New Prime Minister’s Appointment Shows Little Desire for Reform Security minister Gervais Ndirakobuca is sworn in as the new Burundi Prime Minister in Bujumbura on September 7, 2022 (2022 AFP via Getty Images) On September 7, Burundi’s president, Évariste Ndayishimiye, removed government officials he said he no longer trusted. Most significantly, he replaced the prime minister, Alain Guillaume Bunyoni. Given Bunyoni’s poor record on human rights, including at one time overseeing security forces who committed serious violations against real and perceived opponents, his ouster might otherwise be commendable. But his replacement, Gervais Ndirakobuca, is likely a step back in terms of safeguarding fundamental rights in Burundi. Ndirakobuca was a combatant when Burundi’s current ruling party, the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy’s (Conseil national pour la défense de la démocratie-Forces de défense de la démocratie, CNDD-FDD), was still an armed group. He rose through the ranks of the CNDD-FDD to key leadership positions in the police and intelligence services during periods of violence and killings. His alias, Ndakugarika, translates from Kirundi to “I will kill you.” Ndirakobuca was also former President Pierre Nkurunziza’s chief advisor for police affairs during a violent crackdown in 2015, when police shot live rounds at demonstrators opposing Nkurunziza’s third term. That same year, the United States and European Union imposed sanctions on Ndirakobuca, including travel restrictions and asset freezes. The US Treasury Department noted that “In early June 2015, witnesses claimed Ndirakobuca shot a civilian … during a clash between patrolling youths and Burundian police.” The EU said he had issued “instructions that led to disproportionate use of force, acts of violence, acts of repression and violations of international human rights law against protestors …” Ndirakobuca’s appointment shows President Ndayishimiye may prefer an enforcer over someone committed to meaningful human rights reform. International actors should insist Ndirakobuca prove, through concrete actions, that he no longer lives up to his alias. Otherwise, Burundians can likely expect more of the same violent repression against any supposed opponent of the ruling party. © 2022 Human Rights Watch

Khieu Samphan, 91, the last surviving Khmer Rouge leader, during his hearing at the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia in Phnom Penh on Thursday.Credit...Nhet Sok Heng/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, via Associated Press The last surviving leader of the regime that killed 1.7 million Cambodians lost his appeal on Thursday. By Seth Mydans New York Times Sept. 22, 2022 For more than 15 years, a court in a military camp on the outskirts of Phnom Penh worked to bring some measure of justice for the horrors that killed nearly a quarter of Cambodia’s population in the late 1970s. It spent over $330 million. In the end, it convicted just three people. On Thursday, the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia — a United Nations-backed tribunal charged with prosecuting the crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime — held its final hearing. It rejected an appeal by Khieu Samphan, 91, the fanatical communist movement’s last surviving leader, upholding his conviction and life sentence for genocide, as well as his convictions for other crimes. As the ruling was read, Mr. Khieu Samphan, his face partially obscured by large black headphones and a white face mask, sank lower into his seat. During its four years in power, from 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge caused the deaths of an estimated 1.7 million Cambodians from execution, torture, starvation and untreated disease as it sought to abolish modernity and create an agrarian utopia. For many Cambodians who survived one of the worst mass killings of a bloody century, the fact that the tribunal delivered so few convictions, so many years after the atrocities were committed, made it seem a hollow exercise. Many of the Khmer Rouge’s senior figures — including its notorious top leader, Pol Pot — were long dead by the time the court was created. “The Khmer Rouge leaders have died,” said Yun Bin, 67, who was beaten and left for dead in a ditch by the regime’s cadres. “Some victims in my village have already died.” Mr. Khieu Samphan, urbane and multilingual, was the nominal leader and presentable face of the Khmer Rouge and a member of its tight-knit inner circle. During the tribunal’s proceedings, Mr. Khieu Samphan insisted that he was “not aware of the heinous acts committed by other leaders.” Delayed by war and politics, the tribunal, jointly administered by the United Nations and the Cambodian government, was not formally established until 2006, more than a quarter-century after a Vietnamese invasion drove the Khmer Rouge from power. (The group continued for years afterward as a guerrilla insurgency.) The tribunal’s awkward pairing of two judicial systems, and two often-conflicting views of its purpose, led to delays and sometimes-acrimonious disputes. Besides coming under criticism for its high cost and slow pace, the tribunal was marred by corruption and succumbed to pressure from Prime Minister Hun Sen, himself a former Khmer Rouge cadre, to limit the scope of the prosecutions. Watching Mr. Khieu Samphan’s hearing from the gallery. The tribunal produced few convictions, but it helped spur Cambodian schools to start teaching students about the Khmer Rouge period.Credit...Nhet Sok Heng/Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia, via Associated Press All of those problems were foreseeable, said Alexander Hinton, an anthropology professor at Rutgers University who has followed the tribunal and testified before it as an expert witness. Still, he said, it would have been unacceptable not to prosecute the perpetrators of what he called “some of the worst crimes in history.” “I personally have always had very low expectations for what would happen, and those expectations have been met,” Professor Hinton said in an interview. But he said the tribunal had shone a light on a time that many older Cambodians would have preferred to forget, and that many younger ones have found hard to believe. As much as three-quarters of Cambodia’s current population is under 30, and many survivors of the Khmer Rouge have said that their children and grandchildren had dismissed their stories about the time as exaggerated and impossible. The Khmer Rouge evacuated entire cities, including sick people in hospitals, marching hundreds of thousands into the countryside on foot; created a nationwide system of forced labor camps, torture houses and execution grounds, known as killing fields; banned religion and commerce; tore families apart; and executed people who were seen as part of the old order, in some cases simply because they wore glasses. Only in the last decade have Cambodian schools begun to teach students about the Khmer Rouge period, spurred in part by the existence of the tribunal. Youk Chhang, a survivor who heads the Documentation Center of Cambodia, which provided much of the material used by the tribunal, said it was up to the younger generation to learn from the past and work toward “a more optimistic future.” Indeed, the tribunal’s main achievement was the creation, through meticulous research and trial testimony, of “an empirical record that can never be revised or challenged,” Peter Maguire, an expert on war crimes and the author of “Facing Death in Cambodia,” said in an email. One of its major shortcomings, he said, was the small number of people it prosecuted, partly because Mr. Hun Sen, the prime minister, feared the trials could run out of control and cause political problems for his government. Only five people were put on trial, two of whom died before facing judgment. Some of the most important potential defendants died before charges could be brought, chief among them Pol Pot, who died in 1998. Mr. Khieu Samphan unsuccessfully appealed an earlier conviction, in 2014, for murder and other crimes. He received a life sentence in that case, which would have remained in effect no matter the outcome of his hearing Thursday. His co-defendant, Nuon Chea, often referred to as Brother Number Two to Pol Pot, was also found guilty in both trials and sentenced to life in prison. He died at 93, less than a year after the two men were convicted of genocide in 