Image of Mahmoud Mehrabi published on social networks Isfahan's Islamic Revolutionary Court has sentenced another dissident, Iranian social media activist Mahmoud Mehrabi, to death on the charge of "corruption on earth." Mehrabi’s lawyer, Babak Farsani, said that the charge was issued without detailed justification from Branch 5 of the court. The charges of "corruption on earth" and "Moharebeh" (waging war against God) represent the most severe criminal offenses under the Islamic Republic's interpretation of Sharia law, both carrying the penalty of death. The government’s intelligence ministry, which usually takes charge of sentencing dissidents, has historically exploited the vague terms to target and silence them. Prominent Iranian dissident rapper Toomaj Salehi was sentenced to death by the same court just last month – over his support for nationwide anti-regime protests in 2022. In a recent statement on X (formerly Twitter), Farsani expressed hope that the country’s Supreme Court of Iran would consider the grave concerns raised in their appeal against the verdict. In a video posted online, Mehrabi's sister said she was verbally informed by authorities of the execution order, and is urging the international community and the public to advocate for her brother and all political prisoners in Iran. Despite limited information on Mehrabi's specific activities, it is known that he faced allegations of "spreading falsehoods on Instagram," "anti-regime propaganda," "incitement of military and law enforcement to abandon their duties," "promoting conflict and violence," and "insulting the Supreme Leader," as reported by the Telegram channel Human Rights Advocates. Mehrabi first became entangled in the country’s legal system, which is not independent, when he was arrested in February 2023 and subsequently transferred to Dastgerd Prison in Isfahan. He was briefly released on bail in April 2023 but was rearrested hours later at his parental home in Mobarakeh, after an operation by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard's (IRGC) intelligence agents. This sentence comes amid an escalating use of the death penalty in Iran, following the unprecedented nationwide protests in 2022. According to the Human Rights Activists News Agency (HRANA), executions have more than doubled in the past two years, with 767 individuals executed in the year ending March 2024, highlighting an intensified crackdown on dissent within the country. © Volant Media 2024

People look at portraits of victims who lost their lives during ethnic clashes, at a memorial in Churachandpur district in Manipur. | credit: AFP GENOCIDE WARNING: ETHNIC CONFLICT IN MANIPUR, INDIA By Prabhleen Kaur Manipur, one of India’s northeastern states, has witnessed violent ethnic conflict between the majority Meitei community and the minority tribal Kuki community for the past five months. The deadly clashes have left over 200 people dead and over 70,000 displaced. Manipur, with a total population of 3.2 million, is geographically divided into the central valley, largely populated by the mostly Hindu Meitei, and the surrounding hills, inhabited by the predominantly Christian Kuki, Naga and other tribal communities. The trigger for the violence was a Manipur High Court order directing the state government to consider inclusion of the Meitei in the Scheduled Tribe category. This inclusion would grant them reservations (quotas) in jobs and educational institutions. The Kuki and Naga already enjoy Scheduled Tribe status. They protested granting the same status to the Meitei, who constitute a majority in numbers and in political power. After the protests turned violent on May 3, 2023, many incidents of murder, rape, kidnapping, torture, sexual assault and arson ensued, affecting people from both communities. The violence has driven nearly all the Meitei living in the hills to the valley and forced almost all Kuki inhabiting the valley into the hills. The state is completely segregated along ethnic lines. Even police officers are ethnically divided. Theft of weapons and ammunition from police armories has worsened the security situation. Members of both communities are crammed into overcrowded relief camps. Scarcity of basic resources and medical supplies in these camps has turned the conflict into a humanitarian crisis. The state government, run by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), has done little to restore trust between the communities. It took BJP prime minister Narendra Modi two months to even acknowledge the Manipur violence, when a video showing two Kuki women being paraded naked by a Meitei mob caused public outrage. The state has imposed long internet shutdowns, restricting access to information and stifling public protest. Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh, himself a Meitei, blames illegal Kuki immigration from neighboring Myanmar and drug trafficking for the violence. The indigenous Kuki, ethnically similar to tribes in Myanmar, fear displacement from their ancestral lands. Manipur has a history of insurgencies. The current conflict has a communal character. Hundreds of Kuki churches and Meitei temples have been destroyed. Genocide Watch considers the ethnic conflict in Manipur to be at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 5: Organization, Stage 6: Polarization and Stage 8: Persecution. The government’s repeated attribution of violence to Illegal immigration and external forces is characteristic of Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends that the state and union government: • Adhere to directions issued in the Supreme Court order of Aug. 7, 2023, for an impartial investigation into crimes perpetrated during the conflict and during distribution of relief supplies. • Ensure adequate supply of medicines, food, and other provisions to relief camps. • Take immediate measures to recover the weapons and ammunition looted from state armories. • Restore internet services. • Assist families of missing persons to identify unclaimed bodies in mortuaries. • Set up a truth and reconciliation commission to initiate ethnic reconciliation and restore stability

Genocide Emergency Alert: Mali 2023 By Esme Matthews In 2012 Touareg independence militias and Islamist militants affiliated with al Qaeda seized control of northern Mali, including Timbuktu, Gao, and Kidal. They declared independence for the Republic of Awazad. At the request of Mali’s President, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 2085 authorizing a Chapter VII military intervention. French and Malian forces drove the rebels out of major cities in 2013. Beginning in 2015, Fulani jihadists attacked Bambara and Dogon farmers. In retaliation for Fulani attacks, the Malian Army has persecuted the Fulani (Peul) ethnic group in central Mali. Although they extend across West Africa, Fulanis are a minority of the population in Mali. Fulani herdsmen opposed Malian government grazing fees for their cattle herds. Islamists appealed to the Fulani tradition of jihadism to recruit Fulani militias. In 2017, four extremist Fulani groups merged to form the JNIM terrorist group. Conflict between the Fulani and Dogon resulted in the 2019 Ogossagou Massacre, in which a Dogon self-defense group murdered 130 Fulani herdsmen. The JNIM tries to use persecution against Fulani to justify self-defense by JNIM. Failure to stop the JNIM precipitated a military coup in 2021. Since then civil war in Mali has increased. Rebel forces now control a third of Mali.  One third of the victims of JNIM attacks have been civilians. In counterattacks, Malian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries have killed hundreds of civilians. In 2023, the JNIM terrorist group targeted a passenger boat on the Niger River, killing 49 civilians. It also attacked an army base, killing 15 soldiers. In 2021, President Assimi Goïta asked for assistance from the Russian Wagner Group. In 2022, he demanded that France and its African Union allies leave Mali.  France withdrew its military presence after 10 years of deployment. Wagner Group mercenaries fight alongside Malian soldiers. Both have committed crimes against humanity, including escalating sexual violence against women. These are direct violations of the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court to which Mali has been a State-party since 2002. In November 2023, the Malian government denied affiliation with the Wagner Group and rejected accusations of war crimes by Human Rights Watch over targeted killings of civilians. The European Commission reported that 470,000 Malians remained displaced and 3.9 million people in Mali require protection because of increased human rights violations, including sexual violence. Genocide Watch considers Mali at Stage 5: Organization, Stage 6: Polarization, and Stage 8: Persecution of the Ten Stages of Genocide. Genocide Watch recommends: France should urge the UN Security Council to reauthorize a UN Peacekeeping Operation in Mali. The UN General Assembly should condemn the Wagner Group as a terrorist organization. Mali should expel all foreign mercenaries, including the Wagner Group. The International Criminal Court should prosecute Malian soldiers and Wagner mercenaries for war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Manipur: A Land of Settled Grief The Wire Harsh Mander November 1, 2023 The prime minister has not visited Manipur even five months into the conflict, and, until the no-confidence motion against his government in Parliament, did not make any public appeal for peace in Manipur. Representative image of security forces in Manipur. Photo: X/@manipur_police Manipur, literally the ‘jewelled land’, today is the theatre of a full-blown civil war of the kind that free India has not seen. Civilian populations on both sides flaunt sophisticated modern weapons including assault rifles, light machine guns and mortars. Even five months after the conflagration began, the combat shows no sign of an end. It is rare for even a day to pass without the rattle of gunfire and bombs and news of fresh deaths and injuries. The state of Manipur is effectively partitioned, the valley emptied out of the last of its Kuki residents, as the Kuki dominated southern hills are of their Meitei inhabitants. The border between the valley and the Kuki dominated part of the hills – guarded and patrolled by military and paramilitary personnel of diverse stripes and uniforms – is mutually impenetrable for people of the two respective warring communities. Women’s groups successfully blockade for weeks the passage of army trucks carrying food supplies for soldiers in the hills. No rations have been supplied by the state government for patients and students in the medical college in the hills. Teachers, doctors, nurses and even police persons have been reallocated (or have fled) on ethnic lines to the two sides of this border: it is unsafe for Kuki public servants to work in the valley, as it is for Meitei public servants to work in the Kuki dominated part of the hills. Representative image of Army Commander Lt Gen. R.P. Kalita interacting with Manipur CM N Biren Singh in August. Photo: X/@easterncomd The ten Kuki members of the legislative assembly were unable to participate in the record eleven-minute-long legislative assembly session because the government could not ensure their safety.These ten Kuki MLAs, including eight from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), expressed their despair in a public statement: “Our people can no longer exist under Manipur as the hatred against our tribal community reached such a height that MLAs, ministers, pastors, police and civil officers, laymen, women and even children were not spared, not to mention the destruction of places of worships, homes and properties.” To live amid the Meiteis after the violence, they declared, would be “as good as death”. The anguish of a retired Lieutenant General of the Indian Army living in Manipur is even more palpable. “The state is now ‘stateless’,” laments Lt Gen Nishikanta Singh. “Life and property can be destroyed anytime by anyone just like in Libya, Lebanon, Nigeria, Syria, etc.”. This spurred a former chief of the Indian Army General Ved Malik to respond, “Law & order situation in Manipur needs urgent attention at [the] highest level”. Manipur – an ethnic mosaic The current battle between the Meitei and Kuki people centres on competing claims of indigeneity, belonging and non-belonging: about which people are indigenous to Manipur, and who are outsiders. There is no dispute that the Meitei people are native to the Manipur valley, and the Nagas to the hills. But the Kukis insist that they too have long been inhabitants of the Manipur hills, and are not “foreigners” from Myanmar as is now claimed. The three main ethnic groups in Manipur have historically clustered in different parts of the state’s geography – the Meiteis in the valley, the Kukis in the southern hills and the Nagas in the northern hills. But there has not been, before the 2023 combat, an absolute, hostile segregation of the communities. In places dominated by one ethnic group, there have grown minority settlements of the other community. And barring interludes of internecine violence, the three communities have lived together with peace and goodwill. It is this long history of inter-ethnic peace that the 2023 warlike clashes threaten to destroy. The Meitei are the dominant group in Manipur, in population share (53%) as well as politically and economically. They reside mainly in the Imphal valley, which comprises just 10% of the state’s geography. The Meitei trace their ancestry in the Imphal valley at least to 2000 years back. The kingdom was ruled by one of the longest unbroken dynasties of the world, the Ningthouja, from 33 AD. The name Manipur came later. The kingdom was Kangleipak, renamed in 1724 by the king now converted to Hinduism, who chose the Sanskrit name Manipur. The boundaries of the kingdom sometimes included the surrounding hills, and went so far as the Irrawady river in Myanmar. But for the greater part of its history of two millennia before the arrival of the British, it was confined to the valley. ALSO READ Inclusion of Meiteis in ST List Rejected in 1982, 2001, Historical Documents Kept From Manipur HC VIEW MORE The rulers and people of the Imphal valley followed the indigenous animistic faith of Sanahism until the 18th century. The king in 1704 converted to the Hindu faith, and large sections of the people also adopted the Vaishnavite faith. The Naga and Kuki-Zomi are not two homogenous tribes but are clusters of many tribes, listed as 34 Scheduled Tribes (ST) in the Indian Constitution. The Nagas, 17% of the population of present-day Manipur, inhabited the northern hill ranges for almost as long as the Meitei people in the valley. The Kukis, around 26%, are admittedly of more recent origin, but how recent is a matter of current dispute. The first archival mention of the Kuki in Manipur is in British colonial records in 1777. It is alleged that the British encouraged the settlements of the Kuki people in the hills of Manipur to provide a counter to the more aggressive Naga tribes, but it is also true that the Kukis were enemies of the colonial British and therefore colonial writings cannot be taken at face value. Apart from these three large ethnic clusters, the valley also is home to Muslim Meitei (called Pangal) who are believed to have migrated in the 17th century from Sylhet, and now are 8% of the state’s population, and also the Gurkhas and immigrants from mainland India. After Manipur was invaded by Burma in 1819, the king reached out to the British for protection and Manipur became, between 1826 to 1891, a protectorate of the British, and from 1891 a princely state of the British Empire. It signed an annexation treaty with India in 1947, and merged with the Indian union in 1949. It is interesting that before its annexation, the briefly independent state of Manipur had passed the State Constitution Act in May 1947, the first of its kind in Asia. The king two years earlier had converted Manipur into a democratic constitutional monarchy. The constitution was progressive in its representation of various communities: it created three categories that it termed General, Hill and Mohamaden (Muslim), and provided for elections to the legislature for these three groups in the ratio of 30, 18 and 3 respectively. Another interesting fact of this history is that when the legislature of Manipur passed a resolution opposing the merger of Manipur with the union of India, the Speaker was a Kuki, TC Tainkhan. Manipur – a site of entrenched violence It is not as though violence is new to Manipur. The state witnessed some of the earliest insurgent movements in North-East India, of both Naga and Meitei militant groups, not long after the merger of the princely state of Manipur into the union of India in 1949. Kuki militant groups rose only from the 1990s. The militant groups are organised around ethnic lines of the three main ethnic clusters of the state – Meitei, Kuki and Naga. Their demands have ranged from independence from the Indian state to various grades of self-rule within the Indian union, and they have targeted both the Indian state and other ethnic communities within Manipur. While the Nagas and Kukis fought a bloody series of ethnic battles in the 1990s resulting in more than 400 deaths, 2023 sees the first major clash between the Meitei and Kuki people. (Kuki leaders recall that Kuki chiefs sent 300 volunteers to support the Meitei king in his opposition to the merger as proof that the Kuki people were historically not enemies but supporters of the Meiteis). File photo of violence in Manipur. Photo: Twitter@MangteC The Naga militant groups have engaged in extended peace negotiations with the Indian government in recent years. The government of India entered into a Suspension of Operations agreement with the Kuki militant groups in 2008. The Meitei groups have not been part of any peace agreement. The present chief minister Biren Singh has not hidden his closeness – and some suggest active patronage – to the Meitei militias Arongal Tenngol and Meitei Leepun, who have reportedly played a major role in the present conflict. One indicator of how deeply entrenched the violence in post-merger Manipur is that although Manipur is home to just 0.2% of India’s population, as many as 38% of Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) cases in the country registered between 2014 and 2020 were in Manipur. Data from the National Crimes Research Bureau reveal that in this period while the highest number of cases registered under the UAPA were in Manipur (2,595), this was followed quite distantly by Jammu and Kashmir (1,202) and Assam (1,071). Today there are an estimated 30 militant groups in Manipur, but for many years most of these have been dormant – the Naga groups in long drawn-out peace talks with the Indian government, and the Kuki groups in a tripartite Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement. Some operate from across the porous border in Myanmar. What lit the fires in Manipur in 2023? Given this long history of internecine and anti-state conflict in Manipur ever since its merger with the Indian union, what had contributed to the unprecedented ferocity of the present combat? Most accounts begin with the Manipur high court ruling for suggesting ST status for the Meitei, the state-wide protests by Kuki organisations against this, and violent counter-protests by the Meitei. But these actually were only the matchsticks that lit a fire for which the fuel had already been dangerously (and wantonly) spilt. The paramount responsibility for pushing Manipur, and with it the country, to the brink must rest most on the shoulders of the chief minister, N. Biren Singh, for his open unapologetic partisanship, his frequent resort to deliberately provocative public statements and actions, and for his wanton refusal to disarm, charge and arrest those openly spreading hate and lethal violence. And with him, the union government is responsible for not reining him in, or better, replacing him, and for not ensuring that sufficient forces are deployed to disarm the civilian populations and ensure the safety of all people of every identity. PM Modi and CM Biren Singh. In the background is a video screengrab of cars burning in Manipur. Even when he was in the Congress, he became infamous (or popular, depending on who was making the evaluation) for his anti-Kuki rhetoric. These became more strident in the run-up to the midsummer bloodbath of 2023, and in the months after it broke out. Outlook India spoke to many people, including BJP Kuki MLAs, who described the chief minister as “prejudiced” and “anti-Kuki”. Even Meitei commentators like Pradip Phajouban said that the chief minister’s provocative discourse over the last two or three years made the Kukis “very sensitive, pushed to the wall”. The first strand of his rhetoric is to stigmatise the Kuki people as “illegal immigrants” and “foreigners”. This is an obvious canard, as pointed out by the Editors’ Guild in their report after visiting the state, because the decennial censuses from 1901 to 2011 have not shown any unusual rise in the non-Naga tribal population. The military coup in neighbouring Myanmar led Chin minorities to flee into neighbouring states like Mizoram and an estimated 4,000 to Manipur. But it is unfair to use this to tar all Kuki residents as illegal foreigners. A second part of the “othering” discourse led and fuelled by the chief minister is of Kukis being “poppy cultivators” (or worse, narco-terrorists) engaged in transnational drug trade centred in Myanmar, responsible for the spread of drug addiction like a silent epidemic across the valley. There is no doubt that vast tracks of fields in the hills grow poppies, and that the majority of poppy farmers are Kuki. But successive state governments, including the present one, have done little to halt this cultivation. People estimate the volume of the illegal drug trade in the state at around Rs 50,000 crore (incidentally much higher than the entire budget of the state); and there is no credible claim that the processing and trafficking of the drugs are enterprises operated and owned by Kuki people. The responsibility for the massive illegal drug industry lies elsewhere, including with powerful men and women in Imphal and Delhi. ALSO READ Despite Repeated Requests, PM Modi Avoids Meeting Manipur BJP MLAs VIEW MORE While all of this unfolded, the temperature of hate propaganda in the popular discourse against the Kuki people was also raised dangerously. There was, for instance, a systematic attack on the history of Kukis in the Sangai Express, the largest circulated newspaper in Manipur. A new joint organisation of the Meitei and Tangkhul people called the ‘Federation of Haomee’ demonised the Kukis. To all of this, the chief minister and his government never reacted. These too were preparatory to the current violence. But even more than this hate discourse, what triggered further existential insecurities and fear among the Kuki people were a series of imperious public actions clearly targeted at them. Important among these was what could only be described as the weaponising of provisions and powers of the state government under the Hills Area Committee Act of 1972. The Kuki people continue to resort to their customary modes of shifting cultivation in the forested hills as they have for centuries, moving from one forest habitat to another. The Editors Guild reports that without following proper procedure as laid down in this Act, “the N. Biren Singh government declared parts of Hills as ‘reserved’ and ‘protected’ forests and ‘wetland reserves’. All land owner-ship documents within these areas were cancelled and a drive started to evict them in December 2022”. What fuelled Kuki anger more “is that the forest surveys, inquiries, evictions and demolitions were carried out only in the non-Naga inhabited tribal areas, once again leading the Kuki community to believe that it was being singled out”. Manipur chief minister N. Biren Singh. Photo: Facebook/N. Biren Singh This led inevitably to violent confrontations in the early months of 2023 between the state authorities and the Kuki-Zo community which had been living in these villages. A committee of the state government headed by the chief secretary on April 3, 2023, cancelled all land/property deeds and recognition of villages within the designated reserved and protected forest areas, without any rehabilitation plan for the evicted tribal population. There was then the chief minister’s highly publicised “war on drugs”. Experts tell us that in this highly lucrative trans-national drug trade, the “drugs of choice are: heroin, brown sugar, prescription painkillers, cough syrups and Yaba or WIY (“World is yours”) pills”. The government’s exclusive focus was only on poppy growing which targeted the poorest poppy cultivators, many of whom are Kuki, to the wilful neglect of “the other components of the drug trade, the smuggling of synthetics to Myanmar and the smuggling in of drugs and their distribution through Manipur”. In yet another series of openly provocative official moves, in March 2023, the state government peremptorily withdrew from the tripartite Suspension of Operations (SoO) agreement with the Kuki militants. This was effectively a ceasefire, which was suddenly, summarily and unilaterally terminated, without explanation or discussion with the Manipuri people. The government then went on to remove the application of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) selectively only from the Imphal Valley and not the hill districts. As the Editors Guild notes, this was obviously partisan because “the Kuki insurgent groups were in peace talks with the Union while the Meitei insurgents active in the Imphal Valley were outside any process of negotiation for peace”. To make matters worse, the chief minister made no secret of his closeness with Meitei militias like the Arambai Tenngol, even on occasion posing for photographs with the militants. “In retrospect, this was seen by the Kuki-Zo tribals as a partisan move in preparation for violence against the Kukis, which came a few weeks later”. It was against this background that the provocation and rage of the Kuki people can be understood against the decision of a single-judge bench of the high court. Tellingly, the state government did not appeal against the court’s directive. This was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back. Tribal student organisations resolved to organise protest marches in all district headquarters on May 3 under the conciliatory theme ‘Come Let Us Reason Together‘. Rallies were held in 10 of the 16 districts of the state. But in some of these rallies, clashes broke out between people of the two communities, and the state exploded in flames. The same night, homes and churches of Kuki residents of the Imphal valley were vandalised and burnt by radical gangs of Meitei young men, killing many including women and children. In the next few days, massive counter-rallies were organised by the Meiteis, including women who often blocked attempts by security forces to rescue people and protect shrines and property. Killings and horrific acts of sexual violence followed. The clashes quickly spread to the hills where armed mobs destroyed villages and homes of the Meitei people. Burning down of almost all the Meitei settlements in Churachandpur and Moreh by the Kuki militants further triggered the cycle of violence. Five months later, as I write this, the killings continue with numbing constancy. At least 200 people have been killed, an uncounted number are injured and by the chief minister’s own admission, there are “hundreds” of complaints of sexual violence. Almost 60,000 people have been rendered homeless as Kuki homes and habitations in Meitei majority areas, and Meitei homes and villages in Kuki majority hill tracts have been destroyed and razed to the ground. While both communities have both perpetrated and suffered horrific losses of life and property, it would be fair to underline that the losses are much greater among the Kuki people, probably because of tacit or open state support. At least 300 churches have been vandalised and burnt down. Through all of this, the state has remained culpably absent from the discharge of its constitutional duties. The governments of India and Manipur are unable (or unwilling) to disarm civilian populations and militant militias, and to charge, arrest and prosecute people responsible for horrific murders and rapes, the looting of armouries, and the burning and looting of homes and villages, in which no one was spared: the home of even a union minister of Narendra Modi’s cabinet was burned down in Imphal. The state is also absent from its duty to extend relief to the 60,000 internally displaced people whose houses and villages have been razed, resulting in a colossal humanitarian crisis in what has become a war zone. The might of the Indian state seems singularly unequal to the challenge of restoring peace and security in this tiny but enormously sensitive frontier state that shares a long border with Myanmar. After the violence began, the state government ticked the mandatory boxes, by ordering a curfew and directing District Magistrates to issue shoot-at-sight orders in extreme cases. But in practice, none of this was enforced. The state government has done nothing to prevent men brandishing modern and presumably unlicensed weapons from patrolling the streets, nothing to disarm them, and nothing to investigate, charge and detain those named in police complaints for murder, rape and arson. Bunkers lined with sandbags manned by heavily armed men have come up on both sides of the “border” of a state that has been effectively partitioned. Close to the checkpoints along this border are clusters of women groups, the Meira Paibi (revered for their iconic protests against killings and rape by army personnel) on the Meitei side, and Kuki women groups on the other. The state police and paramilitary forces in the state have also been perilously divided on ethnic grounds. The local police is largely Meitei and does not hide their partisanship. The Assam Rifles, a paramilitary formation controlled by the Indian army is being stigmatised for performing its duty of protecting the Kukis. There is a long history of this: the Meitei version is that the Assam Rifles and Kuki militants partnered in counter insurgency operations against Naga and Meitei insurgent groups; and that Kuki militants under the Suspension of Operations agreement draw a monthly salary from the Government of India. The Assam Rifles, in turn, sent a legal notice to a Meitei leader for his allegations that the Assam Rifles was partisan. The Manipur police filed FIRs against Assam Rifles soldiers for allegedly blocking their way with armoured vehicles, helping Kuki militants to escape, feeding into the popular Meitei narrative that the Assam Rifles soldiers are shielding Kuki “narco-terrorists”. The Assam Rifles argue that they are being pilloried only because they escorted endangered Kuki people to safety, and patrol the border blocking Meitei militants from executing killing missions into the hills. Meitei groups led by the Meitei Paibi have been demanding the withdrawal of the Assam Rifles from all of Manipur, and in the course of their protests locked the gates of central government offices. Whatever may have been their role in the present conflict, it must be acknowledged that the Manipuri people have long hated the Assam Rifles. It was, for instance, the rape and brutal murder of a Meitei woman Thongam Monorama that led to the iconic protest by women of the Meitei Paibi in 2004 when they stripped naked before the headquarters of the Assam Rifles. Meitei groups also met defence minister Rajnath Singh to press this demand. The chief minister assured representatives of the Meitei Paibi that the Assam Rifles would indeed be withdrawn from the state in September. Meanwhile, the state cabinet ordered the replacement of the Assam Rifles with the local police in manning a crucial border checkpoint. In this background, the initiative by Union home minister Amit Shah, after his sole visit to Manipur after the violence broke out, to establish a unified command of police and paramilitary forces under the chief minister was still-born. The prime minister has not visited Manipur even five months into the conflict, and, until the no-confidence motion against his government in Parliament, did not make any public appeal for peace in Manipur, barring a 30-second statement condemning the sexual violence. He brushed aside all demands to dismiss the state government or at least to replace the chief minister. There are also questions about the role of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh in stoking majoritarian sentiments among the Meitei people. In recent years the valley has witnessed the rise of “‘Meiteism’ – a concerted effort to revive Meitei identity, religion and culture often aligned with Hinduism”, and a Meitei sub-nationalism often converging with Hindutva nationalism. Within this revival is a strong assertion of indigeneity and primary belonging – the idea that Manipur is the land of the Meitei, and they are threatened by the alleged growing numbers of Kuki tribes of Christian faith. There is also fueling a narrative of alleged proselytising by the Christian church. Analysts sometimes compare the Manipur violence of 2023 to the Gujarat communal carnage of 2002. The comparison is apt only up to a point. In both, the state government was aggressively majoritarian and the leadership bellicose in its communal or ethnic partisanship; in both, the state government did nothing to protect the targeted minorities, and to extend relief or to secure to them legal justice; and in both, the state leadership was stubbornly protected by the Union government. But the resemblance ends here. Imagine Gujarat in 2002 if the Muslim victims also fought back and both sides were armed to their teeth with weapons of modern warfare. Also read: Mohan Bhagwat’s Comments on Manipur Violence Show Northeast Remains a Puzzle That RSS Can’t Solve And this brings me to what is arguably the state government’s most culpable contribution to converting what could have been a bloody ethnic battle of the kind that the state has seen too often in the past, into a civil war – the looting of armouries. On the day of the march, and repeatedly after it, Meitei mobs stormed police armouries and absconded with an estimated 4,000 modern weapons including assault rifles, long-range guns, 51 mm mortars and half a million bullets. There is no evidence that the Manipur police, most of them of Meitei identity, used any significant force to prevent this pillage, which has continued to recur. It is alleged that Kuki police persons in the valley permitted a similar looting of arms, but on a much smaller scale. To date, only a small fraction of these arms have been recovered. It is this plunder with impunity of state armouries that has armed large civilian populations with lethal modern weapons on an scale unprecedented in independent India. The poisonous harvest of a majoritarian state In summary, the story that emerges out of Manipur is an extremely grim one. The agony of the Manipuri people is the poisonous harvest of a state that openly treats a segment of its own citizens as enemies. It begins, as we saw, with relentless runaway hate speech by the chief minister himself, which stigmatises the Kuki citizens as illegal foreigners and narco-terrorists. With toxic falsehoods he builds a dark spectre that haunts the popular Meitei imagination, of a shining Manipur home to the Meitei people for more than two centuries in grave danger of being overrun by alien immigrants pouring in from Myanmar. These unwanted aliens, according to his “alternative truth”, encroach and destroy Manipuri forests, grow poppies and ravage Meitei youth with their trade in opium and brown sugar. He then follows this up with a battery of public actions, directly targeting the Kuki minority in the state he has been elected to lead. He declares the forest abodes and shifting cultivation farms, inhabited for many generations by the Kuki people, as illegal and drives a campaign to free the forests from their “encroachments”. He launches a “war on drugs” that targets only the lowest rung of poppy cultivators, mostly impoverished Kuki farmers, leaving unscathed, those engaged in the highly lucrative transnational drug trade. He suddenly terminates without explanation the virtual ceasefire with Kuki militants, while not disguising his sympathies – and possible patronage – of Meitei militia. He does not appeal against a high court decision to recommend ST status to the Meitei, knowing how much this would stoke fears among the Kuki people and that this would open the doors for Meitei people to lawfully buy lands in the hills, pushing the minority further into the margins. And then his government stands by as militants loot police and paramilitary armouries, arming civilians to fight a civil war against another section of the people of the state. A land of settled grief The critically wounded Manipur is a land of profound and settled grief. In relief camps of both communities, people spoke of their agony that their neighbours of generations had turned overnight into enemies. But an even greater sense of loss arose from their conviction that they would never be able to return to the only place they called home. A partition had been accomplished, a border had been drawn on their lands, as impenetrable and uncompromising as the one the country endured in 1947. And even more dangerously, in the hearts of ordinary people. In the relief camps that we visited in a four-day journey of the Karwan e Mohabbat to the state from July 25 to 28, we found the state virtually absent. Communities pool donations every day to ensure that people are fed. We saw camps in the hills where children were eating just rice water with salt. The Karwan e Mohabbat prepared a detailed report on the immense humanitarian crisis and what the state urgently needs to do. But little changes, as residents of the camps are offered little hope and reassurance that they will be able to pick up the broken pieces of their lives in the foreseeable future. Barely a day passes without people with serious bullet injuries being wheeled into the single medical college in Churachandpur. Prior to the conflict, a one-hour road journey on an ambulance would transport them to the much better-equipped Imphal hospital. But today, this journey is impossible because of the “border” that implacably divides them. They sometimes struggle with a 12-hour mountain road journey to Aizawl, but no life-support ambulance to keep their patients alive through this difficult journey is at hand. Since the conflict, the state government has halted supplies of food and medicine for patients and medical students. The battered community raises donations not just for the camps, but also to keep the public hospital functioning. A Wall of Remembrance has been erected in Churachandpur. On it are pasted pictures of every Kuki person who has been killed. You see on the wall faces of small children, women, old people and young men. The wall is surrounded by empty coffins. Every alternate day thousands of women dress in black and gather around the wall to collectively mourn. For five months, at the time of writing, 96 bodies lie in the mortuaries in Imphal and Churachandpur. The state government has not made safe arrangements for the families to travel to Imphal to identify the remains of their loved ones. And for those in Churachandpur, they long refused to bury them as a mark of their grief and protest. A gentle pastor in Churachandpur Reverend Jangkholam Haokip barely finds time to sleep ever since the conflict broke, tirelessly organising food and medicines for the relief camps and hospital, and tending to the injured men brought in each day. I call him from time to time. One day, he almost broke down. “What do I tell our young people? What solace or hope can I offer? Do I tell them that we must just endure and wait to die? Each day, I search really hard to find some reason to hope. But I just cannot find even a single ray of hope for our future in Manipur.” Harsh Mander is a social worker and writer. Copyright 2023 Harsh Mander and The Wire

Historic Moment for Benin as New Law Legalizing Abortion Adopted in 2021| IPPF Africa Benin, formerly Dahomey, gained independence from France in 1960. While initially a one-party socialist state, Benin transitioned to a democratic multiparty republic in 1989. Until 2016, Benin was one of the most stable democracies in Africa. Since 2016, an increasingly unstable political environment has led to human rights abuses and the potential for ethnic violence. In 2018, the government passed the Digital Code which restricts freedom of expression by criminalizing “false information” published online. The Digital Code has been used to silence opposition to President Patrice Talon. 2018 presidential candidate Reckya Madougou was arrested and detained, removing any significant opposition to Talon’s re-election as President. In December 2021, Madougou was convicted and sentenced to up to 20 years in prison on charges of terrorism and plotting to assassinate political figures, despite a lack of evidence against him. Arbitrary arrests have accompanied growing reports of corruption in the government and the judicial system, despite creation of a High Commission for the Prevention of Corruption. Since 2021, Benin has suffered at least twenty attacks by al-Qaeda linked armed groups, such as Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM). The government has increased arrests by Benin police based on presumed ethnic affiliation with armed groups. 70% of Benin women experience gender-based violence (GBV) during their lifetimes. In 2021 a law was promulgated that expands punishments for GBV.  Child marriage is common with 30.6% of girls married under 18. Female genital mutilation (FGM) is a widespread practice. The 2018 penal code, decriminalized same-sex relationships. However, violence against LGBTQ+ individuals remains high. In April 2021, three transgender women were forced to undress, then beaten and robbed by a group of men in Cotonou. On another occasion, a transgender woman was beaten by police with sticks and machetes, stripped naked, and detained for three days, while deprived of clothes and food. This violence against LGBTQ+ individuals violated Articles 15 and 18 of the 1990 Benin Constitution. Due to arbitrary arrests and violence against LGBTQ+ persons, Genocide Watch considers Benin to be at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, and Stage 8: Persecution. Genocide Watch Recommends: -Benin should enforce Law no. 2003-03 prohibiting Female Genital Mutilation. -Benin should educate its police to stop violence against LGBTQ+ individuals. -Benin should prosecute attacks against political opponents and LGBTQ+ individuals.

Russia Country Report May 2024 By Genocide Watch Ukraine mothers protest mass rapes by Russian troops in Bucha Credit: United Nations Department of Peacekeeping Operations Cartographic Section Russia has a long history of persecuting ethnic minorities and societal dissidents. Imperial Russia organized Jewish pogroms. The Soviet Union committed genocide against Ukrainians during the Holomodor and against Kazakhs during the Kazakh famine. It committed war crimes against Polish officials in the Katyn Massacre and purged, imprisoned, and murdered millions of domestic political opponents throughout the Soviet era. During the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan, Russian forces killed one million civilians. Russia engaged in genocidal warfare by invading Georgia, Chechnya and Ukraine. On Feb. 24, 2022, following its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014, Russia began a full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It is now committing genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. Russia has tried to legitimize its aggression against Ukraine by arguing that it is “denazifying” the country. This is “genocidal mirroring.” It is Russia that has become a Nazi state. Russia claims that Ukraine is not a state in its own right. Russian forces in Ukraine have deliberately massacred thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed essential Ukrainian water, electrical, and healthcare infrastructure. They murdered hundreds of Ukrainian civilians during the Bucha Massacre of 2022 and have committed other genocidal massacres across Ukraine. Russian troops systematically torture, rape, and sexually assault Ukrainian civilians. Some Russian troops have accompanied their rapes with statements expressing the explicit intent to stop Ukrainian women from reproducing. Russia has purposely deprived Ukrainian civilians of food and water. Russia funds the Wagner Group, a mercenary organization that has killed, raped, and tortured thousands of civilians in Ukraine, Mali, Sudan, and the Central African Republic. Thousands of Ukrainians have died. The war has displaced millions. Russia has contravened Article 2e of the Genocide Convention in occupied Ukraine by forcibly transporting over 19,000 Ukrainian children to Russia. It has sent children to re-education camps where they are prohibited from using the Ukrainian language. They are indoctrinated in the Russian language, history, and culture. Russian families have adopted Ukrainian children and given them Russian citizenship. Russia denies responsibility for the genocide in Ukraine. Putin himself denied that the Russian Army committed the Bucha Massacre. He even decorated the troops who committed it. Maria Lvova-Belova, Russia’s Children’s Commissioner, rejected claims that Russian deportation of Ukrainian children constitutes genocide, despite its violation of Article 2e of the Genocide Convention. The ICC has charged Putin and Lvova-Belova with genocide. Russia uses the invasion of Ukraine to justify its suppression of Russian media. Russia passed two laws that make it a crime to report the occupation as a “war” or “invasion.” It is a crime to participate in or report on protests. In 2022, Russia expanded its foreign agents law, barring reporters deemed to be “foreign agents.” Under the law, it has arrested, prosecuted, imprisoned, and fined American journalists and multiple Russian human rights defenders and shut down all non-governmental Russian human rights organizations. It arrested, imprisoned, and murdered Alexei Navalny, the strongest Russian opposition leader. Russia continues to attack LGBTQ+ rights. In December 2022, the Russian Parliament declared it illegal to promote non-heterosexual relationships. Russia’s Supreme Court recently banned LGBTQ+ advocacy. Since 2017, Chechnya, led by Ramzan Kadyrov, has initiated multiple campaigns aimed at detaining and torturing gay men. Kadyrov has said he desires to remove gay people in the region to “cleanse our blood.” Gay men who wish to avoid criminal charges can “volunteer” to fight for Russia in occupied Ukraine. Because Russia is committing genocide in occupied Ukraine and oppressing its citizens, Genocide Watch considers Russia to be at Stage 8: Persecution, Stage 9: Extermination and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends: ● The United States, European Union, and NATO must supply the Ukrainian government with armament, including tanks, Patriot missiles, artillery, ammunition, cruise missiles, and jets critical to defeating Russia. ● The International Court of Justice must recognize that Russia has violated the Genocide Convention. ● The ICC must try Putin and Russian leaders for genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity in Ukraine. ● The United States, United Kingdom, and European Union must force corporations that continue to operate in Russia, like PepsiCo and Unilever, to totally cease their operations in Russia.

(FILE) People hold portraits of Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi, right, and children, left, who were killed during the protests in Iran, during a rally in Istanbul, on Nov. 26, 2022. In the U.S. State Department’s recently released report on human rights conditions in 2023, dissident Iranian rapper Toomaj Salehi is mentioned among those individuals in Iran whose freedom of expression has been “severely restricted.” His case is listed as an example of how Iranian authorities “use the law to intimidate or prosecute persons who directly criticized the government or raised human rights concerns.” The State Department noted that at the end of 2023, Salehi, who had been charged with one of highest crimes in Iran’s legal system — “corruption on earth” — was “awaiting a sentence.” That wait is now over; Salehi has been sentenced to death. A popular singer and songwriter, Salehi was arrested in October 2022 after publicly supporting the massive protests that broke out after the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini. Amini had been detained by the morality police for improperly wearing her hijab. Her death inspired the “Woman, Life, Freedom” movement in Iran. The regime responded with a brutal crackdown against dissent. Hundreds were killed; thousands arrested, and to date, nine people were executed in protest-related cases. Salehi, who in his music denounced the Iranian regime’s repression, is among the most prominent figures arrested. He was released on bail in November 2023 on the orders of Iran’s Supreme Court, only to be re-arrested days later after posting a video describing the torture he endured in prison. A revolutionary court in Isfahan recently issued the verdict and the sentence of death. UN experts, who have raised the case of Toomaj Salehi with Iranian authorities at various occasions since his arrest in 2022, said they “are alarmed by the imposition of the death sentence and the alleged ill-treatment of Mr. Salehi which appears to be related solely to the exercise of his right to freedom of artistic expression and creativity.” U.S. State Department Principal Deputy Spokesperson Vedant Patel called Salehi’s treatment “another example of the Iranian regime’s horrific and pervasive human rights abuses.” He said, “We once again condemn the Iranian regime’s use of the death sentence as a tool to suppress people’s human rights and fundamental freedoms,” and added that the United States will continue to make clear in public fora the egregiousness of such cases so that with the international community, “we can further collectively hold the Iranian regime accountable for its crackdowns.” © Voice of America 2024

Police were deployed across Istanbul, blocking even small sidestreets with metal barriers in an attempt to prevent protesters gathering Turkish police on Wednesday arrested more than 200 people who tried to reach Istanbul's historic Taksim Square for May 1 rallies, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said. Police used tear gas and fired rubber bullets to disperse thousands of protesters who defied a ban on celebrating International Workers' Day there. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan had outlawed the annual protest on Taksim Square, but the leader of Turkey's main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Ozgur Ozel, called for the rally to go ahead. More than 42,000 police officers were deployed to keep order in the city, Yerlikaya said. Ozel and Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu, who was reelected this year on a CHP ticket, joined a march towards Taksim Square, but organizers stopped several miles away as routes were blocked. Some protesters clashed with security forces as they tried to breach the barricades. "If May 1 is not celebrated in the country's main square, democracy is in trouble. This struggle will continue until Taksim is free," Ozel said earlier. The Constitutional Court ruled at the end of last year that a ban of demonstrations in Taksim Square violated the right to peaceful assembly. © 2024 Deutsche Welle

Terrorists Take Over Schools After Months of Attacks in Plateau State: Officials TruthNigeria March 16, 2024 Nigerian school children sit on the ground in an open-air classroom in Bokkos, Nigeria. credit Masara Kim By Masara Kim Under the scorching sun on a Thursday afternoon in Bokkos town, 8-year-old Precious Musa holds her notebook on her lap with high seriousness. She sat on bare, red dirt along with hundreds of other homeless children in a camp for internally displaced people (IDP’s) at the County seat of Bokkos. But Musa takes school with a sense of mission and listens intently to a lecture on arithmetic without benefit of white board. She is among 19,000 Christians displaced by brutal attacks during last year’s Black Christmas massacres, 45 miles south of Jos, the capital of Plateau State. Although many would pity Musa, this is a good day for her. Even now she holds on to her dream of becoming an architect. I know that mindset, because 30 years ago I sat in a classroom in Butura Kampani and dreamed of becoming an astronaut. I ended up as a conflict reporter for TruthNigeria, but my eyes are still on the stars. The terrorist attacks came almost simultaneously to 36 villages, according to military authorities, starting on December 23 and peaking on Christmas Eve. More than 295 people were killed in the onslaught lasting several days according to Rev. Chris Damcher, the Chairman of the Plateau State Civil Society Organizations. TruthNigeria estimates a force of approximately 3,000 armed men carried out the massacres as residents reported being swarmed by more than 100 in every village. Major General Abdulsalam Abubakar, the Commander of a 2000-man military task force in Plateau State said his troops were overwhelmed during the invasions. But the “Operation Safe Haven” task force had sufficient time to prepare. TruthNigeria had published a series of advance warnings of the attacks since November, giving exact details of the targeted areas. The attacks were described as the worst instance of genocide in the country in recent years and drew global outrage from both U.S.- and European lawmakers. In the midst of the chaos, the terrorists reduced Musa’s village of Mangor to ashes, killing more than 40 people according to town leaders. Victims included at least 20 women and children who met a gruesome fate while seeking refuge in a nearby stream bed. Sole survivor of her family’s massacre: Purity Panmun Danat, 3. Photo by Masara Kim. The previous day, Dec. 23, in a village just 10 miles away, Purity Panmun Danat, 3 years old, was not so lucky. She is the sole survivor of her family’s massacre after their village, Kambar-Pelli, was attacked. Purity witnessed the slaughter of her father, mother, three brothers, and a sister. Purity miraculously survived when her mother hid her under a curtain. Sixteen people in Kambar-Pelli, were killed that night by the marauders whom residents said spoke the Fulani dialect. The Fulani tribe, known throughout Africa as skilled herders and fundamentalist Muslims, have contributed an outsized share of leaders to Nigeria’s government since independence in 1960. On the downside, Fulani jihadist groups are responsible for six times more Christian deaths than the ISIS insurgency known as Boko Haram in recent years. But the attacks are ongoing. Fulani terrorists killed two people making a living in a mining camp south of Jos the capital of Plateau state on March 6. Federal Government to Appease Killers? Despite these grim realities, President Bola Tinubu announced plans on Monday, March 11, to implement subsidized ranching communities aimed at resolving the so-called “farmer-herder clashes” nationwide. “I know what it means for roaming cows to eat crops and the vegetation of our land. I know it is painful. But when we re-orient the herder and make provision for cattle rearing, we can address that,” said the President while launching an agro-allied project — the Food Security and Agricultural Mechanization Program in Niger State. When he made the remarks, Precious Musa was grappling with the aftermath of being neglected by her government, as terrorists threatened her town and her future. Despite her dream of becoming an architect, her eyes reflect despair. Ten miles away in the village of Butura Kampani, residents, faced with no other option to survive, are banding together and forming self-defense groups to repel the attacks themselves. In this town of 5000 residents, hundreds of children attended classes in worn-out but comfortable classrooms, dazzling in their school uniforms. But in Mangor and dozens of other villages in Central Plateau, the situation remains dire. More than 13,000 schoolchildren are unable to access their homes and schools due to ongoing threats. In Bokkos town where 19,000 displaced residents are sheltering in makeshift camps, at least 1,300 schoolchildren are forced to take classes sitting on dirt, taught by volunteers. They hail from some 25 villages taken over by terrorist squatters, according to Bishop Ayuba Matawal, who is in charge of 19 camps in the city. 12 miles away in Mangu county, a staggering 11,800 displaced children are hearing lectures by volunteers, according to Mr. Markus Artu, a community leader representing more than 80,000 displaced residents. The area witnessed days of armed attacks across 30 communities claiming over 350 lives recorded by end of May 2023, according to town leaders. Despite the establishment of a special military unit called “Operation Hakorin Damisa” in July, Artu texted “Nothing has changed,” to TruthNigeria. “There are schools that have been taken over by bandits,” said Plateau Stare Governor Caleb Mutfwang recently. “The crisis has inadvertently destabilized us in several ways,” said the Governor, who has repeatedly described the attacks credited to Fulani terrorists as genocidal, aimed at land grab and ethnic displacements. The situation in Plateau has been replicated in nearby Benue State. Mr. Ojotu Ojema, a member of the Nigerian House of Reps hailing from Benue told TruthNigeria whole counties have been displaced in his constituency in recent weeks. “What is happening is very worrisome,” said Ojema in a telephone interview. “All the villagers are now crowding into the local government headquarters because the villages are not safe,” Ojema said. Classroom in Butura Kampani Town, secured by civilian guards known as vigilantes, similar to the one TruthNigeria editor Masara Kim attended in the 1990s. Photo by Masara Kim. More than 1000 Communities Taken Over By Terrorists The situation in the two states reveals a disturbing trend across the killing fields of the country’s northern states. More than 1,000 communities have been taken over by terrorists in the last 15 years, according to Intersociety. TruthNigeria investigations have gathered that in many of these communities, terrorists are standing up their own governments and imposing Sharia law on hapless residents. In Damari, a rural hub of 100 villages bunched near the border with Niger State West of Kaduna metropolis, the terrorists have converted public schools into indoctrination centers, according to residents interviewed by helpless residents talking to TruthNigeria. “Children are the most precious resource being lost in Africa, and particularly in Nigeria, due to Islamic terrorism and its consequences including food shortages, potential famine, hyperinflation, and high rates of out-of-school youth,” texted Dede Laugesen, the Executive Director of Save the Persecuted Christians, a U.S. based nonprofit. “Children in Nigeria are kept from an education because the government has failed to confront the terrorists. Instead, terrorists act with impunity and move about the affected communities unhindered even with hostages in tow,” Laugesen wrote. “The Nigerian government should be alarmed at this growing crisis which threatens to destabilize Africa’s most populous nation,” she wrote. “Instead, they make excuses and tell lies—lies that U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has swallowed to the detriment of Nigeria’s future and most especially to her children,” Laugesen wrote. Masara Kim is the senior editor of Truth Nigeria and reports from Jos. https://truthnigeria.com/2024/03/terrorists-take-over-schools-after-months-of-attacks-in-plateau-state-officials/ Copyright TruthNigeria 2024

Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, explains how many of the Ten Stages of Genocide are already present in India, and why the genocidal process must be stopped. Dr. Stanton's presentation to the Indian American Muslim Council in Houston may be viewed at:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2MX_tvIfKA

Government Targets Overseas Indians Opposing Ruling Party Policies Nitasha Kaul, professor at the University of Westminster in London, during an Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation Subcommittee hearing in Washington, DC, October 22, 2019.  © 2019 Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP via Getty Images India: Authorities Revoke Visa Privileges of Diaspora Critics By Human Rights Watch (New York) – Indian authorities are revoking visa privileges to overseas critics of Indian origin who have spoken out against the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led government’s policies, Human Rights Watch said today. Prime Minister Narendra Modi often attends mass gatherings of diaspora party supporters in the United States, Europe, Australia, and elsewhere to celebrate Indian democracy, while his government has targeted people it claims are “tarnishing the image” of the country. The Overseas Citizens of India (OCI) status is available to foreign citizens of Indian origin or foreigners married to Indian nationals to obtain broad residency rights and bypass visa requirements, but does not amount to citizenship. Many of those whose OCI visa status was revoked are Indian-origin academics, activists, and journalists who have been vocal critics of the BJP’s Hindu majoritarian ideology. Some have challenged their exclusion in Indian courts on constitutional grounds seeking protection of their rights to speech and livelihood. “Indian government reprisals against members of the diaspora who criticize the BJP’s abusive and discriminatory policies show the authorities’ growing hostility to criticism and dialogue,” said Elaine Pearson, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The authorities seem intent on expanding politically motivated repression against Indian activists and academics at home to foreign citizens of Indian origin beyond India’s borders.” The BJP-led government has in recent years become more cautious about the visa status for overseas Indians. In 2021, the government downgraded the privileges of the 4.5 million OCI cardholders by re-categorizing them as “foreign nationals,” and requiring them to seek special permission to carry out research and journalism, or visit any area in India listed as “protected.” Over the past decade, the government has canceled over 100 permits and deported some status holders for allegedly showing “disaffection towards the Constitution.” This has heightened concerns for OCI cardholders whether living in India or abroad, many of whom have older parents and other strong personal ties to India. In 2022, after the authorities revoked his status, Ashok Swain, an Indian-origin Swedish academic, appealed to the Delhi High Court, which quashed the order, stating that the government had not provided any reasons for its action. In July 2023, the Indian consulate in Sweden sent Swain a fresh order canceling his OCI status because of his social media posts “hurting religious sentiments” and “attempting to destabilize the social fabric of India,” without providing specific evidence to substantiate those allegations. When Swain challenged the order in September 2023, the authorities claimed they had received “secret” inputs from security agencies. In February 2024, Swain’s X (formerly Twitter) account was blocked in India and subsequently hacked. “My case has been used as an example to scare or to force other academics outside India to not be critical of the regime,” Swain told Human Rights Watch. “They want to create fear because people want the opportunity to go back to the country.” Indian authorities have also prevented academics who are OCI cardholders from entering the country. On February 23, the authorities barred Nitasha Kaul, a British professor at the University of Westminster in London from entering India. Kaul said immigration authorities did not provide any reasons but a Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson later said in response to questions about her case that “the entry of foreign nationals into our country is a sovereign decision.” Unidentified government officials also told the media that Kaul had “shown animus” toward India. Kaul has been a vocal critic of the BJP and its affiliated groups, and in 2019 she testified before the United States House Committee on Foreign Affairs about human rights violations in Jammu and Kashmir. Kaul told Human Rights Watch that she has received numerous rape and death threats online from pro-BJP trolls in India and overseas. “In addition to this, they have called me jihadi and a terrorist,” she said. “There has been a vast amount of deliberate disinformation suggesting that because my work is critical of the ruling party in India, that makes me pro-Pakistani.” In some cases, the authorities have openly cited criticism of BJP government policies as evidence to revoke the visa status. In response to a petition by a British activist, Amrit Wislon, challenging her cancellation, the government cited her social media posts about Kashmir and her article condemning the police’s excessive use of force against protesting farmers in 2020 and 2021. Indian authorities are increasingly using what appear to be politically motivated tactics against the around 25 foreign reporters with OCI status working in India as of January 2024, embroiling them in opaque bureaucracy or simply denying them permission to continue reporting. Vanessa Dougnac, a French journalist who had lived in India for 22 years, said she left the country after the Ministry of Home Affairs sent her a “show cause” notice in January, saying it intended to cancel her OCI card because she did not have a permit to work as a journalist and her news reports created a “biased negative perception of India.” Dougnac was denied permission to work as a journalist in 2022, and said the ministry had not responded to her “repeated requests” for an explanation or review of its decision. In 2023, the authorities revoked the OCI status of an American journalist shortly after the journalist published a report about criminal actions by an Indian company. The journalist, who did not wish to be identified, told Human Rights Watch: “No specific allegation was made against me, and no evidence has been produced despite several requests.” In 2022, the authorities deported the American-Sikh journalist Angad Singh. After Singh brought a lawsuit challenging the decision, the government told the Delhi High Court that he “presented a very negative view of India’s secular credentials” in a 2020 documentary about the 2019-20 protests against the country’s amended citizenship law. Foreign writers, journalists, academics, and activists have been increasingly denied access to India for seemingly political reasons, Human Rights Watch said. In March 2022, British anthropologist Filippo Osella, who had visited India regularly for over 30 years, was turned away by immigration authorities despite holding a valid research visa. Others denied entry include an Australian writer, Kathryn Hummel; a Pakistani academic, Annie Zaman; a former Swiss diplomat and activist, Kurt Vogele; Mukunda Raj Kattel, director of Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development; and Aaron Gray-Block and Ben Hargreaves, both Greenpeace activists. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which India is a party, addresses in article 13 the rights of aliens lawfully in a country, and non-discrimination against “all persons,” including non-nationals, in article 26. The Covenant does not recognize non-nationals having a right to enter or reside in a country, a decision left to the state. However, the United Nations Human Rights Committee, the international expert body that monitors compliance with the ICCPR, has stated in its General Comment No. 15 on the status of aliens, that, “in certain circumstances an alien may enjoy the protection of the Covenant even in relation to entry or residence, for example, when considerations of non-discrimination … arise.” The General Comment further provides that if the legality of an alien's “stay is in dispute, any decision on this point leading to his expulsion or deportation ought to be taken in accordance with article 13. It is for the competent authorities … in good faith and in the exercise of their powers, to apply and interpret the domestic law, observing, however, such requirements under the Covenant as equality before the law” in accordance with article 26. Distinctions are permissible only when based on reasonable and objective criteria. “Foreign governments eager to partner with India on trade and security should take note that the Indian government is increasing repression to hide a deteriorating human rights situation,” Pearson said. “These governments should press the Modi administration to interact with its critics to bring about reform instead of intimidating them into silence.” © 2024 Human Rights Watch

LGBTQ+ refugees living in Kenya stand behind a rainbow flag outside an office of the UN refugee agency UNHCR in Nairobi, Kenya in May 2019. | Ben Curtis/AP By Grace Condon What is Conversion Therapy? So-called “conversion therapy,” also known as “reparative therapy,” “reintegrative therapy,” or “aversion therapy,” is a practice aimed at changing homosexual, transgender, or non-binary individuals’ sexual orientation or gender identity to heterosexual or cisgender identity. The practice of conversion therapy is rooted in the erroneous and prejudiced belief that homosexuality and gender diverse identities are illnesses that must be cured. Such gender identities are often also seen as morally reprehensible or sinful. Proponents of conversion therapy cite pseudoscientific evidence that the “therapy” is both effective and beneficial to individuals who undergo “treatment.” In reality, there is no reliable scientific evidence that conversion therapy has ever worked. In fact, there is strong evidence that it is both harmful and dangerous to the health and even the lives of homosexuals and transgender individuals. Homosexuality, particularly among men, has for centuries been considered deviant and was widely criminalized. At the end of the 19th century, a German psychiatrist claimed that he had turned a gay man straight through hypnosis sessions and trips to a brothel. This claim set off a conversion therapy movement that continued into the 20th century. During the 20th century, most psychiatrists considered homosexuality a mental illness that needed to be cured. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) considered homosexuality a psychiatric disorder until 1973. Some LGBTQ+  people were given electroconvulsive therapy. Some were even subjected to lobotomies in order to “cure” their homosexuality or gender non-conforming identities. Aversion therapy was also a widely used technique. LGBTQ+ people were given chemicals that would make them vomit or given electrical shocks and then shown gay pornography or photos of their lovers. Aversion therapy was based on the belief that if LGBTQ+ people were made to feel disgust at homosexuality they would no longer have any desire for same-sex relationships. Although conversion therapy is now widely discredited by the medical and psychiatric communities, it is still a common practice in countries around the world. According to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP), homosexuality and gender diverse identities are not pathological; “the absence of pathology means there is no need for conversion or any other like intervention. Further, there is evidence that “conversion therapies” increase the risk of causing or exacerbating mental health conditions in the very youth they purport to treat.” Conversion Therapy is Torture A United Nations expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz, has stated that conversion therapy can amount to torture and should be banned globally. He states that conversion therapy practices are: ·         “inherently discriminatory; ·         they are cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment; and ·         depending on the severity or physical or mental pain and suffering inflicted on the victim, they may amount to torture.” According to Madrigal-Borloz, there are 3 main practices used in modern day conversion therapy: 1.    psychotherapeutic interventions based on the belief that LGBTQ+ identities come from abnormal or traumatic upbringings, 2.    medical interventions based on the belief that sexual and gender diversity are biological dysfunctions, and 3.    faith-based approaches rooted in the belief that LGBTQ+ identities are evil and sinful. Borloz has pointed out that physical, psychological, and sexual abuse, as well as electrocution, forced medication, isolation, confinement, verbal abuse, and humiliation are all tactics used during conversion therapy. Victims of conversion therapy may also be subjected to anti-gay slurs, beatings, shackling, food deprivation, and exorcisms. Borloz has identified public and private mental healthcare providers, faith-based organizations, traditional healers, and State agents as the perpetrators of this abuse. There is evidence that being subjected to conversion therapy has long-lasting detrimental effects on victims’ physical and mental wellbeing. Conversion therapy increases the individual’s vulnerability to anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress, as well as suicidal ideation and suicide attempts. The Pan American Health Association has stated that conversion therapy represents “a severe threat to the health and human rights of victims.” Conversion therapy is unethical and dangerous to those subjected to it. While conversion therapy has been banned in some countries, it is still legal in the majority of the world. In a few countries, there is no explicit legislation banning the practice, but limited restrictions are in place including prohibiting healthcare practitioners from carrying out conversion therapy. Even in some countries that have legislation restricting conversion therapy, the practice continues. According to No Conversion Canada, as of 2021, as many as 10% of LGBTQ+ Canadians have been subjected to conversion therapy. What Can be Done? Organizations like the Trevor Project and OutRight Action are working towards a global ban on conversion therapy through legislative advocacy, public education, and providing survivor testimonies. Spokespersons for both of these organizations have stated that “building a broad coalition of religious leaders, public figures, politicians, and everyday citizens is key to banning the practice.” Bringing attention to the fact that conversion therapy remains a widespread practice, rather than something of the past, is imperative in the struggle to implement a worldwide ban. Reducing social stigma against LGBTQ+ people is another key to ending conversion therapy, as the practice is rooted in prejudiced assumptions and beliefs about groups that do not conform to standard gender classifications. Legislation is needed in most countries to ban the practice. Such legislation should also prescribe punishment for those who subject LGBTQ+ people to conversion therapy. The persecution and torture of LGBTQ+ people through conversion therapy should be considered a crime against humanity. The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Genocide Watch