Genocide Watch staff have published the seventeenth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream covers the Salvadoran Civil War (1979-1992) and the massacres committed by the Salvadoran military and death squads. Despite the fact that 75,000 people were killed during the bloody civil war, there has been no little to no accountability for the perpetrators of massacres, extrajudicial killings, enforced disappearances, and torture. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

Beijing’s own words and actions highlight the intent to end the Uyghurs as a people. On his way out of office on Jan. 19, then-U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo issued a determination that China “has committed genocide against the predominantly Muslim Uyghurs and other ethnic and religious minority groups in Xinjiang.” Nobody in the U.S. policy community seriously disputes that atrocities are occurring in Xinjiang—but some analysts have zoomed in on the term “genocide.” Sometimes it seems to be a way of trying to force policies back toward the failed engagement of the past rather than confronting what’s happening in China and rethinking policy accordingly. This debate over terminology has high stakes. It’s not just how Washington engages, competes, and cooperates with Beijing but also about how the United States understands China’s policies and intentions and how they manifest on the ground. The United States, however, cannot have a successful China policy if it is not grounded in a realistic assessment of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) ambitions and methods—and the atrocities that have resulted because of them. We can dismiss claims that genocide requires mass killing immediately. Under the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which both China and the United States are signatories, genocide has two parts. The first is the commission of any of the following acts: “killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group, or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.” The second part is intent. Any of those acts “committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group” would constitute genocide. Many denialists concede the large body of still-accumulating evidence from survivors, satellite imagery, media reporting, and Chinese government policy documents show evidence of potentially genocidal actions. However, they argue the Chinese government and the CCP have not demonstrated any intent to destroy the Uyghur people. This argument has made the rounds in places such as the U.S. State Department, the Washington Post, and The Economist. In Brookings Institution fellow Michael O’Hanlon’s words, “there is no compelling evidence of a plan to ‘destroy’ the group, so Chinese behavior does not meet the definition of genocide based on the concept of intent as noted in Article II.” This seems to expect a criminal to explicitly describe why they are committing a crime even as it happens. Genocidal states have not, in fact, been given to acknowledging their intent publicly; even the Nazis worked overtime to lie about the Holocaust as it happened while the Soviet Union constantly denied its targeting of ethnic minorities. Beijing has provided both direct and circumstantial evidence of the intent to destroy the Uyghur people. A Chinese government document cited by the New Yorker speaks directly to this. That document on reeducation stated, “break their lineage, break their roots, break their connections, and break their origins.” Agence France-Presse in 2018 found a similar document that used the same language about breaking Uyghur roots to build new, better Chinese citizens. It has recurred throughout state commentary. Even if this is not a call for mass murder—although it is violent language in a context of mass state violence—it is entirely explicit about breaking the cultural and social connections that make Uyghurs a recognizable ethnic group. China’s policies toward Uyghur families also reinforce this interpretation of intent because they deliberately break the channels of cultural transmission from generation to generation. Thousands of Uyghur children have been placed in boarding schools and orphanages, separated from their parents and grandparents. Working-age adults can be forced to work far away from their homes or may still be in prison. Many elderly Uyghurs have also been detained for attending too many funeral services, which are religious observances, or for myriad other reasons for which Uyghurs disappear into the camps. Although specific evidence about the elderly is lacking, China has expanded the network of elderly care facilities in Xinjiang throughout this latest crackdown in the name of poverty alleviation—a justification used for the forced labor programs. These policies in combination are clearly intended to destroy any continuity of Uyghur culture or sense of identity as a people, just as Native American boarding schools in the United States were used to destroy native cultures. This destruction of generational bonds extends to attempting to curtail the birth of new Uyghurs. From 2018, female survivors of the camps in Xinjiang reported being forced to take drugs that affected menstruation and fertility. Researcher Adrian Zenz documented a massive drop in Uyghur birth rates brought about by the Chinese government’s birth suppression policies that not only included involuntary birth control, such as the insertion of IUDs but also forced abortions and sterilizations. Other Uyghur and Kazakh women corroborated Zenz’s findings from local government documents with their personal testimony. (For those who believe that life begins at or near conception, these actions also meet the first possible criterion for genocide.) For adults, the expression of Uyghur culture is enough to result in detention, whether informally in the camps or formally through the prison system. The reasons for detention or disappearance include, but are not limited to, telling others not to sin, attending a traditional funeral, traveling abroad, abstaining from alcohol and cigarettes, public expressions of grief when your parents die, praying, fasting, going to a mosque, speaking your native language in school, having a full beard, or is related to anyone who has done any of the aforementioned things. This destruction of generational bonds extends to attempting to curtail the birth of new Uyghurs. All of these atrocities have a wider political context. China’s policies toward Uyghurs should also be put in the context of the CCP’s oft-repeated goal of achieving “national unification”—one of the three pillars of what Chinese President Xi Jinping calls the “Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation.” China analysts have typically understood “national unification” as referring to the territorial control of Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, and other disputed territories. But Chinese words and policies in practice imply economic, social, and cultural assimilation with Han-dominant parts of China. As part of the campaign against Uyghurs, Uyghur-language education has been large if not entirely eliminated. In 2019, China’s State Council issued a white paper denying Uyghurs’ Turkic roots, claiming them instead as part of the Chinese nation. Even as China detains Uyghur religious leaders, forces Uyghurs to violate Islamic social mores, and destroys their holy sites, Beijing claims to be protecting Muslims’ right to their beliefs. All of this has been done in the name of joining the Uyghurs to the party’s version of Chinese modernity. China’s actions very clearly meet four out of five conditions of genocide—and remember, they only need to meet one. And while no evidence has emerged of mass killing yet, the conditions that would enable it are very clearly being created. Jewish groups are increasingly speaking up about Chinese policies in part because they recognize the cruelty that marks China’s dehumanization of the Uyghurs. Dehumanization to exclude victims from the moral community is a necessary precursor to widespread cruelty, as David Livingstone Smith, author of Less than Human: Why We Demean, Enslave, and Exterminate Others, observed. This is because it’s difficult psychologically to kill another human being or inflict atrocities on them. The Chinese guards at the camps reportedly are exhibiting the signs of this psychological toll. In the New Yorker’s account of one woman’s journey through the camps, Chinese guards at one point changed behavior, becoming erratic, irrationally cruel, and unstable—all signs of trauma for what they are being ordered to do. Just as Adolf Hitler and the Nazis called Jews “rats,” “subhuman,” and “a virus,” Xi has called Uyghurs a “virus.” The world’s interdependence with China makes it complicit in these crimes. They are not being cruel through inattention alone but through their economic activity and household purchases that reward China’s forced labor programs built on the backs of concentration camps and the destruction of Uyghur families. China’s recent push to punish companies that refuse to use Xinjiang cotton shows Beijing demands complicity as a cost of engaging with them. Regardless of whether officials call it genocide or merely crimes against humanity, China’s policies demand a response commensurate to the scale of the atrocities happening at this very moment. And the world has to acknowledge these atrocities are exactly what the CCP intends. Peter Mattis is former deputy staff director of the Congressional-Executive Commission on China. Access the full article here. Foreign Policy © 2021

New York Times April 10, 2020 By Julie Turkewitz and Isayen Herrera Photographs by Meridith Kohut CARACAS, Venezuela — The labor pains began in her village, in the dark. Her baby was coming, and Milagros Vásquez, 20, needed help. With a minidress stretched over her swollen and increasingly stressed body, Ms. Vásquez braved a motorbike journey across three rivers and gripped her belly through two jolting bus rides. But arriving at the first hospital was just the beginning. Over the course of 40 hours, Ms. Vásquez, a former high school athletic star, visited a second hospital, a third, a fourth. We have no sterile tools, they told her at once. No incubator, they said at another. She took another bus. She slept on a bench. She cried in the street, losing count of the number of doctors who had placed their hands inside her, measuring her body’s dilation, only to tell her to leave. She tried the fifth hospital. We can’t help you, they said. Finally, in Caracas, the capital, she stood outside the largest maternity ward in the country and sent up a last, desperate plea. “Please God,” Ms. Vásquez prayed, “please don’t let me die.” Venezuela’s public health system, once the best in Latin America, has been in a state of progressive collapse for years, crippled by a broken economy overseen by an increasingly authoritarian government. But few parts of that system have been as damaged as its maternity wards, where the most critical birthing tools — vital sign monitors, ventilators, sanitation systems — have broken down or just disappeared, sometimes forcing doctors to turn women away. About half of the country’s physicians, some 30,000 people, have left in recent years, many of them desperate to save their own families, according to the Venezuelan Medical Federation. The true impact of this on mothers and babies is unknown. The most recent data come from 2016, when maternal deaths shot up by 65 percent and infant mortality rose by 30 percent in a single year. The minister who published that information was promptly fired — and new statistics have been treated as a state secret since. To understand what it is like to give birth in this shattered system, we followed pregnant women to six hospitals in Venezuela, and one across the border in Colombia, as they sought to deliver. To give birth in Venezuela today is to risk death — for both the woman and her child. Ms. Vásquez was once a high school handball player so celebrated for her strength and skill that she traveled to Latin America representing Venezuela. But one day this January, on the doorstep of a towering Caracas hospital, Concepción Palacios, she crumpled, sobbing, her arms around the waist of her mother, Cristina, who pounded on the door, begging for her daughter to be admitted. Ms. Vásquez fainted. But then the door opened, and about 48 hours after her labor pains began, she gave birth to baby Cristal. But her infant, born premature and tiny at just 3.3 pounds, didn’t make it past morning. Days later, Ms. Vásquez pulled a white baby blanket from the pocket of her sweatshirt, one of her only memories of her daughter. Hospital officials had declined to give her a death certificate, and with no money for a burial, she had to leave Cristal’s body in the morgue. “Here,” she said, “a woman is treated like a dog.” For many Venezuelan women today, the defining feature of childbirth is the ruleta, or roulette: The grueling process of traveling from hospital to hospital, trying to find one that is equipped to help them. They sometimes hitchhike, or walk for miles, or take buses over roads whose ruts and bumps seem designed just to torture them. In rare cases, they are rejected over and over until finally giving birth in the street, on a hospital’s steps — or in its lobby. “I threw myself on the ground,” said Evaró Chacín, 32, who said her daughter was born on the lobby floor at Hospital Noriega Trigo in Maracaibo after staff there told her they couldn’t take her. “It was my husband who had to help me.” In some instances, women die. Darwin Maiquetía, 37, lost his wife, Kenny Chirinos, on Jan. 20, after she developed an infection following a cesarean section in a military hospital. For years, hospitals have struggled to acquire disinfectant. “The level of anger I have is not normal,” said Mr. Maiquetía, cradling his newborn daughter, Alena, one afternoon. He chose a military hospital, he said, because he thought that in an increasingly militarized country, it would be safe. Ms. Chirinos, an avid outdoorswoman who often went rappelling on the outskirts of Caracas with her husband, was the love of his life, he said. “They’re destroying families,” he said, “destroying lives.” In other cases, families lose their children. “All the clinics said the same: We don’t have what’s necessary to care for your baby,” said Aydimar Alvarado, 26, who traveled to 12 hospitals before giving birth to a little boy, Kahel, in December. Born with a mop of dark hair that nurses smoothed into a mohawk, making him look like a miniature rock star, Kahel died 10 days later. His death certificate cited prematurity, bleeding around the brain and other factors. One doctor we consulted said the conditions might have been prevented or addressed had his mother’s care not been delayed by the roulette. In his many televised speeches, the country’s president, Nicolás Maduro, has characterized the country’s health system as facing challenges but generally doing well. As recently as March, he encouraged women to “give birth, give birth,” saying that every woman “should have six children” for the good of the country. He has attributed the country’s medical supply shortage to sanctions, which President Trump has imposed to try to push Mr. Maduro out. Analysts and critics claim this assertion has only some weight. Sanctions have sometimes delayed the delivery of essentials, but the government could go through aid organizations to get what it needs, said Feliciano Reyna, founder of the Venezuelan nonprofit Action for Solidarity. One economist, Asdrúbal Oliveros, said Mr. Maduro had simply chosen to prioritize the import of oil and food over medicine, making the calculation that pregnant women and sick people don’t protest — but that hungry people do. The heads of the country’s women’s ministry and health ministry did not respond to requests for interviews. Nor did the directors at several major hospitals. After years of denying the country was in crisis, Mr. Maduro opened the door last year to humanitarian aid, and groups like the Red Cross and UNICEF began to bring in hundreds of tons of goods, including lifesaving antibiotics. But the effect has at best-been palliative, in part because donations are scarce. “We put out a call for help,” said Luis Farias, of the Red Cross in Venezuela, “and it didn’t get the backing that we had hoped.” Critically, the dearth of medical supplies is colliding with the growing needs of Venezuelan women. Years into the country’s recession, a growing number of expectant mothers are grappling with crisis-related problems — like malnutrition — that heighten the risk of a complicated birth and the need for expert help. The obstetricians and pediatricians who remain have found it nearly impossible to do their work. Inside the delivery room at the public hospital in the city of La Victoria, Nataly Smith, 21, climbed onto a metal birthing bed one night, shaking and alone. She wore pink lipstick and had her hair in a ponytail. Blood pooled on the floor below her. A list of missing items hung on a nearby wall: soap, gauze, trash bags. Worms had invaded the hospital’s vinyl recliners, so the beds had been banished to a nearby room. “I’m scared,” Ms. Smith whispered. At her feet was Dr. Beatriz Ticona, 52, chief of the ward, in purple glasses and colorful scrubs. Dozens of her doctors had quit, she said, aghast at the conditions or desperate for higher pay. Most doctors at public hospitals make less than $10 a month, a salary that is impossible to live on. Dr. Ticona has four pediatricians to help her. She needs 18, she said. She has two respirators for babies in need and no intensive care unit. There is one grimy bathroom for the entire maternity ward. Critically, the blood bank is often empty. That night, Ms. Smith gave birth to a healthy girl, Cristangely. But not all patients are as lucky. And when a patient dies, families sometimes come looking for someone to blame. “To find yourself in that situation where they accuse you of being an assassin,” Dr. Ticona said, “is not easy.” About three years ago, Dr. Ticona had a breakdown and had to leave the job for months. She came back out of a sense of duty. But she wondered how long she could hang on. “It gets to a point,” she said one night, “where there is so much need that you collapse.” Increasingly, pregnant women are giving up on Venezuela altogether and making the journey to neighboring Colombia, where the government has promised to pay for their health care. These women, some of whom have watched their sisters and neighbors die in childbirth back home, are a growing part of Venezuela’s exodus. Five years ago, at Hospital San José in Maicao, Colombia, just minutes from the border, doctors delivered about 70 Venezuelan children. Last year, they delivered more than 2,700. The influx has pushed the hospital to its financial limits, said Dr. Guillermo Villamil, an administrator. So far, the Colombian government has repaid the hospital less than a third of the $8 million that it has cost to help Venezuelan patients, he said, adding that he was committed to helping until the money ran out. (The office of the Colombian president, Iván Duque, said it was assessing hospital costs and how much is owed.) Though official border crossings have been closed to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, pregnant women keep arriving, often traveling over dangerous, informal paths known as trochas. One day in January, a hospital cot went racing through the maternity ward of the Hospital San José. In the bed was Neryelín González, 25, who had abandoned her university studies in chemistry in Venezuela and crossed the border into Colombia 10 days before, on one of those illegal paths, in search of a safe place to give birth. In the delivery room, she gave birth on a cushioned recliner covered in sanitary plastic. A clean crib waited for her baby. Two doctors and three nurses coached her through the process. “Push,” said Dr. Said Acuña. “Breathe.” Her little boy, Jhonei, was born healthy, at 6.7 pounds. “Oh my God,” she said, as doctors held him up, her anguished face twisting into a smile. “He’s out!” Later, hospital aides moved her to a clean room with air-conditioning and a shower. She changed into a white dress she had brought along. Soon, nurses entered with her baby boy and a plate of hot food. She had done it, she said. The journey had been worth it. Her child was safe, she added. And she was never going back. Sheyla Urdaneta contributed reporting from Maicao, Colombia. Julie Turkewitz is the Andes bureau chief, covering Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Guyana. Before moving to South America, she was a national correspondent covering the American West. @julieturkewitz A version of this article appears in print on April 11, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Please Don’t Let Me Die’: The Perils of Giving Birth in Venezuela . The New York Times Company © 2021

The New York Times April 15, 2021 The Biden administration is close to completing a review of Trump-era weapons sales to the two Gulf Arab states. Democrats in Congress oppose the deals. WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to suspend the sale of many offensive weapons to Saudi Arabia approved under the Trump administration, but it will allow the sale of other matériel that can be construed to have a defensive purpose, U.S. officials said on Wednesday. The plan, which was briefed to Congress last week, is part of an administration review of billions of dollars in arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that the White House announced soon after President Biden’s inauguration. The original sales were met with strong opposition last year from Democrats in Congress, who are angry over the countries’ involvement in the war in Yemen and wary of the transfer of advanced military technology to authoritarian Middle Eastern states with ties to China. The Biden administration will approve $23 billion in weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates, according to a State Department spokesman, including F-35 fighter jets and armed Reaper drones. Biden administration officials signaled at the time of the review that those arms, sold to the Emirates soon after it had signed a diplomatic agreement with Israel brokered by the Trump administration, were likely to be approved. The fate of President Donald J. Trump’s arms sales to Saudi Arabia had been less clear. Mr. Biden, who has said that he wants to reset Washington’s relationship with Riyadh, announced in February that he would end “all American support for offensive operations in the war in Yemen, including relevant arms sales,” but the White House did not provide further details. Since then, U.S. officials have debated which weapons sold under the Trump administration might plausibly be used for Saudi Arabia’s self-defense, including ones from missile and drone attacks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, whom the Saudis have been fighting in Yemen. Even as Biden administration officials have criticized Saudi Arabia and its crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, they have repeatedly pledged to help the Saudis defend themselves. After the review, the Biden administration plans to suspend the sale of air-to-ground offensive weapons used by fixed-wing aircraft — mainly fighter jets and drones — to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said. This includes systems that can turn regular bombs into precision-guided munitions. The suspension is aimed at addressing one of the main concerns in the Yemen war: the killings of civilians, including many children, because of the use of such bombs by the Saudi-led coalition. Raytheon Company, the biggest supplier of the bombs, lobbied the Trump administration to continue the sales, despite a growing outcry from humanitarian groups, members of Congress, and some in the State Department. The suspension does not cover sales of any other kinds of weapons to Saudi Arabia, U.S. officials said. Weapons used by helicopters would still be permitted, as well as ground-to-ground munitions and small arms. Electronics equipment, including jamming technology, would also be permitted. The Saudi military receives almost all its weapons from the United States. “You can’t cut off everything while your partner is taking daily attacks from an adversary when you’ve made public statements about being committed to their security,” said Kirsten Fontenrose, a director at the Atlantic Council who served as the National Security Council’s director for the Persian Gulf region in the Trump White House. The review does not recommend suspending any weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates. That fact emerged on Monday after the Justice Department formally notified lawyers about the decision, which officials say was made this year as part of a lawsuit opposing the agreement brought by the nonprofit New York Center for Foreign Policy Affairs. The Emirates played a big role in the Yemen war but stepped back recently. As part of negotiations last year to try to persuade the Emirates to normalize relations with Israel, the Trump administration told Emirati officials that it would accelerate approval of sales of F-35 fighter jets and drones. U.S. officials said on Wednesday that Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken received the report this week from other offices in the State Department and that he was expected to approve it. The report would then go to the National Security Council for final approval. “I and many other House members remain concerned about the proposed sale of $23 billion in arms to the U.A.E.,” said Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York and the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He said he had “many questions about any decision by the Biden administration to go forward with the Trump administration’s proposed transfers” of the fighter jets, drones and munitions to the Emirates. Israeli officials and some members of Congress have expressed concerns that the sales of F-35s would weaken what they called Israel’s “qualitative military edge” over other countries in the region, and that Congress requires presidential administrations to maintain it as a matter of law. Israel is currently the only country in the region with F-35s. Other U.S. officials have been concerned about selling the F-35, one of the military’s most advanced pieces of hardware, to the United Arab Emirates when it is developing a closer relationship with China, which is notorious for technological espionage. American officials are worried about the radar and stealth abilities of F-35s and some drone technology, among other things. Ms. Fontenrose added that some officials had additional concerns that the Emirates might employ American-made weapons, including Reaper drones, in the Libyan civil war, where it has intervened. She said the Emirates had provided the Trump administration with “assurances” on that front. The State Department official, who requested anonymity to discuss policies that had not been officially announced, noted that it would take years to complete the Emirati arms deal and that during that period the administration would ensure that the country was living up to obligations, such as to protect American technology and to ensure that U.S. arms were not used in contexts that violate human rights and the laws of conflict. Mr. Meeks echoed that point. “Fortunately, none of these transfers would occur anytime soon,” he said, “so there will be ample time for Congress to review whether these transfers should go forward and what restrictions and conditions would be imposed.” Mr. Trump’s deal with the Emirates was approved soon after it had agreed to join the Abraham Accords, which normalized its diplomatic relations with Israel for the first time. Some Democrats complained that the arms sales appeared to have been an inappropriate inducement for the Emirates to agree to the accords, which largely formalized a relationship that had grown steadily friendlier for many years. “I still don’t believe it’s in our interest to fuel a spiraling arms race in the Middle East,” said Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut and a leading critic in Congress of the arms sales and of U.S. ties to Gulf Arab states. “I have requested a briefing from the administration regarding the status of the review of both the U.A.E. and Saudi sales.” Michael Crowley is a diplomatic correspondent in the Washington bureau. He joined The Times in 2019 and was a White House correspondent for the last 18 months of the Trump administration. @michaelcrowley Edward Wong is a diplomatic and international correspondent who has reported for The Times for more than 20 years, 13 from Iraq and China. He received a Livingston Award and was on a team of Pulitzer Prize finalists for Iraq War coverage. He has been a Nieman Fellow at Harvard and a Ferris Professor of Journalism at Princeton. @ewong A version of this article appears in print on April 15, 2021, Section A, Page 10 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Is Expected to Approve Some Weapons Sales to U.A.E. and Saudis. The New York Times Company © 2021

Please see the below statement from Refugees International President Eric Schwartz: “Refugees International is deeply concerned about the failure of Myanmar’s neighbors to protect those seeking refuge from the Myanmar military’s February 2021 coup and ongoing attacks on civilians. As the Myanmar displacement crisis grows, governments in South and Southeast Asia must refrain from forced returns and work with the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) to ensure access and assistance to those seeking asylum. The Myanmar military’s horrific actions have led to the deaths of more than 700 civilians and the displacement of tens of thousands in recent weeks. Many of those displaced remain within the country, but thousands have fled into Thailand and hundreds into India. We are alarmed by reports that Thai authorities have forced some 2,000 refugees back into Karen State in Myanmar and that India has detained more than 150 Rohingya refugees who may be forced back into Myanmar as well. In February, Malaysia returned at least 1,000 people from Myanmar despite concerns expressed by UNHCR. Such actions are in violation of the international principle of non-refoulment. Officials in Bangladesh, which is hosting nearly 900,000 Rohingya refugees, continue to push for repatriation despite the fact that those who led the genocidal campaign against the Rohingya are now in charge. Meanwhile, conditions in the Rohingya camps are deteriorating as Bangladesh continues to pursue negative measures including restriction of livelihoods and education opportunities and construction of barbed wire fencing around the camps. Bangladesh has also moved nearly 20,000 refugees to an isolated island despite serious questions about the safety, feasibility, and voluntariness of such moves. Some countries in the region have also continued to push back boats of asylum seekers, refusing them safe disembarkation. A boat that left Bangladesh carrying more than 80 Rohingya refugees in February has been stranded for weeks. The Indian navy and coast guard have provided assistance, but Indian officials refuse to allow the boat to reach the shore. China, meanwhile, has closed its border with Myanmar, citing concerns with the spread of COVID-19. While such concerns justify carefully managed public health measures, they do not justify forcing people back into dangerous situations. Steps can be taken for testing, quarantining, and the provision of health assistance. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), of which Myanmar is a member, is being directly impacted and must play a greater role in pressuring the Myanmar junta and assisting those displaced. ASEAN members should also adhere to previously stated commitments toward a framework for search-and-rescue and safe disembarkation of asylum seekers found at sea. The Myanmar military’s actions are at the center of this growing crisis and increased regional and international coordination will be required to reverse the dangerous path it has taken. In the meantime, countries must hold to their international obligations to assist those who seek refuge.” For more information or to arrange an interview, please contact Refugees International Director of Communications Sarah Sheffer at ssheffer@refugeesinternational.org or +1 202 540 7029. Access the full article here. Refugees International © 2021

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 14, 2021 Washington, DC – The United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) today expressed its alarm and outrage regarding deteriorating religious freedom conditions in Nigeria in the context of increased violence. On this seventh anniversary of Boko Haram’s abduction of 276 schoolgirls from Chibok, the security situation remains dire. “Nigerians have waited too long for the violence to stop,” USCIRF Vice Chair Tony Perkins stated. “Seven years since the outrageous abduction of the Chibok schoolgirls, copycats are still popping up all over, taking inspiration from Boko Haram and other extremist groups. It is the Nigerian people who pay the price – people like Leah Sharibu, who just passed her third year in captivity having been abducted from her school in 2018 and is still held for refusing to abandon her Christian faith.” Religious freedom conditions in Nigeria deteriorated over the past year, with recent and ongoing attacks against Christian communities, Muslim congregations, and houses of worship. In this context, more than 600 students have been abducted from schools in northwest Nigeria since December. These abductions, perpetrated by armed criminal gangs, resemble tactics commonly employed by Boko Haram and other militant Islamist groups in northern Nigeria. Meanwhile, recent intercommunal tensions and organized violence in the south of the country demonstrate the insecurity is spreading. “USCIRF is deeply concerned these violent trends will only exacerbate the challenges Nigerians face in exercising their right to freedom of religion and belief. Many in Nigeria’s government are apathetic and negligent in the face of these egregious acts,” said USCIRF Commissioner Frederick A. Davie. “Nigerian officials at all levels, from the President and federal officials to local governors, police commissioners, and courts need to do more to prevent growing insecurity and hold accountable those who perpetrate violent acts. We urge the U.S. government to leverage the recent decision of the State Department to designate Nigeria a country of particular concern to ensure progress is made on this urgent problem.” In its 2020 Annual Report, USCIRF recommended that the U.S. Department of State-designate Nigeria as a “country of particular concern,” or CPC, and Boko Haram as an “entity of particular concern,” or EPC. USCIRF has also produced recent analyses on religious freedom conditions in Nigeria and violations committed by militant Islamist groups in northern Nigeria. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) is an independent, bipartisan federal government entity established by the U.S. Congress to monitor, analyze, and report on religious freedom abroad. USCIRF makes foreign policy recommendations to the President, the Secretary of State and Congress intended to deter religious persecution and promote freedom of religion or belief. To interview a Commissioner, please contact USCIRF at Media@USCIRF.gov or Danielle Ashbahian at dashbahian@uscirf.gov. Access the full article here. USCIRF © 2021

Country Report: Cambodia February 2021 Left to right: Senate President Say Chhum, President of National Assembly Heng Samrin, and Prime Minister Hun Sen commemorate Cambodia's National Independence Day, in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, November 9, 2019. (Hul Reaksmey/VOA Khmer) The Cambodian Genocide caused the death of two million Cambodians. The targets of the genocide included officials of the former regime, intellectuals, former city dwellers, Cham Muslims, Vietnamese, Buddhist monks, and Christians. The Khmer Rouge communist regime forced Cambodians to work from dawn to dusk on collective farms and infrastructure projects in order to turn Cambodia into an agrarian utopia. Instead, they turned Cambodia into a hell on earth. Over 1.5 million people died from exhaustion, disease, or famine. Another 500,000 Cambodians who were deemed disobedient were murdered in the Khmer Rouge "killing fields." Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch and Director of the Cambodian Genocide Project, was instrumental in creation of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the "Khmer Rouge Tribunal." Finally established in 2006, the tribunal has both Cambodian and UN appointed international prosecutors and judges. It has brought a few top leaders of the Khmer Rouge regime to justice. Three top leaders, Nuon Chea (Brother number 2), Khieu Samphan, and Duch were convicted. Ieng Sary died while on trial, Ieng Thirith was ruled unfit to stand trial, and Pol Pot died before he could be arrested. The Cambodian government has refused to permit any further indictments. Since UN-supervised elections in 1993, the Cambodian People’s Party (CPP) and Prime Minister Hun Sen have dominated the Cambodian government. A crackdown on human rights began in 2017, targeting the media, nongovernmental organizations, and political opponents. Members of the Cambodia National Rescue Party (CNRP), the CPP’s main competitor, have faced harassment, intimidation, and arbitrary detention. Demonstrators peacefully protesting the arrest of opposition leaders have been violently attacked. In 2017, the CNRP was dissolved based on the government's allegation that the party’s leaders were conspiring to overthrow the government. The CNRP was banned from the 2018 elections, and the CPP won every seat in the National Assembly. Cambodia launched an anti-drug campaign in January 2017. Police targeted poor addicts disproportionately. Those sent to drug detention centers face torture. Due to this campaign, the prison population doubled by 2019, leading to severe overcrowding. Prime Minister Hun Sen used the COVID-19 crisis to pass a national emergency law that gives the government unchecked power to suppress freedom of expression, association, and assembly. The law would allow Hun Sen to target his critics by monitoring private communications, censoring independent media outlets, and giving significant fines and prison sentences for vaguely defined criminal offenses. Genocide Watch considers Cambodia to be at Stage 3: Discrimination. The CPP arbitrarily detains opposition activists and has banned the main opposition political party. Cambodia’s anti-drug campaign tortures those sent to drug detention centers. Genocide Watch recommends: · Cambodia should close its drug detention centers and create drug treatment programs. An anti-drug policy that relies on punishment is not only inhumane, but it is also ineffective. · Donor nations should fund creation of a comprehensive drug treatment program for Cambodia. · Donor nations should fund anti-corruption and anti-torture training programs for police. · Cambodia should allow genuinely free elections, including participation by the CNRP. · The U.S. and E.U. should invoke Global Magnitsky sanctions against Cambodian leaders who contribute to violations of human rights. · Donors should generously fund genocide education by the Documentation Center of Cambodia.

The army’s power grab is not only destroying democracy, it may also lead to another onslaught against the Rohingya. The streets of Myanmar are covered in blood – again. On March 3, the military which seized power more than one month ago dropped any pretense about allowing peaceful protests against the coup. In a brutal crackdown, at least 38 people were killed across the country, but the actual death toll is likely to be higher. The shocking scenes brought back painful memories of the military-led repression of protests in Myanmar in 1988 and 2007, as well as military-led violence against ethnic groups like the Rohingya. The bloody scenes must be a wake-up call for the world to act now to support the protesters and ensure a return to a genuinely inclusive democracy. If the Myanmar army’s reign of terror becomes normalized, there is every chance violence will escalate. Since the new military regime seized power on February 1, it has arrested hundreds of opposition activists, abolished the democratically elected parliament, and enacted a slew of new repressive laws. People in Myanmar have responded by organizing a Civil Disobedience Movement (CDM) that has ground much of the country to a halt, as everyone from civil servants to doctors and train drivers has refused to work in protest against the new junta. For us Rohingya, the violence on March 3 echoes the vicious, genocidal military campaign unleashed in Rakhine State in 2017. The army and its proxies killed thousands of people and drove more than 700,000 to flee into Bangladesh. The Myanmar military, or Tatmadaw as it is known, has also committed war crimes and crimes against humanity against other ethnic minorities. Friends and family members I speak to back home in Rakhine State are terrified the coup violence can escalate and reach them as well. If the military feels enough domestic pressure, there is every risk it could try to stir up “patriotic” support for renewed military campaigns against the Rohingya or other minorities. However, there have been glimmers of hope over the past month with the tentative thaw in relations between ethnic groups, united in their hatred of the military. I have been inundated with messages on social media from Bamar people who apologize for spewing hate speech against the Rohingya and say they now understand the Tatmadaw is the common enemy. From the camps in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh, Rohingya refugees have posted their support for protesters. This interethnic solidarity shows what Myanmar could look like if there were no military interference. We cannot forget that during the election in 2020, many people – including the Rohingya – were effectively disenfranchised. But to reverse this process, to build an equitable society where people from all walks of life and ethnic backgrounds enjoy equal rights, we first have to defeat the coup. And for that, we urgently need the world’s support. This year’s coup – and the violence over the past few weeks – is the direct result of the world’s failure to act forcefully against the military in the past, not least after the campaign against the Rohingya in 2017. Many of the commanders identified as responsible then – including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – are now in direct control of the country. It is no exaggeration to say brutality and repression are in the DNA of the Tatmadaw. The international community must take a forceful stance against the coup and push for an immediate return to democracy. Countries must impose targeted sanctions on the military leadership and their associated businesses, along with a global arms embargo. Crucially, efforts to hold the military to account for past abuses must be prioritized. States must add support to the investigations already happening at the International Criminal Court (ICC) and the International Court of Justice, while members of the UN Security Council (UNSC) must finally stop playing politics with people’s lives and support a full referral to the ICC. Only justice can break this cycle of violence. Regional governments must take responsible action as well. For the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), this coup is a litmus test for its ability to play a constructive and democratic role in the region. Indonesia has so far led diplomatic efforts reportedly focused on making sure the Tatmadaw keeps its commitment to hold new elections within a year. While regional engagement is welcome, this is a deeply flawed plan that would essentially legitimize a military coup. ASEAN must instead push the Tatmadaw back into the barracks and facilitate the return of the government that was democratically elected in November last year. China must also stop shielding Myanmar from scrutiny on the world stage and stop threatening to veto action against the military coup at the UNSC. Most importantly, the world must show its unconditional support to those risking their lives and liberty for democracy across Myanmar. The CDM and protesters need to be recognized as legitimate actors and offered the help they need, whether political, economic, or technical. Ultimately, the pressure the military feels from within the country will always be much more effective than anything from the outside. As Rohingya people, we know from heart-breaking experience what being on the receiving end of the Tatmadaw’s wrath means. On March 3, at least 38 more people in Myanmar sacrificed their lives to stand up to a military that craves power above all else. Now, the world must unite and act so that these sacrifices were not in vain. The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance. Al Jazeera © 2021 Access the full article here. Below, Genocide Watch is also publishing the immediate media release of the author of this article Tun Khin, President of Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. BROUK calls for the immediate release of 150 Rohingya refugees detained by police in India As of March 9, 2021, India has detained more than 150 stateless Rohingya refugees in the city of Jammu in Kashmir, India. India is calling this crackdown a “verification exercise” reminiscent of the brutal verification exercises carried out against the Rohingya by successive government regimes in Myanmar. Indian authorities are planning on forcibly sending these detained Rohingya back to Myanmar. “This move by Indian authorities to send stateless victims of genocide back to the perpetrators of that genocide is outrageous and unacceptable,” said Tun Khin, President of BROUK. The international community must urgently act to protect these Rohingya refugees from this violation of their most basic human right, the right to life. India will be returning Rohingya to a situation of extreme danger that could potentially put their lives at risk. Now with the Myanmar coup ongoing, 600,000 Rohingya people in Arakan are facing an ongoing genocide and are incredibly vulnerable to more violence. Because of the decades of dehumanization, we don’t have the protection that comes with widespread public support and protests from the Burmese population. Widespread violence against the Rohingya by the military could occur at any time. “We have seen ongoing genocide against Rohingya in Arakan State,” said Tun Khin. “How 2 can they send these people back to the open prison they will face in Myanmar?” Both the military and civilian government in Myanmar have proven that they are willing to weaponize violence against the Rohingya to generate nationalist political support throughout the country, demonstrating a complete disregard for Rohingya humanity as they are used as political pawns. Now the same thing is happening in India. These threats of deportation are politically motivated as the Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) tries to whip up nationalist sentiment against the Rohingya. The BJP has promised to deport Rohingya if they with the state elections in West Bengal. “The tragedy is that wherever we turn people are exploiting our vulnerability,” said Tun Khin. “The international must stand on our shared principles of human rights, and leverage their influence to stop this senseless endangerment of Rohingya who is only trying to find some safe corner of the world to live.” - We call on India to immediately release these detained refugees and halt any plans for returning them to Myanmar where their lives are at risk. - We call on the international community to immediately put pressure on India to honor its human rights obligations to protect Rohingya refugees. - Rohingya are vulnerable they could be attacked at any time in this climate of instability. We call on the international community to immediately use all of its leverage to protect vulnerable Rohingya in Rakhine State. - We call on ASEAN to immediately act to address the root causes of this regional problem, those being human rights abuses and unending impunity for the military in Burma. For more information, please contact Tun Khin, Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK. Burmese Rohingya Organisation UK © 2021

The Continuing Oppression of Native Americans and Black Americans Since its founding, the United States has systematically oppressed both its Native American and Black American minority populations. White Americans have subjected both groups to genocide. Since 1964 the U.S. has adopted numerous civil rights laws. But cultural practices still discriminate against these minorities, rendering both groups as underrepresented and undervalued members of the American society. After centuries of dehumanization, both Native Americans and African Americans face discrimination and fear for their own safety. They are not allowed equal opportunities to lead dignified lives in the United States. Native Americans Since colonization in the 1600s, the white majority in the United States has systematically oppressed Native Americans through forced assimilation, forced displacement, cultural genocide and mass killings. Between 1492 and 1900, as many as ten million Native Americans died from diseases like smallpox. Thousands more were murdered in genocidal extermination campaigns. At the founding of the United States, there was a tacit acceptance of Native Americans living east of the Mississippi. In 1830, however, President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act, ordering the forced displacement of Native Americans known as the "Trail of Tears," in which 60,000 Native Americans were forced to move to reservations west of the Mississippi and in the process, over 8,000 Native Americans died. State sponsored genocide continued until the end of the 1800's. A striking example was California Governor Peter Burnett's 1851 State of the Union speech in which he said: “a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct.” His words inspired the California genocide that killed at least 9,462 Native Americans in 370 massacres. California towns offered bounties for Indian scalps. In the 20th century, the U.S. forced Native Americans to assimilate through forced removal of their children to "Indian schools" and sterilization. As late as 1950, mandated by laws known as the “Indian Termination Policy”, thousands of Native American children were sent away from their families to attend boarding schools, where they were not allowed to speak their native languages or practice their customs. Under the stated goal to "advance the health" of Native Americans, the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs established the Indian Health Service. Indian Health Service medical professionals sterilized 3,406 Native American women between 1973 and 1976. While the U.S. granted Native Americans citizenship rights in 1924, including the right to vote, there has been little tangible progress to ensure that this minority group is able to exercise the full human rights granted by the US Constitution. State approved high school textbooks in a majority of U.S. states currently deny that a genocide occurred against Native Americans. They label Native American victims of genocidal massacres as casualties of wars between settlers and Indians. They justify the massacres perpetrated by the US Army as defending the "manifest destiny" of whites to possess America. As of 2019, only California, under the leadership of Governor Gavin Newsom, has formally recognized this past state-sponsored genocide against Native Americans. These past acts of genocide have had lasting impacts on Native American communities. As of 2019, there are only 6.7 million Native Americans and 574 Native American tribes, the three largest being Navajo, Cherokee, and Sioux. Native Americans have the highest rates of diabetes, alcoholism, and suicide in the US. The U.S. continues to illegally occupy Native American land in violation of treaties between the US government and Native American groups. The government permits companies to encroach on Native American land for oil, mineral, and access rights, such as the recent construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. The U.S. has systematically committed genocide against Native Americans through mass killings, forced sterilization, and the removal of Native American children from their cultures. Since the of U.S. has not acknowledged this genocide, Genocide Watch asserts that the United States is in Stage 10: Denial. Black Americans From 1619 until 1865, British colonial and U.S. law allowed the enslavement of African Americans. White Americans and Native Americans could own Black Americans as property. Much of the U.S. economy, especially in the southern States, relied on unpaid slave labor. By 1861, when the Civil War broke out, more than 4 million Black Americans were enslaved in the South. White slave-owners subjected Black Americans to whipping, torture, separation of families, rape of women slaves, and unpunished murders. Until 1865, in many states, it was illegal to teach enslaved people to learn how to read and write. In 1865, the U.S. civil war ended in the abolition of slavery and the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, which gave all Black Americans citizenship, provided equal protection for all persons under the law, and guaranteed male Black Americans the right to vote. However white former slave owners fought back against Black citizenship. Southern states passed criminal laws turning many misdemeanors into felonies and removed voting rights and civil rights from felons for life. They imprisoned felons and instituted leasing of prison labor at no wages. They thus reinstituted a new form of slavery. Southern former slave states passed Jim Crow laws requiring racial segregation in all aspects of life. Based on an ideology of white supremacy, the Jim Crow laws were upheld by the US Supreme Court in Plessy v Ferguson on the principle of “separate, but equal.” Jim Crow laws mandated racial segregation of all public spaces, including restaurants, housing, public transport, and schools; prohibited interracial marriage; and barred Black Americans from voting through literacy tests and poll taxes. In the 19th century, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded by pro-slavery confederate veterans. The KKK terrorized, lynched, bombed and murdered Black Americans. From 1882 to 1968, the KKK and white racist mobs lynched at least 3,959 Black Americans. While KKK membership has dwindled since the 1980s due to FBI infiltration and Southern Poverty Law Center lawsuits, since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2016, there has been an alarming 55% spike in far-right white supremacist group memberships. With the Civil Rights movement and passing of Civil Rights Acts, Jim Crow laws and their racist segregationist policies were legally abolished. But even though Black Americans gained legal status, many white Americans still view Black Americans as second-class citizens. Despite progress brought by the Civil Rights movement, Black Americans have disproportionately experienced discrimination and racial profiling, poverty, maternal mortality, lack of health care, unemployment, inferior education, high incarceration rates, and police brutality. Known as the ‘school-to-prison pipeline,’ young black men are punished under zero-tolerance drug possession and three strikes imprisonment laws and convicted of felonies, stripping them of their right to vote and denying them educational resources when compared to their white peers. Black Americans make up 13% of American citizens; yet 34% of incarcerated Americans are Black people. Throughout American history, white police officers have murdered thousands of Black Americans with impunity. In 2013, white police officer George Zimmerman shot and killed Treyvon Martin, an unarmed black teen. He was acquitted of any crime. The acquittal drew the attention of the world to police brutality against Black people. Police murders of Michael Brown, Freddie Gray, and Alton Sterling inspired national protests and resulted in the Black Lives Matter movement. In 2020, after the police murders of George Floyd & Breonna Taylor, and after two white racists hunted down and murdered Ahmaud Arbery, the Black Lives Matter movement resurfaced, with massive nationwide protests calling for reforms of policing and the unequal American judicial system. Since Black Americans continue to experience mass incarceration, are barred from voting through felony convictions, are vilified as criminals by racist political leaders and by the media, are brutalized by racist police, and the history of Black Americans' persecution is denied, Genocide Watch asserts that the United States is in Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization and Stage 10: Denial. Genocide Watch recommends: K-12 education should be required about Native American and African American history and current affairs. The United States government should acknowledge that it is still in violation of its treaties with Native Americans. Affirmative action should continue to support Black and Native American success in academia and the workforce. Police departments should be purged of racist police officers after intensive investigation and vetting under new federal law.

Unsplash/Zinko Hein | People holding a vigil in Yangon, Myanmar. The ongoing repression of protests in Myanmar could spark a “full-blown conflict” on a par with Syria, the United Nations’ top human rights official warned on Tuesday, urging States with influence to take immediate and impactful action to halt the “slaughter” of civilians. “Statements of condemnation, and limited targeted sanctions, are clearly not enough. States with influence need to urgently apply concerted pressure on the military in Myanmar to halt the commission of grave human rights violations and possible crimes against humanity”, Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, said. Her appeal came in the wake of yet another weekend of “coordinated bloodshed” in Myanmar, including the reported killing of at least 82 people in Bago, where, according to credible reports, the country’s military, Tatmadaw, opened fire with rocket-propelled grenades, fragmentation grenades and mortars. “The military seems intent on intensifying its pitiless policy of violence against the people of Myanmar, using military-grade and indiscriminate weaponry”, she said. Security forces also reportedly prevented medical personnel from helping the wounded, as well as charging relatives a “fine” of roughly $90 to claim the bodies of those who were killed, according to the High Commissioner’s Office (OHCHR), which added that some individuals are now resorting to the use of makeshift or primitive weapons in self-defence. Ms. Bachelet also highlighted the need to cut off the supply of arms and finances to the military leadership that aid its commission of serious human rights violations, noting the report of the UN Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, which contains clear recommendations for impactful action in relation to the military. ‘Clear echoes of Syria’ The High Commissioner cautioned that the situation in Myanmar clearly echoes that of Syria in 2011, as it descended into conflict, with the past ten years showing the horrific consequences for millions of civilians. “There too, we saw peaceful protests met with unnecessary and clearly disproportionate force. The State’s brutal, persistent repression of its own people led to some individuals taking up arms, followed by a downward and rapidly expanding spiral of violence all across the country”, she said. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights at the time warned that the failure of the international community to respond with united resolve could be disastrous for Syria and beyond, Ms. Bachelet added. “I fear the situation in Myanmar is heading towards a full-blown conflict. States must not allow the deadly mistakes of the past in Syria and elsewhere to be repeated.” UN Photo/Laura Jarriel | United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet (file). People forced into hiding, Internet cut Over 700 people are reported to have been killed in the crackdown by the security forces since the military overthrew the Government on 1 February. Thousands more have been injured, many of them seriously. At least 3,080 people are currently in detention and there are reports that 23 people have been sentenced to death following secret trials – including four protesters and 19 others who were accused of political and criminal offences – according to OHCHR. The mass arrests have forced hundreds of people to go into hiding, and reports suggest that many journalists, civil society activists, celebrities and other public figures are being sought, many simply because of the dissent they have been expressing on-line, it added. Wireless broadband and mobile data services were also cut indefinitely on 2 April, leaving the vast majority of people without access to vital sources of information and communication. Infrastructure on the ‘brink of collapse’ The UN human rights office also warned that Myanmar’s economy, education and health infrastructure have been brought to the brink of collapse, leaving millions without livelihood, basic services and, increasingly, food security. Thousands of internal migrants have left urban centres for their places of origin, many with little savings to sustain themselves and their families, while COVID-19 control and response measures have effectively been brought to a standstill. In addition, clashes between the military and ethnic armed groups have also intensified in several locations in Kachin, Shan and Kayin states, where the military have been employing airstrikes that have killed and displaced civilians, including several hundred who have sought refuge in neighbouring countries. The High Commissioner called on neighbouring States to give temporary protection to people fleeing the violence, and to refrain from returning people fleeing Myanmar at this time, in accordance with the principle of non-refoulement. She also urged the Myanmar military and neighbouring States to facilitate humanitarian access to populations in need. Copyright © United Nations

An encampment at a "Kill the Bill" protest at College Green, Bristol. (Giulia Spadafora/NurPhoto via Getty Images) In the United Kingdom (UK) since 2010, the government has created a “hostile environment” for illegal immigration. The "Gypsy," Roma and Traveller community, a traditionally nomadic minority, has endured persecution in Europe since the Middle Ages. The Nazis killed 300,000 to 500,000 Roma in the Holocaust, while Sweden subjected Roma to forced sterilization until 1976. Even now, their way of life is under threat in the UK. Since World War II, the UK has passed laws harming Roma and Travellers. Roma and Travellers often face evictions, and their land use applications are often rejected. Following the government’s revision of the definition of “Gypsies” and “Travellers” in 2015, it has been more difficult for those who temporarily stop travelling to retain their eligibility for land use applications. A 2016 law watered down authorities’ obligations to provide encampment sites. An Equality and Human Rights Commission survey showed 44% of people in the UK expressed negative feelings towards Roma and Travellers. A survey in the Traveller Movement's 2017 report found that 91% of participants from the community faced discrimination in education, healthcare, and employment; 77% experienced hate speech or crime; and 76% hid their identity. Their life expectancy is 10 years below the UK average, and their lifestyle makes them more vulnerable to COVID-19. The Police, Crime, Sentencing, and Courts Bill contains anti-protest measures, and it also harms Roma and Travellers by criminalizing trespass and unauthorized encampments. Police have already used violent tactics at protests against the bill. The vaguely-defined bill could result in land bans, fines, jail terms, or vehicle seizures for residing or "intending" to reside on land with a vehicle without consent or causing significant "disruption" or "distress." Such measures could increase homelessness and trigger family separations and even forced adoptions. Given the itinerant lifestyle of Gypsies and Travellers, which was upheld as an "enshrined freedom not to stay in one place" by the Court of Appeal in 2020, the bill appears to be a direct attack on the community’s identity. Only 3% of encampments were unauthorized in 2020, but families that use such camps often have no option, and the number of families concerned may change over time. 84% of police oppose criminalizing unauthorized encampments. 93% propose more site provision instead. The mainstreaming of dehumanization by politicians has fed into policymaking. A Conservative politician was suspended in 2014 for saying Travellers should be “executed”. Others still in office have called them “parasites” and a “disease”. The 2019 Conservative manifesto said criminalizing trespass would “protect our communities.” While there is no evidence of disproportionately high crime rates around Traveller sites, Home Secretary Priti Patel has said nearby communities “should not be living in fear” and referred broadly to “criminality” among Travellers. The 2018 Windrush Scandal collectively traumatized Black people in the UK. The Home Office deported or detained at least 164 residents from the Windrush Generation, which the UK invited from the Caribbean to settle from 1948 to 1971. It never offered them citizenship and then destroyed their landing cards in 2010. At least 11 deportees died, 50,000 people risked deportation, and 5,000 were impacted in some way. Victims faced discrimination or homelessness, including people born in the UK. The Windrush Compensation Scheme has been slow and insufficient. Some survivors have still been denied citizenship. Refugees have also been targeted with harsh policies. Discriminatory migration policies have forced refugees to take dangerous sea-crossings, causing almost 300 deaths since 1999. The UK has dropped a refugee family reunification scheme led by Lord Alf Dubs, who fled Nazi genocide in the Kindertransport mission. This form of family separation is harming children’s welfare. The UK has crammed refugees into military barracks despite their increased risk of contracting COVID-19. The government plans to deny asylum rights to refugees who arrive illegally and send asylum seekers to be processed offshore. In Australia, a similar policy has been held to amount to crimes against humanity. The government-ordered Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities has denied the UK is institutionally racist. However, Genocide Watch considers the UK is at Stage 3: Discrimination, Stage 4: Dehumanization, and Stage 6: Polarization of the Ten Stages of Genocide. The police bill threatens to elevate the UK to Stage 8: Persecution. Genocide Watch recommends: Members of Parliament should remove parts of the bill criminalizing the rights of Gypsies and Travellers. If the bill passes without these changes, it should be challenged in the UK courts for violating Travellers’ rights. The government should provide more encampment sites and form a strategy to tackle anti-Traveller discrimination. The government should compensate and grant citizenship to all Windrush survivors and protect refugee rights.

13 Apr 2021 Radio Free Liberty/Europe Baku showcases a‘ park of trophies’ displaying the helmets of Armenian troops who died in the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict. Armenia on Tuesday accused its historic rival Azerbaijan of fomenting ethnic hatred by displaying helmets of Armenian soldiers killed during the war between the neighbouring countries last year. A decades-long conflict over the disputed Nagorno-Karabakh region erupted into all-out war in September, killing more than 6,000 people. Six weeks of fighting ended in November with Armenia’s defeat. Yerevan ceded swathes of territories to Baku under a Russian-backed ceasefire, which was seen in Armenia as a national humiliation. On Monday, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev visited a “park of trophies” showcasing military equipment seized from Armenian troops during the war. “Everyone who visits the park of military trophies will see the strength of our army, will see our willpower, and how hard it was to achieve victory,” Aliyev said in a video address published on his website. Hundreds of helmets of Armenian soldiers killed in the war were displayed in the park in central Baku as well as wax mannequins of Armenian troops. The park, due to be opened to the public shortly, sparked uproar in Armenia, with the country’s foreign ministry accusing Azerbaijan of “publicly degrading the memory of the victims of the war, missing persons and prisoners of war, and violating the rights and dignity of their families.” “Azerbaijan is finally consolidating its position as a global centre of intolerance and xenophobia,” the ministry said in a statement. Armenian ombudsman Arman Tatoyan said the park was “proof of genocidal policy” that “clearly confirms institutional hatred towards Armenians in Azerbaijan”. This sentiment was shared by most people in the Armenian capital Yerevan, where mass anti-government protests have been held regularly against Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan’s decision to agree to the humiliating truce, leading him to call snap polls in June. “This is true fascism,” 41-year-old historian Mher Barsegyan told the AFP news agency. The park “recalls evidence of Hitler’s barbarism that is exhibited in museums around the world”, he said. Ethnic Armenians declared independence for Nagorno-Karabakh and seized control of the region in a brutal war in the 1990s that left tens of thousands dead and forced hundreds of thousands from their homes. Azerbaijan and Armenia have traded accusations of war crimes after the conflict – which had been largely dormant for decades – re-ignited in September. Link to Original Article Radio Free Liberty © 2021