Myanmar's Prime Minister and State Administrative Council Chairman Min Aung Hlaing attends a meeting with Director General of Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin in Moscow, Russia July 12, 2022. Roscosmos/Handout via Reuters Aug 1 (Reuters) - The head of Myanmar's junta on Monday blamed instability for stalling efforts to implement a peace plan agreed with other Southeast Asian countries as he extended emergency rule for another six months. The junta first declared a state of emergency after seizing power from the elected government of Aung San Suu Kyi in a coup in February last year. Myanmar has been in chaos since then, with conflict spreading after the army crushed mostly peaceful protests in towns and cities. The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed a five-point "consensus" to end hostilities last year, but there has been little sign of the junta implementing the five-point plan, which includes an end to violence and dialogue. Junta leader Min Aung Hlaing said in a speech aired on state media that Myanmar had been striving to overcome the challenges of the coronavirus pandemic while facing internal violence. While the junta has failed to implement the ASEAN plan, it has never rejected it. "Our country is an ASEAN state so we value the conventions of ASEAN," Min Aung Hlaing said. While Min Aung Hlaing did not mention the extension of the emergency in his speech, state media reported that a military government defence and security council had unanimously approved his request for six more months. The junta said it had to take power last year because of voting fraud in a November 2020 general election that Suu Kyi's party easily won. Election monitoring groups found no evidence of mass fraud. The military has pledged to hold new elections in August 2023 though the timetable has already slipped and opponents do not believe it would be free and fair. Security forces have killed more than 2,100 people since the coup, according to the Assistance Association for political prisoners, an activist group. The junta has said such tolls are exaggerated. The true picture of the violence has become more difficult to assess since lightly armed People's Defence Forces have sprung up to take on the army, often in more remote areas where ethnic minority insurgents are also fighting the military. In his speech, Min Aung Hlaing blamed "terrorists" for inflicting casualties. The military has branded as "terrorists" its armed opponents and a rival shadow National Unity Government set up by pro-democracy politicians. The junta has faced sanctions from many Western countries and last week saw further condemnation after the execution of four democracy activists it accused of "terror acts". read more Min Aung Hlaing also brought up the economy, which has slumped since the pandemic and as the coup ended a decade of reform. "I think progress can be seen within six months," he said, citing the prospect of more jobs and a focus on farming. The World Bank projects Myanmar's economy will grow 3% this fiscal year following an 18% contraction last year and warned that a return to pre-pandemic levels was unlikely in the near term. © 2022 Reuters. All rights reserved

Terrorist groups in Kenya have tried to use social media to destabilize before the election. (Farah Abdi Warsameh/Associated Press) Washington Post July 31, 2022 By Neha Wadekar NAIROBI — The shooter approaches from behind, raising a pistol to his victim’s head. He pulls the trigger and “pop,” a lifeless body slumps forward. The shot cuts to another execution, and another. The video was posted on Facebook, in a large group of al-Shabab and Islamic State supporters, where different versions were viewed thousands of times before being taken down. As Facebook and its competitor TikTok grow at breakneck speed in Kenya, and across Africa, researchers say the technology companies are failing to keep pace with a proliferation of terrorist content, hate speech and false information, taking advantage of poor regulatory frameworks to avoid stricter oversight. “It is a deliberate choice to maximize labor and profit extraction, because they view the societies in the Global South primarily as markets, not as societies,” said Nanjala Nyabola, a Kenyan technology and social researcher. About 1 in 5 Kenyans use Facebook, which its parent company last year renamed itself Meta, and TikTok has become one of the most downloaded apps in the country. The prevalence of violent and inflammatory content on the platforms poses real risks in this East African nation, as it prepares for a bitterly contested presidential election next month and deals with the threat of terrorism posed by a resurgent al-Shabab. “Our approach to content moderation in Africa is no different than anywhere else in the world,” Kojo Boakye, Meta’s director of public policy for Africa, the Middle East and Turkey, wrote in an email to The Washington Post. “We prioritize safety on our platforms and have taken aggressive steps to fight misinformation and harmful content.” Fortune Mgwili-Sibanda, the head of government relations and public policy in sub-Saharan Africa for TikTok, also responded to The Post by email, writing: “We have thousands of people working on safety all around the world, and we’re continuing to expand this function in our African markets in line with the continued growth of our TikTok community on the continent.” The companies use a two-pronged content moderation strategy: Artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms provide a first line of defense. But Meta has admitted it is challenging to teach AI to recognize hate speech in multiple languages and contexts, and reports show that posts in languages other than English often slip through the cracks. In June, researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue in London released a report outlining how al-Shabab and the Islamic State use Facebook to spread extremist content, like the execution video. The two-year investigation revealed at least 30 public al-Shabab and Islamic State propaganda pages with nearly 40,000 combined followers. The groups posted videos depicting gruesome assassinations, suicide bombings, attacks on Kenyan military forces and Islamist militant training exercises. Some content had lived on the platform for more than six years. Reliance on AI was a core problem, said Moustafa Ayad, one of the authors of the report, because bad actors have learned how to game the system. If the terrorists know the AI is looking for the word jihad, Ayad explained, they can “split up J.I.H.A.D with periods in between the letters, so now it is not being read properly by the AI system.” Ayad said most of the accounts flagged in the report have now been removed, but similar content has since popped up, such as a video posted in July featuring Fuad Mohamed Khalaf, an al-Shabab leader wanted by the U.S. government. It garnered 141,000 views and 1,800 shares before being removed after 10 days. Terrorist groups can also bypass human moderation, the second line of defense for social media companies, by exploiting language and cultural expertise gaps, the report said. The national languages in Kenya are English and Swahili, but Kenyans speak dozens of other tribal languages, dialects and the local slang known as Sheng. Meta said it has a 350-person multidisciplinary team, including native Arabic, Somali and Swahili speakers, who monitor and handle terrorist content. Between January and March, the company claims to have removed 15 million pieces of content that violated its terrorism policies but did not say how much terrorist content it believes to still be on the platform. In January 2019, al-Shabab attacked the DusitD2 complex in Nairobi, killing 21 people. A government investigation later revealed they planned the attack using a Facebook account that remained undetected for six months, according