Assumpta Kaboyi | VOA October 08, 2021, 7:28 PM A U.S. agent removes handcuffs from Rwanda genocide suspect Oswald Rurangwa after he is flown by U.S. authorities to Kigali on Oct. 7, 2021, for transfer to Rwandan police custody. (Assumpta Kagoyi/VOA Central Africa Service) An alleged participant in the 1994 Rwandan genocide faces a possible 30 years in prison after U.S. officials deported him to Kigali, where he was taken into custody after his arrival Thursday. Oswald Rurangwa, 59, escorted by U.S. security officials, was deported to Rwanda on a private jet. U.S. Embassy officials received him at Kigali International Airport and immediately handed him over to Rwandan security staff. Rurangwa was handcuffed and led into a waiting Rwanda Investigation Bureau van. Speaking to reporters at the airport, Rwanda Prosecution Authority spokesman Faustin Nkusi said Rurangwa was the head of Interahamwe militia in the Gisozi sector, a suburb of Kigali, during the genocide. "He participated in many acts of the genocide, including planning meetings, joining mobs of attackers, and killing. He committed genocide crimes, complicity to genocide, inciting people to commit genocide, murder and extermination as a crime against humanity," Nkusi said. "We issued an arrest warrant against him in 2008, but this coincided with the Gacaca [court] ruling that had already been handed down to him. So, the U.S. judicial authorities deported him to serve his sentence here," he added. In 2007, a Gacaca, or Rwandan community court, tried Rurangwa in absentia, finding him guilty of genocide and sentencing him to 30 years behind bars. FILE - Family photographs of some of those who died hang on display in an exhibition at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in the capital Kigali, Rwanda, April 5, 2019. U.S. attorney Charles Kambanda, who is familiar with the case and knowledgeable about legal affairs in Central Africa, said the U.S. had a different rationale for deporting Rurangwa. "Oswald Rurangwa was sent to Rwanda purely on account of immigration fraud,” the New York state-based attorney told the VOA Central Africa Service. "This means he was deported, not extradited. ICE [U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement] handed him over." According to the prosecution, Rurangwa fled Rwanda in 1994 for the Kibumba refugee camp in what was then Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of Congo. He later moved to another camp, Kayindu, before applying for asylum in the United States in 1996. Nkusi said Rwandan law permits Rurangwa to have his case retried. "You have seen that he has been assigned an attorney," Nkusi said, adding that Rurangwa would be informed of the earlier ruling and given a copy of his sentence. "He will also be informed about his right [of appeal] because even though he was sentenced in absentia, he has the right to have the case retried." Rurangwa was being taken to Mageragere prison, Nkusi said. This story originated in VOA's Central Africa Service. Geoffrey Mutagoma contributed from Washington. VOA News

Waakhe Simon Wudu | VOA October 21, 2021, 12:00 PM UN Rights Commission Condemns South Sudan Security Crackdown. Peacekeepers from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) provide security in Bentiu, South Sudan, June 18, 2017. A United Nations rights commission in South Sudan says the government is harassing activists, journalists and their families, limiting their activities, and targeting their work and finances. In a statement of "concern" issued this week, the United Nations Commission of Human Rights in South Sudan said the pattern of harassment is impeding the already slow pace of achieving peace among feuding factions and stifling public opinion crucial to achieving democracy. “Civic space in South Sudan is eroding at the accelerating pace, undermining efforts to achieve a sustainable peace,” said Yasmin Sooka, the commission chairwoman. The government slammed the statement, with a spokesman saying the commission was spreading untruths, “This U.N. Human Rights Commission, who is monitoring them?" asked Michael Makuei, South Sudan's information minister. "Who is supervising them? They just sit in their offices here in Juba and they write because they must write something controversial to prove that they are doing their job, so that they continue in their job." The commission blames government security officers for a continuing crackdown that it says has forced some prominent activists to flee the country. The commission says those include James David Kolok, a member of the technical committee to conduct a consultative process on truth, reconciliation and healing, and Wani Michael, who has acted as a youth representative on the national constitution amendment committee. Andrew Clapham, one of the commissioners, said the government’s targeting of high-profile human rights defenders “will have a chilling effect on civil society, and will discourage public participation.” He said government actions will undermine confidence in the work on transitional justice, framing a constitution, and setting up national elections, which Clapham said are essential to the success of the transition set out by the 2018 Revitalized Peace Agreement. The commission says the latest restrictions and acts of harassment began after the creation of the opposition Peoples Coalition for Civil Action in July. The security clampdown accelerated after a planned nationwide government protest in August fizzled amid what activists say was an intentional internet outage and warnings from security officials of serious consequences against organizers if the demonstration happened. Since then, some activists say their phone service has been disrupted and bank accounts frozen and journalists say they have been increasingly harassed. A key parliament member recently said that journalists should be restricted in covering the newly formed parliament. Agents also detained a government broadcaster after he allegedly declined to report news about recent presidential decrees on the South Sudan Broadcasting Corporation airwaves. In addition, three journalists recently were detained and a radio station was closed as the government clamped down on the August protests. Government spokesman Makuei says the government could not allow the planned protests by the PCCA, which he described as “enemies.” VOA News

