Darfur Women Action Group will be hosting an online panel discussion event on Wednesday, December 9th on the Importance of Accountability for Genocide Prevention and Justice for Victims (1.00-3.00 pm EST). To mark International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and conclude our 16 Days of Activism campaign, Darfur Women Action Group will be hosting an online event with two-panel discussions on December 9th from 1:00-3:00 pm EST. The first panel will focus on accountability as a genocide prevention mechanism and feature the following notable speakers: Ambassador Stephen Rapp (former U.S. Ambassador-at-Large for War Crimes Issues), Ms. Mona Ali Khalil (former UN Senior Legal Officer and founder of MAK LAW), and additional speakers to be confirmed soon. The discussion will address effective accountability mechanisms and the present failure of the international community to hold perpetrators responsible, taking Sudan as an example. The second panel will focus on strategies for genocide prevention and feature the following distinguished speakers: Dr. Gregory Stanton (Founder and President of Genocide Watch), Ms. Niemat Ahmadi (Founder and President of DWAG), and additional speakers to be confirmed soon. The panel will delve into the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on genocide prevention and women empowerment efforts around the world. Both panels will conclude with each speaker contributing a set of strategic recommendations and answering questions from our audience. The panel discussion will be held via Google Meet and shared on Facebook after the event. A recording of the event is available on the Facebook page. For questions, please email: outreach@darfurwomenaction.org Please join us as we discuss mechanisms for genocide prevention, women empowerment, and sustainable change in Darfur. About: Darfur Women Action Group Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) strives to empower and amplify the voices of women, the victims of genocide, and the historically excluded Sudanese. DWAG ultimately aims to enable them to fight for their rights, achieve justice, and to equally participate in the transformation of their society. Niemat Ahmadi, President Darfur Woman Action Group © 2020

Coptic Christians praying for the victims of a terrorist attack. (Nurphoto via Getty Images) Egypt has been under an Emergency Law since the 1967 Six-Day War. It was reimposed after the 1981 assassination of Anwar Sadat. The law extends police powers, suspends constitutional rights, legalizes censorship and abolishes habeas corpus. It limits political activity including demonstrations. The Arab Spring in 2011 forced the resignation of Hosni Mubarak. Elections were held, and won by the Islamist Mohammed Morsi. Morsi was deposed in 2013 by a military coup led by General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. Coptic Christians have faced discrimination by the Egyptian government and violence from Islamist terrorists. With 36 Christians out of 596 Parliament members, Copts have little political representation. In Imbaba on May 8, 2011, 2,000 Copts and Muslims clashed over false rumors that a Christian woman’s community was preventing her from converting to Islam. A mob burned down two churches, killed 12 people, and injured 220 others. Sectarian clashes continue to occur, with sacred holidays as flashpoints. In 2018 seventeen people were sentenced to death and nineteen others were given life sentences for their involvement in bombings of Coptic churches in Cairo, Alexandria, and Tanta in 2016 and 2017. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has emphasized Egyptian unity and supported the Copts verbally. He was the first Egyptian president to attend a Coptic Christmas Eve Mass in 2015. Security forces protected Coptic Christians from terrorists by foiling a terrorist plot planned for Easter in April 2020. In 2014, Egypt adopted a new constitution that includes freedom of religion. However, it also affirms Islam as the state’s official religion and bans conversion to any religion other than Islam. The constitution lays out harsh sentences for blasphemy. Several blasphemy cases have been prosecuted under el-Sisi’s administration. The Egyptian parliament has passed laws restricting the construction and renovation of churches. Under a law passed in 2016, churches can only be built in proportion to the number of Christians in an area, and governors can deny church-building permits, with no appeals process. The Muslim Brotherhood has also faced persecution. Under Presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser in the 1950s and 60s, Hosni Mubarak (1981-2011), and Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, the Muslim Brotherhood has been considered a threat to national security, and since 2013, it has been classified as a terrorist organization. Thousands of supporters of the Muslim Brotherhood have been detained, tortured, or disappeared. Journalists, scholars, and human rights advocates have become targets of Egyptian security police. Three leaders of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the scholar Patrick Zaki, and Egyptian family members of opposition journalists in exile were arrested and tortured in 2020. Genocide Watch considers Egypt at Stage 8: Persecution. Coptic Christians are targets of violent attacks by Islamist terrorists. The government denies permission to build or repair churches. Human rights defenders and opposition journalists have been arrested and tortured. Genocide Watch recommends: The Egyptian government should protect Coptic Christians by fully investigating and prosecuting perpetrators of violence against them. Its security forces should protect Christian worship. The Egyptian government should immediately release human rights, journalists, and opposition leaders; and stop arresting and torturing them.

Social media platforms, technology companies, and religious and civil society leaders have a central role in combatting hate speech, “a clear warning sign” of genocide, the United Nations Secretary-General has said. In a message on the international day to commemorate the victims of genocide and affirm their dignity, on Wednesday, Secretary-General António Guterres also highlighted the key responsibility of governments. “Governments need to guarantee civic space for human rights institutions and defenders to do their essential work, and they need to protect the rights of those at risk,” he said. ‘Warning signs’ Mr. Guterres outlined that genocide is always preceded by “clear, multiple warning signs” and victims are often early targets of hate speech, discrimination and violence. But promptly recognizing and acting on these warning signs, remains a challenge. “Hate speech is a clear warning sign, and we need to do better in rejecting it in all its forms,” said the Secretary-General, highlighting that all of society must be involved. “It is crucial that we all join hands to defend the principles of equality and human dignity and to repair the fissures and polarization that are so prevalent in our societies today.” Observed on 9 December every year, the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime was established by the UN General Assembly. The date commemorates the adoption of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, in 1948, by the General Assembly. ‘Foundational’ to the UN In the message, the Secretary-General highlighted that the imperative to prevent genocide is “foundational to the United Nations”. The Convention, adopted in the aftermath of the Holocaust and the Second World War, remains “as relevant as ever” as we work to prevent genocide and other atrocity crimes, he said. “Crimes which are sadly still being perpetrated with impunity and no regard for the sanctity of human life,” he added. Hate speech is a clear warning sign, and we need to do better in rejecting it in all its forms – UN Secretary-General Rights of victims Mr. Guterres also called for credible and effective accountability to deter atrocity crimes and providing justice and remedies for victims. Meeting their psychological and material needs is equally important. “Victims have rights to truth, justice, reparation and a comprehensive package of guarantees of non-recurrence,” he stressed. Praise for national efforts, tribunals On Wednesday in New York a special event took place to mark the International Day, where judges and experts shared their experiences in securing justice for victims of genocide and related crimes. Mr. Guterres acknowledged the contributions made by special national mechanisms to reckon with genocide, and the international tribunals set up within the UN system. "The Human Rights Council, General Assembly and Security Council investigative bodies - fact-finding missions, groups of experts, high-level missions and commissions of inquiry - also play a fundamental role", he said. He paid tribute to the "pivotal role" of civil society, in amplifying the voices of victims, and calling for accountability and reparations: "It often takes decades and generations for a community destroyed by genocide to recover. Preventing genocide, ultimately involves all of society, which must always remain committed and vigilant." The UN chief said we must all work harder, "to repair the fissures and polarization that are so prevelant in our societies today." © 2020 United Nations