to local media. During the Kenyan election in 2017, journalists documented how Facebook struggled to rein in the spread of ethnically charged hate speech, an issue researchers say the company is still failing to address. Adding to their worries now is the growing popularity of TikTok, which is also being used to inflame tensions ahead of the presidential vote in August. In June, the Mozilla Foundation released a report outlining how election disinformation in Kenya has taken root on TikTok. The report examined more than 130 videos from 33 accounts that had been viewed more than 4 million times, finding ethnic-based hate speech as well as manipulated and false content that violated TikTok policies. One video clip mimicked a detergent commercial in which the narrator told viewers that the “detergent” could eliminate “madoadoa,” including members of the Kamba, Kikuyu, Luhya and Luo tribes. Interpreted literally, “madoadoa” is an innocuous word meaning blemish or spot, but it can also be a coded ethnic slur and a call to violence. The video contained graphic images of post-election clashes from previous years. After the report was published, TikTok removed the video and flagged the term “madoadoa,” but the episode showed how the nuances of language can elude human moderators. A TikTok whistleblower told report author Odanga Madung that she was asked to watch videos in languages she did not speak and determine, from looking at images alone, whether they violated its guidelines. TikTok did not directly respond to that allegation when asked for comment by The Post, but the company issued a recent statement about efforts to address problematic election content. TikTok said it moderates content in more than 60 languages, including Swahili, but declined to give additional details about its moderators in Kenya or the number of languages it monitors. It has also launched an operations center for Kenya with experts who detect and remove posts that violate its policies. And in July, it rolled out an user guide containing election and media literacy information. “We have a dedicated team working to safeguard TikTok during the Kenyan elections,” Mgwili-Sibanda wrote. “We prohibit and remove election misinformation, promotions of violence and other violations of our policies.” But researchers still worry that violent rhetoric online could lead to real violence. “One will see these lies really turn into very tragic consequences for people attending rallies,” said Irungu Houghton, director of Amnesty International Kenya. Researchers say TikTok and Meta can get away with lower content moderation standards in Kenya, in part because Kenyan law does not directly hold social media companies responsible for harmful content on their platforms. By contrast, the Facebook Act in Germany fines companies up to $50 million if they do not remove “clearly illegal” content within 24 hours after a user files a complaint. “This is quite a gray area,” said Mugambi Laibuta, a Kenyan lawyer. “When you’re talking about hate speech, there’s no law in Kenya that states that these sites should enforce content moderation.” If Meta and TikTok do not police themselves, experts warn, African governments will do it for them, possibly in anti-democratic and dangerous ways. “If the platforms don’t get their act together, they become convenient excuses for authoritarians to clamp down on them across the continent” and “a convenient excuse for them to disappear,” Madung said. “And we all need these platforms to survive. We need them to thrive.” https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2022/07/31/kenya-meta-tiktok-facebook-disinformation/ Copyright 2022 The Washington Post

By Umar A Farooq Federal judge issues default judgement against Libyan commander and paves the way for plaintiffs to seek monetary compensation Multiple Libyan families filed lawsuits against Haftar in US courts, accusing him of torturing and killing their relatives (AFP/File photo) A federal US judge on Friday issued a default judgement against Libyan commander Khalifa Haftar, finding him liable for war crimes against several Libyan families who have accused him of extrajudicial killings and torture. Judge Leonie Brinkema's judgement, which follows a previous recommendation from a magistrate judge last month, paves the way for the families in three separate civil suits to seek monetary compensation. Following Brinkema's decision, lawyers for Haftar confirmed that they would be withdrawing as the Libyan commander's counsel, leaving him without a lawyer going forward. Sitting anxiously in the courtroom in Alexandria, Virginia, the Libyan family members and advocates working on the case quietly burst into joy as soon as they heard Brinkema's decision. For them, this was a major victory following three years of civil litigation to hold Haftar accountable for the torture and deaths of their loved ones. "This is the culmination of years of work with Libyan victims against what the war criminal Haftar has done for so many years in Libya," Esam Omeish, president of the Libyan American Alliance, an advocacy group that serves as a lead consultant in one of the three lawsuits, told Middle East Eye. "These people had the brave sense of fighting in a court of law, and they wanted to have their day in court," he said. "After three years of going back and forth of, dealing with lawyers and judges and many hearings, today, we reached a conclusion of that judgment, saying that Khalifa Haftar indeed is liable for committing these crimes against the torture victims." Multiple Libyan families had filed lawsuits against Haftar in US courts in 2019 and 2020, in which the Libyan commander was accused of torturing and killing their relatives. The families filed their lawsuits under the Torture Victim Protection Act of 1991, a law that allows non-US citizens to seek compensation from individuals who, acting in an official capacity for any foreign nation, allegedly committed torture or extrajudicial killing. Haftar, a US citizen who had been a Virginia resident for decades, unsuccessfully tried to have the civil lawsuits tossed out under the claim of immunity as head of state. Earlier this year, Haftar was a no-show at a long-sought video deposition where he was going to be asked about his alleged role in the extrajudicial killings and torture of Libyan civilians in the country's decade-long civil war. The next step in the legal case is a hearing where the judge will evaluate what kind of compensation package the families should receive. According to the Wall Street Journal, Haftar has owned various property holdings in Virginia worth millions of dollars. "We will now be moving towards the damage phase," Mark Zaid, a lawyer representing one group of the plaintiffs, said during a press conference shortly after Friday's hearing. "And we'll execute upon properties wherever we can find them anywhere in the world." "It's rumoured he has hundreds of millions of dollars, perhaps more around the world." Global ramifications for Haftar The judgement has serious potential ramifications both inside Libya and around the world for Haftar, who has for years been vying to become the leader of the North African country. "Within Libya, it is a wake-up call to many people who are trying to either partner with him and what they call a democratic transition of Libya through elections," Omeish said. "You cannot deal with a criminal who is hellbent on dictatorship and ruling the country by force as a partner." On the international stage, having Haftar found liable for war crimes in an American court of law could create diplomatic issues for the Libyan military leader, especially in terms of Libya's relationship with Washington. A former CIA asset, Haftar returned to Libya following the country's 2011 uprising and served in the internationally recognised government until 2014, when civil war broke out in the country. While an April 2019 phone call between Haftar and former US President Donald Trump stoked rumours that Washington was throwing its weight behind the commander, a source with direct knowledge of the matter previously told MEE that US-Libya ties soured soon after the call. "This has to weigh in very heavily when we have a person liable in front of a civil suit, and he is still being courted as a potential leader of Libya, as a potential presidential candidate, as a potential partner with the United States," Omeish said. "I think it's rather egregious for us to even consider engaging him or dealing with him." In 2019, he mounted a 14-month campaign to take control of the country's capital, Tripoli. Fighting soon devolved into a proxy conflict with his Libyan National Army (LNA) receiving support from Russia, the United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Chadian and Sudanese fighters, as well as other mercenary groups. Haftar was eventually pushed back after Turkey intervened by providing fighters, combat drones and military equipment to support the UN-backed government in Tripoli. Following a ceasefire in October 2020 and the establishment of a new unity government, Libya was headed towards elections in December 2021, but the vote was delayed due to a constitutional crisis and the country continues to remain politically divided. A path to criminal prosecution War crimes by Haftar's forces and allied groups have been well documented, including by Middle East Eye in 2020 when it investigated and revealed mass graves found in the city of Tarhuna. With Haftar having now been found liable in a civil lawsuit, the Libyan American Alliance has said they hoped this will now lead to a path towards criminal prosecution against him. "We call upon the Attorney General Mr Garland and others to look into the criminality of this US citizen who has committed egregious crimes in Libya," Omeish said. Zaid, the attorney for one of the group of plaintiffs, agreed that this case could soon go from a civil one to a criminal one. "I have made this clear. I asked both the attorney general under the Trump administration and the Biden administration that under US law - which I actually helped work on 25 or so years ago, the War Crimes Act of 1996 - that Haftar as a US citizen can and should be prosecuted," Zaid said. "And we still hope the Biden administration will do that." Copyright © 2014 - 2022. Middle East Eye. Link to Article: https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/us-court-finds-libyas-khalifa-haftar-liable-war-crimes

Independent UN-appointed human rights experts who have urged China to repeal Hong Kong’s 2020 national security law (NSL) after claiming that its use had led to the arrest of children, said on Wednesday that they welcomed pledges to replace it with a more transparent and consultative process. Hong Kong residents hold signs condemning police brutality during protests on August 31, 2019. (Source: Unsplash/Joseph Chan) Definition unclear The UN Human Rights Committee underscored the shortcomings of the National Security Law (NSL), including its lack of clarity on “national security” and the possibility of transferring cases from Hong Kong to mainland China. “There was a lot of discussions on recent legislation, including Hong Kong National Security Law. I think there was a constructive discussion on those issues and the committee did raise its concerns,” said Photini Pazartzis, Chairperson of the Human Rights Committee, at a press conference in Geneva. The panel urged Hong Kong to repeal the national security law and, in the meantime, refrain from applying it. “The Committee was deeply concerned about the overly broad interpretation of Hong Kong National Security Law, the NSL, which was passed by the National People’s Congress of China without consultation with the Hong Kong’s public,” said vice chair, Christopher Arif Balkan. Dozens of child arrests He added that since it was introduced in 2020, the NSL had reportedly led to the arrests of “over 200 people, including 12 children.” The Committee monitors the application of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) by State parties. It released its findings on Hong Kong following a scheduled review in Geneva. The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region is a signatory to the Covenant for investigation, prosecution, trial and execution of penalties, but mainland China is not. “Once a State party has subscribed to the Covenant, there is an obligation that those rights are paramount. “In other words, your local legislation cannot derogate from those rights. There are human rights, after all, universal rights,” explained Mr. Arif Balkan. “China is not a party to the ICCPR. But then China can implement the NSL within Hong Kong. So that creates a lacuna for residents of Hong Kong,” he added. Hong Kong returned to Chinese rule in 1997 with the guarantee of a high level of autonomy, including freedom of expression. Representatives of the semi-autonomous territory informed the Committee that they were contemplating new national security legislation. The Committee members said they hoped the law could be amended for the better. Promises broken “They gave us assurances, that there would be transparency, consultation in enacting a new security law,” said Mr. Arif Balkan. The UN Human Rights Committee published its findings on Hong Kong, China, among other countries, after the closing of its 135th session on Wednesday in the Swiss city. The findings contained the Committee's main concerns and recommendations on the implementation of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as well as positive aspects. The Human Rights Committee monitors States parties’ compliance with the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. It has been ratified by 173 States parties. The Committee is made up of 18 members who are independent human rights experts drawn from around the world, who serve in their personal capacity and not as representatives of States parties. Ⓒ 2022 UN News. All rights reserved.

July 31 marks the 39th anniversary of the genocide of the Barzanis, in which thousands of men and boys from the Barzani tribe were systematically killed by the Ba’ath regime in Iraq. We honor those who were murdered and reflect on the suffering and resilience of those who survived. On July 31, 1983, under the orders of Saddam Hussein, the Iraqi army raided numerous camps near Erbil and further north in Iraqi Kurdistan and abducted 8,000 Barzani men and boys, some as young as 10 years of age and elderly men of up 80 years. Their mothers, wives, and daughters would never see them again. The Barzani men and boys were taken to deserts in southern Iraq, executed and buried in mass graves. The remains of some were found in the deserts of the south after 2003 and transferred to the Kurdistan Region for proper burial, but the whereabouts of thousands of victims are still unknown. The genocide of the Barzanis ultimately became a blueprint for Saddam Hussein’s Anfal campaign five years later that led to the deaths of up to 182,000 Kurds who were killed by chemical weapons and massive operations of displacement and disappearance. Today the sons and daughters of those victims are part of the revival of Kurdistan. Their success in education, economy, and society is testimony to the resilience of the people of Kurdistan. We honor the memory of those laid to rest and all those still missing, and we salute the survivors for their resolute spirit. The Tragedy of the Missing Barzanis This mass kidnapping went unnoticed by the outside world but the emotional pain it caused is still deeply felt by the Barzani tribe – long regarded by Saddam’s regime as enemies of the state. Read more kurdistanmemoryprogramme.com Watch a documentary film 'All My Mothers' about the Barzani Genocide. Click on image.

