By Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko attends a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 23, 2023. Sputnik/Alexei Danichev/Kremlin via REUTERS/File Photo WARSAW, Aug 1 (Reuters) - Poland said on Tuesday it was rushing troops to its eastern border after accusing Belarus, Russia's closest ally, of violating its airspace with military helicopters. The Belarusian military denied any such violation and accused NATO member Poland, one of Ukraine's most fervent backers in its conflict with Russia, of making up the accusation to justify a buildup of its troops. Belarus leader Alexander Lukashenko had earlier taunted Poland over the presence of Russian Wagner mercenaries near their joint border. Poland's Defence Ministry said it was sending "additional forces and resources, including combat helicopters". It said it had informed NATO of the border violation and Belarus' charge d'affaires had been summoned to provide an explanation. The Polish military initially denied any border violation had occurred but later, after consultations, said the intrusion took place "at a very low height, hard to intercept by radar". Belarus' defence ministry, writing on Telegram, said Warsaw had changed its mind about the incident "apparently after consulting its overseas masters". "This statement was not backed up by data from Poland," it said. "The Belarusian Defence Ministry views it in the manner of an 'old wives' tale' and notes there were no border violations by Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters." Residents of areas near the eastern Polish city of Bialowieza, close to the Belarus border, shared accounts on social media of what they said were border violations before the defence minister issued its statement. HISTORY OF ANIMOSITY Belarus has allowed Russian President Vladimir Putin to use its territory as a launch pad for the Ukraine invasion, but Lukashenko has not committed his own troops to the war. The ex-Soviet state has a long history of animosity with Poland, as does Russia. Last week, Putin accused Poland of harbouring territorial ambitions on Belarus and said it would consider any attack on its neighbour as an attack on itself. Earlier on Tuesday, Lukashenko mockingly told Poland it should thank him for keeping in check Wagner mercenaries now stationed in Belarus after an abortive mutiny against the Kremlin last month. An unspecified number of the Wagner fighters have since moved to Belarus and begun training Lukashenko's army. Poland had already started moving more than 1,000 of its own troops closer to the border. Lukashenko joked at a meeting with Putin last month that some of the fighters were keen to press into Poland and "go on a trip to Warsaw and Rzeszow". State news agency Belta quoted him on Tuesday as saying that the Poles "should pray that we're holding onto (the Wagner fighters) and providing for them. Otherwise, without us, they would have seeped through and smashed up Rzeszow and Warsaw in no small way. So they shouldn't reproach me, they should say thank you." Rzeszow is a city near the Ukrainian border. On Saturday, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said a group of 100 Wagner fighters had moved closer to the Belarusian city of Grodno near the Polish border, describing the situation as "increasingly dangerous". Reporting by Mark Trevelyan, Agnieszka Pikulicka-Wilczewska, Max Rodionov and Ron Popeski, Editing by Gareth Jones and Bill Berkro © 2023 Reuters.

Funding shortages and the halted Ukraine grain deal rattle UN aid programs. Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the U.N. World Food Program (WFP), speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, Aug. 1, 2023. A halted landmark wartime grain deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to flow and donor fatigue is rattling the operations of the United Nations food agency. (AP Photo / Hassan Anmar) BY KAREEM CHEHAYEB. BEIRUT (AP) — A halted landmark grain deal that allowed Ukrainian grain to flow to countries in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, along with donor’s fatigue, is rattling the operations of the United Nations food agency, its deputy executive director said Tuesday. “What we have to do now is to look elsewhere (for grain) of course,” Carl Skau, deputy executive director of the World Food Program told The Associated Press. “We don’t know exactly where the market will land, but there might well be an increase in food prices.” The WFP on Tuesday started reducing monthly cash aid for 120,000 Syrian refugees living in two camps in Jordan citing budget cuts, a decision that upset both refugees and Jordanian officials. The agency has said it would gradually cut off 50,000 refugees in Jordan from its assistance altogether. The program had initially covered 465,000 refugees. Syrian refugees in Jordan expressed frustration at the news, as they continue to struggle with finding work and high inflation rates. “This decision ruined our lives,” Khadija Mahmoud, a Syrian refugee from the Aleppo countryside in Amman and a mother of eight told the AP. “How are we going to pay for the apartment’s rent, the electricity bill, the water bill, how? We don’t have the capacity.” The WFP announced last week it has only raised $5 billion so far this year, less than half of its objective of between $10 billion and $14 billion. It also said it has reduced its food and cash assistance worldwide in recent months due to what it calls an “unprecedented funding crisis”. Russia’s withdrawal from the Black Sea Grain Initiative, which helped secure Ukrainian wheat also impacted the WFP, which this year purchased 80% of its wheat supply from the war-torn country. U.N. agencies and international humanitarian organizations for years have struggled to reach budgetary requirements due to the global economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s war with Ukraine. In the Middle East, budgetary constraints have impacted assistance for war-torn Syria and neighboring countries hosting millions of refugees while facing economic crises of their own, including Jordan and Lebanon. In June, WFP announced major cuts in aid to Syria, now in its 13th year of civil war, cutting 2.5 million of the 5.5 million people who rely on the agency for their basic food needs. “Frankly, it’s difficult to see how they would manage because all our beneficiaries are in dire need of assistance,” Skau said. In March, then-WFP executive director David Beasley warned that ongoing funding cuts could cause mass migration, destabilized countries, and starvation in the next 12 to 18 months. “When the most vulnerable at critical levels of food insecurity don’t receive our food assistance, there are only two ways out,” Skau said. “Either they die or they move.” © 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

According to the U.N. Human Rights Office, in just one massacre, at least 87 people — mostly from the ethnic African Masalit tribe — were killed by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces and an affiliated Arab militia. Their bodies were dumped in a grave just outside the West Darfur city of Geneina, the agency said. Conflicts between the Arab dominated Sudanese government and non-Arab ethnic groups have resulted in numerous genocides targeting non-Arab people in Sudan. Genocide became Sudanese state policy when the Arab supremacist Arab Gathering seized power in Khartoum in 1983. Since then, determined to dominate all of Sudan, the Sudanese army and Arab militias have massacred hundreds of thousands of non-Arab people in the Nuba Mountains, Darfur, the Blue Nile,and in South Sudan before South Sudan became independent. Over three million non-Arabs have been displaced. In 2003-2005, government-backed Janjaweed militias carried out systematic killings of non-Arabs and a scorched earth policy in Darfur. They were supported by bombing by the Sudanese Air Force. They forcibly displaced Fur, Massalit, and Zaghawa communities and murdered, looted, and mass raped non-Arab populations in Darfur. Janjaweed militias killed at least 300,000 non-Arab people and forcibly displaced 2.5 million. A joint UN-AU peacekeeping force, UNAMID, was established in 2007 with a mandate to protect civilians. However, UNAMID became an observer mission, rather than a peacekeeping force. It failed to protect the hundreds of thousands of people in Sudanese IDP camps from rapes and murders. The Janjaweed militias became an official government force, renamed the "Rapid Support Forces" (RSF) led by General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti). Granted jurisdiction by the UN Security Council, the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued arrest warrants for Omar al-Bashir and other leaders of the Darfur genocide for crimes against humanity and war crimes in 2009, and in 2010 for charges of genocide. Bashir appointed these same accused criminals as governors over areas where they committed their crimes. Anti-government protests began in late 2018 and a military coup ousted Omar al-Bashir in 2019.UNAMID withdrew in December 2020. Although a civilian-led democracy was promised following the military coup, another military coup followed in 2021 which removed civilians from government. Generals Burhan and Hemeti shared power over Khartoum. The RSF took control over western Sudan, including Darfur. In December 2022, the civilian opposition, General Burhan, and Hemeti signed a "new framework" which on paper would transition the government to civilian leadership and integrate the RSF into the Sudanese Armed Forces. But Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (Hemeti) rejected proposals to integrate his Rapid Support Forces into Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF). Failure to incorporate the RSF into the military and lack of cooperation between the SAF and the RSF resulted in civil war. Fighting broke out between Hemeti’s RSF and Gen. Burhan’s Sudanese Armed Forces on April 15, 2023. Since then, over 1000 civilians have been killed and more than 4,000 have been wounded. In Khartoum and Omdurman, tens of thousands have fled, with over 75,000 internally displaced. Over 100,000 people have fled from Sudan. The RSF now controls most of Khartoum. The massive influx of new refugeesfrom Sudan threatens to overwhelm neighboring countries . Countries including the US, Canada, and France have evacuated their diplomats. Uncertainty exists regarding the location of Bashir. Hospitalsare running out of supplies, and havebeen directly hit by shells and gunfire. They lack electricity and medicines. The director of the UN's World Food Program (WFP) fears the conflict could result in a humanitarian crisis for all of Eastern Africa. The RSF recommenced its attacks on the people of Darfur, especially the Massalit. The Rapid Support Forces have murdered over 1000 Massalit, raped thousands of women, and driven tens of thousands of Massalit into Chad. Massalit towns have been destroyed, their wells poisoned, their streets strewn with corpses. Genocide Watch considers Sudan to be at Stage 8: Persecution and Stage 9: Extermination. Genocide Watch recommends: • The UN Security Council should declare the war in Sudan is a threat to international peace and security. • The UNSC should authorize a UN Peacekeeping Force (PKO) under Chapter7 of the UN Charter. • The UNSC should call on African Union and other countries to provide thousands of troops for the PKO. • The UNSC should make the PKO an ordinary expense of the UN, obligating all UN members to pay for it. • The UNSC resolution should refer the situation in all of Sudan to the International Criminal Court. • The PKO mandate should be to end the civil war by diplomacy or force and to protect civilians. • The mandate should include the arrest of both Gen. Burhan and Hemeti if they are charged by the ICC.

How colleges plan to factor in race without asking about race. Schools roll out new essay prompts and software updates for application readers, while worrying about legal exposure. By Melissa Korn Rice University is among the schools that say they are tweaking their essay questions or adding new ones in light of the ruling.PHOTO: BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES Colleges are rethinking what information they ask from applicants—and even which words they use to extract those details—as they react to last month’s Supreme Court ruling that dramatically limited how they can consider race when selecting students. Schools are also making changes to where they scout for potential students, how application files get reviewed, and longstanding policies governing which groups of candidates get preferential treatment. School officials say they remain committed to enrolling a diverse class of students, even if the tools they can use have changed. They have to move quickly; most applications go live on Aug. 1. The Supreme Court forced a tectonic shift in college admissions when it said schools could no longer take race into account when assessing applicants or give preference to applicants based on race. But Chief Justice John Roberts said in the majority opinion that colleges can still consider applicants’ discussions of how race affected their lives, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.” Rice University, Colorado College, Hampshire College and Lehigh University say they are tweaking their essay questions in light of the ruling. Some are still finalizing the exact language. “The idea is to provide a vehicle for students of all backgrounds and all contexts to feel as though they can tell their story in a way that the rest of the application might not allow them to do,” said Dan Warner, Lehigh’s vice provost for admissions and financial aid. Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., will use Roberts’s own words in its new essay prompt: “Drawing upon examples from your life, a quality of your character, and/or a unique ability you possess, describe how you believe your goals for a college education might be impacted, influenced, or affected by the Court’s decision.” The Wall Street Journal asked more than 50 selective colleges and universities what changes they are making to their applications, fall recruiting calendars or other elements of their admissions process—including the use of binding early-decision programs and the practice of giving extra credit to athletes or children of alums. About 35 said they were still reviewing the ruling and weren’t ready to discuss firm plans. A few said they were advised by legal counsel not to speak publicly about potential changes. Art Coleman, managing partner and co-founder of EducationCounsel, a legal and policy consulting firm that works with schools, said the court ruling didn’t provide guidance on how schools can recruit, whether race can still be considered for financial-aid awards, or what might justify looking at race in other elements of the process. “You open the door and you’re stepping into blank space,” Coleman said. “The fear of litigation is real.” Edward Blum, the conservative activist behind the lawsuits that led to the Supreme Court decision, sent letters earlier this month reminding 150 schools to heed the new legal limitations. Sen. J.D. Vance (R., Ohio) added to the worry with a letter to Ivy League universities, and Oberlin and Kenyon colleges. “The United States Senate is prepared to use its full investigative powers to uncover circumvention, covert or otherwise, of the Supreme Court’s ruling,” he warned. Much of the work schools are doing in the wake of the ruling is behind the scenes, including updating software programs to ensure that those reviewing applications can’t see whether an applicant filled in the optional check box listing their race or ethnicity—which can still be used for federal reporting purposes—or how the racial mix of the admitted class is shaping up midcycle. Some offices are also revising staff guidelines to defend against what they see as nearly inevitable allegations of violating the law. They may include reminders that the notes readers put on applications should focus on why someone’s unique perspective or experience might enrich the campus community, rather than just that they would bring diversity. In light of the limitations the ruling puts on giving special consideration to students of color, many college-access advocates are pushing schools to stop giving preferential treatment to the children of alums, who at many schools are overwhelmingly white and wealthier than the general applicant pool. The U.S. Department of Education opened an investigation this week into the use of donor and legacy admissions at Harvard, one of the two schools named in the Supreme Court affirmative-action cases. The probe comes in response to a civil-rights complaint filed against Harvard after the ruling that alleged legacy preferences disproportionately benefit white applicants and disadvantage students of color. On Wednesday, Sens. Jeff Merkley (D., Ore.) and Chris Van Hollen (D., Md.) and Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) reintroduced legislation to stop universities from giving preferential treatment to children of alumni and donors. They say their aim is to ensure equity in the admissions process. In recent weeks, Wesleyan University and the University of Minnesota announced they would no longer give any extra consideration to legacy applicants; Minnesota also won’t take into account whether an applicant has ties to school staff. They join a small but growing roster of institutions ignoring legacy status, including the University of Illinois, Johns Hopkins University and Amherst College. “The Supreme Court said you can’t use race affiliation. Why should you be able to use family affiliation?” said Wesleyan President Michael Roth. Roth said that while he is concerned about potential financial fallout, the school previously rejected most legacy applicants and still received plenty of donations. The most resource-intensive changes will have to do with recruiting, as schools look to make their applicant pools more diverse. Heights Philadelphia, a nonprofit that works with about 3,000 minority students across that city, is already hearing from additional colleges looking to partner on issues such as arranging campus visits, demystifying the application process and getting out the word about scholarship offerings. “We have been really heartened by hearing from institutions that want to do this better,” said Sara Woods, co-president. Colorado College admissions dean Karen Kristof asked her staff to rethink which high schools they visit this fall, paying extra attention to ones within the state. There is no extra budget, so the office is reducing other expenses, such as cutting down on the print run of its 46-page informational brochure. “This is not the time to just keep doing what you’ve always been doing. You do that at your own peril,” Kristof said. Copyright © 2023 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

By Nick Paton Walsh, Masoud Popalzai. Video by Jessie Gretener and Alessia Tinti Updated 8:19 PM EDT, Fri July 28, 2023 A Pakistani soldier stands guard as stranded Afghan nationals return to Afghanistan at the Pakistan-Afghanistan border crossing point in Chaman on August 15, 2021, after the Taliban took control of the Afghan border town. CNN — Afghans who were promised a home in the United States after their country fell to the Taliban say they have waited so long for the US to process their applications that they are now being sent back to the enemy they fled. A number of Afghans who worked with the US and were told they were eligible for resettlement there have been forcibly deported back to Afghanistan from Pakistan, where they fled to await processing following the Taliban takeover in 2021, CNN can reveal. One man waiting for a US visa described being dropped at the Afghan border by Pakistani police this summer. “They did not hand us over to the (Taliban) Afghan border forces,” he said. “They just released us on the border and told us to go back to Afghanistan. It was me, my four kids and my wife deported together.” He is now living in hiding in the Afghan capital, Kabul. Another deported Afghan, also speaking from hiding in Kabul, said: “So this is very, very dangerous, and it is very tough… How many people have been killed, had been tortured, have been disappeared?” The man, a former employee of a US contractor, said the Taliban “will punish me, they will put me in jail. Maybe they will kill me? I’m sure they will.” He added: “Still, we believe that the USA will help us. We believe we didn’t lose our hope still.” Both individuals spoke to CNN anonymously for their safety, and provided documentation showing a US visa case number being processed, and evidence of their presence in Pakistan. Many Afghans fled the Taliban after the August 15, 2021 fall of Kabul to the hard-line group. More than 124,000 Afghans were airlifted out of the country in a huge US-led operation. Yet, thousands also fled across the border to Pakistan, often with incomplete paperwork, following US guidance that they should wait in a third country for their visa applications to the US to be processed. Nearly 90,000 Afghans have since been resettled in the US, according to State Department figures, but many others have been caught in the backlog of so-called Afghan Priority 2 (P-2) or Special Immigrant Visas (SIV) applications waiting to be processed. Human rights groups say the most acute situation is faced by those in Pakistan, from where hundreds of Afghans have been deported in a crackdown against migrants following recent political instability. At least two Afghans awaiting P-2 visas have been swept up in this crackdown, CNN has learned, and complain of Pakistani police persecution. Several others still residing in Pakistan told CNN about what they said was harassment by Pakistani police and the threat of deportation if they did not pay fines or bribes. Pakistan’s Foreign and Interior Ministries have not responded to CNN’s request for comment on the claims. At least 530 Afghans have been deported from Pakistan so far this year, according to Haseeb Aafaq, a spokesman for volunteer group the Afghanistan Immigrants Refugees Council. Aafaq said the figure came from his studies of local records but added it might be a low estimate as many Afghans were deported without documentation. Aafaq added that the Pakistani authorities made no exceptions for pending US visa cases. “There is no differentiation. The authorities here do not even think about where you are from. If you are Afghan, you must be deported if your visa is not valid, whether you are SIV or P-2 or sponsorship cases.” He said many of those deported are P-2 cases, but he could not provide a precise number as many Afghans keep their P-2 status confidential out of fear for their safety. Two young Afghan men have taken their own lives in Islamabad since June, both awaiting US P-2 visas, according to activists. Aafaq said one of them, aged 25, who died last week, had suffered “mental pressure and economic pressure and an unclear future.” Aafaq said the US failure to open a Resettlement Support Center (RSC) in Pakistan meant the processing of cases there had partially stalled. “The RSC has not been activated yet, while in other countries, like Turkey or Tajikistan, people have gone to the US,” he said. Afghans waiting in Pakistan have reported harassment by Pakistani police, including arrest and demands for money. One, who worked with the US military and asked not to be named for his safety, told CNN: “They were asking for a visa. There were a lot of policemen, they came into the house without clear information. And they took me out of (my) home and they just put (me) in the van. My kids, they were very much harassed. They were crying, they were asking for help.” He also described how he once saved his American colleagues during a protest, and had commendation letters denoting his service. “I’m disappointed because (of) the way that I served the Americans in Afghanistan. I was expecting them to welcome me there sooner. It seems like I have no future at all.” The US State Department told CNN in a statement that the Biden administration “continues to demonstrate its commitment to the brave Afghans” who worked with the US. It added that its “processing capacity in Pakistan remains limited, but (staff) are actively working to expand it.” The statement urged “Afghanistan’s neighbors” to “keep their borders open” and “uphold their obligations” when it comes to asylum seekers. Pakistan’s Foreign Ministry declined to comment. Another Afghan, whom CNN is not naming for his safety, served the US in Afghanistan and is now in Pakistan with his wife and children. He described their wait for US help as a “bad dream.” His wife sobbed: “Going back to Afghanistan is a big risk and here we are dying, every moment. Staying in Pakistan is a gradual death.” © 2023 Cable News Network. A Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All Rights Reserved. CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

By Gabriel Gavin Even from a prison cell, Mikheil Saakashvili holds Georgia's future in his hands | Pool photo by Irakli Gedenidze via AFP/Getty Images TBILISI, Georgia — Almost every day, Giuli Alasania makes the drive down a dusty highway through the Georgian capital to visit her son, former President Mikheil Saakashvili, in hospital. “It’s ironic,” she says, fussing over the plastic pots of stewed beans and salads she is bringing for his lunch, “when he was president, he built this clinic. Now he’s dying in it.” Ailing and imprisoned, Saakashvili holds Georgia’s future in his hands. Confined to his hospital room, he told POLITICO that his life or death will have an enormous impact on whether Georgia has a realistic chance of joining the European Union, in a scribbled note passed to his legal team. “I am fighting for my life and for this country,” he wrote, “of course, they might still drive me to a lethal outcome and it would be a terrible signal in this hybrid war for the entire region and embolden autocracies and wannabe despots.” Saakashvili’s enormous influence — a decade after he left the presidency — comes despite his controversial record as leader. In 2003, he led the Rose Revolution that overthrew a post-Soviet government run by oligarchs with the promise of a crackdown on corruption and an opening to the West. He even changed the constitution to enshrine “full integration” into both the EU and NATO. “After the Rose Revolution, there was this mood among young people — we were all motivated, we believed we had a chance to build Georgia up and make it something different to what had happened before,” said Eka Gigauri, head of anti-corruption NGO Transparency Georgia. “We decided we were not just a regular post-Soviet country, and that the EU and NATO was the only choice for us. We were ready to dedicate everything we had for that.” But in 2008, Saakashvili led his country during a disastrous war with Russia, and his increasing authoritarianism alienated many of his original supporters, including Gigauri, who quit her role in the civil service to hold the state to account from the outside. The bombastic center-right leader was voted out in 2013 and left for Ukraine — becoming governor of Odesa and then head of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s National Reform Council. A Georgian court found him guilty in absentia of abusing his power by pardoning police who beat an opposition lawmaker. He was stripped of his Georgian passport and sentenced to six years behind bars. Few expected Saakashvili to ever return. They underestimated his capacity for showmanship. In 2021, the homesick politician illegally sneaked back across the border, touring the countryside, eating his favorite khinkali dumplings and daring the authorities to arrest him — which they soon did. The increasingly erratic former president declared he was a political prisoner and went on a hunger strike to demand his release. He called it off after a few weeks as Russia invaded Ukraine. Since then, though, the 55-year-old’s health has dramatically deteriorated. “He has lost so much weight I hardly recognize him,” said his mother. “I bring him the smallest size of trousers and even those are too big. He has confusion, he can’t remember what happened a few hours ago. Tests show he has heavy metals, mercury, barium and bismuth, and cyanide, in his body.” Life and death In life, Saakashvili may have failed to bring about the deep and lasting reforms Georgia would need to join the EU — but in death, he could sink the project for good. “Relations with the international community are already in a deep freeze as a result of the Georgian Dream party’s embrace of Moscow,” said David Kezerashvili, who served as Saakashvili’s defense minister during the 2008 Russian invasion. “And the prospects of European Union membership would appear to be crumbling before our eyes.” After Saakashvili left power, the country shifted in a more pro-Moscow direction under the ruling Georgian Dream party, founded by billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili. Although Ivanishvili publicly left front-line politics, he is widely believed to call the shots and give orders to Prime Minister Irakli Garibashvili. Even though the Kremlin and its local allies control a fifth of Georgia’s territory, the government refused to impose sanctions on Russia in the wake of Moscow’s full-blown invasion of Ukraine. Instead, it has been accused of turning a blind eye as the country becomes a waystation for sanctioned goods moving from the EU into Russia, cashing in by circumventing restrictions. In a sign of warming ties, the Kremlin scrapped a ban on direct flights to Georgia and relaxed visa requirements for its citizens. Russian holidaymakers now fly to the sunny capital and its seaside resorts, despite public protests and a warning from Georgian President Salome Zourabichvili. In May, Garibashvili came under fire after claiming the war was the result of Ukraine’s desire to join NATO, echoing Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s own talking points. According to a report from the European Council on Foreign Relations, Ivanishvili “appears to be largely responsible” for Tbilisi’s pro-Moscow tilt. “Through his control of the Georgian Dream party and the government, Ivanishvili may be attempting to maneuver Georgia into Russia’s sphere of influence,” it says. Pro-EU population The government’s shift of direction clashes with popular views; blue EU flags hang from apartment balconies and government buildings across Tbilisi. A nationwide poll in April by the International Republican Institute found that 89 percent of Georgians support joining the EU, the highest number recorded for years. But only 38 percent of the 1,500 people sampled think the current government is following a “pro-Western” foreign policy. Outside the hospital, an activist keeps a round-the-clock vigil, sleeping in a car decked out with placards reading “free Misha!” Worry is growing within the international community about Saakashvili’s fate, with many asking for his release | Screenshot of Georgian court hearing There is also international concern for the fate of Saakashvili. Zelenskyy wants the Georgian government to allow the former president to come to Ukraine. “Russia is killing Ukrainian citizen Saakashvili at the hands of the Georgian authorities,” he tweeted earlier this month, after court photos showed an emaciated Saakashvili. “I urge our partners to address this situation and not ignore it and save this man. No government in Europe has the right to execute people, life is a basic European value.” The U.S. State Department said late last year it is “very closely following” Saakashvili’s treatment. Meanwhile, the European Parliament earlier this year urged Tbilisi to release Saakashvili, warning his treatment is “a litmus test for the Georgian government’s commitment to European values and its declared European aspirations, including EU candidate status.” EU candidacy clash Georgia’s EU hopes are already in deep trouble. In June 2022, the EU granted Ukraine and Moldova candidate status, but stopped short of offering the same to Georgia — instead prescribing a package of 12 recommendations for reforms. Last year, a European Parliament report warned Georgia has “seriously backslided with respect to the basic democratic principles and key political commitments” it undertook as part of an association agreement with the bloc. “The rule of law is backsliding from the progress that the Georgian Dream achieved during the first years of their governance,” said Vakushti Menadbe, associate professor at Ilia State University law school, adding: “They try to create illusion that there is progress, however, the proposed reforms do not drive towards more democratization.” While the government insists Saakashvili is receiving adequate care and must serve his sentence, allies of the former leader are pushing for an EU-backed delegation to investigate his health. Giorgi Chaladze served as a former deputy culture minister in Saakashvili’s government and now acts as his personal lawyer. “The EU agreed in February to send a mission to look into his treatment and health,” he said, sitting in an office surrounded by paperwork covered in the former president’s scrawl. A long-awaited Polish medical mission was in Tbilisi earlier this month, but has yet to publicize its findings. Aside from them, Saakashvili’s only visitors are his mother and his lawyers. Every day, Chaladze or another member of his team visits the hospital with print-outs of tweets and messages from well-wishers. One, from former Belgian Prime Minister and MEP Guy Verhofstadt, calls on the authorities to “stop the inhumane treatment” and “release him now!” Saakashvili has jotted instructions on a corner of the page to retweet the post. International fallout The European Commission is expected to publish its 2023 Enlargement Package in October, which will assess progress in key reform areas and potentially open the door for Georgia’s EU candidacy. Saakashvili’s lawyers communicate with him in notes passed to his hospital room. One, from former Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, calls for his release | Gabriel Gavin/POLITICO In a statement shared with POLITICO, Georgia’s Mission to the EU denied that momentum has stalled on its potential accession. “Georgia has earned to be a candidate for EU membership both in terms of its technical readiness to take this step and in terms of the geopolitical choices it has made over the last 25 years,” it said. However, with concern growing over the former president’s treatment, Brussels is looking increasingly unfavorably on Georgia’s EU hopes, argues Viola von Cramon, a German Green MEP and a member of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs. “Saakashvili was definitely not a democrat, but he knew what he was fighting for and knew what it meant to have an attractive country, to bring young people back, to pay people properly in the public sector,” she said. “Now the influence of Russia is remarkable. If he dies in prison, the message it send[s] to the EU is absolutely zero.” Back in her apartment, surrounded by portraits and family photographs of the man who once led the country, Alasania said she’s come to terms with what could happen to him. “My son isn’t afraid to die,” she said. “He’s afraid that Georgia might die.” © 2023 POLITICO LLC

May Sarah Cardinal sits for a portrait outside the Law Courts building in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada on Thursday, May 25, 2023. Cardinal said she was pressured into having her tubes tied when she was 20. "The doctor told me: 'There are hard times ahead and how are you going to look after a bunch of kids? What if your husband leaves?'... I was afraid if I didn't go through with it, they would be angry with me and I didn't feel like I had a say." (AP Photo / Amber Bracken) By Maria Cheng TORONTO (AP) — Decades after many other rich countries stopped forcibly sterilizing Indigenous women, numerous activists, doctors, politicians and at least five class-action lawsuits say the practice has not ended in Canada. A Senate report last year concluded “this horrific practice is not confined to the past, but clearly is continuing today.” In May, a doctor was penalized for forcibly sterilizing an Indigenous woman in 2019. Indigenous leaders say the country has yet to fully reckon with its troubled colonial past — or put a stop to a decades-long practice that is considered a type of genocide. There are no solid estimates on how many women are still being sterilized against their will or without their knowledge, but Indigenous experts say they regularly hear complaints about it. Sen. Yvonne Boyer, whose office is collecting the limited data available, says at least 12,000 women have been affected since the 1970s. “Whenever I speak to an Indigenous community, I am swamped with women telling me that forced sterilization happened to them,” Boyer, who has Indigenous Metis heritage, told The Associated Press. Medical authorities in Canada’s Northwest Territories issued a series of punishments in May in what may be the first time a doctor has been sanctioned for forcibly sterilizing an Indigenous woman, according to documents obtained by the AP. The case involves Dr. Andrew Kotaska, who performed an operation to relieve an Indigenous woman’s abdominal pain in November 2019. He had her written consent to remove her right fallopian tube, but the patient, an Inuit woman, had not agreed to the removal of her left tube; losing both would leave her sterile. Despite objections from other medical staff during the surgery, Kotaska took out both fallopian tubes. The investigation concluded there was no medical justification for the sterilization, and Kotaska was found to have engaged in unprofessional conduct. Kotaska’s “severe error in surgical judgment” was unethical, cost the patient the chance to have more children and could undermine trust in the medical system, investigators said. The case was likely not exceptional. Thousands of Indigenous Canadian women over the past seven decades were coercively sterilized, in line with eugenics legislation that deemed them inferior. In the U.S., forced sterilizations of Native American women mostly ended in the 1970s after new regulations were adopted requiring informed consent. The Geneva Conventions describe forced sterilization as a type of genocide and crime against humanity and the Canadian government has condemned reports of forced sterilization elsewhere, including among Uyghur women in China. In 2018, the U.N. Committee Against Torture told Canada it was concerned about persistent reports of forced sterilization, saying all allegations should be investigated and those found responsible held accountable. In 2019, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged that the murders and disappearances of Indigenous women across Canada amounted to “genocide,” but activists say little has been done to address ingrained prejudices against the Indigenous, allowing forced sterilizations to continue. In a statement, the Canadian government told the AP it was aware of allegations that Indigenous women were forcibly sterilized and the matter is before the courts. “Sterilization of women without their informed consent constitutes an assault and is a criminal offense,” the government said. “We recognize the pressing need to end this practice across Canada,” it said, adding that it is working with provincial and territorial authorities, health agencies and Indigenous groups to eliminate systemic racism in the country’s health systems. Boyer, the senator collecting data on the issue, recalled once being approached by a tearful Indigenous woman describing her forced sterilization. “It made my knees buckle to hear her story and to realize how common it was,” Boyer said. “Nothing has changed legally or culturally in Canada to stop this.” Indigenous people comprise about 5% of Canada’s nearly 40 million people, with the biggest populations residing in the north: Nunavut, Yukon and the Northwest Territories. The more than 600 Indigenous communities, known as First Nations, face significant health challenges compared to other Canadians. Suicide rates among Indigenous youth are six times higher than their counterparts and the life expectancy of First Nations people is about 14 years less than other Canadians. Until the 1990s, Indigenous people were mostly treated in racially segregated hospitals, where there were reports of rampant abuse. It’s difficult to say how common sterilization — with or without consent — happens. Canada’s national health agency doesn’t routinely collect sterilization data, including the ethnicity of patients or under what conditions it happens. In 2019, Sylvia Tuckanow told the Senate committee investigating forced sterilizations about how she gave birth in a Saskatoon hospital in July 2001. She described being disoriented from medication and being tied to a bed as she cried. “I could smell something burning,” she said. “When the (doctor) was finished, he said, ‘There: tied, cut and burnt. Nothing will get through that,’” Tuckanow said, referring to her singed fallopian tubes. She said she hadn’t consented to the procedure. The Senate committee’s work was prompted by a previous 2016 investigation led by Sen. Boyer into about a dozen forced sterilizations of Indigenous women at a Saskatchewan hospital. In November, a report documented nearly two dozen forced sterilizations in Quebec from 1980 to 2019, including one woman who said her doctor told her after bladder surgery that he had removed her uterus at the same time — without her consent. The report concluded that doctors and nurses “insistently questioning whether a First Nations or Inuit mother wants to (be sterilized) after the birth of her first child seems to be an existing practice in Quebec.” Some women were not even aware they were sterilized. Morningstar Mercredi, an Alberta-based Indigenous author, was sterilized as a 14-year-old, but didn’t find out until decades later when she sought help after being unable to conceive. “I went into a catatonic stage and had a nervous breakdown,” Mercredi wrote in her 2021 book, “Sacred Bundles Unborn.” She told the AP the cost to First Nations peoples of coerced sterilizations was “staggering,” noting the procedures were previously routine in Indigenous residential schools and hospitals. “These many generations of Indigenous persons denied life is an effective genocide,” she said. The Senate report on forced sterilization made 13 recommendations, including compensating victims, measures to address systemic racism in health care and a formal apology. In response to questions from the AP, the Canadian government said it has taken steps to try to stop forced sterilization, including investing more than 87 million Canadian dollars ($65 million) to improve access to “culturally safe” health services, one-third of which supports Indigenous midwifery initiatives. Last year, the government allocated 6.2 million Canadian dollars ($4.7 million) to help survivors of forced sterilization. It said the Senate report was “further evidence of a broader need to eliminate racism” and acknowledged that bias in the health system “continues to have catastrophic effects on First Nations, Inuit and Metis communities.” Dr. Alika Lafontaine, the first Indigenous president of the Canadian Medical Association, recalls times in his own training when it was unclear whether Indigenous women had agreed to sterilization. “In my residency, there were situations where we would do C-sections on patients and someone would lean over and say, ‘So we’ll also clip her (fallopian) tubes,’” he said. “It never crossed my mind whether these patients had an informed conversation” about sterilization, he said, adding he assumed that had happened before patients were on the operating table. One problem, Lafontaine said, is that many First Nations women must fly hundreds of miles south to deliver their babies. “That happens because we literally did not build any health facilities where Indigenous people live,” he said. Gerri Sharpe, president of Pauktuutit Inuit Women of Canada, said health centers serving Inuit women often aren’t staffed by Indigenous people, resulting in translation problems. For example, in Inuit culture, people often communicate with facial expressions, like raising their eyebrows for “yes” or wrinkling their nose for “no.” “Doctors will be speaking, and they look to the woman to acknowledge something. When she (raises her eyebrows), the doctor labels it as ‘non-responsive,’” Sharpe said. Dr. Ewan Affleck, who made a 2021 film, “ The Unforgotten,” about the pervasive racism against Canada’s Indigenous people, said the way forced sterilization happens now is more subtle than in the past. He noted an ongoing “power imbalance” in the country’s health system. “If you have a white doctor saying to an Indigenous woman, ‘You should be sterilized,’ it may very likely happen,” he said. There are at least five class-action lawsuits against health, provincial and federal authorities involving forced sterilizations in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Quebec, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario and elsewhere. May Sarah Cardinal, the representative plaintiff in the Alberta case, said she was pressured into having her tubes tied after having her second child in 1977, but the doctor never explained the procedure was irreversible. “The doctor told me: ‘There are hard times ahead and how are you going to look after a bunch of kids? What if your husband leaves?’” Cardinal told the AP. “I was afraid if I didn’t go through with it, they would be angry with me, and I didn’t feel like I had a say.” Cardinal only realized she had been a victim of forced sterilization when her daughter, Anita, pieced it together after watching a video in a university class about eugenics and forced sterilization. “My mother had always told me she wanted more children but that she didn’t have a choice,” Anita Cardinal said. May Sarah Cardinal said she recalled her doctor asking if she and her husband were “native” Canadians and wondered why that should make a difference. “I would see mothers with their kids and my heart ached not to be able to have more,” she said. Kotaska, the ob-gyn who carried out the surgery that left an Indigenous woman sterile in 2019, was the president of the Northwest Territories’ medical association and held teaching positions at several Canadian universities. Documents show an anesthetist and surgical nurse became alarmed when Kotaska said during the surgery to remove the woman’s right fallopian tube: “Let’s see if I can find a reason to take the left tube as well.” Kotaska told investigators he was “voicing his thought process out loud” that removing both tubes would lessen the woman’s pelvic pain, the documents say. Describing Kotaska’s actions as “a violation of his ethical obligations,” investigators suspended Kotaska’s medical license for five months, ordered him to take an ethics course and reimburse the cost of the inquiry. The Northwest Territories health department said it was the first time a “non-consensual medical procedure” had been referred for investigation. The woman is suing Kotaska and hospital authorities for 6 million Canadian dollars ($4.38 million). There was no suggestion in the documents that Kotaska was motivated by racism. Kotaska declined to comment to the AP. The Canadian government would not comment on Kotaska’s actions but said forced sterilization is illegal and prosecutable under Canadian criminal law. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police in the Northwest Territories said there is no criminal investigation into Kotaska. “People don’t want to believe things like this are happening in Canada, but cases like this explain why entire First Nations populations still feel unsafe,” said Dr. Unjali Malhotra, medical officer of the First Nations Health Authority in British Columbia. Despite Canada’s reputation as a progressive society, its continued forced sterilization of Indigenous women puts it alongside countries like India and China, where the practice mostly affects women from ethnic minorities. In Europe, forced sterilizations affected more than 90,000 Roma women in past decades in the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria. Court rulings, apologies from the governments, reparations programs and modified health policies have mostly stamped out the practice; the last known forced sterilization on the continent was in 2012. In 1976, the U.S. found that forced sterilizations happened in at least one-third of the regions where the government provided health services to Native Americans. The U.S. government has never formally apologized or offered compensation. Indigenous leaders in Canada say an official apology would be a critical step towards rebuilding the country’s fractured relationship with First Nations people. Only the province of Alberta has apologized and offered some compensation to those affected before 1972. Mercredi said she continues to endure the repercussions of being sterilized without her knowledge decades ago. “Those who subject women to this must be held accountable,” she said. “No amount of therapy or healing can reconcile the fact that my human right to have children was taken from me.” ___ The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content. ___ This story has been corrected to show Dr. Unjali Malhotra’s title is medical officer, not chief medical officer. © 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Canada is ravaged by fire. No one has paid more dearly than indigenous people. The country's record-breaking fire season has led tens of thousands of Indigenous people to flee their homes and ravaged forests they rely on for sustenance. A wildfire burning in northern Quebec in June. Many Indigenous communities live in remote stretches of the province. (Renaud Philippe for The New York Times) By Brent McDonald, Matt Joycey and Ben Lafflin In early July, fierce wildfires fueled by dry conditions in northern Quebec laid waste to large swaths of spruce forest, destroying cabins and tourist camps. It also cut off transportation to isolated Indigenous communities over the region’s lone paved road, a 370-mile stretch of highway with little or no cell reception. Before evacuation orders were issued, residents who tried to leave along the Billy Diamond Highway, as the road is known, encountered flames and smoke that cast a dark-of-night pall in the afternoon. “I honestly wasn’t sure we’d make it out,” said Joshua Iserhoff, 45, a member of the Cree nation of Nemaska who was forced to turn back with his wife and two children and who, like other residents, eventually found another way out. “The wind was so ferocious it almost picked up the vehicle,” he said, calling the drive a “traumatic experience.” Since May, hundreds of wildfires across Canada have burned more than 47,000 square miles of forest, an area the size of New York State, and have displaced more than 25,000 Indigenous residents from British Columbia to Nova Scotia, according to government officials. The blazes have taken a particularly devastating toll on Indigenous communities because they live on the frontline of many fires and depend on forests for food and their homes are in remote areas that are not a firefighting priority since they are sparsely populated and have few buildings. The country’s Department of Indigenous Services has paid $55 million so far to communities affected by wildfires. Canada’s wildfires, whose frequency and intensity are linked to climate change, have set records for the amount of land that they have burned and have sent vast plumes of smoke across the country and into the United States. As of Friday, more than 1,000 fires were burning across Canada with more than 600 of those out of control, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. Evacuations from Indigenous people ordered by community leaders in tandem with government officials have lasted weeks, with families sometimes separated across hundreds of miles, sleeping in hotels and gyms. Many have had to flee repeatedly already, with a little more than a month left in Canada’s fire season. In July, eight of the nine Cree communities in Quebec, with a collective population of about 21,000, were under total or partial evacuation orders. Some were airlifted by commercial airliners or Chinook helicopters operated by the Canadian Royal Air Force. In some Cree communities, older people, young children and those with health issues were taken out by bus along hundreds of miles of gravel roads. On an 11-hour bus ride from Nemaska to Quebec City, William Wapachee, 79, who said he had lung cancer, started coughing and had trouble breathing. Before reaching the city, he was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital where he received oxygen. “I inhaled too much of that smoke,” Mr. Wapachee said. “Before, if we had fire, it was only in one place,” he added. “Now it seems to be a fire here, a fire there, fire everywhere.” Quebec has been hit by outbreaks of wildfires that are more common in western Canada, putting many Indigenous communities in the province at risk. “I’ve never seen that level of evacuation in Cree Nation, simultaneous communities all at once,” said Mandy Gull-Masty, who in 2021 became the first woman elected grand chief of the Cree Nation in Quebec. “Never has that happened before.” In June, Ms. Gull-Masty was among roughly 1,000 residents of Waswanipi, an Indigenous community in northern Quebec, who were forced to leave after a large wildfire threatened the town. “We are basically refugees of climate in this territory,” she said. “We are constantly escaping either risk of fire or impact of smoke in the community.” While no one has been killed by the fires that have threatened Indigenous communities, they have inflicted immeasurable damage to the forest ecology and cultural heritage, disrupting a way of life that’s reliant on hunting and fishing for food. Many Indigenous communities occupy the country’s vast northern latitudes where the government’s policy is to let wildfires burn, except where they threaten towns or key infrastructure. A single fire near the Quebec town of Radisson that started during an intense lightning storm on June 1 is still burning and is now two and a half times the size of the largest wildfire ever recorded in California, according to the interagency forest fire agency. Such gigantic blazes have contributed to bands of heavy smoke that have blanketed large parts of the United States and led to warnings in early June about hazardous levels of smoke pollution across the Eastern Seaboard. Kurtis Black, the fire chief in Nemaska, was recently surveying Indigenous firefighters applying water to smoldering hot spots that have repeatedly flared up along a gravel road that leads to the Billy Diamond Highway. “I don’t think these fires will stop until everything is burned,” Mr. Black said. “These fires are here to stay until fall gets here — or the snow.” Ms. Gull-Masty, in a video interview, criticized the Quebec government’s policy to largely refrain from fighting wildfires in the province’s northern section. This year’s fires have caused major damage to Cree traplines, which are crucial for hunting and trapping in the fall and winter, she said. “Our territory doesn’t have a super high population, and we don’t have a lot of infrastructure that needs to be protected,” Ms. Gull-Masty said. “But for us, our territory is our infrastructure.” Quebec’s Wildfire Agency, in an email, defended its policy as necessary because of limited resources across such a vast boreal landscape. On July 20, a period of rain had contained the fires and dissipated the smoke near Nemaska, allowing about 300 evacuees to return from hotels outside Quebec City. But three days later the fires roared back and the skies again turned orange. Mr. Black, Nemaska’s fire chief, called for the full evacuation of a summer settlement used by the Cree that was near the fires. Freshly caught sturgeons were left drying on fish racks. Diane Amy Tanoush recorded a video as she and other Indigenous people who had been living at the settlement loaded bags and coolers and put on N95 masks for the long boat ride to a landing across a lake. “It’s starting to get dark,” she said. “This is our fifth time evacuating.” © 2023 The New York Times Company

By: Niamo Brooks, Australian Institute for International Affairs First published January 21, 2021 If further genocidal acts and violence are to be prevented in Burundi, the UN should remain vigilant and act on its learnings from Rwanda. It should be concerned that transparency of internal politics and violence will be prevented without adequate reporting, and perpetrators not appropriately prosecuted. As of December 2020, the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) ended its reporting on Burundi, following pressure from the newly elected President Évariste Ndayishimiye, who argued that continued scrutiny was motivated by external governments seeking geopolitical influence. The UNSC noted the improved security situation as part of wider progress made in the region. This development followed the election of President Ndayishimiye, who was selected after the sudden death of Pierre Nkurunziza. In his first presidential speech, Ndayishimiye said he would follow in the path of his predecessor. This immediately raised doubts because of the previous regime’s infamous denial of human rights and record of rape and summary executions. A comparison with the pre-genocidal state of Rwanda provides insight as to why removing Burundi from UN scrutiny may be a mistake. During its years as a colonised state, the Tutsi governed Rwanda as a monarchy, an elite political and economic class militarily supported by Belgium. Violence can be traced to 1960 when the Hutu Revolution was ignited and mass slaughter was perpetrated against the Tutsi following years of discontent. As Rwanda gained independence, its colonial government left the majority Hutu in government. This meant that in 1962, Belgium had granted power to a disenfranchised group which had previously suffered under the Tutsi monarchy, creating an environment for resentment and reprisals. The 1994 Rwandan genocide against the Tutsi, in which 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutus were estimated to have been killed by Hutu Interahamwe militia or community members with whom they had lived with for generations, is one of Africa’s darkest memories. While this was occurring, a Rwandan government representative was a UNSC member and present at UNSC meetings. He denied reports of actions perpetrated by Rwandan authorities in order to stall UN action. Meanwhile, the UN turned its back on its own General Romeo Dallaire, UNAMIR Commander's (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) request for doubled peacekeeping troops and warnings of the planning of genocide. Neighbouring Burundi has a similar demographic ratio to pre-genocide Rwanda: 85 percent Hutu, 14 percent Tutsi, and one percent Twa. Like in Rwanda, it was the removal of the single monarchy that gave rise to ethnic tensions, yet in Burundi, this did not occur until 1968 when a single-party republic was installed by the military. Prior to this, the Burundian monarchy was multi-ethnic and, in contrast to Rwanda, did not recognise the relevance of ethnicity. However, following Tutsi Prince Louis Rwagasore’s assassination in 1961, power tensions in Burundi grew, especially with the Tutsi minority attempting to prevent similar events to those in Rwanda occurring to their ethnic group in Burundi. A military coup in 1968 gave rise to the Tutsi leader and previous military colonel, President Michel Micombero, who in 1972 ordered the killing of Hutus who he perceived as a threat to his regime. Over 200,000 Hutus were slaughtered, targeting all educated Hutus, in an attempt to decapitate the Hutu leadership. Later, from 1993 to 2000, Burundi was engulfed in civil war following the assassination of the democratically elected Hutu president, Melchior Ndadaye. The war was fought between Tutsi military and “Hutu rebel groups,” with the predominant rebel group becoming the governing party of Burundi today, the Conseil National pour la Défense de la Démocratie – Forces de Défense de la Démocratie (CNDD-FDD). This period of violence led to approximately 300,000 deaths and 400,000 displaced. The war caused Hutu refugees to flee to Rwanda with its Hutu-led government, and added to the anger, frustration, and violent ideology already growing within the nation. The Rwandan genocide and the Burundian civil war created refugee flows of approximately two million and 700,000, respectively. Most apparent was the exile of perpetrators of violence, who carried with them their violent philosophies and tendencies to neighbouring countries. The intertwining of ethnic identities among countries in the region with ongoing refugee movement created a never-ending possibility for violent outbreaks. This exemplifies the movement of ideology across borders with refugee flows breaking out of war zones, especially when ethnicities are transnational. An accurate comparison with Rwanda to determine the potential for genocide in Burundi can be aided by the use of Gregory Stanton’s ten stages of genocide: classification, symbolisation, discrimination, dehumanisation, organisation, polarisation, preparation, persecution, extermination, and denial. Stanton claims that each stage presents opportunities for intervention, that the “process is not linear,” and that “all stages continue to operate throughout the process.” Classification, or the distinguishing of people as “us and them,” and symbolisation can be attributed to colonisation, with the example of identity cards in pre-genocide Rwanda. Discrimination, or “a dominant group using… political power to deny the rights of other groups” is evident in both Hutu and Tutsi governments, military coups, and the exploitation of power in Rwanda and Burundi. Dehumanisation is a powerful contributor to perpetrator psychology. The process of likening humans to animals, insects, or disease allows perpetrators to “overcome the normal human revulsion against murder.” In Rwanda, this “other form” was “cockroaches” and was widespread over hate radio and televisions stations. Recently, UN investigators in Burundi highlighted the “proliferation of hate speech,” which fuelled “inflammatory rhetoric with an ethnic dimension.” They suggested that this is being used as a “tool” when deemed “politically expedient.” Without the power and influence of the Interahamwe militia, the Rwandan genocide may not have occurred or had the same impact. But while the Interahamwe were responsible for the preparation, organisation, and extermination of the Rwandan genocide, it was the dehumanising propaganda that motivated extreme violence. The Interahamwe ruthlessly engaged the community according to the Hutu Ten Commandments, which insisted that the role of Hutus was to ensure total domination over the Tutsi and which called for a united Hutu front. Since 2015, political commentators have been concerned about the rise of the Imbonerakure militia group throughout the Burundian countryside, which is associated with the current government and deemed a great source of insecurity within the country. A recent article suggests that their threat transcends borders, with Tanzanian police supporting the group in torturing Burundian refugees. Further, Burundi’s government has implemented repressive laws against the media, with reports of harassment and arrest of media representatives. This is set amid rising repression by the CNDD-FDD, which has recently used its powerful majority in the National Assembly to restrict the opposition and has introduced prison terms for opposition leaders, with no scrutiny due to a lack of media access. With strong parallels between current events in Burundi and Rwanda’s history and experience, there is no firm evidence suggesting that what occurred in Rwanda cannot occur in Burundi, which would reflect poorly on the Security Council’s recent removal of Burundi from its agenda. The international community has a responsibility to ensure protection of Burundians to prove that it has learned from the lesson of Rwanda. © Copyright 2023 Australian Institute of International Affairs. ACN 000 045 170

Sudanese refugees gather with their belongings in preparation for being transported to Gaga camp, 130 kilometres from the Sudanese-Chadian border. (Insa Wawa Diatta / UNHCR) On July 28, 2023 the Rapid Support Forces violently seized the town of Sirba in West Darfur. Sirba is located 23 miles north of El Geneina, the capital of West Darfur, which has endured constant attacks throughout the past two months by the RSF. The attacks began on Monday and waged for the whole week until the town was seized. Civilians on the ground confirmed that the entirety of the town, including homes and markets, were plundered and then burned by the RSF and their Allied Militias. The dead bodies from the attacks are scattered on the streets and have yet to be counted. The government army chose not to protect civilians or stand in the way of RSF to stop the slaughter. The Janjaweed, who were accused of carrying out the ethnic killings against the Black African Minority in Darfur during the genocide, the RSF, and other Arab Militias have been accused of specifically targeting ethnic African communities during the recent conflict leading to the deadly attacks in El Geneina and now the ones in Sirba. Sriba is home to the Eringa Tribe, one of the many indigenous African tribes in the Darfur region. The seizing of Sirba is evidence of the ongoing genocide being carried out against the indigenous tribes. The attacks in Sirba are similar to previous attacks in El Geneina and most recently Mornay. These are isolated incidents but are part of a systematic genocidal attack that has been ongoing for 20 years. The recent war has given the RSF and Janjaweed militias the opportunity to finally complete their extermination project in Darfur. DWAG is extremely outraged by the ongoing slaughter in Darfur and the lack of immediate response from the international community, including the U.S. West Darfur has been the most targeted region during the recent conflicts due to its strategic borders used to facilitate the smuggling of weapons and the flow of militias from other countries into Sudan to aid the RSF in their genocidal attacks against the indigenous African populations. Accordi to Eringa tribal leaders, “they [RSF] arrived in 127 vehicles mounted with heavy weapons. Others came on motorcycles and on horses and camels.” The RSF attacked the town from the South, East, and North and prevented civilians from fleeing. Those who managed to escape the violence have been caught in heavy rainfall without shelter. We at DWAG are dismayed to see the escalation of violence and genocidal attacks in Darfur without outrage from the regional or international actors. We urge our supporters to speak up for the people of Darfur and add your voices to ours to call on the Biden administration telling them that in the face of genocide they must not look the other way. We continue to urge the Biden Administration to take immediate steps to lead the international community to adopt the following recommendations and save lives in Darfur and end the war in Sudan. ● Placing Darfur under international trusteeship to end the genocide attack and uprooting to the indigenous Africans population in Darfur and prevent the disintegration of Sudan. ● Enable unhindered humanitarian access to all in need in Darfur and Sudan at large. ● Impose accountability for perpetrators of serious international crimes. ● Impose targeted sanctions on the two warring generals and their allies to cut the war financing, flow of weapons and destruction in Sudan through verified assets freezing and travel ban. Without urgent intervention to save lives or provide humanitarian aid, millions will die in silence in Darfur. If we can speak in one voice and make our voices louder we can compel our leaders to act and end this. Please speak. Silence only aids the perpetrators. Thank you for standing with the people of Sudan and for speaking up for Darfur. Sincerely, Niemat Ahmadi, Founder and President, and Darfur Women Action Group Team

By Nelson Renteria Police officers and soldiers escort a young man to a detention centre, in San Salvador, El Salvador May 2, 2022. Picture taken May 2, 2022. REUTERS/Jose Cabezas/File Photo SAN SALVADOR, July 26 (Reuters) - El Salvador's Congress on Wednesday approved group trials for the tens of thousands of people arrested during President Nayib Bukele's crackdown on criminal gangs, which has given the country one of the world's highest incarceration rates. The legislation will allow prosecutors to simultaneously try up to hundreds of people alleged to be part of the same criminal group or from the same area of the Central American country. El Salvador has been under a state of emergency for 16 months, sparking the arrest of over 71,900 alleged gang members. Some 6,000 people have been released, official data show. Lawmakers from Bukele's New Ideas party, which has a majority in Congress, said the measure seeks to boost order and efficiency. It passed by 67 votes in favor and six against. Justice Minister Gustavo Villatoro says up to 900 defendants from the same group could be prosecuted at a time. The state of emergency has been popular among Salvadorans. Proponents point to a significant drop in homicides and crimes such as extortion and drug dealing. But the policy has drawn criticism from Salvadoran and international rights groups, who say it has led to human rights abuses such as torture, deaths in custody, and arbitrary detentions, particularly of young men in poorer neighborhoods. The lawmakers who passed the measure said people found not to have links to gangs should be released. Opposition politicians and rights groups say group trials risk depriving detainees of their right to due process and their individual presumption of innocence. "'We're not arresting innocent people' turned into 'We're arresting innocent people but not keeping them', which turned into 'We're keeping them but the courts will set them free eventually'," said Manuel Melendez, a PhD candidate at Harvard University and researcher on Salvadoran politics. Ingrid Escobar, spokesperson for Humanitarian Legal Aid, a group providing assistance to Salvadoran detainees, said prisoners are at risk of being tried for crimes they did not commit. "For living in a place stigmatized by gangs, despite not necessarily being gang members themselves," she said. On July 14 at the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, rights organizations denounced the deaths of 174 people in state custody and over 6,400 documented human rights abuses during the state of emergency. The government and attorney general's office deny this. Lawmakers also approved a bill that will raise the maximum sentence for gang leaders from 45 to 60 years. Reporting by Nelson Renteria in San Salvador; writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by Matthew Lewis © 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

FILE - This photo shows the mobile phone app logos for, from left, Facebook and Instagram in New York, Oct. 5, 2021. A team of some of the world’s leading social media researchers has published four studies looking at the relationship between the algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram and America’s widening political divide. (AP Photo/Richard Drew, file) BY DAVID KLEPPER WASHINGTON (AP) — The powerful algorithms used by Facebook and Instagram to deliver content to users have increasingly been blamed for amplifying misinformation and political polarization. But a series of groundbreaking studies published Thursday suggest addressing these challenges is not as simple as tweaking the platforms’ software. The four research papers, published in Science and Nature, also reveal the extent of political echo chambers on Facebook, where conservatives and liberals rely on divergent sources of information, interact with opposing groups and consume distinctly different amounts of misinformation. Algorithms are the automated systems that social media platforms use to suggest content for users by making assumptions based on the groups, friends, topics and headlines a user has clicked on in the past. While they excel at keeping users engaged, algorithms have been criticized for amplifying misinformation and ideological content that has worsened the country’s political divisions. Proposals to regulate these systems are among the most discussed ideas for addressing social media’s role in spreading misinformation and encouraging polarization. But when the researchers changed the algorithms for some users during the 2020 election, they saw little difference. “We find that algorithms are extremely influential in people’s on-platform experiences and there is significant ideological segregation in political news exposure,” said Talia Jomini Stroud, director of the Center for Media Engagement at the University of Texas at Austin and one of the leaders of the studies. “We also find that popular proposals to change social media algorithms did not sway political attitudes.” While political differences are a function of any healthy democracy, polarization occurs when those differences begin to pull citizens apart from each other and the societal bonds they share. It can undermine faith in democratic institutions and the free press. Significant division can undermine confidence in democracy or democratic institutions and lead to “affective polarization,” when citizens begin to view each other more as enemies than legitimate opposition. It’s a situation that can lead to violence, as it did when supporters of then-President Donald Trump attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. To conduct the analysis, researchers obtained unprecedented access to Facebook and Instagram data from the 2020 election through a collaboration with Meta, the platforms’ owners. The researchers say Meta exerted no control over their findings. When they replaced the algorithm with a simple chronological listing of posts from friends — an option Facebook recently made available to users — it had no measurable impact on polarization. When they turned off Facebook’s reshare option, which allows users to quickly share viral posts, users saw significantly less news from untrustworthy sources and less political news overall, but there were no significant changes to their political attitudes. Likewise, reducing the content that Facebook users get from accounts with the same ideological alignment had no significant effect on polarization, susceptibility to misinformation or extremist views. Together, the findings suggest that Facebook users seek out content that aligns with their views and that the algorithms help by “making it easier for people to do what they’re inclined to do,” according to David Lazer, a Northeastern University professor who worked on all four papers. Eliminating the algorithm altogether drastically reduced the time users spent on either Facebook or Instagram while increasing their time on TikTok, YouTube or other sites, showing just how important these systems are to Meta in the increasingly crowded social media landscape. In response to the papers, Meta’s president for global affairs, Nick Clegg, said the findings showed “there is little evidence that key features of Meta’s platforms alone cause harmful ‘affective’ polarization or has any meaningful impact on key political attitudes, beliefs or behaviors.” Katie Harbath, Facebook’s former director of public policy, said they showed the need for greater research on social media and challenged assumptions about the role social media plays in American democracy. Harbath was not involved in the research. “People want a simple solution and what these studies show is that it’s not simple,” said Harbath, a fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center and the CEO of the tech and politics firm Anchor Change. “To me, it reinforces that when it comes to polarization, or people’s political beliefs, there’s a lot more that goes into this than social media.” One organization that’s been critical of Meta’s role in spreading misinformation about elections and voting called the research “limited’ and noted that it was only a snapshot taken in the midst of an election, and didn’t take into account the effects of years of social media misinformation. Free Press, a non-profit that advocates for civil rights in tech and media, called Meta’s use of the research ”calculated spin.” “Meta execs are seizing on limited research as evidence that they shouldn’t share blame for increasing political polarization and violence,” Nora Benavidez, the group’s senior counsel and director of digital justice and civil rights said in a statement. “Studies that Meta endorses, which look piecemeal at narrow time periods, shouldn’t serve as excuses for allowing lies to spread.” The four studies also revealed the extent of the ideological differences of Facebook users and the different ways that conservatives and liberals use the platform to get news and information about politics. Conservative Facebook users are more likely to consume content that has been labeled misinformation by fact-checkers. They also have more sources to choose from. The analysis found that among the websites included in political Facebook posts, far more cater to conservatives than liberals. Overall, 97% of the political news sources on Facebook identified by fact-checkers as having spread misinformation were more popular with conservatives than liberals. The authors of the papers acknowledged some limitations to their work. While they found that changing Facebook’s algorithms had little impact on polarization, they note that the study only covered a few months during the 2020 election, and therefore cannot assess the long-term impact that algorithms have had since their use began years ago. They also noted that most people get their news and information from a variety of sources — television, radio, the internet and word-of-mouth — and that those interactions could affect people’s opinions, too. Many in the United States blame the news media for worsening polarization. To complete their analyses, the researchers pored over data from millions of users of Facebook and Instagram and surveyed specific users who agreed to participate. All identifying information about specific users was stripped out for privacy reasons. Lazer, the Northeastern professor, said he was at first skeptical that Meta would give the researchers the access they needed, but was pleasantly surprised. He said the conditions imposed by the company were related to reasonable legal and privacy concerns. More studies from the collaboration will be released in coming months. “There is no study like this,” he said of the research published Thursday. “There’s been a lot of rhetoric about this, but in many ways the research has been quite limited.” © 2023 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.