ISIS-linked ADF inflicts genocidal massacres in DR Congo Washington Post By Katharine Houreld August 12, 2023 Mwenda, a small town at the foot of the Ruwenzori mountains in the Democratic Republic of Congo, has been attacked multiple times by the Allied Democratic Forces, an affiliate of the Islamic State. The militant group has killed many civilians and abducted a number of people, including children. (Brent Stirton/Getty Images) BENI, Democratic Republic of Congo — Deep in Congo’s forested ravines, a local affiliate of the Islamic State has been growing increasingly deadly — seizing children to swell its ranks, honing its bombmaking skills, and launching ferocious attacks on villages, churches and clinics — without attracting much international attention. The Allied Democratic Forces (ADF) has also widened its recruitment from elsewhere in Africa and the Middle East and has plugged itself into foreign financing networks that help fund its campaign of bombings, according to investigators from the United Nations and the U.S.-based Bridgeway Foundation. This year has been the group’s bloodiest yet. The ADF was founded decades ago in neighboring Uganda with the aim of overthrowing that country’s government, which eventually pushed the group’s fighters over the border into the forested mountains of the Democratic Republic of Congo. The group’s ambitions broadened after its founder was arrested in 2015 and a new leader, former religious judge Musa Baluku, took over. Desperate for funds, Baluku vowed allegiance to the Islamic State. The resulting influx of money began at a time when the group had almost stopped conducting attacks. Since then, the ADF has carried out a wave of bombings and attacks, killing thousands of civilians. In June, the ADF targeted a school near the Uganda-Congo border, leaving 41 dead. Most were children. They were burned alive. One Congolese boy who recently escaped from the ADF recounted its brutality. He was only 12 when fighters raided his town, Bulongo, hacked his mother and father to death in front of him, and then seized him and his brother. The boy, whose name is being withheld to prevent reprisals, said they were marched into the jungle, where commanders gave them military training. Children point to a mass grave containing 14 bodies in Boga, Congo. It lies next to a hostel that was attacked in 2021, one of several attacks by militants on the town and nearby areas that included massacres of civilians and burning of villages. (Alexis Huguet/AFP/Getty Images) “Their job was killing people,” he said flatly. The boy was among 11 escapees interviewed for this article, along with victims of the attacks, Congolese military officers, security officials and religious leaders, among others. Some of the escapees said that boys as young as 10 are trained as fighters and that girls mostly become sex slaves, either gang-raped or forcibly “married” to a commander. The boy said he had been forced to participate in an attack on another village and recalled watching as a Tanzanian bombmaker instructed other recruits on explosives. The Tanzanian, Ahmed Mohamood, also piloted drones used to surveil targets and monitor attacks. The boy strained to decipher a babel of tongues as foreign recruits crowded into the camp, named Medina for one of Islam’s most holy cities. While the commanders were mostly Ugandan, there were also several Somalis, Rwandans and Tanzanians, he said. Once, the boy said, Mohamood motioned him over and said softly: “Your mother is dead. If you try to run, you will also be killed.” But finally, abandoning his brother, he did. In recent years, the Islamic State’s international operations have become more fragmented. Its loss of its so-called caliphate in Syria and Iraq coincided with the strengthening of local affiliates in Afghanistan, the Sahel region of Africa and — far less publicly — central Africa. In 2017, the first documented cash transfers from the Islamic State to the ADF took place. Two years later, the Islamic State announced the debut of the Islamic State Central Africa Province affiliate, which included the ADF. The U.S. government imposed sanctions in 2021 on the ADF, calling it an Islamic State affiliate. The ADF’s decision to affiliate with the Islamic State initially faced internal dissent. A 16-year-old girl who had spent eight years with the ADF before escaping said Mohamood had arrived in Congo with a black flag and a demand: Swear allegiance or be attacked. The ADF’s founder, Jamil Mukulu, had always opposed the Islamic State, and his son, Moses, now spoke out against joining the group. Moses was beheaded by other ADF fighters, she said, and two other senior commanders who also opposed the Islamic State were beaten to death. Other interviewees confirmed her account. Error! Filename not specified. A woman shows scars from a machete attack by the Allied Democratic Forces in the village of Mbao, Congo, near Beni, in 2019. Eleven people were killed in the attack on the village and several young children kidnapped; she was left for dead. Her name has been withheld to avoid retaliation. (Katharine Houreld/The Washington Post) A U.N. panel of experts, for the first time, detailed links between the ADF and the Islamic State in June. Both the United Nations and Bridgeway mapped out how the ADF received funds from a South African cell that worked with a Sudanese Islamic State operative. That operative, known as Bilal al-Sudani, was killed in a U.S. military raid on a Somali cave complex earlier this year. Although its initial explosive devices were crude and ineffective, the ADF’s bombmaking capacity has been increasing. Last year, the group carried out its first suicide attacks, including an attack by a woman that killed eight people in a military bar. In January, the group bombed a church in Kasindi, a small town on the Congo-Uganda border, killing 16 people and wounding 62. The ADF’s influence has also been felt elsewhere in Africa. Dino Mahtani, a former U.N. sanctions monitor, has documented links between the ADF and the Islamist insurgency in Mozambique, which has shut down a multibillion-dollar gas project, killed thousands of civilians and displaced more than 800,000 people. Foreign fighters are still a small proportion of the group’s overall members, estimated by defectors to be in the hundreds. Bridgeway, which has interviewed 171 former ADF members who escaped or were captured, said 141 were Congolese or Ugandan. Most of the others were from six other African countries, but there were also fighters from Britain, Egypt and Jordan. In Bulongo, southeast of the regional capital of Beni, parents routinely split up their children in the evening and have them sleep in different homes to prevent entire families from being killed in ADF raids. The group has attacked Bulongo 17 times in the past 2½ years, killing more than 70 people and kidnapping 40, said a local activist. “Before, they were abducting everyone. But since 2021, if you are older than 15, they will kill you automatically,” he said. In the town of Mukondi, the ADF killed 38 people in March, including a 2-month-old baby. A month later, militants killed at least 21 civilians in Musandaba, on the outskirts of Beni. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for both attacks. When ADF militants first moved into Congo more than two decades ago, they often cultivated relations with villagers and fought alongside non-Muslim fighters. A 15-year-old, who escaped this year after eight years, said fighters previously stole crops but left some food for local people, occasionally even payment. But now, commanders order raiders to destroy gardens, slaughter animals and kill any villagers who do not join them, he said. “They said the infidels had to be erased; they’d say we had to behead the whole village,” said another escapee. Some parents have deliberately turned their children over to the group. A 16-year-old girl said she was delivered to the ADF by her father, who was loyal to the group, when she was 8, along with three siblings. One of the first sights she saw was a group of men beheaded for trying to escape. Her older brother became a fighter and was fatally shot during an attack, the girl recounted. Her younger sister was killed carrying out a food raid. And her little brother, only 2, became sick and died. The girl herself was married off to a fighter at age 13. “There was a lot of suffering. I thought of committing suicide,” she recounted, saying she stole a rope to hang herself. “I felt like I was dead already.” When the 12-year-old boy from Bulongo escaped, his grandmother welcomed him home. She’s crippled and caring for his seven younger siblings. No one goes to school, and often there’s no food. A local teacher keeps an eye on him. Occasionally he’ll take a machete and attack the banana grove. It’s the only time he cries. The boy said he feels lucky. The ADF often shows abductees social media videos of captured fighters being lynched. And escapees are sometimes rejected by their relatives and communities. Girls and women often come home pregnant or with babies fathered by their rapists to find that their husbands or families won’t take them in. An 18-year-old who was kidnapped last year and raped by ADF fighters holds the child she was pregnant with when she escaped. Many women who escape with children face rejection from their families. (Katharine Houreld/The Washington Post) A 23-year-old woman, who had been abducted, said that she was forcibly married to a Tanzanian fighter and that ADF commanders told her she was free to go — as long as she left her head. She escaped with a 1-year-old baby. Another young woman, 18, escaped while pregnant. Both were initially rejected when they returned home, they recalled. Bridgeway has brokered a deal for Uganda to take back its citizens as part of a long-running government amnesty program. Bridgeway has also set up committees composed of civil-society activists and religious and local leaders to receive escapees and help them reintegrate into their communities. The committees take them to the military for questioning, but those who were kidnapped or tricked into joining the ADF are eventually released; Bridgeway said only about 15 of those they interviewed had joined voluntarily. The teacher from Bulongo keeping an eye on the boy is part of her village’s committee. She has lost three children from her school to ADF raids. She said only one has returned home, a 10-year-old girl, who had been repeatedly gang-raped. The girl shivers and stares during the day and screams every time she falls asleep, her teacher said. Her two younger brothers are still ADF captives. washingtonpost.com © 1996-2023 The Washington Post