Frances Haugen, former Facebook employee, and whistleblower. Credit IAMC To view briefing click on image. Washington, DC (July 28, 2022) – Facebook employees-turned-whistleblowers Frances Haugen and Sophie Zhang have slammed a human rights report from Meta, the company that owns Facebook, for failing to acknowledge its role in spreading disinformation and hate speech in India, especially from those belonging to India’s ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). That Meta’s first-ever global Human Rights Impact Assessment (HRIA) report released earlier this month had failed to address its complicity in the spread of disinformation in India underscored that the social media giant prioritized profit over combating hate, Haugen and Zhang said at a Congressional Briefing organized on Wednesday. Haugen, who turned a global celebrity last year upon sharing tens of thousands of incriminating documents with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, dismissed Meta’s claim of protecting human rights and providing remedies for negative impacts. “Facebook's report points [that] they have an oversight board that people can appeal to, that they're transparent about what they take down,” Haugen said during the virtual Briefing. "But the reality is that they won't give us even very basic data on what content moderation systems exist in which languages and the performance of those systems.” Facebook had “under-invested” in high-quality content moderation systems and “rolled out the bare minimum” for them, she said. “They won't even let us see samples of how these systems perform [as] activists are having their content taken down.” The only country you can actually read about in Meta’s report is the US, which has the “safest, most sanitized version of Facebook… the cleanest corner of Facebook.” On the other hand, Non-English languages “get less investment [and] quality assessment.” Facebook’s own regular checks of the top ten posts in countries facing conflict found that “post after post would be horrific [with] gory images, severed heads… We would sit there and discuss, like, how did this get through? Why was this getting the most distribution?” Haugen said of her time as a product manager with Facebook’s civic integrity department. “Facebook's products are designed to give the most reach to the most extreme content,” and its algorithms were “intrinsically majoritarian” as the content that gets a better reaction from the majority gets “more distribution… Human rights and Facebook are intertwined. We can't advance human rights, [and] we can't have safe discourse unless Facebook actively participates and has a relationship with the public,” Haugen said. Fired from Facebook in 2020 as a data scientist after she exposed its failure to combat fake and abusive content, Zhang said Facebook faced “the most political interference in India” and was “most deferential” to the Indian government because of India’s “increased willingness” to threaten action and “the lack of public reaction” in support of a “tougher line” in India. Sophie Zhang, former Facebook employee, fired for exposing Facebook's publication of hate speech (IAMC) To view briefing, click on image. “Facebook has effectively conducted a massive donation in kind to authoritarian governments by refusing to act and allowing their bad behavior to continue,” Zhang said, adding that it was “biased towards those in power.” The people “who can regulate Facebook and force you to change the situation have no incentive to change [it.] The only people who want to change the situation are those not in power who cannot change it.” Facebook’s failure to control hate speech and disinformation in India could have serious consequences. “if Facebook leads to the degradation of democracy in India, that will hurt its relationships with the United States and American interests globally,” she said. Zhang said Meta refused to close fake accounts in India that she uncovered because they were linked to a BJP member of Parliament. “As soon as the discovery was made, I could not get an answer from anyone. It was as if they had stonewalled me,” she said. “Facebook did not want to say yes because they were afraid of any important parliamentary figure.” Facebook cared “not about saving the world and protecting democracy. It cares about its profit. [It] has a strong incentive to be solicitous and differential towards the ruling party.” The Congressional briefing was co-hosted by Genocide Watch, World Without Genocide, Indian American Muslim Council, Hindus for Human Rights, International Christian Concern, Jubilee Campaign, 21Wilberforce, Dalit Solidarity Forum, New York State Council of Churches, Federation of Indian American Christian Organizations of North America, India Civil Watch International, Center for Pluralism, International Commission for Dalit Rights, American Muslim Institution, Students Against Hindutva Ideology, International Society for Peace and Justice, The Humanism Project and Association of Indian Muslims of America. Press release by Indian American Muslim Council, the largest advocacy organization of Indian Muslims in the United States with chapters across the nation. For more information, please visit our website at: www.iamc.com

Prominent activist Kyaw Min Yu (Ko Jimmy), left, and former NLD lawmaker Phyo Zayar Thaw. Credit: CNN FORSEA Event to Honour Lives of Four Executed Myanmar Activists Outraged by Myanmar military junta’s cold-blooded murder of the 4-pro-democracy activists in the country a week ago, an international group of activists, concerned scholars, musicians and singers have teamed up with Myanmar dissidents to host a 2-hour YouTube LIVE event this coming Saturday, 30 July. The event will commence at 7 pm Yangon, 1:30 PM London; 8:30 AM New York, and ends at 9 pm Yangon; 3:30 PM London; 10:30 AM New York. The event’s Burmese organizer Dr Maung Zarni of the Forces of Renewal for South East Asia, a network of concerned scholars and rights activists, said, “the (Myanmar) regime that only 6 years ago violated all grave crimes in international law – including genocide against a national minority Rohingyas – has once again proven capable of such cold-blooded murder of our fellow activists in the name of law.” He added, “this Saturday’s event is not a memorial service to mourn the murdered activists, but to both honour their lives and exemplary sacrifices and more broadly to celebrate Myanmar’s spirit, strength and stamina of resistance against successive murderous military leaderships.” Nine different performing artists and/or bands including hip hop and classical musicians, from New York, Sarajevo, Phnom Penh, Kuala Lumpur and Northern Myanmar will perform as an act of solidarity to Myanmar resisters. The event will be opened by String Quartet Sinfonietta SA, led by Professor Belma Alic of the Music Academy of Sarajevo. The quartet will play 'Stone sleeper', by the Bosnian composer Vladimir Milosevic. The acclaimed Burmese dissident vocalist and musician Mun Awng will perform LIVE from his native highlands of Kachin, Northern Myanmar. Among the international speakers are: Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah, Yale’s renowned scholar of everyday resistance Professor Emeritus James C. Scott, and veteran Malaysian dissident Hishamuddin Rais. They will be joined the fellow Myanmar resisters: Moethee Zun, former head of the All Burma Students’ Democratic Front; Moe Thway, a founding member of Generation Wave; Nay San Lwin, co-founder of the Free Rohingya Coalition; and Ma Khaing Zar Aung, President of the Industrial Workers’ Federation of Myanmar. To watch the event, go to: https://youtube.com/channel/UCfB6hOaCGI1yXA2yPKDvpJQ Contact: info@forsea.co & What’s App: 00 44 771 047 3322 BACKGROUNDER: The Execution of 4 Activists should Strengthen Myanmar People’s Resolve & Unite their Resistance against the Genocidal Military Junta https://forsea.co/the-execution-of-4-activists-should-unite-resistance-against-military-junta/ Performing Artists String Quartet Sinfonietta SA, led by Prof. Belma Alic from the Music Academy of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina Mun Awang, Acclaimed Dissident Musician, Liberated Area, Myanmar Pich Charya, Renowned classical Khmer Musician, Documentation Centre of Cambodia, Phnom Penh, Cambodia George Mathew, Conductor and Director of the Music For Life International, New York City Kultur Shock, Seattle-based gypsy punk with root in Bosnian Federal Republic of former Yugoslavia HIPHOPDECONTROL, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia YaRobin, underground hip hop group, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia Mulham Abordan, Syrian refugee and musician, Austria Solidarity Speakers Moethee Zun, Veteran Leader of All Burma Students Democratic Front and founder of Students for A New Society in Burma (1988) Moe Thway, A Founder, Generation Wave, Myanmar Khaing Zar Aung, President of Industrial Workers’ Federation of Myanmar (IWFM) Laura Watson, Global Women’s Strike, UK Hishamuddin Rais, Veteran dissident, educator & performing artist, Malaysia James C. Scott, renowned scholar of everyday resistance, Yale University and author of The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, New Haven, CT, USA Saifuddin Abdullah, Foreign Minister, Malaysia Jay Kerr, Labour Rights Campaigner with No Sweat and Punk Ethics, UK Nay San Lwin, Free Rohingya Coalition, Frankfurt, Germany

