collecting death certificates and later escaped to Ukrainian-controlled territory. “It’s a huge tragedy.” Russia, which didn’t respond to questions for this article, has said 59 people drowned in the territory it controls, roughly 408 square kilometers (160 square miles) of flooded areas. But in the Russian-occupied town of Oleshky alone, which Ukrainian military officials estimate had a population of 16,000 at the time of the flooding, the number is at least in the hundreds. An exact figure for the dead — in Oleshky, the occupied area’s most populous town before the war, and beyond — may never be known, even if Ukrainian forces retake the territory and are able to investigate on the ground. The AP spoke to three health workers who kept records of the dead in Oleshky, one volunteer who buried bodies and said she was later threatened by Russian police, and two Ukrainian informants passing intelligence from the area to the Ukrainian security service. According to their accounts, mass graves were dug, and unidentified bodies were taken away and never seen again. Nearly a dozen interviews were conducted with other residents, rescue volunteers and recent escapees from the area. The AP also gained access to a closed Telegram chat group of 3,000 Oleshky residents who posted about bodies lying on the streets, bodies collected by police and the many missing. Most spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity or, like Svitlana, on condition only their first names be used, fearing reprisal from Russia on family members still in occupied territory. Together, these accounts reveal a calculated attempt by Russian authorities to cover up the true cost of the dam collapse, which the AP has found was likely caused by Moscow. Residents of Oleshky fear their enduring traumas risk being forgotten as the war grinds on, and their beloved once idyllic home is gradually depopulated. Water flows over the collapsed Kakhovka Dam in Nova Kakhovka, in Russian-occupied Ukraine, June 7, 2023. (AP Photo, File) A TOWN ABANDONED The dam burst in the early hours of June 6, causing extensive flooding along the lower Dnipro River, submerging entire communities across the Ukraine-controlled right and Russian-occupied left banks in a matter of hours. At first, the Russian-appointed administration in Kherson told residents not to be alarmed. In a post on its official Telegram channel, it stressed the “situation is not critical.” So most went about their normal day — walking dogs, going to work, staying at home. Choices that would later prove fatal. By the afternoon the water levels were rising quickly, inundating two-story homes as the powerful current swept everything away. The elderly struggled to climb up to roofs, people clung to their chimneys waiting to be saved by local rescue crews, most of them civilians who owned boats. For the first three days of the floods occupation authorities were nowhere to be found, locals said, having apparently fled, despite initially reassuring residents. Conspicuously absent were police and prosecutors, both Russian-appointed officials authorized to deal with the deceased. Bodies were piling up and decaying in the summer heat, their stench wafted in the air. Wailing relatives approached the town’s medical workers, not knowing where to take the dead. “A lot of people drowned,” said Svitlana, the head nurse at the Oleshky District Multidisciplinary Hospital, the city’s main primary health center, which later transformed into a shelter for people forced out of their homes. The putrefaction of flesh caused many corpses to inflate. “People were floating around the city like balloons.” They needed to be buried. “We took the responsibility,” the nurse said. They had the authority to issue death certificates both under Ukrainian law and Russian rule. The health center functioned as a main hospital for Oleshky residents after Russia occupied the town in March 2022, soon after Russia invaded Ukraine. Health workers continued to receive salaries from Ukraine, deposited electronically into their bank accounts, a crucial link tying them to their homeland as the occupation’s draconian laws began to transform everything else before their eyes. Russian rubles replaced Ukrainian hryvnias in the market. Some residents accepted Russian passports to make life under occupation easier. Keeping record of the Ukrainian dead, largely caused by shelling before the floods, became a last vestige of Ukrainian control. For health workers in the hospital, it was a matter of national necessity. After occupation authorities forbade the issuance of death certificates in the Ukrainian language on Jan. 1, health workers continued to do so in secret to ensure the Ukrainian medical database was up to date in Kyiv, the capital. Residents were given two certificates, one to satisfy their new occupiers, and the other to keep moored to their homeland. Health workers told residents to hide the latter. The same procedure was followed immediately after the dam collapse. In total, around 15 death certificates were electronically sent during the first week after the flood to Svitlana Serdiukova, the health facility’s medical director in exile, who was keeping track of the registry remotely in government-controlled Ukraine. Svitlana, the nurse in Oleshky, was in direct contact with her during this time. The cause of death for all 15 was asphyxia by drowning. RUSSIA CERTIFIES THE DEAD Everything came to a halt on June 12. The Russian state emergency rescue service workers were back in Oleshky by the afternoon of June 9, and three days later, they began reasserting control. They brought large trucks and road-clearing equipment and offered to evacuate people first to Radensk, in Kherson region, and from there relocate them to Chelyabinsk and Tula in Russia. The residents refused to be taken that far, asking only to be taken to a dry patch in Oleshky. They were refused. Many stayed put. Russian authorities had strict orders for the hospital: Doctors were now forbidden from issuing death certificates for flood victims. They were still permitted to issue certificates for other causes of death, however. The new rule was issued verbally, said Svitlana and Yelena, a fellow nurse at the hospital. From that moment on, they said, flood victims would have to be referred for autopsies in facilities elsewhere in Kherson region, in Kalanchak, Skadovsk, and Henichesk, where doctors approved by occupation authorities would be in charge of issuing the certificates after conducting forensic examinations. Relatives could not bury their family members without the crucial document. Svitlana said she pressed the police for an official order proving the old policy in place since March had changed. They didn’t have it, and responded to her queries with threats, she said. “They said: ‘You will suffer the consequences for doing this.’ I said, ‘Alright, I am ready, and the doctor, too.’” The order deprived doctors of responsibility for flood victims. It also took away their ability to keep records of the dead for Kyiv. Serdiukova’s record-keeping could go no further. The last Ukrainian death certificate she received was on June 14. (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin) The police came to the hospital daily to make copies of death certificates issued by doctors, to ensure the rules were being obeyed. “You need to understand under what circumstances we worked there — under the FSB, police, prosecutors,” Svitlana said, using the acronym for the Russian security service that is the main successor agency of the Soviet-era KGB. The hospital referred just under 50 bodies to the new autopsy centers, but this doesn’t reflect the total dead. Residents were given specific numbers to call police who dispatched workers to collect discovered bodies, circumventing the hospital altogether. Family members were charged 10,000 rubles (equivalent to about $108) as a service fee, a hefty sum for many under occupation. Those who couldn’t afford that begged doctors to write a different cause of death, such as “heart attack,” so they could be buried quickly, both nurses said. Bodies without relatives to claim them were never seen again. The rescue service also patrolled Oleshky’s streets to collect the dead. On June 15, the hospital began giving vaccines against hepatitis A, dysentery and typhoid amid rising concerns of water-borne diseases. A worker from the town’s municipal “Pobut” service, responsible for cleaning streets, arrived visibly inebriated, Svitlana said. Svitlana told him to return when he was sober. But the man, in his early 40s, replied, he could not but drink after what he had seen. He had been ordered to dig out the dead from under their collapsed homes, he said, and bury them in mass graves. He recognized some. “The TV guy has drowned, the ginger, Yura,” he told her, referring to his hair color, according to Svitlana’s account. She knew him, too. A FATHER BURIED Anastasiia Bila, Yurii’s daughter, was in Lviv in western Ukraine, where she had fled before the invasion, when she spoke to her father for the last time. It was on June 6, at around 3 p.m. He had refused to evacuate their family home. He had two German shepherds he could not abandon. The connection was intermittent. She urged him to go to the second floor of the house if the water levels continued to rise. She tried to call again a half-hour later, but there was no reception. She made a plea on the private Telegram chat: “Bilyi Yurii Anatoliyovych, does not get in touch for a second day,” she wrote, adding his last known location, his home’s address: Dniprovska, 85. “Please help me find my father, maybe someone saw or knows his whereabouts, any information.” (AP Illustration/Peter Hamlin) On Sunday, five days later, Bila’s uncle was able to check on his brother by hiring a boat with his wife and son. They found Bilyi’s lifeless body. He told Anastasiia she could stop looking for her father. The body was buried in a mass grave in the yard of the Orthodox Pokrovska Church in the center of Oleshky. It was not possible to bury him and others anywhere else, as most places were still flooded, Bila said. Bilyi’s shop has been on the same street. The grave was doused with chlorine, Bila’s uncle, who witnessed the burial, recounted to her, she said. The priest prayed over the dead. Pobut workers, made up of local Ukrainians and acting on orders of occupation authorities, were responsible for collecting and burying the dead, according to health workers. They dug on a daily basis between June 10-20. The bodies were buried without coffins, not even bags to cover them. As the unit was acting on orders of occupation authorities, the decision to bury people in mass graves likely came from those authorities, health workers said. “The first bodies were buried in the city center (church), as 90% of the city was underwater,” said Bila. “Those bodies were not processed by a hospital, no autopsy or time of death, they were buried right away,” she said. Serdiukova later confirmed Bilyi was not in Ukraine’s registry. Officially he is considered a missing person. The exact number of bodies in the grave where Bilyi was buried is not known. Bila said her uncle did not tell her a precise number. He is living under occupation and did not respond to questions from the AP. But the hospital workers the AP interviewed estimate the number to be between 10 to 20. For a time, they tried to document who was buried where. They asked relatives to fill out forms detailing where bodies were found, how they were clothed, and later, which plot of which grave they were buried in. “The bodies were collected and buried in a mass grave to ensure they don’t start decomposing on city streets. After de-occupation there will be an exhumation. That’s when we’ll be able to investigate everything,” said Serdiukova. With the return of the Russian state emergency service, the process became more orderly. They arrived with trucks to carry bodies and a special rescue team. The fate of unidentified bodies, those without relatives to claim them, carted away by the Russian rescue service is also not known. Yelena, the nurse, approached a truck driver and asked him what would happen to them. He told her casually that the bodies with no relatives were buried in a mass grave, she said. Without caskets, in black bags. While several people interviewed referred to more mass graves than the one where Bila’s father was buried, the AP was unable to determine the precise number of such graves or how many people were buried in them. Bila considers herself lucky. At least her father is buried in the town he loved and refused to leave, even under the threat of death. Like many, she’s waiting for Ukraine to liberate the town. Then, she said, “I’ll be able to re-bury him in a proper cemetery.” THE THREAT The volunteer was not afraid of dead bodies. When the floods inundated her neighborhood in Oleshky, the sight of the floating dead did not stir her like it did the others. She had witnessed her best friend’s death when she was a teenager. “It’s the living that frighten me,” she said. On June 7, she, her husband and three neighbors went about evacuating trapped residents inside homes. By June 9, she witnessed dead bodies for the first time. They were “bloated and partially decomposed. They were floating. I often couldn’t recognize a person,” she said. Some were trapped under the sticky mud and had to be dug out. Those she knew, around 20, she took to the hospital with the hopes that relatives could claim the bodies. The rest were taken to another church in the city, blessed by a priest and buried in the town’s cemetery. She said she collected “more than 100” dead. FILE - Houses are seen underwater in the flooded town of Oleshky, Ukraine, June 10, 2023. An AP investigation has found that Russian occupation authorities vastly and deliberately undercounted the dead in one of the most devastating chapters of the 22-month war in Ukraine - the flooding that followed the catastrophic explosion that destroyed the Kakhovka Dam in the southern Kherson region. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File) The health workers estimate 200 to 300 people drowned in Oleshky. “I’m even afraid to say it out loud,” said Yelena. Many were older, unable to physically leave their homes or climb up to the roof, according to the accounts of rescue volunteers, residents who reported relatives dead, and health workers. “I buried them with my own hands,” the volunteer said. There was no money to hire diggers, she said, but people volunteered to do it for free. The graves were dug shallow, 1 meter (3 feet) deep. Any more and they would flood. The volunteer said she used bedsheets to cover them. When those ran out, she said, she found plastic film. Pits were dug for each person, but sometimes for up to three, the volunteer said. But this work was put to a stop when the Russian rescue service returned. Occupation authorities prohibited volunteers from collecting or burying the dead, telling them this was a job for the police only. Russian emergency service trucks arrived. Workers in white bodysuits put the dead in black bags, witnesses said. One driver told the volunteer they were destined for autopsies in Henichesk, an occupied port city about three hours away. Some days later, several police officers came to the volunteer’s home. She said they told her that an informant had told them she had been involved in burying people without death certificates. They interrogated her about why she had transported bodies, and how many she had recovered. She explained there was no other option, the bodies were smelling. They reprimanded her, telling her she did not have the right to collect bodies and eventually forced her to sign a document promising she would stop collecting the dead because she didn’t have the right qualifications, she said. “They told me that if I continue doing so they’ll ‘cage me’, That’s when I stopped,” the volunteer said. “I was scared for myself and my family.” The police visited her home almost every day after that, she said. “They had video journalists coming here to show how Russia helps here. They wanted to conceal the consequences of the dam explosion, so that people don’t talk about how many people suffered and how many needed help. They wanted to hide it,” she said. “That’s why they prohibited us.” WORLDS APART The evidence is still hidden in Oleshky: documents detailing the dead, plots where they are buried, photos, the death certificates collected in secret. “I hid all these papers behind closed doors so that no one knew,” Svitlana said. “With time everything is forgotten, some people might leave, their life will change, but with those papers — no one will forget. It was important to save them.” She is waiting for Ukraine to liberate the territory so the truth can come to light. She cleared her phone and left documents behind to keep them out of the hands of Russians who routinely stop Ukrainians leaving occupied areas and conduct thorough security checks. Residents, speaking to the AP after they returned to Ukraine-controlled territory, said most of the town is no longer habitable. Many remain missing since the floods, while battles inch closer. Ukrainian forces are reportedly advancing near the Krynky area, which lies 40 kilometers (24 miles) from Oleshky. There was a pause during the flooding from shelling, which resumed with ferocity, residents say. Both Russia and Ukraine have traded blame for bringing down the dam, but analysts agree that Russia had motive. The dam’s collapse occurred right as Ukraine launched what would develop into a disappointing counteroffensive. The flooding altered the geography of the Dnipro River, complicating plans set out by Ukrainian military leaders. Now, two-thirds of Oleshky is gone, entire districts and homes are destroyed, according to the accounts of half a dozen residents who left. “There are two Ukraines,” said Svitlana. “One is at war, in tragedy, many people are left homeless. And the other is living life well and flourishes.” In Oleshky, divisions between the townspeople have deepened, sometimes within members of a single family. The volunteer’s sister moved to Russia. Bila’s uncle and his family are estranged from hers because he harbors pro-Russian views, she said. Svitlana said colleagues still in Oleshky told her that her office was ransacked after she left in August. But she is confident the documents are still hidden. “It’s a durable book,” she said. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

At World Court, Israel to Confront Accusations of Genocide The New York Times Jan. 10, 2024 By Isabel Kershner and John Eligon Israel has categorically rejected the allegations being brought this week in the International Court of Justice by South Africa. The Peace Palace which houses the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands. South Africa has brought a case accusing Israel of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and is asking the court to order Israel to halt its attacks.Credit...Peter Dejong/Associated Press The International Court of Justice, the United Nations’ highest judicial body, will begin hearings this week in a case brought by South Africa that accuses Israel of committing genocide in Gaza. The hearings, the first step in a lengthy process should the case go forward, will be the first time that Israel has chosen to defend itself, in person, in such a setting, attesting to the gravity of the indictment and the high stakes for its international reputation and standing. Genocide, the term first employed by a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent in 1944 to describe the Nazis’ systematic murder of about six million Jews and others based on their ethnicity, is among the most serious crimes of which a country can be accused. In its submission to the court, South Africa cited that lawyer, Raphael Lemkin, expounding on the definition of genocide. South Africa, whose post-apartheid government has long supported the Palestinian cause, accused Israel of actions in Gaza against Hamas that are “genocidal in character.” It says Israel has killed Palestinian civilians, inflicted serious bodily and mental harm, and created for the residents of Gaza “conditions of life calculated to bring about their physical destruction.” More than 23,000 Palestinians have been killed over the past three months, a majority of them women and children, according to health officials in Gaza. And most of the enclave’s 2.2 million residents have been displaced since the war began, increasing the danger of disease and hunger, according to international organizations. The allegation, which Israel categorically denies, is laden with a particular significance in Israel, a country founded in the wake of the near wholesale destruction of European Jewry and that soon after became a haven for Jews expelled by the hundreds of thousands from Arab lands. Israel, a signatory to the 1948 international Convention against Genocide, is keeping the details of its defense for the court. But Israeli leaders say South Africa’s allegations pervert the meaning of genocide and the purpose of the convention. A more fitting case, they say, could be brought against Hamas, an internationally labeled terrorist organization that is the target of Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. A woman running to her home in Ashkelon, Israel, moments after a rocket siren was sounded during the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times “There’s nothing more atrocious and preposterous than this claim,” President Isaac Herzog