At a memorial in the Churachandpur district of the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, portraits of victims who died during recent ethnic clashes between the predominantly Hindu Meitei majority and the mainly Christian Kuki minority.Credit...Arun Sankar/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images New York Times Aug. 9, 2023 By Debasish Roy Chowdhury Indian social media is a brutal place, a window on the everyday hatred and violence that has come to colonize the country in the nine years since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government came to power. But the images from the northeastern state of Manipur that began circulating in July were shocking even by those low standards. A video clip showed two women being sexually assaulted as they were paraded, naked, by a crowd of men who later gang-raped one of them, according to a police complaint. The horrific scene was part of an explosion of ethnic violence since May that has turned the small state into a war zone, killing more than 150 people and displacing tens of thousands. The state has a long history of ethnic animosities that predate Mr. Modi’s rise. But the fuse for the current unrest in Manipur was lit by the politics of Hindu supremacy, xenophobia and religious polarization championed by his Bharatiya Janata Party. India is a diverse nation, crisscrossed by religious, ethnic, caste, regional and political fault lines. Since Mr. Modi took office in 2014, his ruling party has torn those asunder with dangerous exclusionary politics intended to charge up the party’s base and advance its goal of remaking India’s secular republic into a majoritarian Hindu state. The repugnant nature of this brand of politics has been clear for some time, but the situation in Manipur shows what’s ahead for India: The world’s most populous country is slowly degenerating into a conflict zone of sectarian violence. Christian activists take part in a candlelight vigil in protest over sexual violence against women and the ongoing ethnic violence in India’s northeastern state of Manipur, during a demonstration in Amritsar, India.Credit...Narinder Nanu/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Under Mr. Modi’s government, the state monopoly on violence is being surrendered to extremists and vigilantes. Those targeted by the kind of mob violence that we are seeing in India may conclude that equal rights are no longer guaranteed, that political differences can no longer be peacefully reconciled or fairly mediated and that violence is the only way for them to resist. The targeting of minorities — particularly Muslims — by right-wing Hindu extremists is now a way of life in many states. Vigilante mobs, which often assemble provocatively in front of mosques, regularly assault Muslims as understaffed and underequipped police forces fail to intervene. Lynchings and open calls for genocide are common. India now ranks among the 10 countries at the highest risk of mass killings, according to Early Warning Project, which assesses such risks around the world. In Manipur, Christians are bearing the brunt as the state’s B.J.P. government stokes the insecurities of the majority ethnic Meitei, who are predominantly Hindu. State leaders have branded the Kuki who populate the hill districts and who are mostly Christian as infiltrators from Myanmar, blamed them for poppy cultivation intended for the drug trade and evicted some of them from their forest habitats. The specific trigger for the current violence was a court ruling in the state in favor of granting the Meitei affirmative action provisions and other benefits that have long been enjoyed by the Kuki and other tribes, which sparked a protest by tribal communities opposed to the ruling. The Manipur government this year also began a citizenship verification drive that infringes on the privacy of Kuki. A similar drive in neighboring Assam state targeting Muslims has already reportedly disenfranchised nearly two million people. Emboldened by the state government’s rhetoric, Meitei militias in Manipur have gone on a rampage of raping, pillaging, looting police armories and burning villages. More than 250 churches have been burned down. Those were Meitei men in the horrific 26-second video, sexually assaulting two Kuki women. (The video was shot in early May but came to light only in July, possibly delayed by a government internet ban imposed in the state in response to the violence.) Many similar attacks on Kuki women have been reported. Mr. Modi has called the rape incident “shameful” but has otherwise said little about the chaos in Manipur. The violent impact of his party’s polarizing politics is acutely felt in India’s heartland, too. The area near a tech and finance hub on the outskirts of New Delhi was rocked by violence last week as Hindu supremacists staging a religious procession clashed with Muslims. Mosques were attacked, an imam was killed, businesses were burned and looted, and hundreds of Muslims have fled. In tandem with the B.J.P.’s demonizing of India’s nearly 200 million Muslims, television, cinema and social media are deployed to radicalize the Hindu majority, pumping out a steady stream of Islamophobia and vile dog whistles. Extremist groups, at least one of which appears to have received the public support of the prime minister, run amok. Muslims have been arrested for praying, had their livelihoods and businesses destroyed and their homes razed. Bulldozers, used to demolish homes, have become an anti-Muslim symbol, proudly paraded by B.J.P. supporters at political rallies. As John Keane and I argue in our book “To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism,” it’s a signature tactic of modern-day despots: tightening their grip on power by redefining who belongs to the polity and ostracizing others. In the ultimate subversion of democracy, the government chooses the people, rather than the people choosing the government. India is already a complex federation of regional identities, many of which consider themselves distinct from Hindi-speaking north India, the power base of Mr. Modi’s party. This federal structure is held together by delicate bonds of social and political accommodation. But they are fraying fast under Mr. Modi, who has no appetite for either, shrinking the space for nonviolent political contestation. Some regional political parties see the Bharatiya Janata Party’s centralizing and homogenizing Hindu-first thrust as a cultural imposition from outside and are assailing it with the same divisive us-versus-them vocabulary. Because of its giant and growing population, India will become more important to the rest of the world geopolitically and economically, with the promise of its massive market. And so Western leaders like President Biden — who staged a lavish welcome for Mr. Modi on a state visit to Washington in June — engage with the prime minister, downplaying his government’s assaults on liberalism. But a political strategy of conspicuous humiliation and subjugation of ethnic and religious minorities that make up around one-fifth of the population is dangerously deluded. India can be either a conflict zone or an economic powerhouse — not both. It is increasingly clear which of those two destinies awaits the country. Debasish Roy Chowdhury (@Planet_Deb) is a Hong Kong-based Indian journalist and the author, with John Keane, of “To Kill a Democracy: India’s Passage to Despotism.” A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 10, 2023, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: Modi Is Pushing India to the Brink. Copyright 2023 The New York Times Company

Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA) responds to humanitarian needs of Sudan’s conflict EuroNewsweek September 4, 2023 By Jackie Abramian Health personnel at the Saudi hospital in Omdurman treat a newborn patient amidst Sudan's Conflict. (Credit: Omer Jay for SAPA) “70 percent of hospitals and healthcare organizations are out of service in Sudan’s conflict zone – within Khartoum state and the Darfur areas. Across the conflict areas, there is a total of 89 hospitals and 62 are out of service completely. Some 19 hospitals were bombed or attacked by missiles,” says Mohamed Eisa, Secretary-General of the Sudanese American Physicians Association (SAPA), a 650-member strong non-profit founded in 2019. Since the start of the April 15 power struggle in Sudan between two Sudanese generals–Abdel Fattah Burhan (head of the Sudanese military) and rival Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (head of paramilitary Rapid Support Forces)–SAPA has supported the public health sector with staff incentives, and financial assistance to 2,437 healthcare professionals across Khartoum, Gezira, Port Sudan, South Darfur, and Kasala. The U.N. Migration Agency reports nearly 700,000 Sudanese displaced, in addition to the 3.7 million existing IDPs. The power struggle, which continues to wage a bloody battle concentrated around the capital city of Khartoum and the Darfur region, is now a humanitarian crisis. “Genocide is again underway in Darfur. Since 2003 it has never stopped. In the past months, over a thousand African Massalit have been murdered by the Arab ‘Rapid Support Forces,’ the renamed Janjaweed, still led by the murderous General Hemeti, who also controls much of Khartoum. Sudan needs a robust Chapter Seven UN Peacekeeping Force with a mandate to end the Sudanese civil war and Darfur genocide. The International Criminal Court should charge both General Hemeti and General Burhan with crimes against humanity and Genocide. The UN PKO should be mandated to arrest them and send them to the Hague for trial,” says Greg Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch. “The UN and its members must not get tired of preventing, stopping, and punishing genocide.” Children, Women, and IDPs Caught in Sudan’s Conflict Zone With three Interagency Emergency Health Kits (IEHK) delivered to Madani, Sudan’s second-largest city and the capital of the east-central Gezira state, SAPA plans another IEHK for Alnao Hospital and has ​​delivered two tons of medications and supplies to the hospital while awaiting the clearance of 40 tons of medical supplies now held off in Port Sudan. SAPA has launched new healthcare facilities to lessen pressure on existing public health infrastructure. It provides dedicated healthcare support to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) and food provisions for doctors’ residences in five states. Before the recent conflict, SAPA supported healthcare projects in Sudan forging partnerships with other NGOs and human rights organizations in the U.S. and globally. Since the start of the April conflict, SAPA’s all-volunteer Board of Directors expanded services with support from 30,000 individual donors from over 30 countries. “SAPA has started services in Gezira where our largest operations are. We now have over 50 full-time staff employees and incentivized volunteers or part-timers,” says Eisa, who is a gastroenterologist and hepatologist based in Pittsburg (USA), and just returned from a month-long work in Khartoum. Another SAPA member, now in Madani, assists with projects including a fully equipped Operating Room in Madani Teaching Hospital, the largest public hospital in Gezira state providing surgical capacities and patient care. SAPA’s oxygen generation plant in Singa – the second largest city southeast of Khartoum – fills 2,000 oxygen cylinders each month for clinics across the state. The plant, a collaboration with the state’s Minister of Health which provided half of the budget, eliminates long travel distances to obtain oxygen tanks and is a lifesaver during emergencies. The $132,000 investment has already impacted over one million people’s lives in the Sennar and Blue Nile states in East Sudan. In consultation with the Federal Ministry of Health, SAPA also determined that Darfur was in dire need of oxygen tanks since the area has been void of healthcare centers since the 1956 independence. “Strengthening the local communities, and local civil movements is extremely beneficial for improved healthcare status in Sudan. Our work is not just with the top-level officials and medical unions, but also with the local communities,” Eisa says SAPA, in collaboration with the Islamic Medical Association of North America (IMANA), has shipped to Gezira, Sennar, and White Nile states $450,000 worth of medications covering the medical needs of 20,000 people for three months. IMANA is one of the largest faith-based medical groups in the world and the largest Muslim medical organization in North America. SAPA also received $3.6 million worth of medication shipments from its partner organization, United Hand Relief. With the widespread Hemorrhagic Fever across Sudan, SAPA’s $22,000 vector control project in the eastern Sudanese city of Kasala, provides treatment to over 30,000 households. With most of the capital city Khartoum residents fleeing into Madani, SAPA and the Faculty of Medicine at Gezira University set up the Madani IDP Health Clinic and 70 Mobile Clinics to meet the medical and healthcare needs of IDPs. The mobile clinics, mobilized in Madani a few weeks after the April conflict. SAPA hired healthcare workers and volunteers to equip the clinics. Each mobile clinic has about 20 healthcare professionals who have served nearly 6,000 patients across 43 locations in Gezira State with reproductive health, and soon will offer vaccination programs. Additional mobile clinics are planned for Northern and White Nile States as well. “We operated on an IDP who had colon cancer. With support from partners, we are also able to manage secondary care. For those who need tertiary care, we contact national specialized centers dedicated to tertiary care–from cardiac surgeries, transplants, and cancer,” Eisa says SAPA retrofitted a former contact isolation center as a secondary care hospital and will reopen the hospital with a dedicated monthly operating budget of $90,000. Some 25 percent of the IDPs treated at SAPA mobile clinics are children, and between 25% to 40% are women, suffering from a range of ailments from simple colds to severe malnutrition among children, to malaria and other infectious diseases, and cancer. The mobile clinics travel through different IDP camps with the smaller minivans providing simple medical services, from measuring blood pressure to a gluco-meter while larger vans are equipped with laboratory equipment and a small pharmacy. According to UNICEF, an estimated 82,000 Sudanese children have crossed into neighboring countries, while an additional 368,000 children are internally displaced. In partnership with the Sudan Doctors Trade Union and other entities such as the Sudanese Pediatrics Consultants Society, SAPA ensures ongoing pediatric care in the conflict area. “We haven’t been attacked so far luckily because Madani is sort of away from the conflict, there isn’t any sort of immediate danger. But we have mobilized activities and support a Saudi hospital, the only hospital that provides obstetrics and gynecology services in Omdurman city right now,” Eisa says SAPA provides salaries for the staff to continue their services and serve children in the conflict area. Jackie Abramian is committed to amplifying the work of women peace-builders, change makers and social entrepreneurs. She is a social enterprise advisor and the founder of Global Cadence consultancy. Copyright 2023 Jackie Abramian and EuroNewsweek

