Luis Acosta People hold a banner reading "Colombia, we are all" during a march in opposition to road blockades and violence after a month of national protests, in Bogota, Colombia May 30, 2021. REUTERS/Luisa Gonzalez Colombian authorities are investigating 10 police officers who allowed civilians to shoot at demonstrators in Cali, a high-ranking official said on Monday, while the attorney general's office linked three more deaths to protests. The Andean country has seen more than a month of protests against the social and economic policies of the government of President Ivan Duque. The demonstrations were sparked by a now-withdrawn proposed tax reform. Since the tax reform was withdrawn, protesters' demands have expanded to include a basic income, opportunities for young people and an end to police violence, including the dissolution of the feared anti-riot unit ESMAD. Protests have been marked by violence. The attorney general's office on Monday said 20 deaths have been linked to demonstrations - three more than a previous tally - while rights groups report dozens more protesters have been killed by security forces. Colombia's third-largest city Cali, which has become an epicenter for protests, once more saw bloodshed on Friday with civilians and even an off-duty agent of the attorney general's office shooting at demonstrators, the attorney general said. An investigation has been launched to identify those who broke the law in Cali, General Jorge Luis Vargas, director of Colombia's national police, said on Monday, adding that information concerning officers who may have broken the law or not performed their duties has been sent to the military justice unit. Over the weekend Cali Mayor Jorge Ivan Ospina reported more than a dozen violent deaths took place in the city on Friday and reported armed men shooting at demonstrators in the presence of the police. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, on Sunday called for those responsible for the violence in Cali to be held accountable. "It is essential that all those who are reportedly involved in causing injury or death, including state officials, are subject to prompt, effective, independent, impartial and transparent investigations and that those responsible are held accountable," she said. As the death toll rises, negotiations between the government and protest leaders have stalled. The government says protesters must condemn and reject road blocks before further negotiations take place. Protest leaders accuse the government of backtracking on earlier commitments. The national strike committee has called for more protests to take place on Wednesday. © Copyright 2021 Reuters

Welcome to Frontier Fridays. This week, the junta overwhelmed armed civilian resistance in Mindat Township in Chin State, Western countries announced new sanctions against the military regime, the Union Election Commission sparked controversy by calling another meeting and the Karen National Union began internal elections amid tensions over its response to the coup. Mindat under attack On Saturday morning security forces reportedly managed to seize control of Mindat in Chin State, which has been a hotspot of armed civilian resistance in recent weeks. The junta's assault, which followed an ambush on a convoy of reinforcements, reportedly included the use of helicopters and heavy artillery. “The military’s use of weapons of war against civilians, including this week in Mindat, is a further demonstration of the depths the regime will sink to to hold power,” the US embassy said in a tweet. At least seven civilian fighters were reportedly killed, but the resistance claimed to have taken out many more Tatmadaw soldiers. Eventually, though, the civilian force – which is alternatively known as the Chinland Defence Force and the Mindat People's Defence Force – abandoned the town in order to reduce the risk to noncombatants. “We won’t fight back against their offensives and let the town be destroyed," one civilian fighter told Myanmar Now. As clashes escalated in Mindat, civilians rose up in other nearby cities in an apparent attempt to undermine the junta's offensives. Skirmishes also broke out in Kanpetlet, Chin State and Kyaukhtu Township in Magway Region, both of which are less than 50 kilometres from Mindat. One soldier was reportedly killed in Kyaukhtu while no fatalities were reported from either side in Kanpetlet. The Irrawaddy reported that the Tatmadaw artillery firing on Mindat is based in Kyaukhtu and some reinforcements have come from there. The fighters in Kyaukhtu might have been hoping to disrupt the junta’s assaults on Mindat to provide some relief. Still, those attempts to assist the fighters in Mindat were largely unsuccessful, underscoring the need for more coordination between anti-junta forces. "In a revolution you can’t fight alone. In the case of Mindat, the people fought alone and the uprising was quashed. If a revolt is to be staged, it would be better if all people rise up together on an appointed date so that the military can’t use all of its force on a particular town. If one town alone is resisting stiffly, the military will just use a larger force to suppress it," a defector from the navy told The Irrawaddy, in a piece of really sound advice. New sanctions rolled out Some Western countries took further coordinated action against the junta this week, with the United States, United Kingdom and Canada all announcing new sanctions against regime members and military-linked companies. The US announced sanctions against the State Administration Council as an entity and 16 individuals – 13 members of the military junta (either SAC or cabinet), and three adult children of junta officials. Secretary of State Antony Blinken cited the junta’s “continued violence” as justification for the sanctions, specifically mentioning the recent fighting in Mindat, Chin State. Included in the new slate of sanctions are the ministers for international cooperation and finance, the governor of the Central Bank of Myanmar and the chairman of the rejigged Union Election Commission. Combined with previous sanctions, the US has now designated a significant number of military regime officials. Some notable exceptions include social welfare minister Thet Thet Khine, foreign affairs minister Wunna Maung Lwin, foreign investment minister Aung Naing Oo, and electricity and energy minister Aung Than Oo. It’s not immediately obvious why these ministers have been passed over. There might be practical reasons – for example, they might anticipate having to work with Wunna Maung Lwin in future – or it could just be that they haven’t got to them yet. The list also included three adult children of high-ranking military officials (two children of a general and one of an admiral). Again, there was no specific explanation for why they were targeted, but it may be because of their business interests: Hein Htet, son of General Maung Maung Kyaw, is a director of a company called Paramount Events, while Yin Min Thu, daughter of Admiral Tin Aung San, is a director of Global Icon General Trading. Global Witness said the sanctions against the SAC are the "most significant" as it will "target all financial transactions, banking assets and other sources of revenue under the SAC's control". The decision seems to be an attempt to sanction the Myanmar military regime in its entirety without sanctioning the country itself, but it’s definitely the broadest sanction so far. UN special rapporteur Tom Andrews also said the SAC sanction is "one of the most significant steps" against the junta thus far and called for more countries to follow suit. “Not only is doing business with the junta morally reprehensible, it could now mean being cut off from the US financial system and/or facing criminal or civil penalties in the United States,” he said. As usual, Andrews added an appeal for sanctions on the oil and gas sector, saying profits from that have been "a lifeline for the junta", a demand echoed by Global Witness. Canada also sanctioned "16 individuals and 10 entities", including many of the same officials sanctioned by the US along with some military-linked companies. “Canada will continue to take additional actions, in coordination with our partners, should the Tatmadaw refuse to reverse course,” the statement said. One of the newly sanctioned entities is Myanma Gems Enterprise, a state-owned gemstone company that was also sanctioned by the UK the same day, and had already been sanctioned by the US. Canada targeted a few more companies, like Myanmar Pearl Enterprise and Myanmar Timber Enterprise, which had also already been sanctioned by the US. Global Witness once again called for sanctions against Myanmar Oil and Gas Enterprise, the junta's main source of foreign currency in the formal economy. Meanwhile, Japan's foreign minister said the country is considering cutting off development assistance to Myanmar for ongoing projects, after already suspending any new aid back in March. "We don't want to do that at all, but we have to state firmly that it will be difficult to continue under these circumstances," Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi told Nikkei. UEC meeting causes fractures The Union Election Commission's invitation to political parties to attend another meeting has caused fresh fractures in the political landscape. The People's Party, founded by pro-democracy activist Ko Ko Gyi, was riven by mass resignations after deciding to attend today's meeting. The party's co-founder and general secretary resigned in protest, as did the regional chair, vice chair, secretary and other officials from the party's Mandalay chapter. In Rakhine, the Arakan National Party announced that it would not attend, shortly after the party chairman declared that the ANP would no longer cooperate with the junta. This decision had caused divisions within the party already, so boycotting the UEC meeting will likely do more damage. To complicate matters further, the Arakan Front Party said it will attend the meeting – this is probably less of a surprise given the junta released party chairman Aye Maung from prison back in February. The AFP is largely made up of former ANP members, and Aye Maung remains one of the most influential political figures in Rakhine, so this split could cause even more tension. At a press conference on May 15, a UEC official said it was planning several amendments to election laws, which sounds like bad news. Khin Maung Oo said there would be unspecified changes to make voting eligibility and identification stricter, which could risk disenfranchising voters. He also said the UEC would target a recent amendment that allowed internal migrants to change their registration after 90 days of residency, but did not say how this would be changed. The original rule required voters to live somewhere for 180 days, and the decision to cut this by half was controversial among ethnic minority parties who believed it would allow Bamar migrants to essentially water down ethnic votes in those states. Khin Maung Oo again floated the idea of changing the voting system to proportional representation, which would significantly increase the military's chances of gaining the majority needed to select the president given they are already guaranteed 25 percent of seats in parliament. Early reports indicate that the UEC announcedthe dissolution of the NLD for unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud. We'll have more on this developing next week. KNU elections begin But the UEC isn't the only organisation planning an election, and Rakhine isn't the only state dealing with internal divisions. The Karen National Union has begun the process of voting for new leaders – something it does every four years – at a time when the armed group is at a crossroads on how to proceed with the fight against the Tatmadaw. The group has been one of the staunchest allies of the pro-democracy movement, but recently its chairman endorsed the Nationwide Ceasefire Agreement and urged negotiations with the military. While the commander in Duplaya district backed up the chairman, other influential Karen leaders rejected this position, and internal tensions are spilling out into the open. KNU township and village officials will elect their district chair, secretary and joint secretary, who will then vote on overall KNU leadership positions at a general assembly meeting. Expect the internal elections to largely be a referendum on whether to expand fighting against the Tatmadaw and work more closely with the National Unity Government. Given the tensions, the process could get messy. A major-general in the Karen National Liberation Army, the KNU’s armed wing, has urged fellow members to avoid making divisive statements to media outlets. Major-General Saw Pilate Sein said all Karen in KNU areas must take caution in making statements so that they do not cause “incitement among ourselves” and “statements must be verified within the organization before they are out”. This is likely an attempt to calm down the heated emotions within the KNU, but it could also have been directed specifically at Mutu Say Poe, given his statement was the most divisive so far. These summaries are drawn from our Daily Briefing, which informs our members every weekday about current affairs in Myanmar, and from our Media Monitor, which features translations of headlines and stories in Myanmar-language media. Take a free trial of the newsletters here. Access the full article here. Frontier Fridays © 2021

Rukumbuzi Delphin Ntanyoma and Helen Hintjens International Institute of Social Studies, Erasmus University, The Hague, The Netherlands First Published on May 8, 2021 A MONUSCO delegation in Fizi, one of the territories affected by recent violences, March 16 2019 (MONUSCO/Jacob de Lange) Abstract Recent warfare in Eastern DRC, especially since 2015, is marked by violence inspired by ‘race’ narratives. Identity politics around ‘race’ is used to legitimise ‘expressive’ or reprisal-oriented violence against ‘Hamitic’ or ‘Tutsi’ minorities. The case of the Banyamulenge of South Kivu is examined in this article. Following Autesserre, we show that one-dimensional narratives – in this case of ‘race’ – tend to over-simplify the dynamics of political violence. Anti-Hamitic racism is derived from colonial ideas around race hierarchies, and has resulted in systematic killings of Banyamulenge civilians in what resembles a ‘slow genocide’. Expressive violence has, in turn, produced a lack of concern for the plight of Banyamulenge civilians among the military, humanitarians, media, scholars and NGOs. Given armed alliances between local Maimai forces, Burundian and Rwandan opposition and the DRC army, such ‘race’ narratives cruelly legitimise violence against civilians from ‘Tutsi’ communities, associated by neighbouring communities with Rwanda. Resultant displacement, starvation and killing of Banyamulenge civilians in this context amount to an on-going, slow-moving genocide. As the COVID-19 crisis unrolls, the decolonisation of identity politics in Eastern DRC, and in South Kivu in particular still seems very remote. Keywords South Kivu, Banyamulenge, identity politics, colonial, warfare, expressive violence, race, tribal, DRC, citizenship Introduction The world is simultaneously moving in opposite directions. (Rosenau, 2003: 12) South Kivu Province, in the High Plateau of Uvira-Minembwe, is facing an underreported, misunderstood and disturbing humanitarian crisis. The scapegoating of specific minorities, informed by colonial-era ideas about ‘race’ and ‘tribe’, is being instrumentalised as part of what Kalyvas terms ‘expressive violence’ against civilians (Kalyvas, 2006). In South Kivu, such forms of violence are enacted against Banyamulenge with some 150,000 civilians besieged as IDPs (Internally Displaced Persons) in Minembwe since January 2019, as well as smaller numbers in Bijombo and Mikenke, Banyamulenge are sitting targets for attacks. Violence against this minority is often justified as revenge for the past war crimes of Banyamulenge troops. Banyamulenge civilian IDPs have, for some years, been targets of what can be seen as a slow-moving genocide (see Ntanyoma, 2019b). Slow genocide can be defined as ‘the emotional and physical harm done to survivors of violence over time…[and] emotional and physical harm resulting from witnessing or participating in violence and the continuing experiences of living in unsafe and violent communities’ (Cottam et al., 2006: 2). According to the International Crisis Group (ICG), in 2004, the situation in Darfur resembled ‘Rwanda in slow motion’ (ICG, 2004). ‘Slow genocide’ is also used to classify the long, drawn-out destruction of Palestinians by Israel (Barghouti, 2010; Lendman, 2010). Similarly, the situations of the Rohingya in Myanmar, and of West Papuans in Indonesia have been defined as ‘slow-burning’ or ‘slow-motion’ genocides (Elmslie and Webb-Gannon, 2013; Zarni and Cowley, 2014: 682). Just as Rohingya are referred to as Bangladeshis in order to deny their claims to full Myanmar citizenship, so too, Banyamulenge are referred to as Rwandans, which serves to discredit their claims to be recognised as full and equal Congolese citizens. It is well to remember that genocide, as Sheri Rosenberg reminds us, may not consist of one spectacular set of events (although it can do), but can take the form of a gradual process of ‘genocide by attrition’, with the slow death of a people and their culture over time (Rosenberg, 2012: 18–19). This insight applies to the Banyamulenge community in South Kivu, and yet to declare the killing and starving of a community a slow genocide, even publicly, does not guarantee a strong response will come that will stop the killers in their tracks, as demonstrated in the case of Darfur 20 years ago, when declaring what was taking place a genocide did not produce the expected results (Straus, 2005). Meanwhile, in South Kivu, Maimai attacks on Banyamulenge civilians, given the community’s stigmatised status, are ignored in the media, or framed as ‘inter-ethnic’ violence rather than one-sided killings. State failure to protect all persecuted minorities in Eastern DRC is evident. Far from promoting dialogue or a military solution, Forces Capitals Armees de la Republique Democratique du Congo (FARDC) are reported to turn a blind eye to attacks by Maimai rebels on Banyamulenge, and even recently, said to have assisted the Maimai (Stearns, 2011: 126). Amid tensions in Minembwe, Kivu Security Tracker (KST) has remarked that ‘FARDC members had given ammunition to the Maimai groups two days before’ a Maimai attack (KST, 2020a). Not surprisingly, Vogel and Stearns (2018: 6) classify the FARDC as belligerents in the third phase of warfare since 2015. In 2020 and 2021, with COVID-19, come further risks of intensified victimization of minority communities, such as the Banyamulenge and others, under cover of lockdown. Local armed groups were active in South Kivu in the 1960s during the Mulelist rebellions (Stearns et al., 2013a). They were then largely dormant until just after the Rwanda genocide which ended in July 1994, when a million Rwandans, and a heavily armed retreating force, fled into then-Zaire. Open warfare intensified from 1996 to 1998, involving regime change, becoming a general war involving regional states, from 1998 to 2003 ‘Africa’s first World War’ (Prunier, 2009). Most recently, warfare again shifted its nature, from 2015 onwards, to take more expressive forms, involving both reprisals ‘…conducted against those who had nothing to do with the prior act’ and uncoordinated acts of revenge, where ‘…the attack is aimed indiscriminately’ at a specific ethnic group, in this case the Banyamulenge (Boyle, 2010: 190). During the first and second Congo wars (1994–1998 and 1998–2003), Banyamulenge fighters were closely associated with Rwandan military and political intervention in Zaire, and later in DRC. Banyamulenge forces often formed a proxy force for Rwanda. Today, with this alliance long gone, perceptions persist that Banyamulenge are allied to, and loyal to, Rwanda. National and global events have ‘frozen’ the Banyamulenge in this role. On the pretext that they are not loyal Congolese, but intent on subversion, the Banyamulenge have been systematically marginalised and persecuted. The Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour la Stabilisation en République Démocratique du Congo (MONUSCO) has little chance of maintaining peace, whilst its main partner is the FARDC. MONUSCO soldiers appear not to have noticed the acute humanitarian tragedy unfolding near their base in Minembwe. International humanitarian agencies completely ignore the crisis in South Kivu and fail to respond to human need in Minembwe and other centres where IDPs are concentrated. Instead of a focus on civilians, the main priority of those working for ‘peace’, has been to bring armed factions together for dialogue. Caught in a prolonged and crippling state of siege since March 2019, Banyamulenge are now exposed to the threat of being wiped out. Maimai commonly define their enemies in terms of ‘race’, whilst international organisations, NGOs and researchers, tend to blame ‘tribal conflict’, assuming that South Kivu and indeed much of Eastern DRC, is divided by ‘age-old’ ethnic divisions. Banyamulenge are viewed as just one party in complex patterns of a many-sided violence among different communities (Ntanyoma, 2019b; Thakur, 2010). Since the colonial era, narrative framings around racial and ethnic violence have intensified, especially with globalisation (Rosenau, 2003: 289). Narratives of ‘race’ and ‘tribe’ tend to obscure how current violence against the Banyamulenge, as both asymmetrical and expressive, takes the form of systematic persecution of a particular identity group. Woven through this article is the quest for some solutions in the face of the slow and seemingly deliberate genocide of a stigmatised minority (Ndahinda, 2013). As Rosenberg points out, we should not ‘ … lose sight of the fact that genocide is a fluid and complex social phenomenon, not a static term’, and not confined to its purely legal definition (Rosenberg, 2012: 17). The slow pace of killings does not preclude the conclusion of a systematic destruction of ‘a people’ taking place daily, and invisible to most external actors, including to most genocide scholars. The toxic power of mass violence first infested the Congo under Leopold II, when: ‘ … a quasi-genocide … durably traumatized the population’ (Prunier, 2009: 76). In Congo, capitalism relied, not on ‘free’ workers or a ‘free market’, but on forced labour and divide-and-rule extractive policies of violent predation (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2002). After independence, neo-colonial predation under President Mobutu, who was installed by the West, was followed by long years of war at the turn of the millennium. The extreme cross-generational trauma of Congolese civilians resulting from these historical and more recent mass atrocities leaves scars that can produce recurring cycles of attack and revenge (Maeresera et al., 2018; Mels et al., 2010). As Mobutu’s regime collapsed, the toxic realities of the Rwandan genocide, inspired by racial thinking, spilled over into Zaire, intensifying ‘race’ as a vector of violence and conflict in Eastern Congo end sentence at Congo. Since 1994, ‘violence of the so-called Congolese conflict … was the product of unsettled questions that the Rwandese genocide had brushed raw’ (Prunier, 2009: xxxii). The so-called ‘Hamitic hypothesis’ is one of the most poisonous legacies of colonialism, disseminated through school textbooks, the clergy, and the administration, both before and after independence, in Congo and the Great Lakes region. As a ‘hypothesis’, this posits racial’ differences between ‘Bantus’ and ‘Hamites’ as at the root of violent conflict in the Great Lakes region and beyond (Eltringham, 2006; Taylor, 2001). This imperial, 19th century notion of ‘race’ remains alive and well in South Kivu today. Globally imposed reforms, from political decentralisation to multi-party elections have tended to reinforce this polarisation between communities, intensifying hatred and violence along identity lines (Rosenau, 2003: 289, 338). Such is the case for the Banyamulenge of South Kivu. Historically, Banyamulenge fighters were seen as perpetrators of violence rather than victims of violence (Ndahinda, 2013; Ntanyoma, 2019a; Vandeginste, 2015; Weiss and Carayannis, 2004: 133). When the Banyamulenge assisted the Rwandan army in replacing Mobutu with President Laurent Kabila, they were punished by having some of their land dispossessed specifically in Katanga province and South Kivu (Ntanyoma, 2019a: 75; Stearns et al., 2013b: 18–19). These trends have intensified, especially since 2015. ‘Bantu’ communities, feeling themselves victims of Banyamulenge and Rwandan fighters, coalesced into a broad military front. Some have become perpetrators, seemingly dedicated to wiping out the Banyamulenge. One wonders: ‘Is there a layering of identity that can occur when persons are subject to forms of mass trauma and violence, and then participate in such actions themselves?’ (Davey, 2019: 5). If so, then the reverse may also be true: that those once considered archetypal perpetrators, namely the Banyamulenge, can later become victims of atrocities that threaten their very survival. Together, one of us a Congolese national, concerned with explaining armed violence in Eastern DRC, the other a half-Belgian Westerner specializing in the African Great Lakes region, we analyse why the Banyamulenge have experienced rapid take-over of their land, homes, and cattle, resulting in a state of siege, alongside the massacre of displaced civilians (Ntanyoma, 2019b; Radio France International [RFI], 2019). Some information used was gathered during doctoral fieldwork by the main author when he was in South Kivu between November 2018 and May 2019. The article first introduces expressive warfare in South Kivu, which involves elements of proxy warfare using both informational weapons and physical violence. The article identifies two common narratives (one on ‘race’, the other on ‘tribe’) used to explain and dismiss the recurring violence against Banyamulenge in South Kivu. Both serve to ‘justify’ attacks on Banyamulenge civilians as self-defence by ‘autochthonous’ Congolese armed groups. The result is that local and international organisations are equally unable to recognise the slow genocide taking place in South Kivu today since, almost by definition, the Banyamulenge are framed as an aggressive, militarised ‘tribe’ or ‘race’ (Ndahinda, 2013: 485). Elements of Autesserre’s narrative analysis framework help to account for the ways violence by local armed actors is framed, and warnings of genocide (ignored), by international actors. In her study, Autesserre (2012) identified a number of over-simplified accounts related to ‘why there is war’ in DRC, ‘who the bad actors are’ and ‘what interventions are needed’ (Autesserre, 2012; see also Autesserre, 2009). Conventional explanations of warfare centre on mineral resource extraction, and on sexual violence, in what is otherwise largely a forgotten conflict (Autesserre, 2012: 204). The commonly proposed solution is to strengthen the Congolese state, reinforcing the security and justice institutions in particular. The ‘resource curse’ does no doubt affect local, regional and global dynamics of violence in Eastern DRC and South Kivu. Certainly, sexual violence should be punished, and gender dimensions of violence should not be ignored. Victims need to be offered physical and emotional healing and some measure of justice (as recognised by Nobel prize winner Dr Denis Mukwege). Yet, empirically, during the present phase of warfare: ‘There is no systematic correlation between violence and mining areas. Only 20 percent of violent incidents occur within 20 kilometres of a mine, and only 3 percent occur within 2 kilometres’ (KST, 2019b: 9). It is interesting to reflect on the gender aspect of identity politics in the DRC, whereby: … the dehumanizing nature of many of the images and stereotypes of women and how they are used to justify violence toward women are very similar to the dynamics used by in-groups to justify violence against out-groups in larger conflicts. (Cottam et al., 2006: 4) Despite this, the ‘conflict minerals’ discourse remains widely used, meaning that other forms of violence, including land grabbing, selective withdrawal of national citizenship, and promoting hate-based identity politics on social media, are all ignored. Yet these elements ‘outside the frame’ are (the ones that need) more urgent attention. Expressive violence in warfare in South Kivu Available data suggest ‘current conditions for the populations of the Eastern Congo remain among the worst in Africa … [and] HDI [the Human Development Index of the UNDP] went down from 167 to 187 …  – lowest in the world between 2006 and 2010’ (Autesserre, 2012: 203). And this situation has likely deteriorated since 2010. This can partly help to explain why the persecution of Banyamulenge people has not been attended to, or taken sufficiently seriously, by local NGOs, humanitarian actors and the international community. The scale of suffering in DRC is world-record breaking. All of Eastern DRC’s communities have experienced repeated violence and war, forced labour and abuse. In this context, the temptation is to look for someone, or something, to blame for these woes. The most convenient target happens to be the largest category of victims of genocide in the past – the Rwandans, and the Tutsi in particular- with whom the Banyamulenge are wrongly identified ‘as if they were the same’. During the most recent phase of warfare in Eastern DRC, civilians are targeted by forms of ‘expressive’ and ‘asymmetric’ violence, sometimes based on ascribed ethnic, racial or tribal identities. The term ‘expressive violence’ implies ‘ … the discursive, symbolic, ritualistic, and generally non-instrumental character of violence’ (Kalyvas, 2006: 24), which aims to inflict pain and destroy the symbols of the ‘enemy’, focussing on ‘identity and sectarianism’. Although such expressive violence may produce some material benefits, these are not necessarily the sole or even the main motivation, which may be something akin to revenge (Kalyvas, 2006: 24). Instrumentally, expressive violence ‘can be used to exterminate a group or to control it’ even though it is not strategic in the usual sense (Kalyvas, 2006: 26). In South Kivu, we show that there has been a shift from a complex, multi-sided armed conflict, to a slow genocide, and a campaign of attrition, against unpopular minorities. The Banyamulenge are not alone in being framed by many other Congolese as ‘Tutsis from Rwanda’, in spite of the strong historical evidence suggesting they have lived inside the present boundaries of the Congo since at least the early 1800 s (Hiernaux, 1965: 377; Moeller, 1936; Newbury, 2009: 265; Weis, 1959). It may be useful to view ‘violent non-state actors as one part of the wider and full-spectrum (economic, socio-political, informational) [of] coercive efforts’ (Rauta, 2019: 3). Some features of expressive, hybrid warfare include how it: ‘ … targets the vulnerabilities of a society and system while deliberately exploiting ambiguity to avoid detection’ (Qureshi, 2020: 174). The present stage of expressive violence in South Kivu involves direct physical violence alongside social media hate speech, intelligence and media campaigns by local and national politicians, and targeted physical and symbolic violence of a brutality that communicates a distinct sense of fear and threat to Banyamulenge civilians (Simons and Chifu, 2018). The situation around the Minembwe-Bijombo High Plateau involves a web of actors, from strictly local leaders and armed groups, to international NGOs and diplomats, the African Union, EU and UN agencies, and regional and central government. In 2015, clashes in Burundi against a Presidential third term coincided with pressure for presidential elections in DRC. After parliamentarians voted to allow Paul Kagame to stay in office, both Rwanda and Burundi started to back proxy armed actors in Eastern DRC. The Banyamulenge felt increasingly abandoned as a lost cause, in the midst of what became the ‘Third Congolese War’ (Battory and Vircoulon, 2019; Larcher, 2018; Muhame, 2019). Other regional countries such as Uganda, and Tanzania are also implicated in backing armed actors in irregular warfare on their behalf, elsewhere in Eastern DRC (Uwiringiyimana, 2019). Some journalists interpreted President Kagame’s 2019 New Year speech as suggesting military and diplomatic collusion between Uganda and Burundi, without naming these two countries, in efforts to overthrow him (Fröhlich, 2019). From late May to November 2019, Rwanda–Uganda relations deteriorated, following alleged shootings at the border (Biryabarema, 2019). Expressive violence, as described in Kalyvas (2006: 25) is ‘killing for killing’s sake’, and does not differentiate civilians from armed actors. In Bijombo Groupement and Minembwe Rural Municipality, armed attacks sought to wrest control of Bijombo Groupement from the Banyamulenge, first established in 1969. It took two years before the traditional chief of Bijombo Groupement, a Banyamulenge, could take his place (Rukundwa and Republic, 2004; Verweijen and Vlassenroot, 2015: 28). Military and political contestation of a Banyamulenge right to traditional chieftaincy has continued ever since (Muchukiwa, 2006; Muzuri, 1983; Verweijen and Vlassenroot, 2015). The Banyamulenge are the only community in South Kivu who now appear to be entirely ‘on their own’ in their efforts to ensure they have political representation and secure the right to full Congolese citizenship. Some features of hybrid warfare, namely that it: ‘ … targets the vulnerabilities of a society and system while deliberately exploiting. While Kalyvas (2006) warns about the predominance of expressive over other motivations, he argues that ‘(d)educing motive from behavior is a bad idea, as is replacing evidence with politically motivated classifications … ’ and insists that ‘particular act may be consistent with several motives’ (Kalyvas, 2006: 24). Even though the article underscores the warning from Kalyvas, it also stresses that violence targeting Banyamulenge generally displays a sense of expressive violence. Verweijen (2015: 174) underlines that indiscriminately attacking the Banyamulenge increases the popularity of perpetrators (see also Alida, 2017). Whether violence is justified as revenge, peer pressure or collective imaginaries, it builds on racial and physical traits to dehumanize and define who is to be killed (Stearns, 2011: 194; Turner, 2007: 92). For instance, Stearns et al. (2013a: 43) have remarked that: On 4 October 2011, a vehicle from the humanitarian organization Eben-Ezer was ambushed in Kalungwe village, near Fizi town. After the passengers were separated according to their ethnic origins, seven Banyamulenge were killed, while those of other ethnicities were set free. (See also Verweijen, 2015: 175) Most local Congolese framings refer to Banyamulenge as ‘Tutsis’, as ‘Rwandaphones’, or as ‘Hamites’. For scholars, NGOs and MONUSCO, such racial terms are translated into a more familiar narrative around the theme of ‘tribal clashes’, in which all sides are said to be equally guilty of murderous and irrational violence (United Nations Joint Human Rights Office [UNJHRO], 2020). Neither the ‘race’, nor the ‘tribal clashes’ narrative acknowledges the distinct vulnerability of Banyamulenge civilians, faced with multiple armed enemies who now completely surround them. Serious attacks on Banyamulenge housing, land and property (HLP), resulting in their internal displacement and dispossession, along with killings of civilians are producing the ‘slow genocide’ of Banyamulenge in South Kivu that we have referred to. Both HLP attacks and massacres of civilians are defined in law as war crimes. Framing Banyamulenge as those ‘who deserve punishment’, is a form of informational warfare, which by ‘creating alternative false realities’, mainly through media and the internet, obscure the real dynamics of one-sided warfare and expressive violence (Simons and Chifu, 2018). Historically, Banyamulenge were framed as non-native to South Kivu and DRC. What is new, however, is the intensity of attacks on this minority, now displaced by force, and literally besieged since early 2019. At present, no major organisation provides support or protection for this beleaguered community, so powerless have the Banyamulenge become through dispossession and stigmatisation (Ndahinda, 2013; Ntanyoma, 2019b). After the 1994 Rwanda genocide, Hutu military and para-military fled into Zaire, shielding behind Rwandan Hutu civilians (Hintjens, 2006; Lemarchand, 1998; Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2002). This defeated army regrouped in refugee camps, launching further attacks for several years on Rwandan Tutsi from across the border (Stearns, 2011). RPA soldiers and their proxy allies who, at that time, included Banyamulenge fighters, retaliated against Hutu genocidaires. As defeated FAR (Forces Armées Rwandaises) troops were pushed deeper into (then) Zaire, civilian hostages were forced along. Ngolet, citing the almost mythical Garreton Report of 1996, claims: … he [Garreton] noted that in Uvira and other territories conquered by the Banyamulenge, ADFL forces attacked refugee camps, killing and displacing numerous people. Garreton charged that these forces committed grave human rights violations by forcefully expelling the refugees to their country of origin, knowing full well that as Hutus they would face persecution and even death. (Ngolet, 2011: 4) The RPA did not defeat genocidal Hutu Power armed groups in Eastern DRC, but did kill many thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands, of Hutu civilians (Emizet, 2000; Olsson and Fors, 2004). Prunier speculates on the RPF’s military modus operandi, for whom fighting in Uganda from the 1980s onwards meant: ‘ … they knew only the gun and the gun had worked well for them in the past … [moreover] … Their self-confidence was strong, their political vision embryonic and they had a limited but efficient bag of tricks to deal with the international community’ (Prunier, 2009: 22). At first, the international community considered RPA intervention in Eastern DRC as the illegal, but understandable pursuit of armed genocidal criminals. Later, however, this changed. Through 1996–1998, the RPF, and Rwanda’s proxies in Eastern DRC, including the Banyamulenge military, aimed for regime change (Ntanyoma, 2019a). Rwanda’s presence in Eastern Zaire/DRC encouraged other countries from around the wider Great Lakes region to intervene, transforming the second Congolese war (1998–2003) into ‘Africa’s First World War’ (Prunier, 2009; Stearns, 2011; Turner, 2007). Complex alliances emerged around renewed plunder of mineral resources and mass violence, including sexual violence, against civilians, reinforcing hostility towards Tutsi Rwandaphones as presumed outsiders, in both North and South Kivu. The Banyamulenge’s position became more difficult as they were caught between Rwanda and the FARDC, specifically following the 1996 rebellions, when the armed group known as Gumino was formed (Stearns et al., 2013b; Vlassenroot, 2002). Gumino,1 affiliated to the Banyamulenge, split several times, and was unable to defeat Maimai military power on the ground, or defend Banyamulenge civilians effectively (Ntanyoma, 2019a; Stearns, 2011). The last Gumino fighters had reintegrated into the FARDC in 2010 (Ntanyoma, 2019a; Stearns et al., 2013b). Meanwhile, in 1999, the MONUC (Mission de l’Organisation des Nations Unies pour le Congo), was created, and a few years later became MONUSCO (with the addition of ‘la Stabilisation’). With 20,000 troops under Chapter VII provisions, and 3000 soldiers from the African region, MONUSCO has struggled to protect Congolese civilians, and seems unaware of the extent of Banyamulenge vulnerability, though they are displaced close to a MONUSCO base (Beljan, 2014; Clark, 2011; Kets and De Vries, 2014). Despite a huge budget, UN peace-keepers cannot stabilise Eastern Congo or South Kivu (Kuele and Cepik, 2017). We explain how they could do better, perhaps, if they managed to understand the situation on the ground (see Titeca and Fahey, 2016). Prunier’s study Africa’s First World War: Congo, the Rwandan Genocide and the Making of a Continental Catastrophe (Prunier, 2009; see also Turner, 2007) shows how the Rwanda genocide revived dormant ideas of race in the region. The second Congolese war ended with a peace agreement in Sun City, in 2003, but violent conflict broke out again in 2015, intensifying from 2017 (Autesserre, 2012: 250). Narratives of violence as rooted in racial and tribal identities, now circulate almost unchallenged in South Kivu. This third long cycle of warfare involves a range of violent methods, including economic warfare against property (land, housing, cattle). The civilian population has been displaced on an unprecedented scale. In the presence of MONUSCO, regular brutal killings of besieged IDPs, illness and death from starvation, are all producing a slow genocide (Kleinfeld, 2019; Ntanyoma, 2019b). Whilst MONUSCO and the UN affiliated organizations recognize the complexity and multiple causes of violence around the Banyamulenge (UNJHRO, 2020), their reports tend to view the conflict through the lens of tribal violence to possibly justify the incapacity to intervene (UNSC, 2020). In some cases, the UN reports highlight events selectively, perhaps to avoid questions being raised about MONUSCO’s mandate. In May 2020, the UN Security Council (UNSC) (2020: 4) described the situation in Kamombo and its neighbourhood at the time of the Makanika attack (a Banyamulenge-affiliated armed group) and their occupation of these localities (May 2020), whilst failing to report on earlier violence against Banyamulenge since May 2019 that had led to this occupation that had led to this occupation in the first place. Similarly, MONUSCO has failed to protect the property (land and cattle mainly) of displaced Banyamulenge, even those guarded by UN forces in Mikenke IDP site. Thousands of cattle were looted in more than 20 attacks that targeted civilians’ property within meters of the MONUSCO base. More particularly, IDPs in Mikenke were attacked four times as Maimai groups entered the IDP site and killed and wounded individuals supposedly under UN protection. Similar incidents have taken place in Minembwe and also in the Bijombo groupement (Uvira territory). There is no working transport infrastructure in these areas, yet in Bijombo, for example, MONUSCO sheltered Babembe, Bafuliro, and Banyindu civilians whilst leaving displaced Banyamulenge unprotected some 15–20 kms away. Although MONUSCO’s mandate stresses civilian protection, its limited capacity to understand local dynamics and root causes of violence has undermined this mission (Autesserre, 2012). MONUSCO relies on the National Army and Intelligence and seeks to maintain an aura of political neutrality. By failing to protect civilians living a short distance from the MONUSCO bases, the UN troops have failed to prevent Banyamulenge being subjected, for example in Bijombo, to severe hunger, to attacks with impunity and to deliberate impoverishment by surrounding armed forces. In other words, the neutrality of the UN peacekeeping mission in Eastern DRC is highly questionable. National developments add to this fraught local political situation. Following long-delayed 2018 presidential elections, violence against Banyamulenge intensified instead of diminishing. A UN Panel of Experts expressed the fear that battle-lines were being (re)drawn in ways that could yet lead to another ‘African World War’ (RFI, 2019; UN Group of Experts [UNGoE], 2018a). Fighting was especially intense in South Kivu, bordering Rwanda, Burundi and Tanzania (Battory and Vircoulon, 2019; Kleinfeld, 2019), particularly in the High Plateau of Minembwe-Uvira, and in the Mid-Plateau areas of Uvira, Fizi and Mwenga. From 2019 to 2020, this ‘Third Congolese war’ intensified further, and has now become an apparently concerted effort to rid the region, and the DRC, of so-called ‘Rwandaphones’. Representing the Banyamulenge in South Kivu One distinctive feature of the DRC Constitution is that civic citizenship is grounded solely in membership of an ethnic community, linked with a specific territory (Jackson, 2007; Mamdani, 1999). To be a citizen, any Congolese man or woman must belong to one recognised ethnic group or sub-group, and this group must have its own local chieftaincy area and its own territorial representation (Court, 2013; Jackson, 2007). Jackson (2007: 90–93) has extensively documented how, in DRC, nationality is generally located in farming land, and that, in contrast to this, many ‘Rwandophones’, including the Banyamulenge, are historically nomadic pastoralists. In this way, ‘Bantu’ Congolese communities, the Babembe, Bafuliro, Bavira and Banyindu in South Kivu, which historically specialised in farming, have sought to claim uncontested control over entire regions, and a monopoly on the status of full Congolese citizens, with their own chieftaincies and government arrangements. Minembwe Territoire was established in 1998, during the RCD rebel insurgency, when the then Decentralization Minister was an active member of this rebellion and himself also a member of the Banyamulenge community (Lemarchand, 2013: 432; Stearns et al., 2013b; Verweijen and Vlassenroot, 2015; Vlassenroot, 2002). The creation of Minembwe Territoire was supposed to rehabilitate the Banyamulenge, ending their historical exclusion from traditional chieftaincies in Congo in place since the colonial era (Muchukiwa, 2006: 134; Rukundwa and Republic, 2004; Stearns et al., 2013b: 27; Verweijen and Vlassenroot, 2015: 1). In 2013, a ministerial decree created over a hundred municipalities and cities across Congo under the decentralisation provisions. This decree was implemented in late 2018, just before the general elections. With decentralisation measures from 2018, Minembwe was listed as a Rural Municipality, controlled by Banyamulenge representatives. The Banyamulenge, it is also claimed, do not have the same entitlement to control government office, even at municipal levels (Bøås and Dunn, 2014; Jackson, 2006). When Minembwe Rural Municipality was declared a decentralized entity in 2018, the area was inhabited mainly by Banyamulenge people. Their control over any local government whatsoever has been hugely contested (KST, 2020b; Ntanyoma, 2019b: 19). Within the region, the Banyamulenge community has remained in control of just one traditional entity, the Bijombo groupement, and this too is disputed. Members of self-styled ‘native’ ethnic communities argue that Banyamulenge are not entitled to manage any traditional entities, since they are not ‘autochthonous’ to the DRC (Muchukiwa, 2006: 111). Within the Minembwe Rural Municipality, entire localities and villages have been destroyed, and razed to remove evidence of where Banyamulenge lived, mostly peacefully, alongside their South Kivu based neighbouring communities. Ignoring two centuries of history or more, the rhetoric of ‘race’ based national identity has become a way of denying the belonging and citizenship of Banyamulenge as ‘people from nowhere’. Although records corroborate that Banyamulenge individuals managed some local administrative entities during the precolonial and colonial periods (Loons, 1933; Reyntjens and Marysse, 1996: 15), with their removal from local government positions, the primordial claim of civic nationality of the Banyamulenge is undermined (Mamdani, 1999). Dragged into wars of claims and counter-claims of membership of the Congolese nation/state, expressive violence has dogged the Banyamulenge since the early 2000s (Stearns et al., 2013b; Vlassenroot, 2002). This situation was enough to trigger renewed military mobilization by neighbouring communities, with Maimai challenging the right of Banyamulenge people to control even a single municipality in DRC (Radio Okapi, 2020b). Rural Minembwe ended up being the most hotly contested political seat in the country. In Fizi territory, which was numerically dominated by the Babembe people, Babembe political leaders have contested Banyamulenges' status as Congolese nationals since at least the 1960s. From the 1980s through to the 2006 general elections, as reported on Radio Okapi, there were demonstrations and protests in Bukavu and Uvira, with support from veteran politicians like Anzuluni Bembe (Radio Okapi, 2006a; Rukundwa and Republic, 2004: 136; Vlassenroot, 2013: 34). The aim of such protests was simple: to dispute the right of Banyamulenge people to control any part of the DRC government (see also Radio Okapi, 2006b). Since early 2019, the area around Minembwe has become the epicentre of violent contestation of the right of the Banyamulenge community of South Kivu to be represented politically, and hence to be Congolese citizens. In 2018, the Decentralization Minister, a Banyamulenge, was accused of manipulation, even though the Decentralisation Act was signed in 2013, before he became Minister (Mfundu, 2020; Radio Okapi, 2020b). Challenges to the Banyamulenge as ‘not Congolese’ are not new; in 1995, the Vangu Mambweni Commission under President Mobutu demanded that those of ‘Rwandan descent’ be expelled from Zaire by the end of the year. The Commission alleged Banyamulenge were sent by Rwanda to enslave autochthonous Congolese people and steal their land (Emizet, 2000; Huening, 2013; Prunier, 2009). These massacres placed Banyamulenge people in a very vulnerable position, convincing Banyamulenge fighters to join the RPA (Rwandan Patriotic Army) and fight alongside Rwandan troops. In the longer term, the price of this decision was that the Banyamulenge as a whole, and not just armed soldiers, would come to be wrongly associated with the regime in Kigali, as ‘invaders’ and ‘outsiders’, seeking to dominate those who claim to be autochthonous Congolese citizens. All this reveals how narratives of race have been used – and continue to be used – to reinforce divisions among the Congolese population, notably around election times. Despite their mostly good relations with neighbouring communities in South Kivu, during the pre-war era, the Congolese citizenship of the Banyamulenge, and other ‘Tutsi’ or ‘Rwandan’ people has constantly been brought into question, in local social media and by local politicians from neighbouring ‘Bantu’ communities (Huening, 2015). Maimai groups affiliated to Babembe, Bafuliro, Banyindu, and Bavira communities consider themselves the only ‘autochthonous’ Congolese, openly challenging the right of their neighbours, the Banyamulenge, to remain in the Congo (Geschiere and Jackson, 2006; Mathys, 2017; Sanders, 1969; Verweijen, 2015). Within nativist and also ‘liberationist’ Congolese political discourse, Banyamulenge are an enemy within, a sort of fifth column of Rwanda, whatever their actual affinities and alliances today. Nzongola-Ntalaja (2002) exemplifies this view on the Left of Banyamulenge soldiers as Rwandan proxies. The Banyamulenge community did not take part in the Sovereign National Conference of 1990–1992 (Conférence Nationale Souveraine) for this reason, since it vocalised hostility to their role under Mobutu, as expressed in the report of the Vangu Mambweni Commission, referred to earlier. In these ways, citizenship questions help explain the weakened position of the Banyamulenge in recent decades (Court, 2013; Jackson, 2007). Both proximate and underlying causes of recurrent cycles of irregular warfare in Eastern DRC, and in South Kivu, are complex and historically specific. Within the race narrative, which we consider in the next section, there is little room to acknowledge the present and growing vulnerability of Banyamulenge civilians to slow attrition through hunger, lack of proper shelter, medical care and security. All local communities in South Kivu can, with good reason, claim to have been victimized in the past, given patterns of warfare since 1994. Widespread grievances mean that armed groups and civilians tend to disregard the suffering, deaths and displacement of civilians from other communities, even sometimes from their own (Stearns, 2011). Massacres and destruction of property continue to fuel resentments at past atrocities, and all communities have reason to feel invaded, within the wider security void of South Kivu. What makes this dangerous for the Banyamulenge in particular, it is now suggested, are the narratives of ‘race’ and ‘tribe’. ‘Race’ politics in South Kivu Local grievances among ‘Bantu’ in South Kivu centre on a supposed struggle between ‘autochthonous’ Congolese and Rwandan ‘immigrants’ (Bøås and Dunn, 2014; Jackson, 2006). Fighting over the right of representation in local government is, for the Banyamulenge, a matter of community survival, and the foundation of a collective claim to citizenship, as explained. Losing both farming land and cattle to armed Maimai groups thus spells a significant loss of entitlement, and is proving life-threatening for Banyamulenge civilians collectively. Political representation as the basis for citizenship as an authentic Congolese ‘ethnic’ group matters as much as land, cattle and other material essentials for sustaining life. Indeed, political membership of a territorially embedded community remains the only possible basis for a claim to citizenship, land and resources in DRC, even today (Huening, 2013; Jackson, 2006; Ntanyoma, 2019a). Far from aligning themselves with Rwanda, the Banyamulenge of South Kivu have, for some time, sought to distance themselves from the neighbouring country. Ten or twenty years ago, the Babembe, Bafuliro, Banyindu, and Bavira were indeed victims of ‘invading Banyarwanda’ armed groups. Whilst this portrayal may be credible for the late 1990s and early 2000s, today the immediate threat has passed. Despite this shift, perceptions of ‘race’ identities remain fixed in the mould of those years. Now it is autochthonous ‘Bantu’ who take up arms and threaten the very survival of the Banyamulenge people. Yet perceptions of threat and danger have not caught up with changing realities; all Kinyarwanda speakers tend to be targeted and lumped together as the ‘Trojan Horse’ of Rwanda (Nzongola-Ntalaja, 2002; Turner, 2007). Such stigmatising stereotypes are popularised through ‘hate speech’ on radio, in social media and in public political pronouncements (Genocide Watch and Ntanyoma, 2021; Huening, 2013; Weiss and Carayannis, 2004: 123). The terms ‘Bantu’ and ‘Hamite’ originated in 19th century imperial race science. The colonial ideology of a racial hierarchy, first introduced by European educators and administrators popularised the Hamitic hypothesis in the Great Lakes region, especially in those regions under Belgian control. As Sanders noted back in 1969, referring to the term, Hamitic: ‘The word still exists, endowed with a mythical meaning; it endures through time and history, and, like a chameleon, changes its colour to reflect the changing light. As the word became flesh, it engendered many problems of scholarship’ (Sanders, 1969: 531). In the DRC it has changed its colour to become a way to justify a slow genocide through attrition. The Hamitic hypothesis remains embedded in mutual distrust between ‘Bantu’ and ‘Hamitic’ peoples, defined in a classificatory system that essentialises ‘racial’ differences. According to this historical narrative dating from John Hanning Speke, all Rwandans or Tutsis in the Great Lakes region were late-comers, invaders who had usurped Hutu kingdoms, imposing their own ‘alien’ rule over Hutu peasants. The humiliations of overlordship and feudal subservience created a sense of humiliation among ‘Bantu peoples’ that ‘nurtures a profound thirst for redress and vengeance on the part of the [allegedly] defavourized group’ (Taylor, 2001: 57). Eurocentric and profoundly racist, the Hamitic hypothesis is still widely expressed in the popular political culture of South Kivu and even elsewhere in the African Great Lakes region (Hintjens, 2001). In this sense, in South Kivu, it can be reasoned that: ‘the process of decolonization has not been completed … [and] perhaps … we witness the lingering effects of colonialism in the form of the Hamitic hypothesis’ (Taylor, 2001: 55). Regional leaders, journalists and priests, Maimai militia leaders, and politicians, have all labelled the Banyamulenge as ‘invaders’ in South Kivu, or worse (Turner, 2007: 92). Whilst their neighbours, the Babembe, Bafuliro, Banyindu and Bavira view themselves as ‘autochthonous’, as full DRC citizens, this is not true of how Banyamulenge are viewed (Court, 2013; Ntanyoma, 2019a; Stearns, 2011). The Hamitic hypothesis of ‘Tutsi’ invaders creates a racial stereotype very difficult to contest and deconstruct, with dramatic consequences for Banyamulenge civilians now confined to tiny areas in Minembwe, besieged and attacked on a regular basis (KST, 2019a; Ntanyoma, 2019b; RFI, 2019). Other, relatively neglected framings around root causes of warfare in South Kivu, related to land, citizenship and identity politics are drowned out by dominant narratives around ‘racial’ identities. During a public meeting in Kinshasa, the 2018 presidential candidate Martin Fayulu claimed that Minembwe rural municipality was a ruse to annex part of Congo on behalf of Rwanda.2 In Baraka, in South Kivu, on 17 January 2020, a young militant from the Congolese Lamuka opposition coalition, whipped the crowd up into a hate-filled frenzy, giving Banyamulenge just 48 hours to leave the DRC. He said those unwilling to leave voluntarily should be forced out (KST, 2020b), adding that local people who assisted ‘Rwandophones’ would be considered enemies. One self-proclaimed General, William Amuri Yakutumba, gained local political support through being openly hostile to Congolese of ‘Rwandan descent’, claiming former President Joseph Kabila was hostage to ‘foreign powers’ who ‘oppressed’ ‘native’ Congolese. In a similar vein, Christian Sita Mampuya, representative of the Congolese community in South Africa, suggests the Banyamulenge are not Congolese, but refugees from Rwanda who seek to take over other communities’ lands (South African Broadcasting Corporation [SABC], 2019).3 Similar narratives characterize Congolese social media, where violence by autochthonous Congolese against Rwandaphone newcomers or those long established in DRC, is justified by othering those attacked. When the remnants of the genocidal army of the former Rwandan Republic fled into Congo, they were dominated by Hutu Power ideology. They made local allies among the Congolese communities who were similarly hostile to anyone defined as Tutsi. Through associating with Maimai, the FDLR (Front Démocratique pour la Libération du Rwanda), ALIR and other armed groups perpetuated the Hutu Power ideology, to justify the slaughter of innocent civilians, including Banyamulenge. Today the ideology of essentialised racial differences is used to justify land grabbing, and the looting of cattle. The logic is substantially the same as that used during the genocide, a colonial ideology of ‘Bantu’ as ‘autochthonous’, and ‘Hamites’ as recent, pastoral immigrants. Meanwhile, a second narrative parallels the first, and refers to ‘tribal’ or ‘ethnic’ roots of violence in the Kivus and across Eastern DRC. This narrative is common in international media circles, in scholarly analyses and NGO accounts of warfare in DRC. The Hamitic hypothesis is implicit rather than explicit in such outsider narratives. From this perspective, ‘autochthon tribes [are] … innocent lambs, savagely attacked by evil “Banyarwanda predators” over the course of the past two decades or more’ (Prunier, 2009: 53). At best, all sides in the conflicts, all ‘tribes’, are viewed as equally guilty of armed aggression, and civilians are being killed in cycles of retaliation for earlier civilian deaths (Prunier, 2009: 53). Unfortunately, Prunier also notes, this kind of tribal narrative is shared by both ‘Kivu civil society and its European NGO allies’ (Prunier, 2009: 53). Since 2017, hostility between Rwanda and Burundi has increased, and the complexity of cross-cutting ‘tribal’ or ‘race’ alliances has intensified, becoming close to untraceable. Currently the Maimai’s ideology is closely connected with the narrative of fighting ‘foreign invaders’, collapsing Rwanda with former local proxies, the Banyamulenge military, even though they are no longer allied (Verweijen, 2015). In this vein, Jackson (2007: 488) suggests that: Most ordinary Congolese still hold the Banyamulenge to blame for the great suffering that the country has undergone since 1998, seeing them as a ‘Trojan Horse’ for Rwandan rapine and irredentism against the national territory, contributing to the enormous present polarization around the ‘nationality question’. In the Maimai narrative, the struggle against Banyamulenge is framed to sound similar to other liberation struggles to resist land grabbing and invasion by dominant outsiders (Eltringham, 2006; Hintjens, 2006). Dressed in anti-colonial clothes, inherited from the national liberation language of the early Simba uprisings at the time of independence, like that uprising, now too, Maimai have ended up targeting their Banyamulenge neighbours, and victimising their fellow Congolese (Ntanyoma, 2019a: 35). ‘Race’ and ‘liberation’ narratives can produce a toxic, deceptive mix which outsiders may confuse with ‘tribal’ war. The ‘First African World War’ of 1998 to 2003, pitted local and regional actors against one another, and placed them in alliances on an extended range of battlefronts. The DRC’s neighbouring countries, notably Rwanda and Uganda, but also Angola and Zimbabwe, played critical direct and indirect military roles in the war. Vogel and Stearns (2018) and Ntanyoma (2014) argue that, by arming and training insurgencies like the CNDP or M23 during the First African World War, regional states, especially Rwanda, became deeply enmeshed in the politics of violence through proxies in South Kivu. The roots of expressive violence in this present phase of warfare lie partly in that crucial period, and in the memories of past atrocities against civilians. Not wanting to hear or see: Slow genocide International media and press coverage of this third period of warfare in South Kivu has been minimal, despite the alarming scale of violence, destruction, displacement and death. The UN and FARDC seem unable or unwilling to protect civilians (UNGoE, 2018a, 2019). The KST is the only agency consistently collecting data on violent attacks and displacement, since: ‘ … the UN Office for Humanitarian Coordination (OCHA) suspended the publication of national totals of internally displaced people … due to pressure from the government’ (KST, 2019b: 5). KST estimated that between 1 June 2017 to 26 June 2019, there were ‘6,555 victims of violent deaths, mass rapes, abductions and kidnappings for ransom, as well as destruction of property and political repression’ (KST, 2019b: 6). As also noted: 'In general, armed violence is concentrated in the densely populated highlands in the far east of the Kivu provinces, close to the Ugandan, Rwandan, and Burundian borders. One can draw a line between Eringeti town in the far north of North Kivu and Baraka in the far south of South Kivu that encompasses a large majority of all violence in the two provinces’. (KST, 2019b: 6) One major concentration of armed attacks and civilian casualties is in the border areas around North and South Kivu, where ‘the Congolese army has not secured the most important thoroughfares, posing a serious obstacle for trade and travel in the region’ (KST, 2019b: 8). This makes key roads in South Kivu insecure (where they are passable). The COVID-19 lockdown cut links with the outside world. Although in the past: ‘ … many prefer to travel by airplane, boat, or not at all’ (KST, 2019b: 8), lockdown ensured that Banyamulenge were stuck in their small enclaves as the COVID-19 pandemic spreads. There is no option to leave for most Banyamulenge civilians trapped in Minembwe. There is no safely accessible airport. KST suggests a major reason warfare in South Kivu today is not adequately researched, reported on or in the consciousness of policy makers, is a lack of adequate and timely data. They explain: Until recently, the largest such datasets – Uppsala Conflict Data Program/Peace Research Institute Oslo (UCD/PRIO), Correlates of War (CoW), and Armed Conflict Location and Events Dataset (ACLED) – mainly sourced violence from local and international media reports. This created a problem of underreporting violence, as much of the violence happens a long way from these correspondents and may not be deemed newsworthy … In addition, these media do not have the means to triangulate or confirm violence, and are therefore more prone to misreporting incidents. The United Nations … sources its data largely from governments. (KST, 2019b: 4) Implicitly, some deaths are more newsworthy than others. Maimai militias claim Banyamulenge are ‘Rwandan-backed foreigners’, traitors in their midst (Jackson, 2006: 104; UNGoE, 2018b: 10). Violations of housing, land and property rights (HLP), especially significant in South Kivu today, are rarely reported or mentioned by researchers. Mass displacement of hundreds of villages forced some 150,000 Banyamulenge to flee to a few tiny areas. Mass displacement has been accompanied by killings, torture and attacks on the displaced, and tens of thousands of cattle looted, all in the past two years, often with the aim of impressive cruelty (Simons and Chifu, 2018). Health and school facilities have been decimated. Yet no humanitarian agency is helping the IDP Banyamulenge population in South Kivu (Bashi, 2019). This is not a two-sided ‘tribal’ conflict; it has become one minority’s struggle for survival. The massive violations of HLP rights should be a central concern. As Leckie notes: ‘ … arbitrary acquisition of housing, land, and property through land-grabbing is commonplace in post-conflict environments and requires the attention of UN peace operations’ (Leckie, 2009: 9). HLP rights violations should be a focus since they lead to great suffering, hunger and even death. As with other stigmatised minorities worldwide, as Huggins explains: The confiscation or outright destruction of housing, land, and property titles; local housing and property cadastres; property registries; and other official records giving proof of ownership, occupancy, tenancy, and other residential rights accompanies most conflicts and complicates the implementation of restitution and other remedial measures. (Huggins, cited in Leckie, 2009: 9) Huggins also notes that HLP rights were not included, for example, in the Arusha Peace Accords signed just before the Rwanda genocide of Tutsi in 1994, in retrospect a major oversight (Huggins, 2009: 204). From 2015, Burundian groups supported by Kigali crossed the DRC border and established bases in Kiryama. Besides the Front National de Liberation (FNL) of the self-proclaimed General Nzabampema Aloys (Levine and Nagar, 2015; Nkurunziza and Anyadike, 2016). This armed group is linked to Burundi’s 2015 electoral protests (Verweijen, 2015). Attacks on civilians intensified, in 2017 to 2018 in the region of Bijombo and later in 2019 around Minembwe. The second Burundian group is Forces Républicaines du Burundi (FOREBU) linked to General Niyombare Godefroid. It first occupied this region around October 2016. FOREBU was later renamed Forces Populaires du Burundi (FPB) (UNGoE, 2018a). Meanwhile, Résistance pour un Etat de Droit au Burundi (Red-Tabara), has been based in Kabembwe, in Fizi territory near Burundian refugee camps in Lusenda. Clashes between these groups have been reported, for example between Red-Tabara and the FPB, probably related to personal power struggles rather than ideological differences. The key problem is that several Burundian groups have allied with various local Maimai militias as proxies, whose only point of agreement is their hostility to the Banyamulenge in the region. Maimai and Biloze-Bishambuke (akin to Maimai) armed groups set the local agenda, even whilst they act as proxies for Burundian rebels (Radio Okapi, 2019). The Maimai’s justificatory tropes remain very simple; irreconcilable ‘racial’ differences with those they term ‘Rwandaphones’. In reaction to this, local Banyamulenge self-defence groups, known as Twirwaneho-Gumino, have been revived. Twirwaneho means something like ‘Let us fend for ourselves’. According to Verweijen and Brabant (2017), the Banyamulenge’s Twirwaneho can be equated with Maimai groups, since their primary mission has been to protect property. However, the similarities end there. Twirwaneho self-defence groups were organised only after Gumino collapsed, by local Banyamulenge youth who feared that, since they were now surrounded, civilians would continue to be attacked (Verweijen and Brabant, 2017: 18). With the balance of power almost entirely with the Maimai and against Twirwaneho-Gumino, cattle theft, land seizures and destruction of housing mean that Twirwaneho-Gumino have been completely unable to protect Banyamulenge property. They cannot therefore be equated with Maimai after all. Their aim is now to prevent genocide of the civilian IDPs in Minembwe and Bijombo. Hundreds of villages have been obliterated in just two to three years, and rural settlements formerly inhabited by Banyamulenge people now lie devastated and in ruins (RFI, 2019). Houses were burned, but also demolished, just to ensure the ‘invaders’ would not return. Given this, to equate Maimai and Twirwaneho seems disingenuous. Recent sources point to on-going crossings of Rwandan Defence Forces (RDF) at the DRC border to fight Rwandan opposition rebels on Congolese soil (BBC, 2015; KST, 2019c; Rolley, 2020a, 2020b). Burundian or Rwandan involvement is reported in most recent clashes, sometimes reportedly involving troops from both countries (Nichols, 2016; UNGoE, 2016, 2018a). As the governments of these two countries use ‘proxy war’ partners in the DRC, they seek to avoid direct confrontations inside Rwanda or Burundi (Vogel and Stearns, 2018). Self-defence mechanisms like the Twirwaneho or others such as the Maimai, rebound and ultimately produce negative effects in the form of retaliations for past attacks, on innocent civilians of all sides. Whenever one group, such as the Banyamulenge, feel threatened and fear armed attacks, they organize their own self-defence forces to curb the threat, and the existence of this armed group is then taken to justify other armed actors in the region taking precautionary measures, in the form of attacks on civilians. The complexity of violence enters the stage of criminalization and reproduces collective victimization based on identity (Kalyvas, 2006; Stearns, 2011). Such preventive attacks by all sides end up harming mainly civilians. One recent study of the situation in the Ruzizi Plain, in the Mutarule-Bwegera region, concluded that the violence continued because: ‘The fragile and militarized socio-political context, where everyone relies heavily on his militia … [and so] long as the state cannot guarantee individuals’ security and that of their properties, different actors can interfere within the fragile environment to reach their hidden agenda’ (Ntanyoma, 2014). Besides the retaliation and forms of criminalization of violence between armed groups affiliated to ethnic communities, the partiality of key political and civil society actors in DRC tends to portray Banyamulenge affiliated groups as stronger and more cruel than others. For instance, in recent attacks and counterattacks, Banyamulenge affiliated groups were accused of having launched an attack in Kipupu locality (South Kivu) that allegedly killed 220 civilians. Some actors claimed being eyewitness including parliamentary members who confirmed to media to having counted the dead bodies (Mwamba, 2020a, 2020b; Radio Okapi, 2020a; RFI, 2020). Specifically, in such tragic incidents, the Banyamulenge are mostly situated in a ‘no-man’s land’ between Rwanda and DRC (Maswana, 2020). The accusations of hundreds killed are still referred to by political actors, social and mainstream media. However, it turned out after investigation pushed by the UN peacekeeping mission in DRC that around 15 people were killed (Basimike, 2020; UNSC, 2020: 4). In the case of Kipupu, UNJHRO (2020: 10) remarked that ‘[s]everal local sources indicated that the civilian population had reportedly left the village of Kipupu during the month of March 2020’. While each death in this context adds prejudice to the existing fragile socio-cultural and security context, mobilization across the country in relation to the Kipupu incident might indicate how violent incidents that involve Banyamulenge affiliated self-defence or armed groups can be manipulated for the interest of harming this minority group. As we have tried to show throughout this article, the criminalization of armed violence can blur the specific vulnerability of any minority targeted for slow genocide, in this case the Banyamulenge. The international media have paid more attention to protests and electoral processes in the DRC than to the selective impacts of this third major phase of warfare (Battory and Vircoulon, 2019; Kleinfeld, 2019). In a context of volatile violent conflict, the mechanisms that aim to prevent threats from other armed groups may reproduce the threats and even intensify the risks of attacks on civilians (Stearns, 2011: 107). This is understandable when one considers the everyday security vacuum in South Kivu and Eastern DRC more generally. Conclusion For international researchers or policy-makers to comprehend or operate within the local context, they would need to acknowledge that: ‘[f]rames shape our views on what counts as a problem (for example, the illegal exploitation of mining resources) and what does not (for instance, land conflicts)’ (Autesserre, 2012: 206). For the media, perennial pressures: ‘ … to find a story that fits in a few pages, or can be told in a few minutes, and that their audience can easily understand and remember’, obscure insights into specific local dynamics that generate expressive violence aimed at particular ethnically or racially defined minorities (Autesserre, 2012: 207). Beyond over-simplified narratives told by local armed actors, politicians, NGOs, scholars and policy-makers, in South Kivu time-lags in information and policy design mean policies designed in one phase of the war are applied later, in a changed situation. This produces perverse consequences. For example: … labelling the Congo a ‘post-conflict’ situation instead of a ‘war’ made a specific set of policies and procedures, such as elections seem natural and appropriate while it made another set of strategies (such as work on local conflicts) seem inappropriate and illegitimate. (Autesserre, 2009: 254) As armed groups proliferate, each seeks allies with actors both within and external to the region, and DRC’s security vacuum extends the battlefield into every home, village, town and business. Destroying people’s livelihoods has become a weapon of choice in the war of all against everyone. With the social sphere and economy criminalised, violence remains intrinsic to the primary ‘mode of production’ and extraction in DRC (Stearns et al., 2013c; Verweijen and Brabant, 2017). An expanding security vacuum sucks in neighbouring states, their opposition movements, allied to local armed actors who continue settling scores through proxy warfare, attacking innocent civilians in the process, for example, the Banyamulenge in South Kivu. Sadly, besides the Banyamulenge themselves and their close friends and supporters, almost no major agencies seem to be alarmed at the intensity of this unpopular minority’s suffering. It is vital that psychic damage to civilians through direct and indirect means – from destruction of housing, property and looting of cattle, to targeted and terror-inspiring attacks on vulnerable civilians, should be addressed and punished. Property, including cattle, should be returned, through legal means. Roads and infrastructure should be constructed to ensure that once the political commitment is found, humanitarian relief can actually reach the Banyamulenge IDPs. Racialised narratives need to be challenged and replaced with narratives of wider belonging and more inclusive Congolese citizenship. FARDC and the Congolese state should provide economic, social and physical security for all civilians in South Kivu, not just some. Instead, we see armed forces fomenting insecurity whilst seeking their own material and instrumental benefit (Baaz and Verweijen, 2013: 575; Vlassenroot and Raeymaekers, 2009). Although MONUSCO operations are gradually being scaled down, the UN troops have not left the DRC. Yet so long as their presence depends on cooperation with FARDC, there is little chance of their being in a position to maintain peace or citizens’ security in South Kivu or Minembwe. Humanitarian tragedies took place even near MONUSCO’s base in Minembwe. Trapped in a prolonged, crippling state of siege since March 2019, Banyamulenge IDPs are threatened daily, and are slowly but surely being destroyed as a people, the core of any definition of genocide. As for other peoples similarly maligned, like the Rohingya, the Banyamulenge IDPs cannot presently return home or recover their lands, livestock, homes and livelihoods (Zarni and Cowley, 2014). Their future as Congolese citizens looks bleak at present. They are becoming ‘citizens of nowhere’. The weapons par excellence of slow genocide include deliberate, targeted starvation and widespread hate speech (Genocide Watch and Ntanyoma, 2021). Both need to be addressed and taken more seriously in identifying cases of slow genocide. To imagine a future of peaceful and secure coexistence, the present crisis should first be seen for what it is: historic grievances and justifiable resentments of many Congolese citizens, projected onto the Banyamulenge, making them now one of Eastern DRC’s most vulnerable minorities. This past year, Black Lives Matter protests have reverberated globally, and their significance can be felt also in DRC, including in South Kivu. Black Congolese lives should matter, whether one is Bafuliro, Babembe or Banyamulenge. No Congolese civilians should be regarded as ‘enemies within’, as foreigners in their own land, or as expendable. Recent confrontations, involving myriad rebels from across international borders, and local armed groups, has involved expressive violence, taking the form of slow, unrelenting genocide. The legacy of an especially violent colonial rupture is that outmoded theories of ‘race’ continue to be powerfully instrumentalised by DRC politicians. Even if attention were paid to the slow genocide taking place in South Kivu, active humanitarian relief and protection of civilians will not be enough to eradicate deeply held beliefs about ‘Bantu’ and ‘Hamitic’ racial identities as incompatible. Replacing race narratives with narratives of a shared, inclusive Congolese identity may be difficult. The priority may be to move towards a political settlement that at least protects all civilians’ safety, valuing their lives. So long as the community’s precarious situation goes unacknowledged, the expropriation of Banyamulenge land, housing, cattle and political representation will continue, and their slow genocide will drag on. To forge pathways towards the peaceful coexistence of all who live in South Kivu, all Congolese lives would need to matter. Indeed, all Black lives will need to matter in DRC for any kind of lasting peace. In conclusion, what is needed most in future is not a return to the South Kivu ‘normality’, but new ways of radically rethinking inter-community relations and moving from dynamics of violence to a wider and more inclusive sense of national belonging. Declaration of conflicting interests The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. ORCID iD Helen Hintjens https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7639-8380 Notes 1. Gumino is an armed group recruiting mainly from the Banyamulenge community. Gumino would literally mean ‘stay here’ in Kinyamulenge, the language spoken by this community. Gumino stands as an offspring of 2002 Masunzu’s resistance under Forces Républicaines Fédéralistes (FRF). 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Assad has won another seven-year term with a vote share of 95.1%. The rather predictable official results are unlikely to quell criticism from the West. The official tally gave Assad 95.1% of the vote Syrian President Bashar Assad won a fourth term in office with 95.1% of votes, the country's parliament speaker announced in a live conference on Thursday. Hammoud Sabbagh also said voter turnout was 78.66%. The Syrian government's official Twitter account posted: "The Syrians had their say. Bashar al-Assad wins the presidential elections of the Syrian Arab Republic after obtaining 95.1% of the votes inside and outside Syria." The landslide victory grants Assad another seven-year term in office in the war-torn country. Assad's government claimed the election showed Syria was still functioning normally despite the decade-old conflict, which has killed hundreds of thousands of people and driven some 11 million people — about half the population — from their homes. US casts doubts over ballot fairness US and European officials have questioned the legitimacy of the ballot, saying it violated UN resolutions seeking to resolve the ongoing conflict in Syria. Those officials have also complained over a lack of international monitoring for the election. Assad supporters took to the streets of Damascus to celebrate his victory. Voting was only possible in areas of the country under government control. Many refugees who have fled the fighting in Syria in recent years were also either unable or unwilling to participate. Three contenders were allowed to run in the vote, with around four dozen rejected by Syrian authorities. Assad faced symbolic opposition from a former minister of his, Abdullah Salum Abdullah, and a longstanding member of a government-sanctioned opposition group, Mahmoud Ahmad. © 2021 Deutsche Welle

In 1993, Eritrea declared independence from Ethiopia. Although an Eritrean constitution was proposed in 1997, it was never ratified. Eritrea is totally controlled by President Isaias Afwerki and his People’s Front for Democracy and Justice. In 2018, a 20-year border war with Ethiopia concluded when Afwerki made peace with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister, Abiy Ahmed Ali. Both the United Nations and Human Rights Watch have named Eritrea as one of the world’s most oppressive countries. In 2020, the nation was ranked as the most censored country in the world, as it has no independent media outlets. Eritrea has only four recognized religious dominations: Sunni Islam, Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholicism, and Evangelical Lutheran. Other groups face persecution and imprisonment. Jehovah’s Witnesses who refuse to serve in the Eritrean military are held at Mai Serwa Asmera Flowers Detention Facility, a labor camp where prisoners are held in conditions inadequate for survival. Eritrea forces all citizens to serve for an indefinite period with the military. Students spend their final secondary school year at Sawa military camp. In 2020, despite the closure of schools due to the COVID-19 pandemic, students were still sent to train at Sawa. This conscription has forced many young adults to flee to Europe. On November 4, 2020, war began in Tigray between Ethiopian federal forces and the Tigrayan Peoples Liberation Force (TPLF). Both Eritrean President Afwerki and Ethiopian President Abiy Ahmed Ali consider the TPLF as their common enemy. In 2020, the Eritrean military invaded Tigray with the tacit consent of Ethiopia. Eritrea acknowledged its presence in Tigray in April 2021. Eritrean soldiers have targeted ethnic Tigrayans with pillage, mass rape, and genocidal massacres. Eritrea has provided food and clothing to Ethiopian soldiers in Tigray. Despite announcing their intent to withdraw at the beginning of April 2021, no Eritrean troops have left Tigray. They continue to inflict atrocities on Tigrayan civilians. Due to decrees that grant Afwerki total power, target civil rights, and silence media, Genocide Watch recognizes the situation in Eritrea to be at Stage 6: Polarization and Stage 8: Persecution. For its genocidal massacres of Tigrayans, Genocide Watch recognizes Eritrea to be at Stage 9: Extermination. To prevent further human rights violations in Eritrea, Genocide Watch recommends: · The Eritrean army should withdraw from Tigray immediately. · A U.N. Human Rights Council Fact Finding Mission should investigate Eritrea's crimes against humanity in Tigray, as well as human rights violations in Eritrea. · The 1997 Eritrean constitution should be ratified, and citizens should be guaranteed freedom of religion, speech, and assembly, and the right to vote. · All political prisoners should be immediately released, as well as prisoners held without trial. · Prison conditions should undergo thorough humanitarian reform. · Under the African Charter on the Rights and Welfare of the Child, the Eritrean government should allow children to receive their education without requiring any military training. · Mandatory service by all Eritrean citizens in the Eritrean military must be abolished.

Written by: Ruth Sherlock Syrian President Bashar Assad and his wife, Asma, vote at a polling station during the presidential election Wednesday in Douma, near the Syrian capital of Damascus. Hassan Ammar/AP It was a decision as symbolic as the Syrian presidential election itself. On Wednesday morning, Syrians woke to local television footage of President Bashar Assad and the first lady, Asma Assad, casting their ballots. The pair were not in a loyalist stronghold but in Douma, the satellite town of Damascus whose residents proved some of the staunchest opponents to Syria's authoritarian regime. In the early days of Syria's decade-long civil war, people from Douma formed some of the first armed groups against the regime. Civilians there also held mass protests, risking live bullets from government soldiers to call for an end to the regime. They paid a heavy price. In 2013, the regime placed Douma and other satellite towns in these eastern suburbs of Damascus under a tight siege, blockading food, medical equipment and aid supplies. For five years, civilians survived on mostly scraps and some starved. The regime and its ally Russia hit the area with airstrikes and shellfire that rights groups say targeted homes, bakeries and hospitals. A chemical weapons attack on Douma prompted then-President Donald Trump in 2017 to take the most concerted direct action of the war against the regime with airstrikes in government-held Syria. Now, with Assad back in control of large parts of Syria, Wednesday's presidential election was a chance for the regime demonstrate the extent of its power. "Assad casting his ballot in Douma is sending a message telling the opposition that we are celebrating through your demise. We are in power here, we are in control," says Danny Makki, a Syrian British journalist and analyst in Damascus. "It's a message about who is top dog within Syria." This show of strength is visible in Damascus, where giant posters of Assad daub the walls of high-rise buildings, roundabouts and roadsides. In recent weeks, dinners and dances have been held in support of the Syrian president's campaign. Many of these events are organized by Syrian businessmen and other citizens who see this presidential election – the first in seven years — as a way to ingratiate themselves with the regime. Assad's government, with its sprawling security apparatus, once again tightly controls almost every aspect of Syrian life — from whom you can do business with to what you can say. The U.S., along with Britain, France, Germany and Italy, released a joint statement calling the Syrian presidential election "neither free nor fair" and voicing support for civil society and Syrian opposition groups who have condemned the process. Assad's two challengers in the presidential race are Abdallah Saloum Abdallah, a former deputy Cabinet minister, and Mahmoud Ahmed Marei, who leads a small opposition party approved by the government. Meanwhile, known political opponents to Assad remain in exile, or are among the tens of thousands of people that the United Nations says have been arrested, tortured and disappeared into regime prisons since the start of the conflict in 2011. The presidential candidates in this election have lacked both the funds and time to campaign. That means they have been unable to mount any significant challenge to Assad, whose family has ruled Syria with an iron fist for some five decades. Makki says Syrian law allowed the candidates only 10 days to campaign, so many Syrians barely knew who Assad's challengers were. Instead of a serious presidential race, he says, the run-up to the election has been a "celebratory kind of pro-Assad great spectacle that has been played and replayed in every part of the country." This fealty was also seen at the polls, with some voters pricking their fingers with needles at polling stations so that they could sign their support for the president with their blood. This was often coupled with the popular pro-Assad chant: "With our blood and soul we sacrifice our lives for you Bashar." The vote took place only in parts of Syria that are back under government control. It excluded the millions of citizens living in the rebel-held province of Idlib and in the northeast of Syria that is controlled by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, which together make up almost a third of the country. After 10 years of war, more than half of Syria's population has fled the country or been internally displaced. The war in Syria has left an estimated half a million people dead and has devastated entire cities. Just as Syrians try to start to piece back together their lives in government-held parts of the country, they have been sent back into spiraling poverty by an economic crisis caused by the war, Western sanctions and the effect of the economic collapse in neighboring Lebanon. In regime-held Syria, now mostly home to loyalists or people who lack the political or economic freedom to leave, it was expected that most of those going to the polls would cast ballots for Assad. "The people inside Syria right now believe that the best solution for them is the current president," a Syrian businessman in Damascus tells NPR, asking not to be named because he fears that speaking with Western media could upset the regime. He says Syrians want to use this election to be a starting point to "build a better Syria," and are desperate for stability and a new era of peace, even if it means living under the current regime. "People want hope." The election result is a foregone conclusion, and does little to build relations with Western governments. But it is a useful tool for the Syrian regime to project legitimacy with governments in the region. There are new signs of rapprochement between Syria and Saudi Arabia, which backed opponents of Assad in the war. Saudi's intelligence chief reportedly met with his Syrian counterpart in Damascus this month. Syrian state media say the country's tourism minister, Muhammad Rami Martini, is visiting Saudi Arabia for the first time in what is reportedly the first trip there by a Syrian regime minister in a decade. Beyond the pomp and demonstrations of support for Assad, there are other Syrians for whom the election is symbolic of everything they have lost. "The regime stole our lives. They destroyed our lives," a Syrian from the city of Homs tells NPR from the U.K., where he now lives. He fled there in 2011 after seeing his friends killed and arrested in government crackdowns on peaceful demonstrators. He didn't want NPR to use his name for fear it could endanger his family members who still live in Syria. "If you look at Syria's cities, they are in ruins, and these are really the ruins of our lives and dreams and hopes," he says. "People just wished for a better future to live in dignity, freedom and justice." He says the regime has won at the cost of the country. In this collapsed economy, his family in Syria, like so many others, struggles even to put meals on the table. "The regime turned Syria into a society that is built on despair." © 2021 npr

Two black pickups speed down an empty city street in Myanmar before coming to a sudden stop. Security forces standing in the back of the trucks begin firing at an oncoming motorbike carrying three young men. The bike swerves, crashing into a gate. More shots are fired as two of the passengers run away, while the third, Kyaw Min Latt, remains on the ground. Moans are heard as officers grab the wounded 17-year-old from the pavement, throwing his limp body into a truck bed before driving off. The incident lasted just over a minute and was captured on a CCTV camera. It is part of a growing trove of photos and videos shared on social media that’s helping expose a brutal crackdown carried out by the junta since the military’s Feb. 1 takeover of the Southeast Asian nation. In this April 1, 2021 photo provided by Dawei Watch news outlet, Hnin Twel Tar Aung holds an image of her 17-year old boyfriend, Kyaw Min Latt, while walking in front of Kyaw Min Latt's coffin during a funeral procession in Dawei, Myanmar. (Dawei Watch via AP) An analysis by The Associated Press and the Human Rights Center Investigations Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, looked at cases where bodies of those targeted indiscriminately by police and the military are being used as tools of terror. The findings are based on more than 2,000 tweets and online images, in addition to interviews with family members, witness accounts, and local media reports. The AP and HRC Lab identified more than 130 instances where security forces appeared to be using corpses and the bodies of the wounded to create anxiety, uncertainty, and strike fear in the civilian population. Over two-thirds of those cases analyzed were confirmed or categorized as having moderate or high credibility, and often involved tracking down the original source of the content or interviewing observers. Since the military takeover, more than 825 people have been killed — well over two times the government tally — according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners, a watchdog organization that monitors arrests and deaths. The junta did not respond to written questions submitted by AP. The HRC Lab examined hours of footage posted online over a two-month period showing dead bodies being snatched off the streets and dragged like sacks of rice before being thrown into vehicles and driven to unknown destinations. Some people have been disappeared or arrested one day and returned dead the next, their corpses mutilated with signs of torture, witnesses confirmed to AP. Autopsies have been carried out without the permission of families. And some death certificates blame heart attacks or falls after violent attacks, contradicting witness accounts and images captured by protesters, journalists, or residents, including some who have been stealthily recording incidents with mobile phones through windows or from rooftops. In this April 1, 2021 photo provided by Dawei Watch news outlet, smoke rises from the chimney of a crematorium where 17-year old Kyaw Min Latt's body was incinerated in Dawei, Myanmar. His March 27, 2021 shooting by a soldier was captured on CCTV cameras and shared through social media. (Dawei Watch via AP) Cremations and exhumations of the deceased have been secretly conducted in the middle of the night by authorities. Other times, grieving families have been forced to pay military hospitals to release their loved ones’ remains, relatives and eyewitnesses told the AP. Though the incidents may seem random and unprovoked — including kids being shot while playing outside their homes — they are actually deliberate and systematic with the goal of demobilizing people and wearing them down, said Nick Cheesman, a researcher at Australian National University, who specializes in the politics of law and policing in Myanmar. “That,” he said, “is exactly the characteristic of state terror.” Taking a page from the army’s historical playbook, experts say the violence also appears aimed at keeping the death toll artificially low and concealing evidence. But unlike past violence, the attacks are being captured on smartphones and surveillance cameras in real-time and could one day be used against the regime before international criminal courts, as has happened elsewhere in the world. “It has always been the military’s strategy to hide the mass crackdown there, the mass killing of the protesters,” said Van Tran, a Cornell University researcher who studied the bloody 1988 and 2007 uprisings in Myanmar. “There are always large-scale operations in order to either cremate the bodies of people that were shot down or ... bulldoze and bury those bodies. So a lot of the time, families do not know where their children went.” Almost a quarter of the recent cases with known locations analyzed by the HRC Lab involved injured people or dead bodies snatched by security forces in the country’s biggest city, Yangon, followed by Mandalay and Bago. The largest number of those incidents, documented through posts on social media, was reported on March 27. Celebrated annually as Armed Forces Day, it commemorates the start of the military’s resistance to Japanese occupation during World War II after more than a century of British colonial rule. This year protesters dubbed it “Anti-Fascist-Resistance Day,” and came out in large numbers in a stand against the military takeover. It was on that day that motorbike rider Kyaw Min Latt was shot, though his family told AP the young carpenter had not been to a demonstration but was instead heading home from the job site to grab an early lunch with two friends. Using satellite visuals, reverse image searches, and a sun-shadow calculator, the HRC Lab was able to verify that the shooting took place at 10:38 a.m. in front of a high school on Azarni Road in the southern town of Dawei. In the footage, two shots are heard and Kyaw Min Latt, who was sitting between the driver and a fellow passenger, is seen grabbing his head and falling sideways. Officers chased after the two other riders with guns raised. Another bang is then heard. Sixteen minutes later, a passerby posted a picture on Facebook of blood-soaked concrete and flip flops near the white motorbike that security forces had carefully propped back up before taking Kyaw Min Latt’s body. Within two hours, the CCTV footage was also being shared widely across social media platforms. That’s how the teen’s father received the news. He told AP he later learned his son had been taken to a military hospital. He rushed there to see him that afternoon and said the teen was still alive, but unconscious. “He was badly wounded,” Soe Soe Latt said. “He opened his eyes when we were at the hospital, but could not say any words.” The boy died soon after, and his father said army doctors wanted to perform an autopsy. The family fought against it, but said the hospital would only release the body if they signed a paper saying their son died of head injuries from falling off the motorbike. A photo published online before Kyaw Min Latt’s funeral by Dawei Watch, a local news outlet, told a different story: There was a gaping wound in the teen’s neck. In this April 1, 2021 photo, a man raises his hand with a clenched fist as he carries the coffin of 17-year old Kyaw Min Latt during a funeral procession in Dawei, Myanmar. (Dawei Watch via AP) Myanmar has a long, tumultuous history of coups, military control, and ethnic conflicts. A junta seized power in 1962, ending 14 years of civilian rule. That began five decades of censorship, mass arrests, disappearances, and dark isolation, resulting in harsh international sanctions that placed it roughly on par with North Korea. Then in 2011, the country became the darling of the Obama administration and other Western governments when it started moving toward quasi-civilian rule and implementing political reforms as part of its long-promised “roadmap to democracy.” But, despite the newfound freedoms and political reforms in the past decade — from the first ATMs and KFC restaurants to high-speed Internet and smartphones — the military never really relinquished control. A quarter of the seats in parliament were reserved for those in uniform, and the armed forces held onto key ministries. Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing, now chairman of the junta’s State Administrative Council, also had the power to impose a state of emergency if he felt national security was at risk. But after the party headed by Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi won a landslide election last November, the military, known as the Tatmadaw, cried voter fraud. That triggered the February takeover and an emergency declaration, transferring all power to the top commander, on the morning the new parliament was set to begin. Suu Kyi — who earlier supported security forces during their violent crackdown on ethnic Rohingya Muslims — and other leaders of her National League for Democracy party were put under house arrest. Hundreds of thousands of people from all walks of life poured into the streets nationwide in protest. Soon after, other NLD members were hauled in for questioning. Some of them would never return alive. Party officials said that family members were prohibited from collecting the body of one man who died at an interrogation center. Two other NLD members were returned as corpses to relatives the next day, drawing a sharp rebuke from the U.S. State Department. Photos and videos posted on social media from several locations, and analyzed by the HRC Lab, show they appear to have been tortured, with the skin partially peeled from one man’s face. Another had dried blood on his head and bruises covering his body. “Just tell people he had a heart attack and died,” a man who attended the cleaning of one victim’s body told AP, recalling what doctors told family members. Despite the attacks on NLD members, the anti-military demonstrations continued. Ordinary citizens soon found themselves targets of soldiers and police. This month, relatives of one man in Bago Region’s Pyay Township said security forces arrived at their home with guns drawn. After beating 33-year-old Aung Khaing Myit, his sister told AP they took him away for questioning about his suspected involvement in a bomb blast. She said the officers swore nothing would happen to him, but he was heard screaming in a nearby room before falling silent. The next day, the family was taken to a military hospital. They were told Aung Khaing Myit died while trying to jump out of a transport vehicle and that he was already placed inside a coffin. His sister said they were allowed to look at his bruised face, but not his entire body, and then authorities took him away for cremation over their objections. “We knew they beat him to death,” she said. “But they tried to lie to us.” And even if bodies are returned to families, it doesn’t mean they will be buried and left to rest in peace. In this March 4, 2021 file photo, a man holds a picture of 19-year-old Kyal Sin during her burial in Mandalay, Myanmar. (AP Photo) Nineteen-year-old Kyal Sin, better known as Angel, became a high-profile case after being shot in the head March 3 during a protest in Mandalay, galvanizing supporters to wear T-shirts and banners bearing her image. Thousands, outraged by her death, gathered for her funeral the next day. But later that night, the flowers were removed from her grave and MRTV state television said her body had been exhumed by authorities so an official autopsy could be carried out, exonerating the police. All that remained at the site afterward was a bloody latex glove and other strewn debris. Authorities later released a death certificate saying the bullet that killed her didn’t match the caliber used by police, and that it came from the wrong direction for security forces to be responsible. Shootings by soldiers and police were the reason Ye Yint Naing’s mother had forbidden him to join a protest in northern Shan State. But that didn’t stop the 15-year-old — he simply skipped breakfast that morning and snuck out while she was busy washing clothes in the back of the house. He quickly met up with friends and headed to the rally, but an hour later tensions began to explode. After activists set a car on fire, Myanmar security forces responded by shooting into the crowd. Ye Yint Naing was hit and fell to the ground. As he lay bleeding and calling for help, his friends watched paralyzed for two hours, unable to reach him because they feared they would be shot by a sniper standing watch, his brother told AP. When the gunfire finally stopped, Ye Yint Naing’s motionless body was loaded into an ambulance and driven away. Social media posts provided the first clues for family members about what happened to him. A picture posted on Facebook by a sympathetic worker at a local cemetery showed them where the body was ultimately taken. Once there, Ye Yint Naing was cremated — which goes against Muslim burial customs — following an order by police. “They actually wanted to hide the dead body,” his brother said, adding he was able to get a bag with ashes and bits of bone to bury. “I have to say, ‘Thank you,’ to the person who cremated the body and took the photo. If not, it would have been hard for our family to find my younger brother because we would not know where he was taken.” Other secret cremations were confirmed in a mountainous trading town in the same state. Military trucks carrying soldiers and police rumbled into Aungban to stamp out a protest early on March 19th, firing off tear gas and bullets that left at least eight people dead, a witness told the AP. Images from the scene posted on social media, showed one bloodied body lying next to a curb, and video captured men dressed in black uniforms kicking debris and randomly shooting their guns. Security forces brought most of the corpses to the local cemetery that night and days later. They broke locks on the crematorium and used car tires to burn several bodies, witnesses said, until “all that remained was ash.” Terrified that their loved ones will not receive proper burials, some family members have started hiding bodies, racing to get them buried before security forces can claim them. That was the case with 13-year-old Htoo Myat Win. He was hit in the chest by a stray bullet while sitting inside his home in the central town of Shwebo, Sagaing Region. Video posted online showed security forces shooting while walking through the street, and a neighbor who witnessed the boy’s death confirmed to AP that they were “spraying bullets” at houses. Authorities came to ask the family for the boy’s body, but they refused to hand it over and instead hid it at a local temple, the neighbor said, declining to give his name fearing retribution. “They cremated him the next day.” ___ Junta spokesman Zaw Min Tun said there is a clear legal procedure in place when people die. Families are informed and autopsies are carried out. “We never hide this number,” he said at a press conference earlier this month. However, the military has put the total killed nationwide at about 300, stressing that nearly 50 police have also died in the violence. Earlier, state-run TV called the more widely used figures from AAPP “fake” news, even though the highly regarded Thailand-based monitoring group often includes the victims’ names, ages and photographs. It also details how and where they died as part of its tally, helping bolster the credibility of those numbers. Ko Bo Kyi, the group’s co-founder, noted the junta also claimed hundreds — instead of thousands — died during some of the country’s biggest pro-democracy protests in 1988. He added that, just as in the past, their goal now is to maintain a climate of fear and uncertainty that immobilizes people and breaks their will. “They believe if they kill, torture, and arrest the protesters, they can stop the demonstrations,” he said. But access to technology and social media since the recent military takeover could eventually be used to help build an international criminal case against the junta, while also making it difficult for foreign donors and developed nations to turn a blind eye to what could one day be classified as crimes against humanity. “It’s a whole new ballgame in terms of evidence in a way that will make prosecution possible many years from now if need be,” said Richard Dicker, International Justice director at the nonprofit Human Rights Watch, noting that video footage from smartphones has also been used in other uprisings and conflicts, including crimes committed in Syria. “That wouldn’t have been viable (in the past) because the evidence would have disappeared.” Still, despite the fact that security forces are aware their actions are being filmed, posted online, and seen around the world, they have continued their attacks on civilians unabated. Dicker said authoritarian governments have long silenced their opponents. Normally, he added, these kinds of atrocities occur at night in the shadows. “What’s new is that it is taking place on the streets and in public view.” Click here to view the full report. © copyright 2021 The Associated Press

Foreign minister hits back over Beijing’s crackdown against the Uyghur Muslim minority. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Tuesday launched a blistering attack against European sanctions imposed over Beijing's crackdown on its Muslim minority, telling a German event: "Our European friends know what is genocide." The United States has already labeled China's treatment of the Uyghur minority as a genocide, and the Dutch and U.K.parliaments have followed suit, arguing that the Chinese government is engaged in activities including forced sterilization and destruction of cultural heritage like mosques. "We do everything we can to promote democracy and human rights in China," Wang said at a webinar organized by Munich Security Conference, where he criticized the European Union for imposing sanctions and questioned their legality given that they were not rolled out through the United Nations. "They were based on so-called evidence. EU never communicated with China whether or not those evidence were true," he said, according to the official translation, stressing that Uyghur Muslims in China were not subject to persecution, concentration camps or genocide. Much of the western attention has focused on forced labor and "re-education" camps in the western region of Xinjiang, but China says such measures are an attempt to control Islamist extremism. Also on Tuesday, a Xinjiang government spokesman said the facilities helped radicalized Muslims "change back from ghosts to human beings." The European Parliament this month voted to freeze the legislative process for ratifying the EU-China investment agreement, after Beijing's counter-sanctions hit members of the legislature. "I wish to stress that, with a high level of mutual benefit, the investment agreement is not a one-sided favor," Wang said. "The Xinjiang-related issue bears on China's sovereignty and security." Despite the confrontational remarks on Xinjiang, Wang presented a picture of cooperation with Europe ranging from trade and investment to climate change. "China is ready to maintain and expand all-round cooperation with Europe," Wang said, days before U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman is to meet her EU counterpart for a joint dialogue on how to confront China. "We see Europe as a partner, not a rival," he added. Rebutting EU's labeling of China as a systemic rival, Wang said China's system had worked well and served the citizens' needs. "Just like the food that is different in the Chinese and Western cuisines that use either chopsticks or knife and fork. It's there for its own particular reason," he said. © Stuart Lau for Politico, 2021

By James Rodríguez Guatemala City Almost 25 years on from the signing of a peace agreement which put an end to Guatemala's bloody armed conflict, thousands of families have yet to find the remains of their missing relatives. More than 200,000 people were killed during the 36-year civil war between the military and left-wing rebels which ended in 1996. Of these, an estimated 45,000 people were forcibly disappeared, their bodies buried in unmarked pits or dumped in mass graves. Over the years, the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG) has tried to locate and identify the remains of the victims of forced disappearances. They collect DNA samples from family members, carry out exhumations and return the identified remains of victims to their relatives for a dignified burial. But as the Covid-19 pandemic struck, the FAFG was forced to suspend its field visits for almost a year. In February, the FAFG resumed its work in the Ixil Mayan communities of Nebaj, Cotzal and Chajul. In 1982, some of the most brutal massacres of the armed conflict were carried out in this area under the orders of then-military ruler General Efrain Rios Montt. Rios Montt was convicted of genocide and crimes against humanity in 2013 but his conviction was later overturned. He died in 2018 while a retrial was under way. Even though Guatemala's Supreme Court of Justice ruled in 2018 that acts of genocide were carried out against the Ixil people, only a small number of low-ranking soldiers have been convicted of war crimes and Rios Montt has not been convicted of genocide posthumously. Meanwhile, for many in the communities ravaged by the conflict, the search for those forcibly disappeared decades ago continues. In 1982, Juliana Tum Sicá's family hid in the mountains near Xexuxcap along with several other people in order to safeguard their lives from constant attacks by the Guatemalan army. While hiding in the mountains, Juliana's daughter, Paula Ajanel Tum, became ill and, without access to food or medicines, died aged seven. Her body was buried in a shallow clandestine grave. The family hopes to recover the girl's skeletal remains to provide a proper burial. The executive director and founder of FAFG, Fredy Peccerelli, says that the passage of time and other obstacles, such as the pandemic, will not stop his group: "Families still deserve to have someone accompany their search to try to identify their loved ones." The FAFG has been working for years to locate, exhume and identify the remains of missing people. In September 2014, members of their team exhumed human remains at a former military garrison in Cotzal. Through DNA testing they were able to identify them as those of Baltazar Gómez Toma. Toma and several other Ixil Mayan men had been summoned to the garrison on 3 February 1982. They were accused of being guerrilla sympathisers and executed by firing squad. After the FAFG identified his remains, they handed them over to his family for a proper burial in February 2021, after they had carried out the necessary Covid-19 safety protocols. "It is our responsibility to continue to provide the experience and scientific know-how to accompany their brave search. They are not alone," Fredy Peccerelli says of his team's work. The FAFG also carried out forensic analyses on the remains of José María Gran Cirera, Domingo del Barrio Batz and Tomás Ramírez Caba. The three men were killed by the Guatemalan Army in 1980 after being accused of aiding guerrilla forces that operated in the region. José María Gran Cirera, who was originally from Spain, was the Catholic priest in the village of Chajul at the time and was killed along with his sacristan, Domingo del Barrio Batz in June 1980. Tomás Ramírez Caba, who also served as a sacristan in his parish, was killed at the entrance of Chajul's Catholic Church later that same year. All three have been decreed martyrs by Pope Francis. Their bodies were originally laid to rest in a crypt inside Chajul's Catholic Church but have been reburied following a beatification ceremony. FAFG founder Freddy Peccerelli says that not only are the scars left by the armed conflict in communities like Chajul, Nebej and Cotzal still very deep, they continue to have repercussions today. Poverty, lack of access to land, corruption and a increasing economic polarisation all play a role in keeping rural communities destitute. "The conflict widened the gap in access to education and to opportunities for work and employment," he says. "The people who benefited and profited from the conflict now occupy political positions," Mr Peccerelli says. He thinks that until Guatemalans come to terms with their past and there are opportunities for them to build a better future within Guatemala, many will continue to emigrate to the United States. Meanwhile, FAFG forensic experts continue their work to reunite families like that of Francisco Toma to lay to rest the remains of their loved ones. Soldiers in uniform abducted Francisco Toma from his home in February 1982. His family was never told where he had been taken or what had happened to him. His remains were among scores of bodies exhumed by the FAFG from a mass grave at the Xolosinay Military Garrison in 2014. Through DNA testing the FAFG was able to identify the remains and hand them to his family for burial. All photos by Guatemala-based documentary photographer James Rodríguez. See article here. © 2021 BBC News

The killing, which comes weeks ahead of presidential elections, is one of the worst atrocities in Peru in decades. By Anatoly Kurmanaev and Mitra Taj | The New York Times May 24, 2021 The Ene river valley in Peru is one of the leading coca-growing regions in the world.Credit...Rodrigo Abd/Associated Press Fourteen men, women and children died in a massacre in a remote coca-growing region of Peru, the Defense Ministry said, reviving memories of the country’s brutal left-wing insurgency just weeks ahead of presidential elections that are playing out along the conflict’s ideological fault lines. The murders, one of Peru’s worst atrocities in decades, occurred in the town of San Miguel del Ene, the ministry said in a statement on Monday. The country’s police chief said earlier on Monday that 18 people died, adding that his officers were still on the way to the isolated town to investigate. Authorities have blamed the attack on a dissident faction of the Shining Path, a Maoist rebel group that terrorized Peru before being brutally put down by the authoritarian leader Alberto Fujimori in the 1990s. Local media reported that pamphlets attributed to the terrorist group were found with the bodies. “We are returning to something that we thought we had overcome,” said Pedro Yaranga, a Peruvian security consultant, who said he had obtained copies and verified the Shining Path pamphlets left at the crime scene. “Most in Peru have thought the Shining Path no longer existed. This tragedy shows that this is not the case.” The mountainous region around San Miguel del Ene, a sparsely populated, forested area in central Peru known for cocaine production and trafficking, is believed to be the last significant operating area for Shining Path remnants. The massacre could shake up Peru’s political landscape just two weeks ahead of the country’s highly charged presidential vote, which has pitted Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of the now-jailed Mr. Fujimori, against Pedro Castillo, a left-wing teachers’ union organizer. Pedro Castillo, candidate for president of Peru.Credit...Raul Sifuentes/Getty Images People on both sides have sought to portray the election as the repeat of the ideological battles of the turbulent 1990s, when Mr. Fujimori’s hard-line policies brought the nation peace at the cost of suppressing democracy and civil rights. Mr. Castillo’s opponents have accused him of being a Shining Path sympathizer who would plunge the country back into the chaos of the insurgency. Mr. Castillo has denied the charges and has sought to play down his party’s Marxist economic proposals since emerging as the leading candidate in April. “We condemn the political use that Fujimorism is making of this tragedy,” Mr. Castillo’s spokesperson in Congress, Betssy Chavez, wrote on Twitter. The latest polls show Mr. Castillo still ahead in the race, though his lead has shrunk in recent weeks, putting Ms. Fujimori within striking distance of victory in most national surveys. The pamphlets reportedly found on the massacre victims called for residents to boycott the vote and called Ms. Fujimori’s supporters traitors. Mr. Yaranga said the country could see a further uptick in violence if Ms. Fujimori wins the race. Remaining Shining Path members could step up punitive attacks against the daughter of their nemesis, he said, and Ms. Fujimori could step up anti-terrorist operations. The trauma of the Shining Path’s war against the Peruvian state still scars the Andean nation decades later. Launched in 1980 by a provincial Maoist academic, Abimael Guzmán, the insurgency sparked an internal conflict that claimed the lives of an estimated 69,000 people. The atrocities committed shocked even a region familiar with Marxist revolts and state oppression. Mr. Guzmán ordered his followers to put down their arms after his capture in 1992, but a remnant of rebels remained in remote forested areas, where their revolutionary ideology was gradually supplanted by drug trafficking and occasional attacks on security forces. See article here. © 2021 The New York Times

A recent spike in clashes is threatening a fragile peace between the Philippine government and Moro Muslims in Mindanao. Originally published in The Diplomat on May 19, 2021 Two rebels belonging to the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters (BIFF) were killed in a clash with the Philippine military on Sunday, days after more than 100 BIFF militants occupied a market in the Maguindanao region of Mindanao. Three members of the Abu Sayyaf terrorist group were also killed in a separate firefight with the military in Basilan, an island just off the coast of Mindanao’s Zamboanga peninsula. The incidents happened shortly after Malaysian authorities arrested eight suspected Abu Sayyaf militants with the assistance of the Philippine military. The militants apparently fled their bases in the Sulu Sea in March and headed to Borneo, where they may have been planning kidnappings for ransom. Armored personnel carriers make their way along traffic as they augment security forces in Datu Paglas, Maguindanao province, southern Philippines on Saturday, May 8, 2021. Credit: AP Photo/Ferdinandh Cabrera Malaysian authorities said on Tuesday its police had killed five Abu Sayyaf rebels in a Monday night shootout in the state of Sabah. Those killed reportedly included Abu Sayyaf sub-commander Mabar Binda, who was on the Philippine government’s wanted list. Mindanao has seen a resurgence of conflict in the past two months, threatening a fragile peace between the Philippine government and the Moro Muslims who live predominantly in the west of the island. The Philippines signed a peace agreement in 2014 with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) in which that group laid down its arms in exchange for the establishment of the Bangsamoro Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (BARMM), which was formalized in early 2019. The BIFF, however, broke away from the MILF and has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (IS). The new BARMM government has said it is attempting to smooth tensions between rival Moro factions and convince the BIFF to lay down its arms. According to a report by the peacebuilding organization International Alert Philippines, BIFF-related violence remains rampant in the BARMM, although the number of conflict incidents dropped by 26 percent from 2018 to 2019. The Philippine military is countering IS-inspired insurgents on several fronts, including Abu Sayyaf and the Maute militants who laid siege to the city of Marawi in 2017. The BIFF is not strictly aligned with those groups, but it expressed its support for the 2017 siege. The BIFF has escalated its attacks on the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) in recent months, including the May 16 firefight that left two BIFF rebels dead. In March, clashes between the BIFF and the AFP led to the displacement of more than 66,000 people in Maguindanao. Tensions have remained high since then. On the morning of May 8, more than 100 BIFF members occupied a town market in Maguindanao for several hours, forcing many families to evacuate their homes. The group did not fire their guns in the market and were cleared away by the AFP by late Saturday morning, a military spokesperson said. In a visit to Maguindanao days after the occupation, President Rodrigo Duterte said he was “moved to tears” by the recent clashes and would consider resigning if his government could not bring peace to the Bangsamoro region. “If I cannot at least [bring] the barest minimum of a peaceful place then I have no reason to stay. It would be a failure, a real failure. I must be frank enough to say, you know, sorry,” Duterte said. The president also warned the BIFF he would retaliate with an “all-out offensive” should the violence continue. “If they continue to kill civilians and if they continue to take hostages of a town, if they continue to kill my soldiers, I will be forced to do what is necessary,” he said. The Philippine National Police on Sunday said it had moved to an offensive mode against BIFF members, citing heightened recruitment activities amid the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The recent clashes come as the fate of a key military agreement between the Philippines and the United States hangs in the balance. Washington and Manila have yet to sign a new Visiting Forces Agreement, which could lead hundreds of U.S. troops and defense contractors to be pulled out of Mindanao within months, the South China Morning Post reported Monday. In an interview last March with The Diplomat, terrorism expert Ronan Gunaratna questioned the military’s decision to ramp up military options against the communist New People’s Army rebel group at the possible expense of focusing on IS-inspired militants. © 2021 DIPLOMAT MEDIA INC.

Belarus police detain journalist Roman Protasevich center, in Minsk, Belarus March 26, 2017. Protasevich was arrested after an airliner in which he was riding was diverted to Belarus. Sergei Grits/AP The brazen arrest of journalist Roman Protasevich by the Belarusian government, in which it forced the international flight he was aboard to land in Minsk, has sent a chill down the spine of the international community. Protasevich, the former editor and founder of Nexta, an anti-regime blog and social media channel, has been instrumental in leading protests against authoritarian President Alexander Lukashenko. The unprecedented steps taken by Belarus to capture a fugitive dissident have broad implications. Political leaders, human rights advocates and international law experts are calling Protasevich's detainment tantamount to an act of state terrorism. "It's a threat to human rights. It's a threat to democracy. And it's a threat to civil aviation," says Allen Weiner, a senior lecturer in law at Stanford Law School. Protasevich's arrest is another example of "transnational repression." In recent years authoritarian governments have become ever-bolder in their efforts to silence opposition or threats well beyond their own borders. Governments are reaching across continents to silence dissent among diasporas and exiles. "Transnational repression" comes in the form of assassinations, illegal deportations, abductions, online threats, and intimidation of family members, according to Freedom House, a U.S.-based nonprofit conducting research on democracy, political freedom, and human rights. "It is a daily assault on civilians everywhere," Freedom House says. Recent well-publicized incidents include Russia's use of nerve agents in an attack against Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence officer, and his daughter, Yulia, in England in 2018. That same year, Saudi Arabia kidnapped and murdered Jamal Khashoggi, a journalist and critic of the government, inside the country's consulate in Istanbul, Turkey. In the case of Protasevich "they reached into the skies to take somebody," says Robert English, a professor and director of Central European Studies at the University of Southern California. Jamal Khashoggi, a Washington Post contributor, was killed on October 2, 2018, after a visit to the Saudi consulate in Istanbul to obtain paperwork before marrying his Turkish fiancée. Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images The Belarusian dissident was a passenger on a Ryanair flight which had taken off in Athens, Greece, and was on its way to Vilnius, Lithuania. As the plane crossed Belarusian airspace, air traffic controllers told the pilots that a bomb was aboard, and ordered them to make an emergency landing in Minsk. A military jet was sent to escort the plane down. Once on the ground, officials boarded the plane and arrested Protasevich. No explosives were found. Protasevich's arrest is "beyond the pale," and takes the world to a more dangerous level, English says. The transnational arrest or murder of dissidents has a chilling effect, Freedom House says. "Even those who are not directly targeted may decide based on the threat against their community to remain silent," the group says. "This is true of the most extreme violence: a single killing or rendition sends ripples throughout a huge circle of people." Belarus's actions could set a dangerous precedent. Belarus showed a disregard for international law and aviation rules in its arrest of Protasevich, Weiner says. "The concern is that if those rules are not abided by or there don't appear to be costs for disregarding those rules, then other people will decide, well, maybe I will find it to be convenient to violate the rules," he says. In the past decade, the world has seen "a decline in democracy and a rise in authoritarianism," Weiner says. What's happening in Belarus is an example of this, he adds. A woman holds a banner during a protest against the detention of the Belarusian journalist Roman Protasevich in front of the European Commission representative office on May 24 in Warsaw, Poland. Omar Marques/Getty Images The international community needs "a firm and effective response to transnational acts of repression across borders," to discourage other governments from emulating Lukashenko, English says. That concern prompted leaders from Western nations on Monday to swiftly denounce the actions and demand the release of Protasevich. The European Union on Monday called on all airlines based in the bloc to avoid flying through Belarusian airspace. The EU also asked the European Council to ban Belarus-based airlines from flying through EU airspace or landing at its airports. Additionally, the leaders called on the council to adopt further targeted economic sanctions against Belarusian officials. "Ordinary citizens' lives were in danger," Ireland's minister for European affairs, Thomas Byrne, told NPR's All Things Considered. "This is wrong, it's illegal and quite frankly it could happen to any of us, so we cannot allow this to happen anywhere in the world." This further complicates relations between Russia and the U.S. Russia is a key ally of Belarus, and the incident comes at a time when President Biden is trying to stabilize relations with Moscow. Though no direct connection has been made between Lukashenko's actions and Russia, the Kremlin is clearly showing support for Belarus. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told journalists on Monday that Belarus had treated the incident with an "absolutely reasonable approach," according to The Moscow Times. Margarita Simonyan, the head of Russian state-sponsored international television channel RT, tweeted that the hijacking makes her "envy" Belarus. Lukashenko, she wrote, "performed beautifully." Biden labeled the arrest of Protasevich a "direct affront to international norms" and joined European allies in calling for an international investigation. "There will come a huge round of pressure to do something really severe on Belarus," English says. "And that will include a lot of people calling for severe actions and more sanctions against Russia, just when Biden is trying to turn the corner with Russia." Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko talk during their meeting in Moscow on April 22. Mikhail Klimentyev/AP © 2021 npr