Rwandan genocide suspect Fulgence Kayishema appears at the Cape Town Magistrates' Court where 54 new charges were added against him, in Cape Town, South Africa June 9, 2023. REUTERS/Nic Bothma/File Photo CAPE TOWN, June 20 (Reuters) - Former Rwandan police officer Fulgence Kayishema, accused of participating in the 1994 Rwandan genocide, has abandoned his application for bail and applied for political asylum in South Africa, prosecuting authorities and his lawyer said on Tuesday. Arrested last month under a false name on a grape farm outside Cape Town, Kayishema has been on the run since 2001, when the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) indicted him for genocide. He stands accused of ordering the death of 2,000 people seeking refuge in a church. He has denied any involvement in violence during the genocide but has said he was "sorry" for the killings. Kayishema is currently facing 54 charges in South Africa, mainly related to contravening the Immigration Act but including several counts of fraud, and could face additional charges, the National Prosecuting Authority (NPA) said in a statement. The NPA said the 62-year-old accused "has abandoned his bail application and will instead launch an asylum application today". "My client fears for his life, if and when extradited, hence the very reason for his asylum application which has been filed today," Kayishema's lawyer, Juan Smuts, told Reuters in an emailed response. He said further details would be revealed in his client's asylum application to officials at the Department of Home Affairs. The state prosecutor will oppose any bail application on domestic charges should the accused consider applying in future, the NPA said, adding the asylum application had no bearing on the court case. Kayishema remains in custody and the case was postponed to Aug. 18 for further investigation. Reporting by Wendell Roelf; Editing by Angus MacSwan © 2023 Reuters

June 27, 2023 Members of the Tigrayan diaspora and their supporters march to mark one year since the start of the conflict in Tigray, the northernmost region in Ethiopia, at the U.S. Capitol, Thursday, Nov. 4, 2021, in Washington. In 2023 urgently needed grain and oil have disappeared again for millions caught in a standoff between Ethiopia's government, the United States and United Nations over what U.S. officials say may be the biggest theft of food aid on record. (AP Photo/Gemunu Amarasinghe, File) ASSOCIATED PRESS By Cara Anna NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Hunger has killed at least 700 people in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in recent weeks after the United States and the United Nations paused food aid, local officials and researchers say. The U.N. and the U.S. first suspended food aid to Tigray in March after the discovery of a scheme to steal donated wheat intended for needy people. They extended the pause to the rest of Ethiopia in early June, affecting 20 million people in need, or about one-sixth of the country’s population. Tigray’s Disaster Risk Management Commission has recorded 728 hunger-related deaths in three of the region’s seven zones since the food aid was suspended in March. The data is based on information gathered by district officials, said the commission leader, Gebrehiwot Gebregziaher. “The situation in Tigray is very difficult. Many people are dying because of the food shortage,” Gebrehiwot said. The figure includes 350 hunger deaths in the northwest zone of Tigray, which hosts thousands of people displaced by a two-year conflict in the region that ended in November. In mid-March, U.S. aid officials found enough food aid for 134,000 people for sale in a local market in Shire, the zone’s biggest town. Separately, researchers at Mekele University in the regional capital have documented 165 hunger deaths in seven camps for internally displaced people in Tigray since the food aid suspension began. There are over 100 such camps across the region. The deaths were reported by camp coordinators to the researchers, who are studying people displaced by the recent war. Most of the deaths are of children, old people and people with underlying health conditions, said one researcher, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisals. He linked the deaths directly to the aid suspension. A U.N. update published on June 14 said the number of children admitted to hospitals in Tigray for malnutrition rose by 196% between April 2022 and April 2023. The recent war left 5.4 million out of 6 million people in Tigray reliant on food aid. During the conflict, both sides looted humanitarian supplies and the government restricted aid access, leading U.N. investigators to accuse it of “using starvation as a method of warfare.” A ceasefire signed in November had allowed aid deliveries to resume to the region. Aid workers have told The Associated Press, which first reported the food aid theft, that senior Ethiopian government officials were deeply involved. The U.S. is refusing to reinstate food aid until they are removed from the aid distribution process and stronger checks are introduced. Ethiopia’s government dismisses as harmful “propaganda” the suggestion that it bears primary responsibility for the disappearance of aid in Tigray and other regions, but it has agreed to a joint investigation with the U.S. while the U.N.’s World Food Program carries out a separate probe. Although they have suspended deliveries of food, the U.S. and WFP continue to run nutrition programs for women and children. However, these have been hampered by a lack of funding. © copyright 2023 The Associated Press

https://www.genocidewatch.com/so/c4OYYYWPK?languageTag=en Barzani Cemetery, Barzan, Kurdistan, Iraq 15 April 2023 credit Ted Stanton copyright 2023 TedStantonPhoto The gravestones have no names because the remains were mixed and buried in mass graves. A Genocide Watch team working in Kurdistan, the US, the UK, India, and the Netherlands today issued a report detailing seven genocides that have been perpetrated in Kurdistan since 1980. Genocide Watch has made numerous trips to Kurdistan since 2007. Genocide Watch teams have read thousands of pages of reports in Kurdish, Arabic, English, French, Dutch and German. Genocide Watch teams have visited many camps for displaced persons in Kurdistan. The teams have interviewed hundreds of eyewitnesses to the genocides and crimes against humanity committed against the Kurdish people. In April 2023, Genocide Watch again made an investigatory trip to Kurdistan with the help of the KGLobby, a Kurdish and Dutch human rights organization. The Genocide Watch team interviewed eyewitnesses from many groups: Yazidis, Barzani and Feyli Kurds, Shi'a and Sunni Muslims, Chaldean and Assyrian Christians. We met with Iraqi organizations that belong to Genocide Watch's Alliance Against Genocide. We also met with officials in the Kurdistan Regional Government, UNITAD (the UN Investigative Team to Promote Accountability for Crimes Committed by Da'esh/ISIL), the Chaldean Catholic Church, the Coalition for Just Reparations, and EMMA (the women rights organization). We follow the heroic work in 1993 of Joost Hilterman and Human Rights Watch, led my dear friend and Yale Law classmate, Ken Roth, in documenting The Anfal Genocide. The Human Rights Watch report remains the gold standard for human rights documentation. We embarked on this trip to gather the evidence and do the legal analysis to prove that these crimes constituted Genocide. We spoke at a major conference in Erbil on Recognition and Reparations for the Kurdish Genocides. We came away determined to seek justice and reparations for the Kurdish victims of these genocides. With the KG Lobby, Genocide Watch is proposing a Resolution by the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) recognizing these crimes as genocides. The IAGS is the most authoritative group of genocide experts in the world. We hope that this IAGS resolution will help mobilize the Iraq government and many other governments that aided and abetted or were complicit in the Kurdish Genocides to recognize their responsibility to provide reparations to assist the hundreds of thousands of Kurds who still live with the daily trauma left by these genocides. Kurdish people must not become another forgotten people, left behind in the aftermath of genocide. We post the Genocide Watch Report on the Kurdish Genocides with a prayer for just reparations.

23 June 2023 Kinshasa – The number of internally displaced persons in the Democratic Republic of the Congo has more than doubled to 6.3 million since the end of 2022 amid a spike in conflict and insecurity, as well as natural disasters and disease outbreaks that are deepening the plight of millions of people and exponentially heightening health needs. The worst-affected eastern provinces of Ituri, North Kivu and South Kivu where about 6 million people have been uprooted by violence since March 2022 are also witnessing an upsurge in infectious diseases. In North Kivu, more than 17 000 cholera cases and 148 deaths have been reported since December 2022. The disease has also affected neighbouring South Kivu. The two provinces alone account for 82% of the more than 136 000 measles cases, including 2000 deaths, recorded in the country so far this year. In addition to the armed violence, flooding earlier this year affected 36 health facilities in North Kivu, South Kivu, Kasai and Tshopo provinces, further increasing health needs. During an outbreak of violence in North Kivu in October 2022, at least 32 health facilities were looted or damaged, limiting access to services. In Mai-Ndombe, Kasai and Tshopo provinces, flooding and inter-community violence have uprooted nearly 100 000 people. Around 18 000 measles cases and 444 deaths have been recorded in the three provinces. United Nations humanitarian agencies have sounded the alarm over the rising humanitarian needs in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo and called for an immediate step-up of operations to assist the affected population. With the deterioration of the humanitarian situation in Mai-Ndombe, Kasai and Tshopo, World Health Organization (WHO) is also immediately scaling up emergency health assistance to respond to the rising needs. WHO has activated its maximum level of organizational response to the humanitarian crisis in the affected provinces. In scaling up its response, the Organization will focus on bolstering access to essential health care services including mental health, gender-based violence and vaccination, early warning and surveillance, provision of lifesaving medicines and supplies, and prevention of sexual exploitation and abuse among the vulnerable population. “The worsening insecurity has taken a heavy toll on millions of people already faced with dire living conditions deprived of critical basic services such as health,” said Dr Boureima Hama Sambo, WHO Representative in the Democratic Republic of the Congo. “With partners, we are determined to step up our assistance to ensure those most in need have access to lifesaving health services.” The major health needs include basic emergency health care, including reproductive health services, mental health and psychosocial support and care for victims of gender-based violence as well as trauma. Ensuring access to essential health services by the vulnerable population, along with strengthening disease surveillance, prevention and response to outbreaks are all crucial for the emergency health response. Other priority areas of health response include disease prevention and routine vaccination, cholera, measles and polio control as well as rehabilitation of health facility equipment. This year, at least US$ 174 million are required to provide urgent health assistance. However, just US$ 23 million, or 13%, have been mobilized. © Copyright World Health Organization (WHO) - Regional Office for Africa, 2015.

“I saw people eating plants that are usually only used to feed animals,” said one resident of a camp for displaced Syrians that sits in the shadow of an American military base but has been cut off from aid for years. By Raja Abdulrahim Refugees outside a United Nations-operated clinic near the Rukban camp in Syria in 2017. The organization’s aid shipments last reached the camp in 2019. Credit: Khalil Mazraawi / Agence France-Presse — Getty Images. Over the course of Syria’s long war, a remote desert camp for thousands of displaced people grew in the shadow of an American military base, just out of reach of Syrian government forces. The Rukban camp, a few miles from the United States base at al-Tanf in southeastern Syria, ended up almost cut off from aid largely because of closed borders and a Syrian government policy to block almost all relief efforts for areas outside its control. That has left many of its 8,000 residents, who live in tents or mud homes, struggling to survive without sufficient food and health care. One Syrian-American aid group worked for years to find a way to ease their plight. In recent days, the group has sent a first wave of critically needed supplies with the help of an obscure United States military provision known as the Denton Program. It lets American aid groups use available space on U.S. military cargo planes to transport humanitarian goods such as food and medical supplies to approved countries. “There isn’t a door we haven’t tried to knock” in trying to get aid to the camp, said Mouaz Moustafa, the executive director of the aid group, the Syrian Emergency Task Force. “We have been screaming at the top of our lungs at everybody who has been complicit in the failure to deliver aid to these people stuck in the middle of the desert,” he added. “We have gone to the State Department and USAID and talked to the United Nations.” A lack of aid led to humanitarian crisis. Rukban sits in a U.S.-protected zone near where the borders of Syria, Jordan and Iraq meet. That puts it just beyond the reach of forces loyal to Bashar al-Assad, the authoritarian Syrian president, who are stationed at checkpoints right outside the protected area. Mr. al-Assad’s government has referred to many of the camp's residents as “terrorists” — a term it uses for almost anyone opposed to his regime’s rule. For several years, residents said, the only goods that have reached them have come through smugglers. “I saw people eating plants that are usually only used to feed animals,” said Khaled al-Ali, a resident of Rukban since 2014. “Everything arrives to the camp via smuggling with no aid groups nor United Nations,” he added, saying the past month had been especially difficult. The U.S. was criticized for not helping the Syrians. The various forces operating around this remote corner of Syria — including the United States, the Syrian government and its Russian backers — have traded blame about the bleak situation in the camp. Washington has come under criticism for not doing enough to help the camp’s residents, who live in an area entirely under United States control. Last year, some American lawmakers sent a letter to the Biden administration urging it to address the humanitarian crisis at Rukban. The United States, in turn, has blamed the Assad government for not allowing the United Nations to deliver aid. In remarks earlier this year, the American ambassador to the United Nations said he was “deeply concerned by the dire need for assistance in Rukban.” Without Syrian government approval, no United Nations supplies can reach Rukban, either via the government-controlled capital, Damascus, or across the Jordanian border. The United Nations last managed to deliver aid in late 2019. Displaced Syrians first arrived at the remote spot in 2014, settling into a zone between two berms that mark the border between Syria and Jordan. It was a few years after Syria’s 2011 Arab Spring uprising, which morphed into a multisided war that drew in foreign powers including Russia, Iran and the United States. In 2016, the American military turned al-Tanf into a small outpost. It is on the strategic Baghdad-Damascus highway — a vital link for forces backed by Syria’s ally Iran in a corridor that runs from the Iranian capital, Tehran, through Iraq and Syria to southern Lebanon. The de facto protection provided by the American presence helped the camp population grow and at its height, some 70,000 people lived there. Since then, in large part because of the lack of aid, all but about 8,000 have left, said Jesse Marks, a senior advocate at Refugees International. The aid group's plan was years in the making. The Syrian Emergency Task Force spent years devising its relief mission. It wanted to use the Denton Program, jointly run by United States government agencies including the State and Defense Departments. But when the task force applied for the program two years ago, Syria wasn’t on the list of approved countries. So the organization lobbied to have it added. The Pentagon’s Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East and South Asia, said on Tuesday that it had extended its support to the humanitarian aid effort by assisting with the transportation of “lifesaving aid” to the Rukban camp. On Saturday, the first pallet of wheat seeds arrived at the al-Tanf base on a Chinook helicopter followed by nine more pallets on Monday with irrigation equipment and school supplies for the Rukban camp’s more than 1,000 children, according to the task force. On Tuesday, the United States military handed over the pallets to the task force’s team inside the camp, said Mr. Moustafa, the executive director. Approximately 900 United States soldiers remain in Syria, though the government will not say how many are at al-Tanf. Their operations in the country include training and arming local forces to fight remnants of the terrorist group Islamic State. Some of the Syrian fighters they are training and equipping live with their families in Rukban, camp residents said. The Pentagon did not respond to questions about why the United States itself had not delivered aid to the camp. Robert Ford, a resident scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington and former American ambassador to Syria from 2010 to 2014, said that because the United States effectively controls the area around the camp, it was obliged under international law to ensure residents’ survival. “The arguments that the American government has made that the U.S. presence is temporary does not absolve it from its immediate responsibility,” Mr. Ford said. © 2023 The New York Times Company

International Intervention is Urgently Needed to Stop the Targeted Extermination of Innocent Civilians in Darfur Dear Friends and Family of DWAG, Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) is outraged by the horrifying massacre, mass killing, and massive exodus of indigenous Africans in El Geneina and the brutal slaughter of the West Darfur governor, Khamis Abakar, by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The attack in El Geneina should have shocked the world's consciousness and prompted the international community to act. The targeted killing of the governor comes after Mr. Abakar had given a media interview detailing the situation confirming the responsibility of the RSF and allied militias for violence which he called a "genocide." This horrific act of violence comes after two months of the ongoing war in Sudan that has inflamed targeted ethnic attacks in Darfur. Mr. Abakar is the most senior government official known to have been killed since the conflict between the army and the RSF began in April and marks a new escalation in the conflict. While the entirety of Sudan is going through war and destruction, particularly the capital Khartoum where civilians continue to fall victim as a result of fighting between the two warring parties (including reported SAF-led bombardment of civilians' homes and services facilities, coupled with the RSF's horrifying attacks and occupation of civilians' homes), the attacks in Darfur are precisely different in their scope and nature of targeting, whereby the RSF has systemically targeted the indigenous Africans while the military remains silently watching from a distance without making any effort to intervene or protect civilians. This reality has been evident from attacks in El Geneina, West Darfur; Kutum and Tawila in North Darfur; and Zalingei in Central Darfur, whereby the RSF is emptying these three cities of their populations by killing, injuring, and forcing them to flee with no access to communication or transportation means. What is common in all of these attacks is the target is the indigenous African tribes who have been singled out for extermination since the 2003 Darfur genocide. The city of El Geneina in West Darfur, where indigenous Africans comprise most of the population, has been the most targeted city during the recent crises consistent with the history of the ongoing genocidal violence in the Darfur region. Sources on the ground confirmed that El Geneina has been through large-scale attacks more than 7 times since the start of the war in Sudan. The RSF and other allied Janjaweed Militias face accusations of carrying out the ethnic killings against the Black Africans in Darfur during the genocide. The RSF and other Arab Militias had put El Geneina under siege for 55 days with a total blockade of access to communications and means of transportation, as well as destroyed food, poisoned water sources, destroyed hospitals and pharmacies, and systematically eliminated all means of survival. Civilians' homes are completely burned and damaged, leaving women and children wandering around the streets. Those who tried earlier to flee were targeted for killing. Over 3000 are wounded with an urgent need for medical intervention and left to die. The people of El Geneina have only two options: dying to gunfire or dying due to starvation or lack of medical attention. Estimates say that at least 500 people have been killed in El Geneina alone in the last week alone, making up over 2500 people, triple the total number of people killed across Sudan, and many more are yet to be reported due to how the conflict has scattered people. Targeted killings of human rights defenders and prominent figures include targeted killings of the brother of Sultan (King) of Masalit along with 16 members of his immediate family and the killing of three lawyers and their families. It was extremely dismaying to note that the national army was present and could do nothing to help or intervene to save lives. DWAG is saddened to be mourning the death of a leader of unimpeachable integrity; while all government officials went into hiding or escaped, Mr. Abakar stuck to his moral compass and has repeatedly called for lifesaving intervention in the West Darfur region by both the international and regional community. Mr. Abakar had been repeatedly outspoken about the atrocities being committed against his people and other ethnic minorities in El Geneina; his values and voice have sadly cost him his life. The RSF killed him along with his brother and son. People who were prevented from fleeing and forced into the killing fields were finally left to feel while escorted out of their homeland at gunpoint by the RSF, the latter cheering in celebration of the "liberation of Masslit land from Abeed (Arabic word for slaves) to be now called the land of Arabs", as an RSF leader stated in one of the videos widely circulated online. What is happening in Darfur today, particularly El Geneina, is a genocide that should prompt international action. The massive exodus of more than 50,000 people of El Geneina running for their lives to find safe refuge was the most horrifying and shocking scene of people uprooted from their homes in recent history. It's a nightmare for members of the Darfuri and Sudanese diaspora, many of whom must watch their families slaughtered and some forced to flee in videos broadcasted by Janjaweed members celebrating their violence. UN leaders have spoken out to condemn the ethnic violence in El Geneina but, disappointingly, have yet to take serious action to protect civilians or save lives, including reaching over 3 thousand abandoned wounded people in El Geneina. US and other international leaders have issued a strong condemnation, but the time is not for condemnation; serious and swift action must take place before it's too late. Today, Darfur faces systematic and fast-approaching full-scale genocide that only immediate and resolute international action can stop. Last week, Darfuri diaspora from all walks of life met and called on the United States and the UNSC to place Darfur under International Trusteeship as the only option to stop the killing of millions in Darfur. We urge you to speak up for the people of Sudan and particularly Darfur, where genocidal attacks are perpetrated on daily bases and at a fast pace against innocent people who have nowhere to turn. The situation is expected to worsen, and the people of the Darfur region are suffering beyond our imagination. We call on you to speak up and tell our leaders, including the United States and the other Member States of the UN Security Council, that they must take immediate action and not look the other way in the face of genocide. They must uphold their legal and moral obligation to intervene to save lives and hold the perpetrators accountable. Urgent international intervention is needed in the Darfur region to prevent more atrocities from occurring in this escalating crisis. Please use your voice to speak up. We will update you with a letter and press statement to support the Darfuri call for international trusteeship to be implemented in Darfur. Thank you for your continued support! Stay tuned for more opportunities to take action. Our full statement is also available here on our website. To help our emergency support please donate here. Sincerely, Niemat Ahmadi, Founder and President, and Darfur Women Action Group Team

By Alison Durkee The Supreme Court is set to rule as soon as Thursday on two landmark cases concerning affirmative action, which could result in the end of a decades-long practice of taking race into account in college admissions—which universities warn could make it much harder for schools to have diverse student bodies. Students enter the Admissions building on the campus of Harvard University on September 12, 2006. Credit: GETTY IMAGES. Key facts: The court considered two cases on affirmative action, brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina—to represent private and public universities, respectively. Students for Fair Admissions argued the practice violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and disadvantaged white and Asian-American applicants. Harvard and UNC have said the practice should be upheld, saying their admissions policies are in line with previous court rulings on the policy and that taking race into account helps to ensure a diverse student body, denying that the practice is discriminatory. It remains to be seen how the court will rule on the issue, but the 6-3 conservative court signaled during its oral arguments that it may be willing to overturn affirmative action. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested ending the practice could be “an incentive for the university to truly pursue race neutral alternatives” to promote diversity, for instance, and Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett said that having applicants discuss their race in other ways on their applications, like through essays, might be more effective than “ticking a box” showing an applicant’s race. The court will rule on the case at some point in the coming weeks, before the end of its term at the end of June, but it’s unknown on which specific day the decision will come out. What to watch for Universities have warned that getting rid of affirmative action would significantly impact the diversity of their student bodies, with Harvard arguing in court briefs that taking race out of its admissions process would reduce enrollment of Black students at the school from 14% to 6% of its student body, and Hispanic enrollment from 14% to 9%. It has also predicted the ruling will result in a 14% drop in students studying the humanities. At least nine states—Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Washington—already have policies that don’t allow race to count in university admissions. The University of Michigan said in a court brief that after it adopted race-neutral policies, its Black population decreased by 44% between 2006 and 2021 as a result, even as Michigan’s population of college-age African Americans increased. What we don't know How or if universities will be able to get around the court’s ruling to maintain diverse enrollment, if affirmative action is overturned. Universities have already started putting strategies in place ahead of the court’s ruling, the Boston Globereported in April, such as working more closely with community colleges and high schools in underserved areas, and 16 schools—including Yale and MIT—have banded together on an effort aimed at recruiting more rural students. University of Maryland education professor Julie J. Park told Axios a ruling overturning affirmative action action could also lead to standardized testing getting killed as an admissions requirement—as tests like the SAT historically benefit higher-income students—and the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO) issued guidance that recommends steps like appointing a review team to create strategies on how to comply with the ruling. Ultimately, however, the Associated Press notes efforts in states where affirmative action had already been eliminated have still not been able to fully make up for taking race into account in admissions, and it remains to be seen whether efforts will become more successful if affirmative action is now overturned on a national level. Big number 41.5%. That’s the approximate percentage of U.S. universities that take race into account when determining admissions, according to a study by the National Association for College Admissions Counseling that Harvard cited in a court brief, as well as 60% of more selective universities that accept 40% or fewer of their applicants. Key background Affirmative action was first established in a 1965 executive order that told employers to “take affirmative action to ensure that equal opportunity is provided in all aspects of their employment.” The Supreme Court then sanctioned affirmative action for university admissions in 1978—though it ruled schools could not use racial quotas for admissions—and affirmed the practice in subsequent rulings in 2003 and 2016, though it struck down a “point system” at the University of Michigan that automatically gave applications from underrepresented racial minorities enough points to virtually guarantee admission. The Supreme Court agreed to take up the Harvard and UNC cases in January 2022 after lower courts sided with the schools and upheld affirmative action, prompting SFFA to appeal the case to the high court. Justices on the 6-3 conservative court signaled during oral arguments that they were likely to strike down the policy. FORBES®

At issue in the case was whether a law aimed at keeping Native American adoptees within tribes is constitutional. By Abbie VanSickle Nita Battise, a member of the Alabama-Coushatta tribe, celebrated the ruling on the steps of the Supreme Court on Thursday. Credit: Kenny Holston / The New York Times The Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a 1978 law aimed at keeping Native American adoptees with their tribes and traditions, handing a victory to tribes that had argued that a blow to the law would upend the basic principles that have allowed them to govern themselves for years. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, writing for the majority, affirmed the power of Congress to make laws about Native American tribes and child welfare. But the ruling did not resolve the question of whether the law, the Indian Child Welfare Act, discriminated against non-Native families based on race. The vote was 7 to 2, with Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissenting. The case pitted a white foster couple from Texas against five tribes and the Interior Department as they battled over the adoption of a Native American child. Under the act, preference is given to Native families, a policy that the couple said violated equal protection principles because it hinges on placement based on race. The tribes have said that they are political entities, not racial groups. Doing away with that distinction, which underpins tribal rights, they argued, could imperil nearly every aspect of Indian law and policy, including measures that govern access to land, water and gambling. The majority dismissed the equal protection argument, saying that no party in the case had legal standing. Instead, the justices focused on Congress’s longstanding authority to make laws about tribes and rejected claims by the challengers in the case, Jennifer and Chad Brackeen, a Christian couple from Texas, that states, not the federal government, should be addressing issues of family law. “Our cases leave little doubt that Congress’s power in this field is muscular, superseding both tribal and state authority,” Justice Barrett wrote, adding that its authority touched on subjects as varied as criminal defense, domestic violence, property law, employment and trade. She added, “The Constitution does not erect a firewall around family law.” In their dissenting opinions, Justices Thomas and Alito asserted that Congress had overstepped. The majority, Justice Alito wrote, had lost sight of those most at risk: children. The majority “decides one question after another in a way that disserves the rights and interests of these children and their parents, as well as our Constitution’s division of federal and state authority,” he added. Justice Thomas wrote that the legislation exceeded the federal government’s power, adding that some of the Native American children involved in the adoptions “may never have even set foot on Indian lands.” The case began when the Brackeens, along with other families, challenged the law after they took in a boy in 2016 known in court records as A.L.M. The boy, born to a Navajo mother and a Cherokee father, joined the couple after Navajo tribal placements fell through. Eventually, both tribes agreed to let the couple adopt the child, but in 2018, A.L.M.’s birth mother had another child, a girl known in court records as Y.R.J. She, too, entered foster care. The Brackeens filed for custody, hoping she could join her brother. The Navajo sought to have the child placed with a distant relative, who lives on a reservation. A state judge determined that the Brackeens would share custody of the girl with the relative. Both the tribe and the couple appealed the decision as A.L.M.’s case made its way to the Supreme Court. In sidestepping the equal protection argument, the justices appear to have left the door open to challenges on whether the law is racially discriminatory. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, wrote that question deserved consideration. “In my view, the equal protection issue is serious,” he wrote. The Indian Child Welfare Act, he added, can deny a child or an adoptive family a placement “because of the child’s race — even if the placement is otherwise determined to be in the child’s best interests.” Justice Kavanaugh added, “Courts, including ultimately this court, will be able to address the equal protection issue when it is properly raised.” In another concurring opinion, Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who has emerged as a fierce advocate of tribal rights, emphasized the fraught history of the legislation, writing that it was meant to remedy the forcible removal of Indian children from their families. “In all its many forms, the dissolution of the Indian family has had devastating effects on children and parents alike,” he wrote. Tribal leaders expressed relief about the ruling. The decision is “a broad affirmation of the rule of law, and of the basic constitutional principles surrounding relationships between Congress and tribal nations,” leaders of the Cherokee Nation, the Morongo Band of Mission Indians, the Oneida Nation and the Quinault Indian Nation said in a joint statement. President Biden nodded to the country’s past in casting the ruling as a victory. “In the not-so-distant past, Native children were stolen from the arms of the people who loved them,” he said in a statement. “They were sent to boarding schools or to be raised by non-Indian families — all with the aim of erasing who they are as Native people and tribal citizens.” A spokesman and a family friend for the Brackeens said they were worried about the future of Y.R.J., now 5 years old. She “has been part of their family for over four years,” said the spokesman, Thomas Graham. “They wish to say they love Y.R.J. more than words can describe and will continue to fight to adopt her and keep her united with her brother, whom the Brackeens also adopted.” The trial concerning Y.R.J. was paused pending the Supreme Court’s ruling. The 1978 legislation was meant to address the legacy of abuses of Native American children, hundreds of thousands of whom had been separated from their tribes to be raised by families with no connection to their culture. Typically in child welfare cases, a judge is charged with determining the best interest of the child. Under the act, however, Native American children are subject to different rules, in part to safeguard their tribal ties. The law lays out priorities for adoption before a child can be placed with a non-Native family. Children should first be in the care of a member of their extended family. If that is not possible, then priority would move to a member of their tribe; failing that, children should go to “other Indian families.” The Supreme Court has heard other challenges to the Indian Child Welfare Act, most recently in 2013, but the court’s composition has shifted considerably since then. Other states, including Ohio and Oklahoma, have backed the Brackeens, arguing that the law intrudes on states’ ability to handle child welfare cases. The Goldwater Institute, a conservative policy center in Arizona that has long mounted challenges to the act, said it improperly forced state agencies to carry out a federal program. “We’re talking about a law that strips children of legal protections based on their racial ancestry,” Timothy Sandefur, the vice president for legal affairs at the Goldwater Institute, said after the court issued its decision. “This law, for example, makes it harder for state officials to protect abused and neglected Indian children.” Medical groups, including the American Academy of Pediatrics, have weighed in to support the legislation, arguing that it helps redress “the intergenerational pain of lost connections and the trauma of historical loss.” In wide-ranging arguments in November, the justices focused on whether Congress had the power to enact the legislation in the first place and whether it violated equal protection principles. In particular, they considered the provision that allowed Native children to be placed with “other Indian families” — and whether that was a determination based on race. © 2023 The New York Times Company

Destruction of churches and mosques in China has grown under the current communist atheist dictatorship. Remarks by Nina Shea Delivered at the 19th Annual Bradley Prizes Ceremony Washington, DC May 16, 2023 During the Cold War, Natan Sharansky, a Jewish Refusnik in the Soviet gulag, tapped on his prison cell in Morse code, excited to tell other prisoners the news: President Reagan had called the Soviet Union an “evil empire.” Sharansky was elated, he later explained, because the leader of the Free World made a frankly moral judgment, delegitimizing their oppressors. Sharansky and other prisoners of conscience were freed thanks largely to relentless American advocacy. Reagan said he viewed religious freedom as the Soviets “Achilles’ heel.” Eventually, the empire fell, without a shot fired, due to Reagan’s policy of peace through military and economic strength, and public diplomacy that especially focused on religious freedom and that, yes, delegitimized Soviet communism before the world. The United States has been the world’s indispensable nation in the defense of religious freedom. This is rooted in America’s dedication to the right, at home. The United States recognizes certain “unalienable rights” endowed by our Creator, of which religious freedom is the very first guaranteed in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. It has been central to our history, traditions, and laws. Think of President George Washington’s unequivocal promise to a Rhode Island synagogue, in 1790: the United States “gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance.” These are revolutionary words still. Many countries today persecute their religious minorities. Our First Amendment’s focus on limiting government power is part of American exceptionalism. It bars laws establishing religion and prohibiting its “free exercise.” Thus, unlike many places, the US does not license religions nor pick and choose among denominations. Religious freedom in America is not limited to worship or holding beliefs in the secrecy of one’s heart -- even North Korea has that. It includes manifesting religion in public. Religious charities run hospitals, schools, and much else; thirty percent of American charitable giving goes to religious organizations. Religious freedom also includes the rights to convert, criticize and reject religion. We have the right to educate our children in our faith and morals. Religious objections to other governmental priorities can be accommodated, as seen in recent Supreme Court decisions for Catholic nuns and Sikh soldiers. Let me cite some examples from abroad showing why America is seen as the shining city on a hill: If you’re caught praying in North Korea, three generations of your family can be sent to labor camp. If caught with a Bible, you’ll be executed. In Iran, all women must wear Muslim headscarves in public under penalty of imprisonment or death. In January, Iran sent hit men to Brooklyn to murder Masih Alinajad, a prominent critic of Iran’s hijab law. The FBI thwarted them. In Nigeria, extremists have reportedly slaughtered over 5,000 Christians last year alone and attacked some 18,000 churches since 2009 -- largely with impunity. Severe persecutors don’t share our fundamental values and aren’t reliable allies. Secretary of State Pompeo designated China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims as genocide and it opened the West’s eyes to the mortal threat the Chinese Communist Party poses to our values and security. China is the modern face of persecution and the greatest threat to religious freedom today. It uses a dense web of regulations and sophisticated tactics. All religious groups are suspect and must register with the party, which controls houses of worship with high tech surveillance cameras that feed into digitized social credit score systems and police computers. A million Muslims have been recently detained in reeducation camps, where women are forcibly sterilized. Falun Gong is officially targeted for “elimination “and its practitioners are evidently killed to order, for organ transplants. This spring, the FBI arrested two Chinese agents who brazenly opened a police station in Manhattan to persecute Falun Gong here, according to the indictment. It is illegal in China to expose children to religion. Christian leaders must preach the teachings of President Xi Jinping. Eight Vatican-approved Catholic bishops are in black jails - - that is, detained indefinitely without due process and subjected to re-education and Maoist struggle sessions that Bradley prize winner Chen Guangcheng suffered. Two Chinese Americans are among the Protestant pastors serving long sentences in prisons. In Hong Kong, Cardinal Zen and free speech hero Jimmy Lai face possible life imprisonment. The innate search for truth and meaning impels religious followers, despite the risks, to resist a system based on lies. Their communities are among the last remnants of civil society, as Beijing’s control tightens. They need US advocacy and this would serve our national security interests. But American commitment to religious freedom is eroding. The Supreme Court annually considers challenges to religious freedom, typically involving accommodation and wall of separation issues. And, we are seeing a different kind of threat surface. First Amendment freedoms are being subordinated to new cultural preferences that lack national consensus. Private hate speech bans curb religious freedom, as well as free speech. Even law schools are canceling traditional religious beliefs, as “fascist.” Will we be following Europe? Finland is criminally prosecuting a Christian parliamentarian for tweeting a screen shot of the Bible. Here, a red flag appeared, when an FBI office labeled Catholic Latin Mass supporters as suspected security threats and called for infiltrating their congregations. Though no crime was cited, FBI legal counsel approved this -- so would the Chinese Communist Party. This call was retracted after it leaked. And, there are bigoted attacks against traditional religions that occur with virtual impunity. Since 2020, hundreds of pro-life centers and churches have been firebombed and vandalized, with only a small fraction prosecuted, as the Attorney General acknowledged at a recent senate hearing. Prosecutions have also been scarce in Brooklyn where Orthodox Jews in religious garb are regularly assaulted in their neighborhoods. This evokes some of modern history’s worst persecutors. It occurs as anti-Semitism surges, with unprecedented, deadly synagogue shootings. We can no longer afford to take our own religious freedom for granted. The horrors of persecution abroad remind us why we must defend this unalienable right at home. https://4152914.fs1.hubspotusercontent-na1.net/hubfs/4152914/Shea%20Remarks_2023%20Bradley%20Prizes-1.pdf?utm_campaign=2023%20Bradley%20Prizes&utm_medium=email&_hsmi=259676014&_hsenc=p2ANqtz-_FSebIRPx8OdWVNJuddsPnsmgyt6nNe1i5CRtI4GsFJ-0iVJ_HBs8xbxrMRY1vdBZCZTau_PpSl318jPOKfnTvYpqXC7YfoAmJuvhks5IOUclTtYo&utm_content=259676014&utm_source=hs_email

By Steven Grattan A flag seized from a neo-Nazi group who call themselves Crew 38 is pictured in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina state, Brazil April 24, 2023. REUTERS/Cristiano Estrela ITAJAI, Brazil, June 13 (Reuters) - Last November, just hours before a social gathering for Haitian immigrants in the town of Itajai in the southern Brazilian state of Santa Catarina, event organizer Andrea Muller received a chilling message. "Cancel the Haiti exhibition or we will commit a massacre," read the subject line of the email, seen by Reuters. "Santa Catarina is a land of WHITE PEOPLE, FOR WHITE PEOPLE," the anonymous sender wrote, signing off with the Nazi salute "SIEG HEIL." Ultimately, the event went ahead without any problems and with police present. Yet the email, which police in Santa Catarina are still investigating, is indicative of a small but rising number of cases of neo-Nazism in Brazil that have increased as far-right politics flourished during former President Jair Bolsonaro's 2019-2023 term. Bolsonaro, a former army captain, was widely criticized for his long-standing defense of Brazil's military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985, his anti-democratic attacks on the country's voting system in last year's election and policies that critics say endangered the country's indigenous peoples. Reuters Graphics Brazil's Federal Police said the number of investigations opened into alleged incitement of neo-Nazism had jumped since 2019, with a "significant increase" this year. Brazil's 1989 racism law punishes the use of symbols linked to Nazism and speech considered "apologies for the regime of Adolf Hitler" is not protected under freedom of expression statutes in Brazil. The police force said 21 probes into the alleged manufacture, sale, distribution or brandishing of swastikas "for the purpose of propagating Nazism" have been opened so far this year, up from just one in 2018, the year Bolsonaro was elected. Some experts say those numbers fail to capture the nationwide scale of the problem. In April, a day after a 25-year-old man with an axe killed four children at a Santa Catarina kindergarten, Justice Minister Flavio Dino ordered police to probe neo-Nazi organizations possibly operating across state lines. Perpetrators wore arm-bands with Nazi swastikas in two previous school attacks this year in Brazil. Brazil's National Jewish association CONIB said it had noted "an unprecedented increase in the number of extremist groups, the majority of which are openly neo-Nazis." Researchers at Sao Paulo state's Unicamp university have tracked a more than 10-fold rise in the number of neo-Nazi cells in Brazil since 2015. In a YouTube video presenting their findings, the Unicamp researchers said Bolsonaro had "fueled" the rise of such groups with his "inflammatory" speeches. Although others question the scale of those findings, no one doubts the numbers are on the rise. Items seized from a neo-Nazi group who call themselves Crew 38 are displayed in Florianopolis, Santa Catarina state, Brazil April 24, 2023. REUTERS/Cristiano Estrela Guilherme Franco de Andrade, an expert on the far right at the Federal University of Mato Grosso do Sul in central-west Brazil, said neo-Nazism was clearly a growing problem. But he was wary of pinning it all on the former president. Instead, he said its growth was more likely tied to growing conservatism after years of graft-stained leftist administrations, than to Bolsonaro. "To credit Bolsonaro directly with any leadership ... is a mistake," he said. Bolsonaro's spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment. SOUTHERN HATE The problem of neo-Nazism is particularly acute in Santa Catarina, a state where many have German and Italian ancestry. The state has the largest proportion of white residents in Brazil, with 84% declaring as white in the last census. Arthur Lopes, a police detective who leads probes into neo-Nazi groups, said that ethnic makeup has led some in the state to believe in white superiority. Lopes, whose office in the Santa Catarina state capital of Florianopolis is cluttered with boxes of seized Nazi paraphernalia, said he now spends much of his day on the dark web, where fascists congregate to avoid the prying eyes of law enforcement. In November, Lopes' team carried out its biggest ever bust, arresting eight alleged neo-Nazis holed up in a rural property who called themselves Crew 38. Several of the men were tattooed with Nazi symbols and English phrases like "White Power." During the raid, Lopes' team found red, white and black flags, T-shirts with the logo of the Hammerskins, an offshoot of a U.S. neo-Nazi organization, and CDs of what Lopes referred to as "white supremacist bands." Lopes said he suspects they were selling the items to Hammerskins cells in the United States and Europe. Luis Eduardo de Quadros, a lawyer representing the eight men, said his clients were old friends who enjoy listening to that style of rock music, but "have nothing against Blacks or Jews." He said he had received death threats for defending them. Lopes said prosecuting those linked to Nazism can be tricky under Brazilian law, which he said was "weak" and "outdated" since the use of symbols other than the swastika that allude to the Nazi regime and speech that denies or defends the Holocaust generally goes unpunished. Itajai local Talita de Almeida, a 32-year-old programmer who attended the Haitian event in November, said the threatening email had opened her eyes to a new reality in Brazil. "I was scared, because I'm Black and I'm LGBT," she said. "It's a step backwards." Reporting by Steven Grattan; Editing by Gabriel Stargardter and Deepa Babington © 2023 Reuters. All rights reserved

By Dr. Elihu Richter and Dr. Gregory H Stanton Genocide has been the highest-ranking cause of preventable violent death in the 20th and 21st centuries, outranking all international and civil wars, combined. In 2008 Blum, Stanton, Sagi, and Richter, published our paper: "‘Ethnic Cleansing’ Bleaches the Atrocities of Genocide." [1] The term "Ethnic Cleansing" first appeared and became common during the civil war in former Yugoslavia. It was invented and used by Slobodan Milošević and Serbian military officers to describe their forced deportations, mass murders, torture, mass rapes, and other crimes against humanity carried out against civilians from 1992-1995. Since 1992, the term "Ethnic Cleansing" has become the dominant term used to describe genocide in the press, by governments, by the UN, and even among legal scholars. The term "Ethnic Cleansing" is a euphemism for genocide and forced deportation. It is a propaganda term used to make genocide seem related to sanitation, hygiene, and public health. Nazi medicine used the term "Rassenhygiene’" (race hygiene) to justify mass murder, especially of Jews, but of other ethnic, national, and gender groups as well. Getting rid of Jews was seen as essential to protecting the health of the master race. Epidemiological metaphors such as tubercle, typhus, cancer, filth, vermin, and disease, were used to describe Jews and the diseases they supposedly conveyed. The metaphors were used to justify mass extermination. The term "Judenrein’" (Jew-free) was meant to describe the mass extermination of Jews as an accomplishment in public health. The term "Ethnic Cleansing", like "Judenrein" and "Rassenhygiene", expropriates pseudo-public health language to describe genocide. "Ethnic Cleansing" has penetrated the vocabularies of mass media, politics, diplomacy, law, medicine, and epidemiology. Perpetrators of genocide use the term to motivate followers. Use of the term by governments and bystanders results in non-response, lack of will, and inaction in halting genocidal atrocities. The term "Ethnic Cleansing" corrupts observation, interpretation, ethical judgment, and decision-making, and counters the life-saving goal of public health. Epidemiologists should lead the way in expunging the term "Ethnic Cleansing" from official and popular use because it bleaches the mass atrocities of genocide. Its use has condoned inaction to prevent genocides. [1] For a discussion on the term 'Ethnic Cleansing' between Dr. Gregory Stanton, and Burmese activists Dr. Maung Zarni, and Nay San Lwin see: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?extid=NS-UNK-UNK-UNK-IOS_GK0T-GK1C&ref=watch_permalink&v=997688314337848

May 29, 2023 FILE - In this photo provided by El Salvador's presidential press office, inmates identified by authorities as gang members are moved at the prison, Terrorism Confinement Center, in Tecoluca, El Salvador, Wednesday, March 15, 2023 (El Salvador presidential press office via AP, File). SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador (AP) — At least 153 people jailed since El Salvador instituted emergency powers in March 2022 to confront the country’s powerful street gangs have died in state custody, according to a report released Monday by the human rights group Cristosal. None of those who died had been convicted of a crime they were accused of at the time of their arrest. There were four women among the victims and the rest were men. The deaths were the result of torture, and systematic and serious injuries, the report said. Nearly half of the victims suffered violent deaths. Some of the deaths showed signs they resulted from deliberate denial of medical assistance, medicine and food, including some deaths resulting from malnutrition. The deaths revealed punitive policies carried out by guards and prison officials. The report stated that such actions would have required authorization and backing by the highest level security officials. The government has not provided an official count of deaths among the incarcerated. The special powers approved by El Salvador’s Legislative Assembly in March 2022 following a surge in gang violence suspend some fundamental rights, such informing someone of their rights at the time of arrest and the reason for their, as well as having access to a lawyer. Cristosal said it compiled the information through field work, including at common graves, and collecting documents from medical examiners. Investigators also interviewed victims’ families and neighbors, as well as others who were jailed and later released. The organization called on the administration of President Nayib Bukele to answer about the conditions people are held under, respect due process, free the innocent, answer for those who have died, provide all available information to victims’ families and end the measures implemented under the special powers. Officially, the government has arrested more than 68,000 people under the special powers since March 2022. More than 5,000 people have been freed because they could not convince a judge they were tied to criminal structures, according to authorities. Other human rights groups and foreign governments have condemned the government’s actions and called for a lifting of what were supposed to be temporary measures. Bukele, however, maintains high levels of approval within El Salvador for his actions against the gangs. All contents © copyright 2023 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.