of Israel said on Tuesday. “Actually, our enemies, the Hamas, in their charter, call for the destruction and annihilation of the state of Israel, the only nation state of the Jewish people.” Ayelet Shaked, a former Israeli justice minister, called the genocide allegations a “blood libel,” a reference to the centuries-old antisemitic trope that Jews kill non-Jewish babies to drink their blood, and asserted that the South African government was using the case to distract its own public from their country’s domestic problems. The International Court of Justice adjudicates disputes between states, and the initial hearings in the Israel case will take place on Thursday and Friday in The Hague. The case brings to a public forum the popular condemnation of Israel’s conduct of the war in much of the developing world. In December, the U.N. General Assembly passed a nonbinding resolution, put forth by the Arab Group and the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, calling for a cease-fire; and the Security Council passed a binding resolution, also promoted by Arab countries, calling for the delivery of more humanitarian aid. Mourners at the funeral of multiple members of one family, who were killed in an Israeli airstrike in Khan Younis in October. Israel’s offensive in the Gaza Strip has killed more than 22,000 Palestinians.Credit...Yousef Masoud for The New York Times South Africa filed an 84-page application to the court in December laying out its claims and citing statements by Israeli officials, which it says “constitute clear direct and public incitement to genocide, which has gone unchecked and unpunished.” Israelis have pointed out that some of the evidence South Africa cites is slim. Among the examples is a comment made in a television interview by an Israeli pop star, Eyal Golan, who said Israel should “erase” Gaza. In a statement released late Tuesday, Israel’s attorney general and state prosecutor said any calls for intentional harm to civilians may amount to the criminal offense of incitement. “Currently, several such cases are being examined by Israeli law enforcement authorities,” the statement added. South Africans have long empathized with the Palestinian people, equating their life in Gaza and under the occupation in the West Bank, with the oppression suffered under apartheid. Nelson Mandela gave explicit voice to this connection, saying in a 1997 speech, “We know too well that our freedom is incomplete without the freedom of the Palestinians.” That sentiment is driving South Africa’s case, said Ronald Lamola, the country’s justice minister, who will lead the delegation at The Hague. “We do believe that it is important for a state like South Africa that has experienced apartheid discrimination to stand firm with the people of Palestine,” he said in an interview. Israel, for its part, says it did not choose war but was forced into it after Hamas led a cross-border assault against it on Oct. 7. About 1,200 people, most of them civilians, were killed in the attack, according to the Israeli authorities, making it the deadliest single day in Israel’s 75-year history, and for Jews since the Holocaust. More than 100 of the 240 captives seized on Oct. 7 are still being held in Gaza. An Israeli family grieving during a funeral for victims of Hamas’s attack in October last year. Israel says it did not choose the path of war but the incursion by Hamas forced the country into conflict.Credit...Tamir Kalifa for The New York Times U.N. rapporteurs said in a statement on Monday that the Hamas-led rampage, which included murder, hostage-taking, rape and mutilation, could amount to war crimes and, given their scope, perhaps also crimes against humanity. A final ruling could take years, but as an emergency provision, South Africa is calling on the court to order Israel to immediately halt its military operation. “All that South Africa has to do to win a provisional measures order is convince the court that its charge of genocide is ‘plausible,’” said William Schabas, a former chairman of a U.N. commission of inquiry into Israel’s military operations in the Gaza Strip in 2014, who is a professor of international law at Middlesex University London. South Africa, Professor Schabas said, had so far only set out “a skeleton of its case,” and it would be months before it gathers all of its evidence. “Only then can we really assess the full strength of the South African case,” he said. The court’s decisions are typically legally binding, though it has few means of enforcing them. In 2004, the court issued a nonbinding opinion that Israel’s construction of its security barrier inside the territory of the occupied West Bank was illegal and that it should be dismantled. Twenty years later, the system of walls and fences is still standing. Even if Israel was to comply with an injunction, Hamas, which is not bound by the laws of war, would not be compelled to similarly stop fighting. Israel’s military insists that it is prosecuting the war in line with international law. Officials point to the millions of messages, sent by various means, telling Gaza’s civilians to evacuate to safer areas ahead of bombings, and say they are constantly working to increase the amount of aid entering Gaza. Displaced Palestinians walking from the north of the Gaza Strip to its south in November. Israel points to its warnings to Palestinians ahead of bombing campaigns as a sign that it is abiding by international law.Credit...Samar Abu Elouf for The New York Times The death toll in Gaza, they say, is attributable in part to the use by Hamas of residential areas and civilian structures, including schools and hospitals, to launch attacks, store weapons and hide fighters. Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari, the chief spokesman for the military, categorically refuted the genocide accusation and said the court should instead focus on how the war started on Oct. 7. “We were the ones who were butchered,” Admiral Hagari said. In Israel, the case is being dealt with at the highest levels. The government has appointed one of the country’s most prominent jurists, Aharon Barak, as the ad hoc judge to join the court on its behalf. (To hear the Gaza case, the court’s regular 15-judge panel will be expanded to 17, with one additional judge appointed by each side.) Mr. Barak was given the assignment even though he criticized Israel’s right-wing government last year over a planned judicial overhaul. A retired Israeli Supreme Court president, Mr. Barak is a Holocaust survivor who fled Nazi-occupied Lithuania as a boy. Aharon Barak, a former president of Israel’s Supreme Court and a Holocaust survivor, has been tapped to represent the nation on the panel of judges in the International Court of Justice case.Credit...Avishag Shaar-Yashuv for The New York Times Israel’s legal team at The Hague will be led by Malcolm Shaw, a British expert chosen for his experience in litigation at the World Court. The South African team will be led by John Dugard, a highly regarded scholar of international law and a former United Nations special rapporteur on human rights in the occupied Palestinian territories. In a statement, Hamas welcomed South Africa’s decision to bring the case, and called on “all countries to submit similar files and requests to competent national and international courts against this Nazi entity,” referring to Israel. The United States, Israel’s most important ally, denounced South Africa’s petition. John Kirby, the National Security Council spokesman, described it as “meritless, counterproductive, completely without any basis in fact whatsoever.” While the South African government maintains that it is pursuing its case to stop a genocide, analysts say officials were more likely motivated by domestic and diplomatic political pressures. In the two years that Russia has pursued its war in Ukraine, South Africa has vigorously resisted condemning Russia, a crucial ally. In taking that stance, South African officials often pointed to what they say is a double standard: American officials demanded support for Ukraine’s sovereignty but paid little attention to Palestinian demands, they said. “South Africa wanted to make a very clear point — to point at these contradictions in the global, institutional, multilateral order,” said Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, a think tank. Support for the Palestinians has long been a popular rallying point in South Africa, and Mr. Singh said, politicians for the governing African National Congress are exploiting that support ahead of an important national election this year. Patrick Kingsley, Marlise Simons and Myra Noveck contributed reporting Isabel Kershner reported from Jerusalem and John Eligon from Johannesburg Isabel Kershner, a correspondent in Jerusalem, has been reporting on Israeli and Palestinian politics since 1990. Her latest book is “The Land of Hope and Fear: Israel’s Battle for its Inner Soul.” More about Isabel Kershner John Eligon is the Johannesburg bureau chief for The Times, covering a wide range of events and trends that influence and shape the lives of ordinary people across southern Africa. Copyright 2024 The New York Times Company

Iranian state media say authorities executed four men convicted of planning sabotage and alleged links with Israel’s Mossad secret service FILE - Protesters hold up a placard reading "Stop Execution in Iran" as they take part in a rally in Berlin, Germany, Oct. 22, 2022. Iran executed four Kurds by hanging on Jan. 29, 2024, having found them guilty of charges of collaborating with Israel. TEHRAN, Iran -- Iran executed on Monday four men convicted of planning sabotage and alleged links with Israel's Mossad secret service, state media reported. The official IRNA news agency said the men were convicted of planning to target a factory in 2022 belonging to Iran’s defense ministry and involved in missile and defense equipment in the central city of Isfahan. The operation was allegedly engineered by Mossad and the four were trained by the Israeli agency in an African country before entering Iran, it said. The four were identified as Iranian nationals: Mohammad Faramarzi, Mohsen Mazloum, Vafa Azarbar and Pejman Fatehi. The execution was carried out after the country's Supreme Court upheld their death sentences, handed down by another court in September. The report did not say how the death sentences were carried out, but in Iran it's usually by hanging. In 2022, Iran said its intelligence agents had dismantled a group linked to Mossad that had allegedly planned terror operations inside Iran, arresting all members of the group and confiscating a large amount of weapons and explosives. Iran from time to time reports on arrests, trials and executions of its nationals for spying for Mossad and other Western intelligence services. Late last month, Iran executed four people — three men and a woman — and sentenced several others to prison for having alleged links with Israel’s Mossad security service, local media reported. Earlier in December, another man was executed on charges of releasing classified information to Mossad. Iran and Israel have accused each other of spying and waging a shadow war for years. Israel views Iran as its greatest threat and has repeatedly threatened to take military action to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Iran denies it is seeking such weapons and has vowed a harsh response to any aggression. In 2020, Iran executed a man convicted of leaking information to the United States and Israel about a prominent Islamic Revolutionary Guard general, Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, who was killed by a U.S. drone strike in January that year. Iran does not recognize Israel and supports anti-Israeli militant groups across the region, including the Lebanese Shiite group Hezbollah and the Palestinian militant Hamas group, currently embroiled in a war with Israel. Last month, a high-ranking Iranian general of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard was killed by an alleged Israeli airstrike in Syria. © 2024 ABC News

In a climate of escalating violence and fear in Port Moresby, 52 asylum seekers – the tail end of the illegal regime – want their suffering to stop. By Ben Doherty Nurul Chawdury with his family in Port Moresby, waiting for resettlement in New Zealand. Photograph: Godfree Kaptigau/The Guardian Ben Doherty Sat 16 Mar 2024 19.00 EDT “I still hope for a bright future, I still hope to go to a country where I can be free, I still hope for a good life for my family.” After a decade, Nurul Chawdury still has hope. As he reasons, it’s all he can hold on to. More than a decade after being forcibly removed to Papua New Guinea by Australia, Chawdury is still there, one of the last remaining cohort who make up the unhappy ragged tail of Australia’s illegal offshore detention regime in that country. Chawdury arrived in Australia by boat in 2013, fleeing the violence of partisan politics in his native Bangladesh. His membership of a political party made his life unsafe and he sought sanctuary in the first refugee convention country he reached. But Chawdury spent just days in Australia before he was exiled to detention on Manus Island. He was told it would be temporary, a stopgap while his claim was assessed and a resettlement place found. “We were told we would be there only for a short time. But we had an interview and then we just wait … we wait one year, one-and-a-half year, and still no answer,’ Chawdury says. “We were imprisoned. My mental state was horrible – it was beyond description – and physically there were no doctors, no medical treatment. If we were ill, we were just ill, there was no help for us.” Chawdury’s claim for refugee protection was swiftly recognised. Australia was legally obliged to protect him. Despite this, Chawdury would spend more than six years on Manus before being moved to Lorengau, then to Port Moresby. Chawdury has watched fellow refugees die through murder, medical neglect or suicide, or abandon their protection claims to take their chances in a dangerous homeland. Others have left for new lives in Australia, the US, Canada and New Zealand. But he still waits. ‘Some days we eat, some days we don’t’ In 2020, assured his resettlement was proceeding, he was joined by his family from Bangladesh, his wife and a daughter whom he had known only as a baby. Another child followed. “When they first came, I was very happy to see my family, but they couldn’t go anywhere and we have just been waiting since that time. Nothing has changed.” Chawdury landed a job at a supermarket – work that gave him purpose and a place in his community, and that allowed him to provide for his young family. But that ended suddenly in January when riots erupted across Port Moresby. Chawdury has the CCTV footage of rioters forcing opening the security doors to his shop before flooding in, stripping the shelves bare and destroying the building. He was caught in the middle of the mob, powerless to stop it. “Every time I close my eyes, I see them attacking me, I think I am surrounded by them, every time I close my eyes,” he says. A life on the fringes has retreated further. His daughter is not able to attend school – she does not have the right documents, he says, and cannot obtain them – and she needs medical attention that she is rarely able to obtain. Often, they have been turned away from hospital. His wife suffered a miscarriage at three months but was refused hospital treatment despite what Chawdury says was excruciating pain, until he begged a senior official to assist. Chawdury says his family does not feel safe. “In Port Moresby, my family went out twice and twice they were attacked, their bags were snatched. “So my family just stays in the room all day, every day. I go out … but they never do. They just stay.” Without work, and with the Australian money that was supposed to support refugees exhausted, Chawdury’s family’s existence is increasingly precarious. “Things are very bad at the moment, it is very hard. Some days we eat, some days we don’t eat,” he says. “Because immigration has cut off all services, we have nothing besides this place to stay … we have no money for food or for transportation … and then there is no medical help for my family: if a person gets sick in the family, they will not treat them. “In the meantime, if the landlord comes and gives us eviction notice again … we will be on the streets.” Secret deal with PNG Since the Manus Island detention centre was ruled unlawful by the PNG supreme court in 2016, Australia has tried to push legal responsibility for the remaining refugees and asylum seekers on to PNG. In December 2021, the Morrison government signed a secret deal with PNG to fund the welfare and support of those sent offshore by Australia. The Albanese government has refused to reveal its detail: a freedom of information request was denied because the information “could reasonably be expected to cause damage to the Australian government’s international relations”. The money – however much it was – came from Australia’s $303m irregular maritime arrival “offshore management” budget. A Department of Home Affairs spokesperson says: “The department does not have any role in the ongoing management of, or service delivery arrangements for, individuals remaining in PNG.” The spokesperson says it is the responsibility of the PNG government to “independently manage individuals remaining in PNG on a permanent or temporary pathway”. “Individuals in PNG have resettlement pathways, including the United States, New Zealand and Canada, or permanent settlement in PNG.” The department refuses to say how many of the nearly 1,400 people Australia sent to PNG remain there. Guardian Australia understands there are 52, as well as a number of their wives and partners, and 28 children. Four want to stay in PNG, three are within the “process” of moving to the US, 19 to New Zealand and seven to Canada. But nearly two dozen have no “pathway” to resettlement. Australia’s claim that those remaining are the responsibility of the PNG government is not supported by international law. The United Nations high commissioner for refugees has repeatedly told Australia it “remains jointly responsible” with PNG for their treatment and welfare. Madeline Gleeson, a senior research fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at the University of New South Wales Sydney, says secrecy around the terms of Australia’s agreement with PNG makes it hard to determine the legality of Australia withdrawing care from the men left there. But she says the original agreement – the basis on which the men were sent to PNG – required commitments from both countries about resettlement. “Australia cannot simply ‘contract out’ of its obligations by paying another country to do what it should be doing itself, particularly given it was well aware of the limitations of PNG’s refugee settlement capacity when it made the secret agreement,” Gleeson says. Australia maintains it paid the PNG government all the required money to manage the refugee cohort during the 2021-22 financial year, to allow PNG to manage its budget over subsequent years. But the money ran out months ago, and Australia has consistently said it will not pay any more. Last year a whistleblower from within PNG’s immigration authority alleged the Australian-sponsored program to care for refugees exiled to PNG had been riven by corruption, fraud and nepotism, and that all the money “has been depleted or gone missing”. The PNG government announced an investigation and the then chief migration officer, Stanis Hulahau, said the allegations were “false” and without evidence. He said Australia should pay further money because the rate of resettlement to third countries had been slowed by Covid. Hulahau has since resigned. ‘Climate of violence and fear’ Heidi Abdel-Raouf, a spokesperson for the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, says refugees in PNG have frequently experienced discrimination, violence and theft, but now their situation was even worse. “Since the recent deaths, riots and shootings in Port Moresby, the climate of violence and fear has grown more severe,” she says. Many are suffering “severe anxiety, depression, PTSD, psychosis and self-harm”. “For some the risk of suicide is chronically high and unpredictable,” Abdel-Raouf says. “A small group are acutely mentally unwell and unable to care for themselves or consent to receive support of any kind. Without electricity, food and medical care they are terrified, paranoid, frail, living in squalor and unable to communicate coherently.” Abdel-Raouf says Australia could not “continue to abdicate responsibility for this cohort” and should evacuate all those who want to leave. Chawdury was interviewed for resettlement in New Zealand months ago but has heard nothing since. “I’m still hopeful for resettlement in a safe country, I have to hope, for my family,” he says. “But the wait is too long, and each day is too hard. I want to request Australia not to make us suffer any more in this place, to take us away from this place so that this suffering could stop.” © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (dcr)