2018. Mr. Khieu Samphan, left, in 1986 with Pol Pot, right, the top Khmer Rouge leader, and Nuon Chea, known as Brother Number Two.Credit...Reuters The third person convicted by the tribunal was Kaing Guek Eav, known as Duch, the commander of the central Khmer Rouge prison in Phnom Penh. Thousands of people were tortured there before being brought to a killing field on the city’s outskirts and executed. He was sentenced in 2012 to life in prison for crimes against humanity and died in 2020, at 77. Though the hearing Thursday marked the end of the tribunal’s active litigation, it will not mean the end of the court itself, said Craig Etcheson, an expert on the proceedings and a former visiting scientist at Harvard University’s School of Public Health. There now comes a three-year “legacy period,” during which donor governments may decide to fund such follow-up projects as public outreach, support for victims who participated in the trial, preservation of archives and analysis of the court’s jurisprudence. “It is not over yet,” said Mr. Youk Chhang of the Documentation Center of Cambodia. “We have at least five million survivors — one third of the population — who suffered at the hands of the Khmer Rouge whose stories have not even been heard or documented.” One of them is a 66-year-old man named Nak, who dismissed the entire tribunal process as a political exercise. He would not give his full name, saying he still feared retribution for speaking his mind. “People are already dead,” he said. “The trial doesn’t mean anything to them. It is a waste of money to have the trial.” Sun Narin contributed reporting. Copyright 2022 The New York Times Company Dr. Gregory Stanton founded and directed the Cambodian Genocide Project, which has worked since 1982 for establishment of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia. Stanton drafted the Internal Rules of Procedure for the tribunal. Dr. Stanton also founded Genocide Watch. He comments: Seth Mydans’ negative article about the tribunal ignores: 1. This tribunal was the first and only international tribunal to try a communist regime for its crimes. 2. The tribunal’s cost was a small price to pay for documentation of some of the greatest crimes in history and for an accounting to the Cambodian people of the reasons for the crimes committed against them. 3. The cost is dwarfed by the multibillion-dollar costs of the ICTY, ICTR, and ICC. 4. More than 500,000 Cambodians attended the trials in person. Hundreds of thousands more watched them on television and listened to them on the radio. The tribunal had the widest outreach of any international tribunal. 5. The tribunal was the first to have victims participate directly in the trials. 6. It had the first Victims Unit to care for the victims who participated. 7. The corruption in personnel appointments that Mydans smears so broadly was nipped in the bud at the beginning of its establishment by a monitoring operation led by human rights organizations that resulted in reforms that ended it. 8. The long delay in establishing the tribunal was due to the Cold War and opposition to establishing it by the United States, which backed a coalition that included the Khmer Rouge. That opposition had to be reversed by legislation passed by the US Congress and signed by President Clinton in 1994. 9. The tribunal was established to try only the top leaders of the Khmer Rouge. That is all any international tribunal can do. Mass trials of everybody who committed crimes would have torn apart Cambodian society. 10. Decisions of the tribunal contributed significantly to international law on crimes against humanity and genocide.

Published by the UNHR Office of the High Commissioner on September 22, 2022 Women wait at a food distribution site in a United Nations camp outside Juba, South Sudan, similar to the cite where the Bentiu attacks occurred. (Kassie Bracken/The New York Times) NEW YORK (22 September 2022) --The war in Ukraine has drastically cut funding for emergency medical and psychosocial care for victims of sexual violence in South Sudan, said the United Nations Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan after recent missions to Western Equatoria and Unity States. “It is difficult to comprehend that we are now seeing women in South Sudan who have been gang raped in the conflict up to five times in the last nine years. Just imagine what it means to be raped by multiple armed men, pick yourself up for the sake of your children and then for it to happen again and again and again,” said Yasmin Sooka, Chairperson of the Commission. “These women are asking us when it will stop – 2013, 2016, 2018, 2021 and now in 2022 – they say they keep telling their stories and nothing changes.” During a visit completed this week to Western Equatoria, members of the Commission’s Secretariat were told that survivors were like zombies, physically and emotionally dead, after experiencing so many brutalizing rapes since 2013. The most recent case the Commission documented occurred last month, but a very substantial number of victims are believed never to report the incidents, especially if they live surrounded by the perpetrators. The youngest victim was 7 years old, who was left for dead after being abducted from her home by two men who then raped her. Accessing medical and trauma care is increasingly difficult for victims as services vanish. In Unity State, the Commission saw toddlers playing with used syringes scattered on the ground around a destroyed medical clinic, while in other places, learned that health workers have fled their posts in fear. Non-governmental organizations are left to fill the gap but they report their funding has been massively cut even though there’s an upsurge in demand, especially for psychosocial services, and for awareness outreach about kits that if used in time can prevent pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. In several interior villages where the violence is occurring, there is simply no service at all with the result that women are not bothering to report the repeated violations. “It’s not that there is a lot of sexual violence in South Sudan. It’s that for half the population – women and girls – sexual violence is how they primarily experience the conflict. And it’s not that sexual violence ebbs and flows – it’s going on all the time, largely unseen. It’s only that we cannot document it consistently throughout the country and that the international community’s attention is elsewhere,” said fellow Commissioner, Barney Afako. In Unity State and rural parts of Western Equatoria, there is no formal court to deal with serious crimes like murder and rape; only customary courts. While in some places, women told the Commission when they reported crimes by the military to the police, the cases were routinely handed them over to the military rather than being investigated by police. “We talk a lot about impunity in South Sudan but for victims there is often no pretense of a judicial recourse. Women raped by armed forces while collecting firewood are threatened with death if they report it. And often the police are too ill-equipped to do their job – they cannot arrest a soldier who is better armed and protected,” said Commissioner Andrew Clapham. The Commission saw very young girls with babies around military bases, and heard multiple accounts of soldiers from both government and opposition forces abducting women. In other instances, displaced families left camps because of hunger and went home to cultivate crops or collect firewood, only to be attacked. The Commissioners are participating in meetings coinciding with the UN General Assembly, and are speaking at an event on 22 September hosted by the Global Survivors Fund, headed by Dr Denis Mukwege and Nadia Murad, Nobel Peace Prize laureates 2018. Background The UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan is an independent body mandated by the UN Human Rights Council. It was first established in March 2016, and its mandate has since been renewed each year. The Commission’s latest report , entitled "Conflict-related sexual violence against women and girls in South Sudan," was published as a Conference Room Paper at the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on 21 March 2022. For more information about the UN Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan, see its webpage, and follow @UN_HRC and @UNCHRSS on Twitter Copyright © United Nations All rights reserved.