By Melissa Eddy The police and the Auschwitz Memorial are urging anyone with knowledge of the vandalism to come forward. Vandals sprayed antisemitic slogans and phrases denying the Holocaust in English and German on nine wooden barracks at the Auschwitz-Birkenau memorial site, in what officials there called “an outrageous attack on the symbol of one of the greatest tragedies in human history.” The police in Oswiecim, the town in southern Poland where the concentration camp sits, said on Wednesday they were analyzing footage taken by security cameras on the site and looking for anyone who could give them information about the vandals, who they believe struck between 8 a.m. and noon on Tuesday. The barracks, which were defaced with black paint, housed men during the Holocaust and are near the Gate of Death in the Birkenau death camp. The police declined to give any further details about the slurs. The Auschwitz Memorial site, in the statement published on its Twitter account, further condemned the graffiti as “an extremely painful blow to the memory of all the victims” who perished at the camp. More than 1.1 million people, the majority of them Jews, perished in gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, or from starvation, cold and disease. Countries across Europe have witnessed an increase in antisemitism online and among people protesting at demonstrations against the restrictions related to the coronavirus pandemic, with observers expressing concern that Jews increasingly feel unsafe in the European Union. The European Commission has earmarked 24 million euros, almost $28 million, to increase protection around synagogues and other Jewish events or sites. Still, Jews who wear skullcaps in public in Germany report being harassed regularly. On Tuesday, a German-Jewish singer, Gil Ofarim, said in a video posted to social media that a hotel employee in the eastern city of Leipzig had told him to hide the Star of David pendant hanging from his neck if he wanted to check into his room. The hotel involved, which is owned by the Marriott International hotel company, has expressed concern over the episode and placed two employees on leave pending the outcome of an investigation. But Jewish and political leaders across Germany expressed outrage over the issues the video raised, with many calling for more solidarity with Jews who are targeted. “I hope that in the future we will encounter solidarity when we get attacked,” the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Josef Schuster, said on Twitter, calling “the antisemitic hostility” against the singer “appalling.” Officials at Auschwitz-Birkenau said their decision to not specify the wording of the slurs on the barracks, in an area of the camp where men were packed into crude wooden bunks, stacked three high from floor to ceiling, was a conscious effort to avoid spreading antisemitic hate any further. “Because the intent of the perpetrator or perpetrators was to spread hate speech, we have decided not to make the images or the content of the graffiti public,” said Pawel Sawicki, a spokesman for the Auschwitz-Birkenau Museum and Memorial, which preserves the site of the death camp. Conservators will begin cleaning the damaged barracks once the police complete their investigation, the museum said. Antisemitic vandalism at the camp is extremely rare, Mr. Sawicki said. Security is constantly being tightened, although the museum said that a plan to fully enclose the perimeter of the camp was part of a still-pending regional investment program. More than a decade ago, a trio of thieves removed and made off with the notorious “Arbeit Macht Frei” (“Work Sets You Free”) sign that looms over the main entrance to Auschwitz. They were later arrested and the sign was recovered, but the theft led to an increase in funding to provide security for the camp, which the Nazis established during World War II in occupied territory that today belongs to Poland. (c) The New York Times

Key figures in Saudi Arabia and UAE accused of crimes against humanity include investors in Britain By Dan Sabbagh Yemeni children at a mass funeral after an attack on a school bus in 2018. The incident features in the dossier to be presented to the police and CPS. Photograph: AFP/Getty Images A group of human rights lawyers will on Wednesday file a legal complaint in the UK accusing key figures in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of being involved in war crimes relating to the war in Yemen. They plan to submit a dossier to British police and prosecutors alleging that about 20 members of the political and military elite of the two Gulf nations are guilty of crimes against humanity, and call for their immediate arrest should they enter the UK. The full list of those accused was not released by the group of lawyers, Guernica 37, but it is understood they include Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and his Emirati equivalent Mohammed bin Zayed. Both are considered close political allies of the UK and important investors in the country, with the UAE ruling family owning Manchester City. Earlier this month, Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF) took control of Premier League rivals Newcastle United in a £305m deal. Toby Cadman, the barrister leading the complaint, said he hoped the Met police’s war crimes unit would ignore any political pressures from the British government and evaluate the issues fairly. “We are talking about the most heinous crimes and we don’t believe there is any immunity from them.” A previous human rights complaint from Guernica 37, which was made against Asma al-Assad, the British wife of the Syrian president, is already being examined by British police. Officers are deciding whether to bring terrorism charges and to remove her British citizenship, following allegations relating to Syria’s civil war. The lawyers have spent nearly a year bringing the fresh case against the Saudi and Emirati leaderships, and will submit a 200-page dossier to the Met and the Crown Prosecution Service, including evidence from the families of civilians killed by airstrikes from the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. It will focus on three controversial events, including an airstrike by coalition jets on a school bus in northern Yemen in August 2018, which killed at least 26 children and wounded at least 19 more. The second incident was the bombing of a funeral in the capital, Sana’a, in October 2016, which is believed to have killed at least 140 people and wounded a further 600. At the time the Saudi-led coalition acknowledged responsibility for the attack. Finally, evidence will be submitted relating to the alleged torture and murder of civilians in Aden, in southern Yemen, by Colombian mercenaries under the command of a US private military company contracted to the United Arab Emirates. Cadman said his firm was relying on the principle of universal jurisdiction under UK law, which applies to crimes such as war crimes and torture. “Under UK law there is no requirement for the crimes to be committed on UK territory or there to be UK victims or UK defendants,” he added. Neither Saudi Arabia nor the UAE are parties to the international criminal court in The Hague, so it is not possible to bring a case there. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