The International Criminal Court (ICC) prosecutor’s decision to close a preliminary examination of alleged war crimes by British forces in Iraq is likely to fuel the perception of a double standard in international justice, Human Rights Watch said today. On December 9, 2020, the ICC prosecutor, Fatou Bensouda, announced that after a six-year initial inquiry, her office will not pursue a formal investigation into alleged war crimes by United Kingdom nationals in the context of the Iraq conflict and occupation between 2003 and 2008. The prosecutor’s office confirmed, though, that there was clear evidence that UK forces were responsible for numerous war crimes in Iraq, including wilful killing or murder, torture and other serious abuses of detainees, and rape and other sexual violence. “The UK government has repeatedly shown precious little interest in investigating and prosecuting atrocities committed abroad by British troops,” said Clive Baldwin, senior legal advisor at Human Rights Watch. “The prosecutor’s decision to close her UK inquiry will doubtless fuel perceptions of an ugly double standard in justice, with one approach for powerful states and quite another for those with less clout.” In a nearly 200-page report, Bensouda’s office said that it would not pursue a full investigation because it could not conclude that the UK authorities have been unwilling genuinely to carry out relevant investigative inquiries and/or prosecutions. At the same time, it detailed some areas of concern related to the UK approach to addressing allegations of serious crimes. Bensouda said that her office remained open to reconsidering the decision based on new facts or evidence. The ICC prosecutor confirmed an earlier finding that there is a reasonable basis to believe that UK armed forces committed war crimes against detainees in Iraq. Though Iraq is not an ICC member, the court has jurisdiction over alleged serious crimes by the nationals of its member countries – in this case, UK nationals. The ICC is a court of last resort. Under the principle of “complementarity,” cases are only admissible before the ICC if national authorities have not conducted genuine, domestic proceedings. If countries have an interest in avoiding ICC intervention, they can conduct national proceedings. In May 2014, the ICC prosecutor’s office had announced that it was reopening a preliminary examination, closed in 2006, into alleged British war crimes in Iraq. Between March 2003 and May 2009, British forces took part in the invasion, occupation, and governing of Iraq. During and after these six years, information emerged indicating widespread, serious abuses of Iraqis in British detention, including assaults, torture, and deaths. Many of the abuses, amounting to torture or other war crimes, were the result of broader systemic failures. Starting in 2004 – and continuing after UK forces left Iraq – Iraqis who alleged that British troops had unlawfully killed, detained, or abused them or their relatives pursued various legal remedies in the United Kingdom. Under pressure, UK governments agreed to several public inquiries that found evidence of serious and repeated abuse of detainees in Iraq, including the beating death of a hotel receptionist, Baha Mousa, in 2003. One inquiry found allegations of the murder of prisoners to be false but still found systematic abuse of detainees. A UK court, after hearing evidence in claims for damages in test cases, found that Iraqis had been systematically abused in British detention. The Defense Ministry has paid out millions of pounds to hundreds of other Iraqis who said they had been abused. Despite the repeated findings by British courts, inquiries, and other inquests that some UK soldiers mistreated Iraqis in detention during the Iraq war, there has been virtually no domestic criminal accountability, Human Rights Watch said. In 2017, the UK government interfered with and prematurely shut down a domestic criminal investigation into the allegations, the Iraq Historic Allegations Team (IHAT), after pressure from some media and members of parliament. The IHAT process had not resulted in any prosecutions by the time it was effectively closed, with a few cases transferred to another body for further investigation. In November 2019, a BBC TV Panorama and Sunday Timesjoint investigation reported that the British government and military repeatedly covered up evidence of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan. The investigation reported that detectives involved in IHAT had serious concerns that military prosecutors had declined to bring charges despite credible evidence of offenses. The Defense Ministry has denied the allegations. Only one British soldier has received a prison sentence – of one year – for war crimes in Iraq. There has been no criminal accountability for senior British military and political figures who either ordered the abuses, turned a blind eye, or prevented prosecutions, although they could be held criminally liable, including under the principle of command responsibility, Human Rights Watch said. In recent years, following an official finding of misconduct and the disbarment of one lawyer representing Iraqi claimants, UK governments have repeatedly attacked the entire legal profession for bringing cases against it concerning abuses in Iraq. The UK government pressured the lawyers’ regulator to bring professional misconduct charges against three lawyers from a separate leading human rights firm that had brought many of the civil claims by Iraqis. A tribunal cleared them of all charges. Former Prime Minister Theresa May, announced in a public speech that she would not permit “activist, left-wing human rights lawyers” to “harass the bravest of the brave,” and her defense minister said, “we don’t need these ambulance-chasing British law firms.” The ICC prosecutor’s decision to end her inquiry follows moves by the UK government to seek parliament’s approval of a law – the Overseas Operations Bill – that would make it nearly impossible to prosecute British soldiers for torture and other war crimes committed overseas. The law would create a “presumption against prosecution” after five years and would also increase the authority of the attorney general, a member of the government, to protect soldiers from prosecution. In her decision, the ICC prosecutor noted that the adoption of such a law “remains prospective” and that her office would only be able to factor its impact on the UK’s ability to address ongoing cases or other allegations once it was in place. In spite of the ICC’s growing docket, the UK has insisted on restricting increases in the court’s budget to a bare minimum. It has also called for setting timelines for completion of the prosecutor’s preliminary examinations. This has given rise to the appearance that the UK sought to indirectly pressure the prosecutor’s office over its UK preliminary examination, Human Rights Watch said. “No one can be in any doubt after reading this report that UK forces were responsible for multiple war crimes in Iraq,” Baldwin said. “And yet the ICC prosecutor seems to have given the UK government the benefit of the doubt despite its failure to prosecute anyone in over a decade for war crimes, and its blatant interference in justice by shutting down the criminal investigation.” © 2020 Human Rights Watch.

Over 50 Killed Since Presidential Poll; Dozen Opposition Leaders Arrested Published by Human Rights Watch on December 2, 2020. Ouattara’s decision to run for a third term has been met with protests - Diom Celest. (EPA) Côte d’Ivoire’s authorities should urgently investigate the killing of more than 50 people in the political and intercommunal violence that accompanied the October 31, 2020 presidential elections and ensure that anyone responsible for unlawful killings is prosecuted, Human Rights Watch said today. Security forces failed to adequately protect civilians and in at least one case used excessive force to disperse opposition-led protests, shooting dead at least two demonstrators and beating a man unconscious. President Alassane Ouattara was re-elected for a third term with a reported 94 percent of the vote in the controversial election, which the main opposition parties boycotted. The poll triggered confrontations between opposition and government supporters in the capital, Abidjan, and at least eight other towns, resulting in brutal street clashes fought with machetes, clubs, and hunting rifles. “The killings of the past month pushed Côte d’Ivoire toward a deadly spiral of violence, a decade after the 2010-11 post-election conflict left over 3,000 dead,” said Jim Wormington, senior Africa researcher at Human Rights Watch. “Respecting the right to freedom of expression and assembly, including for opposition leaders and their supporters, will be a key ingredient to a peaceful resolution of the current crisis.” Since the election, Ivorian authorities have arrested a dozen opposition party members, who rejected the results and said they had formed a National Transitional Council to organize new elections. The opposition members, including Pascal Affi N’Guessan, a former prime minister, were held incommunicado and questioned without access to lawyers for several days after their arrest. Three opposition members, including N’Guessan, remain in detention, while nine others have been released on conditional bail. Human Rights Watch interviewed by telephone more than 36 people about the post-election violence, including 24 victims and witnesses from Abidjan, Oumé, Toumodi, Elibou, and M’Batto, as well as journalists, lawyers, opposition party members, and civil society representatives. Human Rights Watch also analyzed photographs and video footage to corroborate victim and witness accounts. On November 20, Human Rights Watch sent a summary of findings and questions to Aimée Zebeyoux, Côte d’Ivoire’s secretary of state for human rights. Zebeyoux sent a letter in response on November 25. Côte d’Ivoire’s National Human Rights Council said on November 10 that 55 people were killed and 282 injured between October 31 and November 10. The Ivorian government said on November 11 that 20 people were killed on election day and an additional 31 in the days that followed. Human Rights Watch documented 13 of these deaths, including 2 people killed during violence between government and opposition supporters on election day, 9 during clashes in the following days, and at least 2 who were killed by security forces. On election day, victims and witnesses in Abidjan, Oumé, and Toumodi told Human Rights Watch, groups of opposition supporters seeking to prevent the election clashed with pro-government groups who wanted the vote to take place. “There were dozens of them [opposition supporters] telling us, ‘There won’t be an election here, we don’t need foreigners,’” said a government supporter in Oumé, repeating an often-used characterization of government supporters as migrants from other parts of Côte d’Ivoire or elsewhere in West Africa. “We went to arm ourselves with clubs and machetes. Someone from their side slipped on a stone, and people just crowded round him and beat him to death. At least 10 people were injured on our side, including one person who fractured his skull.” In Abidjan’s Yopougon Kouté neighborhood, an opposition stronghold, witnesses said pro-government youth arrived from elsewhere in the city to prevent opposition supporters from disrupting the vote. “I saw a group coming into the neighborhood in two Gbakas (minivans), blue taxis, and scooters,” said one witness. “They were armed with machetes, knives, and guns. I went out with what I could to defend my village. The neighborhood youth started throwing stones, and there were so many of us that they fled. One of the government supporters couldn’t escape in time, and he was beaten to death by our young people.” Witnesses to the election violence, including both government and opposition supporters, said that the security forces did not do enough to prevent violence and protect civilians. “The attack lasted for hours and yet no police officer came,” said a man from Toumodi, who hid in his house and prayed while attackers burned down shops and homes in his neighborhood on November 1. A family of four burned to death in their home. Zebeyoux, the human rights secretary of state, in a letter to Human Rights Watch said that the government’s efforts to secure the election and prevent communal and political violence had “allowed the vote to run smoothly and contained the vast majority of the unrest.” She said that no one had been killed or injured by shots fired by the security forces, and that investigations were underway to “identify and apprehend anyone (supporters of the government as well as the opposition)” who committed crimes. On November 9, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet expressed “serious concerns about the arrests of several opposition leaders” and urged “political leaders from all sides to work together to calm the tensions through dialogue – not heavy-handed security responses and arrests.” The African Union and the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), a regional bloc, criticized the opposition parties for establishing the National Transitional Council but have also called for dialogue to resolve the crisis. “Targeting opposition members through a flawed legal process will not ease the dangerous political and ethnic tensions running through Côte d’Ivoire,” Wormington said. “The Ivorian authorities should focus on investigating and prosecuting all those responsible for the killings in recent weeks, no matter their political affiliation, including members of the security forces who used excessive force against protesters.” For more details and accounts from victims and witnesses, please see below. Election-Related Violence Côte d’Ivoire has a history of election-related violence. In 2010, when Ouattara first came to power, incumbent President Laurent Gbagbo’s failure to step down led to an armed conflict in which at least 3,000 people were killed and more than 150 women and girls were raped. Virtually none of the people implicated in the violence have been held to account. Having won re-election in 2015, Ouattara said earlier in 2020 that he was not planning to run for a third term and would “transfer power to a new generation.” Following the July 8 death of his party’s candidate, however, Ouattara on August 6 reversed course, contending that, although presidents are limited to two terms in office, the passage of a new constitution in 2016 “reset the clock” and allowed him to run again. Despite the government’s efforts to place restrictions on the opposition, including an August 19 ban on public demonstrations, opposition parties organized protests against Ouattara’s third term. According to government figures, clashes between opposition demonstrators and government supporters, and between opposition members and the security forces, resulted in 34 deaths before election day. The country’s main opposition parties on October 15 called for an “active boycott” of the election, decrying Ouattara’s decision to run despite the constitution’s two-term limit, court decisions prohibiting Gbagbo and a former Ouattara ally, Guillaume Soro, from running, and the election commission’s lack of independence. In the hours before Ouattara’s victory was announced on November 2, the opposition said that they did not recognize Ouattara as president and established a National Transitional Council, headed by a former president and opposition party leader, Henri Konan Bédié, to organize new elections. On November 3, Ivorian security forces surrounded Bédié’s Abidjan home, placing him under de facto house arrest, only removing the security perimeter on November 11. In the days after the election, heightened political and ethnic tensions led to further clashes between opposition and government demonstrators, including in Daoukro and M’Batto. A community leader in M’Batto said an opposition march on November 9 ended with opposition and government supporters fighting with machetes, clubs, and guns, leaving at least five dead. On November 11, after 12 days of election-related clashes, Ouattara and Bédié met to try to calm tensions, promising after the meeting to continue their dialogue. Clashes in Yopougon Kouté, Abidjan, October 31 Eight witnesses from Yopougon Kouté, an Abidjan neighborhood and opposition stronghold, described clashes between opposition and government supporters on election day. Witnesses said that, after opposition sympathizers tried to prevent voting at a local school, dozens of government supporters arrived in the neighborhood in Gbakas (minivans), taxis, cars, and scooters, resulting in a violent clash along one of the main roads running through the neighborhood. Several witnesses said that the government supporters were armed with machetes and clubs and that some had handguns, while a video taken by a man Human Rights Watch interviewed shows the opposition supporters armed with sticks, clubs, and machetes. At least one person died in the clash: a government supporter who became separated from his group as they left the neighborhood. Five witnesses said that police and gendarmes in Yopougon Kouté did not intervene to stop the violence, only firing teargas and warning shots to disperse Yopougon Kouté residents after the fatal clash. “No policeman intervened,” said one resident. “There were three police trucks at the court building, which isn’t far. And there were police at the voting center. But it’s only after the conflict that they arrived.” Prior to leaving Youpougon Kouté, two government supporters attacked a 68-year old man, smashing a bottle on his head, cutting him with a machete on his neck, and stealing 32,000 CFA (US$57) and four mobile phones. “They said, ‘He is for Gbagbo,’” the victim said. “They hit me with a bottle in my mouth and the dentures that I wear fell out.” A woman said that seven men entered her house, threatened her family, and stole money and phones: I could hear them on the road, saying, “Anyone who doesn’t vote for Ouattara: we will cut them. He’s our president.” They broke my door with an axe and about seven of them came into my home. I just had time to hide my husband in the bathroom. I said straight away, “Don’t kill us, we are for Ouattara.” One of them said, “Give us your money, or we will cut you.” We gave them everything we had. They also burned down the restaurant of our neighbor – all she has left are the clothes she was wearing that day. Following the confrontation, Yopougon Kouté residents set alight two vehicles that they said had belonged to the pro-government supporters. All eight Yopougon Kouté witnesses referred to the government supporters involved in the confrontation as “microbes,” a term previously used to describe youth-dominated criminal gangs, but that opposition parties have more recently used to refer to pro-government thugs who they say attack opposition protesters. Earlier this year, Amnesty International documented how two Gbakas (minivans) carrying dozens of young men attacked opposition demonstrators in Yopougon during an August 13 protest against President Ouattara’s decision to run for a third term. Amnesty said that police had allowed the attack to occur and failed to protect demonstrators. Asked about “microbes” on November 6, Côte d’Ivoire’s chief prosecutor, Richard Adou, said that “Until the [opposition’s] call for civil disobedience, there were not clashes between children in conflict with the law and other individuals.” Clashes in Oumé Town, October 31 Human Rights Watch interviewed five witnesses who described intercommunal violence on election day in the town of Oumé, 240 kilometers northwest of Abidjan, leaving one dead and dozens injured. Witnesses said opposition supporters from the Gouro ethnic group destroyed voting material as it was being transported to polling places and sought to prevent voting in locations across the city. This led to confrontations between opposition supporters, largely Gouro, and pro-government youth, largely Malinké. Witnesses said that both sides were armed with machetes, clubs, and, in some cases, hunting rifles. One witness observed the killing of an opposition supporter through a window along the road where the clash took place: I went inside my house, and from the window I saw a young Gouro try to hide behind a table. He was hit by a bullet that pierced the table, and then I saw a Malinké come over to him and machete him on his head until he was dead. I ran away to hide, and when I returned to my house they’d taken everything – my clothes and even a computer that belonged to a friend who had come to Oumé from Abidjan because he was worried about election violence there. Both opposition and government supporters interviewed said that police and gendarmes in Oumé didn’t do enough to stop the violence. “The people most to blame for this are the security forces,” a government supporter said. “They were just inside their barracks, and when they started firing teargas to disperse people, it was too late.” Another witness said that he had seen a local gendarme officer trying to separate government and opposition supporters early in the confrontation, but that he’d been unable to do so and that reinforcements didn’t arrive quickly enough to stop the violence. Clashes in Toumodi Town, October 31 and November 1 Human Rights Watch interviewed five witnesses to intercommunal violence on the day of the election and the day after in Toumodi, 200 kilometers northwest of Abidjan. On the day of the vote, opposition supporters, largely drawn from the Baoulé ethnic group, erected barricades to prevent voting and clashed with government supporters from Dioula ethnic groups. Despite an attempted mediation by the local authorities, the day after the vote, witnesses said, young men attacked Toumodikro, a predominately Baoulé neighborhood. Men armed with machetes, clubs, and hunting rifles set alight homes and shops, with a family of four burned alive in their home. A community leader said that dozens of residences had been burned during the violence, leaving hundreds of people to find shelter in local churches or neighboring villages. A local ruling party representative also said that Baoulé youth had set fire to garages belonging to Dioula and to a local market. A Toumodikro resident said that the day after the election, fearful of more violence, he helped his wife get on a bus out of town, but that his mother refused to leave. As he returned from the bus station, he saw people running and shouting that Toumodikro was under attack: I ran to my house to try to help my mother, but when I arrived my older brother’s room was on fire. I ran out, straight into a crowd of attackers. They hit me with machetes, knives, and clubs, but then one said, “he’s RHDP [the ruling party],” because I’m a musician and I had performed in some RHDP events during the election campaign. My mother said in Dioula, “Please don’t burn the house,” but they still burned other buildings in the courtyard, and they ransacked everything else. One witness said that there weren’t enough police or gendarmes in Toumodi to prevent the violence, and that it took until the evening of November 1, after the family had burned to death and dozens of homes were destroyed, before adequate reinforcements arrived. Excessive Force by Security Forces in Elibou Town, November 9 Human Rights Watch interviewed three witnesses who said that three people were shot dead on November 9 by gendarmes in Elibou, about 80 kilometers from Abidjan, during a peaceful opposition demonstration near the intersection of two main highways to protest Ouattara’s reelection. Human Rights Watch reviewed photographic evidence to confirm the killings of two of these individuals. One witness, who participated in the march, said: There was initially a small group of us [protesters], about 150 to 200, who blocked the [East-West] motorway, but the gendarmes fired in the air and the crowd dispersed. But then other villages from the area joined in, and we went back on the road to try to block it. Another detachment of gendarmes arrived to reinforce a group permanently stationed at Elibou. The gendarmes fired teargas as well as live ammunition in the air, but the crowd resisted and didn’t leave the highway. Then the gendarmes fired [live bullets] on the crowd, and someone was hit in the chest. The crowd dispersed and the gendarmes took the person who had been shot and put him in their vehicle. We reassembled again, this time on the North-South highway, and gendarmes opened fire and two people were shot and killed. One person was shot in the head and another in the chest. The gendarmes took away the first corpse, and it hasn’t been returned to the family, but the other two remained on the highway. I took pictures of them. Zebeyoux, the human rights secretary of state, said that two people were killed in Elibou and that investigations were underway “to determine who is responsible … including as regards the members of the security forces who were present that day and if necessary to initiate criminal proceedings before a military tribunal.” Zebeyoux said initial indications are that security forces only intervened to prevent intercommunal violence and that it is highly likely that gunshots were fired by demonstrators. All three witnesses to the killings in Elibou, however, said that at the time of the shootings there were no intercommunal clashes and that the confrontation was between opposition protesters seeking to block the highways and a smaller group of gendarmes. “We had banners, Ivorian flags, but no one had machetes, guns or anything like that,” said a demonstrator. “It’s true that there were more demonstrators [than gendarmes], but the primary objective for the security forces should be the protection of the population.” Human Rights Watch reviewed a video, which an interviewee said he had taken shortly before the shooting of the second and third victims, that showed gendarmes in riot gear confronting dozens of protesters, and in which protesters do not appear to be carrying weapons. The video does not show what happened immediately prior to the shootings. Another witness said that, after the men were shot and the march was dispersed, he was beaten unconscious by gendarmes: We fled after the gendarmes fired at the crowd. I came into a neighborhood [sympathetic to the government] and some young men seized me and gave me over to the security forces. More than 15 members of the security forces hit me with their batons, Kalashnikovs, and sticks. I passed out. When they left, one of my brothers poured water on me and I woke up. I then went to a clinic to get medical treatment. Arrests of Opposition Leaders On November 3, police arrested 11 opposition members at Bédié’s Abidjan house. Eight of them were transferred that night to the National Surveillance Directorate (Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire, DST), a domestic intelligence agency that is not an authorized detention site under Ivorian law. They were detained and questioned there for three nights without access to a lawyer or communication with family members. Three opposition parliament members among those arrested were held in police custody but also questioned at the DST without access to a lawyer. All 11 were brought before an investigating judge on November 6. Nine have since been released on conditional bail, while two prominent members of Bédié’s political party, Maurice Kakou Guikahué and N’dri Pierre Narcisse, remain detained at Abidjan’s central prison (Maison d’Arrêt et de Correction d’Abidjan, MACA). Pascal Affi N’Guessan, an opposition spokesperson and former prime minister, was arrested the night of November 6, and, his lawyer said, held incommunicado at the DST and questioned without access to his lawyer. He was brought before an investigating judge on November 9, and denied bail. Zebeyoux, the human rights secretary of state, said that if some opposition members had been denied means of communication during their detention, this was a “preventative measure aimed at ending threats to public order” resulting from public statements about the creation of a transitional government. Zebeyoux said that N’Guessan had refused his right to be assisted by his lawyer during questioning, which N’Guessan’s lawyer denied in an interview with Human Rights Watch. N’Guessan and the 11 opposition members arrested on November 3 have been charged with terrorism, attacks against the authority of the state, and murder, among other charges. Adou, the chief prosecutor, said on November 2 that the charges relate to the opposition parties’ call for “civil disobedience” prior to and during the election and the announcement of a National Transitional Council. Opposition lawyers said the charges against them were politically motivated, while Ivorian human rights groups said that executive interference in political cases means that they have little chance of a fair trial. The Ivorian government should refrain from interfering in political cases, Human Rights Watch said, and the Ivorian judiciary should release anyone arbitrarily arrested on the basis of their political affiliation. © 2020 Human Rights Watch.

Lord Alton of Liverpool and the Coalition for Genocide Response would like to invite you to a webinar marking the International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime: What Happened To The Promise? The Situations of Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh in 2020 9 December 2020, 4:00 - 5:15 PM GMT (zoom webinar) The Armenian genocide took place between 1915 and 1923 when 1.5 million ethnic Armenians were arrested, deported, or murdered by the Ottoman Empire. Currently, some 32 countries recognize the events as meeting the legal definition of genocide. The formal recognition of historic cases as genocide is not a matter of semantics. Such a formal recognition is crucial for survivors and their families in their efforts to move on. It is crucial for reconciliation and discovery of the truth. It is also crucial to deter similar crimes in the future, to ensure that such atrocities do not happen again. However, as in the case of Armenians, in 2020, we see early warning signs that the practices that targeted the communities over 100 years ago in the Ottoman Empire are being reinforced yet again. The panelists will discuss the warning signs of mass atrocities and the needed responses to ensure that the Armenians are not let down yet again. Speakers include: Lord David Alton of Liverpool, Crossbench peer at the UK House of Lords, Patron of the Coalition for Genocide Response Baroness Caroline Cox, Crossbench peer at the UK House of Lords, Founder of HART Geoffrey Robertson QC, Founder and joint head of Doughty Street Chambers Gulnara Shahinian, human rights expert, and author Please register here. (Link to the webinar will be shared via Eventbrite) The Coalition for Genocide Response © 2020

Fedencia Nacar David holds her photo for an application to work as a maid. She was 15. A year before, a Japanese soldier sliced her ear and threatened to behead her if she didn't go to a garrison with him; she was raped over 10 days. "It still hurts," she says. "I was innocent. Why did that happen to me?" She kept her past from her children until "comfort women" began speaking out in the 1990s. Cheryl Diaz Meyer for NPR Editor's note: This story contains graphic descriptions of sexual and physical violence. Narcisa Claveria will turn 89 this year, two days before Christmas. Stepping onto the veranda of the family apartment, she takes a moment to check on her 92-year-old husband, who eyes visitors with a weary look. The couple lives in the hill town of Antipolo, an hour outside Manila, in the Philippines. Outwardly, she is grandmotherly, sweet and tranquil. But when memories from 75 years ago are tapped, her mood changes. Narcisa begins to cry as she thinks back to her childhood in the Philippines during World War II. "If I could prevent the sun from setting, I would, because whenever night fell, they would start raping us," she says. She was 12 years old at the time. Narcisa Claveria, watches husband, Anaceto, and their great-grandson as he wakes up from a nap. At age 12, Narcisa was dragged from her home by Japanese soldiers and forced to serve as a sex slave in a garrison for 1 1/2 years. At a time when the experience was seen as a mark of shame, her husband encouraged her to share her story and told her: "I am not repulsed by you." Cheryl Diaz Meyer for NPR Narcisa is one of the last survivors of a system of sexual servitude set up by the Japanese imperial troops during World War II. They used abduction, coercion and deception to force women and girls to provide sexual gratification to military personnel. Researchers cited in court cases say that large numbers of them did not survive. It was a far-ranging system of sexual enslavement. Historians estimate that some 200,000 women were victimized by Japanese soldiers in parts of Asia occupied by Japan, prominently Korea. But also Singapore, Myanmar, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia and Taiwan. Images of the estimated 1,000 Philippine "comfort women" who were enslaved and sexually victimized by the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II fill a wall at the offices of Lila Pilipina. The organization of World War II victims of sexual war crimes has helped the "comfort women" in their fight for compensation. Cheryl Diaz Meyer for NPR And in the Philippines as well. There were "probably about a thousand women and girls taken and put into military sex-slave camps" during the Japanese occupation from 1942 to 1945, according to writer and researcher Evelina Galang. Over a period of 18 months, NPR identified and conducted interviews with at least two dozen survivors across the Philippines. In several instances, close family members shared stories told to them by the women who were too infirm to talk. Their portraits are not only the tale of their grievous bodily violations but a tableau of life in war. A Twisted Title The Japanese called them "comfort women" — a term derived from the Japanese word ianfu, combining the Chinese characters meaning "comfort or solace" (i-an) with woman (fu). The enslavement camps where they were forced to have sexual intercourse with Japanese soldiers were called "comfort stations" and were often the same garrisons where they were being held. "Comfort women" is a linguistically warped categorization of the thousands of women and girls, many from poor communities, who were forced to serve as sex slaves. Manila-based attorney Romel Bagares, who has represented some of the women for 16 years, told NPR that the term "hides the untold abuse the victims suffered under the Japanese Imperial Army and denies the victims the dignity they deserve." He says some advocates urge that the term be changed to "survivors of the wartime female slavery system." Pilar Quilantang Galang (left) and Belen Alarcon Culala support each other during a visit to the "Red House," where the women were repeatedly raped as children by Japanese soldiers during World War II. "We had a deeply painful experience in this house," says Galang. "No amount of money can erase the memories. Because money fades, but awful memories do not. They last forever." Cheryl Diaz Meyer for NPR Yet the women commonly use the term. Bagares says in some cases it's a bid to "own it" and have it "signify protest." Japan rationalized the sex slave practice as a way to curb the rape of local women by Japanese troops following the event known as the Rape of Nanking in 1937, when their soldiers sexually assaulted tens of thousands of women in the city that was then the capital of China. For decades, the survivors of the "comfort women" system did not share their stories. Their private pain, hidden in shame, was concealed from the outside world. But by the early 1990s, details of their experiences began to emerge in a series of lawsuits against Japan. They wanted Japan to offer a public apology and financial compensation for their suffering. Isabelita Vinuya, Belen Alarcon Culala and Maria Lalu Quilantang clasp hands. The three women were repeatedly raped as children by Japanese imperial soldiers in their village of Mapaniqui. Cheryl Diaz Meyer for NPR The women of South Korea were the first to organize "comfort women" into a national movement, adding the term to the jurisprudence of human rights for women in wartime. Carol Gluck, a history professor at Columbia University who focuses on modern-day Japan, says, "Without the testimonies of the comfort women, we would not know what happened." But the larger-scale story of sexual enslavement inflicted on Korea, which was under Japanese colonial rule for 35 years, has eclipsed the experience of other so-called "comfort women." Like the few remaining women in Korea, survivors in the Philippines — now in their 80s and 90s — are still demanding to be heard. In the Philippines, their confinement ranged from a matter of nights to more than a year. When the war was over, these women were left with physical and psychological scars: post-traumatic stress disorder, sexually transmitted diseases and damaged reproductive systems. Many were treated as outcasts, at times shunned by their own families. Organized in various and sometimes competing groups, the so-called "comfort women" of the Philippines have demanded official recognition and compensation from Japan as well as acknowledgment by the Philippine government of their continuing plight. Of the approximately 400 women who were identified as "comfort women" in the Philippines, only 45 to 50 are believed to be alive today. Many are reluctant to speak about their experience owing to privacy, trauma and old age. Read the full article here. © 2020 NPR

Refugees and humanitarian workers said on Thursday some of the thousands of Rohingya being shipped to a remote island had been coerced, despite government assertions that none would be forced to go. Two Rohingya told Reuters their names appeared on lists compiled by government-appointed local leaders without their consent, while aid workers said officials used threats and enticements to pressure people into going. Some refugees named as willing to go to the island were in hiding on Thursday, amid a heavy security presence at the sprawling camps. Mohammad Shamsud Douza, the deputy Bangladesh government official in charge of refugees, said the relocation was voluntary. “They are going there happily. No one is forced. The government has taken all measures to deal with disasters, including their comfortable living and livelihood.” Police escorted the first group of 1,000 refugees in buses from Ukhiya in Cox’s Bazar for the journey to Chittagong port and then on to Bhasan Char – a flood-prone Bay of Bengal island that emerged from the sea 20 years ago. “They have taken us here forcefully,” a 31-year-old man told Reuters tearfully by phone as he boarded a bus. “Three days ago, when I heard that my family is on the list, I ran away from the block, but yesterday I was caught and taken here,” he said. An 18-year-old woman said her husband had put their names on the list thinking it was for food rations. He fled when they were told to go to Bhasan Char, she said, adding that she is also hiding in the camp. She was among more than 730,000 Rohingya who fled Myanmar in 2017 following a military-led crackdown that the United Nations said was executed with genocidal intent. Myanmar denies genocide and says its forces were targeting Rohingya militants who attacked police posts. “We came here to save our lives facing different kinds of troubles and difficulties,” she said. “Why would we go to that risky island?” ‘STATE OF PANIC’ Bangladesh says moving refugees who agree to go to the island will ease chronic overcrowding in its camps, which are home to more than 1 million Rohingya, members of a Muslim minority who have fled neighboring Myanmar. A Bangladesh naval official said the first 1,500 refugees would on Friday morning leaving from the port to cross to the island. The journey takes several hours. Human Rights Watch said it had interviewed 12 families whose names were on the lists but had not volunteered to go, while Refugees International said the move was “nothing short of a dangerous mass detention of the Rohingya people in violation of international human rights obligations”. Two aid workers, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said refugees had come under pressure from government officials who used threats and offers of cash and other enticements to persuade them to go to the island. A briefing note by a humanitarian organization, seen by Reuters, said refugees were promised to be given priority to go back to Myanmar when repatriation took place, priority to be resettled in third countries, and access to education. “We’re deeply concerned about how this is unfolding, particularly in terms of continuity of care for some of our patients,” one of the aid workers said. The worker cited a case of a refugee with a mental health condition in a “state of panic” after being told he had to move and his concerns over where he would get his medication on the island. A senior foreign ministry official, who asked not to be named because he was not authorized to speak to the media, said the refugees were being moved because there was little prospect of repatriating them to Myanmar. The United Nations said in a statement it had been given “limited information” about the relocations and was not involved in preparations. More than 300 refugees were brought to the island earlier this year after several months at sea in an attempt to flee Bangladesh. Rights groups say they are being held against their will and have complained of human rights violations. See the full article here. Reuters © 2020

Former detainees claim that the forcible feeding of pork is most rampant in re-education camps and detention centers. It has been more than two years since Sayragul Sautbay was released from a re-education camp in China’s westernmost region of Xinjiang. Yet the mother of two still suffers from nightmares and flashbacks from the “humiliation and violence” she endured while she was detained. Sautbay, a medical doctor and educator who now lives in Sweden, recently published a book in which she detailed her ordeal, including witnessing beatings, alleged sexual abuse, and forced sterilisation. In a recent interview with Al Jazeera, she shed more light on other indignities to which the Uighurs and other Muslim minorities were subjected, including the consumption of pork, a meat that is strictly prohibited in Islam. “Every Friday, we were forced to eat pork meat,” Sautbay said. “They have intentionally chosen a day that is holy for the Muslims. And if you reject it, you would get a harsh punishment.” She added that the policy was designed to inflict shame and guilt on the Muslim detainees and that it was “difficult to explain in words” the emotions she had every time she ate the meat. “I was feeling like I was a different person. All around me got dark. It was really difficult to accept,” she said. Testimonies from Sautbay and others provide an indication of how China has sought to crack down in Xinjiang by taking aim at the cultural and religious beliefs of the mostly Muslim ethnic minority, implementing widespread surveillance and – from about 2017 – opening a network of camps it has justified as necessary to counter “extremism”. But documents made available to Al Jazeera show that agricultural development has also become part of what German anthropologist and Uighur scholar, Adrian Zenz, says is a policy of “secularisation”. According