Another Genocide Is Underway in Nagorno-Karabakh — and We’re Not Paying Attention A crowd waiting for aid and supplies in Nagorno-Karabakh.Credit...Christophe Petit Tesson/EPA, via Shutterstock By Nicholas Kristof New York Times Opinion Columnist Sept. 2, 2023 With its Russian torture chambers and slaughter of civilians, the war in Ukraine is horrifying enough. But what if another country is taking advantage of the distraction to commit its own crimes against humanity? Meet Azerbaijan. You probably haven’t heard of Azerbaijan’s brutality toward an ethnic Armenian enclave called Nagorno-Karabakh, but it deserves scrutiny. The former chief prosecutor of the International Criminal Court, Luis Moreno Ocampo, whom I got to know years ago when he sought accountability for the genocide in Sudan’s Darfur region, now describes what is happening in Nagorno-Karabakh in a similar fashion. “There is an ongoing genocide against 120,000 Armenians living in Nagorno-Karabakh,” he wrote in a recent report. We tend to think of genocide as the slaughter of an ethnic group. But the legal definition in the 1948 Genocide Convention is broader and doesn’t require mass killing, so long as there are certain “acts committed with intent to destroy” a particular ethnic, racial or religious group. That is what Azerbaijan is doing, Moreno Ocampo argued, by blockading Nagorno-Karabakh so that people die or flee, thus destroying an ancient community. “Starvation is the invisible genocide weapon,” he wrote. “Without immediate dramatic change, this group of Armenians will be destroyed in a few weeks.” “It is critically important to label this as genocide,” Moreno Ocampo told me, and also crucial that the United States and other world powers — including Britain, which has been too quiet — step up pressure on Azerbaijan. The concept of genocide was developed in part as a reaction to the Ottoman Empire’s mass killing of Armenians in 1915 and 1916, so Azerbaijan’s starvation of Armenians today suggests that history risks coming full circle. The group Genocide Watch has declared a “genocide emergency,” the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention recently issued an “active genocide alert,” and the International Association of Genocide Scholars warned of “the risk of genocide” and called for Azerbaijan to be held accountable for crimes against humanity. The current crisis began late last year, when Azerbaijanis began blockading the only road into Nagorno-Karabakh, the Lachin corridor to Armenia, on which the territory depends for food and medicine. The International Court of Justice ordered Azerbaijan to remove the blockade. Instead, the Azerbaijani government established a checkpoint on the road and began blocking even humanitarian aid carried by the International Committee of the Red Cross. Empty shelves in a Nagorno-Karabakh supermarket. Credit...Marut Vanyan/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images “People are fainting in the bread queues,” the BBC quoted a local journalist as saying from Nagorno-Karabakh. The report added that the Halo Trust, a nonprofit that works to clear minefields, has had to suspend operations “because its staff are too exhausted to work after queuing for bread all night and returning home empty-handed.” A third of deaths in Nagorno-Karabakh are attributed by the local authorities to malnutrition, the BBC said. I have no way of verifying these reports, but every indication is that the situation is dire — and getting worse by the day. Yet I fear that the West is fatigued and looking inward, for it has likewise paid little attention to other global crises other than Ukraine, from horrendous atrocities in Ethiopia to Sudan’s warlords’ slaughtering of civilians. For dictators, tragically, this isn’t a bad time to commit war crimes. The backdrop is that authoritarian Azerbaijan has a mostly Muslim population speaking a Turkic language, while Nagorno-Karabakh has a mostly Christian population that speaks Armenian. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Nagorno-Karabakh sought independence; a war ended with a stalemate in which the enclave operated autonomously but with close links to neighboring Armenia. In 2020, Azerbaijan fought a brief war in which it reclaimed most of the enclave, and it now wants to recover the rest — and, I suspect, to push out much of the ethnic Armenian population.... Credit...Karen Minasyan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Azerbaijan feels it has a right to integrate Nagorno-Karabakh politically and economically with the rest of the country. Though this is not integration but starvation, and the one point even countries as far apart as the United States and Russia agree on is that Azerbaijan should reopen the Lachin corridor and end the suffering. One possible compromise to end the looming catastrophe is outlined by Benyamin Poghosyan of the Applied Policy Research Institute of Armenia: Azerbaijan would open the Lachin road and Nagorno-Karabakh would simultaneously open one or more roads into Azerbaijan (which Azerbaijan seeks). The U.S. State Department hinted at this approach in a statement denouncing the blockade. As part of that compromise, Azerbaijan would guarantee the freedom of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh. This would be unsatisfying, for it rewards Azerbaijan for starving civilians, and no one could much trust promises from Azerbaijan. But the sad job of diplomats is to devise flawed, much-hated agreements that are better than any alternative outcome, and in this case a defective deal is preferable to the mass starvation and ethnic cleansing of Armenians, again. [Genocide Watch comment: Genocide Watch refuses to use the term "ethnic cleansing," a euphemism invented by Slobodan Milošević used for genocide denial.] Nicholas Kristof joined The New York Times in 1984 and has been a columnist since 2001. He has won two Pulitzer Prizes, for his coverage of China and of the genocide in Darfur. You can follow him on Instagram, Facebook and Threads. His forthcoming memoir is “Chasing Hope: A Reporter’s Life.” @NickKristof @@NickKristof • Facebook A version of this article appears in print on Sept. 3, 2023, Section SR, Page 3 of the New York edition with the headline: Are Armenians Being Ethnically Cleansed? Copyright 2023 The New York Times Company

Ethiopians fleeing from Yemen into Saudi Arabia. Credit: Human Rights Watch. To view video click on image. IGNORING MASS MURDER, THEN AND NOW Jewish Journal of Los Angeles August 30, 2023 by Rafael Medoff The horrifying news that Saudi Arabian border guards have been massacring African migrants is now compounded by the revelation that the Biden administration has been aware of the mass murder for at least a year, and yet has said nothing about it. According to human rights groups, the Saudi security forces have slaughtered “hundreds, perhaps thousands” of unarmed African civilians. The migrants had approached the Saudi border in the hope of finding work or receiving asylum from persecution; the Saudis responded with gunfire, mutilations, and sexual atrocities. For Human Rights Watch Report see:https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/08/21/they-fired-us-rain/saudi-arabian-mass-killings-ethiopian-migrants-yemen-saudi https://youtu.be/f90vwqCYU1c The New York Times reported on August 28 that as early as the autumn of 2022, “American diplomats received grim news that border guards in Saudi Arabia, a close U.S. partner in the Middle East, were using lethal force against African migrants.” Yet throughout this past year, the Biden administration has never criticized the Saudi massacres. The most any U.S. official has said was, as the Times noted, “an oblique reference” to the issue: the deputy American representative to the United Nations said during a UN briefing last January that the Biden administration is “concerned” by “alleged abuses against migrants on the border with Saudi Arabia.” He called on “all parties” to permit an outside investigation. That was it. No reference to the killings and no identification of the perpetrators, even though Washington had already received ample information about the mass murder. The Times pointed out that in late 2022, President Biden publicly criticized Saudi Arabia for cutting oil production, because it might “lead to a rise in global oil prices before the midterm elections.” He even threatened there would be “consequences” for oil cuts. But the president said nothing about the Saudi massacres. Apparently, there are no consequences for mass murder. During the Holocaust, too, the U.S. government received information about mass murder but chose to look away. Beginning in