By Barbara Labbate October 2021 Photo credit: Mike Goldwater/Georgian Journal 2017. Abkhazia is a semi-autonomous, breakaway region of Georgia, currently recognized by most of the international community as Georgian territory occupied by Russia. Abkhazian leadership and Russian occupying forces have done little to protect the rights of the Georgian minority remaining in the region. In 1989, Georgians made up the plurality of people living in Abkhazia at an estimated 240,000 people. The Georgian-Abkhaz conflict of 1992-1993 led to mass expulsion and massacres of Georgians by Abkhazian separatists, reducing the Georgian population to less than 50,000. Abkhazian authorities inhibit the rights, language, culture, and ethnic identity of those who remain. In the Gali district, one of the few remaining districts with a substantial Georgian community, Abkhazian authorities have closed Georgian language schools. In 2008, there were 31 Georgian language schools in Gali; by 2020, only ten remained. Russian is now the primary language of instruction, while the Georgian language is only used in grades 9-11. Abkhazian authorities plan to fully eliminate the Georgian language from schools by 2023. Abkhaz authorities have done little to protect Georgian cultural heritage. In 2017, Russian forces bulldozed a 19th-century Georgian church in Tsebelda to construct a training facility in its place. In 2019, Abkhaz authorities required Georgians to give up their ethnic identity to vote and participate in local politics. In Abkhazia, one must be a citizen in order to graduate high school, work in the public sector, and buy or sell property. Citizenship is contingent on Abkhazian ethnic identity. The only way for Georgians and other ethnic minorities to have civil rights or suffrage is to abandon their ethnicities, which requires announcing in official documentation that one's ancestors were Abkhazian rather than Georgian. Authorities also forced at least 400 Georgians to adopt Abkhazian surnames. Despite these policies, Georgians who adopt Abkhazian surnames and ethnicities are still not guaranteed an Abkhazian passport. Abkhazian authorities acknowledge the discrimination against Georgian citizens. The head of the Abkhazian authority in the Gali district, Timur Nadararia, allegedly said he was surprised Georgians stayed in Abkhazia when they “do not have any rights there and are humiliated every day.” Armenians and Greeks do not face equal pressure to change their ethnic identity, which further suggests that these policies intend to drive Georgians out of Abkhazia in particular. Genocide Watch considers the situation in Abkhazia to be at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, Stage 5: Organization, and Stage 6: Polarization. Genocide Watch recommends: The Abkhazian authorities recognize the civil rights of all residents regardless of ethnicity. The Russian government uses its influence in the region to protect the rights and cultural heritage of ethnic minorities, such as making their financial aid to Abkhazia conditional on their respect of minority rights. Georgian and Abkhazian authorities create an open forum to discuss the protection of ethnic minorities in both regions.

Genocide Watch staff have published the twenty-sixth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream tracks the worsening treatment of the Amazon Rainforest and the indigenous people that inhabit it. Since his election in 2018, Brazilan President Jair Bolsonaro has weakened environmental protections and allowed invasions on indigenous lands. Illegal deforestation and development projects in the Amazon Rainforest threaten indigenous lives and their livelihoods. Although ecocide is not yet subject to prosecution under international law, it is gaining recognition as a form of genocide. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

For decades, armed conflict, political repression and targeted campaigns against minorities have forced hundreds of thousands of people to leave the country. Now many more are expected to follow. By Sui-Lee Wee A refugee carrying his grandmother to the shore of Mizoram, India, after crossing the Tiau River from Myanmar. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times Terrified farmers and families with children in Myanmar are fleeing into India as the military junta that seized power in a February coup continues to seek out and eliminate resistance along the country’s border. The Tatmadaw, as the Myanmar military is known, has targeted areas that are home to thousands of armed civilians who call themselves the People’s Defense Force. Soldiers have fired rocket launchers into residential neighborhoods, burned down homes, cut off internet access and food supplies, and even shot at fleeing civilians, according to residents. For more than seven decades, armed conflict, political repression and targeted campaigns against minorities like the Rohingyas have forced hundreds of thousands of people from Myanmar to seek refuge in other countries. Many more are now expected to follow. Aid groups say they are preparing for a flood of refugees, but are concerned that countries surrounding Myanmar such as Thailand may push them back. In Chin State in the northwest of Myanmar, an entire town of roughly 12,000 people has nearly emptied out in the past month. Residents have reported a large buildup of troops in recent weeks, signaling a potential wider crackdown by the Tatmadaw and leaving many people desperate to escape. Eight months since the military seized control in a coup, the death toll in Myanmar continues to mount, with civilians bearing the brunt. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times The Tiau River forms part of the boundary between India and Myanmar. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times An injured Myanmar local being carried to board a small boat to India. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times After troops burned down his home on Sept. 18 with rocket-propelled grenades, Ral That Chung decided he had no choice but to leave Thantlang, his town in Chin State. “I love Myanmar, but I will return only if there is peace,” said Mr. Ral That Chung, who walked for eight days with 10 members of his family to reach India. “It’s better to suffer here than to live in fear in my own country.” In the eight months since the army seized control, roughly 15,000 people in Myanmar have fled for India, according to the United Nations. Catherine Stubberfield, a spokeswoman for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ Asia and Pacific bureau, said the agency has tracked some 5,000 people who successfully entered India from Myanmar after recent clashes. “The brutality in which entire villages are attacked indiscriminately has created a horrific situation in which people are absolutely desperate,” said Tom Andrews, the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar. “And things are getting worse.” Ral That Chung, left, with his mother. After troops burned down his home on Sept. 18 with rocket-propelled grenades, he decided he had no choice but to leave his town for Mizoram. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times The refugees say they sleep in forests for days, some of them going without food as they make their way toward India. Once they reach the Tiau River crossing separating the two countries, they take a bamboo raft or boat across to reach safety. In the tiny village of Ramthlo, Crosby Cung said all 1,000 people who live there were preparing to leave. The villagers, he said, have selected two to three places where roughly 500 people can hide out in the forest until they are ready to head for the Indian border. Last week, soldiers set a neighboring village on fire. “It is really sad to see,” Mr. Cung said. “Leaving your village and fleeing into the jungle is not what we want to do. I want to protect my village so they do not loot and burn down the village. But we, the civilians, can’t do anything. We have no choice but to flee.” The refugees say they sleep in forests for days, some of them going without food as they make their way toward India. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times Aid groups say they are preparing for a flood of refugees, but are concerned that countries surrounding Myanmar such as Thailand may push them back. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times Refugees crossing a suspension bridge from Myanmar into India. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times The recent exodus has been most pronounced in Chin State, a stronghold of the People’s Defense Force where civilians have often suffered the brunt of the Tatmadaw’s cruelty. In August and September, 28 out of the 45 people killed in the rural border region were civilians, according to the Chin Human Rights Organization. Chin State borders the Indian state of Mizoram and is predominantly Christian. Many of the locals in Mizoram are also ethnic Chin and have close ties to the Chin people in Myanmar, but their patience has been tested by a recent Covid outbreak that Mizoram officials have blamed on refugees. A district official in Mizoram who declined to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the news media, said even though the Indian government’s policy is to keep the borders closed to refugees, the locals are unofficially helping those fleeing Myanmar. If the locals did not provide assistance, the official said, the refugees would die. Phil Robertson, the deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, warned that the situation facing the refugees would become more difficult over time. “Resources will become increasingly scarce, and there may be pressure to send them back,” he said. Refugee houses built by locals in Mizoram. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times The situation facing refugees will become more difficult over time, a Human Rights Watch director said. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times Since February, roughly 15,000 people have fled the country for India, according to the United Nations. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times In India, the refugees live in shacks with tinned roofs or plastic tarps overhead. Van Certh Luai, a refugee who arrived in Mizoram after walking for three days, said her family of six gets only three gallons of water a day for drinking, washing and bathing. Mosquitoes feast on their skin. But the family says they are staying put. “I do not want my three children to grow up in fear,” Ms. Van Certh Luai, 38, said. The fighting in Chin State started in August, when 150 soldiers arrived in the town and started firing mortar rounds, injuring people and damaging houses. On Sept. 6, the Chinland Defense Force — the Chin arm of the People’s Defense Force — said it killed 15 soldiers. Rights activists say the junta has targeted Chin State because it is home to the Chin National Front, the first ethnic armed group to throw its support behind the so-called National Unity Government, the organization founded by Myanmar’s ousted elected leaders. The rebel group has also been training thousands of anti-coup protesters who have taken up arms against the military. Innocent civilians have been caught in the crossfire. Aizawl in Mizoram. Though the Indian government’s policy is to keep its borders closed to refugees, the locals are unofficially helping those fleeing Myanmar, one official said. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times Cer Sung said she heard gunshots and bombs falling at around 4 p.m. on Aug. 15 while she was boiling popcorn at home in Thantlang, in Chin State. In a state of panic, she looked for her 10-year-old son, who was watching his favorite Hindi cartoon on television, remote control in his left hand. As she entered the house, fragments of artillery shells started falling between her and her son. Ms. Cer Sung, 44, recalled seeing the left side of her son’s body go up in flames. His left index finger, the one on the remote control, was blown off. He died on the spot. “I am angry with the Myanmar army for brutally killing my only son,” Ms. Cer Sung said, sobbing. She and her family have decided to remain in Myanmar for now, frightened to stay but also scared to find out what life would be like if they were to leave. Other families have scrambled to leave so quickly that they did not have much time to prepare. Sui Tha Par said she found her husband, Cung Biak Hum, lying on the side of a road with two gunshot wounds to his back and chest after he rushed to extinguish a fire caused by Tatmadaw troops in Thantlang on Sept. 18. His ring finger had been cut off and his gold wedding band was missing, according to family members. “They shot my husband to death,” Ms. Sui Tha Par said in tears. She is pregnant and expects to give birth next month, she said. After burying her husband, she and her two sons, 11 and 7 years old, decided to leave for Mizoram. Sui Tha Par, who is pregnant, at a refugee shelter with her father in Mizoram. Her husband, Cung Biak Hum, was shot to death last month. Credit...Atul Loke for The New York Times © 2021 The New York Times Company

