Jan. 14, 2023 Ukraine’s state emergency service shows the aftermath of the deadly strike, which left a gaping hole in a nine-story apartment building in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine. Credit: Dnipro Regional Administration, via Associated Press A Russian strike tore into a nine-story apartment building in the city of Dnipro in central Ukraine, local officials said, killing at least 14 people, including a 15-year-old girl. Scores were injured. A massive fire burning in the aftermath of the strike, which left a gaping hole in the residential building. Much of the apartment block was reduced to smoldering rubble, and officials said people were trapped in the debris. A rescue operation was underway, with a large number of fire trucks and emergency workers on the scene. The building was hit during the second of two waves of Russian aerial strikes targeting infrastructure across Ukraine on Saturday, jolting residents out of two weeks of relative quiet during a festive holiday period. President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine said that every floor of the building had been “smashed” by the explosion from a missile. “It’s not yet known how many people are under the rubble,” he said in his nightly address. “Unfortunately, the death toll is growing every hour.” At least 64 people were injured, including 14 children, the head of the Ukrainian military administration for the region, Valentyn Reznichenko, said in a post on the Telegram messaging app. He said that rescuers were working to reach people still trapped, adding that more than three dozen had been pulled from under the rubble. A spokesman for the Ukrainian Air Force Command, Yuri Ignat, told a local news outlet, Ukrainska Pravda, that the apartment building had been hit with a Kh-22 missile fired from a Russian bomber, a powerful weapon designed to sink air craft carriers. As darkness fell, smoke continued to billow over a huge pile of rubble. One woman stood by a tree, crying, saying she thought her daughter was in the building. Residents of the city had turned out in numbers to help remove burned out cars and debris from in front of the building to clear the path for fire trucks and rescuers to come in and raise their ladders. At one point, an order was given for all vehicle engines to be turned off so the rescuers could listen for the sounds of people trapped under the rubble. Rescuers on cranes were being guided by the mobile phones and flashlights of those trapped, Kyrylo Tymoshenko, the deputy head of the Ukrainian president’s office, said in a Telegram post. He shared a photo of a person holding a light in the window of a damaged upper story, where the whole face of the building had been shorn off. Before issuing his nightly address, Mr. Zelensky had called the strike “evil” and posted an image of the rescue operation. “We are fighting for every person, every life,” he said in a Telegram post. The United Nations resident coordinator for Ukraine, Denise Brown, called the images coming out of Dnipro “horrifying.” “Dozens of civilians, including children, killed or injured while in their homes,” she wrote on Twitter, adding: “Intentional attacks against civilians is a war crime.” — Nicole Tung, Megan Specia and Cassandra Vinograd

TIME JANUARY 6, 2023 BY CHAD DE GUZMAN Police officers gather as they prepare to search the Manila City Jail premises for drugs and other illegal paraphernalias on Nov. 30, 2018. Jes Aznar—Getty Images Hundreds of the Philippine National Police’s top brass were asked to resign on Wednesday, in the Southeast Asian nation’s latest attempt to curb the illegal drug trade and related corruption that allegedly dogs law enforcement ranks. It was a directive reportedly recommended in part by the national police chief, Rodolfo Azurin Jr., who submitted his resignation the following day. Benjamin Abalos Jr., the country’s interior secretary, says that the submission of resignations by some 300 officials is the “only way to make a fresh start” in the country’s fight against illegal drugs. The interior department oversees the 227,000-strong national police. “This war on drugs will be a difficult battle especially when your own allies are the ones shooting you from behind,” Abalos said in a news conference Wednesday at the police headquarters in Manila. In the Philippines, a country of 110 million people, the police have been at the forefront of a bloody campaign against drug users and dealers. This “war on drugs” was the brainchild of the country’s former populist President Rodrigo Duterte. Though he had once said the police were “rotten to the core,” Duterte empowered law enforcement officials, and the number of deaths related to anti-drug operations ballooned to thousands in a matter of months. Despite the campaign’s brutality, Duterte won record-high support for his tough stance on the drug trade, and he became the country’s most popular outgoing president when he left office last June. But, under new President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., the latest move to reform the police through mass resignations reinforces what a catastrophe the past six years has been, says Richard Heydarian, a political analyst and international affairs expert in the Philippines. “It really reflects the total failure of the previous administration to really clean up the system,” he tells TIME. How bad of a problem is drug use and the drug trade in the Philippines? Duterte once claimed the illegal drug situation in the Philippines was so bad it was at risk of becoming a “narco-state.” But there is limited data to back up claims of how widespread the problem is. Government data claims almost 11.91 metric tons of methamphetamine, locally called shabu, worth $1.4 billion were seized between July 1, 2016 to May 31, 2022. A 2019 survey from the Philippines’ Dangerous Drugs Board, extrapolated that two in every 100, or around 1.7 million Filipinos aged 10-69 were using drugs like methamphetamine and marijuana at the time of the data collection. In the same year, however, only 5,277 recorded admissions in health facilities in the Philippines were related to substance abuse, according to the World Health Organization. What did the war on drugs do? When Duterte took office in 2016, the streets became rife with extrajudicial drug-enforcement-related killings, many in low-income and rural areas, with some victims not even involved in the drug trade. Police data report over 6,200 deaths in anti-drug operations during the past six years, but human rights advocates and independent monitors put the number somewhere between 12,000 to 30,000. They also allege that some errant officers would plant drug evidence to frame victims. The U.S., the European Union, and other international bodies have all raised alarms over the deaths, sparking an International Criminal Court (ICC) probe against Duterte for possible crimes against humanity. At one point in 2017, he asked police to stand down anti-drug operations amid reports of abuse of power, but he reinstated them months later. Marcos Jr., Duterte’s political ally and successor, has vowed to continue the drug war—albeit less punitively. But the killings have not stopped—police reported 46 deaths in anti-drug operations from when Marcos took office on June 30 last year to Nov. 16. Dahas, a monitoring initiative from the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Third World Studies Center, reports even higher figures: recording 161 killings from June 30 to Dec. 7, 2022. And despite thousands dead, the drug trade has not stopped either. In the first five months since Marcos Jr.’s term began, authorities seized almost $179 million in illegal drugs. Worse, enforcers themselves have been implicated in the trade: on Dec. 6, in Taguig City, some 15 km away from the capital Manila, authorities confiscated illegal narcotics worth over $164,000—with the local drug enforcement agency chief the suspected culprit. Why have police generals been asked to resign en mas Abalos himself said the move is a “shortcut” to the lengthy judicial process involved in prosecuting police officials involved in the drug trade. It’s also not necessarily going to lead to a significant change in personnel: a five-member panel will evaluate each official’s links to drugs, and may choose to accept or reject their resignation. “What they’re doing is for show,” says Carlos Conde, senior researcher at Human Rights Watch’s Asia Division. “It’s a tried and tested tactic by a lot of Filipino politicians.” A mass resignation of top police officials is not feasible, says Heydarian, who believes the call to resign should not be taken literally but instead be seen as a call for understanding from the public. “There’s clearly a recognition that things were not working under the previous administration, as far as rule of law, public safety, and dealing with the issue of drugs is concerned,” he tells TIME. But Conde says the Marcos administration is sending “mixed signals” on accountability. More than a dozen police personnel were arrested or removed and investigated last year for their links to the drug trade, and in November, a local court sentenced a police officer convicted of torturing and planting evidence to two terms of life imprisonment, Reuters reported, marking a rare conviction against corrupt drug war officials. However, at the same time, Marcos Jr. refuses to rejoin the ICC over its investigation of Duterte’s brutal war on drugs. “The six years of Mr. Duterte really set the bar so low for human rights,” Conde says, “that whoever replaced him, now Mr. Marcos, can pretty much do anything and he’d still look good.” Copyright 2023 @TIME. All Rights Reserved.

