not even Pope Francis or Angel Gabriel can save Gov Nyesom Wike from his involvement in Obigbo atrocity crimes. Intersociety, Onitsha-Eastern Nigeria Sat, 16th Jan 2021 The leadership of Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law is gladly announcing the release on Court bail of 30 more victims of the Obigbo Army massacre and abductions. Their bail was granted by Magistrate Aminu Mohammed Abdullahi of the Grade 11 Magistrate Court sitting in Wuse, the Federal Capital Territory of Nigeria. The Court bail, granted on Thursday, 14th Jan 2021 saw the victims freed or regained their freedom before dawn on Friday, 15th Jan 2021. The 30 victims, mainly residents of Obigbo and environs in Rivers State and interstate travelers-with different types of lawful occupation; were released from three secret dungeons; namely: Nigerian Army’s Mogadishu Barracks, Abuja, Nigerian Army Training Center in Suleja, Niger State, and SSS (DSS) dungeon located at Mararaba in Abuja. Pope Francis Or Angel Gabriel Cannot Save Wike Over Obigbo Massacre Intersociety also makes bold to say that not even Pope Francis or Angel Gabriel can save Gov Nyesom Wike from his involvement in the Obigbo Army massacre, abductions, and other atrocity crimes. The Gov will soon be slapped with more damning statistics on the referenced ‘industrial scale’ rights abuses and violations perpetrated under his nose and seal at Obigbo and environs and are already being blacklisted internationally. We have observed efforts in futility by the Gov since the aftermath of the massacre, abductions, property crimes, and others. They include what looks like a “gubernatorial show of force”, recalcitrance and “image laundering”; to the extent that ‘the good’, ‘the bad’ and ‘the ugly’ are now being invited to ‘commission projects’. Since the aftermath of the massacre, too, Port Harcourt Government House had become a pilgrimage arena where individuals and groups ancestrally linked to the victims are ‘invited’ to sing victory songs for the Gov for ‘a job well done’ in aiding the massacre and abduction of his own people; same defenseless citizens he got elected and sworn to protect at all times and beyond the confines of personal interest and primordialism. These explain why we hold that ‘not even Pope Francis or Angel Gabriel can save him’. In the Oracular Igbo Society, this is a clear act of taboo and abomination with commensurable sanctions Names Of The 30 Freed Abductees Names of the 30 freed abductees are Citizens Okoli Kanayo, Boniface Okafor, Mbadiwe Godwin, Sima Man, Joseph Nwaaba, Eze Imo, Gozie Oliver, Nwamadi Monday, Izunne Gilbert, Nwabueze Chinyeze, Favour Uchenna, Ego Samuel, Ibenwolu Faith, Abel Daniel, Young Winner, Pepper White, Freedom (Kekeboy), Obinna Ekechukwu, Adonai Uwakwe, Celestine Uwakwe, Arinze (Water), One Man MOPOL, Onyema Amaechi, Chukwunonso Andrew, Chikwado Hosanna, Ndubuisi (Officer), Uzoma Ojiako, Kosisochukwu Ojiako, Miracle Ojiako, and Goodness Nwagbaraukwu. Also Citizen Linus Uroko, a Jewish religionist, who missed being granted bail on 24th Dec 2020 and got his release secured during the release of his 29 colleagues on 30th Dec 2020, on account of his religious belief; was granted unconditional Court bail and freed on 13th Jan 2021. 112 Abductees Now Freed, 96 Remained In Abuja & 200 Others Unaccounted For With this cheering news, it now brings the total number of abducted Obigbo residents, located and freed since 30th of Dec 2020 to 112, out of which 52 were located in four different dungeons manned by the Army in Jebba, Kontangora, Zungeru, and Bida, all in Niger State and freed through Court bails on 3 rd and 10th Dec 2020; 29 were freed on 30th Dec 2020 after a Court bail granted on 24th Dec 2020; one was freed on 13th Jan 2021; and 30 others on 15th Jan 2021, a day after they were granted bail on 14th Jan 2021. As it stands, not less than 96 more defenseless Obigbo residents are still being held incommunicado since late Oct 2020 in different Army dungeons in Abuja and the whereabouts of not less than 200 others including Citizens Chigbo Elvis Ngozi, Obioma Okoroafor, Ozoemena Nwokorie, Mbeta Uchenna and Chiadikobi Ndubuisi are only known to the Nigerian Army and Gov Nyesom Wike of Rivers State. It is also feared that scores of them have been tortured to death or executed in Army captivity. At least, three of the abducted citizens (Okey Anyanwu, Kingsley Iwuagwu, and Chijioke) were killed in Army custody in Niger State. Barr Okoroafor & Ors Deserve Commendation In all, commendation must go to Barr Richie Okoroafor, an International Human Rights Lawyer and Igbo-British Citizen. Without his efforts, the clandestine plans of the heavily Northern Muslim controlled Nigerian Army would have been actualized. Deserving commendation too is the leadership of Indigenous People of Biafra. Barr Okoroafor had led us in the know of the fact that “without the leadership of IPOB, which responded swiftly to distress calls at the beginning and even till date, he could not have achieved much. This is more so when the matter is cloaked in the layers of ‘Prosecutorial Vindictiveness by the Government of Nigeria”. The Army Intended To Execute All The 400 Abductees Or More In Captivity It, therefore, requires no rocket science to establish that the Nigerian Army intended or planned secret abduction and execution in captivity of the abducted 400 Obigbo residents or more-which was why it has not uttered a word since then including releasing a statement taking responsibility for their abduction, disclosing their whereabouts, stating why they were abducted and offenses warranting their abduction; informing their families or relatives of their whereabouts and conditions in detention; and handing them over to Civil Authorities within periods prescribed by the Constitution and others laws of Nigeria for their trial or release on administrative bail pending trial or having them investigative discharged and acquitted for want of investigative and prosecutorial evidence. Attached are the photos of the 30 freed Obigbo Army abductees taken this morning, 16th Jan 2021 after they were freed late evening of yesterday, 15th Jan 2021 from Army dungeons in Abuja and Niger State. International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law © 2021

Minorities, Women Face Increased Risks January 13, 2021 5:44PM EST Members of civil society groups take part in a rally to condemn a recent gang rape of a woman on a highway, Karachi, Pakistan, September 12, 2020.© 2020 Fareed Khan/AP Photo (New York) – Pakistan’s government intensified its crackdown on the media, political opponents, and civil society in 2020, while failing to stem violence against women and minorities, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. Pakistani authorities harassed, and at times, prosecuted human rights defenders and journalists for criticizing government policies. They deployed the National Accountability Bureau, Pakistan’s anti-corruption watchdog, to detain political opponents and critics of the government, including the Jang group editor Mir Shakil-ur-Rehman, who was held without bail for six months. “Pakistan’s continuing assault on political opponents and free expression put the country on an increasingly dangerous course,” said Brad Adams, Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Threatening opposition leaders, activists, and journalists who criticize the government is a hallmark of authoritarian rule, not a democracy.” In the 761-page World Report 2021, its 31st edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the incoming United States administration should embed respect for human rights in its domestic and foreign policy in a way that is more likely to survive future US administrations that might be less committed to human rights. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, other governments stepped forward to champion rights. The Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort. Violence against Pakistan’s Ahmadiyya religious community worsened in 2020, with at least four Ahmadis killed for alleged incidents of blasphemy. Among them was Tahir Naseem Ahmad, who was charged with blasphemy, imprisoned in 2018, and fatally shot in July by an assailant who had smuggled a gun inside a high-security courtroom in Peshawar. The Pakistani government also failed to amend or repeal blasphemy law provisions that have led to arbitrary arrests and prosecutions, and provide a pretext for violence against religious minorities. In August, leading women journalists issued a statement condemning the “well-defined and coordinated campaign” of social media attacks, including death and rape threats, against women journalists and commentators whose views and reporting have been critical of the government. In September, nationwide protests took place to demand police reform after the Lahore police chief made a public statement suggesting that a woman who had been gang-raped on a highway in Punjab was herself at fault because she should not have been traveling “without her husband’s permission” on a motorway late at night. Pakistan had over 350,000 confirmed cases of Covid-19, with at least 7,000 deaths in 2020. With little testing available, the actual numbers were most likely much higher. Partial or complete lockdowns to prevent contagion had a disproportionate effect on women workers, especially home-based and domestic workers. The Sindh provincial government took some measures to protect workers from layoffs and ensure pay. Data from domestic violence help lines across Pakistan indicated that cases of domestic violence increased 200 percent from January-March 2020, and further worsened during the Covid-19 lockdowns after March. See article here. © Human Rights Watch 2021

Foreign Affairs Committee Oral evidence: Xinjiang detention camps - 12 01 21, HC 800 Tuesday, 12 January 2021 Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 12 January 2021. Watch the meeting Members present: Tom Tugendhat (Chair); Chris Bryant; Alicia Kearns; Stewart Malcolm McDonald; Henry Smith; Royston Smith; Graham Stringer. Questions 52-86 Witnesses I: Dr. Kate Ferguson, Co-Executive Director at Protection Approaches and Chair of Policy at European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, and Nicola Reindorp. II: Dr. Simon Adams, Executive Director at Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect, Dr. Gregory Stanton, Founding President and Chairman at Genocide Watch, and Ambassador Stephen Rapp, Former United States Ambassador-at-large at Office of Global Criminal Justice. Examination of witnesses Witnesses: Dr. Kate Ferguson and Nicola Reindorp. Q52 Chair: Welcome to this afternoon’s session of the Foreign Affairs Committee. We are going to be talking about the abuses in Xinjiang, in western China. I will ask our two witnesses to introduce themselves very briefly. For no other reason than it is how you appear on my screen, would you like to go first, Dr. Ferguson? Dr. Ferguson: Thank you very much for having me. I am Dr. Kate Ferguson. I am co-executive director at Protection Approaches and I am also chair of policy at the European Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at Leeds. Nicola Reindorp: Good afternoon. I am the deputy executive director and incoming CEO of Crisis Action1, which builds coalitions to protect people from war and mass atrocities. Q53 Chair: May I ask a relatively open question? Please do not feel the need to repeat each other’s answers on it. Is the UK’s approach to atrocity prevention appropriate to the challenges that we face? What should change? Dr. Ferguson: As you know, I have been analyzing the UK’s responses to atrocities for well over 10 years, and I am afraid that the answer has always been no. I would like to answer that as fully as I can in the time available. It is really important to start by saying that there have always been excellent people in the UK civil service, in embassies, in Whitehall, and in New York, so none of my remarks now or this afternoon should be interpreted as undermining that fact. Likewise, the UK does many things related to atrocity prevention very well. It has strengthened its conflict prevention work and its overseas development contributions. It is developing what I think is a very robust approach to organized crime. Many, myself included, would in fact consider modern atrocities as a form of organized crime. So there are many intersections that are done really well. To my mind, however, the UK has never really taken a good look at its atrocity prevention efforts in anything close to a holistic way. That is in contrast to states such as the US, so either the UK has never thought about it or, in more recent years, there has been a sense that it has just hoped that its existing work on conflict prevention and development would suffice. What that means is that over the last few years, the specific skills, expertise, and approaches that we know can work in reducing the risk of atrocities have fallen through the cracks between conflict prevention, international development and other areas. I suppose that is something that has always been a problem in UK Governments, so that is a criticism not just of this Government, but of past Governments. In some ways, perhaps, this Government have done more to acknowledge atrocity prevention explicitly than any other in this country for a very long time. What is really important to underline is that the prevention of genocide and crimes against humanity can be seen to be absent in UK policy at almost every stage of the cycle of prevention. When I say that, I mean when we are talking about upstream prevention when those risks are rising but they are still reversible; the moment when violence is imminent but still avoidable; the moment when violence is ongoing; and then after the fact, when atrocities have already occurred. At every single stage, I am afraid, to my mind, atrocity prevention thinking and atrocity prevention strategy has been absent. While there are exceptions—I think the UK and South Sudan is an example for us to point to where things are done well, and I think the UK team in Myanmar is making some strides in increasingly learning the lessons of the mistakes that were made leading up to the terrible atrocities in Rakhine in 2017— there is no co-ordinating strategy. So while there are related efforts that make a positive contribution, and there are exceptional individuals who help plug those gaps, there is simply no co-ordinating policy and no institutionalization. That means that when you have good individuals in places where atrocities are a risk, there is no means of collecting that muscle-memory—that institutional memory— when they move on. I am afraid that none of that co-ordinating work is being done. The second part of the problem, to my mind, is that an effective approach to atrocity prevention requires almost all Departments in Government. In order for the UK to be upholding its obligations to help prevent genocide and crimes against humanity, you need all sorts of Departments involved, not just the internationally facing ones—the Treasury needs to be involved because of sanctions; the Home Office needs to be involved because of asylum applications; the Department for Education needs to be involved to ensure that the kids know how to approach material that denies genocide and spreads division. As you said in the Chamber this afternoon, Chair, that involves being able to confront efforts to undermine both research and the very substance of culture and freedom in the UK. The Ministry of Justice also needs to be involved so that the UK can prosecute suspects that are present within this country. At the moment, none of that is being done intentionally. Some of it is being done indirectly. The UK does make important contributions to atrocity prevention, but not in a j joined-up way. The last thing I will say is that I think it is important for me to acknowledge the step forward that was made in 2019 by this Government in publishing, for the first time, their national approach to mass atrocity prevention. While this fell a great deal short of a national strategy—which this Committee, the UK Civil Society Atrocity Prevention Working Group and my organization, Protection Approaches have long called for—it did set out that atrocity prevention was a matter for the MOD, FCO and for DFID. It set out tools and related agendas that showed how Whitehall thinks about atrocity prevention. This is an important step, which I would like to welcome and acknowledge, but without any co- ordinating mechanism, without any resources, and without it being anyone’s job, it is very hard to see how this approach has any legs. While we are in a better place today than we were in 2018— and perhaps the last time that I was with the Committee to give oral evidence—there is still a long way to go. I will end by saying that perhaps the FCO-DFID merger, however it came to pass, certainly brings an opportunity to reimagine what the architectures tasked with upholding that approach to atrocity prevention could look like. However, that requires a lot of work. Q54 Chair: Ms. Reindorp, what is your take on this? You have done a lot of work in conflict prevention in the past. Do you think this is too conflated with atrocity prevention? Do you think we should look at both together or separately? Nicola Reindorp: If I may—I hope this will not necessarily be the format of this—I will say a couple of things more simply than Kate but echoing them. To go back to why this matters, let us just remember the ingredients. For anything to happen in Government or in the world requires political will—to see that something matters as a priority. If you want to prevent anything, first and foremost, you need political leadership and you need the bureaucratic requirement that it is a priority. I will come back to understanding why, politically, I think that matters. Kate, as ever, cogently talked through those other pieces. This is a priority, so let us have an effective early warning system that knows what we are looking for. We have an interdepartmental process that brings the relevant players to the table. Remember, it is the same thing as for diversity: you need different people with different lenses thinking through and analysing the problem, then thinking about what tools we are going to use. You need good tools and capabilities to be able to prevent atrocity or conflict, and you want to be able to do that effectively with others in a multilateral system and in a consistent way. Consistency is core to effectiveness. If we go back to the political piece, what do I think, and what does Crisis Action see—this is a personal view and one of our partners—is the core to why Britain is being inconsistent, piecemeal and inadequate in the prevention of both atrocities and conflict? It is in the sense that it needs to be a political priority and for there to be political leadership at the highest levels through Departments that recognises that it is core to Britain’s interest, and that the occurrence of atrocities outside of conflict can be an indicator of instability that threatens trade and prosperity. It is a threat to our interest because we need to be, and have been—the best of Britain has been—at the forefront of upholding and creating an international system of laws and rules. We were at the forefront, and I led the campaign in the United Nations for Oxfam, of getting agreement about the responsibility to protect. Remember that core notion: sovereignty brings responsibility. You are not entitled, in the 21st century, to do whatever you want to your domestic population. All Governments—the largest gathering ever of world leaders— came together to say that we have a national responsibility to protect our own populations from genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes, and that we have an obligation first and foremost to our own populations. There is that sense that it is in Britain’s interest to prevent atrocities. It is also core to our values and is part of our history, as with tackling the genocidal regime in the second world war. Let us remember that the worst of the atrocities, Kristallnacht, was outside of the context of an armed conflict at the time. The Rwandan genocide was kicked off not in the context of an armed conflict. So again, it is core to Britain’s values. Finally, it is who we are as Brits. Children anywhere matter. If we can seek to help someone, we do. If we can protect the most vulnerable, at risk of the worst crimes, as my friend Jo Cox wrote, “It is how history judges us.” So I would recap the sense that, as Kate has laid out, there are bureaucratic changes that we need to happen, but at its core is the recognition of how fundamental the obligation is to protect and prevent genocide, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and war crimes—the gravest crimes that can occur outside of conflict situations. The beginnings of the Holocaust showed us that. Rwanda, Myanmar—there are distinct situations where identity-based violence, the insurgence of hate speech and the incitement of crimes against individuals take place outside of a situation of armed conflict. Dr Ferguson: May I add something on the problem of conflating conflict prevention with atrocity prevention, to build on everything that Nicola has said? Although most incidents of modern mass atrocity occur in the context of armed conflict, a very significant minority do not. Although we can debate the numbers, roughly a third of modern atrocities, modern genocides and crimes against humanity take place in so-called peacetime. It is probably better to say that they occur outside of situations of hot armed conflict. The reason that we are here today, of course, is because of this important inquiry looking at the terrible crimes that are happening in Xinjiang. That is explicitly and very clearly an example of modern mass atrocities that are occurring outside a situation of armed conflict, ergo the approaches of conflict prevention can easily be seen to be inappropriate or ineffective in that context. It is very explicit for all to see that conflict prevention will not work in this context. Unfortunately, for far too long in the United Kingdom there has been this assumption that atrocity prevention is being done through conflict prevention. To really underline that point, there is another false premise here. Unfortunately, for many, many people in the UK Government who I come into contact with, there is this sense that armed conflict leads to genocide and crimes against humanity, and there is therefore the idea that atrocity prevention is something that follows on from conflict prevention. That simply is not true. Certainly, we know that the instability and impact of war can have a radicalising effect, and we know that it can be a useful smokescreen for other manifestations of violence, but genocide and crimes against humanity do not just happen. They are not the unfortunate consequences or by-products of instability or war. Genocide and crimes against humanity have a political logic; they serve a purpose for those who perpetrate them. They are intentionally committed. The Holocaust and the second world war were related but distinct processes of violence. That is such an important thing to remember, yet to me it seems quite absent from the way the UK understands atrocities. Actually, perhaps even more importantly, mass atrocities themselves are often a driver of modern conflict in our world today. Look at what is happening in Syria. The catastrophe in Syria over the past decade is not the product of a war in which atrocities have been committed. Instead, it is the result of a campaign of atrocities that then provoked war and other forms of violence. Despite this sense that war and identity-based violence might sometimes overlap, they are distinct violent phenomena, so they necessarily require sometimes related but necessarily distinct strategies of prevention and punishment. The reason for that is that it is very, very hard. Genocide and crimes against humanity are crimes about prejudice, exclusion, discrimination, injustice and grievance. They are very often about the deliberate targeting of civilian populations or groups because of how perpetrators see or manipulate an aspect of their identity. We know that they are predictable and can sometimes be preventable, but we have to acknowledge the root of where those different forms of violence come from, and the roots of genocide and crimes against humanity are different from the roots of war. The warning signs of genocide and crimes against humanity are different from the warning signs of armed conflict. Yet at the moment, the UK’s approach to atrocity prevention, such as it is, has been merged to such an extent that it is indistinguishable from conflict prevention. That is why the UK has been too late to come to the table when it comes to the detention of populations in Xinjiang: because it does not have the answers. Chair: Thank you very much. Chris, do you want to come in on this? Chris Bryant: To be honest, the question I was going to ask has been covered, thanks. Chair: Graham? Q55 Graham Stringer: What is the best example of success in atrocity prevention that this country has been part of? Dr. Ferguson: The long pause there may be illustrative of something. I can take a stab, but I am sure Nicola is really well placed to come at this. One of the problems, when you talk about prevention, is that you do not necessarily notice what has been prevented—that is sometimes a difficulty. Unfortunately, no enormous cases leap to the mind of situations where the UK has taken a lead unless perhaps you look at peace in Northern Ireland, say. I would consider that an example of a situation in which atrocity risks were high and atrocities had been ongoing and that peace process has led to an absence of atrocities and to constrictive peace building. I think there was a collective response from the international community following election violence in Kenya some years ago, and the UK, while not leading, was certainly prominent and present in those discussions. There are certainly more well-documented instances where other states have had a conscious strategy and understanding of the principles of atrocity prevention where their efforts have been effectively implemented, to the extent that they have been credited with reducing atrocity risks. The US’s Atrocities Prevention Board and its actions in the Central African Republic in 2014-15 are a good example. In a slightly different way, the national mechanism of genocide and atrocity prevention in Tanzania is credited with having a very effective impact in reducing group tensions and the likelihood of violence in its own country. Q56 Graham Stringer: Those are all relatively small or not very economically powerful countries. Do we have to take a completely different approach to an economically powerful and large country like China—well, China specifically, not “like China”? Nicola Reindorp: Without wanting to be glib, I would suggest the short answer is “Don’t take a different approach”, because consistency here is really important. As with any Government, if Britain is not consistent in how we demonstrate concern about atrocity prevention, it feeds the cynicism—the concern that there is one rule for the powerful and another for the powerless—and undermines that core commitment that was such a breakthrough at the world summit in 2005: that every Government has a responsibility to protect, and that it is no longer possible to claim, as China has, that there is non-interference in domestic affairs. The commitment to the responsibility to protect explicitly states otherwise. If we again walk through the elements of what effective atrocity prevention looks like in practice, the warning signs come through that abuses are being committed from civil society, journalists and other member states. The UK then has to consider what levers it has; what tools it has at its disposal, whether to encourage the state in question to uphold its own national responsibility to protect—offers of assistance that a Government can make in order to enable a sovereign Government to uphold their responsibility—or, where it is manifestly failing, to take action without the consent of the Government concerned. That could mean the application of sanctions, including exclusion from key events, formal and informal sanctions, and targeted sanctions of the kind that this Government put in place through the Magnitsky sanctions from last year, targeting individuals. Those are all tools in the toolbox that can be used. Then, of course, the UK can work with its partners internationally to cast opprobrium on what is going on, whether in international forums such as the Human Rights Council or with our allies. This is also one of those situations where as domestic populations, as individuals, we have ways of signalling through our consumer power—where we get our cotton and where we get our cars—that we do not want our daily products to come at the expense of somebody else in slavery, or at the cost of our planet. Those core pieces of how the UK Government consider what levers and forms of influence they have should be the same, and done in a consistent way. Let us remember, since Kate and I were sitting here scratching our heads and I was going to offer similar examples to those she has just shared, that the cases of effective prevention are few and far between. However, the quicker a Government responds to signs that abuses are in the offing, the larger and less costly the toolbox you have to deal with that. Again, it comes back to the piece about political will, political priority and an interest in being consistent in how we uphold and protect fundamental human rights and fundamental norms, and uphold the core notion that sovereignty brings responsibility and it cannot get shelved in the interests of trade or if we seek to prioritise what we perceive as interests, narrowly construed, over the fundamental interests that Britain has of upholding international law and protecting our values for how we expect human beings to be treated and how the British Government should expect also to be held to account for how it is protecting its own population and how it is adhering to rules and norms around human rights, where I think there is a more questionable case—for example, in relation to Yemen and arms sales, or other places where the inconsistency in the UK Government’s policy can be seen. Q57 Graham Stringer: I have a final question. I am prepared to change my consumer behaviour—I am even prepared to try to persuade other people to change their consumer behaviour—but are you saying explicitly that this country should try to form an alliance to reduce trade in certain goods with China and try to get it expelled or withdrawn from certain international bodies? Individual action is very different. We can all feel better doing that, and it may be effective, but I think what you are asking for is for the Government to do these things. I just want us to be very clear about that. Nicola Reindorp: In relation to consideration of, for example, expulsion from a body, Governments are voted on to the Human Rights Council of the United Nations, and one of the core reforms that came through in 2005 was the idea of a peer review mechanism—that every member of the United Nations should be held to account for its conduct and its adherence to core human rights norms. In this argument about the effectiveness of our international legal system and international law and norms, the desire for consistency and working effectively through those bodies—as I say, this is the conduct that, as members of the United Nations and the international community, we adhere to. I think Britain should be working effectively with its partners to do so. That, I think, is core to effective atrocity and conflict prevention—working effectively and collaboratively with allies and partners across the world. We need to remember and go back to the core of the responsibility to protect doctrine and how that got agreed. Where it is seen to be an alliance of western Governments working alone, where it is seen to be a split between the north and the south, that calls it into question and creates cynicism around the norms—cynicism that Britain or any western nation is interested in norms of human rights where that serves its own perceived domestic interests, but not where it might be subject to criticism. So it’s a question of working effectively with allies across the world that are interested to ensure that we do not conduct trade and international politics in a way that imperils our planet and imperils children, and behave in ways that demean us as human beings. That was my experience in meeting diplomats across the world when negotiating the responsibility to protect. If you ask, “Should we have stood by in the face of Rwandan genocide if we knew it was happening again?”, nobody would say yes. Nobody thinks it is a good idea that we should stand by and do nothing where abuses are being created. I think it is possible to build those alliances to work through existing forums, to demonstrate opprobrium, as well as using trade and other tools, which is why, again, the cross-departmental process is so important. All parts of Government that have a bearing on engaging internationally need to be part of an effective policy. Q58 Graham Stringer: I am looking for a slightly more than one-word answer, but essentially a one-word answer. You are saying that you would advocate an international trade boycott. Nicola Reindorp: No. As with any country, Britain should be working effectively to consider where, for example, it needs more of a coherent strategy for China, as with any country where human rights is a concern, to prevent atrocities and uphold those core obligations. That should be at the heart of the overall navigation of the relationship with China. Should Britain be trading with countries that will enable companies to trade in areas where they are violating or committing crimes against humanity, or that are implicated in violating fundamental norms? No. Is that an absolute trade boycott? No. Is it about ensuring that there is legislation in place to prevent profit from being made from the situation? Yes. Graham Stringer: Thank you. Chair: We will move on. Alicia, you wanted to pick up on some of this cross-departmental stuff. Over to you. Q59 Alicia Kearns: Thank you, Chair, and thanks to both witnesses for giving evidence today. You may be aware of my call, since I was elected, for the creation of an atrocity prevention unit at the Foreign Office, made up of legal experts and experts in sanctions, open-source intelligence, counterdisinformation, multilateral aid and urgent programming. I think this is really vital if we are to stop relying on country or subject teams to suddenly upskill themselves to be able to limit or stop atrocities, but also to ensure that atrocity warnings can be triggered earlier. How do you believe that atrocity prevention is best improved at the Foreign Office, and are there specific bodies or appointees that you think we should be making in order to do that most effectively? Dr. Ferguson, do you want to go first? Dr. Ferguson: Thank you so much. I think that is a great question and I have really welcomed your recommendations and interventions on this issue. I really support them. It is also a great question because you are asking it at a moment when the answer does not need to be hypothetical or a wish list, because we are at this weird inflection point for the UK where we have got the FCDO merger and we await the integrated review with bated breath. With that moment comes the opportunity to reimagine how the UK contributes to these cross-cutting issues, such as human rights, atrocity prevention, justice and accountability, which, as you know so well, have always fallen through the cracks. Maybe what I can run through are the top lines of what I really would put forward for how atrocity prevention can be improved on that departmental level. I will maybe focus mainly on the FCDO in my remarks, because I have already mentioned that I think this needs to be a fully integrated, cross-cutting issue that touches on almost every Department in Government. First of all, I think that atrocity prevention must be set out indisputably as a matter of UK national interest. It is in the UK’s interests that these crimes do not take place, for many reasons—for instance, for global stability, for reasons of trade, for the enormous population movements that they force, and for the enormous human but also economic costs. These crimes are with us for generations. I also think that we can learn some very important lessons from the steps forward that the US was able to take, not just in establishing the Atrocities Prevention Board but in integrating atrocity prevention in its internationalfacing policy from that moment of declaring atrocity prevention as a matter of national interest. Then there needs to be a comprehensive national strategy for atrocity prevention. I have said repeatedly that I think that this should be along the lines of the serious and organised crime strategy. It is a comparable global challenge that impacts some people who are present in the UK— some of our own citizens—even if it exists primarily overseas. Whether coordination for atrocity prevention would sit ultimately in FCDO or maybe the Cabinet Office, it is necessary to have such a strategy to connect all those and other Departments with a means of strategic planning rooted in horizon scanning, scenario planning and that foresight prevention-thinking that we know is integral to the effective implementation of atrocity prevention, as well as having the capabilities that you yourself have mentioned about being able to activate very quickly in urgent situations. Such a strategy would ensure that atrocity prevention thinking was integrated into related agendas, but also vice versa. And on this sort of cross-cutting way of thinking, I do think that the UK Government have been making very positive steps forwards in other areas. It is just that atrocity prevention has not yet been folded into that. I think that we then need to look at early warning and risk assessment tools. They need to be considerably redesigned or supplemented to ensure that those specific indicators, and risks of genocide and crimes against humanity, are being monitored and integrated into the UK’s strategic thinking and planning, the countries at risk index, the joint analysis for conflict and stability processes, and so on. For some time, we have been calling for a joint analysis tool or unit, which would fall across the UK’s internationally facing Departments, where expertise in atrocity risk analysis can sit and be leveraged. The next thing I would call for is for embassy teams to be trained. Other states have been doing that for a long time. The UK is making some steps in that direction but really needs to ramp it up. When I undertook research into the UK’s response to the atrocities in Rakhine in 2017, not one official that I spoke to who had been in Yangon had received training in atrocity prevention. That is not exceptional—you will know that—but it is easily remedied. That is something that we can really make space on. The next thing is that embassies in countries with populations at risk really need to think about what I would call an emergency communications protocol. At the moment, the established bureaucracy or hierarchy of communication that exists in the FCDO—my analysis was mostly done on the FCO, so we do not know what the new structure quite looks like—is such that those who are closest to the risks of violence are forced, very often, to pass up their information in communication processes up the hierarchy. That means that, very often, the urgency of what they are witnessing is diluted and sometimes lost. It is piled into the ministerial briefs, so the Minister just knows that something is an urgent situation, but he or she is also reviewing all the other issues that come across their desk. Especially while we lack an atrocity prevention strategy, it is important to have a simple piece of infrastructure that is low resource and has practically no cost, but can potentially have an enormously life-saving impact, which is where those embassies have a directory of who to communicate with and when, a sense of what to measure and how, and an understanding of what tools are at their disposal and when they can implement them. Just like we have tsunami warnings and earthquake warnings—we will now always have pandemic warning systems—we need to have one for atrocity risks. That is something that can be applied. The next thing is that atrocity prevention needs to become people’s jobs. At the moment, there are very few people in the UK Government structure who have atrocity prevention on their job description. We know that civil servants work so hard. The idea that they are then expected to make time for something that some of us work on for our entire careers—it takes years and years to develop that skillset—is not fair on civil servants. We need to make it people’s jobs and we cannot simply make it the most junior person’s responsibility. That is unfair. Chair: We will have to move on. Forgive me. Dr. Ferguson: I am halfway through my wish list. Okay. I can stop there. I think I have made a case. Chair: I think you have. Stewart, you wanted to come in. Q60 Stewart Malcolm McDonald: Thanks, Chair. Thanks to both our witnesses for being with us this afternoon. Dr. Ferguson, you started to stray into what I was going to ask about, which is early warning mechanisms. Could you both talk about how you see the current early warning mechanisms? Are they fit for purpose? How could they be improved? There is praise for them in the written evidence that we have received from the Jo Cox Foundation, but there are also criticisms of them for being too slow and things end up being missed or do not get to a Minister’s desk until it is too late. Can you talk us through what you see as the problems and how best to fix them? Nicola Reindorp: Can I super quickly pick up on the problem piece? Kate can then talk a little bit about the solution. I have a slight tweak. As Ms. Kearns showed, the importance of expertise matters, and having a requirement that you will be praised in your performance appraisal—that demand is really important. My slight tweak to what Kate has said is that it is right that atrocity prevention has to be somebody’s business, and there needs to be an effective early warning to trigger early action. Again, all the imperatives and incentives need to be: “I will not be squeezed out or shouted down. I will be listened to. If I think there is something in the offing, all the alerts should be about putting this at the top of the Minister’s brief, even if it is then found out to be not as bad as it could be.” If you like, it is the precautionary principle. If there is a whiff of smoke, we should think about fire rather than waiting for the bonfire to be absolutely blazing before we say, “Oh yes, now we should, but we have something terrible going on.” There are a couple of tweaks to the idea that, like we say, if you have one general adviser, that is great for expertise. But it needs to be everybody’s obligation to ensure that they are playing their part in looking out for potential atrocities or conflict. Again, the bureaucratic impulse needs to be that our instincts are that stuff should get raised and not buried. That comes back to the beginning of the conversation about the importance of political leadership and the signals from the top. The last thing I will say is let us remember the nightmare example of a failure of early warning. When the Canadian General Roméo Dallaire was heading a peacekeeping operation in Rwanda in 1994, he had received lists of people who were targeted by the genocidal Rwandan Government and who they intended to murder. That was sent—he sent that to New York. It went to the Department of Peacekeeping Operations and got buried. That is the piece about the message that comes through and has been received. Does the recipient understand what they are seeing, and is the message that this has to get out of their hands and go up the chain as quickly as possible, as a trigger for action? The political leadership, the bureaucratic impasses, the requirement that everybody has a role in the prevention of atrocities and armed conflict, even if some colleagues have expertise to guide, trigger and convene—I think that is at the core of how you make sure that policy gets turned into practical action. Dr. Ferguson: I underline that point from Nicola: to be done effectively, atrocity prevention needs to be everyone’s business. The reason that it cannot be, and that embassies or whoever in New York cannot do that, is that there is no national strategy. People do not have a public policy to follow. It is not a matter of national interest, so it is not automatically integrated into UK policy. The question of early warning is really critical. There are two major headlines that I would emphasise on what is wrong with the current early warning systems and why atrocity risks consistently seem to be missed or are absent. One is that it is too focused on armed conflict. The other is because of the timeframes or horizon on which our early warning mechanisms are focused. There is not an emphasis on prevention; it is more about firefighting. It is more about responding to the crisis that we can see and then reacting, rather than really investing in prevention thinking—that foresight policy-making of looking for the crises that are less obvious. That is really where sustainable stability and prevention is rooted. To highlight an example of where these limitations are, let us take a very brief moment to think about the UK’s Joint Analysis of Conflict and Stability tool—JACS. This is one of the major early warning and risk assessment tools that the UK Government has at its disposal. First, it tends to be triggered only when the situation is worsening, and secondly, it is only really focused on hot conflict. It is a conflict tool, so while it might be very useful in situations of armed conflict, it has repeatedly appeared to be not very effective in situations where we are talking about mass atrocities. A JACS was not initiated in Rakhine until long after the summer of 2017. Either it is not fit for purpose in a context where mass atrocity risks are very high, or it is not being implemented or triggered in such contexts. A question I would ask, if I was able to, of those who are responsible in FCDO, is: “Has a JACS been triggered for Xinjiang? If not, what other means are there for triggering a means of analysis? What is missing?” There are many things that the UK could think about implementing, as well as an internal alarm system of early warning, which I mentioned. Use more public perception data; atrocity crimes are about perceptions of grievance as much as they are the reality of inequality. Undertake scenario planning in embassies; that is such a useful early warning tool. Yes, there are serious limitations, but they could be reasonably rectified without investing in expensive resources. Q61 Royston Smith: Dr. Ferguson, you mentioned the US earlier, and atrocity prevention as a matter of national interest. You will probably say the US—I am not sure—but which countries are doing well and what could we learn from them? Dr. Ferguson: That is a great question; I am mindful of the fabulous session that is following this one, where there will be experts who are far better placed to speak on that US experience than I am. There are different models of atrocity prevention prioritisation that the UK could learn from, and maybe I will briefly run through some of those, but I am happy to speak at greater length if that is necessary. The EU’s atrocity prevention toolbox is really limited. However, it was still something, and the UK has now lost access to that toolkit. It would be interesting to know whether the UK plans on replicating that modest set of internal communication and co-ordinating with European partners. I don’t say that the EU toolbox is a model of excellence, but it is a means of internal communication and flag-raising that the UK now does not have access to. There are modest contributions that are really important and make a difference, such as undertaking atrocity prevention training. States such as Australia, for example, have invested funds—not loads; we are talking tens of thousands rather than hundreds of thousands—in undertaking training of their diplomats and their embassy staff in the principles and fundamentals of atrocity prevention. There are examples of states and different embassies doing that together. The US is perhaps an example where the atrocity prevention agenda and policy priorities have been most comprehensively integrated. As well as its being acknowledged as a matter of national interest, under President Obama they established the Atrocities Prevention Board. That model would probably not be replicable for the United Kingdom, but there are other things that the US did during that Administration, some of which have continued under this Administration, that are useful for the UK to replicate—very simple things, such as providing a field guide for USAID on atrocity prevention and the relationship between atrocity prevention and development. It is a very simple concept and a useful practical outcome that UK DFID never had. The way the US co-ordinates with its civil society on atrocity prevention is exceptionally important. Perhaps you will say I would always say this, but I would always welcome a warmer and more open relationship with our Government counterparts. We are here to help. The UK has a rich civil society that has that expertise and, especially in times of great need and narrowing resources, engaging with UK civil society and the network of 25 NGOs and experts that form the atrocity prevention working group would be following the model of the US in a way that would be useful. Something that the US did when it first established the atrocity prevention working group was to appoint two fellows in atrocity prevention. One came from Government but the other came from civil society. It was a way of augmenting that expertise—it did not, at that time, necessarily exist in the way that it does now—in the US Administration, within the State Department. It also fostered strong bonds between this emerging mechanism of atrocity prevention and civil society. Again, I think that is something that could be replicable. Royston Smith: What do either or both of you think we should do to coordinate with other countries? Nicola Reindorp: Shall I kick off, Kate, and then you can pick up? Obviously, the UK Government sits in a number of places where we can actively engage. Of course, it is a member of the Security Council. There is also the commitment within NATO around prevention and the protection of civilians from genocide and ethnic cleansing. On the protection of civilians, there is a lot of work going on. The UK is part of the international atrocity prevention group, which is a group of like-minded states, where it can collaborate. This year is a moment where there are important initiatives taking place to think through ways of getting greater connection between action on climate change, pandemic prevention, inequality and prevention of conflict and atrocities. As the chair of the G7, as well as hosting the climate summit, there is an opportunity for the UK to set out how it wants to be a leader and not a laggard across a range of agendas around the prevention of harms to both people and the planet. There are any number of forums in which the UK can work as an effective international partner and be able to collaborate. As I mentioned earlier on, as a member of the UN Human Rights Council, there is a sense of being able to convene to identify the strategy on a particular country, to collaborate with other members of the international community, to deploy that in different forums and to use the different tools at its disposal. There are a range of options. Dr. Ferguson: I would add that one simple way is being clearer about how the UK seeks to uphold its obligations when it comes to genocide and crimes against humanity. That would in itself foster and encourage stronger collaboration with other states. I realise that Dr. Simon Adams is in the next session, and he will tell me off if I get this wrong, but I believe the network of focal points for the responsibility to protect is now made up of over 70 states—74, or something like that. They have appointed focal points who are charged with upholding or co-ordinating their national responsibilities to protect. Our own focal point is James Kariuki, who is at the multilateral directorate. He has at his disposal this network of states, and individuals within those states who have, as part of their job description, this commitment and knowledge set. The Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect convenes regular meetings. There is access there to like-minded thinkers and allies that could also be leveraged. Thinking about how the Government might want to better resource the position of our focal point as a means of global co-ordination and leadership, that is worth considering. Chair: I am going to stop there and say thank you very much to our two witnesses. I am extremely grateful for the context in which they have put this. I am going to go straight on to the second panel, because we are relatively tight on time. Thank you very much, Dr. Ferguson and Ms. Reindorp. We are extremely grateful. Examination of witnesses Witnesses: Dr. Simon Adams, Dr. Gregory Stanton, and Ambassador Stephen Rapp. Q63 Chair: I will ask all three witnesses to introduce themselves briefly, and then we will go straight into the questions. For no reason other than that this is the order in which they appear on my screen, please can we have Ambassador Rapp, then Dr. Stanton and then Dr. Adams? Ambassador Rapp: Good afternoon. I am Stephen Rapp; I am a former international prosecutor for Rwanda and Sierra Leone, and I served for six years during the Obama Administration as the US Ambassador-at-Large for global criminal justice. I am now a senior fellow, both at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Center for the Prevention of Genocide and at Oxford Blavatnik school’s programme on international peace and security. Today, I appear in my individual capacity. Dr. Stanton: I began working to tackle genocide when I served in Cambodia for Church World Service and CARE and realised that the Khmer Rouge needed to be put on trial for their crimes. I started a project on the Cambodian genocide when I was still at Yale law school; I gathered a lot of evidence for that and then realised that we needed to really change the way the international system works. In order to do that, I joined the State Department, and, right away, the Rwandan genocide occurred, so I was then moved to the office that dealt with the aftermath of that and wrote the resolution that created the Rwandan tribunal. I then also worked to get the resolution for the Cambodian tribunal. I realised, however, that we also needed a worldwide mass movement against genocide. Chair: Sorry, Dr. Stanton; I am going to ask you to keep it very brief because we are just trying to do one-line introductions. Dr. Stanton: That’s good enough. I started Genocide Watch in 1999, and that is where I am right now. Dr. Adams: I am the suspect previously mentioned by Kate Ferguson in the first panel. I am Simon Adams, the Executive Director at the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Q64 Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Ambassador Rapp, how would you characterise, so far, the response to the Xinjiang crisis? Ambassador Rapp: Frankly, it has been inadequate, in the sense that we haven’t had resolutions from UN bodies that have been able to carry like we have in situations outside the Security Council, on the Human Rights Council, on Myanmar, Syria, or South Sudan. It has been quite inadequate. I would like to say something as a former international prosecutor who led the prosecution of individuals at the Rwanda tribunal and won convictions of genocide. The evidence of genocide, because of the intentional imposition of measures to restrict birth, is actually stronger in the case of Xinjiang than it was in any other case since Rwanda. This is a matter that should be of profound international concern, and it is a real disappointment that, because of the strength of China, it hasn’t been possible to take the kind of response to it that has been possible in other situations of atrocity crime in the last 25 years. Q65 Chair: Dr. Stanton, would you say that the UK has been leading appropriately on this, or would you say that it could do more? Dr. Stanton: It is hard for me to really judge how the UK has responded. I know that the UK and the US—and, for that matter, a lot of other countries—could do a lot more. Ambassador Rapp is right. It is genocide, and it is very clear. Under articles 2(d) and (e) of the Genocide Convention, it is very clear. They are restricting births within the group, and they are taking children away from the group; those are acts of genocide, and they are doing a lot more—a lot of other crimes against humanity. I would argue that right now, gathering the evidence should be our main focus. Who knows how long this will go on, but there will come a time when those who are doing this could be put on trial, and they should be aware that they will be put on trial. I would argue for the use of the UN Human Rights Council to create an independent international fact-finding mission, or body, which would investigate these crimes and gather the evidence. If they can come out with a report as searing and definitive as their report on Myanmar—444 pages of solid evidence—it could have a very deep impact, so that would be one thing I would certainly recommend. I also recommend keeping the Magnitsky type of sanctions on certain individuals and also preventing imports of things that are produced out of the slave labour they have set up. Q66 Chair: Of course, the difference between the Rakhine report and any report into Xinjiang is that Burma did not have a veto, and it is not the world’s second-largest economy. Dr. Stanton: There is no veto in the UN Human Rights Council, so the UN Human Rights Council could still have this independent fact-finding mission. Q67 Chair: Do you think that China would allow such a mission to proceed? Dr. Stanton: No, I do not think it would let anybody in, but a lot of the investigations can be done even if they cannot get in, and that is what the Myanmar commission also had to face. They could not get in, but they were still able to interview a lot of people. Q68 Chair: Dr. Adams, you have no doubt seen many reports, including some from the organisation Bellingcat, into some of the incidents that we have seen in Xinjiang. What more do you think the UK can do, other than supporting reports like the Australian Strategic Policy Institute’s work on Xinjiang or indeed giving the freedom for Bellingcat to operate? Dr. Adams: I think there are a lot of things that can be done, and I back up what has been said by Dr. Stanton and Ambassador Rapp so far. I think the evidence of what is going on is overwhelming and undeniable, and I also agree with Ambassador Rapp that given all of that, the global response has been woefully inadequate. On what the UK could do in particular, I would just draw attention to one part of the problem, which is the whole issue of forced labour. We know that there are now at least 135 detention facilities where people are being forced or coerced into labour. We have very good reports—including one produced by the BBC, by the way—regarding the cotton sector. Some 20% of the world’s cotton supply comes from Xinjiang, and we have already seen some major British retailers, such as Marks & Spencer, saying that they will not source cotton from Xinjiang anymore. The UK Government, I think, have already acknowledged the use of forced labour—that these are credible claims—and have expressed their concern. However, there are proposals afoot to impose fines if companies cannot show due diligence in terms of their supply chains, and I think those proposals should be supported. We need to untangle this web of complicity that we see at the moment around Xinjiang, not just on the issue of forced labour but more generally. I would also encourage the UK Government to look at targeted sanctions against senior Chinese Government officials, who we know are involved in what is going on in Xinjiang; the names are out there. Multilaterally, again, I support what Dr. Stanton just said: the UK, which of course was just elected to the 2021-2023 term on the UN Human Rights Council, should support the idea of an independent investigative mechanism to look at the situation. I will just add one final thing, because I think there are other mechanisms that are kind of neglected in all of this, and one I would particularly like to point out is UNESCO. What the Chinese Government is doing in Xinjiang is also focused on systematically destroying the cultural underpinnings of the Uyghur people. It is bulldozing mosques, it is changing them, and it is attacking their culture in very fundamental ways. As a leading member of UNESCO, the UK could also use that as another forum to increase the pressure on the Chinese Government to stop committing these crimes. Chair: Thank you very much. Alicia, you wanted to come in. Q69 Alicia Kearns: This really follows on from a question I asked during the first session, which was about the atrocity prevention task force in the US. This is not something I am particularly aware of or particularly understand, and it would be really interesting to understand whether you feel a body like that would be beneficial to the UK and who you think would be best placed to sit on that body. Is its armed forces? Is it independent advisors? Is it Ministers? What is the best approach for us to structure atrocity prevention within the UK that we can learn from other countries? Ambassador Rapp: Let me jump in on that. My office was in charge of leading the process under a presidential security directive issued by President Obama in 2011 that led to the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board in 2012. By the way, that has continued, although its name has been changed to the Atrocity Early Warning Task Force in the Trump Administration. That was a whole-of-Government approach using the structure of our national security office. That is something similar to within the Cabinet Office in the United Kingdom, but it would include, as it did in the United States, the State Department, and the Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office. The defence establishment, the intelligence community, homeland security, and justice were all also components of that. We can talk about it—obviously, the earlier speaker, Dr. Ferguson, discussed what we were able to do in the Central African Republic—but it was always a process that was extremely fact-based. Every meeting, which was held monthly, brought in the latest intelligence on what was happening, and then we did deep dives into various countries. That included, of course, having our embassy personnel, even in the middle of the night on the other side of the world, on the calls as well, looking for levers and looking for ways in which we could affect the situation before it became more serious. Obviously, there were situations such as Syria that were very hard to get a handle on, with the Government going all in and the strong Russian support, but in other places, I think it was possible to have effectiveness, even when things had gone very badly initially, such as in the Central African Republic. I think the structure makes sense. I hope to talk later about the ways in which we tried to bring it on to a more multilateral level with the working group that I think was discussed earlier. I heard your proposal earlier, and it was music to my ears, given the leadership that the United Kingdom has exercised around the world and given the different tools that you have. It will be very important. I would say a small thing in terms of my own engagement. I probably visited King Charles Street 15 or 20 times during my tenure and after it. I was extremely well received, but whenever I was dealing with my issues, it was always a matter of having multiple meetings. There was no one person to deal with. I met in the legal office, certainly, then went on to the multilateral director, and then dealt with the stabilisation people, who are extremely forward-leaning but focused on conflict reduction. Then they were always nice and gave me an office somewhere where I could begin to meet the regional teams every half hour on the various situations around the world. That was often the situation. Even when we went to multilateral sessions, we would get only a piece of Government that would attend, often the legal people. You did not always get all the players—the people who were working on stabilisation or humanitarian or trade issues where you have those levers that could impact the situation. Since they were not in the room, the ability to begin thinking in that area was not there, although those multilateral processes did at least force Governments to write up a memo in preparation for the meeting and caused some focus. Obviously, if it can be done within the United Kingdom through your own initiative, that is what would be really needed and very beneficial. Q70 Alicia Kearns: You hit the nail on the head, although you failed to mention the human rights directorate, the conflict prevention department, and all the other teams that also exist. Ambassador Rapp: I am trying to deal with the large boxes, not the small ones—but we got to the smaller boxes too, I’m afraid. Q71 Alicia Kearns: I have one question before we move on; I would like to hear the other witnesses as well. What sort of internal resistance did you come up against when you were trying to create the board? Are there any lessons that we should be prepared for or that we should be paying attention to in advance? Ambassador Rapp: There certainly was resistance. In our Government, as in many, the regional bureaux that all answer to our under-secretary for political affairs have the greatest power, and they often have the resources and the real interest. Of course, we all know that embassies often come forward and say, “Well, things aren’t so bad. Aung San Suu Kyi is making progress,” and so on. You have those kinds of resistance that you have because there are the multiple interests that any Government has in various parts of the world, with countries that are allies on one thing and not on another, or useful in the war on terror and so on. You have those kinds of pressures. Within the US Government, unlike many, we have established these special functional bureaux, offices like mine on global criminal justice, and other Governments have not. There is always that tension in how to put this together. So you have that pushback and, to some extent, you run the risk of having a kind of a stovepipe discussion amongst yourselves—you and the human rights people—and saying, “Wasn’t it awful?” Meanwhile, you are doing other things in the Capitol. So the key thing is to get those people all in the room. At least during the Obama Administration and traditionally—a little less so under President Trump—policymaking often involved bringing everybody into the room, but usually in country-specific situations, once the situation was far gone. People are used to this interagency process, but not an inter-agency process that gets out ahead of the game on a more global basis. That is what was truly revolutionary with our Atrocities Prevention Board. Dr. Stanton: May I add one more thing? I completely agree with Ambassador Rapp about this. Just a couple of comments. One is that I hope that if you did this, it would become much more open to civil society, human rights organisations, and so forth than ours ever became. The Atrocities Prevention Board essentially operated independently. It was almost secret. I did not even know who the members are, and I am the head of Genocide Watch. We cannot have that. In fact, that is a reform we need to make here in the United States. The better model in the United States is the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, which is both politically appointed and an expert body. It has open hearings and so forth. I would urge that, especially because you have a superior form of government—you have the parliamentary system—so you can, in fact, have open hearings much more easily than we can. The second thing I would argue is that the lawyers stood in the way. They did not want an Atrocities Prevention Board because they did not like the word “genocide.” They take the same position as your Foreign Office lawyers that the word “genocide” is kind of a sacred word. It cannot even be used unless a court rules that it is genocide. That is a wrong perspective. It is not in the genocide convention. It takes the individual prosecution burden of proof and then tries to transport it into the state sponsorship of genocide, and it is not right. State sponsorship should not have a burden of proof that is beyond a reasonable doubt; it should be if there is evidence. That is the prosecutorial standard of proof. That is what we need, and your Foreign Office is wrong to approach “genocide” as though it is a sacred term and cannot be used unless a court says it is. That is why Genocide Watch takes an event-driven model for early warning of genocide. It is why we look at it as a process, and we see a lot of things coming in to contribute to the genocidal process. It is not a linear process, but it is one that allows you to then see it coming. I would urge that sort of preventive approach in your analysis of genocide, and that is why you can start calling it genocide long before a court does. Ambassador Rapp: May I just ask the Committee’s indulgence for one minute to respond to the very friendly criticism of my friend, Dr. Stanton? I think he is entirely right about the Atrocities Prevention Board as it began, and I hope that it is modified in the coming Biden Administration. The challenge here was that this was placed within the National Security Council, which is highly secretive. Every one of our meetings began with a report from the CIA or other components of the intel community on immediate intelligence about what was happening in certain capitals and certain areas, and that was quite a closed process. I think a lot of us have come to realise that a great deal of documentation, for instance, is available from civil society organisations, which are frankly leading the way in these areas and the Geneva processes, just like the new mechanisms for Syria and Myanmar, rely on those. So we really need to be able to develop sources that are outside intel; that will also help us to have sanctions regimes that can be defended if challenged in court—the intel community sometimes cannot come into court and provide the evidence that it has. So, in that area and others, this needs to be much more open. We did make efforts to brief people and to engage, but frankly, they were not as adequate as they should have been. Dr. Stanton: In fact, our experience was that we were shut out. I think— there is a lot of proof now—that open-source information is better than the CIA’s, so you do not need a CIA briefing before every Atrocities Prevention Board meeting. Alicia Kearns: We might have to leave that point of dispute for another day. Chair: I would just like to say how much Bellingcat has done to expose quite a lot of the abuses we have seen in Xinjiang and, by the way, elsewhere as well. Alicia, do you want to finish there? Alicia Kearns: I think Dr. Adams raised his hand—then I am done. Dr. Adams: I will try to be very quick, and maybe I will try to bring peace among the Americans, which is something I try to do as somebody living in New York more generally. In the early part of the Atrocities Prevention Board under the Obama Administration, I did get invited to Washington DC a few times, where they did do some consultations with civil society, and all I will say about that is that it was always very interesting to see, as an outsider, how the different parts of the US Government were not really coordinating or talking to each other unless they were convened by a body that brought them together to do so. So I would very much encourage the UK to think about some kind of an atrocity prevention body. I will add to that because it was mentioned in the last panel that the role of your R2P Focal Point inside the UK Government is incredibly important. That person—currently James Kariuki—is part of the global network of R2P Focal Points, which involves 61 states, plus the EU, plus the Organisation of American States. But he could do a lot more if he was empowered to do a lot more as a mechanism to convene people around atrocity prevention. So I encourage you, in whatever you look at in terms of a potential body, to also think about resources and support for the office or the people you want to put at the centre of this thing. Stewart Malcolm McDonald: Dr. Adams, I feel, as a Scotsman, that it should be me bringing peace to the Americans, given our responsibility for the current incumbent in the White House. Dr. Stanton: Oh my God! Ambassador Rapp: Eight more days—yes. Stewart Malcolm McDonald: I want to come back to a question I asked earlier. Ambassador Rapp, you will have heard me ask about the UK’s early warning mechanisms and the criticisms made of them as being too slow. In particular, Dr. Ferguson said in the previous session that they are too focused on armed conflict and, at that, too focused on the conflict that we can see right in front of us. How did the early warning mechanisms work for the board that you were a part of? Ambassador Rapp: Well, understand that these could have been better, as my friend Dr. Stanton pointed out, and obviously from open-source and civil society documentation there is a lot more available. Frankly, even before the creation of the Atrocities Prevention Board, the intel community had a regular monthly publication on atrocities watch, looking at situations such as high-stakes elections where political parties are on ethnic or sectarian lines. As we have seen in the United States and in so many other places—most prominently Kenya—disputes on elections can blow up and create violence. Meanwhile, in our foreign policy, we are pushing for elections and pushing these things forward for very profound reasons, but sometimes you do not see those impacts and dangers. There is obviously the need to monitor social media, the otherisation of certain populations and the blaming of groups for the country’s problems, which is often a strategy of corrupt leaders who want to divert attention from their own theft and corruption. Keeping track of those things, looking at failures of state institutions, and guardrails, and corruption under rule of law, etc.; the ways things can be manipulated to the benefit of certain communities, or other communities can be prosecuted with false evidence; all of those things are indeed worrying signs that need to be monitored. That’s what is key to this, and one’s opportunity to engage then is a whole lot easier—not that it’s ever easy—than when the killing has started, when any intervention would have to put somebody in harm’s way. That’s part of it. I would note, I am a strong believer in accountability; I want to see the perpetrators held to account. Quite often, we also see some very positive things done by our Governments that actually work at cross-purposes. I’m all in favour of peace negotiations, but on the other hand, many times that people have got involved, they immediately elevate armed groups. If a group goes out and kills a lot of people, they need to be brought in, so people kill folks in order to get themselves in the room. You actually have situations where peace efforts unintentionally elevate atrocities. In the humanitarian area we want to feed people who want to have access, but as my friend Charles Petrie OBE, a long-time British UN officer, has said—he wrote the report on Sri Lanka and the ways in which the desire to have access to the area for humanitarian purposes, working in the development offices and everything else, actually contributed to the mass killings that occurred at the end of the conflict. We had a similar report from the Guatemalan ambassador Gert Rosenthal regarding Myanmar. You have to have that focus on the atrocities, who is doing it, and make sure that your other engagements don’t actually encourage—or fail to respond to—those actors that are responsible. Q73 Stewart Malcolm McDonald: Can I just press you on the specifics? Today we are discussing Xinjiang; what were the early warning signs that the US picked up on, and when were they picked up—how early on? Ambassador Rapp: Understand that my own tenure in government ended in 2015, and I’ve continued to be involved in these things from the outside since then. It really began in a big way in 2014, with the socalled effort to counter terrorism through action of the Government, then the move of Chen Guanguo from Tibet to Xinjiang in 2016. In that year, there were these intense applications of population reduction that have now resulted in the Uyghur areas having one-eighth the birth rate of the Han areas in this autonomous region. All of those things could be seen, and then of course through satellites and everything else we began to see the development of these detention facilities—not re-education; these aren’t places people want to go—and the building up of them to the point that we now have 135 million people in there, but up to 3 million in the past. These elements began to be seen, and there were civil society groups that were calling out this kind of activity, and there were some political leaders that were speaking to it. Dr. Stanton: Let me add to that. I agree—I think the civil society groups were the ones who drove this, and in fact it was Congress who drove it. That’s why, as mentioned earlier, the Committee on International Religious Freedom started hollering about the genocide against the Uyghurs before anybody I know of. They certainly had a lot more effect than the Atrocities Prevention Board. So I think having Parliament directly involved in this is very healthy. Dr. Adams: Can I add to that as well? It is not just the situation regarding the Uyghurs, but my organisation works on all mass atrocity situations and works closely with the UN Security Council and Human Rights Council. I cannot think of a single case over the last nine years where we did not have early warning of something heading in a very dangerous and deadly direction in terms of the rising threat of mass atrocities. We have plenty of early warning, as has been mentioned by both speakers, coming from a range of different areas. We see the identity-based conflicts; we see the contestation of power. There can be triggering points, but the underlying factors are ones that are apparent and increase over time. So it is not a failure to predict that we are dealing with; it is a failure to respond. Q74 Stewart Malcolm McDonald: Dr Adams, we are obviously discussing the Uyghurs and Xinjiang specifically today. What are the early warning signs today that maybe three years from now you might be recalled to come back and talk to us about? Dr. Adams: Perhaps this goes back to comments that were made in the last panel and what has been said by Ambassador Rapp, Dr. Stanton and others: I think we are in a genocidal situation in Xinjiang. The evidence is overwhelming. Just because we are not seeing machetes, gas chambers and mass graves, it should not distract us from the fact that there is a systematic attempt under way in Xinjiang by the Chinese Government to destroy Uyghur identity, to pull apart families, mass incarceration, and to destroy the cultural underpinnings of the people. If there is a sense of frustration in my voice, it is not directed at you and your Committee at all. It comes from the fact that over the last nine years of working on mass atrocities, all too often, I end up doing memorial events or post mortems on why something happened, rather than having more discussions about timely and appropriate action up front or about what could be done right now to prevent this from getting worse. Stewart Malcolm McDonald: Sure. Thank you. Q75 Chair: Chris, you wanted to come in? Do you want to carry straight on to the other issue you wanted to raise? Chris Bryant: Yes, I will be very brief, as we have pretty much covered everything. In reference to that comment about a genocidal situation, I want to understand fully. There was a reference earlier to the five different markers—I think article 2(a), (b), (c), (d) and (e), (d) being preventing births and (e) being the forcible transferring of children from one community to another. I guess you could also argue that (a) and (b) are also invoked, because (a) is about the killing of people, and we are pretty clear that that has happened, and (b) is serious bodily and/or mental harm being done to people. Yes? I see you both nodding. Dr. Adams: Yes. Dr. Stanton: Yes, and I think (c) as well: intentionally creating conditions of life that are intended to destroy the group, as such. Q76 Chris Bryant: So that is all five markers basically. Laying above that, there has to be an intent to destroy a race or a religious community, yes? Ambassador Rapp: In whole or in part, and under customary law, it has to be substantial. I think the intent is one issue. I am a prosecutor, so I lead with my strong evidence, but I am always aware of the defence. We have the kind of defence that when we are talking about these biological factors, China has a very intense birth control programme: mandatory one child, modified to two children in urban areas and three children in more rural areas, and of course Xinjiang is an area that is much more rural. To some extent, you have a policy that frankly violates international human rights, aspects of which could be crimes against humanity, but do you have genocidal intent under those circumstances? A little like Ukraine in the 1930s—collectivisation being more rigidly enforced, with mass famine—it was a horrible policy, but was there a genocidal intent? Given the fact that we have had the forcible implantation of IUDs with tracking that prevents them from being removed, along with other kinds of surgical sterilisation—1% of that was happening in Xinjiang, and now 80% of it is happening in this area, which is lightly populated compared with the rest of China—and a dramatic reduction in births in that community within the region compared with the Han community, we can infer the intent. You do not see a document, but I think we have the case. Keep in mind that there are a lot of crimes against humanity here, and one of the things that we have to be careful about when we talk about this is that we need to deal. I prosecuted in Sierra Leone; there was no genocide there, but there were other horrendous crimes. This has to respond to all of that. There can be situations where it is a political motivation, not an ethnic or sectarian one, with horrendous consequences, such as in the Arab spring and what happened in Syria and Libya thereafter. We do not want to absolve genocide completely, but I don’t think there is any question that we have got it here.Dr Stanton: Let me add one thing: everyone assumes that Gambia is going to win the Myanmar case. What Stephen Rapp has just pointed out is that the whole question of intent is very problematic, because according to the ICJ rulings on Bosnia and Croatia, if you have any other intent, they cannot define genocide. I believe those decisions are wrong. Nevertheless, the test that they applied in both Bosnia and Croatia—it has to be the only intent that can be inferred from the acts—is going to be a serious problem in any prosecution for genocide in the future. Dr. Stanton: Let me add one thing: everyone assumes that Gambia is going to win the Myanmar case. What Stephen Rapp has just pointed out is that the whole question of intent is very problematic, because according to the ICJ rulings on Bosnia and Croatia, if you have any other intent, they cannot define genocide. I believe those decisions are wrong. Nevertheless, the test that they applied in both Bosnia and Croatia—it has to be the only intent that can be inferred from the acts—is going to be a serious problem in any prosecution for genocide in the future. Chris Bryant: Yes. Ambassador Rapp: I also think that point can be applied in not quite as rigid a way. In Rwanda, the intent to destroy the Tutsis was about, “Well, they are going to be allies of the RPF in a Tutsi takeover. Therefore, we cannot trust them. They are traitors.” Q77 Chris Bryant: If I might interrupt you, I was going to say that this brings me to several points. One: I guess we need an overhaul of all international law on genocide. Dr. Stanton: Yes. Q78 Chris Bryant: That seems clear to me. Secondly, whether or not you choose to call it genocide, and whether or not you put all your eggs in that legal basket, you still want it to stop. That requires people to face justice and people to have to stop, and I do not know how we achieve either of those two outcomes. Ambassador Rapp: Keep in mind that we have had it in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and a variety of situations where it has been possible. I am a supporter of the ICC—obviously, the US is now sanctioning it; we hope those sanctions are eliminated immediately by President Biden, but I do not anticipate the United States joining it. In the Obama Administration, we supported every case that it prosecuted. There are ways to get out these things. Of course, when you deal with Myanmar, potentially over forced deportation, there are cases. We have also seen that in Syria, and in universal jurisdiction cases in Europe. There is a very good prosecution in Koblenz—one that I hope will soon be filed—against the Syrian general and alleged torturer in Vienna. There are ways to get this out, and there are state responsibility cases. A state could bring China to the International Court of Justice, just as Gambia brought Myanmar and as we see with the Netherlands bringing Syria to the Court for torture. That will not punish anybody, but it will certainly get an important judgment at the end of the day, though we are limited there to genocide or torture. We cannot deal with the other crimes against humanity, because there is no international convention there. Q79 Chris Bryant: Why would Britain not do that? Dr. Stanton: It could. In fact, Britain already makes genocide a crime of universal jurisdiction; so does the United States, and so do a lot of western European countries, Senegal and a few others such as Australia. I would like to see one of the objectives of UK foreign policy, as well as US foreign policy, being to generalise making genocide a crime of universal jurisdiction, as torture already is, so that anywhere that somebody goes, if they have been a torturer or a genocidist, they can be arrested and prosecuted. Dr. Adams: I agree with my colleagues about the legal part of this, particularly on questions of universal jurisdiction. I think that the reservations that China has put around the genocide convention might make an ICJ case much more difficult than an ICC case—very much so. Let me very quickly emphasise that I think we have to continue to think of this not just as a legal question. At the moment, China is operating with a complete sense of impunity. There is almost no cost to what it is doing. That is why, as I mentioned before, we need to increase the cost in the economic area and in the sourcing of materials. We need to look at the issue of targeted sanctions on officials who are complicit in all this, and we need to increase the pressure at the UN Human Rights Council and in all international fora, including UNESCO, as I mentioned, so that there is no way of escaping scrutiny for what they are committing in Xinjiang. Q80 Chris Bryant: Preferably more than scrutiny. Dr. Adams: Absolutely. Ambassador Rapp: There are other tools that we can look at. You have mentioned Magnitsky-type sanctions that can be implemented, and there are trade restrictions. I know that you have an individualised Magnitsky regime under a 2018 law outside the EU structure. The same thing should be done in terms of trade, EU GSP-plus-wise, and so on. There are ways in which trade can be restricted because of these things, and those other tools need to be deployed. Q81 Alicia Kearns: Following on from what we have just been discussing, which is essentially scrutiny rather than justice, how do we bring the perpetrators of the genocide in Xinjiang to meaningful justice? What does justice actually look like in this situation? As a Committee, we have looked at the ICC frustrations, the UN Security Council, the UN Human Rights Council—we have looked at all these obstacles, problems and things that stop us getting justice. How do you hold to account a superpower that is committing genocide? Ambassador Rapp: I am a believer in individual criminal responsibility. As was said in Nuremberg in the judgment of Lord Justice Lawrence, the UK judge, it is not abstract entities that commit these crimes; it is individuals who direct them and make them happen. That is why I think that we could establish multilateral mechanisms with a plurality vote in the Human Rights Council. I notice that the one on Venezuela passed 19 to seven with, I think, 25 abstentions, so you can actually pass these things. At the moment, with China on there, unless you have the OIC countries lined up to a greater extent than they are, it is going to be a difficult vote. Those resolutions can create a record and fact-finding missions. There can be names named, as there was in the fact-finding mission for Myanmar. Then you need to support civil society and open-source efforts, and fund these things, in order to get the information. You have a horrible crime— who is making it happen? Who is in that chain of command? All that needs to be developed. Then you need to list these people. They are going to be diplomats who are not going to be accredited or get agrément. They are not going to be able to travel to visit their money and families abroad. You can begin to have some impact even with a powerful state. Dr. Adams: This partly goes on from what I just I said. I think we need to think of it as a justice issue, and we need to think about it more generally in terms of ending the climate of impunity that senior Chinese officials are currently operating in. There is possibility—a very remote one—of an ICC case. A complaint has been lodged by a number of London-based lawyers regarding the return of people seeking asylum from neighbouring countries. The ICJ angle is very difficult. Let me say something about that. My centre worked very closely with the Gambian Government on the ICJ case. We and our partners at the Global Justice Centre talked to dozens and dozens of countries, including very powerful countries who talk all the time about human rights. Nobody wanted to take that case on—nobody. It required The Gambia, the smallest country on the African continent, thinking imaginatively and having a very committed Justice Minister to get that case lodged. Now everybody sees it as a logical consequence, but at the time it was a very hard push. There are a number of other things. For example, China is a signatory to the international convention on the elimination of all forms of racial discrimination. That has a treaty monitoring body and there are opportunities for the UK Government and others to raise objections there. I have already mentioned UNESCO. Finally, I will underline the point about universal jurisdiction. People like to come to London. They like to go shopping; they like to visit the Tower of London. We need to ensure that London, or Birmingham, or Upton Snodsbury become no-go zones for Chinese officials who are complicit in what is going on in Xinjiang. They should be too afraid to come and avail themselves of those opportunities because they might end up in a set of handcuffs and facing charges of genocidal crimes against humanity in a UK court. That is not going to be the solution to the crisis in Xinjiang, but it is certainly part of tipping the balance away from the impunity that exists at the moment. Dr. Stanton: Let me add one other place: the UN General Assembly. The Security Council is not the only major institution in the United Nations. The General Assembly, where there is no Chinese veto, is a place where you could find strength and support for resolutions that denounce this kind of discrimination against the Uyghurs and other Muslims in China. Q82 Chair: You have no doubt seen some of the reports that the Committee has produced since 2017 on money flows within the United Kingdom and dirty money being spent on property. The identification of students was another element, where some of the red princes from the new Chinese aristocracy are demonstrating their elite status and separateness from the people by spending the money they have stolen off their fellow citizens on elite education in the UK. It is not very difficult to imagine ways in which this new Chinese princely class could be punished for its brutal repression of those it claims to govern. Dr. Stanton: Communism has always worked that way—that idea of an egalitarian system has always been a myth. Chair: You won’t find any disagreement from me, Dr. Stanton. Q83 Henry Smith: Sincere thanks to Dr. Stanton, Dr. Adams and Ambassador Rapp for their contribution. China currently justifies its actions in Xinjiang as part of some kind of proportionate counter-terrorism campaign. Why do you think that narrative is seemingly accepted by so many countries, and what do you think we can be doing to better counter that? Ambassador Rapp: That is an excellent question. We see a variety of regimes doing that. The Assad regime, before it faced ISIS, probably created more extremists than it took out through its repression, which it said was to eliminate terror. We have to be extremely careful about what we talk about as appropriate responses to terror: it should be action based on the conduct of individuals or their work with specific terrorist organisations that have engaged in mass killing of innocents. The idea of some kind of prophylactic action against a whole group because some part of it—in this case a relatively minor part, tiny compared with other places—has done some terrorist acts at some time in the past would justify almost any horrendous crime against humanity, or even genocide, if carried to its extreme. We need to discount that, but that is obviously one of the arguments the Chinese use that resonates with countries that they are assisting financially within the Islamic bloc, such as Pakistan and others. They say, “Well, we face terrorism.” Egypt faces the Muslim Brotherhood, and so on. They can use that argument and I think it needs to be called out as the most ineffective thing to do about jihadist terrorism, and also as the wrong strategy—the counterproductive strategy—when it comes to dealing with these kinds of threat. Dr. Adams: If you look at the documentation that is being leaked—the police station documentation, some of which was republished by The New York Times and by other people—you see people being thrown into detention centres for almost unending periods of time on the basis of religious devotion. They are being sent to prison for very simple things, like turning up at mosque, or having an abnormal beard, because there is a prohibition of it, and so forth. I think the assumption that China made was that by framing this in terms of fighting terrorism and fighting religious extremism, other states who face threats at home would be willing to turn a blind eye to what it was doing in Xinjiang because of that argument. And I think that regrettably, and initially at least, it was were absolutely correct. I think that it did have a deadening effect on people’s criticisms of China. So I think it is incredibly important for the international community, including the UK Government, to counter this narrative and say, “You don’t fight terrorism by locking up 1 million people behind bars, bulldozing their ancient cultural heritage, removing their children and attempting to destroy all the cultural bonds that hold men, women and children together”. China isn’t fighting terrorism in any sense in Xinjiang; it is perpetrating crimes against humanity and genocide. I think that the more Governments that say that openly, and that reject that counter-terrorism narrative, the better. Dr. Stanton: Yes—calling the enemy terrorists has become the default position for people who want to commit genocide. Q84 Chair: Thank you very much indeed. Can I just go back to a question that I meant to ask Dr Stanton about how the UK can take the lead on evidence-gathering activities, because in many UN bodies, such as the OHCHR and the Human Rights Council, there is a requirement not just to attend, of course, and present an argument but to gather the evidence in advance? Dr. Stanton: Right. Q85 Chair: What can the UK do, and what can other countries do, to collect that evidence? Dr. Stanton: That is a really good question and I would urge the UK, in fact, to be a leader for that collection of evidence. And I have already mentioned that I think that the UN Human Rights Council should have an independent international investigative fact-finding commission on this issue, and the UK can take the lead on it. I mean, the US, of course, stupidly withdrew from the UN Human Rights Council. I hope we will be back. But in any case, the UK is a very good body to do that and I am sure you will get a lot of support from a lot of other countries to do this. I would agree with that, and I hope that it would be well funded and that it would have the same kind of effect that we had with the UN fact-finding commission on Myanmar. Ambassador Rapp: Let me follow up on that briefly. I am the pro bono chair of the Commission for International Justice and Accountability, or CIJA, which has been funded by the UK Government on Syria and Iraq, and in Myanmar and elsewhere, and which works with civil society and trains people up to do things according to a criminal justice standard. For instance, it has a million documents from inside Syria as a result of that, and its evidence is the core of the evidence being used, together with the Caesar photos, in determining cases. It is extremely important to support that kind of organisation, or others, and efforts to improve the standards of evidence collection by civil society. Britain has taken the lead on making sure that that is not done in a way that retraumatises the victims, but, frankly, the victim aspect of it and that testimony is less needed than the efforts to connect and link highlevel actors with the crime scene; that is where a lot of the emphasis needs to be made. That needs to be funded and as we see in Geneva with the independent mechanisms for Syria and Myanmar, and with the team that lead on Daesh—UNITAD, which was possible through the Security Council—those organisations largely now rely on what civil society is providing to them, and they are verifying it, vetting it, collating it and so on, only, to some extent, supplementing that information. This is something I am working on at Oxford in this project to really strengthen accountability, but fundamentally it is about documentation and it is about supporting civil society in those efforts, particularly those groups that have access to the ground, which are sending out videos and other things, taking risks with their own lives. They need to be taking the right pictures and providing the right information, or they are taking risks for no good reason. That is the formula, I think, for building more effective back lining. Having then a multilateral mechanism and putting it together in an unbiased way is a key part of it as well. Q86 Chair: Thank you. Can I turn to Dr Adams briefly? Based on what we have heard so far, what responsibilities does the UK have to act in respect of Xinjiang under the R2P principle? Dr. Adams: Thanks for the question. I think R2P—as everyone on this Committee knows—is a global principle that the UK has consistently endorsed and championed. It emerged 15 years ago in response to genocide in Rwanda and in the former Yugoslavia. It seeks to ensure that we do not become spectators again and again to genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes and ethnic cleansing. Excuse me for reiterating this, but under this principle Governments have a responsibility to prevent those four crimes in their territories, a responsibility to assist other states in preventing those atrocities, and a responsibility to act in accordance with international law when states are manifestly unwilling or unable to uphold those responsibilities. The UK is a very important country. It is a permanent member of the UN Security Council, as has been mentioned. I believed in the Spider-Man theory of international relations: with great power comes great responsibility. I think it is, therefore, incumbent on the UK to lead on this question. Even though, as has been pointed out, China’s veto at the Security Council is a massive obstacle to action there, there are other UN bodies, including the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and other bodies that have been mentioned here today where there is a possibility to lead. I think there is a range of actions that the UK could take, in keeping with its responsibility to protect, which was also mentioned, including sanctions on responsible entities and individuals, banning products from Xinjiang, and exploring accountability options under universal jurisdiction. I think the UK definitely has a responsibility to protect the persecuted population, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, because I think the only antidote to the climate of indifference and inaction that we see at the moment in relation to these crimes against humanity and potentially genocide is a dedicated commitment to raise your voice, to bear witness and to act. Chair: Thank you very much. That was a very powerful statement and I am grateful that you made it. Many years ago, I published a report alongside a friend of many of ours, Jo Cox, on the cost of doing nothing. Indeed, as we see the atrocities not only in Xinjiang, but around the world, we are reminded that, although sometimes actions do have consequences, inaction also has consequences. Sadly, we have seen rather more inaction than action of late. On that note, I will draw the session to a close. Thank you all very much. Ambassador Rapp, Dr. Stanton, and Dr. Adams, thank you for joining the Foreign Affairs Committee. Dr. Stanton: Thank you, it was an honour. Ambassador Rapp: Thank you. It was an honour for me as well. UK House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee © 2021

(New York) – Sri Lanka’s human rights situation has seriously deteriorated under the administration of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. Government security forces have increased intimidation and surveillance of human rights activists, victims of past abuses, lawyers, and journalists. Minority Muslim and Tamil communities have faced discrimination and threats. The government pushed through passage of a constitutional amendment that undermines judicial independence and weakens oversight institutions, such as the Human Rights Commission of Sri Lanka. In February, Sri Lanka withdrew its commitments to the 2015 United Nations Human Rights Council for truth seeking, accountability, and reconciliation following the country’s long civil war. “The Rajapaksa administration has quickly reversed human rights gains of the previous government, making minorities more insecure, victims of past abuses fearful, and critics wary of speaking out,” said Meenakshi Ganguly, South Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Even the limited progress on postwar reconciliation is being undone by a greater military role in governance and the government’s dismissal of its international commitments to truth and accountability.” In the 761-page World Report 2021, its 31st edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the incoming United States administration should embed respect for human rights in its domestic and foreign policy in a way that is more likely to survive future US administrations that might be less committed to human rights. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, other governments stepped forward to champion rights. The Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort. President Rajapaksa has appointed people to senior positions, who, like himself, were implicated in war crimes during the civil war that ended in 2009, including the defense secretary, Kamal Gunaratne, and the chief of defense staff, Gen. Shavendra Silva. In February, the United States State Department announced that General Silva was ineligible to enter the US due to his alleged involvement in extrajudicial killings. The Rajapaksa administration escalated surveillance and intimidation, targeting victims’ families and human rights defenders, as well as lawyers and journalists deemed critical of the government. These included victims and activists who engaged with the Human Rights Council. After the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, the government did little to address false accusations on social media that Muslims were deliberately spreading the virus and calls to boycott Muslim businesses. In March, the government began requiring cremation of all Covid-19 victims, disregarding Islamic tradition, though cremation was not required for public health. Four UN human rights experts criticized these requirements as violating religious freedom. The UN high commissioner for human rights, Michelle Bachelet, accused the government of using Covid-19 to stifle freedom of expression after the authorities threatened to arrest anyone who “criticized” its handling of the pandemic. She condemned the pardon of one of the few soldiers ever convicted of serious abuses, and raised concerns about “appointments to key civilian roles of senior military officials allegedly involved in war crimes and crimes against humanity.” The UN Human Rights Council will consider possible measures regarding Sri Lanka at its February-March 2021 session, including calls for an international accountability mechanism to pursue justice for past abuses. “Concerned governments should do all they can to prevent Sri Lanka from returning to the ‘bad old days’ of rampant human rights violations,” Ganguly said. “Governments need to speak out against abuses and press for a UN Human Rights Council resolution that addresses accountability and the collection and preservation of evidence.” © Human Rights Watch 2021

Introduction As President, Joe Biden has pledged to pursue a foreign policy based on moral values and cooperation, an approach that prioritizes decency and the protection of human rights. This pledge will be immediately tested by the ongoing repercussions of one of the worst mass atrocities in recent history, the genocide committed by the state of Myanmar against the Rohingya. But there is a way forward. And renewed global engagement can pave the way toward a lasting solution. An immediate first step should be to recognize the crimes against the Rohingya for what they are: crimes against humanity and genocide. Starting in August 2017, the Myanmar military unleashed a brutal assault that forced more than 700,000 Rohingya people across the border into Bangladesh in a matter of months. As documented by numerous independent reports – including by Refugees International, a UN Independent International Fact Finding Mission, and the State Department’s own report – the assault was marked by systematic killings of civilians, burning of hundreds of villages, and widespread sexual assault. Today, some 1 million Rohingya refugees remain in dire conditions in Bangladesh, while another 600,000 remain at high risk of further atrocities inside Myanmar. Despite some international pressure – including U.S. targeted sanctions on the commander-in-chief of the Myanmar military Senior General Min Aung Hlaing – and ongoing accountability efforts in international and domestic fora, Myanmar has failed to improve conditions and to address these gravest of crimes. In fact, life for Rohingya in Rakhine state has largely deteriorated, and the prospect of further atrocities has grown worse. Under these conditions, the likelihood of safe, voluntary, dignified, and sustainable returns of Rohingya to their homeland is not realistic in the near future. Myanmar continues to repudiate international norms and human rights obligations. Recent elections in Myanmar were neither free nor fair and specifically excluded Rohingya from voting or running for office. The government continues to abuse and marginalize ethnic minorities around the country. The Rohingya remain effectively stateless as the Myanmar government, through its flawed 1982 Citizenship Law, still denies them citizenship. Rohingya in the Rakhine state continue to face restrictions on their freedom of movement and access to medical care and humanitarian aid. This leaves them particularly vulnerable to COVID-19 as Myanmar now faces a sharp increase in cases. Yet, senior officials in Myanmar have arguably shown at least some interest in the good opinion of the international community and have responded to concerted international pressure. Just before the August 2017 assault, the Myanmar government and military indicated that they were prepared to accept the recommendations of an international commission chaired by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and focused on conditions in Rakhine state and the situation of the Rohingya. More recently, the government has engaged international experts in creating a plan for the closure of prison-like camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) as recommended by the Annan Commission. And in December 2019, Myanmar’s de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi traveled to The Hague to defend her country against genocide charges before the International Court of Justice (ICJ). Some of this was motivated by domestic political calculations – Suu Kyi’s visit to the Hague played well ahead of Myanmar’s elections – and other steps, like the implementation of its camp closure strategy and domestic accountability efforts, are little more than window dressing. But without the international pressure that has been cobbled together—however, limited that has been—even these steps would not likely have been taken, and the message of impunity would have been heard more loudly and more clearly by Myanmar’s military. Changing the policies and practices of the state of Myanmar will require a multifaceted approach, one that combines increased international pressure with ongoing diplomatic engagement. For the sake of credibility both with Myanmar and globally, the United States government must speak truthfully about what has happened and be willing to use condemnation and targeted sanctions to demonstrate that the perpetration of egregious crimes comes with serious costs. At the same time, the Biden administration should show a willingness to promote a more cooperative relationship with Myanmar in return for significant and substantial improvements in the treatment of the Rohingya, and a genuine willingness on the part of Myanmar authorities to support accountability for abuses. The U.S. effort should be led by an official of high-standing who would be responsible for promoting multilateral coordination of measures that include diplomatic engagement with the authorities in Myanmar, further targeted sanctions including on military-owned enterprises and support for international accountability efforts. On behalf of the U.S. government, the appointee should press for a UN Security Council session on the Rohingya crisis, which should coincide with U.S. recognition that the atrocities committed against the Rohingya amount to crimes against humanity and genocide. Some analysts may argue that pursuing a policy that includes strong pressures on Myanmar will be counterproductive, harming Myanmar’s population and efforts at democracy while driving Myanmar into the hands of China. But Myanmar’s relationship with China is complex, there is wariness about Chinese influence, and the United States is seen by many in Myanmar as a counterbalance. Moreover, pressure need not be as blunt as blanket sanctions, and can be targeted at those who are responsible for abuses. More importantly, an unchanged approach risks bolstering Myanmar’s sense of impunity and enabling further abuses, not to mention denying the accountability Rohingya seek as part of their safe return. In short, a concerted multilateral effort both to engage and pressure Myanmar where needed would greatly enhance the prospects for preventing a repeat of one of the most egregious crimes in recent history and for reaching a long-term solution to the Rohingya refugee crisis. The Biden Plan President-elect Biden and his team have said little about their approach toward the Rohingya, but the Biden campaign stated that “systematic discrimination and atrocities against Myanmar’s Rohingya Muslim minority is abhorrent and undermines peace and stability.” Antony Blinken, President-elect Biden’s close campaign adviser and nominee to be Secretary of State, tweeted on August 25, 2020 (the three-year mark of the mass expulsion of Rohingya from Myanmar), that “A Biden administration will work tirelessly to support justice for atrocities committed, as well as peace, security, and equal rights for the Rohingya as citizens of Burma.” And as Senator, Vice President-elect Kamala Harris co-sponsored the Burma Human Rights and Freedom Act, a bill calling for further targeted sanctions and support for humanitarian and accountability efforts regarding the Rohingya. More broadly, President-elect Biden has promised a new approach to foreign policy that will seek to “restore our moral leadership” and “revitalize our national commitment to advancing human rights and democracy around the world.” President-elect Biden and his team have also shown previous commitments to atrocity prevention. As Vice President, Biden called genocide prevention “an integral part of our national security apparatus.” The Biden administration is likely to continue in some manner the operation of an interagency Atrocity Prevention Board that was set up during the Obama-Biden administration and continued as the Atrocity Early Warning Task Force in the Trump administration. Refugees International encourages the continuation of such a body as an important vehicle for ensuring high-level attention and coordination on emerging atrocity threats before they reach the level of a Rohingya crisis. At the same time, addressing the plight of the Rohingya will be essential to the credibility of any human rights and atrocity prevention efforts. There are multiple concrete actions the incoming Biden administration can take to back up the spirit of these commitments. An Agenda for Action The Biden administration should take a series of steps to begin addressing the plight of the Rohingya: Make an Official Genocide Determination The single, most influential, immediate step that the U.S. government can take to address the long-term plight of the Rohingya is to call the crimes committed what they are: genocide. The Secretary of State has the authority to make a determination expressing the view of the United States that the atrocities perpetrated against the Rohingya by the Myanmar government amount to crimes against humanity and genocide. President-elect Biden’s nominated Secretary of State Antony Blinken should do just that as soon as possible. Such a move would not only speak the truth of the matter but would also help to spur much needed international action and attention. Such a determination is supported by a UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, and independent groups including the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Refugees International. Prominent legal and human rights experts, including former high-level State Department and White House officials – including U.S. Ambassadors-at-Large for War Crimes David Scheffer and Stephen Rapp and former U.S. Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power – have urged a genocide determination, writing: “[W]e believe the information and assessments produced so far compels the United States, in its capacity as a government and not as a court, to publicly express its view that genocide has been committed and may be continuing against the Rohingya of Myanmar.” A genocide determination would also be wholly consistent with the findings of the State Department’s own documentation on this critical issue. As Refugees International wrote to the Biden campaign in August 2020: “The evidence of genocide and crimes against humanity is clear and convincing and has been amply documented. In making such a determination, the United States would help lead the world in holding the state of Myanmar accountable for grave abuses and in preventing further atrocities.” A genocide determination would bring much needed international scrutiny to Myanmar at a time when abuses against Rohingya and other ethnic minorities continue. It would also help to enhance international accountability efforts, to rally international humanitarian support, and to show solidarity with Bangladesh and other refugee-hosting countries as well as with the Rohingya people. A number of Rohingya civil society organizations have joined a petition urging the United States to make a genocide determination. As one Rohingya refugee told Refugees International recently, “Our expectation is that Biden will declare with his voice that the Burmese government committed genocide against Rohingya, and we also want his active role to help repatriate the Rohingya safely.” Lead a Global Effort on the Rohingya Appoint a High-ranking Official to Coordinate Multilateral Efforts: A genocide determination should be accompanied by the appointment of a high-level Presidential envoy on Myanmar. Such an appointment would send a strong signal about the importance the new administration attaches to this issue and its intention to promote a concerted multilateral engagement to enhance any unilateral efforts to pressure Myanmar to end abuses and create the conditions for the eventual safe and voluntary return of Rohingya to Myanmar. The envoy should have significant experience and stature in global affairs and enjoy the clear backing of the White House. Host a UN Security Council Session to Address the Plight of the Rohingya: The Biden administration should press for a UN Security Council session to build a multilateral strategy toward addressing the plight of the Rohingya. The United States co-hosted a global donor conference for the Rohingya in October 2020 that played an important role in rallying further humanitarian funding and keeping attention on the issue on the global stage. But the conference did not cover the root causes of the crisis, namely Myanmar’s continued abuses and failure to create conditions conducive for the return of Rohingya refugees. A Security Council session should focus on those root causes and on the coordination of concrete actions to address them. Specifically, the session should include a discussion of Myanmar’s ICJ obligations to prevent genocide, progress (or lack thereof) on Annan Commission recommendations like reforming the 1982 Citizenship Law, and multilateral actions including targeted sanctions and an arms embargo. Securing concrete action out of a meeting might be difficult, given the veto powers of permanent Security Council members China and Russia. But the meeting itself would be important as it would raise key issues, publicize concerns, and challenge the stance of China and Russia in vetoing further action. And as Human Rights Watch’s Param-Preet Singh has highlighted, only nine members of the council are needed to hold such a formal session, and procedural matters such as the council’s agenda are not subject to a veto. The Security Council has not held a formal session on the Rohingya since February 2019. The United States will serve as president of the Security Council in March 2021. That provides a good opportunity to hold such a summit, if not sooner. Include Rohingya in Global Discussions about their Future: As Refugees International has reported, Rohingya have been too often left out of decisions vital to their lives and futures. Repatriation agreements between Bangladesh, Myanmar, and UN agencies fail to mention or ensure adequate engagement of the Rohingya community. Repatriation attempts, as well as the relocation of Rohingya within Bangladesh, have failed to adequately consult and inform Rohingya. The Biden administration should push for better empowerment of Rohingya refugees in the humanitarian response and seek to include Rohingya civil society representatives in global fora, including before the UN Security Council, UN Human Rights Council, and in other deliberative bodies. Prioritize Rohingya in Bilateral and Regional Diplomacy: U.S. multilateral efforts should be directed at like-minded allies, as well as governments that have not strongly pressed for change and governments that are effectively providing cover to the government of Myanmar. With the governments of the United Kingdom, France, and others in the European Union, and Canada, and Australia, the United States should urge an increase in targeted sanctions on military officials and military-owned enterprises. Working with Myanmar’s neighbors and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will also be important in creating further leverage with Myanmar. While ASEAN governments are not likely to endorse sanctions, they are conscious of the direct impacts of large refugee flows as well as the negative impact of the Rohingya crisis on the region’s international image. Indonesia and Malaysia, in particular, have been vocal about Rohingya concerns and could be enlisted as part of a carefully calibrated multilateral effort. The United States should utilize both bilateral visits from high-ranking officials and key regional summits like the East Asia Summit and U.S.-ASEAN Summits to advance pressure on Myanmar. At the U.S.-ASEAN summit in November 2018, Vice President Pence directly confronted Aung San Suu Kyi about the treatment of the Rohingya. The Biden administration should take similar opportunities and back them through concerted and well-coordinated actions. At the same time, the United States should emphasize the importance of humane responses to refugee flows stemming from Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya. At least 2,400 refugees are believed to have been stranded at sea in 2020, with countries including Malaysia and Thailand refusing to allow them to disembark safely despite international obligations and regional commitments under the Bali Process. U.S.-ASEAN engagement during the Obama-Biden administration helped to address a 2015 Rohingya boat crisis and prompt new ASEAN commitments to safe disembarkation of those stranded at sea. Renewed U.S. engagement is needed to urge ASEAN countries to better coordinate and refrain from “push-backs” of boats full of refugees. Such demands would be more credible with improved U.S. policies toward refugees and asylum seekers, such as an expansion of the U.S. refugee resettlement program, as pledged by President-elect Biden during the presidential campaign. Such expansion should include resettlement opportunities for Rohingya refugees. Of course, China will remain both a profound general challenge to U.S. foreign policy and a specific one to addressing the plight of the Rohingya. At the same time, as Biden’s team has recognized, China will remain an important partner to address some of the largest problems facing the world today, from climate change to pandemics to atrocity prevention. For its part, China has an interest in security and influence in Myanmar and Bangladesh as it pursues its economic Belt and Road Initiative, in part dependent on access to the Indian Ocean via a deep-sea port and oil and gas pipelines in Rakhine state. China has also sought to be a mediator working behind the scenes with Myanmar and Bangladesh to promote Rohingya repatriation, though with limited results. Engaging China will not be simple, but this mutual interest could present opportunities for positive engagement on the fate of the Rohingya. Other countries with trade and development interests, including India and Japan, will also be important for the United States to engage in Myanmar and the Rohingya. Demand Due Diligence in International Development Efforts: International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and individual countries like Japan are providing significant development funding to Myanmar. In 2020, the World Bank announced $460 million in credits to upgrade electricity power generation and improve health services. But increased development funding amid ongoing abuses must come with increased due diligence, particularly in Rakhine state, where development risks reinforcing the effects of apartheid and ethnic cleansing. A $100 million proposed World Bank project in 2019 raised many concerns including how the project could be equitable and inclusive while systematic discrimination, movement restrictions, and other ongoing human rights violations persist. Any such project should not move forward until prevailing discriminatory laws, policies, and practices are addressed. The United States must use its influence within IFIs and with bilateral partners like Japan to ensure that funds provided to Myanmar face the appropriate due diligence. Take Concrete Bilateral Action to Pressure Myanmar The United States should prioritize work with allies toward coordinated multilateral efforts but must also be prepared to lead by example with its own measures. Among the tools available to pressure Myanmar to create conditions safe for the Rohingya and other ethnic minorities are targeted sanctions, withholding of military assistance, and withdrawal of trade preferences. Sanction Senior Military officials and Military-owned Enterprises: The United States has already placed visa and financial sanctions on nine Myanmar military officers including Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, as well as two military units for their involvement in attacks on Rohingya civilians. These have provided important messages to Myanmar’s leadership. However, many more individuals have been identified for responsibility for gross abuses against the Rohingya both in public reports by human rights groups and by the UN Independent Fact-finding Mission. Failure by the authorities to change course and to hold individuals accountable should lead to the United States placing further sanctions on Myanmar officials through the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, which authorizes the President to impose economic sanctions and deny entry into the United States to any foreign person identified as engaging in human rights abuses or corruption. Further, the United States should impose targeted sanctions on military-owned enterprises, including the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) and Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL). As reported in a special report of the UN Independent Fact-finding Mission, these entities “are owned and influenced by senior Tatmadaw [Myanmar Army] leaders, including the Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and the Deputy Commander-in-Chief Vice Senior General Soe Win, responsible for gross violations of international human rights law and serious violations of international humanitarian law.” The Mission further found that, “At least 45 companies and organizations provided the Tatmadaw with USD 6.15 million in financial donations that were solicited in September 2017 by senior Tatmadaw leadership in support of the “clearance operations” that began in August 2017 against the Rohingya in northern Rakhine.” Withhold military-to-military cooperation with Myanmar: The United States currently restricts engagement between the U.S. and Myanmar militaries including the trading of weapons and training. However, under the Obama-Biden administration, trainings and meetings were resumed and there will be arguments to increase such relations once again in the hopes of influencing Myanmar. Until Myanmar shows good-faith progress in addressing impunity and halting further gross human rights abuses, the United States should continue to withhold security assistance and military-to-military cooperation. This should include restrictions on trainings, participation in joint exercises like the regional Cobra-Gold exercises, and visits by high-level Myanmar military officials to the United States. Withdraw Myanmar’s eligibility under the Generalized Systems of Preferences (GSP) program: Myanmar is still eligible for trade benefits with the United States under the General Systems of Preferences (GSP). The Biden administration should make clear that eligibility for such preferences will be suspended until Myanmar has taken steps to hold perpetrators of atrocities accountable and to create conditions conducive to the safe return of Rohingya refugees. This would send a signal both to Myanmar and to allies that maintain trade preference programs with Myanmar. For example, the EU warned just ahead of Myanmar’s November elections that its “Everything But Arms” scheme, which grants poor countries access to EU markets without tariffs or quotas for everything except weapons, may be at risk. The United States should coordinate with the EU to leverage such economic benefits toward more constructive policies by Myanmar toward the Rohingya. Such actions should be coordinated, to the extent possible, with partner governments and calibrated with Myanmar’s demonstrated willingness or unwillingness to end abuses and take good-faith actions to improve conditions in Rakhine state and with respect to other ethnic minorities. Pledge Support for International Accountability Efforts The United States should support ongoing international accountability efforts including before the ICJ and the International Criminal Court (ICC). The Gambia’s genocide case against Myanmar at the ICJ has already been supported by the 57-member Organization of Islamic Cooperation, and Canada and the Netherlands have expressed their intent to intervene in the case. In the immediate term, the United States should draw attention to the provisional measures of the ICJ requiring Myanmar to take steps to prevent genocide and refrain from destruction of evidence. This could be done through Security Council attention to the progress reports required by the ICJ of Myanmar every six months, whether through their publication or open discussion at a session of the Council. The first such report during a Biden administration will be due in May 2021. Similarly, the United States should support the referral of the situation in Myanmar to the ICC. While the United States is not a member of the ICC and holds significant domestic reservations regarding its jurisdiction over U.S. citizens, U.S. cooperation with the court and tacit approval of a Security Council ICC referral are not without precedent. The United States abstained from a vote that referred the case of Darfur to the ICC and has cooperated in the past in supplying information and evidence against those who are responsible for atrocity crimes. As a first step, President-elect Biden should lift the ill-advised sanctions imposed by the Trump administration on ICC-prosecutors and return to a more cooperative and productive working relationship with the ICC. As the Obama-Biden administration recognized, ongoing domestic concerns with ICC jurisdiction should not preclude cooperation in holding accountable those committing the worst of crimes internationally. International justice mechanisms will be slow, but even more so without the support of the United States. In the interim, the United States should continue to support the UN Independent Investigative Mechanism for Myanmar (IIMM) in its mandate to collect evidence and prepare files for future accountability efforts. More fundamentally, President-elect Biden’s fulfillment of his pledge to rejoin the UN Human Rights Council – the body that established the UN Independent Fact-Finding Mission and the IIMM – will enable further attention and support for accountability efforts. Finally, current efforts at accountability within Myanmar should be recognized for their lack of transparency, impartiality, and independence, and rejected by the United States and allies. Maintain Humanitarian Support for Rohingya The United States has led the world with some $1.2 billion in humanitarian assistance to the Rohingya in Myanmar and refugee-hosting countries since August 2017. The Trump administration co-hosted a global donor conference for the Rohingya in October 2020, which is helping to secure further support. But the humanitarian needs are unlikely to decrease in the near term, especially if Myanmar continues its recalcitrance in addressing the root causes of the crisis. The Joint Response Plan for the Rohingya in Bangladesh for 2020 estimated a need for $1.06 billion in humanitarian assistance. Only 55 percent of that requirement had been fulfilled as of the end of October 2020, the last available update. The Humanitarian Response Plan in Myanmar for 2020 (covering Rohingya and other groups in need of humanitarian assistance) was only two-thirds fulfilled according to the last available update at the end of December 2020. Pre-existing needs have been exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic, which is surging in Myanmar and continues to threaten the densely populated camps in Bangladesh. Underlying weak health infrastructure in Rakhine state and in the camps in Bangladesh and ongoing discrimination and movement restrictions in Myanmar put displaced Rohingya at particular risk. In 2020, the United States provided nearly $85 million in humanitarian assistance to Myanmar, including nearly $11 million toward fighting COVID-19. This aid provides essential food assistance, shelter, and healthcare to nearly 1 million people in need in Myanmar, including some 120,000 Rohingya IDPs in Rakhine state. Yet, too often, humanitarians are unable to deliver this aid to populations who need it. Even as the United States ramps up multilateral efforts to change Myanmar’s policies, it must also maintain humanitarian support and demands for humanitarian access to 600,000 Rohingya who remain in Rakhine state, as well as to distressed populations in other parts of the country. Challenges in Bangladesh The root causes of the Rohingya crisis and any sustainable solution lie in Myanmar, but 860,000 Rohingya refugees are also facing challenges that need to be addressed in Bangladesh. Bangladesh has done much to help the Rohingya who fled into the country. But the Bangladeshi government has also pursued negative policies that must not be ignored. Perhaps most concerning, in December 2020, Bangladesh began moving Rohingya refugees to Bhasan Char, an isolated island in the Bay of Bengal. This move came without UN requested protection and feasibility assessments and amid multiple questions from humanitarians and refugees about the safety and voluntariness of such moves. The United States must refrain from supporting Bangladesh’s movement of Rohingya to Bhasan Char island until the safety and sustainability of such a move is confirmed by an independent UN review and Rohingya refugees are adequately informed to make voluntary decisions about moving. Until that time, the United States should demand that no further transfers should take place and that any refugees who are on the island involuntarily be allowed to return to the main camps. Bangladesh has also been constructing barbed wire fencing around the camps and created bureaucratic challenges to humanitarian access. Rather than pursuing these harmful policies, Bangladesh should work toward providing freedom of movement, education, and livelihood opportunities to refugees. A pilot program to provide education to refugees in Bangladesh camps should be resumed and expanded. More generally, the United States should work with Bangladesh and humanitarian agencies to better inform and engage Rohingya refugees about decisions essential to their lives and futures. For more on this, see Refugees International’s report: A Voice in Their Future: The Need to Empower Rohingya Refugees in Bangladesh. In short, while Bangladesh deserves great credit for hosting Rohingya refugees, the United States must not accept problematic policies that are unnecessarily making life more difficult for refugees and, ultimately, making them less prepared for safe and sustainable returns in the future. Conclusion The genocide committed against the Rohingya is one of the most egregious mass atrocities in the modern era. Not only do justice and the conditions to return home continue to evade the Rohingya people, but those still in Myanmar continue to live under the high risk of further atrocities. The Biden administration has an opportunity to change the trajectory of this suffering and to avoid another chapter of tragedy. Immediate steps are readily available to broadcast a sense of urgency to the world and to kickstart the hard work of rallying a more adequate global response. How the Biden administration responds to the egregious case of the Rohingya will send a signal as to how it will respond to other would-be atrocities. Access the full article here. Refugees International © 2021

32 activists facing criminal charges in a months-long government crackdown (YANGON, January 12, 2021)—Myanmar authorities should immediately release and end criminal proceedings against dozens of student activists facing criminal charges for their involvement in peaceful protest activities, Fortify Rights said today. Today, Aung Myay Thar-Zan Township Court is scheduled to consider criminal complaints against student leader Phone Myint Kyaw, whom police arrested last week. Phone Myint Kyaw is the 21st student activist arrested since September 2020 as part of a months-long crackdown on peaceful anti-war protesters. Police filed criminal complaints against at least 32 students for their participation in a campaign to protest the ongoing war between the Myanmar military and the Arakan Army—an ethnic armed group. “Phone Myint Kyaw should not be in prison and should be released immediately along with the dozens of other imprisoned student activists,” said Ismail Wolff, Regional Director at Fortify Rights. “The detention of peaceful protesters contravenes the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly.” On January 5, Aung Myay Thar-Zan Township police in Mandalay Region arrested Phone Myint Kyaw, 22, a member of the Central Executive Committee of the All Burma Federation of Student Unions (ABFSU), a nationwide political student organization. Phone Myint Kyaw faces multiple charges in Aung Myay Thar-Zan, Chan Aye Thar-Zan, and Amarapura townships in Mandalay Region for allegedly violating sections 505(a) and 505(b) of the Myanmar Criminal Code and Section 4 the Peaceful Assembly and Peaceful Procession Law (Peaceful Assembly Law). Police initially brought a criminal complaint against Phone Myint Kyaw and other students on September 10, 2020, following an anti-war leafletting and poster campaign launched by ABFSU in Mandalay in early September. Phone Myint Kyaw went into hiding after the police filed the complaint against him. Of the at least 32 activists facing criminal charges for their involvement in the protests in Mandalay and elsewhere across the country in September and October of 2020, the Myanmar authorities have detained 20 and convicted ten activists. At least seven activists are currently in hiding, and arrest warrants are pending against four others. Phone Myint Kyaw and at least ten other protesters are currently detained in Obo Prison in Mandalay Region. Phone Myint Kyaw earlier reported being beaten by guards in Obo Prison after authorities detained him for more than 80 days for his role in peaceful protests calling for greater security measures for students at Yadanabon University in Mandalay Region in December 2018. Fortify Rights and Athan documented the earlier arrest, detention, and torture of Phone Myint Kyaw and other ABFSU members in the April 2020 joint report entitled, “Our Demands are for All Students:” Violations of Students’ Rights in Mandalay, Myanmar. “I was beaten up by seven guards,” Phone Myint Kyaw told Fortify Rights in 2019. “I was beaten with sticks. They had a special stick that is coiled with a wire—they hit me with it. They punched me in the head. I was kicked.” The current criminal complaints against Phone Myint Kyaw relate to the distribution of material with slogans saying, “Oppose murderous fascism” and “Dictatorships must fail” and calling for the government to lift mobile-internet restrictions in Rakhine and Chin states. In October and November of 2020, four courts in Mandalay Region convicted ABFSU Central Executive Committee members Kyaw Thiha Ye Kyaw and Soe Hla Naing of multiple charges under sections 505(a) and 505(b) of the Myanmar Criminal Code and the Peaceful Assembly Law for their role in organizing the anti-war campaigns. The two both face a cumulative sentence of more than seven years’ imprisonment. They also face additional charges before these courts. They are currently detained in Obo Prison in Mandalay Region. In a joint statement released in November 2020, Fortify Rights, Article 19, and eight other human rights organizations called on the Myanmar authorities to end the crackdown on human rights defenders and peaceful protesters. Section 505(a) of the Myanmar Criminal Code prohibits anyone who “makes, publishes or circulates any statement, rumor, or report” with the intent or likelihood to cause a member of the military “to mutiny or otherwise disregard his duty.” Section 505(b) similarly prohibits expressions intended or likely to cause “fear or alarm” among the public or induce others to “commit an offense against the State or against the public tranquility.” Punishment under these sections includes up to two years’ imprisonment and/or a fine. The Peaceful Assembly Law provides a maximum penalty of up to three months in prison and/or a fine of up to 30,000 Myanmar Kyat (about US$23) for failing to give advanced notice to the authorities when organizing an assembly. International human rights law and Myanmar’s domestic law protect the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly. Article 19 and Article 20(1) of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which Myanmar is a signatory, protects the right to freedom of opinion and expression and the right to peaceful assembly and association, respectively. These rights are also recognized as fundamental rights that states are bound to uphold under customary international law. Under Myanmar’s domestic law, Article 354(b) of the Myanmar Constitution provides for the right “to express and publish freely their convictions and opinions” and “to assemble peacefully without arms and holding procession.” Under international human rights law, restrictions on the rights to freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are permissible only when provided by law, proportional, and necessary to accomplish a legitimate aim. However, as noted by former U.N. Special Rapporteur on the Rights to Freedom of Peaceful Assembly and of Association Maina Kiai, “freedom is to be considered the rule and its restriction the exception.” Moreover, the requirement under Myanmar’s Peaceful Assembly Law that protest organizers notify authorities in advance or face criminal charges is incompatible with international law. The U.N. Human Rights Committee has held that imposing criminal penalties, including fines and imprisonment, for holding a peaceful assembly is incompatible with human rights law. The Myanmar Parliament should amend or repeal laws used to wrongfully convict and imprison human rights defenders, including the Peaceful Assembly Law, said Fortify Rights. “State Counselor Suu Kyi and her party have a majority in parliament and could swiftly amend any number of laws to bring them in line with the government’s human rights obligations,” said Ismail Wolff. “The Myanmar government should take this opportunity to release all political prisoners and work to deliver on its promise of human rights.” Access the full article here. Fortify Rights © 2021

as the number of jihadist terror groups in the country rises to 21 main & splinter groups since 2015 Muslim domination of security forces encourages safe haven for the Jihadists. Intersociety, Onitsha Eastern Nigeria Sunday, 10th Jan 2021 The Int’l Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of law is strongly warning that Nigeria is speedily becoming the African Capital or Safe Haven for Islamic insurgencies and if nothing concrete and drastic is done in the coming few years, the country will likely become ‘Somalia’ and ‘Afghanistan’ in terms of ‘industrial scale’ devastation and destruction of lives and properties and turning of the country into rubbles and ruins. This is more so when Nigeria has an explosive population, internationally estimated at over 200m, and in the event of the country’s explosion into ‘complex humanitarian emergencies’ or intractable ethnoreligious conflict, the humanitarian crises arising from same will submerge the whole of Africa, Europe, Asia, and Americas. The Int’l Community including UN, EU, US, UK, Canada, Japan, Australia, and others are hereby put on proactive notice before it is too late. Going by our recent research findings, what looks like jihad friendly central governance in Nigeria is encouraging steady movement and settlement of foreign jihadists into the country as well as formation, splitting, and escalation of ‘indigenous’ others. These are in addition to rising in-state actor and non-state actor conflict profiteering and profiteers. The ‘capitalization’ of Nigeria as ‘new African Capital for Islamic Insurgencies’ is further fueled by alliances formed back in June and July 2020 by all the jihadist groups operating in the country, masterminded by the Ibrahim Shekau faction of the Boko Haram Islamic terror group and a soft spot for the jihadists particularly jihadist Fulani Herdsmen by the present Government of Nigeria. The totality of these is fueling the massive movement of Jihadists’ into Nigeria and their ceaseless and untamed attacks on Christian communities or settlements including their churches and sources of livelihood. The number of main and splinter Islamic jihadist groups has therefore increased from three (Boko Haram, indigenous Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, and Ansaru) in Jan 2015 to 21 as of this day in 2021. Converging In Nigeria To Terrorize Black African Christians & Moderate Muslims Continentally speaking, Islamic terrorism and their terrorists who have risen formidably in Sahel and Maghreb areas, joined by the Fulani, Shuwa (or Baggara), and Kanuri jihadists from Sudan, Chad, Senegal, Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and Cameroon, etc are relocating to Nigeria to attack, terrorize and Islamize with great speed and ferocity the peoples, territories, and Governments of Christian held areas of the continent and some secular Muslim countries and their Governments. Their safe haven in Nigeria appears to have been secured following the rise to power by key figures of the Fulani population and round-the-clock State protection of the Fulani Herdsmen and others and their jihadist activities. Today, Nigeria is home to 21 main and splinter Islamic jihadist or terror groups that massacre thousands of Christians yearly and levy property wars against them. The 21 main and splinter jihadist groups are originally five in number with additional 15 splinter groups and-more Jihadist Groups are finding their way into Nigeria with the latest arrival of another called: “Sojojin Khalifa Jihadists”, now operating within Borno, Bauchi, and Gombe axis in the Northeast, and this brings their total number to 21. The originally five Islamic Groups are Islamic State for West African Province (ISWAP), Boko Haram (two splinter groups), Ansaru or Movement for the Emancipation of Muslims in Black Africa, Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen and their indigenous, Shuwa and Kanuri (foreign) affiliates and the Jihadist ‘Bandits and their 12 splinter groups operating in Zamfara, Kaduna, Sokoto, Kastina and different parts of the Middle Belt including remote parts of Abuja and Niger State-Nigeria’s largest landmass State (76,000km2). Among these 21 main and splinter jihadist groups now operating in Nigeria, the Jihadist Fulani Herdsmen, backed by the country’s security forces since mid-2015, are the most widely spread and religiously atrocious. Their jihadist activities wholly and originally targeted at Christians of the Old Middle Belt and other Northern Christian areas including Southern Kaduna, Plateau, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Adamawa and the Taraba States and lately Christian parts of Niger State and the Federal Capital Territory (Abuja); have now spread to all Christian held parts of the country including Southeast and South-south and most of the Christian areas of the Southwest. Further, Nigeria is also likely to have emerged as Africa’s safest haven for illicitly procured and held small arms and light weapons (SALWs) including being home to an estimated over 6m of them. This notoriety likely to have earned by the country is also likely to have put the country at par with the failed State of Afghanistan-presently the world’s most illicitly militarized and ‘weaponized’ with over 6m small arms and light weapons in circulation and wrong hands. Signs are already clear from different parts of Nigeria indicating that victims and potential victims’ communities experiencing jihadist terror attacks are poised to resort to ‘industrial scale’ self-help including taking up arms to defend themselves and their ancestral places of birth, living, and worship. Already the Nigerian security forces, organized by the Government of the day, are heavily accused of not only being grossly biased but also incompetently losing their grip on the country’s land, marine, border, and space security. Owing to the level of a conspiracy by the present heavily Muslim controlled central Government of Nigeria, Nigeria is about earning, if not already earned same notorious status, earned by the Islamic Republic of Sudan under the ousted administration of Gen Omar Hassan el-Bashir. During his atrocious regime, Sudan was not only accused of sponsoring terrorism but also providing secret safe havens for a number of al-Qaeda leaders including but limited to late Osama bin Laden. This is in addition to funding and militarization of the Sudanese Janjaweed terror militias’; sobriquet “Islamic Fulani Janjaweed militants (in Nigeria)”. Muslim Domination Of Security Forces Encourages Safe Haven For Jihadists The strongly suspected safe haven status earned by Nigeria for headquartering Islamic Insurgencies is also fueled by domination and control of the country’s security forces by way of appointments or promotions and postings by Muslims particularly by senior officers of Hausa-Fulani Muslim extraction and deliberate or systematic exclusion or skewed elevation of their counterparts from old Eastern Nigeria and Mid West. These have not only brought about physical and psychological fears of insecurity among the 100m Christian population in the country particularly the Christians of Northern and old Eastern and Mid Western Nigeria but also responsible for the country’s security woes including crass incompetence in general securitization and deepened divisions along ethnoreligious lines. For instance, apart from uproar-generated recent lopsided promotions in the Nigeria Police Force, the latest postings carried out by the Nigerian Army and made public yesterday, 9th Jan 2021; sighted and studied by Intersociety are grossly lopsided and done in serious breach of Section 217(3) of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria as amended. The Section provides that: “the composition of the officer corps and other ranks of the Armed Forces of the Federation shall reflect the federal character or geopolitical balancing of Nigeria” But in the postings involving 47 Major Generals, 163 Brig Generals, 450 Colonels, 309 Majors, 251 Captains, and 322 Lieutenants, totaling 1,546 Army officers; Intersociety is shocked to note that out of the 47 Major Generals, North took 32 including 27 Muslims and South took only 15 involving Southwest seven including Muslims among the seven, South-south five and Southeast only three. In the list of 163 Big Generals posted across the country’s Army formations, North took 110 including 84 Muslims and South took 53 involving Southwest 23 including Muslims among the 23, South-south took 20 and Southeast took only 10. A peep into the remaining postings involving 450 Colonels, 309 Majors, 251 Captains, and 322 Lieutenants also indicated the same gross Northern Muslim domination and control. Such jihadist and ethnoreligious cleansing policy, put in place since mid-2015, is also replicated in other security establishments including the Navy, Air Force, SSS, NIA, and so on The link to the rest of the report is here: https://www.premiumtimesng.com/news/headlines/435688- exclusive-army-redeploys-generals-colonels-others.html?fbclid=IwAR1nRCba4eKpPDZ3heVQ6yP8PbiTLfQbs6kmWqAcN7EAIzXIvH33U8E8oM. The link to our latest special report on hacking to death of 2,400 Christians in 2020 in Nigeria and 34,600 since the 2009-plus unveiling of a new wave of anti-Christian butcheries in Africa’s Coastal Christian States, is here: http://intersociety-ng.org/component/k2/item/592-year-2020-ended-in-nigeria-with-2400-christians-hackedto-death-by-jihadists International Society for Civil Liberties & Rule of Law © 2021 intersociety-ng.org

Published by The Africa Report on January 8, 2021. Roger Lumbala in Paris on 21 September 2012 (Vincent FOURNIER/JA) Former Congolese warlord and lawmaker Roger Lumbala has been placed in provisional detention on charges of “complicity in crimes against humanity”, among others. No doubt he thought his warlord past was long behind him. Former rebel leader Roger Lumbala was arrested in Paris at the end of December and placed in provisional detention on 2 January after being charged. Two days later, France’s National Anti-Terrorism Prosecutor’s Office (PNAT) issued a public statement that reveals the serious charges brought against him: “complicity in crimes against humanity” and “participation in a group formed for the purpose of preparing war crimes”. Looting, killing and rape Lumbala’s alleged crimes date back to the Second Congo War (1998-2003) and cover a period spanning from 2001 to 2003. At that time, Lumbala was head of the Rally of Congolese Democrats and Nationalists (RCD-N), a rebel group backed by the Ugandan military. Though limited in size, the RCD-N has been linked to many clashes in the Haut-Uélé district, now a province in north-eastern Democratic Republic of Congo. Alongside a number of rebels from the Movement for the Liberation of the Congo (MLC), led by Jean-Pierre Bemba, Lumbala and his men fought the Popular Congolese Army (APC), a rival group, including during the military operation “Effacer le tableau” launched in October 2002. Most of these facts are documented in a February 2003 UN Security Council report, which notes that the purpose of the operation “seemed to be for MLC/RCD-N forces to go from town to town destroying everything they could lay their hands on”. The document also mentions reports of acts of cannibalism. While the UN’s 2010 DRC Mapping Exercise Report (“Mapping Report”) was unable to confirm these allegations, the UN Security Council refers to “a pattern of looting, killing and rape as tactics of war”. Political career The war officially ended in June 2003 and, like many rebel leaders from that era, Lumbala became a politician, skirting prosecution. In keeping with the “1 + 4” leadership configuration, the Congolese president, Joseph Kabila, was flanked by four vice presidents, including Bemba, and a transitional government was set up. Lumbala was appointed minister of foreign trade, but his time on the job was short-lived. At the end of November 2004, the former warlord was dismissed from his role alongside five other ministers accused of corruption. However, his political career did not end there. Standing for the 2006 presidential election, he won just 0.45% of the vote, but would go on to land a seat in parliament and become a senator in Miabi (Kasai province). An opposition figure to President Kabila, whom he accused of being responsible for the insecurity plaguing eastern DRC, Lumbala is perfectly at home in this turbulent part of the country where a constellation of rebel movements take shape. Early in September 2012, he was arrested at Bujumbura International Airport and briefly held in police custody for his alleged support of the Rwanda-backed M23 rebels. A few weeks later, M23 fighters took control of Goma. Though he initially denied supporting the group, Lumbala eventually admitted he was a “partner” of M23. At the start of 2013, he was an M23 delegate during talks with Congolese authorities in Kampala. Later, Lumbala found his way to France, where he applied for asylum but was turned away. Excluded from Kinshasa’s amnesty law enacted in 2014, he returned to the DRC in January 2017 after the signing of the Saint Sylvester agreement, which ended the legal prosecution of certain opposition figures, including Lumbala, by the Congolese state. Back in the political arena, he reaffirmed his support for opposition icon and Kabila rival Étienne Tshisekedi. A few weeks on, the man known as the “Sphinx” died in Brussels. In August 2020, as political turmoil gripped Kinshasa, Lumbala seized an opening to create a small party. It had no proper structure but pledged support to Félix Tshisekedi. Mapping Report It probably never occurred to him that at that very moment, several thousands of kilometres from his home country, investigators from France’s Central Office for Combatting Crimes Against Humanity, Genocide and War Crimes (OCLCH) were preparing to arrest him. The arrest came as a surprise to more than a few, as almost 20 years have passed since the alleged crimes were committed: according to the PNAT, it is the first “open investigation based on findings from the Mapping Report”. Several questions remain unanswered, however, such as the grounds on which the PNAT’s crimes against humanity division initiated legal proceedings against Lumbala in 2016. Without elaborating on what led Lumbala’s case to be referred to the prosecutor’s office, Colonel Éric Emeraux, who served as head of the OCLCH from 2017 to 2020, said that “the PNAT can open a preliminary investigation based on mere suspicion supported by any piece of information, whether a testimony, media story or UN report”. He added: “The universal jurisdiction rule also allows France to investigate foreign suspects who have committed atrocities abroad provided that their place of residence is located on French territory, that they own housing and have bank accounts there, and the like.” Lumbala is one of many people mentioned in the Mapping Report, which was published in October 2010 and set out to document the most serious crimes committed in the DRC between 1993 and 2003. Dr Denis Mukwege, a Congolese gynaecologist and the 2018 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, has continued to call attention to the document, but it remains a sensitive, divisive issue, particularly for the DRC’s neighbours. He advocates the establishment of an international criminal tribunal to prosecute the perpetrators of offences committed during that period in the country’s history. Copyright © 2021 The Africa Report. All Rights Reserved.

Upsurge in Attacks on Activists, Community Leaders, Rights Defenders Detainees sleep in an open basketball court inside the Quezon City Jail in Quezon City, Philippines on July 24, 2020. © 2020 Lisa Marie David/NurPhoto via Getty Images (Manila, January 13, 2021) – The Philippine government’s “drug war” killings intensified during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, as did unnecessary arrests during lockdowns, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2021. Attacks by the police, military, and unidentified gunmen on leftist activists, community and Indigenous leaders, human rights defenders, and journalists also increased during the year. “The Duterte administration appeared to take advantage of Covid-19 curfews in 2020 to expand its gruesome and bloody ‘war on drugs,’” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “At the same time, government ‘red-baiting’ of leftist activists, rights defenders, and others have put them at greater risk of deadly attack.” In the 761-page World Report 2021, its 31st edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in more than 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth argues that the incoming United States administration should embed respect for human rights in its domestic and foreign policy, in a way that is more likely to survive future US administrations that might be less committed to human rights. Roth emphasizes that even as the Trump administration mostly abandoned the protection of human rights, other governments stepped forward to champion rights. The Biden administration should seek to join, not supplant, this new collective effort. The rights situation in the Philippines worsened during the pandemic, as the government imposed strict lockdown measures that resulted in the arrest and incarceration of tens of thousands of Filipinos, in conditions that greatly increased their health risk. In the early days of the lockdown, police subjected curfew violators – including children – to abusive treatment. “Drug war” killings in the Philippines in 2020 increased by more than 50 percent during the early months of the pandemic. The police reported in November that since Rodrigo Duterte became president, nearly 8,000 alleged drug suspects had been killed during police operations. In June, the United Nations Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights validated many of these killings. Domestic human rights groups and the governmental Commission on Human Rights believe the actual toll is triple that figure. Philippine rights monitors reported in 2020 that more than 160 political activists had been killed since Duterte became president in 2016. A number of the victims had earlier been “red-tagged” or red-baited by the Philippine military, the police, and local anti-communist groups. Among those targeted for “red-tagging” were celebrities who expressed support for groups that the government accused of having communist links. The media also came under renewed attack. In June, a court convicted Maria Ressa, prominent head of the news website Rappler, on politically motivated charges of cyber libel stemming from Rappler’s persistent reporting on the “drug war.” In July, the Duterte-controlled Philippine Congress voted not to extend the franchise of ABS-CBN, the country’s largest television network, which had often criticized the government’s “drug war,” forcing the network’s closure. “As respect for human rights in the Philippines spirals downwards, concerned governments, and UN agencies will need to press the Duterte government harder to halt its atrocities and hold those responsible to account,” Robertson said. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

“Even an animal would not stay in that kind of trapped situation.” A member of Myanmar's security forces stands guard in September 2018 at "no-man's lad" between Myanmar and Bangladesh, where Rohingya who fled a 2017 crackdown have taken shelter. Photo: Aung Naing Soe. The mass arrest of nearly 100 Rohingya Muslims hiding in safe houses in Myanmar’s biggest city last week cast a harsh spotlight on the lengths to which the persecuted minority go to escape the country, and how a small mistake can shatter dreams of a better life. Rohingya, who are not recognized as citizens in Buddhist-majority Myanmar and lack access to many basic services, have been fleeing their homes in Rakhine state for decades. But conditions worsened after a 2017 crackdown drove 740,000 Rohingya to Bangladesh in a violent campaign that is now the focus of a genocide investigation. The onset of the coronavirus pandemic has made it even harder for Rohingya to escape, with heightened security in Myanmar and at borders in other countries wary of letting in refugees during the outbreak. Last year boats carrying hundreds of Rohingya people made dangerous journeys to Malaysia and Indonesia where most were eventually allowed to land after outcry from rights groups. Going by sea is now considered too difficult and those caught last week were attempting to get to Malaysia overland, according to interviews with several relatives and one detainee. This involves criss-crossing the country and going over the border to Thailand first before attempting to get into Malaysia. They first had to pay the equivalent $3,700 to a team of brokers who will guide them through a journey that takes approximately two months. The first step is getting out of heavily militarized Rakhine state. Then they had to make it hundreds of miles away to the commercial capital Yangon, alternating between vehicles and hiding out in the woods near unfamiliar towns. When caught they were holed up in two houses in a suburb of Yangon for four days as food supplies dwindled. But a Rohingya man left one of the houses after being locked up there for a few days, feeling the need to get out and escape mistreatment by traffickers. But he did not blend in well enough and soon attracted attention. Police arrived, and he was forced to direct them to the hideouts, where 99 men, women and children were found. They were sent to a quarantine facility where five tested positive for coronavirus, according to officials and local media reports. VICE World News interviewed one of the detainees by phone. He said he was heading to Malaysia because there were no jobs or opportunities in Rakhine state, where he lived in an internal displacement camp following intercommunal violence in 2012 that killed hundreds. His parents sold their house to pay for the expenses of the trip. The man, whose identity is not being revealed for fear of retribution in detention, confirmed that some of the Rohingya in the group had been beaten by traffickers. “They gave us trouble in the forest. They let us walk on empty stomachs.” Others left home without saying goodbye. “My son said nothing about him leaving for Malaysia,” said Abdul Dill, the 60-year-old father of one of the men in the group. The son called his father on Jan. 2 and said they were locked in a room by traffickers. Now they were asking for money to help him continue the journey. Abdul sold his farm and house to help his son and make the payment. Another Rohingya man from Rakhine state named Ikram Muller said he was devastated to learn that his brother was one of the 99 detainees, hoping he would make it successfully to Malaysia. “I wouldn’t let him go if I knew he would get arrested,” he said. His family sold their cattle and farm to fund the journey. Muller’s brother is now detained in Yangon, and his future is uncertain. The only thing that is certain is that he will not be going to Malaysia, which he had dreamed of resettling in despite the difficult lives of refugees there. Hothi Zar, 35, said that one of her sons and a son-in-law were also in the group. They left home two months ago in the early morning without letting her know. A few days later, a trafficker called her and asked for approximately $1,500 and said they would bring her son and son-in-law to Malaysia. If she did not pay, they would beat them. “I heard my son was also crying on the phone. So I transferred the money,” she said. A Rohingya politician from Yangon named Kyaw Soe Aung said that around 3,000 Rohingya were arrested for undocumented travel from 2010 to 2017. They were put in prison for a maximum of two years under immigration charges. He said the conditions in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, where freedom of movement is severely limited and health care scarce, reflected how desperate Rohingya are to get out despite risks. “Even an animal would not stay in that kind of trapped situation. They are running away taking huge risks without knowing whether they will end up dead or alive,” he told VICE World News, alleging that these trips cannot be taken without some sort of involvement of local officials along the way. “It would be impossible for authorities not to know about these undocumented travelers. Because Rakhine State has more checkpoints than any other places in the country, especially during the pandemic for travel restrictions,” he said. Four suspected traffickers were arrested and face charges, according to deputy police chief Tin Maung Lwin in Yangon’s Shwepyitar township, where the Rohingya were hiding. He said he was not sure whether the 99 would be sent back to Rakhine state or charged with undocumented travel and imprisoned. A number of Rohingya arrested on the same offenses were released from jails in Yangon during the pandemic in order to ease crowding. “We will have to follow the instructions from the higher level whether we will take action against them or not,” he said. © 2021 VICE MEDIA GROUP

Strengthen Protections, End Asylum Pact with US A transgender woman shows a photograph of Camila Díaz, whom she met while migrating to the US, where they both turned themselves in to immigration authorities. Both women were eventually deported. © 2020 AP Photo/Salvador Melendez Salvadoran president Nayib Bukele agreed on December 15 to implement an Asylum Cooperative Agreement with the US government. It allows US immigration authorities to transfer non-Salvadoran asylum seekers to El Salvador, instead of allowing them to seek asylum in the US. US President-elect Joe Biden has pledged to terminate the deeply flawed agreement, a deeply flawed deal that presupposes El Salvador can provide a full and fair asylum procedure and protect refugees. But for some groups, including lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people, El Salvador provides no safe haven. Its own LGBT citizens lack protection from violence and discrimination. A recent Human Rights Watch report confirms the Salvadoran government’s own acknowledgment that LGBT people face “torture, inhuman or degrading treatment, excessive use of force, illegal and arbitrary arrests and other forms of abuse, much of it committed by public security agents.” Social and economic marginalization further increase the risk of violence. Many LGBT people flee from home. Between January 2007 and November 2017, over 1,200 Salvadorans sought asylum in the US due to fear of persecution for their sexual orientation or gender identity. In a groundbreaking judgment, a UK court recently granted asylum to a non-binary Salvadoran, finding that their gender expression exposed them to police violence and daily abuse and degradation. Five years ago, El Salvador seemed poised to champion LGBT rights. It joined the UN LGBTI Core Group. It increased sentences for bias-motivated crimes. Its Sexual Diversity Directorate trained public servants and monitored government policies for LGBT inclusiveness. Bukele, then a local official, pledged to be “on the right side of history” on LGBT rights. When he ran for president, his promises dissolved. He opposed marriage equality, effectively shut down the government’s sexual diversity work, and refused to support legal gender recognition for trans people. Despite the landmark conviction of three police officers in July for killing a trans woman, violence remains commonplace, and justice out of reach, for many LGBT people. The Salvadoran government should back a gender identity law and comprehensive civil non-discrimination legislation, prosecute anti-LGBT hate crimes, and reestablish a well-resourced office to promote inclusion and eradicate anti-LGBT violence. It should axe the Asylum Cooperative Agreement. As things stand, El Salvador fails to provide effective protection to its own LGBT citizens, let alone LGBT people fleeing persecution elsewhere. © 2021 Human Rights Watch

A large group of Rohingya people, fled from ongoing military operations in Myanmar's Rakhine state, try to cross the border at Palongkhalii, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh, on October 17, 2017. Stringer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images When the Myanmar Army attacked and massacred ethnic Rohingya civilians in 2017, more than 700,000 men, women, and children fled to Bangladesh, some riddled with bullets, burns, and gaping wounds. Hundreds of villages were in ashes, razed by soldiers and their civilian proxies. But long after the physical wounds scarred over, Rohingya continue to suffer mental harm on a massive scale. President-elect Biden can and should do something about it. There are upwards of one million Rohingya refugees now languishing in Bangladesh. They are experiencing trauma, depression, and anxiety at staggering rates. The World Health Organization estimates that approximately 15 to 20 percent of adults will experience some type of moderate or mild mental health disorder one year after an emergency, and in theory, those figures should decrease over time. By contrast, a new report published by Fortify Rights finds that 89 percent of Rohingya refugees in sprawling camps in Bangladesh are experiencing serious depression. Eighty-four percent are experiencing severe emotional distress. And a staggering 62 percent are experiencing symptoms equivalent to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder—a debilitating condition that can prevent its victims from leading normal and constructive lives. What drives these extreme levels of distress? Ongoing genocide in Myanmar is partly to blame, but the new quantitative data reveals that long-term systematic human rights violations in Myanmar and ongoing impunity are also key factors that continue to impact Rohingya mental health. This may seem obvious, but it’s not. The study of trauma typically focuses on the effects of singular traumatic events: witnessing an accident, the death of a loved one, or surviving a violent attack, for example. But none of the existing mental health studies focusing on refugees have accounted for the role of long-term, systematic human rights violations on mental health outcomes. For decades, Rohingya in Myanmar have experienced extreme, draconian restrictions on everything from freedom of movement to health care, practicing their religion, childbirth, and even identifying as Rohingya. The Fortify Rights data—collected with a trained team of Rohingya researchers—also reveals that the community has survived exceedingly high rates of violence, including torture, stabbings, beatings, shootings, and sexual assault. What’s more, the violence, restrictions, and impunity continue unmitigated in Myanmar. Rohingya know that better than anyone, and it stalks them. People hold banners as they stage a demonstration near the U.S. Capitol building on August 25, 2018, in Washington, United States, to protest against massacres carried out by the Myanmar military against Rohingya. Yasin Ozturk/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images The restoration of rights for the Rohingya Thankfully, the Trump Administration has not been blind to this crisis. Secretaries of State Tillerson and Pompeo were both outspoken about the need for justice for Rohingya, and Vice President Pence gave Myanmar’s State Counsellor Suu Kyi an earful at a regional summit in Singapore in 2018, telling her that the “violence and persecution by military and vigilantes” against Rohingya in 2017 was “without excuse.” The U.S. has also been the largest humanitarian donor to the Rohingya people by a long shot. The State Department has spent nearly $1.2 billion to alleviate the humanitarian needs of the Rohingya in Bangladesh and Myanmar since 2017, including $200 million in new funding in 2020 alone. To its credit, the U.S. government also sanctioned Senior General Min Aung Hlaing and other top Myanmar generals for their roles in the atrocities. Former Secretary Tillerson backed a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Council that created a crucial U.N. Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) to investigate atrocities in Myanmar. (Shortly after, Trump foolishly withdrew the U.S. from that body and later fired Tillerson via Twitter). In a report of more than 400 pages published in September 2018, the FFM ultimately determined the situation in Myanmar to be a genocide, as did Fortify Rights in July that same year. Those findings, in part, led The Gambia to file an historic genocide case against Myanmar at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in November 2019. That trial is ongoing. Nevertheless, much remains to be done. And from the Oval Office, President Biden will be in a prime position to help. The Biden administration should do what President Trump and Secretary Pompeo failed to do: act swiftly to formally designate the violations against Rohingya as genocide and crimes against humanity. Evidence already collected by the State Department points to those crimes, and such a designation would support ongoing international accountability efforts, including the case at the ICJ, which Democrat and Republican members of Congress have highlighted as a priority. Biden should also make plans to use American and multilateral leverage to persuade China to holster its permanent veto on the U.N. Security Council with regard to Myanmar. This would enable the heretofore inactive body to refer the situation in Myanmar to the International Criminal Court (ICC), as it should. The Prosecutor at the ICC already has jurisdiction to investigate the forced deportation of Rohingya as a crime against humanity, but the court should be empowered to investigate all manner of atrocities in Myanmar, and without a referral, it can’t do that. The Trump Administration not only failed to engage the Security Council on the ICC option for Rohingya but took the absurd action in September of sanctioning prosecutors at the court. Once in office, Biden should drop those sanctions as a matter of priority, ratify the Rome Statute to enlist the U.S. in the court, and help ensure the court can prosecute the international crimes that continue against numerous ethnic nationalities in Myanmar, including the Arakanese, Kachin, Shan, and others. International justice is not a silver bullet—it is slow, expensive, and flawed—but it remains a crucial piece of the puzzle in preventing genocide and other atrocities. Ultimately, the restoration of rights for Rohingya will come from democratic forces within Myanmar, including the Rohingya people. The Biden Administration should redouble support for human rights defenders in the country and hinge engagement with Myanmar on clear benchmarks for progress, including the restoration of full citizenship rights for Rohingya. The longer the Rohingya genocide grinds on, the more problems it will create for international peace and security. It demands attention with an urgency that transcends party lines. © 2021 TIME USA, LLC.