A new wave of violence and a growing uncertainty about the country’s future have left Afghans in the capital with a constant sense of fear. By Adam Nossiter KABUL, Afghanistan — In Kabul’s uncertain present, fear and dread intertwine in a vise. Fear has become a way of life. “When you’re in the car you feel fear, when you are walking you feel fear, and when you are in the shop you feel fear,” said Shamsullah Amini, a 22-year-old shopkeeper, while watching over his vats of dried grains and beans in the Taimani neighborhood. “If there was any security at all, we wouldn’t all be thinking about leaving the country.” “Fear is omnipresent,” said Muqaddesa Yourish, an executive at a leading communications firm. “It’s gone from a state of fear to a state of being.” Fear has long been part of life in Kabul, with the possibility of sudden death from a Taliban strike. But these days — even as the Afghan government tries to negotiate peace with the Taliban — there is a heightened sense that life is fragile here. With the Taliban active in most of the country and almost daily reports of government forces beaten back, there are new questions about whether a grim return to extremist rule is on the near horizon. On Sunday morning gunmen killed two female judges on a street in a central Kabul neighborhood. The women worked for Afghanistan’s Supreme Court. Shaharzad Akbar, the chairwoman of the Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, wrote on Twitter afterward that the country is suffering “what seems to be a systematic massacre & the world seems to be just watching.” In the first two weeks of January, bombs went off in several Kabul neighborhoods; a car bomb killed a government spokesman and two others; and a police officer, a military pilot, a soldier and a member of Afghanistan’s intelligence agency were all gunned down, according to a New York Times report. The list is not exhaustive. “Right now, I can’t be sure of my own security,” said Omar Sadr, a political scientist at the American University of Afghanistan. “But it’s not just about being targeted. It’s about an atmosphere of fear. If it continues, you won’t have the space needed for a democracy.” The assassination campaign, aimed mostly at government workers, activists, journalists and members of the military, is thought to be the Taliban’s attempt to pressure the Afghan government during the halting peace talks, though the group has denied responsibility for the attacks. It is also a means of silencing critical voices, now and in the future. More than 300 people were killed in targeted attacks last year, including at least six journalists over the last seven months, according to a New York Times tally. Some who are able to get visas have left. “It is pretty morose,” said Farahnaz Forotan, a leading television journalist, who fled to Paris in November after her name turned up on a hit list. In the capital, a veneer of normality masks the dread. In the early evening, storefronts are brightly lit against the darkened streets, and a frenetic bustle of shoppers and street vendors, darting through the perpetual traffic jam, is undamped by the coronavirus. But even these last shreds of routine could disappear if the Taliban return or Afghanistan descends again into civil war. The latest wave of violence evokes memories of the early 1990s strife that destroyed the capital. The internal war has already begun, some here say; the near-daily bombings and shootings, many unclaimed, foreshadow it. At night, the occasional burst of automatic gunfire has become familiar. “There is no safe area,” said Mina Rezaee, who runs the Simple Café in the bustling Karte Seh neighborhood, packed with inexpensive clothing stores. “People are killed at the mosque, they are killed in the street, they are killed at work. And this is something that’s always with me.” Portraits of Simone de Beauvoir, Hannah Arendt and Virginia Woolf hang on one of the cafe’s walls next to a quotation from Michel Foucault about love and sensuality. How many explosions has Ms. Rezaee witnessed up close? “It’s common for me,” she shrugged, noting that she was near a massive truck bombing outside the German Embassy that killed 90 in 2017. In a photograph on her Facebook page, taken after the 2016 Islamic State bombing in Kabul that killed over 80, she clutches her hands to a face contorted with anguish. “Nobody wants to die young,” said Saib Nissar, 25, who runs one of the glassed-in storefront bakeries that dot the capital. “But here in Afghanistan, no one can think of anything but the insecurity.” The most banal aspects of daily life have become a torment. “Every morning on the way to work I’m waiting for an explosion,” said Zahra Fayazi, a customer at the Simple Café and a former top national women’s volleyball player who now works at the state electricity company. “If it doesn’t happen in this square, it will happen in the next one.” “When we get to the office, everyone is talking about the latest explosions,” she said. “I can only breathe again when my daughters return home from school.” The consequences of the violence are both psychological and practical — especially for the government workers, academics and activists who are the biggest targets. Ms. Akbar, the chairwoman of the country’s human rights commission, said, “If you are spending your mental energy thinking about how to survive, inevitably all your days are tense and stressful.” Mr. Sadr, the political scientist, said he sold his car, worried it would be a target. “I’m trying to use taxis instead,” he said. “I’m trying to be cautious and move less.” He also said he worried about whether something he said would attract unwanted notice from the Taliban. “We’re all cautious about speaking, about the implications of speaking,” he said. Ms. Yourish, the communications executive, who is also a former deputy minister, said she no longer has a routine. “I change my routes, I change vehicles,” she said. “I need to be on extra alert about my surroundings. You do get these thoughts of, ‘What if this is my last moment?’ It’s like, taking every day as it comes.” “But I can’t,” she added. There is little confidence that the government can hold out against the Taliban, either on the battlefield or at the negotiating table. Some here who have met with them say Taliban negotiators don’t hide their contempt for the Afghan government, regarding it as a puppet of the Americans. There is deep unease about what will happen when the last American troops withdraw, tentatively scheduled for May. “What will they think of our rights, our women’s rights?” said Ms. Rezaee, the cafe owner, who has all the more reason to fear as a member of the ethnic minority most persecuted by the Taliban, the Hazara, like many of her customers. An Afghan rapper and his musician friends, sitting together at the cafe, were not optimistic. “I sing of a life that doesn’t exist,” Mustafa Saher, 27, raps in his music video. Mr. Saher put his tattooed arm on the table. “If they see this, they will cut my arm off,” he said. “They say, this is the opposite of Islam.” After he posted his video online, he received a threatening phone call saying: “What you are doing? It is against Islam. You are an infidel!” “I am scared of my own people,” Mr. Saher said. “This fear is depressing people and forcing them to isolate themselves,” he said, adding that it had become impossible, already, to hold concerts in many parts of Kabul. “All we want is freedom, and justice, and maybe a little bit of peace,” he said. Fatima Faizi and Najim Rahim contributed reporting. © The New York Times 2021

Paul Rusesabagina, a government critic living abroad, was mysteriously taken back to Rwanda late last year and arrested. His supporters say he has no chance of getting a fair hearing. By Abdi Latif Dahir Published by The New York Times on February 16, 2021. Paul Rusesabagina being escorted in handcuffs to a courtroom last year in Kigali, Rwanda. (Clement Uwiringiyimana/Reuters) NAIROBI, Kenya — He was lauded as a hero during the grim days of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, credited with saving the lives of more than 1,200 people he sheltered at his hotel. But when he mysteriously reappeared back in his home country late last year, he was in handcuffs. Now Paul Rusesabagina, who angered the Rwandan government with his pointed criticism from exile in the years after the blood bath, has gone on trial in a prosecution that has drawn broad international condemnation. Mr. Rusesabagina, who gained fame after his actions were portrayed in the Oscar-nominated movie “Hotel Rwanda,” is charged with terrorism-related offenses. In August, the 66-year-old former hotelier who lived in Belgium and the United States, was paraded before the news media in shackles in the Rwandan capital, Kigali, with no explanation from the authorities as to how he had come to be there. The trial began on Wednesday morning and was being handled by the High Court Chamber for International Crimes. It was being held in the trial chamber of the Supreme Court in Kigali. Mr. Rusesabagina — masked, dressed in pink prison uniform and carrying a blue notebook — arrived in court with 20 co-defendants. As the trial gets underway, his family, his lawyers and critics of the government all say he has no chance at a fair trial. Here is the story so far: Who is Paul Rusesabagina and how did he find himself under arrest? In 1994, Mr. Rusesabagina, who had trained in hospitality in Kenya and Switzerland, was the manager of the luxurious Hôtel des Mille Collines in Kigali when Rwanda found itself consumed by bloodletting that killed as many as a million people. But some had the good fortune to find shelter at the hotel, where Mr. Rusesabagina used alcohol and cash to deter their would-be killers. He is credited with saving 1,268 ethnic Tutsis and Hutus, and his story became the basis of the 2004 movie “Hotel Rwanda.” Mr. Rusesabagina also recounted it in his 2006 autobiography, “An Ordinary Man.” Lauded globally for his courage, Mr. Rusesabagina received numerous humanitarian and civil rights awards, including a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2005 from President George W. Bush. As his profile rose, Mr. Rusesabagina used his new platform to roundly criticize the repressive policies of President Paul Kagame.. After his home in Belgium — where he is a citizen — was broken into a few times and documents stolen, Mr. Rusesabagina moved his family to a gated community in San Antonio, Texas, where he hoped they would all be safe. He is also a permanent resident of the U.S. But on the afternoon of Aug. 31, the Rwandan authorities presented him masked and handcuffed. Mr. Rusesabagina had last communicated with his family from the airport in Dubai, where he had arrived on an Emirates flight from Chicago. He then boarded a private jet that he thought was going to Burundi, where he planned to speak to churches at the invitation of a local pastor. Instead, the plane, operated by the Greece-based Charter firm GainJet, landed in Kigali early the morning of Aug. 28, where he was promptly arrested and bound for three days. Mr. Kagame, speaking on national television, called the operation “flawless” and denied that Mr. Rusesabagina had been abducted, as his family said. In December, Mr. Rusesabagina and his family sued the airline. “Through this lawsuit, we will be able to get some answers,” Carine Kanimba, one of Mr. Rusesabagina’s daughters, said in a telephone interview. What are the criminal charges against him? According to the indictment issued by the Rwandan authorities, Mr. Rusesabagina is accused of nine offenses, among them murder, armed robbery and being a member of a terrorist organization. The charges center on Mr. Rusesabagina’s leadership in the Rwanda Movement for Democratic Change, an opposition coalition in exile whose armed wing, the National Liberation Front, Rwandan authorities have accused of carrying out attacks along Rwanda’s southern border with Burundi in 2018. The authorities have zeroed in on a 2018 video in which Mr. Rusesabagina said that all “political means have been tried and failed” in Rwanda and that it was time to “use any means possible to bring about change.” The other 20 defendants include Callixte Nsabimana, also known as Sankara, a former spokesman of the National Liberation Front who is accused of orchestrating attacks in Rwanda’s southern borders. Mr. Rusesabagina asked the court to release him on bail, citing poor health, but his request was rejected. The prosecution described him as a flight risk. Mr. Rusesabagina’s lead counsel, Kate Gibson, said the proceeding should not even start given the many “fair trial violations.” Ms. Gibson is one of three of Mr. Rusesabagina’s international lawyers who have not been allowed into Kigali to represent him. Because of his Belgian citizenship and the circumstances of his arrest, she said, Rwanda “does not have jurisdiction to adjudicate this case, and should dismiss the charges and permanently stay the proceedings,” she said in an email. Mr. Rusesabagina told the court on Wednesday that he is a citizen of Belgium, not Rwanda. “Let me explain for the fifth time,” he said. “I am not Rwandan.” What are the conditions in which Mr. Rusesabagina is being held? Mr. Rusesabagina is in solitary confinement in Mageragere Prison in Kigali, according to his lawyers. He has access to electricity a few hours a day and is allowed to stand outside for an hour daily depending on the weather. He is also allowed a five-minute call to his family once a week. Mr. Rusesabagina, who has high blood pressure, has repeatedly said in recent months that he is afraid he will die from a stroke. Medications the family sent through the Belgian Embassy in Kigali never reached him, they said. And with Covid-19 outbreaks reported in the prison, his family is worried he will contract the virus. The prison authorities have repeatedly confiscated confidential legal documents, Ms. Gibson said. And with no case file or indictment documents and no way to speak with his lawyers privately, Mr. Rusesabagina is not able to prepare for his own case, she said. “This is a violation of his right to communicate in a privileged manner with his lawyer,” she said. “It is a violation of his right to adequate time and resources to prepare his defense. He is completely hamstrung.” What is the world saying about the case? The prosecution has been roundly condemned by the international community and human rights groups. On Tuesday, 37 members of the U.S. Congress publicly released a letter sent in December that called on Mr. Kagame to release Mr. Rusesabagina. A resolution passed by the European Parliament criticized the Rwandan government for the “enforced disappearance, illegal rendition, and incommunicado detention” of Mr. Rusesabagina, and demanded that “his rights as an E.U. citizen are upheld.” The lawmakers asked member state missions in Kigali, particularly the Belgians, to monitor the trial and visit him in prison. Diplomats, including the United States ambassador to Rwanda, Peter Vrooman, attended the trial on Wednesday. On Tuesday, the Rwandan Parliament responded, adopting a resolution condemning the E.U.’s “attempt to improperly influence an ongoing judicial proceeding.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

A potential U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, coupled with a weak Afghan security force, mean the Taliban will likely continue to capture, condemn and torture thousands. By Adam Nossiter FAIZABAD, Afghanistan — The Taliban prison is a ruined house, a cave, a filthy basement in an abandoned dwelling, or a village mosque. Beatings or worse are a certainty, and the sentence is indefinite. Food, if there is any, is stale bread and cold beans. A bed is the floor or a dirty carpet. The threat of death — screamed, shouted, sometimes inflicted — is ever-present. Malik Mohammadi, a calm 60-year-old farmer, watched the Taliban put to death his 32-year-old son Nasrullah, an army officer, in one such prison. Over a period of nine days last year, Nasrullah, an epileptic, was refused medicine by his captors. He was denied food. His father saw blood coming from his mouth, and bruises from beatings. On the 10th day, he died. “The Taliban beat him,” Mr. Mohammadi said quietly. “I watched the killing of my son.” Such repression is part of the Taliban’s strategy of control in the territories under their rule. While the Afghan government and Taliban negotiators in Qatar fitfully talk about meeting for talks, even as the idea of real peace recedes, the reality is that the insurgents already hold much of the country. An approaching U.S. withdrawal, coupled with a weak Afghan security force scarcely able to defend itself, means the group is likely to maintain this authority and its brutal ways of invoking submission. One of the Taliban’s most fearsome tools for doing so is a loose network of prisons, an improvised archipelago of mistreatment and suffering, in which the insurgents inflict harsh summary judgment on their fellow Afghans, arbitrarily stopping them on the highway. Mostly, they are looking for soldiers and government workers. The government too has been accused of mistreatment in its prisons, with the United Nations recently finding that nearly a third of the Afghan army’s prisoners have been tortured. In the Taliban’s case, the detained are locked up in hidden makeshift prisons, a universe of incarceration in which the hapless charges are often moved, day after day, from ruined house to isolated mosque, and back again — without any sense of how long their detention will last. The approach is anything but discriminating. “It keeps coming back to me in my sleep,” said Sayed Hiatullah, a 42-year-old shopkeeper in Faizabad. Last year, Mr. Hiatullah was falsely accused at a Taliban checkpoint of working for state security. He was imprisoned for 25 days. “I wake up and scream,” he said. “It was the darkest, most bitter period in my life. I was in shock for six months,” Mr. Hiatullah said. “I relive my memories 100 percent, every second, every minute,” said Atiqullah Hassanzada, 31, an ex-soldier captured last year on his way to a military hospital in Kabul, speaking on the floor of his home. “I was beaten on the backs of my thighs and on the shoulder,” he said. Faizabad, a town in Afghanistan’s far north and the capital of Badakhshan Province, is inhabited by numerous ex-prisoners of the Taliban, as the insurgents control many of the roads from here to the capital, Kabul. Making that journey means exposure to Taliban checkpoints, and capture. In Faizabad, the Taliban’s technique is to incarcerate and punish first and ask questions later. There is no judge and no court. Local villagers are forced to provide food. While thousands of Afghans have been detained in this way, there are no statistics. Afghan special forces said they recently freed more than 40 detainees from a Taliban prison in Baghlan Province, a not uncommon incident in local news broadcasts. On Monday, 23 more were freed in Kunduz Province, after being “extensively tortured” by the Taliban, said the Afghan Ministry of Defense. The effect of these arbitrary imprisonments is one of terror. “I begged them, crying, to release me,” said Mr. Hiatullah. “They would beat me even more.” “The Taliban stopped the vehicle and arrested me,” said Naqibullah Momand, traveling to his home in Kunduz Province last year. “They put their hand on my heart to check my heartbeat,” said the 26-year-old television presenter. For the Taliban, a rapid beat would have indicated guilt; Mr. Momand forced himself to remain calm, but he still ended up spending 29 days locked in a two-room house with 20 others, sleeping on a dirty carpet on the floor, a single light bulb illuminated all night, before his captors conceded he wasn’t a member of the Afghan military. Capture is only the beginning of the torment. Local commanders, often very young, have unrestrained control over their prisoners. “The low-level Taliban members’ behavior is very bad,” said Fazul-Ahmad Aamaj, an elderly, semiofficial mediator in Faizabad, the best-known of about 15 in Badakhshan. People whose relatives have been captured often turn to Mr. Aamaj for help. He has secured the release of dozens of the group’s captives, through negotiations involving family, tribal elders and money. Rahmatullah Danishjo, a university student captured on the road to Kabul, on his way from Wardak Province in September 2019, was trussed up and taken to a village mosque. As with other prisoners the holy place hardly proved to be a sanctuary. For local commanders, the mosque makes an ideal jail. “It’s the one central place in the village; in a lot of the villages, the mosque is synonymous with the Taliban,” said Ashley Jackson, co-director of the Centre for the Study of Armed Groups, who has studied Taliban justice extensively. “It’s the way they enforce behavior.” The Taliban also operate a parallel network of civil courts in which religious scholars judge land disputes and family quarrels. These courts, with their swift judgments, have gained a reputation of sorts for efficiency and are welcomed by many Afghans, particularly compared to the government’s corrupted justice system. Taliban courts also judge murders and perceived moral and religious infractions. Here the emphasis is on “punishment”; the system “relies on beatings and other forms of torture,” Human Rights Watch said in a report last year. Crimes perceived as political, like working for the Afghan government, or fighting for it, inhabit a different universe. There are no courts for such crimes. Local Taliban commanders have absolute authority “to arrest anyone they deem suspicious,” Human Rights Watch said. Mohammed Aman, 31, a government engineer, said he was pulled over on the highway from Ghazni to Kabul one afternoon last November, handcuffed and taken to a mosque. “There were 10 or 11 others, handcuffed to a chain, inside the mosque,” he said. “We were praying, early in the morning. They came, and they beat us,” said Mr. Danishjo, who was held in another mosque. “They beat us with sticks for maybe, five minutes. They hit us in the back,” he said. “They were beating us on the hands.” “One of the Taliban flogged us in the courtyard of the mosque,” said Abdel Qadir Sharifi, 25, who was captured when his military base was overrun. “I believed they were going to kill me.” Death is the ever-present threat, sometimes inflicted but more often used as a fearsome bargaining chip to gain what the Taliban want: money, a prisoner exchange, or a painfully extracted pledge to renounce government service. The deliberate, often slow, putting to death of captives also occurs. Summoned along with village elders to negotiate his son’s release in exchange for Taliban prisoners, Mr. Mohammadi was able to see his son three times during Nasrullah’s brief captivity. “They tried to sit him up. But he kept falling down,” Mr. Mohammadi recalled. The Taliban shouted at him: “‘Do you see what is happening to your son?’’’ The next day the Taliban moved Nasrullah to a ruined house. By the ninth day, he had lost consciousness. He was filthy, covered in urine and excrement. His captors allowed Mr. Mohammadi to wash him in cold water. But it was too late. “He was dying,” his father said. “The last time I saw him, it was in the yard of the destroyed house,” he said. After the death of his son, the Taliban tormented him. “Why don’t you cry?” they asked. “I told them, I don’t want to cry in front of the trees and the stones,” said Mr. Mohammadi. “I cried alone,” he said. His other son, Rohullah Hamid, 35, a lawyer in Kabul, who took part in the failed effort to get his brother released, said: “Every day, dozens of Afghans die because of the Taliban. The Taliban are the enemy of humanity.” Najim Rahim contributed reporting from Faizabad, Taimoor ShahTaimoor Shah from Kandahar and Farooq Jan Mangal from Khost. © The New York Times 2021

By Alex Marshall For years, Jasmila Zbanic hoped someone else would dramatize the worst atrocity of the Balkan wars. Instead, she did so with “Quo Vadis, Aida?” and it has been nominated for an Oscar. It took Jasmila Zbanic, seen here on set, a very long time to feel able to make “Quo Vadis, Aida?” Credit...Imrana Kapetanovic/Deblokada LONDON — Jasmila Zbanic, a Bosnian film director, remembers the exact moment she heard something had gone horribly wrong in Srebrenica, a small town in her native country that was the site of the worst atrocity of the Balkan wars. Those conflicts accompanied the breakup of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and in Bosnia — where Muslims and ethnic Serbs and Croats had long been living — people suddenly found themselves in an ethnic war. In July 1995, the Bosnian-Serb army overran Srebrenica, meant to be a United Nations safe haven. Zbanic, then a student, learned the city had been attacked while staying in Vermont, having temporarily escaped the war for an internship at a theater. It was a while before she learned that soldiers had separated around 8,000 Muslim men and boys from their families in the town, then murdered them. But she already knew the violence that was likely to ensue when the army took over a city. “The world just collapsed completely for me,” Zbanic recalled, in a recent video interview. “The United Nations was supposed to protect the city, but not a single bullet was fired,” she said. “What can you believe in when there are no rules?” she added. “It meant violence was winning.” In the film, residents of Srebrenica seek safety. Super LTD Jasna Djuricic stars as a United Nations translator.Credit...Super LTD Over 25 years since the massacre, which some Serbian nationalists still deny was a genocide, Zbanic, 46, is bringing the world’s attention back to Srebrenica’s story with the film “Quo Vadis, Aida?” The movie follows Aida (Jasna Djuricic), a United Nations translator, as she makes increasingly desperate attempts to get U.N. soldiers to save her husband and sons from being murdered. On Monday, “Quo Vadis, Aida?” was nominated for best international feature at the Academy Awards, building on similar success at the BAFTAs, Britain’s version of the Oscars, where Zbanic was nominated for best director. The film is available to rent on Amazon Video. Zbanic was 17 when the Bosnian war began, she said. She had always wanted to be a director, having grown up next to a movie theater in Sarajevo, the nation’s capital, and studied filmmaking at the city’s film and theater academy throughout the war. Her classes there continued even though Sarajevo was under siege, meaning they rarely had electricity and she had to risk being shot by snipers whenever she left home. “Every time the electricity came on for a few days, we’d watch films like a crazy marathon,” she said. Her early features were not about the war itself, instead focusing on its legacy. “Grbavica,” her debut, is about a woman who was raped during the war and is bringing up the child conceived in that assault. It won top prize at the 2006 Berlin Film Festival, marking her as one of Bosnia’s most prominent filmmakers. The later “For Those Who Can Tell No Tales” follows an Australian tourist who stays at a Bosnian spa, only to learn it was the site of war crimes. She often thought about making a film about the Srebrenica massacre, Zbanic said, but really hoped someone else would first. “It was too much, emotionally,” she said. Five years ago, she said she finally felt able to make it herself, including being able to deal with any potential criticism from nationalistic Serbian newspapers and politicians, in and outside Bosnia, some of whom deny the massacre was a genocide or play down its extent. Mladen Grujicic, the mayor of Srebrenica, is an ethnic Serb who has been accused of denying that the massacre was a genocide (Grujicic did not respond to an interview request for this article). Djuricic and Zbanic on set. The actress found filming certain scenes almost too much to bear.Credit...Imrana Kapetanovic/Deblokada “I thought, ‘I know it’ll be a lot of garbage, but I’m ready for it,’” Zbanic said. Making the film turned out to be a challenging experience for some of those involved. Aldijana Kaplan, 34, one of the film’s extras, said in an email she’d been kept in a concentration camp as a child during the war. When she signed up for “Quo Vadis, Aida?” she was just “attracted by the experience of working on a movie,” she said. But while filming a scene in which Bosnian-Serb soldiers enter the United Nations compound and throw bread at desperate refugees, she broke down. “It reminded me of the same scene that happened when I was at the camp,” Kaplan said. Zbanic said that wasn’t the only such moment. When filming a scene involving men being taken away in trucks, she was telling the cast what to do, when an extra interrupted. “He said, ‘No, that’s not the way they took us. This is how we should climb into the truck. This is what they were telling us,’” Zbanic said. He turned out to have been kept in a concentration camp for six months during the war. “In Bosnia, this is still a very hot and painful topic,” the director said. “After 26 years, mothers are still searching for around 1,000 bodies.” Djuricic, 54, who plays Aida, said she also found shooting one scene almost too much to bear, when she had to go and search for her children’s bones in a large hall in which dozens of piles of remains were laid out. “Everything felt so real: that space, the remains,” she said in a video interview. “It was the very last day of shooting and the crew was strangely silent on set,” she added. Zbanic said so far, she has been pleasantly surprised by the reactions across the region, she said. A few Serbian newspapers had written negatively about the film, she said (Informer, a tabloid, called her “a hater of Serbs”). A handful of people also posted negative comments on film review sites like Google and IMDB questioning its accuracy (“Large misinformation, national hatred etc” reads a typical one). The film’s first screening was at a memorial center, in front of young Muslims and ethnic Serbs and Croats, as well as survivors of the massacre.Credit...Kemal Softic/Associated Press But some surprising outlets had been positive about the film, Zbanic said. Ivona Janjic, writing on the website of the Serbian Film Center, a government-funded body, called it “easily one of the best regional films of recent years” and praised it for being made “without the usual national-nationalist colors.” Zbanic was adamant the film is not about blame or revenge. “Serbia is not what their government is,” she said. “It never was.” She made the film, she said, because she wants to “share at least one percent of the pain” of mothers still looking for their children’s bodies, and because she also wants young people in the Balkans to see what really happened at Srebrenica so they can have more empathy with each one another and no longer be ethnically divided. For the film’s premiere, she invited about 100 young people — Muslims and ethnic Serbs and Croats — to watch it at a memorial center in Srebrenica. “I cried the whole time when it was screened,” Sladjan Tomic, 25, a Bosnian-Serb journalist, said in an email, adding that it showed an honest view of what happened that he didn’t get as a child. “Unfortunately, there is not much utility in this movie if my Serbian peers do not see it,” he said. But he held out some hope they might do so if it wins the Oscar. Zbanic said the film’s message wasn’t just about Srebrenica. People need to discuss all genocides, she added, as that’s the only way to learn from them and ensure they never happen again. “Are we are going to live with eyes closed or eyes open?” Zbanic said. “That’s the question.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

A camel herder puts down his animals for the night, in a village in the Mao region. Copyright © Africanews - Rebecca Blackwell/AP. Nine people were killed Friday in clashes between farmers and herders 500 km south of Chad's capital N'Djamena, which has been plagued by deadly inter-communal conflicts, the region's governor told AFP on Monday. The violence between communities is frequent in central and southern Chad, where many inhabitants are armed. They mainly pit nomadic Arab herders against sedentary indigenous farmers who accuse the former of ransacking their fields while grazing their animals. "We do not yet know the reasons for the clashes between farmers and herders that took place on Friday near Mengalang," Abdelkerim Seid Bauche, governor of eastern Logone, told AFP, adding that "nine people were killed". "The situation is now under control with the defense and security forces deployed on the scene," he said. On 10 August, 13 people were killed in clashes between farmers and herders. The conflict started when a child stole a farmer's hoe. In August 2021, 22 people were killed in inter-community clashes 200 km east of the Chadian capital. In February 2021, 35 people were killed in the south of the country. © 2022 Africanews/AFP

Shaken by Grisly Killings of Women, Activists in Africa Demand Change New York Times Feb. 19, 2024 By Abdi Latif Dahir Reporting from Murang’a and Nairobi, Kenya The continent has the highest rate of gender-related killings of women in the world, according to the United Nations. Activists accuse officials of ignoring the issue and blaming the victims. A photograph of Grace Wangari Thuiya, a 24-year-old beautician who was killed in Nairobi, Kenya, in January. Her boyfriend assaulted and repeatedly stabbed her, police told her mother.Credit...Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times A wave of gruesome killings of women across several African countries in recent weeks has prompted outrage and indignation, triggered a wave of protests and precipitated calls for governments to take decisive action against gender-based violence. Kenyans were shocked when 31 women were killed in January after they were beaten, strangled or beheaded, activists and police said. In Somalia, a pregnant woman died this month after her husband allegedly set her on fire. In the West African nation of Cameroon, a powerful businessman was arrested in January on accusations, which he has denied, of brutalizing dozens of women. The upsurge in killings is part of a broader pattern that got worse during economic hard times and pandemic lockdowns, human rights activists say. An estimated 20,000 gender-related killings of women were recorded in Africa in 2022, the highest rate in the world, according to the U.N. Experts believe the true figures are likely higher. “The problem is the normalization of gender-based violence and the rhetoric that, yes, women are disposable,” said Njeri wa Migwi, the co-founder of Usikimye — Swahili for “Don’t be silent” — a Kenyan nonprofit working with victims of gender-based violence. On Valentine’s Day, Kenyans turned out in the capital, Nairobi, for a vigil called “Dark Valentine” to honor the 500 women reportedly killed between 2016 and 2023.Credit...Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times The feminist scholar Diana Russell popularized the term femicide — the killing of women or girls because of their gender — to create a category that distinguishes it from other homicides. According to a report by the United Nations, the killings are often carried out by male partners or close family members and are preceded by physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Critics say that many African leaders, as well as police, ignore or downplay the problem, or even blame victims. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Migwi, the nonprofit co-founder, was leading a training session for girls and women when she was suddenly called to a nearby home in Kayole, a low-income, high-crime neighborhood east of Nairobi. Inside the dimly lit house, Jacinta Ayuma, a day laborer and mother of two, lay lifeless, bloody bruises visible on her face, neck and left arm. The police said she was killed by her partner. He fled, and they have yet to arrest him. An autopsy showed she died from blunt force trauma that resulted in multiple organ injuries. Wails of anguish rang in the air as several officers carried the body into a police van using a thin duvet. Three neighbors said they had heard someone screaming for help throughout the night, until about 6 a.m. But they said they did not intervene or call the police because the sounds of beatings and distress were commonplace, and they considered it a private matter. Njeri wa Migwi, the co-founder of a Kenyan nonprofit working with victims of gender-based violence, was recently called to the home of a woman found dead with bruises on her face and neck.Credit...Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times Ms. Migwi, back in her office nearby, said she had seen too many similar cases. “I am mourning,” she said, her head in her hands. “There’s a helplessness that comes with all of this.” To coincide with Valentine’s Day, women’s rights campaigners in Kenya organized a vigil they called “Dark Valentine” in the capital to commemorate the women who have been killed. At least 500 women have been victims of femicide in Kenya between 2016 and 2023, according to a recent report by the Africa Data Hub, a group of data organizations working with journalists in several African countries that analyzed cases reported in Kenyan news media. About 300 people donning black T-shirts waved red roses, lit red candles and observed a minute of silence. “Why should we have to keep reminding people that women need to be alive,” said Zaha Indimuli, a co-organizer of the event. Among the women whose name was read at the vigil was Grace Wangari Thuiya, a 24-year-old beautician who was killed in Nairobi in January. Two days before her death, Ms. Thuiya visited her mother in Murang’a County, about 35 miles northeast of Nairobi. During the visit, her mother, Susan Wairimu Thuiya, said they had spoken about a 20-year-old college student who was dismembered just days before and what seemed like an epidemic of violence against women. At the Dark Valentine vigil to honor femicide victims, in Nairobi on Wednesday.Credit...Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times Ms. Thuiya cautioned her daughter, whom she described as ambitious and jovial, to be careful in her dating choices. “Fear was gripping my heart that day,” Ms. Thuiya said of their last encounter. Two days later, the police called Ms. Thuiya to inform her that her daughter had died after her boyfriend assaulted and repeatedly stabbed her. Ms. Thuiya said her daughter had never revealed that she was seeing someone. The police said they arrested a man in the apartment where Grace Thuiya was killed. “This is all a bad dream that I want to wake up from,” Ms. Thuiya said. Ms. Thuiya’s killing, among others, sparked large-scale protests across Kenya in late January. In recent years, anti-femicide protests had broken out in Kenya over the killing of female Olympic athletes, and also in other African nations, including South Africa, Nigeria and Uganda. Activists say the demonstrations were among the largest nonpolitical protests in Kenya’s history: At least 10,000 women and men crowded the streets of Nairobi alone, with thousands more joining in other cities. At a time of rising anti-gay sentiments, the protests were also intended to highlight the violence facing nonbinary, queer and transgender women, said Marylize Biubwa, a Kenyan queer activist. A protest against femicide last month in Nairobi after a spate of grisly killings. Credit...Daniel Irungu/EPA, via Shutterstock The movement has generated a backlash, especially online, from men who argue that a woman’s clothing or choices justified abuse. Such comments are disseminated with hashtags like #StopKillingMen and by social media influencers like Andrew Kibe, a men’s rights champion and former radio presenter whose YouTube account was shut down last year for violating the company’s terms of service. “Shut up,” he said in a recent video, referring to those outraged over the killings of women. “You have no right to have an opinion.” Activists say they don’t see enough outrage from political, ethnic or religious leaders. In Kenya, President William Ruto has come under criticism for not personally addressing femicide. A spokesman with his office did not respond to requests for comment. But following the protests, his government vowed to expedite investigations and introduced a toll-free number for the public to report perpetrators. Still, in Kenya and across Africa, campaigners say more investigators need to be hired, judges need to decide cases more quickly and legislatures should pass laws to punish perpetrators more severely. Data collection and research on femicide needs to be funded, said Patricia Andago, a researcher at the data firm Odipo Dev. For now, the killings continue to leave a trail of devastation. On a recent afternoon, Ms. Thuiya, whose 24-year-old daughter was killed in January, sat cuddling her two granddaughters, 5-year-old Keisha and 22-month-old Milan. She said that Keisha believed her mother ascended “to the sky” and asked if she could get a ladder to follow her. “It was very painful,” Ms. Thuiya said about hearing her granddaughter’s questions. “I just want justice for my daughter. And I want that justice now.” Susan Wairimu Thuiya, whose daughter was stabbed to death last month in Kenya, holds her 22-month-old granddaughter, Milan Nduta — one of her daughter’s two young children.Credit...Natalia Jidovanu for The New York Times Abdi Latif Dahir is the East Africa correspondent for The Times, based in Nairobi, Kenya. He covers a broad range of issues including geopolitics, business, society and arts. More about Abdi Latif Dahir A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Rising Killings of Women Incite Flares of Fury in Africa’s Streets. Copyright 2024 The New York Times Company

By Alison Smale An exhibition by the Topography of Terror Foundation in Berlin explores the mass executions after the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. “We Germans know the stories and the scars much less well than we like to think,” Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said at the opening. CreditGordon Welters for The New York Times BERLIN — In this city laden with history, they were just two events recalling a heinous past: one, the opening of a public exhibition calling for a reckoning with a particularly brutal period of the Nazis’ rule; and the other, a modest remembrance of one Holocaust victim. Both channeled questions ever present here: Why did Germans under Hitler abandon their humanity — and who and what survived? The exhibition, which opened late last month, confronts the mass murder of Jews and other minorities after the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941. For all the attention paid to the past here, this display is the first in Germany to focus solely on those executions of more than two million people. Their bodies fell into pits, which were then covered and left as anonymous mass graves. This “Holocaust of the bullets,” as it has come to be known, is deeply familiar to citizens of the former Soviet Union, particularly in Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltics and large parts of western Russia. The very oldest people in those places have vivid, direct memories; those who are middle-aged were raised on Soviet documentaries and war movies; and the young are exposed to modern displays of remembrance. In Germany, however, the mass shootings are less known than the gas chambers and horrors of Auschwitz, Treblinka and other camps in Nazi-occupied Poland. At the opening of the exhibit, Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier used the occasion to link the past and the present. Since 2014, with the outbreak of hostilities in Ukraine, Europe has again had to face “the question of war and peace,” Mr. Steinmeier said. He said nine towns that he had visited in the past year in Ukraine and the region lost more than 180,000 inhabitants during the Nazi invasion. In these “wounded landscapes” of “the forgotten Holocaust,” Mr. Steinmeier said, “this exhibit removes the layers and brings to light, layer by layer, the details of a past which is not just an eastern one, but also ours.” “Without consciousness of those layers under the landscape, we Germans can never do justice — no matter how honest the effort to understand the region and the role we play there,” Mr. Steinmeier said. “We Germans know the stories and the scars much less well than we like to think.” The new exhibit in Berlin is contained within the Topography of Terror, a permanent display that chronicles the Nazis’ rise, rule and fall. It stands, fittingly, where the Gestapo headquarters once did. The special show — “Mass Shootings: The Holocaust From the Baltic to the Black Sea 1941-1944” — was mounted in cooperation with the foundation behind the nearby Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Andreas Nachama, the director of the Topography of Terror, said at the opening that the exhibit bore “a sad relevance,” an allusion to the rise of right-wing populism today. At the entrance, a map shows 722 places where more than 500 people were killed by the Nazis’ firing squads. “The map illustrates how bitter the history is, and how difficult it was to mount this exhibit,” Mr. Nachama said. In one corner, the historians who mounted the show have reproduced Page 6 from The New York Times of Oct. 26, 1941. In a rare early mention of the mass killings of Jews, citing letters reaching Hungary and witnesses’ accounts from Hungarian officers, an article on the page briefly reports the execution of up to 15,000 Jews in Kamenez-Podolsk, or Kamianets-Podilsky, in western Ukraine. The article appears next to ads for fine furs and clothing from Russeks, a large Manhattan store. “Presumably,” the catalog notes, “the newspaper did not inform the Jewish family Nemerov-Russek where their advertisement was going to be placed.” Ulrich Baumann, one of the historians involved in the exhibit, said he felt the comment was needed. “At first glance, it is shocking,” he said, noting that the article was small compared with the ads. “We try to think along with the visitor, and what questions and misunderstandings may arise.” To judge by the solemn and attentive visitors viewing the exhibit on the first Sunday it was open, early this month, it hits home with foreigners and Germans alike. Joshua Bagetti, 27, an electrician visiting from Brisbane, Australia, seemed dazed. He was, he said, stunned to see how rapidly the Nazis had invaded “and how far down south they went” — through the Caucasus to bump up practically against the Middle East. Three 20-year-olds from around Cologne who were in Berlin for job training included the exhibit in their plans for their visit, said Christine Gronemann, one of the three. Ms. Gronemann praised the attention to details and the decision to show this history, which was not much covered in German schools. But their lessons did make one thing plain, she said: “It was very clearly stated that Nazism, and everything to do with it, is not good.” Being taught about the Holocaust, and Germany’s guilt, is a ritual of adolescence here. Students visit former concentration camps or memorials to smaller camps. If a school and its community can manage it, students go to Israel. Holocaust survivors, their numbers dwindling, are honored guests at German schools. Margot Friedlander, 94, is one such survivor. Born in Berlin, she was hidden by Germans from 1943 to 1944 and then deported to Theresienstadt, the camp north of Prague where she met her future husband, Adolf Friedlander. A rabbi married them in spring 1945 in Theresienstadt, and the next year they left for New York, where her husband helped run the 92nd Street Y for 28 years. After he died in 1997, she started writing her memoir, eventually published in German. That led to a trip to Berlin, and a decision to stay. Visiting schools is perhaps the most important part of her new life, she said, “because they are the future.” Ms. Friedlander was attending a gathering of about 60 people one Saturday morning in September. The crowd had assembled first outside the elegant apartment building at Augsburger Strasse 21 and then moved inside to the apartment where Walter Serner, a Dadaist writer, once lived. Although Serner, born Walter Seligmann in Bohemia, converted to Catholicism in 1909, to the Nazis he was a Jew. In 1942, after an itinerant life, Serner and his wife were arrested and sent to Theresienstadt, and then on to the Latvian capital, Riga. Along with the 900 or so other Jews on their transport train, they were shot in a forest outside the city in August 1942. The small ceremony to honor Serner was almost entirely made possible by the enthusiasm of Andreas Mosbacher, a judge and law professor who was struck several years ago by Serner’s work and fate. What works might Serner have written had he lived, the guests wondered. “No one — or very few — has heard of him now,” Judge Mosbacher said. Like much of the art created in Theresienstadt, Serner’s writings attest to a use of the German language and artistic endeavor that has now withered. In this respect, did Hitler’s efforts to mold German culture triumph? Not if you listen to Ms. Friedlander, who has faith in the young. “What was, was,” she said. Now, “they are the ones who must shape society.” © The New York Times 2016 A version of this article appears in print on October 24, 2016, on page A6 of the New York edition with the headline: Germany Confronts, in a Unique Exhibit, Its ‘Holocaust of the Bullets’.

NAIROBI – The lower house of Burundi's parliament has voted to allow security forces in the politically tense nation to conduct night raids without a search warrant. The draft law changing the criminal code was passed late Wednesday in the lower house, with 90 votes in favour and 22 against after eight hours of debate, parliament announced on Twitter. The bill must now go before the Senate before being passed into law by President Pierre Nkurunziza "as fast as possible" a senior member of the ruling CNDD-FDD party told AFP, asking not to be named. The measure comes in a climate of tension, arrests and sporadic violence which has mounted since Nkurunziza in 2015 stood for a third term in office in a hotly disputed election. He has ruled Burundi since 2005 after a devastating civil war. "In light of the evolution of criminality in Burundi these past few years, it was necessary to introduce new rules exempt from common law in criminal proceedings," Justice Minister Aime-Laurentine Kanyana told MPs while presenting the bill. The new measures will apply in cases of "terrorism, trafficking, and illegal possession of weapons or narcotics," Kanyana said. Security forces would be authorised to carry out "multiple searches targeting entire districts and they would also be allowed to seize computer systems to investigate data. 'Democracy buried' MPs from the Amizero y'Abarundi (Hope of the Burundians) coalition, including politicians close to historic rebel leader Agathon Rwasa, voted against a bill that was "contrary to the constitution" the spokesman for the parliamentary group, Pierre-Celestin Ndikumana, told AFP. "The ruling party has just buried democracy in Burundi," he charged. Justine Duby, a Burundi specialist for the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH), said the draft law was "clearly a wish to legalise the illegal and arbitrary practices that the forces of law and order have already resorted to for three years in this country". Independent media, together with local and international NGOs, regularly report incidents where the security forces seal off whole districts and carry out raids and arrests without mandates, Duby said. The main targets of the crackdown have been parts of the capital Bujumbura reputed to be opposition strongholds. Human Rights Watch on Tuesday accused the regime of killing, beating and intimidating suspected opponents of a constitutional referendum due on May 17 that could enable Nkurunziza to stay in power until 2034. "Burundian officials and the Imbonerakure (the ruling party youth wing) are carrying out violence with near-total impunity to allow Nkurunziza to entrench his hold on power," said Ida Sawyer, Central Africa director at HRW. "There is also a desire to legitimise the repressive methods used to muzzle the opposition and put pressure on the population a month ahead of a strongly contested constitutional referendum," FIDH's Duby said. The International Criminal Court has started to investigate a political crisis that has left at least 1,200 people dead and forced more than 400,000 others to leave the country. © 2018 ENCA.com

It's been five months since the shy, frail 13-year-old was snatched from his bed, drugged and raped in the middle of the night. The boy hasn't been able to say much since. "I don't remember a lot," Batista says, darting his eyes toward the dirt floor as he sits in a makeshift clinic in one of South Sudan's displaced people's camps in the town of Wau. The Associated Press is using only the boy's first name to protect his identity. Four years into South Sudan's devastating civil war, the world's youngest nation is reeling from sexual violence on a "massive scale," a new Amnesty International report says. Thousands of women, children and some men are suffering in silence, grappling with mental distress. Some now have HIV. Others were rendered impotent. The report is based on interviews with 168 victims of sexual violence in South Sudan and in refugee camps in neighboring Uganda, home to the world's fastest-growing refugee crisis. Some of the sexual assaults occur not during the fighting but among the millions of people sheltering from the conflict. Batista says he was raped in December by a 45-year-old man he'd seen around the United Nations-run camp. Yet the boy didn't seek psychosocial support until May. Community members say he has kept to himself and is in dire need of help. The U.N. last year reported a 60 percent increase in gender-based violence in South Sudan, with 70 percent of women in U.N. camps in the capital, Juba, having been raped since the start of the civil war in December 2013. "This is premeditated sexual violence. Women have been gang-raped, sexually assaulted with sticks and mutilated with knives," says Muthoni Wanyeki, Amnesty's regional director for East Africa. Victims are left with "debilitating and life-changing consequences," and many have been shunned by their families. The new report interviewed 16 male victims, some who said they had been castrated or had their testicles pierced with needles. "Some of the attacks appear designed to terrorize, degrade and shame the victims, and in some cases to stop men from rival political groups from procreating," Wanyeki says. The U.N. Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan and others say both government and opposition forces use rape as a weapon of war — a strategy made worse because of the country's culture of stigma. "If a survivor is left unsupported or untreated, he or she may develop more serious mental health problems," says Aladin Borja, coordinator for the national mental health and psychosocial support group for the International Organization for Migration. Survivors are discouraged from speaking openly about rape, Borja says, meaning attacks could continue with impunity. Amnesty International says many victims are targeted because of their ethnicity. "They hide in the bush and jump out at you and rape you on the road," says Bakhit Mario, who also shelters in the U.N. camp in Wau. The 22-year-old is part of the Fertit people, a name for several minority ethnic groups from the north. She says friends and family have been raped by men who are Dinka, one of South Sudan's largest ethnic groups and the one of President Salva Kiir. "I see aborted babies in the camp's bathrooms," Mario says. She believes many are a result of unwanted pregnancies due to rape. South Sudan's government has condemned sexual assaults, promising that "the government is moving swiftly to protect civilians from such behavior by educating all armed forces and holding perpetrators accountable," acting government spokesman Choul Laam told the AP. But victims who have reported their attackers to authorities say they've seen little justice. After Batista was raped he told local police, who arrested the perpetrator — only to set the man free a few days later. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ (c) 2017 The Associated Press

The UN delegation will speak to refugees in Bangladeshi camps before they head to Myanmar early next week to visit conflict-scarred Rakhine state Human Rights Watch called Friday for Myanmar's Rohingya crisis to be referred to the International Criminal Court, days before a UN Security Council delegation is due to arrive in the country. Myanmar has come under intense pressure since the start of a military campaign in August that has driven some 700,000 Rohingya Muslims over the border into Bangladesh, where refugees have provided consistent testimony of murder and rape by security forces and local mobs. Myanmar's military insists the campaign was justified as a means to root out Rohingya militants who attacked border guard posts and killed about a dozen police officers. The UN delegation will speak to refugees in the Bangladeshi camps before they head to Myanmar early next week to visit conflict-scarred Rakhine state. They will also meet with Myanmar civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi who has been denounced in the West for her failure to speak up for the Rohingya, a stateless minority that has faced decades of persecution in the largely Buddhist nation. Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, told reporters in Yangon on Friday that the Security Council should issue a resolution to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court or else no one will be held accountable. "The lack of a UN Security Council resolution has left the Myanmar government convinced that it has literally gotten away with mass murder," he said. He also called for targeted sanctions on perpetrators and an arms embargo. Myanmar has rejected nearly all allegations that its security forces committed atrocities in Rakhine. Earlier this month it dismissed an attempt at the ICC to open a probe into the crisis, saying the court has no jurisdiction. It took months for Myanmar to agree to the delegation's visit after the UN levelled accusations of ethnic cleansing in Rakhine. The visiting delegation is led by Britain, Peru and Kuwait, whose ambassador Mansour al-Otaibi has said the trip is not about "naming and shaming" Myanmar, but rather to show the country that the "international community is following the situation and has great interest in resolving it". The United States and its European partners in the council have faced strong opposition to action on the Rohingya crisis from China, which has key economic interests in the neighbouring country. The council adopted a statement in November that called on Myanmar to rein in its military, but there has been no resolution, which could face opposition from China. But Roth said this should not be assumed. "If China wants to veto it should pay the price of turning its back on the crimes against humanity committed against Rohingya." Bangladesh and Myanmar have signed a repatriation deal for the refugees but no Rohingya have returned from the camps across the border, fearing a lack of safety back home. (c) 2018 Daily Mail http://www.dailymail.co.uk/wires/afp/article-5665857/Rights-group-calls-UN-Rohingya-resolution-ahead-Myanmar-visit.html

A policeman stands guard as Christian devotees attend a Sunday mass at the Saint Petrus church in Bandung on May 13, 2018. A wave of blasts including a suicide bombing struck outside churches in Indonesia on May 13, killing at least nine and wounding dozens of others, police said, the latest assault on a religious minority in the world's biggest Muslim-majority country. (AFP/Timur Matahari) The Islamic State group was responsible for suicide attacks against three churches in Indonesia that killed at least 11 people on Sunday, it said via its propaganda agency Amaq. "Three martyrdom attacks killed 11 and wounded at least 41 among church guards and Christians," it said via the Telegram messaging app. Alongside the 11 dead, dozens were wounded in seemingly coordinated attacks against the three churches in the city of Surabaya at around 7.30am local time (00.30GMT), police said. (c) 2018 The Jakarta Post http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2018/05/13/islamic-state-group-claims-deadly-indonesia-church-attacks.html

The new UN envoy for Myanmar told authorities in Naypyidaw during her first visit that credible measures were needed to establish accountability for the violence that engulfed Rakhine state and drove 700,000 Rohingya from their homes, a UN statement said Thursday. Christine Schraner Burgener held talks with Myanmar's de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi and commander-in-chief General Min Aung Hlaing among other officials during a nine-day visit to Myanmar that ended on Thursday. "In all discussions, the special envoy underlined the importance of accountability, which she highlighted was essential for genuine reconciliation," said a statement on the results of her visit. Schraner Burgener "urged for credible fact-finding measures" and said the United Nations was ready to cooperate to establish such steps. Schraner Burgener will travel soon to Bangladesh where 700,000 Muslim Rohingya are sheltering in camps after being driven from their homes by an army campaign. Myanmar has said the military operation launched in August in northern Rakhine state is aimed at rooting out extremists. After visiting camps of displaced Rohingya in Rakhine, Schraner Burgener also suggested that authorities hold public meetings with the affected communities to encourage "reconciliation and healing". The former Swiss ambassador to Germany, who was appointed special envoy in April, also plans to visit Thailand and China. The United Nations as well as the United States, France and Britain have described the military campaign in Rakhine as "ethnic cleansing" and is pushing for a full investigation of allegations of atrocities. Myanmar has refused to allow a fact-finding mission set up by the UN Human Rights Council to enter the country, and has barred UN rights expert Yanghee Lee. The Security Council visited Myanmar and Rakhine state in early May, meeting with refugees who gave detailed accounts of killings, rape and torching of villages at the hands of Myanmar's military. © 2018 | Daily Mail