Azerbaijan troops blockade only road from Artsakh to Armenia Credit: AXIOS It has been over 30 days that Azerbaijan has enforced a brutal blockade of Artsakh, cutting off the 120,000 indigenous Armenian population from life-saving food and medication as they endure freezing winter conditions. Call Vice-President Harris today and urge the Biden Administration to: -- Publicly condemn Azerbaijan’s closure of the Lachin Corridor, Artsakh’s only humanitarian lifeline to the outside world. -- Launch a U.S. humanitarian airlift to Artsakh’s Stepanakert airport and work with USAID to pre-position emergency relief supplies in Armenia for immediate delivery as soon as Azerbaijan lifts its blockade. -- Cut off all U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan, fully enforcing Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, investigating Azerbaijani war crimes, and applying Magnitsky and other sanctions against Azerbaijani officials. Call the White House Comment Line at (202) 456-1111 and leave a message for Vice-President Harris to break Azerbaijan's Artsakh blockade. Your call will be answered between the hours of 11am to 3pm EST on Tuesdays to Thursdays. Please call during that time. A sample phone script is provided below which you can personalize to share why immediate pro-Artsakh U.S. action is important to you. Hello - I am {Name} from {City, State} I am calling to ask the Vice President to step in to help save the Armenian families of Artsakh (Nagorno Karabakh), who have been brutally blockaded by Azerbaijan for more than a month. Please work with the President to take decisive action to help save the indigenous Christian Armenian population of Artsakh, who are struggling to survive on the frontiers of global freedom: -- Publicly condemn Azerbaijan’s closure of the Lachin Corridor -- Launch a U.S. humanitarian airlift to Artsakh’s Stepanakert airport -- Immediately cut off all U.S. military assistance to Azerbaijan Thank you. Click here to write to Vice-President Harris through the ANCA's March to Justice system. To send a letter to Administrator Power, simply type in your name, address, email, and phone and click "Load Messages." The ANCA system will automatically share a draft letter you can review and revise. Then, simply click "Send Messages." Click here to send a pre-written tweet to Vice-President Harris. You can personalize the tweet as you see fit. You must have a Twitter account in order to participate in this ANCA effort.

Kenya Country Report January 2023 A mural painted over a destroyed house in the Kibera slums during the post-2007 election violence (© Antony Njuguna | Reuters) Kenya became a British colony in 1920 and attracted 80,000 European settlers. In 1952, Kenyans demanded independence. The Mau-Mau rebellion attacked white settlers to end British colonial rule. Britain imposed a “State of Emergency.” British forces placed over 80,000 Kikuyu and 80,000 other Kenyans in brutal concentration camps. 1957 elections held for a Legislative Council were won by Jomo Kenyatta's ZANU. In 1962, a referendum revealed that 86% of Kenyan Somalis wanted to join Somalia, but Britain ignored their preference. In 1963 Kenya became independent. Kenya became a republic in 1964, led by the Kikuyu President Jomo Kenyatta and the Luo Vice President Oginga Odinga. Odinga resigned over ethnic conflict between the Kikuyu and Luo that culminated in the 1969 Kisumu massacre, in which 100 Luo were killed by Kenyatta’s personal guards. After Kenyatta died in 1978, Kenya became a one-party state under Daniel Moi. Moi violently suppressed political opposition, including a massacre of over 5,000 ethnic Somalis at Wagalla in 1984. Under international pressure, Moi introduced multi-party politics in 1991. Since then, elections have been marked by ethnic violence between Kikuyus, Luos, Kalenjins and others. In 1992, Moi was re-elected. Violence surrounding the election killed 1,500 and displaced 300,000. In 1997, Moi was again re-elected. Election related ethnic violence in Kenya’s Coastal Province displaced 100,000. The 2002 election saw the Kikuyu Mwai Kibaki elected in a landslide win against Raila Odinga, but his victory was marred by massive voter intimidation. The 2007 election resulted in ethnic conflict after Odinga disputed Kibaki’s victory. Massacres killed over 1,400 and displaced 300,000. In 2012, politicians hoping to win seats in 2013 stoked ethnic herder-farmer violence that killed 116 in the Coast Province. Whilst pre-election violence claimed 477 lives and displaced 118,000, post-election conflict was muted by the Supreme Court's rejection of Odinga’s challenge to Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory. The 2017 presidential election was surrounded by so much police violence and corruption that a re-run was held that reinstated Kenyatta. Although the campaign for the 2022 elections saw political disorder, William Ruto's victory was Kenya's least ethnically partisan. The International Criminal Court charged Ruto with crimes against humanity for his role in 2007 election violence, but the ICC dropped the charges due to a lack of evidence. Ethnic hate speech has grown on Facebook and TikTok. Advocacy of "majimboism" (ethnic devolution and federalism) has been appropriated by the Kalenjin as a dog whistle for deporting Rift Valley farmers. The 2011 invasion of Somalia has legitimized the mass detention and deportation of Somalis and other Muslims. The pastoralist Maasai suffer from hate speech and state-sanctioned land expropriation, which robs them of grazing pastures. Kenya’s political patronage is determined by its President’s ethnicity, resulting in Stage 3: Discrimination and Stage 6: Polarization. Ethnic violence surrounding elections represents Stage Five: Organization and Stage Eight: Persecution. Deportation of Rift Valley farmers and Somalis in northern Kenya is also at Stage Eight: Persecution. Genocide Watch Recommends: The Kenyan government must stop using anti-hate laws like section 13 of Kenya’s 2008 National Cohesion and Integration Act to arrest political opponents. Kenya should continue supporting domestic and international election observers from the EU, Commonwealth, and UN to legitimize Kenya’s elections and prevent potential disputes. The Sentinel Project's Una Hakika Project in 13 counties helped to prevent election violence in the 2022 elections. The Sentinel Project should be funded to expand its use of unbiased news reporting and social media to combat destructive rumors that lead to ethnic conflict.

Canada condemns executions, imposes sanctions. By: Thomson Reuters Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei speaks during a meeting with a group of people and clerics in Tehran on Monday. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters) Iran's judiciary has sentenced three more anti-government protesters to death on charges of "waging war on God," its Mizan news agency reported on Monday, defying growing international criticism over its fierce crackdown on demonstrators. Iran hanged two other people on Saturday in its attempts to stamp out demonstrations, which have slowed considerably since the country began executions just weeks after arrests. Mizan said Saleh Mirhashemi, Majid Kazemi and Saeid Yaghoubi, who had been convicted of allegedly killing members of the volunteer Basij militia during anti-government protests in the central city of Isfahan, could appeal their verdicts. The Basij forces, affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guards, have been at the forefront of the state clampdown on the unrest sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini while in the custody of Iran's morality police on Sept. 16. Papal criticism Pope Francis on Monday condemned Iran for using the death penalty on demonstrators. "The right to life is also threatened in those places where the death penalty continues to be imposed, as is the case in these days in Iran, following the recent demonstrations demanding greater respect for the dignity of women," Francis said. One of the boldest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution, the protests have drawn support from Iranians in all walks of life and challenged the Islamic Republic's legitimacy by calling for the downfall of its rulers. Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Monday signalled the state has no intention of softening its position, saying in a televised speech that those who "set fire to public places have committed treason with no doubt." Under Iran's Islamic law, treason is punishable by death. Rights activists see the executions, arrests and harsh sentences of protesters by the clerical establishment as an attempt to intimidate demonstrators and strike enough fear in the population to end the unrest. Despite the establishment doubling down on repression, small-scale protests persist in Tehran, Isfahan and several other cities. 'Sham trials' At least four people have been hanged since the demonstrations started, according to the judiciary, including two protesters on Saturday for allegedly killing a member of the Basij. Women hold up signs depicting 22-year-old Mahsa Amini during a demonstration outside the UN offices in Arbil, in Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, on Sept. 24, 2022. (Safin Hamed/AFP/Getty Images) Amnesty International said last month that Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 26 others in what it called "sham trials designed to intimidate protesters." Rights activists on social media said two other protesters, 22-year-old Mohammad Ghobadlou and 18-year-old Mohammad Boroughani, had been transferred to solitary confinement ahead of their execution in the Rajai Shahr prison in Karaj city. Videos on social media, unverifiable by Reuters, showed people gathered late on Sunday in front of the prison chanting slogans against Khamenei. The European Union, the United States and other Western countries have condemned Iran for using the death penalty against demonstrators. "The Iranian regime must answer for its brutal repression of brave Iranian voices," tweeted Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly. "In response, Canada is imposing sanctions on 2 Iranian individuals and 3 Iranian entities that are complicit in these activities." On Monday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemned Iran for using the death penalty against demonstrators, and his spokesperson said Berlin wanted to crank up pressure on the Iranian authorities with new international measures. "With the executions, the Iranian regime is employing the death penalty as a means of repression," Scholz wrote on Twitter. "That is horrifying." A German government spokesperson told a news conference that Iran needs to see that there would be a price to pay for continuing with the executions. "Together with our international partners, we will increase the pressure further on the Iranian regime," the spokesperson said. The Islamic Republic, which has blamed the unrest on its foreign foes including the United States, sees its crackdown of protests as preserving national sovereignty. ©2023 CBC/Radio-Canada. All rights reserved.

