Statement by Nada Al-Nashif, Deputy High Commissioner for Human Rights 10 February 2021, Geneva. Palais des Nations unies, Geneva. (Creative Commons) Excellencies, Colleagues and friends, I am honoured to introduce this intersessional meeting and recognise the efforts of the Republic of Armenia and the other sponsors of resolution 43/29 to keep the prevention of genocide on the agenda of the Human Rights Council. Two years ago, we celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. Adopted on 9 December 1948 by the United Nations General Assembly, it was the first international treaty of a new era characterised by a vision of the world where the atrocities committed during the Second World War would never be tolerated again. It was followed the next day by the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights - ensuring the link between the prevention of genocide and the protection, respect and fulfilment of human rights. The Secretary-General referred to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights last year when presenting his “Call to Action for Human Rights” saying “there is no better guarantee of prevention than for Member States to meet their human rights responsibilities”. Sadly, experience – from Rwanda to Iraq and Myanmar– has shown that most mass atrocities find roots in long-standing civil and political violations, as well as discrimination, economic inequalities, social exclusion, and denial of economic, social and cultural rights. From Tutsis to Yazidis or Rohingyas, minorities have experienced severe and targeted denial of their most basic human rights. Excellencies, As the President of the Human Rights Council has just recalled, early signs of many of the recent mass atrocities, including genocide, have been detected and made public by Human Rights Council mechanisms, as well as by Treaty Bodies and the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights. No doubt that the human rights machinery has played a great early warning role. Yet, sounding early warning remains insufficient. In this connection, the Secretary-General suggested in his last report on the prevention of genocide to this Council (A/HRC/41/24), that greater use can be made of the Universal Periodic Review to enhance this. Last year, three rapporteurs also made recommendations to the Human Rights Council with a view to strengthening its preventive mandate, especially through increased cooperation with the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide (A/HRC/43/37). To engage in building robust linkages between the New York based bodies and the various parts of the human rights machinery located in Geneva is certainly crucial, and should be explored. However, as emphasized by the Special Rapporteur on the promotion of truth, justice, reparation and guarantees of non-recurrence and the Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, in a joint study they presented in 2018 to the Council (A/HRC/37/65), it is important to move the focus of preventive work “upstream.” There needs to be a consistent, coherent approach that identifies and tackles the seeds of hatred before they can grow – or be cultivated – into the resentments and bitter divisions that can escalate into conflict. In this respect, the United Nations human rights system contributes to long term prevention by identifying the root causes and accelerators of serious human rights violations, including in the socio-economic sphere; by collecting information on [human rights] violations; identifying alleged perpetrators; and by advocating for and supporting appropriate accountability and transitional justice solutions. Excellencies, Accountability is critical – not only because it provides justice for victims and punishment for perpetrators. A culture of accountability and the fair and equal administration of justice are catalysts for the rule of law and a culture of respect for human rights. They allow addressing grievances and facilitate solutions to their structural roots. Forcefully combating impunity in all its forms is thus central to ending genocide and other mass atrocities. Prevention and punishment – the explicitly stated twin aims of the Genocide Convention – can never be seen in isolation from each other. Punishment – with its functions of deterrence and the enforcement of rights - is key to prevention. States have the primary responsibility to deliver justice and prevent human rights violations and atrocity crimes. The United Nations – in the first instance this Office – can support them through building cultures of accountability in practice. International human rights law underscores the need for States to conduct effective, prompt, thorough and impartial investigations as well as prosecutions; and to ensure access to justice and effective remedies for victims. The United Nations approach embraces all these steps from fact-finding exercises through to judicial processes. In cases where a State is unwilling or unable to deliver justice, the International Criminal Court (ICC) can take over. In this sense, the Court is a central pillar of the work to punish, and therefore help prevent, the gravest of international crimes. States that have not yet acceded to the Rome Statute should consider it. States should also consider how they can contribute to accountability for atrocity crimes committed in other States, including through supporting the work of the United Nations or exercising universal jurisdiction – as we saw with the landmark case brought by The Gambia against Myanmar before the ICC on the basis of alleged violations of the Genocide Convention. . It will certainly increase the understanding of the role that States must play in preventing and punishing acts of genocide committed beyond their frontiers. Excellencies, Effective accountability must encompass the need to acknowledge and take responsibility for the violations of victims’ rights so that their rights can be restored and their entitlement to remedy satisfied. Victims have rights to truth, justice, reparation and a comprehensive package of guarantees of non-recurrence, which will assist in preventing future crimes. There is a powerful link between prevention and truth-seeking, the role of memory and longer-term efforts of education, notably the teaching of history. A country's approach to past atrocities can be transformative – as we have seen repeatedly. Broader accountability measures can assist this transformation to an equitable and just future. It must reach to — but also beyond — the specific crimes committed, and address systemic deficiencies in State structures that have enabled serious human rights violations and abuses. It is only by inscribing accountability in a broader transformative agenda that it can fully realize its preventive potential. I thank you and look forward to your insightful deliberations. © OHCHR 1996-2021

Published by HRW on February 7, 2021. Permanent premises of the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the Netherlands. (2018 Marina Riera/Human Rights Watch) The opening of the trial of Alfred Yékatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona will take place on February 16, 2021 at the International Criminal Court after being postponed from February 9 due to unexpected Covid-related circumstances. Ngaïssona and Yékatom are the highest ranking anti-balaka leaders to face trial, and the first at the ICC. The anti-balaka are Christian militias who engaged in brutal tit-for-tat attacks with the Muslim Seleka following a coup in 2012, leaving civilians caught in the middle. Although the International Criminal Court is conducting two investigations concerning crimes committed in the Central African Republic in the last two decades, this is the first trial of anti-balaka leaders and involving crimes in the country’s conflict since 2012. 1. What is the background in the Central African Republic to these cases? In late 2012, mainly Muslim Seleka rebels began a rebellion that ousted the Central African Republic president, François Bozizé, and seized power through a campaign of violence and terror. In late 2013, Christian and animist militias known as anti-balaka began to organize counterattacks against the Seleka. The anti-balaka had its roots as local self-defense groups that existed under Bozizé and frequently targeted Muslim civilians, associating all Muslims with the Seleka. As the Seleka and anti-balaka fought each other and carried out increasingly brutal tit-for-tat attacks on those they perceived as supporting their enemies, civilians were caught in the middle. Many Muslims fled, and with the mass departure of the country’s minority Muslim population, the anti-balaka turned on Christians and others who they believed had opposed them or had sided with their Muslim neighbors. Over time, the anti-balaka turned on anyone they came across, stealing and looting. There was widespread internal displacement across the country, which continues. Human Rights Watch has documented war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by Seleka and anti-balaka forces since 2013. Some of the most egregious abuses occurred in the central regions of the Central African Republic between late 2014 and April 2017. Human Rights Watch has also documented hundreds of cases of rape and sexual slavery by anti-balaka groups and fighters from Seleka factions. 2. How did the ICC become involved in the Central African Republic? On May 30, 2014, then-interim president Catherine Samba-Panza referred the situation in the Central African Republic since August 2012 to the International Criminal Court in The Hague. On September 24, 2014, the prosecutor announced the opening of an investigation into crimes allegedly committed in the Central African Republic since 2012. This was the second ICC investigation into alleged crimes in the Central African Republic. The ICC’s first investigation related to grave crimes committed in 2002 and 2003 during a coup led by Bozizé. In December 2004, the Central African Republic referred that situation to the ICC, and the ICC prosecutor announced the opening of a formal investigation into the situation in 2007. 3. Who are Alfred Yékatom and Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona? Alfred Yékatom, known as “Rombhot,” was born on January 23, 1975. He was a master corporal in the national army before the conflict and then promoted himself to “colonel” when he became a key anti-balaka leader in 2013. He allegedly commanded a group of about 3,000 members operating within the anti-balaka movement, according to the ICC. On August 20, 2015, Yékatom was added to the United Nations Security Council sanctions list for taking action that was deemed to threaten or impede the political transition process or fuel violence. In 2016, Yékatom was elected to parliament. Patrice-Edouard Ngaïssona is a one-time self-declared political coordinator of the anti-balaka militias and, according to the ICC, an “alleged most senior leader” of the anti-balaka. On February 2, 2018, he was elected to a senior post at the Confederation of African Football. Human Rights Watch interviewed Ngaïssona on September 3, 2014, during which he did not contest that the anti-balaka were responsible for some abuses or that he was a leader of the anti-balaka. 4. When did Yékatom and Ngaïssona first face ICC charges and appear at the ICC? The ICC issued an arrest warrant for Yékatom on November 11, 2018, which it unsealed on November 17, 2018. Yékatom was transferred to the ICC by Central African Republic authorities on November 17, 2018. The authorities in the Central African Republic took Yékatom, who was then a member of parliament, into custody after he took out a gun and fired shots in the parliament building. He made his first appearance before the ICC a few days later. Less than a month later, on December 7, 2018, the ICC issued an arrest warrant for Ngaïssona. Ngaïssona was arrested in France on December 12, 2018 and transferred to the ICC on January 23, 2019. His initial appearance took place two days later. 5. What are the charges against Yékatom and Ngaïssona? Yékatom faces 10 counts of war crimes and 11 counts of crimes against humanity and Ngaïssona faces 16 counts of war crimes and 16 counts of crimes against humanity. The charges include intentionally directing an attack against the civilian population, murder, intentionally directing attacks on religious sites, deportation or forcible transfer of population and displacement of the civilian population, and persecution. Both were also charged with the war crime of enlisting children under age 15 and using them in hostilities. When confirming these charges to go ahead to trial, the ICC judges denied certain charges that the prosecutor had sought relating to events in certain locations outside Bangui, the Central African Republic’s capital. The judges said that the evidence did not establish that Ngaïssona had effective control of certain anti-balaka groups operating outside Bangui. Victims initially raised a concern that the prosecutor might not include rape and sexual violence charges as distinct offenses. The charges ultimately did include rape, both as a war crime and a crime against humanity, although only against Ngaïssona. The prosecutor later sought to add a second instance of rape to Ngaïssona’s charges and to add charges of rape and sexual slavery against Yékatom. The court denied the requests, however, citing among other reasons the need to balance the effectiveness of the prosecution with potential prejudice to the defendants given the late timing. Human Rights Watch has previously documented rape and sexual slavery by anti-balaka forces, including by forces allegedly under Yékatom’s command. 6. Why is the ICC trying Yékatom and Ngaïssona together? In February 2019, the ICC judges joined the Yékatom and Ngaïssona cases. They noted that the crimes were part of the same overall attack and the same conflict. As a result, the judges said, they expected that the evidence against both suspects would be substantially the same. The judges also found that joining the cases would not prejudice the defendants, and would rather enhance the fairness and expeditiousness of the proceedings. In joint proceedings, each suspect is accorded the same rights as if they were being tried separately. 7. How does this trial relate to the previous trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba? The ICC’s first investigation into grave crimes committed in 2002 and 2003 has produced only one case, against Jean-Pierre Bemba, a former vice president from Congo. Forces from Bemba’s Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (Mouvement pour la Liberation du Congo, MLC) were active in the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003, acting at the behest of then-president Ange-Félix Patassé in repressing a coup attempt by Bozizé. Bemba was arrested in Belgium in 2008 and his trial began in 2010. On March 21, 2016, ICC judges found him guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity and sentenced him to 18 years in prison. An ICC appeals chamber overturned the conviction. He was released three days later and went to Belgium. The ICC denied a claim Bemba filed against the ICC for compensation and damages. The ICC has since closed the Bemba case, although the ICC’s Trust Fund for Victims is undertaking certain activities through a pilot project begun in September 2020 to provide assistance to victims of crimes involved in this situation. This includes physical and mental health, rehabilitation, and material support to victims and their families. The ICC has not issued any other arrest warrants in connection with its first investigation. The court has yet to hold anyone to account for the crimes in 2002 and 2003, leaving victims without redress. 8. What does recent unrest in the Central African Republic mean for the trial? The Central African Republic held presidential elections on December 27, 2020. On January 4, 2021, the electoral commission declared Faustin-Archange Touadéra the winner of the presidential election with 53.9 percent of the vote. On January 19, the Constitutional Court affirmed the election results. In the run-up to and following the elections, a new rebel coalition has carried out multiple attacks. The Coalition of Patriots for Change (Coalition des patriotes pour le changement, CPC) includes the same groups that have committed war crimes in the last five years, on both sides of the conflict. In the recent unrest, scores of civilians, several peacekeepers, and a Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) aid worker have been killed. Between December 22 and 29, the UN peacekeeping mission in the Central African Republic, known by the French acronym MINUSCA, noted at least 57 incidents of human rights abuses and 96 victims surrounding election violence, primarily by armed groups, but there have been several additional attacks since. The violence has led to mass displacement, with over 100,000 civilians fleeing to neighboring Chad, Cameroon, and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and another 100,000 civilians fleeing into the bush. On December 19, a government spokesman said that former president Bozizé was behind the new coalition. Bozizé, president from 2003 until he was ousted in a 2013 coup, returned to the country a year ago. In early December, the country’s constitutional court ruled him ineligible to run in the December 27 presidential election on “moral grounds” as he is under UN sanctions and the subject of an international arrest warrant issued by the Central African interim government in 2014. On December 31, President Touadéra dismissed three rebel chiefs from the government as a result of the attacks, which could end a peace deal that 14 rebel groups had signed in February 2019. The UN Security Council has condemned the attacks and called for accountability for the crimes. High-level officials from the African Union, Economic Community of Central African States, European Union, and United Nations have also issued a joint statement in which they invited the government to open an investigation to bring to justice those responsible for the violence. The UN special advisers on the prevention of genocide and responsibility to protect have noted that the current climate of impunity is a major factor fueling the violence and insecurity in the country. The ICC prosecutor issued a statement prior to the election calling for “calm and restraint” and reminding that anyone who participated in crimes would be “liable to prosecution.” Prosecutors in the Central African Republic have stated that an investigation has been opened into Bozizé’s role in the rebellion. 9. What are Yékatom’s and Ngaïssona’s rights as defendants? Yékatom and Ngaïssona are presumed innocent until proven guilty and are entitled to a fair and expeditious trial, conducted impartially. Additionally, under international fair trial standards such as those found in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the ICC’s founding Rome Statute, they are entitled to: Get information about the charges against them in a language they understand; Have adequate time and facilities to prepare a defense; Not be compelled to testify against themselves or to confess guilt; Each have a lawyer of their own choosing; and Be protected from torture and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment. Yékatom and Ngaïssona have both raised concerns regarding respect for their fair trial rights. They asserted that the prosecutor violated obligations on how to disclose material to the defense on several occasions. While the ICC judges agreed, they also found that the prosecutor had either remedied the problems or that there had been no prejudice to the defense. Ngaïssona also has complained about his detention conditions, and requested in-person visits by his defense team, which have been prohibited due to the Covid-19 pandemic. The ICC judges denied the request. Most recently, Ngaïssona’s Defense counsel requested an evaluation by a medical expert in light of the purported deterioration of his mental well-being, but the ICC judges noted that this issue should be handled by the court’s registry. 10. What is the role of victims in Yékatom’s and Ngaïssona’s case? Can they participate in the trial? The ICC has an innovative system of victim participation for an international criminal tribunal. Victims of the alleged crimes can make their views and concerns known to the judges in the trial, separate from any role as witnesses, through their legal representatives. Victim participation is one way to enhance the ICC’s resonance in affected communities. The ICC judges have so far recognized 1,403 victims as participants in the trial. The in-person registration of new victim participants has been complicated by the pandemic, but the ICC is continuing its efforts to register victims. In light of the pandemic, victims may continue to register until the close of the prosecution’s presentation of evidence. The victims are divided into two distinct groups: one consists of former child soldiers and the other of victims of other crimes. The creation of two distinct groups takes into account that their interests might diverge as former child soldiers could have been implicated in crimes against victims of other crimes. Two teams of lawyers represent the victim participants. The legal representatives for victims will be allowed to make opening statements and to participate in all hearings. They may also ask questions to witnesses and present evidence, after obtaining permission from the chamber. 11. How will local communities affected by the crimes in the Central African Republic receive information about the trial? Will they be able to follow the trial in The Hague? Outreach in the affected communities is important to maximize the court’s impact locally. As part of this effort, the ICC produces audio, video, and written summaries of court proceedings, and conducts field missions to discuss developments with affected communities. The pandemic has constrained outreach activities, but the ICC has continued its efforts, with a greater reliance on radio partners, including 20 community radio stations, as a method of mass dissemination of information. It has also displayed billboards in Bangui and the country’s provinces with messages promoting justice and accountability. Ahead of the trial, the ICC will broadcast a question-and-answer dialogue on local radio, and already has been working to answer key questions on people’s minds in local print media. The ICC has planned to stream the opening of the trial in a courtroom in Bangui, with members of the affected communities, journalists, civil society members, and international and national authorities invited to attend. The opening will also be broadcast live on television. As the trial gets under way, the ICC will broadcast summaries of trial developments every month on both television and radio. 12. What will happen at the trial hearing? How long will the trial last? What will be the punishment in the event of conviction? The opening of the trial is scheduled for February 16, 2021 (after being postponed) and is scheduled to last three days. After some procedural issues are addressed, the prosecution will have six hours to present its opening statements. The victim participants and the Ngaïssona defense will then have three hours each for their opening statements. The Yekatom defense will make its opening statement at the beginning of the presentation of its evidence. The prosecution’s presentation of evidence is expected to run from March 15 to 31, but then to be continued at a later time. The Office of the Prosecutor has indicated it will call 147 fact witnesses and four expert witnesses. The prosecution has estimated that it needs approximately 400 hours to examine its witnesses. The ICC judges have allocated a maximum of 200 hours to each defense team for questioning. The ICC has indicated the trial may last approximately two years. Following the presentation of the evidence, the judges will determine a verdict. In the event of conviction, imprisonment for up to 30 years, or life in prison may be imposed. The death penalty is not an available punishment before the ICC. 13. How does this trial relate to the Special Criminal Court that has been established in the Central African Republic? Could Yékatom and Ngaïssona be tried by this court or by domestic courts in the country? The ICC is a court of last resort. Under the Rome Statute, the ICC only prosecutes cases when national courts are unable or unwilling to prosecute. In 2015, the Central African Republic established a Special Criminal Court in Bangui to try serious international crimes committed in the conflict, alongside the ICC. The court operates in partnership with the UN and includes international judges and prosecutors working with Central African Republic justice practitioners. The Special Criminal Court is given primacy over the country’s ordinary national courts. The law establishing the court foresees that if the both courts work on the same case, priority will go to the ICC, which is a bit different from the usual practice between the ICC and national courts. The court became operational in 2018 and investigations are underway, although it has not yet held its first trial. It has a mandate of five years, which can be renewed. The court needs increased international support to continue its work. Yékatom has argued that the ICC should find his case to be inadmissible on the grounds that the Central African Republic is now capable of prosecuting him in the Special Criminal Court. The ICC has denied the request because no investigations or prosecutions against Yékatom are underway at the Special Criminal Court and the Central African Republic authorities have not given any indication that they intend to investigate or prosecute him. An appeal to this decision by the defense is pending. There have also been criminal trials before ordinary courts of the Central African Republic since 2015, including at least two proceedings against former anti-balaka commanders. In February 2020, the Bangui Court of Appeal sentenced 28 anti-balaka fighters for the killing of 75 civilians and 10 UN peacekeepers around Bangassou, in Mbomou province, in 2017. The sentences ranged from 10 years to life. However, most other proceedings have been against low-ranking individuals or have concerned minor crimes. 14. What else is the ICC doing in the Central African Republic? What more should it do? Since the Bemba acquittal, the ICC has brought no further cases as part of its first investigation. Human Rights Watch has criticized the lack of additional cases and has urged the Office of the Prosecutor to pursue charges that are representative of the crimes committed to ensure meaningful delivery of justice. With respect to the ICC’s second investigation, until recently, the prosecution of two anti-balaka leaders was in stark contrast to the lack of proceedings against Seleka leaders and their allies, who continue to control vast territory in the country. However, on January 24, 2021, the Central African Republic surrendered the first Seleka-affiliated suspect to the ICC. Mahamat Said Abdel Kani is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity committed as a Seleka commander in Bangui in 2013. The ICC issued the arrest warrant under seal on January 7, 2019. His initial appearance was held on January 28, 2021. Human Rights Watch has urged the court to bring charges against more Seleka suspects, particularly higher-level Seleka suspects. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

by Jun N. Aguirre on 8 February 2021 The killing of nine Indigenous leaders by police during an operation in the central Philippines on Dec. 30, 2020, has drawn widespread condemnation from environmental and human rights groups, politicians, lawyers, and Catholic bishops. Police allege that those killed, and another 16 arrested, were supporters of the NPA, the armed wing of the banned communist party. But supporters of the Indigenous Tumandok community on Panay Island say they were targeted for their opposition to two dam projects in their ancestral domain. One of the projects, on the Jalaur River, is largely funded through a $208 million loan from the South Korean government. AKLAN, Philippines — At dawn on Dec. 30, 2020, police officers raided Indigenous villages within a military reservation camp in the central Philippines in search of alleged members of the New People’s Army, the armed wing of the banned communist party. During the raid, authorities killed nine leaders and arrested 16 members of the Tumandok ethnic group. The Philippine National Police (PNP) and the Criminal Investigation and Detection Group (CIDG), who led the synchronized raids on the island of Panay, said the members were rebel sympathizers. Human rights and environmental groups have linked the raids to two major dam projects in the area: one on the Jalaur River and the other on the Panay River. Lawmakers and local groups say the targets of the raid, especially those who were killed, had been opposed to the ongoing construction of the controversial Jalaur dam in the nearby municipality of Calinog. Indigenous groups there have long complained that the project is destroying their ancestral domain. An illustration of the JRMP II high dam. Image courtesy of the National Irrigation Administration JRMP Project Stage II Facebook page. Conflicting narratives The PNP’s internal affairs division has opened an investigation into the raids, but insists those killed and arrested were NPA supporters. Roger James Brillantes, a police colonel who heads the internal affairs office for the Western Visayas region, said at a press conference that the operation was part of a government campaign against rebels. “The PNP did the raid because it is armed with warrant of arrests,” he said. “There is an ongoing investigation if the operatives have conducted lapses in its operation.” Police allege some of the Indigenous leaders fired at officers during the raids, prompting a return of fire in which the Indigenous men were killed. Police reportedly seized some firearms from the operation. But those arrested deny there was any resistance on their part, saying the police raided their homes at about 4 a.m., when they were asleep. The Indigenous groups say the firearms and explosives the government says it seized were planted. The Jalaur project is the first large-scale dam to be constructed in the Philippines’ central and southern Visayas and Mindanao regions. Eighty percent of the project cost, nearly $208 million, comes from a loan from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (KEDF) of South Korea, issued through the Export-Import Bank of Korea in 2012. In 2018, the Philippines’ National Irrigation Administration signed a 11.2 billion peso ($224 million) contract with South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction for the second stage of the Jalaur project. The project is expected to provide year-round irrigation, bulk water supply, hydroelectric power, and ecotourism opportunities for the communities on Panay Island. The red marks are the location of the Indigenous barangays or villages that were included in the police raid last Dec. 30, 2020. The nine slain Indigenous leaders came from these areas. The yellow marks are the proposed sites of the Panay High Dam, part of the Panay River Basin Development Project; and the town of Agcalaga, where South Korea’s Daewoo Engineering and Construction conducted a ground breaking ceremony for the second phase of the Jalaur River Multi-purpose Project. The location map was made via Google Earth The fact that those most opposed to the project were killed in a purported operation against communist sympathizers is no coincidence, groups say. On Dec. 11, the nine Indigenous leaders killed were part of a Human Rights Day rally, in which they protested against the dam projects. They were accused of being rebels that same day — a practice known as “red-tagging” that is often used to justify a subsequent crackdown by the police or military. “Their strong resistance against the development projects have made its members become subject of red-tagging by the National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (NTF-ELCAC), and harassment through intensified military presence in their communities,” the Panay chapter of the Philippine Misereor Partnership Inc. (PMPI), a network of NGOs and advocacy groups, said in a statement. An ‘excuse’ to kill The deadly raid on Dec. 30 has also sparked political fallout. On Jan. 4, members of Congress filed a joint declaration calling for a deeper probe into the incident. “This mass killings and arrests of indigenous peoples in Panay, in the middle of a pandemic no less, is highly condemnable, and has no place in society,” six representatives from four parties wrote in their declaration. “The brazen killing of the poor and marginalized indigenous peoples is an indicator of the state of human rights in the country as well as the raging impunity that seems to reign over our land.” The Panay chapter of the National Union of Lawyers of the Philippines (NULP) also condemned the killings, calling them “identical to the killings of farmers in Negros Oriental on March 30, 2019.” In that incident, 14 people were killed in synchronized police raids in three municipalities in Negros Oriental province. Police similarly accused those killed of being armed NPA sympathizers and firing on officers. “It appears that the service of these warrants was nothing more than an excuse to carry out an operation intended to kill and arrest local leaders of Tumanduk communities that have been actively advocating for the rights and interests of farmers and indigenous peoples,” NUPL-Panay said in a statement. Images of the Indigenous members from the Tumanduk community who were arrested during the Dec. 30, 2020 security raid in Panay Island, Philippines. Photo courtesy of the Police Regional Office-Western Visayas The clergy in this staunchly Catholic country has also raised concerns over the killings. In a joint statement, eight bishops representing dioceses in the Western Visayas region issued a demand for the government to thoroughly investigate the raid. They also called on the government to listen to the “legitimate cries of the Tumandoks over the Jalaur mega dam issue”; end the militarization of Indigenous communities in the area; compel the PNP and the military to follow ethical standards in the rules of engagement; and require police officers to use body cameras to protect parties against false accusations. The government, through its Western Visayas Regional Task Force to End Local Communist Armed Conflict (RTF-ELCAC), has responded by calling the bishops misinformed on the issue. Flosemer Chris Gonzales, a lawyer for the task force, said the clergymen may have been deceived by the propaganda from the NPA. “We caution the bishops from making hasty, false, and presumptuous conclusions,” he said. “We would like to think that you have all been misinformed. As Catholics, we adhere to the teachings of the Church but that does not equally mean that our bishops are not prone to errors in judgment. The individuals who were arrested were subjects of legitimately issued search warrants. You cannot conclude that atrocities were committed. That is simply irresponsible.” See article here. Banner image of a visual illustration of the Jalaur River Multipurpose Project, phase II, which has secured financing from a loan from the Economic Development Cooperation Fund (KEDF) of South Korea, issued through the Export-Import Bank of Korea in 2012. Image courtesy of the JRMP II Facebook page. © Mongabay Copyright Conservation News 2021 For more information on the persecution of Indigenous communities environmental defenders in the Philippines, see these articles by The Guardian, Al Jazeera, VICE and Human Rights Watch.

When at least 53 people died in Cameroon in late January after a bus collided with a fuel-laden truck—one of the worst road accidents in the country’s history—few observers would have expected that reactions to the tragedy would include ethnic slurs, mainly on Facebook. They were directed toward members of the Bamileke community, from which most of the victims appeared to originate. Cameroon has long prided itself on the relative harmony between the country’s approximately 250 ethnic groups, none of which dominates nationally—a diversity that many Cameroonians consider to be a safeguard against communal violence. But Cameroon now has to deal with a new reality. A heavily contested presidential election in 2018 has unleashed a new layer of political tensions that have taken an ethnic turn and found a formidable amplifier on social media. Among the supporters of longtime President Paul Biya and the main opposition leader, Maurice Kamto, many now frame the political dispute that arose from that election as a competition for power between, on the one hand, Biya’s Bulu group and the ethnic Beti with whom the Bulu identify, and, on the other, Kamto’s Bamileke community. If allowed to further deepen its roots, this increasingly ethnic acrimony could lead to violence and threaten the stability of a country already facing a separatist insurgency in its Anglophone region . Cameroon’s social fabric could then be torn apart, especially as both sides position themselves for the eventual end of Biya’s presidency. He will turn 88 next week, after nearly four decades in power. A rash of communal violence in a southern town in October 2019 gave Cameroon a taste of what could come if the genie is not swiftly put back in the bottle. To avoid reaching the point of no return, Biya’s government and the opposition should engage in meaningful dialogue about electoral reforms, while the government should also strengthen the country’s laws against ethnic discrimination. Facebook, the most popular social media platform in Cameroon, has a role to play, too— by increasing its capacity to identify and remove inflammatory content on its platform . The ethnic cleavages originate in the rivalry between the ruling party, the Cameroon People’s Democratic Movement, known by its French acronym RDPC—which firmly intends to keep the upper hand whenever Biya’s presidency ends—and opposition leaders ambitious for power, Kamto most prominently. The 2018 election, considered by many observers as riddled with irregularities and whose results are still being contested by the opposition, stoked further political division. Since then, Kamto’s Cameroon Renaissance Movement, or MRC, has boycotted parliamentary and regional elections in 2020 and condemned Biya’s management of the COVID-19 pandemic and the Anglophone crisis. The opposition also wants to see the government undertake some electoral reforms before any future election. This wish notably emanates from a fear that Biya could die or resign before the end of his term, in 2025, leading to snap elections that the ruling party would be better able to control under the current, compromised electoral system. Despite warnings from influential figures and institutions, like Cameroon’s Catholic bishops more than a year ago , the power struggle between the RDPC and the MRC is now increasingly aligned with ethnic affiliations—a situation only made worse by the use of social media by both politicians and the public. While the rise of social media has been a welcome boost for free speech in a country where government-controlled outlets occupy most of the media space, it has also had some destabilizing effects. The platforms, and especially Facebook—the most popular social media platform in Cameroon, with close to 4 million users—are now used to spread ethnic stereotypes, exchange ethnic-based insults, propagate misinformation and even incite violence. That is all widening the divide between the two sides. In the southern town of Sangmelima, such increased divisions seem to have played a role in riots that erupted in late 2019, when Indigenous Bulu targeted Bamileke and Bamoun groups originating from Cameroon’s West Region. Underlying tensions over land rights in the area, notably for space to open shops—which local Bulu feel locked out of by the other groups—spilled over into violence after a Bamoun man was blamed for the murder of a local motorbike taxi driver. Hundreds of locals then attacked Bamilekes, Bamouns and other Cameroonians from the country’s north with sticks and stones, while also looting and destroying their properties. Hundreds fled back to their region of origin in western and northern Cameroon. The government quickly held intercommunal talks, which managed to calm the situation in Sangmelima. However, the episode is a possible sign of the dangerous path the country is currently embarking on. As political actors position themselves for the end of Biya’s presidency, there is a risk they will turn to their own ethnic groups when mobilizing support, meaning even more serious ethnic disputes could arise and shatter decades of relative harmony between ethnic communities. Both the ruling party and the opposition have in their ranks people who understand the dangers of this trend toward tribalized politics, and who have voiced their concerns. But neither camp has done much to stem these tensions. The authorities have sounded alarm bells on rising hate speech, run seminars to warn of its potential harm and even passed a new law criminalizing “contempt of tribe,” in December 2018. But the political opposition has greeted these moves with suspicion, suggesting that they are a smokescreen for repressing journalists. Yet since its passage, the law against tribal hate speech, which provides for more stringent punishment for inflammatory language that appears on social media, has yet to be applied in even a single case. There are concerns over when the law will be used and on what basis, given widespread abuse by both sides. Given the opposition’s boycott of the 2020 parliamentary elections, which lost it the opportunity of getting seats in the National Assembly, the ruling party and the opposition have no forum where they can engage on the difficult topic of electoral reforms. Both sides must nonetheless find a way of talking to each other in order to reach agreement on changes to make the process more transparent—perhaps, most importantly, by moving from a multiple ballot vote, which is more open to manipulation, to a single ballot. Meanwhile, to deal with ethnic tensions, the government should strengthen the legal framework that prohibits ethnic discrimination, notably for access to public service employment. One way to do that might be to better empower a body it created in 2017 to fight this discrimination, but which lacks funding and only has an advisory role. Social media companies have a responsibility, too. Curbing hate speech and disinformation online will not in itself solve the ethnic tensions born out of Cameroon’s political crisis. But it remains key to reduce their reach, and therefore to mitigate the risks of violence. Facebook, in particular, should improve its own capacity to identify and remove fake content and content that incites violence, including by hiring moderators familiar with the particularities of Cameroonian hate speech and linguistic nuances. The social media giant should also boost its outreach to politicians in Cameroon to help them engage with their supporters and tone down the rhetoric online. Biya and his backers may be reluctant to take measures they will perceive as weakening their grip on power. Still, there is reason to hope that the president, at 87, will consider his legacy. With separatist sentiment mounting in the Anglophone areas, the man who has been leading Cameroon since 1982 should be particularly sensitive to preserving the country’s historically amicable interethnic relations. Arrey Elvis Ntui is the senior analyst for Cameroon at International Crisis Group , the independent conflict-prevention organization. © World Politics Review 2021

Independent, Thorough Investigation Needed (Johannesburg) – Angolan authorities should immediately ensure a prompt, independent, and thorough investigation into the killing by security forces of at least 10 unarmed protesters on January 30, 2021 during a protest organized by the Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate Movement in Lunda Norte province, Human Rights Watch said today. Four witnesses told Human Rights Watch that Angolan security forces indiscriminately fired at protesters who had peacefully gathered to demand better public services, including water and electricity supply, in the diamond-rich town of Cafunfu. The Angolan police reported that 6 people were killed, more than 20 were injured, and 16 were detained after officers foiled what they called an armed rebellion organized by the Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate Movement. They provided no basis for this assessment or details of the circumstances that led officers to fire live rounds. “The police use of apparently unnecessary lethal force against unarmed protesters in Lunda Norte requires an immediate and impartial investigation,” said Zenaida Machado, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Those found responsible for abuses should be held accountable.” Graphic video footage shared on social media shows uniformed Angolan police officers and soldiers walking among the dead and injured on a road. A police officer kicks an unarmed man, then steps on his head. The police then put him into a vehicle marked Cuango District Police, alongside other detainees. The Angolan police chief, Paulo de Almeida, said the protesters were members of a secessionist group that tried to break into a police station in the town of Cafunfo, in Cuango, Lunda Norte province. Several witnesses, as well as movement’s leader, José Zecamutchima, disputed the police claims. Zecamutchima told Deutsche Welle that 25 people were killed and “many have disappeared” when police went on a “shooting spree” against unarmed protesters. Almeida rejected calls for an independent investigation into alleged excessive use of force against protesters. Instead, he said that the Angola police “will respond with violence whenever the country’s sovereignty is under threat.” Activists and morgue workers told Human Rights Watch that police officers put nine bodies with gunshots wounds in the local Cafunfo morgue on the morning of the shooting. Two activists said that a tenth body of an unidentified man with gunshot wounds was found on February 2, in a valley near an area known as “Boss Quim.” Two members of the Lunda Tchokwe Protectorate Movement who joined the protests said that about 100 unarmed people were singing as they marched toward a meeting point near the office of the ruling party, the People’s Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA), in Cafunfo. They said that as they passed the police station, police begun to fire at them. “My friend and I ran toward the valley and hid there,” a protester told Human Rights Watch by phone. “Many other people also hid in the valley. It was panic everywhere.” Another man, Ricardo Zenza, said: “The police officers chased us and started firing toward us inside the valley. I saw blood, bodies… I just stayed there, praying quietly. When the policeman left, I ran home. I have been inside my house since Saturday [January 30].” The Angolan government should publicly direct the security forces to abide by the United Nations Basic Principles on the Use of Force and Firearms by Law Enforcement Officials, Human Rights Watch said. The Basic Principles state that security forces shall “apply non-violent means before resorting to the use of force and firearms,” and that “whenever the lawful use of force and firearms is unavoidable, law enforcement officials shall: (a) Exercise restraint in such use and act in proportion to the seriousness of the offence and the legitimate objective to be achieved; (b) Minimize damage and injury, and respect and preserve human life.” Furthermore, “intentional lethal use of firearms may only be made when strictly unavoidable in order to protect life.” The Basic Principles further provide that, “[i]n cases of death and serious injury or other grave consequences, a detailed report shall be sent promptly to the competent authorities.” “Accountability for serious abuses by security forces is essential to prevent their recurrence,” Machado said. “The Angolan government should reform security forces to entrench greater respect for human rights and eliminate unlawful behavior.” © 2021 Human Rights Watch

Dr. Gregory H Stanton says Biden administration must urge Modi to change his policies. The Express Tribune, Pakistan February 05, 2021 By Hammad Sarfraz The systemic state-sponsored discrimination against Kashmiri Muslims bears all the hallmarks of a genocide, according to the founder and president of Genocide Watch, a global organization that flags the intentional destruction of ethnic, racial and religious groups. “We believe that the Indian government’s actions in Kashmir have been an extreme case of persecution and could very well lead to genocide,” said Dr. Gregory H. Stanton, Founding President Genocide Watch. Dr. Stanton, who served at the US Department of State during President Bill Clinton’s term, is known for drafting the United Nations Security Council resolutions that created the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, the Burundi Commission of Inquiry, and the Central African Arms Flow Commission. Speaking from Washington D.C., where he is based, Dr. Stanton described the situation in occupied Kashmir as appalling. “Kashmir is under military rule and it is a very clear pre-genocidal situation,” he cautioned. In the picturesque valley, Dr. Stanton said, the Indian government has confined more than seven million Kashmiris to their homes. “The state has been under lockdown. The Narendra Modi government imposed a sweeping communications blackout and a curfew that was so draconian that residents couldn’t even step out. In short it is a police state,” warned Dr. Stanton, referring to the situation in the valley after the Hindu nationalist government in New Delhi unilaterally stripped the region of its constitutional autonomy. Indian forces stand guard on the bank of Dal lake, in Srinagar, the summer capital of Indian-administered Kashmir. Photograph: Yawar Nazir/Getty Images According to Dr. Stanton the persecution of Kashmir’s Muslims has increased significantly on Prime Minister Modi’s watch. “So many of the early stages of genocide are already present. We don’t wait until it is a full out mass killing campaign to declare genocide. There are early warning signs of genocide now and that’s what we believe is the situation in Kashmir,” explained the American scholar, who is known for examining the stages of genocide and formulating his ‘10 stages of genocide’ theory. Shortly after Kashmir’s special status was revoked by the Modi government, the Genocide Watch issued an alert for the region. In its warning, which is based on Dr. Stanton’s ‘10 stages of genocide theory’, the organization cautioned that Kashmir was inching closer to a genocide. Response to Kashmir In a no-holds-barred interview, Dr. Stanton, who has served at the US Department of State for several years said, he has little hope that the new Biden administration would denounce the Indian Prime Minister for his actions against Muslims. “I don’t see a strong foreign policy yet coming out of the Biden administration. I would make it part of our policy that we need to communicate to Mr. Modi that the US will not tolerate the kind of intolerance that he is preaching if we are going to have a good economic relationship with India.” He said the US would have to employ economic persuasion to convince Prime Minister Modi to abandon his anti-Muslim campaign in Kashmir and across India. “We should condition our economic relations on the improvement of the political situation in India,” said Dr Stanton. According to Dr. Stanton, there is a very slim chance that the US government will adopt such a stance in the US-India relationship, particularly at a time when Washington D.C. is trying to prop up New Delhi to negate Beijing’s growing influence in the region. “I’m afraid the Kashmir issue will stay on the back burner and we would like to get along with the Modi government. The best way to counter China for Biden would be to promote India at this point,” said Dr. Stanton. The cost of denying the situation in Kashmir, he said, hurts everybody and not just the victims. “If you continue to deny the persecution of a group, the persecution will continue,” said Dr. Stanton. America’s inaction in the Kashmir situation, he said, hurts its commitment to human rights. Response from the international community in Kashmir’s case, Dr. Stanton said, has been ‘shameful’. “I don’t think the global community exists. I think it is a mythical beast that exists somewhere out there,” quipped the 74-year-old American genocide scholar. Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President, Genocide Watch https://www.genocidewatch.com “The truth is that we are still a world divided in nation states and a lot of these policies that are made by these states are for their own interest. And they are certainly not human rights oriented. So what is important for most nation states is their trade with India,” explained Dr. Stanton. Modi’s policies At one point during the interview, the former academic also compared India’s prime minister to Adolf Hitler. “Many Jews in Germany identified themselves as Germans and they fought for Germany in the First World War. The whole idea that they were a threat was made up by Hitler. Unfortunately, that’s the case in India, where Muslims are portrayed as enemies of the country,” explained Dr. Stanton. “There is no doubt that the Muslims of India are loyal to the country. It is a fiction made up by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that they are traitors,” he added. Dr. Stanton warned that Modi’s policies would divide the Indian society, which will ultimately make the country unproductive. “It is very harmful for India’s political and economic future. I hope there are opponents of such policies who will unseat Mr. Modi,” said the Washington D.C. based expert on genocide. Expressing his concerns about the situation, Dr. Stanton said: “If Modi is able to whip India into a froth of hatred, and that is possible, I really do fear for the Muslims.” “My fears are that if Modi continues to use exclusionary language and passes more exclusionary laws, Muslims are going to be more and more discriminated against and persecuted not just in Kashmir and Assam but all over India,” cautioned Dr. Stanton. The Solution In an hour-long conversation with the Express Tribune, the former fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars ruled out armed conflict as a solution for the Kashmir crisis. “The only solution to the Kashmir situation is ‘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,” said Dr. Stanton. The Washington-based scholar urged the India’s Prime Minister to halt the construction of the dangerous Hindu-nationalist ecosystem. “I appeal to Prime Minister Modi to recognize the history that India has had of a diverse and tolerant society. I am sure he wouldn’t give any thought to that.” Copyright 2021 The Express Tribune See original article at: https://tribune.com.pk/story/2282736/stark-warning-kashmir-is-on-the-brink-of-genocide

House Foreign Affairs Committee Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission December 17, 2020 Statement of Nina Shea Hudson Institute - Director of the Center for Religious Freedom & Senior Fellow Excerpts follow. The entire Statement, including recommendations, can be found here. Nina Shea, Hudson Institute • On December 7, the United States made a significant policy shift on Nigeria when it designated Nigeria as one of world’s ten worst abusers of religious freedom, as a Country of Particular Concern under the International Religious Freedom Act of 1998. The government of Nigeria was found to be “engaging in or tolerating” “systematic, ongoing, egregious violations of religious freedom.” • As Ambassador at Large for Religious Freedom Sam Brownback stated in a press conference, a major concern in the CPC designation is “the lack of adequate government response in Nigeria.” He said that despite “expanded terrorist activities,” and “a lot of it associated around religious affiliations,” “the government’s response has been minimal to not happening at all.” The ambassador was right to note the terror threat this poses: “The terrorism continues to happen and grow, in some places unabated…We don’t want this place to devolve into a very difficult, lawless terrain in places.” I wholeheartedly agree with his conclusion: “The government really needs to act.” • A growing list of places in Nigeria are engulfed in violence and mayhem from various sources, not least, rapidly spreading Islamist extremism. We are still reeling from the dreadful news of the abduction of 344 Middle School boys, on December 11, in Nigeria’s Katsina state, apparently by the terror group Boko Haram and its allies. That the boys have been rescued today by security forces is a rare bit of good news. • This atrocity was the latest example of mass attacks against tens of thousands of innocent civilians in the northern and middle areas of Nigeria by several groupings of Islamist extremists and those collaborating and supporting them. This kidnapping follows a pattern of large-scale kidnappings of school children: There are the 112 predominantly Christian schoolgirls from Chibok who remain captive, nearly seven years ago, who were forcibly converted to Islam and taken into sexual enslavement by Boko Haram. There is Leah Sharibu, who, rather than renounce her Christian faith, is suffering this same horrific fate, following a 2018 mass kidnapping in Dapchi of 110 mostly Muslim schoolgirls, all of whom but Leah, were released. • In addition to its being an alarming sign of Boko Haram’s reach into western Nigeria, this latest case is distinct in that the students include Muslims, albeit ones who reject the extremist views of Boko Haram. I am confident of this because their school specializes in science, a forbidden subject for the terror group. • The influential Nigeria blog of the Council on Foreign Relations discounted the possibility of any involvement of Boko Haram. On December 15, it posted a piece entitled “Nigeria Schoolboy Kidnapping Likely Criminal, Not Boko Haram,” and concluded that Fulani bandits were responsible, without any consideration that these Fulani could themselves be allied with Boko Haram. • Increasingly, these cases are not either, or, but a mix of Islamist terror and criminality. A recent Nigerian news report was headlined that two sisters were released after kidnapping by “bandits.” Deep into the article the freed girls are quoted saying that their captors forcibly converted them to Islam. Clearly more was involved than simply banditry but no doubt the case was dutifully recorded as “banditry” in government databases. • In the proof of life video, the kidnapped schoolboys, under instructions from their captors, were seen pleading for the closing of all schools except Qur’anic ones. On Dec. 16, AFP reported that local sources asserted that the operation was carried out on Boko Haram’s orders by a notorious local gangster called Awwalun Daudawa, who enlisted his own gang and two others. The respected Nigerian press Vanguard reported that Daudawa “was an armed robber and a cattle rustler before he turned to gun-running, bringing in weapons from Libya, where he had received training, and selling them to bandits.” It commented, “Over time, he forged an alliance with Boko Haram and became their gunrunner, taking weapons the group seizes from the Nigerian security forces in raids and ambushes and selling them to bandits for a cut.” Under international law, this makes these criminals participants in the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which, itself, is the mastermind of the kidnapping. • In these cases, victims are often targeted for their religious views or identity, not solely for purposes of robbery, ransom, rape or human trafficking, but also for the jihadist intent of forcibly converting, punishing, humiliating, or eradicating them. An example is the murder on Dec. 10, in Niger state, of 37-year-old Rev. Jeremiah Ibrahim of Evangelical Church Winning All, and the abduction of his wife, along with four other women, who are now being held hostage for large ransoms. • The identification of ideological factors, where they exist in Nigeria’s relentless violence, is key to finding more effective policy solutions. • I recall the searing words of Bishop Kukah of Sokoto at the funeral Mass of seminarian Michael Nnadi, who was murdered in cold blood by kidnappers after he quoted Scripture to them during his captivity: “We are being told that this situation has nothing to do with Religion. Really? It is what happens when politicians use religion to extend the frontiers of their ambition and power. Are we to believe that simply because Boko Haram kills Muslims too, they wear no religious garb? Are we to deny the evidence before us, of kidnappers separating Muslims from infidels or compelling Christians to convert or die? • Due to the emphasis and resources the Biden administration will be placing on climate change issues, also a serious problem for Nigeria, I am concerned that the religious freedom threat there could be downplayed and sink into obscurity in the future. • State’s report for 2019 narrowly defines the accelerating violence in Nigeria’s Middle Belt mainly in terms of mutual hostility between different classes of rural workers over economic competition due to climate change pressures, with religion being incidental. As the report states, it is a “violent conflict over land and water resources, which frequently involved predominantly Muslim Fulani herders and settled farmers, who were both Muslim and Christian.” Climate change and economic resources, as well as religion — specifically Islamic extremism — are all significant in driving this violence. Additionally, some smaller scale defensive and retaliatory violence by Christians against Fulani Muslims has occurred. • The State Department’s report omits all evidence of radicalization among some Fulani, specifically those involved in militant activity, mass atrocities and supporting or working collaboratively with terror groups. It fails to report the important finding that “Fulani extremists were the most active and deadly perpetrators of terrorism in Nigeria in 2018, ” by the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) of the University of Maryland, established as a “center of excellence” by the US Department of Homeland Security, Science and Technology Directorate. • The Fulani in the neighboring Sahel have been recruited by ISIS and Al Qaeda but State’s report neglects to examine whether they or Boko Haram are influencing or linked to segments of Nigerian Fulani; the report raises the Sahel conflicts only to note a questionable theory that “altered grazing routes” have caused conflict because the Fulani herders “are unaware of preexisting agreements between the local herding and farming groups.” • In October, proof of cross border collaboration between networks of criminals and terrorists emerged in the international media when US special forces rescued American hostage Philip Walton from captivity in northern Nigeria. He had been abducted from his home in terror-plagued Niger by six unidentified men armed with AKs and riding motorcycles, and he was trafficked into Nigeria. American officials feared he could be sold to Nigerian terrorist groups. Certainly, State has access to information of cross-border radicalization, terrorist recruitment or support among Fulani nomadic herdsmen in this area that it should have reported. • The British All Party Parliament Group report of June 2020 finds: “While not necessarily sharing an identical vision, some Fulani herders have adopted a comparable strategy to Boko Haram and Islamic State of West Africa Province (ISWAP), and demonstrated a clear intent to target Christians and symbols of Christian identity such as churches.” It also reported: “During many of the attacks, herders are reported by survivors to have shouted ‘Allah u Akbar’, ‘destroy the infidels’ and ‘wipe out the infidels.’ “It noted that some Fulani now carry out raids, armed with AK47s and rocket propelled grenades. The pontifical Aid to the Church in Need found a pattern of cases in which, “the evidence suggests the Fulani herdsmen are as committed as Daesh (ISIS) affiliates to eliminating Christians in a region where the Church has grown fast.” • On Dec. 16, 2020, the UK-based CSW reported on Boko Haram’s widening links to the Fulani and other militants across northern and central Nigeria: “In January 2020, Shekau released a video in which he also spoke in the Fulani language, Fulfude, and in early July, an armed group in Niger state declared its allegiance to him. Later that month, HumAngle revealed that Shekau had cemented alliances with armed groups in Zamfara state in the northwest, and he was in the process of formalizing relations with groups in Katsina and Sokoto states, also in the northwest, and in Adamawa, Kogi and Taraba states in central Nigeria.” • The State Department report is silent about these ominous signs that Islamist extremism is spreading, along with potential genocide. It fails to mention that Christians, Muslims who reject extremist rules, and international aid workers are the primary civilian targets of the designated Nigerian terror groups. For years, Boko Haram’s leader has been pledging in video rants to kill Christians and non-conforming Muslims because, he believes, God wants him to. • The report does not explain government impunity in these egregious matters, the basis, as Amb. Brownback explained, for Nigeria’s CPC designation this month. Instead it focuses on crediting the government with bringing about declining numbers of violent incidents – even while acknowledging these numbers are “disputed.” After analyzing hundreds of media reports from 2019 and previous years on Nigerian Fulani attacks on Christians, European legal scholar Jose Luis Bazan concludes: “It is difficult to know the exact number of victims of the attacks since the news usually, in particular when the attacks are massive, mentions a minimum number (“at least…”), or even refers qualitatively to them (“many”, “a large number”).” Bazan notes, this is compounded by officials’ “passive attitude” toward the attacks. This was demonstrated again last week, in the kidnapped schoolboys’ case, where the 344 abducted schoolboys were initially reported to the BBC to number ten by Pres. Buhari’s office. • To reemphasize: Religion is not the only driver of the mass atrocities but an analysis that reduces the violence in the center of the country to socio-economic class clashes due to climate change, as State’s Nigeria report does, is, itself, a dangerous over-simplification. It will not lead to appropriate, short term solutions. Most certainly not all 40 million members of the Fulani ethnic group in the region are Islamic extremists, however, there is evidence that some fraction of the Fulani have an explicit jihadist agenda, not only some in the Sahel who are known to have been recruited by the local affiliates of al Qaeda and ISIS, but also some in Nigeria’s Middle Belt who may or may not be allied with Boko Haram and other such groups. A mounting number of attacks in this region also evidence deep religious hatred, an implacable intolerance of Christians, and an intent to eradicate their presence by violently driving them out, killing them, or forcing them to convert. • These factors warrant acknowledgement in the State’s religious freedom report. The report is wrong to suggest that there are so many “complexities” in Nigeria’s situation that it would only deepen the conflict to document them. The State annual reports are premised on the importance of shining light on religious freedom abuses, however “complex,” in order to end them. • A deepening Islamist extremism in Nigeria’s northern and north central states is now readily apparent. Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country and with its largest economy, is in crisis. Large regions of the country are becoming “one large graveyard, a valley of dry bones, the nastiest and the most brutish part of our dear country,” as Bishop Kukah lamented. There are even signs of genocide, the most heinous of human rights crimes. Nigeria’s instability threatens to destabilize the region. • Secretary Pompeo has taken an important step this month in designating Nigeria as a Country of Particular Concern. USAID has also played an important role this year in supporting faith-based groups under fire in Nigeria’s hotspots. However, the State Department’s human rights and religious freedom programming in Nigeria to address these urgent concerns has been grossly inadequate, if not missing entirely.

The latest crackdown on the media follows reporting on the farmers' protest. [Getty Images] A month after taking office in the summer of 2014, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said India's "democracy will not sustain if we can't guarantee freedom of speech and expression". Six years on, many believe, India's democracy looks diminished, by what they say are persistent attacks on the freedom of the press. Last year India dropped two places and was ranked 142 on the 180-country World Press Freedom Index, compiled annually by Reporters Without Borders. It's an unflattering commentary on a country that often prides itself on a vibrant and competitive media. The latest crackdown has happened after violence during a recent rally by farmers to protest at a raft of agriculture reform laws. One protester was killed and more than 500 policemen injured in the clashes. Now police have filed criminal charges - including sedition and making statements inimical to national integration - against eight journalists who covered the protests in Delhi. The cause of the protester's death - at the rally on 26 January - remains disputed. While police say he died when the tractor he was driving overturned, his family alleges that he was shot. His family's account, which has been published by various newspapers and magazines, appears to have become the basis of these charges. Some of the journalists were involved in reporting or publishing the story, and others only shared it on social media. Six of them - and a prominent opposition Congress party MP who is accused of "misreporting" facts surrounding the death - are facing cases in four BJP-ruled states. "Is it a crime for media to report statements of relatives of a dead person if they question a post-mortem or police version of the cause of death?" Siddharth Varadarajan, editor-in-chief of The Wire and one of the journalists charged by police, said. India is one of the most competitive media markets in the world. [AFP] Rights groups and many fellow journalists are outraged. "The Indian authorities' response to protests has focused on discrediting peaceful protesters, harassing critics of the government, and prosecuting those reporting on the events," said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. The police cases, the Editors Guild of India said, were "an attempt to intimidate, harass, browbeat, and stifle the media". A case in point, many say, is Caravan, an investigative news magazine which has often been in the crosshairs of Mr Modi's government. Ten sedition cases have been brought against three of its senior-most editorial staff - the publisher, editor and executive editor - in five states for a story and tweets relating to the death of the protester. One of the magazine's freelance reporters was arrested from a protest site for "obstruction", and released on bail after two days. The magazine's Twitter account was suspended for a few hours in response to a legal notice by the government, citing objections based on public order. Last year, four of Caravan's journalists were attacked in two separate incidents while reporting on the aftermath of religious riots and a protest concerning the alleged rape and murder of a teenager in Delhi. "There is a narrative here which is very dangerous. We live in polarised times where critics of the government are branded as anti-nationals. It is the job of journalists to ask questions to people in power," Vinod Jose, executive editor of Caravan, told me. [Getty Images] The governing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) denies that journalists are being targeted and believes that much of what is happening is part of "orchestrated propaganda" against the government. "All journalists with avowed political affiliations and evident slant against the government have continued to write and speak freely in newspapers, television, and online portals," Baijayant Panda, national vice president of the BJP, told me. Mr Panda says police have filed complaints against journalists in a "couple of recent cases" because there have "been serious criminal allegations of fake news peddling in a riot-like situation, with the intent of fanning violence". He pointed to the case of a senior anchor of a leading news network who was taken off air and his pay docked because of an "incorrect" tweet relating to the death of a protester. "This was not just blatant peddling of a false narrative, but one that had real and imminent potential to inflame large-scale violence. The said journalist and others of his ilk have also had a pattern of promoting such false narratives on earlier instances, and in fact have had to apologise on the record after being taken to court by affected parties," Mr Panda said. He said some state governments, run by political parties opposed to Mr Modi's government, and "for whom these journalists have shown unabashed sympathy, have in fact been hounding journalists with the blatant misuse of power". Critics say a number of journalists seen as sympathetic to the government have consistently got away with broadcasting and publishing inflammatory material, often targeted at minorities. Also, they wonder why the colonial era sedition law is being so widely used to crack down on dissent. An overwhelming majority of sedition cases filed against 405 Indians for criticising politicians and governments over the last decade were registered after 2014, when Mr Modi took power, according to data compiled by the website article14. Opposition politicians, students, journalists, authors and academicians have borne the brunt of the repressive law. In a polarised environment, journalists are more divided than ever before. Much of the mainstream media, including a clutch of partisan news networks, is seen to be uncritical of Mr Modi's government. "India, the world's most populous democracy, is also sending signals that holding the government accountable is not part of the press's responsibility," a report by Freedom House said. Many believe India is becoming unsafe for journalists. Sixty-seven journalists were arrested and nearly 200 physically attacked in 2020, according to a study by Geeta Seshu for the Free Speech Collective. A journalist, who was on his way to cover the gang rape of a girl in Uttar Pradesh state, has been in jail for five months. Journalists - especially women critical of the government - face fierce online trolling and threats. Delhi-based freelance journalist Neha Dixit says she has been "stalked, openly threatened with rape and murder, viciously trolled", and an attempt made to break into her apartment. This week, the police arrested a law student for allegedly sending death and rape threats to Rohini Singh, another freelance journalist. The media in India is divided as never before. [Getty Images] The protection afforded to freedom of expression in India has never been robust, according to Tarunabh Khaitan, vice-dean of law at Oxford University. Although this is a constitutionally guaranteed freedom, its scope was drastically restricted by the First Amendment under Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru in 1951. It was then that India's government "discovered that mouthing platitudes to civil liberties was one thing, and upholding them as principles was quite another," notes Tripurdaman Singh in his book Sixteen Stormy Days. And the colonial police and criminal justice system inherited from the Raj continues to see "human rights as an obstacle rather than their first duty to defend", says Prof Khaitan. India's Supreme Court, too, has had a poor track record on protecting civil liberties in comparison with courts in many other democracies, he says. "The biggest sufferers are the two truth-seeking institutions whose autonomy from political as well as corporate power is critical to a democracy: the media and the universities. The role of these knowledge institutions is to challenge power and seek discursive accountability from power. But once captured, they serve as the instruments of power instead. Weak protection of free expression makes it relatively easy to capture or compromise them," Prof Khaitan told me. India's media was gagged for 21 months when then prime minister Indira Gandhi suspended civil liberties and imposed a nationwide Emergency in 1975. "What is unusual about our current political moment is that, unlike a formal emergency that undermines rights openly, all our rights are supposed to still be functional. There is no formal suspension of rights. But their corrosion in practice has become overwhelming. We are living in an extra-legal, informal, emergency. During a formal emergency, a citizen can perhaps hope that things will go back to normal once it is lifted," says Prof Khaitan. "How do you even 'lift' an informal emergency, one that was never promulgated in the first place?" Soutik Biswas | India Correspondent See article here. © BBC News 2021

KABUL, Afghanistan (AP) — Every morning when Khan Wali Kamran left for work, he was afraid his children might be killed in Kabul’s streets before he got home in the evening. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore, and a month ago he sent his four children to live with his parents in his home village. He’s not the only one afraid. Afghanistan is supposed to be moving toward peace after decades of war, but to the people of the capital Kabul, turmoil only seems to be getting worse. Frequent bombings have everyone on edge. It’s not just dramatic attacks like one that killed dozens at a university last year. There’s also been a string of targeted killings, like the bomb planted on the car of a prominent cleric that detonated Tuesday in the middle of busy morning traffic, killing him and his driver — one of four such bombings that day. The tensions are increased because it’s not clear who is behind the attacks. Some are claimed by the Islamic State group, who took responsibility for the cleric’s killing and the killing of a judge Wednesday in eastern Nangarhar province. But many go unclaimed, blamed by the government on the Taliban who have denied responsibility for most attacks, raising suspicions that militias run by prominent warlords both allied with and opposed to the government are creating chaos. Then there’s the surge in crime. Armed robbers brazenly rob shops or even mug people in broad daylight in public parks crowded with people, stripping them of money and phones at gunpoint. Cars stuck in traffic can be ransacked by thieves. In one case, organized thieves robbed three branches of the same supermarket in different parts of the capital at almost the same time on the same day. Kidnappers are known to snatch children and adult men from the streets, demanding ransoms from their families, anywhere from $50 to $5,000. Residents of Kabul have stopped going out after dark. “We are afraid when we get in our car, go to the office, when we are near our home, in the mosque,” Kamran said. “Life has become hell.” Fear so dominates Kamran’s world that he asked that The Associated Press not identify the village where he sent his four children, including his youngest, a 2-year-old son. Others who spoke to AP asked to be identified only by one name, afraid of drawing the attention of criminals or armed factions. Last year, hope was high that a peace deal reached by the Taliban and U.S. government would lead to an end to more than four decades of relentless war and finally bring peace to Afghanistan. But subsequent talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government have been excruciatingly slow. Many Afghans fear that the deteriorating security is a sign that, rather than peace, what is coming is yet another phase in the war, reminiscent of the chaos of the 1990s when warlords’ armed factions battled for power. That fighting came after the Soviets withdrew and before the Taliban took power. Now the Americans, who helped oust the Taliban nearly 20 years ago, are pulling out, their numbers down to 2,500 troops after former President Donald Trump accelerated the withdrawal. Analysts say there are participants on both sides of the conflict who have more to gain from war than peace. “The war is about power, not even about religion,” said Torek Farhadi, a former Afghan government adviser. “Some of the killings are by the Taliban, some by circles in Kabul who stand to lose wealth, power and status should peace come to Afghanistan.” Ferdaws Faramarz, Kabul police spokesman, accused the Taliban of carrying out attacks in order to “create a gap between the people and government.” Afghans say the deep corruption that permeates the government and security agencies has crippled their capacity and made them incapable of keeping Afghans safe. Despite the billions of dollars spent in Afghanistan since the 2001 ouster of the Taliban, more than 72% of the country’s 32 million people live below the poverty level, which is a daily wage of less than $1.90. Lawlessness has accelerated in the past few years as gangs and militias grow bolder and poverty worsens. Local TV reported recently that in the past 100 days, more than 177 people in Kabul were killed and 360 wounded in suicide attacks, bomb blasts and crimes, a figure police officials confirmed to the AP was accurate. Malik, 22, runs a small barbershop in Kabul’s posh Wazir Akbar Khan neighborhood, where diplomats and powerful government officials live. He used to stay open until 10 p.m., but now he shuts down by 7 most nights, ever since he was robbed last year. The thieves were heavily armed and showed no fear. While two waited outside, two others entered his shop, demanded the cash and walked out with 30,000 Afghanis, the equivalent of $380, as well as two mobile phones. “We were in shock,” Malik said, asking to be identified by just one name. He waited for months for police to do something, but no one was arrested and the stolen goods never recovered. “They just told us we should be careful,” Malik said. Amir, another Kabul resident, said that when he goes to the mosque for prayers, he leaves his money and phone at home. “I know there are robbers everywhere when I step outside my door.” But Amir, a Shiite, is particularly afraid of the Islamic State group, which has targeted the minority community in brutal bombings. Some attacks have been particularly horrific, including one on educational center that killed at least 25, many of them students waiting to take university entrance exams, and another at a maternity hospital last May that killed 24. IS claimed it carried out 82 attacks in Afghanistan in 2020, killing or wounding 821 people, including 21 assassinations. Most of the victims in its attacks were either security personnel or Shiite Muslims. But the perpetrators of many of the targeted killings are unknown. Often carried out by sticky bombs planted on the victim’s car, assassinations have struck young intellectuals and professionals, including journalists, activists, lawyers, judges. The violence is taking its toll on Afghans’ mental health, said psychologist Sharafuddin Azimi, who estimated tens of thousands of Afghans suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. His practice has increased each year, and he said many of his clients are in deep depression, without hope for tomorrow and fearful of death at any time. “Many of our loved ones, the youth, women, men and children are terrified,” he said. “All the time they expect there can be an explosion ... or they feel somebody is following them and they might get stabbed or shot by a thief and get killed.” Gannon reported from Islamabad. © The Associated Press 2021

Investigate Killings of Civilians in Mautu Village, South-West Region (Nairobi) – Army soldiers killed at least nine civilians in Cameroon’s Anglophone South-West region, on January 10, 2021, Human Rights Watch said today. The dead included a woman and a child, and four civilians were injured. The soldiers also looted scores of homes and threatened residents. The army spokesperson admitted that soldiers from the 21st Motorized Infantry Battalion (Bataillon d'Infanterie Motorisé or BIM) conducted an operation in the village, but did not acknowledge that troops killed and injured civilians. “Killing civilians and looting their homes in the name of security are serious human rights crimes that fuel the escalating cycles of violence and abuse in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions,” said Ida Sawyer, deputy Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “Cameroonian authorities should rein in abusive units and, with the assistance of the African Union and United Nations, establish a credible, impartial inquiry into the Mautu killings and prosecute those responsible.” Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone 17 witnesses, including five relatives of victims, about the attack. This area has been severely affected by violence between government forces and armed groups seeking to separate the Anglophone North-West and South-West regions from Cameroon since late 2016. Separatist groups operate in the area around Mautu, and residents said they come to Mautu to buy food and collect water. Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the international nongovernmental health organization, treated four people with gunshot wounds, including a child. Human Rights Watch obtained lists of the nine people killed from four sources and spoke to relatives and residents who either attended burials or took victims’ bodies to the Muyaka hospital mortuary. These details correspond with the information Human Rights Watch obtained independently from other witnesses. Human Rights Watch shared its findings with Commander Atonfack Guemo, Cameroon’s army spokesman, in a January 22 email, requesting answers to specific questions. Atonfack Guemo replied on January 26, failing to address Human Rights Watch's questions, and instead gratuitously dismissed the evidence of unlawful killings as fabricated. Witnesses said that over 50 soldiers, including members of the BIM, entered Mautu on foot at about 2 p.m. on January 10 and started shooting indiscriminately as people fled. The witnesses said that soldiers killed nine people, including a 50-year-old woman and a 6-year-old girl, and went house-to-house searching for separatist fighters and weapons, threatening residents and looting people’s belongings. Some of these accounts were also confirmed by international media outlets and Cameroonian human rights groups. A 30-year-old woman, who witnessed the killing of her 28-year-old neighbor, said: “I saw how the soldiers went to his house, which is next to mine. They took him outside, kicked him, beat him with their guns and hands and then shot him several times. It was the most frightening experience of my life.” Atonfack Guemo, Cameroon’s army spokesman, in a January 11 statement claimed that “terrorist groups” attacked soldiers from the 21st BIM while they were carrying out a “preventive raid” in Mautu on January 10, and that the soldiers responded by killing several “terrorists” and seizing their weapons. But witnesses and residents said that there was no confrontation between armed separatist fighters and soldiers, that at the time of the attack separatists were not in Mautu, and that soldiers deliberately killed civilians. “The military just came to kill us,” a 32-year-old man from Mautu said. “There were no Amba [separatists] around at the time of the attack. The soldiers arrived and fired at villagers as they fled. Separatist fighters come at times to Mautu to get supplies, but they don’t live here, and we don’t shelter them. We are also afraid of them.” Residents said the attack was a reprisal against the population the army accuses of sheltering and supporting separatist fighters. Five witnesses said that, during the attack, soldiers addressed scores of residents, including women, who had been rounded up in the center of the village, and threatened them. “They warned us that they would come back and kill more people if we did not show them where the amba [separatists] were,” a 60-year-old man said. Witnesses reported that the village is now almost completely empty as people fled to the bush or nearby cities and villages, fearing renewed military attacks. “There is no one around,” a 36-year-old witness who remained in Mautu said. “Only a few of us stayed behind. The people are afraid that the army can come back.” In his January 11 statement, the army spokesperson claimed that “terrorist leaders” fabricated “a jumble of gruesome images” in order to blame the Mautu killings on the army. However, Human Rights Watch obtained six videos and three photographs showing the aftermath of the attack and spoke to the man who made the videos and photographs. “Soldiers attacked us and shot at people indiscriminately,” he said. “I fled and hid into the nearby bush. When soldiers left, I came out and filmed those videos. This is real footage, showing real people massacred by those who pretend to protect us.” Human Rights Watch matched the victims filmed with the descriptions of the victims known to have been killed, observed injuries consistent with those described by witnesses, and found no evidence of this visual material online before the date of the attack. The videos and photographs show the bodies of seven men, one woman, and a child as well as two injured women and one injured child. The videos were all captured in daylight, and pooled blood is visible in some, which, along with a lack of insect activity around those deceased, leads Human Rights Watch to believe that the videos were captured within hours of the attack. This is not the first time that security forces attacked Mautu. Witnesses and residents said that soldiers carried out several operations in Mautu in 2020, as well as on January 1, 2021, when they surrounded the village, searched and looted homes, and harassed and beat people. “On January 1, at 6 a.m., lots of soldiers invaded our village,” a resident said. “They broke into my home and rounded me up with other men in the center of the village. They said they would take us all to the military camp unless we showed them where the amba [separatists] were. They beat some of us. They slapped me four times.” The January 10 killings led to a public outcry and was widely condemned in Cameroon and outside. Two prominent Cameroonian human rights groups, the Centre for Human Rights and Democracy in Africa and the Human Rights Defenders Network in Central Africa (Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale or REDHAC), denounced the attack and called for an independent inquiry. The UN special representative of the secretary-general for Central Africa and head of the regional office for Central Africa expressed concern about the killing of civilians and called for an independent investigation. The UN Secretary General on January 15 urged the Cameroonian authorities to bring those responsible for the attack to justice, and reiterated his call on all parties to cease hostilities and engage in a political dialogue to end the crisis in the North-West and South-West regions. The French ambassador to Cameroon condemned the killings and demanded that “the facts of this unjustifiable crime be clarified.” The Canadian and British High Commissioners in Cameroon, as well as the United States embassy in Cameroon, also expressed their concern and called for those responsible to be held to account. This is not the first time that Cameroonian authorities have denied that army troops killed civilians in the Anglophone regions, Human Rights Watch said. In February 2020, government forces killed 21 civilians, including 13 children and a pregnant woman, in Ngarbuh, North-West region, in a reprisal attack against the population accused of supporting separatist fighters. The government initially denied the army was responsible, but later established a commission of inquiry leading to the arrest of two soldiers and a gendarme. Their trial started on December 17. “As Cameroon’s army tries to root out separatist fighters in the Anglophone regions, soldiers are instead targeting, abusing, and even killing civilians,” Sawyer said. “The authorities should send a strong message that such crimes will no longer be tolerated by investigating and prosecuting those most responsible for the Mautu massacre and by compensating victims and their families.” Violence in Cameroon’s Anglophone regions Over the past four years, Cameroon’s Anglophone regions have been embroiled in a deadly cycle of violence that has claimed over 3,500 lives and forced more than 700,000 people from their homes. The violence has escalated since December 2020 when Cameroon held its first regional elections. They were marred by opposition boycotts and intimidation, threats, and violent attacks by separatist fighters against voters, including the killing of one voter in the North-West region. In January, media reported renewed attacks by separatist fighters on government forces and authorities, including an ambush on January 6 of the convoy of the senior divisional officer of Momo Division, in the North-West region. An improvised explosive device, planted by armed separatists on the road, killed five soldiers and one government official. The crisis has been characterized by widespread human rights abuses by both government forces and armed separatists. Security forces have conducted abusive counterinsurgency operations resulting in the killings of civilians and destruction of hundreds of homes. They have also arbitrarily arrested and tortured suspected separatist fighters. Armed separatists have also killed civilians and kidnapped hundreds of people. Since 2017, separatist leaders have enforced a boycott of education in the country’s two English-speaking regions, instructing their fighters to keep schools shut and depriving hundreds of thousands of children of their fundamental right to study. They have used education as a weapon of war, a means to achieve political gains. In one of the latest and most gruesome attacks on education, on October 24, 2020, gunmen stormed a school in Kumba, South-West region, killing seven children and injuring 13 others. Killings in Mautu Human Rights Watch research indicates that government forces deliberately killed civilians in Mautu. Witnesses and residents said that soldiers entered the village on foot at around 2 p.m. on January 10, and then began shooting at people as they ran away in fear. The soldiers left the village at about 4:30 p.m. with at least four vehicles, which had arrived with additional soldiers after the attack began. A 23-year-old woman who lost her 28-year-old brother in the attack said she fled to the nearby forest as the soldiers shot indiscriminately at frightened villagers: I was fetching water outside when I heard a series of gunshots. People were screaming: “The military is coming!” I saw them coming and I immediately ran away toward the surrounding bush where I remained for four hours waiting for the shooting to stop. When I returned to Mautu, I found the body of my brother lying on the ground near our house. His body was covered in blood. He had been shot several times. I saw wounds on his stomach and arm. I took his body to the mortuary of the Muyuka hospital. A 36-year-old man told Human Rights Watch that he escaped death by hiding in a pigsty near his house as soldiers shot at his 26-year-old brother and another man: The military came and there was rampant shooting. I was with my brother and my tenant. We tried to run and take cover. My brother attempted to run behind the kitchen, but the military saw him, and shot him. My tenant was also shot at the same time. I don’t even know how and why I am still alive. I don’t know how I managed to hide. I crawled on the ground until I reached the place where we keep our pigs. I was breathing heavily. I was so afraid for my life. From there, I could hear the soldiers saying in French: “Destroy everything! Destroy the house! Kill everyone!” They had seen me and were looking for me: “Where’s the third person?” I was so scared. I hid there like an animal for over an hour, helpless. Then, when the gunshots stopped, I came out and I saw my brother and my tenant in a pool of blood.” A 32-year-old woman who lost her 50-year-old mother and 6-year-old daughter said she ran away as soon as she heard the first gunshots: I fled to the bush along with many other people. Everyone was running for their lives as the military shot indiscriminately at us. While running, I got separated from my mother and one of my two children. I hid in the bush. When the shooting stopped and the military left, on my way back to Mautu, I discovered the bodies of my mother and my little girl. My mother had three gunshot wounds: one in the head, one in the arm, and one in the chest. I didn’t notice any gunshot wounds on the body of my child. I took their bodies to the mortuary of the Muyuka hospital that same evening. Looting Witnesses said that soldiers broke into homes in Mautu, searched and looted them, and forced people out. A farmer said that soldiers threatened to arrest him if he did not give them money: I was sitting on a chair inside my home. I heard the first gunshots. Two soldiers knocked on my door; I opened it. They searched everywhere in the house, every single corner. They were looking for amba [separatists] and weapons, they said. They found nothing. They said I should give them money: “If you don’t give us money, we will take you to Buea,” they said, implying they would arrest me. I had to give them 3,000 XAF [about US$5]; that was all I had. A 46-year-old man who fled to the bush as soldiers attacked Mautu said he found later that his home had been broken into and his property stolen: “They took food, drinks, and money. They stole a bottle of whiskey, my chili, my shoes, and my wallet with 185,000 XAF [US$342].” Another man, a 40-year-old farmer, also said that soldiers searched his home while he was hiding in the bush during the attack: “They broke the door and stole my phone and 20,000 XAF [US$37].” Accountability Witnesses expressed feelings of despair and frustration. They blamed the soldiers for not distinguishing between ordinary people and separatist fighters. A 60-year-old man who lost his son in the attack said: I am upset and sad. I cannot explain the pain I feel for having lost my son. I buried him with my own hands, that night. His head had been scattered by bullets. I could not take him to the mortuary. This doesn’t feel right. This needs to stop, and those who commit these crimes need to be brought to justice. They [the soldiers] came to destroy us. They do not protect us. They believe everyone is an amba [separatist] fighter. They came and did not ask any questions; they just started shooting. We are just farmers here; we do not work with the amba. My son was not a fighter. Witnesses described their thirst for justice and desire to see the abusers held to account, but they also spoke about the challenges of ensuring accountability in Cameroon. A farmer whose 22-year-old brother was shot dead by the soldiers on January 10 in Mautu said: “Filing a complaint or asking for an autopsy? It seems like an impossible thing to me. I would like to do it, but I am too afraid of reprisals by the military, and also, I wouldn’t know where to start.” At least three witnesses said that abuses by government forces fuel recruitment by separatist fighters. “I am so upset that I decided I will now join the amba,” a 40-year-old man said. “I will go to the bush to join their struggle. I won’t die like an animal! I am frustrated! We are all frustrated. The soldiers come and kill my people.” © Human Rights Watch 2021

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced student protesters as “terrorists” and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations opposing the appointment of a government loyalist to head Istanbul’s most prestigious university. ANKARA, Turkey -- Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has denounced student protesters as “terrorists" and vowed to crackdown on demonstrations opposing the appointment of a government loyalist to head Istanbul’s most prestigious university. Students and faculty members of Bogazici University have spent weeks protesting Erdogan’s Jan. 1 appointment of Melih Bulu, an academic who once ran for parliament as a candidate for Erdogan’s party. They have called for Bulu to resign as the university’s rector and for the university to be allowed to elect its own president, saying the appointment was an affront to academic liberties. Scores of students have been detained amid the protests, some taken away following raids of their homes. “I do not accept these youngsters, who are members of terrorist groups, as sharing our country’s national and moral values,” Erdogan said in a video address to thousands of ruling party members who are holding regional congresses. “Are you students... or are you terrorists who try to raid the office of the rector and occupy it?” he asked. Erdogan went on to say that his government would not allow mass anti-government protests like the ones that swept across Turkey in 2013. The protests were sparked by the government's construction plans at Gezi Park, adjacent to Istanbul's main Taksim square. “This country won’t be a country dominated by terrorists. We will never allow it,” the Turkish leader said. “This country won’t re-live incidents such as the Gezi events at Taksim.” Tensions flared this week after a group of students were arrested over a poster, which was displayed at Bogazici University, that depicted Islam’s most sacred site with LGBT rights flags. The students were arrested over the weekend on charges of inciting hatred and insulting religious values. More than 250 demonstrators were detained following clashes with police in Istanbul on Monday and Tuesday. Close to 70 were also detained in the capital, Ankara, on Tuesday during a demonstration organized in support of the Bogazici students. Erdogan said LGBT values had “no place” in Turkey’s future. Meanwhile, Bulu told reporters Wednesday that he does not intend to resign from his post as rector of the university. The Associated Press © 2021

Women in China's "re-education" camps for Uighurs have been systematically raped, sexually abused, and tortured, according to detailed new accounts obtained by the BBC. You may find some of the details in this story distressing. Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's network of internment camps. The men always wore masks, Tursunay Ziawudun said, even though there was no pandemic then. They wore suits, she said, not police uniforms. Sometime after midnight, they came to the cells to select the women they wanted and took them down the corridor to a "black room", where there were no surveillance cameras. Several nights, Ziawudun said, they took her. "Perhaps this is the most unforgettable scar on me forever," she said. "I don't even want these words to spill from my mouth." Tursunay Ziawudun spent nine months inside China's vast and secretive system of internment camps in the Xinjiang region. According to independent estimates, more than a million men and women have been detained in the sprawling network of camps, which China says exist for the "re-education" of the Uighurs and other minorities. Human rights groups say the Chinese government has gradually stripped away the religious and other freedoms of the Uighurs, culminating in an oppressive system of mass surveillance, detention, indoctrination, and even forced sterilisation. The policy flows from China's President, Xi Jinping, who visited Xinjiang in 2014 in the wake of a terror attack by Uighur separatists. Shortly after, according to documents leaked to the New York Times, he directed local officials to respond with "absolutely no mercy". The US government said last month that China's actions since amounted to a genocide. China says reports of mass detention and forced sterilisation are "lies and absurd allegations". First-hand accounts from inside the internment camps are rare, but several former detainees and a guard have told the BBC they experienced or saw evidence of an organised system of mass rape, sexual abuse and torture. Tursunay Ziawudun, who fled Xinjiang after her release and is now in the US, said women were removed from the cells "every night" and raped by one or more masked Chinese men. She said she was tortured and later gang-raped on three occasions, each time by two or three men. Ziawudun has spoken to the media before, but only from Kazakhstan, where she "lived in constant fear of being sent back to China", she said. She said she believed that if she revealed the extent of the sexual abuse she had experienced and seen, and was returned to Xinjiang, she would be punished more harshly than before. And she was ashamed, she said. Tursunay Ziawudun was able to flee to Kazakhstan, and then on to relative safety in the US. It is impossible to verify Ziawudun's account completely because of the severe restrictions China places on reporters in the country, but travel documents and immigration records she provided to the BBC corroborate the timeline of her story. Her descriptions of the camp in Xinyuan county - known in Uighur as Kunes county - match satellite imagery analysed by the BBC, and her descriptions of daily life inside the camp, as well as the nature and methods of the abuse, correspond with other accounts from former detainees. Internal documents from the Kunes county justice system from 2017 and 2018, provided to the BBC by Adrian Zenz, a leading expert on China's policies in Xinjiang, detail planning and spending for "transformation through education" of "key groups" - a common euphemism in China for the indoctrination of the Uighurs. In one Kunes document, the "education" process is described as "washing brains, cleansing hearts, strengthening righteousness and eliminating evil". The BBC also interviewed a Kazakh woman from Xinjiang who was detained for 18 months in the camp system, who said she was forced to strip Uighur women naked and handcuff them, before leaving them alone with Chinese men. Afterwards, she cleaned the rooms, she said. "My job was to remove their clothes above the waist and handcuff them so they cannot move," said Gulzira Auelkhan, crossing her wrists behind her head to demonstrate. "Then I would leave the women in the room and a man would enter - some Chinese man from outside or policeman. I sat silently next to the door, and when the man left the room I took the woman for a shower." The Chinese men "would pay money to have their pick of the prettiest young inmates", she said. Some former detainees of the camps have described being forced to assist guards or face punishment. Auelkhan said she was powerless to resist or intervene. Asked if there was a system of organised rape, she said: "Yes, rape." "They forced me to go into that room," she said. "They forced me to take off those women's clothes and to restrain their hands and leave the room." Some of the women who were taken away from the cells at night were never returned, Ziawudun said. Those who were brought back were threatened against telling others in the cell what had happened to them. "You can't tell anyone what happened, you can only lie down quietly," she said. "It is designed to destroy everyone's spirit." Mr Zenz told the BBC that the testimony gathered for this story was "some of the most horrendous evidence I have seen since the atrocity began". "This confirms the very worst of what we have heard before," he said. "It provides authoritative and detailed evidence of sexual abuse and torture at a level clearly greater than what we had assumed." Gulzira Auelkhan makes tea at home in her village. She was detained for 18 months. (Getty Images) The Uighurs are a mostly Muslim Turkic minority group that number about 11 million in Xinjiang in north-western China. The region borders Kazakhstan and is also home to ethnic Kazakhs. Ziawudun, who is 42, is Uighur. Her husband is a Kazakh. The couple returned to Xinjiang in late 2016 after a five-year stay in Kazakhstan, and were interrogated on arrival and had their passports confiscated, Ziawudun said. A few months later, she was told by police to attend a meeting alongside other Uighurs and Kazakhs and the group was rounded up and detained. Her first stint in detention was comparatively easy, she said, with decent food and access to her phone. After a month she developed stomach ulcers and was released. Her husband's passport was returned and he went back to Kazakhstan to work, but authorities kept Ziawudun's, trapping her in Xinjiang. Reports suggest China has purposefully kept behind and interned relatives to discourage those who leave from speaking out. On 9 March 2018, with her husband still in Kazakhstan, Ziawudun was instructed to report to a local police station, she said. She was told she needed "more education". According to her account, Ziawudun was transported back to the same facility as her previous detention, in Kunes county, but the site had been significantly developed, she said. Buses were lined up outside offloading new detainees "non-stop". The women had their jewelry confiscated. Ziawudun's earrings were yanked out, she said, causing her ears to bleed, and she was herded into a room with a group of women. Among them was an elderly woman who Ziawudun would later befriend. The camp guards pulled off the woman's headscarf, Ziawudun said, and shouted at her for wearing a long dress - one of a list of religious expressions that became arrestable offences for Uighurs that year. "They stripped everything off the elderly lady, leaving her with just her underwear. She was so embarrassed that she tried to cover herself with her arms," Ziawudun said. "I cried so much watching the way they treated her. Her tears fell like rain." Ziawudun identified this site - listed as a school - as the location where she was held. Satellite images from 2017 (left) and 2019 (right) show significant development typical of camps, with what look like dormitory and factory buildings. (Maxar) The women were told to hand over their shoes and any clothes with elastic or buttons, Ziawudun said, then taken to cellblocks - "similar to a small Chinese neighbourhood where there are rows of buildings". Nothing much happened for the first month or two. They were forced to watch propaganda programmes in their cells and had their hair forcibly cut short. Then police began interrogating Ziawudun about her absent husband, she said, knocking her on the floor when she resisted and kicking her in the abdomen. "Police boots are very hard and heavy, so at first I thought he was beating me with something," she said. "Then I realised that he was trampling on my belly. I almost passed out - I felt a hot flush go through me." A camp doctor told her she might have a blood clot. When her cellmates drew attention to the fact that she was bleeding, the guards "replied saying it is normal for women to bleed", she said. According to Ziawudun, each cell was home to 14 women, with bunk beds, bars on the windows, a basin and a hole-in-the-floor-style toilet. When she first saw women being taken out of the cell at night, she didn't understand why, she said. She thought they were being moved elsewhere. Secret filming obtained by the Bitter Winter activist group showed cells with bars and cameras. Then sometime in May 2018 - "I don't remember the exact date, because you don't remember the dates inside there" - Ziawudun and a cellmate, a woman in her twenties, were taken out at night and presented to a Chinese man in a mask, she said. Her cellmate was taken into a separate room. "As soon as she went inside she started screaming," Ziawudun said. "I don't know how to explain to you, I thought they were torturing her. I never thought about them raping." The woman who had brought them from the cells told the men about Ziawudun's recent bleeding. "After the woman spoke about my condition, the Chinese man swore at her. The man with the mask said 'Take her to the dark room'. "The woman took me to the room next to where the other girl had been taken in. They had an electric stick, I didn't know what it was, and it was pushed inside my genital tract, torturing me with an electric shock." Ziawudun's torture that first night in the dark room eventually came to an end, she said, when the woman intervened again citing her medical condition, and she was returned to the cell. About an hour later, her cellmate was brought back. "The girl became completely different after that, she wouldn't speak to anyone, she sat quietly staring as if in a trance," Ziawudun said. "There were many people in those cells who lost their minds." Gulzira Auelkhan, centre, at home in her village. She was forced to restrain women in the camps, she said. (Getty) Alongside cells, another central feature of the camps is classrooms. Teachers have been drafted in to "re-educate" the detainees - a process activists say is designed to strip the Uighurs and other minorities of their culture, language and religion, and indoctrinate them into mainstream Chinese culture. Qelbinur Sedik, an Uzbek woman from Xinjiang, was among the Chinese language teachers brought into the camps and coerced into giving lessons to the detainees. Sedik has since fled China and spoken publicly about her experience. The women's camp was "tightly controlled", Sedik told the BBC. But she heard stories, she said - signs and rumours of rape. One day, Sedik cautiously approached a Chinese camp policewoman she knew. "I asked her, 'I have been hearing some terrible stories about rape, do you know about it?' She said we should talk in the courtyard during lunch. "So I went to the courtyard, where there were not many cameras. She said, 'Yes, the rape has become a culture. It is gang rape and the Chinese police not only rape them but also electrocute them. They are subject to horrific torture.'" That night Sedik didn't sleep at all, she said. "I was thinking about my daughter who was studying abroad and I cried all night." Sayragul Sauytbay, a teacher, said she witnessed a harrowing rape. She was later accused of crossing illegally into Kazakhstan. (Getty Images) In separate testimony to the Uyghur Human Rights Project, Sedik said she heard about an electrified stick being inserted into women to torture them - echoing the experience Ziawudun described. There were "four kinds of electric shock", Sedik said - "the chair, the glove, the helmet, and anal rape with a stick". "The screams echoed throughout the building," she said. "I could hear them during lunch and sometimes when I was in class." Another teacher forced to work in the camps, Sayragul Sauytbay, told the BBC that "rape was common" and the guards "picked the girls and young women they wanted and took them away". She described witnessing a harrowing public gang rape of a woman of just 20 or 21, who was brought before about 100 other detainees to make a forced confession. "After that, in front of everyone, the police took turns to rape her," Sauytbay said. "While carrying out this test, they watched people closely and picked out anyone who resisted, clenched their fists, closed their eyes, or looked away, and took them for punishment." The young woman cried out for help, Sauytbay said. "It was absolutely horrendous," she said. "I felt I had died. I was dead." Ziawudun broke down in tears as she identified footage and images of the camps. In the camp in Kunes, Ziawudun's days drifted into weeks and then months. The detainees' hair was cut, they went to class, they underwent unexplained medical tests, took pills, and were forcibly injected every 15 days with a "vaccine" that brought on nausea and numbness. Women were forcibly fitted with IUDs or sterilised, Ziawudun said, including a woman who was just about 20 years old. ("We begged them on her behalf," she said.) Forced sterilisation of Uighurs has been widespread in Xinjiang, according to a recent investigation by the Associated Press. The Chinese government told the BBC the allegations were "completely unfounded". As well as the medical interventions, detainees in Ziawudun's camp spent hours singing patriotic Chinese songs and watching patriotic TV programmes about Chinese President Xi Jinping, she said. "You forget to think about life outside the camp. I don't know if they brainwashed us or if it was the side effect of the injections and pills, but you can't think of anything beyond wishing you had a full stomach. The food deprivation is so severe." Detainees had food withheld for infractions such as failing to accurately memorise passages from books about Xi Jinping, according to a former camp guard who spoke to the BBC via video link from a country outside China. "Once we were taking the people arrested into the concentration camp, and I saw everyone being forced to memorise those books. They sit for hours trying to memorise the text, everyone had a book in their hands," he said. Those who failed tests were forced to wear three different colours of clothing based on whether they had failed one, two, or three times, he said, and subjected to different levels of punishment accordingly, including food deprivation and beatings. "I entered those camps. I took detainees into those camps," he said. "I saw those sick, miserable people. They definitely experienced various types of torture. I am sure about that." Analysts say the policy against the Uighurs flows directly from President Xi Jinping. (Getty Images) It was not possible to independently verify the guard's testimony but he provided documents that appeared to corroborate a period of employment at a known camp. He agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. The guard said he did not know anything about rape in the cell areas. Asked if the camp guards used electrocution, he said: "Yes. They do. They use those electrocuting instruments." After being tortured, detainees were forced to make confessions to a variety of perceived offences, according to the guard. "I have those confessions in my heart," he said. President Xi looms large over the camps. His image and slogans adorn the walls; he is a focus of the programme of "re-education". Xi is the overall architect of the policy against the Uighurs, said Charles Parton, a former British diplomat in China and now senior associate fellow at the Royal United Services Institute. "It is very centralised and it goes to the very top," Parton said. "There is absolutely no doubt whatsoever that this is Xi Jinping's policy." It was unlikely that Xi or other top party officials would have directed or authorised rape or torture, Parton said, but they would "certainly be aware of it". "I think they prefer at the top just to turn a blind eye. The line has gone out to implement this policy with great sternness, and that is what is happening." That left "no real constraints", he said. "I just don't see what the perpetrators of these acts would have to hold them back." According to Ziawudun's account, the perpetrators did not hold back. "They don't only rape but also bite all over your body, you don't know if they are human or animal," she said, pressing a tissue to her eyes to stop her tears and pausing for a long time to collect herself. "They didn't spare any part of the body, they bit everywhere leaving horrible marks. It was disgusting to look at. "I've experienced that three times. And it is not just one person who torments you, not just one predator. Each time they were two or three men." Later, a woman who slept near Ziawudun in the cell, who said she was detained for giving birth to too many children, disappeared for three days and when she returned her body was covered with the same marks, Ziawudun said. "She couldn't say it. She wrapped her arms around my neck and sobbed continuously, but she said nothing." The Chinese government did not respond directly to questions from the BBC about allegations of rape and torture. In a statement, a spokeswoman said the camps in Xinjiang were not detention camps but "vocational education and training centres". "The Chinese government protects the rights and interests of all ethnic minorities equally," the spokeswoman said, adding that the government "attaches great importance to protecting women's rights". Tursunay Ziawudun at home in the US with her landlady, who supports her. Ziawudun was released in December 2018 along with others who had spouses or relatives in Kazakhstan - an apparent policy shift she still doesn't fully understand. The state returned her passport and she fled to Kazakhstan and then, with the support of the Uyghur Human Rights Project, to the US. She is applying to stay. She lives in a quiet suburb not far from Washington DC with a landlady from the local Uighur community. The two women cook together and take walks in the streets around the house. It's a slow, uneventful existence. Ziawudun keeps the lights low when she is in the house, because they shone brightly and constantly in the camp. A week after she arrived in the US, she had surgery to remove her womb - a consequence of being stamped on. "I have lost the chance to become a mother," she said. She wants her husband to join her in the US. For now, he is in Kazakhstan. For a while after her release, before she could flee, Ziawudun waited in Xinjiang. She saw others who had been churned through the system and released. She saw the effect the policy was having on her people. The birth rate in Xinjiang has plummeted in the past few years, according to independent research - an effect analysts have described as "demographic genocide". Many had turned to alcohol, Ziawudun said. Several times, she saw her former cellmate collapsed on the street, the young woman who was removed from the cell with her that first night, who she heard screaming in an adjacent room. The woman had been consumed by addiction, Ziawudun said - she was "like someone who simply existed, otherwise she was dead, completely finished by the rapes". "They say people are released, but in my opinion everyone who leaves the camps is finished." And that, she said, was the plan. The surveillance, the internment, the indoctrination, the dehumanisation, the sterilisation, the torture, the rape. "Their goal is to destroy everyone," she said. "And everybody knows it." © 2021 BBC