July 1 2024: ALGIERS, Algeria (AP) — Algerian authorities arrested two journalists for publishing a video showing businesswomen protesting how they were treated at a government-sponsored event. Journalists in Algeria have faced mounting repression since President Abdelmadjid Tebboune came to power four years ago, with possible long jail time on flimsy charges, experts say. Many news outlets have also shuttered due to mounting legal fees. Sofiane Ghirous and Ferhat Omar of the news website “Algerie Scoop” were detained last week for broadcasting material authorities claimed “constituted incitement and hate speech,” according to a statement from the National Committee for the Liberation of Detainees, a local watchdog group, on Saturday. In the video, women start-up founders accused the government of “humiliating” and treating them with “contempt” at an innovation event organized by the Ministry of Education and Professional Training. Ghirous is the editor-in-chief of Algerie Scoop — accredited by the government in 2021— and Omar is the website’s director. The press freedom group Reporters Without Borders has recently downranked Algeria on its freedom of expression index to 139th out of 180 in 2024 while decrying the country’s “pressure on independent media and threats to arrest journalists.” In June, the popular news website Radio M announced it would cease publication due to “impossible conditions” while its editor, Ihsane El Kadi, serves a five-year prison sentence on charges alleging his media company accepted foreign funds for his coverage, which was often critical of the government. Also over the weekend, authorities raided the Librairie Gouraya bookstore in the city of Bejaia, nearly 240 kilometers (149 miles) east of the capital, to prevent the sale of “Shared Kabylia” where a book signing was scheduled for its French author, Dominique Martre. They briefly arrested Martre, the Algerian publisher and several others, including journalists and activists. In the book, Martre recounts her experiences teaching French in the mountainous region of Kabylia in the 1970s. Those arrested were released later in the evening, attorney Mokrane Ait Labri — whose journalist brother was among the arrested — told The Associated Press. The crackdown on freedom of expression comes as Algeria gears up for an election in September. Tebboune will likely seek a second term as president. © 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Special rapporteurs working for UN warn famine is imminent and over 25 million people need urgent help People queue to register for aid at a camp for internally displaced persons in Agari, north Kordofan, last week. Photograph: Guy Peterson/AFP/Getty Images Human rights experts working for the United Nations have accused Sudan’s warring parties of using starvation as a war weapon, amid mounting warnings of imminent famine in the African country. Sudan plunged into chaos in April last year when simmering tensions between the country’s military and a notorious paramilitary group, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), exploded into open fighting in the capital, Khartoum, and elsewhere in the country. In 14 months of fighting, more than 14,000 people have been killed and 33,000 others wounded or injured, according to the UN, but rights activists say the toll could be much higher. There have been widespread reports of sexual violence and other atrocities that rights groups say amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. The conflict created the world’s largest displacement crisis, with more than 11 million people forced to flee their homes. “Both the SAF [Sudanese armed forces] and the RSF are using food as a weapon and starving civilians,” the experts said. “The extent of hunger and displacement we see in Sudan today is unprecedented and never witnessed before.” Neither the military nor the RSF returned phone calls seeking comment. The experts warned that famine was imminent as humanitarian aid has been blocked and harvest season disrupted by the war. They said more than 25 million civilians in Sudan and those who fled the country were being starved and needed urgent humanitarian assistance. A report by the Clingendael Institute thinktank said last month that about 2.5 million people in Sudan could die from hunger by the end of September, with about 15% of the population in the regions of Darfur and Kordofan probably being the worst affected. The independent experts said local efforts in response to Sudan’s hunger crisis had been hampered by unprecedented violence and targeted attacks on civil society and local responders. Dozens of activists and local volunteers have been arrested, threatened and prosecuted in recent weeks, they said. “The deliberate targeting of humanitarian workers and local volunteers has undermined aid operations, putting millions of people at further risk of starvation,” they said. “Local responders are risking their health and lives and working across battle lines.” They urged both sides to “stop blocking, looting and exploiting humanitarian assistance”. The experts are part of the UN special procedures, which is the largest body of independent experts in the organisation’s human rights system. The fighting has in recent months centred around El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur state, trapping hundreds of thousands of civilians. At least 143,000 people have been forced to flee the city over the past three months, according to the UN. The UN security council earlier this month demanded the RSF immediately end its siege of the city, which is the military’s last stronghold in the sprawling Darfur region. © 2024 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

By Anne Barnard It was the first time the White House had ordered military action against forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. Credit Syrian Arab News Agency, via Reuters BEIRUT, Lebanon — The diplomatic situation had been looking bright for President Bashar al-Assad of Syria. With the help of Russia, he had consolidated his power, the rebels were on their heels and the United States had just declared that ousting him was not a priority. So why would Mr. Assad risk it all, outraging the world by attacking civilians with what Turkey now says was the nerve agent sarin, killing scores of people, many of them children? Why would he inflict the deadliest chemical strike since the 2013 attacks outside Damascus? Those attacks came close to bringing American military retaliation then. And in a stunningly swift reversal, Tuesday’s attack drew a response from President Trump: dozens of cruise missiles launched at a Syrian air base. One of the main defenses offered by Mr. Assad’s allies and supporters, in disputing that his forces carried out the strike on Tuesday, is that such an attack would be “a crazy move,” as one Iranian analyst, Mosib Na’imi, told the Russian state-run news site Sputnik. Yet, rather than an inexplicable act, analysts say, it is part of a carefully calculated strategy of escalating attacks against civilians. For years, at least since it began shelling neighborhoods with artillery in 2012, then bombing them from helicopters and later from jets, the Syrian government has adopted a policy of seeking total victory by making life as miserable as possible for anyone living in areas outside its control. Government forces have been herding defeated opponents from across the country into Idlib Province, where the chemical attack occurred. Starved and bombed out of their enclaves, they are bused under lopsided surrender deals to the province, where Qaeda-linked groups maintain a presence the Syrian military uses as an excuse to bomb without regard for the safety of civilians. One of the worst chemical attacks in the Syrian civil war occurred on Tuesday in opposition-held Idlib Province. Dozens of people died, including children. Then the blaming began. By YARA BISHARA, MEGAN SPECIA and NATALIE RENEAU on Publish Date April 5, 2017. Photo by Ammar Abdullah/Reuters. Dr. Monzer Khalil, Idlib Province’s health director, said such extreme tactics aimed to demonstrate the government’s impunity and to demoralize its foes. “It makes us feel that we are defeated,” said Dr. Khalil, whose gums bled after he was exposed to scores of chemical victims on Tuesday. “The international community will stay gazing at what’s happening — and observing the explosive barrels falling and rockets bombing the civilians and the hospitals and the civil defense and killing children and medical staff — without doing anything.” “Militarily, there is no need,” said Bente Scheller, the Middle East director of the Berlin-based Heinrich Böll Foundation. “But it spreads the message: You are at our mercy. Don’t ask for international law. You see, it doesn’t protect even a child.” On Thursday, Syria’s foreign minister challenged accounts by witnesses, experts and world leaders that his government was involved. “I stress to you once again: The Syrian Army has not, did not and will not use this kind of weapons — not just against our own people, but even against the terrorists that attack our civilians with their mortar rounds,” the minister, Walid al-Moallem, said in Damascus. But the denial, as well as a Russian assertion that a bomb hit a chemical weapons depot controlled by the rebels, seemed perfunctory, almost without regard to the facts, which Western governments said pointed to a Syrian government hand. Critics of President Barack Obama, including President Trump, say that his decision not to enforce his “red line” on chemical attacks in 2013 convinced the Assad government it could get away with anything, and that it has been escalating its harsh tactics against civilians ever since. Since that “green light,” wrote Jihad Yazigi, an opposition-leaning Syrian economist, “Assad knows that a large-scale attack against its civilians is a short-term public relations liability but a long-term political asset.” That was only reinforced, critics say, by recent statements by American officials that it was time to accept the “political reality” of Mr. Assad’s grip on power. By showing it puts no limits on the tactics it uses, Mr. Yazigi wrote, “the regime shows to the world the West’s impotence and weakness.” Dr. Khalil, 35, fled his job at a state-run hospital in 2011. The Syrian uprising was in its early days, with largely peaceful protests that faced crackdowns from security forces. He said he was threatened with arrest for treating wounded protesters. In 2015, a mix of Qaeda-linked and other rebels, some supported by the United States and its allies, drove government forces from Idlib, the capital of Idlib Province. Dr. Khalil became the health director. The city then became a bombing target, and the Syrian government accused the Americans of backing the Qaeda-linked group, then called the Nusra Front. “We are aware that we are in this Qaeda trap,” Dr. Khalil said. “But in Idlib we have 2.2 million people, and how many Qaeda fighters? You cannot kill the two million for their sake.” The fall of Idlib led to another turning point: Russia’s full-on entry into the conflict, adding its firepower to the Syrian government’s. Russia said it entered to fight the Islamic State, but directed most of its strikes at places farther west, like Idlib, where rival insurgents more urgently threatened government forces. Chlorine attacks continued — investigators from the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons and the United Nations concluded the government had carried out at least three in 2014 and 2015 — with little international reaction. Idlib’s population grew as rebels and civilians moved there from areas recaptured by Assad forces and allies. After Mr. Trump came into office, proclaiming a wish to work with Russia and maybe even Mr. Assad against the Islamic State, expectations grew that the international community would accept relegitimizing Mr. Assad. And last week came the statements from Secretary of State Rex W. Tillerson and the ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki R. Haley, indicating effectively that Washington could accept Mr. Assad remaining in power. On Monday, Western officials were gathering in Brussels to weigh billions of dollars in reconstruction aid to the Assad government, amid opposition fears that they would drop their demand for a political transition first. By Thursday, however, American military officials were discussing a possible military strike on Syria, and Mr. Tillerson was saying there was “no role” for Mr. Assad in Syria’s future. And then Thursday — before dawn on Friday in Syria — Mr. Trump ordered the attack on the Shayrat air base, from which, he said, the chemical attack was launched. Witnesses described how Tuesday’s attack unfolded. That morning, a network of observers was, as usual, tracking the skies to warn residents and rescuers of possible airstrikes. They spotted Syrian aircraft and sent out warnings on walkie-talkies. Syrian Su-22 aircraft were then seen circling above Khan Sheikhoun at 6:47 a.m. and again at 6:51 a.m. One of the observers — based on long experience — believed that the planes might be carrying a chemical payload. “Guys, tell people to wear masks,” he warned. Witnesses put the attack itself at just before 7 a.m. A video of the area at that time shows three towering puffs of smoke and one smaller cloud. Dr. Khalil said he and his wife were drinking coffee at home at 8 a.m. when he got a call and rushed to Idlib’s central hospital. He found 60 patients already packing the wards. His nose began to itch, from the toxic substances, he believes. Back in Khan Sheikhoun, new airstrikes hit a hospital and a civil defense headquarters. Across the province, doctors were noticing symptoms similar to those from sarin. Some of the displaced people who wound up in Idlib in recent years come from the Damascus suburbs that were attacked with sarin in 2013. One, a media activist from near Damascus, Moaz al-Shami, was sickened for two months by the 2013 attacks. Now living in Idlib, he was struck with the same vomiting and respiratory distress he remembered from that day. His voice remained hoarse on the telephone two days later. Correction: April 7, 2017 An earlier version of this article rendered incorrectly a quotation from Dr. Monzer Khalil, the health director of Idlib Province in Syria. He said, “But in Idlib we have 2.2 million people, and how many Qaeda fighters? You cannot kill the two million for their sake.” He did not say 3.3 million people and three million fighters. Reporting was contributed by Patrick Kingsley from Reyhanli, Turkey; Karam Shoumali and Safak Timur from Istanbul; and Hwaida Saad from Beirut. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The New York Times Company