BY ALEXANDER J. MOTYL, OPINION CONTRIBUTOR - 07/27/22 7:00 AM ET Hanna Tverdokhlib holds her 7-year-old son, Volodymyr, after placing candles around a Ukrainian genocide memorial in Los Angeles to honor children killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. From halfway around the world, Tverdokhlib feels helpless — and guilty for being safe in the United States — as she watches the war unfold. Joseph Stalin was wrong about most things, but he was spot on in allegedly saying that “The death of one man is a tragedy, the death of millions is a statistic.” The Russo-Ukrainian War provides ample evidence of the truth of Stalin’s remark. We were shocked when the first Russian missiles struck Ukrainian cities. We were more shocked when Russian missiles hit an infirmary and a theater serving as a hideout for scores of children — in Mariupol, a city that was subsequently leveled. We were still more shocked when the Ukrainian armed forces uncovered mass graves in several towns north of Kyiv. Bucha, one of those towns, even became emblematic of Russian atrocities and therefore became an obligatory stop for foreign dignitaries hoping to express their outrage. The Bucha revelations occurred in early April. Since then, our capacity for genuine outrage has visibly diminished. Missiles continue to strikecivilian targets; Ukrainians continue to die; Russian leaders continue to boast of their genocidal intentions; the West continues to shake its collective head. In reality, however, our outrage is less outraged than it used to be. We’ve gotten used to daily reports of senseless death and destruction. We’ve gotten tired of following a genocide-in-progress. That’s not too surprising. The ongoing genocide lacks drama. It lacks immediacy and overwhelming presence. Scores or more of non-combatant Ukrainians are being killed every day, and even though the numbers are still far from a million, they are progressively becoming more of a statistic than a tragedy. We are becoming jaded and increasingly unmoved by what seemed to be a river but is now merely a steady stream of death in Ukraine. Western press coverage illustrates this declining interest, with Ukraine moving from screaming headlines on page one to straightforward stories on pages three or four. But jadedness is also a welcome condition, a happy relief, as it distracts us from an awful reality that our stated commitment to human rights should compel us to end. We all know that genocide is the ultimate crime against humanity. It can’t be excused, and it must be prevented. Theoretically, that is. In fact, we hope that genocides will just go away and stop interfering in our mundane affairs. Because the only way to stop a genocide is to employ some degree of force — whether economic compulsion or military interference. It’s far easier to rail against China for genocidal policies against the Uyghurs. Easier still is to look the other way, as did the Dutch peacekeepers while several thousand Bosnians were taken to Srebrenica to die — or the millions of Germans who pretended that the concentration camps were benign, or the millions of Russians who ignored Stalin’s repressions and the dire reality of the Gulag. The world’s response to the Rwandan and Cambodian genocides was no less tepid than its response to the Holodomor, Stalin’s famine genocide of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-1933, and of course the Holocaust. The entire world knew of these and many other crimes and did next to nothing. No country stands absolved of some degree of complicity, both in committing crimes against humanity and in failing to respond to crimes against humanity. The world’s current genocide fatigue is thus nothing new. The ongoing Russian extermination of Ukrainians for being Ukrainians should distress all of Russia’s sympathizers in Africa, Asia and Latin America, if only because it so strongly resembles their own colonial experiences. But it doesn’t, because they can pretend that the Russians are resisting American imperialism. The Ukrainian genocide should positively outrage the West. After all, it challenges Europe both normatively and geopolitically. If Russia succeeds in slaughtering tens or hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without any significant opposition from the collective West, then the European Union, which claims to be a community of values, will be exposed as an amoral institution bereft of the right to laud liberalism, rule of law, and democracy and to oppose war-mongering, revanchism, and imperialism. Such a European Union will not survive long. But indifference to the Ukrainian genocide will also herald the EU’s geopolitical irrelevance. If Vladimir Putin can get away with genocide, then the West will have signaled to him that he can target any other country and be assured of the West’s silence. That wouldn’t matter if he had no expansionist agenda, but since he hopes to reconstitute some form of imperial Russia, no country on the Russian Federation’s borders will be safe from Russian encroachments on its sovereignty — and that means Estonia and Poland as much as Georgia and Kazakhstan. Unfortunately, genocide fatigue is so much more comfortable. One can claim to be concerned, while drinking beer and shrugging helplessly. Moreover, claiming that genocide is too strong a word for Putin’s barbarity is one way of pretending that things aren’t quite that bad. Hoping that negotiations with a sociopathic barbarian can produce a lasting peace is another convenient way of pretending genocide isn’t taken place. But genocide fatigue won’t stop the ongoing genocide in Ukraine. It can only delay the ultimate reckoning and eviscerate the West. © 1998 - 2022 NEXSTAR INC. | ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

July 26, 2022 (JUBA) – South Sudan President Salva Kiir and the First Vice President Riek Machar have agreed to extend the current transitional period, citing the need to complete critical benchmarks for the conduct of elections. A well-placed sourced within the presidency said the two leaders agreed to extend the term of the present coalition government for 32 months. “His Excellency, the President of the Republic [of South Sudan] and His Excellency, the First Vice President have agreed in principle to extend the lifespan of the current transitional government national unity. The other vice presidents, actually the presidency as a whole agreed”, the presidential aide told Sudan Tribune on Tuesday. The process, further stated the source, will now be forwarded to the parties signatory to the peace agreement to discuss and incorporate their views before it is taken to the council of ministers, Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (R-JMEC) and then parliament for rectification. “There is a talk currently going on between the leaders. They are consulting each other as parties, as comrades in the government as colleagues in the liberation struggle, and in their capacities as senior citizens to come to terms with the realities of the situation and forge a consensus. Some are talking of 28 months; others are talking of 32 months,” noted the presidential aide. “This is now the talk which the parties will have to decide before their decisions are taken to the council of ministers and the Reconstituted Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission before it goes to parliament for rectification”, he stressed. Observers, however, say views of the public on the matter are diverging. For instance, while some parties to the peace deal support extension of the Revitalized Transitional Government of National Unity (R-TGoNU) when it expires, others have proposed formation of a government of technocrats. In the past, government and opposition officials had argued that elections can only occur after critical benchmarks are met, citing the graduation of unified forces and deploying them to provide security and protect the country’s population. There have also been calls for facilitation of the return of refugees, conduct of population census, review and enacting security-related bills, restructuring electoral commission and the need to approve political parties act, among other issues. Copyright @ 2022 | Sudan Tribune. All rights reserved.