the autumn of 1941, Washington received increasingly detailed reports about the Nazis’ machine-gun massacres of tens of thousands of European Jews in occupied Russia. One eyewitness account described freshly-covered mass graves “heaving like the sea” from the movement of victims who were not yet dead. A report smuggled from Poland in June 1942 disclosed that the Germans had “embarked on the physical extermination of the Jewish population on Polish soil,” and had already murdered at least 700,000 Polish Jews. The World Jewish Congress publicized the news. The Roosevelt administration had no comment. In August, a telegram to Washington from the World Jewish Congress representative in Geneva, Gerhart Riegner, reported that the Germans intended “to exterminate all Jews from German and German-controlled areas in Europe after they have been concentrated in the east (presumably Poland).” The State Department refused Riegner’s request to forward the telegram to American Jewish leaders, because of - as one U.S. official put it - “the fantastic nature of the allegation and the impossibility of our being of any assistance.” In fact, there were many ways the U.S. could have been of assistance, but it would have meant taking steps that President Franklin D. Roosevelt was unwilling to consider, such as admitting more refugees to the United States or urging the British to open the doors of Palestine. Finally, three months later, the accumulation of evidence compelled Undersecretary of State Sumner Welles to acknowledge that “there is no exaggeration. These documents [from Riegner and others] are evidently correct.” But when the British Foreign Office proposed that the Allies issue a joint statement about the killings, Roosevelt administration officials resisted, fearing that - as one senior official put it - “the various Governments of the United Nations [as the Allies were informally known] would expose themselves to increased pressure from all sides to do something more specific in order to aid these people.” The U.S. eventually went along with issuing the statement, but only after watering down some of the language. For example, the proposed phrase “reports from Europe which leave no doubt” (that mass murder was underway) was whittled down to just “numerous reports from Europe.” The final version, released on December 17, 1942, was signed by the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the governments-in-exile of eight German-occupied countries. It condemned the Nazis’ “bestial policy of cold-blooded extermination.” But it did not propose any steps to rescue Jews from Hitler. The idea of offering asylum for Jewish refugees was left out of the statement because, as one British official explained, it would mean making an offer “which would dog our footsteps forever.” How much have attitudes changed since the 1940s? Eighty years later, “rights violations, no matter how grave, rarely take priority when diplomats do business with their counterparts from rich partners like Saudi Arabia,” the Times noted. But “rich” mass murderers should not be given a pass. The Biden administration has promised to take international human rights seriously. It has a moral obligation to speak out against mass murder, even when it may be politically or financially inconvenient to do so. (Dr. Medoff is founding director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies and author of more than 20 books about Jewish history and the Holocaust. His latest is America and the Holocaust: A Documentary History, published by the Jewish Publication Society & University of Nebraska Press.) Published in the Jewish Journal of Los Angeles - Aug. 30, 2023 https://jewishjournal.com/commentary/opinion/362257/ignoring-mass-murder-then-and-now/ Copyright 2023 Rafael Medoff/ Jewish Journal of Los Angeles

Bosnia and Herzegovina Country Report August 2023 By Bekir Hodzic, Genocide Watch Bosnia and Herzegovina was once part of Yugoslavia, a multi-ethnic communist federation formed after World War II. Its long-term leader, Josip Tito, died in 1980, allowing ethno-nationalist politicians to stoke hatred among the country’s ethnic groups, which caused Yugoslavia’s republics to begin seceding from the Yugoslav federation. Bosnia’s ethnically diverse population—43% Bosniak Muslim, 33% Orthodox Serb, and 17% Roman Catholic Croat—left it divided. In a 1992 referendum, Bosniaks and Croats voted for Bosnian independence. Bosnian-Serbs boycotted the plebiscite. When Bosnia declared independence, Bosnian Serb militias launched a war to secede from Bosnia and join Serbia. In Serbian president Slobodan Milošević’s euphemism for forced displacement and genocide, they “ethnically cleansed” Serb areas. Bosnian Serb forces expelled families from their homes, destroyed houses and mosques, and operated concentration camps. They shelled civilian cities and massacred thousands. Rapes of Bosniak women were widespread. Over 90% of the above crimes were later attributed to Bosnian-Serb militia units. Of over 100,000 people killed during the Bosnian war, 60% were Bosniak, 25% Serb, and 8% Croat. In July 1995, Serb soldiers invaded Srebrenica, a town the United Nations had declared a “safe zone” that housed over 34,000 Bosniak refugees. As hundreds of Dutch UNPROFOR “peacekeepers” watched, Bosnian Serb forces under General Ratko Mladić deported 25,000 women, children, and elderly and massacred the remaining 8,372 men and boys. This massacre was recognized as genocide by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia and the International Court of Justice. NATO finally intervened, bombed Belgrade, and generated the conflict’s end through the Dayton Peace Accords. The Dayton Accords stopped the war, but they also legitimized Bosnia’s ethnic division, recognizing the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, for Bosniaks and Croats, and the Republika Srpska, for Bosnian Serbs. The federal government today is divided along tripartite lines, with a rotating presidency. Segregation divides Bosnia’s healthcare, education, and government services. Bosnia’s constitution limits political power to the three constituent peoples, so people from ethnic minorities, such as Roma, cannot attain office. Dayton has thus entrenched cross-communal divides within Bosnia, making reconciliation between ethnic groups difficult to attain. Justice remains distant for many survivors. Hundreds of war crime cases await trial in Bosnia’s courts, with only a handful decided each year. A societal stigma persists around rape and sexual assault, preventing women from coming forward to prosecute their abusers. Women who do sue face legal hurdles. Laws in the Republika Srpska force victims who lose claims to “pay excessive court fees.” 96,305 individuals are still internally displaced. Placement of memorials where atrocities happened meets strong resistance from Bosnian Serb authorities. Genocide denial is rampant. Bosnian-Serb nationalists continue to deny that the Srebrenica genocide occurred. Serb media glorifies convicted war criminals through monuments and celebrations. Milorad Dodik, Republika Srpska’s president, recently called Srebrenica a “fabricated myth.” Dodik has threatened Republika Srpska’s secession from Bosnia and he withdrew the Republika Srpska from Bosnia’s military, judiciary, and tax administration, igniting concerns that another war could break out. Genocide Watch considers Bosnia at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 6: Polarization, and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends: ● Bosnia’s High Representative under Dayton, Christian Schmidt, must use his authority to stem rampant secessionism and genocide denial from the Republika Srpska. ● The European Union must condition Bosnia’s potential membership upon its willingness to desegregate public accommodations and grant all peoples full political rights. ● Bosnia must provide its judiciary the necessary resources to conduct war crimes trials. ● Bosnia, the U.N., U.S., and E.U. should revise the Dayton Accords to meet current crises.