to Zenz, the documents and state-approved news articles support talk within Uighur communities that there is an “active” effort to promote and expand pig farming in the region. In November 2019, Xinjiang’s top administrator, Shohrat Zakir, that the autonomous region would be turned into a “pig-raising hub”; a move that Uighurs say is an affront to their way of life. One news article published in May that Zenz recorded describes a new farm in the southern Kashgar area, which aims to produce 40,000 pigs every year. The project is expected to occupy a 25,000-square-metre (82-square-foot) area in an industrial park in Kashgar’s Konaxahar county, renamed Shufu, according to the Chinese-language website, Sina. The deal was formally signed on April 23 this year, the first day of Ramadan, the Muslim fasting month, and states that the pig farming is not meant for export purposes, but instead “to ensure the supply of pork” in Kashgar. The Uighurs make up 90 percent of the population in the city and the surrounding area. “This is part of the attempt to completely eradicate the culture and religion of the people in Xinjiang,” Zenz told Al Jazeera. “It is part of the strategy of secularisation, of turning the Uighurs secular and indoctrinating them to follow the communist party and become agnostic or atheist,” he added. ‘Three evils’ Beijing has defended its policies in the region, saying the approach is needed to fight the “three evils of extremism, separatism, and terrorism”, following deadly riots in the regional capital Urumqi in 2009. It has denied the existence of the re-education camps in which the United Nations has said more than one million people have been held, instead saying it operates vocational centres that allow it to “retrain” the Uighur population and teach them new skills. Like Sautbay, Uighur businesswoman Zumret Dawut has first-hand experience of detention. She was picked up in March 2018 in Urumqi, the city where she was born. For two months, Dawut said authorities demanded explanations about her links to Pakistan, her husband’s homeland. They questioned her as well about how many children she had, and whether or not they had studied religion and read the Quran. She says she was humiliated repeatedly and on one occasion was slapped in the face with a rolled paper after displeasing her interrogator. Another time, she had to beg the camp’s male officers to allow her to go to the restroom, only for them to leave her handcuffed and watch her the whole time she was in the toilet. She too says she was served pork repeatedly. “When you sit in a concentration camp, you do not decide whether to eat, or not to eat. To be alive, we had to eat the meat served to us,” she told Al Jazeera through an interpreter. Yet those experiences could not have prepared her for what would happen next. She and several other female detainees were sterilised to prevent them from having more children. The controversy was reported earlier this year by the Associated Press news agency, drawing widespread condemnation. Starting them young Sautbay, who was from the town of Ili, ended up in another camp after authorities learned that her husband and their two children had left for neighbouring Kazakhstan in early 2016. She had originally planned to join them but by then authorities had confiscated her passport and that of other civil servants. Because of her medical background and experience in running preschools, Sautbay was assigned to teach her fellow detainees the Chinese language, allowing her to closely observe what was happening to the Uighurs. She says the practice of making Muslims eat pork went beyond the detention camps. In one school in Altay, a city in northern Xinjiang, students were also forced to eat the meat and when many refused and demonstrated against their school administrators, the government sent in soldiers to intervene, Sautbay said. The Xinjiang government also started an initiative called “free food” for Muslim children in kindergarten, serving them pork dishes without their knowledge, she added. The idea was that by starting them young, the Muslim children would acquire a taste for non-halal food. “China is using and will use different tactics to force Uighurs and other Muslim population to eat pork,” Sautbay said. Last year, the Italy-based AsiaNews alleged that during the Chinese Lunar New Year, which happened to be the “Year of the Pig”, government officials reportedly delivered pork directly to Muslim households in Ili, and insisted that Uighurs decorate their homes for the festive season. Arslan Hidayat, a Turkey-based Uighur rights activist and secretary-general of the Uyghur Revival Association, told Al Jazeera that whether it is breeding pigs, or eating pork and drinking alcohol, the Chinese government is attempting to “normalise” prohibited practices for Muslims in Xinjiang. In 2018, as part of official state policy, the Xinjiang government also announced that all halal restaurants in the region would be required to “operate normally” during Ramadan, in contrast to previous years when those same establishments were closed during the month-long ritual of fasting. According to the Xinjiang government website, which published the memorandum containing the provision on Muslim food establishments, the directive was meant to ensure “normal life order during Ramadan.” But Zenz believes the directive meant the government wanted to make sure “Uighurs eat and don’t fast” during the day. He also shared two other official documents, written in the Chinese language, which showed the government in Kashgar allotting money for food for their mostly Muslim Uighur staff during Ramadan. Taken together, this constitutes a pattern of the Chinese government carrying out a “war against halal”, Zenz noted referring to the term used in Islam to describe acceptable food and other daily practices. In 2018, the Reuters news agency also reported on an “anti-halal campaign” in Urumqi “to stop Islam penetrating secular life and fuelling ‘extremism'”. ‘Radicalised’ Speaking to Al Jazeera about China’s overall policy towards Uighurs, Einar Tangen, a China affairs expert based in Beijing, said that the Chinese government “feels strongly” that many of Xinjiang’s residents have been “radicalised” in recent years. In Beijing’s view, the only way to address the situation in Xinjiang is to give residents “the education that they should have gotten when they were younger.” Thus the “training camps”. “This is what they [government] say, and they are moving people through this education camps. They teach them skills, language, history, and that’s their way of dealing with it.” But the activist Hidayat notes that even non-observant Uighurs, many of them government employees who had tried to adopt a lifestyle similar to the Han Chinese, had not escaped punishment. They too were sent to the camps, by virtue of their racial identity alone, he said. Tangen, however, pointed out that the economic situation in Xinjiang had “improved dramatically over the years” and people there were better off. “People live longer. They have better opportunities,” Tangen noted. “So there is always this tension between what the West says is your human rights, to speak freely, do what you want, and the idea that without economic opportunity and food on the table, rights don’t mean a lot.” With regards to the specific allegations of forcing Muslims to eat pork, Tangen said that he did not know whether the information was “factual”, but if it was taking place it was not the result of “central government policy.” The documents seen by Al Jazeera are among a cache that also detailed the alleged sterilisation programme reported by AP. “I am sure that there are things that are happening that should not be happening. But unless I have some of the facts, it is impossible” to determine the veracity of the allegations, Tangen said. In a huge bureaucracy like that of China, there may be “some people” who might commit abuses, he said. “The key is to find these people and punish them.” The Chinese government has had little to say about the issue, although various state-controlled publications questioned the credibility of both Sautbay and Dawut when they made allegations of other abuses in Xinjiang. Beijing has also accused Zenz, the German anthropologist, of “fabricating facts and falsifying data” and pointed to his links to “right-wing” factions of the US government. China observers also raised questions about his “sudden expertise” on Xinjiang and the Uighurs. Al Jazeera has sought an official response from China’s foreign ministry but has yet to receive a reply. It has also requested comment from the Institute for Human Rights at China University of Political Science and Law, but it had yet to respond at the time of publication. Dawut, the Uighur businesswoman now living in exile in the US, says she stands by her story of what happened to her inside the camps. Meanwhile, Sautbay, the Kazakh medical doctor, said that by sharing her ordeal, she hoped to be a voice for those who remain in captivity. “The days I have spent in the concentration camp will not be erased from my memory, and I have to live with it my entire life,” she said. Access the full story and videos here. Al Jazeera © 2020