FLORIDA SETS UP FORMERLY INCARCERATED PEOPLE TO VOTE — THEN ARRESTS THEM Florida sets up formerly incarcerated people to vote, then arrests them Southern Poverty Law Center August 11, 2023 by Rhonda Sonnenberg In a country where wealth and friends in high places can go a long way in making legal problems disappear, John Boyd Rivers has neither of those advantages. He and his wife barely scrape by in Alachua County, Florida, raising eight children on his unreliable income as a mason. On May 16, Rivers, 45, stood before a Gainesville court and explained why he thought he had the right to vote in the 2020 presidential election after a representative of the county elections office helped him register and he received a Florida voter ID card. “I informed him that I was in [the Alachua County jail] on a violation of probation and he [elections official] told me that as long as I didn’t have a sex crime or murder charge, I would be eligible to get my rights restored,” Rivers told the jury. He was among 41 formerly incarcerated people, also known as returning citizens, who were arrested in 2022 and 2023 for voter fraud in Florida following the 2020 election. Nearly half took plea deals, fearful of facing the unknown of a jury trial and guilty verdict. To date, only Rivers and one other have been tried in court. He drew a split verdict: not guilty of knowingly registering to vote while ineligible but guilty of willful, fraudulent voting. Gov. Ron DeSantis and conservative lawmakers have launched continued attacks on voting rights that have made the state’s historically inequitable criminal justice and voting rights systems worse. Since DeSantis’ election in 2018, the Florida Legislature has passed the most sweeping voter suppression laws of any state. DeSantis has proposed additional voter suppression measures for 2024 and continues to ramp up spending for his Office of Election Crimes and Security – from $1.2 million in 2022-2023 to $2.2 million in 2023-2024. And he’s added $1 million in new spending for the establishment of a Statewide Voter Fraud and Assistance Hotline. “Instead of fulfilling its role to enable Floridians to vote, the state has made it more difficult, which is anti-democratic,” said Courtney O’Donnell, a senior staff attorney for voting rights with the Southern Poverty Law Center. These new laws criminalize voting – particularly by returning citizens – and the third-party voting organizations that assist Black people and other historically disenfranchised groups to register to vote due, in part, to their lack of access to ballot boxes. “Florida continues to attack returning citizens who simply want to exercise their right to vote as well as disregard the majority of Floridians who support that right,” O’Donnell said. “We are continuously monitoring these developments, and along with our community partners, we are fighting back to uphold voting rights in Florida.” Neil Volz, left, and Desmond Meade of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition during the organization’s Advocacy Day in 2020. (Credit: Brandi Hill) IMPOSSIBLE DEBT Florida leads the country by far in disenfranchising U.S. citizens. Nearly 1.2 million people cannot vote due to a felony conviction, according to the Sentencing Project. Considering that Black people are arrested at five times the rate of white people and in 2021 made up 48% of the state’s prison population while only 14% of the overall state population, it is unsurprising that one in eight Black Floridians of voting age were disenfranchised in 2022. That rate is nearly twice that of non-Black Floridians. At the time Rivers registered to vote, he knew nothing about the 2019 voter suppression law, SB 7066, that directly impacted him and the 40 other returning citizens who have faced charges. SB 7066 requires returning citizens not only to complete their sentences in full but also to pay all fines, fees and restitution to their victims. These court, interest and collection fees are compounded for delinquency of payment and can easily run into the thousands. Many returning citizens are simply unable to pay. At the time of his voting trial, Rivers had paid just $34 of his more than $6,700 in fines, fees and restitution. Rivers is on a two-year supervised probation, for which he must pay $20 each month on top of his court debt. He plans to appeal his conviction with the help of a public defender. If impossible debt weren’t obstacle enough, the state’s online system for returning citizens’ voter qualification lacks a central database of convictions and total debt owed, making it virtually impossible to figure out what an individual’s outstanding financial obligation is. The state acknowledges the system’s failures but does nothing to fix them. SB 7066 made a mockery of Amendment 4. The 2018 ballot measure that was approved by 65% of Florida voters gave returning citizens the right to vote unless they had committed murder or a sexual offense. It was a dream come true for returning citizens – until election crimes task force officers began going door to door with guns raised to arrest the very people Amendment 4 was intended to re-enfranchise. Rivers had been convicted of four felonies, two false statements and a probation violation over the course of 14 years. Like most returning citizens, he had completed his sentences in full and was “excited,” he said, at the prospect of voting in the 2020 election. The day he registered to vote from jail in Alachua County, Rivers glanced over an information pamphlet and a voter registration form. Both were printed in 2013, six years before SB 7066 was enacted. The state allowed county elections supervisors to use obsolete voter registration forms and pamphlets, ones never updated with the fines, fees and restitution obligation. Rivers signed the registration and assumed that the information he provided would be checked. By law, the state Division of Elections is required to perform a legal analysis to determine if a returning citizen is eligible to vote and send its conclusion to the elections supervisors of all 67 Florida counties. Only after the local official double-checks the information is a voting ID card supposed to be issued. Desmond Meade, founder and executive director of the Florida Rights Restoration Coalition, at the Free the Vote Fest march and early voting event in 2020. (Credit: Brandi Hill) The Florida Rights Restoration Coalition (FRRC), a nonpartisan nonprofit that has been helping returning citizens restore their right to vote, has been working with formerly incarcerated people on this situation. “We knew [the arrests] were a sign of things to come because all of them [returning citizens] received a voter registration card,” said Desmond Meade, founder of the FRRC. “We didn’t focus on the charges but on the fact that they never should have been issued a voter card. The election system is broken.” Nicholas Nunn, the FRRC senior counsel, agreed. “Instead of helping returning citizens understand their eligibility, Florida expanded the office of the statewide prosecutor to prosecute them,” Nunn said. In Rivers’ case, he told the court that the elections office representative he met with, Thomas “T.J.” Pyche, never mentioned SB 7066, and Pyche could not remember with absolute certainty whether he had. “He made an announcement several times [at the jail] … said they passed Amendment 4 and people with felonies could possibly vote if they were, if, you know, if they were approved to do so,” Rivers recalled. STATE INVESTIGATION On July 28, the FRRC filed the first major lawsuit challenging Florida’s implementation of SB 7066. The suit argues that Florida’s failure to provide an accessible, accurate system for determining voter eligibility – namely a returning citizen’s financial obligation – makes it “impossible to determine voting eligibility,” the basic requirement of SB 7066 and the state’s own representation of its obligation during a prior lawsuit against SB 7066. The new lawsuit also asserts that DeSantis’ threats to prosecute more returning citizens who relied on voter information cards to cast their ballots have effectively scared off people from voting in the future. As a result, the state has created an “undue burden” on the right to vote in violation of the U.S. Constitution. Nunn, calling Florida’s online voter verification system “a national embarrassment,” said “the state cannot make you guess as to your voting eligibility and then arrest you when you guess wrong.” Steve