By: Steve Holland An interior view shows PMC Wagner Centre, which is a project implemented by the businessman and founder of the Wagner private military group Yevgeny Prigozhin, during the official opening of the office block in Saint Petersburg, Russia, November 4, 2022. REUTERS/Igor Russak/File Photo WASHINGTON, Dec 22 (Reuters) - The private Russian military company, the Wagner Group, took delivery of an arms shipment from North Korea to help bolster Russian forces in Ukraine, a sign of the group's expanding role in that conflict, the White House said on Thursday. Wagner owner Yevgeny Prigozhin denied the assertion as "gossip and speculation". John Kirby, spokesperson for the White House National Security Council, said Wagner was searching around the world for arms suppliers to support its military operations in Ukraine. "We can confirm that North Korea has completed an initial arms delivery to Wagner, which paid for that equipment. Last month, North Korea delivered infantry rockets and missiles into Russia for use by Wagner," he told reporters. The news was first reported by Reuters. The Wagner Group was founded in 2014 after Russia seized and annexed Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and sparked a separatist insurgency in Ukraine's eastern Donbas region. The United States estimates that Wagner has 50,000 personnel deployed in Ukraine, including 10,000 contractors and 40,000 convicts recruited from Russian prisons, Kirby said. Prigozhin, a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, said Kirby had a habit of making statements based on conjecture. "Everyone knows that North Korea has not been supplying any weapons to Russia for a long time. And no such efforts have even been made," he said in a statement. "Therefore, the supply of weapons from North Korea is nothing but gossip and speculation." The U.S. assessment is that the amount of material delivered by North Korea will not change the battlefield dynamics but more military equipment is expected to be delivered by Pyongyang. In November, after the White House said Pyongyang was covertly supplying Russia with a "significant" number of artillery shells, North Korea said it had never had arms dealings with Russia and has no plans to do so. The Russian and North Korean U.N. missions did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The United States accused Pyongyang and Moscow of violating U.N. sanctions on North Korea and will share its information with the U.N. Security Council's North Korea sanctions committee, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, said in a statement. Pyongyang has built ballistic missiles capable of striking almost anywhere on earth, weapons experts say, as well as shorter-range weapons. Kirby said Putin has increasingly turned to the Wagner Group for help in Ukraine, where Russian forces have stumbled. The European Union has imposed sanctions on the group, accusing it of clandestine operations on the Kremlin's behalf. Putin has said the group does not represent Russia, but that private military contractors have the right to work anywhere in the world as long as they do not break Russian law. SANCTIONS ON WAGNER The Biden administration on Wednesday unveiled new curbs on technology exports to the Wagner Group. More sanctions are coming in the weeks ahead against the company and its support group in countries around the world, Kirby said. Prigozhin is spending more than $100 million per month to fund Wagner's operations in Ukraine, but has encountered problems recruiting Russians to fight there, Kirby said. The Wagner Group, staffed by veterans of the Russian armed forces, has fought in Libya, Syria, the Central African Republic and Mali, among other countries. U.S. intelligence indicates Wagner has played a major role in the battle for the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut and has suffered heavy casualties there with about 1,000 Wagner fighters killed in recent weeks, Kirby said. Inside Russia, Prigozhin's influence is expanding, and his group's independence from the Russian Defense Ministry "has only increased and elevated over the course of the 10 months of this war," Kirby said, without providing evidence. Kirby said that in some instances, Russian military officials in Ukraine were subordinate to Wagner forces. In addition, Prigozhin has criticized Russian generals and defense officials for their performance since the invasion. © 2022 Reuters. https://www.reuters.com/world/us-says-russias-wagner-group-bought-north-korean-weapons-ukraine-war-2022-12-22/

December 25, 2022 By Eurasiatimes Kazakhstan’s failure to investigate rights violations by the authorities during January’s protests has been condemned by Human Rights Watch (HRW). President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev claimed the protests were hijacked by thousands of “terrorists” exploiting instability to attempt a coup. A total of 1,113 protesters and others have been convicted with 423 convicted on charges of “participating in mass riots” while one army officer was prosecuted for abuse of power over a man’s death. Another case over three deaths is unresolved while hundreds of allegations of violence against the authorities have not been investigated, the rights group said. “Nearly a year after the January events, families of those who were killed and the hundreds of people wounded or tortured are still waiting for justice,” said Mihra Rittmann, a Central Asia researcher at HRW. “Kazakhstan’s partners should urgently renew their calls for an independent and effective investigation into the January events.” Tokayev promised after protests that the government would address concerns about the huge wealth, impunity and power enjoyed by government figures and police officers. The Kazakh authorities estimate that 238 people were killed in the protests and acknowledge six people died in custody from torture after the protests. This is seen as a heavy underestimate. On November 16, a military court convicted Mark Zlunyaev, an army officer, over the death of Ernazar Krykbaev, a 24-year-old shepherd who was shot dead near an army camp the day after protests broke out in Taldykorgan. Zlunyaev was sentenced to six years in prison. Another army officer in Taldykorgan is yet to stand trial over three people who were shot dead. Bakhytzhan Toregozhina, a human rights defender in Almaty, said the authorities in Taraz, Kyzylorda and Shymkent have all cleared their security officers of wrongdoing. In Kyzylorda investigations were closed into the deaths of 24 people and 20 people in Shymkent on grounds there was no criminal conduct. In Taraz 15 people were killed in January but the prosecutor’s office has closed its investigation. In Almaty, Kazakhstan’s biggest city where the most sizeable protests took place, rights monitors say the authorities have closed at least 32 cases into 139 deaths. Hundreds have alleged being tortured after the protests, including allegations that police in Taldykorgan used irons to burn detainees. But the Prosecutor General’s Office has reported that only two torture cases, involving eight police officers, have reached court and no one has been prosecuted. Unrest in Kazakhstan in January. Picture credit: YouTube © 2022 EurasiaTimes. https://www.eurasiatimes.org/en/25/12/2022/kazakhstan-fails-to-probe-violence-against-january-protesters-hrw/

By Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia December 29,2022 Excellency Lt. Gen. HUN Manet: The handover ceremony of the former building of Khmer Rouge tribunal to the Royal Cambodian Army is a testament to the complete closure of the tribunal's proceedings Source: Royal Cambodia Army Photos by: Long David Giving a speech at the handover ceremony of the former building of Khmer Rouge tribunal to the Royal Cambodian Army on 28 December 2022, His Excellency HUN Manet, deputy commander-in-chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces and the commander of the Royal Cambodian Army, said that it is not only the handover ceremony, but also a testament of the complete closure of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal’ proceeding. The place, where the Cambodian Government handed over part of this military base to serve for the Khmer Rouge trial since 2006, will be turned from a place of justice to a place of resumption of national defense. He added that the light of justice from the 16 year-processing trial is a turning point in the dark history of the Cambodian people, the victims of a brutal regime, as well as for humanity as a whole. Having a chance to learn and see the real prosecution on senior Khmer Rouge leaders and the most responsible for the grave crimes committed during the Kampuchea Democratic Regime will provide Cambodian people and especially younger generations to understand and remembrance about a tragedy that must not be happened again, both in Cambodia and in the world, Lt. Gen. added. His Excellency Lt. Gen. Hun Manet also congratulates for the success of the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, a brilliant achievement under the wise leadership and vision of Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo Hun Sen, Head of the Royal Government of Cambodia, together with the efforts of the working group led by the late Samdech Vibol Panha Sok An, H.E. DPM Bin Chhin as well as the participation of the international community through the United Nations by ensuring both respect for national sovereignty and international standards of justice. These are the contributions to the benefits of justice that ensures the maintenance of peace, national unity, and the repair of vital psychological reparation for victims and their families, as well as to prevent it from not to happen once again as the tragedy that Cambodia suffered between 1975-1979. Source: Royal Cambodia Army Photos by: Long David At the same time, HE Lt. Gen. Hun Manet praises and thanks all the actors who participated in this historic mission, including judges, prosecutors, lawyers, legal officers, and leaders of the office of administrative, both national and international, who have strived to fulfil their roles and responsibilities with high will and responsibility. The success of the Khmer Rouge tribunal, can also be considered a common success for all, including the Cambodian people, the Royal Government of Cambodia, the United Nations and the entire international community. Copyright 2022 @ Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Additional Information about Case 002/02: https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/articles/supreme-court-chamber-notifies-full-written-judgement-case-00202-regarding-khieu-samphan https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/articles/statement-civil-party-lead-co-lawyers-release-final-judgement-extraordinary-chambers-court https://www.eccc.gov.kh/en/articles/civil-parties-attend-hearing-judgment-and-participate-related-program

ASIA TIMES By DAVID HUTT JANUARY 2, 2023 Sonexay Siphandone hails from a powerful political clan and has ties to China but his success in the role is far from guaranteed Sonexay Siphandone takes over at a time of extreme economic duress. Image: Twitter The scion of a major political dynasty and a key conduit for Chinese investment, Sonexay Siphandone took over as Laos’ prime minister last week after the unexpected early resignation of his predecessor. After weeks of rumors about whether he would go, Phankham Viphavanh offered his resignation as on December 30, the last day of a National Assembly sitting. He goes down as the shortest-serving prime minister in the communist era, in the job just shy of 24 months. Under his tenure, Laos had a particularly poor Covid-19 response in 2021 and then was hit by economic crises on multiple fronts last year. He’s also at the center of several scandals that have tainted the image of a formerly straight-cut apparatchik. “I am 72 years old, and am no longer in good health,” Phankham said before the assembly. “Because of this, I feel that I can no longer carry the heavy burdens our country is facing.” Sonexay, a former deputy prime minister and investment minister, received a near-unanimous vote from the National Assembly to become the next prime minister. Aged 56, he is one of the youngest premiers in recent history. “I understand deeply that this will be a difficult and challenging role,” he told the National Assembly. Indeed, Laos has one of Asia’s highest rates of inflation, a fast depreciating currency, and there’s no certainty it won’t default on its external debts, much of which is owed to key partner China, not least for a high-speed railway project connecting the two countries. Sonexay’s most important and immediate task will be to convince Beijing to give debt deferrals on loans owed at a time it can barely afford interest repayments. Beijing, for its part, won’t want another key Belt and Road Initiative partner to default. A promotional poster for the 414-kilometer Laos-China railway project that promised to transform Laos from landlocked to land-linked. Photo: Facebook Sonexay hails from one of Laos’ two most important political dynasties. His father Khamtay Siphandone was a former prime minister and state president in the 1990s, and aged 98 still exerts big influence over the party. “Sonexay, as a next-generation leader entrusted by the senior party leaders, is expected to lead those technocrats in crucial cabinet positions who are also from mainstream clans and close to dynasties,” says Toshiro Nishizawa, a University of Tokyo professor and a former adviser to the Lao government. “Sonexay’s ascension might reflect accelerated leadership rejuvenation attempts with the party’s inner circle consensus led by Thongloun Sisoulith,” the state president and communist party chief, Nishizawa added. Given the dynastic source of power, some analysts doubt whether Sonexay is much of a “technocrat”, although he has occupied key government posts and was made chair of a special economic task force set up in mid-2022. It “may represent a step backwards for any ‘good governance’ initiatives in Laos, such as they are,” says an analyst who requested anonymity. Indeed, the Siphandone family is known for being close to corrupt officials and involvement in the shady world of Laos’ extractive resources. An analyst noted that Khamtay “oversaw the peak of the logging boom in Laos in the 1990s.” The mood in Laos is mixed, even though rumors had been circulating for weeks that Phankham would retire. Outgoing Lao Prime Minister Phankham Viphavanh struggled to keep a grip on the economy and manage intra-party rivalry. Image: Global Times One Lao resident told Asia Times that they’re hopeful Sonexay can shake up the government and was pleasantly surprised that the ruling Lao People’s Revolutionary Party (LPRP), which would have directly managed the power transfer, had even accepted it. Some analysts had doubted rumors in recent weeks that Phankham would resign because they believed it would be an explicit admission of personnel and policy failure by the party. Even though Phankham used the excuse of poor health, which may or may not be true, many Laos reckon he was forced out. But another resident of Vientiane says that “most people are just resigned to how things are now. Most of the rural youth have already left for work in Thailand, the educated try for scholarships.” Sonexay’s assumption of the premiership is a major victory for the Siphandone clan, whose power base lies in the south of the country. His sister, Viengthong Siphandone, rose quickly through the ranks at the party’s last National Congress in early 2021 to become the new chair of the Supreme Court. She was formerly head of the State Audit Organization. Viengthong is married to Khampheng Saysompheng, a former minister of Labor and Social Welfare, and then minister of Industry and Commerce (he was replaced in June). He is “widely seen as one of many corrupt high-level government officials,” stated an analyst writing in 2015. As well as Viengthong, ranked 18th in the Central Committee, two other members of the Siphandone clan sit on the party’s decision-making body: Viengsavath (ranked 52nd) and Athsaphangthong (64th). Sonexay first made it into the Central Committee in 2006 after serving as governor of Champasak province, in southwestern Laos. A decade later he was elected onto the Politburo for the first time and made a deputy prime minister and head of the prime minister’s office, a position that put him in close contact with Thongloun Sisoulith, the prime minister at the time. Thongloun is now state president and general secretary of the communist party. Thongloun Sisoulith attends talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (not pictured) at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, November 28, 2016. Photo: Agencies As well as a deputy prime minister, Sonexay also in 2019 became Minister of Planning and Investment, one of the most powerful positions in the cabinet as it confers close cooperation with influential investors from China and Vietnam, as well as direct access to the governments in Beijing and Hanoi. Because of his family pedigree and fast rise through the party ranks, some analysts suspected that Sonexay might have been named prime minister at the last quinquennial power reshuffle in early 2021. But months before the National Assembly made its announcement, he only received the ninth rank in the Politburo during the party’s National Congress, a sign he wasn’t about to land the premiership. Instead, that post went to Phankham, who arguably took over at the wrong possible moment. After experiencing hardly any cases of Covid-19 in 2020, infection and death rates spiked in the months after Phankham became prime minister in March 2021. At one point last year, Laos sat at the bottom of the Nikkei Asia Covid-19 Recovery Index. Then came the economic crisis of 2022. Inflation has topped nearly 40%. The local currency, the kip, crashed in value by as much as 68% against the US dollar, as of October. About a fifth of the workforce is unemployed, reckons the Ministry of Labor and Social Welfare. Worse, Laos’ debt-service obligations will average US$1.3 billion per year from next year until 2026, roughly the same amount the state had in official foreign reserves in June. It isn’t clear if Laos can continue making these payments or if it will receive further debt deferrals from China, its main external creditor. A default could be on the cards, many analysts reckon. Phankham may have been the public face of these crises, but Sonexay played an active role after being appointed head of the government’s special economic task force in June. He delivered the economic report at the latest sitting of the National Assembly in December. Laos wait in a fuel line in the capital of Vientiane as shortages hit the landlocked nation. Image: Facebook Phankham was also dogged by scandals. He has come under criticism for allegedly granting too many concessions for mining exploitation in the north of the country and over his government’s failure to adequately tackle corruption, Radio Free Asia reports. During his resignation speech, Phankham claimed that he was stepping down because of reaching the retirement age and “health problems”, although there is much skepticism about the claim. In addition, there are rumors that the Siphandone family advanced their power move because Khamtay, the 98-year-old patriarch, is currently in poor health. But a Lao source told Asia Times that Sonexay’s promotion may have come earlier than desired since Lao prime ministers are rarely re-elected. Sonexay is a “compromise figure” within the ruling communist party, the source added. It isn’t clear that Sonexay will entirely benefit from this early reshuffle, and that it might have been politically wiser for him if Phankham had continued for another 12 months or so in the job and then staged a reshuffle when the worst of the economic crisis is expected to be over. Most analysts expect a slightly better economic situation next year although the major problems will persist, as Asia Times reported last week the World Bank expects gross domestic product (GDP) growth of around 3.8%, compared to just 2.5% in 2022. Sonexay’s premiership could be helped in that his promotion comes as China races down the path of reopening from “zero-Covid.” Greater numbers of Chinese tourists are expected to visit Laos this year, boosting the important but depleted sector and delivering more foreign currency reserves to the state coffers. More Chinese investment and trade with Laos is also expected in 2023. Sonexay’s father, Khamtay, was the leader of the party’s military wing in the 1970s and 1980s, and is suspected of having opposed many of the pro-market reform ideas being led by party founding secretary-general Kaysone Phomvihane. However, Khamtay oversaw many economic reforms during his premiership in the early 1990s, although he strongly opposed political reform. Laos remains one of the most repressive states in Asia, with no free press or allowances for dissent. Then-Lao prime minister Khamtay Siphandone (left) on a four-day business visit to Singapore. Image: Singapore National Archives Sonexay isn’t expected to lead any major shift in foreign policy for Laos, which tries to balance between China and Vietnam, its main trade and political partners. Phankham was seen by some as being closer to the Vietnamese side, as he was the former president of the Laos-Vietnam Friendship Association. In November 2000, President Jiang Zemin became the first Chinese head of state to visit Laos, following an invitation by then-Lao president Khamtay Siphandone. As investment minister, Sonexay was deeply involved in several Chinese-led projects, including the $6 billion China-Lao railway. He also has ties with Vietnam and Thailand. In October 2017, he led a delegation to Hanoi to meet Nguyen Phu Trong, general secretary of the Vietnamese Communist Party. Vietnamese prime minister Pham Minh Chinh was one of the first world leaders to congratulate Sonexay on his ascension to the premiership. US Ambassador to Vientiane Peter Haymond also offered his congratulations. “The United States is committed to our Comprehensive Partnership with the Lao PDR, and we look forward to working with the Prime Minister and his government to support Laos’ continued economic recovery,” he said in a statement. Copyright 2023 @ ASIA TIMES. All Rights Reserved.

Germany Country Report January 2023 Germany’s history of genocide spans back to the colonial rule of German Southwest Africa (DSWA), today Namibia. DSWA was Germany’s primary settler colony, with over 3,000 German citizens settling there by 1903. In response to colonization, Indigenous people, including the San, Damara, Ovambo, Nama, and Herero groups, rebelled in the early 1900s, killing approximately 100 German settlers. After the riots, German General Lothar von Trotha ordered the annihilation of all Herero and Nama people. The German army forced the tribes into the desert and to labor camps. Approximately 80,000 died from disease, exhaustion, thirst, and starvation from 1904-1908, including 80% of the Herero and 50% of the Nama populations. The Herero genocide later inspired Nazi policy. After World War I, Germany claimed Jews and communists orchestrated their defeat, known as the ‘stab-in-the-back' myth. Adolf Hitler rose in the ranks of the Nazi Party through his dedication to nationalism and white supremacy, eventually becoming Chancellor in 1933. The Nazis sponsored the killing and sterilization of mentally and physically disabled, the segregation of Jews into ghettos, and antisemitic pogroms such as Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. The Nazis also targeted Soviet POWs, Poles, and Slavs by mass executions from Einsatzgruppen death squads. An estimated 6 million Jews and 11 million individuals of other targeted groups (Soviets, Poles, Roma and Sinti, asocials, homosexuals, disabled people, and Jehovah’s Witnesses) were killed in the Holocaust. Despite this history of genocide, there have been reconciliation efforts from Germany today. In May 2021, Germany agreed to pay $1.1 billion in reparations to the Herero and Nama peoples, officially recognizing the 1904 genocide. However, some criticized the century-long delay for these reparations. Germany has also paid billions of Euros in reparations to Holocaust survivors, memorials, and funds. However, neo-Nazi activity and white supremacy still plague Germany. Scholars are concerned by the rise of the alt-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) Party in Germany. In addition, reports by Human Rights Watch indicate a 72% increase in anti-immigrant hate crimes, and a 16% increase in antisemitic hate crimes during 2021. For example, Tareq Alaows, a Syrian human rights activist and the first refugee to run for German parliament, withdrew his campaign in March 2021 due to racist attacks and threats. Most recently, a right-wing extremist group, comprising a former AfD politician, attempted to overthrow the German government in Berlin on December 7, 2022. Because of the increase in right-wing extremist activity and threats to democracy, Genocide Watch considers Germany to be at Stage 6: Polarization. Genocide Watch recommends the following: The German government continue to donate to Holocaust survivors, memorials, and educational funds, especially as Holocaust denial increases worldwide. The Herero and Nama genocide should be taught in German primary and secondary educational curriculums. Legal action should be taken against the former AfD policymaker that participated in the attempted coup in December 2022. AfD should also be investigated as a potential terrorist group and labeled as a threat to German democracy. Download Report

By: France24 Aliaksandra Herasimenia of Belarus (bronze) poses with the medal. REUTERS/Bernadett Szabo A Belarusian court on Monday sentenced the country's former champion swimmer and government critic Aliaksandra Herasimenia to 12 years in prison in absentia, a rights group said. Herasimenia, who in her career won Olympic medals and retired in 2019, has lived in self-imposed exile since autumn 2020 and was not present at the hearing. The 36-year-old was found guilty on multiple charges, including "calls for sanctions" and other actions "aimed at harming the national security" of Belarus, said the Viasna rights group. Herasimenia co-founded the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation (BSSF) in the wake of mass protests that erupted in August 2020 against the contested re-election of strongman President Alexander Lukashenko. The foundation provided financial and legal assistance to athletes targeted by the authorities for their political views. It also advocated for a boycott of sporting events held in Belarus and called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to suspend the ex-Soviet country. The organisation was labelled as extremist in Belarus. Herasimenia had auctioned off a gold medal she won at the 2012 World Championships for over $16,000, using the proceeds to support the foundation. Separately, a court in Minsk sentenced several trade union representatives including Alexander Yaroshuk to prison violating public order, Viasna said. © 2022 AFP https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20221226-belarus-activist-athlete-sentenced-to-prison-in-absentia

