A portrait of Alla, a Ukrainian woman who said she was held by Russian forces for 10 days in July in the occupied city of Izyum in Ukraine's northeast Kharkiv region. During that time, she said she was raped and tortured by her captors. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) By Siobhán O'Grady, Anastacia Galouchka, and Whitney Shefte October 9, 2022 at 1:00 a.m. EDT IZYUM, Ukraine — Soon after Russian forces took her prisoner, the 52-year-old woman picked up a nail and carved her name into a brick wall. A-L-L-A, she wrote. Below, she scratched how many days she had been held in the shed outside a medical clinic in her hometown. Above, she wrote in simple words what she had endured in captivity: ELECTRICAL SHOCK. UNDRESS. PAINFUL. She hoped the markings would one day serve as clues for her son about what she expected to be the final days of her life. “I thought if my son would look for me, he could find these writings and understand that I was there and died there,” she later recalled. Some of Alla’s writing is still visible in the small shed in Izyum, the city in northeast Ukraine, where she said occupying Russian forces tortured, raped and beat her while she was held captive for 10 days in July. The men who detained her, Alla said, were seeking information about her son, who works for Ukraine’s internal security service, the SBU, and about her own work at the region’s gas company. Her husband, who worked at the same company, was also detained and tortured on the clinic’s property. Alla’s account of her treatment at the hands of Russian forces adds to a growing body of evidence of alleged war crimes committed by Russian troops and officials in the parts of Ukraine they occupied this year, after President Vladimir Putin ordered an invasion and launched a full-scale war. Russian forces have left a trail of destruction and cruelty across Ukraine, including in Bucha, where they were accused of atrocities. New reports of barbarity are emerging as Ukraine’s military liberates more towns following months of occupation, and as authorities and rights groups try to document these acts of inhumanity in hopes of one day bringing perpetrators to justice, perhaps before an international tribunal. Russia controlled Izyum, a small city in the northeast Kharkiv region, from March through September, when a surprise Ukrainian counteroffensive forced Russian troops and local collaborators to rapidly retreat. In the weeks since Ukraine retook its territory, horrific details have emerged about some of the most grievous offenses Russian forces allegedly committed during their violent occupation. Civilians who survived the occupation have recounted other instances of rape and torture at the hands of Russian and Russian-backed troops. Some of the hundreds of civilian bodies retrieved from a mass burial site in Izyum showed signs of torture, Ukrainian officials said. Alla shared her account with The Washington Post on the condition only her first name be used. The Post is also not naming her husband, or son, to protect her identity. Washington Post journalists twice visited the site where she was imprisoned, once independently and once with Alla and her husband. Her account was consistent with what Post journalists found inside, including her name and other details still scrawled on the wall. It was impossible to independently verify every detail of Alla’s case. But in an investigation into torture in Izyum, Human Rights Watch spoke to eight other men and one other woman who were detained at the clinic during the Russian occupation, said Belkis Wille, senior researcher in the group’s conflict and crisis division. The woman told the group she was threatened with rape but not sexually assaulted. A man who was held in a garage at the clinic during the same time as Alla reported that he heard women’s screams, and soldiers talking about denying food to a prisoner because she had not performed a sex act, Wille said. Alla also showed The Post journalists a video of herself after she returned home, in which she appeared gaunt and disheveled. Alla's name scratched onto the wall of the shed where she was held hostage and abused on the ground of a medical clinic that was used by Russian soldiers as a detention center and torture site in occupied Izyum. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) Harassment The harassment started in mid-March. After surviving heavy shelling, Alla braved a pedestrian bridge across the river that runs through Izyum to check on her son’s empty apartment near the city center. On her way, she found a scene of ruin: Corpses lay on the sides of the road, and there were destroyed buildings everywhere she looked. Her son’s neighbors told her that Russians had visited the building, asked about her son, who was working elsewhere in the Kharkiv region, and searched his apartment. The men “started taking out everything,” she recalled, including his coffee machine, CD player, television and washing machine. Fearing all his belongings would be looted, she moved what valuables were left to a friend’s house nearby. That same month, Russian forces began visiting her and her husband at their home. First they said they were looking for weapons or wanted photos of her son, who was deployed for work outside of Izyum. Later they started searching her phone, interrogating her and her husband about whether their son was hiding in Izyum and insisting he should collaborate with Russia. Soldiers also told them that her son’s neighbors had provided intelligence to them about their family. They were “threatening us all the time, telling me that if my son collaborated with them, they won’t touch us, everything will be good,” Alla said. “We lived in constant fear, but they didn’t touch us, didn’t torture us.” Like many other civilians, Alla and her husband knew they might be safer elsewhere but they feared leaving behind her elderly parents. Then the Russians’ demands escalated. The Russian-appointed mayor of Izyum and men who identified themselves as FSB agents repeatedly asked Alla to return to her job at the Kharkiv gas company. The gas supply was cut to the much of the city and Russian officials wanted to turn it back on. Alla insisted she would not return to work and that as a manager, she did not have the technical expertise they needed. When she finally visited her office, she found the door kicked in and her belongings turned upside down. The next day, on July 1 at 11 a.m., two cars pulled up outside their house — both emblazoned with the Russian “Z.” About 10 men jumped out of the vehicles, including those who had visited them before. “ ‘You were saying you wouldn’t go to work?’ ” Alla recalled them shouting. “ ‘You went to the gas bureau and bossed around there? Now, get ready.’ ” The men placed bags over Alla and her husband’s heads, bound their hands with duct tape and shoved them into the trunks of each car. With her eyes covered, Alla did not know where she was being taken. Then the cars stopped and the soldiers jumped out. “ ‘We’ll beat the Ukrainian out of you here, you won’t come out of here alive,’ ” they told her. “ ‘Either you accept our rules and acknowledge that you live in Russia or you’ll go missing. No one will find you, ever.’ ” Then they pushed Alla through a door, untied her hands and took off the bag covering her eyes. She was inside a small, dark shed with a cement floor. The men locked the door and said they would be back soon. The medical clinic building that was used, according to victims, as a detention center and interrogation and torture facility by Russian occupiers. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) Torture An hour later, six men returned to the shed, placed the bag back over her head and brought her to another building nearby, where they demanded she undress. When she refused, “they forcefully undressed me, laid me on [the] table and started touching me, everywhere,” she said. They laughed as they groped her. “Then they were throwing me on my knees, screaming, ‘Oh, you are Ukrainian. Do you know what we do with Ukrainian women and mothers of Ukraine’s Security Service officers?’ ” Alla said. “ ‘We tie them up naked on the main square and send pictures of them to their sons so they would see what we can do to their parents.’ ” The commander made rules about how Alla should behave, threatening to beat her if she disobeyed: When the men entered the shed, she should be naked from the waist down and keep her back turned to them. She initially refused. “ ‘What do you mean you would not take your clothes off? Do you think you can argue with us?’ ” she recalled the commander saying. “I started crying and screaming, but he took my clothes off and asked his soldiers who would be the first to rape me.” The assaults — carried out by the commander — usually began after 4 p.m., when the men returned to the clinic. For three days, the commander forcibly touched her and forced her to perform oral sex on him while holding her husband hostage in a garage nearby. Alla said she could hear her husband cry out as the troops beat him, and overheard the commander tell “my husband that he raped me, and that we both enjoyed it.” Buildings on the grounds of the medical clinic in Izyum, Ukraine, where a woman, Alla, and her husband said they were held hostage and tortured. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) The shed was so stuffy that she found it difficult to breathe and had to remove a loose brick from the wall to try to get fresh air. She begged the soldiers for anti-anxiety medication, which they provided. They also gave her two buckets — one to use as a toilet and the other for porridge and stale bread. Through a hole in the wall, she once saw the men escorting her husband back to the garage, beaten so badly he could barely stand. “I was determined to commit suicide. There were some spikes inside the barn, and I had a bra so I thought of hanging myself,” she said. “It did not work out. I started crying. I was crying all the time. They heard me crying and came back, and started harassing me again.” As the days passed, the men continued to demand information from her about the gas supply in Izyum — at one point shocking her feet with electricity and laughing as she screamed. “I cannot express what kind of pain it was,” she said. The commander also asked about money on her bank card and in her house, which she later realized they stole, she said. For days as they questioned her, the men accused her of lying about even basic information. In the end, after demanding details from her about how to extract and distribute natural gas in Izyum, the Russians said they were satisfied with her answers and that she and her husband would both be released — a decision the couple still does not fully understand. On July 10, they were blindfolded and dumped at a gas station on the side of the road. After taking some time to heal, they fled through Russia, Belarus and Poland until they reached a part of Ukraine not occupied by Russia, where Alla received gynecological treatment because of her repeated assaults. In September, days after Ukraine liberated Izyum, Alla and her husband returned to their hometown for the first time. With the Russians gone, their son has also been able to return. Leaning up against the wall outside their home, Alla turned to her husband. “Did you believe them when they said they were raping me?” she asked him. He paused. “I didn’t know what to believe,” he responded. He said he could only hope it wasn’t true and was some form of psychological torture the soldiers were using against him instead. Two days later, they returned to the abandoned clinic where they were tortured just two months before. “Truth sets you free” is written in German on the wall of the one of the rooms at a medical clinic that occupying Russian forces used as a detention center and torture site in Izyum, Ukraine. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) Inside the main clinic building, where Alla and other detainees were tortured, the German words “Truth Sets You Free” were scrawled on the wall in what appeared to be a nod to the Nazis’ use of “Work Sets You Free” — the slogan on the gate to Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Alla stepped into the shed where she was held, her eyes scanning the wall to look for the markings she left — some now scratched over in what she thinks was an effort to erase the truth of what the Russian forces did to her. She pulled back the covering on the boarded-up window. She found the sedative packets on the floor. She pointed to the corner where she moved a brick to get light and fresh air — then the metal rods where she tried to hang herself. In the garage where her husband was held, Alla found the filthy yellow foam mattress she had slept on, and the dirty clothes she used as a pillow. Her ordeal was over, but the trauma was not. “We are Ukrainians. We were always for Ukraine,” she said. “For that, we were punished.” © 1996-2022 The Washington Post

A lack of basic medicine is killing patients in Ethiopia's Tigray region, which is the epicentre of a 23-month civil war and is under blockade. Both sides have agreed to peace talks in South Africa, and a doctor pleads for the humanitarian crisis to be one of the first issues addressed. Patients at hospitals in Tigray have faced a lack of medicine and equipment when they have come to be treated. Credits AFP. Dr Fasika Amdeslasie speaks in a matter-of-fact voice, but what he has to say is devastating. "We have a lack of anesthesia drugs, lack of intravenous fluids, lack of antibiotics and so you see complications arising [with] the patients and you see them dying helplessly - your arms folded," the surgeon says on a WhatsApp call using a rare satellite internet connection from the Tigrayan capital, Mekelle. The patients are helpless but the doctors are too. Nevertheless, there is barely a hint of emotion as Dr Fasika, who works at Mekelle's main Ayder Hospital, relates the impact of the conflict in Tigray on the region's health service. For most of the past two years Tigray has been isolated from the rest of the world. Fighting started in November 2020 when federal Ethiopian forces tried to wrest control of the region from the Tigray People's Liberation Front (TPLF). An effective blockade began when the TPLF mounted a counter-offensive and recaptured much of Tigray in June 2021. Deliveries ground to a halt, banking services stopped