Amnesty International 24 February 2021, 13:40 UTC The Pakistani authorities must immediately and unconditionally release a husband and wife facing death sentences after being convicted of sending ‘blasphemous’ text messages, said Amnesty International, ahead of an appeal hearing in the case at the Lahore High Court today. Shagufta Kausar and Shafqat Emmanuel, who are Christians, have been in prison since 2013 and were convicted and sentenced to death in April 2014 by a Trial Court in Toba Tek Singh. The couple face execution for sending ‘blasphemous’ texts to a mosque cleric insulting the Prophet Mohammad, from a phone containing a sim registered in Shagufta's name. Both deny the allegations and believe that the sim was obtained by someone using a copy of her National Identity Card. “The mandatory death sentences for Shagufta Kausar and Shafqat Emmanuel are emblematic of the dangers faced by the country’s religious minorities as long as the blasphemy laws remain in place. They have been in prison for the better part of eight years waiting for their appeal hearing, when they should not be in jail in the first place. We call for their immediate and unconditional release,” said Samira Hamidi, Amnesty International’s Deputy Regional Director for South Asia. “The Government of Pakistan must urgently repeal its blasphemy laws that have been flagrantly abused and caused an immeasurable amount of harm.” Pakistan’s blasphemy laws are incompatible with international human rights laws, overly broad, vague and coercive. They have been used to target religious minorities, pursue personal vendettas, and carry out vigilante violence. Judges, fearing reprisals if they do not deliver the harshest sentences, often fear for their lives when adjudicating blasphemy cases. The couple’s appeal was due to be heard in April 2020 but was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic. At their last hearing, on 15 February 2021, the judges left the court as they were due to hear the appeal. Background There has been an alarming uptick in “blasphemy” accusations in Pakistan over the last year, with accusations brought against artists, human rights defenders and journalists. Amnesty International is calling for the full repeal of Pakistan’s blasphemy laws. Of further concern is the automatic and mandatory imposition of the death penalty, prohibited under international human rights law and standards. The mandatory death penalty does not allow judges the possibility of taking into account the personal circumstances of the defendant or the circumstances of the particular offence; and the use of this punishment for crimes that do not meet the "most serious crimes" threshold, meaning intentional killing. For more information about the law on blasphemy in Pakistan, see here. © 2021 Amnesty International

ABUJA, NIGERIA - Gunmen killed 36 people in two attacks in northern Nigeria on Wednesday, a day after insurgents fired rocket-propelled grenades amid worsening security facing Africa's most populous nation, officials and residents said. The series of attacks by armed bandits occurred over the past 48 hours with 18 people killed each in villages of Kaduna and Katsina states and several others injured. The assailants burned down houses, displacing the villagers. Hundreds of people have been killed in northern Nigeria by criminal gangs carrying out robberies and kidnappings. Such attacks have added to security challenges in Nigeria, which is struggling to contain Islamist insurgencies in the northeast and communal violence over grazing rights in central states. The latest attack came less than a month after President Muhammadu Buhari replaced his long-standing military chiefs amid worsening violence, with the armed forces fighting to reclaim other northeastern towns overrun by insurgents. Last week, unidentified gunmen killed a student in an attack on a boarding school in Nigeria's north-central Niger state and kidnapped 42 people, including 27 students. © VOA 2021

Stunning Admission Highlights Need for UN Inquiry Philippines opposition Senator Leila de Lima, second right, shows the printout of her cast ballot for the country's midterm elections on May 13, 2019 in Paranaque, southeast of Manila, Philippines. De Lima, who has been in police detention since February 2017 on alleged drug charges, was given a 2-hour furlough to vote.© 2019 AP Photo/Bullit Marquez (Geneva) – The Philippine Department of Justice admitted police culpability in thousands of “drug war” killings, Human Rights Watch said today. The surprising admission provides further reason for the United Nations Human Rights Council, meeting in Geneva, to investigate President Rodrigo Duterte’s abusive anti-drug campaign. In a speech before the Human Rights Council on February 24, 2021, Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra disclosed the initial findings of a departmental review into the deaths of drug suspects during anti-drug operations in the Philippines. He said that in many cases, police made no effort to examine recovered weapons, verify ownership, or conduct ballistic examinations. In most of the cases the Department of Justice reviewed, police failed to follow standard protocols in the coordination of drug raids and in the processing of crime scenes. His statement seriously undermines the usual government claim that drug suspects were killed because they fought back, Human Rights Watch said. “The justice secretary’s astounding disclosure is the first time the Duterte administration has admitted many police are to blame for ‘drug war’ deaths,” said John Fisher, Geneva director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Human Rights Council should recognize this admission as reason enough to create an independent, international commission of inquiry.” The Philippine police have killed thousands of mostly urban poor men since the “war on drugs” started after Duterte took office in June 2016. Thousands more have been murdered by unidentified assailants that Human Rights Watch research has linked to the police or other authorities. Domestic and international human rights groups have called on the Human Rights Council to undertake an independent international investigation into the killings, while the International Criminal Court continues its preliminary examination into alleged crimes against humanity. In justifying the police killings of drug suspects, the Philippine government has repeatedly claimed that drug suspects “fought back.” But research by Human Rights Watch and others have shown that this claim frequently had no basis and that, in fact, police routinely planted evidence, such as weapons and drugs on the bodies of victims, to justify their killing. The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, in its June 2020 report, found that many of the guns recovered at the crime scene often had the same serial numbers, suggesting that these weapons were recycled. During the Human Rights Council session in October, the government committed to take certain steps to address concerns raised over the “drug war,” offering to review some police killings. Guevarra, in his February 24 speech, said the Department of Justice referred its findings to the police, which, he said, promised to take action. Allowing the police to investigate the Justice Department’s findings is unrealistic and may even frustrate efforts to seek justice, Human Rights Watch said. Since international scrutiny of the “drug war” began, the Philippine government, particularly the police, has refused to cooperate with investigations conducted by the national Commission on Human Rights. The Office of the Solicitor General, the government’s lawyer, has actively tried to undermine the investigations. The police’s own Internal Affairs Service has had a lackluster record in investigating police complicity in crimes while other government agencies, such as the Office of the Ombudsman, have also failed to take action. Only a handful of cases out of thousands reported are being investigated, while just one case in which police officers were implicated has resulted in a court conviction. “The justice secretary tried to show that their findings are proof of what he called ‘functioning accountability mechanisms,’” Fisher said. “Concerned governments should not be fooled by this unconvincing attempt to head off a Human Rights Council investigation. If the Philippine government now admits that its previous denials of police misconduct were false, what else are they hiding? This only makes an international inquiry by the UN even more imperative.” © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Credit: Express Tribune Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President of Genocide Watch, discusses how Modi’s India is treading a dangerous path towards mass persecution The Express-Tribune (Karachi, Pakistan) February 21, 2021 By Hammad Sarfraz When the history of genocide is finally written, it often seems like it manifested out of thin air. Like the concept of temporary insanity in all but settled criminal cases, popular imagination conjures up images of fleeting madness on a national scale. But genocide, like all developments in history, is a gradual process. Its foundations are laid brick by brick by generations of ideologues until the divide between ‘us and them’ reaches fever pitch. Hidden by the sands of time are the tales of the politics of division, and of mass deception and denial across generations that cultivate the atmosphere for reprehensible atrocities. In 1996, on the heels of genocide in Rwanda and Bosnia, the founder and president of the non-governmental organisation, Genocide Watch, Dr Gregory H Stanton outlined the ‘eight stages of genocide’ in a briefing paper he authored. “Genocide is a process that develops in eight stages that are predictable, but not inexorable,” he wrote at the time. “It is not a linear process, but logically the later stages must be preceded by the earlier stages. Logically prior stages continue to operate,” he elaborated. But much more importantly, he stressed that “at each stage, preventive measures can stop it.” By 2012, Dr Stanton revised the model by identifying two more stages in the process. The new 10-stage framework now reads as follows: Classification, Symbolisation, Discrimination, Dehumanisation, Organisation, Polarisation, Preparation, Persecution, Extermination and Denial. In the first, communities are divided along lines of ‘us and them’, with any respect stripped from the differences that supposedly characterise the latter. In the second, the ‘other’ is crystallised through the use of symbols and labels. In the third stage, Discrimination, the dominant group uses laws, customs and political powers to deny other groups’ their rights. The fourth, Dehumanisation, sees the dominant community equate other groups to vermin, animals, insects or diseases. The fifth stage sees the state organise hatred and violence towards non-dominant groups using means like mobs, militias or even, special military or paramilitary units. The sixth sees propaganda reach fever pitch, with ideologues intimidating moderates into silence or support. The seventh lays the groundwork for genocide, as leaders from the dominant group plan a ‘final solution’ to the ‘question’ of a targeted group. In the eighth, victims are identified on ethno-religious grounds and the targeted group is confined to ghettos or concentration camps, where it may be deliberately deprived of resources. The ninth stage sees the actual mass killing of members of a targeted group. Finally, the tenth stage sees the perpetrators of genocide and members the dominant group deny the crime ever took place. Unless driven from power by force and brought before a tribunal, the perpetrators may then live in impunity. It is important to note that these 10 stages are not linear and can often overlap and occur simultaneously. The Express Tribune earlier spoke to Dr Stanton regarding the Narendra Modi regime’s systemic heavy-handed treatment of the people of Kashmir (Indian Illegally Occupied Jammu and Kashmir (IIOJK). At the time, the American scholar issued a stark warning: ““We believe that the Indian government’s actions in Kashmir have been an extreme case of persecution and could very well lead to genocide.” Dr Stanton stressed that at present the valley is suffering from a ‘pre-genocidal’ situation and that many of the early stages of the genocide model could very clearly be identified. What follows is a transcript of the complete conversation The Express Tribune had with Dr Stanton in which he articulated his apprehensions for both the people of IIOJK and Muslims in India along with why he thinks the concept of a ‘global community’ is a myth when it comes to state-sponsored atrocities. ET: How would you describe the current situation in IIOJK? What stage would you assign to the region? GS: We believe Kashmir right now is at stage eight, which is persecution. It hasn’t quite reached the level of genocide, but certainly, it is at stage eight. Kashmir was supposed to be autonomous under Article 370 of the [Indian] Constitution and Prime Minister Modi suspended it. In addition to that, Modi and the Indian government arrested a lot of the local leaders and many are still in jail. The state is under lockdown. The Internet was cut off. It was subjected to a curfew so draconian that one couldn’t even go out. In short it became a police state. We believe that the Indian government’s actions in Kashmir have been an extreme case of persecution and could very well lead to genocide. We have documented proof that at least 50,000 people have died since 1989. You could say that is already genocide. Article 2B of the Genocide Convention prohibits serious mental and bodily harm upon the members of a group and Article 2C that deals with imposing conditions of life on members of a group that are calculated to bring about the destruction of that group. You can say that some of the conditions of life imposed on Kashmiri Muslims have reached that level. It hasn’t reached the level of Rwanda or Cambodia, and some of the other classic genocide cases. So, we call it persecution. But our model is a process model. We don’t treat genocide as an event. The so-called early stages are already present in Kashmir. Very clearly Muslims are being classified versus Hindus. The dehumanisation stage has also been present and the Modi government has been calling Muslims parasites, terrorists and a lot of other names for some time now. It is also clearly organised. You have the whole Indian army up there in Kashmir – 600,000 troops for a small area – which is absurd. The next stage, which is polarisation, is also very clear. Kashmiri Muslims have been treated as the other. Then we have the preparation stage and the Indian government and the army have plans to crush a possible uprising in Kashmir. So many of the early stages of genocide are already present. We don’t wait until it is a full out mass killing campaign. We stress that there are early warning signs of genocide now and that’s what we believe is the situation in Kashmir. ET: What does a regime achieve by the intentional destruction of a group? What is the Indian government trying to achieve in the case of IIOJK by targeting an indigenous ethnic group? GS: They achieve the annihilation of the opposition. If there is an ethnic group that is opposed to the government, they see wiping them out as one way to deal with the problem. The group that is targeted is often persecuted for mythical or fictional reasons made up by the regime targeting it. Jews, for instance, were not a threat to Germany. Many Jews in Germany identified themselves as Germans and fought for Germany in World War I. It was Hitler who came up with the idea that they were a threat. Hitler was a paranoid sociopath. He was a narcissist and mentally ill person who in some ways is very similar to someone we recently defeated as president. This aspect, where a leader tells a big lie again and again – that a small group is a threat – can work to draw in popular support. Unfortunately, that is the case in India, where Muslims are portrayed as the enemy of the nation, which is nonsense. It is a fiction made up by the Bharatiya Janata Party that Muslims are traitors somehow. [As for Kashmir], by the intentional destruction of Kashmiri Muslims, the Indian government is trying to cement into place India's ownership of the valley. I would largely blame Narendra Modi and the BJP for the situation in Kashmir right now. It’s not just him alone; he has a whole group of BJP leaders who are in some cases even more extreme than he is. The Indian home minister for instance. Modi and the BJP have used the anti-Muslim rhetoric to marshal political support for themselves, just the way Donald Trump did. So, they’re the ones to be blamed for it. They passed the Citizenship Amendment Act in India, which is clearly anti-Muslim. When they pass such exclusionary legislation, world leaders should raise hell about it. ET: What’s next for the people of IIOJK? GS: I wish I had the answer. I don’t know what’s next for them. It’s been one of those issues that has been there since 1948. And if it has been there for so long, you wonder how long it will take to resolve such a crisis. One thing I would hope for would be a realisation that the situation in Kashmir needs to be resolved without name calling back and forth. In other words, with real diplomacy. I actually think that Pakistan currently has a leader who is capable of that. I don’t think India does. So right now, I don’t think that diplomacy is likely to happen. One thing I’ve learned over many years of work is that violent revolutions won’t work. They always make human rights worse. ET: What are your fears for the Muslims of India? At present, the Indian regime has been using politics of ‘us versus them’ very effectively. Is that a purely ‘Hindu versus Muslim’ issue? GS: My fears are that if Modi continues to use this kind of exclusionary language and passes more exclusionary laws then Muslims are going to be more and more discriminated against and persecuted. Not just in Kashmir and Assam, but in other parts of India. I am very worried. A lot of people think Hitler's Nazis must have been a small minority. That’s wrong, as Hitler was eventually supported by a majority of Germans. People should never forget that. By the time he was finished with the total reorganisation of German society, his support was very close to unanimous and you couldn’t even express opposition. It takes hundreds of thousands of people to carry out genocide. If Modi is able to whip India into a froth of hatred, it is possible and I really do fear for the Muslims in the country. There is also persecution of Christians and all other minorities in India as well. Let’s face it. Hinduism is a caste-based religion. So, these kinds of exclusionary laws are very harmful for lower caste Hindus as well who are already treated as pariahs. ET: The exclusionary tactics of the Hindutva campaign have Modi’s full support. What will it take to stop that campaign? Have you had a chance to speak with the Indian leadership? GS: I don’t have much hope for Modi because he has advocated this doctrine throughout his political career. At least 2,000 Muslims were killed during anti-Muslim riots when he was chief minister of Gujarat. There is evidence that Modi instructed the police to stand down and not stop these riots. There was a commission that concluded he was actually complicit. He was so stunned that he handpicked another commission that then cleared him. Modi’s support for Hindutva has been very successful for him as he went on to become Prime Minister of India. So I don’t have much hope of converting him. But his support is waning, particularly among young people in India. Increasingly we are seeing in India that the young people who are the engine of progress are not buying into this religious sectarianism. As for me personally, I haven’t had a chance to communicate with the present Indian leadership. I lived in India in 1978 and 1979. I was affiliated with the Indian Law Institute. ET: What are the long-term consequences of Modi’s policies? GS: They are disastrous if they are followed out. His policies of divisionism are going to continue to fracture Indian society. When you have a divided society where one group hates the other, a nation becomes unproductive and it’s riven by hatred and animosity that should not even exist. It is very harmful for India’s political and economic future. I hope there are opponents of such policies who will throw Modi out of power. ET: Why is the international community not discussing Kashmir actively? How would you rate the response of Western democracies and what will it take to attract the attention of the global leadership? GS: The response has been very weak. I worked at the US Department of State under former president Bill Clinton and I saw how weak our foreign policy is on genocide. I served during the Rwandan genocide and our lawyers wouldn’t even call it genocide, saying the US might have to do something to stop it if they did. That’s actually in a cable I read. We had this indifference towards that genocide. Susan Rice who later became the national security adviser was one of the four people in the Peacekeeping Core Group who recommended that all UN troops be withdrawn from Rwanda. We voted to do that. The US response to the Rwandan genocide was so pathetically weak, as was that of the UK and France. In fact, France might have even helped the perpetrators. In order to attract global attention to Kashmir, you would need mass killings of the level we saw in Rwanda. And if they end up doing this, they will keep it secret because that would elicit a huge reaction by the global community. It’s just shameful, I don’t think the global community exists. I think it is a mythical beast that exists somewhere out there. The truth is that we are still a world divided in nation states and a lot of policies that are made by these states are for their own interests. They are not human rights oriented. So, what is going to be important for most nation states is going to be trade with India. Genocide does not occur to them as a cause for concern in Kashmir. ET: How do you view the US role in preventing genocide in Kashmir and other parts of the world? GS: I think our main role should be to openly support movements for democracy, against racism and division and religious prejudice in other countries. I think the real job of working against genocide will come from within those countries at risk of genocide. It not something the US can arrogantly impose on others. How can we do so when we have committed so much genocide and racial discrimination at home? That said, I’m afraid the Kashmir issue will stay on the back burner and the US would like to get along with the Modi government. I don’t see a strong foreign policy coming out of the Biden administration. Of course, former president Trump found a real comrade in Modi since they have a lot of similar characteristics. They are both essentially authoritarian leaders. ET: What’s the long-term cost of denying the existence of the Kashmir issue? GS: Denial hurts everybody, not just the victim group. If you continue to deny the persecution of a group, you will continue the persecution. There is nothing to stop it. Denial certainly does not help the denier because they cannot have an honest relationship with those who are suffering. In India, we have a whole construct of education that is in denial about how Hindu and Muslim relations have been so tense over so many centuries. Meanwhile, Washington’s inaction in Kashmir hurts its commitment to human rights. ET: What would you advise policy makers in Kashmir to prevent a possible genocide? GS: We’ve got some very good policy makers right now. Samantha Power will head USAID and she has a very strong stance against genocide. I would make it part of our policy that we need to communicate to Modi that we will not tolerate the kind of intolerance that he is preaching if we are going to have a good economic relationship with India. So, let’s make this a centerpiece of American relationship with India. In other words, use economic persuasion to say, "Look if you would like us to give India preference over China as a producer of goods for the US you will have to stop this anti-Muslim hate campaign." So that should be a policy of our government. ET: How does India heal? GS: Hindus who search for truth like Gandhi will find ways to overcome this hatred that Modi and his party are trying to inflict upon India. India today is certainly not Gandhi’s India. I’m not sure if it ever was. Even when he was leading, there was so much opposition to him that it resulted in his murder. And he was murdered by a member of the RSS. The BJP is nothing but the RSS’s political wing. So, the hatred was already there even at the beginning of India’s history. I do believe there are many followers of Gandhi in India but not enough to turn the tide at this point. But perhaps India can combine those people with those who feel India’s economic future cannot be built upon a sectarian society. If you combine the economic realists with the spiritually committed, I think Modi can be defeated. ET: If you had the chance to speak with Prime Minister Modi, what would your message be? GS: I would appeal to him. I don’t know how much luck I would have. But I would appeal to him to recognise the history that India has had of a diverse and tolerant society. I am sure he wouldn’t give any thought to that. ET: Is the age of human rights over? GS: No, it is just beginning. The age of human rights began long ago. It began with Moses, Jesus and Mohammed. In modern times, it began after World War II, with the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Genocide Convention. Since then, we have failed to enforce many of these human rights. We need to look at how we can restructure our institutions in a way that they protect human rights rather than threatening human rights. And that would mean rethinking the concept of nation states. It is that big. So when I see institutions like the European Union, which is a transnational institution that has its own Court of Human Rights, I still have faith that the future is ahead of us. Copyright © 2021 The Express Tribune https://tribune.com.pk/story/2285162/division-denial-and-genocide

Genocide Watch staff have published the fourteenth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream reflects on the genocide committed by Bosnian Serb Forces (VRS) during the Bosnian War (1992-1995) in the UN safe area of Srebrenica. More than 8,000 Muslim men and boys were killed during the week of July 11, 1995. Though the main perpetrators of the Srebrenica Genocide have been prosecuted, many Bosnian Serbs continue to celebrate these war criminals while denying the genocide. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, ethnic tensions remain between Bosnian Serbs and Bosniaks (Muslims). See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

266 MPs out of 338 vote in favour of motion; majority of cabinet absent from vote People gather on Parliament Hill on Monday, Feb. 22, 2021, to protest the Chinese government's treatment of the Uighur minority in China.(Andrew Lee/CBC) The House of Commons today accused the Chinese government of carrying out a campaign of genocide against Uighurs and other Turkic Muslims. A substantial majority of MPs — including most Liberals who participated — voted in favour of a Conservative motion that says China's actions in its western Xinjiang region meet the definition of genocide set out in the 1948 United Nations Genocide Convention. The final tally was 266 in favour and zero opposed. Two MPs formally abstained. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and almost all of his cabinet colleagues were absent for the vote. Foreign Affairs Minister Marc Garneau was the only cabinet minister present. When it was his turn, he said he abstained "on behalf of the Government of Canada." The motion also calls on the government to lobby the International Olympic Committee to move the 2022 Winter Olympic Games out of Beijing. It was passed over the strenuous objections of Chinese Ambassador to Canada Cong Peiwu, who denounced the vote as meddling in China's internal affairs. China also condemned the motion. At a briefing in Beijing Tuesday, foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said China has lodged stern representations with Canada. After the vote, Garneau issued a statement saying the federal government remains "deeply disturbed by horrific reports of human rights violations in Xinjiang, including the use of arbitrary detention, political re-education, forced labour, torture and forced sterilization. "The government of Canada will continue to work with international partners to defend vulnerable minorities and we once again repeat our call for transparency and a credible international investigation in response to allegations of genocide. "This investigation must be conducted by an international and independent body so that impartial experts can observe and report on the situation first-hand." 'Stop spreading disinformation,' says China Media reports and academic and UN experts have accused China of imprisoning Uighurs in concentration and "deradicalization" camps and targeting them for forced labour, sexual violence, population control methods and sweeping surveillance. China's foreign ministry has denied the accusations. The motion calls on the government to officially adopt the position that China is engaged in genocide, and to coordinate a response with the U.S. and other allies. While it's not clear what impact — if any — the non-binding resolution will have on the Liberal government's approach to China, it threatens to inflame relations between the two countries at a time when they're already tense due to the arrest of Huawei chief financial officer Meng Wanzhou by Canadian authorities more than two years ago, and China's subsequent imprisonment of Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor. In a statement posted to the Chinese embassy's website prior to the vote, Cong insisted the reports of Uighur persecution are based on lies. "A few people in Canada and some other western countries are talking about upholding values, but one important part of the values should be: respect facts and stop spreading disinformation and even lies," Cong said in the statement. "We urge the Canadian side to take seriously China's solemn position … so as not to cause further damages to China-Canada relations." 'A time for moral clarity' At a press conference this morning, Conservative foreign affairs critic Michael Chong said the evidence of China's crimes is overwhelming. He cited survivor testimony, satellite images, video, documents and media reports from major U.S. and international news outlets. "Today is a time for moral clarity," said Chong. "We can no longer ignore this. We must call it for what it is — a genocide." Chong and Conservative human rights critic Garnett Genuis were joined at the event by a Uighur woman who fled China and has become an outspoken critic of the Chinese regime. Speaking through a translator, Kalbinur Tursun said she was assigned to teach Chinese at a mass detention facility and a women's prison in the city of Ürümqi from March to November 2017. She said that during her time in the job, she saw or heard of multiple acts of intimidation, violence and rape directed against Uighur people. "No one should be subjected to such cruelty," she said. Tursun said she was forcibly sterilized in 2019 through a surgical procedure, along with hundreds of other Uighur women. Tursun said some of her relatives are still in Chinese prisons and that Chinese authorities have targeted her for harassment and intimidation to punish her for speaking out. Canada wants independent investigation MPs on the House of Commons subcommittee on international human rights agreed in an October report with the experts who say China's campaign against the Uighurs meets the definition of genocide set out by the UN. The committee heard testimony from several Uighur witnesses who gave first-hand accounts of atrocities Bob Rae, Canada's ambassador to the United Nations, called on the United Nations in November to investigate whether China's persecution of ethnic Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang constitutes genocide. Despite these calls, Prime Minister Trudeau and his cabinet ministers have been reluctant to use the word "genocide" to describe China's actions against the Uighurs. Last week, Trudeau said the word is an "extremely loaded" one and he is not prepared to use it at this point. In question period today, Garneau said the government takes allegations against China "very seriously" and has raised its concerns directly with the Chinese government. Garneau said Canada wants independent investigators to go into China to document abuses and is working with international partners to gain access to the region. A formal genocide declaration would bring Canada in line with the U.S. ahead of a virtual bilateral meeting between Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden scheduled for Tuesday. A man wearing a face mask to protect against the coronavirus walks past the Olympic rings on the exterior of the National Stadium, also known as the Bird's Nest, which will be a venue for the upcoming 2022 Winter Olympics, in Beijing, Tuesday, Feb. 2, 2021. A motion passed by the House of Commons today calls on the government to lobby for relocation of the games out of China due to the country's human rights record.(Mark Schiefelbein/The Associated Press) In January, former U.S. secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration had determined that China had committed "genocide and crimes against humanity" in Xinjiang region. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has continued the former administration's policy of describing China's treatment of the Uighurs as genocide. "My judgment remains that genocide was committed ... against the Uighurs and that hasn't changed," Blinken said late last month. Canada-China tensions continue The push by MPs to condemn China and relocate the Olympic Games comes at a time of heightened tensions. Beijing has been demanding for the past two years that Canada release a top executive of communications giant Huawei who is wanted on fraud charges in the United States. Meng Wanzhou, who is also the daughter of the company's founder, denies the charges, which China says are politically motivated and part of a U.S. effort to stifle the nation's economic expansion. Former Canadian diplomat Michael Kovrig and Canadian entrepreneur Michael Spavor were detained by Chinese authorities nine days after the RCMP arrested the Chinese tech scion at the Vancouver airport in December 2018 on a U.S. extradition warrant. Conservative Leader Erin O'Toole told reporters after the vote that Trudeau and his cabinet missed an opportunity to stand up for human rights — as former prime minister Brian Mulroney did with the campaign against racial apartheid in South Africa. "There's real suffering going on in China. There's a genocide happening and Canadians, while we're free traders and I'm very proud to be a free market party, our values are not for sale and Mr. Trudeau needed to send that message today," O'Toole said. The Conservative leader also said that fear of a trade backlash is not a good enough reason to ignore human rights violations in China. "We will work with any sectors impacted by us standing up for human rights and dignity, as we have done before," he said. Green Party Leader Annamie Paul issued a statement criticizing the Liberal cabinet and the prime minister for abstaining from the vote and urged the federal government to strongly condemn China, lead a discussion with allies to bring China back into compliance with international law and consider legal actions. "Canada is not powerless, and it has a variety of multilateral and unilateral options available to respond to the genocide against the Uyghur and other Muslim minorities in China," she said in the statement. ©2021 CBC/Radio-Canada

Pro-Uighur protesters demonstrate outside the White House in Washington, on Aug. 14, 2020. PHOTO BY CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES State Department Lawyers Concluded Insufficient Evidence to Prove Genocide in China Despite the Trump administration’s declaration of a genocide in Xinjiang, upheld by the Biden administration, some legal experts suspect China’s behavior may fall short of actual genocide. Foreign Policy February 19, 2021 BY COLUM LYNCH The U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Advisor concluded earlier this year that China’s mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity—but there was insufficient evidence to prove genocide, placing the United States’ top diplomatic lawyers at odds with both the Trump and Biden administrations, according to three former and current U.S. officials. The revelation comes nearly a month after then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Jan. 19, one day before U.S. President Donald Trump’s presidency ended, that China was carrying out a genocide against Chinese Muslims, primarily the ethnic Uighur population, in the western region of Xinjiang. The Biden administration has reaffirmed Pompeo’s stance and backed off a recent claim Biden’s United Nations envoy pick, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, made in her confirmation hearing that the State Department, under the Biden administration, was conducting a review of the designation. A State Department review during the final weeks of the Trump administration of China’s conduct in Xinjiang pitted the department’s lawyers against advocates of a genocide determination. Those advocates included Kelley Currie, who then served as U.S. ambassador at large for global women’s issues and is a long-standing critic of China’s human rights record, and former Sen. Sam Brownback, who served as the department’s ambassador at large for international religious freedom. It resulted in a “split” memo from the department that was sent to Pompeo, according to two officials. Beyond the legal debate over the characterization of China’s repression of its Muslim population, the genocide designation carries enormous political weight, applying pressure on the United States and other countries to punish a global powerhouse whose trade, environmental, and security activities are entwined with their own. But wielding the g-word without a solid legal basis also carries the risk of politicizing and eroding the power of the designation, which has been invoked in the past century to describe the worst episodes of mass killing, from the murder of millions of Jews during the Holocaust to the slaughter of around 800,000 Rwandans during the country’s genocide. The cautious conclusions of State Department lawyers do not constitute a judgment that genocide did not occur in Xinjiang but reflects the difficulties of proving genocide, which involves the destruction “in whole or in part” of a group of people based on their national, religious, racial, or ethnic identity, in a court of law. It also points to a disconnect between public perception of the crime of genocide and the legal definition in the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, which has long been interpreted by State Department lawyers to require intent to bring about the physical and biological destruction of a group. “Genocide is difficult to prove in court,” said Richard Dicker, an expert on international justice at Human Rights Watch. Even the most horrific of crimes—burning of villages, systematic rape, or the execution of large numbers of civilians—can not be considered genocide unless the perpetrators carry out their crimes “with a very specific intent—the intent, of course, being to destroy in whole or in part a population based on their religious, ethnic, or national background,” he said. There is little dispute within the U.S. government that China’s treatment of the Uighur population has been horrific and criminal: More than 1 million Uighurs have been detained in reeducation camps, and many have reportedly been subjected to forced labor and sterilization. China has committed numerous crimes listed in the convention as acts of genocide, including the prevention of births and infliction of bodily or mental harm on members of a group and the compulsory separation of children from their communities, according to human rights groups. But there remains questions over whether that conduct meets the extraordinarily high threshold required to prosecute the crime of genocide. “International courts have concluded that, for a crime to come within the definition in the [Genocide] Convention, the perpetrator must intend to destroy the relevant group in a biological or physical sense,” wrote Todd Buchwald, who served as the special coordinator for the State Department’s Office of Global Criminal Justice during the Obama administration, and Adam Keith, a former human rights specialist in the National Security Council, in an exhaustive study of U.S. decision-making on genocide. The convention, they noted, excluded the more limited concept of “cultural genocide.” But many international legal experts view that interpretation as too narrow and say there is ample evidence that China has engaged in genocide. The Genocide Convention enumerates five categories of genocide, starting with the killing of members of a protected group but also including acts aimed at preventing a victim’s ability to bear children and forcibly separating children from their communities. Critics of the State Department’s legal stance have argued that it has focused too heavily on the first category, mass killing, and not enough on the other categories. In the case of China, these critics note, there is little evidence that it is engaging in mass killings of Uighurs and other minorities, many of whom have been subjected to indoctrination and pressed into forced labor. But evidence that it is carrying out other forms of genocide abounds, Beth Van Schaack, a visiting professor at Stanford Law School’s Center for Human Rights and International Justice, wrote in a recent post on Just Security. “For example, the torture, rape and sexual violence committed against Uyghurs likely constitute genocide ‘by causing serious bodily and mental harm’—the second type of genocide recognized by the Convention,” she wrote. “Likewise, the deplorable living conditions of incarcerated Uyghurs may constitute genocide by ‘deliberately inflicting conditions of life calculated to bring about [their] physical destruction’—the third form of genocide.” The process of determining whether the U.S. government can and should declare the commission of mass atrocities a genocide has evolved informally since the United States became a party to the convention in 1988. Since the Cold War, the State Department has claimed genocide occurred in at least five cases. In 1993, the Clinton administration accused Bosnian Serbs of carrying out genocide against Bosnian Muslims. A year later, it accused ethnic Hutu extremists of carrying out a genocide in Rwanda. In 1995, it charged the Iraqi government of trying to eliminate the country’s Kurdish population. The process became more formal during the George W. Bush administration, when then-Secretary of State Colin Powell established an extensive review process. He deployed a team of investigators called the Atrocities Documentation Team to the Chad-Sudan border to interview refugees in an effort to determine whether genocide had occurred in Darfur, Sudan, where the Sudanese government and a government-backed militia, known as the janjaweed, unleashed a reign of terror and displacement on several ethnic and tribal groups. Powell declared before Congress in 2004 that “genocide has been committed in Darfur and that the government of Sudan and the janjaweed bear responsibility—and that genocide may still be occurring.” That formal review served as a model for future efforts to determine whether genocide had occurred. In March 2016, then-Secretary of State John Kerry determined that the Islamic State had committed genocide, crimes against humanity, and ethnic cleansing against the Yazidis, Christians, and Shiite groups. His successor, Rex Tillerson, confirmed that decision. But the Trump administration never reached a final decision on the question of whether the Rohingya Muslim minority in Myanmar were victims of genocide, and the Biden administration continues to review the situation. Some human rights advocates believe there is a stronger case for designating Myanmar’s attacks on the Rohingya genocide than China’s conduct in Xinjiang. In the case of China, Pompeo launched a review during his final months in office, a decision that was embraced by China critics in the department as overdue but viewed skeptically by others as a rushed and politicized effort to provide cover for a decision Pompeo had already decided he would make. “I have determined that the People’s Republic of China is committing genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang, China, targeting Uyghur Muslims and members of other ethnic and religious minority groups,” Pompeo said on Twitter on Jan. 19, a day before Biden took office. He accused the Chinese of carrying out “forced sterilizations and abortions on Uyghur women, coerced them to marry non-Uyghurs, and separated Uyghur children from their families.” Currie declined to discuss the internal deliberations on the matter during the Trump administration, adding simply that “the secretary’s decision and statement speak for themselves.” A State Department official declined to comment on the internal deliberations during the Trump administration over the genocide designation but said that Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s decision to confirm Pompeo’s decision was based on his own reading of the convention, not on the department’s findings. The official noted that the secretary of state, whether Pompeo or Blinken, wields the ultimate authority to make the final judgment, regardless of recommendations from the department’s lawyers. There is no need to initiate a new formal review into the matter, the official said. The Biden team during the campaign reached the conclusion that China had carried out genocide several months before Pompeo’s declaration. In August 2020, Biden’s presidential campaign issued a statement concluding that China’s mass internment of Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang amounts to “genocide.” Blinken reiterated that view during his confirmation hearing. Pressed on whether he agreed with Pompeo’s assertion that genocide occurred in Xinjiang, Blinken answered, “That would be my judgment as well.” But Thomas-Greenfield, however, appeared to hedge during a subsequent confirmation hearing, saying that while the situation “feels like” genocide, she was awaiting the findings of a State Department review. “I know the State Department is reviewing that as we speak,” she said, before later aligning her position with Blinken’s. “Secretary Blinken and I have made clear that genocide has been committed against the Uyghurs in Xinjiang,” she wrote in response to a question from Sen. Marco Rubio. Colum Lynch is a senior staff writer at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @columlynch Copyright 2021 Foreign Policy https://foreignpolicy.com/2021/02/19/china-uighurs-genocide-us-pompeo-blinken/ Genocide Watch comment: The State Department lawyers who reject calling China's atrocities "genocide" are committing the same legal malpractice that they committed when for three months they refused to call the Rwandan genocide "genocide" in 1994. Then they similarly argued that there was not sufficient evidence of the specific intent to destroy, in whole or in part, an ethnic or religious group despite public evidence from the Red Cross that 10,000 Tutsis were being murdered each day. Joan Donoghue, then in the State Department Office of the Legal Advisor, led that denial of genocide in Rwanda. Donoghue became a judge on the International Court of Justice in 2010. She joined the opinion of the International Court of Justice in Croatia v Serbia which held that if any other intent can be found for state actions besides genocide, such as "ethnic cleansing," then the crime cannot be genocide. Genocide must be the only intent. Joan Donoghue is now President of the International Court of Justice, which is considering Gambia's case against Myanmar for violation of the Genocide Convention.

23 February 2021, 16:16 There was no mass support for German fascists in Northern Caucasus; and the version of Soviet authorities on collaboration, which became the reason for the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes, is unjustified, historians have pointed out. The "Caucasian Knot" has reported that the Fatherland Defender's Day coincides with the anniversary of the Stalinist deportation of Chechens and Ingushes in 1944. Ingush activists have proposed a new format for the celebration on February 23 – without entertainment events. The operation "Shamil", during which German intelligence agents landed in 1942 in the Chechen-Ingush Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Ch-I ASSR) aiming to provoke an anti-Soviet rebellion there, is cited as a "far-fetched justification" for the deportation of Chechens and Ingushes, said Pavel Polyan, a historian. He pointed out that the Vainakhs' deportation was conducted 14 months after the expulsion of Germans; that is, it is not possible to treat the deportation as a preventive measure. There are no convincing proofs of "mass collaboration" in Northern Caucasus in German documents, Peter van Huis, a historian from the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, has confirmed. Although the Vainakhs' deportation is recognized as a crime in Russian historiography, its official reason – "collaboration with Nazis" – is often presented as a proven fact with reference to NKVD (the then sort of Interior Ministry) documents. However, Wehrmacht's archival documents indicate that Nazis' plans to trigger an uprising in Chechen-Ingushetia by sending saboteurs failed precisely because of absence of support among local residents. Residents of the Ch-I ASSR did not seek "just like that" to help the German paratroopers, said Apti Batalov, a son of a surviving participant in the operation. "They helped in exchange for weapons and parachute fabrics," he said. This article was originally published on the Russian page of 24/7 Internet agency ‘Caucasian Knot’ on February 23, 2021 at 11:50 am MSK. To access the full text of the article, click here. Source: https://www.eng.kavkaz-uzel.eu/articles/53762/ 2021 © Caucasian Knot

Myanmar (Burma): Genocide Emergency February 2021 Military leaders overthrew Aung San Suu Kyi's elected government on 1 February (Getty Images) Myanmar (Burma) has persecuted its Rohingya population since independence from Britain in 1948. Burma stripped Rohingya of citizenship in 1982. Following a Facebook hate campaign, hostility between the Buddhist Burmese majority and the Muslim Rohingya minority increased dramatically in 2012. In 2016 and 2017, the Burmese Army (the Tatmadaw) attacked and burned hundreds of Rohingya villages in Rakhine province, murdered thousands of Rohingya, and forced over a million Rohingya to flee their homes and seek refuge in Bangladesh. The Myanmar Army’s attack on Rohingya in 2017 was genocide. Over ten thousand Rohingya were brutally murdered in their villages. Genocidal intent was demonstrated by landmines and Myanmar Army shooting of fleeing Rohingya at the border with Bangladesh. The forced displacement of a million Rohingya was driven by the terror caused by the Army’s genocidal massacres. The Myanmar Army intentionally destroyed a substantial part of the Rohingya ethnic and religious group. Myanmar denied the Rohingya food and health care, and imposed conditions of life deliberately intended to destroy the group. It inflicted serious bodily and mental harm on members of the Rohingya group. Following exhaustive investigations, a UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission reported in 2018 and 2019 that there is overwhelming evidence that the atrocities committed against the Rohingya by Myanmar constitute crimes against humanity and genocide. It called for trials of top Myanmar generals. Burmese leader and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Aung San Suu Kyi, denies allegations of genocide, refuses to grant citizenship to the Rohingya, and even rejects use of the name “Rohingya.” The Myanmar government has created the false narrative that the Rohingya are illegal migrants from Bangladesh. It calls them “Bengalis.” Myanmar says that its Army’s mass murders of civilians (including women and children,) were necessary parts of a “counter-insurgency campaign” against Islamic “terrorists.” Aung San Suu Kyi has made diplomatic visits to appeal to Islamophobia in India, Hungary, and other countries. The Gambia charged Myanmar with violation of the Genocide Convention in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2019. The ICJ ordered Myanmar to protect the Rohingya against genocide in a Provisional Order in January 2020. The Court stated that the Rohingya are a protected group under the Genocide Convention, citing Articles 2 and 3. In September 2020, Canada and the Netherlands joined the case against Myanmar. Bangladesh is relocating thousands of Rohingya to an island off its coast, ostensibly to provide better living conditions until they can be repatriated. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch oppose the relocation plan due to reports that some refugees are forced or pressured to relocate. The UN Refugee Agency has not been allowed to assess the safety of the island, which may be vulnerable to storms. On February 1, 2021, the army seized control of the government, detained Suu Kyi and other officials, and declared a one-year state of emergency. The army claims, without evidence, that widespread fraud occurred in the November 2020 election. Commander-in-chief Min Aung Hlaing, one of the main perpetrators of the Rohingya genocide, is now in power. Some believe the coup was motivated by Hlaing and other top army officials hoping to prevent Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy from taking full control of the Myanmar parliament. They may also want to avoid International Criminal Court charges. UN investigators report that security forces are using live ammunition against those protesting the coup. Many fear conditions may worsen for the 130,000 Rohingyas still living in the open-air prison camps in Myanmar that UN officials have compared to concentration camps. Genocide Watch considers Myanmar to be at Stage 9: Extermination. Genocide Watch recommends: France, Bangladesh and other countries should file memorials in the ICJ joining Gambia’s case against Myanmar. The press, UN, and human rights groups should use the word ‘genocide’ to describe the atrocities against the Rohingya, and stop using the euphemism used for genocide denial, “ethnic cleansing.” The Myanmar Army must release Aung San Suu Kyi and other the detained officials, end its state of emergency, and allow the democratically elected government to take power. Following diplomatic agreements with Myanmar using economic incentives, Rohingya must be free to return to Myanmar under armed UN or regional protection with full citizenship.

An unlikely alliance of rebels is laying siege to the capital, displacing about 200,000 people, after a disrupted election. Here is an explanation of a humanitarian crisis that gets scant attention. Published by The New York Times on February 21, 2021. United Nations peacekeepers in the Central African Republic. (Pacome Pabamdji/AFP/Getty Images) In the shadow of six surrounding neighbors burdened with their own problems sits the Central African Republic, a landlocked country that gets relatively little attention but that has been plagued by instability and conflict upending the lives of its citizens for many years. The Central African Republic is once again enduring an acute bout of instability from an on-again, off-again civil war that has displaced hundreds of thousands of people. Despite the intervention of United Nations peacekeepers, Russian military advisers and Rwandan troops, peace is still elusive. Almost one-third of all Central Africans have been displaced from their homes in recent years — including 200,000 who fled just since December, after a troubled election. Here are basic questions and answers on the country’s history and what is driving its dysfunction. Where is the Central African Republic? Roughly the size of Texas, with a population of about 5 million, it is basically in the middle of the African continent, enclosed clockwise by Chad, Sudan, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Republic of Congo and Cameroon. All host refugees from the Central African Republic who have fled mayhem in their homeland. The colonial name, Ubangi-Shari, stood for the land that straddles the Ubangi and Shari river basins. The name changed during the 1950s decolonization period of French equatorial Africa. What is causing the fighting in the country now? The latest turbulence can be traced to elections on Dec. 27, which rebel groups tried to disrupt. The incumbent, President Faustin-Archange Touadéra, won a second term, as rebels staged attacks and occupied major towns. Few people outside the capital, Bangui, could safely vote because of rebel violence, and the rebels even reached Bangui. The president’s opponents have accused him of fraud. The rebels are an unlikely marriage of the remnants of two broader and formerly antagonistic armed groups: the Seleka, which means alliance and is a coalition of majority Muslim fighters from the north, along with some Chadian and Sudanese; and mostly Christian vigilante militias that call themselves anti-balaka, which sometimes translates as anti-machete. Both groups have been accused of committing atrocities against civilians, including rape and mass murder. Why have rebel groups that were recently enemies teamed up? The precise reasons are unclear. But they have combined in an alliance called the Coalition of Patriots for Change. And they are believed to have the support of a former president, François Bozizé. He seized power in a 2003 coup and was deposed by the Seleka in 2013. Disqualified from running in the December elections, he is believed to be in hiding and faces U.N. sanctions for his support of anti-balaka groups. It’s not clear whom the coalition represents, but they present themselves as a legitimate political force. Abakar Sabone, a minor warlord who is something of a spokesman for the coalition, said in a telephone interview, “We would have taken power if that was what we wanted, but we are giving Touadéra a second chance to open an inclusive discussion. “But if he tries to be stubborn,” he continued, “then we will head to the capital and get him out.” What is everyday life like right now? Bangui is under siege. Rebels are blocking the entry routes, constricting supply deliveries. A sack of flour in February tripled in price from a month before. Alhadj Sali Abdou, 56, who lost the supermarket he owned when war broke out in 2013, now makes about $3 a day reselling baguettes outside his house. He said he had never seen things as bad as they are now. “I don’t want to say that I am totally desperate,” he said, adding that if peace could be restored, he could get back on his feet. With so many people displaced, families are camping out in churches. Many lack food, spare clothes, bedding or cooking utensils. Humanitarian groups working in the country say they have also faced rebel attacks, and some have stopped operating there. Motorbikes, the vehicles of choice for most residents of the capital, are banned because the rebels use them, so people frequently find themselves stranded. How long has the Central African Republic been unstable? Outsiders have long exploited the area that is now the Central African Republic. When sultans ruled, it was plagued by slave traders. Then French colonialists leased it to companies who forced local people to work for them. About half the population died over the 50 years after French explorers first arrived. The independence leader Barthélemy Boganda died in a mysterious plane crash in 1959, one year before full independence. And since then, the country has rarely been at peace, buffeted by political rivalries. In 1965 the president, David Dacko, was overthrown by a military commander, with French backing. Jean-Bedel Bokassa, who later proclaimed himself emperor, ruled for 14 years and was accused of atrocities including the killing of schoolchildren for not wearing uniforms with his image. Bokassa was convicted of murder and sentenced to death, later commuted to life imprisonment. He died in 1996. After the Bokassa era the country suffered a succession of coups, mutinies and more French military interventions. The United Nations has deployed a peacekeeping force there since 2014 to help protect civilians from antagonists. Is the instability related to the country’s diamonds and gold? It could well be. The country’s great agricultural and pastoral potential is undeveloped, and its people are among the poorest in the world. Nearly three quarters live below the international poverty line of $1.90 a day. The government has no control over roughly two-thirds of the country, including some major mining areas. Rebel groups traffic diamonds and gold and collect taxes from miners and other people in the trafficking chains. So they have a financial interest in keeping things as they are, and keeping the government from gaining more control. What is the government doing about the rebel alliance? President Touadéra has enlisted aid from Russia in training Central African Republic soldiers, and a Russian is the president’s security adviser. Some see this as part of a pattern of expanding Russian military influence across Africa. In December, in the face of a rebel offensive, Mr. Touadéra’s government asked Russia for more help. Three hundred Russian reinforcements were sent — Russia said they were military advisers. Rwandan soldiers were sent to help too, on top of the many Rwandan peacekeepers in the country with the United Nations. The 13,500 U.N. peacekeepers are supposed to protect civilians and stop armed groups from inflicting violence on the population. They helped secure the election, but are powerless to disarm the rebels and are often subject to rebel attack. Some have also been accused of sexual abuses. It remains unclear how long the costly peacekeeping mission will stay in the country. Is there any hope? The government forces, with their foreign allies, have started to push back the rebels, who in early February agreed to a cease-fire and voluntarily withdrew from the western town of Bouar, which they had taken a month earlier. The trial of two anti-balaka leaders at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which began on Feb. 16, is the court’s first prosecution of crimes committed in the Central African Republic conflict. The defendants, Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona and Alfred Yékatom, are the highest-ranking anti-balaka leaders ever to face trial. This may begin to fill what Human Rights Watch has called a “justice void” that has created a climate of impunity in the country. Mahamat Said, a Seleka leader, was handed over to the I.C.C. in January. Ruth Maclean reported from Dakar, Senegal. Moussa Abdoulaye contributed reporting from Bangui, Central African Republic, Mady Camara from Dakar and Rick Gladstone from New York. © 2021 The New York Times Company.

Year After Delhi Violence, Bias Against Muslims Taints Investigation February 19, 2021 9:00AM EST A woman walks past security forces patrolling a street in a riot affected area in New Delhi, India, February 26, 2020.© 2020 REUTERS/Adnan Abidi (New York) – Authorities in India have adopted laws and policies that systematically discriminate against Muslims and stigmatize critics of the government, Human Rights Watch said today. Prejudices embedded in the government of the ruling Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have infiltrated independent institutions, such as the police and the courts, empowering nationalist groups to threaten, harass, and attack religious minorities with impunity. February 23, 2021 marks the one-year anniversary of the communal violence in Delhi that killed 53 people, 40 of them Muslim. Instead of conducting a credible and impartial investigation, including into allegations that BJP leaders incited violence and police officials were complicit in attacks, the authorities have targeted activists and protest organizers. The authorities have lately responded to another mass protest, this time by farmers, by vilifying minority Sikh protesters and opening investigations into their alleged affiliation with separatist groups. “The BJP’s embrace of the Hindu majority at the expense of minorities has seeped into government institutions, undermining equal protection of the law without discrimination,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The government has not only failed to protect Muslims and other minorities from attacks but is providing political patronage and cover for bigotry.” The February 2020 attacks in Delhi had followed months of peaceful protests by Indians of all faiths against the government’s discriminatory citizenship law and proposed policies. BJP leaders and supporters attempted to discredit protesters, particularly Muslims, by accusing them of conspiring against national interests. Similarly, after hundreds of thousands of farmers of various faiths began protesting against the government’s new farm laws in November 2020, senior BJP leaders, their supporters on social media, and pro-government media, began blaming the Sikhs, another religious minority. They accuse Sikhs of having a “Khalistani” agenda, a reference to a Sikh separatist insurgency in Punjab in the 1980s and 90s. On February 8, Prime Minister Narendra Modi spoke in parliament, describing people participating in various peaceful protests as “parasites,” and calling international criticism of increasing authoritarianism in India a “foreign destructive ideology.” Following violent clashes on January 26 between the police and protesting farmers who broke through police barricades to enter Delhi, the authorities filed baseless criminal cases against journalists, ordered the internet to be shut down at multiple sites, and ordered Twitter to block nearly 1,200 accounts, including of journalists and news organizations, some of which Twitter later restored. On February 14, the authorities arrested a climate activist, accusing her of sedition and criminal conspiracy for allegedly editing a document providing information on the protests and how to support them on social media, and issued warrants against two others. The latest arrests come amid increased targeting of activists, academics, and other critics, by the government in recent years. The authorities have especially harassed and prosecuted those protecting the rights of minorities and vulnerable communities. BJP leaders and affiliated groups have long portrayed minority communities, especially Muslims, as a threat to national security and to the Hindu way of life. They have raised the bogey of “love jihad,” claiming that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam, labeled Muslims illegal immigrants or even extremists, and accused them of hurting Hindu sentiment over cow slaughter. Since Modi’s BJP came to power in 2014, it has taken various legislative and other actions that have legitimized discrimination against religious minorities and enabled violent Hindu nationalism, Human Rights Watch said. The government passed a citizenship law in December 2019 that discriminates against Muslims, making religion the basis for citizenship for the first time. In August 2019, the government also revoked the constitutional autonomygranted to the only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir, and imposed restrictions in violation of people’s basic rights. Since October 2018, Indian authorities have threatened to deport Rohingya Muslim refugees to Myanmar despite the risks to their lives and security, and have already repatriated over a dozen. States use laws against cow slaughter to prosecute Muslim cattle traders even as BJP-affiliated groups attack Muslims and Dalits on rumors that they killed or traded cows for beef. Most recently, three BJP-ruled states have passed an anti-conversion law, which in practice is used against Muslim menwho marry Hindu women. These actions violate domestic law and India’s obligations under international human rights law that prohibit discrimination based on race, ethnicity, or religion, and require the governments to provide residents with equal protection of the law. The Indian government is also obligated to protect religious and other minority populations, and to fully and fairly prosecute those responsible for discrimination and violence against them, Human Rights Watch said. “The BJP government’s actions have stoked communal hatred, created deep fissures in society, and led to much fear and mistrust of authorities among minority communities,” Ganguly said. “India’s standing as a secular democracy is at serious risk unless the government rolls back discriminatory laws and policies and ensures justice for abuses against minorities.” For additional details, please see below. Discriminatory Laws and Policies In November, India’s Uttar Pradesh state government passed a law aimed at curbing interfaith relationships. The phrase “love jihad” is used by BJP politicians to promote a baseless theory that Muslim men lure Hindu women into marriages to convert them to Islam. The law, Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, requires anyone wishing to convert to seek approval from the district authorities and carries a punishment of up to 10 years in prison for converting another person through coercion, fraud, misrepresentation, or inducement. While this law ostensibly applies to all forced religious conversions, enforcement has largely targeted Muslim men in Hindu-Muslim relationships. Since the law came into effect, Utter Pradesh authorities have filed cases against 86 people, 79 of whom are Muslim, accusing them of “enticing a woman” and forcing her to convert to Islam. Seven others are accused of coercing women to convert them to Christianity. The government has even unlawfully used the law retroactively, and sometimes even brought cases against families of the accused Muslim men. In most cases, the complainant is not the woman but her relatives, who oppose an interfaith relationship. The law has created considerable fear among interfaith couples already at risk of censure from families and Hindu nationalist groups. In November, the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh had to grant protection to 125 interfaith couples. Hindu nationalist groups, including those affiliated with the BJP, have openly harassed and attacked interfaith couples and filed cases against them. On December 5, men from the militant Hindu group Bajrang Dal, which supports the BJP, forcibly took a 22-year-old Hindu woman married to a Muslim man to the police. The police sent the woman to a government shelter, and arrested her husband and his brother under the anti-conversion law. The woman alleged that she suffered a miscarriage at the shelter due to medical negligence. She was reunited with her husband after she told the court that she was an adult and had married by choice. BJP-ruled Madhya Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh states passed similar laws and other BJP-ruled states, including Haryana and Karnataka, are considering it. Several states – Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Arunachal Pradesh, and Uttarakhand – already have anti-conversion laws that have been used against minority communities, especially Christians, including from Dalit and Adivasi communities. In December 2019, the Modi administration achieved passage of the discriminatory Citizenship (Amendment) Act, which fast-tracks asylum claims of non-Muslim irregular immigrants from the neighboring Muslim-majority countries of Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Coupled with the government’s push for a nationwide citizenship verification process through a National Population Register and a proposed National Register of Citizens, aimed at identifying “illegal migrants,” it has heightened fears that millions of Indian Muslims could be stripped of their citizenship rights and disenfranchised. Before the government passed the law, Home Minister Amit Shah said at an election rally in Delhi in September 2018: “Illegal immigrants are like termites and they are eating the food that should go to our poor and they are taking our jobs.” He promised that “if we come to power in 2019, we will find each and every one and send them away.” Justice System Bias In many states, the criminal justice system increasingly reflects the discriminatory views of the BJP, targeting religious and other minorities and critics of the government, and shielding its supporters. Delhi Riots The government’s citizenship policies sparked weeks of nationwide protests beginning December 2019. During the protests, police in several cases did not intervene when BJP-affiliated groups attacked protesters. In at least three BJP-governed states, police used excessive and unnecessary lethal force, killing at least 30 people during protests and injuring scores more. Some BJP leaders called the protesters anti-national and pro-Pakistan, while others led chants to “shoot the traitors.” On February 23, 2020, after a BJP leader, Kapil Mishra, advocated forcibly dispersing peaceful protesters, many of them Muslim, BJP supporters gathered in the area, leading to clashes between the groups. The situation was aggravated as Hindu mobs armed with swords, sticks, metal pipes, and bottles filled with gasoline, targeted Muslims in several neighborhoods in northeast Delhi. While most of the 53 people killed were Muslim, a policeman and government official were among the Hindus who also died. An independent investigation by the Delhi Minorities Commission found that the violence was “planned and targeted” and that some policemen actively participated in the attacks on Muslims. In a February 24 video, several policemen are seen beating five grievously injured Muslim men lying on the street, forcing them to sing the Indian national anthem to prove their patriotism. The police then detained them. One of the men, Faizan, 23, died from his injuries two days later. A year later, the police say they are still trying to identify the policemen in the video. The authorities have yet to investigate other allegations of police complicity in the violence. In contrast, the Delhi police have filed politically motivated charges, including terrorism and sedition, against 18 activists, students, opposition politicians, and residents – 16 of them Muslim. The police case relies extensively on disclosure statements that are suspiciously similar and WhatsApp chats and social media messages about organizing and announcing peaceful protests as evidence of complicity in a larger conspiracy to defame the Indian government, hatched by those who organized the protests against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. The authorities have filed charges under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, related to unlawful activity, terrorist funding, and planning and committing acts of terrorism. They have also accused protest organizers and activists of sedition, murder, attempted murder, promotion of religious enmity, and damage to public property, among other alleged offenses. All those charged have been critical of the BJP government and the citizenship law. They include members of Pinjra Tod, an autonomous collective of women students; United Against Hate, a group that works to protect religious minorities; and the Jamia Coordination Committee, which led the student protest at Jamia Millia Islamia University. The courts have granted bail to only two people charged in this case. While granting bail to one of them, the Delhi High Court observed that the police had failed to produce any evidence to show that the accused had committed a terrorism-related offense. Police in Delhi have denied allegations of bias in investigations, saying that the numbers of people charged are nearly identical from both communities. In addition to the case against activists, of the 1,153 people against whom rioting charges have been filed in court, 571 are Hindu and 582 Muslim. However, activists say that the police have focused more on investigating allegations against Muslims and arresting them. Muslim victims of abuses and witnesses said that the police initially turned them away, refusing to file their complaints, and that even when police filed the cases based on their accounts, they omitted names of BJP leaders or police officials allegedly complicit in the attacks. The police have also implicated Muslim victims in these cases. In several cases in which Muslims were arrested, Human Rights Watch foundthat the police did not follow criminal code requirements, such as producing an arrest warrant, informing the person’s family of the arrest, and providing them a copy of the First Information Report (FIR), the official police case, or ensuring that those arrested have access to legal counsel, including during interrogation. In some cases, Muslim families who had succeeded in identifying BJP leaders and police officials when they filed complaints said they faced increasing pressure to withdraw the complaints. Lawyers representing riot victims also allege that the police have them under scrutiny. In December, the Delhi police raided the office of a prominent Muslim lawyer, Mehmood Pracha, who is representing several riot victims. The police accused Pracha of forging documents and instigating a man to depose falsely in a Delhi violence case. A day after the police raid on Pracha’s office, some riot victims held a news conference accusing the police of forcing them to submit a statement saying that Pracha coerced them to file false complaints. The raid has prompted condemnation from hundreds of lawyers who called it an attack on attorney-client privilege, and said it was aimed at intimidating Pracha and his clients. Meanwhile, the Delhi police told a court in July that it has no “actionable evidence” against BJP leaders even though there are videos showing BJP leaders advocating violence, complaints by witnesses, and transcripts of WhatsApp conversations the police have submitted in court showing Hindu rioters took inspiration from BJP leaders. Earlier, in February 2020, the Delhi High Court, while hearing petitions about the riots, had questioned the Delhi police decision to not file cases against BJP leaders for advocating violence, saying it sent the wrong message and perpetuated impunity. Instead of responding to court orders, the government fast-tracked orders transferring the presiding judge to another state, taking the riot-related cases away from him, raising questions over the timing of the transfer. Under a new judge, the court accepted the submission of the government’s attorney that the situation was not immediately “conducive” for registering police complaints. In several riot-related bail hearings, courts have raised doubts over police investigations that targeted riot victims; in at least five cases the courts refused or were reluctant to accept eyewitness accounts of police officials. Jammu and Kashmir In August 2019, after the Indian government revoked the constitutional autonomy of Jammu and Kashmir state, it imposed broad restrictions and arbitrarily detained thousands of people, including elected officials, political leaders, activists, journalists, and lawyers. The authorities detained many of these people without informing their families about their whereabouts; several were even transferred to jails outside the state. Hundreds of habeas corpus petitions were filed in the courts by families seeking information about those detained and challenging unlawful detention. Although habeas corpus, a legal action seeking judicial review of the lawfulness of detention, is recognized as a core human right in both Indian and international law, courts delayed hearing the petitions for over a year in the majority of cases. Of the 554 habeas corpus petitions filed in the Jammu and Kashmir High Court after August 5, 2019, the court had passed judgment in only 29 cases by September 2020. Over 30 percent of the cases became moot because the government had released the detainee by the time their petition was heard in court, while 65 percent of the cases remained pending a year later, in many cases a year after the person was detained. The harsh and discriminatory restrictions on Muslim-majority areas in Jammu and Kashmir remain in effect, with scores of people detained without charge and critics threatened with arrest. In August 2019, the government ordered a blanket internet shutdown across the state. In January 2020, it allowed broadband and slow-speed 2G internet only to access limited websites. In March, the authorities lifted restrictions to websites, but only at 2G speed for mobile internet services, which does not allow services such as video calls, emails, or access to web pages with photos or videos. The government finally restored mobile internet services at 4G speed in February 2021, 18 months after it was suspended. The government continues to clamp down on journalists and human rights activists, including bringing politically motivated charges of terrorism under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and using counterterrorism operations to harass and intimidate them. Empowering Vigilantes ‘Cow Protection’ Groups BJP leaders have made strong statements about the need to protect cows, considered sacred by many Hindus. Beef is consumed mostly by religious and ethnic minorities, and such statements have in some cases encouraged violence against them. Several BJP-ruled states have passed stricter laws to prohibit killing cows and adopted cow protection policies, promoting Hindu nationalism and disproportionately harming minority communities. Many of the new legal provisions make cow slaughter a cognizable, non-bailable offense, putting the burden of proof on the accused in violation of the right to be presumed innocent. Communal rhetoric by BJP leaders along with policies around cow protection by BJP-led state governments have emboldened violent vigilante groups. Since May 2015, at least 50 people have been killed, mostly Muslims, and hundreds injured in attacks by these so-called cow protection groups, many claiming affiliations with militant Hindu groups that often have ties to the BJP. Police have often stalled prosecutions of the attackers, while several BJP politicians have publicly justified the attacks. In a number of cases, police have filed complaints against victims’ family members and associates under laws banning cow slaughter, leaving witnesses and families afraid to pursue justice. The authorities have even used the National Security Act – a repressive law that permits detention without charge for up to a year – against those suspected of illegally slaughtering cows. In 2020, the Uttar Pradesh government arrested at least 4,000 people over allegations of cow slaughter under the law banning it, and used the National Security Act against 76 people accused of cow slaughter. Fueling Islamophobia For several weeks following the outbreak of Covid-19 in March, the BJP government singled out a mass religious congregation in Delhi, organized by the international Islamic missionary movement Tablighi Jamaat, to explain a spike in cases. This led to a surge in Islamophobia with some BJP leaders calling the meeting a “Talibani crime” and “Corona Terrorism,” and pro-government television channels and social media accusing those who attended the gathering and Indian Muslims in general of not just being responsible for the outbreak but deliberately spreading it. Fake videos contending that Muslims were deliberately spreading the virus went viral on social media and WhatsApp, leading to weeks of abuses against Muslims, boycotts of their businesses and of individuals, and numerous physical attacks on Muslims, including volunteers distributing relief supplies. State governments across the country also filed cases against over 2,500 foreign nationals for allegedly violating visa terms and intentionally disregarding Covid-19 guidelines to attend the Jamaat meeting. Courts in several states cleared the accused, strongly criticizing the authorities for “malicious” prosecutions devoid of evidence. While quashing cases against 35 people who attended the Jamaat congregation, 29 of them foreign nationals, the Bombay High Court stated in August that the cases appeared to have been filed to warn Indian Muslims who had been protesting against the citizenship policies across the country: “This action indirectly gave warning to Indian Muslims that action in any form and for anything can be taken against Muslims.” Claiming ‘Hurt Religious Sentiments’ The government’s discriminatory policies and practices have empowered its violent supporters to commit unlawful acts with impunity. Government supporters file baseless complaints against critics and at the same time pro-BJP mobs threaten, harass, and attack minority community members. Uttar Pradesh police in January detained Nasir, 26, a Muslim street vendor after members of the militant Hindu group Bajrang Dal accused him of offending them by selling a shoe branded “Thakur,” an upper-caste name. Following much criticism on social media and elsewhere, police denieddetaining Nasir and dropped charges against him of promoting enmity between groups, but said they are still investigating allegations of causing hurt and intentional insult. A high-end jewelry chain, Tanishq, withdrew an advertisement in October, fearing violence after a Hindu nationalist backlash. The advertisement depicted a Muslim family throwing a baby shower for their Hindu daughter-in-law; those opposing it said it promoted “love jihad” or interfaith marriages. The company faced vicious trolling on social media, threats of attacks against their staff at one of their stores, and boycott campaigns. Legal provisions such as section 295A of the Indian Penal Code, which criminalizes “deliberate and malicious” speech intended to outrage religious feelings, are increasingly used by the majority to silence those with whom they disagree. Police make arrests based on spurious complaints even though the Supreme Court has clarified that the law does not punish every act of insult to religion. It must be proved that the act was malicious or deliberate, and only an aggravated form of insult to religion that also has a tendency to disrupt public order can be punished. Human Rights Watch has long called for the repeal of section 295A, which uses overbroad language that does not meet international standards. In November, Hindu nationalists took exception to an interfaith couple kissing in a temple in a television production of A Suitable Boy, based on the novel by Vikram Seth, set in newly independent India. The BJP state home minister in Madhya Pradesh ordered an investigation into “extremely objectionable content” and the police filed a criminal case under section 295A for insulting religious feelings against two executives of Netflix, the platform that streams the program. In several cases in which police have arrested Muslims based on spurious cases filed by Hindu nationalist groups, courts have failed to adequately protect the rights to freedom of expression and opinion. In November, when granting bail to a news anchor sympathetic to the government, the Supreme Court reiterated that bail is the rule and jail is the exception and observed thatcriminal law should not be used for “selective harassment of citizens.”However, the police have continued to harass activists, journalists, and critics of the government by filing unjustified cases against them for dissenting views, protesting, or covering protests, most recently during the farmers protests in Delhi, and argued against bail in the courts. Courts in Madhya Pradesh denied bail to a Muslim standup comic, Munawar Faruqui, who was arrested under section 295A for jokes he apparently did not perform that allegedly hurt Hindu sentiments, with police subsequently admitting they had no evidence of the performance. Faruqui and his five associates – including three Hindus, a Muslim, and a Christian – were arrested on January 1 by state police based on a complaint made by the son of a BJP politician, who also leads a Hindu nationalist group. A mob of men from the organization disrupted Faruqui’s show, saying he made “indecent” and “vulgar” remarks against Hindu deities. During Faruqui’s bail hearing, the judge reportedly remarked that “such people must not be spared.” Faruqui appealed to the Supreme Court, which granted him bail on February 5, noting that the allegations in the case were vague and that the police had failed to follow proper procedure before his arrest. However, in another case, the Supreme Court refused protection from arrest to makers of the web series Tandav after police in six states opened investigations based on complaints under section 295A and others that it had hurt Hindu religious sentiment. The judges refused bail, saying, “You cannot play a role hurting religious sentiments of others.” The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which India has ratified, encourages bail for criminal suspects. Article 9 states that, “It shall not be the general rule that persons awaiting trial shall be detained in custody, but release may be subject to guarantees to appear for trial.” See article here. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Police charge forward to disperse protesters in Mandalay, Myanmar, on Saturday. Security forces ratcheted up their pressure against anti-coup protesters, using water cannons, tear gas, slingshots and rubber bullets. AP At least two people were killed during an anti-coup protest in Myanmar in the bloodiest day since the Feb. 1 military takeover that led to the arrest of the country's de facto leader and kicked off weeks of nearly nonstop demonstrations. According to multiple reports from Mandalay, the country's second-largest city, police confronted striking ship workers and other protesters in an hours-long standoff. Some demonstrators are said to have flung projectiles at police, who attempted to disperse the hundreds-strong demonstration by firing off live rounds alongside tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets. Reuters says witnesses found cartridges for live rounds alongside rubber bullets on the ground. Both residents and protesters were forced to flee the area as security forces chased after them, The Associated Press reports. Some journalists also fled after being hit by tear gas and slingshot projectiles. One man died on the scene after being shot in the head and another en route to receiving treatment after being shot in the chest, according to media reports that cited local journalists and medical workers. At least 20 others were injured, according to multiple reports. Saturday's deaths follow the death Friday of a young woman who was shot in the head during protests last week. The death of 20-year-old Mya Thwet Thwet Khine marked the first confirmed fatality to occur in the protests, which were spurred by the military takeover and arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi and members of her National League for Democracy party. The junta had seized power, baselessly claiming the landslide win for Suu Kyi'a party in a November election was the result of fraud. Suu Kyi has been detained since her arrest and been charged with illegally importing walkie-talkies — a charge widely viewed as politically motivated — and violating Article 25 of the National Disaster Management Law. The junta is facing sanctions from the U.S. and other countries. Violence in the weeks of demonstrations had largely been limited, but recent protests in Myanmar have been met with crackdowns by security forces. Earlier in the week in Mandalay, the AP notes, state railway workers joining a civil disobedience movement were met with similar force by security forces. Videos posted on social media showed muzzle flashes and police firing off slingshots and throwing rocks at buildings. Police also used force in arresting protesters in the northern state of Kachin on Friday. The army says one police officer has died of injuries sustained during the protests, Reuters reports. Also on Saturday, in the cities of Yangon and Naypyitaw, young people held ceremonies for Mya Thwet Thwet Khine, the young woman who died Friday. She had been on life support after being shot in the head during protest in the capitol Naypyitaw. Thousands also marched peacefully in several parts of Myanmar on Saturday, including in the northern town of Myitkyina and in Bagan and Pathein, Reuters reported. © 2021 npr