Over two weeks, the Rajabis suffered loss after loss as suicide attacks on Shiite mosques in two parts of the country ravaged their family. KANDAHAR, Afghanistan — When Masooma Rajabi saw her relatives flooding into the family’s courtyard, she broke down in sobs. Her family had congregated there twice over the past two weeks: First to mourn the loss of her husband, who had been killed in a suicide attack on a Shiite mosque in northern Afghanistan, and then again after another blast ripped through a Shiite mosque in Kandahar, killing her father-in-law and lodging shrapnel in the skull of her 15-year-old son, Maisam. She had clung to hope that Maisam would recover. But now, seeing her husband’s cousins and her mother quietly weeping, Masooma knew she had lost him, too. “How is this possible?” asked Masooma, 32, burying her face in her damp head scarf. For decades, violence has torn through Afghanistan’s Shiite community, perpetuated first by the Taliban — who consider Shiites heretics — and in more recent years by the Islamic State Khorasan, or ISIS-K. When the Taliban, hard-line Sunni Muslims, seized power in August, they vowed to end decades of bloodshed and sought to reassure Afghan Shiites that they would not again be their targets, as they were during the group’s previous rule from 1996 to 2001. This time around, the Taliban have allowed Shiites to observe the holy holiday of Ashura; they dispatched a Shiite cleric to do outreach in Shiite communities; they visited Shiite mosques to demonstrate solidarity and they vowed that the new government would keep them safe. But two suicide bombings by ISIS-K at mosques in October, which together killed more than 90 people and injured hundreds of others, stoked fears that in fact the Taliban would allow the Islamic State’s campaign against Afghan Shiites to go unchecked. The attacks also fueled concerns in neighboring Iran, a Shiite Muslim theocracy and self-proclaimed defender of Shiite Muslims around the world, where officials have voiced concerns about the fate of Afghan Shiites under Taliban rule and the threat of a resurgent ISIS-Klaunching attacks on Iranian soil. Now many Afghan Shiites fear the beginning of a new brutal chapter, one in which their security depends on the very movement that once targeted them. Few understand that devastating new reality more than Masooma and her family. In the span of just two weeks, she and her relatives lost a grandfather, father and son — three generations of Afghan men who spent most of their lives in a country at war but died after the bloodshed was meant to be over. “When the Taliban became in power, we were not expecting these things,” said Masooma’s uncle-in-law, Abdul Raziq Rajabi, 50, the morning after Maisam died. “But I can’t say now whether the Taliban will support our people or not.” After the attack, an uneasy quiet enveloped their neighborhood of mud brick houses stitched together with narrow alleyways and electric wires dangling overhead. It is one of a handful of Shiite districts in Kandahar, the Pashtun heartland of the country. Some Shiites there are Hazara — an ethnic minority that has been persecuted for centuries — who migrated to the southern city for work or to flee violence. Others have lived in the south for hundreds of years. Masooma’s father-in-law, Haji Nematullah Rajabi, 60, migrated from the central province of Ghazni to Kandahar nearly half a century ago and lived a comfortable life in the relative calm of the city. He started selling agricultural equipment, married his wife, Sughra, and eventually had a daughter and two sons. Ezzatullah Rajabi, 33, Sughra and Nematullah’s son, married Masooma and they had three boys of their own. They moved to Kunduz, an economic hub of northern Afghanistan. The move made sense to expand the family business but terrified Ezzatullah’s mother. After the Taliban briefly seized the city in 2015 and 2016, Sughra called every week begging him to return to Kandahar. Still, when the Taliban began their military offensive last summer, even Ezzatullah was on edge. After the group seized power and offered public pledges to protect Afghan Shiites, who make up 10 to 20 percent of the country’s population, Ezzatullah said his fears dissipated. Then on Oct. 8 an Islamic State suicide attack devastated Ezzatullah’s mosque in Kunduz, killing at least 43 people. Masooma heard the explosion and sprinted to the mosque, knowing her husband had gone there to pray. She scoured the bodies being carried out in bloody scarves, looking for him. The next morning, Nematullah arrived from Kandahar and found Ezzatullah’s body — his limbs bent like a rag doll — in a hospital morgue. Seeing him, Nematullah nearly collapsed. The family returned to Kandahar to bury Ezzatullah and the following Friday — determined to show his unwavering faith — Nematullah went to his mosque to pray. He called Masooma three times that morning asking her to send his oldest grandson, Maisam, to join him. Masooma relented. But around 1 p.m., she heard another blast — this time from two suicide bombers who barged into the mosque during Friday prayers. The explosion left bodies scattered across bloodstained carpets. Dazed survivors poured out of the building through broken windows, while others looked for loved ones. Nematullah’s surviving son, Ahmad Zia, found him among the bodies — his right side bloodied, eyes closed and barely able to speak — and then spotted Maisam, whose head was wrapped in a bloodied scarf. He brought them both to the hospital, where Maisam was put on life support and Nematullah died — one of at least 47 people killed that day. The attack on Bibi Fatima Mosque was ISIS-K’s first in Kandahar, the Taliban’s historic stronghold, and it shocked the Shiite community there. For many, the week that followed was a blur of funerals and mourning. In one Shiite neighborhood, mourners poured into a cemetery for bombing victims each day, whispering prayers at the row of fresh graves. By the cemetery gate, talk of security consumed a group of men as they passed around a pot of tea. The new, untested government could not confront the resurgent threat from ISIS-K, some said. Others questioned the Taliban’s professed intentions to protect Afghan Shiites — even wondering whether some Talibs might see the recent attacks as an invitation to freely kill Shiites. “The Taliban are just saying they are trying to keep our security, but why should we believe them?” asked Khalil, 36, staring at the graves. For Shiite community leaders, the implication of the bombing was clear: It was time to take security back into their own hands. Days after the attack, they met with Taliban officials at the mosque — the air still heavy with the smell of charred flesh — and demanded that the new government return seized weapons to the roughly 40 Shiite places of worship in Kandahar. The Taliban agreed to return up to three weapons to every Shiite mosque and offered compensation to families of the bombing victims. “It is the right not only of the Shia’s nation, but the right of all Kandahar’s people to be secure,” Haji Mullah Abdul Ghafar Mohammadi, 41, the Taliban police chief in Kandahar, said in an interview. But weeks later, the Taliban had still not yet returned the weapons — prompting some Shiite leaders to take matters into their own hands. As men poured into Bibi Fatima Mosque the following Friday, two men with Kalashnikov rifles manned the entrance, while plainclothes security guards kept watch from behind nearby shop counters. Others were perched on nearly every roof in the vicinity, their bodies hunched over and weapons aimed at the pavement below. Still, many remained on edge. At the Rajabi family home, Ezzatullah’s brother, Ahmad Zia, planned to go to the mosque, but his mother would not allow it. “He is the only son I have left,” his mother, Sughra, said quietly. He offered her a pained look, Maisam’s condition heavy on his mind. For the past week, the boy had been hospitalized, intubated and unconscious. Eleven relatives had taken shifts squeezing an old manual oxygen pump to keep him alive. When Ahmad Zia went back to the hospital that night, the doctors gave him the news he feared: Maisam was brain-dead. The next morning, the family gathered for the now well-rehearsed ritual of death. Relatives visited the family home, prayed at the mosque and took Maisam’s body to the cemetery to bury him, right beside his father and grandfather. Wali Arian contributed reporting from Istanbul. © The New York Times 2021

By SAM McNEIL and VICTORIA MILKO FILE - Young demonstrators participate in an anti-coup mask strike in Yangon, Myanmar, on April 4, 2021. Years after coming under scrutiny for contributing to ethnic and religious violence in Myanmar, internal documents viewed by The Associated Press show that Facebook continues to have problems detecting and moderating hate speech and misinformation on its platform in the Southeast Asian nation. (AP Photo, File) Years after coming under scrutiny for contributing to ethnic and religious violence in Myanmar, Facebook still has problems detecting and moderating hate speech and misinformation on its platform in the Southeast Asian nation, internal documents viewed by The Associated Press show. Three years ago, the company commissioned a report that found Facebook was used to “foment division and incite offline violence” in the country. It pledged to do better and developed several tools and policies to deal with hate speech. But the breaches have persisted -- and even been exploited by hostile actors -- since the Feb. 1 military takeover this year that resulted in gruesome human rights abuses across the country. Scrolling through Facebook today, it’s not hard to find posts threatening murder and rape in Myanmar. One 2 1/2 minute video posted on Oct. 24 of a supporter of the military calling for violence against opposition groups has garnered over 56,000 views. “So starting from now, we are the god of death for all (of them),” the man says in Burmese while looking into the camera. “Come tomorrow and let’s see if you are real men or gays.” One account posts the home address of a military defector and a photo of his wife. Another post from Oct. 29 includes a photo of soldiers leading bound and blindfolded men down a dirt path. The Burmese caption reads, “Don’t catch them alive.” Despite the ongoing issues, Facebook saw its operations in Myanmar as both a model to export around the world and an evolving and caustic case. Documents reviewed by AP show Myanmar became a testing ground for new content moderation technology, with the social media giant trialing ways to automate the detection of hate speech and misinformation with varying levels of success. Facebook’s internal discussions on Myanmar were revealed in disclosures made to the Securities and Exchange Commission and provided to Congress in redacted form by former Facebook employee-turned-whistleblower Frances Haugen’s legal counsel. The redacted versions received by Congress were obtained by a consortium of news organizations, including The Associated Press. Facebook has had a shorter but more volatile history in Myanmar than in most countries. After decades of censorship under military rule, Myanmar was connected to the internet in 2000. Shortly afterward, Facebook paired with telecom providers in the country, allowing customers to use the platform without needing to pay for the data, which was still expensive at the time. Use of the platform exploded. For many in Myanmar, Facebook became the internet itself. Htaike Htaike Aung, a Myanmar internet policy advocate, said it also became “a hotbed for extremism” around 2013, coinciding with religious riots across Myanmar between Buddhists and Muslims. It’s unclear how much, if any, content moderation was happening at the time by people or automation. Htaike Htaike Aung said she met with Facebook that year and laid out issues, including how local organizations were seeing exponential amounts of hate speech on the platform and how its preventive mechanisms, such as reporting posts, didn’t work in the Myanmar context. One example she cited was a photo of a pile of bamboo sticks that was posted with a caption reading, “Let us be prepared because there’s going to be a riot that is going to happen within the Muslim community.” Htaike Htaike Aung said the photo was reported to Facebook, but the company didn’t take it down because it didn’t violate any of the company’s community standards. “Which is ridiculous because it was actually calling for violence. But Facebook didn’t see it that way,” she said. Years later, the lack of moderation caught the attention of the international community. In March 2018, United Nations human rights experts investigating attacks against Myanmar’s Muslim Rohingya minority said Facebook had played a role in spreading hate speech. When asked about Myanmar a month later during a U.S. Senate hearing, CEO Mark Zuckerberg replied that Facebook planned to hire “dozens” of Burmese speakers to moderate content, would work with civil society groups to identify hate figures and develop new technologies to combat hate speech. “Hate speech is very language specific. It’s hard to do it without people who speak the local language and we need to ramp up our effort there dramatically,” Zuckerberg said. Information in internal Facebook documents show that while the company did step up efforts to combat hate speech in the country, the tools and strategies to do so never came to full fruition, and individuals within the company repeatedly sounded the alarm. In one document from May 2020, an employee said a hate speech text classifier that was available wasn’t being used or maintained. Another document from a month later said there were “significant gaps” in misinformation detection in Myanmar. “Facebook took symbolic actions I think were designed to mollify policymakers that something was being done and didn’t need to look much deeper,” said Ronan Lee, a visiting scholar at Queen Mary University of London’s International State Crime Initiative. In an emailed statement to the AP, Rafael Frankel’s, Facebook’s director of policy for APAC Emerging Countries, said the platform “has built a dedicated team of over 100 Burmese speakers.” He declined to state exactly how many were employed. Online marketing company NapoleonCat estimates there are about 28.7 million Facebook users in Myanmar. During her testimony to the European Union Parliament on Nov. 8, Haugen, the whistleblower, criticized Facebook for a lack of investment in third-party fact-checking, and relying instead on automatic systems to detect harmful content. “If you focus on these automatic systems, they will not work for the most ethnically diverse places in the world, with linguistically diverse places in the world, which are often the most fragile,” she said while referring to Myanmar. After Zuckerberg’s 2018 congressional testimony, Facebook developed digital tools to combat hate speech and misinformation and also created a new internal framework to manage crises like Myanmar around the world. Facebook crafted a list of “at-risk countries” with ranked tiers for a “critical countries team” to focus its energy on, and also rated languages needing more content moderation. Myanmar was listed as a “Tier 1” at-risk country, with Burmese deemed a “priority language” alongside Ethiopian languages, Bengali, Arabic and Urdu. Facebook engineers taught Burmese slang words for “Muslims” and “Rohingya” to its automated systems. They also trained systems to detect “coordinated inauthentic behavior” such as a single person posting from multiple accounts, or coordination between different accounts to post the same content. The company also tried “repeat offender demotion” which lessened the impact of posts of users who frequently violated guidelines. In a test in two of the world’s most volatile countries, demotion worked well in Ethiopia, but poorly in Myanmar -- a difference that flummoxed engineers, according to a 2020 report included in the documents. “We aren’t sure why … but this information provides a starting point for further analysis and user research,” the report said. Facebook declined to comment on the record if the problem has been fixed a year after its detection, or about the success of the two tools in Myanmar. The company also deployed a new tool to reduce the virality of content called “reshare depth promotion” that boosts content shared by direct contacts, according to an internal 2020 report. This method is “content-agnostic” and cut viral inflammatory prevalence by 25% and photo misinformation by 48.5%, it said. Slur detection and demotion were judged effective enough that staffers shared the experience in Myanmar as part of a “playbook” for acting in other at-risk countries such as Ethiopia, Syria, Yemen, Pakistan, India, Russia, the Philippines and Egypt. While these new methods forged in Myanmar’s civil crises were deployed around the world, documents show that by June 2020 Facebook knew that flaws persisted in its Myanmar safety work. “We found significant gaps in our coverage (especially in Myanmar and Ethiopia), showcasing that our current signals may be inadequate,” said an internal audit of the company’s “integrity coverage.” Myanmar was color-coded red with less than 55% coverage: worse than Syria but better than Ethiopia. Haugen criticized the company’s internal policy of acting “only once a crisis has begun.” Facebook “slows the platform down instead of watching as the temperature gets hotter, and making the platform safer as that happens,” she said during testimony to Britain’s Parliament on Oct. 25. Frankel, the Facebook spokesperson, said the company has been proactive. “Facebook’s approach in Myanmar today is fundamentally different from what it was in 2017, and allegations that we have not invested in safety and security in the country are wrong,” Frankel said. Yet, a September 2021 report by the Myanmar Social Media Insights Project found that posts on Facebook include coordinated targeting of activists, ethnic minorities and journalists -– a tactic that has roots in the military’s history. The report also said the military is laundering its propaganda through public pages that claim to be media outlets. Opposition and pro-military groups have used the encrypted messaging app Telegram to organize two types of propaganda campaigns on Facebook and Twitter, according to an October report shared with the AP by Myanmar Witness, a U.K.-based organization that archives social media posts related to the conflict. Myanmar is a “highly contested information environment,” where users working in concert overload Facebook’s reporting system to take down others’ posts, and also spread coordinated misinformation and hate speech, the report said. In one example, the coordinated networks took video shot in Mexico in 2018 by the Sinaloa cartel of butchered bodies and falsely labeled it as evidence of the opposition killing Myanmar soldiers on June 28, 2021, said Benjamin Strick, director of investigations for Myanmar Witness. “There’s a difficulty in catching it for some of these platforms that are so big and perhaps the teams to look for it are so small that it’s very hard to catch water when it’s coming out of a fire hydrant,” he said. The organization also traced the digital footprint of one soldier at the incineration of 160 homes in the village of Thantlang in late October. He posed in body armor on a ledge overlooking burning homes, with a post blaming opposition forces for the destruction in a litany of violent speech. Facebook “conducted human rights due diligence to understand and address the risks in Myanmar,” and banned the military and used technology to reduce the amount of violating content, spokesperson Frankel said. Yet Myanmar digital rights activists and scholars say Facebook could still take steps to improve, including greater openness about its policies for content moderation, demotion and removal, and acknowledging its responsibilities toward the Myanmar people. “We need to start examining damage that has been done to our communities by platforms like Facebook. They portray that they are a virtual platform, and thus can have lower regulation,” said Lee, the visiting scholar. “The fact is that there are real-world consequences.” © copyright 2021 The Associated Press

Milorad Dodik Credit...Dado Ruvic/Reuters By Srecko Latal Mr. Latal is a journalist, editor and analyst who has reported extensively from the Balkans since the 1990s. SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina — A Serb strongman, who for years exploited ethnonationalist feelings to claim more power, publicly pledges to break his country apart, threatening to set off cascading conflict. The West, distracted by its own problems, barely notices. No, that’s not Yugoslavia in 1991. It’s Bosnia and Herzegovina today. The country, whose complex constitutional order was painstakingly negotiated in the teeth of a bloody war and settled through the Dayton Accords, is on the brink of breaking up. At the heart of the crisis is Milorad Dodik, the Bosnian Serb leader and longtime separatist. In October, he announced plans to withdraw the Serb-dominated Republika Srpska, one of the country’s two administrative entities, from major state institutions. In what effectively amounts to secession, he intends to set up a separate taxation office, army and security forces. For a region with a recent history of ethnic violence and conflict, it’s a terrifying development. Behind Mr. Dodik’s moves, 15 years in the making, lies the steady withdrawal from the region of the United States and the European Union. In their absence, competing foreign influences — Russia foremost among them — have stepped into the vacuum, emboldening autocratic leaders and destabilizing the region. To avoid the breakup of Bosnia, which could lead to a new war and all-out disaster, the West must reverse course immediately and set about repairing the damage. In the 1990s, the West was slow to react to the breakup of the former Yugoslavia. After much bloodshed, it eventually launched airstrikes against the Serb forces in Bosnia in 1995 and in Serbia and Kosovo in 1999, and deployed tens of thousands of NATO troops to oversee the truce and stabilize the region. In subsequent years, the United States and the European Union spent billions of dollars to help reconstruct the region. Though often justifiably criticized for focusing on short-term, slapdash solutions, their efforts were key to ensuring the safety and stability of the Balkans. But their attention slipped away. The United States, more focused on its operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, had withdrawn from hands-on engagement by 2010. It handed over the responsibility to the European Union, which was supposed to underwrite the region’s long-term stability by accepting its countries into the bloc. Yet by 2019, as the European Union struggled with its own problems and divisions, it became clear that the offer had been effectively taken off the table. Robbed of their European dream and denied full access to the bloc’s common market, Balkan leaders reverted to the nationalism and populism of the past. The rule of law, human rights and other key democratic principles fell by the wayside. In multiethnic countries with unfinished national projects, such as Bosnia, Montenegro, North Macedonia and Kosovo, ethno-political divisions have festered. Even so, the main responsibility lies with the countries themselves, especially political representatives and their affiliated media, who based their popularity on spreading animosity toward other ethnic groups. In Bosnia and Herzegovina, ethnonationalism has taken center stage. Mr. Dodik is not alone in his radical ways: Muslim Bosniaks, the largest ethnic group, have agitated for a unitary state, and Bosnian Croats have demanded an autonomous Croat region. Crucially, the abdication of the West not only allowed democratic backsliding but also opened the region to other outside forces. Russia has taken a pronounced interest, establishing a strong political influence in all Serb-populated parts of the region, while Turkey, the Gulf countries and Iran have done the same in Muslim-populated areas. China, using its political pragmatism and ample economic resources, has become a major presence throughout the region. What’s more, Croatia and especially Serbia have started to interfere in the internal politics of neighboring countries, adding to regional tensions. The recent escalation in Bosnia is a case in point. Mr. Dodik, once a United States-backed liberal who turned to nationalism in part out of disappointment with failed Western promises, made his separatist move only after receiving a green light from Russia. For their part, Muslim Bosniaks, feeling abandoned by Western powers, have turned for help to Turkey — while Bosnian Croats rely fully on Croatia, an E.U. member. This is, to put it mildly, very dangerous. The situation in Bosnia, with its deepening ethno-political disputes and conflicting narratives, looks a lot like it did before conflict broke out in 1992. If Mr. Dodik goes ahead with his plan, it would represent a clear violation of the country’s peace accord. In response, the Bosnian Croat leadership could look to reinstate their wartime autonomous region of Herzeg-Bosnia — and Muslim Bosniaks would look to defend Bosnia by any means, even taking up arms. With military resources supplied by international backers, war is all too easy to imagine. The United States and the European Union seem to have lost their institutional memories of the price they paid — in the lives of their soldiers and billions of dollars from their taxpayers — for ending the Balkans’ bloody wars of the ’90s. But the worst can be averted if they fully re-engage, devoting resources and high-profile officials to the task. They should revive their “carrot and stick” strategy — combining sanctions, concessions and financial resources — they successfully wielded in the Balkans in the past. That way, Western officials can bring key local and regional leaders to the negotiating table where differences can be thrashed out, checking the pernicious influence of other countries in the process. Bosnia and Herzegovina’s leaders, of course, must rise to the challenge. But that may happen only once the West restores a long-term European perspective to the region. The fuse on the Balkans’ powder keg has been lit. It must be stamped out before the region, and even Europe itself, is engulfed in fire. Srecko Latal, who covered Bosnia and Herzegovina for The Associated Press during the 1992-95 war, is a former analyst for the International Crisis Group and an editor at the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network. Copyright 2021 The New York Times Company

Genocide Watch staff have published the thirtieth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream covers the Haitian Massacre of October 1937, in which, on President Rafael Trujillo's orders, the Dominican Republic military killed as many as 30,000 Haitians near the Dominican-Haitian border. The massacre was genocidal in nature, as the victims were targeted for their nationality and skin color. The Dominican government has never taken responsibility for the massacre, and no high-level government official has ever been held accountable. Following the massacre, Trujillo instituted a state-sponsored doctrine of anti-Haitianism, the legacy of which is still seen today. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

Jummas and indigenous people from around the world call for the Chittagong Hill Tract peace treaty to be honored outside the UN in New York. May 2011 ¦ Survival International © Ben Powless Genocide Watch is issuing a Genocide Warning for the Jumma people in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s indigenous people are dispersed throughout the country but are concentrated in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) in southeast Bangladesh. Known collectively as the Jumma people, the indigenous people comprise 12 different ethnic groups: the Chakma, Marma, Tripura, Tanchangya, Mro, Lushai, Khumi, Chak, Khiyang, Bawm, Mrung/Riang, and Pangkhua. Their religions differ from the majority Muslim Bengali population. Likewise, they have a distinct language and culture. They faced social, economic, and political marginalisation, exclusion, persecution, and displacement prior to the independence of Bangladesh, which then continued with further forced displacement, violence, land confiscation, and denial of their identity under the Bangladesh Constitution. The Bangladesh government transferred more than 400,000 Bengalis into the CHT without the consent of the Jumma people as part of their “transmigration programme,” seizing their land amidst violent clashes and changingthe demographic makeup of the area. The Bangladesh military moved into the CHT in early 1972 and has carried out atrocities against the Jumma people alongside attacks from Bengali settlers. These include rape and sexual abuse, forced evictions, destruction of property, torture, and murder in a “genocidal campaign against them.” The treatment of the Jumma people has beendescribed as persecution and even “creeping genocide.” In 1997, a political group representing the Jumma people, Parbatya Chattagram Jana Samhati Samiti (PCJSS), signed the CHT Peace Accord with the government of Bangladesh. The Peace Accord aimed to resolve the conflict peacefully via its agreements to afford special governance to the region, demilitarize the region, and establish a land dispute resolution mechanism. These agreements, however, have not been fully implemented, leading to continued tensions betweenthe government and the Jumma communities. Accordingto the UN Special Rapporteur on Religious Intolerance, this persecution “threatened the survival of the cultural and religious identity of Indigenous populations.” Today, Bengali settlers outnumber Jumma people in the CHT. The Jumma people remain displaced from major portions of their former lands. They are subject to judicial harassment by Bengali settlers in systematic denial of the land rights of the Jumma people. They suffer attacks including arson and property destruction by Bengali settlers who are supported by the Bangladesh army. In 2017 these attacks. Even religious sites became targets of destruction. The government has taken no action to hold the perpetrators of these attacks accountable. Indigenous advocates have been targeted and killed. Rape and sexual assault have been used as a weapon to terrorize the Jumma communities. In 2020, 889 rapes of women and girls were reported. A true tally may never be collected, as many rapes have gone unreported. The overwhelming majority of perpetrators of violence against the Jumma people are Bengali settlers. There is widespread impunity. Genocide Watch considers that the following stages of genocide are present in Bangladesh’s treatment of the Jumma people in CHT: Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 5: Organization, Stage 8: Persecution, and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends: Bangladesh should ratify the international conventions relating to the protection of indigenous peoples, including the ILO C.169 - Indigenous and Tribal Peoples Convention, 1989 (No. 169) and the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). The Bangladesh government must fully implement the 1997 CHT Peace Accords. State authorities should investigate and prosecute crimes of rape and sexual assault against Jumma people. Bangladesh should adopt the recommendations of UN human rights treaty mechanisms and those set out by the UN Human Rights Council in its most recent Universal Periodic Review. Bangladesh should stop the slow-moving genocide that threatens to destroy the Jumma people, their identity and way of life.

By Anjana Pasricha Beddings and other belongings of Indian migrant laborers and homeless people lie scattered after they were evicted from the banks of Yamuna River where they were squatting during lockdown in New Delhi, India, April 15, 2020. An eviction drive in India’s northeastern state of Assam of residents living on government-owned land has heightened insecurities among the state’s Muslim population according to rights activists. The evictions being carried out in the remote state came into national spotlight after two people were killed in September during one of the drives to evict 800 mostly Muslim families from Dhalpur in Assam’s Darrang district. The violence caused outrage after a video that went viral on social media showed a policeman shooting a young man who was running toward him with a stick — he was among residents protesting the evictions and demanding rehabilitation. Seconds later, the video shows him lying motionless on the ground and a government-appointed photographer kicking the victim’s body. The young man, Moninul Haque, and a 12-year-old boy who got caught in the violence were killed. Many of those displaced told local media that they had been farming the land for decades since moving to the area after losing their own land to river erosion. The eviction drive resumed this month as Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party that rules the state vowed to press on with its campaign to clear people settled on government land. More than 500 families, who had been growing crops like ginger and turmeric, were evicted last week, from Lumding. Officials said the drive, for which hundreds of police and paramilitary soldiers were deployed, was peaceful. Critics and activists charge that the campaigns to clear government land are being carried out in areas populated predominantly by Muslims. The government denies this and says the drive is not targeted at any community but at people who are squatting on forest and government land. It says the land will be used for farming projects that will create jobs for “indigenous” people. An Indian homeless man sits in a bus as he is being evicted with other homeless people and migrant laborers from the banks of Yamuna River where they have been squatting during lockdown in New Delhi, India, April 15, 2020. Suhas Chakma, Director of the Rights and Risks Analysis Group told VOA the evictions aim to satisfy the sentiment of Assamese-speaking people in the state. “It is very clear the action is selective. Otherwise, the state government should carry out a survey of such encroachments throughout the state, and not just conduct evictions in areas where mostly Muslims have settled,” points out Chakma. “If that is done, they would find thousands of people from all communities who have been cultivating government land for decades.” Assam’s population of 33 million includes Hindus, Muslims and several indigenous tribes. Among the residents are Bengali-speaking people, who came over the decades from Bangladesh with which the state shares a border. A spokesman for the Bharatiya Janata Party in Assam state, Rupam Goswami told VOA that majority of those evicted are Bengali-speaking Muslims because they account for most people settled on government land. “The drive is not targeting any one section but only encroachers, a majority of whom happen to be Muslims. Some Hindu people settled on forest land were also evicted,” says Goswami. “People cannot be allowed to destroy forests and settle on it. The eviction was an ongoing process since 2016. It is nothing new.” However, analysts point out that the eviction campaign has been fast tracked by the BJP since it won a second term in control in Assam earlier this year. In the runup to the polls, it had promised to free government land from “encroachers” and distribute it among “indigenous” people who are landless. Critics say the BJP is tapping into the state’s history of tensions between ethnic Assamese who have long complained of losing lands and jobs to Bengali-speaking people. “A divide has existed for many decades between the local Assamese and anyone who come from outside, irrespective of their religion. But with eviction drives like this, the BJP is deepening a wedge more specifically between the Bengali Muslims and the indigenous population,” says Niranjan Sahoo, a political analyst at the Observer Research Foundation in New Delhi. “Now, it is boiling down to religion.” The evictions have revived worries among the Muslims in Assam, especially those who were among about 1.9 million people left off a controversial citizenship register drawn up in the state in 2019 when people were asked to show documentary evidence that they or their ancestors had resided in India before 1971. The exercise aimed to identify illegal immigrants in Assam. Those not in the register are believed to include both Hindus and Muslims. But Muslims in Assam are more fearful because a controversial citizenship law passed in December 2019 will allow citizenship for migrants from nearby countries who are either Hindu or from one of five other religions, but not for Muslims. Analysts like Sahoo say the Assam evictions are another example of the fracturing of inter-community relations witnessed in India since the BJP came to power. “If you connect the dots, it is part of the BJP’s agenda to rally the Hindu base and create a divide between the majority community and the Muslims not just in Assam but other places also.” For the time being, the people evicted in Assam are living in cramped shanties without basic facilities. A body that represents minority communities, the All Assam Minorities Students Union, said the displaced are facing shortages of food, drinking water and medicine and demanded proper rehabilitation for them. The state government has said it will provide compensation and resettlement for families if they are citizens. “The government will give land to those who are landless,” said BJP’S spokesman Goswami. Activist Chakma counters by saying that “You cannot say I have evicted you and now you come and prove your citizenship. Many of them have proper identity papers. How many times will they have to prove that they are citizens?” © VOA News

Thousands of migrants and refugees have flocked to Belarus’ border with Poland, hoping to get to Western Europe. Many of them are now stranded at the frontier, setting up makeshift camps as Polish security forces watch them from behind a razor-wire fence and try to prevent them from entering the country. The European Union has accused the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko, of aiding illegal border crossings in retaliation for EU sanctions. Lukashenko denies encouraging migration to Europe. WHAT IS BEHIND THE CRISIS? Belarus was rocked by months of massive protests following the August 2020 election that gave authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko a sixth term in office. The opposition and the West rejected the result as a sham. Belarusian authorities responded to the demonstrations with a fierce crackdown that saw more than 35,000 people arrested and thousands beaten by police. The European Union and the U.S. reacted by imposing sanctions on Lukashenko’s government. Those restrictions were toughened after an incident in May when a passenger jet flying from Greece to Lithuania was diverted by Belarus to Minsk, where authorities arrested dissident journalist Raman Pratasevich. The EU called it air piracy and barred Belarusian carriers from its skies and cut imports of the country’s top commodities, including petroleum products and potash, an ingredient in fertilizer. A furious Lukashenko shot back by saying he would no longer abide by an agreement to stem illegal migration, arguing that the EU sanctions deprived his government of funds needed to contain flows of migrants. Planes carrying migrants from Iraq, Syria, and other countries began arriving in Belarus, and they soon headed for the borders with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. Pavel Latushka, a member of the Belarusian opposition, charged that state-controlled tourist agencies were involved in offering visa support to migrants and helping them drive to the border. The EU accused Lukashenko of using the migrants as pawns in a “hybrid attack” against the 27-nation bloc in retaliation for the sanctions. Lukashenko denies encouraging the flow of migrants and said the EU is violating migrants’ rights by denying them safe passage. WHAT HAS BEEN THE RESPONSE BY EU COUNTRIES? During the summer, Lithuania introduced a state of emergency to deal with an influx of migrants and strengthen its border with Belarus. It set up tent camps to accommodate the growing number of migrants. In previous months, small groups of asylum-seekers tried to sneak into Lithuania, Poland, and Latvia at night, using forest paths away from populated areas. This week, much larger groups gathered openly at the Polish border, and some people used shovels and wire cutters to try to break through a razor-wire fence at Poland’s border. Authorities in Warsaw estimated the crowds at about 3,000-4,000 and said they prevented hundreds of people from entering the country. Poland deployed riot police and other forces to bolster the border guards. Eight deaths have been confirmed at the Belarus-Poland border, and temperatures have fallen below freezing at night. The EU has made a strong show of solidarity with Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia. EU officials are expected to discuss another round of sanctions against Belarus, and European Council President Charles Michel said for the first time that the bloc would consider the possibility of financing “physical infrastructure” such as barriers or fences on the border. Analysts say Lukashenko’s heavy-handed approach would likely backfire. “Such brutal tactics would make Belarus toxic and delay the prospect of talks with the EU,” said Artyom Shraybman, a Belarusian political analyst who was forced to leave the country under pressure from authorities. “European politicians won’t engage in talks under pressure.” Pavel Usau, head of the Center for Political Analysis and Prognosis based in Poland, also said Lukashenko is mistaken if he thinks he can force the EU into concessions. “Lukashenko expects the EU to give in to pressure and ask Poland to let migrants cross into Germany,” Usau said. “But the EU realizes that doing so would allow Lukashenko to emerge as the winner and encourage him to continue to take further such steps, raising the number of migrants to tens of thousands.” The Belarusian opposition has urged the EU to take even tougher measures, including a trade embargo and a ban on transit of cargo via Belarus. WHAT IS RUSSIA’S ROLE? Belarus has received strong support from its main ally, Russia, which has helped buttress Lukashenko’s government with loans and political support. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said the migrants flow resulted from the U.S.-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Western-backed Arab Spring uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa. He challenged the EU to offer financial assistance to Belarus to deal with the influx. At the same time, the Kremlin angrily rejected Poland’s claim that Russia bears responsibility for the crisis. Usau said Russia could step in as a mediator in the hope of improving ties with Germany and other EU nations. WHAT COMES NEXT? Belarus is estimated to host between 5,000 and 20,000 migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa. Many have run out of money and grown increasingly desperate as the winter approaches. Belarusian residents are uneasy about their presence, raising pressure on the authorities to act. Some observers expect Lukashenko to escalate the crisis and pressure the EU to ease sanctions. “As a minimum, Lukashenko wants to take revenge against the EU, and as a maximum, he aims to soften the European sanctions that have dealt a painful blow to key Belarusian industries,” said independent analyst Valery Karbalevich. “Belarusian authorities have tried unsuccessfully to persuade the EU to engage in talks and bargaining, and migrants are just an instrument in a hybrid attack by Minsk.” “Lukashenko has nothing to lose,” he added. “He’s no longer worried about his reputation.” (c) AP News

ETAN Says That It Is Never Too Late to Hold Accountable Those Responsible for Santa Cruz Massacre Photo by Steve Cox, Generations of Resistance: East Timor On the 30th anniversary of the Santa Cruz massacre, the East Timor and Indonesia Action Network (ETAN) urges the international community to end impunity for the human rights crimes committed during the occupation of Timor-Leste. "The Santa Cruz massacre is among the most notorious crimes committed by Indonesia during its illegal occupation of Timor-Leste and has waited too long for justice," said John M. Miller, National Coordinator of ETAN. "Those responsible for the massacre and for the many other crimes against humanity during Indonesia's illegal occupation need to be held accountable for their crimes." On November 12, 1991, U.S.-armed Indonesian troops shot hundreds of peaceful demonstrators calling for self-determination and protesting atrocities committed by the Indonesian military. More than 271 East Timorese were killed on the spot or died soon after and an equal number disappeared and are believed to be dead. The 1991 massacre was a major turning point in Timor-Leste's struggle for liberation. Indonesia's assault was witnessed and filmed by foreign journalists. The eyewitness accounts of U.S.-based Allan Nairn and Amy Goodman, photographer Steve Cox, and filmmaker Max Stahl (who died recently, see below) countered Indonesia propaganda and inspired the formation of dozens of grassroots groups worldwide - including ETAN - to support Timor's self-determination. During more than two decades of U.S.-backed occupation, Indonesian soldiers committed serious crimes with impunity, taking as many as 184,000 Timorese lives and torturing, raping, and displacing countless others. Timor-Leste became independent in 2002. "The East Timorese people still need to know where the bodies of their relatives and friends are," said Miller. "Impunity for decades of systematic Indonesian military and police atrocities prevents both Timor-Leste and Indonesia from respecting human rights and consolidating the rule of law. In recent years, Indonesia has increasingly violated human rights including stepped up military action in West Papua and the harassment of human rights defenders and environmental and anti-corruption activists. "The U.S and other governments that armed and trained Indonesia's security forces during the Suharto dictatorship, now actively pursue business-as-usual with Indonesia leaving no room for genuine accountability for their collusion with Timor's oppression," Miller added. Perpetrators from countries such as the United States, Britain, and Australia that actively aided in these crimes by providing weapons, training, and political support have yet to be held accountable. For more on the Santa Cruz massacre see ETAN's backgrounder here: http://etan.org/factsheets/santa_cruz.htm

“Why should we be oppressed like this? Aren’t we the people of Afghanistan?” asked one member of the Hazara community. 10 October 2021 | By Chantal Da Silva, Amin Hossein Khodadadi and Mushtaq Yusufzai Members of the Hazara community pray outside a mosque on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, this month. AAMIR QURESHI / AFP - Getty Images The Taliban gave Gulsom two days to leave her home with her husband and their three young daughters. The 25-year-old and her family were one of hundreds of Hazara families forcibly evicted from their homes late last month, sparking fears that an ethnic minority that was targeted by Afghanistan’s previous Taliban regime is being persecuted again. “It was very difficult,” Gulsom said in a WhatsApp voice message Thursday, adding that the Taliban had taken everything from them. Both Gulsom and her husband, Mohammad, 35, were born and raised in a small village in the Daykundi province, where they grew up as neighbors before they got married and started their family. The couple, who did not wish to give their last names or the name of their village because they feared persecution, said they had previously relied on subsistence farming to feed themselves. Without access to their crops, they said they did not know how they would survive. “I’m so confused. I can’t sleep,” Mohammad said. “My wife says that every night she has nightmares.” A photo taken by Mohammad purportedly shows Hazara families in Afghanistan's Daykundi province leaving their homes after the Taliban ordered them to evacuate their houses this month. Obtained by NBC News For now, the family has found short-term shelter in an empty home owned by a relative in the country’s capital, Kabul. They have also borrowed a small amount of money from a friend to pay for food. But their relative is planning to sell the property and after that, Mohammad said, he could not “predict the future.” Taliban spokesman Bilal Karimi said there had been a dispute over the land on which Gulsom, Mohammad and other Hazara families had been living, and a Shariah court, or a court of Islamic law, had ruled in favor of the claimants. As a result, they left, he said. But a human rights activist, Dr. Saleem Javed, said the Taliban were using the Shariah to justify the takeover of long-held Hazara land. “These people have been living on their ancestral lands,” said Javed, a Hazara who lives in Sweden. “Everybody knows that those areas belong to the Hazaras,” he added. Javed, who along with other activists has been tracking Taliban actions in Hazara villages, estimated that at least 1,500 families had been forced out of their homes in Afghanistan’s Daykundi and Urugzan provinces, although he said the number could be double that. With many of them relying on subsistence farming, he said, the situation could be “catastrophic.” “These people are simple farmers, villagers. They do not have a way of (making) income,” he said. “These lands and villages, they belong to them … But the Taliban do not give heed to this.” Daniel Balson of Amnesty International said he was also aware of hundreds of Hazara families being forced out of their homes, but he could not verify how many people have been displaced. He also warned that in addition to Hazara families losing their only means of subsistence, they would also have to contend with falling temperatures as winter approaches. “It’s going to get very cold soon,” he said. “Many of these people who are evicted from their homes, from their lands, from their villages, are going to be cut off from their one means of sustenance, and they’re going to be at risk to the elements in a very real life-or-death way.” The displacements come after weeks of warnings from the United Nations and rights groups that Hazaras and other minority groups could be persecuted by the Taliban. A mostly Shiite Muslim ethnic minority, Hazaras make up about 9 percent of the country’s total population of 40 million people, according to the nongovernmental organization Minority Rights Group International. Hazara men travel on a three-wheeler vehicle on the outskirts of Kabul, Afghanistan, this month.Aamir Qureshi / AFP - Getty Images The majority of Afghans are ethnic Pashtuns and Sunni Muslims, who do not view Shiites as true members of the Islamic faith. As a result, the Hazara community was brutally oppressed by the Taliban before the hard-line regime was toppled by the U.S.-led invasion in 2001. Hazaras are also frequently targeted by the Islamic State terrorist group, which views them as heretics, and other Sunni Muslim militant groups in both Afghanistan and Pakistan. “In the 1990s, the Taliban massacred thousands of Hazaras,” said Azra Jafari, a Hazara activist and politician who made history in 2008 after becoming Afghanistan’s first female mayor. She added that Hazaras had remained “the main target for the Taliban” over the past 20 years. After the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan in August, Amnesty International said in a report that 13 members of the Hazara community, including a teenage girl, were killed by the group. Nine were believed to be government soldiers who had surrendered, the report said. Karimi denied the Taliban were behind the killings, but said they would investigate the claims. Other Taliban members had been “punished for violating the general amnesty,” offered by the group’s leadership when it took power, he said. However, Javed said he feared that the forced evictions are part of the Taliban’s way of “testing” how much they can get away with before the international community intervenes. If the group was not sanctioned, he said, it would return to its old ways. Gulsom and Mohammad also said they were disappointed by the international community’s silence in the midst of their suffering. “I am stunned that big nations, big media companies, even our neighboring countries have been silent,” Mohammad said. “No country has even taken a position or put any pressure on the Taliban.” “Why should we be oppressed like this?” he said. “Aren’t we the people of Afghanistan?” © 2021 NBC UNIVERSAL

By Tommy Walker FILE - A Karen woman holds up a hymn book during Christian mass gathering, Umphang, Thailand, May 23, 2021. Myanmar’s military is cracking down on religious groups that refuse to accept military rule, religious leaders say. Nearly 88% of Myanmar’s population identify themselves as Buddhist, with other religious denominations, such as Christians, Muslims, and Hindus, making up the rest. Seemingly all of the country’s religious groups are being caught up in the fallout from the military coup. In the nine months since the military-run State Administrative Council ousted the democratically elected government, fighting has continued between military forces and anti-coup opposition. A military offensive aimed at targeting an ethnic armed group in Chin state in western Myanmar killed civilians and destroyed religious buildings at the end of October, according to local sources. More than 90% of Chin state’s population is Christian, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization. Military spokesman Zaw Min Tun denied to local reporters that buildings were specifically targeted. The Burma Human Rights Network, a local group, condemned the attacks in a statement Monday, saying the junta has a long history of targeting religious minorities. Fires burn in the town of Thantlang in Myanmar's northwestern state of Chin, Oct. 29, 2021. More than 160 buildings in the town in the northwestern Myanmar, including three churches, have been destroyed by shelling by government troops. Buddhist monks, Muslims, and Christians have all taken to the streets and demonstrated against the military takeover. Religious figures in the country say military action has had a chilling effect on religious groups. Sister Francisca, formerly a nun at a Catholic church in Mandalay, described how soldiers ordered her church not to participate in anti-coup protests. "The military went and told the cardinal and leaders, don't get involved in the revolution,” she said. She added that soldiers had refused to allow her community to carry out daily charitable tasks, including treating COVID-19 patients. She recounted to VOA this week how armed soldiers had threatened to shoot her and others sitting in front of her house unless they went inside. She also described an incident in which she said a neighborhood man was shot by soldiers. At night, she said, local people do guard duty but, she said, soldiers shoot the guards one of them was shot in the lung. “Fortunately, he survived. We stay afraid all the time,” she said. She ultimately fled to another city. Although she found another Christian church there, it was already occupied by soldiers and she remains on the run. Thet Swe Win, founder of Synergy, an organization promoting interfaith efforts in Myanmar, told VOA by phone that several religious groups have been targeted by the military, including Buddhists. Unlike other religions, though only the Buddhists who oppose the coup face military pressure. He estimates around 80% of Myanmar's Buddhists oppose the junta. He said the military has branded monks who refuse to accept junta rule as “fake” before beating and arresting them. In this undated photo provided to The Associated Press in September 2021, monks gather to make a diagram of Obo Prison located in Mandalay, Myanmar. He believes the crackdown on these monks is not about religion, but about influence. “I’m not sure it’s religious persecution because all the monks who were arrested were involved in the strike. They raided monasteries to arrest monks. I don’t hear they destroy monasteries of the pagodas,” he said. Myanmar has a long history of religious and ethnic conflict, and Thet Swe Win said he is concerned about nationalism among some Buddhist monks. Neither pro- nor anti-coup monks accept religious minorities such as Rohingya Muslims, he said, and he accused the military of using these differences to stoke tensions. Sann Aung, a university teacher and imam of a mosque in Myanmar, said the junta is “fueling religious conflict to divert political attention.” In addition, he said, Muslims face more persecution if they are arrested during a protest. Some religious and civil society leaders in August formed the Spring Revolution Interfaith to, Sann Aung said “mobilize and coordinate voices from religious leaders, community leaders and groups to come out with single voice and to support movements fighting against military dictatorship.” Father Domanic, a priest at a Catholic church in Shan state, told VOA that after he organized a peaceful prayer event that opposed the coup, the military arrested him. He later fled. The priest now believes “no religion can do well” in Myanmar. “Most of the religious leaders do not dare to go against the coup, that’s why most peoples’, especially the youth, beliefs and attitudes towards religion are diminishing,” the priest told VOA. “There is less trust in religion and they become frustrated. In my view, only humanitarianism can lead the way to peace.” A Free Burma Rangers volunteer examines a baby in Yeh Mu Plaw village, Karen state, Myanmar, June 10, 2021. (Courtesy Image: Free Burma Rangers) Dave Eubank, the head of the Thai-based Free Burma Rangers, a humanitarian group that provides medical assistance within Myanmar, said the military is becoming “desperate” and predicted the junta would increase attacks against religious groups. “The dictatorship of Burma has always targeted Christians and Muslims and religious minorities, which they view not only different from them but also following a god that those minorities feel are higher than any government [and] definitely a threat to the regimes in Burma,” Eubank said, using another name for the country. “Since the coup, the gloves have come off, the attacks have been more direct and pointed,” he said. © VOA News

Brazil's President Jair Bolsonaro attends a virtual global climate summit via a video link in Brasilia, Brazil April 22, 2021. Marcos Correa/Brazilian Presidency via REUTERS Brazil is the largest country in Latin America. It is home to two hundred million people. Fifty-six percent of Brazil's citizens identify as Black or brown. Yet in 2019, nearly 80% of those killed by police and 75% of murder victims were Black. The Atlas of Human Development in Brazil, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), and the João Pinheiro Foundation have concluded that racial disparities have been widening in Brazil. Black people comprise the majority of people who are living in extreme poverty. They have the highest rates of homicide. They earn 42% less than white people. Brazil suffers from 'structural racism' in many of the same ways that are evident in the USA, another post-slavery society. The UN has urged the government to enact structural reforms. Since the election in 2018 of the openly anti-human rights President Jair Bolsonaro, discrimination against Black and Indigenous people has worsened. Police brutality has markedly increased according to Human Rights Watch. Bolsonaro's homophobic statements and restrictions against the LGBTIQ+ community have exacerbated homophobic and transphobic violence, resulting in imprisonment, murder, and discrimination against LGBTIQ+ people. Brazil's long history of violence against the Indigenous people of its Amazon regions is becoming increasingly life-threatening. Intentional burning and wildfires have destroyed large areas of the Amazon Forest, home to over 30 million people. According to Amnesty International, the fires are mostly caused by illegal deforestation and land seizures. Burning has usually been linked to the interests of agribusiness to clear the forest for cattle farming. At least 182 indigenous people were murdered in 2020, a dramatic 61% increase from already elevated numbers in 2019. In November 2019, President Bolsonaro announced that the Amazon is being opened for agriculture and mining. Indigenous peoples in Karipuna, Eu-Wau-Wau, and Arara have reported illegal seizures and destruction of their ancestral lands. The Brazilian government severely limited the powers of the governmental agencies created to protect the people of the Amazon regions. Indigenous leaders who oppose such deforestation are often murdered. Government officials in protective agencies receive frequent death threats. President Bolsonaro has tried to "mirror" his government's attacks on Indigenous people by claiming that the Brazilian government itself is being attacked by the criminal actions of onguerios (NGOs). President Bolsonaro calls NGOs such as Greenpeace "terrorists." In 2021, President Bolsonaro's denialist propaganda that the COVID-19 pandemic is a hoax has led Brazil to become one of the world's worst-affected countries. He repeatedly dismissed the danger caused by the pandemic and rejected taking strict quarantine measures. His COVID denialism and racism are directly parallel with the right-wing politics of his model, Donald Trump. An October 2021 congressional report on Bolsonaro’s failures to respond to the pandemic recommended he be charged with crimes against humanity. Genocide Watch considers Brazil to be at Stage 5: Organization due to police oppression against Black, Indigenous, and LGBTIQ+ people, and Stage 6: Polarization based on race, class, and Indigenous identity. Genocide Watch recommends: · The U.S., O.A.S., E.U., and U.N. should urge President Bolsonaro to end police brutality against Black, Indigenous, and LGBTIQ+ people. · The same governments should support international and local NGOs that defend human and Indigenous rights. · The entire international community should work to prevent the Amazon region from becoming another victim of agribusiness deforestation, a cause of global warming and climate change. · The World Bank and IMF should devise financial incentives for Brazil to protect the Amazon. · The U.S., U.N., and O.A.S should demand that President Bolsonaro stop denying the scientific facts about the COVID-19 pandemic and implement measures to provide Brazilians with vaccinations.

By Richard Weir and Carolina Jordá Álvarez A screenshot of thermal anomaly data showing fire activity in Thantlang town, Chin State, Myanmar on October 29, 2021. © 2021 NASA FIRMS New satellite data analyzed by Human Rights Watch corroborates images and videos streaming out of Myanmar’s Chin State showing towns once again on fire. Human Rights Watch reviewed thermal anomaly data collected by an environmental satellite sensor (VIIRS) that detected the presence of multiple active fires in Thantlang town in Chin State in northwestern Myanmar. The thermal anomalies were detected for the first time on October 29 at 12:29 p.m. local time. The readings are consistent with reports of fires burning buildings during the day, depicted in photos and videos circulated around this time by the media and human rights groups. More than 12 hours later, additional thermal anomalies were also detected, consistent with reports of fires at night. The military spokesperson, Gen. Zaw Min Tun, claimed without offering any evidence that, after clashes with soldiers, the Chinland Defense Force-Thantlang set houses on fire as they left. The media outlet Myanmar Now quoted a spokesperson for the armed group who blamed the military for the damage, saying soldiers were burning houses for “no reason.” Myanmar’s military has a long history of widespread arson attacks, such as those on ethnic Rohingya villages in Rakhine State in 2012, 2016, and 2017, and has made similar claims many times before to deflect blame. Thantlang has been nearly completely uninhabited since September after its population, estimated to be around 10,000, fled mostly to other parts of Chin State because of ongoing fighting between the military and anti-junta militias that are part of a growing network of so-called People’s Defense Forces (PDFs). Parts of the town were reportedly previously damaged. On October 29 the international humanitarian organization Save the Children released a statement saying their office in Thantlang had been damaged, and raised concerns that the fires risk “destroying the whole town and the homes of thousands of families and children.” The laws of war applicable to armed conflict in ethnic minority areas of Myanmar prohibit deliberate, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks on civilians and civilian property. Intentional destruction of civilian property not being used for military purposes violates the laws of war and may amount to a war crime. A credible and impartial investigation of alleged war crimes is urgently needed, and those responsible should be held to account. The United States and Swedish governments have condemned the attacks on Thantlang. But governments and the United Nations should demand that humanitarian agencies have unhindered access to provide aid to affected communities, call for the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights to be allowed to investigate the sites, and impose coordinated sanctions against those implicated in abuses. © 2021 Human Rights Watch