The New York Times Dec. 24, 2022 As Moscow wages war in Ukraine, its mercenaries have already established control in the Central African Republic — with scant Western reaction. By Roger Cohen Photographs by Mauricio Lima BANGUI, Central African Republic — In early March, as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine entered its third week, a Russian diplomat nearly 3,000 miles away in the Central African Republic paid an unusual visit to the head of this country’s top court. His message was blunt: The country’s pro-Kremlin president must remain in office, indefinitely. To do this, the diplomat, Yevgeny Migunov, the second secretary at the Russian Embassy, argued that the court should abolish the constitutional restriction limiting a president to two terms. He insisted that President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, who is in his second term and surrounds himself with Russian mercenaries, should stay on, for the good of the country. “I was absolutely astonished,” recalled Danièle Darlan, 70, then the court’s president, describing for the first time the meeting on March 7. “I warned them that our instability stemmed from presidents wanting to make their rule eternal.” The Russian was unmoved. Seven months later, in October, Ms. Darlan was ousted by presidential decree in order to open the way for a referendum to rewrite the Constitution, only adopted in 2016, and abolish term limits. This would effectively cement what one Western ambassador called the Central African Republic’s status as a “vassal state” of the Kremlin. With his invasion of Ukraine, President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia unleashed a new disorder on the world. Ukraine has portrayed its fight against becoming another Russian vassal as one for universal freedom, and the cause has resonated in the United States and Europe. But in the Central African Republic, Russia already has its way, with scant Western reaction, and in the flyblown mayhem of its capital, Bangui, a different kind of Russian victory is already on display. Russian mercenaries with the same shadowy Wagner Group now fighting in Ukraine bestride the Central African Republic, a country rich in gold and diamonds. Their impunity appears total as they move in unmarked vehicles, balaclavas covering half their faces and openly carrying automatic rifles. The large mining and timber interests that Wagner now controls are reason enough to explain why Russia wants no threat to a compliant government. From Bangui itself, where Wagner forces steal and threaten, to Bria in the center of the country, to Mbaiki in the south, I saw Moscow’s mercenaries everywhere during a two-and-a-half-week stay, despite pressure on them to rotate to fight in Ukraine. “They threaten stability, they undermine good governance, they rob countries of mineral wealth, they violate human rights,” Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said of Wagner operatives last week during a U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. Yet, although feared, the Russians are often welcomed as a more effective presence in keeping a fragile peace than the more than 14,500 blue-helmeted United Nations peacekeepers in this war-torn country since 2014. As elsewhere in the developing world, the West has seemingly lost hearts and minds here. President Biden’s framework for this era — the battle between democracy and rising autocracy — comes across as too binary for a time of complex challenges. Despite the war in Ukraine, even because of it, Central Africans are intensely skeptical of lessons on Western “values.” Mr. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and the inflationary spiral it has spawned has made a desperate situation more desperate in this landlocked nation. Prices for staples like cooking oil are up by 50 percent or more. Gasoline is now sold in smuggled canisters or bottles, as gas stations have none. Hunger is more widespread, in part because U.N. agencies sometimes lack the fuel to deliver food. Yet many Central Africans do not blame Russia. Russian mercenaries shopping in October at Bangui Mall, a fancy supermarket used mostly by embassies’ staff and nongovernmental organizations based in the country. A Russian Orthodox Church in Bangui. Tired of Western hypocrisy and empty promises, stung by the shrug that war in Africa elicits in Western capitals as compared with war in Ukraine, many people I met were inclined to support Mr. Putin over their former colonizers in Paris. If Russian brutality in Bucha or Mariupol appalls the West, Russian brutality in the Central African Republic is widely perceived to have helped quiet a decade-old conflict. Africa will account for a quarter of humanity by 2050. China spreads its influence through huge investments, construction and loans. Mr. Biden convened the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit “to build on our shared values” and announced $15 billion in new business deals, as the West scrambles to play catch-up and overcome a legacy of colonialism. Mr. Putin’s Russia, by contrast, never builds a bridge, but is the master of pitiless protection services, plunder and propaganda. It wins friends through hard power, now extended to more than a dozen African countries, including Mali and Sudan. As in Syria, its readiness to use force secures the outcome it seeks. In March, only 28 of Africa’s 54 countries voted at the United Nations to condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the same slim majority that subsequently voted to condemn Russia’s annexation of four Ukrainian regions, suggesting a growing reluctance to accept an American narrative of right and wrong. “When your house is burning, you don’t mind the color of the water you use to put out the fire,” said Honoré Bendoit, the subprefect of Bria, a regional capital, about 280 miles (or a six-day drive on what passes for roads here) northeast of Bangui. “We have calm thanks to the Russians. They are violent and they are efficient.” Map of the Central African Republic, December 25, 2022 Credit: Borysk5, CC BY-SA 4.0 , via Wikimedia Commons Efficient, that is, in destroying or dispersing the rebel groups that have long destabilized the country through an intermittent war that has left tens of thousands dead since 2012. When Mr. Touadéra was elected in 2016, he had effective control over only about 20 percent of the country. From 2017, mistrustful of his own army and frustrated with a French military presence that he judged ineffective, he began to turn to Russia in a bid to re-establish control over rebel-held areas. That year, the United Nations approved an offer from the Kremlin to send military trainers to the Central African Armed Forces. The unarmed trainers morphed into Wagner’s armed mercenaries. A U.N. report last year found evidence of “excessive force, indiscriminate killings, occupation of schools and looting on a large scale.” Today, the Wagner shock troops form a Praetorian Guard for Mr. Touadéra, who is also protected by Rwandan forces, in return for an untaxed license to exploit and export diamonds, gold and timber from virgin forests and from Russian mining interests in the country’s central region. “Today, we have 5,000 Russians in the country,” Pascal Bida Koyagbele, the minister for strategic investment and a close confidant of Mr. Touadéra’s, said in an interview. “Thanks to them we have retaken control of 97 percent of our territory.” That figure is widely disputed. Another minister recently spoke of 80 percent control. And what, I asked Mr. Koyagbele, of persistent reports of Russian brutality? “In a war, as in Iraq,” he said, “things happen.” ‘Our Partners Are the Russians’ The Central African Republic, a country slightly bigger than Ukraine, has only two traffic lights. Neither of them works. A go-ahead Bangui mayor installed them in 2008, but that was before war, sectarian violence and pillaging propelled the nation backward. With their wiring pilfered, the lights stand as forlorn symbols of a forgotten push for progress. Nearby, rising from the potholed, unpaved roads of what the U.N. estimates is the world’s third poorest country, billboards advertise a vodka “made in the heart of Africa with Russian technology.” The vodka, called Wa Na Wa, is sold in 30-cent sachets, and as I photographed one of the advertisements, a man screamed abuse and seized me by the throat. The poster was the work of his brother-in-law, he claimed, demanding to be paid. An advertisement for vodka called Wa Na Wa in Bangui says it is “made in the heart of Africa with Russian technology.” The vodka is sold in 30-cent sachets. On Prof. Faustin-Archange Touadéra Avenue — the president already has a road named after him — a recently installed statue of four armed Russian soldiers protecting a kneeling woman with two children has pride of place. Soldiers in red berets from the Central African Armed Forces pose beside it for photographs. Women carrying bundles on their heads and babies on their backs drift past. Nearby, a poster advertises “Granit,” a Wagner-financed movie released a year ago that features the heroics of Russian paramilitaries defending Mr. Touadéra. On the banks of the Oubangui River, Russia has opened a cultural center, offering a carousel for children, Russian lessons for adults and movie screenings. It stands about midway between the French and Russian Embassies, a symbol of the intense competition between the Central African Republic’s former colonizer in Paris and its current master in Moscow. In a sign of the growing venom of this conflict, Yevgeny V. Prigozhin, the Russian tycoon who heads the Wagner group and is close to Mr. Putin, accused France last week of sending a parcel bomb that severely injured Dimitri Sytyi, who is believed by Western officials to oversee Wagner’s mining and shipment of diamonds in the Central African Republic. France dismissed the accusation. Russian propaganda is a relentless, anti-Western assault, much of it channeled through the popular Radio Lengo Songo. Marcelin Eenjikele, a journalist there, said he could not let me into the radio’s walled compound because “we have to ask permission of our Russian controllers.” A colleague of his, who declined to give his name, shouted: “We are a new generation. The spirit of domination and the Cold War is over for us! We do not accept your worldview. Our partners are the Russians.” Near the Russian cultural center, the Tourangelle restaurant has a lovely setting overlooking the river. On May 15, five armed Russian mercenaries appeared at 10:30 p.m. and demanded drinks. When the night guard explained that it was too late, they beat him so severely that he was urinating blood and had to be hospitalized. The Russian cultural center in Bangui. It stands about midway between the French and Russian Embassies. A view of the Oubangui River from La Tourangelle restaurant in Bangui. The night guard at La Tourangelle was beaten by a group of five Russian mercenaries in May. “They kicked him in the genitals,” the owner, Nzimbi Yele, told me. “We had the Ukraine flag hanging here, they tore it down. They wiped their hands on the American flag. I spoke to the Russian Embassy and the police. There was no reaction, none.” Asked about the Wagner Group, Mr. Yele said, “They look at us Africans like dead leaves.” A request to meet Mr. Touadéra to discuss Wagner’s presence, relayed through Mr. Koyagbele, the government minister, did not elicit a response. In response to questions about the size, violence and political purpose of the Wagner Group in the Central African Republic, Mr. Prigozhin responded: “All your questions are provocative. If you are ready to provide legally formalized guarantees for the publication of my answers in full, then I am ready to give comments.” An offer from his communications office to send a contract to that end was declined. A cemetery in Bangui. The Central African Republic has been independent from France since 1960. ‘The Russians Kill. That Is Different.’ Seldom stable since its independence from France in 1960, the Central African Republic, a nation of chronic coups and rebellions that suffers from porous borders and the calamitous governance of public office for private gain, lurched into something resembling full-scale war in December 2012. Over the ensuing decade, a multilayered conflict involving more than a dozen armed groups — and since 2014, a U.N. peacekeeping force with an annual budget of $1.1 billion — has festered. It has been at once a fight for power, a religious conflict between Christians and the Muslim minority, a battle for control of resources, and a proxy war of covetous neighbors. The conflict endures, but in a minor key for now. Lizbeth Cullity, the American deputy head of the U.N. Mission, described a “hit and run, hide and seek” low-level conflict, with armed groups retreating into the bush and reappearing. “What we have is neither war nor peace,” she said. Today, of a population of 6.1 million, 700,000 are refugees in other countries, 430,000 are internally displaced, and 3.4 million require humanitarian assistance, in what Isabella Leyh of the U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Bangui called “the most forgotten of forgotten crises.” Residents listening to U.N. peacekeeping officers during a routine patrol in November in Bangu Selling fuel in October outside the United Nations headquarters in Bangui. Workers painting a crosswalk in a residential neighborhood in October in Bangui. Anyone flying into the Central African Republic tumbles out of a makeshift international airport onto a rutted dirt road running through a market where corrugated iron roofing, old tires and glistening offal spill into the red mud. The capital is the only place with an electricity grid in the entire vast country. It works intermittently. Malnutrition, lack of water and the fear bequeathed by war leave their trace in sunken, bloodshot eyes. Hardship is etched in every furrowed brow across a country where 71 percent of people live on less than $1.90 a day, by United Nations estimates. Waiting for school transportation in November in Bangui. U.N. peacekeepers save lives, but, constrained by their strict rules of engagement, they have been unable to do more than apply a very expensive bandage. They have no apparent exit strategy. Workers unloading sand taken from the bottom of the Oubangui River in November to be used in construction projects in Bangui. Laborers in Bangui In a camp for 36,000 displaced people in Bria, the capital of the large central Haute-Kotto region, I fell into conversation with Flora Assangou, a single mother of three, who was chopping wood. She said she would return to her village one day, but only when there was security. I asked her about the peacekeepers. “Oh, they just do patrols,” she said. “Do the patrols help?” I asked. She laughed. When rebel groups kill someone, Ms. Assangou said that U.N. peacekeepers — known as MINUSCA — “take a photograph.” But “the Russians kill,” she added. “That is different. It brought us some peace.” Peter Schaller, who heads the World Food Program operation in Bangui, said: “We’ve asked for coordination with the Russians, but they say they report only to the president. They have little or no communication with us.” This can create problems. “Sometimes they jam radio communications in areas they operate, and our air service finds it has to fly visually.” A boy carrying straw in October in Bangui. A street market in Bangui where women were selling leaves and vegetables in November. At fish market in October in Bangui. Mr. Schaller said the Russian mercenaries regularly steal fuel from planes at Bangui airport. Gerson Finarou, a prominent businessman, said he was at the presidential palace three months ago and saw “Russians arrive in unmarked vehicles, smash the pumps and take gasoline.” There was no government response. “Russia came with its answers to an urgent problem,” said Jean-Serge Bokassa, the interior minister in Mr. Touadéra’s government from 2016 to 2018, before growing disillusioned. He is a son of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who ruled the country for 14 years, including two as self-proclaimed emperor. “Unfortunately, the answers included detestable methods, and unhappily today we are a Russian colony.” The colony is a little quieter. Jean-Serge Bokassa, a son of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, a political and military leader who served as the second president of the Central African Republic, at his home in November in Bangui. “You go to work in the morning and you know you will return in the evening,” said Chanel Gana, who works in the Siriri soap factory in Bangui. Muslims praying outside a mosque in October in Bangui. ‘Russians Control Everything’ As an unmarked Russian armored truck came barreling toward us, sending mud flying, Yves Oueama, our driver, swerved sharply to the right. “The Wagner wagons never give way,” he said. “If you don’t get out of their path, you’re done.” The road, a track really, traced a reddish line through the forest from Bria toward Bambari, 130 miles southwest. That journey takes two or three days, and Russia’s sprawling gold mine at Ndassima — whose reserves were described as “huge” by Western diplomats in Bangui — lies between the two towns. “The Russians control everything,” said Abdoul Aziz Sali, a mining economist, noting that Wagner had set up companies to exploit the region for diamonds, gold and timber. “They are arrogant and violent. When they come to a meeting, they do not even sit down.” Ibrahima Dosso, the head of the U.N. World Food Program office in Bria, oversees the vast camp where tens of thousands of people who have fled war are housed in makeshift shacks, reliant on the mission’s distribution of food and, once every two months, about $50 in cash. Electricity comes only from generators, water only from wells. Along the road to Bambari, men trudged toward distant fields carrying machetes. Women in fabrics of blazing color bore baskets of plantain. Children taking home water collected from a well just outside a refugee camp in November in Bria. United Nations staff in November in Bria loading an aircraft with humanitarian aid, food and water to be relocated to another U.N. compound in the country. In this area, and in Bria itself, Wagner forces, who are based in the former offices of a diamond-buying authority, are an unpredictable presence. Mr. Dosso rarely leaves his office, but on this day, accompanied by a Zambian MINUSCA unit providing protection, he headed out to a village called Ngoubi and invited me along. A truck carried beans, cooking oil and U.S.A.I.D. rice in 110-pound sacks emblazoned with the stars and stripes. The people of the village gathered as the sacks were laid out on a blue tarpaulin. Before receiving their handouts, men signed a list by pressing their forefingers dipped in blue ink; women used red. Close to two-thirds of Central Africans are illiterate. Lucienne Wapi, 48, a mother of 12, said it was a struggle to find enough to eat and hard to sleep. She held a grandson, whose stomach was bloated from hunger. I asked if there was peace in the area. “Peace is not just the absence of war,” she said. “If I do not eat or sleep well, it means I am not at peace.” The town of Bria tails off into a refugee camp that is a seething shantytown of one-room structures spread over the hills. Pigs feed on garbage as women tress the hair of their little ones. Most of the people, still afraid to return to the land they fled, have been here several years. Fidelia Nafara, 15, was carrying her 9-month-old baby. She lives with her parents and siblings, eight to a single room. They fled a village 70 miles away in 2014. The father of her child is Muslim, and he disappeared after her own father, who is Christian, threatened him. Fidelia Nafara, 15, with her 9-month-old child on her back, cooking outside her house in a refugee camp in November in Bria. Wandering around the miserable camp, with its crude latrines and stinking garbage, I thought of the millions of Ukrainians who have fled Russia’s unprovoked war into the arms of a wealthy European continent that thought war was behind it. No place is immune to the war in Ukraine. But nor, in much of the world, does it take center stage as in the West. When only 6 percent of rural homes have sanitation and less than half of children have a birth certificate, the suffering of others pales. The war in Ukraine has changed many things, but not the fact that when people must think of their stomachs, they think of little else. A French Withdrawal An AirFrance advertisement outside its headquarters in Bangui offering two flights a week to Paris. The French Embassy in Bangui is set on sprawling grounds beside the Oubangui River. This is prime real estate, but behind coils of razor wire, the embassy is an embattled place. Last year, a mysterious fire broke out on the top floor, destroying an eighth of the building. This year, Jean-Marc Grosgurin, the French ambassador, canceled the traditional July 14 Bastille Day party because of threats from pro-Russia youth movements. Guests, mostly foreigners, enjoying the swimming pool area of Ledger Hotel, the only five-star hotel in the Central African Republic, in central Bangui. France this month completed the withdrawal of all of its forces from the Central African Republic. Six years ago, they numbered more than 1,600. Asked about this decision, the French Ministry of the Armed Forces sent a statement blaming Central African authorities for choosing to work with a “nonstate actor, the Wagner Group, that regularly commits violence and abuses toward the civilian population and is a for-profit enterprise whose business model is based on the plundering of local resources.” At Western embassies, there is intense concern that Mr. Touadéra will allow Wagner mercenaries to take control of the international airport, which had been protected by the last 130 French troops. For now, MINUSCA forces are guarding the airport. Toward the end of my stay, I drove about 50 miles southwest to the sprawling Berengo military camp, an estate with an airstrip that used to belong to the Bokassa family. The former president is buried there, but his grave cannot be visited by family members because Mr. Touadéra has handed the property to the Wagner Group. Small planes fly in and out, carrying Russian booty. I stopped at the gate and asked a Central African guard if I might go in. He opened the gate. A Russian, his face masked to his pale eyes by a balaclava, stepped out brandishing an automatic rifle. When I inquired about the Bokassa grave, he used the rifle to motion me away angrily and ducked back inside. The gate slammed. Russia does not want prying eyes on its unconventional invasions in Africa. A Constitutional Referendum The Russian attempt to overturn the Central African Constitution — in effect an attempt to reproduce in the Central African Republic what Mr. Putin has contrived for himself in Russia — gradually bore fruit after the meeting with Ms. Darlan in March. In late August, Mr. Touadéra announced he had formed a committee to draft a new Constitution because “so many people have raised their voices to demand it.” But he had underestimated Ms. Darlan. On Sept. 23, the Constitutional Court ruled unanimously that the presidential decrees creating the committee were “unconstitutional and invalid.” Mr. Touadéra could not disavow the words of his own oath of office in which he swore not to extend his presidency beyond the two-term limit. With no Senate sitting because of postponed elections, such a procedure was unlawful. Danièle Darlan, the former president of the Constitutional Court, at her home in November in Bangui. The ruling provoked fury against Ms. Darlan from Mr. Touadéra’s supporters who, through the Russian-controlled Radio Lengo Songo and various social media outlets, called protesters to the streets. Ms. Darlan told me she had met with the president a week before the court’s ruling. “I asked him, ‘Why such precipitation when you still have more than three years in office?’ The president said he did not understand himself, but the people were in a great hurry. He looked at me and said, ‘How do you want me to stop this now?’” The initiative was difficult to stop, of course, because Moscow had demanded it, Western diplomats and officials said. The Russian Embassy, in a written statement transmitted through the Foreign Ministry in Moscow, confirmed that Mr. Migunov had met with Ms. Darlan in March. It said that “he never discussed the issue of presidential mandates with her,” but gave no indication as to why else he might have requested a meeting. On Oct. 25, in what she called a “grotesque” maneuver, Ms. Darlan, whose term was to run to 2024, was ousted. The government argued that she was no longer qualified to head the Constitutional Court. Radio Bangui broadcast her dismissal as she arrived at her office. Three days later, Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, issued a statement saying the United States “notes with deep concern” the “removal” of Ms. Darlan. “Judicial independence is a central tenet of democracy,” he said. It was a rare intervention. The United States, which pays about 25 percent of MINUSCA’s operating costs, and for the bulk of the vast quantities of humanitarian aid that go to the Central African Republic, has taken a generally low-key approach to Wagner’s predations in the country, in line with the quiet realpolitik of much of the Biden administration’s foreign policy. U.N. peacekeeping soldiers from Mauritania boarding a pickup truck before a patrol in November in Bangui. This month, two senators, Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi, and Benjamin L. Cardin, Democrat of Maryland, introduced a bill to designate Wagner a terrorist group, citing, among others things, the trafficking and raping of women in the Central African Republic. In response, Mr. Prigozhin issued a statement, saying, “We have never crossed the boundaries of what is permitted.” Russia, through Wagner, is clearly determined to consolidate its power. Western diplomats say that the Wagner presence has shrunk since the Ukraine War — as some have been sent to fight — yet Russia’s grip on the country remains firm. Planning for the constitutional referendum is underway. Mathias Moruba, the head of the National Elections Authority, and Charles Lemasset, the official responsible for the technology controlling the voting process, were invited to Russia for a week of instruction on electoral procedures in October. “It is not very subtle,” said Ms. Darlan, who is being protected by U.N. peacekeepers after threats to her life. When the referendum will be held is not clear, but its outcome seems as certain as the referendums held recently in the four Ukraine regions that Mr. Putin annexed. Elections yield only one result in the Putin-controlled world that Ukraine is fighting to defeat. “Blood will flow,” Mr. Bokassa predicted. “All this is dangerous,” Ms. Darlan said. “Because if you look at our history, adventures like this have never ended well.” Ivan Nechepurenko contributed reporting from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Tom Nouvian from Paris. Roger Cohen is the Paris bureau chief of The Times. He was a columnist from 2009 to 2020. He has worked for The Times for more than 30 years and has served as a foreign correspondent and foreign editor. Raised in South Africa and Britain, he is a naturalized American. @NYTimesCohen A version of this article appears in print on Dec. 25, 2022, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Putin Wants Loyalty, and He’s Found It in Africa. 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