Friday, September 29, 2023 Roman Gressier This Monday, September 25, a Virginia immigration judge ruled to not deport retired Salvadoran Colonel Roberto Antonio Garay Saravia, arrested in April for his alleged involvement in the El Mozote massacre, in which Salvadoran commandos from the Atlacatl Battalion executed nearly 1,000 civilians amid a scorched-earth campaign in December 1981 in the department of Morazán. Garay Saravia has legally resided in the United States since 2014 and is the first and only member of the Salvadoran military to be arrested explicitly for his ties to the massacre. According to army records, he served as commander of one of four sections of the Atlacatl Battalion, an elite squadron financed and trained by the United States. He was arrested following a joint two-year investigation by the human rights and war crimes units of the Department of Justice (DOJ) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS). U.S. investigators also tie the colonel to other massacres of civilians committed by the Salvadoran Army between 1981 and 1984 during the civil war, like La Quesera and El Calabozo, but the removal proceedings against Garay Saravia focused on the crimes at El Mozote. Judge Brian T. Palmer conceded that Atlacatl participated in “scorched earth” campaigns. “The Court finds ample evidence in the record that noncombatant civilians were deliberately killed by Atlacati Battalion soldiers,” he wrote in his decision. He also acknowledged that Atlacatl participated in El Mozote, that Garay Saravia participated in “Operation Rescate,” the military operation in which the massacre occurred, and that the officer “was assigned as a Section Leader, in some capacity, within the Battalion.” But at the same time he dismissed the key portion of the testimony of expert witness Terry Karl, a Stanford University investigator and specialist on the Salvadoran civil war. Karl asserted during the hearings that Garay Saravia “incited, assisted, or otherwise participated” in the massacres mentioned in the deportation proceedings. Karl also testified in April 2021, during the ongoing trial for the El Mozote massacre in a court in Morazán, on the Army hierarchy involved in the massacre and the presence of a U.S. military advisor, Allen Bruce Hazelwood, in Morazán during the murders. The academic argues that a pact of silence among military officers has obstructed any courtroom testimony from within the Salvadoran Armed Forces. “The Court finds the DHS did not establish by clear and convincing evidence that the Respondent assisted or otherwise participated in the commission of deliberate killings or that the Respondent knew or should have known that his subordinates committed deliberate killings,” wrote Palmer. “Although the Respondent likely was present and likely otherwise participated in or failed to prevent the murders, a mere likelihood or preponderance is not enough to meet DHS's clear and convincing burden.” “With few exceptions, there is little evidence to indicate the specific location of identified Atlacatl units, and even less evidence as to who led the sections,” said the judge. “The Respondent's section could not have been present at all the killing sites, which occurred over a four-day operation in diverse locations.” “For purposes of removal proceedings, ‘units’ do not assist or otherwise participate [in] extrajudicial killings, but instead such acts are committed by individuals within units. Although the Court finds that many members of the AtlacatI Battalion committed, assisted, and participated in the murder of noncombatants in the described operations, the Court finds insufficient evidence that the Respondent was one of those people.” Residents of the hamlet of El Potrero in the village of La Joya bury their family members in a monument honoring the victims of the El Mozote massacre. They buried the remains of 19 people on Sunday, Dec. 11, 2016. Photo Fred Ramos Palmer —a former Marine Corps commander appointed by former Attorney General Jeff Sessions in 2018, who as a soldier was deployed to Kuwait, Kosovo, and Afghanistan, among other campaigns— concluded on these grounds that Garay Saravia did not lie on his September 2013 visa application, a crime punishable by deportation. In order to obtain U.S. residency, which he was granted in March 2014, he asserted that he had not “participated in or ordered genocide, torture or extrajudicial killings.” In 2017, three years after his move to the United States, the Legislative Assembly revoked the amnesty granted during the 1992 peace accords which had shielded those responsible for war crimes from prosecution. “It is a good thing that any court would require a high bar for evidence of individual responsibility before expelling someone from the country through deportation,” says Angelina Godoy, director of the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, who for years has worked to shed light on crimes from the Salvadoran armed conflict. “But it’s hard not to note the irony that this exact same immigration court system deports thousands of Salvadorans every year without affording them anywhere near the presumption of innocence shown to Mr. Garay.” “Our attorney requested Mr. Garay Saravia’s arrest months ago,” says Leo Tovar Claros, of the Association for the Promotion of Human Rights in El Mozote. “We believe these cases are positive because they are all guilty, but this man was from a high level where he gave out the orders for what happened here in El Mozote, as well as in other cases around the country in which he is also guilty.” Gap in the Records Judge Palmer lamented, as did Karl during the hearings, that “possibly incomplete service records” in the Salvadoran military’s files hinder efforts to establish exactly where Garay Saravia was during the massacre, which men he led, and what actions they took. Victims’ associations and human rights groups have constantly advocated for a complete unsealing of the Salvadoran military’s records. President Nayib Bukele promised in November 2019 to declassify all of the military’s files relating to El Mozote, but four years later his government has kept them secret. “The Court further recognizes the evidentiary challenges created by the Salvadoran military's efforts to conceal its past atrocities,” Palmer indicated, “as well as the passage of time the Respondent's alleged crimes occurred more than four decades ago.” Godoy, of the University of Washington, told El Faro after Garay Saravia’s arrest that the Salvadoran military records contain more information on his possible participation in the El Mozote massacre. “El Mozote is certainly important but the court reviewed evidence of his participation in multiple major and well-documented massacres from this period,” adds Godoy. “I think it is disgraceful that 40 years on, complete judicial investigations have not taken place in *any* of these massacres.” Upon his arrest in April, senior Biden officials underscored that “individuals who have committed atrocities overseas will not find safe haven in the United States.” On Thursday Garay Saravia’s defense tried to present the immigration judge’s decision as an “exoneration,” despite the fact that removal proceedings are a civil process and the retired military officer has yet to face criminal charges in El Salvador. “While we acknowledge that tragic events, including the loss of lives, take place during civil wars and the Salvadoran civil war is no exception, our client simply is not the man the U.S. government accused him of being,” asserted defense attorney José Campos in a statement. “[Garay Saravia] has long maintained his innocence in this matter. It is a testament to the principles of justice and due process upheld by the United States legal system.” DHS will likely appeal the decision, though their press office has yet to confirm to El Faro whether they will do so. An appeal would first pass through the Board of Immigration Appeals, and then to a federal court of appeals. The proceedings against Garay Saravia in the United States have taken place amid the most difficult period for the victims and their families. The judge who ordered the El Mozote massacre case to trial in El Salvador, Jorge Guzmán, was forced into retirement in September 2021 following legal reforms implemented by the ruling party Nuevas Ideas that purged one-third of the country’s judges. Since then, victims and witnesses have complained of procedural changes established by the new judge assigned to the case. Even if Garay Saravia were to be removed to El Salvador, he would not face any restrictions on his liberty under the current circumstances as he does not face an arrest warrant. Judge Guzmán has now left El Salvador. He told El Faro that what triggered his departure was “the criminalization of my wife with fabricated evidence by a labor court judge, in retaliation for my confrontation with the Court and with the President.” In the last two years in El Salvador, not a single hearing has been held relating to the El Mozote massacre. FUNDACIÓN PERIÓDICA (San José, Costa Rica). All rights reserved. Copyright © 1998 - 2023. Founded on April 25, 1998.

By Andrew Roth and Pjotr Sauer Ruben Vardanyan flanked by Azerbaijani officers after being arrested. Authorities said he had been taken to Baku after illegally entering the country. Photograph: State Border Service Of Azerbaijan/EPA Azerbaijan has detained a former leader of the breakaway Nagorno-Karabakh government in its first high profile arrest since launching a lightning offensive last week that it said would lead to a “reintegration” of the territory into Azerbaijan. Ruben Vardanyan, a wealthy businessman who had served as the state minister of the Nagorno-Karabakh republic, was detained as he tried to cross the border into Armenia on Wednesday morning, as one of more than 50,000 Armenians who have fled the region to avoid incoming Azerbaijani control. Vardanyan made his fortune in investment banking in Russia before moving to the self-declared Nagorno-Karabakh republic in 2022, where he was appointed state minister. He was dismissed in February 2023, but remained a prominent figure in the region, which many Armenians call Artsakh. In an interview with the Guardian last week before his arrest, he said that he knew he would be a target for Azerbaijani forces when the war started last week. “It’s life,” he said. “If you are ready to die for your country, then it’s ok. It’s bad but something you have to be ready for if you’re doing something important... the end of the story can be very bad. And I was ready for it the first day, I knew it.” As Azerbaijani forces have moved into villages and towns, more than 40% of the population of Karabakh have evacuated in just over 72 hours. Azerbaijani troops entered the town of Martakert, the first major settlement that has been occupied since the offensive began. It appeared that most of the population had fled before the troops arrived, who filmed themselves in front of the local government administration and declared: “Karabakh is Azerbaijan!” Vardanyan had accused Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, of launching a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh and had called for sanctions against Azerbaijan. His wife, Veronika Zonabend, confirmed his arrest in a statement. “My husband, Ruben Vardanyan, the philanthropist, businessman and former minister of state of Artsakh, has been arrested and held captive by the Azerbaijani authorities at the border as he attempted to leave this morning, along with thousands of Armenians escaping Azerbaijani occupation,” she said. “Ruben stood with the Arsakh people during the 10-month blockade and suffered along with them in the struggle for survival. I ask for your prayers and support to ensure my husband’s safe release.” A photo released by the Azerbaijani government showed Vardanyan under arrest flanked by two Azerbaijani officers in camouflage at an airfield. Azerbaijan said Vardanyan had illegally entered its territory, which is internationally recognised as including Nagorno-Karabakh, and had been taken to Baku. The Azerbaijani government had previously said it intended to arrest Vardanyan, though the charges against him on Wednesday were not made public. Zonabend told the Guardian she found out about her husband’s arrest from media reports and called the images of it “just awful”. “He left a message yesterday evening to say that he was safe but I did not know his exact plans,” she said. “Since the 19th of September he had been calling to say that he is alive.” “He came to Karabakh because he wanted the best for his nation, his people,” Zonabend said. “That he stayed so long shows what sort of man and politician he is. I hope the international community will help. I pray for it.” Azerbaijani forces often photograph and interrogate men crossing the border from Karabakh into Armenia, although Vardanyan’s arrest was the first publicly known arrest since the exodus of refugees into Armenia began last week. Azerbaijani troops, who had blockaded the Nagorno-Karabakh territory for 10 months and still maintain checkpoints along roads into Armenia, arrested three young men in August for allegedly stepping on an Azerbaijani flag during a football match. Baku’s search for “terrorists” in the territory has many men of military age concerned they could be arrested if they try to leave. One teenage boy said he and six other men were led away by Azerbaijani forces and interrogated upon leaving Nagorno-Karabakh, but declined to say what he was asked. Another Karabakh man who had fought against Azerbaijani forces told the Guardian he had burned his documents before crossing the border in order to avoid being identified as a potential security threat. “Men are worried,” said Siranush Sargsyan, a freelance journalist from Stepanakert. “Every man. All they have is the fear that they will be checked [at the border]. They know that there is some kind of list, they want to kidnap them or arrest them, and every man has this fear.” © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

By Christian Edwards (CNN) — The self-declared Republic of Artsakh (Nagorno-Karabakh) will cease to exist from next year after its president signed a decree dissolving state institutions following its defeat by Azerbaijan. The Azerbaijani victory last week triggered a huge exodus of ethnic Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh and marked the end of decades of conflict – and potentially the end of centuries of Armenian presence in the region. President Samvel Shahramanyan’s decree called for all institutions and organizations of the Republic of Artsakh – which is not recognized internationally – to dissolve from January 1 2024. “The Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) ceases its existence,” read the decree. Azerbaijan reclaimed control of the breakaway region last week after an offensive lasting just 24 hours. Nagorno-Karabakh lies within Azerbaijan’s borders but has for decades operated autonomously with a de facto government of its own. Azerbaijan has long been clear about the choice confronting Karabakh Armenians: Stay and accept Azerbaijani citizenship, or leave. The majority of the population has already voted with its feet: Tens of thousands have fled their ancestral home rather than submitting to rule by Baku. How did this happen? After generations of intermittent wars and brittle ceasefires, the suddenness with which Nagorno-Karabakh fell to Azerbaijani troops – and with which its ethnic Armenian population has scrambled to evacuate – has been startling. Azerbaijan launched its offensive on September 19, firing missile and drones at the regional capital of Stepanakert in what marked the start of a third war fought for control of the region in as many decades. Under the Soviet Union, of which Azerbaijan and Armenia are both former members, Nagorno-Karabakh became an autonomous region within the republic of Azerbaijan. Karabakh officials passed a resolution in 1988 declaring its intention to join the republic of Armenia, causing fighting to break out as the Soviet Union began to crumble, in what became the First Karabakh War. About 30,000 people were killed over six years of violence, which ended in 1994 when the Armenian side gained control of the region. After years of sporadic clashes, the Second Karabakh War began in 2020. Azerbaijan, backed by its historic ally Turkey, reclaimed a third of the territory of Karabakh in just 44 days, before both sides agreed to lay down their weapons in a Russian-brokered ceasefire. The Nagorno-Karabakh Conflict Nagorno-Karabakh, an ethnic Armenian-majority breakaway region, has been the cause of two wars between Armenia and Azerbaijan in the past three decades. Azerbaijan launched a 24-hour assault on the region in on September 19 2023, before ethnic Armenian forces agreed to a Russia-brokered ceasefire that saw them disband their armed forces. Azerbaijan said it had retaken full control of the region the same day. Source: Council on Foreign Relations Graphic: Henrik Pettersson, CNN But the third war was to last just a day. The Karabakh presidency said its army had been outnumbered “several times over” by Azerbaijani forces and had no choice but to surrender and agree to “the dissolution and complete disarmament of its armed forces,” by which time Azerbaijan had killed at least 200 people and injured many hundreds more. A second ceasefire – also brokered by Russia – came into effect at 1 p.m. on September 20. The swiftness of Karabakh’s surrender was a measure of its military inferiority. Armed with Turkish drones, Azerbaijan won a crushing victory in 2020, attacking not only Nagorno-Karabakh but also Armenia itself. Unlike in 2020, Armenia’s armed forces did not attempt to defend the region during the most recent offensive – in part out of fear of further Azerbaijani aggression. “They have such an advantage that they could easily cut Armenia in two,” Olesya Vartanyan, Crisis Group’s senior analyst for the South Caucasus, told CNN. “Just through a very short military operation. Probably a day or two for it to happen.” Karabakh’s despair was Baku’s triumph. In a speech to the nation Wednesday evening, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev announced his forces had “punished the enemy properly” and that Baku had restored its sovereignty “with an iron fist.” Shahramanyan, the regions’ president, said Thursday he had signed the decree “due to the current difficult military-political situation.” The Azerbaijani presidency had previously insisted that the Artsakh government – as well as its armed forces – also dissolve itself. It warned if they did not do so, that the offensive would continue “until the end.” What happens next? The day after the ceasefire, Baku sent representatives to meet with Karabakh officials and discuss “reintegration.” Few details were released of the talks, but Azerbaijan has long been explicit about the choice confronting ethnic Armenians in the region. In a speech delivered in May, he said Karabakh officials needed to “bend their necks” and accept full integration into Azerbaijan. Farid Shafiyev, chair of the Center of Analysis of International Relations in Baku – an organization involved in the government discussions about “reintegration” – told CNN: “Those who don’t want to accept Azerbaijani jurisdiction, they have to leave. Those who would like to stay and get the passports, they are welcome to stay.” Aliyev claimed that the rights of Karabakh Armenians “will be guaranteed,” but Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and international experts have repeatedly warned of the risk of ethnic cleansing. Thousands have chosen to flee to Armenia rather than live under Azerbaijani rule. Alain Jocard/AFP/Getty Images For many Karabakh Armenians, the “choice” offered by Azerbaijan was no choice at all. “I can’t trust them, their fake promises,” Siranush Sargsyan, a local journalist based in Stepanakert, told CNN. Anna Ohanyan, a senior scholar in the Russia and Eurasia program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said she feared what would happen to local residents who chose to stay and attempted to refuse Azerbaijani citizenship. “If the Armenian community will not leave, but also will not take up Azerbaijani passports, I think that basically would be suicidal,” Ohanyan told CNN. Will any Armenians remain? More than half of the local population had fled Nagorno-Karabakh for Armenia by Thursday morning. Many harbored no hope that they can ever return to their ancestral homeland. “They changed our flag, our government surrendered. That’s all. No Armenian will be left here within maybe two weeks,” Nonna Poghosyan, the American University of Armenia’s program coordinator in Stepanakert, told CNN. Ohanyan said that the best case scenario would be that Azerbaijan erects “a Potemkin village” – that is, a sham settlement intending to paint a false picture to the outside world, the sort once used to impress Russian empress Catherine the Great. “But in the long term, I think there will be a systematic push, continued demographic engineering to push Armenian communities outside the region,” Ohanyan said. Images shared with CNN showed long lines of cars along the Lachin corridor – the only road connecting the enclave to Armenia – as thousands of residents attempted to flee at once. Lines of cars are seen around Lachin corridor as thousands fled Nagorno-Karabakh. Maxar Technologies Poghosyan arrived in Armenia Thursday morning with her husband, twin children, parents and grandmother. She said what ordinarily would have been a 45 minute drive had taken the seven of them 35 hours, so snarled up was the road. Who will take the refugees? Pashinyan said in a speech Sunday his government “will welcome our sisters and brothers of Nagorno-Karabakh to the Republic of Armenia with all care.” But how prepared Armenia – a nation of some 2.8 million people – is to house up to 120,000 arrivals from Nagorno-Karabakh remains unclear. Many of those on the move landed in temporary refugee camps set up in the border towns of Goris and Kornidzor. During a visit to Armenia, United States Agency for International Development (USAID) chief Samantha Power warned those arriving were suffering from “severe malnutrition.” Power warned of the "dire" humanitarian situation during a visit to Kornidzor, September 26, 2023. Astrig Agopian/Getty Images Nagorno-Karabakh has been under blockade since December 2022, when Azerbaijan-backed activists established a military checkpoint on the Lachin corridor. The blockade prevented the import of food, fuel and medicine to Nagorno-Karabakh, prompting fears that residents were being left to starve. CNN spoke to residents of Stepanakert, the region’s capital, before the beginning of the offensive, who said they would have to wait in line for hours each day to receive their daily ration of bread. The blockade was only lifted last week to allow residents to flee. Can everyone leave? Analysts told CNN before the evacuations began that they feared Azerbaijan might prevent certain members of the population from leaving. Vartanyan, of Crisis Group, said she was concerned about who would manage the routes into Armenia. “Will it be Russian peacekeepers, the ICRC, or will it be Azerbaijani authorities?” she asked. “Does it mean people will have to go through filtration camps? And then will people get detained – for example, the local men who took part in the fighting in the past, or those who were part of the local de facto authorities?” Over the weekend, “one of the main things that people were doing in Stepanakert was burning all the possible documentation that could become evidence for the Azerbaijani authorities that they personally were part of the de facto government,” Vartanyan said. On Wednesday, Ruben Vardanyan, a prominent Karabakh politician and businessman, was arrested at a border checkpoint at the Lachin corridor and taken to Baku, the border service said. Vardanyan was indicted for multiple charges Thursday, including financing terrorism, participating in the creation and activities of illegal armed groups, and illegally crossing Azerbaijani borders, according to state media. The Azerbaijani State Security Services allege that Vardanyan funded “illegal military units” in the Nagorno-Karabakh region. Baku has long maintained that the Artsakh government and its armed forces have operated illegally on Azerbaijan’s territory. A video published by the security services appeared to show Vardanyan in detention. Shakhramanyan signed the decree Thursday, agreeing to dissolve the Artsakh state from next year. National Assembly of Republic of Artsakh/PHOTOLURE/AP/FILE David Babayan, a local politician and adviser to president Shahramanyan, said Thursday he would hand himself in to Azerbaijan. “You all know that I am included in the black list of Azerbaijan and the Azerbaijani side demanded my arrival in Baku for an appropriate investigation,” Babayan wrote on Telegram. “My failure to appear, or worse, my escape, will cause serious harm to our long-suffering nation.” In the decree signed Thursday, president Shahramanyan called on Azerbaijan to allow the “free, unconstrained, and unhindered passing of the population of Nagorno-Karabakh, including the militants who laid down their weapons, with their property and transportation means through Lachin corridor.” CNN’s Benjamin Brown, Aren Melikyan, Gul Tuysuz and Scott McLean contributed reporting. © 2023 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

Exclusive: Philippine defense secretary vows to stand up to ‘bully’ China By Ivan Watson, Rebecca Wright, Helen Regan, Kathleen Magramo and Yasmin Coles, CNN Updated 7:39 AM EDT, Fri September 29, 2023 Philippines defense chief says China is behaving like a bully 02:37 - Source: CNN Manila, Philippines (CNN) — China is behaving like a schoolyard bully toward smaller countries, the Philippine defense secretary told CNN Friday during an exclusive interview in which he warned his nation, and the wider world, had to stand up to Beijing’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea. “I cannot think of any clearer case of bullying than this,” said Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. “It’s not the question of stealing your lunch money, but it’s really a question of stealing your lunch bag, your chair and even enrollment in school.” His comments follow increasingly assertive moves by the Philippines to protect its claim to shoals in the South China Sea during more than a month of high-stakes maritime drama. While tensions between China and the Philippines over the highly-contested and strategic waterway have festered for years, confrontations have spiked this summer, renewing regional fears that a mistake or miscalculation at sea could trigger a wider conflict, including with the United States. The region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflagration and the recent confrontations have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally. Recent incidents have involved stand offs between China’s coast guard, what Manila says are shadowy Chinese “maritime militia” boats and tiny wooden Philippine fishing vessels, Chinese water cannons blocking the resupply of a shipwrecked Philippine military outpost, and a lone Filipino diver cutting through a floating Chinese barrier. Teodoro characterized the Philippines’ refusal to back down in the waters within its 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone as a fight for the very existence of the Philippines. “We’re fighting for our fisherfolk, we’re fighting for our resources. We’re fighting for our integrity as an archipelagic state… Our existence as the Republic of the Philippines is vital to this fight,” Teodoro said in a sit down interview at the Department of National Defense in Manila. “It’s not for us, it’s for the future generations too.” Video purportedly shows Chinese ship firing water cannon at Filipino vessel in disputed waters 00:40 - Source: CNN “And if we don’t stop, China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said, adding that Beijing wont stop until it controls “the whole South China Sea.” Beijing says it is safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea and warned the Philippines this week “not to make provocations or seek troubles.” It accused Philippine fishing and coast guard vessels of illegal entry into the area. China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims. Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which the Philippines says challenges its sovereignty and fishing rights as well as endangering marine biodiversity in the resource-rich waterway. In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea. But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway. Video released of diver cutting China's floating sea barrier 01:39 - Source: CNN What’s at stake In his first sit-down TV interview with an international news outlet since he took the position in June, Teodoro was keen to stress whatever happens in the South China Sea impacts the globe. Crucially, the waterway is vital to international trade with trillions of dollars in global shipping passing through it each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend, and beneath the waves lie huge reserves of natural gas and oil that competing claimants are vying for. With nations already suffering from inflation brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are concerns that any slow-down in travel and transporting of goods in the South China Sea would result in significant impact to the global economy. “It will choke one of the most vital supply chain waterways in the whole world, it will choke international trade, and it will subject the world economy, particularly in supply chains to their whim,” Teodoro said, adding that if this were to happen, “the whole world will react.” The defense secretary warned that smaller nations, including regional partners, rely on international law for their survival. “Though they need China, they need Russia, they see that they too may become a victim of bullying. If they (China) close off the South China Sea, perhaps the next target may be the Straits of Malacca and then the Indian Ocean,” Teodoro said. Risk of conflict Why it matters who owns the seas (April 2021) 03:48 - Source: CNN Only a few years ago the Philippines was treading a much more cautious path with its huge neighbor China. But since taking office last year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte. Marcos has also strengthened US relations that had frayed under Duterte, with the two allies touting increased cooperation and joint patrols in the South China Sea in the future. In April, the Philippines identified the locations of four new military bases the US will gain access to, as part of an expanded defense agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China. Washington has condemned Beijing’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there. US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford reiterated Washington’s commitment to the mutual defense treaty in testimony before a US House subcommittee on Tuesday. She said the treaty covers not only the Philippine armed forces, but also its coast guard and civilian vessels and aircraft. “We have said repeatedly and continue to say that we stand by those commitments absolutely,” Ford said. Aaron Favila/AP: A Philippine supply boat, center, maneuvers around Chinese coast guard ships as they tried to block its way near Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, at the disputed South China Sea on August 22. Defense secretary Teodoro has concerns about a possible escalation “because of the dangerous and reckless maneuvering of Chinese vessels” but he was clear that any incident – accidental or otherwise – the blame would lie with China “squarely on their shoulders.” And he called global powers to help pressure Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea. “Peace and stability in that one place in the world will generate some relief and comfort to everyone,” he said. As part of the Marcos administration’s commitment to boost the Philippines defense and monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, Teodoro said further “air and naval assets” have been ordered. “There will be more patrol craft coming in, more rotary aircraft and we are studying the possibility to acquiring multi-role fighters,” he said, adding that would “make a difference in our air defense capabilities.” Preferring cooler heads to prevail, Teodoro said that diplomacy would provide a way forward providing Chinese leader Xi Jinping complies with international law. “Filipinos I believe are always willing to talk, just as long that talk does not mean whispers in a back room, or shouting at each other, meaning to say there must be substantial talks, open, transparent and on a rules-based basis,” he said, while also adding that talks cannot be used as a delaying tactic by Beijing. The Philippines, he said, has “no choice” but to stand up to China because otherwise “we lose our identity and integrity as a nation.” But conflict, he added, was not the answer or desired outcome. “Standing up doesn’t mean really going to war with China, heavens no. We don’t want that. But we have to stand our ground when our ground is intruded into.” © 2023 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

Maldives election run-off pitched as fork in the road between India and China Pro-China presidential candidate Mohamed Muizzu accuses incumbent Mohamed Solih of allowing traditional benefactor India too much influence By Hannah Ellis-Petersen South Asia correspondent Ibrahim Mohamed Solih, the incumbent Maldives president, shows his ink-marked finger after casting his ballot during the first round of the presidential election. Photograph: Mohamed Afrah/AFP/Getty Images As the archipelago of the Maldives goes to an election run-off on Saturday, it will not just be two presidential candidates on the ballot. This election is being pitched as a larger geopolitical battle between India and China, which over the past decade have been engaged in a tug-of-war to gain influence over the Maldives. While the tussle is not new, the narrative of India versus China has reached a fever pitch in this election, where opposition candidate Mohamed Muizzu is trying to unseat the government of Mohamed Solih and has put resistance to India’s perceived influence over the Maldives at the forefront of his agenda. Since Solih came to power in a surprise win in 2018, he has moved the country much closer to India – which has historically long ties with the Maldives – while distancing it from Chinese investment that had surged under the previous regime. Yet Muizzu has accused Solih of endangering the national security of the Maldives with its close ties with India, alleging that the current government has allowed Indian military presence and influence on Maldives territory, which Solih denies. After neither candidate managed to secure more than 50% of the votes in the first round of elections held in early September, a run-off will be held on Saturday, in a race that is being tightly fought. “The main opposition narrative is that national sovereignty and independence are under threat, mainly because of India,” said Azim Zahir, a research fellow at the University of Western Australia. “They have been playing up the India threat very vigorously, and increasingly more so in the build up to this run-off election.” People’s National Congress (PNC) candidate Mohamed Muizzu speaks during an election campaing rally in Thinadhoo on 26 September before the second round of Maldives’ presidential election. Photograph: Mohamed Afrah/AFP/Getty Images Muizzu’s own allegiances are widely acknowledged to be towards China. When his party, the Progressive Alliance coalition, was previously in power between 2013 and 2017 under President Abdullah Yameen, it pursued a significant pro-China policy, signing a free trade agreement with China and becoming part of President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road project, accepting billions of dollars in loans from China. Muizzu, who was mayor of the capital, Malé, at the time, spearheaded a $200m bridge project paid for by China. But Yameen’s government also came under criticism for this policy, and accusations he had led the Maldives into a China debt trap were seen to contribute to his loss in 2018. ‘All for India to lose’ Though it is a widely scattered archipelago with a population of just over 500,000, the Maldives holds crucial strategic importance for India and China as well as the west. It is on the pathway of essential east-west cargo shipping lines, including China’s oil supplies from the Gulf. It is also seen as a gateway to larger geopolitical influence and control over the Indian ocean, particularly for China which is growing increasingly assertive in the region. Yet it is also seen as somewhat unpredictable, having only become a fragile democracy in 2008 after three decades of authoritarian rule. Foreign policy has oscillated wildly in that time between India and China, while corruption and criminality have remained rampant in politics. For India, which is engaged in a tense border dispute with China, keeping Chinese influence out of its back yard in the Indian Ocean is seen as highly important and under the current Solih government they have invested over $2bn in infrastructure, as well as increasing training and security cooperation, in an apparent bid to deepen influence. Earlier this year, India’s foreign minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar visited the Maldives to give them two sea ambulances and sign several development agreements, while emphasising that India was “always willing” to help the Maldives. They have also utilised soft cultural power, opening a highly active Indian cultural centre in Malé. Yet India’s increased activity has also been long been viewed with suspicion by those in the Maldives. A particular source of contention have been aircraft given to the Maldives by India, which has stationed dozens of military personnel in the country to operate them, leading to allegations of India trying to set up a strategic military presence. In 2022, former president Yameen began an “India Out campaign” which also gained traction among the hardline Islamist groups. Though Solih swiftly banned the campaign, terming it a “threat to national security”, it only amplified the anti-India rhetoric. Such has been the anti-India fervour around the election that last week, the Indian high commission in the Maldives was forced to release a statement calling out “fake reports” in the local media which they said were intended to intimidate high commission officials and “adversely affect the friendly relations between India and Maldives”. While China has kept quiet on the surface, behind the scenes Beijing has been quietly exerting influence, including inviting journalists and politicians on fully funded trips to China, and opening a cultural centre of its own. Eyes are also on the election in the west, where for many countries, countering Chinese influence in the Indo-Pacific has become a central priority of foreign policy. Not too far away in the Indian Ocean sits the US Diego Garcia naval base, which played a central role in the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan and is still seen as one of America’s most critical bases in the region. Days before the initial election in September, the US opened its first embassy in the Maldives. The UK and Australia also recently opened embassies. Regional security is also a crucial factor for India and others in keeping some influence over the Maldives. The concern over Islamist extremism and jihadism in the country continues to go unaddressed by successive governments and in July, the US treasury department released a list of names of 20 leaders and financial facilitators linked to Islamic State, Isis-Khorasan (Isis-K) and Al-Qa’ida operating in the Maldives. Nonetheless, Ahmed Shaheed, the former Maldives foreign minister, emphasised for most voters in the Maldives issues of economy and employment were more important than geopolitics, and that despite the fiery anti-India rhetoric, should Muizzu win the election – as it looking increasingly likely – it is unlikely that ties with India would be severed altogether. “I don’t see a drastic change in the orientation of the modern foreign policy, even if there was a government change: India will likely remain a very strong partner,” he said. “It’s all for India to lose rather than China to gain.” © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

Sexual and gender-Based violence incidences have significantly risen since the onset of Sudan’s conflict, a new report shows. Conducted by UN Women, the Initial Rapid Gender Assessment specifically focused on the regions of Southern and central Darfur, White Nile and Khartoum in Sudan. The assessment provided information on the different needs, capacities, and coping strategies of women, girls, boys and men in Sudan, classifying them into needs requiring immediate attention and those seeking mid-term interventions. Since the fighting in Sudan between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) broke out on April 15, 2023, humanitarian needs have reportedly increased from 16 million to 24.7 million people in need. Women were attacked while sourcing food and water as they fled the fighting. Water, food, shelter and income sources are listed as essential household needs. “The breakdown of families due to separation, and lack of kinship support, forced women to spend long hours outside their homes, increasing their vulnerability to opportunistic attacks and assaults,” partly reads the report. The 36-page assessment further revealed a shift in gender roles within the society. “In de-facto female-headed households, women assumed the responsibility of household financial maintenance, a role previously undertaken by their husbands – resulting in increased workload for women,” it noted. Also observed was that women’s participation in decision-making at household and community levels in male-headed households remained unchanged. In these households, the assessment shows, women continued performing their reproductive roles and responsibilities without extended family support, which would typically allow them to engage in productive work. But to strengthen women and youth-led organisations and community-based initiatives, the report recommenced a quick institutional assessment of the registered and unregistered women-led and youth-led organisations and community-based initiatives to assess their capacity to deliver humanitarian response and advance small grants to strengthen their operational and programmatic capacity. It urged provision of training among women and youth on the principles of humanitarian response to support their participation in the humanitarian programme cycle while calling for integration of gender-based violence prevention and mitigation measures across all response efforts. The Initial Rapid Gender Assessment was conducted in Sudan from 10-20 May, 2023. Copyright @ 2021 | Sudan Tribune. All rights reserved.

Reported cases are almost all by RSF paramilitaries and are just the tip of the iceberg, say campaign groups. Systematic sexual violence is being used by paramilitaries in Sudan to degrade and humiliate people, say campaign groups. Photograph: Ümit Bektaş/Reuters Since Sudan’s conflict erupted in April, Sulima Ishaq has been working around the clock. As the head of the country’s Combating Violence against Women and Children unit, it is her job to document sexual violence. It has now become systematic. Ishaq and her team usually act on tipoffs from doctors and nurses. Sometimes, late at night, she receives calls directly from survivors, who tell her about their ordeals. In a recent case, a teenage mother was raped by seven fighters while she fetched firewood in the western Darfur region. Another woman was gang-raped at her home in the capital, Khartoum, in front of her siblings. Ishaq describes the scale of the sexual violence directed at Sudan’s women as a tragedy. “Sometimes the documentation process itself is very painful,” she says. “It is impossible to disconnect.” The fighting in Sudan has killed at least 4,000 people and forced 4.5 million from their homes. Most of it has centred on Darfur and Khartoum where there have been fierce battles in residential neighbourhoods. So far, Ishaq and her team have verified 124 rapes. These cases are just the tip of the iceberg, with the true number almost certainly running into the thousands, according to Ishaq. “It is really very hard to get reliable data,” she says, citing poor phone connections, constant power cuts and the difficulty of tracking survivors who have fled to Chad and other neighbouring countries. Fear of reprisals also prevents survivors from speaking out. These factors mean most rape survivors receive little or no assistance from health and social workers. Nearly all the rapes documented by Ishaq’s unit were committed by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, which has occupied civilian neighbourhoods in Khartoum and Omdurman, its twin city, as it battles Sudan’s army for control. “It is brutal, and it is all about humiliation and degrading human dignity,” says Ishaq. “Sometimes it is a part of their strategy. To make people evacuate their houses, they threaten sexual violence against the women.” More than 4 million women and girls are at risk of sexual violence across Sudan, according to the World Health Organization. The Darfur Women Action Group and the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa (SIHA), two campaign groups, have both documented cases of women being kidnapped by the RSF for ransom. They are often raped while they are held hostage. Many have been taken to Chad or kept as sex slaves. Several rapes documented by SIHA in Khartoum happened when women tried to retrieve documents from their abandoned homes, only to find them occupied by the RSF. Other women were seized from the streets. “The testimonies all point towards the RSF,” says Hala Al-Karib, the regional director at SIHA. “We have testimonies of women who have been raped in front of their families. In Omdurman, a mother and her three daughters were all raped in front of each other.” A woman recently assisted by Save the Children was raped when a group of armed fighters burst into her family’s Khartoum home and threatened to kill them all unless they gave them a daughter. Two other girls helped by the NGO were raped in front of their father in Khartoum. One of them later died from her injuries, while her father died from suspected shock. “The number of cases is huge,” says Katharina von Schroeder, a spokesperson for Save the Children. In Darfur, the pattern of sexual violence reflects the genocidal war of the mid-2000s, says Ishaq. During that conflict, Kalashnikov-wielding Arab militias known as the Janjaweed targeted members of sub-Saharan African groups in the region. “It is the same way as it happened before,” says Ishaq. Today’s RSF grew out of the Janjaweed, with most perpetrators never being held accountable for their crimes committed two decades ago. “On the contrary, they were promoted and given access to resources and business, and now they are carrying on as they were before,” says Al-Karib. “This violence doesn’t happen in a vacuum.” Women played a prominent role in the revolution that toppled the former dictator, Omar al-Bashir, and threatened the grip of military actors over Sudan’s politics and economy. Neimat Ahmadi, the president and founder of the Darfur Women Action Group, says: “Because of that, they are targeted.” Last week, a group of UN human rights experts said the RSF were using rape and other sexual violence “as tools to punish and terrorise communities”, citing reports of hundreds of women being kept as slaves to be raped in degrading conditions. Save the Children has warned that children as young as 12 are being raped, with some “targeted specifically for their ethnicity as well as their gender”. Ishaq fears the level of sexual violence will increase if the fighting reaches new areas. She is also worried about the mental health of her staff as they continue their documentation work. “We are being traumatised,” she says. “In our nightmares, we carry the stories of the agony, the struggle and the pain.” © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. (modern)

Gabon has been partially suspended from the Commonwealth after military commanders carried out a coup ousting President Ali Bongo. By James Landale & Antoinette Radford A file photo shows Gabon's ousted president Ali Bongo at the United Nations in 2022 The decision was made by Commonwealth foreign ministers meeting on the margins of the United Nations general assembly. Leaders called on Gabon to uphold the values and principles of the Commonwealth. They asked the country to hold credible elections as soon as possible. Gabon's military ousted Mr Bongo from power shortly after he was declared winner of the 2023 presidential election. Mr Bongo had been in power in the oil-rich country since 2009, when he succeeded his father who had ruled the country for 41 years. He was initially placed under house arrest as military leaders took over, but was later freed and given permission to travel abroad for medical check-ups. The foreign ministers - sitting as the Commonwealth ministerial action group - have requested Gabon guarantee Mr Bongo's safety and that of his family, and said in a statement that they "strongly condemned the unconstitutional removal of the elected government from office". They said Gabon's suspension was in place "pending the restoration of democracy". It excludes Gabon from all Commonwealth intergovernmental meetings and events, including ministerial and heads of government meetings. The new prime minister, Raymond Ndong Sima, was installed as interim prime minister in September, after Gen Brice Oligui Nguema, who led the coup against Mr Bongo, became Gabon's transitional president. Speaking to the BBC, Mr Sima said the country should hold fresh elections within two years. Commonwealth ministers gave the new leaders of Gabon two years from 30 August 2023 to hold credible elections. They added in the statement that if progress was not made in that time, the country may be removed from the group altogether. Despite condemnation of the coup from other international leaders in both Africa and the West, many civilians appear to have welcomed the change. Many Gabonese were sceptical about Mr Bongo's decision to stand for a third term, while the opposition claimed widespread fraud. Some also held serious doubts about his capacity to provide effective leadership, after he suffered a stroke in October 2018. © 2023 BBC.

By Ayanda Charlie in Johannesburg & Tamasin Ford Operation Dudula gives Dimakatso Makoena a sense of purpose and hope about the future. © 2023 BBC. South African anti-migrant group Operation Dudula has become notorious for raiding businesses belonging to foreign nationals and forcing shops to close. BBC Africa Eye has gained rare access to members of the country's most-prominent anti-migrant street movement. In a school kitchen in Kwa Thema, a township east of Johannesburg, Dimakatso Makoena is busy making sandwiches. The 57-year-old single parent of three has been a cook there for more than 10 years. "To tell you the truth, I hate foreigners. How I wish they could just pack and go and leave our country," she says, fighting back tears. It is hard to understand the strength of this hate until Ms Makoena pulls out her phone to show a picture of her son. Emaciated with a glazed look in his eyes, angry burn scars spread over his body, up his arms and across his face. "He started smoking drugs when he was 14 years old," she says, explaining how her son often goes out to steal things to feed his habit. One day he had tried to take some power cables to sell when he got electrocuted and burned. Her son uses crystal meth and nyaope, a highly addictive street drug that has devastated communities across South Africa. It is not until she blames foreigners for selling the drugs that her reasoning and support for Operation Dudula becomes clear. "Dudula, that's the only thing that keeps me going," she tells the BBC. Operation Dudula was set-up in Soweto two years ago, the first group to formalise what had been sporadic waves of xenophobia-fuelled vigilante attacks in South Africa that date back to shortly after white-minority rule ended in 1994. It calls itself a civic movement, running on an anti-migrant platform, with the word "dudula" meaning "to force out" in Zulu. Soweto was at the forefront of anti-apartheid resistance and home to Nelson Mandela, South Africa's first democratically elected president. Now, the township has become the home of the country's most-prominent anti-migrant group. With one in three South Africans out of work in one of the most unequal societies in the world, foreigners in general have become an easy target. But the number of migrants living in South Africa has been grossly exaggerated. According to a 2022 report by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS), an independent research organisation based in the capital, Pretoria, there are about 3.95 million migrants in South Africa, making up 6.5% of the population, a figure in line with international norms. This number includes all immigrants, irrespective of legal status or where they come from. The xenophobic rhetoric used by some public officials, politicians and anti-migrant groups has helped fuel the myth that the country is overrun with migrants. The South African Social Attitudes Survey for 2021 found that almost half of the population of 60 million people believed there were between 17 and 40 million immigrants in the country. Current polling suggests support for the governing African National Congress (ANC), the party once led by Mr Mandela, could fall below 50% for the first time. Operation Dudula has ambitions to fill that vacuum and has now transformed itself from a local anti-migrant group into a national political party, stating its aims to contest next year's general election. Zandile Dabula, who was voted in as president of Operation Dudula in June 2023, is calm, charismatic and emphatic about the group's message: "foreigners" are the root cause of South Africa's economic hardship. When it is put to her that this campaign is based solely on hate, she tells the BBC: "We must be realistic here that most of the problems that we have are caused by the influx of foreign nationals. "Our country is a mess. Foreign nationals are working on a 20-year plan of taking over South Africa." When challenged on the veracity of this 20-year plan, she admits it was a rumour but says she believes it is true. "You see drugs everywhere and most of the drug addicts are South African rather than foreign nationals. So, what's happening? Are they feeding our own brothers and sisters so that it can be easy for them to take over?" she says. Yet the anger meted out to migrants can be on those who are in the country legally and working in legal occupations. A Nigerian market trader, who was the target of a raid by Operation Dudula members in Johannesburg earlier in the year, tells the BBC that the two women who tasered him and destroyed his clothes by throwing them in the gutter did not stop to ask questions. As they shot he says they swore at him, saying: "You must go to Nigeria… We are Dudula, we are South African." With no stock, he is now sleeping on the streets: "I vote in this country. I am a citizen here. I've never seen a country treating people like this. If I'm doing something illegal, fine. Deport me. But I'm not doing anything illegal. Now you make my life miserable, I can't pay my rent. I want to go, it's too much." Operation Dudula maintains it is concern over the huge influx of drugs into South Africa's most deprived communities that is their most pressing complaint, but there is no data to back up the claim that people who sell drugs are not South African citizens. Comparative statistics are not available for drug crimes, though the ISS report quotes the justice minister as saying that immigrants made up 8.5% of all convicted cases in 2019 and 7.1% in 2020. The ISS adds that 2.3% of inmates incarcerated each year are undocumented foreigners. In Diepkloof, in eastern Soweto, the BBC joins a so-called Dudula taskforce. Men in trucks are going to confront a Mozambican shopkeeper who a South African landlady alleges has not paid his rent. It is supposed to be a negotiation but quickly descends into a confrontation where one of the men, Mandla Lenkosi, threatens to beat him up. When the BBC asks them about their thuggish behaviour, they maintain they are enforcing the law. Mr Lenkosi, also from Soweto and out of work, takes part in raids on migrant homes and workplaces, people who are suspected of anything from drug dealing to remaining in the country past their visa date "We grew up in apartheid times, where things were much better than what it is now," he says, pointing to the drug problems. "The law was the law [then]." His fellow Dudula supporter, Cedric Stone, agrees: "South Africa needs to go back to the old South Africa that we know. "Our fathers started the tuck shops but today all those tuck shops are all foreigners, especially, Bangladeshis, Somali and Ethiopians. Why?" President Cyril Ramaphosa has spoken out against anti-migrant protests, and condemned vigilante groups for harassing and attacking migrants. He has likened their behaviour to strategies adopted by the apartheid regime to oppress black communities. In 2019 he launched the National Action Plan to combat racism and xenophobia, yet campaigners want the government do more. Annie Michaels, an activist from the Johannesburg Migrants Advisory Panel, says South Africans are blaming the wrong people for their ills and should in fact admire migrants for their survival skills. "Stop sitting and complaining and dying in that corner and waiting for the government that is failing you on a daily basis," she tells the BBC. "The migrants… are the poorest of the poor. They would rather go to them and rattle them, instead of rattling the cages of the guys living in the glass houses." For her part, Ms Dabula says critics of Operation Dudula who maintain it is a collective of violent vigilantes are wrong. "We don't promote violence and we don't want people to feel harassed," but adds: "We cannot be overtaken by foreign nationals and do nothing about it." Hundreds of supporters travelled to attend its first national conference in Johannesburg in May, where members voted to register the group as a political party. Waving South African flags, dancing and singing their way through the streets to the City Hall, it feels like a celebration. However, the songs they are singing carry a threatening message: "Burn the foreigner. We will go to the garage, buy some petrol and burn the foreigner." The military clothing harks back to South Africa's liberation struggle. It all communicates a readiness for battle. Ms Makoena is also there, smiling and dressed in her party T-shirt. "Operation Dudula is going to make history today," she says. On stage, Isaac Lesole, Operation Dudula's technical adviser, has a question for the cheering supporters: "Do we make peace with illegal foreigners?" "No," the audience shout back in unison. According to South African law, registering a party does not mean it will automatically qualify to contest an election - it has hoops to go through. Operation Dudula does not have a manifesto or any policy other than its stance on foreigners, though Ms Dabula maintains it has a presence in every province except Northern Cape. Supporters of the new party who spoke to the BBC appear to genuinely want things to be fixed in their communities. They reflect a change of mood in South Africa's political landscape with people fed up with the status quo. However, a toxic mix of poverty, drugs and fear has resulted in a blame game where migrants have become the scapegoats. © 2023 BBC.

By Steve Hendrix and Hazem Balousha Palestinian demonstrators burn rubber tires along the border fence east of Gaza City on Friday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) GAZA CITY — As Palestinians in the nearby West Bank have endured their deadliest year in decades, it has been a rare summer of quiet ­­in the Gaza Strip. Raed Asad hoped he could finally secure a permit to work on an Israeli farm or construction site. But in late August, Israel put a halt to new work permits — accusing Hamas, the Islamist militant group that governs this blockaded territory, of being behind terrorist attacks in the West Bank. Hamas and Israel traded familiar threats. In Gaza’s latest lurch between calm and chaos, Asad saw his long-shot chance vanish. “Getting [a work permit] was my only light of hope,” Asad, 30, said on a recent day as he cleared fallen leaves from a fruit orchard for a few shekels. The unemployed father of three has a degree in medical administration but has only ever found work in the fields. Fears of another military escalation have continued to build this month. On Sept. 4, after Israeli border agents found what they said was a cache of explosive materials being smuggled into the country in a shipment of blue jeans, officials shut down all exports from Gaza. Neither side wants to return to a full military confrontation, security experts said, but both need to demonstrate resolve to appease hard-liners. In Gaza, the next war never feels far off. Hamas put its forces on high alert recently, stopping cars near the border to check for Israeli infiltrators. The group held field exercises last week with Islamic Jihad and other armed factions, conducting drills on rocket launches, kidnapping soldiers and “storming settlements,” according to local Gazan media. In the deadliest shift, Hamas has also permitted — some analysts say orchestrated — the return of Friday protests at Gaza’s eastern border, where young demonstrators have faced off with Israeli soldiers. On Sept. 13, five Palestinians were killed when they attempted to detonate an explosive at the barrier wall. Raed Asad with his wife, Salwa, and two of their children in the northern Gaza Strip on Sept. 7. Asad has a degree in medical administration but has only ever found work in the fields. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) In the aftermath, Israel indefinitely barred workers with permits from entering the country. “It has been quiet, but it is beginning to boil,” Basem Naim, head of Hamas’s Political and International Relations Department, said in an interview with The Washington Post. “There is a lot of pressure under the water.” For months, the West Bank has been the center of the conflict. More than 175 Palestinians there have been killed since January, most in Israeli military raids targeting a new generation of militants; at least 29 Israelis have been killed in shootings, stabbings, car rammings and other attacks by Palestinians in the West Bank and Israel. In June, Israeli soldiers mounted a two-day incursion into Jenin, the largest military operation in the occupied West Bank in decades. At least five Palestinians were killed Tuesday in raids in Jenin and Jericho that included a drone airstrike. Gaza’s 2 million people, meanwhile, have been enjoying relative calm, allowing Hamas and Israel to quietly nurse an unofficial economic peace of work permits and trade, designed to keep tensions in check. But in August, Israel directly blamed Hamas for a string of attacks against Israeli settlers in the West Bank, including the fatal shootings of a father and son in Huwara, and a woman driving near Hebron. In a rare move, Hamas went beyond expressing general support for the attacks and claimed the Huwara and Hebron shooters as members of its armed wing, the Qassam Brigades. “It is an honor for us to support resistance in the West Bank, Jerusalem, anywhere,” Naim told The Post, but he would not elaborate on the group’s role in the West Bank’s surging militancy. Israel’s security cabinet voted in August to give Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu authority “to attack terrorists and those who dispatch them,” a measure widely interpreted as an assassination threat against Hamas leaders. Later that month, young Gazans were allowed to gather at the eastern border in an echo of the violent “March of Return” demonstrations in 2018 and 2019, when Israeli forces killed more than 190 Palestinians and wounded thousands. A Palestinian demonstrator drags burning rubber tires toward the border fence east of Gaza City on Friday. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) Dozens have been injured in the protests in recent weeks. At a gathering Friday, a group of about hundred men were prevented from getting close to the fence by Hamas security agents. On other occasions, hundreds have been allowed to approach, sometimes throwing explosive devices. Experts said a full-scale return of the demonstrations is unlikely. The last round created hundreds of amputees, often seen begging at Gazan intersections. “There is no support for the protests in the public,” said Mkhaimer Abu Sada, a political science professor at Al-Azhar University in Gaza City. “But this is another way of Hamas pulling Israel’s strings and saying, ‘Don’t go too far.’” In Gaza, Hamas is criticized by some militants for cooperating with Israel and “exchanging quiet for jobs,” Abu Sada said. Hamas was faulted in May for not coming to the aid of its rival faction, Islamic Jihad, as Israeli airstrikes decimated its military leadership — part of a short-lived exchange of fire that killed 33 people in Gaza and two people in Israel. “People don’t always understand your choice not to respond,” Naim said. “Hamas is trying to avoid an escalation. A lot of our sons and daughters would be killed.” Islamic Jihad has kept a low profile in Gaza since the strikes. “It’s not just that they lost their commanders, it’s that now they know they can’t count on Hamas to help,” Abu Sada said. “It may change their calculation about when and how to act.” Naim blamed Israel for ratcheting up tensions and for strangling Gaza’s economy with restrictions that amounted to “a catastrophe.” Gaza exports more than $130 million worth of clothing, fish, produce and other goods a year, officials said. “You cannot have an ‘economic peace’ and ban all exports,” he said. Gazan fish merchant Awni Abu Hasira had to wait nearly a week for a truck laden with 2,000 pounds of his seafood to cross into the West Bank. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) Awni Abu Hasira had already bought more than 2,000 pounds of shrimp, crabs and fish caught by Gazan fishermen when he got word that Israel had shut down exports. His shop near the waterfront, normally crowded with men loading iced coolers into trucks bound for the West Bank, was empty. “If it goes for more than a week, I could be out of business,” Abu Hasira said. Israel allowed some trucks to cross after six days, including one laden with Abu Hasira’s fish. Other Gazans have felt the squeeze when applying for work permits in Israel, where they can make double what they earn here. Last year, the Israeli government said it would increase the number of permits for Gazans, currently at 18,500. But in August, Israel’s public broadcaster reported that officials had changed their minds, citing Hamas’s support for the West Bank attacks. The Israeli military’s Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the unit responsible for administering permits, confirmed that a planned increase to 20,000 was on hold. “The quota increase is contingent upon the security stability both within and emanating from the Gaza Strip,” COGAT said in a written response to The Post. Asad’s social media chats lit up at the news. “The permits are all we talk about,” he said. Palestinian youths gather at the Turkish visa office in the Gaza Strip on Sept. 5 to apply for work visas. (Loay Ayyoub for The Washington Post) Workers are scrambling now to find other options. A riot broke out at the office for Turkish work visas last week as security guards struggled to keep applicants from overwhelming the building. Waiting there on a recent morning was a 24-year-old who works at construction sites for $5 to $8 a day. Salem, who only gave his first name out of fear of reprisals from Gazan authorities, spent hours in line with his passport, bank statements and the $180 application fee, only to learn he was ineligible. “You have to be married,” he said. “I can’t afford to get married.” © 1996-2023 The Washington Post

By Gerry Shih (Shubhadeep Mukherjee for The Washington Post; Peter Hapak/Trunk Archive) MUDBIDRI, India — At first, the WhatsApp messages touted roads paved, schools built, free food distributed to the poor — all the usual pitches from a government during election season. But as May drew closer, the messages turned darker. One viral post that landed in Sachin Patil’s iPhone listed the names of 24 local Hindu men it said were murdered by Muslims. Another mass message warned of Hindu girls being groomed by Muslim men to join the Islamic State. Yet another viral post that reached Patil made an urgent appeal to vote: “If the BJP is here, your children will be safe. Hindus will be safe.” By the time election day arrived here in south India’s Karnataka state, Patil, a 25-year-old bank teller in a sleepy village outside Mangaluru, said he was receiving 120 political messages a day in six WhatsApp groups. “They were definitely a reminder,” Patil said, to cast a ballot for the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that governs India. The BJP, led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and affiliated Hindu nationalist groups have been in the global vanguard of using social media for political aims — to advance their ideology and cement their grip over the world’s largest electoral democracy. They have perfected the spread of inflammatory, often false and bigoted material on an industrial scale, earning both envy and condemnation beyond India’s borders. Central to the success of the BJP, a party with 180 million members, is a massive messaging machine built on top of U.S. social media platforms. It is part of a wider effort by the right-wing forces aligned with Modi to wield technology in various ways — and restrict its use by opponents — in pursuit of a Hindu nationalist agenda that seeks to marginalize religious minorities and suppress criticism. As hate speech and disinformation in India have grown in recent years, Silicon Valley giants have at times tried to police this incendiary content. But often they have struggled — or willingly turned a blind eye. Yashpal Suvarna, a BJP candidate for the Karnataka state assembly, was well known for an anti-Muslim incident, and his campaign played up that fierce image in Whatsapp posts. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) The Biden administration, meanwhile, has been aggressively courting India as a counterweight to China even as Modi has accelerated his country’s descent into autocracy. Just this month, the world’s attention was urgently focused on the conduct of the Modi government, after Canada alleged that Indian agents may have assassinated a prominent Sikh separatist on Canadian soil, again raising questions about the efforts of Western countries to draw closer to New Delhi. This spring, Washington Post journalists spent several weeks in Karnataka as it was gearing up for elections and gained rare access to the vast messaging machinery and the activists who run it. In extensive interviews, BJP staffers and the party’s allies revealed how they conceive and craft posts aimed at exploiting the fears of India’s Hindu majority, and detailed how they had assembled a sprawling apparatus of 150,000 social media workers to propagate this content across a vast network of WhatsApp groups. People gather for a Suvarna rally in May in the coastal town of Malpe. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) Using this infrastructure, the party was able to send messages touting the BJP’s accomplishments and denigrating its opponent, the Indian National Congress party, directly into the pockets of hundreds of millions of people. But beyond the party’s official online efforts, there was also a shadowy parallel campaign, according to BJP staffers, campaign consultants and party supporters. In rare and extensive interviews, they disclosed that the party quietly collaborates with content creators who run what are known as “third-party” or “troll” pages, and who specialize in creating incendiary posts designed to go viral on WhatsApp and fire up the party’s base. Often, they painted a dire — and false — picture of an India where the nation’s 14 percent Muslim minority, abetted by the secular and liberal Congress party, abused and murdered members of the Hindu majority, and where justice and security could be secured only through a vote for the BJP. A BJP election war room in May as the Karnataka election neared. Party volunteers blasted out social media messages, some anti-Muslim and incendiary. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) Today, India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users. Social media researchers, government officials and WhatsApp itself have acknowledged the platform’s potential as a tool to fan polarization and stoke violence. But precisely what goes on within the BJP’s WhatsApp ecosystem has long been a mystery to political scientists and opposition parties, which have struggled to replicate the party’s digital success. “Other parties in India have tried this. We’ve seen it in other countries like Brazil. But WhatsApp was really mastered first, and at scale, by the BJP,” said Rutgers University professor Kiran Garimella, who has studied WhatsApp’s role in Indian politics. “It requires resources, planning, investment, a top-down belief in building this infrastructure. But 99 percent of what’s happening in these groups is off-limits. We have no visibility at all.” On the breezy, palm-lined coast of Karnataka, few trolls had more influence than “Astra,” which means “weapon” in Sanskrit. Most BJP party workers said they did not know Astra’s real identity, but many spoke glowingly about his fiery reputation. A pro-BJP, anti-Congress party troll named Astra became feared and influential on WhatsApp. He turned out to be an unimposing 28-year-old named Sunil Poojary. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) Astra cranked out polarizing WhatsApp posts that would be shared over and over in coastal Karnataka — like those that eventually reached Patil, the bank teller. Astra was courted by local BJP candidates whenever they launched their campaigns, although he rarely spoke at rallies. Astra was such a militant voice on the internet that even BJP leaders feared being accused by him of being too moderate toward Muslims. “Pages like Astra are much bigger than the official BJP accounts,” said Sudeep Shetty, who heads social media for the BJP in Udupi district. “They’re our secret weapon.” On a sultry morning in April, with the election still a month away, Astra emerged from his office, an airless, converted college dormitory overlooking a dirt cricket field. He pressed his palms together in a traditional Hindu greeting and introduced himself. In person, Astra wasn’t as fearsome as he was by reputation. He was a willowy, bespectacled 28-year-old, and his name, he said, was Sunil Poojary. A BJP supporter, wearing a hat in the party color and bearing its lotus election symbol, attends the Suvarna rally in Malpe. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) A vast army Wedged between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghats mountain range, the twin cities of Mangaluru and Udupi boast top universities and historic temples. Along tidy village roads, Muslim women cloaked in body-length black niqabs walk past Hindu priests resting under sacred fig trees. Ethnically and culturally diverse but conservative, affluent yet a hotbed of religious friction, the coast has always stood apart from the rest of Karnataka state. In the 1980s, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), the paramilitary volunteer organization that serves as an umbrella for Hindu nationalist groups, swept in. The RSS built homes for poor tribes and fed the needy. It sent aspiring politicians into the BJP, its political wing. It established camps for youngsters and indoctrinated them in Hindutva, or Hindu nationalist ideology. It funneled them into hard-line activist groups, most notably the Bajrang Dal, a group that accosted and beat up Muslims accused of smuggling cows, considered sacred in Hinduism. Gangs of Bajrang Dal members tracked down and forcibly separated interfaith couples, often accusing Muslim men of waging “love jihad,” and frequently clashed with Muslim activist groups. Ajith Kumar Ullal, 59, the BJP's social media head in the port city of Mangaluru. “Each and every BJP volunteer who has a mobile is a social media warrior,” he said. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) While young men roiled the streets, political parties jockeyed at the ballot box. In the past seven years, the BJP and Congress — the two biggest parties — have battled on WhatsApp. (While Congress attracts some Muslim voters, its leadership happens to be predominantly Hindu.) It was approaching noon one day this spring, and Ajith Kumar Ullal, the BJP’s social media head in Mangaluru, had been up for seven hours, barking orders over a droning air conditioner that struggled to match the south India heat. Ullal, 59, worked out of a “war room” in the BJP’s gleaming downtown office, commanding a social media “cell” of nine volunteers responsible for an area in coastal Karnataka inhabited by 1.5 million people. The cell included his deputy, who serves as copywriter, and three graphic designers who combined text with photos and logos to craft rectangular picture posts, widely considered the most attention-grabbing and shareable format on WhatsApp. Volunteer fieldworkers, who had combined phone numbers from voter registration rolls with information collected going door to door, added as many residents as possible to WhatsApp groups. All told, the BJP had 150,000 workers staffing WhatsApp just for the state election, according to Vinod Krishnamurthy, a former head of BJP social media for Karnataka. Ullal, himself, belonged to 200 WhatsApp groups. Within an hour of seeding a new WhatsApp post, Ullal expected it to be spread to hundreds of thousands of residents in his coastal district. “Each and every BJP volunteer who has a mobile is a social media warrior,” he said. A march at the May rally in Malpe for BJP candidate Suvarna. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) A revolution begins This revolution in political communications started to stir in 2016, when the Reliance conglomerate entered the telecommunications sector and offered new customers unlimited free data, sparking a price war. Within three years, India’s mobile data went from among the most expensive to among the cheapest in the world. Late that decade, BJP officials began assembling huge databases of phone numbers and seeking ways to streamline the messaging process, three former campaign officials recalled. During an election in Gujarat state, the party used software written in Python code that could hijack WhatsApp’s web interface to spread attack ads to tens of thousands of recipients with just a few clicks, according to an internal presentation seen by The Post. WhatsApp’s engineers in 2018 introduced new limits on message-forwarding in India after witnessing the rise of fast-spreading rumors, which had led to mob killings and other tragic consequences. They also made technical changes to curb mass messaging. Young men on their phones at a mall in Mangaluru. India is WhatsApp’s largest market, with more than 500 million users. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) So the BJP turned to its biggest strength: organizational discipline. “Everyone who wants to know how the BJP operates looks for hi-fi, extraordinary tech, and some of that exists,” said a former BJP campaign manager. “But the reality is, it’s mostly brute, manual labor.” According to a field study conducted in 2020, Indian users told Meta researchers they “saw a large amount of content that encouraged conflict, hatred and violence” that was “mostly targeted toward Muslims on Whatsapp groups.” “Anti-Muslim rhetoric ... is likely to feature in upcoming elections,” warned the internal study, which was shared with The Post by whistleblower Frances Haugen. One former Meta employee who examined Indian elections said that the problem has been recognized internally for years but that executives have not found a solution to monitor or moderate a platform that is by design private. In response to questions about what measures parent company Meta has taken to address divisive political material on WhatsApp, Meta spokeswoman Bipasha Chakrabarti said WhatsApp has limited message-forwarding and used spam-detection technology to prevent automated mass messaging. When asked whether the company was aware of the online campaigns in Karnataka, Chakrabarti said: “WhatsApp provides end-to-end encryption by default to protect people’s conversations, and that means that nobody — including WhatsApp — can read or listen to your message.” She declined further comment. At the start of the campaign season, Ullal added The Post to one of his WhatsApp groups, and in the ensuing weeks, his team mostly disseminated traditional campaign messages about public services and government achievements. But as election day neared, the tenor of the campaign changed dramatically, and the WhatsApp group became strewn with incendiary posts and appeals to religious bigotry. Ullal compared it to cricket strategy. “In the last few overs,” he said, “that’s when you do the big hitting.” One post likened Congress politicians to Tipu Sultan, an 18th-century Muslim king who is often vilified for allegedly butchering Hindus. Another post defended as a “victim of conspiracy” a Hindu vigilante who was arrested in March for allegedly beating a Muslim man to death. Typically, BJP staffers didn’t create the inflammatory content, said Akshay Alva, Ullal’s deputy. But they spread it, anyway. “There are things we may not say, but the troll pages say it,” Alva said. Poojary, a.k.a. Astra, runs an anonymous troll page feeding highly polarizing and incendiary content into WhatsApp groups. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) A string of viral hits Sunil Poojary pounded on his office desk. “I don’t want beautiful videos. I want only content!” he shouted toward the next room, where Ashwini, his video editor, was struggling to keep up with the pace. On this day in April, the BJP’s nominees for state assembly were registering their candidacies, officially kick-starting the election season, and Poojary, who led a team of four, was overwhelmed. New computers and streaming equipment for YouTube were still sitting unboxed in his windowless office. Using his three Android phones, Poojary needed to churn out a steady stream of image posts, stamp them with the Astra logo and blast them out to 30 WhatsApp groups. In the past few days, Astra had scored a string of viral hits. Poojary had compared the election to a struggle between nationalists (the BJP) and terrorists (the Congress party). He disseminated a photo of a Muslim man groping a statue of a goddess worshiped by a community that’s considered a swing vote in the state. He also edited down a speech of a local Congress candidate, he admitted, to make it falsely seem that he was praising Muslim kings. Poojary didn’t make money from the Astra posts, he said. But his social media exploits and his reach helped garner him an unusual level of influence for a 10th-grade dropout who had never held a regular job: The chief minister of Karnataka shared Astra posts on Facebook, and Poojary said he would get calls from other top government and party officials. Santosh Kenchamba runs the highly influential Rashtra Dharma troll page, helping to wage what he calls a perpetual “civilizational battle” to remake India into a Hindu state. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) A writer, not a fighter Poojary, who hails from an ethnic group that traditionally tapped coconut trees for sap, never expected this kind of success. When he was 7, Poojary recalled, the RSS arrived at his family’s remote two-acre farm carved out of the jungle. They asked to recruit him. His father said yes. In the local RSS branch, young Sunil learned Hindu chants and nationalist songs. He performed military drills and practiced yoga. His formal schooling was derailed in the 10th grade when his father died, leaving him adrift, he said. But he had already found a family in the RSS and purpose in hard-line Hindutva. Elders in Poojary’s RSS chapter diverted him into the Bajrang Dal, but he quickly knew he did not fit in with muscle-bound bruisers. When his Bajrang Dal gang would start drinking by the highway to steel themselves for ambushing cow transporters, Poojary would not drink or join in the beatings. When they roamed around looking to break up cases of “love jihad,” Poojary would urge what he considered restraint: “I would tell others, ‘Don’t hit the women.’” Instead, he turned to writing, penning lengthy essays about Hindu mythology and Indian history, and self-publishing three books. But nothing gave him the attention he desired until he found WhatsApp. In 2020, Poojary launched Astra and three other troll pages and learned to craft headlines, insert images using the free Android app Blend Collage and tweak colors for maximum virality. He reveled in the fact that people assumed the man behind Astra was a “gangster.” “If people see me, they’ll see I’m slim and diminutive,” he said. “But I have a gift from God: Goddess Saraswati holds my hand and tongue.” Suvarna at the Malpe rally. His campaign used Whatsapp posts to brag of his ties to the hard-line Hindu nationalist group Bajrang Dal. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) Braying for revenge In April, the BJP’s state leadership sent shock waves along the coast by tapping a local businessman named Yashpal Suvarna as a candidate for the state assembly. In 2005, as a local leader of the Bajrang Dal group, Suvarna had become known after stopping two Muslims transporting cows in a truck, stripping them naked and parading them before reporters while police looked on. Given Suvarna’s past as a thug, his campaign team was hoping to use WhatsApp to soften his image and showcase his “humility.” But Suvarna’s personal assistant Yatish felt unsure, so he called up the best social media whiz he knew: Astra. Poojary told the campaign that the strategy would not work. Up to a third of voters were young men, who liked an aggressive candidate, he reasoned. Furthermore, the Congress party was hinting that if elected, it would ban the Bajrang Dal. Suvarna’s team pivoted. It began sharing to about 1,000 WhatsApp groups strident posts bearing Suvarna’s face next to a menacing Lord Bajrangbali, the deity after which the Bajrang Dal is named, and boasting of his ties to the group. Mohammed Fazil, 23, was hacked to death in July 2022 north of Mangaluru after calls by right-wing influencers for a revenge killing. Police said Fazil was randomly targeted as a Muslim. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) Poojary also jumped into action. To boost the BJP campaign, he exploited a number of communal killings that had rattled Karnataka the previous summer. In July 2022, a Muslim teenager was killed in an altercation with members of the Bajrang Dal. That led to the revenge killing of a BJP volunteer by local members of an Islamist militant group, according to Indian law enforcement. Poojary and several other right-wing influencers then spread material agitating for the volunteer’s death to be avenged. Days later, around sundown on July 28, Mohammed Fazil, 23, was hacked to death by four masked men as he walked near a busy highway crossing north of Mangaluru. Police said Fazil was randomly targeted as a Muslim. At a Bajrang Dal rally, a Hindu nationalist leader openly boasted that Fazil was killed out of revenge. The role of the heated WhatsApp discourse in the violence remains unclear. Supporters of Suvarna gather in Malpe in May during his run for the Karnataka assembly. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) A perpetual ‘civilizational battle’ Looking back months later, Poojary said he believed that the anger circulating on WhatsApp had contributed to the bloodshed and that violence could be justified in the service of Hinduism. Santosh Kenchamba, who runs the highly influential Rashtra Dharma troll page, said he also called for the revenge killing. He explained that it was part of a perpetual “civilizational battle” by online activists to help remake India into a Hindu state where Muslims knew their place. As the election heated up in April, Poojary doubled down on spurious claims on WhatsApp that Muslims, abetted by the Congress party, had killed dozens of other Hindu activists. One of the voters who received these pre-election messages was Patil, the bank teller. Lounging with friends outside a barbershop not far from where Fazil was killed, Patil, a middle-class young Hindu man with a taste for flower-print shirts and new iPhones, said he had known Fazil from school. Patil said that while growing up, he did not think Fazil, or most Muslims, posed much of a threat. But over the past five years, Patil had become increasingly troubled by what he was seeing on WhatsApp about the danger Muslims allegedly posed, he said. He had heard anonymous voice recordings on WhatsApp that purported to be of Muslim extremists plotting to kill Hindus. As the May election approached, he received warnings about more violence if Congress won. Patil did not question any of this disinformation. Instead, he and his friends, who said they consumed news only from WhatsApp, arrived at an inevitable conclusion. “Hindus are in danger,” Patil said. Suvarna, center left, speaks to supporters in Malpe. Despite an overall win by the Congress party in Karnataka, Suvarna would claim a seat in the assembly. (Samyukta Lakshmi for The Washington Post) An unending struggle With the campaign reaching fever pitch at the start of May, Modi landed on the coast to lead a teeming rally. Poojary stood in the heat, mostly bored as his hero spoke about the economy. But after an hour, Modi’s voice began to rise. His arms reached for the sky. Finally, he unleashed his fury over the Congress party’s proposal to ban the Bajrang Dal. “When you press the button in the polling booth,” Modi thundered, “punish them by saying, ‘Hail, Lord Bajrangbali!’” The crowd, including Poojary, erupted in rapture. But even with the prime minister’s last-minute intervention, the statewide election proved to be a disappointment for the BJP. Television analysts said the party had been weakened, in part, by infighting among its leaders, and the Congress party gained enough seats to take control of the state legislature in Karnataka. On a quiet street north of Mangaluru, Patil — who ultimately had voted for the BJP — worried about Hindus’ safety. With Congress now running the state, he said, “Muslims will be emboldened.” But the shrill warnings that left Patil so alarmed had actually helped carry the day for the BJP along the coast. In this part of the state, where operatives such as Poojary and Ullal had filled voters’ screens with their divisive content, the BJP swept all but two of the 13 contested legislative seats. Down by the sea, roads were blanketed every 100 yards by banners congratulating one of the region’s rising stars, “Yashpal Suvarna, Member of the Legislative Assembly.” Up in the red clay hills, Poojary seemed relieved. Five local BJP candidates he had supported on social media all won. But he was also worried, he admitted, that with Congress now controlling the state police, he might be charged with libel or spreading fake information. Still, Poojary could not help continuing to stir the pot. The election had barely ended, and he was already spreading posts that compared the new Congress state government to Tipu Sultan, the Muslim oppressor. He warned, using an image of splattered blood, that a Hindu holy man had already been murdered near Bangalore. In his windowless office, Poojary was still giving directions to his video editor and graphic designer every few minutes. His phone was still lighting up constantly with WhatsApp notifications. “The Muslims have won,” he said, “for now.” He excused himself, pressed his palms together in front of his heart, and went back to work. Mohit Rao and Shams Irfan contributed to this report. About this story Design by Anna Lefkowitz. Visual editing by Chloe Meister, Joe Moore and Jennifer Samuel. Copy editing by Gilbert Dunkley and Martha Murdock. Story editing by Alan Sipress. Project editing by Jay Wang. © 1996-2023 The Washington Post

Featured Image: Muhammad Yunus, Nobel Peace Prize winner. Image rights reserved to Getty Images. DELIVERED BY Spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights: Ravina Shamdasani LOCATION Geneva September 05, 2023 We are very concerned by the continued intimidation and harassment of human rights advocates and civil society leaders through legal proceedings in Bangladesh, including Nobel laureate Mohammad Yunus, known for his work on poverty alleviation through Grameen Bank, and two leaders of the respected human rights organization Odhikar. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Türk calls on the Bangladeshi authorities to create a safe and enabling environment for human rights defenders and other civil society representatives to carry out their essential work for the welfare and protection of all people in Bangladesh. Yunus has faced harassment and intimidation for almost a decade. He currently faces two trials that carry potential prison sentences - one on charges of violating labour laws, the second for alleged corruption. While Yunus will have the opportunity to defend himself in court, we are concerned that smear campaigns against him, often emanating from the highest levels of government, risk undermining his right to a fair trial and due process in line with international standards. We have also been following closely the cases brought against the leaders of the Odhikar organization, Adilur Rahman Khan and Nasiruddin Elan, in which the verdicts are due to be delivered on Thursday 7 September. The criminal charges relate to a fact-finding report they compiled 10 years ago on extra-judicial killings. Both have faced harassment and intimidation, and their organisation’s licence was not renewed. The legal harassment of civil society leaders, human rights defenders and other dissenting voices, is a worrying sign for civic and democratic space in Bangladesh. These cases also represent an important test for the independence of the judiciary in Bangladesh. The High Commissioner urges the judicial authorities to ensure the most rigorous review in these cases to ensure that rights to due process and fair trial are strictly and consistently applied. We are also studying closely the new Cyber Security law which has been presented to Parliament to replace the problematic Digital Security Act. The new law will replace imprisonment with fines and increase the scope for bail for several offences, but it is very important that Parliament address the remaining concerns to prevent any further arbitrary use of the law to suppress freedom of expression. Copyright 2023 United Nations. All Rights Reserved.