‘An ‘epidemic’ of goldminers have illegally invaded the territory of the Yanomami people to pillage its riches, bringing disease and death to the tribe.’ Photograph: AFP/Getty Images On 1 January, Jair Bolsonaro will be sworn in as Brazil’s 38th president. He has expressed open disdain for the indigenous peoples of Brazil, and it is no exaggeration to say that some of the world’s most unique and diverse tribes are facing annihilation. Genocide is defined by the UN as “the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group”. Large-scale mass genocides rightly receive global attention, yet countless others go unreported and unpunished because the victims number only a few hundred, or even a few dozen. Right now, deep in the Amazon rainforest, a small tribe of survivors is on the run. They are the Kawahiva, an uncontacted tribe of just a few dozen people, the victims of waves of horrific attacks which have pushed them to the brink of extinction. We know almost nothing about them, except that they are fleeing chainsaws in a region with the highest rate of deforestation in the Amazon. Brazil’s first ever investigation into the genocide of an uncontacted tribe was launched in 2005, and 29 people suspected of involvement in killing Kawahiva were detained but later released, including a former state governor and a senior policeman. The case stalled for lack of evidence. The Kawahiva’s territory lies near the town of Colniza, one of the most violent areas in Brazil, where 90% of income is from illegal logging. Survival International, the global movement fighting for the rights of tribal people, has recently called for increased police protection for the team responsible for protecting the Kawahiva’s land. FUNAI, Brazil’s Indian Affairs Department, has been prevented from properly carrying out its work in the area due to violence from illegal loggers and ranchers, leaving the tribe exposed. Preventing a genocide of uncontacted people is not a priority for Bolsonaro. He once said: “There is no indigenous territory where there aren’t minerals. Gold, tin and magnesium are in these lands, especially in the Amazon, the richest area in the world. I’m not getting into this nonsense of defending land for Indians.” Indigenous peoples are frequently regarded as obstacles to the advance of agribusiness, extractive industries, roads and dams. As more rainforest is invaded and destroyed in the name of economic “progress” and personal profit, uncontacted tribes become targets – massacred over resources because greedy outsiders know they can literally get away with murder. These are silent, invisible genocides, with few if any witnesses. The news often only emerges months, if not years, later. The UN convention on genocide came into force 70 years ago, yet entire tribes continue to be exterminated by the dominant society in order to steal their land and resources. Symbolic of this is the “last of his tribe”, a lone man living in a patch of forest in Brazil’s western Amazon region. We know nothing about him except that he rejects all contact, and survived waves of attacks carried out in the 1970s and 80s against his people and his neighbours, the Akuntsu tribe – of whom just four survive. No one has ever been prosecuted for these genocides. This impervious mentality harks back to the wild west of the 18th and 19th centuries, when Native Americans in the US were slaughtered by the colonists. Indeed, Bolsonaro himself has declared: “It’s a shame that the Brazilian cavalry wasn’t as efficient as the Americans, who exterminated the Indians.” The majority of the world’s 100 or so uncontacted tribes live in the Brazilian Amazon. They are aware of the outside world, use and adapt outside goods for their own purposes and may engage sporadically with contacted tribes nearby. Their hunter-gatherer lifestyles require vast and acute botanical and zoological knowledge. With this unique understanding of sustainable living, they protect some of the largest and most biodiverse forests on Earth. Uncontacted people make homes, love their families, tend the landscape, and, like any of us, want to live well and in peace. Where their rights are respected they continue to thrive, but all face catastrophe unless their land is protected. The largest area of primary rainforest under indigenous control is the Yanomami territory, which straddles part of the Brazilian border with Venezuela. It is home to around 32,000 Yanomami, including some groups who are uncontacted. A “epidemic” of goldminers have illegally invaded the territory to pillage its riches, bringing disease and death to the tribe. In May, Yanomami reported that two uncontacted members of the tribe had been murdered by miners. FUNAI had closed its protection post in the area due to a lack of funds and, while prosecutors have ordered the post to be reopened, the authorities have not yet investigated the killings. Bolsonaro opposed the creation of the Yanomami territory in the 1980s, calling it a “crime against the motherland”, and a “scandal”. He affirmed his beliefs in 2017, saying he regarded the creation of the reserve as “high treason”, and there are murmurs that this is an area already in the crosshairs of the new administration. Bolsonaro intends to take FUNAI out of the justice ministry and into a newly created ministry for women, family and human rights. This is a move sure to weaken the department’s efficacy and clout – it has already been undermined by huge budget cuts. Bolsonaro has appointed Damares Alves as the new minister, an evangelical preacher and congressional aide who co-founded Atini, a controversial group that evangelises in indigenous communities and is subject to an investigation by public prosecutors for inciting racial hatred against indigenous peoples. After her appointment, she immediately questioned Brazil’s landmark policy to respect uncontacted tribes’ choice to remain uncontacted: “We are going to bring them to the forefront, not because they are uncontacted, but because they are forgotten and left to the care of NGOs. It is the state which will take care of these uncontacted people.” This is Bolsonaro-speak for forcing contact in order to open up and plunder their lands. Bolsonaro’s transition team has already announced that a task force will review the boundaries of a large indigenous territory in the northern Amazon, Raposa-Serra do Sol. “We are afraid of a new genocide against the indigenous population and we are not going to wait for it to happen. We will resist. We will defend our territories, and our lives,” said Sônia Guajajara, a leader of Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil, which represents more than 300 Brazilian indigenous peoples. Tribes are mobilising themselves to protect their territories using satellite technology and drones to monitor invasions. In the Araribóia reserve in Maranhão state, a group of men from the same tribe as Sônia, the Guajajara, have embarked on a desperate struggle to protect the forests they share with several dozen uncontacted Awá. A spokesman from these “Guardians of the Amazon” explains: “Our forest is being invaded by illegal loggers, right now. It’s an emergency. We patrol, we find the loggers, we destroy their equipment and we send them away. We constantly receive death threats from the logging gangs. But we continue, as our forest is our life. Our uncontacted Awá relatives also live in the forest. They cannot survive if it’s destroyed. As long as we live, we will fight for the uncontacted Indians, for all of us, and for nature.” Solidarity with the indigenous peoples of Brazil can change the world in their favour. Survival International was founded 50 years ago, following the publication of Norman Lewis’s article Genocide in the Sunday Times in 1969, which revealed some of the atrocities suffered by Brazil’s indigenous peoples last century. We are the only organisation fighting worldwide to stop the extermination of uncontacted tribes. Now, more than ever, we must mobilise our collective power to expose and put an end to these hidden genocides. Fiona Watson is director of research and advocacy at Survival International © 2019 Guardian News and Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

By: Jintamas Saksornchai Published 11:17 AM EDT, July 23, 2023 Supporters of the Move Forward Party walk in a circle during a protest in Bangkok, Thailand, Sunday, June 23rd, 2023.The demonstrators are protesting that Thailand's Constitution is undemocratic, because it allowed Parliament to block the winner of May's general election, the Move Forward party, from naming its leader named the new Prime Minister, even though he had assembled an eight-part coalition that had won a clear majority of seats in the House of Representatives. (AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit) ASSOCIATED PRESS BANGKOK (AP) — Hundreds of people gathered Sunday in the Thai capital of Bangkok to demand that conservative senators stop blocking the naming of a prime minister belonging to a winning coalition formed from May’s general election, a stance that risks a potentially destabilizing political deadlock. Protesters braved heavy rain to show their anger and frustration toward the members of the Senate, who were appointed by the military and pride themselves as defenders of traditional royalist values, which they believe are under threat. The surprise election winner, the Move Forward Party, failed in two efforts to have its leader Pita Limjaroenrat confirmed as the next prime minister, largely because he failed to woo enough votes from the senators, who are disturbed by the party’s reformist policy platform. As many as 1,000 demonstrators took to Bangkok’s busy Asok intersection with umbrellas and raincoats. many shouting “Senators, get out!” Speakers at the peaceful rally also called for political parties in a coalition assembled by Move Forward not to “switch sides” by joining hands with other parties that supported the outgoing government of Prayuth Chan-ocha, who as army commander seized power in a 2014 coup and was returned as prime minister after the 2019 election. Sombat Boonngam-anong, a veteran social activist who organized the rally, told the crowd that senators only have the right to vote yes, and described voting no as unconstitutional. “You can only vote yes, because the people already said yes to the results. You don’t have the right to vote anything else,” he declared of the senators’ responsibilities. The Move Forward Party finished first in May’s general election and formed an eight-party coalition, which together won majority of 312 seats in the 500-member House of Representatives. But under the military-enacted constitution, a new prime minister must receive the support of a combined majority of both the lower house and the unelected 250-seat Senate. Pita was rejected in a first vote and was knocked out of contention last when a procedural vote decided he could not be nominated a second time. On Friday, the coalition held a meeting and announced that its second biggest member, the Pheu Thai Party, would nominate its candidate and assume the leading role in forming a government. Its three possible nominees are real estate tycoon Srettha Thavisin; Paetongtarn Shinawatra, the daughter of former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted by a 2006 military coup; and Chaikasem Nitsiri, the party’s chief strategist. While declaring that the coalition for now will stick with its original members and try to win more votes from conservative lawmakers before the next vote scheduled for Thursday, Pheu Thai did not rule out the possibility that Move Forward could be excluded from the coalition altogether in order for it to succeed in forming the government. On Saturday and Sunday, Pheu Thai met with several parties that voted Prayuth in as prime minister in 2019. The parties that met with Pheu Thai over the weekend, including the military-backed Palang Pracharath and United Thai Nation parties, while denying they discussed joining the coalition. also made it clear they would not be willing to do so as long as Move Forward remains in the bloc. Some of Move Forward’s supporters want the coalition to stand fast instead of inviting new members from the other side of the political spectrum, and feel their Pheu Thai colleagues are putting the pursuit for power ahead of principle. Pheu Thai is the latest in a string of parties closely affiliated with populist billionaire Thaksin, who is in exile to avoid a prison sentence for abuse of power that he contends was politically inspired. Supporters of parties backed by Thaksin staged several mass protests against the conservative establishment that ousted him, spurring violent crackdowns, especially in 2010, when at least 94 people were killed. Move Forward’s victory was powered by a widespread desire, particularly among young people, for deep structural change in Thailand after nine years of military-backed rule. The party also wants to reduce the influence of the military, which has staged more than a dozen coups since Thailand became a constitutional monarchy in 1932, and of big business monopolies. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By AP News Zeljka Cvijanovic, a Serb member of the tripartite collective Bosnian presidency attends the final campaign rally in the Bosnian town of Banja Luka, Friday, Sept. 30, 2022. The U.S. on Monday, July 31, 2023 imposed sanctions on four ranking Bosnian Serb officials for undermining a 1995 peace agreement that ended a war that left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless. The four officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury include Cvijanovic as well as the prime minister of the Serb entity in Bosnia, Radovan Viskovic. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File) SARAJEVO, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — The U.S. on Monday imposed sanctions on four ranking Bosnian Serb officials for undermining a 1995 peace agreement that ended a war that left more than 100,000 dead and millions homeless. The four officials sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury include Zeljka Cvijanovic, a Serb member of the tripartite collective Bosnian presidency, as well as the prime minister of the Serb entity in Bosnia, Radovan Viskovic. The four are alleged to have taken part in drafting a law that U.S. and other international officials say undermines the unity of Bosnia by ignoring the decisions of the country’s constitutional court. The Bosnian Serb parliament has passed the law to not recognize or implement any decisions by Bosnia’s multi-ethnic Constitutional Court. “This action threatens the stability, sovereignty, and territorial integrity of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the hard-won peace underpinned by the Dayton Peace Agreement,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson. “This behavior further threatens the country’s future trajectory and successful integration into Euro-Atlantic institutions.” The Bosnian War started in 1992, pitting mostly Muslim Bosniaks, Serbs, and Croats against each other. It ended with the U.S.-sponsored Dayton accords that created two regions, the Republika Srpska and the Bosniak-Croat Federation. The Bosnian Serb ruling party, SNSD, said that the latest U.S. sanctions were “shameful” and “hypocritical” and would not “stop us from doing our job.” The pro-Russian Bosnian Serb leader, Milorad Dodik, has openly been striving to separate Bosnian Serb territories from the rest of Bosnia and join them with neighboring Serbia. Because of that, he was also sanctioned by the U.S., in 2017. On Monday, the U.S Treasury said that “as a result of today’s action, all property and interests in property of the designated persons described above that are in the United States or in the possession or control of U.S. persons are blocked and must be reported.” The U.S. recently also imposed sanctions on the pro-Russian head of Serbia’s security agency, Aleksandar Vulin, accusing him of involvement in illegal arms shipments, drug trafficking and misuse of public office. There are widespread fears that Serbia, an ally of Russia, could inflame tensions in the Balkans to divert at least some of the world attention from the war in Ukraine. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By Lorne Cook People walk past a mural painted in colours of the Serbian flag, that reads: "When the Army returns to Kosovo…” in Belgrade, Serbia, Thursday, July 13, 2023. Kosovo is a former province in Serbia whose 2008 declaration of independence Belgrade does not recognize. Most ethnic Serbs in Kosovo also have refused to acknowledge Kosovo's statehood that is backed by the United States and most EU nations but not Russia and China. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic). BRUSSELS (AP) — Senior lawmakers from the United States and Europe are calling for a change in the Western diplomatic approach toward Serbia and Kosovo amid concern that tensions between the two could rapidly spiral out of control. In the letter, signed by U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez, chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and his counterparts in Germany, the U.K., Ukraine and other countries, the lawmakers said U.S. and European Union negotiators were not putting enough pressure on Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic. Serbia and its former province of Kosovo have been at odds for decades. Their 1998-99 war left more than 10,000 people dead, mostly Kosovo Albanians. Kosovo unilaterally declared independence in 2008 but Belgrade has refuses to recognize the move. “It is hugely underestimated how serious the situation is that the EU and allies have brought themselves into with the continued appeasement of autocrats in the region like Vucic and (Bosnian Serb leader Milorad) Dodik,” one of the letter’s signatories, Dutch EU lawmaker Thijs Reuten, told the Associated Press on Wednesday. The letter, addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell and U.K. Foreign Secretary James Cleverly, highlights a series of incidents, including attacks on NATO peacekeepers, since Serbs living in the north of Kosovo boycotted municipal elections there in April. “All point toward a rapidly deteriorating situation which not only threatens the Belgrade-Pristina dialogue, but regional peace itself,” the lawmakers wrote. They said recent finds of hidden weapons in northern Kosovo and cross-border arms smuggling “highlight the risk of further escalations.” Borrell and his team lead a Belgrade-Pristina dialogue aimed at normalizing ties, and the U.S. is the other major player. In June, emergency talks with Vucic and Kosovo Prime Minister Albin Kurti to defuse tensions ended without producing a clear result. The two refused to meet face-to-face and Borrell, who held talks separately with both men, conceded that they have “different interpretations of the causes and also the facts, consequences and solutions.” In their letter, the lawmakers warned that “the current approach is not working. We would ask that the international community learns from our past and ensure we do not adopt a Belgrade-centered policy for the Balkans.” They noted a “lack of pressure on Serbia” over the attacks on peacekeepers and the detention of Kosovo police and said the West’s diplomatic response “highlights the current lack of even-handedness in addressing such flashpoints.” Borrell’s team confirmed he received the letter. Spokesman Peter Stano underlined that “the EU is a neutral facilitator” in the normalization dialogue and that both Serbia and Kosovo’s governments were being asked equally to help ease tensions. “The EU is currently closely monitoring Serbia’s compliance to the EU’s requests and stands ready to take measures in case of non-compliance to these requests,” Stano said. Vucic told reporters Tuesday that even though the letter was “directed against” him personally, “it is actually directed against Serbia.” He said the lawmakers who signed it think he’s “guilty” because he does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 declaration of independence. “I’m causing instability in the region because I’m advocating for the rights of the Serbian people in Bosnia and Montenegro,” Vucic said. “It is my fault and I’m proud of that.” Vucic, a former ultranationalist who now claims to want to take Serbia into the EU, has maintained close ties with Russian President Vladimir Putin and has refused to impose sanctions on Russia over its war on Ukraine. There are widespread fears in the West that Moscow could use Belgrade to reignite ethnic conflicts in the Balkans, which experienced a series of bloody wars in the 1990s during the breakup of Yugoslavia, in an effort to draw world attention away from the war. At the same time, Kurti, a longtime Kosovo independence activist who served prison time in both Serbia and Kosovo, has proven a thorny interlocutor for negotiators to work with. Little progress has been made on improving ties since he took office as prime minister in 2021. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By AP News FILE - A completed resolution vote tally to affirm the suspension of the Russian Federation from the United Nations Human Rights Council is displayed during a meeting of the United Nations General Assembly, Thursday, April 7, 2022, at THE United Nations headquarters. An expert commissioned by the U.N.'s top human rights body says in her first report on Russia that the rights situation in the country has “significantly deteriorated” since President Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine in February last year. (AP Photo/John Minchillo, File) GENEVA (AP) — The rights situation in Russia has “significantly deteriorated” since President Vladimir Putin launched his war against Ukraine in February last year, an expert commissioned by the U.N.’s top human rights body said in her first report on the country on Monday. Mariana Katzarova, the special rapporteur on Russia’s rights situation mandated by the Human Rights Council, chronicled the domestic crackdown that has largely targeted critics of Putin’s war as well as other opposition voices in Russia. Her report, made public on Monday, is separate from another probe by U.N.-backed investigators that has accused Russia of war crimes in Ukraine. Never before has the council authorized a rights expert to examine rights issues in one of the permanent members of the U.N. Security Council: Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States. The report cited figures last month from OVD-Info, which tracks human rights violations, indicating that more than 20,000 people were detained between February last year and June for participating in anti-war protests. More than 600 criminal lawsuits were initiated against “anti-war activity,” it said. The report said over half of all protesters who were arrested for what it called “peaceful anti-war activism” were women. Katzarova said she had received “credible reports” of a litany of rights violations including torture, allegations of rape and sexual violence, and threats of sexual abuse by law enforcement officers against both men and women. None of those cases had been officially investigated, she said. The Russian Justice Ministry’s registry of “foreign agents” contained 649 organizations and individuals by the end of July — an increase of more than 25% in six months, the report said. More than 100 organizations were declared as “undesirable” at the end of July, meaning they could be banned. Last April, barely six weeks after Russia’s armed invasion of Ukraine, the U.N. General Assembly suspended Russia’s seat in the 47-member-country rights council in Geneva. The mandate of Katzarova, who is Bulgarian, was created a year ago, and she started work in May. Authorities in Russia have refused to cooperate, and said submissions from her team would be “automatically disregarded,” the report said. Rights in Russia have been on a “steady decline” over the last two decades, the report said, but Katzarova found the situation has “significantly deteriorated since its invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.” The report was built on consultations with over 60 Russian and international rights organizations and individuals, and nearly 100 written submissions, including from rights advocates and witnesses of rights violations. The rights council is set to discuss it Thursday. Since the start of the war, the Kremlin has claimed that the vast majority of Russians support its “special military operation” in Ukraine, while also insisting that those who disagree are free to do so. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov has noted, however, that those willing to criticize the government must do it in compliance with the existing laws. Putin himself has said that he is “not judging” those “who behaved not like patriots.” He also said last week that one “can disagree” with the Russian authorities “and live here, speak out about it -- no one is prohibiting it.” Copyright 2023 The Associated Press.

FILE - A Tigrayan refugee rape victim who fled the conflict in Ethiopia’s Tigray sits for a portrait in eastern Sudan near the Sudan-Ethiopia border, March 20, 2021. U.N.-backed human rights experts say that war crimes continue in Ethiopia despite a peace deal signed nearly a year ago to end a devastating conflict that also engulfed the country’s Tigray region. The violence has left at least 10,000 people affected by rape and other sexual violence — mostly women and girls. (AP Photo/Nariman El-Mofty, File) BY JAMEY KEATEN Updated 2:35 PM EDT, September 18, 2023 GENEVA (AP) — U.N.-backed human rights experts say war crimes continue in Ethiopia despite a peace accord signed nearly a year ago to end a conflict that engulfed the country’s northern Tigray region. The violence has left at least 10,000 people affected by rape and other sexual violence — mostly women and girls, they found. They warned of “hallmark risks” that the violence could spread further, producing more “atrocity crimes” and jeopardize security more broadly in East Africa. With a multi-ethnic population of about 120 million, Ethiopia is by far the most populous country in the region. The experts’ report, published on Monday, comes against the backdrop of an uncertain future for the team of investigators who wrote it: The U.N. Human Rights Council is set to decide early next month whether to extend the team’s mandate in the face of efforts by the Ethiopian government of Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed to end it. The violence erupted in November 2020, centering largely — though not exclusively — on the northern Tigray region, which for months was shut off from the outside world. The report cites atrocities by all sides in the war, including mass killings, rape, starvation and destruction of schools and medical facilities. Mohamed Chande Othman, chairman of the international commission of human rights experts on Ethiopia, said the situation remains “extremely grave” despite a peace accord signed in November. ”While the signing of the agreement may have mostly silenced the guns, it has not resolved the conflict in the north of the country, in particular in Tigray, nor has it brought about any comprehensive peace,” he said. “Violent confrontations are now at a near-national scale, with alarming reports of violations against civilians in the Amhara region and on-going atrocities in Tigray,” Othman added. Speaking to reporters in Geneva, he said patterns of grave rights violations and growing “securitization” in Ethiopia “bear hallmark risks of further atrocity crimes.” The report said troops from neighboring Eritrea — which the commission said were the worst offenders — and militia members from Ethiopia’s Amhara militia continue to commit grave violations in Tigray, including the “systematic rape and sexual violence of women and girls.” Commissioner Radhika Coomaraswamy said the presence of Eritrean troops in Ethiopia showed not only “an entrenched policy of impunity, but also continued support for and tolerance of such violations by the federal government.” “Entire families have been killed, relatives forced to watch horrific crimes against their loved ones, while whole communities have been displaced or expelled from their homes,” she said. The team faulted a “lack of cooperation” from the Ethiopian government, and said the Eritrean government did not respond to questions about its alleged role in the crimes in Ethiopia. The government in Addis Ababa has sought to set up its own transitional justice system, which the commission said was an attempt to evade international scrutiny. Citing consolidated estimates from seven health centers in Tigray alone, the commission said more than 10,000 survivors of sexual violence sought care between the start of the conflict and July this year. But accountability and trust in the justice system in Ethiopia have been lacking. The commission said it knows of only 13 completed and 16 pending military court cases addressing sexual violence committed during the conflict. The figures in the report offer a sweeping look at a conflict that was known to be rife with cases of sexual violence, even after the signing of the peace deal. Ethiopia announced a state of emergency in the Amhara region last month, and the experts cited reports of “mass arbitrary detention of Amhara civilians,” including at least one drone strike carried by government forces. Amhara, Ethiopia’s second most populous region, has been gripped by instability since April, when federal authorities moved to disarm its security forces following the end of the war in neighboring Tigray. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

BY SAMY MAGDY Updated 1:40 PM EDT, October 11, 2023 1 of 3 | South Sudanese who fled from Sudan sit outside a nutrition clinic at a transit center in Renk, South Sudan, on May 16, 2023. Four Western countries have floated a proposal on Wednesday Oct. 4th 2023 for the U.N.'s top human rights body to appoint a team of experts to monitor and report on abuses and rights violations in war-wracked Sudan. (AP Photo/Sam Mednick, File) 2 of 3 | FILE- Smoke rises over Khartoum, Sudan, on June 8, 2023, as fighting between the Sudanese army and paramilitary Rapid Support Forces continues. (AP Photo, File) 3 of 3 | This is a locator map for Sudan with its capital, Khartoum. (AP Photo) CAIRO (AP) — The United Nations’ top human rights body voted Wednesday to establish a face-finding mission to probe allegations of abuses in Sudan’s monthslong war. Sudan was engulfed in chaos in mid-April, when simmering tensions between the military and a powerful paramilitary group exploded into open warfare in the capital, Khartoum, and other areas across the east African nation. The U.N. Human Rights Council narrowly adapted the resolution, with 19 out of the council’s 47 members voting in favor of establishing the mission. Sixteen members opposed it, while 12 countries were absent. Proposed by the U.K., the U.S. and Norway, the resolution says the mission will “investigate and establish the facts, circumstances and root causes of all alleged human rights violations and abuses and violations of international humanitarian law” in Sudan’s war. The conflict in Sudan has turned Khartoum and other urban areas into battlefields, wrecking civilian infrastructure and an already battered health care system. Left without basic supplies, many hospitals and medical facilities have closed. More than 9,000 people have been killed in the conflict, according to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, which tracks Sudan’s war. The fighting has forced over 4.5 million people to flee their homes to other places inside Sudan and more than 1.2 million to seek refuge in neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency says. In the first weeks of the war, fighting centered in Khartoum, but it then moved to the western region of Darfur, which was the scene of a genocidal campaign by Arab militia groups, known as jajaweed, against ethnic Africans in the early 2000s. The paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and its allied jajaweed militias have again attacked ethnic African groups in Darfur, say rights groups and the U.N., which has reported mass killings, rape and other atrocities in Darfur and other areas in Sudan. “Civilians in Sudan are bearing the brunt of the ongoing devastating conflict,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, a senior director with Amnesty international, said a day before the vote. “Parties to the conflict have also committed war crimes, including sexual violence and the targeting of communities based on their ethnic identity.” The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor announced in July an investigation into alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the latest fighting in Darfur. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

File - Sudanese refugees who fled the conflict in Sudan gather Monday, July 10, 2023, at the Zabout refugee Camp in Goz Beida, Chad. Some 260,000 people have fled Darfur into neighboring Chad after RSF fighters and allied Arab militias stormed a number of cities and towns, burning houses and driving out residents. (Pierre Honnorat/WFP via AP, File) Amna al-Nour narrowly escaped death twice. The first was when militias torched her family’s home in Sudan’s Darfur region. The second was two months later when paramilitary fighters stopped her and others trying to escape as they tried to reach the border with neighboring Chad. “They massacred us like sheep,” the 32-year-old teacher said of the attack in late April on her home city Geneina. “They want to uproot us all.” Al-Nour and her three children now live in a school-turned-refugee housing inside Chad, among more than 260,000 Sudanese, mostly women and children, who have fled what survivors and rights groups say is a new explosion of atrocities in the large western region of Sudan. Two decades ago, Darfur became synonymous with genocide and war crimes, particularly by the notorious Janjaweed Arab militias against populations that identify as Central or East African. Fears are mounting that that legacy is returning with reports of widespread killings, rapes and destruction of villages in Darfur amid a nationwide power struggle between Sudan’s military and a powerful paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces. “This spiraling violence bears terrifying similarity with the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in Darfur since 2003,” said Tigere Chagutah, a regional director with Amnesty International. “Even those seeking safety are not being spared.” Fighting erupted in the capital, Khartoum, in mid-April between the military and the RSF after years of growing tensions. It spread to other parts of the country, but in Darfur it took on a different form -– brutal attacks by the RSF and its allied Arab militias on civilians, survivors and rights workers say. During the second week of fighting in Khartoum, the RSF and militias stormed Geneina, the capital of West Darfur state, located near the Chad border. In that and two other assaults since, the fighters went on a rampage of burning and killing that reduced large parts of the city of more than half a million people to wreckage, according to videos shared by activists. “What happened in Geneina is indescribable,” said Sultan Saad Abdel-Rahman Bahr, the leader of the Dar Masalit sultanate, which represents Darfur’s Masalit ethnic community. “Everywhere (in the city) there was a massacre. All was planned and systemic.” The sultanate said in a report that more than 5,000 people were killed and 8,000 others were wounded in Geneina alone in attacks by the RSF and Arab militias between April 24 and June 12. The report detailed three main waves of attacks on Geneina and surrounding areas in April, May, and June, which it said aimed at “ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against African civilians.” The RSF was born out of the Janjaweed militias that during the conflict in the 2000s were accused of mass killings, rapes and other atrocities against Darfur’s African communities. Former President Omar al-Bashir later formed the RSF out of Janjaweed fighters and put it under the command of Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, who hails from Darfur’s Arab Rizeigat tribe. The RSF didn’t respond to repeated requests by The Associated Press for comment on the allegations concerning the recent violence, including rapes. On its social media, the paramilitary force characterized the fighting in Darfur as renewed tribal clashes between Arabs and non-Arabs. In interviews with the AP, more than three dozen people and activists gave similar descriptions of waves of attacks by the RSF and Arab militias on Geneina and other towns in West Darfur. Fighters stormed houses, driving out residents, taking men away and burning their homes, they said. In some cases, they would kill the men and rape women and often shot people fleeing in the streets, al-Nour and other survivors said. Almost all interviewees said the military and other rebel groups in the region failed to provide protection to civilians. “They were looking for men. They want to eliminate us,” said Malek Harun, a 62-year-old farmer who survived an attack in May on his village of Misterei, near Geneina. He said gunmen attacked the village from all directions. They looted homes and detained or killed the men. His wife was killed when she was shot by fighters firing in the village market, he said. He buried her in his home’s yard. Arab neighbors then helped him escape and he arrived in Chad on June 5. On July 13, the U.N. Human Rights Office said a mass grave was found outside Geneina with at least 87 bodies, citing credible information. The international group Human Rights Watch said it also documented atrocities including summary executions and mass graves in Misterei. The Sudanese Unit for Combating Violence against Women, a government organization, said it documented 46 rape cases in Darfur, including 21 in Geneina and 25 in Nyala, the capital of South Darfur, as well as 51 in Khartoum. The true number of cases of sexual violence are likely in the thousands, said Sulima Ishaq Sharif, head of the unit. “There is an emerging pattern of large-scale targeted attacks against civilians based on their ethnic identities,” said Volker Perthes, the U.N. envoy in Sudan. The International Criminal Court’s prosecutor, Karim Khan, told the U.N. Security Council last week they were investigating alleged new war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. Al-Nour, whose husband was killed in a bout of tribal clashes in early 2020, said assailants stormed her district of Jamarek in Geneina in late April and burned down dozens of houses, including hers. “They forced people to get out of their homes, then shot at them,” she said, speaking by phone from the Chadian border town of Adre. She and her children — aged 4, 7 and 10 — escaped with the aid of Arab neighbors. They kept moving from town to town amid clashes. In mid-June, she and a group of 40 men, women and children started on foot down the 20-kilometer (12-mile) highway to the border, planning to escape to Chad. They were soon stopped at an RSF checkpoint, she said. Holding the group at gunpoint, the fighters asked about their ethnicity. Two of the 14 men in the group were Arab, with fairer skin. The fighters abused and beat the others, who were darker skinned and had Masalit accents. “You want to escape? You will die here,” one fighter told the Masalit. They whipped everyone in the group, men and women. They beat the men to the ground with rifle butts and clicked the triggers of their guns to frighten them. One man was shot in the head and died immediately, al-Nour said. They took away the remaining men along with four women in their 20s, she said. She does not know what happened to them but fears the women were raped. They allowed the rest of the women and children to continue their trip. Other refugees in Adre reported similar violence on the road to the border. “It was a relief to reach Chad,” said Mohammed Harun, a refugee from Misterei who arrived in Adre in early June, “but the wounds (from the war) will last forever.” Copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By Molly Quell FILE - Smoke rises following Israeli bombardments in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Jan. 17, 2024. Judges in the Netherlands on Monday Feb. 12, 2024 ordered the Dutch government to halt the export of fighter jet parts to Israel, citing a clear risk of violations of international law. (AP Photo/Mohammed Dahman, File) THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — An appeals court ordered the Dutch government on Monday to halt the export of F-35 fighter jet parts to Israel, citing a clear risk of violations of international law. A trio of human rights organizations brought a civil suit against the Netherlands in December, arguing authorities needed to reevaluate the export license in light of Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip. “It is undeniable that there is a clear risk that the exported F-35 parts are used in serious violations of international humanitarian law,” Judge Bas Boele said in reading out the ruling, eliciting cheers from several people in the courtroom. The exports must cease within seven days. The decision came as Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte traveled to Israel to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the conflict. Rutte was also expected to separately meet with Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the government would appeal. “It is up to the state to shape its foreign policy,” Geoffrey van Leeuwen, the minister for foreign trade and development said in a statement. In the meantime, van Leeuwen said his office would abide by the export ban. “We are extremely grateful that there is justice and that the court was willing to speak out on justice,” lead lawyer Liesbeth Zegveld told reporters after the hearing. Oxfam Novib, Pax Nederland and The Rights Forum filed the case in December. They argued the continued transfer of the aircraft parts makes the Netherlands complicit in possible war crimes being committed by Israel in its war with Hamas. In January, a lower court sided with the government, allowing the Dutch to continue sending U.S.-owned parts stored at a warehouse in the town of Woensdrecht to Israel. The Netherlands is home to one of three F-35 European regional warehouses. Other countries are also considering restricting weapons sales to Israel. Human rights groups in the United Kingdom have brought a similar suit against their government, attempting to block weapons exports to Israel. In the United States, Democrats in the Senate are pushing a bill that would require President Joe Biden to get congressional approval before greenlighting weapons sales to Israel. Late last month, the U.N. top court ordered Israel to do all it can to prevent death, destruction and any acts of genocide in Gaza. Although that decision was made after the appeal in the Dutch case was heard, the groups’ lawyers say judges likely considered the legally binding order from the International Court of Justice. The decision left some room for Dutch authorities to export parts of the aircraft being used in operations other than Gaza. Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By Elise Morton Employees of diplomatic missions walk to lay flowers at the monument, a large boulder from the Solovetsky islands, where the first camp of the Gulag political prison system was established, near the building of the Federal Security Service (FSB, Soviet KGB successor) in Lubyanskaya Square in Moscow Russia, Sunday Oct. 29, 2023. (AP Photo/ Dmitry Serebryakov) Russians commemorated the victims of Soviet state terror on Sunday, while the Russian government continues its crackdown on dissent in the country. The “Returning of the Names” event was organized by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning human rights group Memorial. The commemoration has traditionally been held in Moscow on Oct. 29 — the eve of Russia’s Remembrance Day for the Victims of Political Repression — at the Solovetsky Stone memorial to victims of Soviet-era repression, and centers on the reading out of names of individuals killed during Joseph Stalin’s Great Terror of the late 1930s. Since 2020, Moscow authorities have refused to grant a permit for the demonstration. This is allegedly owing to the “epidemiological situation” and a ban on holding public events, though supporters of Memorial believe the refusal is politically motivated. Memorial itself was ordered to close by the Moscow authorities in November 2021. Although it was shut down as a legal entity in Russia, the group still operates in other countries and has continued some of its human rights activities in Russia. Instead of a demonstration, on Sunday Muscovites and several Western ambassadors laid flowers at the Solovetsky Stone. The subdued event took place under the watchful eyes of police. Memorial also organized a live broadcast of the reading of the victims’ names, from Moscow and other Russian cities, as well as from abroad. The “Returning of the Names” event comes as Russian prosecutors seek a three-year prison sentence for human rights campaigner and Memorial co-chair Oleg Orlov. Orlov was fined around $1,500 earlier this month and convicted of publicly “discrediting” the Russian military after a Facebook post in which he denounced the invasion of Ukraine, the latest step in a relentless crackdown on activists, independent journalists and opposition figures. Memorial said on Friday that state prosecutors had appealed the sentence, calling it “excessively lenient.” “It’s obvious that Orlov needs isolation from society for his correction,” Memorial quoted the prosecutor as saying. A law adopted shortly after the Kremlin launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine made such public “discrediting” a criminal offense if committed repeatedly within a year. Orlov has been fined twice for antiwar protests before facing criminal charges. Memorial, one of the oldest and the most renowned Russian rights organizations, was awarded the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize along with imprisoned Belarusian activist Ales Bialiatski and the Center for Civil Liberties, a Ukrainian organization. Memorial was founded in the Soviet Union in 1987 to ensure that victims of Communist Party repression would be remembered. It has continued to compile information on human rights abuses and track the fate of political prisoners in Russia while facing a Kremlin crackdown in recent years. The group had been declared a “foreign agent,” a designation that brings additional government scrutiny and carries strong pejorative connotations. Over the years, Memorial was ordered to pay massive fines for alleged violations of the ”foreign agent” law. Russia’s Supreme Court ordered it shut down in December 2021, a move that sparked an outcry at home and abroad. Memorial and its supporters have called the trial against Orlov politically motivated. His defense team included Dmitry Muratov, editor-in-chief of the independent newspaper Novaya Gazeta and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2021. Copyright 2023 The Associated Press.

A worker walks next to a pile of sacks of food earmarked for the Tigray and Afar regions in a warehouse of the World Food Programme (WFP) in Semera, the regional capital for the Afar region, in Semera, Ethiopia, Feb. 21, 2022. Only a small fraction of needy people in Ethiopia's northern Tigray region are receiving food aid, according to an aid memo seen by The Associated Press, more than one month after aid agencies resumed deliveries of grain following a lengthy pause over theft. (AP Photo, File) BY RODNEY MUHUMUZA KAMPALA, Uganda (AP) — Nearly 400 people have died of starvation in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions in recent months, the national ombudsman said Tuesday, a rare admission of hunger-related deaths by a federal body. Local officials have previously reported starvation deaths in their districts, but Ethiopia’s federal government has insisted these reports are “completely wrong”. Ethiopia’s ombudsman office sent experts to the regions, which are gripped by drought and still reeling from a devastating civil war that officially ended 14 months ago. They concluded that 351 people have died of hunger in Tigray in the past six months, with 44 more deaths in Amhara. Only a small fraction of needy people in Tigray are receiving food aid, according to an aid memo seen by The Associated Press, more than one month after aid agencies resumed deliveries of grain following a lengthy pause over theft. Just 14% of 3.2 million people targeted for food aid by humanitarian agencies in Tigray this month had received it by Jan. 21, according to the memo by the Tigray Food Cluster, a group of aid agencies co-chaired by the U.N.’s World Food Program and Ethiopian officials. The memo urges humanitarian groups to “immediately scale up” their operations, warning that “failure to take swift action now will result in severe food insecurity and malnutrition during the lean season, with possible loss of the most vulnerable children and women in the region.” The U.N. and the U.S. paused food aid to Tigray in mid-March last year after discovering a “large-scale” scheme to steal humanitarian grain. The suspension was rolled out to the rest of Ethiopia in June. U.S. officials believe the theft may be the biggest diversion of grain ever. Donors have blamed Ethiopian government officials and the military for the fraud. The U.N. and the U.S. lifted the pause in December after introducing reforms to curb theft, but Tigray authorities say food is not reaching those who need it. Two aid workers told the AP that the new system — which includes fitting GPS trackers to food trucks and putting QR codes on ration cards — has been hampered by technical issues. Aid agencies are also struggling with a lack of funds. A third aid worker said the food aid pause and the slow resumption meant some people in Tigray have not received food aid for over a year. “They went through multiple rounds of registration and verification, but no actual distributions yet,” the aid worker said. The aid workers spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the press. Around 20.1 million people across Ethiopia need humanitarian food due to drought, conflict and a tanking economy. The aid pause pushed up hunger levels even further. The U.S.-funded Famine Early Warning System has warned that crisis levels of hunger or worse “are expected in northern, southern and southeastern Ethiopia throughout at least early 2024.” A former head of the WFP has described these levels of hunger as “marching towards starvation.” In Amhara, which shares a border with Tigray, a rebellion that erupted in August is impeding humanitarians’ movements and making distributions difficult, while several regions of Ethiopia have been devastated by a multi-year drought. Malnutrition rates among children in parts of Ethiopia’s Afar, Amhara and Oromia regions range between 15.9% and 47%, according to a presentation by the Ethiopia Nutrition Cluster and reviewed by the AP. Among displaced children in Tigray, the rate is 26.5%. The Ethiopia Nutrition Cluster is co-chaired by the U.N. Children’s Fund and the federal government. Tigray, home to 5.5 million people, was the center of a devastating two-year civil war that killed hundreds of thousands and spilled into the neighboring regions. A U.N. panel accused Ethiopia’s government of using “starvation as a method of warfare” by restricting food aid to Tigray during the conflict, which ended in November 2022 with a peace deal. Persistent insecurity meant only 49% of Tigray’s farmland was planted during the main planting season last year, according to an assessment by U.N. agencies, NGOs and the regional authorities, and seen by the AP. Crop production in these areas was only 37% of the expected total because of drought. In some areas the proportion was as low as 2%. The poor harvest prompted Tigray’s authorities to warn of an “unfolding famine” that could match the disaster of 1984-5, which killed hundreds of thousands of people across northern Ethiopia, unless the aid response is immediately scaled up. But Ethiopia’s federal government denies there is a large hunger crisis. When Tigray’s leader, Getachew Reda, raised the alarm over looming mass starvation deaths last month, a federal government spokesperson dismissed the reports as “inaccurate” and accused him of “politicizing the crisis.” Copyright 2024 The Associated Press.

Rohingya women wait in a queue with vouchers to collect relief distributed by the Bangladesh Red Crescent Society at Kutupalang Unregistered Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, February 6, 2017. REUTERS/Mohammad Ponir Hossain By Antoni Slodkowski COX'S BAZAR, Bangladesh More than 1,000 Rohingya Muslims may have been killed in a Myanmar army crackdown, according to two senior United Nations officials dealing with refugees fleeing the violence, suggesting the death toll has been a far greater than previously reported. The officials, from two separate U.N. agencies working in Bangladesh, where nearly 70,000 Rohingya have fled in recent months, said they were concerned the outside world had not fully grasped the severity of the crisis unfolding in Myanmar's Rakhine State. "The talk until now has been of hundreds of deaths. This is probably an underestimation - we could be looking at thousands," said one of the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity. Both officials, in separate interviews, cited the weight of testimony gathered by their agencies from refugees over the past four months for concluding the death toll likely exceeded 1,000. Myanmar's presidential spokesman, Zaw Htay, said the latest reports from military commanders were that fewer than 100 people have been killed in a counterinsurgency operation against Rohingya militants who attacked police border posts in October. Asked about the UN officials' comments that the dead could number more than 1,000, he said: "Their number is much greater than our figure. We have to check on the ground." About 1.1 million Rohingya Muslims live in apartheid-like conditions in northwestern Myanmar, where they are denied citizenship. Many in Buddhist-majority Myanmar regard them as illegal immigrants from Bangladesh. In addition to the information the two UN officials gave Reuters, a report released by the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) on Friday gave accounts of mass killings and gang rapes by troops in northwestern Myanmar in recent months, which it said probably constituted crimes against humanity. The government led by Aung San Suu Kyi said last week it would investigate the allegations in the report. It has previously denied almost all accusations of killings, rapes and arson. But mounting evidence of atrocities by the army puts Suu Kyi, who has no control over the armed forces under a constitution written by the previous military government, in a difficult position, Myanmar-based diplomats say. The Nobel peace prize winner has been criticised in the West for her silence on the issue, undermining the goodwill she built up as a democracy champion under years of junta rule and threatening international support. Challenging the generals, however, could put Myanmar's democratic transition at risk. COUNTING THE DEAD Independent verification of what has been happening in Myanmar is extremely difficult as the military has cut off access to northwestern Rakhine. The OHCHR report cited supporting evidence including bullet and knife wounds sustained by refugees and satellite imagery showing destruction of villages. A second senior U.N. official, from a different agency in Bangladesh, told Reuters that the report only described "the tip of the iceberg". The OHCHR report was based on interviews with 220 people, the majority of whom said they knew of people who had been killed or disappeared. Reuters also has reviewed a separate, internal U.N. analysis using a much larger sample size. In this unpublished report, based on interviews with families comprising more than 1,750 refugees, there were 182 reports of killings of people just in the interviewee's home village, and 186 reports of people from their village disappearing, more than 10 percent in both cases. The document acknowledges the actual number in both categories was likely lower as interviewees from the same village may have separately described the same incidents. The U.N. says 69,000 people have crossed the border since October, so if the proportion reporting people killed or missing among all the refugees was consistent with those in the report the total number would run into the thousands. HARROWING ACCOUNTS According to refugees' accounts provided to Reuters in camps in Bangladesh over the past two weeks, the army intensified its offensive in northern Rakhine in mid-November, unleashing what the OHCHR report described as a "calculated policy of terror" after an incident in which several hundred Rohingya attacked an outnumbered group of soldiers, killing an officer. The OHCHR report details deaths in random firings, including from helicopters and grenades; targeted killings of imams and teachers, slitting of throats with knives and locking people inside burning houses. Reuters reporters have heard similar accounts from refugees in the camps in Bangladesh. Khatun Hazera, a 35-year-old woman from the village of Kya Guang Taung, told Reuters that soldiers shot her husband, a teacher at the village madrassa, as he was returning from school with his students. Reuters could not independently confirm these accounts. Presidential spokesman Zaw Htay said the authorities "will try to verify" such reports, adding: "If it's true we need to find out the reason and the background data about the incident." "WHERE ARE THE MEN?" The OHCHR report says that the vast majority of the new Rohingya refugees were women and children, raising questions about the fate of the men left behind, U.N. officials said. "Boys and men between the age of 17 and 45 were particularly targeted, as they are considered to be strong and seen as a potential threat to the army and authorities," it said, adding that many accounts describe men of that age being rounded up and taken away with their hands tied behind their backs or heads. Zaw Htay said the police and army were doing their jobs in making arrests. Myanmar authorities have given little information about how many may have been detained, although prison officials told a U.N. human rights envoy last month that they were holding about 450 people. "If you look at the new arrivals - the majority are women - so many of them talk about a killed husband, a slaughtered uncle or a missing brother. Where are all the men?" said the first U.N. official. (Additional reporting by Simon Lewis in Yangon; Editing by Alex Richardson) (C) 2017 Reuters