Cary, another legal counsel for the FRRC, said, “Voter fraud cases are the first of their kind [against] people who believed that Amendment 4 gave them their right to vote.” The FRRC wrote the first draft of Amendment 4. Voters represented in the lawsuit, Cary said, “are exhausted and confused. They’ve been through the wringer over something they didn’t even know was wrong.” In Rivers’ case, he did not learn the truth until nearly a year after he voted. The revelation came after the Florida Department of Law Enforcement in 2022 launched a criminal investigation of the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections office, run by Democrats, over its efforts to sign up people in jail to vote. An investigator later described “the mass registering of inmates to vote without any inquiry into the person’s prior criminal history, proof of identity, satisfaction of prior legal financial obligations, restoration of voting rights, the charges they were being held on (or) their knowledge level and understanding of the state’s voting system and requirements.” The local prosecutor, a Republican, cleared officials in the elections office of wrongdoing but filed felony voter fraud charges against 10 people who had been incarcerated in the jail. ‘CAME TO HIS HOUSE WITH GUNS’ In an interview with the SPLC, criminal defense attorney Robert Barrar described Florida’s voter fraud prosecutions as “a colossal waste of taxpayer dollars.” Barrar successfully defended returning citizen Ronald Miller in Miami-Dade County and is defending him against the state’s appeal. “The county prosecutor didn’t take the [Miller] case,” Barrar said. “It was the state prosecutor under the Florida attorney general, so this is all political theater.” Miller, who had been convicted of murder in 1998, served his sentence and was solicited to register to vote by a Democratic voter outreach operative outside a Miami grocery store. He signed his name and filled out his address on a voter registration form given to him by the operative, who filled out the rest. Like the others, Miller received a voter ID and assumed he could vote in the 2020 presidential election, although in his case, his murder conviction made him ineligible. “The FDLE agents came to his house with guns, and he comes out of his house in his boxers and is arrested,” Barrar said. “When I read about the arrests, it appalled me, so I decided to represent him pro bono. … The charging document says that the voter has to have specific intent to commit fraud, and I didn’t see it. There can be no fraud when someone is issued a voter registration card and votes thereafter, believing they had the right to.” LEGACY OF JIM CROW Following the Civil War, Florida officially disenfranchised Black Floridians with felony convictions in 1868, when it wrote a new state constitution that prohibited persons convicted of a list of felonies to vote. In the following decades, as Reconstruction ended and Jim Crow spread across the former Confederate states, similar laws kept Black people segregated and powerless until passage of new civil rights and voting laws in the 1960s. In recent years, conservative lawmakers in numerous Southern states have tried to turn back the clock by passing restrictive laws that effectively block many citizens in historically disadvantaged communities from the polls. In Georgia, the Election Integrity Act of 2021, SB 202, criminalized a broad range of voter-assistance activities by individuals and organizations. In Alabama, returning citizens must pay their fines, fees and victim restitution and apply for a certificate that shows that their right to vote has been restored. Under the 2017 Definition of Moral Turpitude Act, HB 282, if they have been convicted of certain crimes, they face a higher bar for rights restoration. In Mississippi, lawmakers this year passed the voter-purging law HB 1310. They also passed SB 2358, a law that criminalized voter assistance in the return of absentee ballots. A federal judge in July blocked SB 2358 as a violation of the Voting Rights Act after the SPLC, ACLU, ACLU Mississippi and the Mississippi Center for Justice sought a preliminary injunction against it. On Aug. 4, the SPLC also won a major voting rights victory when a judge ruled that the 1890 Mississippi Constitution’s lifetime voting ban for returning citizens convicted of certain felonies violates the Eighth Amendment. THE JELLY BEAN TEST Yet Florida stands out for its recent efforts to suppress voting. In addition to SB 7066, the state passed SB 90 in 2021 and SB 7050 this past May. Together, they placed new voting barriers that disparately affect people of color and the third-party voter registration organizations that assist them. Because Black people register to vote with these organizations at five times the rate of white people, the severe strictures SB 7050 places on them threaten not only the very existence of these groups, which may number as many as 2,000, but the significant number of Floridians they register and assist to vote in elections. Faith in Florida is one of those groups. It provides voter education, registration and voting assistance in 25 of Florida’s 67 counties, with an emphasis on reaching Black and Brown communities in rural areas. The group registered 5,000 people to vote in 2022. “We have to be extremely careful now in how we collect voter registrations and turn them in,” said LaVon Bracy, Faith in Florida’s democracy director. “A $250,000 fine in one calendar year?” she asked, referring to the jump from the maximum $50,000 in fines that can be levied in one year. “Nonprofits don’t have that kind of money.” Under the new law, groups like hers can be fined $50,000 for each person who is found to be ineligible to collect voter applications. They will also be required to give a state “receipt” to every person they register. The receipt must include their name and the name of the group that registers them. The group sends the receipt to the state, which is then supposed to investigate the eligibility of the applicant. “We’ve gone back to Jim Crow,” Bracy said. “We don’t have to count jelly beans to get Black folks not to vote. They’ve gotten smarter with their tactics, but the object is the same, voter suppression.” Copyright 2023 Southern Poverty Law Center How many jelly beans in this jar?: Voter suppression throughout history WPSD Local Chris Yu Oct 30, 2020 Voting only takes minutes. But for many, the right to vote took decades of sacrifices. As we look forward to Election Day next Tuesday, we look back on the challenges people of color went through to cast their ballots. One tactic that was used to prevent Black people from voting during the Jim Crow era was the so-called jelly bean test. Some registrars would ask prospective Black voters to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. A local woman said her great aunt experienced the test. In July, former President Barack Obama mentioned the jelly bean test in his eulogy at the late Georgia Congressman John Lewis' funeral, while also bringing up voter suppression tactics that exists today. "We may no longer have to guess the number of jelly beans in a jar in order to cast a ballot," said Obama. "But even as we sit here, there are those in power are doing their darnedest to discourage people from voting — by closing polling locations, and targeting minorities and students with restrictive ID laws, and attacking our voting rights with surgical precision, even undermining the Postal Service in the run-up to an election that is going to be dependent on mailed-in ballots so people don't get sick." Olga Koulisis, an assistant history professor at Murray State University, said voter suppression against minorities were taking place even after the adoption of the 15th Amendment in 1870, which gave Black men the right to vote. "Though the 15th Amendment prevented voting discrimination based on 'race, color, or previous condition of servitude,' that didn't prevent violent voter intimidation as local whites often policed the behavior of racial minorities within their communities," Koulisis wrote in an email. William Mulligan, a professor of history emeritus at Murray State, gave an example. "It was not uncommon in the late 19th, early part of the 20th century, for armed white men to go to the polls to try to keep African Americans from voting," said Mulligan. "And they often would have signs, 'Coon Hunting Club,' obviously using the racial slur. So when we see today armed people parading around and talking about going to the polls and carrying their weapons into the polls, that's a terrifying reminder of the use of violence to intimidate minorities, especially African Americans, from voting." Koulisis said voter suppression continued when numerous southern states instituted literacy tests and poll taxes, while offering exemptions for illiterate poor white people via grandfather clauses. "An important part for your viewers to understand about these voter suppression laws was that they were typically coded in non-racial terms (literacy tests, state's right to determine voting requirements, civic exams, poll taxes), but resulted in clear racial distinctions. Following the laws on the books meant creating a system in which whites could vote and many people of color could not," said Koulisis. "I think it's also important for us to note that states were able to use literacy tests and poll taxes to successfully suppress minority votes because people of color experienced inequalities in education and economic opportunities. Political suppression was tied to systemic educational