UN says satellite imagery showed fires burning and fresh signs of destruction at the Shimelba and Hitsats camps for refugees. There have been significant violations of international law at two refugee camps in Ethiopia’s northern Tigray region, the UN’s refugee agency has said. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said satellite imagery showed fires burning and fresh signs of destruction at the Shimelba and Hitsats camps for refugees from neighbouring Eritrea which people fled due to political persecution and compulsory military service before the conflict in Tigray. “These are concrete indications of major violations of international law,” Filippo Grandi, commissioner of the UNHCR, said in a statement on Thursday. The Reuters news agency published satellite images on Tuesday from Planet Lab Inc that showed destruction in the two camps during the first week of January. Aid agencies say they have been unable to reach the camps since the conflict erupted in Tigray in November between Ethiopian federal forces and the TPLF, the party that used to govern the region. There has been no comment from Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed and the government’s emergency task force for the Tigray crisis. In December, a UN team was shot at when it tried to reach the Shimelba camp. Two diplomatic sources told Reuters the UN team encountered uniformed troops from neighbouring Eritrea. At the time, Ethiopia and Eritrea denied there were Eritrean troops in Tigray. A senior Ethiopian general has since said they had crossed into the region uninvited. Grandi said there had been reports of additional military incursions over the last 10 days. “I continue to receive many reliable reports and first-hand accounts of ongoing insecurity and allegations of grave and distressing human rights abuses, including killings, targeted abductions and forced return of refugees to Eritrea,” he said. Source: Reuters

The Question of "Intent" in Genocide In the first episode of the 2021 Free Rohingya Coalition Genocide Podcast Series, Gregory Stanton and Daniel Feierstein, the two past Presidents of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, will share their thoughts on the perennial question of INTENT in the Genocide Convention and discuss The Gambia vs Myanmar case at the International Court of Justice. The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was the first international human rights treaty adopted by the UN General Assembly, which predated by one day the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Under this international treaty, all states are obligated not to commit genocide, although only 152 out of 194 states have ratified or acceded to the Convention. Over the past 70 years, the question of INTENT has plagued attempts to apply this law. View the Podcast here: https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=416625012733026&id=173623393278024 Free Rohingya Coalition © 2021

An expert in conserving garments for museums and collectors finds a new calling in saving the clothes worn by victims of atrocities. The textile conservationist Julia Brennan putting on gloves to inspect clothing from victims of the Khmer Rouge stored in crates at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press Large boxes of history regularly arrive at Julia Brennan’s doorstep in Washington. A delivery might contain the greatcoat Abraham Lincoln wore on the night of his assassination or a rhinestone-studded “Sex Machine” jumpsuit that once belonged to James Brown. A textile conservator, Ms. Brennan, 62, is a trusted resource for museums and collectors, who call upon her to soften the damage done by time, the elements and mishandling. In her meticulous hands, a tattered rabbi’s hat rises like a soufflé; centuries-old emotional states and habits — underarm stains on a wedding dress, cigar burns on a kimono that belonged to Babe Ruth — are analyzed with care. Over the past five years, Ms. Brennan has also taught herself to conserve another kind of fabric — the clothes left behind by mass atrocities. She has salvaged thousands of garments from a notorious Khmer Rouge prison in Cambodia, and a shipping container’s worth of bloodstained clothing collected from victims of the Rwandan genocide. “Textiles are so often forgotten,” Ms. Brennan said over a recent video call, but even a simple T-shirt can lend human specificity to an unthinkable act of violence. “It’s that woman who wore that camisole,” she said. “It’s that man who had his hands tied behind his back, wearing his favorite brown canvas jacket.” Ms. Brennan is a trusted resource for museums and collectors, who call upon her to soften the damage done to fabrics by time and neglect.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press The garments are not only vivid reminders but also forensic evidence. “We don’t know what governments, conservators, stakeholders and historians will want to do in the future,” she said, “what information they’ll mine from these collections.” There were few precedents and no standard protocols for this work, which was funded in part by the U.S. State Department. The clothes had been housed in buildings that were not entirely sealed off to their tropical climes, she said, letting in “rodents, birds, microorganisms, rains, sunlight, which literally eat them up.” At the former prison in Cambodia, now the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, the director, Chhay Visoth, happened upon the clothing in a disused storeroom in 2014, 35 years after the Khmer Rouge fled the city. A mix of military uniforms and civilian clothes, it had been stuffed into trash bags, and severely damaged by moisture and insects. “I explained to my staff, this is the great treasure of the museum collection — it’s not rubbish,” Mr. Chhay recalled. Soon after, impressed by Ms. Brennan’s work for a museum in Thailand, he called on her for help. Ms. Brennan found an even more daunting challenge in the garments worn by thousands of Rwandans when they were massacred in 1994, in a church where they had taken refuge. Survivors commemorated the victims by piling their clothes on the pews, and in 1997 the bullet-riddled church became the Nyamata Genocide Memorial. Two decades later, the remaining shirts, pants and skirts were rigid and unrecognizable, caked in red dirt and bat droppings. “It looked like a building fell on top of them,” Ms. Brennan said. Ms. Brennan with some of her equipment during a seminar in a makeshift laboratory room in the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press Conservation of these collections was difficult for many reasons — their scale and poor conditions, the responsibility of safeguarding this history as an outsider — but mainly because washing the clothes was out of the question. “If we were to clean everything, we would remove a lot of witness-bearing information,” Ms. Brennan explained. There could be DNA in the stains, and at the Nyamata memorial the grime contained bone fragments. She interviewed archaeologists, forensic scientists and others for advice, and tested out techniques on Goodwill castoffs she had soaked in the murky Potomac River and flattened under her car’s tires. She looked for new tools in unexpected places, or made her own. Ms. Brennan inspecting the clothes of Khmer Rouge victims, recovered from a former prison.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press A desiccant from the agricultural industry provided a low-cost remedy for moisture. She experimented with devices like chili pepper roasters and bingo ball cages, before customizing one, to gently tumble fossilized bricks of fabric from Rwanda until they broke into separate garments. The Nyamata project — a partnership between the Rwanda National Commission for the Fight Against Genocide and PennPraxis, a research institute at the University of Pennsylvania — restored color and form to the clothes. Now, said Martin Muhoza, a conservation specialist with the national commission, “You can imagine exactly who was wearing the textile.” Over monthlong visits to Phnom Penh, Ms. Brennan headed an exhaustive operation, organizing climate-controlled storage and training the Tuol Sleng museum staff. Decades removed from the Khmer Rouge regime, her Cambodian collaborators brought a sense of urgency to the work. Kho Chenda, head of the museum’s conservation lab, said that without the evidence she and her colleagues save, Cambodia would run the risk that future generations would not believe the atrocities took place. Alongside the museum’s black-and-white photographs of some of the 20,000 political prisoners once held there, and torture devices used to extract “confessions,” are now ammunition pouches, hand-patched linen shirts and tube skirts. In Cambodia, Ms. Brennan instructed trainees in textile preservation.Credit...Heng Sinith/Associated Press Ms. Brennan, whose father worked for the State Department, was born in Indonesia and also lived as a child in Nepal and Bangladesh. Textile crafts grounded her peripatetic life; she learned embroidery from her Thai caretakers, and batik-making and palm-weaving in middle school. “I was wrapped and carried on my Indonesian nanny’s hip in a batik from the day I was born,” she said. After studying art history at Barnard College, Ms. Brennan apprenticed with a textile conservator in Philadelphia, and after a decade she founded her own practice in Washington. “The work is contemplative and disciplined,” she said. Before mending the clothes of historical figures, she reads their biographies, even if her task is limited to a corroded zipper or a faded collar. With private clients who want to preserve family heirlooms, she takes on the role of a “textile therapist,” listening to the memories evoked by the needlepoint samplers and christening dresses. The genocide memorials weren’t her first encounter with remnants of tragedy — she has treated artifacts from every major American war — but the immediacy of the violence made these assignments more difficult. In Rwanda, she regularly handled garments that attested graphically to the killing. A dress pierced with haphazard holes suggested grenade shrapnel. A cleanly sliced T-shirt indicated the use of a machete. “My mind automatically filled it out with the person that was wearing it,” she said. “I would have to steel myself,” she admitted, citing as inspiration her Rwandan collaborators, many of whom were themselves survivors of the genocide. She was also guided by the example of Miyako Ishiuchi, a Japanese photographer who captured evocative images of garments that survived the Hiroshima nuclear blast. “After she photographs one of these textiles, she says ‘goodbye’ and ‘I’ll make sure that your memory is kept alive,’” Ms. Brennan recounted. Ms. Ishiuchi inspired Ms. Brennan to rethink the notion that a conservator must remain “detached and technical.” She allowed herself to wonder about the lives hinted at by details like names embroidered onto military caps and tiny pockets sewn into waistbands and seams. She still thinks about a “Creamsicle-colored” child’s dress found among the Khmer Rouge uniforms. It conjured images of a young girl “playing in the courtyard of her house off a boulevard,” Ms. Brennan recalled, guessing that its Peter Pan collar and flared silhouette “must have been so super vogue, in 1968, ’69.” An unknown number of children, including some infants, were imprisoned at Tuol Sleng, only a handful of whom survived. Conserving the dress was a small, necessary gesture for Ms. Brennan, restoring a record of “a person and an era.” “It’s so distinctive,” she said, “that somebody might even recognize it.” © 2021 The New York Times Company

Editor’s Note: The Islamic State has suffered significant losses in recent years, but Mozambique—far from the heartland of its former self-proclaimed caliphate in Iraq and Syria—is a rare bright spot for the group. Tore Hamming, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King’s College, details the group’s successes in Mozambique and the problems the government there has had fighting the group. Daniel Byman Although the militant Islamist insurgency in Mozambique has been brewing since late 2017, it was only when Islamic State-affiliated militants captured the northeastern port city of Mocimboa da Praia in Cabo Delgado province in mid-August 2020 that it gained the world’s attention. After the group’s successive losses in the Levant, it came as a shock to analysts and policymakers that the Islamic State was once again capable of controlling territory—jeopardizing the outlook for stability in Mozambique. This was not the first time Islamist militants succeeded in taking control of territory in Mozambique, however. Four months before, in March 2020, they briefly took Mocimboa da Praia, where the insurgency originated and which has seen more than 30 attacks from the group since 2017. They also held the city of Quissanga, approximately 120 km further south, for about 48 hours, raising their flag before retreating to evade a large-scale confrontation with the Mozambican army and its foreign backers. Since then, Mozambique’s northeastern region has witnessed horrific brutality in the form of kidnappings, massacres and beheadings (including the killing of more than 50 young men in early April). More than 2,000 people have been killed and 500,000 internally displaced. According to the World Food Program, hundreds of thousands of civilians in the northern region will soon also suffer from severe food shortages. The History of the Insurgency The militant group’s official name is Ahlu Sunnah wa-l-Jama’ah (ASWJ), but it is known locally as al-Shabab—though no relation to the Somalia-based al-Qaeda-affiliate—and is now referred to internationally as the Islamic State in Mozambique. There remains uncertainly about the exact origin of the group, but historian Eric Morier-Genoud argues that it originated as an Islamist sect in 2007. Over the following years, the sect and its followers clashed with local communities and mainstream Islamic organizations due to its peculiar traditions, which included opposing formal educational institutions, praying in the mosque wearing shoes (considered a prophetic tradition by some) and praying only three times per day. During its early years, the sect generally isolated itself from the surrounding society, but starting in late 2015 it turned more outward looking. It built its own mosques and religious schools, and started engaging in dawa (proselytizing) activities and offering education to the local population, including to women. Through these initiatives the group slowly became more popular among local youth, but it also resulted in further clashes with local Muslim communities that sought to limit its interference with the area’s Islamic traditions. In early October 2017, community leaders in Mocimboa da Praia issued a complaint to the local authorities in the district, who then arrested approximately 30 members of the group. A few days later, on Oct. 5, the remaining group members at large retaliated with a rescue mission targeting Mocimboa prison and three police stations—this was the launch of the armed insurgency against the state. These events were followed by a strong state crackdown involving mass arrests that led to further radicalization among some of the area’s youth. The insurgency has evolved since that catalyzing incident. In the remainder of 2017, ASWJ increased its reliance on violence mainly through guerilla attacks targeting smaller villages at night and killing local Sufi sheikhs. In 2018, it expanded its activities to daytime attacks on isolated villages. And in 2019, the scope of violent attacks saw a sharp rise in numbers and a geographic expansion, with Macomia, Mocimboa da Praia and Palma being the most affected districts. At this point, the group felt confident enough to launch attacks along the better secured and more populous coast and against important road structures. Rebranding as an Islamic State Affiliate The first sign that the insurgency was changing character appeared in the form of a photograph in which six militants are standing and sitting in front of a flag; the image began circulating on the encrypted platform Telegram in May 2018 with a message that ASWJ had pledged allegiance to Islamic State caliph Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in effect becoming what observers have called the Islamic State in Mozambique (ISM). This initially raised suspicion regarding whether ASWJ had in fact joined the Islamic State or if the group was fragmenting and only a faction had pledged loyalty to Baghdadi. The latter was to some extent confirmed by the Islamic State, which claimed that “a contingent of the mujahideen” in Mozambique had joined its Central Africa Province (ISCAP) together with militants in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The true extent of the insurgency’s fragmentation remains unknown and is a complicating factor when assessing ISM’s cohesion and strength. Indicative of the new organizational relationship, on June 4, 2019, the Islamic State issued its first official communique claiming an attack in Mozambique, which was soon followed by photos of spoils from the attack. In another indication of the linkage, on July 24, ISCAP issued a video pledging allegiance to al-Baghdadi. Yet the Islamic State’s most prominent mention of the insurgency in Mozambique came in an editorial in its al-Naba news bulletin on June 3, 2020, that taunted the West and other African states for their failure to defeat the insurgency and claimed that their interest in Mozambique is financial. This ambiguity leaves open the question of how close the linkage is between the militants in Mozambique, who continue to refer to themselves as al-Shabab, and the Islamic State. International actors have generally been hesitant to publicly acknowledge ISM’s connection to the Islamic State, opting to view the insurgency as entirely local and with little to no ideological overlap or other linkages between the fighters in Mozambique and the Islamic State. This argument, however, appears increasingly naïve. In December 2020, U.S. officials also confirmed the connection. As part of ISCAP, the affiliate in Mozambique is involved in the Islamic State’s formal structure and tightly connected with the Islamic State affiliates in the DRC and Somalia. While the information available is insufficient to establish a hierarchy, if one exists, between the affiliates in Mozambique and the DRC, the group in the DRC has allegedly helped fund ISM. ISCAP is formally under the Somalia-based Al-Karrar Office (maktab al-karrar) in the Islamic State’s structure to administer distant provinces outside of Syria and Iraq, which makes Somalia the regional reference point for the militants in Mozambique. Additionally, the publication of news and media from Mozambique by the Islamic State’s central media unit (despite being irregular) is indicative of some level of connection between ISM and the Islamic State’s Central Media Department (diwan al-i'lam al-markazi). The growing sophistication of ISM’s military operations is a further indication of the benefits it has gained from its inclusion in ISCAP. ISM attacks have grown increasingly complex and introduced new weapons and tactics. This shows that the Mozambican affiliate is part of an interconnected regional militant network in East, Central and Southeast Africa linked to the Islamic State. Intensification and Internationalization Over the course of 2020, ISM’s insurgency intensified steadily. Data from ACLED shows that its attacks increased in terms of frequency and number of casualties in April 2020. After a slump in July, attacks have remained at a high level ever since. In terms of military success, the seizure of Mocimboa da Praia remains the group’s most important feat. According to the Islamic State’s own narrative of the seizure, the group “burned the port facilities, army barracks and Christian homes in the city and the surrounding villages, and seized weapons and ammunition, and sums of money after the army fled.” The account in the Islamic State publication al-Naba stated that the attack against the city resulted in more than 130 Mozambican army soldiers killed or wounded. Part of what makes the city, and the province of Cabo Delgado, so attractive to the militants is its oil and natural gas resources, estimated to be worth more than $60 million. The past year has seen several horrific large-scale attacks. On Aug. 6, 2020, ISM fighters killed 50 people in attacks on two barracks in Mocimboa de Praia. On Sept. 5, an attack in Awasse, showcased in the most recent photo set released by ISCAP, resulted in approximately 70 casualties, including Tanzanian soldiers. And in perhaps the most gruesome attack to date, ISM fighters beheaded as many as 50 people at the local soccer field in the village of Muatide in early November. The insurgency is often correctly described as inherently local in nature, with ISM reacting to local grievances with little concern for the global nature of the Islamic State’s project. While this appears mainly true, there is also a risk of overemphasizing the local character of the group and its actions. The group has been heavily influenced by the militant milieu in Tanzania. ISM has on several occasions launched attacks near the Tanzanian border, and occasionally even crossed it. Though previously suspected, ISW’s cross-border activity was not confirmed until October 2020, when ISCAP claimed an attack on Tanzanian forces in Kitaya village in Tanzania’s Mtwara region on Oct. 14, and two weeks later reported burning several villages in the area. The group has also managed to attract fighters from the region, including at least 52 Tanzanians and perhaps as many as 100 individuals, as well as funding, from South Africa. Having captured Mocimboa da Praia in August, ISM has now showed itself capable of controlling a large and important piece of territory for a prolonged period of time in a clear show of strength. Since then, the group has turned its eyes on the city of Muidumbe, southwest of Mocimboa, where it faces tougher resistance. Battling the Insurgency The past six months have testified to the challenge ahead for Mozambique to suppress the insurgency. In the long term, several factors contribute as drivers of conflict: extreme social inequality, ethnic tensions, a large youth population (about 45 percent of the country is between 15 and 35 years old) combined with high youth unemployment (approximately 80 percent), and the discovery of natural resources. The most pertinent problem, though, especially in the short term, is that the Mozambican army simply is not up to the task of battling the militants on its own. Lacking proper training, army soldiers were recently accused by Amnesty International of committing atrocities against civilians. In some areas, like the districts of Muidumbe, Macomia and Palma, the government has relied increasingly on local militias to compensate for its own forces’ shortcomings. It has also teamed up with foreign security contractors, mainly in the form of the Russian Wagner Group and the Dyck Advisory Group, a South Africa-based private security firm. Starting in late 2019, at least 150 mercenaries linked to the Wagner Group were deployed to northern Mozambique, but they produced little in the way of results and eventually withdrew after suffering significant casualties. Foreign countries might provide more support. Neighboring South Africa and international actors like the United States and the United Kingdom are in talks about some level of military support, but they do not have concrete interventions currently planned. In the West, there is likely to be little political interest in engaging militarily as long as ISM is seen only as a local or even regional threat, without ambitions to attack Western interests. While ISM’s inclusion in the Islamic State’s network theoretically could draw Western countries’ attention, it remains unlikely because of the insurgency’s history and character. Instead, Portugal and the United States recently alluded to increased cooperation in terms of training of Mozambican forces. Regional partners will provide a more realistic line of support. Though a report in early December suggesting that Malawi would be sending troops to Mozambique turned out to be false, other countries are stepping in. After the October and November 2020 intrusions in Tanzania, that nation intensified its cooperation with Mozambique and established a joint operation along the two countries’ shared border. On Jan. 11, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi traveled to Tanzania to discuss further cooperation in fighting militant Islamist networks in the region. Though the Southern African Development Community (SADC) at one time appeared the most obvious partner for Mozambique, the Mozambican government has so far showed little interest in the political process that SADC initiated to confront the insurgency, and the prospect of the SADC providing military support to Mozambique seems rather dim. Aiming to secure the country’s economic interests, however, Nyusi reached a deal in January with the French oil company Total to introduce new security measures to protect the natural gas project in Cabo Delgado that is planned to start operations in 2024. The project has been hindered so far by the violence, resulting in Total evacuating 500 of its 3,000 employees in the region. While security forces are occasionally capable of retaking parts of the territory controlled by ISM, as illustrated by the recent counteroffensive in the district of Muidumbe, the government is unlikely to recapture the entire province of Cabo Delgado from the militants as long as it does not receive substantial assistance from foreign actors. Until then, Mozambique remains a success story for the Islamic State that demonstrates its ability to attract the loyalty of local militias, provide them with an effective platform, and, in return, profit from their accomplishments. © Lawfare 2021

Auschwitz Death Camp was liberated on January 27, 1945. This date has been designated as International Holocaust Remembrance Day, with the primary purpose of promoting Holocaust education. Unfortunately, this noble endeavor has been twisted into a grotesque ruse by the Lithuanian Government to falsify, misinform, deceive, misrepresent and revise the truth about the unfolding of the Holocaust in that country. Every year, Lithuania uses this date to perform a disingenuous “Holocaust Regret Show.” Lithuania admits Jews were “lost”. More than 200 mass murder sites are located in the country. Believing anything else would be nothing short of absurd. However, the Lithuanian Government claims that it was the Soviets and Nazis that were the murderers. They do admit that “just a few degenerate local collaborators” “unfortunately” helped their enemies murder Jews. The claim of “loss” negates the long history of antisemitism that preceded the murders. Lithuania converts their national leaders who guided the hate and murder into current national heroes and continues to deny their participation in the genocide of our families. The Lithuanian Government has an entire department dedicated to historical revisionism and Holocaust distortion. It is called the Genocide and Resistance Research Centre of Lithuania, but it conducts little research. Rather, conclusions are prepared which research results are required to fit. It is a propaganda department of Orwellian proportions. Concurrent with the government Holocaust lies is a campaign to paint Russia’s historical revisions as a threat against Lithuania. They are. At the same time, Lithuania claims a moral high ground as tellers of historical truth. On January 27, 2021, Lithuanian officials will again produce their annual “Holocaust regret show.” They will mass tweet “We Remember,” but what exactly do they remember? They will not remember that their Prime Minister Brazaitis told their citizens not to murder Jews “so publicly” as it could be disturbing for some to watch. We know with certainty that they will not remember this because their government misrepresents US Congressional records in order to claim that the US Congress “completely exonerated” Brazaitis. They will not remember that the much-venerated great-grandfather of their current Foreign Minister Landsbergis was a Holocaust perpetrator, nor will they remember that their Ambassador to Germany, Darius Semaska, whose Grandfather Jonas is also hailed as a current national hero, was also a Holocaust perpetrator. Ambassador Semaska’s relatives falsely reinvented him into yet one more secret rescuer of Jews, so we are certain they will not recall his murders. Lithuanian Ambassador Semaska did nonetheless, remember to defend the good name of Jonas Noreika, another Holocaust perpetrator. The Lithuanian government will proudly tell the world of the 917 Lithuanians who were rescuers of Jews, but they will forget that this was only 0.04% of Lithuanians. 900 sounds so much better. They will not remember that tens of thousands of Lithuanians participated in the murders or other crimes. Lithuanian memory is exquisitely distorted and selective. The Lithuanian Government will not remember that the American cities of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, and West Hollywood have condemned them for Holocaust revisionism. They will not remember that the US State Department has similarly condemned them, or that the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance and very many Jewish organizations have joined the international chorus of condemnation of their Holocaust lies. Lithuania will remember that their own enemies murdered Jews. Lithuanian memory is a fraudulent ploy to use their own victims in positioning themselves against their enemies. Our murdered families will once again become their tools as they did in 2020 when Lithuanian President Nauseda mourned Jewish victims at Auschwitz, while not remembering that his Lithuanian national hero, Antanas Baltusis was the leader of the guards at Majdanek concentration camp. The Lithuanian Government will say that they will “never forgive”. But they have forgiven Lithuanian Holocaust perpetrators to the point of naming so many as national heroes, that their true sentiments about the Holocaust are obvious. Lithuania will mourn the “loss” of their Jews. As in their Tweet below, they twist their words in order to hide that so many Lithuanians murdered Jews, and then, so many of those murderers became their Freedom Fighters. Mourning murdered Jews will take the form of issuing coins to divert from the facts; they also offer expressions of love, devotion, tourism promotion, and business engagement. They will remember that they named 2020 for the Vilna Gaon who was born 300 years ago. They will not remember that in 1941 Lithuanians murdered the Gaon’s relatives. Naming years as honors is a Lithuanian tradition. They have named 2021 in honor of Juozas Luksa, a member of a group that murdered Jews. They claim that the absence of incriminating evidence is itself proof of innocence. When Rabbi Baker, Director of International Jewish Affairs of the American Jewish Committee expressed his objections to honoring such a person as a national hero, the Lithuanian Government labeled Rabbi Baker guilty of “hostile propaganda”. Imagine Germany naming a year in honor of any known Nazi, provably guilty of murder or not! Lithuanians say “Never Forget,”, but they have forgotten that it was their own leadership that proposed the elimination of Jews to Hitler. They have forgotten that murders of Jews began prior to the arrival of Nazis, and they were the ones who enthusiastically volunteered to murder their Jewish neighbors. They have forgotten that they competed to plunder Jewish assets. When Lithuania’s Foreign Minister Landsbergis speaks about “never forgetting” will he forget that his own grandfather, Vytautus, first post-independence Head of State, recently, very publicly wished death upon Ruta Vanagaite for telling the truth about Lithuania’s Holocaust crimes? Lithuanian officials will parade with signs that say “Never Again.” There were, within current Lithuanian territory (pre-war), approximately 250,000 Lithuanian Jews. Today, Lithuania has approximately 3,000 Jews, of which about 200 are original Lithuanian Jews (0.08%). The other 2,800 were migrants to Lithuania. Therefore, we know that “Never Again” does not mean a pledge to protect their Jewish population from another genocide because the genocide has already been completed. In 1941, their national hero, Kazys Skirpa, called for a national program of eliminating Jews. This program, with a 99.92% success rate, has had the highest success rate of any program in its entire history. Lithuania remembers Skirpa for lifting a flag on a hill in 1919, but they do not remember his programmed elimination of Jews. (Clearly, a flag is more important than 220,000 Jewish lives). The Lithuanian government has systemically denied the participation of their own nationalists in the genocide, so, to them, does the statement “Never Again” mean regret that they will never have another opportunity? Translation: A Nation that respects itself should know its heroes Diplomat Colonel Kazys Skirpa The first volunteer who raised the flag of Lithuania on Gediminas Tower on January 1, 1919, the head of the Lithuanian Activist Front, organizer of the June 1941 uprising. The Nation knows its heroes! On January 27, 2021, decent human beings will remember six million Jewish victims, each victim an individual with a family, somebody that loved them, each with a future, each murdered in the cruelest fashion conceivable to their murderers. We will sincerely mourn the victims, while Lithuania displays false platitudes, and presents lies, and lies, and even more lies. On January 27, 2021, there will once again be victims of the Holocaust. This time the victims will be facts and the true memory of each of the 220,000 Jewish Lithuanian victims. Their memory will be murdered all over again by Lithuanian-government-sponsored Holocaust revision. Lithuanian officials are proactively approaching Jewish organizations to request public speaking engagements in order to express their regrets. As professional diplomats trained in the art, they will appear sincere, and the annual “Holocaust Regret Show” will proceed. How many of us will be able to discern the truth from the lies within their statements? See below examples of distortions sure to come. May the memory of our murdered families always be a blessing. We are the only voice of the murdered Jews. On January 27, 2021, and every day, let us not allow the Lithuanian government to revictimize our families. See the full article here. The Times of Israel © 2021

Uttar Pradesh Sees First Arrest Under New Anti-Religious Conversion Legislation The eighth Indian state to ratify and implement an anti-religious conversion law, Uttar Pradesh, on January 4th saw the first arrest of a Christian under the new legislation. In addition to Uttar Pradesh, other states such as Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Guharat, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, and Uttarakhand have all implemented similar laws which the governments claim are imperative to combat “Love Jihad” (also commonly referred to as “Romeo Jihad”), an unproven conspiracy theory that Indian Muslim men are seeking marriage with Hindu women in order to convert their wives to Islam and have Muslim children. The new legislation, under which an individual can be charged with “facilitating fraudulent [religious] conversion” with little to no evidence or warrant, posits a penalization of 10 years of imprisonment to individuals convicted of waging ‘Love Jihad.’ Additionally, the law stipulates that any individual who wishes to convert religions must confer first with the district magistrate and submit a “declaration” of conversion 60 days prior to the religious conversion ceremony. Those that do not follow these stringent regulations can be detained in prison for a term of no less than six months and up to five years. Quick Facts About Uttar Pradesh's Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance Passed by Uttar Pradesh state cabinet on 24 November 2020. Religious conversion is a non-bailable crime with a punishment of up to 10 years of prison time. The first charge under this legislation was filed just hours after it came into effect. "One month of 'love jihad' law in UP: 51 arrests made, 14 cases lodged, only 2 complaints from victims." - Only 2 out of the 14 cases were filed by the alleged victims themselves; the majority were filed by family members. In December, one pregnant Hindu woman, 22-year-old Muskan Jahan, was arrested under the new legislation for allegedly 'unlawfully converting religions' to marry her Muslim husband. She later suffered a miscarriage. Former Law Commission of India Chief Justice A. P. Shah and former Supreme Court of India judge Madan Lokur has condemned the persecutory application of the new ordinance. Now, on 4 January 2021, Morning Star News announced that three Indian civilians and one Korean Christian woman were arrested in Uttar Pradesh on December 19th, having been accused of violating the new legislation and engaging in fraudulent evangelism. Two individuals by the name of Sharma and Gupta claimed that three Indian civilians visited their homes not only to deliver COVID-19 aid but also in attempts to convert them to Christianity by offering them some stimulus money. More specifically, they claim that the aid workers told them that if they visited a church with them or converted to Christianity, they would receive extra rations and 1 million rupees (≈ USD $13,673). Raj Kumar Masih, the leader of the aid organization that the three arrested individuals worked for, has asserted that Sharma and Gupta’s claims of attempted incitement to fraudulent conversion to Christianity are absurd, as not all of those arrested are even Christian themselves. Moreover, Masih has steadfastly denied that the aid organization has offered recipients any money as an incentive to convert to Christianity; he has offered to provide documentation of the organization’s beneficiaries who will testify that they were made no such propositions. Jubilee Campaign condemns the persecutory and discriminatory application of Uttar Pradesh's Prohibition of Unlawful Religious Conversion Ordinance, which has been used to imprison religious minorities and revoke women's freedom to convert religions and marry. We are similarly disheartened to see 'love jihad' legislations being passed in multiple other Indian states such as Madhya Pradesh. Jubilee Campaign continues to tirelessly advocate against abductions and forced conversions of girls, and believes that the "love jihad" legislation is not a proper counter to abductions and forced conversions. See the full article here. Jubilee Campaign USA © 2021

In all genocides, you will find EXTERNAL ACTORS - states, corporations/business organizations, individuals (officials from other states, for instance, diplomats, ex-officials, academics, spiritual, religious, and perpetrating community leaders). Myanmar genocide -- which my researcher colleague and wife Natalie and I characterized as "the slow-burning genocide", because of its excruciatingly protracted nature of persecution -- is no exception - UN officials, western and Asian diplomats, legal scholars, lawyers, academics, thinktank writers, and advisers, business executives, journalists, etc. - have played various complicit and proactive roles, serving as Bystanders, Enablers, Whitewashers, Appeasers, Collaborators, Cheerleaders, Financers, etc. Many scholars who specialize in Myanmar affairs carefully avoid being entangled themselves in the activist cries against the atrocities against the country's most vulnerable and most peaceful population of Rohingya committed in the name of, falsely, Buddhism, national security, and illegal immigration. From former senior diplomats from the Philippines and Japan to heads of state and other ranking politicians from Myanmar's immediate neighborhoods of Singapore, Thailand, India, Cambodia, to EU, UK, US ambassadors, ex and serving, are complicit, with varying degrees of culpability, in Myanmar genocide. I won't name names here because there are too many - to keep track of these crime-enablers and/or -whitewashers. I remember how extremely visceral I had felt in Berlin 2 years ago when a brand new Burma desk officer inside the building of the German Federal Foreign Affairs Ministry in Berlin who dismissed my observation that the potency of Burmese racism was no less than Nazis' whipped up loathing of the Jews in Germany in the 1930s. Holding this typical rotating diplomatic assignment, the German diplomat knew next to nothing about my country's affairs, let alone being in a position to assess the depth of racism. My blood boiled and I felt this incredible disgust in my bones. Genocides are crimes perpetrated against a weak and vulnerable target group, primarily by highly racialized or ethnicized political states (such as Myanmar), with popular support of the majoritarian ethnicized CIVIL SOCIETY, with the intent to destroy the target group, IN WHOLE or IN PART. Genocidal methods are varied and numerous, beyond what is encoded and defined in the Genocide Convention. Forced migration (forced out-migration or "deportation" of members of the target group, not because they commit any crime against the state or the society at large) but because they exist as who they say they are - for instance, Rohingya. That is because they belong to the group called Rohingyas. Their group membership/ identity is the prime reason for the state-directed assault against their community. This - the INTENT (to commit genocide) - is the subject of my next podcast and Facebook LIVE with two world-renowned on 25 January. We have been deeply troubled by Myanmar's international lawyer William Schabas' nonsensical - or more disingenuous - a legal argument which he mounted at the ICJ during the public hearings of The Gambia vs Myanmar: the accusers must establish one and only interpretation - the intent to destroy the targeted "protected group" under the Genocide Convention - if a crime is to be deemed, juridically, genocide. In other words, the intent behind criminal deeds must absolutely be SINGULAR. Sadly, this kind of stupidity or dishonesty pervades many legalistic circles, when experts and scholars split hair, while the world burns and corpses pile up. Here is an old museum captain that caught my attention during a visit to "the concentration camp in the 'Reich capital' at Publications - Gedenkstätte und Museum Sachsenhausen (sachsenhausen-sbg.de), the SS's purpose-built concentration camp. Free Rohingya Coalition © 2021

The December 2019 massacre in West Darfur killed almost 100 defenseless non-Arab civilians. The current violence--both in West Darfur (particularly the El Geneina area and displacement person camps (notably the two Kinding camps)--and in South Darfur has seen more than three hundred people killed, some 100,000 newly displaced, and tremendous suffering for lack of humanitarian capacity. The number of wounded--many seriously--is also very high, and medical capacity is overwhelmed. Many more will die. The large attack on El Geneina and the Kinding camps was clearly premeditated, coming from multiple directions and comprising large numbers of heavily armed militiamen. How many were Rapid Support Forces out of uniform? How many were in the loosely organized Arab militias tolerated by the RSF? The attack on the Fellata village of El Tawil in South Darfur also raises the question of RSF involvement. Fallata spokesman for the region, Ibrahim Mousa, declared to Radio Dabanga: ... that the armed attackers were driving cars and riding horses and camels. The attack was preceded by large gatherings of Rizeigat fighters who then headed east in the the direction of El Tawil village, Mousa said. He criticized the failure of the government forces to intervene, despite the fact that the army garrison is only five kilometers away from where the attack took place. Mousa expressed his surprise about the heavy weapons used by the attackers. He further noted that paramilitaries of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) participated in the attack. I attach below (in reverse chronological order) my brief comments about this violence from my Twitter account, along with the dispatches they speak to. As I noted today, the question seems not whether there will be another ethnically-targeted militia attack on non-Arab civilians, but when. I conclude with the warning I posted on December 31, 2019, in the wake of the massacre that had occurred shortly before in West Darfur: Sudan Reeves © 2021

In October 2020, French President Emmanuel Macron proposed a law to "defend France’s secular values against “Islamist radicalism.” According to Macron, the religion of Islam is “in crisis” all over the world. Three terrorist attacks in 2020 led Macron to announce a government crackdown on ‘separatism.’ The new law will result in discrimination against France's Muslim minority. France is home to four million Muslims, 5.8% of France's population, the highest percentage in Western Europe. Macron's new law proposal resulted in anti-French demonstrations in Muslim countries, along with boycotts of French products. As the 2022 French presidential election approaches, French Muslims fear a resurgence of France's far-right anti-Muslim political parties. Discrimination against Muslims has long been a pattern in France. In 2012, Human Rights Watch reported that “French police are using overly broad powers to conduct unwarranted and abusive identity checks on black and Arab young men and boys.” In May 2020, the Defender of Rights, the official authority in charge of combating discrimination in France, published a report accusing the Paris police of “systematic discrimination.” In 2020, a security bill was introduced to restrict filming and posting images of police on social media. Its goal is to cover up police brutality. Since 2005, wearing Muslim headscarves has been prohibited in publicly supported schools. In 2010, in response to the Charlie Hebdo massacre, wearing face-coverings in public was outlawed. As part of the French government's crackdown on ‘separatism,’ 76 mosques in France have been investigated for promoting religious extremism, with police patrols around the mosques. The French Interior Minister announced that these mosques may face closure. Over 2,600 Muslim mosques have been identified as possible threats to national security. In 2021, NGOs, lawyers, and religious organizations in 13 countries submitted a report on France’s discrimination against Muslims to the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR). Genocide Watch considers France to be at Stage 6: Polarization due to the French government's crackdown on ‘separatism’ that targets France's Muslim minority. Genocide Watch recommends: · When the new law against separatism enters into force, it should be challenged in the European Court of Human Rights as a violation of the European Convention on Human Rights due to its legitimation of discrimination and its violation of freedom of religion. · The UN Human Rights Council should place France's laws that discriminate against Muslims on its agenda for discussion. · French people of all religions should oppose Islamophobia and the right-wing nationalist political parties that promote intolerance against Muslims.

Genocide Watch staff have published the eighth Timestream in a series of critical genocides in the world. This Timestream covers the ongoing violent conflict between Cameroonian government security forces and armed separatist groups in Anglophone regions. What began as peaceful civil rights demonstrations by the country's Anglophone minority has transformed into a violent conflict that has killed at least 3,000 people and displaced another 700,000 Anglophones. The Anglophone crisis has already progressed into all Ten Stages of Genocide and the conflict shows no signs of abating. See the full Timestream here and view our other Timestreams here.

Can the Afghan government withstand the pressure? KABUL — Growing uncertainty over peace talks with the Taliban, a drumbeat of targeted killings and the looming withdrawal of U.S. troops have raised tension here to a fever pitch, prompting calls for President Ashraf Ghani to step down and an interim government to take over. Supporters of the idea say it would offer a better chance of settling the 19-year war in Afghanistan and ending the relentless bloodshed, given that the Taliban refuses to recognize Ghani’s government as legitimate. Opponents call it a dangerous, irresponsible gambit that would benefit an assortment of opportunistic politicians eager to grab a share in power. “The only way to break the current deadlock is to form an interim government,” said Jafar Mahdavi, a former legislator who is involved in the peace talks process. “The Taliban won’t accept Ghani’s rule, and they won’t join his government.” Ghani has repeatedly insisted that he will remain in office for his full five-year term and see the peace talks to fruition. But a new round of negotiations, which have made almost no headway since they started in September, stalled this week, as two of the top Taliban negotiators failed to return to the talks in Qatar after visiting Pakistan for consultations. The group’s spokesman in Doha, the Qatari capital, tweeted Saturday that the negotiating teams were still working on preparing a substantive agenda for the talks. But delegates to the talks from Kabul said the process had been further slowed by the unexplained absence of the top two Taliban negotiators, Abdul Ghani Baradar and Abdul Hakim Ishaqzai. Baradar, a founder of the Taliban movement, spent eight years in prison in Pakistan but was released in 2018, at the United States’ request, to participate in the peace process. The role of Pakistan in the peace talk process has taken on sudden new importance in the past several weeks. The country has long said it supports the talks and seeks a stable Afghanistan. But it has also hosted fugitive Taliban leaders for years and sheltered violent anti-Afghan militias that operate along the long, porous border between the neighboring Muslim countries. Complicating matters for the Afghan government is a Friday deadline for U.S. troops in Afghanistan to be reduced from 5,000 to about 2,500. This was the chief demand of the militants, who signed a separate deal with U.S. officials in February. The troop reduction could cause the Afghan government to lose much of its remaining leverage in the talks. Ghani’s position was already weakened when he agreed to release about 5,000 imprisoned Taliban fighters under U.S. pressure to seal the February pact. Pentagon officials said Tuesday that the troop drawdown was expected to proceed as planned, even though it is widely opposed in Congress. A recently enacted defense policy bill bars the U.S. government from using funds to pay for it without a “comprehensive interagency assessment of the risks and impacts” of leaving only a minimal U.S. military presence in the country. Another stumbling block in the talks is the continued high level of Taliban attacks. A recent spate of unclaimed targeted killings, including shootings and car bombs, has left several dozen civic and democratic activists, journalists, government officials and others dead. Afghan officials have blamed the Taliban for the attacks, and U.S. military officials made the same accusation last week. Zalmay Khalilzad, the Trump administration’s special envoy for Afghan peace, made a whirlwind visit to the region this past week, holding meetings in Pakistan and Qatar as well as Kabul in an attempt to ensure the survival of the U.S.-Taliban deal and press for a nationwide cease-fire to accompany the Doha talks. Khalilzad met with a variety of political leaders and diplomats here, but Ghani refused to see him. The president, like many Afghans, felt betrayed by the generous terms of the deal he brokered with the insurgents. Now they view Khalilzad as pushing too hard for a quick settlement among Afghans, especially amid local media reports that he was encouraging an interim government. Last week Khalilzad called on both sides to reduce violence but did not blame the Taliban for the recent targeted attacks. The leader of the U.S. diplomatic mission in Afghanistan, Ross Wilson, said in a statement on Twitter on Wednesday that the United States is not pushing for a new government. “We have not advocated, and the United States is not advocating, an interim government,” he wrote. “The outcomes of Afghanistan Peace Negotiations are up to Afghans & we believe those outcomes should reflect the wishes & aspirations of the Afghan people.” Abdullah Abdullah, head of the government council for peace and reconciliation, has said for months that he would be open to the creation of an interim government if that would help the prospects for peace. Abdullah was Ghani’s top rival for the presidency in the past two elections. “We have to be flexible in our thoughts,” Abdullah told an international virtual conference last year. “Nothing should derail us from getting to a durable, lasting and acceptable peace for all Afghans, including the Taliban.” Some Afghan officials and experts have called for an interim government to be used only as a last resort. “To form an interim government now would be premature and irresponsible,” said Davood Moradian, director of the Afghan Institute for Strategic Studies. “It would mean dismantling the current government, and the members would have no real authority to make an agreement. There would be bound to be infighting among them. This might be a possible outcome of talks, but it cannot come first.” But fears remain about what an interim government would mean for the democratic gains made since the Taliban was forced out of power. “The people of Afghanistan are not supporting an interim government because there is no guarantee its formation could end the war in the country,” said Mohammad Khalid Momand, a member of parliament. “Afghans don’t want to lose the achievements of the past 18 years.” Sharif Hassan contributed to this report. © The Washington Post 2021