The Armenian Weekly December 2, 2020 Editor’s Note: The Armenian Weekly received the following op-ed from Dr. Gregory Stanton regarding Dr. Henry Theriault’s open letter to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) published on November 4. Since Dr. Stanton addresses portions of the letter that have already been published online and in print, we are only including his rebuttal comments here. Without the required vetting by the IAGS listserv moderator, Henry Theriault misused his position as IAGS president to directly post on the IAGS listserv an attack on Genocide Watch, on our Ten Stages of Genocide model, and ad hominem on its founding president. Genocide Watch does not have the time to write an article to refute all of Theriault’s baseless allegations about Genocide Watch, our country report on Armenia, or the Ten Stages of Genocide model we have used successfully to predict genocides for over 20 years. Instead, Genocide Watch offers the following comments on Theriault’s letter and the errors in it. The Genocide Watch country report on Armenia, released on October 31, makes no assertion that Armenians are about to commit genocide against Azeris. Genocide Watch did not say that Armenians are about to commit genocide against Azeris and does not believe this. Genocide Watch challenges Henry Theriault to find any sentence in our Armenia country report that asserts that ”Armenians are about to commit genocide against Azeris.” Apparently Theriault is unfamiliar with the difference between our genocide warnings about specific current threats and our country reports which include the historical context of human rights situations in the country analyzed. Theriault's statement: “most striking feature of the second ‘warning’ is that it closely follows the official manipulated Azerbaijani narrative of history with Armenians” is also false. Genocide Watch rejects the propaganda from Azerbaijan that Nagorno-Karabakh (Artsakh) is still part of Azerbaijan. Genocide Watch did not accept any Azeri propaganda, and we also included the historical context in both our genocide alert on Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh and in our country report on Armenia. In fact, the historical context in our Armenia country report which Theriault denies is the expulsion of Azeris from Armenia and Artsakh. That is a historical fact. Genocide Watch didn’t accept any Azeri propaganda to determine it. Genocide Watch would gladly compare Genocide Watch’s website with any other website on genocide in the world, including the website of the IAGS, initiated by the Genocide Watch's founding president in 2007. Contrary to assertions in Theriault's letter, Genocide Watch shares and vets its warnings quite carefully with members of our distinguished board of advisers, with specialists on the countries we monitor and with other member organizations of the Alliance against Genocide. Additionally, the country report on Armenia doesn’t “parrot” propaganda from Azerbaijan or from any other source. Theriault states, “a ‘warning’ from ‘Genocide Watch’ based on an unscientific process is meaningless. The facts of the risk of genocide by Azerbaijan and Turkey are rather clear; a ‘warning’ from ‘Genocide Watch’ adds no weight or legitimacy to those facts, but simply summarizes a body of evidence that is already clear and stands on its own.” Actually, many policy makers take our warnings seriously. Just days after Genocide Watch issued its Alert, the British Parliament specifically noted our Genocide Emergency Alert on Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh. Genocide Watch hereby challenges Theriault to send the chapter he mentions critiquing the “10 Stages Approach” to Genocide Watch before it is published so Genocide Watch can write a rejoinder to be included in Jim Cox’s forthcoming volume. In his letter, Theriault misrepresents the Ten Stages model. The stages are processes. They are not linear or teleological or consistent. Many stages occur simultaneously. The reason the model is useful is that it identifies processes that may lead to genocide, and it shows that there is a logic to the processes because they reinforce each other. We do not claim that these are the only processes (stages) that contribute to genocide. Indeed, in 2012, Genocide Watch added two stages to its Eight Stage model. Genocide Watch does not believe that the Ten Stages of Genocide were handed down on a stone tablet on Mount Sinai. Theriault has never discussed the Ten Stage model with us or with anyone else from Genocide Watch before he presumes to “critique” it. Elisa Forgey, for one, could explain the model to Theriault, or the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, which uses the Ten Stage model as the structure for comparing genocides in its permanent exhibit. Genocide Watch also uses other models such as Barbara Harff’s and the Minority Rights Group’s. The Ten Stage model says in its opening paragraph that it is not a linear model. Theriault portrays it as a linear model that can only apply to past genocides. In fact, it is merely a logical model of ten of the processes that may result in genocide. The model has proven useful in comparing genocides for many scholars and teachers, and it is one of the most powerful models yet discovered for noting processes that have been proven to contribute to genocide. Contrary to comments in Theriault’s letter, the model is most useful for noting events in a country or situation that are danger signs of possible genocide. The model is oriented toward the future, not the past. No one claims that the model is causal. And it certainly isn’t magical. Theriault reveals his mistaken view that the Ten Stages model is linear and must occur in order and totally misses the purpose of the model, which is to look forward, and to indicate warning signs of processes that contribute to genocide. Stating that the “‘10 stages’ approach is completely unscientific,” Theriault demonstrates his inadequate view of the scientific method. He echoes political scientists who think the model is “unscientific” because it is not based on statistical analysis. In fact, it is as scientific as models of the processes of photosynthesis or of the double helix, which are also not based on statistical analysis. The Ten Stages of Genocide is a social scientific model. The genocidal processes are structured systems of social and cultural transformations. Theriault expresses the tautological reasoning of an academic philosopher, rather than the inferential reasoning used by social scientists, lawyers, and other students of human social processes who deal with probabilities and factors that increase the likelihood of events, rather than their certainty. Genocide Watch challenges Theriault to invent a better model for describing the processes that contribute to genocide. Contrary to what is stated in Theriault's open letter, in fact, the model is not teleological or linear, as the Ten Stages of Genocide model says in its very first paragraph. In addition, the Ten Stages model does not attempt to account for all of human behavior or force events into the model. Rather the model describes processes that have been shown to contribute to genocides and that may be early warning signs of genocide in the future. It is event based, not reductive. The Ten Stages model never claims that polarization or any other stage is genocide. It simply shows that polarization is a process that may contribute to genocide. Genocide Watch fully understands the difference between the processes that may lead to genocide and the legal concept of genocide itself. As an international lawyer who has helped to establish several international tribunals to try the accused based on the Genocide Convention, Dr. Stanton has learned that prosecution nearly always comes after a genocide ends. The Ten Stage model is designed to note social events that may contribute to and be predictive of future genocide. No single event “determines that an event is genocide.” Genocide is the culmination of many events. Genocide is defined by the acts and the intentions of the perpetrators. The Ten Stages are only contributing processes. They are not causal. They cannot result in “false positives” – another philosopher’s red herring. The presence of one or several of the stages does not mean that a genocide is occurring or is inevitable. It only means that public policy makers should take steps to counter the processes, or risk ignoring early warning signs that have led to genocide in the past and that may lead to another genocide in the future. Again, Genocide Watch did not say that Armenians are likely to commit genocide. Theriault’s straw man for his attack on Genocide Watch and its Ten Stage model is imagined from his misrepresentation of Genocide Watch’s country report on Armenia, and from his misrepresentation of the Ten Stages of Genocide model. Genocide Watch knows the difference between genocides and non-genocides. The Ten Stage model has proven to be a powerful predictive model. It has made Genocide Watch nearly always the first human rights NGO to predict and warn about impending genocide. Genocide Watch is often years ahead of other NGOs in warning of genocide. In fact, Dr. Stanton famously predicted and warned the president of Rwanda in 1989 that genocide would occur there within five years. Genocide Watch is also nearly always the first human rights organization to declare that a genocide is underway, as in the case of Darfur in 2004, the Rohingya in 2012 and ISIS in 2014. Genocide Watch and several other members of the Alliance against Genocide (which was founded and is chaired by Genocide Watch) currently warn that genocide is being committed by Fulani jihadists in Nigeria. Most governments and human rights organizations are still in denial and refuse to call the massacres of Christians in Nigeria genocide. In contrast, Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum are always too late to declare that genocide is underway. They usually avoid even using the word genocide until the genocide is over. The Ten Stage model has proven to be useful not just to “high school students and diplomats without significant knowledge” as Theriault sarcastically charges, but to thousands of professors and scholars who write and teach about genocide. It is the most widely used model in publications about processes that contribute to genocide. It is one of the most widely used models in the World Bank, the UN, the US government, and by risk prediction organizations. Genocide Watch is always striving to improve the Ten Stage model. If Theriault can come up with a better model for warning about genocide, we would welcome it and use it. In his open letter, Theriault ignores what Elihu Richter and others call “the precautionary principle,” which holds that when warning signs of a catastrophe are compelling, preventive action must be taken, and the burden of proof that the catastrophe will not occur shifts to the deniers that it will occur. This is the basic principle of epidemiology to prevent pandemics. It is also the principle underlying measures to prevent global warming. The same principle should be applied to genocide prevention. Otherwise, preventive action will always come too late. The problems with the Ten Stages model that Theriault alleges exist solely in the imagination of Henry Theriault. In fact, they don’t exist. Genocide Watch has never claimed that the model is finished or perfect. Theriault finally descends to ad hominem attack: “I would like to believe in the good intentions of him and others involved with ‘Genocide Watch.’ But whether their intentions are good or not is beside the point. In the present case, the presumptuousness and unconcern for the real consequences of issuing such laxly conceived and carelessly tested ‘warnings’ will not be paid by them, in their comfortable lives, but by the thousands of 18, 20 and even 50-year-old ‘soldiers’ as well as the civilians on both sides who are likely to die in the coming weeks and months.” The ad hominem arrogance and hypocrisy of this personal attack by Theriault is not worthy of rebuttal. Theriault earns a six figure salary as an academic bureaucrat. Not a single person has ever made a penny from working for Genocide Watch. Our goal in life is not to maintain our “comfortable lives.” Genocide Watch has spent a total of $100,000 over 20 years—$5 thousand dollars per year. All of the staff of Genocide Watch are volunteers. At Genocide Watch we will continue to do what we can with our imperfect model of the genocidal process to prevent the deaths of the thousands who die every year from genocide, including the people in Armenia and Artsakh. Theriault has simply not proven the invalidity of Genocide Watch’s Genocide Emergency Alert on Azerbaijan’s invasion of Artsakh, or of Genocide Watch’s country report on Armenia and Artsakh, or of Genocide Watch’s Ten Stages of Genocide. He most certainly hasn’t proven that the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS) has done more than Genocide Watch to prevent genocide. Genocide Watch is respected by many policy makers, scholars, teachers, students, journalists, and concerned citizens around the world. Our work is part of the curriculum in hundreds of schools and universities. Our work reflects the scholarship and research of hundreds of experts around the world. We have not only helped to create international tribunals. We have played an active role in preventing a number of potential genocides: East Timor, Kosovo, Macedonia, Côte d’Ivoire, Ethiopia under Meles; it’s a rather long list. And we are still working to prevent genocides in many other countries. Since Theriault refers to the International Association of Genocide Scholars (IAGS), perhaps he should be reminded that following in the footsteps of the IAGS founders—Israel Charny, Helen Fein, Robert Melson and Roger Smith—Genocide Watch's Founding President Gregory Stanton was elected IAGS First Vice President 2005 - 2007, and President 2007 - 2009. He was instrumental in incorporating the IAGS, getting it non-profit status, making its finances honest and accountable, writing its bylaws, founding its journal, founding the IAGS website and listserv, and organizing the first IAGS Biennial Meeting held in Bosnia—a country that had recently lived through a genocide. It’s not a bad record for Genocide Watch to have had a hand in organizing the IAGS. Genocide Watch hopes new leadership will return the IAGS to its broad original inclusion of policymakers, journalists, academics, teachers, artists, lawyers and activists. Dr. Gregory H. Stanton is the founding president of Genocide Watch. He was Professor of Genocide Studies at George Mason University and James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at University of Mary Washington. https://armenianweekly.com/2020/12/02/a-rebuttal-to-theriaults-open-letter-regarding-genocide-watch/

UAE flag with Dubai skyline © 2019 Getty Images (Washington) – The United States should halt proposed weapons sales to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Human Rights Watch said today. It should suspend all future sales until the UAE curtails unlawful airstrikes in Yemen and Libya, halts support and weapons transfers to abusive local forces, and credibly investigates previous alleged violations in both countries. On November 10, 2020, the US State Department formally notified the US Congress of the administration’s intent to sell the UAE US$23.37 billion in weapons, including F-35 fighter jets, unmanned aerial vehicles, as well as air-to-air and air-to-ground munitions. It cited the UAE’s need to defend itself from Iran as well as the UAE’s diplomatic agreement to normalize relations with Israel. “In continuing to sell weapons to the UAE, US authorities are ignoring pervasive evidence of airstrikes and other attacks by the Saudi and UAE-led coalition in Yemen that unlawfully killed civilians,” said Sarah Holewinski, Washington director at Human Rights Watch. “US officials’ desire to reward the UAE for recognizing Israel should not entail complicity in unlawful deaths in Libya and Yemen.” Given extensive documentation of the UAE’s repeated and ongoing unlawful attacks in Yemen and Libya and its direct support for abusive local forces in both countries, US State Department officials risk complicity if they approve the supply of arms that are then used in the commission of war crimes, Human Rights Watch said. On November 18, three US senators introduced resolutions of disapproval to block the proposed sales. Since March 26, 2015, the UAE has played a prominent role in a coalition of countries that has conducted military operations in Yemen, including committing over 30 fighter jets to carry out airstrikes and naval ships to enforce the coalition’s maritime blockade. Since the start of the conflict, Human Rights Watch has documented at least 90 apparently unlawful coalition airstrikes, which have hit homes, markets, hospitals, schools, mosques, and detention centers. Some of the attacks may amount to war crimes. The Yemen Data Project, which compiles information on air strikes and other attacks based on open-source information, estimates that the Saudi and UAE-led coalition has conducted more than 22,180 airstrikes on Yemen since the war began, an average of over 10 attacks per day. In a September 2020 report on the human rights situation in Yemen, the UN Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen identified senior UAE military officials in its “mapping of main actors” alongside military officials from Saudi Arabia, the Yemeni Government, the Houthis, and armed groups in the south and along the western coast that are directly supported by the UAE. In 2018, the coalition bombed a wedding, killing 22 people, including eight children, and in another strike bombed a bus filled with children, killing at least 26 children. Human Rights Watch has identified remnants of US-origin munitions at the site of more than two dozen attacks, including the 2018 attacks on the wedding and the bus. In 2017 and 2018, the UAE led coalition operations to retake areas on the western coast, including Hodeida. Despite removing its ground forces from southern Yemen in late 2019, the UAE continues to support abusive local forces that have arbitrarily detained, forcibly disappeared, tortured, and abused dozens of people during security operations, including by transferring weapons to these forces. According to the Group of Experts, despite the withdrawal of ground forces, the UAE has “continued its air operations, and some 90,000 United Arab Emirates-backed Yemeni fighters remain on the ground in Yemen.” In 2019, CNN reported that US-made weapons sold to the UAE were later transferred to abusive local forces, including a half dozen MRAP all-terrain vehicles manufactured in Texas transferred to the “Giants Brigade,” an abusive local militia allied with UAE-backed forces fighting on the west coast of Yemen. The UAE is also a party to the ongoing conflict in Libya. It has conducted airstrikes and drone strikes, established a forward operating base there, and has provided direct support to the armed group known as Libyan Arab Armed Forces (LAAF, formerly the Libyan National Army), led by Khalifa Hiftar, including transfers of weapons, ammunition, armored vehicles, and other military equipment. In April, Human Rights Watch identified an apparently unlawful drone attack carried out directly by the UAE that hit the Al-Sunbulah biscuit factory in Wadi al-Rabie on November 18, 2019, killing eight civilians and wounding 27. In July 2019, an apparently unlawful air strike by the UAE on a detention center for migrants under the control of the Government of National Accord’s Interior Ministry killed over 53 people, mostly African migrants. The UN Panel of Experts on Libya has found in multiple reports, and most recently in a December 2019 report, that the UAE “routinely and sometimes blatantly supplied weapons” to the abusive armed group LAAF in violation of a two-way UN arms embargo on parties involved in the Libya conflict. The UAE weapons transfers to the Hiftar forces identified by the Panel of Experts include an offshore patrol vessel, armored personnel carriers, high explosive laser-homing projectile rounds, air defense systems, and drones. The panel found that the UAE conducts drone strikes in Libya on behalf of the LAAF which have killed civilians and did not respect the principle of proportionality under international humanitarian law. Human Rights Watch has repeatedly documented violations by the LAAF, including summary executions, enforced disappearance, torture, desecration of corpses of opposing fighters in eastern Libya between 2014-2018 and more recently during the battle for Tripoli in May, as well as unlawful airstrikes, including an apparently unlawful airstrike on a residential neighborhood of Tripoli in October 2019 that killed civilians. Human Rights Watch has also documented use of internationally banned cluster bombs and antipersonnel landmines and booby traps by LAAF fighters and affiliated foreign forces in the southern districts of Tripoli during the latest Tripoli conflict. Despite evidence of unlawful attacks and support for abusive local forces, the United Arab Emirates has not announced any investigations into specific attacks or held military officials accountable. In August 2016, the Saudi and UAE-led coalition announced the first results of the coalition’s recently created investigative mechanism, the Joint Incidents Assessment Team (JIAT), which has a mandate to investigate the facts, collect evidence, and produce reports and recommendations on “claims and accidents” during coalition operations in Yemen. In 2018, however, Human Rights Watch showed that the JIAT has failed even in its limited mandate to assess “claims and accidents” during coalition military operations, providing deeply flawed laws-of-war analyses and reaching dubious conclusions. The JIAT only evaluates airstrikes and has not investigated abuses by local forces supported by the coalition. The European Parliament has passed resolutions calling for EU countries to adopt an arms embargo against Saudi Arabia. In 2018, the EU expanded this call to include other parties to conflict in Yemen, including the UAE. “How many more UAE airstrikes using US weapons need to wreak havoc on civilians before the US says no more?” Holewinski said. © 2020 Human Rights Watch

“Meo Soknen, 13, stood inside a small shrine full of human bones and skulls, all victims of the Khmer Rouge … in Kandal Province, Cambodia.” Heng Sinith/Associated Press (2009)