Helen Davidson and Vincent Ni | The Guardian Tue 19 Oct 2021, 06.02 EDT Authorities using predictive policing and human surveillance on Muslims in Xinjiang, thinktank says. A vendor selling naan bread waits for customers on a street under surveillance cameras in Shule county, Xinjiang. Photograph: Ng Han Guan/AP Authorities in the Chinese region of Xinjiang are using predictive policing and human surveillance to gather “micro clues” about Uyghurs and empower neighbourhood informants to ensure compliance at every level of society, according to a report. The research by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) thinktank detailed Xinjiang authorities’ expansive use of grassroots committees, integrated with China’s extensive surveillance technology, to police their Uyghur neighbours’ movements – and emotions. The findings shed further light on the extraordinary scope of the Chinese Communist party’s grip on the largely Muslim and purportedly autonomous region, going beyond police crackdowns and mass arrests to ensure total control. The report also revealed the identities of officials – including two former visiting fellows at Harvard University – and the organisations that make up the political architecture of the years-long crackdown by Beijing on Uyghurs, which rights organisations say has included the detention of an estimated 1 million people in re-education camps. The report said the nominally voluntary local committees mirrored the Mao-era “revolutionary neighbourhood committees”, with daily meetings delegating home visits and investigations and assessing whether any individuals require “re-education”. However, according to ASPI, leaked police records showed the modern-day committees also received “micro clues’’ from China’s predictive policing system, the integrated joint operations platform (IJOP). Such clues could include someone having an unexpected visitor or receiving an overseas phone call, and would prompt inspection visits modelled on neighbourly interactions. Instruction manuals cited by ASPI showed committee workers in the city of Kashgar were advised to “show warmth to their Uyghur ‘relatives’ and give kids candy” while observing the Uyghur targets. “Xinjiang’s community-based control mechanisms are part of a national push to enhance grassroots governance, which seeks to mobilise the masses to help stamp out dissent and instability and to increase the party’s domination in the lowest reaches of society,” the report said. It detailed the case of an 18-year-old Uyghur man, Anayit Abliz, in Ürümqi, who was sentenced to three years in a re-education camp after he was caught using a filesharing app that is used widely in China to share movies, music and other censored content. “While he was detained, officials from the neighbourhood committee visited his family members six times in a single week, scrutinising the family’s behaviours and observing whether they were emotionally stable,” the report said. The thinktank said the IJOP was managed by the political and legal affairs commission (PLAC). The PLAC, which the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, has called the party’s “knife handle”, is China’s overseer of the national law and order system reporting directly to the CCP’s central committee. The report found it wielded vastly expanded operational and budgetary control in Xinjiang, an expansion seen before in mass political campaigns. “Xinjiang’s bureaucratic inner workings in the last seven years fit a wider pattern of authoritarian rule in China,” wrote the report’s lead author, Vicky Xiuzhong Xu, saying some tactics used in the campaign were conceived elsewhere, while others used in Xinjiang were being replicated in other regions including Hong Kong. ASPI also collected basic information of more than 440 principal and deputy county party secretaries in the Chinese region since 2014, unmasking the individual officials implementing the CCP’s crackdown, including at least two who had been educated at Harvard as visiting fellows. The report said the vast majority of county party secretaries – the most senior local officials – over the last seven years were of Han ethnicity. It said not a single Uyghur could be identified among secretaries in September, but they often served as a “ceremonial” second-in-command figure. ASPI said its findings showed the CCP promise of “ethnic self-rule” for the nominally autonomous region were a “fig leaf”. The report also alleged that, in addition to mass internment and coercive labour assignments, residents in China’s far-west Xinjiang region were also compelled to participate in Mao-era mass political campaigns. Responding to the report, China’s embassy in London denied the allegations and accused the ASPI of being an “anti-China rumour-maker”. It claimed its re-education centres were vocational training schools operating as part of its anti-terrorism efforts “no different from the desistance and disengagement programme (DDP) of the UK or the deradicalisation centres in France.” The ASPI report – funded partly by the UK, Australian and US governments – adds to a growing body of evidence of Beijing’s crackdown in Xinjiang. China’s government has been accused by Human Rights Watch and legal groups of committing “crimes against humanity”, while some western governments have formally declared the government to be conducting a “genocide”. China has denied all these accusations. The report said Xinjiang authorities expected “extreme and repressive practices of the 2017 re-education campaign to become the norm by the end of 2021, a stage the party state calls ‘comprehensive stability’”. A recent media report from Xinjiang by Associated Press revealed a reduction in visible means of control and repression, but “a continuing sense of fear” among the population and ongoing surveillance. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

Joe Parkin Daniels | The Guardian Tue 19 Oct 2021, 06.00 EDT Inter-American court of human rights rules Colombia was ‘internationally responsible’ for violation of Jineth Bedoya’s rights. Jineth Bedoya speaks at a press conference in Havana in November 2014. Photograph: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images The Colombian state has been found responsible for the kidnap, torture and rape of a prominent journalist who was abducted while reporting on her country’s civil war, in a landmark ruling from the inter-American court of human rights. Jineth Bedoya, who has been pursuing justice for over 21 years and now campaigns against sexual violence, was recognised by the court on Monday as having suffered “grave verbal, physical and sexual aggressions” for which the state was responsible. Before now, only three of her attackers had faced justice, receiving sentences in Colombian courts in 2019. Following the announcement, while her legal team also celebrated the news, Bedoya tweeted on Monday evening: “18 October 2021 goes down in history as the day when a fight – which began over an individual crime – led to the vindication of the rights of thousands of women who are victims of sexual violence, and of women journalists who leave a part of themselves in their work.” Jonathan Bock, director of Colombia’s Foundation for Press Freedom (FLIP), which has provided legal assistance to Bedoya, said: “This ruling sets a precedent that will remind governments that it is not possible to ignore violence against the press, and less that they can be tolerant of state agents who are perpetrators. “This ruling gives society and female journalists the tools to make gender violence visible.” Bedoya was abducted on 25 May 2000, outside the Modelo prison in Bogotá, where she was due to interview an incarcerated paramilitary leader. She was drugged and driven hours outside the city, where she was tortured and gang-raped. “It’s difficult to understand what happened, all I know is that I wanted to die,” Bedoya told the Guardian in 2019. When authorities failed to properly investigate the attack, Bedoya began probing independently, eventually securing the support of Flip and the Centre for Justice and International Law (Cejil). The inter-American court of human rights, which has jurisdiction over most Latin American states, ruled on Monday that Colombia was “internationally responsible for the violation of the rights to [Bedoya’s] personal integrity, personal freedom, honor, dignity and freedom of expression”. The court also ruled that the Bedoya’s attackers could not have carried out the abduction and assault “without the acquiescence and collaboration of the state”, and that the government failed to protect Bedoya and her mother, Luz Nelly Lima, from threats and persecution in the years after the attack. When the court heard Bedoya’s testimony in March, the Colombian government withdrew its representatives and called for the recusal of five of the six judges attached to the case. After a widespread backlash, the government later resumed its participation. A peace deal signed in 2018 with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) leftist rebel group formally ended five decades of war that left 260,000 dead and displaced more than 7 million, with state-aligned paramilitary groups and other leftist rebel armies contributing to the bloodshed. Sexual violence, though widespread, was often obscured by other atrocities and tended to be ignored or met with impunity. Between 1985 and 2016 alone, more than 13,500 women were victims of sexual violence during the armed conflict, according to a report by the National Center of Historical Memory. “Jineth Bedoya has been tirelessly seeking justice for more than 20 years,” read a statement from Cejil posted on Twitter. “The decision of the court is dignifying for Jineth, for female journalists who face gender violence, and for the thousands of victims of sexual violence of Colombia’s armed conflict.” © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.

By Greg Torode | Reuters October 18, 202110:15 PM EDT Court rulings free Hong Kong police to probe older offences under security law. Police ask supporters to leave during the court hearing of Tong Ying-kit, the first person charged under a new national security law near the High Court, in Hong Kong, China. July 30, 2021. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo. HONG KONG, Oct 19 (Reuters) - Recent court judgements have freed Hong Kong authorities to use national security powers to deploy tough colonial-era laws in a crackdown against opposition groups, alarming activists and lawyers in the city. Police have launched investigations into acts that took place before the national security law was imposed a year ago, despite assurances by Beijing and Hong Kong that the financial hub's legislation would not be retroactive. The recent probes have unnerved pro-democracy campaigners across the city, leaving some to fear they face prosecution for acts they believed to be legal at the time. "The past is the future," said Simon Young, a professor at the University of Hong Kong's law school. "We are starting to see a fuller evolution of the national security law, and the way it allows the authorities to look at older laws and past events through a new lens. "We can see it gives them new powers and confidence to use laws that were perhaps overlooked, or seen as previously unenforceable." Several groups, including veteran protest organiser Civil Human Rights Front, are under investigation for acts that pre-date the security law, according to statements by senior police and reports in pro-Beijing media. Asked about statements from Police Commissioner Raymond Siu that the Front was being investigated over marches that predate the law, a force spokesman told Reuters last month that "police will continue to investigate if any organisation and person have violated the ... security law and other Hong Kong regulations". Some legal scholars and lawyers say the situation reveals the full sweep of the law - including its ability to effectively reboot laws from the British colonial era that touch on national security. Two paragraphs in recent court judgements appear to clear the path for security probes into past actions, they warn. One February ruling in the Court of Final Appeal suggested that the national security law's reference to "acts endangering national security" included violations of older laws. And a District Court ruling in April noted that under the security law, the older offence of sedition was now classified as a more serious crime, potentially removing its previous statute of limitations of six months. "AUTHORITARIAN GOLDMINE" Beijing imposed the national security law on Hong Kong last year, seeking to punish what it sees as subversion, secession, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces. But fresh police investigations into acts that predate the law's imposition appear to be triggering sometimes overlooked legislation on crimes such as sedition, a law governing private groups and even legislation against espionage, criminal lawyers say. Those powers include the right for national security police to conduct searches and electronic surveillance, such as phone tapping, without going to court or asking a judge for a warrant. Asked about investigations into older offences and the impact of the court rulings, a police spokesperson said they would not comment on specific cases. "In conducting any operation, the police will act on the basis of actual circumstances and according to the law," the spokesperson said. When the law was passed, senior Chinese and Hong Kong officials repeatedly stressed it would not be retroactively applied. Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam told the UN Human Rights Council in June 2020 that the law was urgently needed to tackle a "gaping hole" in national security but the presumption of innocence would be maintained and the law would have no retrospective effect. Lam also told the UN it would only affect "an extremely small minority" of Hong Kong. Zhang Xiaoming, deputy director of the State Council's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office, said on July 1 last year that "the law is not retroactive". Security provisions in the older laws would be used "to punish crimes that have already been committed which endanger national security", he said. The intensifying crackdown is forcing some prominent groups to disband, including the Civil Human Rights Front. Others are urgently shredding files, and deleting photos and online material, saying they fear even once-innocuous details could be used against them under Hong Kong’s evolving security regime. "The recent past is an authoritarian goldmine," said one private investigator who has been assisting some groups to protect themselves. "Essential rights and protections will count for little as the national security police build their cases by going backwards as well as forwards." © 2021 Reuters.

Deadly blast in northern city of Kunduz comes as Islamic State has intensified attacks since the U.S. withdrawal 8 October 2021 | By Yaroslav Trofimov, Saeed Shah, and Ehsanullah Amiri Several dozen worshipers were killed in a bombing at a Shiite mosque in Afghanistan’s northern city of Kunduz on Friday, witnesses and officials said, the deadliest militant attack in the country since U.S. forces withdrew in August. While nobody claimed immediate responsibility, the attack bore the hallmarks of Islamic State’s regional affiliate, Islamic State-Khorasan Province, which has repeatedly struck Shiite civilians in the past. ISKP has claimed several recent attacks, including a bombing Sunday at a Kabul mosque. Friday’s explosion took place at around 1 p.m. local time, just as the mosque in the Khanabad area of Kunduz was packed with worshipers attending the weekly sermon. Matiullah Rohani, a spokesman for the provincial government, said at least 46 people were killed in the bombing at the mosque. The death toll was expected to rise significantly. “It’s a massacre and a crime against humanity,” said Ali, a former policeman in Kunduz who rushed to the mosque after the explosion and didn’t want his full name used. “Dead bodies were laid over each other. Flesh and broken glass everywhere. We thought that the explosions were over once the Taliban took power, but sadly we see a repeat of the old story.” A doctor at a Kunduz hospital run by the Doctors Without Borders aid organization said that, in his clinic alone, some 20 people were sent to the morgue and dozens of others among the 200 patients admitted after the blast were in critical condition. “This is the bloodiest attack I have seen in my life,” said the doctor, whose hospital was hit by an errant U.S. airstrike in 2015. “The floor of each intensive-care unit is filled with blood—it is like a blood river.” Other hospitals in Kunduz also received casualties from the explosion. Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid said in a tweet that the movement’s special forces had arrived on the scene of the Kunduz explosion to start investigating after “a number of our compatriots were martyred and injured.” Kunduz residents organized a blood drive to aid survivors. While the Taliban and ISKP both seek to implement strict Islamic rules in Afghanistan, the two groups have profound religious and political differences. Though the Taliban persecuted Shiites when the Islamist movement ruled the country in the 1990s, their current government includes a member of the Hazara Shiite community as a deputy minister. Islamic State, by contrast, views all Shiite Muslims as heretics who should be exterminated. Still, some residents of Kunduz blamed the Taliban for Friday’s tragedy. The new Taliban authorities have disarmed the security detail at the Shiite mosque, and, unlike in the past, nobody frisked the faithful ahead of Friday’s prayers, a local resident said. “It’s a total disaster here,” said Kunduz resident Hafizullah, who lives near the mosque. “All the windows of houses close to the mosque have been shattered and I see pieces of flesh on the street.” With the country’s economy in a free fall after the Aug. 15 collapse of the Afghan republic, improved security is the Taliban’s crucial source of legitimacy. “We are suffering from hunger and lack of money, but we are willing to put up with that as the Taliban promised that the war was over,” said Kunduz shopkeeper Abdul Ahmad, whose store is located some 400 yards from the explosion site. But, he said, “if this violence carries on, we will stand against the Taliban just as we stood against the last government.” The recent spate of ISKP attacks creates a strategic challenge for the Taliban. On one hand, the country’s new rulers crave international recognition and need foreign aid as the economy shrinks—something that would require them to accommodate international demands on women’s rights and minorities. On the other hand, the Taliban fear that any such concessions could alienate their own hard-line foot soldiers, making some of them defect to Islamic State, which is also known as Daesh. “Taliban soldiers don’t receive a salary, they are in it for ideological reasons. So if they see anything going against their beliefs, they can be pushed to join Daesh,” said a Taliban official in western Afghanistan. “Restrictions on women is one of these issues. They feel they fought for 20 years in order to impose Islamic order, not a continuation of what they see as prostitution and fornication because men and women are mixing in offices and colleges.” Unlike the Taliban, ISKP pays its members. Days after the Taliban takeover on Aug. 15, ISKP, also known as ISIS-K, carried out one of the deadliest attacks of the Afghan war, killing some 200 Afghans trying to leave the country and 13 U.S. service members at the entrance to the Kabul airport. Since then, the group has launched frequent bombings and ambushes against the Taliban in the eastern province of Nangarhar, and on Sunday sent a suicide bomber to strike a Taliban gathering at Kabul’s main mosque. Since Sept. 18, ISKP has carried out 34 attacks, according to a tally kept by Abdul Sayed, an expert on jihadist groups in Afghanistan. Mr. Sayed said that, as an insurgent group for the past two decades, the Taliban lack the counterterrorism capabilities required to tackle the ISKP threat. Founded by Afghan and Pakistani Taliban members who considered the movement to be too moderate, ISKP initially held swaths of territory, especially in Nangarhar. The Taliban retook most of these areas in 2015, and ISKP has turned to urban terrorism in order to survive under current leader Shahab al-Muhajir. This new strategy requires much smaller resources and manpower. “The most brutal attacks in Afghan history have been carried out by Islamic State against Shiite Muslims,” Mr. Sayed said. “Now the Taliban have taken on the responsibilities of a state to deal with this. It is going to be a very bloody era.” Copyright ©2021Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Whistleblower Frances Haugen adds to long-held concerns that social media site is fuelling violence and instability By Emmanuel Akinwotu The former Facebook employee Frances Haugen testifying before a Senate committee, where she accused Facebook of ‘literally fanning ethnic violence’. Photograph: Lenin Nolly/SOPA Images/Rex/Shutterstock Whistleblower Frances Haugen’s testimony to US senators on Tuesday shone a light on violence and instability in Myanmar and Ethiopia in recent years and long-held concerns about links with activity on Facebook. “What we saw in Myanmar and are now seeing in Ethiopia are only the opening chapters of a story so terrifying, no one wants to read the end of it,” Haugen said in her striking testimony. Haugen warned that Facebook was “literally fanning ethnic violence” in places such as Ethiopia because it was not policing its service adequately outside the US. About half of Myanmar’s population of 53 million use Facebook, with many relying on the site as their primary source of news. In June this year, an investigation by the rights group Global Witness found that Facebook’s algorithm was promoting posts in breach of its own policies that incited violence against protesters marching against the coup launched by the military in February. Researchers began by liking a Myanmar military fan page, which was not seen to be violating Facebook’s terms. They found that Facebook then suggested several pro-military pages that did contain abusive content. “We didn’t have to look hard to find this content; FB’s algorithm led us to it,” said Rosie Sharpe, a digital researcher who worked on the report. “Of the first five pages they recommended, three of them contained content that broke FB’s rules by, for example, inciting or glorifying violence.” The link between social media posts and offline violence in Myanmar had already been widely documented. In 2018 a Guardian analysis revealed that hate speech exploded on Facebook at the start of the Rohingya crisis the year before, when attacks by armed groups and ordinary communities on people from the Muslim minority erupted. Thousands of posts by nationalist, anti-Rohingya supporters gained traction online, including posts which falsely claimed mosques were stockpiling weapons. An independent investigation commissioned by Facebook later agreed with assessments that the site had been used to incite offline violence. “What happens on Facebook matters,” Sharpe said. “Promotion of violence online leads to real-world harms. That’s particularly true in Myanmar, where Facebook has admitted that it played a role in inciting violence during the military’s genocidal campaign against the Rohingya.” Facebook has faced similar criticism in Ethiopia, which has been engulfed in an armed conflict between the federal government and the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). In 2019, for instance, the retired Ethiopian runner Haile Gebrselassie blamed “fake news” being shared on Facebook for violence that left 81 people dead in Oromia region. After another outbreak of ethnic violence in 2020 – sparked by the killing of a popular singer from the Oromo ethnic group – an investigation by Vice claimed that the violence had been “supercharged by the almost-instant and widespread sharing of hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook, which whipped up people’s anger”. In her testimony Haugen blamed engagement-based ranking for “literally fanning ethnic violence” in countries like Ethiopia. “Facebook … knows, they have admitted in public, that engagement-based ranking is dangerous without integrity and security systems, but then not rolled out those integrity and security systems to most of the languages in the world,” Haugen said. And that’s what is causing things like ethnic violence in Ethiopia.” Sharpe said legislators were not doing enough to hold social media companies to account. “The EU has gone the furthest towards doing this. There’s draft legislation in the EU, the digital services act. If it was passed it would require very large online platforms to have to assess and mitigate the risk of their algorithms spreading content that impacts on our rights. However, the proposed law doesn’t go far enough as it would only give regulators the opportunity to scrutinise how algorithms work when they suspect wrongdoing.” Facebook has pushed back forcefully against Haugen’s accusations. In a blogpost published on Tuesday evening its chief executive, Mark Zuckerberg, said “it’s just not true” that the company puts profit over safety. © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies.