The Algerian military has maintained control of politics and oil revenue since the Algerian Civil War (1991-2002) and the disputed 1999 election of Abdelaziz Bouteflika. By keeping loyal politicians in positions of power, the military has ensured that no meaningful reform is carried out. The Algerian government is dominated by the Arabic-speaking military. It excludes Amazigh (Berbers). The Hirak movement began in February 2019 in protest of President Bouteflika’s intention to run for a fifth term. It continued after Bouteflika resigned on April 2, 2019. The movement demands democratic reform and a readjustment of the role of the military. It is the largest sustained political movement since Algerian independence. The movement also advocates for the rights of the Amazigh (Berber) minority. President Abdelmajid Tebboune, elected in December 2019, praised the Hirak movement, recognized the need for political dialogue, and released some imprisoned activists. However, the Tebboune government has since used COVID-19 restrictions to restrict freedom of speech and political meetings. Algerian authorities have arbitrarily arrested more than 300 people on political charges such as harming "the integrity of the national interest," "incitement to unarmed gathering," or publications meant to "harm the national interest." These charges violate the rights to free speech, expression, association, and peaceful assembly. Courts use social media posts as evidence against activists. Those arrested have reported excessive use of force, brutal interrogation techniques, and extended solitary confinement. Algerians have not forgotten the brutality of French colonialism in Algeria (1830-1962), which just prior to independence became genocidal. While French President Emmanuel Macron created a "Memories and Truth Commission" to examine France’s colonial past, he has refused to apologize for what Macron himself in 2017 described as a “crime against humanity.” France and Algeria still have hostile relations. Within Algeria, the eleven million Amazigh (Berber), a third of the population, face discrimination and harassment for their former association with the French. During its occupation of Algeria, the French army recruited Amazigh men from the Kabylie region in the northeastern mountains. Tamazight, the Amazigh language, was not recognized as an official language in Algeria until 2016. Although Algeria adopted the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in September 2007, Amazigh people do not possess legal indigenous status. The Kabylie region is a stronghold of the Hirak movement, which has contributed to conspiracy theories that the Amazigh are directing the Hirak movement in collaboration with descendants of the 900,000 French who fled in 1960. The Algerian government instituted a ban on carrying non-Algerian flags in June 2019, a measure clearly aimed at Amazigh demonstrators who carry the Amazigh flag at protests. Genocide Watch considers Algeria to be at Stage 3: Discrimination. Amazigh and Hirak activists are targeted for expressing their political opinions. Genocide Watch recommends: · The Algerian Government should end its surveillance and targeting of Hirak and Amazigh activists who are exercising their rights to free speech, association, and peaceful assembly. · The ban on carrying flags other than the national Algerian flag at protests should be revoked.

ACLED has completed a review of the Lebanese news outlet El Nashra in a monthslong effort to improve coverage of political violence and protest throughout Lebanon. The data release has resulted in the addition of over 2,000 events to the ACLED dataset, accounting for approximately a fourth of the total events recorded between 2016 and 2021 across the country. While not altering underlying trends observed in previous analysis, this supplementation significantly enhances the disaggregation of the ACLED dataset, with more than 60 new locations now recorded as sites of political disorder in Lebanon. What follows is an updated assessment of recent trends in conflict and demonstration activity around the country. The 2019 Uprising and Its Aftermath In October 2019, a wave of demonstrations engulfed Lebanon for months. A peaceful protest movement started in Beirut, then spread throughout the country, with participants calling for long-awaited political and economic reforms. Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri resigned days after the start of the uprising. Difficult negotiations to appoint Hariri’s successor ended only in December, when President Michel Aoun picked university professor Hassan Diab to form a technocratic government. By the end of January 2020, large-scale mobilization had dwindled and violent riots became more common (Reuters, 19 January 2020). The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020, and the man-made port explosion that ripped through Beirut in August, further exacerbated Lebanon’s political quagmire. Lockdown restrictions introduced to curb the spread of coronavirus halted economic activity in a country already facing economic crisis and double-digit inflation. The August blast razed Beirut port, Lebanon’s main commercial hub and entry point for food and medicines, raising fears of a looming humanitarian catastrophe (UN ESCWA, 19 August 2020). Additionally, Lebanon has been confronted with political paralysis after Prime Minister Diab resigned in the aftermath of the explosion. After a failed attempt to secure the post by ambassador Mustapha Adib, Saad Hariri staged a comeback as Prime Minister-designate in October 2020. Still, interparty vetoes and entrenched political and economic interests have thwarted efforts to form a new cabinet (Abi-Nassif, 28 January 2021). Amid this political bickering, the number of demonstrations recorded in the last quarter of 2020 was the lowest since the start of the uprising in 2019. The Resurgence of Unrest in 2021 Since the beginning of 2021, Lebanon has experienced a significant surge of collective mobilization nationwide amid worsening economic conditions. The number of demonstrations recorded by ACLED in March 2021 was the highest since the onset of the popular uprising in October-November 2019. Unlike 2019, however, demonstrations have turned increasingly violent. While violent demonstrations constituted 16% of total demonstration events in 2019, they account for approximately a third of all demonstrations recorded thus far in 2021 (see figure below). Notably, the spatial distribution of demonstrations reveals the nationwide character of the unrest. Lebanon’s most populous urban areas of Beirut (including the districts of Baabda, Aley, and Al Metn of Mount Lebanon governorate), Zahle, Tripoli, and Saida account for little more than half of all demonstration events in 2021, highlighting how political disorder has been widespread across the country. Frustration at political inaction over an ever worsening economic crisis led demonstrators countrywide to block roads by setting dumpsters and tires on fire (Agence France Presse, 8 March 2021). With the Lebanese lira hitting an all-time low against the US dollar in early March 2021, reports of scuffles over subsidized food and of mobs storming supermarkets were widely circulated on social media (Middle East Eye, 5 March 2021; The National, 2 April 2021). Foreign currency reserves, estimated at $16 billion, are depleting, leaving the government at risk of being unable to pay for imports (Reuters, 26 March 2021). The economic crisis has especially hit the country’s wasteful power sector. Power outages have been a common feature in postwar Lebanon, forcing families to rely on fuel generators for a few hours a day. Yet, with outages lasting up to 20 hours in the summer of 2020, generator providers have rationed power supply, plunging Beirut and other cities into darkness (The National, 28 July 2020). Early this year, Lebanon’s caretaker energy minister, Raymond Ghajar, a close associate of President Aoun’s son-in-law Gebran Bassil (European Council of Foreign Relations, 4 February 2020), warned that without financial guarantees, the state-owned electricity company may be unable to pay for fuel and provide power (Daily Star, 23 February 2021). Political Violence and Threats to Freedom of Speech The resurgence of unrest has raised new fears of a violent escalation resulting from the economic crisis. This is compounded by the simultaneous occurrence of political and social crises, along with geopolitical tensions. In Lebanon, this combination has historically been a prelude to conflict. “With or without civil war,” notes Lebanese historian Hicham Safieddine, “failing to solve the crisis along socially just terms will lead to increased forms of violence, ranging from petty crime to organized mafia-style management of scarce resources under sectarian protection” (Middle East Eye, 20 April 2021). There are already signs of these trends on the rise across the country. Activists have denounced increased attacks on freedom of speech. In February, unidentified gunmen fatally shot Lebanese intellectual and Hezbollah critic Lokman Slim in the southern town of Saida. Police investigations have so far failed to identify any suspects, and there are concerns that Slim’s death could become yet another unsolved political assassination in recent Lebanese history (BBC, 4 February 2021). According to Samir Kassir Eyes Center for Media and Cultural Freedom, a Beirut-based media watchdog named after the journalist killed in 2005, nearly 200 media workers were assaulted by security forces and non-state groups between October 2019 and March 2021 while covering protests and the economic crisis (Majzoub, 4 May 2021). Additionally, the economic crisis is putting a strain on Lebanon’s postwar clientelist system. Access to public services has long been subordinated to party or sectarian affiliation (L’Orient Le Jour, 30 January 2020; Assouad, 14 January 2021). Powerful families have thus exerted considerable influence in several parts of Lebanon by providing patronage to their clients. Recently, there were reports that political clans were hoarding Russian and Chinese COVID-19 vaccines to reward select members of their support base (Ansamed, 29 March 2021). Competition over increasingly scarce patronage resources is likely behind mounting tensions between rival political parties (L’Orient Le Jour, 22 April 2021). In 2020, ACLED records over 100 political violence events in Lebanon, with an additional 40 reported between January and April 2021 (see figure below). In March 2021 alone, the Bachoura area of Beirut was the site of violent confrontations between militants of Amal and Hezbollah (Kataeb, 23 March 2021). Members of Walid Jumblatt’s Progressive Socialist Party (PSP) clashed with rivals both from the Lebanese Democratic Party over fuel filling in Aley (Murr TV, 21 March 2021) and from the Arab Unification Party in the Chouf (Lebanon24, 4 March 2021). Personal disputes and feuds over drug smuggling are also driving clan-related violence. ACLED data reveal that the number of violent events involving clans has increased almost fourfold in 2020 compared to the previous year, with the trend continuing in 2021. The governorate of Baalbek-Hermel, home to several Shiite clans and a stronghold of Hezbollah (Al Sharq al Awsat, 21 September 2015), accounted for roughly half of all clan-related violence between January 2020 and April 2021. During this period, at least 25 people were reportedly killed in clan-related violence across the country. Conclusion Lebanon’s monthslong political gridlock and economic meltdown have had catastrophic social consequences, with close to two million people estimated to be living in extreme poverty (World Bank, 12 January 2021). Eighteen months since the uprising began in October 2019, this has spurred a new bout of unrest. Unlike the peaceful mobilization that engulfed Lebanon in 2019, the recent turmoil is significantly more violent, a reflection of both increasing popular frustration with the country’s political elite and competition among political groups for increasingly scarce resources. In the absence of any political breakthroughs, heightened competition and popular frustration are likely to persist — and even escalate — in the coming months as Lebanon heads towards the general election in May 2022. © 2021 ACLED

Government’s Investigation Underscores Need for Independent, International Inquiry This week Ethiopia’s attorney general’s office released its findings into allegations of atrocities committed by Ethiopian and Eritrean forces in Tigray’s historic city of Axum in late November 2020. The press release stated that most of those killed were fighters who died in clashes with Eritrean troops, and not civilians. Human Rights Watch’s own reporting found that young civilian men, some armed, joined a small group of Tigray militia to ambush Eritrean troops atop the town’s May Quho hill. But what is most revealing in the attorney general’s press release is what it ignores – namely – the widespread pillaging that occurred the week Ethiopian forces captured the town and the horrific massacre by Eritrean forces that unfolded over 24-hours from the afternoon of November 28 through November 29. The Ethiopian government should explain its silence on this 24-hour period, long after the clashes ended, when Eritrean forces summarily executed scores of residents, shot civilians in their homes, killed others on the street, and summarily executed some men in custody. Most killed were men and boys, but people with disabilities, older people, and women, including a mother-of-five, were also killed. The findings, as well as reports of atrocities committed throughout the conflict, raise questions about how the Ethiopian government distinguishes between combatants and civilians. Under international humanitarian law, military forces can only attack civilians if they are directly participating in hostilities, even if they had participated in fighting in the past. Captured fighters and detained civilians must be treated humanely, and never summarily executed or otherwise mistreated. Eritrean officials are already interpreting the attorney general’s findings as a vindication of their forces’ actions in Axum. Far from genuine attempts at accountability, these findings whitewash abuses and signal that such crimes are permitted. Previous Ethiopian government investigations into human rights abuses and violence elsewhere in the country have been stalled, met with denials, or marred by due process violations, making this one of several official inquiriesthat failed to properly investigate security force abuses or hold those responsible to account. The attorney general’s Axum findings should signal to Ethiopia’s foreign and regional partners that a robust, independent international inquiry may be the only way to give the hundreds of victims and their families in Tigray the justice to which they are entitled. © Laetitia Bader for Human Rights Watch, 2021

Lawyer compares Myanmar treatment of Rohingya to Nazi Germany Interview with Myanmar's Lawyer Details International Crimes Against Rohingya Fortify Rights March 06, 2020 (BANGKOK and YANGON, March 6, 2020)—Myanmar’s legal counsel in an ongoing genocide trial at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) once compared the government’s treatment of Rohingya Muslims to Nazi Germany’s treatment of Jews during the Holocaust, according to previously unreleased video footage from 2013 obtained and published by Fortify Rights today. The Government of Myanmar hired Professor William Schabas in 2019 to defend it at the ICJ against allegations of genocide of Rohingya Muslims. “Professor Schabas’s description of the situation of the Rohingya in 2013 was accurate, and the violations continued unabated for years, culminating in crimes of genocide in 2016 and 2017,” said Matthew Smith, CEO of Fortify Rights. “This footage is in the public interest. We decided to release it to demonstrate that Myanmar’s narrative of the situation in Rakhine State is based on lies, which Professor Schabas himself helped to debunk in 2013.” The unedited video, filmed for the making of the 2013 Al Jazeera documentary “The Hidden Genocide,” includes more than 21-minutes of an interview with Professor Schabas, who elaborates on the possible genocide of Rohingya, references Nazis three times, and characterizes the Myanmar government as a “tyrannical regime” with respect to its treatment of Rohingya. To view interview, click on the image above. In the interview, award-winning Al Jazeera journalist and filmmaker Phil Rees asks Professor Schabas to describe life for Rohingya in Myanmar in his own words, to which Professor Schabas replies: It’s analogous to some of the ghettos that existed for Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe. It did have the effect of isolating and of depriving people of fundamental rights, such as the right to free movement within a state, the right to leave the country, although people were able to get in and out illegally, of course, by crossing the border into Bangladesh. Indeed, that may have been one of the things that was hoped for all along. In 2016 and 2017, the Myanmar Army led a campaign of massacres, mass rape, and mass arson, displacing more than 800,000 Rohingya men, women, and children to Bangladesh. In November 2019, The Gambia filed a case at the ICJ in The Hague against Myanmar for failing to prevent or punish genocide against Rohingya. During the case’s third day of hearings on December 12, The Gambia’s legal counsel highlighted a brief portion of the interview with Professor Schabas, which aired in “The Hidden Genocide.” In the film that aired, Professor Schabas said it was “not frivolous to envisage the use of the term genocide” with respect to Rohingya in Myanmar. In response to The Gambia’s argument, Professor Schabas attempted to distance himself from the claim, telling the judges that the “journalist from Al Jazeera” misrepresented the interview, adding that the “journalist persistently tried to get me to apply the word genocide to the situation in Myanmar.” He went on to say, “My views will be a lot clearer if we could get a copy of the tape of the entire interview.” Fortify Rights obtained the entire interview with Professor Schabas from Phil Rees, who maintains the rights to the footage and authorized its use. In the footage, published in full today, Rees asks if “there might be a case to be made” that the Rohingya are facing genocide in Myanmar “in the very restricted definition of genocide,” to which Professor Schabas responds, in part, that there may be “an arguable case that genocide is taking place in the situation like that confronting the Rohingyas in Burma [Myanmar].” Continuing, Professor Schabas says: And it’s also important to point out that even if we’re not in the context of a genocide that’s underway, that many of the acts that surround what’s going on are warning signs of genocide, are precursors, if you want, and this has to of course greatly heighten our concern, because, as we say the famous slogan “Never Again,” we live with various forms of persecution all around the world, but when it starts to get close to what looks like a genocidal behavior, then there has to be a more decisive response to it than would otherwise be the case. Professor Schabas explains to Rees that he is “always cautious” about “cavalier use of the term” genocide and that “it’s important not to abuse the term and not to use it unnecessarily.” He continues: “But I don’t think that there’s much difficulty in asserting that in the case of the Rohingya, that we’re moving into a zone where the word can be used even if . . . we have insufficient evidence now to reach any firm conclusion.” ©UN Photo/ICJ-CIJ/Frank van Beek. Courtesy of the ICJ. All rights reserved.ICJ Rees went on to ask Professor Schabas if it was fair to say there was “a whiff” of genocide unfolding against Rohingya in Myanmar, to which Professor Schabas replies, “Yes, I think it is fair.” Professor Schabas continues: What we have with the Rohingyas in Burma [Myanmar] are some of the warning signs that indicate the kind of mentality that ultimately degenerates into—or accelerates, if you want—into a truly genocidal paradigm, and so it would be a place of a special concern. We can’t say that about all forms of persecution of minorities, because we have them all over the world in one form or another . . . But when you see measures preventing births, trying to deny the identity of a people, hoping to see that they really are eventually, that they no longer exist, denying their history, denying the legitimacy of their right to live where they live: these are all warning signs that mean that it’s not frivolous to start to envisage the use of the term genocide. In the footage published today, Professor Schabas also elaborates on other international crimes against Rohingya in Myanmar, specifying “a range of measures,” including the denial of citizenship, the prevention of births and marriages, and restrictions on freedom of movement, claiming the policies were “designed to persecute this minority I think with a view that they would ultimately disappear.” Professor Schabas claims, prophetically, that many Rohingya “have fled the country, and more will continue to do so. It’s an inevitable consequence in a sense of persistent of acts of persecution.” To date, the Government of Myanmar has neither repealed nor abolished any of the abusive policies or practices against Rohingya accurately described by Professor Schabas in 2013. On international accountability, Professor Schabas explains that the International Criminal Court and the tribunals for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone “focus on the people at the top, what they sometimes call those who bear the greatest responsibility for these acts. And so that’s where the responsibility lies in Burma [Myanmar] too. I don’t think there is any doubt about it.” On March 5, Professor Schabas gave a closed lecture at Yangon University on international law to hundreds of students. On January 23, 2020, the ICJ ruled unanimously in favor of The Gambia’s request for provisional measures of protection for Rohingya in Myanmar. The measures require Myanmar to report to the court in May and then every six months thereafter for the duration of the trial, among other requirements, including to take affirmative actions to prevent genocide and preserve evidence of genocide. The unanimous vote means that all 17 judges, including the judge appointed to the court by Myanmar as well as the judge from China, voted against Myanmar and for the provisional measures. “If Myanmar was teetering on the brink of a ‘genocidal paradigm’ in 2013, well before military-led massacres and mass rapes of Rohingya in 2016 and 2017, then surely a finding of genocide today is not ‘implausible’ as Myanmar now claims,” said Matthew Smith. “The Government of Myanmar should fully implement the provisional measures and cooperate with human rights monitors and international justice mechanisms.” Copyright 2020 Fortify Rights

The independent Uyghur Tribunal is hosting public hearings on June 4-7 and September 10-13 at Church House in London and live-streaming online. Below is a PDF brochure about the Tribunal and the hearings. In-person tickets can be booked here: Uyghur Tribunal: First Hearings on Eventbrite. The research section and associated investigators of the Uyghur Tribunal have been collecting, collating, and assessing evidence from many sources over the past months. The Tribunal will consider both inculpatory and exculpatory material on an independent and impartial basis. Counsel and advisers to the Tribunal have selected a balanced and representative sample of all evidence provided for presentation to the Panel and the public. This evidence consists of Fact Witnesses and Expert Witnesses. Fact Witnesses are individuals who, being present, have personally seen or perceived a situation; a beholder, spectator, or eyewitness. Fact Witnesses testify to what they have seen, heard, or otherwise observed and describe only facts (as opposed to expressing opinions). Expert Witnesses are individuals who, by reason of education or specialized experience, possess specific knowledge of a particular subject. Expert Witnesses will assist the panel in understanding complicated and technical subjects and may express opinions based on their specialized knowledge © Uyghur Tribunal, 2021

A spate of clashes involving Government security forces and insurgent groups in northeast Nigeria has caused mass displacement and threatened humanitarian assistance, as armed groups go “house-to-house” hunting for aid workers, the UN said on Friday. “Up to 65,000 Nigerians are on the move following a series of attacks by armed groups on Damasak town, in northeast Nigeria’s restive Borno State”, UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) spokesperson Babar Baloch told journalists in Geneva. “Initial reports indicate that eight people were killed, and a dozen injured.” Echoing those concerns, the Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reported several incidents in the town since Sunday 11 April. “Humanitarian assets have been targeted, including the destruction of at least five NGO offices and several NGO vehicles, a mobile storage unit, water tanks, a health outpost and a nutrition stabilization centre,” said OCHA spokesperson Jens Laerke. Civilian targets Non-State armed actors were also “conducting house-to-house searches, reportedly looking for civilians identified as aid workers”, he said. This was despite the fact that aid operations and humanitarian facilities were a “lifeline for people in northeast Nigeria who depend on assistance to survive”. According to OCHA, the attacks will affect support to nearly 9,000 internally displaced people and 76,000 people in the host community, who are receiving humanitarian assistance and protection. Repeated attacks In the latest reported attack on Wednesday - the third in seven days – UNHCR’s Mr Baloch explained that “up to 80 per cent of the town’s population – which includes the local community and internally displaced people as well – had been forced to flee. Assailants looted and burned down private homes, warehouses of humanitarian agencies, a police station, a clinic and UNHCR facility. Describing the situation as “extremely critical”, OCHA’s Mr. Laerke insisted that if the attacks continue, “it will be impossible, maybe for longer periods of time, for us to deliver aid to people who desperately need it” – his comments coming as UNHCR noted that its staff had relocated out of Damasak, temporarily, this week. Civilians fleeing the violence include Nigerians and Niger nationals, Mr. Baloch said, explaining they had made for Borno state’s capital city, Maiduguri and Geidam town in neighbouring Yobe State. Others crossed into Niger’s Diffa region. Years in the making Years of insecurity and insurgency in Nigeria’s northeast have created a massive humanitarian emergency in the Lake Chad basin. To date, it has uprooted some 3.3 million people. “More than 300,000 are Nigerian refugees, more than 50 per cent of them are hosted in Niger and Diffa region - where these refugees, where thousands of refugees, are now arriving from Nigeria, already hosts a quarter (of a) million refugees from Nigeria,” Mr. Baloch said. © UN News 2021

Genocide Watch staff have published the eighteenth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream discusses Indonesia's invasion and occupation of Timor-Leste, formerly East Timor, from 1975-1999. During this time, Indonesia committed genocide, with between 100,000-200,000 East Timorese dying during this 24-year period. The 1999 referendum for independence caused another spike in violence committed by the Indonesian military and militias. Officials have taken little to no accountability for the genocide and continue to resist ongoing investigations and trials. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

People attend a funeral for those killed by suspected Boko Haram militants in Zaabarmar, Nigeria, on November 29, 2020. Image: Jossy Ola / Associated Press Intersociety 11 May 2021 Onitsha, Eastern Nigeria, 11th May 2021: Nigeria remains the country with the highest number of Christians murdered in 2021. Nigeria is the ‘most dangerous place to be a Christian.’ It is Africa’s leading hotbed of Islamic Jihad and religious intolerance. From January to April 2021 in Nigeria, 1,470 Christians were murdered by jihadists. In addition, out of an estimated 3200 Nigerians abducted by jihadists during the period, Nigerian Christians accounted for no fewer than 2,200. The 1,470 Christian deaths in four months is the highest number recorded since 2014. It surpassed the total number of Christians killed in the whole of 2019, estimated by Open Doors to be 1,350. The International Society for Civil Liberties and Rule of Law in January 2021 disclosed that more than 2,400 defenseless Christians were murdered by jihadists in Nigeria in 2020. The World Watch List report on Christians released by Open Doors; found that “3,530 Christians were killed in Nigeria between Nov 2019 and Oct 2020”. Drawing from the conclusions of these reports, between 2,401 and 3,530 Christians were murdered by jihadists in 2020 in Nigeria’. The latest research investigation conducted by Intersociety took weeks and cut across all the troubling Christian areas of the country with Kaduna recording the highest number of 300 Christian deaths out of estimated total of 430 killings, followed by Benue with 200 Christian deaths, Plateau 90 Christian deaths, Igbo Land States of Ebonyi, Enugu and Anambra, etc 80 Christian deaths, Christian part of Niger States (i.e. Shiroro, Munya and Rafi, etc) 70 deaths, Taraba/Adamawa 65 deaths, Ogun/Ondo 52 Christian deaths, Kebbi 50 Christian deaths (out of over 60 killed), Borno 50 Christian deaths (out of over 110 killed), Nasarawa 30 Christian deaths, Igbo part of Delta 20 Christian deaths, Edo 20 Christian deaths, non Igbo part of Delta 10 Christian deaths, Oyo/Ekiti/Osun 30 Christian deaths, Gombe 20 Christian deaths, Christian part of Geidam in Yobe State 15 deaths (out of total killings) and Kogi State 10 Christian deaths. Nine Igbo Christians were also killed in Kibiya District of Kano State. There are also likely dozens of other Christian deaths, numbering over 30 not recorded. The Northern Muslim controlled Nigerian Army also accounted for killing of at least 120 defenseless Christians from Benue, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Imo, Abia and Ebonyi. The research investigation further projected from interviews and open source reports that 220 Christians are most likely to have died or been killed in captivity of their abductors. This represents 10% of 2,200 abducted Christians across the country especially Christian travelers and rural others among them are male and young female farmers including those abducted and raped to death or killed after being raped. The totality of the above brings the number of defenseless Christians killed in Nigeria from Jan to April 2021 to 1,470; out of which Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen murdered more than 800 Christians. Killings by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen are concentrated in Southern Kaduna (jointly perpetrated with Fulani Bandits), Plateau, Benue, Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Delta, Edo, Southwest States, Kogi and Nasarawa. Killings by Boko Haram and Fulani Bandits are majorly witnessed in Borno, Taraba, Adamawa, Yobe, Kebbi, Gombe, Niger and FCT. Killings by ISWAP and Ansaru are concentrated in Borno, Adamawa and Taraba States. A breakdown of locations where 2200 Christians were abducted indicates that Kaduna recorded the highest number with 800 abductions out of estimated total of 1,100 abductions. Out of the 800 abducted Christians in the State, indigenous Christians of the State accounted for 600 including those abducted in Muslim held areas of Birnin-Gwari, Igabi and Giwa Local Government Areas. The abducted Christian travelers who are not indigenes of the State also accounted for about 200 and among them are dozens of Igbo Christians resident in Northern Nigeria especially those traveling from the North to the South or Niger State and the FCT. Niger State, on its own part, recorded the second largest Christian abductees with 300 out of total of 450-500 abductions; followed by Adamawa/Taraba with 100 abductees, Borno with 50 abductees (out of not less than 130 abducted), Nasarawa with 40 abductees, Oyo/Ekiti/Osun with 40 abductees, FCT 30 abductees, Kogi 20 abductees, Ogun/Ondo 15 abductees and at least 205 others abducted by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in Anambra, Ebonyi, Enugu, Imo, Abia, Benue, Plateau, Kebbi, Yobe, Delta, Edo, etc. Added were 500 abducted Southeast indigenous Judeo-Christians secretly being held without trial since January 2021 by Nigerian Army, SSS, Police and Navy. 26-page Backup Statistics Is Attached The link attached below is a 26-page statistical sources backing up the special report. For meaning of jihad, it is here: https://intersociety-ng.org/jihad-its-violent-objectives/. The 26-page backup statistics contains all the verifiable and credible sources: ‘closed source’ and ‘open source’ statistics backing the special report; one of them is the Weekly Security Tracker (of Council on Foreign Relations) belonging to John Campbell, former US Ambassador to Nigeria. Beyond the compiled and attached backup statistics, Intersociety also made extensive use of eyewitnesses, survivors, residents, journalists and activists on the ground in the affected Christian areas, such as Igabi, Giwa and Birnin-Gwari in Kaduna State, Shiroro, Munya and Rafi in Niger State and Kebbi and Katsina State. Apart from killings, maiming and abductions by the named Jihadist groups, Governments and local institutions in the Muslim controlled Northern States are also making life very unbearable for their indigenous Christian communities. These include Katsina State where under-age Christian girls are forcefully married to Muslim men and converted to Islam. (Defining Jihad): https://intersociety-ng.org/back-up-statistics-on-killing-of-christians-in-nigeria-jan-april-2021-2/. Who Is Killing Whom In Nigeria’s Jihadists’ Circles Providing credible and irrefutable answers to the above is as important as the special report itself. This is because the Nigerian Government and Governments of the affected States have made several deliberate attempts to cover up the massacres of Christians in Nigeria by falsely labeling them as ‘herders-farmers clashes’, or attacks by “bandits”, or ‘killings that cut across Muslims and Christians”, etc. However, in our extensive investigative findings accompanying this special report, the non-street crimes’ butcheries ravaging the country are originally categorized into: (1) killings with disproportionate reprisals by Fulani Muslim Bandits against Hausa Muslims (Yansakai), (2) killings and acutely disproportionate reprisals by Fulani Muslim Herdsmen against indigenous Christians in the North and nowadays Southwest, Southeast and South-south, and (3) killings and zero reprisals by Fulani, Kanuri and Shuwa Arab (with some Hausa Muslim foot soldiers) controlled Boko Haram, Ansaru and others against Christians, moderate Muslims and Government targets. For instance, the killings taking place against rural Muslims in Zamfara, Katsina, Sokoto and Kaduna States are perpetrated by variant Fulani jihadist terrorists called “Bandits”. Fulani Banditry originally formed in 2011 and 2013 when it went full swing following the killing by Hausa Muslims of ‘the most popular and highly respected Fulani leader in all the neighboring States of Zamfara, Sokoto, and Kebbi, one Alhaji Ishe, of Chilin village in Kuyambana district of Dansadau Emirate in Maru Local Government Area of Zamfara on the 11th of April 2013. While Hausa Muslims operated a violent vigilante group, called “Yansakai”, the Fulani Muslims formed theirs, called “Zamfara Bandits”, which metamorphosed into today’s Jihadist “Bandits”. The rift between indigenous Hausa Muslims and their Fulani counterparts originally started over cattle rustling and related others leading to the two being at protracted daggers drawn. See the attached backup statistics for more details. Eighty-Nine (89) Southeast Christians Butchered In Four Months The killings, raping, maiming and abductions by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in Igbo States of the Southeast are being covered up by Southeast Governors. In Anambra State, at least twenty Christians have been murdered by the Jihadists and scores abducted since Jan 2021. Yet nothing was said and no action was taken by the Government of Anambra State. See the attached backup statistics for more details. In Ebonyi State, not less than fifty Christian lives were lost to Fulani Jihadists between March and April 2021. In the killings that swept Mgbo and others in Ohaukwu LGA back in April, at least seventeen Igbo Christians were butchered and the State Government falsely blamed it on “inter-communal” clash but later admitted that they were perpetrated by Fulani Herdsmen “hired by the People of Agila in Benue State”. In Ishielu Local Government Area of the State and its neighboring Eha-Amufu in Enugu State, not less than 30 Igbo Christians were massacred by Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen in late March 2021 and among them were seven persons from Eha-Amufu and 23 others from the affected communities in Ishielu and among them were: Ekpe Ekene, Ajuru Nwekpe, Offorbuike Ede, Ede Friday, Ogbuzuru Ndubuisi, Joe Nwede, Nnaji Chinonso, Nnajionu Omebe Ogbodi, Reverend PC Njoku, Ogbuagu Aja, Chinedu Eze, Nnaji Offorbuike, Okpala Kenneth, Okonkwo Egwu, Friday Ogbuaborede, James (from Amanvu), Nkoli Sunday Odo and one unidentified. Nine Igbo Christians were also murdered in Kibiya District of Kano State; totaling at least 89 Igbo Christian lives lost in first four months of 2021. Signed: Principal Officers: Emeka Umeagbalasi, Chidimma Udegbunam, Esq., Obianuju Igboeli, Esq., and Ndidiamaka Bernard, Esq. Contacts: Phone/WhatsApp: +2348174090052, Email: info@intersociety-ng.org, Website: intersociety-ng.org

Outraged by a long-ignored slaying in Honduras, lawyers are urging a human rights court in Central America to force governments to better protect transgender people in a region where they are targets. New York Times By Frances Robles | April 29, 2021 A transgender woman at the headquarters of Arcoíris, an association that works for L.G.B.T. rights, in Honduras. (Photograph by Daniele Volpe) In a region where experts put the life expectancy for transgender women at only 30 to 35 years, Vicky Hernández didn’t make it even that long. Ms. Hernández was 26 when she was found shot in the eye on a Honduras street, a slug of unknown caliber and a used condom beside her body. Twelve years later, investigators still have not run forensic tests on that evidence. It is still not clear whether the authorities ever performed an autopsy. And two other transgender women who reported having witnessed a police patrol car roll up to Ms. Hernández just before she ran off and went missing were themselves killed within a year of her death. But now, the case may be about to make legal history as a regional human rights court deliberates whether the Honduran government was responsible for Ms. Hernández’s death and owes her family reparations. It is the first time the Inter-American Court of Human Rights will rule on whether governments have done enough to protect transgender people. And while the Hernández case puts a spotlight on a pattern of abuse against vulnerable people in Honduras, it is being closely watched in a region where many countries remain hostile toward transgender people. The court, based in Costa Rica, could order the Honduran government to enact measures designed to prevent violence against transgender people, setting a legal precedent in the region. Ms. Hernández’s murder in San Pedro Sula was among the first of an explosion of killings of transgender women in Honduras that followed a June 2009 coup in which the country’s president was rousted from bed and exiled. The next morning, Ms. Hernández, a sex worker, was found dead after a night in which, because of a strict curfew, nobody but law enforcement and military authorities were supposed to be roaming the streets. That timing is considered critical, because it suggests that what might ordinarily be dismissed as just another death in one of the most dangerous cities in one of the most dangerous countries in the world might have been something more: an extrajudicial killing. The government has denied that its forces played any role, but for many, the circumstances raised strong suspicions that whoever wanted Ms. Hernández dead wore a uniform. Activists have long denounced the wave of human rights violations that followed the 2009 coup, and blamed those who took power for what they considered targeted killings. And Ms. Hernández was an activist for trans women who had been violently attacked before. “The coup unleashed new levels of violence, lethal violence,” said Angelita Baeyens, vice president of international advocacy and litigation for Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a Washington-based organization, which brought the suit. That organization, as well as a Honduran human rights group called Cattrachas, took the government of Honduras to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, an offshoot of the Organization of American States. A trial was held virtually in November, and a ruling is expected soon. Ms. Baeyens said the court could do more than just make a finding in the Hernández case. It could also take steps like ordering the legal recognition of transgender people’s new names and requiring that changes to official I.D. cards be allowed — something governments in the region often refuse to do now. The court could also call for the elimination of laws that allow the police to hold suspects for dubious reasons. Transgender women in Honduras say they are constantly harassed, beaten and even killed, and that the violence is often perpetrated by law enforcement. “They call it social cleansing,” said Claudia Spellmant, a transgender activist who fled the country in 2013 after repeated attacks, and now lives in New York. “They don’t want trans people on the street.” With few employment opportunities available to them, many transgender women in Honduras — rejected by their families, the church and society at large — turn to prostitution. They hit the streets every night, where they are exposed to corrupt police officers and violent clients, say activists as well as current and former sex workers. Krishna Flores, 24, a transgender sex worker in Tegucigalpa, the capital, said she had been assaulted twice this year. Police officers cut off her hair, burned her makeup and purse and lobbed tear gas at her. Finally, she said, she ran into a stranger’s home for safety. “The truth is,” Ms. Flores said, “here in Honduras, where we are, there’s a lot of violence against trans people. From the police, or people who seek us out to have relations with us, people who don’t want to pay us. And sometimes it’s the military. They scream horrible things at us.” Ms. Flores said it is common to have rocks, bags of water, rags and eggs thrown at her from moving cars. She is told that she is an embarrassment to society. In January, officers yanked on her hair extensions and shaved her head. “It was traumatic,” Ms. Flores said. A lawyer for the government said that while it was clear that strong religious beliefs — 85 percent of the population of Honduras is either Catholic or evangelical — fostered discrimination against transgender people, Honduras “categorically rejects” the notion that Ms. Hernández was killed by police officers or soldiers. Lawyers for Ms. Hernández’s family are asking for financial compensation for her family and structural changes to Honduran policing. If the court does rule in favor of the family, any reparation should take into account the lack of evidence tying the government to Ms. Hernández’s death, the government’s lawyer in the case, Sonia A. Escobar Rodríguez, said in a summary of her arguments that she shared with The New York Times. “There is no evidence at all, and nor can it be rationally inferred, that those responsible for Vicky Hernández’s death were members of the public safety forces, simply because a patrol car trying to avoid lamentable tragedies happened to be nearby,” wrote Ms. Escobar, who works at the Honduran Attorney General’s office. Ms. Escobar’s summary said the government had made significant advances in public safety, such as improving the criminal complaint system and strengthening the judiciary. She said it had also provided sensitivity training to dozens of government workers. And she said violence motivated by sexual orientation or gender identity is now an aggravating factor in sentencing. Rosa Seaman, Honduras’ vice secretary of Human Rights, said the government had created a special investigations unit for crimes against the vulnerable, including gay and transgender people. But, she conceded, training for police officials has had mixed results. “Some receive it well,” Ms. Seaman said. “But I want to be frank and honest: Others have a lot of prejudices, especially when I tell them they have to respect gender identity. Trans women are the most discriminated against and are more often the victim of crime and lose their lives.” Victor Madrigal-Borloz, an expert on gender identity discrimination for the United Nations, said that even in the context of the “worrisome violence” in Honduras, crime against transgender people was “exacerbated” and disproportionate. “The case of Vicky Hernández is going to become extremely important milestone,” he said, adding that it will help people recognize that “trans women live their lives in a vortex of discrimination and violence.” Cattrachas, the organization that helped bring the Vicky Hernández lawsuit, has logged 119 killings of transgender people since the 2009 coup. “There is a pattern in all of these cases: They are all shot in the head, there were no autopsies and no investigations,” said Indyra Mendoza, the founder of Cattrachas. “And while it’s true that in Honduras they also kill teachers and cabdrivers, those murders are not the result of religious prejudice and fundamentalism. And those have some chance of getting justice.” Data collected by human rights organizations show that Honduras has the highest rate of murders of transgender and other gender diverse people in the world, with Brazil and Mexico close behind. Nearly 500 transgender women were killed in Latin America from 2014 to 2019, according to Sin Violencia LGBTI, a regional information network. In Brazil last year, 175 transgender women were killed, according to the National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals. Already in 2021, 53 transgender people have been killed, according to the advocacy group, with the youngest victim just 13. That has made the Vicky Hernández lawsuit of deep interest across the region. “We are watching very closely as to how the result of the case could impact the situation in the region,” said Bruna Benevides, a researcher for Brazil’s National Association of Transvestites and Transsexuals, although she expressed doubt that her country’s conservative president, Jair Bolsonaro, would embrace any rulings that helped transgender people. Rihanna Ferrera, who lost her run for office in Honduras in 2017 under her male birth name, said the case was important because it could force the government to at least make some tangible improvements, like allowing legal name changes. Ms. Ferrera’s sister, Bessy, who was also transgender, was murdered in 2019. “After what happened to my sister, I decided not to leave and instead to confront this discrimination, stigma, violence and criminalization,” she said. “We need not to remove people from the danger. We need to confront the state and tell the state: Here we are, and we are in danger. We don’t have to leave. You, as the government, have to solve this.” Oscar Lopez contributing reporting. A version of this article appears in print on April 30, 2021, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: Murder Case Spotlights Treatment of Trans People in Honduras. © 2021 The New York Times Company

In most of China, women are being urged to have more babies, to shore up a falling birthrate. But in Xinjiang, they are being forced to have fewer. Amy Qin | The New York Times When the government ordered women in her mostly Muslim community to be fitted with contraceptive devices, Qelbinur Sedik pleaded for an exemption. She was nearly 50 years old, she told officials in Xinjiang. She had obeyed the government’s birth limits and had only one child. It was no use. The workers threatened to take her to the police if she continued resisting, she said. She gave in and went to a government clinic where a doctor, using metal forceps, inserted an intrauterine device to prevent pregnancy. She wept through the procedure. “I felt like I was no longer a normal woman,” Ms. Sedik said, choking up as she described the 2017 ordeal. “Like I was missing something.” Across much of China, the authorities are encouraging women to have more children, as they try to stave off a demographic crisisfrom a declining birthrate. But in the far western region of Xinjiang, they are forcing them to have fewer, as they tighten their grip on Muslim ethnic minorities. It is part of a vast and repressive social re-engineering campaign by a Communist Party determined to eliminate any perceived challenge to its rule, in this case, ethnic separatism. Over the past few years, the party, under its top leader, Xi Jinping, has moved aggressively to subdue Uyghurs and other Central Asian minorities in Xinjiang, putting hundreds of thousands into internment camps and prisons. The authorities have placed the region under tight surveillance, sent residents to work in factoriesand placed children in boarding schools. By targeting Muslim women, the authorities are going even further, attempting to orchestrate a demographic shift that will affect the population for generations. Birthrates in the region have already plunged in recent years, as the use of invasive birth control procedures has risen, findings that were previously documented by a researcher, Adrian Zenz, with The Associated Press. While the authorities have said the procedures are voluntary, interviews with more than a dozen Uyghurs, Kazakhs and other Muslim women and men from Xinjiang, as well as a review of official statistics, government notices and reports in the state-run media, depict a coercive effort by the Chinese Communist Party to control the community’s reproductive rights. The authorities pressured women to use IUDs or get sterilized. As they recuperated at home, government officials were sent to live with them to watch for signs of discontent; one woman described having to endure her minder’s groping. If they had too many children or refused contraceptive procedures, they faced steep fines or, worse, detention in an internment camp. In the camps, the women were at risk of even more abuse. Some former detainees say they were made to take drugs that stopped their menstrual cycles. One woman said she had been raped in a camp. To rights advocates and Western officials, the government’s repression in Xinjiang is tantamount to crimes against humanityand genocide, in large part because of the efforts to stem the population growth of Muslim minorities. The Trump administration in January was the first government to declare the crackdown a genocide, with reproductive oppression as a leading reason; the Biden administration affirmed the label in March. Ms. Sedik’s experience, reported in The Guardian and elsewhere, helped form the basis for the decision by the United States government. “It was one of the most detailed and compelling first-person accounts we had,” said Kelley E. Currie, a former United States ambassador who was involved in the government’s discussions. “It helped to put a face on the horrifying statistics we were seeing.” Beijing has accused its critics of pushing an anti-China agenda. The recent declines in the region’s birthrates, the government has said, were the result of the authorities’ fully enforcing longstanding birth restrictions. The sterilizations and contraceptive procedures, it said, freed women from backward attitudes about procreation and religion. “Whether to have birth control or what contraceptive method they choose are completely their own wishes,” Xu Guixiang, a Xinjiang government spokesman, said at a news conference in March. “No one nor any agency shall interfere.” To women in Xinjiang, the orders from the government were clear: They didn’t have a choice. Last year, a community worker in Urumqi, the regional capital, where Ms. Sedik had lived, sent messages saying women between 18 and 59 had to submit to pregnancy and birth control inspections. “If you fight with us at the door and if you refuse to cooperate with us, you will be taken to the police station,” the worker wrote, according to screenshots of the WeChat messages that Ms. Sedik shared with The Times. “Do not gamble with your life,” one message read, “don’t even try.” ‘I lost all hope in myself’ All her life, Ms. Sedik, an ethnic Uzbek, had thought of herself as a model citizen. After she graduated from college, she married and threw herself into her work, teaching Chinese to Uyghur elementary school students. Mindful of the rules, Ms. Sedik didn’t get pregnant until she had gotten approval from her employer. She had only one child, a daughter, in 1993. Ms. Sedik could have had two children. The rules at the time allowed ethnic minorities to have slightly bigger families than those of the majority Han Chinese ethnic group, particularly in the countryside. The government even awarded Ms. Sedik a certificate of honor for staying within the limits. Then, in 2017, everything changed. As the government corralled Uyghurs and Kazakhs into mass internment camps, it moved in tandem to ramp up enforcement of birth controls. Sterilization rates in Xinjiang surged by almost sixfold from 2015 to 2018, to just over 60,000 procedures, even as they plummeted around the country, according to calculations by Mr. Zenz. The campaign in Xinjiang is at odds with a broader push by the government since 2015 to encourage births, including by providing tax subsidies and free IUD removals. But from 2015 to 2018, Xinjiang’s share of the country’s total new IUD insertions increased, even as use of the devices fell nationwide. The contraception campaign appeared to work. Birthrates in minority-dominated counties in the region plummeted from 2015 to 2018, based on Mr. Zenz’s calculations. Several of these counties have stopped publishing population data, but Mr. Zenz calculated that the birthrates in minority areas probably continued to fall in 2019 by just over 50 percent from 2018, based on figures from other counties. The sharp drop in birthrates in the region was “shocking” and clearly in part a result of the campaign to tighten enforcement of birth control policies, said Wang Feng, a professor of sociology and expert in Chinese population policies at University of California, Irvine. But other factors could include a fall in the number of women of childbearing age, later marriages and postponed births, he said. As the government pushes back against growing criticism, it has withheld some key statistics, including annually published county-level data on birthrates and birth control use for 2019. Other official data for the region as a whole showed a steep drop in IUD insertions and sterilizations that year, though the number of sterilizations was still mostly higher than before the campaign began. In Beijing’s depiction, the campaign is a victory for the region's Muslim women. “In the process of deradicalization, some women’s minds have also been liberated,” a January report by a Xinjiang government research center read. “They have avoided the pain of being trapped by extremism and being turned into reproductive tools.” Women like Ms. Sedik, who had obeyed the rules, were not spared. After the IUD procedure, Ms. Sedik suffered from heavy bleeding and headaches. She later had the device secretly removed, then reinserted. In 2019, she decided to be sterilized. “The government had become so strict, and I could no longer take the IUD,’” said Ms. Sedik, who now lives in the Netherlands after fleeing China in 2019. “I lost all hope in myself.” ‘The women of Xinjiang are in danger’ The penalties for not obeying the government were steep. A Han Chinese woman who violated the birth regulations would face a fine, while a Uyghur or Kazakh woman would face possible detention. When Gulnar Omirzakh had her third child in 2015, officials in her northern village registered the birth. But three years later, they said she had violated birth limits and owed $2,700 in fines. Officials said they would detain Ms. Omirzakh and her two daughters if she did not pay. She borrowed money from her relatives. Later, she fled to Kazakhstan. “The women of Xinjiang are in danger,” Ms. Omirzakh said in a telephone interview. “The government wants to replace our people.” The threat of detention was real. Three women told The Times they had met other detainees in internment camps who had been locked up for violating birth restrictions. Dina Nurdybay, a Kazakh woman, said she helped one woman write a letter to the authorities in which she blamed herself for being ignorant and having too many children. Such accounts are corroborated by a 137-page government document leaked last year from Karakax County, in southwestern Xinjiang, which revealed that one of the most common reasons cited for detention was violating birth planning policies. Those who refused to terminate illegal pregnancies or pay fines would be referred to the internment camps, according to one government notice from a county in Ili, unearthed by Mr. Zenz, the researcher. Once women disappeared into the region’s internment camps — facilities operated under secrecy — many were subjected to interrogations. For some, the ordeal was worse. Tursunay Ziyawudun was detained in a camp in Ili Prefecture for 10 months for traveling to Kazakhstan. She said that on three occasions, she was taken to a dark cell where two to three masked men raped her and used electric batons to forcibly penetrate her. “You become their toy,” Ms. Ziyawudun said in a telephone interview from the United States, where she now lives, as she broke down sobbing. “You just want to die at the time, but unfortunately you don’t.” Gulbahar Jalilova, the third former detainee, said in an interview that she had been beaten in a camp and that a guard exposed himself during an interrogation and wanted her to perform oral sex. The three former detainees, along with two others who spoke to The Times, also described being regularly forced to take unidentified pills or receive injections of medication that caused nausea and fatigue. Eventually, a few of them said, they stopped menstruating. The former detainees’ accounts could not be independently verified because tight restrictions in Xinjiang make unfettered access to the camps impossible. The Chinese government has forcefully denied all allegations of abuse in the facilities. “The sexual assault and torture cannot exist,” said Mr. Xu, the regional spokesman, at a news briefing in February. Beijing has sought to undermine the credibility of the women who have spoken out, accusing them of lying and of poor morals, all while claiming to be a champion of women’s rights. ‘We are all Chinese’ Even in their homes, the women did not feel safe. Uninvited Chinese Communist Party cadres would show up and had to be let in. The party sends out more than a million workers to regularly visit, and sometimes stay in, the homes of Muslims, as part of a campaign called “Pair Up and Become Family.” To many Uyghurs, the cadres were little different from spies. The cadres were tasked with reporting on whether the families they visited showed signs of “extremist behavior.” For women, this included any resentment they might have felt about state-mandated contraceptive procedures. When the party cadres came to stay in 2018, Zumret Dawut had just been forcibly sterilized. Four Han cadres visited her in Urumqi, bringing yogurt and eggs to help with the recovery, she recalled. They were also armed with questions: Did she have any issues with the sterilization operation? Was she dissatisfied with the government’s policy? “I was so scared that if I said the wrong thing they would send me back to the camps,” said Ms. Dawut, a mother of three. “So I just told them, ‘We are all Chinese people and we have to do what the Chinese law says.’” But the officials’ unwelcome gaze settled also on Ms. Dawut’s 11-year-old daughter, she said. One cadre, a 19-year-old man who was assigned to watch the child, would sometimes call Ms. Dawut and suggest taking her daughter to his home. She was able to rebuff him with excuses that the child was sick, she said. Other women reported having to fend off advances even in the company of their husbands. Ms. Sedik, the Uzbek teacher, was still recovering from a sterilization procedure when her “relative” — her husband’s boss — showed up. She was expected to cook, clean and entertain him even though she was in pain from the operation. Worse, he would ask to hold her hand or to kiss and hug her, she said. Mostly, Ms. Sedik agreed to his requests, terrified that if she refused, he would tell the government that she was an extremist. She rejected him only once: when he asked to sleep with her. It went on like this every month or so for two years — until she left the country. “He would say, ‘Don’t you like me? Don’t you love me?’” she recalled. “‘If you refuse me, you are refusing the government.’” “I felt so humiliated, oppressed and angry,” she said. “But there was nothing I could do." © Amy Qin for the New York Times, 2021

Enter the Grayzone: fringe leftists deny the scale of China's Uyghur oppression Coda 30 July 2020 On July 25, Max Blumenthal, the founder and editor of the far-left news site The Grayzone, went on Going Underground, a current affairs show broadcast by the Russian state-controlled TV channel RT. On air, he questioned the scale of the detention of Uyghurs in camps in China’s northwestern Xinjiang province. “I don’t have reason to doubt that there’s something going in Xinjiang, that there could even be repression,” said Blumenthal. “But we haven’t seen the evidence for these massive claims.” He went on to describe reports of Beijing’s abuse of Uyghurs as “the hostile language of a Cold War, weaponizing a minority group.” Blumenthal’s statements met with outrage online and many social media users accused him of ignoring one of the largest-scale human rights violations of the 21st century. This is not the first time a writer from The Grayzone has sought to refute or downplay reports of Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang, and there is precedent for Blumenthal’s words. With a hardline anti-imperialist ideology and a deep-seated antagonism towards U.S. interventionist foreign policy, The Grayzone has followed a similar path on Syria, challenging reports of atrocities by the regime of President Bashar al-Assad. What is more, these fringe views appear to be creeping into other areas of the American left. Ideological spread In April, a small left-wing blog named LA Progressive began to publish articles denying the persecution of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. In one, Margaret Kimberely wrote that widespread reports on the mass detention of Muslim minorities are “a falsehood.” In a subsequent essay, Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers dismissed such narratives as “vast exaggerations used to stoke anti-China views.” LA Progressive’s denial of human rights abuses in Xinjiang is particularly jarring considering the rest of its content. Most of the site’s articles concentrate on issues of racial and economic inequality, LGBTQ rights and healthcare reform. But, in recent months, it has run three pieces stating that the Chinese state is being subjected to a disinformation campaign over its treatment of Muslim minorities in Xinjiang. Founded in 2008 by husband and wife Dick Price and Sharon Kyle, LA Progressive states that it is “committed to advocating for the public interest, as opposed to the corporate agenda.” Price and Kyle are active in Los Angeles left-wing circles and have ties to groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union, on whose national board of directors Kyle represents Southern California. When asked why the site had published the pieces cited above, Price said, “We don’t necessarily agree with every sentence in every opinion piece we publish, but we do feel these two articles are worthy of people’s consideration.” Small but loud While the number of left-wing voices denying China’s ongoing repression of the Uyghur people is few, those that do exist are vociferous and well-organized. Of these, The Grayzone is by far the most influential. In recent years, it has taken a variety of contrarian stances on world affairs, from supporting the Assad regime in Syria to backing Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolas Maduro. Blumenthal began his career as part of the more mainstream left. The son of Sidney Blumenthal, a former aide to President Bill Clinton, he has written for The New York Times, The Nation and The Daily Beast on subjects ranging from Sarah Palin’s 2008 vice-presidential campaign to the Arab-Israeli conflict. He has also published a number of books, two of which are based on his experiences in Palestine. Once a supporter of the Syrian revolution and a critic of Assad, Blumenthal has made frequent appearances on state-run broadcasters such as Russia’s RT and Sputnik radio, and China’s television news channel CGTN. In December 2015, he attended a 10th anniversary party for RT in Moscow. Around this time, he became a fervent advocate for the Syrian regime and set up The Grayzone. Initially hosted by the progressive website AlterNet, The Grayzone left the platform in early 2018. In March 2020, Wikipedia marked The Grayzone as a “deprecated source” and discouraged editors from linking to it — a designation shared with RT, the far-right TV channel One America News Network and Alex Jones’ conspiracy theory site InfoWars. While many of The Grayzone’s ideas push hard at the edges of left-wing discourse, it still commands a significant audience. The project has 112,000 YouTube subscribers and over 67,200 followers on Twitter. Blumenthal was recently retweeted by President Donald Trump. He has also appeared on the Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight and Rolling Stone magazine’s popular podcast Useful Idiots. Unsurprisingly, The Grayzone is viewed favorably in Beijing. Blumenthal was recently the subject of a three-part interview with Global Times, a newspaper run under the auspices of the Communist Party of China. Ajit Singh, who has written two articles for The Grayzone questioning reports that Uyghurs were being held in camps in Xinjiang, has appeared on the state-owned news channel CGTN multiple times. Meanwhile, between December 2019 and March 2020, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokespeople Hua Chunying and Lijian Zhao both tweeted a Grayzone article that claimed reports of Uyghur oppression were unreliable and overblown. The existence of U.S.-based outlets, run and staffed by American residents who are ready and willing to refute criticism of China’s actions in Xinjiang is of great benefit to Beijing, according to experts. “Having westerners say things that are in line with the state narrative helps bolster their claims,” explained Darren Byler of the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Asian Studies. “It’s coming from Grayzone, rather than from Chinese state media, although it’s saying the same thing.” Nury Turkel, a Uyghur lawyer and the Commissioner of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, said that The Grayzone goes one step further than simply repeating Beijing’s line. “It’s almost like these guys are providing talking points to the Chinese propaganda machine,” he said. Since 2018, The Grayzone has published at least four articles undermining reports of the repression in Xinjiang. “Information about camps containing 1 million prisoners has originated almost exclusively from media outlets and organizations funded and weaponized by the U.S. government to turn up the heat on Beijing,” wrote Singh and assistant editor Ben Norton in one August 2018 piece. In recent months, a blog named Black Agenda Report has taken similar stances. Founded in 2006 by veteran broadcaster Glen Ford, and activists Margaret Kimberely and Leutisha Stills, the site gained some recognition in progressive circles around 2012 for its critiques of President Barack Obama from a radical left-wing African-American perspective. In January, contributing editor Danny Haiphong published an article titled “My Trip to China Exposed the Shameful Lies Peddled by the American Empire.” In it, he explained that he had taken a two-week tour of the country with an organization named the China-U.S. Solidarity Network. While there, he visited a number of cities, including Beijing and Urumqi, the capital of Xinjiang. “I did not see concentration camps for Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” he wrote. “In fact, it is difficult to walk more than a mile without running into a mosque. Every street sign in the city is translated in both Mandarin and Uyghur languages.” Haiphong later repeated these points on Grayzone’s YouTube show Red Lines, which is hosted by Anya Parampil, a former correspondent for RT America and Blumenthal’s wife. In a response to questions for this piece, Haiphong wrote, “Shouldn’t reporters be curious, rather than assume the dominant narrative peddled by US intelligence and corporate media? If you want to cover disinformation, you may want to redirect your attention to those with power rather than come question me.” The left-wing magazine CounterPunch has published a significant number of articles condemning Beijing’s repression of Uyghurs in Xinjiang. However, it has also occasionally featured pieces that deny any such thing is taking place. “The deluge of fake news from Western corporate media since the beginning of this year seeks to demonize the Chinese government, painting it as a gross violator of human rights, when the truth is the exact opposite,” wrote Thomas Hon Wing Polin and Gerry Brown in September 2018. The same people who take pro-Beijing positions on Xinjiang often follow suit on China’s ongoing crackdown in Hong Kong. Popular Resistance, a blog run out of Baltimore, Maryland, by Zeese and Flowers — the authors of one of LA Progressive’s Xinjiang denialist pieces — is one example. “What is happening in Hong Kong is not actually a people’s uprising for democracy, but a tool for anti-China rhetoric and Great Power Conflict,” they wrote. Popular Resistance has repeatedly cited Grayzone in its coverage of Xinjiang and republished Haiphong’s Black Agenda Report article. “The enemy of my enemy is my friend” Left-wing support and equivocation for authoritarian regimes is by no means a new phenomenon. In the past, notable figures such as Noam Chomsky and Alexander Cockburn have questioned the scale of atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge and Stalin. These positions have generally been rooted in anti-imperialism and a deep suspicion of America’s dominance in global affairs. Many on the U.S. left take issue with the hegemonic position occupied by their country, but very few end up defending Bashar al-Assad’s bombing of the Syrian people or Xi Jinping’s mass incarceration of religious and ethnic minorities. However, publications such as The Grayzone function on a purely ideological level. Based on a desire for a multipolar world, in which global military, cultural and economic power is distributed among multiple nation states and Western influence greatly diminished, they have been quick to argue on behalf of authoritarian regimes such as China and Syria. Weaponizing doubt While a few fringe media outlets are unlikely to shift mainstream political opinion on China’s actions in Xinjiang, they can create significant problems in some areas of the left. Some experts believe that the spread of pro-Beijing narratives is a particular risk in light of the Trump administration’s intensifying rhetoric against China. “The narrative has gotten louder in response to the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Byler. “There’s been a real ratcheting up of anti-China sentiment at a grassroots level in the U.S.,” he explained. “I think that’s causing people to think more about China than they have.” As a result, people who oppose Trump and look for information that corresponds with their concerns over his presidency could be more exposed than before to the ideas put forward by organizations like The Grayzone. While underplaying China’s actions in Xinjiang fits neatly into Grayzone’s multipolar philosophy, such a position is more difficult to reconcile with a broader left-wing worldview that places primacy on the principles of equality, social justice and solidarity with oppressed people. “It makes it problematic, both because it undermines the Uyghur stories themselves, but also because it makes effective responses more difficult,” said Byler. “I don’t mince words, it’s a matter of conscience,” said Turkel. “We’re talking about crimes against humanity.” Denying the systematic oppression in Xinjiang, he said, ignores its effect on the lives of millions of people who “have names and aspirations just like anyone else.” For Uyghurs in Xinjiang, mass imprisonment and surveillance, the separation of families and forced sterilization of women are all part of a grim reality. But even as new details come to light on the scale of these abuses, The Grayzone is sticking to its line. In an email responding to a request for comment for this article, Blumenthal wrote, “We consider Coda Story to be a NATO propaganda shop wrapped in a boring neocon blog, so we’re not interested in any back and forth. But we do encourage you to run the following statement: ‘The Grayzone does not favor re-education centers for anyone except smarmy warmongering neoconservative fraudsters.’” Illustration by Gogi Kamushadze Copyright 2020 Coda

We Can’t End the Forever War Without Stopping “The City of ISIS” Syrian Democratic Times May 6, 2021 BY: SINAM MOHAMAD “When we grow up, we will slaughter you,” say the children as they throw rocks at the woman reporter and run away. The children are ages 1 to 12. Several adult women can be seen in the background. They are covered head to toe in the black veils of ISIS. One boy stops and speaks to the reporter directly. He appears to be about seven years old. “When I grow up, I will behead you,” he says. Why? Because she is a woman who does not follow ISIS ideology, a strict, anti-feminist code of conduct in which women are considered the property of men. This shocking scene appears in a video captured by reporter Rola Al-Khatib and shown on the news channel Al-Arabiya. The scene occurred as she was walking in the Al-Hawl camp last month — a massive camp in North and East Syria that is called “The City of ISIS.” The children are being held there, with their mothers and caretakers. Tens of thousands of children are there being fed a steady diet of ISIS ideology, every single day, with little to no contact with the outside world. In ten years, these children will become the next wave of so-called “Islamic extremism.” It is an inevitable reality. Unless the international community takes action to help them. In his first address to Congress this week, US President Joe Biden asserted his admirable intention to end the “forever war” by withdrawing US troops from Afghanistan. But a solution to the “forever war” must address the children being raised on ISIS extremism. Former US President Donald Trump announced the defeat of ISIS with a flourish in March 2019, when our forces, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), overran the last ISIS stronghold with the help of the United States and others. The recently-released New York Times bestselling book, “The Daughters of Kobani,” tells the story of the all-woman military unit that helped battle ISIS. But ISIS was never totally defeated. It still lives. It’s just that now, it lives within the walls of the Al-Hawl camp. Al-Hawl camp is a mammoth network of thousands of long-term refugee tents and a few permanent structures just east of Hasakah, in the democratic, autonomous region of North and East Syria. The camp has collected over 70,000 former ISIS soldiers, supporters, and their families, who came to Syria to fight from 57 different countries. These ISIS detainees try to live in their tent city as if they were in the capital city of their caliphate. Despite the best efforts of the guards, the detainees still uphold their strict ISIS codes of conduct within the borders of the camp. Detainees who do not follow the code of conduct live in fear. Many have been killed by their fellow detainees for “unholy” behavior, such as criticizing or doubting the “caliphate.” ISIS detainees in the camp continue to plan the resurrection of their “caliphate,” and dream of committing more atrocities in the name of their so-called “holy war.” ISIS members talk together, eat together, pray together, teach their children, and plan for their resurgence every day in Al-Hawl camp, as the Biden Administration strategizes to end the endless fighting against Islamic extremism. President Biden declared recently, “it’s time to end the forever war.” The risk of ISIS resurrection is credible. In 2014, the organization had about 30,000 fighters from all over the world and was occupying a massive swath of Syria, about one-third of the country. They had swept through northeast Syria after the Syrian civil war, capitalizing upon a power vacuum left after the Syrian government withdrew its troops from the region. They invaded city after city, imposing their strict rule upon our region. The atrocities of ISIS included killings, beheadings, enslavement, property theft, forced conscription, child soldiers, and violence against women and children. It seemed to them then that their armies were unstoppable. It was only when our brave men and women of the SDF partnered with the US military and the US-led Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS that the black tide of ISIS was stopped. Our fighters fought to reclaim their homeland. But more than that, they fought to oppose the brutal ideology of Islamic extremism. Our fighters were born of the movement for true democracy in Syria, the movement for democracy, equality, women’s rights, religious freedom, and ethnic plurality. The fight against ISIS was just an extension of the better world that many have been fighting for their whole lives. When our forces captured the final town held by the ISIS “caliphate,” the town of Al-Baghuz Fawqani, experts and military strategists were surprised by how many people emerged out of the extensive tent city and tunnel network that ISIS had built there. The fighters were supported by thousands upon thousands of support staff, technicians and logistical staff, managers and workers. Also hidden from view were their families, tens of thousands of women and children. Some of the women were working as support staff, some were not. Some were being held as slaves. Most were true believers of ISIS ideology, but not all. When these tens of thousands of detainees were brought to Al-Hawl, no one thought they would be there for more than a few months — enough time to sort out who is or is not culpable. Now, they linger there. Each ISIS detainee deserves a fair trial. Individuals must have a chance to face the evidence of their crimes. Those who were cooks and medics and janitors should face lesser charges than those with blood on their hands. But in the region of North and East Syria, which has faced a decade of war due to great power rivalry, death and devastation, economic hardship, a refugee crisis, Turkish occupation, and overall instability, there are few resources to conduct the thousands of trials that would be needed. The SDF and the regional administration have been calling upon the international community to set up tribunals or to conduct trials in the region. Ilham Ahmed, Executive President of the Syrian Democratic Council, has been meeting with foreign governments to “find a sustainable solution for ISIS foreign fighters.” General Mazloum Abdi of the Syrian Democratic Forces said, the Global Coalition to Defeat ISIS “has a duty to continue support to our forces to eliminate the growing ISIS threat.” As the US Representative of the Syrian Democratic Council, I have been asking for the United States to offer help in processing the detainees. As early as June 2019, I wrote, “If we do nothing, we will soon see ISIS erupt again.” After all, ideas do not die by bullets. We have called upon the international community to provide legal assistance and expertise to our own regional officials, in the absence of an international tribunal. Home countries of foreign fighters should be obligated to take back their own citizens, but so far most have refused. Re-education and re-integration programs, especially for the children and their mothers — often young women in their teens and 20s — will be necessary. Those who will not go to prison could be safely placed in smaller communities where they can reconnect with their other family members and travel the long road of de-radicalization from ISIS extremism. Much assistance is needed. So far, not one country has offered significant help to the SDF in addressing the ISIS detainee crisis. The SDF is the only flood wall, the levee, that is keeping the rest of the world safe from ISIS. Yet the political arm of the SDF, the Syrian Democratic Council, has so far not even been invited to UN peace talks on the future of Syria. First steps to addressing “The City of ISIS” would be the SDC’s inclusion in talks on the future of Syria, as well as assistance in legal processing of the ISIS detainees. We lost 11,000 men and women in the course of defeating ISIS. We do not want to be fighting this war again in ten years. The rocks thrown by children in Al-Hawl camp today will become the bombs of tomorrow. It is admirable that Joe Biden seeks to end the forever war, and has made that a policy priority for his administration. But there can be no end to the forever war, unless we do something to address the crisis that is “The City of ISIS.” Sinam Sherkany Mohamad is the Co-Chief of the US Mission of the Syrian Democratic Council. She is a Kurdish woman from Afrin, Syria.