and telephone connections were largely cut making it almost impossible to phone anyone up. The UN says that currently 5.4 million people - around three-quarters of Tigray's population - need some kind of food aid as the fighting has disrupted supplies. The sick are not exempt, even though they are not directly involved in the conflict. Some drugs and other vital equipment have come through the World Health Organization and the International Committee of the Red Cross - but their arrival has been sporadic and supplies stopped completely when fighting resumed in August, ending a five-month humanitarian ceasefire. "We don't have medicine for our patients, we don't have surgical materials to do surgery, we don't have vaccines to vaccinate children, we don't have insulin to give to diabetic patients," Dr Fasika tells the BBC's Newsday programme, listing the impact the last 16 months have had. "So all kinds of patients are suffering. We are telling them to return home without treatment." Drugs to treat cancer patients have not been available at all and they cannot get radiotherapy as the equipment for that is in the federal capital, Addis Ababa. Travelling there is impossible. "Basically cancer patients are doomed to die," says the 41 year old, who was once the dean of the medical school. Medics have also had to watch those suffering from kidney failure deteriorate as supplies for dialysis have only come through intermittently. "The last arrival was June and there has been a complete blockage since August and now this week we are running out of materials for the 25 patients we have," according to Dr Fasika. He says that 90 kidney patients have died "in front of the doctors" and he wonders what will happen to the 25 who remain. Regarding diagnosis, the hospital laboratory lacks the chemical reagents vital for the tests, meaning that often doctors cannot tell what is wrong with patients. Added to this, the unreliable electricity supply and the absence of fuel for the generators means that the hospital can go days without power. Throughout the grim catalogue of what he and his fellow medics are dealing with, Dr Faseka's even voice does not reveal the weight of what he is describing. "I have run out of emotion because it is a living reality, I am just describing what I face daily. "We are protecting ourselves emotionally. We will not know how much burden we are carrying until we are relieved. Otherwise it's a natural defence mechanism not to think about it - you don't dwell there and you do what you have to do." But the doctors and nurses themselves are also having to deal with the fact that, as federal employees, they have not been paid since May last year. Dr Fasika gets sent money from friends and family abroad, but this comes at a price as money changers charge a high commission for having to smuggle the cash into Tigray. "This hospital is my life," Dr Fasika says, explaining what motivates him despite the difficult conditions. "Professionalism calls you. If you can go and talk to patients and counsel them and do what you can, then that's the most important thing. Not only me but all the professionals here." When it comes to possible peace talks between the federal government and the TPLF, Dr Fasika shies away from getting involved in the politics. But he is worried that as the talks are a political process they will be drawn out as the different sides debate the details. "The talks may take time, but our lives, the children's lives and the patients' lives may not have that time. So I wish they do things on the humanitarian situation first. "Humanitarian law has to be respected. Why does it fail in Tigray when it is not failing in Ukraine? Is it because we are not important people?" © 2022 BBC

#StopHazaraGenocide The attack at the Kaaj Educational Centre in Kabul on 30 September 2022 killed 56 female students and teachers. 115 wounded were taken to hospitals where the Taliban have cut off water, urgent care, and access for journalists. The current systematic attacks on Hazaras fulfill the elements of the definition of genocide. We gather in solidarity with the Hazaras who are subjected to genocide in Afghanistan. The Hazaras have long faced systematic atrocities based on their membership in an ethnic and religious group. The Hazaras of Afghanistan have endured nearly 300 attacks since 2002. These attacks have a long history. In the 1890s, the Hazaras faced genocide, slavery, and massive depopulation that killed sixty percent of Hazaras. Under the Taliban in the 1990s, Hazaras were victims of at least nine genocidal massacres. The Taliban massacred between 2000 and 15,000 Hazaras in Mazar-e Sharif in 1998. The Taliban massacred hundreds more Hazaras at Bamyan when they blew up the stone Buddhas. The Taliban also targeted the Hazaras during the Taliban insurgency under the former Republic. Since 2015, the Islamic State-Khorasan has also claimed responsibility for targeted attacks against Hazaras. None of the crimes carried out against Hazaras have been investigated. None of the perpetrators have been arrested or brought to justice. No compensation for victims and their families has been paid. As the de facto authority in Afghanistan, the Taliban have failed to provide protection for the Hazaras. The Taliban have forcibly displaced thousands of Hazaras from their ancestral lands across the country including Daikundi, Helmand, Kabul, Mazar-i-Sharif, and Uruzgan. These intentional attacks to destroy a substantial part of the Hazara group amount to the crime of genocide. They fulfill the elements described in Article II of the Genocide Convention of 1948. International organizations like the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and Genocide Watch have issued warnings of genocide against the Hazaras. Hazaras face intentional destruction based on their ethnicity and religion. We are deeply concerned about the violation of the fundamental human rights of all groups in Afghanistan. Women and girls especially have suffered systematic attacks on their rights under the Taliban. Since the August 2021 takeover by the Taliban, genocidal attacks against the Hazaras have increased significantly. There is an emerging pattern of targeting Hazara young people, especially girls. Hazaras are massacred in educational centers, schools, places of worship, hospitals, maternity centers, sporting facilities, wedding halls, buses on highways, and at funerals and other public gatherings. The Hazara people call for the following: 1. The UN, US, UK, EU, human rights organizations, and journalists must recognize that the systematic attacks against the Hazaras in Afghanistan fulfill the definition of genocide: the intentional destruction of a substantial part of an ethnic and religious group, as such. 2. The UN and national governments should initiate urgent consultations with Hazara organizations on practical actions for the protection of the Hazaras in Afghanistan. 3. The International Criminal Court must open investigations of the atrocities against the Hazara people and should initiate cases against perpetrators for genocide and crimes against humanity. 4. All countries should prioritize Hazaras fleeing Afghanistan for asylum and resettlement as refugees.

Journalist Aziz Yusupov arrested in Uzbekistan before OSCE conference on human rights SEPTEMBER 30, 2022 / 10:25 AM AKIPRESS.COM - The Association for Human Rights in Central Asia (AHRCA), the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights (HFHR), International Partnership for Human Rights (IPHR), the Norwegian Helsinki Committee (NHC) and the World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) condemned the arrest of human rights activist and journalist Aziz Yusupov in Uzbekistan. Yusupov's arrest came just before the Human Dimension Conference in Warsaw, which is organised by the Polish OSCE Chairmanship with support from the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) this week and the next, and appeared to be aimed at preventing him from attending this major human rights event, the organizations' statement says. "Aziz Yusupov’s arrest calls into question the Uzbekistani government’s assurances about the progress of successful human rights reforms in the country," Director of IPHR Brigitte Dufour said. According to the information of human rights organizations, Yusupov was detained after being summoned to the police station in Ferghana in eastern Uzbekistan on 25 September 2022 after the authorities learned that he was applying for a Polish visa in order to travel to the Human Dimension Conference. At this conference, which gathers representatives of governments, international organisations and civil society, he intended to present independent information about the human rights situation in Uzbekistan, the IPHR says. Yusupov had submitted a visa application at the Polish embassy on 23 September, using an invitation issued to him by the OIDHR. Two days after his detention, on 27 September 2022, Ferghana Criminal Court sanctioned his pre-trial detention for three months on charges of the possession of drugs, an offense which is punishable by up to five years’ imprisonment under Article 276.1 of the Criminal Code. Yusupov denies the charges. Human rights organizations which issued statements about the situation believe that they were fabricated in order to penalise him for his human rights activities. "Yusupov’s case shows that the Uzbekistani authorities have renewed the practice of using trumped-up charges against human rights defenders. Once again, we see human rights defenders being accused of crimes in criminal cases aimed at discrediting them and obstructing their legitimate work," Secretary General of NHC Berit Lindeman noted. According to AHRCA, Aziz Yusupov has recently been involved in monitoring the situation of prisoners in Uzbekistan, especially vulnerable groups such as women and children, and providing assistance to them. In the past year alone, Aziz Yusupov has conducted 20 interviews amongst prisoners and former prisoners including those serving sentences on politically motivated grounds and victims of torture. Yusupov’s family moved to Uzbekistan from Tajikistan in the 1990s after the civil war broke out in Tajikistan. He is the brother of independent journalist Farrukh Yusupov (Yusufiy), who has worked for many years with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty and repeatedly has criticised the authorities in Uzbekistan. Yusufiy also participated in investigations of corrupt business companies controlled by the daughter of the former Uzbekistani president, Gulnara Karimova. In 2016 Aziz Yusupov was arrested and unfairly sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment. Then the human rights organizations stated that Yusupov was tortured in detention and the only evidence against him was his written admission of guilt, which he signed under pressure. Aziz Yusupov was widely recognized as a political prisoner by human rights groups. Following international pressure, he was released from prison on parole early in February 2019 due to poor health. He had to follow several courses of medical treatment after release. The authorities of Uzbekistan did nor provide comments on Yusupov's arrest.

A military parade displaying Houthi forces and weapons moves through a main street of Sanaa, Yemen, on Sept. 21, 2022. Yemen's warring parties face a deadline to renew a 6-month-long truce on Sunday, Oct. 2. (Ansar Allah Media via AP) By: Ahmed Al-Haj October 2, 2022 SANAA, Yemen (AP) — Yemen’s warring sides have failed to reach an agreement to extend a nationwide cease-fire, the U.N. said Sunday, endangering the longest lull in fighting since the country’s bloody civil war began. In a statement, the U.N.’s envoy to Yemen called on all sides to refrain from acts of provocation as the talks continue, after the deadline of Oct. 2 for extending the agreement was missed. The U.N.-backed truce initially took effect in April, and raised hopes for a longer pause in fighting as Yemen’s civil war entered in its eighth year. The devastating conflict began in 2014, when the Iranian-backed Houthis seized the capital of Sanaa and much of northern Yemen and forced the government into exile. A Saudi-led coalition including the United Arab Emirates intervened in 2015 to try to restore the internationally recognized government to power. In a statement, U.N. envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg said he “regrets that an agreement has not been reached today.” He did not call out the Houthis by name for failing to agree to his proposal but thanked the internationally recognized government for “engaging positively” in talks to extend the cease-fire. He called on leaders to continue to endeavor to reach an agreement. “I urge them to fulfill their obligation to the Yemeni people to pursue every avenue for peace,” he said. The foreign minister for Yemen’s internationally recognized government placed the blame for the truce ending on the Houthis. In comments made with the pan-Arab Satellite channel Al-Hadath, Ahmed Awad Bin Mubarak said that Houthis had obstructed the cease-fire and gone against the interest of the Yemeni people. “The government made many concessions to extend the truce,” he said. There was no immediate comment released from the Houthi rebels following the U.N. statement. But on Saturday, the Houthis said that discussions around the truce had reached a “dead-end,” and said that they were continuing to advocate for a full opening of the Sanaa airport, and lifting of the blockade on the key port city of Hodeida. The Iran-backed hosted a large military parade last month, showcasing rockets and large weaponry, drawing condemnation from observers. In the hours leading up to the deadline, a Houthi military spokesman threatened private oil companies still working in the country to leave or their facilities would be seized. Yahia Sarea wrote on Twitter that the fossil fuels belong to the people of Yemen and could be used to pay public servants’ salaries. April’s truce had originally established a partial opening of the Sanaa airport and the Red Sea port of Hodeida. The ensuing months have seen flights start again from the capital’s airport to Jordan and Egypt. It also called for lifting a Houthi blockade on Taiz, the country’s third largest city. But little progress has been made there, after talks aimed at reopening local roads stalled. Another sticking point is how salaries of public employees will be funded, many of whom have not been compensated for years. Sunday’s statement came a few days after Grundberg met in Sanaa with the top leader of the Houthis, Abdel-Malek al-Houthi, and other senior officials, who have been pushing for a full opening of the airport. The envoy warned last week that the risk of return to war was a real possibility. “Millions will now be at risk if airstrikes, ground shelling and missile attacks resume,” said Ferran Puig, country director in Yemen for the international charity Oxfam, reacting to the news of the truce expiring. Analysts say it remains unclear if further talks could make progress, with Houthis feeling empowered and the coalition fighting them splintered by inter-alliance trouble. Peter Salisbury, an expert on Yemen with Crisis Group, an international think-thank, said the Houthis have been behaving as if they had more leverage throughout the negotiations, because they were more willing than the other side to return to war. Compared with forces fighting with the Saudi coalition, ″they run an effective police state and operate a pretty functional and motivated fighting force,” he said. In recent years, the Houthi forces have deployed increasingly effective weaponry against Saudi Arabia and their rivals, including cruise missiles and drones, drawing accusations that their main backer, Iran, is helping the group obtain them. Meanwhile, cracks within the anti-Houthi coalition have surfaced in the southern provinces. In August, United Arab Emirates-supported militia groups seized vital southern oil and gas fields controlled by other forces fighting with the Saudi-led coalition. Clashes between them and other forces from within the alliance have killed dozens. But the truce has led to a significant overall lull of direct warfare despite claims of violations by both sides. International charity Save The Children said that the truce had led to a 60% decrease in displacement and a 34% drop in child casualties in Yemen. The conflict, which in recent years turned into regional proxy war between Saudi Arabia and Iran, has killed than 150,000 people have been killed, including over 14,500 civilians, according to The Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises. ___ AP writer Jack Jeffery and Samy Magdy in Cairo contributed to this report. © 2022 AP News https://apnews.com/article/middle-east-united-nations-yemen-civil-wars-sanaa-ba7d97673e3330ba85a34e6b11560c31

VOA By Tommy Walker October 01, 2022 Activist group Thalufah organized Saturday's event in protest against Thailand's Constitutional Court decision to keep Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha in power, in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 1, 2022, (Tommy Walker/VOA) BANGKOK — Anti-government demonstrators took to the streets in Thailand’s capital Saturday following a court ruling allowing Prime Minister Prayut Chan-ocha to stay in office. Around 500 demonstrators gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument to protest the decision. Background ruling Prayut, 68, is a former Royal Thai Army officer who led a military coup in Thailand in 2014 and has been in power since. In 2017 a new constitution was drafted by the military, limiting a prime minister’s time in the job to only eight years. In August, Thai opposition political parties filed cases with Thailand’s Constitutional Court arguing that the prime minister’s time in the job should have ended this year, saying his term began with the coup takeover. But after suspending Prayut to review the case, the court Friday ruled in favor of the prime minister, stating his term as the head of the government had not exceeded its limit. It ruled 6-3 that Prayut’s time in charge began August 6, 2017, a day after the new constitution took effect. Victory Monument In response, Thalufah, an activist group in Thailand, organized a protest beside Bangkok’s Victory Monument, a regular demonstration venue in recent years that has seen protesters and police clash violently. But the mood Saturday afternoon was much lighter than demonstrations in recent years, as protesters gathered beside market stalls to sing, dance, and voice their disapproval at the court’s decision. Activists took to the stage to voice their anger at Prayut, but the atmosphere remained upbeat, as the demonstration mirrored a mini concert. Protesters gather beside Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 1, 2022, (Tommy Walker/VOA) Politics, not justice Chuveath Dethddidark, an activist in Thailand, reiterated the reason for the protest. “We cannot accept about what the Constitution Court do yesterday. But they allow Prayut Chan-ocha to stay on. This is politics, it is not justice. We know, everyone knows it’s not from just the court that makes this decision. We cannot allow this, four more years or anymore. I expect (more protests) but to be realistic people may express their anger [during] the elections,” he added. Quotes Ladoo, who declined to provide a surname, is an activist for Thalufah. He said protests against Prayut would continue until elections, which are likely to be held in 2023. “The reasons we are [protesting], the decisions made yesterday that Prayut Chan-ocha can still be the prime minister of Thailand, we the people, the people of Thailand are against [this], it is against the people, the right of the people, it is all wrong the decision came this way. Today we came to express ourselves, express our freedom, express our opinion to prove we disagree with the decision made yesterday.” We are planning to launch the activities before the elections to express the freedom of people,” he added. A protester holds up a sign directed against Thailand’s Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha during Saturday's anti-government demonstrations in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 1, 2022, (Tommy Walker/VOA) Protest background Although hundreds turned out for the demonstration Saturday in Bangkok, the numbers are a sharp decline from street protests in recent years. Thousands of protesters have been calling for a change in government and reform of the country’s monarchy since 2020. But protests have regularly turned into clashes with police, who have used rubber bullets, pepper spray and water cannons to repel demonstrations with hundreds since being arrested and charged. In 2021 most demonstrations were aimed at the government’s COVID-19 policy that resulted in violent clashes in Bangkok’s Din Daeng district. The activist said times have changed now and attributes the decrease in numbers to Thailand’s economic rebound. “I don’t think we expect the people to come out a lot more, because we understand the condition of the people isn’t the same as it was in 2020 or 2021 because at that time the economy started falling. We understand so many people are waiting for the elections, but we want to launch the activities to connect that period of time to express we are still fighting and even if you are at home you are fighting with us,” Ladoo added. Amid the pandemic in recent years, Thailand’s GDP declined by 6% in 2020 but has since grown and is on the path to recovery. As most of the world has learned to live with COVID-19, Thailand has followed suit. Tourism is one the biggest incomes in the Southeast Asian country, and as of today all remaining coronavirus restrictions were dropped for international arrivals. A protester holds up a picture of Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-Cha during protests beside Victory Monument in Bangkok, Thailand, Oct. 1, 2022, (Tommy Walker/VOA) Escalation concerns Last week there were concerns that Thailand could see another military coup if protests were to escalate amid Friday’s decision. Thailand’s digital economy minister, Chaiwut Thanakamanusorn, warned another military coup could take place, but experts and analysts in the country said it would not happen. Thailand has endured more than 10 coups in the last century. More protests in Bangkok are expected Sunday. @2022 VOA. 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Smoke billows following Russian airstrikes near Syria's Bab al-Hawa border crossing with Türkiye, Sept. 27, 2022 (AFP Photo) A total of 74 civilians were killed in war-torn Syria in September, including 21 children, three women and seven torture victims, while the Bashar Assad regime’s attacks continue to displace people, the Syrian Network for Human Rights (SNHR) said Saturday. The SNHR said that of the 74 deaths, eight of the civilians were killed at the hands of Syrian regime forces, seven were killed at the hands of the Russian forces, six civilians were killed at the hands of the PKK’s Syrian wing the YPG, one civilian killed at the hands of U.S.-led Coalition forces, and 52 civilians, including 18 children and three women, killed at the hands of other parties. The report said further that the SNHR documented in September “a massacre due to a Russian airstrike on Hafsarja village in the western suburbs of Idlib, which breached the Turkish-Russian cease-fire agreement of March 2020.” “The attack killed seven civilians, including two children, and wounded 11 others.” The Idlib region bordering Türkiye is home to about 3 million people and it is one of the last pockets to oppose Damascus. The Idlib de-escalation zone was forged under an agreement between Türkiye and Russia. The area has been the subject of multiple cease-fire agreements, which have been frequently violated by the Assad regime and its allies. A fragile truce was brokered between Moscow and Ankara in March 2020 in response to months of fighting by the Russia-backed regime. Almost a million people have fled Assad's offensive yet the regime still frequently carries out attacks on civilians, hindering most from returning to their homes and forcing them to live in makeshift camps. For years, the Assad regime has ignored the needs and safety of the Syrian people, only eyeing further gains of territory and crushing the opposition. With this aim, the regime has for years bombed vital facilities like schools, hospitals and residential areas, causing the displacement of almost half of the country’s population while adopting policies to make their lives more difficult. The report said it had evidence that some of the attacks were deliberately targeting civilians and civilian infrastructure. “These attacks, along with indiscriminate bombardment, have resulted in the destruction of facilities and buildings.” Russian attacks killed 8,700 Some 8,700 civilians died in attacks carried out by Russian forces in Syria since 2015, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) reported similarly on Friday. Since Sept. 30, 2015, Russian forces have been fighting alongside Assad's forces against opposition groups. Some 2,112 children were among the 8,700 civilians killed in Russian airstrikes and shelling attacks against Syrian areas controlled by the opposition forces, the SOHR added. In its report, released on the seventh anniversary of Russia's military intervention in Syria, the observatory said civilian facilities such as schools, markets and hospitals bore the brunt of the attacks. "In total, and since the deployment of Russian forces in Syria in 2015 until 2022, some 21,106 people have been killed," the observatory head, Rami Abdel-Rahman said. Since it started its war in Ukraine this year, Moscow has withdrawn many of its troops from Syria to Ukraine. Nevertheless, attacks on the Syrian civilian population continue, the Britain-based observatory said. After more than 11 years of civil war in Syria, Assad's forces and pro-Iranian supporters are believed to control around two-thirds of the country again, thanks in part to Russia's intervention. © Turkuvaz Haberleşme ve Yayıncılık 2021 Link to article: https://www.dailysabah.com/politics/74-civilians-including-21-children-killed-in-syria-in-september/news

Australia Country Report October 2022 Indigenous Australians, despite inhabiting the continent for centuries, have been devastated by forced displacement and physical and cultural genocide. Government reparations have been insufficient to provide for their economic needs and health. Despite government apologies, genocide denial continues today. During colonization in the late 1700s, Indigenous Australians were wiped out by infections from European settlers, such as cholera, smallpox, measles, and typhus. Colonizers also drove Indigenous communities off native lands. Genocidal tactics included violent forced displacement, starvation, sexual violence, and enslavement, which decimated native populations. For example, only 300 Indigenous Tasmanians survived government-sponsored extermination during the Black War in 1832. Australia continued the genocide in the 1900s through forced assimilation and cultural genocide. The government portrayed children of mixed Aboriginal and white heritage as a cultural threat. The Half-Caste Act of 1886 mandated the ‘dilution’ of Indigenous identity. The government could seize ‘half-caste' children and forcibly remove them from their parents to provide them with ‘better’ (i.e., white) homes where they could grow up to work as domestic servants. Between 1909 and 1943, the ‘Welfare Acts’ deprived Indigenous people of basic civil, political, and economic rights and made it illegal to enter public places or government institutions, freely marry, or meet relatives. The government also authorized the removal of Indigenous children from their families for upbringing in mission stations or with foster parents. These children - called the ‘Stolen Generations’ - were permanently separated from their families, prohibited from speaking their native languages, and stripped of their Indigenous cultures and identities. 100,000 Aboriginal children were stolen through these removal practices, which continued until the mid-1970s. These practices violate the Genocide Convention's Article 2, thus constituting genocide. The genocide still impacts Aboriginal communities. Surviving members, parents, and descendants of the Stolen Generations remain traumatized by the forced removal and identity loss. Aboriginals suffer from high rates of substance abuse, mental illness, and suicide. They face greater socio-economic, political, employment, and health-related struggles than non-Indigenous Australians. Australia is also under fire for the recent human rights violations against refugees. Thousands of asylum seekers have been forcibly transferred and detained in offshore camps, particularly in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. Refugees suffer abuse and inhumane treatment, with over a dozen refugees dead from murder, suicide, and medical neglect. Genocide Denial is still dominant in Australia. The term ‘genocide’ remains contested, with debate over the term dubbed ‘history wars’. Some elected officials deny or minimize the number of kidnapped children. Because of unremedied socio-economic inequities for Aboriginals, lack of reparations, and continuing genocide denial and human rights violations, Genocide Watch considers Australia to be at Stage 3: Discrimination and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends the following: The government should implement effective reparations to assist Aboriginal communities. The government should officially declare that the racist laws and policies that resulted in the Stolen Generations and forced displacement of Indigenous Australians constituted genocide. Aboriginal history should be taught in public schools to educate children about Indigenous culture, encourage public awareness of the genocide, and address ongoing inequalities affecting Aboriginals. Download report

The findings by the United Nations experts are the latest allegations of war crimes against Russia since its invasion of Ukraine. A Russian soldier patrols in Mariupol, Ukraine, on April 12 . Alexander Nemenov / AFP via Getty Images file Sept. 23, 2022, 12:38 PM EDT By Dan De Luce Russian troops have raped and tortured children in Ukraine, carried out a “large number” of executions and committed other war crimes, according to a United Nations investigation by legal experts. Set up by the U.N. to probe the conduct of the war, the Independent International Commission of Inquiry reported its chilling findingsFriday in Geneva, describing a long list of abuses and atrocities in four regions. “Based on the evidence gathered by the commission, it has concluded that war crimes have been committed in Ukraine,” Erik Mose, the chairman of the three-member commission, told the U.N. Human Rights Council. Mose, a Norwegian judge, said the commission has documented cases in which children have been "raped, tortured and unlawfully confined." “There are examples of cases where relatives were forced to witness the crimes," he added. "In the cases we have investigated, the age of victims of sexual and gendered-based violence ranged from 4 to 82 years." Children also have been killed and wounded in “indiscriminate attacks” by Russian forces using explosive weapons, he said. Mose said that he and his colleagues “were struck by the large number of executions in the areas that we visited.” The commission is investigating executions in 16 towns and settlements and has “credible allegations regarding many more cases of executions, which we are documenting further,” he said. The execution cases often featured “the prior detention of the victims as well as visible signs of executions on bodies, such as hands tied behind backs, gunshot wounds to the head, and slit throats,” according to Mose. For Ukrainians who were unlawfully detained, witnesses “provided us with consistent accounts of ill-treatment and torture,” he said. The update from the commission follows other allegations of war crimes from international human rights groups, Western governments and Ukrainian authorities, including the recent discovery of a mass burial site in the eastern town of Izyum. The commission also had found two cases of “ill-treatment against Russian Federation soldiers by Ukrainian forces,” he said. “While few in numbers, such cases continue to be the subject of our attention." The commission focused on the regions of Kyiv, Chernihiv, Kharkiv and Sumy, visiting 27 towns and settlements and interviewing 150 victims and witnesses. As it continues its investigation, it will examine the forced transfer of people and the alleged expedited adoption of children, Mose said. The United States has accused Russia of interrogating, detaining and forcibly deporting hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians to Russia. An unknown number of children are believed to have been adopted by Russian families. The alleged deportations represent a war crime, violating the Geneva Conventions, U.S. officials say. Russia has denied committing war crimes and defended its conduct of the war since it launched the invasion Feb. 24. Russian officials say Ukrainians who relocated to Russia traveled there voluntarily. © 2022 NBC UNIVERSAL

By: Mustafa Salim Updated September 28, 2022 at 4:02 p.m. EDT|Published September 28, 2022 at 11:19 a.m. EDT Fighters with the Kurdish Komala Party inspect damage Wednesday after an attack on their headquarters in Iraq's Sulaymaniyah province. (Gailan Haji/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock) BAGHDAD — Iran carried out deadly cross-border attacks Wednesday in northern Iraq, targeting the headquarters of three Iranian Kurdish opposition parties who support the ongoing demonstrations inside Iran. The missile and drone strikes killed at least 13 people and wounded 58, including civilians and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Kurdistan region of Iraq. Saman Barzanji, the health minister, said ambulances have struggled to reach some of the affected sites, which are in remote, mountainous areas, and the death toll is expected to rise. The strikes targeted the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran in the Koysanjak district in Irbil, the Kurdish Komala Party in the village of Zarkwezela, in Sulaymaniyah province, and the Kurdistan Freedom Party in Kirkuk province. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran confirmed the deaths of two of its members, while the leader of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Hussein Yazdanpanah, told Kurdish media his group had endured “heavy losses.” One of the strikes hit a civilian area, close to an elementary school. Footage circulating on social media showed children screaming and running for shelter behind rocky outcroppings. “It was a quiet morning until the sound of bombing shook our house,” said Salar Ali, a 47-year-old farmer from Koysanjak. He immediately rushed to the school, where he was reunited with his 10-year-old son. “We are a quiet, peaceful village and we don’t deserve what is happening to us,” he said. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, or IRGC, claimed responsibility for the attacks against what it called “bases operated by separatist terrorists,” and vowed to continue targeting Kurdish groups. The Iranian military, meanwhile, carried out artillery attacks for a fifth day on several areas bordering Irbil province. Those attacks have not resulted in any casualties. But the strikes underscore the unease in the Iranian government over the protests that have rocked the country for nearly two weeks. They began after Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, fell into a coma and died after being detained by the country’s “morality police.” Dozens of protesters have been killed and hundreds injured in the ensuing crackdown, according to rights groups. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, in an interview aired on state television Wednesday, addressed the protests but portrayed them as largely violent and instigated by Western powers. “Who are the ones who are spreading chaos? They want to create chaos and jeopardize security in this country,” he said, referring to the United States. Raisi vowed to “follow up” on the inquiry into Amini’s death and said that a forensic examination was underway. But at the same time, Raisi, a hard-line cleric and former judiciary chief, pledged to put some demonstrators on trial. “They must be dealt with,” he said of those he accused of “causing trouble and chaos.” The protests began in Iran’s predominantly Kurdish west, where Amini was from, and which shares a border with Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region. Iran’s exiled Kurdish parties have long based themselves in Iraq, and while they have voiced support for the protests in Iran, there is no indication they are directly connected to the unrest. But analysts said the attacks were an attempt at deflection by Tehran, an effort to blame outside forces for a homegrown uprising. “What the Iranians want to say is that the unrest inside Iran is instigated by the political opposition parties [in Iraq],” said Hiwa Osman, a Kurdish political analyst based in Irbil. “But in reality it’s public dissent by the Iranians, inside Iran, against the Iranian regime.” Iraq’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Ahmed Al-Sahaf, said he would summon the Iranian ambassador in Baghdad to protest the violence, while the Kurdistan Regional Government condemned the attacks as “an incorrect behavior, a distortion of the course of events, and a source of astonishment.” It was the first Iranian attack inside Iraq since March, when the Revolutionary Guard claimed a missile strike on an empty villa in Irbil owned by a Kurdish oil tycoon, who was reportedly targeted for being involved in energy talks with Israel.“ The constant Iranian message in all of these attacks, starting from last year’s … is we can harm you, and America cannot protect you,” said Osman. “And the Kurdish authorities are only left with condemnation.” Erin Cunningham in Washington contributed to this report. © 2022 Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/09/28/iraq-iran-strikes-protests-kurdistan/

On 19 September, in Nieuwe Kerk in The Hague, the panel of judges of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal (PPT) delivered its judgment following a process of public hearings inaugurated in November 2021 at the request of Safer World for Truth Coalition – composed by Free Press Unlimited, Committee to Protect Journalists and Reporters Without Borders, and supported by the Syrian Centre for Press and Freedom of Expression and the Centre for Justice and Accountability – and articulated in three different thematic hearings each dedicated one of the exemplary cases for the murder of journalists: from Mexico, Miguel Angel López Velasco, from Sri Lanka, Lasantha Wickrematunge, and from Syria, Nabil Walid Al-Sharbaji. Based on the extensive and rigorous documentation and the witness statements publicly submitted, the PPT panel of judges unanimously pronounced a condemnatory judgment against the States of Mexico, Sri Lanka, and Syria for being guilty, through their actions and omissions (lack of due investigation, lack of reparation measures for the victims, complete impunity), of all the human rights violations denounced in the indictment. The seriousness of the responsibility is further underlined as the three states are signatories to the multilateral treaty obliging them to respect the fundamental civil and political rights of all citizens, which include the right to life, freedom of religion, speech, assembly, electoral rights, and the right to due process. Throughout the four hearings of the Session, the victims’ relatives, as well as the numerous experts who spoke, fully highlighted the growing trend, in the most diverse contexts, of the many forms of violence against those who work in the field of information, with important consequences on the ability of society as a whole not only to render justice to the victims but also to guarantee accountable levels of democracy. The alarming worsening of the situation at the international level has been also stressed and analyzed by the PPT with detailed documentation on the extension of the murders and attacks on media workers, which have further occurred in full impunity despite the proliferation of recommendations produced by the United Nations and other international and regional agencies. A clear lack of political will is the only possible explanation of the evidence of a powerless strategy in the implementation of otherwise very clear binding obligations targeted to prevent and prosecute these crimes, in an area so critically linked to the sustainability of a civil society. In this context, the recommendations put forward by the PPT in the last section of its judgment strongly advocate an urgent and long-term bottom-up involvement of all social actors and communities. It is in this direction that two initiatives – markedly diverse, but even more significantly complementary – that accompanied the Closing Session must be read. Far away from The Hague, in Veracruz, Mexico, a State most affected by this real massacre of ‘information workers’, the judgment was read out at an event where Miguel Angel López Velasco’s family members were joined by one of the PPT judges, Marcela Turati, and a crowd dispersed only by an earthquake outbreak. In the evocative Nieuwe Kerk, meanwhile, the words of the witness gave way to a ‘liturgy of silence’: each of those present carried, in a timeless procession, a picture of a murdered journalist, to create a monument of faces demanding the results of the PPT not to be the end of a duty of memory, but rather the beginning of another journey. (c) 2022, Permanent Peoples Tribunal.

ABUJA, Nigeria — Gunmen attacked two communities in Nigeria’s north-central region, killing 14 people and injuring many others, authorities said Thursday. The attackers stormed the communities in the Logo council area of Benue state Wednesday night, opening an “unprovoked” fire on residents, said Paul Hemba, the state’s top security official. Police in Benue confirmed the attack. The assailants shot 12 people to death in one community and then moved on to another where they killed two more villagers, Hemba said. He said 15 people were “seriously injured.” He identified the attackers as “Fulani herdsmen,” a group of mostly young pastoralists from the Fulani tribe caught up in Nigeria’s conflict between host communities and herdsmen over limited access to water and land. In Nigeria’s middle belt and central regions, deadly clashes between local communities and herdsmen continue in a cycle of violence that has defied government measures, although security forces have recently announced some arrests and seizure of arms. A similar attack in another part of Benue targeted a convoy of soldiers of the Nigerian army, but they were able to repel the assailants, Hemba said. Many of the attacks in rural areas are similar. Motorcycle-riding gunmen often arrive in the hundreds in areas where Nigeria’s security forces are outnumbered and outgunned. Authorities have in the past admitted that the inadequate number of security personnel in many of the affected areas is one of the major reasons the attacks have continued. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari, who came into office in 2015 on a wave of goodwill after promising to end the nation’s protracted security crisis, leaves office in 2023. Those security challenges are back on the front burner as political campaigns for next year’s election begin.