More than 500 detained in both Moscow and St Petersburg, says monitoring group, after Putin orders call-up of military reservists Anti-war protests break out across Russia after Putin announces partial mobilization Security forces detained more than 1,300 people in Russia on Wednesday at protests denouncing mobilisation, a rights group said, hours after President Vladimir Putin ordered Russia’s first military draft since the second world war. The independent OVD-Info protest monitoring group said that according to information it had collated from 38 Russian cities, more than 1,311 people had been held by late evening. It said those figures included at least 502 in Moscow and 524 in St Petersburg, Russia’s second most populous city. Unsanctioned rallies are illegal under Russia’s anti-protest laws. Russian interior ministry official Irina Volk, in a statement quoted by Russian news agencies, said officers had cut short attempts to stage what it called small protests. “In a number of regions, there were attempts to stage unauthorised actions which brought together an extremely small number of participants,” Volk was quoted as saying. “These were all stopped. And those persons who violated laws were detained and taken to police stations for investigation and establish their responsibility.” One-way flights out of Russia were rocketing in price and selling out fast on Wednesday after Putin ordered the immediate call-up of 300,000 reservists. The Vesna opposition movement called for protests, saying: “Thousands of Russian men, our fathers, brothers and husbands, will be thrown into the meat grinder of the war. What will they be dying for? What will mothers and children be crying for?” Riot police detain demonstrators in Moscow. Photograph: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP The Moscow prosecutor’s office warned that organising or participating in protests could lead to up to 15 years in prison. Authorities have issued similar warnings ahead of other protests. Wednesday’s were the first nationwide anti-war protests since the fighting began in late February. AFP journalists in the centre of Moscow said at least 50 people were detained by police wearing anti-riot gear on a main shopping street. In St Petersburg, AFP reporters saw police surround a small group of protesters and detain them one-by-one, loading them on to a bus. Protesters were chanting “No mobilisation!” “Everyone is scared. I am for peace and I don’t want to have to shoot. But coming out now is very dangerous, otherwise there would be many more people,” said protester Vasily Fedorov, a student wearing a pacifist symbol on his chest. “I came out to the rally planning to participate, but it looks like they’ve already arrested everyone. This regime has condemned itself and is destroying its youth,” said Alexei, a 60-year-old resident who declined to give his last name. Russian Police officers detain a female protester during an unsanctioned anti-war protest rally at Arbat street in Moscow. Photograph: Contributor/Getty Images “Why are you serving Putin, a man who’s been in power for 20 years!” a young protester shouted at one policeman. “I came to say that I am against war and mobilisation,” Oksana Sidorenko, a student, told AFP. “Why are they deciding my future for me? I’m scared for myself, for my brother,” she added. Alina Skvortsova, 20, said she hoped Russians would soon understand the nature of the Kremlin’s offensive in neighbouring Ukraine. “As soon as they really understand, they will come out on to the street, despite the fear,” she said. In Ekaterinburg, Russia’s fourth-largest city, police hauled on to buses some of the 40 protesters who were detained at an anti-war rally. One woman in a wheelchair shouted, referring to the Russian president: “Goddamn bald-headed ‘nut job’. He’s going to drop a bomb on us, and we’re all still protecting him. I’ve said enough.” The Interfax news agency quoted the Russian interior ministry as saying it had quashed attempts to “organise unauthorised gatherings”. All the demonstrations were stopped and those who committed “violations” were arrested and led away by police pending an investigation and prosecution, it added. © 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

A leaked six-minute video shows scenes of a grizzly Damascus massacre by Assad forces. Omar and Siham Siyam spent years wondering what happened to their son © 2022 Deutsche Welle In late April 2022, a Syrian defector leaked a video of the Tadamon massacre. Hundreds of Syrian families watched the clip, hoping to learn what had happened to their missing sons. The Siyam family watched it, too. Their son, Waseem Siyam, left his home in Damascus in the early morning of April 14, 2013. He had been ordered by the government to deliver flour to a state-run bakery in the city’s southern Tadamon neighborhood. The 34-year-old never returned from what should have been a routine task. For many years, the Siyams, who now live in Germany, believed Waseem had been arrested at a checkpoint and taken to a government jail. Yet the leaked video finally revealed to them the grisly details of his disappearance. The clip shows a blindfolded man in a white t-shirt and jeans being led through an empty alley to a pit filled with corpses. “My father was the first to recognize him [in the video],” says Tasnim Siyam, Waseem’s sister, adding that her father recognized his son by his gait. “He looked so different, they had beaten him already, maybe it was also the fear.” They made Waseem jump into the pit and shot him dead. “It is surreal, how can I process the fact the man being killed in the video is my brother,” asks Tasnim Siyam. Toying with victims The leaked video was recorded on April 16, 2013, just days after Waseem’s disappearance. It shows two uniformed men methodically kill 41 people. Each time, one of the two gets a blindfolded person from a white delivery van, leads the person to a large pit that already contains several corpses and car tires. They are pushed in and shot dead. Then, the bodies are doused in fuel and set alight. The Syrian war has now been raging for 11 years, during which countless atrocities have been committed by all parties involved in the fighting. The Tadamon massacre video, recorded in what was then government-controlled Damascus, however, stands out for the planned nature of the callous brutality it shows. It is clear from the video that the two executioners are enjoying their “work.” They murder civilians in broad daylight in a calm, routine manner. They play a twisted game with their victims, falsely telling them the alley they are passing through is being targeted by snipers, so the blindfolded victims run along and fall into the pit. Before they know what has happened, they are shot. The murderers, feeling untouchable, documented their crimes by filming high-definition footage. Sometimes they wave at the camera and crack jokes. Why did they record their crimes? Did they want to produce “war trophies”? Or show their superiors they were doing as they were ordered? Whatever the reason, it’s highly unlikely they thought the video would be seen by the public. Identifying the killers Ugur Umit Ungor, a professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at the University of Amsterdam, was among the first to receive a copy of the clip in 2019. Working with his colleague Annsar Shahhoud, the two were able to identify the two killers in the video: Najib al-Halabi, who is now dead, was part of a militia loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad; the other man, seen wearing a fishing hat, is Amjad Youssef. He is an officer in Assad’s secret service. “The last two years were hellish for us,” Ungor tells DW. “Imagine you know of a horrible massacre, need to watch this video again and again, but cannot tell anyone else about it.” Analyzing the video to identify the murderers was nothing like ordinary academic research. They set out to do what so far few have managed to achieve: Produce definitive proof that the Syrian state is directly responsible for some of the worst atrocities committed in the war. ‘I killed many people’ Ungor and his Syrian colleague Shahhoud used unconventional research methods. Shahhoud adopted a fake online identity to dupe the Syrian regime and find out more about the men behind the massacre. Shahhoud pretended to be a young Alawite woman from Homs by the name of “Anna Sh” who supported Alawite President Assad. The Guardian newspaper first covered how, over the course of two years, Shahhoud succeeded in talking to hundreds of Assad staffers and winning their trust. One day, she stumbled across Amjad’s online profile. Shahhoud, as Anna, befriended the man. Occasionally, they would chat on the phone, with Ungor secretly listening. Amjad Youssef told her he felt lonely and stressed. Shahhoud’s assumed character lent him her ear. After several months, he confided in her: “I killed many people.” The two academics had finally achieved their goal. The two passed the recorded conversations to Dutch and German prosecutors, and described their findings in New Lines magazine. “We could not lean back and say: We are academics, we do research, let this revelation blow up on social media and not get involved,” says Ungor. “We had to take responsibility.” Solid evidence of war crimes The leaked six-minute video presents solid evidence of crimes as they were committed by identifiable perpetrators and victims. It also shows the killings were a pre-mediated massacre. A mass grave had been prepared, both killers acted in a routine fashion and attempted to conceal their victims’ identities. The video suggests the killings followed a systematic pattern, said Alexander Schwarz, an expert on international criminal law with Amnesty International. “A systematic attack on civilians, as seen in this video, is one criterion for a crime against humanity.” Still, it is unclear whether these revelations will lead to a trial. A life sentence handed down to Syrian officer Anwar Raslan in January by a German court in Koblenz, however, shows the surviving executioner in the video could be prosecuted. Additionally, the video is of great political significance, according to Fritz Streiff, who provides legal counsel to Mnemonic, an organization documenting human rights abuses. He argued that its shocking nature shows that nations should not normalise ties with the Assad regime. “This is not just about Amjad Youssef,” says Ungor. “This is also about the system that creates people like him.” Closure for families? Schwarz and Streiff work with people whose relatives have vanished in Syria. Shedding light on the disappearance of loved ones, as the Anwar Raslan case did, can bring closure to some families. Tasnim, the sister of murdered Waseem, is not so hopeful. “I know you need to stay positive in life, but we have lost all hope,” she says. “We’re alive only because we want to be. “I want people to understand why some of us need months, or years, to settle down [in Germany],” she says. “Some never settle down, because they endured things in Syria that were so horrific no normal person could ever imagine them.” Copyright © 2022, THG PUBLISHING PVT LTD. or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved. Link to article: https://frontline.thehindu.com/dispatches/syria-leaked-video-exposes-bashar-assad-killing-machine/article65500057.ece

This report finds that Hazara in Afghanistan, as a religious and ethnic minority, are at serious risk of genocide at the hands of the Taliban and Islamic State–Khorasan Province (IS-K). This finding engages the responsibility of all states to protect the Hazara and prevent a possible genocide, under the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) and customary international law. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, it significantly affected the situation faced by the Hazara and reversed the 20-year progress made in addressing the marginalisation and discrimination experienced by this minority group. The return to power of the Taliban has included brutal acts of violence against the Hazara throughout Afghanistan and a return of terror. The first half of 2022 has seen hundreds of members of the Hazara community killed and many more injured as a result of the targeted attacks, including bombings of Hazara schools, places of worship and other centres. This trend is likely to continue. There is a pressing need to provide the community with protection, in line with international obligations under the Genocide Convention. While there is clear evidence of the atrocities against the Hazara, both in the public domain or received by this Inquiry, it is very likely that what is known is the tip of an iceberg. To date there has been no collection of evidence by any independent body. This is crucial to ensuring justice and accountability in the future. As this report was being finalised in August 2022, IS-K claimed responsibility for several attacks that resulted in over 120 fatalities within a few days only. Further attacks are expected because of the inaction and impunity in response to the targeting of the Hazara.

By Rachel Pannett and Miriam Berger A protest in Tehran on Monday over the death of Mahsa Amini while she was in the custody of Iran’s “morality police.” (AFP/Getty Images) Protests in Iran over the death of a young woman while in the custody of its so-called morality police continued into the fifth day, with at least seven people killed and hundreds injured or arrested, according to activists. The death of Mahsa Amini, 22, a Kurdish woman from western Iran, during a visit to the capital last week has stirred outrage over the government’s increasingly strict enforcement of ultraconservative dress codes for women, compulsory since Iran’s 1979 revolution. The case has drawn worldwide interest and condemnations from the United States, the European Union and the United Nations. Amini was detained as she exited a metro station, and she suffered a heart attack and slipped into a coma while in custody, state-affiliated media said. Her family insisted that she had no previous health problems. Activists asserted that she may have been beaten by police. Authorities released edited CCTV footage of Amini at the police station, but her family has demanded the release of unaltered footage. The heightened international scrutiny of Iran’s human rights record comes as its arch-conservative president, Ebrahim Raisi, gave his first speech to the U.N. General Assembly in New York on Wednesday. Raisi did not address Amini’s death, and accused the West of having a “double standard” on human rights. Wednesday was the fifth day of unrest across Iran, with protests in numerous places, including Tehran, the capital. Two people were killed Tuesday as security forces fired on protesters in the Kurdish city of Saqez — Amini’s hometown — while two more died in the town of Divandarreh and a fifth was killed in Dehgolan, according to Hengaw, a Norway-based rights watchdog. The claims could not immediately be independently verified by The Washington Post. In Tehran, photos from the scene of one protest showed demonstrators crowded around a burning motorcycle. Videos posted on social media appeared to show protesters injured after clashing with authorities. Internet access was restricted in parts of the country. Other images showed protesters burning headscarves and shouting slogans attacking Iran’s supreme leader. Some used Amini’s Kurdish first name, Jhina, in a reference to discrimination Kurds face in Iran. Among those arrested was Yalda Moaiery, a prominent photojournalist, her father told the Committee to Protect Journalists. The governor of Kurdistan confirmed the death of three protesters, which he described as “suspicious.” The semiofficial Fars News Agency reported that security forces dispersed demonstrators in a number of cities, and that police arrested the leaders of some of the protests. State media has covered the protests, but has described them as illegal, violent and caused by instigators. A man reads a newspaper in Tehran on Sunday with a cover photo of Mahsa Amini, who died after being arrested by Iran's “morality police.” (Wana News Agency/Reuters) In an apparent effort to calm the public, the provincial aid to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader, paid a two-hour visit to Amini’s family home Monday and promised that “all institutions will take action to defend the rights that were violated,” the semiofficial Tasnim news agency reported. Authorities shared edited video from a CCTV camera that showed Amini looking healthy while entering the police station, and then later showed her collapsed on the ground and being brought to an ambulance. But her family has demanded the release of the entire footage, calling the clips insufficient evidence. The police commander of the greater Tehran area told reporters that Amini was wearing a hijab that violated rules requiring women to wear a headscarf and dress conservatively. He said she didn’t resist detention and even made jokes in the police van. Amini’s father, Amjad, said that the week before the incident they had been in Tehran without problems. “There was no problem with my daughter’s manto,” he told the state-backed Tasnim news agency Tuesday, referring to a long coat that women in Iran wear as part of the required dress code, “and she was wearing hijab.” A senior morality police official, Col. Ahmed Mirzaei, was suspended after Amini’s death, according to Iran International, a London-based news channel. Officials denied those claims, the Guardian reported. The Interior Ministry previously ordered an investigation into Amini’s death at Raisi’s behest. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken called on the Iranian government “to end its systemic persecution of women and to allow peaceful protest,” in a tweet Tuesday. The acting high commissioner for human rights at the United Nations, Nada Al-Nashif, issued a statement Tuesday expressing alarm at her death and calling for an independent investigation. “Mahsa Amini’s tragic death and allegations of torture and ill-treatment must be promptly, impartially and effectively investigated by an independent competent authority, that ensures, in particular, that her family has access to justice and truth,” she said. “The authorities must stop targeting, harassing, and detaining women who do not abide by the hijab rules,” Nashif added, calling for a repeal of mandatory hijab regulations. In its own statement Monday, the E.U. said what happened to Amini was “unacceptable and the perpetrators of this killing must be held accountable.” Before leaving for New York, Raisi told reporters at the Tehran airport that he has no plans to meet with President Biden on the sidelines of the event, the Associated Press reported. Indirect negotiations between Washington and Tehran to revive a 2015 nuclear deal appear to be close to stalled. Raisi, a hard-line cleric who assumed office last year, has called for strict enforcement of the dress codes. Last month, a video appeared to show a woman detained by Iran’s increasingly assertive guidance patrols being thrown from a speeding van. The government crackdown sparked a protest movement over the summer by Iranian women, who photographed themselves without headscarves and posted the pictures on social media. © 1996-2022 The Washington Post

Tens of thousands have been displaced and dozens killed in the fighting. Danil Usmanov Sep 18, 2022 Batken has become a ghost town (all photos by Danil Usmanov) As people in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan pray and hope that the fighting along their border is over, thoughts will turn to the damage to life and property wrought in under a week of fighting. The reckoning will take time. Civilians are still stunned by trauma. Batken, the capital of the eponymous region in southern Kyrgyzstan, has become a ghost town since hostilities broke out. When a Eurasianet correspondent arrived there on September 17, all the small stores and cafes were closed. At least two minimarkets were open, but soldiers were their only customers. Just a trickle of people was using the gas stations. Most of the shelling and incursions by Tajik troops occurred in places right on the border. On September 16, though, the odd projectile landed on Batken too, despite it lying several kilometers from Tajikistan. Some residents returned to the city throughout the day from the villages to which they had repaired to avoid the danger of fresh shelling. In the evening, they left again. A few dozen people gathered at the military enlistment office. They had come from all over the country to sign up and were asking officers for weapons. They didn’t get any. A building near the enlistment office used to sell motor oil. It was hit by a rocket and now lies in ruins. The teahouse next door had its windows blown out. A few curious passersby peered inside and took pictures. There were more people in and around the grounds of the hospital. Gunfire rang out somewhere nearby at 10 p.m. An aircraft, probably a small plane, flew overhead, and a convoy of trucks thundered through the city. Late at night, the owner of the hotel where the Eurasianet correspondent was staying roused his guests and ordered everybody to collect their documents and leave. It was dangerous to stay, he said. The hospital too was being evacuated, he explained. A long line of cars snaked east toward Uzbekistan’s enclave of Sokh – yet another territorial anomaly in this geographically vexing area. The Uzbek government has earned warm plaudits from many in Kyrgyzstan for enabling the mass evacuation of civilians through its territory. Some people had driven out to fields in the open and slept there for the night. They said they lived near a military outpost and thought it better to keep away from there while the danger was still high. The deep sense of fear has spread all throughout the region of Batken. As of September 18, almost 137,000 people had fled for their safety, Emergency Situations Ministry officials said. According to official government data, almost 550,000 people live in Batken region. In Razzakov, a town right in the very southwestern-most corner of the country, crowds have for days assailed the little airport there in the hope of getting on a flight out. Kyrgyz Health Ministry representatives said the death toll had, as of the evening of September 18, reached 46. Around 140 people have been hospitalized, they said. The sense of panic has also spread to the Osh region, which lies to the south and east of Batken. Fully 5,300 people were evacuated from a near-border area in the region’s highland Chon-Alai district that reportedly saw exchanges of mortar fire between Tajik and Kyrgyz troops on September 17. Border areas in Tajikistan, which have also seen rocket attacks, are more populous than those in Kyrgyzstan. But news of evacuation efforts there has filtered out only by word of mouth. The government’s official channels in Dushanbe have entirely disregarded the humanitarian aspect of the unrest. For several days, the news of fatalities too only came through anonymous accounts from locals. The authoritarian regime in Tajikistan has cowed both journalists and citizens into submission. Even reporting on the victims of conflict is hazardous. The other form of evidence for the human toll of the violence are the grisly video images that have been shared across social media. One piece of footage filmed in the Tajik border town of Ovchi Kalacha showed five people that appeared to have been killed in one instant, possibly by a shell strike. A government statement released over the weekend appeared to allude to this incident, although there is no certain way of knowing. Other brief snippets of video footage provide evidence of more deaths, but little sense of the context: a lifeless middle-aged woman lying in a thick slick of blood as another woman kneels over her weeping; a charred and mangled passenger vehicle with the barely recognizable remains of human figures inside; two clean-shaven young soldiers lying on their backs surrounded by destroyed boxes of ammunition and spent heavy-caliber shells. The Tajik Foreign Ministry broke its government’s silence on fatalities on September 18 in a statement of protest in which they accused the Kyrgyz army of taking aim at an ambulance traveling through the near-border village of Chorqishloq, not far from the district capital, Isfara. “As a result of this attack, five members of the same family were killed; they included two children – Asmoa, born on July 11, 2016, and Imron, born on December 5, 2017. A paramedic and a driver [were also killed],” the statement read. More deaths were caused, they said, by Kyrgyz drone strikes. Six civilians were killed after a missile hit a school in Ovchi-Kalacha and another 12 died after a drone strike on a mosque in the same town, the Foreign Ministry said. At least one of those incidents is likely the one captured in the amateur video footage spread online. Neither Kyrgyzstan nor Tajikistan are being forthcoming about the disposition of their forces around the disputed border. By all appearances, however, Tajik troops and irregulars have retreated from the Kyrgyz villages that they occupied after the first surge of major clashes. No territorial gains or losses have been recorded. Only deaths. Danil Usmanov is a photo and video journalist based in Bishkek.

By Reuters Equatorial Guinea President Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo attends a plenary session of the Paris Peace Forum, France November 12, 2019. MALABO, Sept 20 (Reuters) - Equatorial Guinea has abolished the death penalty, according to a new criminal code signed by veteran President Teodoro Obiang, adding to a growing list of African countries seeking to extinguish a vestige of colonial rule. The West African oil-producing country of 1.4 million people is no stranger to political violence. Campaign groups have accused the government of torture, arbitrary detentions and sham trials during Obiang's 43 years in power. Yet the world's longest-serving president appears willing to move with other African countries that have ended the practice. The last execution took place eight years ago, according to Amnesty International. The new penal law, seen by Reuters on Tuesday, is dated Aug. 17 but was officially published over the weekend. It will come into force in 90 days, the document said. Obiang's son, Vice-President Teodoro Nguema Obiang Mangue, described the abolition as "historical and memorable". "I write it with capital letters to seal this unique moment," he tweeted on Monday. "EQUATORIAL GUINEA HAS ABOLISHED THE DEATH PENALTY." Capital punishment, adopted in some places during colonial rule, remains legal in just over 30 African countries. But more than 20 of those have not carried out executions for at least 10 years, according to data provider Statista. Sierra Leone's parliament last year voted unanimously to abolish the death penalty. In the last two years, Malawi and Chad have both ruled it to be unconstitutional. Globally, about 170 countries have abolished or introduced moratoria against the death penalty, according to the United Nations. Equatorial Guinea's new law bolsters "the global trend towards universal abolition" and contributes "to the enhancement and development of human rights," acting U.N. High Commissioner for human rights Nada Al-Nashif said in a statement. Vast problems remain in Equatorial Guinea. Political dissent is suppressed and oil wealth benefits an elite few. Obiang Mangue was tried in absentia and convicted of embezzlement by a French court in 2020. Assets that foreign powers say he bought with ill-gotten gains include a crystal-coveredglove worn by Michael Jackson, an armoured Rolls-Roycelimousine and a yacht. He has denied wrongdoing. https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/equatorial-guinea-scraps-death-penalty-eight-years-after-last-execution-2022-09-20/ © Thomson Reuters 2022

Attacks against civilians ‘abhorrent’, says Jan Lipavský, of Czech Republic, which holds EU presidency Ukrainian workers exhume bodies from graves in Izium. Photograph: Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA The EU presidency has called for the establishment of an international tribunal for war crimes after new mass graves were found in Ukraine. “In the 21st century, such attacks against the civilian population are unthinkable and abhorrent,” said Jan Lipavský, foreign minister of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU’s rotating presidency. “We must not overlook it. We stand for the punishment of all war criminals,” he added in a message on Twitter. “I call for the speedy establishment of a special international tribunal that will prosecute the crime of aggression.” The appeal follows the discovery by Ukrainian authorities of about 450 graves outside the formerly Russian-occupied city of Izium, with most of the exhumed bodies showing signs of torture. “Among the bodies that were exhumed today, 99% showed signs of violent death,” Oleg Synegubov, head of Kharkiv’s regional administration, said on social media. “There are several bodies with their hands tied behind their backs, and one person is buried with a rope around his neck,” he added. “Russia leaves only death and suffering. Murderers. Torturers,” said Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy. Some of the remains exhumed included children and people who were likely tortured before dying, he added. The US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, on Friday said that the graves likely provided more evidence that Russia is committing war crimes in its pro-western neighbouring country. The French president, Emmanuel Macron, joined the condemnation, describing what had happened in Izium as atrocities. “I condemn in the strongest terms the atrocities committed in Izyum, Ukraine, under Russian occupation,” Macron tweeted. The Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, Dmytro Lubinets, said there were “probably more than 1,000 Ukrainian citizens tortured and killed in the liberated territories of the Kharkiv region”. The Ukraine national police chief, Igor Klymenko, said they had found multiple torture rooms in the town of Balakliya and elsewhere in Kharkiv since the Russians were driven out. The UN in Geneva has said it hopes to send a team to determine the circumstances of the deaths. The discoveries came a little more than five months after the Russian army, driven out of the vicinity of the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, left behind hundreds of corpses of civilians, many of whom bore the traces of torture and summary executions. The EU is “deeply shocked” at the discovery by Ukrainian officials of mass graves in the recaptured city of Izium, the bloc’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Friday. “This inhuman behaviour by the Russian forces, in total disregard of international humanitarian law and the Geneva conventions, must stop immediately,” he said On Thursday, the European Commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, said she wanted Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, to face the international criminal court over war crimes in Ukraine. In Washington, the US president, Joe Biden, warned his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin against using chemical or tactical nuclear weapons after serious losses in his war in Ukraine. “Don’t. Don’t. Don’t,” Biden said, in an excerpt from an interview with CBS’ 60 Minutes aired on Friday evening. Biden was responding to an interviewer’s question about the possibility of Putin, whose army is incurring heavy losses in the Ukrainian counteroffensive this month, resorting to chemical or tactical nuclear weapons. “You would change the face of war unlike anything since the second world war,” Biden said. “They will become more of a pariah in the world, more than they have ever been,” the US leader added. Ukrainian forces have recaptured thousands of square kilometres in recent weeks thanks to a counter-offensive in the north-east and now threaten enemy positions in the south. The Russians “are angry because our army is pushing them back in its counter-offensive,” said Svitlana Shpuk, a 42-year-old worker in Kryvyi Rih, a southern town, and Zelenskiy’s home town, which was flooded after a damwas destroyed by Russian missiles. Synegoubov said that an 11-year-old girl was killed by missile fire in the region. Pavlo Kyrylenko, the governor of Donestk in eastern Ukraine which has been partially controlled by Russian-backed separatists since 2014, said on social media that Ukrainian firefighters were battling a fire there and that the bombing had led to cuts in drinking water. “The occupiers are deliberately targeting infrastructure in the area to try to inflict as much damage as possible, primarily on the civilian population,” he said. The Russian army denies targeting civilian infrastructure or residential areas. In its daily briefing in Moscow, the Kremlin said it had carried out “high-precision” strikes against Ukrainian positions in the Mykolaiv and Kharkiv regions. © 2022 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

Former St. Sargis Church in Mokhrenes, Nagorno-Karabagh credit:Monument Watch Report shows near-total erasure of Armenian heritage sites by Azerbaijan By David Nutt, Cornell Chronicle September 12, 2022 A new report from the Cornell-led Caucasus Heritage Watch (CHW) has compiled decades of high-resolution satellite imagery to document the complete destruction of Armenian cultural heritage in the Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan beginning in the late 1990s. Moreover, the latest finding of CHW’s heritage monitoring project suggests that the same policy of cultural erasure now threatens Armenian monuments in the Karabakh region of Azerbaijan. CHW has recently discovered the destruction of an historic church in Karabakh, one of hundreds of Armenian monuments in territories ceded to Azerbaijan under the terms of a 2020 ceasefire to a war between Azerbaijan and Armenia. The destruction of St. Sargis church in the village of Mokhrenes between March and July 2022 provides evidence of the first major violation of a ruling by the International Court of Justice, which ordered Azerbaijan in December 2021 to prevent such acts. Satellite photos of destroyed St. Karapet Monastery of Abrakunis replaced by mosque , Click to open gallery view Credit:Provided Satellite images show St. Karapet Monastery of Abrakunis (founded in 1381), its destruction (between 1997 and 2001) and the reuse of the monastery grounds for a mosque built in 2013. According to CHW’s report on Nakhchivan, of the 110 medieval and early modern Armenian monasteries, churches and cemeteries that CHW identified from archival sources, 108 were destroyed between 1997 and 2011 in what the authors describe as “a systematic, state-sponsored program of cultural erasure.” CHW was founded in 2020 by Lori Khatchadourian, associate professor of Near Eastern Studies, and Adam T. Smith, Distinguished Professor of Arts and Sciences in Anthropology, both in the College of Arts and Sciences, along with Ian Lindsay, associate professor of Anthropology at Purdue University. “Cultural heritage faces more significant threats right now than ever before, from economic development to climate change. But the most serious threat to heritage comes from autocratic governments ready to reshape the past into a fiction that legitimates their domination,” Smith said. “Luckily, there are also new tools for researchers to uncover the facts that counter these fictions.” The researchers have built an interactive web platform that provides detailed historical background for each site and also allows users to swipe between images from “before” and “after.” For some sites, such as the Holy Mother of God church in Ramis, satellite imagery captured the destruction in progress. Geographically, Nakhchivan is a 2,125-square-mile province sandwiched between Armenia, Turkey and Iran and an exclave of Azerbaijan – which lies further east, on the far side of Armenia. The region had been inhabited for centuries by a multicultural mix of Armenian, Turkic and Persian communities. But increasing ethnic tensions led to the exodus of Armenians from the province over the course of the Soviet period, leaving behind a rich cultural legacy of historic monasteries, churches and ancestral cemeteries. As the Soviet Union was unraveling, Armenian and Azerbaijani forces clashed over the mountainous Nagorno-Karabakh region. Armenian separatists secured control over the disputed region (which Armenians call Artsakh) until September 2020, when Azerbaijan launched a military offensive, regaining much of the land. Many of the cultural sites were significant architectural monuments. The Monastery of St. Tovma in the village of Agulis, an important ecclesiastical center of medieval Armenia, featured exquisite frescoes and inscriptions. St. Nshan Monastery of Bist was a well-known medieval cultural center with a scriptorium that produced illuminated manuscripts now held in museums. To identify the locations of the destroyed sites, the researchers turned to scholarly surveys of the region’s architectural history. They compared this source material with declassified U.S. satellite images from the 1970s and 1980s, Soviet maps from the 1930s to 1990s, and more recent satellite imagery, all of which enabled them to construct a meticulous visual timeline that shows the gradual eradication of cultural heritage sites. “Since these cultural heritage monuments are no longer on the landscape, and since the government of Azerbaijan denies that they ever existed in the first place, it required painstaking forensic work just to find their precise geographic coordinates,” said Khatchadourian, who noted the uniqueness of incorporating spatial data from both sides of the Cold War’s so-called “Iron Curtain.” Of the 110 identified sites, the researchers documented the total destruction of 108, or 98%. The two remaining sites – a small cemetery and a chapel – possibly evaded notice because they were in such poor condition they weren’t recognized as Armenian. Satellite evidence allowed the team to establish the timeframe for the destruction of every site in their database, with greater or lesser precision depending on the availability of satellite imagery. The evidence suggests that the campaign of erasure began in 1997 and was largely completed by 2009. In some cases, such as the Saint Tovma Monastery of Agulis, the buildings were replaced by mosques or other civic buildings. The new report on Nakhchivan, released Sept. 12, complements CHW’s parallel effort to monitor at-risk heritage sites in real time. From the deliberate destruction of synagogues in the Holocaust to the demolition of mosques in Bosnia Herzegovina in the 1990s, state-organized destruction of cultural heritage has plenty of precedents. The erasure of the Armenian sites in Nakhchivan is particularly troubling, the researchers say, because Azerbaijan has gone to great lengths to keep their policy of heritage erasure secret. “Azerbaijan has been destroying sites clandestinely,” Khatchadourian said. “It’s a state secret. So unlike ISIS, or the Taliban, which made a big spectacle out of their form of heritage destruction, Azerbaijan does not want to be known as a state that sponsors cultural erasure. They spent a lot of money on UNESCO trying to brand Azerbaijan as a land of tolerance even as they undertook a systematic program of heritage demolition.” While cultural erasure in Nakhchivan shows the limits of how organizations like UNESCO can respond to violations committed by member states within their own sovereign territory, the team’s method of “heritage forensics” may provide a template for documenting attacks on cultural heritage elsewhere. CHW’s research is supported by the Aragats Foundation, Cornell and Purdue Universities, the Armenian General Benevolent Union and the Institute of Armenian Studies at the University of Southern California Copyright 2022 Cornell Chronicle

By Moki Edwin Kindzeka FILE - Pupils stand in line in their school's courtyard in Douala, western Cameroon, on Jan. 13, 2022. Officials in the country say separatist attacks and threats have shut down scores of schools since the school year started on Sept. 5, 2022. MBOUDA, CAMEROON — Officials in Cameroon say armed separatists have chased several thousand children from schools just days after the students returned to classrooms for the first time in years. Troops sent to restore school security in the western regions say they have killed at least 13 rebels in clashes over the last month. Cameroon's military says separatist attacks this month on western villages, mostly on schools, sent thousands of schoolchildren, teachers and villagers fleeing for safety. Lingalla Prudence is among students who on Monday fled Kumbo, an English-speaking town in the Northwest Region. The separatist conflict has disrupted her education so often that the 21-year-old, who should be in college, is still trying to finish high school. "We were in school, and some people brought guns and chased us out of the school and kidnapped some teachers and all the children are out of school," she said. Teachers' associations say the anglophone rebels are targeting state schools, which they view as a tool of the French-speaking majority's rule. But they are also attacking religious and private schools. Joe Tiemuncho, coordinator of the Parent-Teachers Association for Presbyterian schools in Cameroon, said separatist attacks and threats have shut down scores of schools that had reopened, some for the first time in years, when the school year started on September 5. "Many schools have shut down given the intimidations that are coming from separatist fighters," he said. "Teachers, learners and school managers are afraid to get into full-swing activities because it is unpredictable, you can't say what will happen in the next few minutes. Some teachers have even had their arms amputated. Students have been kidnapped and they [fighters] continue to kidnap teachers, students and others asking for ransom." Cameroonian military spokespersons weren't allowed to speak with reporters on a trip to the area, but they did confirm that hundreds of troops were deployed to restore security so classes can resume. The military says the separatists also declared a lockdown in the English-speaking western regions that paralyzed trade. Separatists that declared the lockdown say it is in response to a government ban on community schools that the rebels control. Capo Daniel, a self-declared deputy defense chief of the Ambazonia Defense Forces (ADF), one of the largest rebel groups in Cameroon, said the ADF is not in favor of the lockdown called by other rebel factions. "Misguided forces that are imposing this lockdown target [on] innocent civilians who have largely rejected this lockdown. So, for the most part, our people stay at home out of fear," he said. "It is the responsibility of everybody who speaks for the Ambazonia liberation movement to ensure our students access community schools, religious schools and private schools that have been allowed and authorized by us to open." Cameroon in August closed more than 200 community schools that rebels said they controlled. The military says in the past week troops killed at least 13 rebels during clashes in the towns of Kumbo, Oku and Ndop. Rebel spokesman Daniel confirmed their fighters were killed and said they also killed government troops. Cameroon's military did not confirm any fatalities but said a few troops were wounded. Cameroon's anglophone rebels want to create a breakaway state they call Ambazonia, separate from Cameroon's French-speaking majority. The U.N. says the rebel conflict has killed more than 3,300 people and displaced more than a half-million since fighting broke out in 2017. https://www.voanews.com/a/cameroon-officials-say-rebels-attacking-schools-/6749097.html Copyright ©️ VOA 2022