Jihadist rebels last week blew up two bridges in northern Burkina Faso in a bid to isolate key towns in the region, the army said on Tuesday. Children displaced by attacks gather in a makeshift camp for the displaced in Youba in Yatenga province in Burkina Faso. Taken 4.20.2020. © 2022 VOA News. OUAGADOUGOU - Highway bridges at Wousse and Nare villages were blown up almost simultaneously on Friday, the military said. The attacks are "an attempt to isolate" the towns, the military added. The Nare bridge had recently been repaired after being damaged in a bomb blast on June 30. Burkina Faso's ruling junta last month announced it would create two "zones of military interest" in the north and east of the country that are reputed havens for jihadists. In these areas, "human presence is forbidden" - a move aimed at giving the army freer range to crack down on the rebels. Blowing up the bridges "could aim at preventing people from leaving the military zones and enable the terrorists to remain mingled with the population," thus hampering the operation, said Mahamoudou Sawadogo, a security expert. Other attacks in the north this year have "systematically" targeted telecommunications and strategic installations, including an airfield at Ouahigouya, Sawadogo said. Burkina Faso is one of the poorest nations in the world, and since 2015, terrorist incursions have shaken the nation, leaving 1.9 million people displaced and hundreds of people dead. © 2022 VOA News

July 26, 2022 18:23 GMT Ruslan Kulyk was one of five civilians whom relatives and residents say were summarily executed by Russian soldiers at a post office in Peremoha shortly after they seized control of the village on February 28. PEREMOHA, Ukraine -- For years, Serhiy Kulyk has been holding onto a plot of land next to his modest house in Peremoha, a village about 60 kilometers northeast of Kyiv. He hoped his 27-year-old son, Ruslan, would one day build a home on the spot for his own family so they could remain close together. That dream is gone forever: It died along with Ruslan, one of five civilians whom relatives and residents say were summarily executed by Russian soldiers at a post office in Peremoha shortly after they seized control of the village on February 28, according to an investigation by Schemes. The Ukrainian government is investigating the killings as a possible war crime. Based in part on reporting by Schemes, the authorities have identified two Russian officers they allege ordered soldiers to shoot civilians in Peremoha -- Maksim Krasnoshchyokov and Aleksandr Vasilyev -- as suspects. Maksim Krasnoshchyokov (left) and Aleksandr Vasilyev Serhiy and Larysa Kulyk are trying to pick up the pieces of their lives after their loss, but every day the question looms: What’s the point? “We have come to terms a little bit, but it is difficult, very difficult, to bury your children,” Ruslan’s mother, Larysa Kulyk, told Schemes, an investigative unit of RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service, as she placed flowers on the fresh grave of her only son. After Russian forces were driven out of Peremoha in March and April, the Kulyks went back to a semblance of the lives they were living before Russia’s unprovoked invasion of Ukraine on February 24, including returning to work. But the attraction of everyday activities, like tending to their garden and picking food for their children, has faded. “Why do we need [the garden] without our son?” Larysa Kulyk asked through tears. “What is the purpose?” Shot On The Stairs The Kulyks, who have two adult daughters, are among thousands of Ukrainian families across the country who have lost loved ones in Russia’s war, which is grinding on more than five months after the invasion with no end in sight. Their son and the four other men shot at the post office are among the many victims of Russian soldiers who held sway in parts of northern Ukraine in the weeks after the invasion -- and left a trail of death, destruction, and allegations of rape, torture, and other atrocities when they retreated, having failed to take Kyiv. Peremoha, which means victory in Ukrainian and is named after the Allied victory over Nazi Germany in World War II, is one of the many cities, towns, and villages in the Kyiv and Chernihiv regions that Russian forces swept into from the north in the first several days of the invasion. On the evening of February 28, the day Russian troops entered the village, Serhiy and Ruslan Kulyk made their way to the post office. They were part of a group of Peremoha men communicating via chat about how to defend their village of 1,100 people. Several of the men had agreed to meet that day at the post office, where one of them worked, to discuss what steps to take. Serhiy Kulyk told Schemes that he thought the Russian column of armored vehicles would pass through Peremoha on its way to Rusaniv, a village 7 kilometers to the west. He expected the Russian forces to face stiff resistance in Rusaniv -- and reasoned that as they retreated, Peremoha’s volunteer defenders could try to pick off some armored vehicles with Molotov cocktails. But the column stopped in Peremoha, he said, and the Russian soldiers immediately began looking for individuals -- especially men -- serving in local militias known as territorial defense units or in any way helping the Ukrainian armed forces. Peremoha resident Olena Palivoda said she told her husband, Oleksandr, not to meet up with the group at the post office, warning him that it was too dangerous. It was one thing for the villagers to attack a single Russian military vehicle with Molotov cocktails, she told him, and another for them to stare down at an entire armored column. "We will defend the village," she said he answered in reply. Palivoda said her husband and the others may have been inspired by videos of Ukrainian acts of heroism during the first four days of the war. But whatever plans they may have had, they never got a chance to put them into action. Russian troops learned of their meeting, possibly from a collaborator or a villager they interrogated, and made their way to the post office. Ruslan's Last Text Serhiy and Ruslan Kulik had nearly reached the building when they saw Russian armored vehicles heading in the same direction, Serhiy said. He said he ran through a fence and called out to his son, who he thought was running behind him, only to realize later that he had decided to hide with others in the cellar of the post office building. “Mom, they have almost found us,” Ruslan texted that night, at 9:50 p.m. It was the last time his parents heard from him. Andriy stands in the ruins of the post office building. “Before my eyes, they were simply shot and thrown into the basement,” he said. Andriy, another member of the group chat, told Schemes he was captured by Russian forces near the village council building and beaten. The soldiers interrogated him, taking his phone away, and frog-marched him to the post office, where they interrogated him again. Two other men were being questioned there as well. The soldiers ordered the two other men into the cellar, he said, and shot them from behind as they took the first few steps down the stairs. “Before my eyes, they were simply shot and thrown into the basement,” said Andriy, who did not want his last name published. He would later learn that the Russian soldiers had already killed three other men inside the post office, their bodies lying out of sight in the cellar. The post office now lies in ruins. Andriy said the soldiers blew it up in an attempt to hide evidence of the killings. Four of Andriy’s childhood friends, including Ruslan Kulyk, were among the dead. Oleksandr Palivoda, who had moved to Peremoha three years ago, was the fifth victim. The post office now lies in ruins. Andriy said the soldiers blew it up in an attempt to hide evidence of the killings. Since the invasion, Russian forces have targeted Ukrainian civilian men for interrogations, beatings, and in some cases extrajudicial execution, sometimes accusing them of helping the military. 'Happiest Day' Civilians who spontaneously take up arms -- as Ruslan Kulyk and the other victims may have been planning to do -- are entitled by international law to protection against violence when captured. The post office massacre is among countless acts by Russian soldiers -- some proven, some alleged -- that are being investigated as possible war crimes. While some of the suspects are in Ukrainian custody, most of them -- including the two soldiers named by the authorities in the killings at the post office in Peremoha, both of them majors who eyewitnesses said were giving orders -- have either been killed, are still fighting, or have returned to Russia. Like Serhiy and Larysa Kulyk, other relatives and residents are struggling to come to terms with the killings five months later. Olena Palivoda left Peremoha with her son after her husband’s killing, but she has since returned. The couple had toiled for a decade to save up money for the house they bought there. Among other work, they sold strawberries, raspberries, and vegetables they grew in the garden of their previous home to make money for the purchase. "For us, it was the happiest day of our lives,” Olena said of the day they bought the house. “It’s our castle.” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty © 2022 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

July 26, 2022 16:29 GMT A Ukrainian photographer is documenting harrowing stories from residents of the areas around Kyiv occupied by Russian forces at the opening of the 2022 Russian invasion. Rustem, Bucha Rustem's house is on Vokzalnaya Street, where a column of Russian equipment was destroyed. When that battle was under way, Rustem was hiding in the basement with his son, wife, and other relatives. An infantry fighting vehicle exploded near their property. As a result of the intense fire, the garage -- with their car inside -- was destroyed. Smoke poured into the house, and when they went out into the street they saw neighboring houses had caught fire, as well. After surviving this, the locals of Bucha thought that everything was over and the Russians had retreated. But on March 4, Russian soldiers returned and set up in a neighboring house. The inhabitants managed to flee to Rustem's place. They hid from the Russians all night. Then, on March 5, soldiers knocked on the door. The residents shouted: "We’re old people and children. We’re unarmed.” The Russians drove everyone out of the house, lined them up, checked documents, and then they smashed their phones. One phone miraculously remained intact, and Rustem's wife stuffed it into her bag. They were given five minutes to pack. The owner of the house wanted to take a cat named Snowball. Rustem tried to put the cat inside a bag, but she jumped out and ran away. The soldiers moved everyone to the basement of a multistory building on a nearby street. There was a whole crowd of Russian soldiers there and armored vehicles in every yard. The neighbors on Sadovaya Street had a command vehicle on their property. After spending several nights in the basement, Rustem asked the Russians to let people go. The soldiers released 10, including a woman with a 3-year-old child, but one family was kept in the basement for another four days. Rustem and the rest of the group who were released walked to Irpin, where they stayed overnight. Irpin was bombed all night. The group waited for the morning, then continued. They were picked up by volunteers and taken to the famous broken bridge near Irpin, and from there they were transported to Kyiv. Graffiti left by Russian soldiers. After spending a month in Poltava, in eastern Ukraine, with his brother, Rustem returned to Bucha following the Russian retreat. At the entrance to his house, the cat, Snowball, was waiting for him. Inside, there were empty bottles of wine, abandoned soldiers' boots, and graffiti in his son's room that read: "It was orders” -- followed by a misspelled English-language “Sorri." Iryna, Bucha After the Russians captured Bucha, Iryna was afraid to go outside. She sat in the house with her sick mother and waited to die. She lived on Yablonska Street, which later become infamous as Bucha’s street of death. Four days into the occupation, a neighbor came to draw water from the well and told Iryna that the Russians let people go outside “if there's a white bandage on your sleeve.” Iryna started to go into her yard to to cook food over an open fire and to collect water. Russian soldiers settled in two neighboring buildings. They didn’t want to live in Iryna’s modest house, but they put an armored vehicle in her yard and camouflaged it with rags. Russian soldiers often came to the well to fill square plastic containers with water. Iryna talked with them and told them she was frightened. They said they were terrified, too. The soldiers, especially those who arrived in the first wave of the invasion, were very scared. It was impossible to get used to the gunfire. A yard in Bucha that was occupied by Russian soldiers. On March 18-19, there was a rotation of the soldiers and the first wave was replaced with new troops. Wherever the Russians placed their vehicles, they were hit with very accurate [Ukrainian] strikes, and there were Russian casualties. Iryna didn’t see the bodies of the Russians because the troops didn’t leave their comrades lying in the street, but they suffered severe losses. When she was cooking outside, she could hear what the Russian soldiers were talking about from the houses on either side. In the early days of the occupation, Iryna accepted that the soldiers were just victims of circumstance, until she saw the atrocities being committed. The Russians killed three men and buried them near a neighbor’s house. Then they killed her friend Dima who was sitting near a house, smoking. On a nearby corner, the soldiers kicked people out of a house. People came out with their hands raised, then a grenade was thrown inside. The property owner was shot and his body lay in the street for a month. Iryna also watched through a window as Russian soldiers buried the body of a next-door neighbor. Iryna’s mother wasn’t able to get medical help. She died on March 14. Iryna asked two men living in the basement of an apartment building to help with the burial. She received permission from the Russian soldiers to bury her mother in the yard. An armored vehicle loomed above them as they dug. In April, when this photo was taken, Iryna’s mother’s body was still interred in the yard. After her mother’s death, Iryna moved to a safer place in the basement of another apartment building. Sometimes Iryna went home to make food or to change her clothes. Once the Russians came into the basement to forbid people from going out onto Yablonska Street, telling people it was coming under fire. Iryna thinks it may have been an attempt to hide the extent of their atrocities from locals. When Ukrainian troops arrived, Iryna could not believe that Bucha had been freed and that this nightmare was over. She cried when she saw Ukrainian soldiers with a flag. Yuriy, Puscha-Vodytsa He's a widower who lives in a beautiful place near the forest on the northwestern edge of Kyiv. Everything in the house is made by hand. On the veranda, there is furniture he made himself. After the Russian advance, not a single house in the neighborhood remained untouched. Everyone was affected to varying degrees. If the walls and the roof of a house remained, then the owners counted themselves lucky. In early March, a neighbor said, “Come over. My mother-in-law made soup. We’ll eat and then leave. Heavy shelling has begun.” Yuriy was preparing to evacuate. He had gold, money, and documents on the table, but as he was going to meet his neighbor at the end of the street, a short Russian soldier with a white cloth around his arm came out of the forest and yelled, “Hands up!” Yuriy raised his hands, then was told to “lie down!” He has sciatica, so he was moving very slowly. Then he heard gunshots. The bullets hit Yuriy's arm, heel, and thigh. By some miracle, none hit his vital organs. Meanwhile, the neighbor, Serhiy, was standing in the yard of his house. Yuri shouted, “Seryozha, they got me!” The Russian soldier heard that and called to his boys, “There’s a second one. There’s a second one! Get to work!” And again there was a burst of automatic weapons. Serhiy shouted “[Yuriy] Ivanovich, I can’t leave the yard. Crawl towards me!” Under fire, Yuriy crawled to the corner of the fence, where someone grabbed him by the hood and dragged him inside the yard. Then he passed out. He woke up inside a house and saw his neighbor tearing a sheet into ribbons for bandages. The hole in his arm was huge; the wound on his heel hung open. When Serhiy and Serhiy's mother-in-law were patching his wounds, Russian soldiers came into the house, shouting, “Hands up!” Everyone raised their hands, and the Russians asked, “Are there [Ukrainian] soldiers here?” Then they got everyone down on their knees. The Russians searched the house and forbade anyone from going outside. “We will check,” they said, but they never returned. For a week, Yuriy lay in bed. He ate almost nothing. They were between Ukrainian and Russian lines. There was no Internet or phone connection. Artillery shells, mortars, Uragan rockets, and cluster bombs were flying overhead. Serhiy made crutches for Yuriy out of boards so he could move around. Due to the lack of antibiotics, Yuriy’s wounds festered and had to be washed with chamomile and other treatments. One day, a group of Russian soldiers came into Serhiy’s yard. He counted 32 men. They had good uniforms and weapons, and each of them was armed with a grenade launcher. Three of them came into the house and spotted a bottle of liquor in the corridor. “What do we have here?” they asked. “Horilka? (a traditional Ukrainian spirit). Can we try some?” “Even if I say no, you’ll still drink it,” Yuriy replied. The soldiers drank a couple of glasses. “Oh, it’s good,” they said. On the third glass, they drank to dead comrades. Two of them left and the eldest went up to Yuriy and said, “Old man, I’m sorry. It’s not us who are fighting. It’s our government that has waged this war.” Yuriy replied, “And yet it’s you who are here, not the government.” The Russian soldier replied, “We are following orders!” and then turned around and left. If they had known the soldiers were going to come, they’d have poisoned the liquor. A destroyed checkpoint once manned by Russian soldiers in Bucha. In the middle of March, a cold snap came. It got down to -10 Celsius. There was no electricity. They lived in their jackets. At the same time, there was heavy shelling to the point that it made life impossible. There was nowhere to hide. When Serhiy went out to a toilet in the yard, a shell exploded and shrapnel caught him in the arm and groin. Now there were two wounded people in the house. Serhiy got worse. The wounds became infected and his mother-in-law nursed him. Yuriy said a prayer: "Mother of God, there are no hopeless situations. Get us out of here, for there is always a way out.” On March 23, the Ukrainian military pushed the Russians out of the area and some Ukrainian soldiers arrived at Serhiy’s house. The soldiers told them they needed to evacuate quickly. When the Ukrainian fighters saw Yuriy on makeshift crutches, they told him, “No, granddad. Don’t.” The soldiers emptied a wheelbarrow they were using to collect anti-tank mines, sat Yuriy inside, and hurried to the evacuation bus. The bus drove slowly through the forest, then full speed along the highway to the hospital. Serhiy underwent surgery and Yuriy returned to the village. Traces of the Russian military are visible all over. All the valuables and money, even a portrait of Yuriy’s deceased wife, have disappeared. He is restoring his house. Roses are growing through the rubble. Life goes on. The tendon on one arm still doesn’t work, but he can wield a hatchet and a hammer. The most important thing, he says, is to keep some vodka nearby, to drink to victory! May, Irpin May is 92 years old. In March, Russian troops bombarded her town of Irpin, near Kyiv. Three shells hit her house and the building burned quickly. May managed to grab a sheet to wrap herself with, then ran out into the street. She stood in the middle of the road until some neighbors took her into their house. That night, three more houses burned down nearby. Damage from shelling in a sports field in Irpin With the help of her neighbors, May left for Lviv in western Ukraine. Then in the summer, the woman returned to Irpin and now lives in a settlement for displaced people. Maya says: “My own land was calling me.” May grew flowers of Ukrainian tobacco, roses, and lilies. Sometimes she comes to her yard and digs up flowers to give to her neighbors. The authorities promised to help with the restoration of houses after the war, but when this will happen and whether the woman will live to see it is the big question. Volodymyr, Bucha On March 5, Volodymyr was walking his dog in Bucha when suddenly a Kadyrovite -- a Russian soldier loyal to infamous Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov -- came out from around the corner and pointed a machine gun at him. Volodymyr jumped onto the porch for cover. At the same moment there was the loud whistle and an explosion of an incoming shell. The multistory house shook violently. Volodymyr came out from the porch and saw the upper floors were burning. He went around the house from the other side and photographed the fire. The photo Vladimir took was published by the BBC. At that time, the Russians shot at local residents indiscriminately. It was deadly to go out on the road. If soldiers spotted you, you were as good as dead. A Russian sniper's nest in Bucha One day, Volodymyr watched from his balcony as Russian soldiers shot a man on the street below. A moment later, he heard a sound, and Volodymyr noticed a bullet sticking out of the railing in front of him. A sniper had wanted to get rid of the witness. Volodymyr thinks they shot at him with a silenced gun. The Russians killed other residents of his apartment block and destroyed the cars in the yard. When shelling started, the residents of the apartments didn’t go down into the basement. They just stayed in their apartments and let fate decide. To prevent Russian soldiers from breaking into the building after dark, they firmly locked the door each night. In the first half of March, Volodymyr went with his neighbors around the district, gathering corpses. Some died of natural causes; others were killed by the Russians. Once the Russian military took Volodymyr to identify a corpse. He saw that the dead man was a Russian and said: "This is not ours." The soldiers told him: "Well, what are we supposed to do? Take it away.” Volodymyr responded, “Why should I put him with our dead? Do what you want. You bury him.” When they opened the last humanitarian corridor, Volodymyr left Bucha through the city of Vorzel. He got there on foot with his dog. When he passed by the Russian checkpoint, a Kadyrovite wanted to shoot him, but other soldiers liked the dog and they let Volodymyr live. Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty © 2022 RFE/RL, Inc. All Rights Reserved.