In Nepal, calls grow for the restoration of a Hindu state. A resurgent Hindu nationalism in the former Hindu kingdom is drawing strength from India’s ruling BJP. The Pashupatinath Temple on the banks of the Bagmati River in Kathmandu, Nepal. Credit: Wikimedia Commons/Bijay Chaurasia Santosh Sharma Poudel ¦ December 9th 2021 In August of this year, a group of people led by former Nepal Army General Rookmangud Katawal launched a campaign for the restoration of Nepal as a Hindu state. Dubbed the Hindu Rastra Swabhiman Jagaran Abhiyan, which loosely translates as the Campaign for Dignity and Awareness for a Hindu State, the campaign will focus on “identity and culture” based on religion. Katawal, who was Nepal’s Army chief between 2006 and 2009, said that “the goal of the campaign is to restore Hindu Identity and not establish Hindu fundamentalism.” Just two weeks earlier, around 20 Hindu religious organizations formed a united front in Devghat in Nepal’s Tanahun district and decided to take to the streets for the restoration of Nepal’s former status as a Hindu state. Around 81.3 percent of Nepal’s population is Hindu. It was in 2007 that Nepal was declared a secular state by the interim constitution. However, not everybody was happy with the move. Among them was the Rashtriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal (RPP-Nepal), a conservative royalist party, which identifies the monarchy and the Hindu state as its primary platform. The royalists won almost 7 percent of the votes in the second Constituent Assembly elections in 2013, which reconfirmed Nepal as a secular republic. Since then, a small but not insignificant section of the populace has kept the hope of restoring the Hindu state alive. The demand for a Hindu nation has gone hand in hand with the demand for the return of the monarchy. This is because the monarchy has meshed with Hinduism and the monarch has been regarded as the avatar (form) of the Hindu deity, Bishnu. The allure of the Hindu nation has increased significantly in recent years. And it is not just the royalists who are seeking to go back to the old ways. During his tenure, former Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli whipped up Hindu nationalist sentiments. He claimed that Madi in Nepal, not Ayodhya in India, was the birthplace of Lord Ram. He installed idols of Ram in Madi after a worship ceremony he held at the prime minister’s official residence. Oli was also the first communist prime minister to worship at the Pashupatinath Temple and donated $2.5 million of government funds to the temple. Earlier this year, Surendra Pandey, recently elected the vice chair of Oli’s party, predicted that Oli would soon declare the restoration of the Hindu state as a key item on his electoral agenda. (It has not happened so far.) Public enthusiasm on the issue is growing, as evidenced by an increasing number of people participating in in pro-monarchy/Hindu rallies led by youth groups. It would not be surprising if the major mainstream parties in Nepal include restoration of the Hindu state in their manifestos for the next general election. There are several reasons for the rise of Hindu nationalism and support for the restoration of the Hindu state. For RPP-Nepal, the issue goes to the heart of its political philosophy. Oli used Hindu nationalism instrumentally, though he does not have much affinity for a “secular” state. He used the religious-nationalist card to burnish his credentials when his back was against the wall due to deep divisions within his party, the Nepal Communist Party. Many people have been disappointed by the performance and conduct of the mainstream political parties over the last decade-and-a-half and harken back to the previous monarchical era. Hindu nationalism has also surged as a counter to the rise in ethnic and linguistic nationalism as well as in response to the increased presence of Christian missionaries in the Nepali hinterlands. For a long time, Nepali nationalism was defined by the Hindu Brahmins and Chettris, the dominant castes from the hills. King Mahendra promoted Nepali nationalism which identified with “ek raja, ek desh, ek bhasa, ek bhesh” (one king, one state, one language, one dress). It promoted the dominance of hilly upper-caste people and marginalized the ethnic communities, especially in the Terai region i.e., the plains. Being the only Hindu kingdom in the world was a source of identity and pride. The Janaandloan II (people’s movement in 2006) and subsequent Madhes aandolan (in 2007 and 2008) brought forth the issues of marginalized communities to the center of Nepali politics. The subsequent constitutions of 2007 (interim) and 2015 recognized that, and ensured the representation of these groups through progressive affirmative action. As a result, Brahmins and Chettris felt uncomfortable with the changing social dynamics. They feel that Nepal has lost its identity, and the way forward is the restoration of the Hindu nation. The rise to power in India of the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has had a significant influence on Nepal too. In the BJP, Nepal’s Hindu nationalists have found an ally. BJP leader and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath wrote a letter in 2015 (he was only a member of parliament then) to the Nepali prime minister saying that Nepal must be a Hindu state and ban religious conversion. The Nepali constitution was about to be finalized at that time. Earlier Adityanath had said that a Hindu king and Hindu culture were part of Nepal’s soul, and without them Nepal would disintegrate. He attended a religious gathering in Nepal in 2016 at the invitation of former King Gyanendra Shah. He has consistently expressed hope that Nepal will be restored as a Hindu state. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi has also made a religious pilgrimage to Nepal. In his two-day visit to Nepal in 2018, he visited three major religious sites at Janakpur, Muktinath, and Pashupatinath. He emphasized the religious and cultural ties between India and Nepal. Many critics had said then that the visit was largely aimed at shoring up the support of Hindu voters in India. On a recent visit to Nepal, BJP spokesperson Vijay Shankar Shastri said: “Nepal was a Hindu state and will always remain so.” Other Hindu groups from India such as Hindu Janjagruti Samiti have campaigned online and provided support for the restoration of the Hindu state. Nepalis like to assert their own identity, often “othering” India, but in this case, the Hindu nationalists on both sides of the border have found a common cause. In a way, developments in Nepal reflect a global phenomenon. In many countries, majority groups that had enjoyed historical dominance are pushing back on ‘progressive’ policies designed to promote the causes of minorities. In Nepal’s context, Hindus are the ones on the march. © 2021 DIPLOMAT MEDIA INC.

UN Rights Body Should Create International Inquiry into War Crimes The shallow grave of an unidentified person killed during fighting in the village of Chenna, in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Residents said it was dug in early September 2021 after Tigrayan fighters left the area. © 2021 Tom Gardner Tigrayan forces summarily executed dozens of civilians in two towns they controlled in Ethiopia’s northern Amhara region between August 31 and September 9, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. These killings highlight the urgent need for the United Nations Human Rights Council to establish an international investigative mechanism into abuses by all warring parties in the expanded Tigray conflict. On August 31, Tigrayan forces entered the village of Chenna and engaged in sporadic and at times heavy fighting with Ethiopian federal forces and allied Amhara militias. Chenna residents told Human Rights Watch that over the next five days Tigrayan forces summarily executed 26 civilians in 15 separate incidents, before withdrawing on September 4. In the town of Kobo on September 9, Tigrayan forces summarily executed a total of 23 people in four separate incidents, witnesses said. The killings were in apparent retaliation for attacks by farmers on advancing Tigrayan forces earlier that day. “Tigrayan forces showed brutal disregard for human life and the laws of war by executing people in their custody,” said Lama Fakih, crisis and conflict director at Human Rights Watch. “These killings and other atrocities by all sides to the conflict underscore the need for an independent international inquiry into alleged war crimes in Ethiopia’s Tigray and Amhara regions.” © Human Rights Watch Since the start of the armed conflict in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region in November 2020, Ethiopian military forces, alongside Eritrean armed forces, Amhara regional special forces, and Amhara militias, have fought against a Tigrayan armed group affiliated with the region’s former ruling party, the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). Human Rights Watch and other rights organizations have documented war crimes and possible crimes against humanity in the Tigray region by all parties to the conflict. In July, fighting expanded to the neighboring Amhara region, leading to large-scale displacement, with 3.7 million people in the region in need of humanitarian assistance. In September and October, Human Rights Watch remotely interviewed 36 people, including witnesses to killings, victims’ relatives and neighbors, religious figures, and doctors about fighting and abuses in and around Chenna Teklehaimanot village (Chenna) and the town of Kobo. Nineteen people described seeing Tigrayan fighters in Chenna and Kobo summarily execute a total of 49 people who they said were civilians, providing 44 names. Human Rights Watch also obtained three lists of civilians who had allegedly been killed in Chenna between August 31 and September 4. Taken together, the lists contain 74 names, 30 of which witnesses and relatives of those killed also mentioned to Human Rights Watch. In addition to summary executions, civilians may also have been killed during the fighting from crossfire or heavy weapons. Human Rights Watch was not able to determine how many were killed in this way. A 70-year-old man said that two Tigrayan fighters killed his son, 23, and nephew, 24, in his home in Chenna’s Agosh-Mado neighborhood on September 2: “At about midday two Tigrayan fighters came to my compound … they asked [for] our identity cards and accused us of being members of the local defense forces. Then they tied my son and nephew’s hands behind their backs and took them out through the gate of my compound and shot them dead there. Then they turned to me, and I begged them not to kill me and they left.” Witnesses also said that Tigrayan forces put civilians at grave risk by holding them in residential compounds and shooting from those compounds at Ethiopian troops positioned on nearby hills, drawing return fire. Such actions may amount to “human shielding,” a war crime. Tigrayan forces seized control of Kobo in North Wollo district in mid-July. According to residents of Kobo and nearby villages, on the morning of September 9, Tigrayan forces from Kobo conducted operations in neighboring villages. As these forces searched for weapons in at least two villages, farmers there attacked the Tigrayan forces and fighting ensued. When Tigrayan forces returned to Kobo shortly after midday, they attacked farmers working in the fields between the villages and Kobo. Four residents described the summary execution of 23 people, including farmers returning to Kobo, in four incidents in the town. A resident of Kobo’s Segno Gebia neighborhood said that at about 2 p.m. on September 9 he watched from the window of his home as Tigrayan forces executed four men. “At one point I saw about 50 Tigrayan fighters,” he said. “About five of them went into a room where you can chew qat [a popular mild stimulant] and brought out four men who were my neighbors and just shot them. I don’t know why they chose them.” On December 4, Human Rights Watch sent TPLF authorities a summary of findings requesting comment but received no response. The UN Human Rights Council should urgently establish an independent international mechanism to investigate abuses in the Tigray conflict, which has since expanded into the neighboring Amhara and Afar regions. The investigation should include alleged summary executions and other serious violations of the laws of war by Tigrayan forces, identify those responsible at all levels, and preserve evidence for future accountability, Human Rights Watch said. The UN Security Council should add Ethiopia to its formal agenda and urgently take concrete measures against the warring parties to deter further abuses, including targeted sanctions and a global arms embargo. “Tigrayan forces’ apparent war crimes in Chenna and Kobo spotlight the urgent need for all warring parties in Ethiopia to prioritize the protection of civilians,” Fakih said. “The UN Security Council needs to pressure the parties to make this happen through sanctions and an arms embargo.” Expanding Conflict in the Amhara Region Since the armed conflict began in Ethiopia’s Tigray region in November 2020, human rights groups and the media have documented serious laws-of-war violations by the Ethiopian military and their allied forces. Tigrayan militias have also been responsible for attacks against Eritrean refugees. Following the withdrawal of Ethiopian federal forces from most of Tigray in June, the government has imposed an effective siege on the region, blocking essential humanitarian aid and services. By July, Tigrayan forces had moved into neighboring Afar and Amhara regions, displacing hundreds of thousands of civilians, some multiple times, and triggering widespread humanitarian needs. Tigrayan forces have also committed sexual violence against women and girls in the Amhara region. On November 4, Ethiopian federal authorities declared a state of emergency granting security forces sweeping powers, and called on the population to mobilize and join the fight against Tigrayan forces. Tigray Forces Occupy Chenna, August 31 – September 4, 2021 The shallow grave of an unidentified person killed during fighting in the village of Chenna, in the Amhara region of Ethiopia. Residents said it was dug in early September 2021 after Tigrayan fighters left the area. © 2021 Tom Gardner Chenna is a small rural village in Dabat woreda (district), North Gondar zone in the Amhara region. Ethiopian soldiers stationed in the village left suddenly on August 30 and were replaced by a new contingent of Ethiopian forces that afternoon, residents said. At about 4 a.m. on August 31, Tigrayan forces entered Chenna. They fought the Ethiopian military troops at close quarters for two days before the Ethiopian forces retreated from the village. On September 4, Ethiopian military forces, Amhara militias, and Amhara regional special forces retook the village. Residents said that Tigrayan forces occupied residential compounds while in the village. Two witnesses said that these forces fired on Ethiopian forces positioned in nearby hills when no civilians were in the compounds. However, another described a situation in which Tigrayan forces forced civilians to remain in a compound, possibly using them as human shields. Two others said Tigrayan forces deployed in compounds with civilians remaining in them, putting the civilians at risk when Ethiopian forces returned fire. Both sides used heavy weapons, including artillery, mortars, and machine guns. A man from the nearby village of Wakken, who had just completed 15 days of military training by Ethiopian soldiers when Tigrayan forces seized Chenna, said that on the morning of August 31 he joined the soldiers fighting in nearby mountains, where they exchanged fire with Tigrayan forces in Chenna. Another said that on September 2 and 3, Ethiopian forces’ use of heavy weapons, including mortars, against Tigrayan forces in Chenna was particularly intense. Genet said that Tigrayan forces occupied her family’s large compound, firing DShK mounted machine guns at Ethiopian forces on the mountainside. She said that on September 3, Ethiopian forces fired at the compound using unspecified heavy weapons that killed some Tigrayan fighters and damaged the animal shed, killing some cows and donkeys. At one point, Tigrayan soldiers speaking Amharic and Tigrinya came to her house, she said, saying they were redeploying to her compound because Ethiopian forces had fired on their troops in the church. Several residents said they saw Tigrayan forces occupy the villages’ main church and one said they occupied a school. Five residents said that Tigrayan forces pressured families to slaughter their cattle and cook for them in their compounds without paying. Two residents also said that Tigrayan forces made them carry supplies. Civilians were caught in the fighting. Some Chenna villagers fought alongside government soldiers, which under the laws of war would be directly participating in the hostilities. Others carried food for the government troops or tended to the wounded, which would not subject them to attack. Summary Execution of Civilians in Chenna Chenna residents interviewed provided the names of 39 civilians they said Tigrayan forces summarily executed while occupying the village, although they only saw 26 of them being killed. In addition, Human Rights Watch obtained three lists of 57, 48, and 37 names, drawn up by a local official and two priests who had each overseen the funerals of about 30 people after the fighting had ended. They said the civilians on the lists were killed between August 31 and September 4, although they did not know how each person had been killed. Some names appeared on two or all three of the lists and, removing duplicates, the total number of names comes to 74. In addition, 9 names from the Human Rights Watch interviews do not appear on any of the three lists. A doctor working at the University Hospital in Gondar city, said that injured civilians were first taken from Chenna to the nearby Dabat Hospital on September 4 and 5, and then referred to Gondar from September 6 onward. He estimated that 35 of the people referred from Dabat were civilians from Chenna, including 3 women and 3 children. Between September 6 and 11, the hospital also received more than 1,000 injured Ethiopian soldiers and civilians who had been injured while fighting in Chenna and nearby areas or otherwise assisting Ethiopian forces. Local officials reported that between 120 and 200 civilians had been killed during the fighting, but Human Rights Watch was unable to corroborate those additional cases. Human Rights Watch interviewed 15 people, who described 15 incidents in which Tigrayan forces summarily executed 26 civilians in Chenna between August 31 and September 4, including 22 men, 1 woman, and 3 children. Human Rights Watch corroborated 3 of these cases in which a total of 4 people were killed. In the other 12 incidents, Human Rights Watch was only able to speak with one witness. On August 31, groups of Tigrayan fighters, hours after occupying Chenna, entered a residential compound, confiscated the food in the house, and took away a farmer and his brother. The farmer’s wife, Martha, said: They kicked and slapped my husband and brother-in-law. They ate our food and then they left and other Tigrayan forces came for some time and left, and a third group came. They stayed until midday. They took my husband and brother-in-law with them in the direction of Chinchaye sub-village and kicked and slapped them. I followed them and they beat me, telling me to stay behind, but I ignored them. They spoke in Tigrinya, which I don’t understand, but also in Amharic and I heard them ask my husband and brother-in-law whether they were militia members. They said no, they were farmers. When we reached the edge of Chenchaye, they told my husband to put down a bag of bullets they had told him to carry and to turn his face away. Then one of them shot him in the back of the head. I fainted. The fighters released the brother-in-law, but Martha added how she has not been seen or heard from him since. Hilina said that her husband and brother-in-law were killed in apparent retaliation for her father-in-law’s participation in fighting against Tigrayan forces in Chenna. Hilina explained: At about 2 p.m. on September 1, I was with one of my husband’s relatives close to my home in Dia sub-village. Tigrayan fighters approached and shot over her head, shouting that she should tell them whether any of her relatives had fought against them in Chenna. She told them that my brother-in-law’s father, a local militia member, had joined local farmers fighting against them. They beat her until she showed them his house. The next day at about 11 a.m., I saw about 10 of them go to his house, very close to ours, and they found his [adult] son. They brought him out of the house and took him to the edge of a field one minute away. I heard them speaking to him in Tigrinya and Amharic and they accused him of giving information to his father about where Tigrayan fighters were in Chenna. Then one of them shot him in his abdomen, killing him. On September 3 at about midday, my husband returned from a different area and found out that his brother had been killed. He started crying. Soon after that, Tigrayan forces came to our house, said he was the son of a militia member and took him to the Laka River about three minutes from our house, above Saint George’s church. I followed them and saw them shoot him in the abdomen, killing him. Another woman, Eyerusalem, said that just before Tigrayan forces left Chenna on September 4, they killed her 60-year-old father and her 67-year-old grandfather’s brother: It was about 10 a.m. on Saturday [September 4] and I was at my father’s house with him, together with my great uncle who lives right next to us in Digansa sub-village. Suddenly, Tigrayan fighters who were being pushed out of the village by Ethiopian soldiers came into our compound. They were angry that they were losing the battle. They stayed for about an hour. Just before they left, they took my father and great uncle outside the front of the compound. Two of them tied my father’s hands behind his back and then shot him. Four of them then shot my great uncle. Two other Chenna residents said Tigrayan fighters killed two residents, whose names they provided, in two separate incidents for refusing to slaughter livestock for the fighters. A local priest said that Tigrayan forces shot and killed his 22-year-old neighbor: I was in my home compound with my neighbor. The Tigrayan forces kept coming in and out of my compound and told us to prepare food for them. On September 2, they beat my neighbor to force him to slaughter my goats. The next day, other fighters told him to steal other peoples’ goats and bring them to my compound and slaughter them. When he refused, they took him outside my compound and tied him to a tree and shot him in the head. Summary Executions of Civilians in and around Kobo, September 9 The town of Kobo, in the North Wollo district of the Amhara region, has an estimated population of about 60,000. Human Rights Watch interviewed 13 displaced residents of Kobo about fighting there and in nearby villages to the east and south on September 9 and 10. They had fled to the town of Dessie, about 165 kilometers from Kobo, shortly after September 10, where they joined thousands of others who had already fled Kobo when Tigrayan forces controlled the town in mid-July. Human Rights Watch was unable to reach people by phone who were still in Kobo or the surrounding areas because the phone network had been down since then. Four people interviewed said they had spoken with people from villages south of Kobo who had described what had happened. These people said that on September 9 between about 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., Tigrayan forces entered their villages and searched for weapons. In at least two villages, Gedemeyu and Zobel, farmers responded by attacking the Tigrayan forces, they said. Two residents said that as Tigrayan forces retreated along the main road from the villages toward Kobo, they killed farmers in the fields. A farmer from Kobo said he heard gunshots as he worked on his land between Kobo and Gedemeyu village on September 9: I saw Tigrayan fighters driving along the road from Kobo to Gedemeyu at about 9 a.m. At about 11 a.m., I heard gunshots and about two hours later I heard gunshots getting louder. I fled back to Kobo with many of the other farmers there, but some of the farmers stayed in their fields. He said the next day he spoke to some of those farmers in Kobo: They told me that as the Tigrayan forces returned on the road to Kobo, they shot at the farmers in the fields. On the next day, September 11, I went back to my land and helped recover three bodies of farmers who were lying in the fields. One of them was my cousin. We buried them that day in Saint Michaels church in Kobo. I also saw nine other bodies during their burial in Saint George’s church in Kobo that day, who people said had been killed on the farms between Kobo and Gedemeyu, too. Tigrayan forces returned from the nearby villages to Kobo around 2 p.m. on September 9 and searched houses for weapons in various parts of Kobo, including the Buna Bank in Ketana 5, and Segno Kebeya neighborhood, two residents said. That same day, Tigrayan forces executed 23 civilians in three neighborhoods in the city, four residents said. Local residents in Kobo told journalists they had seen dozens of corpses in the streets. Five people said they saw bodies lying in the streets that afternoon but did not know their identities. Ahmed, a minibus driver from Kobo said: The morning of September 9, I drove my minibus from Kobo to Weldiya village nearby and drove back to Kobo between 1 and 2 p.m., passing through the usual Tigrayan checkpoint near Kobo. When we entered the town, we heard gunfire. We tried to reach my house, but I got stuck due to the fighting. I parked my minibus in the Segno Gabia neighborhood and went with my assistant to a local shop until about 5 p.m. The fighting died down a bit, so we tried to walk to my house. Near my house, we saw many dead bodies on the ground including a woman. A baby was also crying on the body of another dead woman. Then we reached a major junction in the area. Tigrayan forces stopped us there. Some of them were teenagers. I saw six people whose hands had been tied behind their backs and who were standing in a line. They were wearing civilian clothes and they didn’t have any guns. Then one of the fighters ordered other fighters to shoot me and my assistant, but one of the fighters recognized me from a checkpoint outside Kobo I had driven through earlier that day. He said they shouldn’t shoot me because I was a driver, not a fighter. I speak Tigrinya and told them all that my assistant was also a driver, not a fighter, but one of the fighters said I was lying. At that moment, one of the six people with their hands tied behind their back ran away and my assistant ran away too. One of the fighters then shot my assistant in the back and killed him, while the other man escaped. They shot him in the back. Then one of the fighters ordered the teenage fighters to shoot the other five men with their hands tied and they did, one by one. Then they let me go. Another resident said that on September 9 he watched from his house in the Piassa neighborhood of Kobo as Tigrayan fighters executed 12 farmers from his neighborhood, whose names he listed, at about 4 p.m. after they had returned from their farms near Gedamayu village. Applicable Laws of War International humanitarian law, or the laws of war, is applicable to all parties to the armed conflict in Ethiopia’s Amhara, Afar, and Tigray regions. Under Common Article 3 to the four Geneva Conventions of 1949, captured combatants and civilians must “in all circumstances be treated humanely.” They are protected against “violence to life and person, in particular murder of all kinds, mutilation, cruel treatment and torture.” Under the laws of war, warring parties may target only military objectives. Deliberate attacks on civilians and civilian objects, indiscriminate attacks, and attacks that can be expected to cause disproportionate civilian harm are prohibited. Military forces can only attack civilians who are at the time directly participating in hostilities, such as by firing weapons. Warring parties must take all feasible precautions to protect civilians under their control from the effects of attacks. This means removing civilians, to the extent feasible, from the vicinity of their forces. Deliberately deploying behind civilians to deter attacks is considered “human shielding,” a war crime. A warring party’s seizure of private property must be justified by military necessity, and compensation must be provided. Pillage, forcibly taking private property for personal use, is prohibited and can constitute a war crime. Parties to a conflict must protect property, including churches and schools, that is of great importance to the country’s cultural heritage. People who commit serious violations of the laws of war with criminal intent – that is, intentionally or recklessly – may be prosecuted for war crimes. Individuals may also be held criminally liable for assisting in, facilitating, aiding, or abetting a war crime. Recommendations Tigrayan Defense Forces and all other parties to Ethiopia’s conflict in Tigray should respect international humanitarian law and immediately cease unlawful attacks against civilians. They should treat everyone in custody humanely and prohibit or prevent summary executions and other abuses. Those responsible for abuses should be appropriately punished. The Ethiopian government should endorse the Safe Schools Declaration, an international political commitment – currently supported by 108 countries – to take concrete measures to better protect students, teachers, schools, and universities from attack during conflict, including by refraining from using schools for military purposes. The UN Human Rights Council should hold a special session on Ethiopia and establish without undue delay an independent international mechanism to publicly report on conflict-related abuses, preserve evidence, and pave the way for credible accountability. The UN Security Council should add Ethiopia to its formal agenda and impose targeted sanctions and a global arms embargo. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Bosnia-Herzegovina Country Report December 2021 Bosnia-Herzegovina was historically multi-ethnic. According to the 1991 census, 44% of the population identified as Muslim Bosniak, 32.5% as Orthodox Serb, and 17% as Catholic Croat. Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito stifled nationalist separatist movements during his regime. When Tito died in 1980, Yugoslavia began to break up, divided by ethnic nationalism. Independence movements arose in Bosnia, Croatia, and Slovenia. Serbian nationalism was particularly dangerous, as Slobodan Milošević sought a pan-Serbian state and the expulsion of Bosniaks and Croats. When Bosnia-Herzegovina declared independence in April 1992, Bosnian Serb forces attacked, seeking secession from Bosnia and unification with Serbia. Serbian leader Slobodan Milošević used Serbian nationalism and anti-Muslim hate speech to divide Serbs, Bosniaks, and Croats. Bosnian Serb forces and Serb militias perpetrated genocide and crimes against humanity against Bosniaks and Croats, including extermination, torture, deportation, detention in concentration camps, and shelling and murder of civilians. Approximately 100,000 people (military and civilians) were killed during the Bosnian War. 61% of the victims were Bosniak Muslims; 25% were Bosnian Serbs, and 8% were Bosnian Croats. Serb militias deported Bosniak women to “rape camps” where they forcibly impregnated them with “Serbian” children following the patrilineal rules of Yugoslav ethnic identity. Rape was a tool of genocide. The United Nations peacekeeping force, UNPROFOR, tried to establish “safe zones” for Bosnian refugees at Srebrenica, Gorazde, and Zepa. But the “safe zones” weren’t safe. The head of UNPROFOR, Akashi, refused to authorize the use of force to protect them. On July 11, 1995, the Bosnian Serb army took Srebrenica, overwhelming the Dutch UN peacekeeping forces. Serbian forces separated males and females, deported and sexually assaulted the women, and killed the men. 8,000 Bosnian men and boys were massacred in what was recognized by the ICTY and ICJ as the Srebrenica genocide. The UN established the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) in 1993 to prosecute those who perpetrated genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes in the former Yugoslavia. Slobodan Milošević, Radovan Karadžić, and Ratko Mladić were among the top leaders prosecuted for by the ICTY. Karadžić and Mladić were convicted of genocide. Milošević died before the end of his four-year trial. Bosnia-Herzegovina is still ethnically divided. On October 25, 2021, Milrod Dodik, the Serb president of Bosnia’s triple-shared presidency, announced that Republika Srpska will withdraw from several shared institutions, including the military and judicial bodies, and establish Serb-only replacements. Dodik has repeatedly threatened to secede from Bosnia in favor of the predominantly Serb Republika Srpska. Dodik even denies the 1995 Srebrenica genocide. Genocide denial has plagued Bosnia-Herzegovina since the end of the Yugoslav Wars. Bosnian Serbs and Serbian nationalists minimize the genocide, denying massacres of Bosniaks and Croats. Bosnian Serb military leaders attempted to cover up their massacres by exhuming bodies from mass graves and burying them in secondary and tertiary gravesites. Serb revisionists try to minimize the well-documented murders of the Srebrenica genocide. Other Serb leaders even claim that the Srebrenica genocide was entirely fabricated. Genocide Watch considers Bosnia-Herzegovina to be at Stage 6: Polarization and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends the following: Bosnia-Herzegovina should join the European Union to promote political and economic stability. Signatory nations to the Dayton Peace Accords should demand the ouster of Dodik. NATO and the EU should declare that they will not tolerate new separatist movements in Bosnia.

By Grant Peck FILE - In this June 20, 2017, file photo, United Nations spokesman Stephane Dujarric fields questions for U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres during his first press conference with U.N. correspondents, on World Refugee Day, at U.N. headquarters. Dujarric expressed deep concern at the reports "of the horrific killing of 11 people" and strongly condemned such violence. He reminded Myanmar's military authorities of their obligations under international law to ensure the safety and protection of civilians and called for those responsible "for this heinous act" to be held accountable. (AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews, File) Myanmar government troops rounded up villagers, some believed to be children, tied them up and slaughtered them, according to a witness and other reports. An opposition leader said the civilians were burned alive, as repression of resistance to a de facto coup takes an increasingly brutal turn. A video of the aftermath of Tuesday’s assault — apparently retaliation for an attack on a military convoy — showed the charred bodies of 11 people, lying in a circle amid what appeared to be the remains of a hut. Outrage spread both inside and outside Myanmar as graphic images were shared on social media of the assault, which Human Rights Watch said was similar to other recent attacks — and looked like it was meant to be discovered. “This incident is quite brazen, and it happened in an area that was meant to be found, and seen, to scare people,” researcher for the group, Manny Maung, said. “Our contacts are saying these were just boys and young people who were villagers who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time.” Opposition spokesperson, Dr. Sasa, said the attack began after a military convoy — which was raiding villages in the country’s northwest — hit a roadside bomb. Troops retaliated first by shelling the village of Done Taw, then rounding up anyone they could capture there. “They were lashed together, tortured, and ultimately burned alive,” he said, adding that the victims ranged in age from 14 to 40. “The sheer brutality, savagery, and cruelty of these acts shows a new depth of depravity, and proves that, despite the pretense of the relative détente seen over the last few months, the junta never had any intention of deescalating their campaign of violence,” said Sasa, who uses one name and is the spokesperson for Myanmar’s underground National Unity Government. That group declared itself the country’s only legitimate leaders in the wake of the military takeover on Feb. 1 that prevented elected lawmakers from taking their seats in parliament. The seizure of power was initially met with nonviolent street protests, but after police and soldiers responded with lethal force, violence escalated as opponents of military rule took up arms. In recent months, fighting has been raging in northwestern areas. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric expressed deep concern at the reports of the “horrific killing of 11 people” and strongly condemned such violence, saying “credible reports indicate that five children were among those people killed.” The government has denied that it had any troops in the area. But a witness told The Associated Press that about 50 troops marched into Done Taw at about 11 a.m. Tuesday, seizing anyone who did not manage to flee. “They arrested 11 innocent villagers,” said the witness, who described himself as a farmer and an activist and spoke on condition of anonymity because he fears for his safety. He did not see the moment of their killing but said he believed they were burned alive, as did other people who spoke to Myanmar media. He later saw the charred remains — and was present when the widely distributed images were taken. The images themselves could not be independently verified. The witness said that those captured were not members of the locally organized People’s Defense Force, which sometimes engages the army in combat. He said they were as members of a less formally organized village protection group and did not give a reason for the soldiers’ assault. Other witnesses cited in Myanmar media said the victims were members of a defense force. Dujarric, of the U.N., reminded Myanmar’s military authorities of their obligations under international law to ensure the safety and protection of civilians and called for those responsible “for this heinous act” to be held accountable. As of Wednesday, he said security forces have killed more than 1,300 unarmed people, including more than 75 children, since the military takeover. In seizing power, the military claimed there was massive fraud in the 2020 election that saw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy win in a landslide. The military said that justified the takeover under a constitution that allows it to seize power in emergencies — though independent election observers did not detect any major irregularities in the voting. On Monday, Suu Kyi was convicted on charges of incitement and violating coronavirus restrictions and sentenced to two years in prison. The court’s action was widely criticized as a further effort by military rulers to roll back the democratic gains of recent years. © copyright 2021 The Associated Press

‘The lack of consequences for the crimes committed in Tigray has made it easier for warring parties to commit further atrocities.’ By Laetitia Bader Priest on his way to church in Axum, Tigray region, Ethiopia on January 25, 2011. © 2011 Matjaz Krivic via Getty Images A full year has passed since Eritrean government forces massacred Tigrayan civilians in Ethiopia’s historical town of Axum. But survivors of the massacre and of other atrocities in Tigray are still no closer to accessing justice and redress – an accountability shortfall that is fuelling further abuses as conflict spreads. Due to the Ethiopian government’s deliberate suppression of information about the conflict in Tigray, details of the massacre in Axum only surfaced months after the event. Ethiopian and Eritrean authorities responded with denials that Eritrean forces were even in Tigray, let alone that a massacre had occurred. After the initial denials, Ethiopia’s attorney general later acknowledged that Eritrean soldiers had killed 110 civilians in Axum, and said Ethiopian soldiers were facing trial for other killings, rape, and sexual violence during the conflict. But these steps fall far short of addressing the crimes allegedly committed by government security forces since the beginning of the conflict. And proceedings so far have lacked transparency and independent scrutiny. Ethiopia’s bloody conflict now continues to unfold beyond Tigray, where rebel forces have also summarily executed and raped civilians. A weak international response Concrete measures to pave the way for accountability – such as the establishment of a robust international investigative mechanism – are key. Yet international bodies still seem unwilling to take concrete measures to press warring parties to prevent further atrocities. The Security Councils of both the UN and the African Union – bodies mandated to ensure peace and security – have remained largely paralysed. Each body has made only one public statement condemning abuses and the UN Security Council has not formally included Ethiopia on its agenda. Sanctions regimes have, meanwhile, failed as deterrents, with the United States only targeting Eritrean individuals and entities, and EU member states still unable to agree on designations. The UN Human Rights Council, the world’s rights body, finally placed Ethiopia on its agenda in July, but its actions have not reflected the urgency of the ongoing crisis, which has left more than seven million people in need of humanitarian assistance. The EU, which has spearheaded recent efforts on Ethiopia at the Human Rights Council, has a decisive role here. Since the beginning of the conflict, it has repeatedly condemned abuses, pushed for humanitarian access, and considered targeted sanctions. Yet, as the EU’s foreign policy is determined by unanimity, resistance from key member states risks undermining crucial efforts, including calling for a Human Rights Council special session that could establish an investigative mechanism. European and other countries initially said they wanted to first see the outcome of a joint UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) and Ethiopian Human Rights Commission (EHRC) investigation opened in March. The joint report is now out, and recommends an international investigative mechanism, but some EU member states still appear reluctant to heed that call. Summary executions and ethnic round-ups As the world dithers, the civilian toll of the Ethiopia crisis remains a daily and devastating reality for communities in Tigray and beyond. Amhara forces allied to the federal government are yet again forcibly displacing Tigrayans – including many older people and children – from western Tigray, the site of some of the worst crimes so far. The Ethiopian federal government and regional authorities continue to impose an effective siege on Tigray, making it impossible to bring in basic medical supplies or sorely needed food. Throughout the country, thousands of Tigrayans have also been rounded up and detained or forcibly disappeared in widespread ethnically targeted sweeps. Families are living in fear that they might be next. In the Amhara and Afar regions, Tigrayan forces have also committed human rights violations. Thousands of civilians have been displaced by ongoing fighting, with many now suffering from growing food insecurity. I recently spoke to a man in Debre Birhan, in the Amhara region, who was displaced twice after fleeing shelling by Tigrayan forces in his hometown in October. He is now living with his wife in an informal displacement camp, worrying about the lack of healthcare for his newborn child. "There is no clinic. We are not getting any medication in the camp,” he told me. “My wife got no follow up after giving birth.” International investigative mechanism needed On 24 November, Human Rights Watch joined 27 other organisations in calling for a special session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva to establish an international investigative mechanism that could document serious abuses by all sides and preserve vital evidence, which is currently at risk of erosion and destruction. Sixty-five African organisations and individuals have also called for a special session in a letter to the UN secretary-general. African states should listen to their own citizens by supporting the AU’s regional efforts and acting decisively in Geneva. The longer the wait, the harder it will be to uncover facts and begin the process to achieve justice. Human Rights Council members need to rise to the challenge, support the call for a special session, and secure the establishment of a robust investigative mechanism without further delay. Such Human Rights Council action could play a preventative role and complement the current AU mediation efforts between the warring parties. The mechanism would not only pave the way for future accountability but also help to support meaningful transitional justice efforts, which are key to any successful future national dialogue and essential to communities devastated by the conflict. The lack of consequences for the crimes committed in Tigray has made it easier for warring parties to commit further atrocities. The EU and other Human Rights Council member states must do their utmost to change that calculus as soon as possible. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Decision is response to what is described as China’s ‘genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang’ and other abuses By Vincent Ni and Joan E Greve A police officer beside a Winter Olympics poster in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province. Photograph: Mark Schiefelbein/AP The White House has confirmed it will stage a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, in the latest move that will further widen the rift in an already strained bilateral relationship. “The Biden administration will not send any diplomatic or official representation to the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics and Paralympic Games, given the PRC’s ongoing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses,” press secretary Jen Psaki said from the briefing room podium on Monday. The announcement comes two months before the games are to begin. American athletes are still expected to compete in the Olympics, despite the Biden administration not sending any representatives to Beijing. “The athletes on Team USA have our full support,” Psaki said. “We will be behind them 100% as we cheer them on from home. We will not be contributing to the fanfare of the games.” Psaki said administration officials made Beijing aware of the move before Monday’s announcement. “We feel this sends a clear message,” she said. Hours before the announcement, China said a diplomatic boycott of the Olympics would be “a stain on the spirit of the Olympic charter” and “sensationalist and politically manipulative”. The last time the US staged a full boycott of the Olympics was during the cold war in 1980, when the former president Jimmy Carter snubbed the Moscow summer Games along with 64 other countries and territories. China’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, on Monday accused Washington of “hyping a ‘diplomatic boycott’ without even being invited to the Games”. “I want to stress that the Winter Olympic Games is not a stage for political posturing and manipulation,” Zhao said. “It is a grave travesty of the spirit of the Olympic charter, a blatant political provocation and a serious affront to the 1.4 billion Chinese people.” The US diplomatic boycott comes amid escalating tensions between China and many western countries. It was first raised by Joe Biden last month as pressures grew in the US Congress over its concerns about China’s human rights record, including over the treatment of Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities. Politicians including Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House of Representatives, have advocated a boycott as protest. The calls for the boycott intensified in recent weeks after concerns over the treatment of the Chinese tennis star, Peng Shuai. The 35-year-old former doubles world No 1 last month accused a former senior Chinese politician of having coerced her into sex. Countries from the US to Australia have since called on China’s authorities to ensure Peng’s wellbeing, and the Women’s Tennis Association last week announced the suspension of future games in China. Rights groups have also seized on the opportunity to urge the international community to boycott the Beijing Olympics. In the UK, the Commons leader, Jacob Rees-Mogg, told MPs last month that “no tickets have been booked” for the Beijing Games in February. But he also added that the UK government “have long had a policy of thinking that sporting boycotts do not work and that it is a matter for the International Olympic Committee to decide whether the athletes go.” The Foreign Office said on Monday that “no decisions have yet been made” about the government’s attendance at the Beijing Winter Olympics. In Australia, Canberra last week joined 19 other countries in not signing the Olympic Truce – a tradition that dates back to ancient Greece and ensures conflicts don’t disrupt the sports competition – with China in order to send a message to Beijing. On Friday, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, said his government “was considering those matters and working through those issues”. Zhao on Monday said in response to Morrison’s comments that “no one would care about whether these people come or not, and it has no impact whatsoever on the Olympics to be successfully held by Beijing”. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies

Victims in US and UK legal action accuse social media firm of failing to prevent incitement of violence By Dan Milmo Residents of the Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Photograph: Tanbirul Miraj Ripon/EPA Facebook’s negligence facilitated the genocide of Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar after the social media network’s algorithms amplified hate speech and the platform failed to take down inflammatory posts, according to legal action launched in the US and the UK. The platform faces compensation claims worth more than £150bn under the coordinated move on both sides of the Atlantic. A class action complaint lodged with the northern district court in San Francisco says Facebook was “willing to trade the lives of the Rohingya people for better market penetration in a small country in south-east Asia.” It adds: “In the end, there was so little for Facebook to gain from its continued presence in Burma, and the consequences for the Rohingya people could not have been more dire. Yet, in the face of this knowledge, and possessing the tools to stop it, it simply kept marching forward.” A letter submitted by lawyers to Facebook’s UK office on Monday says clients and their family members have been subjected to acts of “serious violence, murder and/or other grave human rights abuses” as part of a campaign of genocide conducted by the ruling regime and civilian extremists in Myanmar. It adds that the social media platform, which launched in Myanmar in 2011 and quickly became ubiquitous, aided the process. Lawyers in Britain expect to lodge a claim in the high court, representing Rohingya in the UK and refugees in camps in Bangladesh, in the new year. “As has been widely recognised and reported, this campaign was fomented by extensive material published on and amplified by the Facebook platform,” says the letter from the law firm McCue Jury & Partners. Facebook admitted in 2018 that it had not done enough to prevent the incitement of violence and hate speech against the Rohingya, the Muslim minority in Myanmar. An independent report commissioned by the company found that “Facebook has become a means for those seeking to spread hate and cause harm, and posts have been linked to offline violence”. The McCue letter says: “Despite Facebook’s recognition of its culpability and its pronouncements about its role in the world, there has not been a single penny of compensation, nor any other form of reparations or support, offered to any survivor.” In the US and UK, the allegations against Facebook include: Facebook’s algorithms amplified hate speech against the Rohingya people; it failed to invest in local moderators and fact checkers; it failed to take down specific posts inciting violence against Rohingya people; and it did not shut down specific accounts or delete groups and pages that were encouraging ethnic violence. The US complaint cites Facebook posts that appeared in a Reuters report, with one in 2013 stating: “We must fight them the way Hitler did the Jews, damn Kalars [a derogatory term for Rohingya people].” Another post in 2018, showing a photograph of a boatload of Rohingya refugees, says: “Pour fuel and set fire so that they can meet Allah faster.” The number of Rohingya killed in 2017, during the Myanmar military’s “clearance operations”, is likely to be more than 10,000, according to the medical charity Médicins sans Frontières. About 1 million Rohingyas live in Cox’s Bazar refugee camp, in south-eastern Bangladesh, where McCue and Mishcon de Reya, which is also working on the UK-based case, expect to recruit more claimants. The UK case has about 20 claimants so far, while in the US the class action suit hopes to act on behalf of an estimated 10,000 Rohingya in the country. The Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen has alleged the platform is fanning ethnic violence in countries including Ethiopia and is not doing enough to stop it. She said 87% of the spending on combating misinformation at Facebook is spent on English content, while only 9% of users are English speakers. Responding to Haugen’s revelations, Facebook has said it had a “comprehensive strategy” in place for countries at risk of conflict and violence, including use of native speakers and third-party fact checkers. Facebook’s owner, Meta, has been approached for comment. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies

By Deborah Mayersen Refugees who fled Ethiopia’s Tigray conflict queue for contributions before sunrise in eastern Sudan. Photo by Yasuyoshi Chiba/AFP via Getty Images Since conflict erupted in Tigray, northern Ethiopia, in November 2020, there have been widespread reports of atrocities in the region. Hundreds of massacres and attacks on civilians have been documented. Recently, the conflict has spread to other areas of the country. While all sides have been accused of atrocities, there is a clear difference in the scale of the atrocities committed by government-aligned forces against Tigrayan civilians. The current situation in Ethiopia represents a dramatic change from the optimism with which the Abiy government was viewed even just two years ago. When the prime minister was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in October 2019, for example, the official press release praised his important reforms that give many citizens hope for a better life and a brighter future. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has described the situation as “ethnic cleansing”. A UN Human Rights office investigation found war crimes and crimes against humanity may have been committed. Amnesty International’s investigation concluded that the Ethiopian government and allied forces have committed widespread sexual violence, constituting war crimes and potentially crimes against humanity. Genocide Watch has commented that Tigray is victim of “systematic violence with genocidal intent”. The region is also experiencing famine as a direct result of the conflict. Ethiopian forces and those allied with them have deliberately targeted farming infrastructure and water points. The fighting has also severely disrupted the planting and harvesting of crops. In early July, the UN estimated that 400,000 people in Tigray were experiencing famine; USAID puts that figure much higher. In late June, the conflict took a particularly deadly turn. Following the success of the Tigrayan Defence Forces in capturing territory, Ethiopian forces withdrew from much of the region, simultaneously imposing a blockade. Since then, less than 10% of the required humanitarian aid has been able to reach Tigray. Desperately needed supplies of food, water and essential medicines simply cannot get through. There is widespread acknowledgement that this is a deliberate strategy of the Ethiopian government. In October 2021, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres called on the government to allow the unrestricted movement of desperately needed fuel, cash, communications equipment and humanitarian supplies. Others have been even more direct. Mark Lowcock, following his recent retirement as head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, was asked in an interview on PBS: “Is the Ethiopian government trying to starve Tigray?” His response: “Yes.” This raises the question of whether the current atrocities in Ethiopia might have been predicted, and if so, whether timely engagement might have helped prevent the violence. It is an important question because, in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, early warning was touted as an important means of prevention. The Responsibility to Prevent principle was established in 2005. UN member states pledged to protect their populations from genocide and mass atrocities. It also places emphasis on early warning. Similarly, the UN Office on Genocide Prevention and the Responsibility to Protect highlights the importance of risk assessment as a pathway to prevention. In short, risk assessments did point to a high risk of atrocities in Ethiopia. While warnings could have been more clear, sufficient information was available to recognise the risk. Stronger engagement by the UN, African Union and others might have helped prevent the current, dire situation. Risk assessments I recently conducted a review of mass atrocity risk assessments to understand how effectively they can provide early warning of genocide, mass killing and other forms of targeted mass violence. Currently there are four risk assessment lists that identify countries at risk of mass atrocities. All are run by non-governmental organisations and academics. Each issues annual or periodic tables, presenting rankings or categories of risk. Examining assessments of Ethiopia for the 2019-2020 forecasting period, we can see that both Genocide Watch and the Early Warning Project placed the country in the highest risk category prior to the outbreak of the violence. Peoples Under Threat and the Atrocity Forecasting Project recognised some level of risk in Ethiopia, but deemed it outside of the 10 countries considered most at risk. This suggests at least some recognition of risk, and perhaps an opportunity for prevention. One of the problems with this type of analysis, however, is that risk assessments are currently a fairly inexact tool for understanding risk of mass atrocities. There are three principal limitations to their value. First, they over-predict risk. Even among the countries listed at highest risk, most will not experience genocide or mass atrocities in the forecasting period. This makes it hard for policymakers and practitioners to determine where it would be most beneficial to direct their limited resources. Second, risk assessments are imprecise. While being in the top echelon of risk is indicative, a country ranked first is not necessarily any more likely to experience atrocities than a country ranked 10th. And the converse is true. Ethiopia provides a strong example of this imprecision. It ranked 9th or lower in most risk assessments. Finally, risk assessment lists have a very limited capacity to determine when violence might erupt. Peoples Under Threat, for example, has ranked Ethiopia in the top 15 at-risk countries every year since its inception in 2006. Similarly, Genocide Watch has long recognised the risk there. That can make it hard to determine when that risk might be realised, and to respond accordingly. It can also lead to complacency as to the severity of the risk. In short, while risk assessments did identify serious risk of mass violence in Ethiopia before it started, the information was somewhat ambiguous. Detailed qualitative analysis is crucial to truly understand risk in any given country. Conclusion Despite the recognition of risk, it’s clear that the scope and severity of the crisis has caught many by surprise. What matters most at this point, however, is a robust international response. Currently that response is heavily focused on the civil war, and on finding a political solution to the crisis. That is essential. Yet that will take time – and it’s time that the people starving in Tigray don’t have. Right now, key international actors need to focus squarely on saving lives. They must collectively demand Ethiopia allows immediate and unfettered humanitarian access to Tigray, in accordance with international law and independent of any other developments with respect to the conflict. Ethiopia must feel the intense pressure of the entire international community to stop starving its own people. Copyright © 2010–2021, The Conversation US, Inc.

Exclusive: Political officials and diplomatic and activist sources describe stealth campaign By Stephanie Kirchgaessner Yemeni Red Crescent workers remove the body of a casualty following a Saudi-led airstrike in Dhamar. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA Saudi Arabia used “incentives and threats” as part of a lobbying campaign to shut down a UN investigation of human right violations committed by all sides in the Yemen conflict, according to sources with close knowledge of the matter. The Saudi effort ultimately succeeded when the UN human rights council (HRC) voted in October against extending the independent war crimes investigation. The vote marked the first defeat of a resolution in the Geneva body’s 15-year history. Speaking to the Guardian, political officials and diplomatic and activist sources with inside knowledge of the lobbying effort described a stealth campaign in which the Saudis appear to have influenced officials in order to guarantee defeat of the measure. In one case, Riyadh is alleged to have warned Indonesia – the most populous Muslim country in the world – that it would create obstacles for Indonesians to travel to Mecca if officials did not vote against the 7 October resolution. In another case, the African nation of Togo announced at the time of the vote that it would open a new embassy in Riyadh, and receive financial support from the kingdom to support anti-terrorism activities. Both Indonesia and Togo had abstained from the Yemen resolution in 2020. This year, both voted against the measure. The resolution was defeated by a simple majority of 21-18, with seven countries abstaining. In 2020, the resolution passed by a vote of 22-12, with 12 members abstaining. “That kind of swing – from 12 no’s to 21 – does not just happen,” said one official. John Fisher, the Geneva director of Human Rights Watch, said: “It was a very tight vote. We understand that Saudi Arabia and their coalition allies and Yemen were working at a high level for some time to persuade states in capitals through a mixture of threats and incentives, to back their bids to terminate the mandate of this international monitoring mechanism.” A Yemeni man attends the mass funeral of Houthi rebel fighters killed in battles with Saudi-backed government troops in the Marib region. Photograph: Mohammed Huwais/AFP/Getty Images He added: “The loss of the mandate is a huge blow for accountability in Yemen and for the credibility of the human rights council as a whole. For a mandate to have been defeated by a party to the conflict for no reason other than to evade scrutiny for international crimes is a travesty.” Representatives from the Indonesian and Saudi embassies in Washington and the foreign ministry in Togo did not respond to a request for comment. The HRC first voted to establish a team of experts who would investigate possible violations of humanitarian law and human rights in Yemen in 2017. Yemen’s civil war had intensified in 2015 after a coalition led by Saudi Arabia, using weapons procured in the US and UK, intervened on behalf of the internationally recognised Yemeni government against Houthi rebels. More than 100,000 people have been killed in the conflict and 4 million have been displaced, activist groups say. Saudi Arabia, which is not a voting member of the UN human rights council, initially supported the effort. Reports by the experts – known as the Group of Eminent Experts on Yemen (GEE) – grew more “damning” over the years, one person who closely followed the matter said. In 2020, the GEE recommended for the first time that the international community focus their attention on accountability for potential war crimes. They included five recommendations, including that the matter be referred to the prosecutor of the international criminal court by the UN security council. One person who followed the matter said: “I think that must have been the trigger moment when the Saudi coalition realised this is really going too far.” Nations that supported the measure, which was led by the Netherlands, were apparently caught off guard by the Saudis’ aggressive tactics. Yemenis inspect the site of Saudi-led airstrikes in Sana’a. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA During the negotiations, none of the countries that would later change votes from abstaining to “no” raised objections to the resolution, which differed from the 2020 version in only one substantive way: it sought to extend the mandate to two years instead of one. Sources said it was not until about a week before vote that “alarm bells” began to ring for proponents of the measure, when they grasped that the Saudi campaign “was very different from previous years” – in part because Saudi had engaged with policy makers in individual capitals around the world. “You could see the whole thing shift, and that was a shock,” said one person familiar with the matter. Usually, voting positions are known days before a vote is taken. But in October, member countries resisted sharing what their final position would be, which proponents saw as a worrying sign that some countries were under intense pressure. Supporters of the resolution decided to proceed with the vote, even though its outcome was uncertain. “For the Saudis to win this battle at the expense of the Yemeni people is terrible. But it’s also a textbook case for other countries like Russia and China to torpedo any other investigation. It really shook everyone to the core. The scrutiny should be on those members of the council that couldn’t withstand the pressure,” said one person close to the matter. Members of the HRC serve for a period of three years. Of the countries that served both in 2020 and 2021, four changed their votes from abstention to “no” on the Yemen resolution: Indonesia, Bangladesh, Senegal and Togo. Yemenis gather around the coffins of Houthi fighters killed in recent clashes with Saudi-backed government forces, in Sana’a. Photograph: Yahya Arhab/EPA The vote came when the foreign minister of Togo was on an official visit to Saudi Arabia, and coincided with the announcement of the new embassy in Riyadh. Togo also announced that it would be receiving counterterrorism funding from the Saudi-based International Center for the Fight against Extremist Ideology. In the case of Indonesia, it is understood that Saudi Arabia communicated that Indonesian Covid vaccination certificates might not be recognised for Indonesians traveling to Mecca if the country did not reject the measure. One observer said the alleged threat showed Saudis were willing to “instrumentalise” their access to a holy place. One week after the vote, the UAE, an ally of Saudi Arabia in the Yemen conflict, invited Senegal to sign a memorandum of understanding to establish a joint Emirati-Senegalese business council. The aim of the council was for the UAE chamber of commerce to “boost cooperation” between the “two friendly countries”. The UAE did not respond to a request for comment. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

By Sandrine Amiel FILE: At the opening of the trial, defendant Taha Al-J. covers his face with a folder in Frankfurt, Germany, Friday, April 24, 2020. - Copyright Arne Dedert/dpa/POOL via AP An unprecedented trial is due to end on Tuesday in Frankfurt, Germany. Taha Al-J. is the first alleged jihadist prosecuted for genocide against the Yazidis. The Kurdish-speaking minority was persecuted and enslaved by members of the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS) group in Iraq and in Syria, when jihadists controlled large swathes of the Middle Eastern countries' territories. An estimated 10,000 Yazidi people were killed in northern Iraq in the mass atrocities. About 7,000 Yazidi women and girls, some as young as nine, were enslaved and forcibly transferred to locations in Iraq and eastern Syria. Prosecutors say Taha Al-J., a former IS member, enslaved a Yazidi girl and her mother in Iraq, then tortured and murdered the 5-year old child in 2015. If the Frankfurt court concludes that Taha Al-J. committed genocide, "then it will be the first time that a legal court says that crimes against Yazidis by IS are genocide," said Natia Navrouzov, Legal Advocacy Director at global Yazidi NGO Yazda. While the crimes have been recognised by the United Nations as amounting to genocide, as well as a few other international and national bodies, "it hasn't happened yet that a court of law has said what happened to the Yazidis is a genocide," the lawyer noted. "For the victims, it would be something really fabulous. You know, it has been seven years since they've been waiting for this. So it would be a great milestone for us," she told Euronews. Euronews explores the implications of the landmark case for the Yazidis' long quest for justice and the role European countries play in the process. What is Taha Al-J. accused of? Taha Al-J. is an Iraqi national who is believed to have joined IS in 2013. He and his wife Jennifer W., a German national, were allegedly members of the Hisbah, IS' moral police. German prosecutors say Taha Al-J. and Jennifer W. "purchased" a Yazidi woman and her 5-year old child, Rania, as household "slaves" in Mosul in 2015. He is suspected of prohibiting the girl and her mother from exercising their religion, forcing them to convert to Islam. The plaintiff's lawyers also say the two were "subjected to almost daily beatings." One day, after the girl fell ill and wet her mattress, Taha Al-J. chained her up outside as punishment and let her die in the scorching heat, prosecutors said. Navrouzov told Euronews that the girl died as a consequence of the heat, thirst and malnourishment. "She was just weak overall," she said."And the mother was there, so she saw it," the lawyer added. The mother of the child has been a key witness in the case and is represented by lawyers Amal Clooney and Natalie von Wistinghausen at the trial. FILE: Human rights lawyer Amal Clooney, right, and her client Nadia Murad, left, a Yazidi genocide survivor, listen during a United Nations meeting, March 9, 2017.Bebeto Matthews/AP Taha Al-J.'s wife, Jennifer W. was recently convicted in a separate trial in Munich for failing to undertake any steps to prevent the death of the child, despite witnessing her husband's act. Taha Al-J. was arrested in Greece in May 2019 as he was reportedly trying to apply for refugee status. "Since Germany had already started the investigation against Jennifer W., who was his wife, it asked for the extradition of Taha Al-J.," since both cases are linked, Navrouzov explained. He was indicted in early 2020 and faces charges of having committed genocide, crimes against humanity, murder and human trafficking as a member of a terrorist organisation. His trial started in April 2020. If convicted, Taha Al-J. faces life imprisonment. Reached by Euronews, Taha Al-J.'s lawyer Serkan Alkan said he and fellow defence lawyer Martin Heising "deny the charges because we have the feeling our client is used as a representative for the crimes of IS." Alkan argued that a lot of information was missing, "up to the point that it is not clear if anyone has died. We don't have hard proof for this." "Furthermore, we think in legal terms in no way he has fulfilled the requirements of the international criminal law," he added. What would be the significance of a genocide verdict? If the Frankfurt court concludes that Taha Al-J. committed genocide, "we hope that this will have a domino effect, that this will lead to more trials like this one," said Navrouzov. FILE - In this Tuesday, April 15, 2015 file photo, a Yazidi woman whispers into the ear of her friend as both hold small fires to make a wish for the Yazidi new yearBram Janssen/AP But Navrouzov was far from taking a genocide verdict for granted in this case. "As a lawyer, I know how hard it is to prove genocide," said Navrouzov. "Of course we know IS committed genocide against the Yazidi. But in every trial, you have to prove that this particular person had the intent to commit genocide against the Yazidis. And I think that's always very hard to prove." "The court has to be careful about the way they will communicate on this," she warned. "If they conclude that they don't have enough proof for that, they need to make sure they communicate to the Yazidi community in the correct way and tell them 'we are not saying there is no genocide against the Yazidis'. We're just saying that for this particular person, there's not enough proof to say that he had the intent to commit genocide." Why is the trial taking place in Germany? "Taha is Iraqi. The victim is Iraqi. The crimes happened in Iraq. But still, Germany, thanks to the universal jurisdiction principle, can prosecute," Navrouzov explained. Under this principle, Berlin allows its court to prosecute crimes against humanity committed anywhere in the world. But even European countries that do not have universal jurisdiction could prosecute their nationals who were so-called "foreign fighters" in Iraq and Syria, the lawyer added. Navrouzov told Euronews that Germany is "way ahead of other countries" as the only nation prosecuting individual IS members. France launched a case against the Lafarge company, which is accused of paying millions of euros to jihadist groups in order to keep its cement factory in Syria running through the early years of the war. But the case centres on the liability of a company rather than on individual IS members. Outside Europe, Iraq is "of course" prosecuting IS members, Navrouzov said, but only for membership to a terrorist group. "Unfortunately, in Iraq, there is no legal framework to prosecute them for international crimes, genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity," the lawyer noted. "This is not the justice the victims want and hope to see." What are the challenges in bringing such crimes to justice? Since 2014, Yazda has been relentlessly documenting the crimes against the Yazidi minority, collecting the testimonies of over 2,000 victims. The non-profit has played an instrumental role in the Taha Al-J. case. "We have identified the only victim and the only witness, and we were able to connect her through our legal team to the German prosecutors and war crimes unit, "Navrouzov told Euronews. Those who work to bring the perpetrators of the Yazidi genocide to justice are facing multiple challenges, the lawyer said. "One of the main challenges is to identify the whereabouts of the perpetrators. Where are they? Are they in custody? If yes, where and if we know where they are, is the country willing to prosecute them?" Navrouzov asked. "And another big challenge is to link the IS members to their real identity because IS members were using kunyas or war names. And we have thousands of kunyas, war names mentioned in the statements we have collected. But it's really hard to link them to a real person and then try to understand if it is the same as the name mentioned in the victims' statements," she went on. But the key challenge is above all "political," Navrouzov said. "European countries have been very reluctant to repatriate their nationals from Iraq and Syria to prosecute them, for different reasons -- the security of the country, the public opinion is against it, etc." "Another argument is that they don't have the evidence to prosecute them. So they're afraid that if they bring them back, they will have to release them very quickly because they don't have anything against them." "So this is the gap we're trying to fill. We reach out to these countries and we say, 'these people have also committed crimes against Yazidis, and that means that they can be prosecuted not only for membership to a terrorist group, but also for genocide and crimes against humanity, war crimes, which means that their sentence will be higher. And it also means that they will be prosecuted in a way that is what Yazidi victims are looking for and are hoping for." "Europe does not seem ready for the moment. But I also think that it's not a sustainable situation. They cannot keep ignoring this issue," Navrouzov said. © euronews 2021

Secret documents urge population control, mass round-ups and punishment of Uyghurs By Patrick Wintour Chinese president Xi Jinping argued in a speech that ‘population proportion’ was a foundation for peace in Xinjiang, new documents have revealed. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP Excerpts from previously unpublished documents directly linking China’s crackdown on Uyghur Muslims and other minorities in Xinjiang province to speeches by the Chinese leadership in 2014 have been put online. The documents – including three speeches by Chinese president Xi Jinping in April 2014 – cover security, population control and the need to punish the Uyghur population. Some are marked top secret. They were leaked to the Uyghur Tribunal – an independent people’s tribunal based in the UK. In the documents, the highest levels of the Chinese Communist party (CCP) leadership call for Uyghur re-education and relocation to rectify an imbalance in the Uyghur and Han population in Xinjiang. Dr Adrian Zenz, the German academic who was asked by the tribunal to authenticate the documents, said the top secret and confidential papers are significant because they show multiple links between the demands of the Chinese leadership of 2014 and what subsequently happened in Xinjiang, including mass internment in re-education camps, coercive labour transfers and optimising the ethnic population by increasing Han population shares. Zenz alleges that the documents show the leadership’s long-term intent to commit cultural genocide with the specific purpose of safeguarding the rule of the CCP. The documents were handed in full in digital form to the tribunal in September, but have not been published in full in order to protect the source of the leak. Instead transcripts from some of the documents, lengthy quotations, summary and analysis have been published. The original documents were peer reviewed by Dr James Millward, professor of inter-societal history at Georgetown University Washington, and Dr David Tobin, lecturer in east Asian studies at the University of Sheffield. Some have been redacted to remove reception stamps. The leak covers 11 documents and 300 unique pages. They range from April 2014 to May 2018. Zenz said some of the documents were drawn upon by the New York Times in a report in 2019, but that the leak also comprises previously unseen information. In late 2016, just before the implementation of a set of unprecedented measures in Xinjiang, the leaders’ statements were handed to Xinjiang’s cadres as crucial study material, preparing them to implement the measures. In one 2014 speech covered by the leak, Xi argues that the belt and road initiative, his signature foreign policy project, requires a stable domestic security environment. He asserts that the entire country’s national security and the achievement of China’s major goals in the 21st century will be in jeopardy if the situation in southern Xinjiang is not brought under control. The speech was delivered weeks after Xi called for “all-out efforts” to bring to justice assailants who murdered 31 people and wounded more than 140 with knives and machetes in a bloody killing in the south-western city of Kunming on 1 March. Beijing blamed Xinjiang separatists for the attack. In the speech Xi demands that the region engage in an all-out battle to “prevent Xinjiang’s violent terrorist activities from spreading to the rest of China”, argues that “stability across Xinjiang and even across the whole country depends on southern Xinjiang”, and calls for “a crushing blow to buy us time”. He notes that since violent acts had already spread to other regions of China, “therefore we propose that Xinjiang is currently in … a painful period of interventionary treatment”. Religious extremists, he says, are “devils who will kill without blinking an eye”. He also warns religious extremism is “a powerful psychedelic drug”, and calls for reform through education, as opposed to a practice of arrest and release – a reference to re-education and detention camps. In another document, Xinjiang’s party secretary, Chen Quanguo, personally commands officials to “round up all who should be rounded up” and says the region’s vocational re-education facilities should be “unswervingly operated for a long time”. In one of Xi’s speeches, he argues that “population proportion and population security are important foundations for long-term peace and stability”. This statement was later quoted verbatim by a senior Xinjiang official in July 2020, who then argued that southern Xinjiang’s Han population share was “too low”. Other classified documents lament “severe imbalances in the distribution of the ethnic population” and a “severely mono-ethnic” population structure (an over-concentration of Uyghurs) in southern Xinjiang. They mandate that by 2022, 300,000 settlers (mostly Han from eastern China) are to be moved to regions in southern Xinjiang administered by the Xinjiang Construction and Production Corps, also known as “bingtuan”, a paramilitary entity, with the explicitly stated aim of increasing Han population shares in the region. Xi himself ordered the abolishment of preferential birth control policies for ethnic groups in southern Xinjiang that had previously allowed them to have more children than the Han. He demanded that birth control policies in the Uyghur heartland were to be made “equal for all ethnic groups”. The fresh leak was first mentioned at a special session of the UK-based tribunal on Saturday. Government reports indicate that in February 2017, just weeks prior to the start of an internment campaign, leading cadres in prefectures and counties were subjected to an intensified study schedule of two of Xi’s speeches for at least two hours every week. Zenz has been denounced by defenders of Beijing as a Christian fundamentalist determined to destroy Chinese communism. The Chinese government has imposed sanctions against him. It has always maintained that political, economic and religious freedoms in the Xinjiang region are “fully guaranteed”. Zenz claims the new material shows that top Chinese leaders viewed the achievement of “stability maintenance” and related goals such as religious “de-extremification” in Xinjiang to be a matter of China’s national security, crucial to achieving primary long-term political goals. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

A Chinese flag flutters near the Olympic rings on the Olympic Tower in Beijing on Nov. 11. (Carlos Garcia Rawlins/Reuters) Opinion: China is perfecting a 21st-century method of destroying an entire people By Fred Hiatt China’s Communist leaders, innovative in so many ways, appear to be perfecting a 21st-century approach to genocide. With the Beijing Olympics less than three months away, will Coca-Cola and other sponsors of the Games celebrate with China while this is taking place? While, a few hours’ flight due west of the stadiums and ice rinks, an entire people is being slowly, deliberately erased? We have learned to think of genocide as industrial-scale slaughter: gas chambers, killing fields, mass graves. A report published last week by the U.S. Holocaust Museum’s Simon-Skjodt Center for the Prevention of Genocide, “To Make Us Slowly Disappear,” suggests that China may have found a different way, more insidious if no less monstrous. The campaign against the Uyghur population of western China, a Muslim minority of about 12 million people inside a nation of more than 1 billion, began with conventional discrimination, escalated to intense surveillance and mass detentions, and now includes forcible sterilization and insertion of IUDs; separation of men and women through incarceration, forced migration and coerced marriages of Uyghur women to men from the ethnic Han majority; and mass kidnapping of Uyghur children, taken from their parents and placed in state “boarding schools.” The campaign is not without terrible violence, torture and killing, as survivor accounts make clear. But, the report says, it hinges on something else: “coercive interventions of the Chinese government to prevent sizable numbers of Uyghurs from coming into being.” This suggests that the deliberate goal is “to biologically destroy the group, in whole or in substantial part.” One of the missions of the Holocaust Museum is “to do for victims of genocide today what was not done for the Jews of Europe.” The seriousness with which it accepts this responsibility is reflected in the meticulous caution of the well-documented report: Although both the Trump and Biden administrations have declared that China is committing genocide against the Uyghurs, the museum says it is “gravely concerned that the Chinese government may be committing genocide.” Uncertainty is what China wants; it has constructed a formidable information blockade. Uyghur scholars were among the first targets of the mass detention campaign. Foreign scholars, correspondents and think-tank experts are kept out of the Xinjiang region where the crimes are being committed — and increasingly out of China altogether. And China attempts to silence even Uyghurs living abroad by locking up and abusing the relatives back home of anyone who dares speak out. No one has been more victimized by this barbarity than the reporters of Radio Free Asia, who have done more than anyone in the past five years to reveal the truth. “The Chinese government are very professional on how to hide their crimes,” one of those reporters, Gulchehra Hoja, said at a forum organized by the museum last week. Hoja, about whom I’ve written before, knows this all too well: Trying to silence her, the Chinese government locked up, as usual without charge or trial, her brother, her mother, her cousins, their spouses — nearly two dozen relatives in all. As a result, we have indications, alarming snippets, satellite evidence — but far from the whole story. The report says between 1 million and 3 million people are detained; Hoja says she believes the higher number, but it can’t be proven. The report refers to more than 880,000 Uyghur children being put in boarding facilities — often after their parents are illegally detained — but that was only through 2019. Researchers uncover dramatic drops in Uyghur birth rates — in 2019, “at least 186,400 fewer children were born in Xinjiang compared to what would have been expected if birth rates had remained static at the pre-2017 baseline,” the report says — but then China hides more data, so reports are dated, fragmentary and, almost certainly, far less terrible than the truth. What is to be done? The report calls on China, which proclaims its innocence, to allow a U.N.-authorized commission access to Xinjiang to investigate. Certainly it should be at the top of President Biden’s agenda when he holds a tele-summit with President Xi Jinping on Monday. Hoja puts it more simply: “Please, I ask international community, break silence,” she said. “This is not a Uyghur tragedy. This is a human tragedy.” Will Coca-Cola and other Olympic sponsors really just pretend none of it is happening? “We stand with those seeking justice and equality,” chairman and CEO James Quincey declared last year. On its website, the company boasts of being the longest continuous sponsor of the International Olympic Committee because they share the “same core values of friendship, respect, inclusion, integrity and excellence.” At a congressional hearing in July, Coca-Cola executive Paul Lalli said the sponsors have no say in where the Games take place. “We support and follow the athletes wherever they compete,” Lalli said. That may be true. Also true: There will be no “justice and equality” for the Uyghur women being kicked, raped and sterilized as the ice-dancing competition unfolds; no “respect and inclusion” for Uyghur infants being seized from their parents as skiers race down the slalom course. “The future of a people may depend on swift, coordinated action by global actors,” the report says. Or we all can pretend it’s not happening, grab a Coke and enjoy the Games. © 1996-2021 The Washington Post