and economic inequalities." Brent Taylor, an associate professor of history at West Kentucky Community and Technical College, provided a copy of a poll tax receipt from 1895, which showed a total of $2.50. Taylor said during that time, many poor people made only about $300 to $400 a year, so the poll tax represented a significant fee. As for the literacy tests, Taylor said questions were mostly about history, civics, and specific clauses in the Constitution, making them difficult for the average person. Below is an example of a question from a literacy test in Alabama: "If a bill is passed by Congress and the President refuses to sign it and does not sent it back to Congress in session within the specified period of time, is the bill defeated or does it become law?" Alonzo Davis, an artist who lives in the Washington, D.C., area but operates the Artist-in-Residence Studio in Paducah, recalled the literacy test that his father faced when trying to register to vote in Tuskegee, Alabama, in the 1940s. "People of color were required to pay a poll tax and also to take an exam. I remember as a kid, (my father) coming back, saying, 'Can you believe this?' On the exam, actually asked, 'How many windows in the White House?' So that's a historical note that I've always remembered and has been part of my effort to always be engaged in the voting process," recalled Davis. Davis said because he was a child at the time, he did not comprehend how unfair the question was. "I always thought like it was a joke, and you treated it as if it was something ridiculous," Davis said. "And of course, I didn't really appreciate the true meaning of it until I became a teenager and an adult." Koulisis said although the 24th Amendment, which was adopted in 1964, got rid of poll taxes in federal elections and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 expanded the political participation of minorities, literacy tests continued in several states until amendments were added to the Voting Rights Act in 1970. To achieve such voting rights, Mulligan noted that many people made immense sacrifices. "If people realize that this wasn't just given. Women didn't just one day say, 'We would like to vote,' and men said, 'Well, of course.' It was a long struggle," said Mulligan. "Women were jailed. Women were beaten. It was a struggle, in very sense of the word, to get the right to vote. African Americans beginning to assert the right to vote in the 1950s. People were murdered. We just lost John Lewis, the great civil rights leader, who was clubbed and beaten, basically left for dead for a civil rights march. Police dogs and fire hoses turning loose on people demonstrating for their rights." "So to be the recipient of the benefits that those people fought so hard to gain for all of us," Mulligan continued. "And we need to remember that expanding rights to include women benefited men. Extending rights to African Americans benefited white and all Americans. We all benefit when more people are included in this system and given full rights and full freedom." Meanwhile, Davis still recalls the first time he voted - in the early 1960s in Los Angeles. "It was sort of like a manhood activity, sort of like being able to drive for your first time," he said "You're an adult now and you have a responsibility to be a participating citizen." Copyright 2020 WPSD Local

https://newlinesinstitute.org/genocide/the-russian-federations-escalating-commission-of-genocide-in-ukraine-a-legal-analysis/ UkraineAlert August 10, 2023 New report highlights evidence of escalating Russian genocide in Ukraine By Kristina Hook The brutality of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has shocked many, even as Ukrainians and regional experts have noted that today’s war crimes fit broader patterns of Russian aggression against Ukrainians stretching back centuries. As evidence of atrocities continues to accumulate, the international legal community is closely monitoring the situation. In May 2022, the New Lines Institute and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights issued an independent legal inquiry that found the Russian Federation in breach of the United Nations Genocide Convention’s prohibition on direct and public incitement to genocide. The report identified a serious risk of genocide. In other words, the first few months of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine provided ample evidence to trigger the central duty of the United Nations Genocide Convention, namely to prevent genocide in Ukraine. The UN Genocide Convention legally obligates its 152 signatories, including Russia, to act as soon as they become aware (or should have become aware) of genocide risks. All forms of violence should be condemned everywhere, but genocides have been declared the “crime of crimes” in international law, as they target a community’s most basic right to exist. The horrors of genocidal violence sometimes obscure a crucial point in analyses of Russia’s egregious actions against Ukrainians. While the Genocide Convention forbids genocidal violence itself (“the commission of genocide”), it also prohibits four other related actions: Conspiracy to commit genocide, attempts to commit genocide, complicity in genocide, and direct and public incitement to genocide (Article III). The inciting language of Russian state actors has long met the “direct and public” standard and is a crime with no statute of limitations. I am the principal author of a new report by the New Lines Institute and Raoul Wallenberg Centre for Human Rights, an updated legal analysis into the evidence of Russia’s breaches of the UN Genocide Convention in Ukraine. This report features nearly sixty pages of verifiable, open-source information. To begin, we reviewed Russian state actors’ direct and public incitement to genocide since they were formally put on notice regarding these breaches of the Genocide Convention in May 2022. Organizing verifiable examples through an expert framework on the five “D’s” of incitement (demonization, delegitimization, dehumanization, denial, and disinformation), we found durable genocidal incitement across all levels of Russian state authority. Over the past year, direct and public incitement to genocide by Russian state actors neither decreased in tone or in volume. In fact, we demonstrate that this specific breach of the Genocide Convention escalated. New dehumanizing tropes, such as “de-Satanizing” Ukrainians, have even been introduced through powerful, state-endorsed platforms. In legal language, there are reasonable grounds to believe that Russia is responsible for direct and public incitement to genocide against Ukrainians. This inciting language is horrifying on its own, as it calls for the erasure and destruction of Ukrainians through graphic slurs and threats. However, Russia’s actions in Ukraine have mirrored the violence of the rhetoric coming out of Moscow. Over the past year, we have identified evidence of a surge in systematic and coordinated genocidal tactics against Ukrainians. Our legal analysis found reasonable grounds to believe that Russia is responsible for the commission of genocide. This position is supported both by actions prohibited in the Genocide Convention and an underlying pattern of atrocities indicating that Russia aims to destroy the Ukrainian national group in part. While Russia’s direct orchestration and participation in actions prohibited under the Genocide Convention are undeniable, such as the forcible transfer of Ukrainian children, our report breaks new ground by linking these actions of genocide with evidence of its mental element, the motive to destroy a national group in whole or in part. We invite others to engage with the sheer volume of evidence captured in our report and avoid allowing Russia’s daily atrocities to cloud our vision. When Russian state actors’ words and actions are analyzed systematically and across the timeline of the full-scale invasion, abundant evidence indicates that Russia’s genocidal tactics are escalating. The Genocide Convention compels the international community to proactively meet the challenges posed by Russia’s clear and evolving genocidal tactics, halting this genocide in motion. In addition, our report reveals singular aspects of Russia’s genocide, including documented evidence of all five acts prohibited in the Genocide Convention’s Article II: Killing, serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about the victims’ physical destruction, measures to prevent births, and the forcible transfer of children. The Genocide Convention does not require evidence of all five prohibited acts to meet the legal standard. Russia’s violation of all five acts of genocide is therefore particularly heinous and adds to the overall portrait of their escalating attempts to commit genocide in Ukraine. Looking ahead, many atrocity prevention policy and legal precedents will be set by the international community’s response to Russia’s escalating genocide in Ukraine. Genocide reports can make for harrowing reading, but nothing can compare to the horrors Ukrainians face each day. We hope our report will galvanize both policy and public action to advocate for the millions of Ukrainians whose lives have been forever changed by Russia’s genocide, and whose safety is not yet secured. Kristina Hook is assistant professor of conflict management at Kennesaw State University and a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. She is the lead author of the expert report The Russian Federation’s Escalating Commission of Genocide in Ukraine: A Legal Analysis.

ECOWAS chair Bola Tinubu says the regional bloc would exhaust all avenues of engagement to ensure a swift return to constitutional governance in Niger. Nigeria's Bola Tinubu addresses West African leaders at extraordinary summit on Niger, in Abuja, Nigeria, August 10, 2023 [Screen grab/AFP] 10 Aug 2023 West African heads of state on Thursday began an emergency summit in Nigeria to discuss a new response to last month’s military takeover in Niger after the coup leaders defied their earlier threat to use force to restore democracy. In an opening speech to heads of state of the 15-member Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Nigerian President Bola Tinubu said the bloc would be assessing solutions to the situation as the coup “poses a threat … to the entire West African region”. “It is our duty to exhaust all avenues of engagement to ensure a swift return to constitutional governance in Niger,” Tinubu who is also head of ECOWAS, said at the summit in Abuja before a closed-door session began. Since the July 26 overthrow of the democratic leadership, the coup plotters have refused to relinquish power and release detained President Mohamed Bazoum, ignoring an August 6 deadline from ECOWAS to reinstate Bazoum. The meeting is happening hours after Niger’s coup leaders named a new government. Mahamane Roufai Laouali, cited as “secretary general of the government”, named 21 ministers on state television overnight without specifying any further government plans. It is unclear if there were any representatives from Burkina Faso, Guinea and Niger, whose military heads of state have sided with Niger, at the summit. However, the presidents of Mauritania – a founding ECOWAS member which withdrew from the bloc in December 2000 – and Burundi were in attendance, according to Al Jazeera’s Ahmed Idris, reporting from Abuja. Idris said a source close to one of the mediation missions sent to Niger told Al Jazeera that the coup leaders want sanctions eased to aid the flow of medicine and food supplies and restoration of electricity. But it remains unclear if ECOWAS will accede to any such demands as the bloc continues to seek Bazoum’s reinstatement. “If the coup is allowed to succeed, it could dent the image of ECOWAS and make it look weak … and that could pose a serious threat to democracy, something that leaders here are eager to avoid,” Idris said. Bazoum’s party has said the detained leader and his family are being at the presidential residence without electricity or running water and had gone days without fresh food. This led to United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres calling for “his immediate, unconditional release and his reinstatement as Head of State,” a UN spokesperson said on Wednesday. ‘A lot is at stake’ The meeting in the Nigerian capital, Abuja, could prove a pivotal moment in the standoff. The bloc’s leaders are expected to agree on next steps, which could include military intervention – something an ECOWAS official has said would be a last resort. Sadeeq Garba Shehu, a security analyst and adjunct professor at the Marshall European Centre for Security Studies, said the ball was in ECOWAS’s court after the coup leaders “called the bluff” on the bloc’s seven-day deadline. “It’s a very decisive moment for ECOWAS and its leaders,” he told Al Jazeera from Abuja. Pressing ahead with the option of the use of force “is a position that is fraught with dangers and uncertainties”, Shehu said. “First, will there be acceptance by all the members to put their money where their mouth is? How many of the ECOWAS members are ready to do that? How many are ready to finance that?” Shehu added, noting that West African leaders had to also consider domestic pressures from their countries’ own populations. But ECOWAS could still stick to its decision to see a democratic government in place in Niamey, Idris warned. “A lot is at stake because the way things are, people are really concerned about the spate of coups in West Africa, five in less than three years … in Burkina Faso and Mali, democratic timelines have been shifted several times and now we have Niger,” he said. “The situation in those countries has emboldened the coup leaders in Niger … and could encourage ambitious soldiers [elsewhere] to take up arms and depose democratic governments.” ‘Time for public diplomacy’ On Wednesday, former Nigerian central bank Governor Sanusi Lamido Sanusi met coup leaders in the Nigerien capital, Niamey, offering a glimmer of hope for dialogue after previous ECOWAS missions were spurned. And after a meeting with Nigerian President and ECOWAS Chair Bola Tinubu, Sanusi told Nigerian press in Abuja that “interventions are ongoing and will continue”. “This is a time for public diplomacy. It’s not a matter that we leave to governments. All Nigerians, all Nigeriens need to be involved to find a solution that works for Africa, for Niger, for Nigeria and for humanity,” he said. A former emir of the northern Nigerian city of Kano, Sanusi is also a leader of the Nigerian order of the Tijaniyyah, a Sufi Muslim sect with origins in Algeria but with a large following across West Africa, including Niger. He did not respond to Al Jazeera’s requests for comment on the mission to Niamey. Any escalation would further destabilise West Africa’s Sahel region, one of the world’s poorest, where long-running violence from armed groups has displaced millions and stoked a hunger crisis. Niger had recently fared better than its neighbours Mali and Burkina Faso in stemming the violence. It also became an increasingly important Western ally for fighting armed groups after coups in the other two countries between 2020 and 2022, led to strained relations with traditional partners. ECOWAS, the UN and Western countries have been putting pressure on the coup leaders to stand down, while military governments in neighbouring Mali and Burkina Faso have said any military intervention in Niger would be seen as a declaration of war on them. In Burkina Faso’s capital Ouagadougou, resident Issouf Ouedraogo felt it made no sense for his country’s new leaders to support the Niger coup because the contexts were different. “Burkina was in a situation of degradation and acute insecurity,” he said in reference to the frustrations that stoked two coups there last year. “Niger, on the other hand, was in a stable situation,” he noted. SOURCE: AL JAZEERA AND NEWS AGENCIES

By Loni Prinsloo and Katarina Hoije A crane stands above a building under construction in the Point E district in Dakar, Senegal, on Saturday, July 29, 2017. Photographer: Xaume Olleros/Bloomberg For years, governments around the world have assailed social media for their role in the spread of disinformation, inciting violence and provoking uprisings. In June, French President Emmanuel Macron blamed Snapchat and TikTok for spreading footage of police fatally shooting a teenager and inflaming protests. US lawmakers have faulted platforms including Twitter and Parler for contributing to the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riots. And earlier this week — in one of the more extreme responses by a government yet — Senegal imposed a temporary ban on TikTok on all wireless phone networks. And it didn’t stop there. It blocked access to the entire Internet on mobile devices. For five days, possibly longer. Senegal’s chief communications minister, Moussa Bocar Thiam, said at the time that the shutdown was intended to prevent the spread of “hateful and subversive messages” by individuals who “threaten to destabilize the country.’’ At least 40 people have been killed in protests across the country since a government opposition leader, Ousmane Sonko, was arrested and convicted of morally corrupting a youth. The government’s move to shut off Internet in response to the protests has taken a heavy toll. Homes have lost power. People have lost access to the mobile systems they depend on to pay for basic needs such as food and water. Those who relied on social media to avoid protests on their streets are now finding themselves in the middle of them. “Access to information in times of crisis, conflict, and political turmoil is often a matter of life and death,” said Bridget Andere, a senior policy advisor at Access Now, a non-profit organization advocating for people’s digital rights. “Aside from the fact that shutdowns are a violation of fundamental rights, they disrupt people’s livelihoods and sources of income, negatively impact national economies, and enable those in power to commit human rights abuses against people with impunity.” In many African nations, smartphones are the only access to the Internet that some people have. And social media apps — TikTok in particular as it’s overtaking Twitter and Facebook in popularity — have become a lifeline for news and information. Senegal is no exception. There, people rely on Internet access on their phones to pay for essential services and, especially now, to stay informed of unrest that’s intensifying ahead of a Feb. 25 presidential election in which President Macky Sall is due to step down after two terms. Sonko, widely seen as the main challenger to whomever Sall’s ruling coalition picks as its candidate, may be disqualified from the race following his June 1 sentencing. The opposition leader, who has attracted a large following among young voters in a country where 60% of people are below the age of 25, was accused and acquitted of raping and threatening a massage-parlor employee but found guilty of "corruption of youth.” Ibrahim Diop, a 27-year-old radio show host who lives in Senegal’s capital, Dakar, said he’s lost electricity in his home because, without Internet on his phone, he couldn’t top off his account with a local utility. He had also been using his mobile TikTok app to navigate around protests — an attempt that’s proven futile without social media. In Diop’s view, Senegalese authorities are more concerned about the world seeing people rise up against the government than they are about keeping people safe. “A woman was filming from her balcony, and when the police noticed her, they fired teargas at her,’’ he said. ``It’s clear they don’t like when people film.’’ As hard as it’s tried to establish itself as a source of entertainment — a place for fun, lighthearted videos, TikTok has become an influential and often-times controversial platform caught in the crosshairs of social and political movements. At the center of Senegal’s shutdown efforts are videos circulating on TikTok of protests erupting over high unemployment, a clampdown on civil rights and the arrests of opposition leaders. One video appears to show military police shielding themselves with a child. Others appear to show officers firing on protesters. For its part, the government has suggested the videos may have been taken out of context. TikTok didn't respond to multiple requests for comment. Senegal’s move to block Internet access is certainly not without precedent. The Ethiopian government has restricted access to some websites and the internet for years amid unrest in the Tigray region. On the eve of Uganda’s presidential election in 2021, after Facebook took down a number of pro-government accounts, internet was suspended. Iran cut off web access in 2019 after soaring fuel prices sparked deadly demonstrations. Governments have grown increasingly concerned about social media provoking uprisings after Twitter, now known as X, was widely cited as playing a role in the toppling of leaders from Tunisia to Egypt during the Arab Spring. In the week before Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak’s resignation in 2011, the number of posts on Twitter about political change in Egypt surged from 2,300 a day to 230,000, according to one study by the University of Washington. Last year, government-enforced internet blackouts led to $261 million in economic losses across sub-Saharan Africa, which includes Senegal, affecting 132.2 million internet users in the region, according to Top10VPN, a London-based review site that tracks industry data. The Senegalese government says the cost of a shutdown is minimal compared with the human toll from violent protests. It has repeatedly deplored both material losses and deaths stemming from the riots and announced plans to create a police unit charged with protecting public property. On a recent day, Maimouna Sow, a merchandise buyer in Senegal, went to the market to shop for products for her clients. It wasn’t until she tried to reach a customer to ask about a purchase that she realized she couldn’t connect to the messaging application WhatsApp on her phone. “I was standing there in the middle of the market, and I couldn’t reach them,’’ she said. “I tried calling and then texting. It was so frustrating.” Paying bills, buying groceries and filling up on gas are all things Sow said she’s grown accustomed to doing through mobile apps. Now people in her area are rushing to ATMs to withdraw as much cash as they can, she said, but “that’s bound to become a problem soon.” An executive at a telecom firm that operates in Senegal, who asked not to be identified because the talks aren’t public, said the government has ordered companies to shut internet service and TikTok from 8 a.m. to 2 a.m. local time, indefinitely. The executive said telecom operators have been asking Senegal's communications ministry for clarity on when the order will be lifted. The owner of a financial technology company in Dakar, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation, said the shutoff has disrupted his business and is sending the message to technology entrepreneurs in the city that they aren’t a priority. The online payment software firm Wave Mobile Money has also been affected by the shutdown — but has developed ways in which clients can still use the application through other means, Falilou Cisse, a spokesperson for the Africa-focused company with headquarters in Dakar said by phone. That said, Cisse noted: “Our app works best when it’s used with a mobile phone network.” ©2023 Bloomberg

Exclusive: Survivors and witnesses bring case to human rights council over 2021 attack killing eight people By Patrick Wintour The UN human rights council case is the first over Turkish airstrikes against the Yazidi people. Photograph: Fabrice Coffrini/AFP/Getty Images Turkish airstrikes that allegedly targeted a civilian hospital and killed eight people in Iraq have been made the subject of a formal complaint to the UN human rights council. It is the first case to be brought on the issue of Turkish airstrikes against the Yazidi people. The attack on 17 August 2021 destroyed the Sikeniye medical clinic in Sinjar and left more than 20 people injured. The four claimants, either survivors or witnesses to the airstrikes, say they violated their right to life under international law, as guaranteed by article 6 of the international covenant on civil and political rights. Further, the claimants allege that Turkey failed to investigate the killing of civilians resulting from the airstrikes and provide victims with effective remedies, constituting a violation of their rights to a prompt, independent and effective investigation under the same covenant. The complaint was submitted late last week and took two years to prepare. Turkey characterised the airstrikes at the time as an attempt to control the armed wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ party (PKK) as well as the Sinjar Resistance (YBS), a Yazidi self-defence force. The YBS denies Turkish claims that it is linked to the secular PKK. The claim to the UN states that the hospital was near a YBS checkpoint but no armed units directly protected the facility, which was built in a civilian area. The claimants say all eight of those killed were hospital staff members. It is claimed that since 2017 about 80 Yazidis have been the victims of “collateral damage” from Turkish airstrikes against PKK targets in Iraq, where many fighters have found refuge. The legal claim asserts that Sikeniye was a purely civilian hospital run by the Sinjar council, with 10 beds and about 20 occupants. One of the complainants, a hospital staff member identified only as C1 in the claim, gave an eyewitness account of the attack, saying he had not recovered from the mental and physical consequences. A third witness, a relative of a victim of the strikes, said there were no PKK members at the site. On 18 August 2021, the Turkish ministry of defence claimed to have neutralised 10 PKK terrorists in an air operation. Earlier that week, a Turkish airstrike targeted a vehicle in the centre of Sinjar, killing a commander and a YBS fighter and injuring three people. The claim has been bought on behalf of four Yazidis by the Accountability Unit, a human rights NGO, and Women for Justice, a Yazidi NGO based in Germany that is being supported by human rights lawyers in the UK. Aarif Abraham, the director of the Accountability Unit, said: “This is a critically important and symbolic case involving clearcut violations of the fundamental rights of Yazidi citizens by the Turkish state. There is no lawful excuse for targeting a civilian hospital with three successive airstrikes in 30 minutes, killing eight civilians and seriously injuring over 20 others. “Turkey has long enjoyed impunity and the international community’s silence for targeting non-Turkish nationals outside its territories on the pretence of targeting terrorists. The human rights committee is the only body which holds the realistic prospect of holding Turkey accountable and providing the victims with meaningful redress.” Dr Leyla Ferman, the chief executive of Women for Justice, said: “After the victory over Islamic State in Sinjar, the Turkish airstrikes pose the greatest security risk. The Yazidis were shocked that Turkey did not stop at a hospital.” She said the case was a chance to show that the security of the Yazidis was a concern of the UN. The continued security tensions have slowed the return of Yazidis in exile, after a genocide perpetrated against them by IS in 2014. In Sinjar and refugee camps in northern Iraq, the tens of thousands of displaced Yazidis blame the absence of a clear governing authority for the failure to ensure their safety and bring public services back to the province. The complaints procedure against a state party is largely in written form, and can require the state party to provide compensation and guarantees of non-repetition. The UK government has urged Turkey and the Kurds in Iraq to settle their differences but has not directly condemned the airstrikes by Turkey. © 2023 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

By Celine Alkhaldi and Nadeen Ebrahim. Women walk on the streets of Tehran as the country's morality police resume hijab patrols in Iran on July 18. © Fatemeh Bahrami / Anadolu Agency / Getty Images. CNN — Just weeks ahead of the one-year anniversary of the mass protests sparked by the death of Mahsa Amini, Iranian authorities are considering a draconian new bill on hijab-wearing that experts say would enshrine unprecedentedly harsh punitive measures into law. The 70-article draft law sets out a range of proposals, including much longer prison terms for women who refuse to wear the veil, stiff new penalties for celebrities and businesses who flout the rules, and the use of artificial intelligence to identify women in breach of the dress code. Experts said the bill, which has not yet been passed, was a warning to Iranians that the regime would not back down from its stance on the hijab despite the mass demonstrations that rocked the country last year. The bill was submitted by the judiciary to the government for consideration earlier this year, then forwarded to the parliament and subsequently approved by the Legal and Judicial Commission. It is set to be submitted to the Board of Governors this Sunday before it is introduced on the floor of parliament, state-aligned news agency Mehr reported Tuesday. Iran’s parliament would work on finalizing the text and voting on the bill “in the next two months,” Mehr said. It is “a clear response to the protests from September of last fall,” Sanam Vakil, director of the Middle East and North Africa program at the Chatham House think-tank in London, told CNN, adding that the establishment was attempting to “reassert authority over veiling and the requirements expected of women.” Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman, died last September after being detained by the regime’s infamous morality police and taken to a “re-education center,” allegedly for not abiding by the country’s conservative dress code. While not officially disbanded, the morality police had largely pulled back following last year’s protests, which have gradually waned. But earlier this month, police spokesman General Saeed Montazerolmahdi said the morality police would resume notifying and then detaining women who are caught without the Islamic headscarf in public. Extreme punitive measures The hijab has long been a point of contention in Iran. It was barred in 1936 during leader Reza Shah’s emancipation of women, until his successor lifted the ban in 1941. In 1983 the hijab became mandatory after the last shah was overthrown in the Islamic Revolution of 1979. Iran has traditionally considered Article 368 of its Islamic penal code as the hijab law, which states that those in breach of the dress code face between 10 days to two months in prison, or a fine between 50,000 to 500,000 Iranian rials, what is today between $1.18 to $11.82. The new bill would reclassify failure to wear the hijab as a more severe offense, punishable by a five-to-ten-year prison sentence as well as a higher fine of up to 360 million Iranian rials ($8,508). That fine is far beyond what the average Iranian could pay, as millions are below the poverty line, Hossein Raeesi, an Iranian human rights lawyer and adjunct professor at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada, told CNN. Another section states that in order to enforce the new law, Iranian police must “create and strengthen AI systems to identify perpetrators of illegal behavior using tools such as fixed and mobile cameras.” Earlier this year, state media reported that cameras would be installed in public places to identify women who violate the country’s hijab law. Under the new law, business owners who do not enforce the hijab requirement will face steeper fines, potentially amounting to three months’ of their business profit, and face bans on leaving the country or participating in public or cyberactivity for up to two years. The bill also targets celebrities, who may face a fine of up to a tenth of their wealth, exclusion from employment or professional activities for a specified period of time, as well as a ban on international travel and social media activities. The draft law would also mandate broader gender segregation in universities – common hotbeds of civilian protests – and other public spaces. Article 49 of the bill defines the lack of hijab for women as “clothes that show a part of the body below the neck or above the ankles or above the forearms.” Clothes that are “revealing or tight” also violate the law. Some of the measures in the draft law have already been “unlawfully” exercised by the Iranian security forces, Raeesi said, including the recent closure of an insurance company in Tehran after some photos of female employees without the hijab circulated on social media. With this bill, the government would “legalize illegal behavior” by those forces, Raeesi said. Experts believe the legislation, or parts of it, is likely to pass in some form – most members of parliament are regime-aligned and unlikely to block it – though Raeesi said it was possible that the government could pull the bill if it is able to control any potential unrest around the Mahsa Amini anniversary. If the bill is passed by parliament, it must also be approved by the regime’s Guardian Council, Raeesi told CNN. A 12-member council with considerable power in Iran, the Guardian Council is charged with making sure that legislation passed falls in line with the values of Islam and the Iranian constitution. Any bill passed by the parliament must be reviewed and approved by the council to become law. In the meantime, experts said the bill sent a clear message to Iranians. “The system is trying to make clear that leniency won’t be tolerated, and that there is a clear, graduated system of punishment for individuals that are going to flout the dress law in the country,” Vakil said. © 2023 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved.

Syria gives green light to UN to keep two crossings from Turkey to rebel-held northwest open for aid. Trucks loaded with United Nations humanitarian aid for Syria following a devastating earthquake are parked at Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Turkey, in Syria's Idlib province, on Feb. 10, 2023. On Tuesday, July 11, 2023, the UN Security Council failed to renew the Bab al-Hawa border crossing into opposition-held northwestern Syria from Turkey. © AP Photo / Ghaith Alsayed, File. BY EDITH M. LEDERER UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Syria has agreed to keep two crossings open from Turkey to its rebel-held northwest for the delivery of aid for another three months, the United Nations announced Tuesday. The U.N. “greatly welcomes” the Syrian government’s decision to keep the Bab al-Salameh and al-Rai border crossings open until Nov. 13, U.N. deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said. But the most convenient crossing to the area, Bab al-Hawa, remains closed, though Haq said the United Nations is in talks with the Syrian government and remains ready to reopen it if “obstacles” can be overcome. “We’re hopeful that we can do so,” he told reporters. The U.N. Security Council failed to adopt either of two rival resolutions on July 11 to authorize further deliveries through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing, which had been used to deliver 85% of aid to Syria’s northwestern province of Idlib. It is home to about 4.1 million people, many of whom have been forced from their homes during the 12-year civil war, which has killed nearly a half million people and displaced half the country’s pre-war population of 23 million. Hundreds of thousands of people in Idlib live in tent settlements and had relied on aid that came through the Bab al-Hawa border crossing. Syrian President Bashar Assad opened the two additional crossing points from Turkey at Bab al-Salameh and al-Rai to increase the flow of assistance to victims of the devastating magnitude 7.8 earthquake that ravaged northwestern Syria and southern Turkey on Feb. 8. He extended their operation for three months in May until Aug. 13. Haq said the Syrian government informed U.N. humanitarian chief Martin Griffiths in a letter on Sunday that it would allow the U.N. to continue using the two crossings until Nov. 13. Syria has set conditions for the renewal of deliveries through Bab al-Hawa, which the U.N. humanitarian office has largely rejected. Syria insisted aid deliveries must be done “in full cooperation and coordination with the government,” that the U.N. would not communicate with “terrorist organizations” and their affiliates, and that the International Committee of the Red Cross and the Syrian Arab Red Crescent would run aid operations. The U.N. responded that the prohibition on communicating with groups considered “terrorist” by the Syrian government would prevent the U.N. and partner organizations from engaging “with relevant state and non-state parties as operationally necessary to carry out safe and unimpeded humanitarian operations.” Stipulating that aid deliveries must be overseen by the Red Cross or Red Crescent is “neither consistent with the independence of the United Nations nor practical,” since those organizations “are not present in north-west Syria,” it said in a letter. The letter also noted that the Syrian government’s request that aid deliveries should be carried out in “full cooperation and coordination” with Damascus requires “review.” Those appear to be the issues that Haq said are now being discussed with the Syrian government. © 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Biden to designate monument near Grand Canyon, preventing uranium mining. Uranium extraction had already been restricted in the area, which Native tribes consider sacred, but the moratorium was set to expire in 2032. Mr. Biden’s designation will make it permanent. The Biden administration is set to designate almost a million acres in Arizona as a national monument. © Michael A. McCoy for The New York Times By Zolan Kanno-Youngs and Lisa Friedman President Biden will designate nearly a million acres of land near the Grand Canyon as a new national monument on Tuesday to protect the area from uranium mining, administration officials confirmed on Monday. Mr. Biden’s visit to Arizona is part of a nationwide blitz by the White House to translate key policy victories to voters — including a law he signed last year to inject $370 billion in tax incentives into wind, solar and other renewable energy — as the 2024 campaign ramps up. Senior cabinet officials are also touring the country this week, highlighting his domestic agenda. During his first stop of a three-state tour, Mr. Biden will announce that he is creating a national monument — the fifth such designation of his presidency — in an area sacred to Native American tribes, administration officials told reporters on Monday. “The mining is off limits for future development in that area,” Ali Zaidi, Mr. Biden’s national climate adviser, told reporters on Air Force One. “It’s focused on preserving the historical resources” in the area. Native tribes and environmental groups have long lobbied for the government to permanently protect the area around the Grand Canyon from uranium mining, which they say would damage the Colorado River watershed as well as areas with great cultural meaning for Native Americans. Under the proposed designation, all new uranium mining will be blocked. Uranium mining has already been restricted in the area in question since 2012, but that Obama-era moratorium was set to expire in 2032. Mr. Biden’s designation would make the conditions permanent. Mr. Biden’s visit to Arizona was also an effort to energize crucial constituency groups in the state, even as much of the American public remains skeptical of his domestic agenda. Mr. Biden has called the Inflation Reduction Act — major legislation he signed last year that aims to cut planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions — “the largest investment ever in clean energy.” Yet 71 percent of Americans say they have heard “little” or “nothing at all” about the package one year later, according to a Washington Post-University of Maryland poll. And most Americans — 57 percent — disapprove of his handling of climate change, according to the poll. Surveys show young voters, who turned out in force during the 2020 election, are particularly concerned about global warming. Some environmental groups were left infuriated when Mr. Biden greenlit a drilling project known as Willow on pristine federal land in Alaska and mandated the sale of offshore drilling leases as part of a deal to pass the climate bill, undermining a campaign promise to ban drilling on federal lands. “We know that polls don’t tell the entire story,” Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, said on Monday when asked about why voters seemingly do not know what it is in Mr. Biden’s bills. As the administration continues to enact the various legislative packages, she said, “we’ll see Americans start to feel what we’ve been able to do in Washington.” Native Americans were also a crucial voting bloc in Arizona in 2020, when the state voted for a Democratic presidential candidate for the first time since 1996. They made up 6 percent of Arizona’s electorate in 2020, larger than Mr. Biden’s margin for victory, according to the National Congress of American Indians. More than 80 percent of Native American voters in 2020 agreed with the statement that “the federal government should return lands stolen from Native American tribes,” according to a 2022 poll conducted by the African American Research Collaborative. “It is likely a strategic decision to focus on the Grand Canyon,” said Gabriel Sanchez, a fellow at the Brookings Institution who has researched voting trends among Native Americans. “Many Native Americans do not vote based on party, but on which candidates will do the most to advance the interests of Native American communities.” The National Mining Association called the monument designation “unwarranted” and said it would force the United States to rely on imported uranium from countries like Russia. Representative Bruce Westerman, Republican of Arkansas and the chairman of the House Committee on Natural Resources, blasted Mr. Biden for locking up domestic resources. “This administration’s lack of reason knows no bounds, and their actions suggest that President Biden and his radical advisers won’t be satisfied until the entire federal estate is off limits and America is mired in dependency on our adversaries for our natural resources,” Mr. Westerman said in a statement. The administration has argued that the proposed monument represents only 1.3 percent of the nation’s known uranium reserves. “This is going to be a limit on future development in this space while being respectful of existing rights,” Mr. Zaidi said. The area in question is called Baaj Nwaavjo I’tah Kukveni — Baaj Nwaavjo, meaning “where tribes roam,” for the Havasupai people, and I’tah Kukveni, or “our footprints,” for the Hopi tribe. Earlier this year Mr. Biden created a new national monument, Spirit Mountain, in Nevada, insulating from development a half-million acres that are revered by Native Americans. He also restored and expanded protections for Bears Ears National Monument and Grand Staircase-Escalante in Utah, sites that are sacred to Native Americans and that had been opened to mining and drilling by the Trump administration. In June, the Biden administration banned drilling for 20 years around Chaco Canyon in New Mexico, one of the nation’s oldest and most culturally significant Native American sites. © 2023 The New York Times Company

The Islamic State Group says its leader was killed by militants in Syria and names his successor. Fighters from the Islamic State group parade in a commandeered Iraqi security forces armored vehicle in the northern city of Mosul, Iraq, June 23, 2014. The Islamic State group announced Thursday the death of its little known leader Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi who had been heading the extremist organization since November. BY BASSEM MROUE. BEIRUT (AP) — The Islamic State group announced on Thursday the death in Syria of its little-known leader, Abu al-Hussein al-Husseini al-Qurayshi, who headed the extremist organization since November, and named his successor. The group did not say when al-Qurayshi was killed but added that he died in fighting with an al-Qaida-linked group. IS spokesman Abu Huthaifa al-Ansari said that Abu Hafs al-Hashemi al-Qurayshi was named as the group’s new leader. Al-Qurayshi was the fourth IS leader to be killed since the group was founded by Iraqi militant Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi and declared a caliphate in large parts of Syria and Iraq in June 2014 before its defeat years later. The spokesman, al-Ansari, said in an audio message that al-Qurayshi “was martyred” in rebel-held northwestern Syria by members of Syria’s al-Qaida-linked Hayat Tahrir al-Sham when they tried to detain him in the province of Idlib. “He fought them until he succumbed to his wounds,” al-Ansari said of al-Qurayshi, adding that the al-Qaida-linked group detained some IS members who were with the late leader, including Abu Omar al-Muhajir, another spokesman, and that they are still being held. In April, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Turkish intelligence agents had killed al-Qurayshi in northern Syria — a statement that IS denied. The Islamic State group broke away from al-Qaida a decade ago and attracted supporters from around the world. Despite its defeat in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria two years later, IS militants still carry out deadly attacks in both countries and elsewhere. An Afghan branch of IS has claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing on Sunday in Pakistan at a pro-Taliban party’s election rally, in one of the worst attacks in Pakistan in recent years. The death toll from that attack has climbed to 63. IS founder al-Baghdadi was killed in a raid by Americans troops in northwestern Syria in October 2019. The group’s leader after that, Abu Ibrahim al-Hashimi al-Qurayshi, was also killed in a U.S. raid in February 2022, in northwestern Syria. His successor was killed in southern Syria later that year. Al-Qurayshi is not the real name of the IS leaders but comes from Quraish, the name of the tribe to which Islam’s Prophet Muhammad belonged. IS claims its leaders hail from this tribe and “al-Qurayshi” serves as part of their nom de guerre. © 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

By Reuters A building is seen at the former Trnopolje detention camp near Prijedor, Bosnia and Herzegovina November 13, 2017. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/File Photo Aug 4 (Reuters) - Serbia and Bosnia's Serb Republic on Friday marked the 1995 exodus of Serbs from Croatia in a Bosnian town notorious for Serb war crimes during the Bosnian war, triggering outcry from survivors and human rights activists. The memorial was held in the northern town of Prijedor where the first Serb-run detention camps for non-Serbs were opened at the start of the Bosnian war in 1992 and more than 3,000 Catholic Croats and Muslim Bosniaks were killed and buried in mass graves. "This is an ugly political message," said Gordana Katana, a journalist and activist from the Serb Republic's city of Banja Luka. "This is an attempt to find a balance in the crime." Each August since 1995, Serbia and Croatia separately mark the anniversary of the military operation Oluja (Storm), which Croatia sees as its decisive victory in the 1991-95 independence war, and which Serbia commemorates as the ethnic cleansing of about 200,000 Serbs from Croatia. The former socialist Yugoslav federation begun crumbling in 1991 with the declarations of independence by Slovenia and Croatia, followed by wars - first in Croatia and then in Bosnia waged by Belgrade-backed nationalist Serbs who wanted to carve their ethnically pure Serb states in the two countries. In August 1995, the Croatian army took clawed back almost all of the territory taken by breakaway Serbs in a four-day operation, when some 200,000 ethnic Serbs fled to Bosnia and Serbia from the advance of Croatian forces. Many Bosniak survivors feel hurt that victims from another state are commemorated in the town in which Bosniak victims have been ignored. Local Serb authorities have for years rejected pleas to raise a monument to the 102 children killed in Prijedor. "It is not right to commemorate the Oluja victims in Prijedor, it is the politicization of the crime," said Satko Mujagic, who was detained at the age of 20 in two Serb-run camps near Prijedor. Serb Republic nationalist President Milorad Dodik, who has offered to Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to organise the memorial in Prijedor, dismissed the criticism. "It is monstrous to dispute our right to mark the events commemorating our victims," Dodik said. Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Louise Heavens © 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved.

By Sitarah Mohammadi, World Hazara Council Threatened and beaten, Afghan women defy Taliban with protests credit: Victor J. Blue, NY Times World Hazara Council’s Spokesperson Sitarah Mohammadi’s Statement to the Australian Federal Parliament on Taliban suppression of women’s rights, and genocide against the Hazara people As diaspora advocates for human rights, we stand united in strongly condemning the grave violations of human rights perpetrated by the Taliban against the people of Afghanistan. Since the Taliban’s return to power in 2021, they have launched a systematic campaign against human rights in Afghanistan that affects all groups, but especially women, Hazaras, and religious and ethnic minorities. Taliban attacks on women have violated every international treaty protecting the rights of women. Women and girls are not permitted to get any education above primary school. They cannot hold jobs except in healthcare for women, such as nursing or midwifery. Women cannot even get their hair cut in beauty salons, which were all closed by Taliban decree. Women in Afghanistan, who once held hope for a brighter future, are now shackled by the Taliban in a tyranny that denies them fundamental freedoms, education, and participation in public life. The Taliban’s systematic oppression of women amounts to what many legal scholars now recognise as gender apartheid. Hazara women bear the brunt of the Taliban’s repressive rule due to the intersection of their gender, religion, and ethnicity, rendering them particularly vulnerable. The Taliban have committed war crimes of collective punishment against civilians in Afghanistan’s Panjshir province. The Hazaras, a Shi'a religious minority in Afghanistan, have faced relentless persecution, genocidal massacres, the bombing of their mosques and schools, and attacks on their maternity clinics, including mass murders of Hazara mothers, babies. and school children. The Taliban are committing a slow genocide by attrition against Hazaras. The Hazara people have been forced from their ancestral lands by systematic deportation, a crime against humanity. Forced evictions of other groups such as Uzbeks have also taken place to change Afghanistan’s demographic landscape. Hazaras are totally excluded from the Taliban government. Taliban discrimination against Hazaras is most systematically applied in the Taliban’s judicial system. The Taliban have completely removed Hazaras from courts across the country, even where they constitute the majority. Today, there is not a single Hazara working as a judge or even a clerk in any court. Taliban courts systematically discriminate against Hazaras. The Taliban have diverted humanitarian aid destined for Hazara areas to reward the Taliban's supporters in other regions, leaving Hazaras without food or medicines sent by the UN and other international agencies. The humanitarian crises that have unfolded since 2021 have had devastating consequences for millions of people in Afghanistan, particularly marginalised groups, such as the Hazaras, leaving them vulnerable to poverty, displacement, and insecurity. Innocent civilians, including children, have suffered extreme hardships, with access to food, water, and healthcare increasingly scarce. Today, we call on Australia to support Afghanistan's women and the Hazara, a group the Taliban have targeted for genocide. Australia must open its doors to refugees who are fleeing from Taliban tyranny. Thank you. For background information, please read the following papers: 1) The Hazara Inquiry (a joint effort of the UK cross-party Parliamentarians from both Houses and experts that inquired into the situation of Hazaras in Afghanistan and Pakistan): https://www.hazarainquiry.com/ 2) “Relentless Atrocities: The Persecution of Hazaras” (Michigan Journal of International Law): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4121751 3) “The Afghan State and the Hazara Genocide” (Harvard Law School's Harvard Human Rights Journal): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4516797 4) “The Genocide of Hazaras” (Virginia Journal of International Law): https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4262465 Sitarah Mohammadi and Hazara World Council members meet with Australian parliamentarians