Emmerson Mnangagwa. copyright Reuters Zimbabwe Genocide Watch 2023 By Abigail Francis, Genocide Watch During the Gukurahundi (1983 to 1987), the Zimbabwean army’s Fifth Brigade committed genocide against the Ndebele ethnic group in Matabeleland, murdering over 20,000 people. The army utilized the Bhalagwe concentration camp to execute these murders. Robert Mugabe, leader of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU-PF) from the majority Shona ethnic group, ordered the genocide to defeat the Ndebele opposition leader, Joshua Nkomo, in an attempt to create a one-party state. The Zimbabwe government has never tried the perpetrators of the Gukurahundi. Public discussion of the genocide is forbidden. Zimbabwe’s current President, Emmerson Mnangagwa led the genocide. Mugabe used violent tactics to remain in power for 37 years. He punished Ndebele opposition voters by withholding food aid to Matabeleland. Food distributors even required a ZANU-PF membership card to be displayed before food aid would be given. In 2008, ZANU-PF militias killed 200 civilians after the opposition Movement for Democratic Change won a plurality in the first round of presidential elections. In 2017, a military coup deposed Mugabe, replacing him with Mugabe’s “crocodile,” Emmerson Mnangagwa from ZANU-PF. He was re-elected in 2018 in disputed elections. Mnangagwa has continued Mugabe’s brutal suppression of protests and political opposition. Due to government confiscation of productive farms owned by white farmers and rampant corruption, 60% of Zimbabwe’s population now faces food insecurity. The inability of Mnangagwa’s government to control hyperinflation and to provide basic social services has destroyed Zimbabwe’s economy. Mnangagwa’ ZANU-PF maintains its hold on the majority Shona ethnic group. Mnangagwa was reelected President in August 2023. EU observers say the election was neither free nor fair. Zimbabwe has high rates of gender-based violence. A quarter of Zimbabwean women over 15 have reported experiencing sexual violence. Activists correlate the high rate of domestic violence with the widespread practice of child marriages. The country’s inflation and lack of food have forced families to marry off their daughters to receive early payment of their bride price. LGBTQ people face discrimination, violence, and denial of fundamental rights in Zimbabwe. Under the Criminal Law Act 2006, it is illegal for men to engage in same-sex sexual activity. There have been reports of “corrective rape,” especially against LGBTQ women. Genocide Watch considers Zimbabwe to be at Stage 3: Discrimination and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends that the government of Zimbabwe should: Recognize the Gukurahundi as a genocide and prosecute remaining perpetrators. Stop the suppression of opposition political parties and hold free and fair elections. Discourage child marriage by outlawing payment of bride price for minors under 18. Reject legislation targeting LGBTQ people. Prosecute “corrective rape.”

Mauritanian slaves. Credit: Anti-Slavery International Mauritania Country Report 2023 by Brooklyn Quallen In 1960, Mauritania achieved independence from France, beginning nationhood as an authoritarian, oneparty state. After several coups and two constitutions, Mauritania saw its first peaceful transfer of power after the 2019 presidential election. Political conflict and socioeconomic problems plague the country. Over half of the population lives in extreme poverty. The most serious human rights problem is the persistence of slavery. The people of Mauritania are divided into three groups: the Bidhans, of mixed Arab-Berber descent, who hold all the power in Mauritania; the Haratins, descendants of freed black slaves once owned by Bidhans, who still face slave-like conditions; and black ethnic groups – the Halpulaar, Soninké, Wolof, and Bambara – who, like the Haratins, are subject to racial discrimination. Although ethnic conflict in Mauritania is complex, broadly, the Bidhans subordinate Haratins and black ethnic groups. The Bidhans still enslave black Mauritanians. Mauritania is among the last countries that tolerates slavery. Black Mauritanians suffered genocidal massacres in the 1980s and 1990s, when tens of thousands of black Mauritanians were forcibly deported from the country. Hundreds were detained, tortured, and killed in a state-sponsored effort to eradicate black culture in the country. A border dispute between Senegal and Mauritania in the Senegal River Valley led to armed conflict. While there was no “grand plan” to eliminate all black Mauritanians, the government used the border war to commit genocidal massacres in an attempt to Arabize the country. Mauritania claimed that black Mauritanians are actually Senegalese who fraudulently obtained Mauritanian documentation. Blacks were deported by the Mauritanian government on the pretext of national security. Over 500 black Africans were executed. Their land was confiscated and given to Bidhans. Although mass deportations of black Mauritanians ended in the 1990s, they still face persecution today. Over 90,000 are still enslaved, despite the legal abolition of slavery in 1981. Slavery was not officially criminalized in Mauritania until 2007. The government denies the continued existence of slavery. Very few people have been prosecuted under Mauritania’s anti-slavery laws. Even free Haratins are subordinated by slave-owning Bidhans. In the 2023 parliamentary elections, the People’s Progressive Alliance, which represents Haratin freed slave interests, lost all its seats in the National Assembly. Lacking legal remedies for human rights violations, black Mauritanians represent a permanent underclass in Mauritanian society. They are consistently dehumanized and denied their human rights. Due to its subordination of black Mauritanians, Genocide Watch considers Mauritania as being at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 6: Polarization, and Stage 8: Persecution. Genocide Watch recommends: • The Mauritanian government must prosecute slaveowners and enforce anti-slavery laws. • Mauritania should promote genuine emancipation of former slaves and equalize access to education and economic resources. • Mauritania should invest in state and religious initiatives to promote ethnic reconciliation.

Genocide Emergency: Xinjiang, China 2023 by Christian Azzolini, Genocide Watch Workers walk by the perimeter fence of what is officially known as a vocational skills education centre in Dabancheng in Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, China.Thomas Peter / Reuters Twelve million people, the majority of whom are Uyghur Muslims, live in Xinjiang, China, officially known as the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is intent on colonizing Xinjiang and replacing Uyghur Islam with Han Chinese communism. Due to implementation of the "Big Development of the Northwest Plan," millions of Han Chinese have been resettled in Xinjiang since the early 1990s. The CCP has held millions of Uyghurs in huge "reeducation" prisons. Han Chinese monitors are forcibly placed in Uyghur families. These assimilationist policies are designed to stop independence movements by Uyghurs. Chinese officials claim the program is to defeat "terrorism." By 1997, protests broke out due to Chinese prohibition of Uyghur traditional celebrations. The CCP launched a "strike hard" campaign to suppress ‘illegal religious activity’. The Chinese military killed over 200 protestors and made thousands of arrests. Tensions peaked during the 2009 riots, when ethnic rioting erupted in the regional capital of Urumqi. Two hundred people were killed. China tries to justify its repression as a fight against "religious extremism". The CCP has severely restricted movement in Xinjiang. The entire region is under constant video, camera, and audio surveillance. The Chinese government collects personal biometric data, including fingerprints, facial recognition data, iris scans, and DNA samples. It has begun to use AI. Hundreds of thousands of police files document movements and conversations of the "ethnic language population". State officials use behaviors and indicators of "extremism" to target potential opponents of CCP rule. Since 2016, "convenience police stations" have become ubiquitous, with armed police manning checkpoints on major roads and in villages. These checkpoints discriminate against ethnic Uyghurs, subjecting them to systematic inspections at roadblocks, train and bus stations, and airports. Since 2017, between 800,000-2,000,000 million Uyghurs have been held in Xinjiang's concentration prisons, commonly referred to as "re-education camps." Uyghurs are forced to participate in CCP indoctrination programs in which detainees are forced to abandon their Muslim faith and culture. The CCP forbids use of the Uyghur language and imposes Mandarin Chinese within these camps. Inside camps, CCP officials subject Uyghurs to physical beatings, sexual assault, and gang rapes of women. The Chinese government's family planning program restricts Uyghur and Turkic Muslim reproduction, preventing births in violation of Article 2d of the Genocide Convention. According to Adrian Zenz, between 2015 and 2018, East Turkistan's Uyghur population growth rate fell by 84%. State-sponsored forced inter-racial marriages between Uyghur women and Han Chinese men are part of "family planning" policies, as are female sterilizations, forced abortions, mass rapes, and sexual torture. The CCP forces Uyghur women to live with Han Chinese men in Uyghur homes. The CCP forcibly removes Uyghur children from their homes and places them in residential schools where they are forbidden to speak the Uyghur language, a violation of Genocide Convention Article 2e. After "reeducation," Uyghurs are forced to work harvesting cotton and other Chinese export products. They are subjected to a modern form of slavery. The CCP's direct attack on Uyghur Muslim religion now includes destruction of Uyghur mosques. Genocide Watch considers the CCP's repression of freedom of movement and religion, and its Orwellian surveillance of Uyghurs as Stage 3: Discrimination. The CCP's torture and imprisonment of Uyghurs into “re-education camps” is Stage 8: Persecution; the mass rape of women inside and outside these camps and CCP removal of Uyghur children is Stage 9: Extermination in violation of the Genocide Convention. The CCP's denial of its acts of genocide are stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends: · The US and other members of the UN should prohibit imports of goods produced by Uyghur forced labor. · UN members should ensure that Uyghurs have access to a fair system for adjudicating asylum requests. · The US should forbid investments in Chinese companies that use Uyghur forced labor. · The US and EU should bar exports of technology (AI, facial recognition) used in the Uyghur genocide. · The US and EU should support internal Chinese nonviolent resistance movements to overthrow Chinese Communist Party tyranny.

by Abigail Francis, Genocide Watch Dancers in Senegal. Credit: Anton Ivanonov Shutterstock.com Senegal Country Report June 2023 Since independence in 1960, Senegal has been one of the most stable and democratic countries in Africa. Lacking natural resources, its greatest strength has been its educated population. Senegal has been a leader in human rights in the United Nations, where top human rights officials have been Senegalese. However, the population is poor. It ranks 170th in the 2022 world Human Development Index of the UNDP. The Wolof are the majority ethnic group in Senegal. Over 90% of the Senegalese population is Muslim. The Casamance region is geographically and culturally separate from the rest of Senegal. Differing from Senegal's French colonial history, this region was a Portuguese colony. Most people of the Casamance region do not belong to the Wolof ethnic group. Casamance has a large Christian population. In 1982, sentiments of isolation and neglect led to the formation of the Movement of Democratic Forces of Casamance (MFDC), a guerrilla insurgency group demanding independence. Years of civil war displaced an estimated 150,000 people. The Senegalese government and the MDFC signed a peace agreement in 2022. Those returning to the region suffer from damaged housing, farmland, and food supplies. Some separatist members of the rebel group have continued fighting. In January 2022, the MFDC killed two Senegalese soldiers and took nine hostages. Members of the LGBTQ community face discrimination. The Senegalese penal code prohibits “acts against nature” between those of the same sex. Those convicted can be imprisoned for up to five years. In 2020 lawmakers introduced a law that would lengthen this sentence to 10 years. According to a survey by the Pew Research Center, 96% of Senegalese believe that homosexuality should not be accepted by society. LGBTQ community members in Senegal report a strong feeling of being unsafe. Politicians and police officers are promoting violence against the LGBTQ community. Harassment has caused members of the community to go into hiding. It is illegal for LGBTQ groups and organizations to hold meetings. The government rejects registration for NGOs defending LGBTQ rights. In 2022 there were protests against President Macky Sall following the arrest of the progressive opposition leader Ousmane Sonko. Sonko is ineligible to run in the upcoming presidential election because he has been charged with “corrupting the youth.” Violent protests resulting from President Sall’s jailing of political opponents and his social media ban have caused 16 deaths and 500 arrests. Newborn children are under threat due to infanticide. Stigma and shame from cultural intolerance of premarital relations are often the cause. Infanticide is the second most common crime committed by women in Senegal. Genocide Watch considers Senegal to be at Stage 1: Classification, Stage 3: Discrimination, and Stage 6: Polarization in the Ten Stages of Genocide. Genocide Watch recommends: The Senegalese government and international donors should provide resources to displaced people returning to the Casamance region. The United Nations, Senegalese, and international human rights NGOs should oppose legislation targeting LGBTQ people. The Senegalese government should stop its repression of opposition political groups and lift bans on social media. The Senegalese government should provide mental health resources to unmarried pregnant women.

Eighteen communities in the Cacheu region, northern Guinea-Bissau, have declared an end to the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) and made a commitment to combat other degrading phenomena, an official source told Lusa. credit:National Committee for the Abandonment of Harmful Traditional Practices (CNAPN) Guinea-Bissau Country Report February 2023 Guinea-Bissau is a former Portuguese colony that gained independence in 1974 under President Luis Cabral after a decade-long war against Portugal. Cabral and the ruling African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde (PAIGC) massacred thousands of local soldiers who fought for Portugal during the colonial war. In 1980, Joao Bernado Vieira ousted Cabral in a coup and ruled until Guinea-Bissau’s first multi-party, free elections in 1994. Cabral won the election. After a series of military coups and a civil war, Vieira was elected President in the 2005 elections. In 2009, military officials assassinated Vieira. His chosen successor, Bacai Sanha, died in January 2012. There was a considerable increase in the smuggling of cocaine following a 2012 military coup. During elections three months later, the military junta detained Interim President Raimundo Pereria and frontrunner Carlos Gomes. General Antonio Indjai, who led the coup, desired control over Guinea-Bissau’s lucrative cocaine trade. Following pressure from the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the coup faltered. General Indjai released the detainees on the 27th of April. Elections in 2014 brought Jose Mario Vaz to power. He became the first President to complete a full five-year term. The 2019 election saw former prime minister Umaro Sissoco Embaló triumph over Pereria, ending 46 years of PAIGC rule. Embaló appointed himself President without the Supreme Court's consent and sent military troops to enforce his orders. Guinea-Bissau has become a cocaine smuggling entrepot from Latin America to West Africa into Europe. 800-1,000 kg of cocaine goes through Guinea-Bissau every night. The United Nations has designated Guinea-Bissau as a ‘narco-state.’ The support the Guinea-Bissau military provides to organized crime has made the country a free port for the drug trade. Guinea-Bissau's drug trade will grow. Drug smuggling cartels promote corruption and murder. Corruption of the police has destabilized Guinea-Bissau and left it open to mass violence. Guinea-Bissau’s women's rights groups have recently made progress in ending Female Genital Mutilation, which has been outlawed since 2011. But civil society leaders face threats from the powerful drug cartels with numerous cases of torture, police brutality, and political violence, as seen in the abduction of a member of parliament, Marciano Indi, in May 2020 and the assault of two members of the opposition party. Genocide Watch considers the military elite's cooperation with organized crime and drug cartels, coupled with the its disregard for constitutional and international law, as Stage Five: Organization. Genocide Watch Recommends: · The United Nations, African Union, ECOWAS, US, and EU should place targeted economic sanctions on leaders of Guinea-Bissau’s military who have facilitated organized crime. · Guinea-Bissau must continue to allow UN and NGO observers to monitor elections. · Donation limits on political party and campaign funding should be enacted and enforced to prevent cartels from buying elections.

A video shows a group of migrants walking along a steep slope inside Saudi Arabia on the trail used to cross from the migrant camp of Al Thabit. (Human Rights Watch). To view video, click on image. A Human Rights Watch report says the guards regularly fire on African migrants trying to enter the kingdom from Yemen and killed hundreds in a 15-month period. Saudi Border Guards Accused of Killing Hundreds of African Migrants New York Times Aug. 21, 2023 By Ben Hubbard and Shuaib Almosawa Border guards in Saudi Arabia have regularly opened fire on African migrants seeking to cross into the kingdom from Yemen, killing hundreds of men, women and children in a recent 15-month period, Human Rights Watch said in a report released on Monday. The guards have beaten the migrants with rocks and bars, forced male migrants to rape women while guards watched and shot detained migrants in their limbs, leading to permanent injuries and amputations, the report said. The shooting of migrants is “widespread and systematic,” it said, adding that if killing them were Saudi government policy, it would constitute a crime against humanity. A Saudi government statement dismissed the report as inaccurate. “The allegations included in the Human Rights Watch report about Saudi border guards shooting Ethiopians while they were crossing the Saudi-Yemeni border are unfounded and not based on reliable sources,” the statement said. [Genocide Watch comment: The Saudi regime is, as usual, lying. MSB and his government apparently don't follow Islamic laws against lying and murder.] The report provides chilling new details about the conditions along one of the world’s most dangerous smuggling routes, a patch of isolated, war-ravaged territory rarely visited by journalists, aid workers or other international observers. It focuses on the plight of migrants from Ethiopia, one of the world’s poorest countries, who seek to enter Saudi Arabia — the Arab world’s richest nation and one of the globe’s largest oil exporters — and on the increasingly harsh efforts by the kingdom’s security forces to keep migrants out. Faisal Othman, a migrant from Ethiopia, told The New York Times that he was trying to cross the border with about 200 others last September when a projectile exploded near the group and shrapnel tore apart the women around him. “Most of them ended up as remains,” Mr. Othman, 31, said by phone on Sunday from the Yemeni capital, Sana. “They were shredded like crushed tomatoes.” His account was not included in the Human Rights Watch report, but was similar to many of the cases it documented. He said destitution pushed people to risk the trip. “They’re just poor people looking to make a living on bare feet, but they face rockets,” he said. For years, streams of migrants have fled Ethiopia because of poverty, drought and political repression and have headed for Djibouti, where smugglers transport them across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, the Arab world’s poorest country, which has been torn apart by years of war. In Yemen, the migrants are taken to territory near the Saudi border that is controlled by the Houthis, an Iran-backed militant group that seized Sana and much of the country’s northwest from the internationally recognized Yemeni government in 2014. The next year, Saudi Arabia and some of its Arab allies launched a bombing campaign to drive out the Houthis. But it didn’t work, and the war sank into a stalemate and fueled one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. Human Rights Watch based its report on dozens of interviews with migrants who have attempted the trip or with their associates; an analysis of hundreds of photos and videos shot by migrants; and an examination of satellite images of the border area. It describes Saudi border guards firing on groups of migrants with rifles and explosive munitions believed to be mortars or rockets, often killing large numbers of people. One 14-year-old girl cited in the report recalled seeing 30 people killed around her when Saudi guards opened fire on her group in February. The girl told the researchers that she had hidden under a rock and had fallen asleep, only to realize that other people she thought were sleeping around her were dead. Other migrants cited in the report said they had been abused by Saudi guards after being stopped near the border. Some were beaten, and others were shot in the limbs after the guards asked them where they would prefer to be shot, the report said. One 17-year-old boy told researchers that guards had forced him and another migrant to rape two girls in their group after killing another migrant who had refused to do so. The report estimates that the number of migrants killed between March 2022 and June 2023 is at least in the hundreds but says that the true toll could be in the thousands. While it focuses on abuses by the Saudi security forces, the report also accuses the Houthis of the widespread abuse of migrants by facilitating smuggling, extortion and detention, which together can constitute human trafficking and torture. Houthi forces work with smugglers to gather large numbers of migrants in two makeshift camps near the Saudi border, the report said. Some migrants pay bribes to be let in and are then abused once inside. From one of the camps, the migrants walk more than six miles through mountainous terrain to reach the border, where guards sometimes open fire. Since the start of Yemen’s war, the country has seen rampant human rights violations and scant efforts to hold perpetrators accountable. In their effort to beat back the Houthis, Saudi Arabia and its allies have carried out a bombing campaign that has hit weddings, funerals and a school bus full of children on a field trip, altogether killing an untold number of civilians. For their part, the Houthis have fired rockets at civilian targets in Saudi Arabia, deployed child soldiers and controlled the territory they hold with an iron fist, sometimes disappearing dissidents. The pace of the conflict has slowed since Saudi Arabia and Iran, which supports the Houthis, reestablished diplomatic relations this year and Saudi Arabia began peace talks with the Houthis. But talk of accountability for war crimes has been absent from the discussions. The last United Nations-backed body established to monitor human rights violations in Yemen stopped working in 2021, after Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates lobbied members of the United Nations Human Rights Council to end the body’s mandate. Although Monday’s report suggested that the Saudi border forces had become more harsh in targeting migrants, the violence is not new, and there have not been significant international efforts to stop it. Abdulaziz Yasin, a prominent member of the Ethiopian community in Sana, said the reports of migrants’ being attacked never stopped. “Every day, there are three, four or five migrants being killed,” he told The Times in a phone interview. “Sometimes, 10, 20 or 30 get killed at once. There are a lot of Africans being killed.” Still, he said, the community believes that it cannot count on any international agency to help. “We complain to the organizations to no avail,” he said. “How can anyone help us?” Ben Hubbard reported from Istanbul, and Shuaib Almosawa from New Delhi. Ben Hubbard is the Istanbul bureau chief. He has spent more than a dozen years in the Arab world, including Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Yemen. He is the author of “MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman.” More about Ben Hubbard A version of this article appears in print on Aug. 22, 2023, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Saudi Guards Killed African Migrants, a Rights Group Says. Copyright 2023 The New York Times Company

By Daria Sito-sucic Milorad Dodik, Serb member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina speaks during an interview in his office in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina November 11, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo SARAJEVO, Aug 11 (Reuters) - Bosnia has charged Serb nationalist leader Milorad Dodik with defying decisions by the international official overseeing peace in the country, the state prosecutor's office said on Friday. Any official in Bosnia who fails to implement a decision of the international High Representative or obstruct it in any way can be jailed for from six months to five years under rules brought in to prevent the country sliding back to war. Dodik has moved to separate the Serb-dominated region from Bosnia over the past two years and repeatedly criticised his political opponents and Western ambassadors to the country, where around 100,000 people died in a 1992-5 conflict. The Serb leader, who has close ties with Russia, last month signed two laws that the peace envoy, German ex-government minister Christian Schmidt, had revoked saying they defied Bosnia's constitution and the terms of the peace deal. One law suspended rulings by Bosnia's constitutional court and the second ended publication of the peace envoy's decrees and laws in the Serb Republic's official gazette. The state prosecutor said gazette director Milos Lukic was also charged. "The prosecution of Bosnia-Herzegovina indicted Milorad Dodik and Milos Lukic for the criminal act of failing to execute the decisions of the High Representative," the prosecutor's office said, adding that the charges had been sent to the state court for confirmation. Dodik, who is president of Bosnia's Serb Republic, has long advocated the secession of the Serb-dominated region from Bosnia, in which it coexists with a federation shared by Bosniaks and Croats under the country's 1995 U.S.-backed peace deal. His office rejected the indictement. "The Republika Srpska (RS) President is indicted because he has obeyed the explicit provisions of the RS constitution and did not allow anyone and anything to rise above the RS constitution and its institutions, particularly not the decree of an unelected foreigner without legitimacy," Dodik's office told the Serb news agency Srna. © 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved