Dan Collyns Claims of rightwing candidate, trailing Pedro Castillo in the polls, emboldens far right, who have vowed not to accept result A Pedro Castillo supporter in Lima. With 100% of the official vote counted, leftist Castillo had 50.12% – and advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival. Photograph: Alessandro Cinque/Reuters The prospect of the son of illiterate Andean peasants becoming president as his rival cries fraud has shaken Peru’s entrenched class system and its fragile democracy, letting loose a torrent of racism in the bicentennial year of the country’s independence. With 100% of the official vote counted, leftist Pedro Castillo had 50.12% – and advantage of about 44,000 votes over his far-right rival Keiko Fujimori. But Fujimori has claimed fraud, challenging about 500,000 votes, calling for half to be annulled, and obliging officials at Peru’s electoral board to reexamine ballots – despite the lack of evidence of wrongdoing. Two weeks after the election, which national and international observers said was transparent, the stance of Keiko Fujimori – the daughter of jailed 1990s autocrat Alberto Fujimori – has emboldened the far right, who have vowed not to accept the election results. In a move which illustrates the skewed playing field, Fujimori has recruited Lima’s most expensive law firms to quash 200,000 votes, almost all from poor Andean regions which voted overwhelmingly for Castillo. “The tension has reached a breaking point,” said José Ragas, a Peruvian historian at Chile’s Catholic University. “The Lima elite is not just trying to keep power – it’s not just that they don’t want to recognise the victory of Pedro Castillo – but they are trying to cancel the rural vote.” The election has unleashed expressions of racism that go beyond the discrimination against Japanese-descended Alberto Fujimori who took office in 1990 and Alejandro Toledo, a US-educated Andean, who governed Peru from 2001 to 2006. In one ugly but not unusual case, the online news site Sudaca published a private text messages between middle-class white men in Lima who discussed how people from the highlands should “die of hunger” and called for the return of Alberto Fujimori’s alleged forced sterilisations which mostly targeted indigenous women. Other social media memes characterised Castillo as a donkey or said Andeans were too ignorant to be allowed to vote. They echo old “racist and classist attitudes ingrained in the national and social debate,” said Ragas. But social media has given such comments a much bigger audience, he said. Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, slammed such expressions of racial hatred. “I repudiate hate speech and discrimination in all its forms, as it is unacceptable in any democratic society,” she said in a statement last week, as she called on Peruvians to accept the election result. As officials at Peru’s electoral board work overtime to reinspect the disputed ballots, social media and partisan news broadcasters have helped spread fake news stirring up the spectre of totalitarian rule, violence and even mass expropriations if Castillo is declared the winner amid rumblings of coup plots among the far-right. Apparently inspired by Donald Trump’s refusal to accept defeat at the US elections, Fujimori has led a string of marches against “fraud” telling supporters at one rally: “The election will be flipped, dear friends.” The three-time presidential candidate has already spent more than a year in pre-trial detention, accused of receiving more than $17m in illegal campaign funds and heading a criminal organisation, and could face a 30-year jail term if convicted. She denies the allegations. On Friday, Peru’s interim president Francisco Sagasti slammed as “unacceptable” a letter signed by nearly a hundred retired military officers urging the armed forces not to recognise Castillo if he takes office. “They want to incite top commanders of the Army, Navy, and Air force to break the rule of law,” he said in an address to the nation. As tension – fanned by fake news – grows, José Miguel Vivanco, Executive Director for the Americas, at Human Rights Watch, called on “all Peruvians – especially the candidates, the public servants and the members of the security forces” to “respect the electoral results which the authorities announce.” © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited

Sudan's Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok attends a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron and Sudan's Sovereign Council Chief General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan (not seen) during the International Conference in support of Sudan at the Temporary Grand Palais in Paris, France, May 17, 2021. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool KHARTOUM, June 15 (Reuters) - Sudan's prime minister warned on Tuesday of the risk of chaos and civil war fomented by loyalists of the previous regime as he sought to defend reforms meant to pull the country out of a deep economic crisis and stabilise a political transition. Abdalla Hamdok made the comments in a televised address days after young men carrying clubs and sticks blocked roads in the capital Khartoum following the removal of fuel subsidies. Hamdok's government serves under a fragile military-civilian power-sharing deal struck after a popular uprising spurred the army to overthrow veteran leader Omar al-Bashir in April 2019. The transition is meant to last until the end of 2023, leading to elections. "The deterioration of the security situation is mainly linked to fragmentation between components of the revolution, which left a vacuum exploited by its enemies and elements of the former regime," Hamdok said. He said that without reform of Sudan's sprawling security sector, which expanded under Bashir as he fought multiple internal conflicts, Sudan will continue to face internal and external threats. "These fragmentations can lead us to a situation of chaos and control by gangs and criminal groups, just as it can lead to the spread of conflict among all civilian groups and might lead to civil war." Though Sudan has won international praise for economic reforms since Bashir's fall and has made progress towards debt relief, many Sudanese face food shortages or have struggled to make ends meet as prices have soared over the past year. Inflation hit 379% in May and electricity or water outages occur daily. While roadblocks have often been used in protests triggered by economic or political grievances since 2018, a Reuters witness saw more aggression around the barriers set up in recent days. The state government said police and prosecutors would deal with what it called the gangs involved in blocking the roads, but there appeared to be little police presence on the streets. Additional reporting by Alaa Swilam Writing by Aidan Lewis Editing by Mark Heinrich © Copyright 2021 Reuters

Hardly a day passes without the Islamic State carrying out an attack against government forces and their allied militias in the Syrian desert. By Mohammed Hardan Pubished 17 June 2021 A general view taken on August 13, 2017, shows an Islamic State group poster in the central Syrian town of Al-Sukhnah, as pro-government fighters clear the area after taking control of the city situated in the county's large desert area called the Badiya. - STRINGER/AFP via Getty Images Despite the announcement of the defeat of the Islamic State (IS), and despite the numerous campaigns launched by all parties in Syria against it, the terrorist group still poses a threat. At the field level, it seems IS cells resumed their activities in the Syrian desert, known as Badiya. Military operations have intensified to the point that hardly a day passes without IS carrying out an explosion, ambush, assassination or attack in separate areas of the Badiya, which extends over Raqqa, Hama, Homs, Deir ez-Zor and all the way to Suwayda. These terrorist operations include targeting security and military personnel from the government forces, Iranian militias and Russian forces. Despite the numerous campaigns launched by the various parties in Syria against IS, its power of offense remains unhinged, which indicates that it has regained its ability to make a strong comeback. Local websites reported that the government forces had attended the funeral of three members, including an officer with the rank of captain, who were killed on June 6 by an IS mine as they were riding a vehicle on a dirt road linking the city of al-Sukhna and Athreya in the eastern desert of Homs. On June 3, a brigadier general with the Syrian government army was killed in clashes with IS in al-Sukhna, east of Homs in the Syrian desert. On the same day, IS also attacked sites belonging to the Qatirji group, which is close to the government, in the Qadisiyah desert east of Raqqa. Three members were killed and many others were wounded. Media outlets reported on June 2 that a military adviser in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and his companions were killed in an ambush by IS on the road between the cities of Deir ez-Zor and Palmyra in the countryside of Homs. This was preceded on June 1 by the killing of three members of the pro-government militia Liwa al-Quds and the capture of another member in an attack by IS fighters on the headquarters and checkpoints of Iranian militias in the Sukhna desert. The group went missing on May 27 and the bodies were found on May 29. The media announced this on May 30. Local media reported on May 30 that a group affiliated with the Syrian government, consisting of 30 members, went missing on May 27 in the Palmyra desert in the eastern countryside of Homs. Two days later on May 29, the bodies of 13 members of this group were found dumped near the Arak oil field in the eastern countryside of Homs. The rest of the group's members are still missing. On May 17, a convoy of seven military vehicles carrying about 40 members of an Iranian militia was attacked. Five members of the convoy were killed, others were injured and three are still missing. These attacks brought the death toll as of March 23, 2019, to 1,458 dead from among the government forces and militiamen loyal to them, including at least two Russians, and 152 fighters loyal to Iran, according to the statistics of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. In this context, Abbas Sharifa, an expert in the affairs of jihadist groups and a researcher at the Jusoor Center for Studies in Istanbul, told Al-Monitor, “The Syrian desert has turned into a black hole that swallows the convoys of the Syrian regime, Iran and Russia’s forces. This is despite all the military operations they waged against IS cells and despite IS’ loss of a large number of its members and part of its equipment, supply methods and hideouts.” He explained, “These cells were able to overcome their stage of exhaustion and regain the element of surprise to launch attacks. They also benefited from the nature of the vast Badiya region and its mountains, valleys and numerous caves. The cells gained full knowledge of the details of the Badiya terrain, roads and places of shelter. They resort to the raid strategy, which consists of moving in small groups and using light weapons, to strike and withdraw immediately. As for their tactics, they plant mines around the vital sites of the regime, such as oil wells, phosphate deposits, military sites and fixed posts, and the main camps that include supply and transport bases. This rendered unsafe the roads used for supply and logistics on the outskirts of the cities controlled by the regime and its allied forces.” Sharifa continued, “It seems that the attacks launched by IS cells will continue amid the weakness of the regime’s forces and the lack of seriousness in Russia’s use of smart weapons, such as drones, which is one of the most important weapons capable of eliminating IS cells.” However, he argued that IS cells will not be able to regain their full strength and take control of any specific area. “These cells lack funding and armament and have a shortage in human capital. This is because of the transformations the group witnessed in its organizational structure and method of work. These transformations will eventually cause IS’ own demise and fragment it into dispersed gangs that will collapse one after the other.” For his part, Abdulaziz al-Khalifa, a journalist with Baladi news network, told Al-Monitor, “IS’ movements depend on the network of tunnels it dug in the area. This makes it difficult to track its movements. IS is also betting on the conflict of interests between Iranian and Russian forces deployed in the area to fight IS. These forces did not coordinate when pulling out some troops. This allowed IS cells to retreat or strike the [remaining] forces. [IS] has also taken advantage of the fact that some factions, such as the Russian-backed Eighth Brigade, refused to take part in the operations [against IS].” He added, “Russia seeks to eliminate the Iranian presence in the region. It wants to impose itself as a partner to the US in fighting IS. Meanwhile, Israeli strikes [are regularly launched] against Iranian targets across Syria.” Khalifa indicated that IS cells in the Badiya use river supply lines to secure new recruits, weapons and mines from their areas of deployment to the north and east Euphrates region controlled by the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). “These weapons and fighters may have crossed over to Syria’s Badiya under the eyes of the SDF, who wants the regime and its allies to be preoccupied with fighting IS,” he said. He explained that a large number of IS members are from the Badiya tribes, which makes them familiar with the nature of the region and capable of adapting and living in its difficult climate conditions. On March 23, 2019, former US President Donald Trump announced the defeat of IS in Syria. The defeat culminated in the killing of IS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi in October 2019 in a US military operation in Idlib province. Yet IS still poses a dangerous threat in Syria, as its members continue to control some areas that they use to launch attacks. © 2021 Al-Monitor, LLC

Image credit: https://www.stl-tsl.org/en/about-the-stl Reuters Originally Published June 2, 2021 THE HAGUE, June 2 (Reuters) - A U.N. tribunal set up to prosecute those behind the 2005 assassination of Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and related cases said on Wednesday it will have to close after July if it is unable to resolve an acute funding shortage. "The Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL) regrets to announce that it is facing an unprecedented financial crisis. Without immediate funding, the Tribunal will not be able to operate beyond July 2021," it said in a statement. An exclusive report by Reuters last week revealed the tribunal, which is funded 51% by voluntary contributions and 49% by the Lebanese government, had run out of money. read more Last year the tribunal convicted in absentia former Hezbollah member Salim Jamil Ayyash for the bombing that killed Hariri and 21 others in a ruling that is being appealed. read more . Created by a 2007 U.N. Security Council resolution, the tribunal's 2020 budget was 55 million euros ($67 million). Wednesday's statement said that while the 2021 budget was cut by 37% and a $15.5 million contribution had been received from the United Nations on behalf of Lebanon in March, other contributions had not materialised. The closure would leave "important cases unfinished, to the detriment of victims", said Registrar David Tolbert in a statement. Court officials have notified U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutteres of the situation and judges and other staff are preparing steps to preserve court records and take steps "related to the protection of witnesses", the statement said. The decision would be a blow to families of victims in the Hariri murder and cases in related attacks carried out around the same time that are still under examination. It would also undercut calls for the creation of a new U.N. tribunal to bring to justice those responsible for the Beirut port blast last August that killed 200 and injured 6,500. Reporting by Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Andrew Heavens © 2021 Reuters. All rights reserved.

Dr. Gregory H. Stanton discusses the Ten Stages of Genocide at virtual event hosted by the Holocaust Memorial Resource & Education Center of Florida

June 3, 2021 | Council on Foreign Relations | Blog Post by Guest Blogger for Asia Unbound Tenzin Dorjee is a Senior Researcher and Strategist at the Tibet Action Institute and a PhD candidate at Columbia University. Paramilitary police officers swap positions during a change of guard in front of Potala Palace in Lhasa on October 15, 2020. Thomas Peter/Reuters In a post published on the Council on Foreign Relations’ Asia Unbound blog on March 29, Tibetologist Robert Barnett admonishes what he sees as the blurring of lines between advocacy and scholarship in the discourse on Tibet. The article, whose stated goal is to dispel the notion of a “Xinjiang-Tibet equivalence,” begins with legitimate arguments for distinguishing knowledge from speculation, urging the media and the academic community to refrain from overstating China’s repression in Tibet. However, in cautioning against overstatement, Dr. Barnett goes much too far in the opposite direction, downplaying the severity of China’s repression and painting a picture of Tibet that deviates sharply from the lived reality of Tibetans. The version of Tibet that he depicts has little in common with the experience of ordinary Tibetans, who are routinely deprived of their freedom of expression, movement, religion and assembly. His description also sits uneasily with the fact that Freedom House has ranked Tibet as one of the least free places in its 2021 “Freedom in the World” report, assigning it a combined score of 1 out of a possible 100 for civil liberties and human rights –– by comparison, Syria scored 1/100 and North Korea scored 3/100. The titular argument of Dr. Barnett’s article is that the level of repression in Tibet cannot be equated with that in Xinjiang. There is nothing novel or controversial about his thesis that the internment camps of Xinjiang do not exist in Tibet. So why bother to state the obvious? Because, according to Dr. Barnett, “a number of commentators, journalists, and politicians” have equated Tibet with Xinjiang “in terms of mass abuses.” Among those guilty of this transgression, he first names Dr. Lobsang Sangay, the outgoing head of the Tibetan government in exile. To be sure, Dr. Sangay drew comparisons between Xinjiang and Tibet. But he was quick to point out where the comparison ended. In a BBC interview in July 2019, Dr. Sangay said there were “detention camps” in Tibet but “not as large” as in Xinjiang. If analyzed in its proper context, it is clear he was referring not to Nazi-style death camps but to the garden-variety re-education centers that have been a feature of China’s indoctrination programs in Tibet. Dr. Sangay’s main message was that Chen Quanguo, the architect of the Uyghur internment camps, was deploying against the Uyghurs the tools of tyranny he had sharpened in Tibet. This was hardly an overstatement: before Chen took the reins in Xinjiang, he had indeed been the Party Secretary of Tibet Autonomous Region from 2011 to 2016. Xinjiang specialists like James Leibold as well as rights monitoring groups like Human Rights Watch have also made the observation that Tibet served as a laboratory of repression for Chen’s dystopian vision. Dr. Sangay was simply trying to connect the dots between Tibet and Xinjiang, which is not the same as equating them. In accusing him of equating the two regions, Dr. Barnett basically erects a straw man that he then proceeds to demolish. Another individual who comes under censure is Adrian Zenz, the author of a report that points to the existence of a mass program of labor training in Tibet. Dr. Zenz, it is worth noting, is the German scholar whose research on Xinjiang was pivotal in alerting the world to the Uyghur genocide. In critiquing Dr. Zenz’s report on Tibet, Dr. Barnett contributes some interesting details that enrich and complicate our understanding of the labor training program. Yet the essence of his critique suffers from several flaws, two of which merit special attention. Dr. Barnett’s first error is a conceptual one. Dr. Zenz, in discussing the nature of China’s labor training programs in Tibet, has highlighted the “systemic presence of numerous coercive elements.” While noting that there were “clear elements of coercion during recruitment, training and job matching,” he explicitly acknowledges in the report that there was “so far no evidence” of force being used. However, Dr. Barnett misses that conceptual distinction between force and coercion, using the terms interchangeably and thus misinterpreting one of Dr. Zenz’s key arguments. In the voluminous literature on the strategy of conflict, coercion is said to operate when the threat of retaliation plays a role in getting someone to do something against their will. The direct use of brute force is not necessary for coercion to obtain; the threat of punishment often lurks in the shadows without ever appearing onstage. Dr. Barnett contends that there is no evidence of force having been used to recruit people into the labor training program and rushes to argue that coercion is therefore absent, basically conflating the two terms. This is akin to saying, “Since there is no evidence for the presence of A, we can conclude B is absent.” Besides, in the highly repressive climate of Tibet, the line between choice and coercion is extremely blurry, and yet Dr. Barnett fails to consider the range of direct or indirect negative repercussions Tibetans may face if they do not participate. Second, one of the reasons he cites for questioning the validity of Dr. Zenz’s report is that its release was “coordinated with a prominent media campaign,” which included the publication of op-ed pieces in leading newspapers and a report by a political advocacy group. In Dr. Barnett’s view, Dr. Zenz’s report is tarnished by his ties to the media and the advocacy community. But this notion that engagement with the non-academic community disqualifies a research enterprise belongs to an elitist, and highly exclusivist, model of scholarship. True, in a bygone era, academics were expected to keep the subjects of their research at a distance –– though such an approach usually led to less knowledge, not more. In today’s more inclusive and decolonized models of scholarship, which put a premium on real-world impact, dialogue between academia and advocacy is considered not only ethically desirable but also epistemically beneficial. Finally, Dr. Barnett rebukes the Australia-based hosts of the Little Red Podcast for equating Tibet with Xinjiang in a recent episode on which I was one of the guests. “Tibet is not Xinjiang,” he repeats. I find it strange that he ignores the entire first segment of the show where we discuss the historical and political reasons why Beijing’s repression in Tibet is different from that in Xinjiang. Starting at 11:45 minutes, I go to great lengths to suggest that the current repression gap between the two regions may be largely attributed to two factors: (1) the Dalai Lama effect, which includes a highly dedicated and fairly influential global network of advocacy groups using political leverage to constrain Beijing’s behavior in Tibet, and (2) the United States’ global “war on terror” that put the Uyghurs, who are Muslims, in an exceptionally vulnerable position vis a vis China. While noting that the tactics of repression are more sophisticated and therefore less brutal in Tibet –– largely out of necessity because of the transnational network of activists monitoring China’s behavior –– none of the guests on the show equate the two regions in terms of mass abuses. Even so, the biggest problem with Dr. Barnett’s article is not how it misrepresents the Little Red Podcast, or Dr. Sangay or Dr. Zenz, but how it normalizes repression by minimizing the scope and scale of China’s totalitarian rule in Tibet. In his rosy view, Tibetan language, culture, and religion are neither under threat nor being targeted for eradication. He insists Xi Jinping’s China is merely trying to “adapt popular understandings of Tibetan Buddhism,” not seeking to destroy it. He points out that “publications of traditional religious texts run into the thousands.” The quantity of scriptural publications, however, is a misleading metric of religious life, which is more meaningfully measured by variables such as monastic enrollment and graduation rates, the breadth and depth of the curriculum, and the doctrinal and liturgical knowledge of the Sangha, etc. In reality, Chinese authorities strictly control and suppress monastic enrollment in Tibet, forbidding anyone below eighteen to join the cloister. Tibetan children in Lhasa, for instance, are banned from visiting the Jhokhang temple or the Potala Palace –– such bans on religious activity often do not exist on paper and are easily missed by scholars relying purely on documentary evidence. Photos of the Dalai Lama have long been banned in monasteries and homes, but now Chinese authorities are seeking to expunge him altogether from Tibetan Buddhism, which goes far beyond merely “insulting the Dalai Lama.” (To understand what Tibetan Buddhism without the Dalai Lama might actually mean, imagine the Catholic Church without the Pope.) Whereas once the monastery used to be a liminal space relatively impervious to the state, now it is a panopticon filled with surveillance cameras watching the monastics at all times. Instead of spending their day studying the scriptures, monks and nuns are forced to attend political indoctrination programs and immerse themselves in Xi Jinping thought, which can hardly be called a “popular adaptation” of what the Buddha taught. Even more pernicious than Beijing’s attack on Buddhism is its assault on the Tibetan language, a campaign that bears all the hallmarks of a multigenerational project to render a language dead and thus eliminate a people’s identity. In a report published by Human Rights Watch, Tibetan sources on the ground describe how China’s new education policy, deceptively labeled “bilingual education,” has been replacing Tibetan with Mandarin Chinese as the medium of instruction not only in primary schools but in kindergartens across the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR). What Beijing calls “bilingual education” is more accurately described by the International Tibet Network as a “cradle to grave” education system, where “new methods of 'controlling minds' have been imposed from an early age, with Tibetan toddlers increasingly being subjected to ideological education in hundreds of new and expanded kindergartens across Tibet.” In Lhasa, for instance, parents are required to place children as young as three in these kindergartens, where the children’s mother tongue is first downgraded, then marginalized, and finally banished into irrelevance. By some estimates, around 81,000 Tibetan children above the age of 3 were “in pre-schools and kindergartens” in the TAR by 2017. According to Xinhua, this number has now grown to 150,000, and the number of kindergartens in the region has increased tenfold over the last decade to roughly 2,200. Even the pro-Beijing Global Times has reported that recent policies have “left the Tibetan language in a precarious situation,” as parents complain that “there is nowhere to study Tibetan language.” One story that was relayed to me by a Lhasa native illuminates the micro-level mechanism by which a language, and the culture it carries, can undergo annihilation. A Tibetan toddler, after attending the “bilingual kindergarten” for a couple of months, came home one day speaking only in Chinese. Her parents were horrified when they realized that their daughter could no longer communicate with her grandparents, who spoke only Tibetan. In Tibet, as in many traditional societies, grandparents play a foundational role in shaping children’s cultural development and orienting their worldview — if children inherit genes from their parents, they inherit culture from their grandparents. Seen in this light, the vast and growing network of state-led “bilingual kindergartens,” which permanently damage the children’s relationship with their grandparents, are clearly designed to stem the intergenerational transmission of culture and fundamentally reconfigure Tibetan identity. Much of this is underreported in the media, for the simple reason that Tibet remains an information black hole. Even North Korea, the hermetically sealed nation, has allowed the Associated Press and the Agence France-Press to establish bureaus on the ground, but there is not a single foreign reporter in Tibet. Beijing uses big-data technology of surveillance and state-of-the-art infrastructure of repression –– including the “convenience police stations” and the “double-linked households system,” innovated by Chen Quanguo during his tenure in Tibet –– to keep Tibetans, much like Uyghurs, in a general state of fear. But China’s ambition goes beyond mere physical control of its restless peripheries. Calling its ethnic unity education “an engineering project of the soul,” Xi Jinping’s China aims for nothing less than to “transform ethnic cultures and identities” as a permanent solution to what it views as the two biggest challenges to its cultural unity and political stability: Tibet and Xinjiang. To conclude, imagine a detective who, after failing to find a gun or a knife in the house of an abusive husband, decides that his battered wife calling for help has no reason to fear for her life. When, in fact, any number of items in the house can be retooled into a deadly weapon. Dr. Barnett looks for a single fatal wound on Tibetan culture, and failing to find it, is quick to exonerate the Chinese government. Meanwhile, as China wages its multifaceted campaign to displace Tibetan language, erase Tibetan Buddhism, and relocate the nomads from the grasslands into the ghettos, Tibetans get the unmistakable feeling that their culture is undergoing death by a thousand cuts. There is no single policy that destroys a people, no single bullet that kills a culture. It is the totality of state policies and strategies whose interaction creates a complex process that ultimately chokes a culture and lowers it into its coffin, not overnight but over time. Reference 1. Human Rights Watch, China’s “Bilingual Education” Policy in Tibet: Tibetan-Medium Schooling Under Threat (2020) 2. International Tibet Network, Shaping the Soul: China’s New Coercive Strategies in Tibet (2021) 3. Schelling, Thomas, The Strategy of Conflict (1960) 4. Zenz, Adrian and James Leibold, “Chen Quanguo: The Strongman Behind Beijing’s Securitization Strategy in Tibet and Xinjiang,” China Brief, Volume 17, Issue 12 (September 2017). 5. Human Rights Watch, “China: Tibetan Children Banned from Classes,” January 30, 2019. 6. Human Rights Watch, “China: Ban on Tibet Religious Activity Toughened,” September 11, 2019. 7. Leibold, James, “Planting the Seed: Ethnic Policy in Xi Jinping’s New Era of Cultural Nationalism,” China Brief, Volume: 19 Issue: 22 (December 31, 2019). ©2021 Council on Foreign Relations. All rights reserved

June 12, 2021 | By Nicholas Kristof Credit: Kevin Frayer/Getty Image In 2021 the United States and other countries have declared that China is committing genocide against ethnic Uyghurs — yet nothing much changes. That passivity discounts the horror of genocide, the ultimate crime. So that we don’t grow numb to what’s unfolding, let me introduce a Uyghur woman: “Nancy,” as she asks to be called, is now safe in the United States but terrified that speaking out will doom her parents. China’s repression of the Uyghurs, a Muslim minority in the far west region of Xinjiang, has received attention mostly for locking about one million people in modern concentration camps. A less noted element has been a systematic attempt to suppress births of Uyghurs. Nancy described one relative, a gynecologist, who was sent to a concentration camp for two years and then sentenced to six years in prison for removing IUDs from two women for health reasons. Another relative was sent to a concentration camp for two years because she was overseeing family planning work in a Uyghur village where a woman became pregnant without permission. Nancy heard that the pregnant woman’s husband was sentenced to 11 years in prison, but she’s not sure what happened to the mother or baby. It’s impossible to verify Nancy’s accounts, but they fit into what journalists, diplomats and human rights groups have uncovered about repression in Xinjiang. So what’s going on? Alarmed by a separatist movement in Xinjiang that in the past has occasionally been violent, China appears to be trying to stifle Uyghur births so as to dilute the Uyghur population in a sea of Han Chinese. Officials have spoken of the need to “change southern Xinjiang’s population structure” and “end the dominance of the Uyghur.” The result has been a campaign of forced sterilization and IUD insertion. Some 80 percent of China’s IUD insertions have been in Xinjiang, home to less than 2 percent of the country’s population, and population growth rates in the two largest Uyghur prefectures fell 84 percent, according to Adrian Zenz, a scholar who has documented a brazen Chinese government plan to suppress millions of Uyghur births in the coming years. This is part of a systematic dehumanization of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Muslims are forced to betray their faith by eating pork or drinking alcohol, prayer is banned in public places, kids are sent to boarding schools to be indoctrinated, and when Uyghur men are jailed the government has sent Han Chinese men to live in their homes and share beds with their wives. China is not massacring Uyghurs, so this is not a genocide in the commonly accepted sense. But under the legal definition in the 1948 Genocide Convention, China’s practices appear to qualify as genocide by suppressing births of a particular ethnic group. Nancy’s own personal journey reflects how China’s government has gone from wooing Uyghurs to crushing them. Her family was not religious, her mother was a Communist Party member entrusted with a senior government job, and the family was ready to work within the system. Indeed, when Nancy was in high school, the Chinese government dispatched her to live in eastern China so as to assimilate her and mold her into a Uyghur agent of influence. But tensions between Han Chinese and Uyghurs grew. Eventually Nancy, frustrated by the lack of good jobs even for educated Uyghurs in China, took a position in Turkey. That didn’t raise eyebrows at the time, but after China began its crackdown in 2016, any foreign travel by Uyghurs became suspicious. Nancy’s parents had visited her in Turkey, so they were detained in concentration camps for re-education. After the parents were released from the camps, they left her a voice message urging her to return to China. “Your country loves you,” her mom told her. “Your country needs you here.” Nancy immediately grew suspicious, doubly so when her mother then said that Nancy’s pregnancy might make it difficult to return. In fact, Nancy was not pregnant, and she assumes that someone was forcing her mother to lure her home but that her mother was trying desperately to signal that she should stay away. Nancy says that an uncle became paralyzed while in the camps, apparently from a beating, and another relative died while inside. Four of her cousins are currently locked up in forced labor camps, she said, and guards are demanding bribes in exchange for not starving one of them. What can the world do in the face of these atrocities — not to mention the destruction of Hong Kong, the kidnapping and mistreatment of two Canadian hostages and other rogue behavior by President Xi Jinping? One sensible response: a partial boycott of next year’s “Genocide Olympics” in Beijing, with athletes allowed to participate, but officials and business executives staying away. A second: companies eliminate Xinjiang products, such as cotton and solar panels, from their supply chains, despite the risk of a nationalist backlash within China. All of this is unsatisfying and inadequate, and it may not move Xi. But when we declare a genocide, we can’t simply shrug and do nothing. © 2021 The New York Times Company

Senior UN officials have condemned a deadly attack on a hospital in Syria this past weekend, underlining the need for accountability for crimes committed in the country’s decade-long war. UNICEF/Ashawi | A family arrives in Afrin in northern Aleppo governorate in Syria after escaping conflict in rural Idlib. (file) The Al-Shifaa Hospital came under fire amid shelling in the rebel-held northern city of Afrin on Saturday. At least 18 civilians were killed, according to media reports, including staff and patients at the hospital. Parts of the facility were also destroyed. Ceasefire needed now “Such appalling attacks on civilians and civilian infrastructure, including healthcare facilities and workers, are unacceptable and must cease”, the UN Special Envoy for Syria, Geir Pedersen, said in a statement on Monday. “All parties must fully comply with their obligations under international humanitarian law, including the protection of civilians and civilian objects. I also reiterate the Secretary-General’s call for accountability for crimes committed in Syria.” The envoy added that the attack, and continuing violence in Syria, again underscores the importance of implementing a nationwide ceasefire, as well as renewed effort toward a political settlement. Third attack in two years The Al-Shifaa Hospital, one of the largest medical facilities in northern Syria, has been hit three times since 2019, according to two top UN aid officials. Imran Riza, Resident Coordinator and Humanitarian Coordinator for the country, and Muhammad Hadi, Regional Humanitarian Coordinator for the Syrian Crisis, strongly condemned the attack in a joint statement issued on Sunday. They said the hospital provides an average of 15,000 medical services each month, including 350 newborn deliveries and 250 specialized surgeries. It has been receiving financial support from the UN for the past two years. “For the people of Syria, already beleaguered by ten years of crisis, health facilities should be safe havens”, their statement said. They reiterated that directing attacks against civilians and civilian infrastructure, including hospitals, are strictly prohibited under international humanitarian law. © 2021UN News

By the Tibet Advocacy Coalition Read full report here. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY A new phase of China’s strategy on Tibet was set in place at the Seventh Tibet Work Forum in August 2020. This top-level conclave was presided over by Xi Jinping and established the direction of policy for the next five to ten years. The Forum mapped out an expansion and strengthening of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) coercive capability in Tibet, with the objective of “breaking lineage, breaking roots, breaking connections, and breaking origins”. To achieve this, the CCP is deploying a pernicious combination of systematic, harsh measures bringing together ideological indoctrination beginning at childhood; the restructuring and dismantling of rural economies through mass relocation, labour mobilization and transfer programmes and other measures, and a systematic intensification of data-driven policing and surveillance. The intent of these policies is obscured beneath a proactive official discourse of “modernisation”, “economic development”, “poverty alleviation”, “labour skills training” and “bilingual education”. Party chief of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) Wu Yingjie was less oblique when he stated on 31 December 2020 that official priorities were to “control the belly” and to “control the brain”. In other words, to render the Tibetan population both more dependent upon the state for their livelihoods, in order to ensure complete control, and to embrace Chinese cultural nationalism, the concept of ‘Zhonghua minzu’. Ding Yexian, a senior leader in the TAR and head of the leading group on education, described this orchestrated campaign imposed from the top down by Xi Jinping, saying that: “Socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics in the new era informs the whole process of shaping the soul and educating people on a grassroots level.” The protests that swept across Tibet in 2008 laid bare the reality that Tibetan resistance to Chinese rule remained strong, despite years of systematic repression by Beijing. Chinese leaders were no longer content with merely suppressing dissent in Tibet and moved from a strategy of “suppression to prevention”. Rather than merely reacting to events once they have taken place, Chinese officials are now seeking to pre-emptively catch any signs of potential and perceived opposition, or even mild critique. The intention is to change the way that Tibetans think and act in order to ensure compliance with CCP policy; to create a society in which not only is there no dissent, but the very idea of it is not even contemplated. In order to achieve this, there has been an increasingly heavy emphasis on techniques of indoctrination and “controlling the mind.” A ‘cradle to grave’ system of displacement, control and cultural erasure has emerged in Tibet. New methods of “controlling minds” have been imposed from an early age, with Tibetan toddlers increasingly being subjected to ideological education in hundreds of new and expanded kindergartens across Tibet. Such measures have been prioritized by Xi Jinping and in the Tibet Autonomous Region, are being implemented with zeal under Wu Yingjie’s leadership in order to secure the loyalty of a new generation to the CCP. But compliance and loyalty to the CCP cannot be achieved by indoctrination alone, particularly in a resilient population with a deeply rooted sense of cultural and religious identity. This focus is combined with an intensified campaign to remodel rural economies and livelihoods. A stepped-up programme of ‘labour mobilisation’ is being implemented across the plateau contributing to the breaking apart of rural Tibetan communities and the destruction of traditional livelihoods. According to official figures – likely to be inflated in order to give the impression of meeting quotas – over the past five years 2.8 million rural Tibetans have been ‘transferred’ from the agricultural sector to secondary and tertiary industry in urban areas, including numerous projects that fulfil China’s strategic and economic objectives such as involvement in hydropower or mining projects. This transfer of rural Tibetans into the urban wage economy emerges from the devastating impacts of relocation and resettlement of the Tibetan rural population over two decades, which has seen high numbers of herders and nomads ‘sedentarized’, often moved into concrete block encampments in semi-urban areas far from their grasslands, with no sustainable means to provide for themselves and their families. They are now described by officials as ‘surplus’ rural labour drafted into ‘training’ programmes and new jobs in urban areas. This new labour programme does not just target Tibetans in rural areas, but also political prisoners and released prisoners, who are regarded as a ‘threat’ to the Chinese state due to their views. The programmes prioritise the Chinese language and redeploy prisoner labour into construction or other projects, including in the heavily militarised area of Nyingtri (Chinese: Linzhi) close to the Tibet-India border. As part of the broader effort to break connections, lineages, lifestyles and loyalties, the CCP has simultaneously deepened its political crusade against religion, which strikes at the heart of Tibetan identity. Wu Yingjie is spearheading a new drive to separate religious beliefs “from life” and remove the Dalai Lama’s influence entirely. Criticism of religion is an increasingly important theme of compulsory political education in Party training facilities, villages, neighbourhoods, schools and workplaces and Tibetan monks and nuns continue to be heavily subjected to tough ‘re-education’ campaigns. A handful of accounts even testify to the imprisonment, torture and the rape of Tibetan nuns. These measures aim to create a ‘Sinicized’ official Buddhism, dissociated from the Dalai Lama, with the intention that future generations will only remember him as an enemy. This new phase of coercive assimilation represents an escalated level of threat to Tibet’s linguistic, cultural and religious identity that far surpasses previous political campaigns and policy measures. It aligns Tibet with strategies being applied in East Turkistan (officially known as Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region), for which Tibet served as a lab to pioneer and trial oppressive and dystopian control measures that were then amplified and accelerated against millions of Uyghurs subjected to mass internment and forced labour (with some then reapplied in Tibetan areas). A comprehensive network of inter-connected political mechanisms and facilities now operational in Tibet aims to drive the influence of the CCP deeper into people’s lives. As in Uyghur areas, increasingly intrusive surveillance of Tibetans’ everyday lives has been implemented, involving data-driven and predictive policing. This is coupled with efforts by Beijing to push a vision of ‘non-interference’ at the United Nations in order to further undermine democratic principles, human rights standards and accountability at the global level. This has only served to weaken and subvert one of the main mechanisms available to democracies to hold governments accountable for their human rights violations and has permitted a situation in which these large-scale violations in Tibet are not met with a well-coordinated international response or punishment. It is in this environment that calls by over 50 UN experts for the establishment of an independent monitoring mechanism to assess China’s rampant human rights violations, including in Tibet, continue to go unheard and reprisals against human rights defenders has become routine. ©2020-2021 tibetadvocacy.org

June 8, 2021 | By Jomana Karadsheh and Gul Tuysuz, CNN Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) Amannisa Abdullah and her husband, Ahmad Talip, were on their way to shop for baby clothes in Dubai, when the message that changed both their lives came through. Ahmad read it and announced an abrupt change of plan: He had to report to a police station immediately. Ahmad dropped Amannisa off at a friend's house that day in February 2018, promising to pick her up later. He never came back. In their Dubai apartment, a sleepless Amannisa prayed and cried through the night, watching the hours pass as her repeated calls to Ahmad went unanswered. The next morning, the heavily pregnant 29-year-old shuffled out of the door, hugging her 5-year-old son close. They hailed a taxi to the police station where she tried to explain her predicament to a police officer. As she spoke, her little boy tugged at her hand. Quietly, he pointed towards a jail cell where Ahmad was sitting. For 13 days, Amannisa shuttled back and forth between her home and the jail, pleading with law enforcement officials to release Ahmad. With each visit, her husband looked more dejected. He told her he was convinced that the long reach of China had reached his Uyghur family in the United Arab Emirates. "It's not safe here. You must take our boy and [go] to Turkey," he told Amannisa in their last conversation. "If our new baby is a girl, please name her Amina. If he's a boy, name him Abdullah." A week later, Ahmad was sent to the UAE capital, Abu Dhabi. Five days later, Amannisa said, Abu Dhabi authorities told her that he had been extradited to China. Their daughter, Amina, was born a month later in Turkey. She has never met her father. Amannisa's testimony is one of more than a dozen accounts collected by CNN, detailing the alleged detention and deportation of Uyghurs at China's request in three major Arab countries: Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. CNN has repeatedly reached out to Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia for comment on the extraditions and has not received a response. China's government has also not responded to CNN's request for comment. In Egypt, rights groups have documented hundreds of detentions -- and at least 20 deportations -- of Uyghurs In 2017, the majority of them students at the prestigious Islamic university of Al-Azhar. In Saudi Arabia between 2018 and 2020, at least one Uyghur Muslim was allegedly detained and deported after performing the Umrah pilgrimage in Islam's holiest cities. Another was arrested after a pilgrimage and faces deportation. Amannisa Abdullah's husband Ahmad Talip and their son, Musa, in Dubai. Reports of Uyghur disappearances have unnerved the largely Muslim global diaspora from China's Xinjiang region. The families of the deported fear their loved ones have ended up among the estimated 2 million Uyghurs who have been sent to internment camps in Xinjiang in recent years. As Beijing's global influence expands, rights activists fear that even as Western nations take China to task over its treatment of Uyghurs, countries in the Middle East and beyond will increasingly be willing to acquiesce to its crackdown on members of the ethnic group at home and abroad. A Human Rights Watch report released in April said China had tracked down hundreds of Uyghurs across the globe, forcing them to return and face persecution. In many cases "it is impossible to find out what has happened" to them, the report said. For some Uyghurs, the extraditions from Muslim countries will be especially galling, shattering notions of Islamic solidarity and deepening feelings of isolation on a world stage where China's power has grown rapidly. CNN has seen a document issued by Dubai's public prosecutor on February 20, 2018 -- eight days after Ahmad Talip was taken into custody -- confirming a Chinese extradition request for him, listed in the paperwork under his Chinese name, Aihemaiti Talifu. The document says that Dubai authorities initially decided to release Ahmad due to insufficient proof that he should be extradited. The Dubai prosecutor's office instructed police "to stop searching the above-mentioned person and lift all the restrictions on him, unless he is wanted for another reason." CNN has seen a document issued by Dubai's public prosecutor confirming China's request to extradite Ahmad Talip. It says Dubai authorities initially decided to release him. But on February 25, 2018, Amannisa was told that Ahmad had been deported. Authorities in the UAE never explained what her husband was accused of. Three years on, she still has no answers. "If my husband [has committed] any crime, why they don't tell me? Why China don't tell me?" she asked CNN. "I don't know if my husband is still alive or not," she said. "I have no ... news about him from China, from UAE. Both [are] silent. They are silent, completely silence." "Why you don't obey your own court paper? You say you are Muslim country. And I never believed that since this happened, I never believe you." Dubai authorities and the UAE's Foreign Ministry have not responded to CNN's repeated requests for comment on Ahmad's case. Deportations from Muslim-majority countries Xinjiang is among China's most ethnically diverse regions, home to a variety of predominantly Muslim ethnic groups; the Uyghurs, who have their own distinct culture and language, are the largest of these. Many Uyghurs have long felt marginalized in their homeland. Inter-ethnic tensions have been stoked by grievances linked to allegations of unfair economic policies and government-backed restrictions on religious behavior, halal food and Islamic dress. Amannisa Abdullah with daughter, Amina, 3, left, and son Musa, 8. Amina was born in Turkey and has never met her father, Ahmad Talip, pictured on screen in the background with Musa. In recent years, under President Xi Jinping, Beijing's policy towards the region's minority groups has hardened noticeably, prompting many to head overseas. Since 2016, evidence has emerged that the Chinese government has been operating huge, fortified centers to detain Uyghur citizens in Xinjiang. As many as two million people may have been taken to the camps, according to the US State Department. Former detainees and activists call these "concentration camps" — places where inmates are subjected to intense indoctrination intended to de-Islamize them, forced to learn Mandarin, and instructed in Communist Party propaganda. China vehemently denies allegations of human rights abuses, insisting that the Xinjiang camps are voluntary "vocational training centers," designed to stamp out religious extremism and terrorism. But testimonies collected by CNN from former detainees describe incidents of forced labor, torture, sexual abuse and even the deaths of fellow detainees. The US State Department has accused Beijing of "genocide" against the Uyghurs. In addition to cultural assimilation, human rights groups and overseas Uyghur activists have also alleged that the Chinese government coerced Uyghurs to submit to birth control and enforced sterilization. Over the years, Uyghurs abroad have spoken out about relatives who have disappeared in Xinjiang. Families have been ripped apart, and many children are growing up as orphans, with no contact from their parents back home. Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur activist based in Oslo, says he has documented and confirmed at least 28 Uyghur deportations from three Muslim-majority countries between 2017 and 2019: 21 from Egypt, five from Saudi Arabia, and two, including Ahmad, from the UAE, according to Ayup. Chinese President Xi Jinping holds a welcome ceremony for Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, crown prince of Abu Dhabi of the United Arab Emirates, before their talks in Beijing, China, on July 22, 2019. But he fears this may be only the tip of the iceberg. Too often, he says, family members fear going public about deportations in case it jeopardizes the safety of loved ones who have disappeared, as well as other family members in Xinjiang. In the Middle East, China has adeptly navigated the region's hodgepodge of political fault lines, its friendships across the region transcending political divides. China has increasingly robust relations with both Saudi Arabia and its regional arch-nemesis Iran. Middle Eastern countries in financial dire straits, such as Lebanon, may find any overtures from China difficult to resist. Similarly, oil-rich Gulf Arab countries facing a pandemic-induced economic slump also view China as a possible financial lifeboat. In a 2019 open letter, more than a dozen Muslim-majority countries — including the UAE, Iran, Egypt and Saudi Arabia — publicly endorsed China's policies in Xinjiang. They were among 37 signatories responding to Western criticism of China at the UN Human Rights Council. Following a visit to Xinjiang in 2020, the UAE's ambassador to Beijing publicly praised China's policies in the province. In a sit-down interview with Chinese state media this February, Ali al-Dhaheri said what "impressed" him the most during the visit was "the positive plan and vision for Xinjiang -- China wants the region to play an active part in the Chinese economy, provide stability, raise living standards and improve the lives of the region's people." For Maya Wang, senior China researcher at Human Rights Watch, the alleged treatment of Uyghurs by the autocratic governments of the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Egypt is not surprising -- despite those countries being signatories to the UN's Convention Against Torture. "A lot of these governments don't care about human rights," she told CNN. "They are unelected governments that persecute their citizens in their countries. There is no real rule of law and democracy when it comes to deportations of Uyghurs." Disappearances in Egypt Maryam Muhammad, 29, has been keeping a dark secret from her two sons. To shield them from the cruel reality they were born into, she tells them their father, Muhtar Rozi, is on a long overseas work trip. He has been gone for almost four years. But Salaheddiin and Alaeddin rarely ask about him. They were only 18 months old and 5 months old when he disappeared. Maryam last heard from her husband on July 16, 2017, when he sent her a message saying he had been detained. Rozi was among dozens of Uyghurs rounded up by Egyptian security services -- believed to have been acting at the behest of the Chinese government -- in a dramatic sweep documented by human rights groups. According to Human Rights Watch, at least 62 Uyghurs were arrested in a series of July 2017 raids at restaurants and supermarkets popular with the ethnic group, as well as at their homes. Many of those detained were students at Al-Azhar University. Maryam is stoic. Recounting her story, she sticks to the facts, leaving out the emotional impact on her family. But she chokes up when she remembers her husband's last words to her: "He said: 'You are my precious. I love you so much.'" "I'm tired of trying to be strong," she says, wiping away the tears. "I know I must try to be strong because of my children, because of my husband." Maryam Muhammad, her child and her husband, Muhtar Rozi, who disappeared during a crackdown on Uyghur Muslims in Egypt. China and Egypt have never officially acknowledged the alleged deportations, which occurred less than a year after the two countries signed a security cooperation agreement -- and less than three weeks after the Egyptian Interior Ministry and China's Ministry of Public Security signed a "technical cooperation document." Neither government has responded to CNN's request for comment on the events of 2017. Earlier that year, China had demanded that all Uyghur students studying abroad return home, according to Human Rights Watch. Maryam says the family had all the required documentation to prove their legal status in Egypt: "We have passports. We have [Egyptian] residency cards and we also have permission of the Chinese Embassy in Egypt to enter the school," she told CNN. "So, we did not worry much about this." She showed CNN documents confirming her family's legal status and a marriage certificate issued by the Chinese Embassy in Cairo. As news of the raids began to spread in early July 2017, the family went into hiding, drawing up plans to flee the country. Maryam and the boys would fly to Istanbul, but since they believed Muhtar was more likely to be arrested, he would take a ferry to Jordan, hoping to escape state surveillance. Muhtar Rozi in Cairo, where he was a student at the leading Islamic university of Al Azhar. But in his last message to his wife, Muhtar told her he had been detained at Egypt's Nuwaiba port. She searched frantically for him — even risking a flight back to Egypt and hiring a lawyer. But the police told her they had no record of him. "It's like my husband became air," she says. Disappearance from pilgrimage A small group of Uyghurs stand silently in the snow outside Istanbul's Saudi consulate, infamous as the site of the October 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Nuriman Veli leads the group, her glasses fogging up from the cold. Hands trembling, she holds up a placard with a message to Saudi Arabia: "Don't deport my father to China, send him to Turkey where he is a resident." Her father, Hamdullah Abduweli, was detained in the kingdom while on pilgrimage to Islam's holy cities, Mecca and Medina. He has not yet been deported, and Nuriman and her sister are in a race against time, desperate not to lose another parent. More than four years ago, they lost contact with their mother in Xinjiang. "If we lose our father, it will destroy us," she said. The pandemic prompted Saudi Arabia to close its airports just as Hamdullah was performing his pilgrimage, leaving him stranded in Saudi Arabia. In October, he told family members he suspected he was being trailed by "Chinese agents." A month later, Hamdullah and his Uyghur roommate were detained by Saudi authorities. Despite calls for their release by Human Rights Watch and others, the two have not been heard from since. Nuriman Veli, second from left, and her sister protesting the disappearance of their father and his friend, pictured on the placard, outside Istanbul's Saudi consulate on February 12. CNN has blurred a portion of the photo to protect the men's personal details. Hamdullah is at least the second Uyghur reported to have been detained during a Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. In July 2018, Osman Ahmed was also allegedly arrested by Saudi authorities during a visit to the holy sites. After three months spent trying to locate Osman Ahmed, his family in Turkey was told by an elderly relative in Saudi Arabia that she had received word about Osman's whereabouts from Saudi authorities. "They told her: 'We sent him back to wherever he is from,'" Osman Ahmad's daughter Ilminur Osman told CNN. The family has not been able to confirm Osman's fate, but they say they have heard from people in Xinjiang that he was spotted in one of the region's internment camps. CNN reached out to the Saudi government for comment on both cases but did not receive a response. "Shame on Saudi Arabia. If they don't want Uyghurs to come to perform pilgrimage just say: 'We do not want you here,'" activist Ayub told CNN. "Do not do this when people [come] to perform pilgrimage." Saudi Arabia Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman greets Chinese President Xi Jinping during a meeting at the Diaoyutai State guest house on August 31, 2016 in Beijing, China. It was only after her father's detention that Nuriman found out other Uyghurs had been arrested in Saudi Arabia and forcibly returned to China. "If I knew, I would have told him not to go," Nuriman says. Activists say the situation is a damning indictment of the Muslim world's leadership. "These countries pride themselves for being leaders of the Islamic world, but they don't bat an eyelid when returning people for persecution for being Muslim," says Wang. "It is quite outrageous and I think it's hypocritical, but that illustrates the geopolitical reality." Growing Sino-Turk relations Even in Muslim countries that have traditionally been seen as places of safety for Uyghur Muslims, the sand is shifting. Over the last decade, thousands of Uyghurs have settled in Turkey, with Uyghur neighborhoods and schools cropping up in the country's major cities. In addition to sharing a religion with the majority of Turkey's population, Uyghurs — a Turkic ethnic group — also speak a similar language. But in recent years, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- who once championed Uyghur rights — has toned down his criticism of China's Xinjiang policy, in an apparent bid to boost relations with Beijing. A child from the Uyghur community living in Turkey wears a mask during a protest against the visit of China's Foreign Minister to Turkey, in Istanbul on March 25, 2021. An extradition treaty between the two countries, ratified late last year by China and now awaiting approval by Turkey's Parliament, is exacerbating fears. Turkish officials have sought to reassure Uyghurs, as well as the Turkish public, that they will not extradite Uyghurs back to China. "It is not right to interpret this as Turkey will hand over Uyghur Turks to China," Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said last December, adding that Beijing had made requests in the past, but that Turkey had not complied. But at least four Uyghurs, including a mother and her two children, were deported by Turkey to Tajikistan last year, according to activist Abduweli Ayup. He says multiple testimonies suggest they eventually ended up in China. Last September, Turkey's Directorate General of Migration Management denied that Turkey had extradited Uyghurs to China. "We have not directly, or through third countries, deported any Uyghur Turks to China and Turkey does not and will not ever have such a policy," the directorate said in a written statement. But official statements like these do little to assuage Uyghurs' concerns. A small Istanbul apartment is the only home Amannisa's 3-year-old daughter Amina has ever known. As she follows developments in Turkey, Amannisa fears the world is closing in on her and her children. A few weeks after she arrived in Istanbul, she trekked across the city, asking passers-by for directions to the sea. She told them she wanted to take her children to enjoy the view, but says her real intentions reveal the depths of her despair. "What I want to do is I want to go inside ... with my child ... because I don't know how to swim," says Amannisa. "I have no right to live [in] this world. Maybe this world is not big enough to let me live like other people." CNN's Sarah El Sirgany contributed to this report. © 2021 Cable News Network.A Warner Media Company. All Rights Reserved.CNN Sans ™ & © 2016 Cable News Network.

Andrew Bragg’s views backed by NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian, who says Uluru statement contains ‘deeply liberal ideas’ June 7, 2021 | Katherine Murphy Liberal senator Andrew Bragg says he believes Australians will support a legislated voice to parliament and an amendment to the constitution that obliges the commonwealth to ensure that Indigenous peoples are heard. Bragg – the backbencher who is leading efforts to persuade colleagues to adopt the Uluru statement – will use a speech to the Sydney Institute on Tuesday night to try and map a pathway through the Coalition’s internal differences. Bragg’s efforts have also been backed by the New South Wales premier, Gladys Berejiklian, who used remarks at a book launch earlier this week to argue the Uluru statement contains “deeply liberal ideals”. In endorsing Bragg’s campaign, Berejiklian also noted “a growing mood for change on the issue of reconciliation”. On Tuesday night, Bragg will tell the Sydney Institute the Coalition party room is becoming more supportive of change, particularly in the current generation of new parliamentarians. The Liberal senator will say that shift is encouraging, but the government also needs “to think about what the people will ultimately support”. “I believe that the Australian people will support the parliament establishing a voice and that they will support an amendment to the constitution that obliges the commonwealth to ensure that Indigenous peoples are heard,” Bragg will say. “I do not believe that the Australian people will support an amendment to the constitution, however, that is highly complex and explicitly creates a new entity in the constitution.” The Uluru statement calls for the establishment of a “voice” to parliament that would be enshrined in the constitution. A constitutionally enshrined “voice” cannot be abolished by the government of the day. Senior Coalition players have derided the concept, erroneously, as a third chamber of parliament but the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, has embarked on a co-design process for the “voice”. Under a proposal outlined in an interim report in January, the federal government would be obliged to consult the Indigenous voice to parliament when crafting laws on race, native title and racial discrimination that impact upon Aboriginal Australians. But the voice would have no power to overturn policy or prevent laws being passed. While Wyatt has been attempting to land a consensus position, the government has never fully endorsed constitutional enshrinement of the Uluru proposal, and has been tracking towards a legislated option. Wyatt has argued repeatedly the process should not be rushed because any proposal that ultimately failed at a referendum would set back the cause for many years. Bragg supports some form of constitutional change. He will say on Tuesday night Uluru calls for constitutional enshrinement and a “voice established in legislation as part of a package that includes a constitutional amendment that obliges the commonwealth to hear Indigenous peoples is a liberal way of delivering what Uluru calls for”. Addressing negative pushback from colleagues about the proposal, Bragg will say: “Putting an obligation on the commonwealth to consult doesn’t give a special deal to a minority, it provides a duty to consult which should have been there at the outset.” Bragg argues the Liberal party needs to lead this debate because the “party of patriots should … drive this agenda because it is a patriotic agenda”. “We cannot change the past but we need to make sure that the restlessness in Australia is concluded by delivering a national reconciliation worthy of a great nation,” Bragg will say on Tuesday night. “Until we do this we are denying our children their full and proper inheritance”. The Labor senator Pat Dodson has recently blasted the Morrison government for a lack of progress. “[Wyatt’s] got to lead, he’s supposed to be the leader in the First Nations space, it’s no good prancing around if you won’t lead on hard issues, and this is a hard issue,” Dodson told reporters in March. “He’s the bloke with responsibility, with the PM, and they should be leading and helping the nation to heal the wounds of the past divisions and discord, and taking us forward to build a better relationship. And if they’re not prepared to do that, they should get out of the road and let someone else run the place.” © 2021 Guardian News & Media Limited or its affiliated companies. All rights reserved.

By MEE staff Human Rights Watch said the Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary was likely behind eight incidents of forced disappearances between December 2019 and October 2020 (AFP) Amnesty International has called on Iraqi authorities to reveal the whereabouts of at least 643 men and boys who had been abducted by Shia paramilitaries in the fight against the Islamic State (IS) group. The men and teenagers disappeared during an operation by Hashd al-Shaabi in June 2016 to retake Fallujah in the western desert from IS. Witnesses told Amnesty that, on 3 June 2016, gunmen wearing uniforms with emblems associated with the paramilitary "took an estimated 1,300 men and boys considered to be of fighting age away from their families". At least 643 men and boys were boarded onto buses and a large truck, and what has happened to them remains unclear. "For five years, the families of these men and boys have been living in anguish, not knowing the fate of their loved ones, or whether they are even alive," Lynn Maalouf, deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa at Amnesty International, said in a statement. "Young boys were ripped away from their parents and entire families torn apart. The families deserve to know what happened to their loved ones. They deserve an end to their suffering." Days after the disappearance, Baghdad's then-prime minister Haider al-Abadi set up a committee that would investigate reports of disappearances and abuses during the military operations to retake Fallujah from IS. Amnesty said that the "committee's findings have never been made public". Human Rights Watch reported eight incidents of forced disappearances between December 2019 and October 2020, and said that the Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary was likely behind all of them. In a petition signed by 30 human rights organisations last year, the groups said that "Iraq has become one of the largest countries that have missing persons in the world". After taking office in 2020, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi announced his government would be creating a new mechanism for locating victims of forced disappearances, but rights groups have criticised authorities for not following through. Kadhimi has also been criticised for not holding those accountable for a spike in targeted killings of prominent activists and journalists. © Middle East Eye 2021