Michelle Bachelet accuses Sri Lanka of reneging on promises to ensure justice for thousands of civilians killed in the final stages of the 37-year separatist war. The United Nations human rights chief has called for an International Criminal Court investigation into Sri Lanka’s Tamil separatist conflict and sanctions on military officials accused of war crimes, according to a report obtained by the AFP news agency. Michelle Bachelet accused Sri Lanka of reneging on promises to ensure justice for thousands of civilians killed in the final stages of the 37-year separatist war that ended 10 years ago. “Domestic initiatives for accountability and reconciliation have repeatedly failed to produce results, more deeply entrenching impunity, and exacerbating victims’ distrust in the system,” she said in the report obtained before its official release. The government of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa has reversed some advances made under previous administrations in protecting human rights, the report said. Surveillance of rights activists and dissidents has increased and a climate of self-censorship has emerged, it added. Rajapaksa won the 2019 presidential election on a nationalist agenda which included a promise that troops who crushed Tamil rebels would not be prosecuted. Rajapaksa was the top defence official when government forces crushed the rebel fighters in a military campaign that ended in May 2009. His brother Mahinda was president then and is currently the prime minister. UN reports have accused Sri Lankan troops of shelling hospitals and indiscriminate aerial bombardments, executing surrendering rebels and causing the disappearance of thousands of minority Tamils. At least 100,000 people were killed in the war and allegations were made that 40,000 Tamil civilians were killed in the final onslaught. The president, a retired army lieutenant colonel, threatened last year to withdraw from the UN rights council if it pursued allegations against his troops. Sri Lanka has not signed up to the ICC, and so it is outside its jurisdiction. But while another state cannot refer a non-signatory to the ICC, the UN can. In her latest assessment, Bachelet recommended for the first time that the ICC look into Sri Lanka’s case, and said action should be taken against war criminals, including Tamil rebels. “Member states can actively pursue investigation and prosecution of international crimes committed by all parties in Sri Lanka before their own national courts,” she said. The 17-page report also calls for possible targeted sanctions “such as asset freezes and travel bans against credibly alleged perpetrators” of rights violations. Bachelet expressed concern at General Shavendra Silva’s elevation as army chief and General Kamal Gunaratne’s appointment as defence secretary. UN reports have implicated them in alleged war crimes. Silva, who was a field commander at the height of the separatist war, already faces a US travel ban. Sri Lanka has resisted repeated calls for an independent investigation and the Rajapaksa brothers had previously denied any war crimes were committed. However, in advance of next month’s UN Human Rights Council sessions in Geneva, President Rajapaksa last week did a U-turn and said Sri Lanka would investigate some allegations. He gave a commission of inquiry six months to look into previous inquiries into the allegations of “human rights violations, serious violations of international humanitarian law”. The UN rights body said, since returning to power, the president had undermined previous police investigations and may have contributed to the destruction of evidence. Bachelet called on member states to take action to preserve evidence from key cases such as the killing of 17 aid workers from a French charity in August 2006 and the 2009 assassination of newspaper editor Lasantha Wickrematunge. The UN rights chief said several top police officers involved in high-profile cases had been penalised or arrested to stifle investigations. She also criticised President Rajapaksa for granting a pardon in 2020 to an army officer convicted and jailed for killing eight Tamil civilians, including four children, in April 2000. SOURCE: AFP © Al Jazeera 2021

Accords bring together Fulani and Dogon communities who have historic tensions over access to land and water. Three “peace agreements” have been signed by representatives from herder and farmer communities that have become trapped in violence sparked by armed group attacks in central Mali, a Swiss mediator said. The accords bring together the Fulani – also called Peul – who mainly comprise semi-nomadic herders, and the Dogon, who are chiefly sedentary farmers. The two groups have historic tensions over access to land and water, but the friction turned bloody after armed fighters pushed into their region more than five years ago. “On 12, 22 and 24 January 2021, the Fulani and Dogon communities signed three peace agreements with humanitarian objectives,” the Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD), a Swiss organisation, said on Tuesday. They apply to Koro, a county-sized area bordering Burkina Faso that has borne some of the worst bloodshed, it said in a statement. Remote and dangerous, the area is only entered regularly by humanitarian groups, United Nations patrols and the army. Under the accords, the signatories pledged to encourage members of their communities “to work for peace by forgiving past acts and spread messages of cohesion and calm”. They also agreed to “guarantee physical integrity, the free circulation of people, goods and cattle … to respect the habits and customs” of all, and enable people of all communities to have access to villages and markets, the statement said. Al Jazeera’s Nicolas Haque, reporting from Dakar in neighbouring Senegal, said the agreements were “significant” and a “breakthrough” as they come at a time of intensified violence and attacks. “In the absence of the Malian state and of security, these two ethnic groups have resorted to armed militias … for protection,” Haque said. “At the heart of all of this is access to land – for the Fulanis who are mostly herders, access to land to graze their animals. And for Dogons, who are mostly farmers, it’s access to land to grow food,” he said. The agreement is also meant to help the displaced return home. Last week, the UN refugee agency said more than two million people were forced to flee their homes within their own countries’ borders owing to the violence engulfing Africa’s Sahel region. On top of the internally displaced, more than 850,000 people have fled Mali and taken shelter in other countries, it said. Similar agreements were signed just over two years ago but failed to stem the violence. Central Mali, a mosaic of many communities, came under strain in 2015 when a ruthless al-Qaeda group appeared on the scene. It was led by an ethnic Fulani preacher named Amadou Koufa, who largely recruited among members of his own community. Other ethnic groups, notably the Dogon and Bambara, formed so-called self-defence forces, setting the scene for bloody tit-for-tat violence. One of these groups, a Dogon armed group called the Dan Nan Ambassagou, has been accused by NGOs and the UN of carrying out massacres in Fulani villages, an allegation it denies. The force has officially been dissolved but remains active. The Malian army has also been accused of abuses towards the Fulani in the Koro area, and many Fulani have fled for the safety of the regional capital, Mopti. © Al Jazeera 2021

Hundreds of civilians in Cabo Delgado province are victims of indiscriminate killing by rebels, gov’t forces and private militia, Amnesty says. Fighters, government forces and a “private militia” backing the authorities have indiscriminately killed hundreds of civilians in an escalating conflict in northeastern Mozambique, Amnesty International has said in a new report. Violence stoked by fighters in gas-rich Cabo Delgado province has killed at least 2,600 people since 2017, about half of them civilians, according to an NGO, the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data. More than half a million people have been displaced. Local people are “caught between the Mozambican security forces, the private militia fighting alongside the government and the armed opposition group locally known as ‘al-Shabab’ – none of which respect their right to life, or the rules of war”, Amnesty’s regional chief, Deprose Muchena, said in a statement on Tuesday. “All three have committed war crimes, causing the deaths of hundreds of civilians.” There was no immediate comment from the government. The authorities have previously denied their soldiers committed any atrocities in Cabo Delgado. Amnesty said its analysis was based on interviews with dozens of internally displaced people, as well as reviews of videos and pictures, including satellite imagery. The watchdog said the government hired a South African private military company, Dyck Advisory Group (DAG), after it “lost a number of battles” in its quest to regain control of the region. The mercenaries have fired guns from helicopters and dropped hand grenades indiscriminately into crowds, according to Amnesty. DAG said it will hire outside lawyers to look into its activities in Mozambique. “We take these allegations very seriously and we are going to put an independent legal team in there shortly to do a board of inquiry and look at what we are doing,” Lionel Dyck, the founder of the company, told Reuters news agency. He declined to give further details of the group’s mission in Mozambique. Amnesty said it had probed an attack by helicopter at a hospital in the port town of Mocimboa da Praia in June last year, and schools had come under fire in other incidents. It said it had verified video of another incident in September, in which government troops beat a naked woman with a wooden stick, shot her 36 times and left her body on the highway. In another gruesome killing, security forces blindfolded and shot several men in Quissanga before dumping their bodies in a mass grave, Amnesty said. After that attack, “government security forces took women to be raped at the nearby base they had set up, where they also detained, beat, and summarily executed more men”, the rights group added. The fighters are also accused of heinous acts of violence with machetes, including numerous beheadings, the desecration of corpses and abduction of young women and children, including young girls. “Fighters routinely kill civilians, loot their homes, and then burn them down using petrol,” Amnesty said. It added residents used separate words to describe two al-Shabab methods of killing: “Beheaded” and “chopped”, the second of which, it quoted a 75-year-old man as saying, meant “being ‘divided like a cow'”. © Al Jazeera 2021

Mass killings underscore the enormous security challenges facing Niger’s new president, Mohamed Bazoum. Armed men in southwestern Niger have killed at least 58 people when they intercepted a convoy returning from a weekly market and attacked a nearby village, the government said on Tuesday. The attacks on Monday occurred in the Tillabery region, which is near the border with Mali and Burkina Faso and has seen increasingly deadly attacks by armed groups active across the region with links to ISIL (ISIS) and al-Qaeda. The announcement was read on Niger state television on Tuesday evening by government spokesman Abdourahmane Zakaria, who declared three days of national mourning for the victims. The mass killings underscore the enormous security challenges facing Niger’s new president, Mohamed Bazoum, who won the election in late February to succeed outgoing leader Mahamadou Issoufou. ‘Targeted executions’ Attackers killed at least 100 civilians on January 2 in raids on two villages in Tillabery, one of the deadliest episodes in the country’s recent history. The assailants this time intercepted four vehicles transporting passengers from a weekly market to the villages of Chinagoder and Darey Dey, the government said in a statement. “These individuals then gutlessly and cruelly proceeded to carry out targeted executions of passengers,” it said. “In the village of Darey Dey, they killed people and burned the granaries.” There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Monday’s massacres. The violence is part of a wider security crisis in West Africa’s Sahel region. Many of the attacks are concentrated where the borders of Niger, Mali and Burkina Faso meet, a zone that a 5,000-strong French task force has targeted heavily. Not only are armed groups active in the Tillaberi region, but the counterterrorism offensives against them have helped give rise to ethnic militias, analysts say. Intercommunal tensions have been exacerbated as a result, particularly near the border between Mali and Niger, with fighting over scarce resources. Fighters staged mass attacks on Niger’s military in the Tillaberi region, killing more than 70 in December 2019 and 89 in January 2020. © Al Jazeera 2021

The US Commerce Department said the companies were involved in using forced labour by Uighurs and other Muslim groups. The United States Commerce Department on Monday added 11 Chinese companies implicated in what it called human rights violations in connection with China's treatment of its Uighurs in Xinjiang in western China to the US economic blacklist. The department said the companies were involved in using forced labour by Uighurs and other Muslim minority groups. They include numerous textile companies and two firms the government said were conducting genetic analyses used to further the repression of Uighurs and other Muslim minorities. Blacklisted firms cannot buy components from US companies without US government approval. It was the third group of companies and others in China added to the US entity list, after two rounds in which the Trump administration cited 37 companies and others that it said were involved in China's repression in Xinjiang. "Beijing actively promotes the reprehensible practice of forced labor and abusive DNA collection and analysis schemes to repress its citizens," Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said in a statement. The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not immediately comment. The companies added to the blacklist include KTK Group Co, which produces more than 2,000 products used to build high-speed trains, from electronics to seats; and Tanyuan Technology Co, which assembles high thermal conductive graphite reinforced aluminium composites, including some for consumer electronic products. Another company is Changji Esquel Textile Co, which Esquel Group launched in 2009. Esquel Group produces clothing for Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger and Hugo Boss. In April, Esquel denied it used forced labour in Xinjiang. Also on the blacklist is Hetian Haolin Hair Accessories Co. On May 1, US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said it was halting imports of the company's hair products, citing evidence of forced labour. On July 1, CBP seized in Newark a shipment of almost 13 tons of hair products worth more than $800,000 with human hair that originated in Xinjiang. Commerce previously added 20 Chinese public security bureaus and companies including video surveillance firm Hikvision, as well as leaders in facial recognition technology SenseTime Group Ltd and Megvii Technology in connection with China's treatment of Muslim minorities. SOURCE: REUTERS NEWS AGENCY © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network

Famed for his depiction in Hotel Rwanda film, former hotel manager denies role in violence committed by armed group. Published by Al Jazeera on September 25, 2020. Paul Rusesabagina is detained in front of media in handcuffs in Kigali, Rwanda. [Clement Uwiringiyimana/Reuters] Paul Rusesabagina, portrayed in a 2004 Hollywood movie as a hero who helped save Tutsis during the Rwandan genocide, has admitted to a Kigali court that he formed an armed group but denied he supported any violence or killings. The 66-year-old former hotel manager was propelled to fame after the Oscar-nominated film Hotel Rwanda depicted him using his connections with the Hutu elite to protect Tutsis fleeing slaughter during the 1994 blooshed. After years in exile, where he became a fierce government critic, he appeared under arrest in Rwanda’s capital last month after apparently being lured into a private jet under false pretences. In recent years Rusesabagina co-founded the Rwandan Movement for Democratic Change (MRCD), an opposition party based abroad. While he has previously expressed support for the National Liberation Front (FLN), which has claimed responsibility for a series of attacks in Nyungwe, near the border with Burundi, his exact role has been unclear. “We formed the FLN (National Liberation Front) as an armed wing, not as a terrorist group as the prosecution keeps saying. I do not deny that the FLN committed crimes but my role was diplomacy,” he told the court, wearing a pink prison uniform. “The agreement we signed to form MRCD as a political platform included the formation of an armed wing called FLN. But my work was under the political platform and I was in charge of diplomacy.” Wearing a pink prison uniform for his bail hearing on Friday, Rusesabagina told the court that he helped to form the National Liberation Front to assist Rwandan refugees, but said he never supported violence. The judge postponed ruling on his application for bail until October  2. Rusesabagina, a Belgian citizen and US permanent resident who has been a prominent critic of President Paul Kagame, is charged with 13 offences that also include financing terrorism, complicity in murder, recruiting child soldiers and forming a rebel group. If convicted, he faces a maximum of 25 years in prison. It is not clear when his trial will begin. Earlier this month, he described how he disappeared while visiting Dubai and then turned up days later in Rwanda, a country his family says he would never return to voluntarily. Speaking to The New York Times with Rwandan authorities present, he said he thought the private plane he boarded in Dubai was going to Bujumbura, Burundi, where he had planned to speak to churches at a pastor’s invitation. Instead, Rusesabagina stepped out of the plane and was surrounded by Rwandan soldiers, the report said. He said he was then tied up, could not see anything and did not know where he was. The Rwandan court has said he was arrested at Kigali International Airport, contradicting an earlier police version that he was arrested through “international cooperation”. Human Rights Watch has asserted that Rusesabagina was “forcibly disappeared,” saying that the lack of lawful international extradition proceedings suggests that Rwandan authorities do not believe their evidence would stand up to independent scrutiny. Rusesabagina had asked to be released on bail, citing poor health that has caused him to be taken to hospital three times since his arrest. He looked frail during his first court appearance. “I assure the court that I will not flee from justice,” Rusesabagina said in his earlier bail application, which was denied. His court appearance Friday was to appeal that rejection. The denial of bail further alarmed his family, which along with some human rights and legal groups has expressed concern that his arrest is the latest example of Rwanda targeting critics. “We have no hope that he can be given fair justice in Rwanda and ask for his immediate release,” daughter Carine Kanimba said on social media earlier this month. Rusesabagina is credited with saving more than 1,000 lives during Rwanda’s 1994 genocide that killed some 800,000 Tutsis and moderate Hutus. For his efforts, he was awarded the United States Presidential Medal of Freedom. But he has faced criticism from Rwandan authorities in the years since he began speaking out against alleged human rights abuses by Kagame’s government. Government supporters reject Rusesabagina’s criticism, saying Kagame’s leadership supports democracy and economic growth. © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network.

Fatou Bensouda calls for suspects in Darfur conflict case to face ‘justice without delay’ as she discusses options for trial with officials in Sudan. Omar al-Bashir has been under arrest in Khartoum since his overthrow last year [File: Morwan Ali/EPA] Former Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and other suspects wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) for alleged war crimes and genocide in Darfur must face justice without further delay, the court’s chief prosecutor, currently on a visit to Khartoum, has said. Options for prosecuting them, including a trial in Sudan and a hybrid tribunal, were being discussed with Sudanese authorities, Fatou Bensouda told reporters on Tuesday. “We are seeing what is possible,” she said. “They must all face justice without further delay.” The ICC has outstanding arrest warrants against al-Bashir and three other Sudanese suspects on charges of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. Al-Bashir has previously denied the charges. The conflict in Darfur, in the west of Sudan, escalated from 2003 when mainly non-Arab rebels took up arms against al-Bashir’s government, triggering a campaign of repression by the army and mostly-Arab armed groups. More than 300,000 people are estimated to have been killed and 2.5 million displaced, according to the United Nations. The 76-year-old former president is in custody in Khartoum’s tough Kober prison after being removed by the military in April last year following months-long protests against his rule. He was convicted last December for corruption and is now on trial in Khartoum for the 1989 coup that brought him to power. If convicted, al-Bashir and 27 other co-accused could face the death penalty. Al-Bashir’s legal team has repeatedly denounced the charges against the former president as politically motivated. ‘Historic’ visit Bensouda said she was encouraged by meetings with senior officials from the transitional authorities who assumed power after al-Bashir’s overthrow, adding that she discussed with the officials access for investigators to probe alleged atrocities in Darfur. “I particularly welcomed the assurances of support and cooperation expressed to me by the authorities during this visit,” Bensouda said. “We look forward to making timely progress on all of these items,” she added, describing her visit to Sudan as “historic”. The ICC delegation led by Bensouda has been in Sudan since October 17 and is expected to remain in the country until Wednesday. Sudan’s transitional government has agreed that al-Bashir would stand trial before the ICC. However, in a peace deal finalised earlier this month, the government agreed to set up a special court for crimes in Darfur and said al-Bashir should also face that court. In a recent interview with the Financial Times, Sudanese Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok said he had spoken with the ICC about the option of trying al-Bashir in Sudan, potentially in a “hybrid court”. Other than al-Bashir, several of his aides also face accusations of committing atrocities in Darfur, including former South Kordofan governor Ahmed Haroun and ex-Defence Minister Abdelrahim Mohamed Hussein. Both are in custody in Sudan. In June, Ali Kushayb, the head of the Popular Defence Forces accused of carrying out some of the worst atrocities in Darfur, surrendered to the ICC and is now in custody. A fifth man, rebel leader Abdallah Banda, is wanted by the ICC but remains at large. © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network

Hundreds of thousands of Rohingya Muslims, who have taken shelter in Bangladesh, lament their exclusion from the polls. Mohammad Yusuf voted in almost every Myanmar election from 1974 until 2010 – the last time ethnic Rohingya were allowed to vote in the country he still calls home after fleeing three years ago in the wake of a brutal military offensive. When Myanmar holds on Sunday its second democratic election after decades of military rule, Yusuf will be among hundreds of thousands of mostly Muslim Rohingya deprived of a vote – leading the United Nations to warn that the polls will not be free or fair. “Not being able to vote makes me feel really sad. It feels as though we are dead and we don’t matter,” Yusuf, 65, who lives in the world’s largest refugee settlement in Bangladesh, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone. “These rights are important. We want our children to become engineers and lawyers one day. But I don’t see this happening any time in the future. I don’t have confidence. I don’t know if we will even be able to vote in 2025.” Myanmar’s Union Election Commission did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Myanmar’s ambassador to the UN has said that the elections will be free and fair and that all citizens could take part. Myanmar does not recognize the Rohingya as an indigenous ethnic group, deriding them as illegal “Bengalis” from Bangladesh, although the community traces their history in Myanmar back for centuries. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled an army crackdown in 2017 that the UN said had “genocidal intent”, joining other refugees who escaped earlier ethnic violence in cramped camps in Bangladesh, one of Asia’s poorest countries. Myanmar has denied the allegations, saying the army was battling an armed group. Rohingya stripped of identity documents The new coronavirus pandemic has made conditions for some 850,000 Rohingya refugees in the Bangladesh camps even more difficult, with many skeptical that they will ever return home. “Myanmar isn’t interested in taking us back,” said Mohammad Ismail, a 35-year-old Rohingya in Kutupalong camp. “Even if we do go back one day, what if they don’t allow us to vote again? We have children. What will happen to them? If they don’t get their rights and citizenship, how will they survive?” Successive military governments in Myanmar have stripped the Rohingya of identity documents, leaving many with no proof of their origins. Their temporary identity cards were nullified before the 2015 elections, the first openly contested poll in 25 years, which brought longtime pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy to power. Rohingya politicians have mostly been barred from contesting the elections and rights groups have accused Myanmar authorities of disenfranchising Rohingya voters en masse. “There hasn’t been any change since 2015,” said Ismail, adding that he did not think the elections would lead to any improvements in the lives of the Rohingya. “If the Myanmar government had the will, it could have arranged voting systems for all the refugees in Bangladesh,” said Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition, which lobbies for a protected homeland in Myanmar. “But this is something that’s beyond the imagination.” See the full article here. Al Jazeera 2020 ©

Doctor dies after bomb attached to her rickshaw explodes while at least seven civilians shot and killed by a group of gunmen in eastern Afghanistan. A female doctor was killed in a bomb blast in the eastern Afghan city of Jalalabad and at least seven civilians were shot and killed by a group of gunmen overnight in the country’s east, provincial officials said on Thursday. The doctor was killed after a magnetic bomb attached to the vehicle she was travelling in exploded, according to a spokesman from the governor’s office in the eastern Nangarhar province. “She was commuting in a rickshaw when the bomb went off,” the spokesman told the AFP news agency. The doctor was on her way to work at a provincial hospital’s maternity ward. A child was also injured by the explosion. Another spokesman from the provincial hospital also confirmed the incident and the numbers of dead and injured people. Juma Gul Hemat, the provincial police chief in Nangarhar, said the victims of the shooting incident were workers at a plaster factory in the Sorkh Rod district. Police arrested four suspects, he added. The labourers were all from Afghanistan’s minority Shia Hazara community, according to Farid Khan, a spokesman for the provincial police chief. Some had come from the capital of Kabul, as well as central Bamyan and northern Balkh provinces, to work in the factory. No one immediately claimed responsibility for that attack, but fighters from the ISIL (ISIS) group have declared war on the Shia and frequently single out the Hazaras. The act of aggression came two days after three female media workers who worked at a private TV station were gunned down in Jalalabad in separate shooting incidents that were just minutes apart. ISIL claimed responsibility for killing the three women – Mursal Wahidi, Sadia Sadat and Shahnaz Raufi. The three left work together and were gunned down in separate attacks while on their way home, almost at the same time. But many other attacks have gone unclaimed. The government blames most on the resurgent Taliban, who today hold sway over nearly half the country. The Taliban, in turn, deny any role in some of the instances and blame the government. Meanwhile, in the western Herat province, 39 people, both military and civilians, were wounded when security forces launched an operation to arrest a local militia commander, sparking a firefight, the governor’s office said. The wounded, including three children, are being treated. The militia commander was not arrested and remains on the run, said Wahid Qatali, the provincial governor in Herat. Journalists, religious scholars, activists and judges have all been victims of a recent wave of political assassinations across Afghanistan, forcing many into hiding – with some fleeing the country. The assassinations have been acutely felt by women, whose rights were crushed under the Taliban’s five-year rule, including being banned from working. Intelligence officials have previously linked the renewed threat against female professionals to demands at the peace talks for their rights to be protected. The attacks come as speculation is rife over the United States’s future in Afghanistan after President Joe Biden’s administration announced plans to review the agreement signed with the Taliban last year that paved the way for foreign troops to leave the country by May. © Al Jazeera 2021

The Myanmar government minister responsible for repatriating Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh has told Al Jazeera the Rohingya may have 'planned' their exodus to give the appearance of ethnic cleansing. More than half a million Rohingya refugees have fled across the border after a military crackdown in Rakhine state. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ © 2017 Al Jazeera

Several others wounded after attackers, armed with guns and machetes, stormed school in city of Kumba, Southwest Region. Published by Al Jazeera 24 October 24, 2020 - Updated October 25, 2020. An empty classroom following the attack at a school in Kumba, Cameroon, on Saturday. [My Media Prime Tv/Reuters] At least eight children were killed and a dozen wounded after attackers stormed a school in southwestern Cameroon with guns and machetes, the United Nations said. Arriving on motorbikes and in civilian clothes, the men attacked the Mother Francisca International Bilingual Academy in the city of Kumba, in the country’s Southwest Region, at around midday on Saturday. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, described by the UN as “the worst atrocity” since the resumption of the school year earlier this month. It was not clear if the attack was linked to a continuing struggle between government forces and armed groups in the English-speaking west seeking to form a breakaway state. “At least eight children were killed as a result of gunshots and attack with machetes. Another twelve were wounded and taken to local hospitals,” the UN’s Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said in a statement. Some children were reportedly injured jumping from second-storey windows. Videos circulating on social media filmed by local journalists appeared to show adults rushing from the school with children in their arms, surrounded by wailing onlookers. One photo verified by the Reuters news agency showed the inside of a classroom, where a pile of dried blood had pooled on the floor near some scattered flip-flops. “They found the children in class and they opened fire on them,” city sub-prefect Ali Anougou told Reuters. Isabel Dione ran into the school to search for her 12-year-old daughter when she heard about the shooting. She found her on the floor of a classroom, bleeding from the stomach. “She was helpless and she was shouting ‘mum please help me’, and I told her ‘only your God can save you now’,” Dione told Reuters. The girl was rushed to hospital where she is undergoing treatment for a gunshot wound. Local education official Ahhim Abanaw Obase confirmed six deaths of children aged between 12 and 14 and added that another eight had been taken to hospital. “I am shocked and outraged by the killing of innocent school children [who] were attending school to get an education,” said Matthias Z Naab, the UN’s resident humanitarian coordinator in Cameroon. “Children have a right to education. Violence against schools and innocent school children is not acceptable under any circumstances and can constitute a crime against humanity if proven in a court of law. I call on the competent authorities to conduct a thorough investigation into this tragedy,” added Naab. African Union Commission Chair Moussa Faki Mahamat said: “There are no words of grief nor condemnation strong enough to articulate my full horror at the brutal attack targeting primary schoolchildren … as they sat learning in their classroom.” Prominent separatist leader Ayuk Tabe described the attack as “inhumane” in a Twitter post and said “anyone responsible for these atrocities must be brought to book.” Cameroon’s two Anglophone regions – the Northwest and Southwest Regions – are home to a large minority of English speakers in a country where French speakers are the overwhelming majority – a situation that is the legacy of the decolonisation of western Africa by France and Britain more than 60 years ago. In late 2016, long-standing complaints of political and economic discrimination against English speakers by the central government spilled over when lawyers, students and teachers began calling for reforms. The government’s lethal response to the protests provoked rebels to declare in 2017 independence for a region they call “Ambazonia”, triggering a stronger crackdown by the authorities. Both sides have since been accused of committing atrocities in a conflict that has killed some 3,000 people and forced hundreds of thousands of people from their homes. William Lawrence, senior adjunct professorial lecturer at the American University in Washington DC, US, called Saturday’s attack an “escalation that we have not yet seen in the anglophone crisis in Cameroon”. “Think about it symbolically – we have a bilingual school that represents a united Cameroon being attacked and children being the victim of something that wasn’t their fault at all,” he told Al Jazeera. “It’s horrific and it’s gruesome.” Anglophone separatists have imposed curfews and closed schools as part of their protest against President Paul Biya’s government. Last year, officials blamed separatists for kidnapping dozens of schoolchildren, charges they denied. Anougou and another official blamed Saturday’s attack on the separatists but did not offer evidence. © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network.

Guidon Shimiray Mwissa forces continue to commit crimes against civilians with help of the army, new Human Rights Watch report says. Published by Al Jazeera on October 20, 2020. Guidon claims he doesn't receive support from the army and denies committing rights abuses [Screegrab/Al Jazeera] Forces loyal to a wanted Congolese rebel leader are continuing to commit killings, rapes, extortion and forced recruitment of children with support from the country’s army, Human Rights Watch (HRW) has said in a new report. Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) issued an arrest warrant for Guidon Shimiray Mwissa in June 2019 for participating in an insurrection, recruiting child soldiers and committing the crime against humanity of rape in the country’s eastern region. Guidon, 40, is an ethnic Nyanga and former government soldier from Walikale territory who defected in 2007 to become a rebel fighter. Shortly thereafter, he joined the Nduma Defense of Congo (NDC) under Ntabo Ntaberi Sheka. In 2014, Guidon broke away from Sheka and established the NDC-R. “A 2019 arrest warrant has not stopped Guidon from committing horrific abuses against civilians in areas he controls,” Thomas Fessy, HRW’s senior Congo researcher said. “His backers within the Congolese army should be investigated and prosecuted for using an abusive group as a proxy force”. Guidon, who remains at large, leads the NDC-R rebel group whose fighters are notorious for torturing and executing civilians. NDC-R controlled a larger area than any other armed group in DRC until the group split three months ago. Some of the group’s fighters have surrendered to the government. Guidon claims he does not receive any support from the army and denies committing rights abuses. “The NDC-R does not have any collaboration with the Congolese army. When we are in confrontation with other armed groups, we find heavy weapons, ammunition, and Congolese military uniforms.” he told a local TV station. The HRW report added that since 2014, NDC-R forces have killed dozens of men, women, and children, many of them hacked to death with machetes or shot. During the attacks, fighters looted and burned houses, and tortured men and women with knives and machetes, according to witnesses and victims interviewed by HRW. A 14-year-old girl from Masisi territory described being raped by an NDC-R fighter while returning from the fields in early 2020. “He took me and pushed me on the ground. He said: ‘If you refuse, I will shoot you in the stomach’.” In January 2018, the UN Security Council added Guidon to the UN sanctions list, freezing his assets and imposing a worldwide travel ban. A Congolese army spokesman in North Kivu told HRW that government troops were “actively seeking to arrest Guidon”. © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network.