Local officials say at least 19 people killed in the eastern part of country in two separate attacks by ADF fighters. At least 19 civilians have been killed in the restive eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo at the weekend in attacks blamed on a notorious armed group, local officials said. Nine people were kidnapped on Friday by the Allied Democratic Forces (ADF), and their bodies were found in the province of North Kivu, which borders Rwanda, regional administrator Donat Kibwana said on Sunday, adding that their burials were under way. In the neighbouring Ituri region, ADF fighters attacked the village of Bukaka late on Saturday and killed 10 civilians, local official Bananilao Tchabi told AFP news agency. Civil society leader Raphael Bon Benogo said the victims were five men, three women and two children. "Some were killed with machetes and others with firearms," he said. The ADF has been blamed for killing about 500 people since last year in retaliation for an army crackdown on their bases in the forests around the Beni region. In another incident on Saturday in Fizi, in South Kivu province, gunmen from a "coalition of armed groups" attacked an army unit, killing two soldiers, a local army spokesman said. Dozens of armed groups operate in eastern DRC, a legacy of the two Congo wars in the 1990s that pulled in neighbouring Uganda and Rwanda. The army last year launched a campaign against the ADF after the group was blamed for dozens of attacks in the region, which also struggles with inter-ethnic fighting. The ADF originated in neighbouring Uganda in the 1990s, opposed to the rule of long-serving Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. In 1995, it moved into the DRC, which became its base of operations, although it has not carried out attacks inside Uganda for years. © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network

A ten-count indictment has been filed against Kosovo's President Hashim Thaci charging him with crimes allegedly committed in the independence war of the late-1990s, including murder and torture. The Hague-based Specialist Prosecutor’s Office, SPO, according to a press statement on Wednesday, has filed a ten-count indictment with the Kosovo Specialist Chambers, KSC, charging Kosovo President Hashim Thaci, the Kosovo politician Kadri Veseli, and others with a range of crimes against humanity and war crimes, including murder, enforced disappearance of persons, persecution, and torture. “The indictment alleges that Hashim Thaci, Kadri Veseli, and the other charged suspects are criminally responsible for nearly 100 murders. The crimes alleged in the indictment involve hundreds of known victims of Kosovo Albanian, Serb, Roma, and other ethnicities and include political opponents,” the press release said. A Specialist Chambers Pre-Trial Judge is currently reviewing the indictment to decide on whether to confirm the charges. According to the press release, the Specialist Prosecutor deemed it necessary to issue this public notice because of repeated efforts by Thaci and Veseli to obstruct and undermine the work of the KSC. “Mr Thaci and Mr Veseli are believed to have carried out a secret campaign to overturn the law creating the Court and otherwise obstruct the work of the Court in an attempt to ensure that they do not face justice. “By taking these actions, Mr Thaci and Mr Veseli have put their personal interests ahead of the victims of their crimes, the rule of law, and all people of Kosovo,” the statement reads. Over the past year, more than 100 people, mostly former members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, have been summoned for questioning by the Specialist Prosecution as suspects or witnesses in relation to crimes allegedly committed during Kosovo’s war of independence from Serbia between January 1, 1998 and December 31, 1999 in Kosovo. Those questioned included former KLA guerrilla fighters who have become high-profile politicians, such as Ramush Haradinaj, who resigned as prime minister of Kosovo after being summoned. The Specialist Chambers will hear cases arising from an EU task force report which said that unnamed KLA officials could face indictments for a “campaign of persecution” against Serbs, Roma and Kosovo Albanians during the war. The alleged crimes include killings, abductions, illegal detentions and sexual violence. The report was commissioned after the Council of Europe published an inquiry in 2011, which alleged that some senior Kosovo officials, including Thaci, were responsible for various human rights abuses. Thaci has strongly denied the allegations. The negotiations to establish the court lasted from 2011 until 2015. International judges and prosecutors staff the new court, although it operates under Kosovo’s laws. Since the Kosovo war ended, the international community has been overseeing the justice system in Kosovo whose results in prosecuting war crimes have been poor – fewer than 20 final verdicts in war crimes cases. It was believed that the Kosovo prosecution couldn’t handle the political pressure in sensitive cases concerning senior officials, which was one reason why the international community decided to establish the new court. Copyright BIRN 2015

Market day was in full swing when soldiers sped into the northern town of Taouremba, firing in the air, as their drone buzzed overhead. They herded the men into the central marketplace, residents said, letting the women run home. A soldier began reading names from a tablet computer, and those who were called forward were told to strip, then tied up with their own clothes and thrown into a pickup truck. When some men tried to hide in the crowd, two informants in hoods and veils pointed them out. One man was shot on the spot. Later, according to accounts from witnesses and human rights advocates, the bodies of the 13 abducted villagers were dumped just outside of town. Over the past four years, Burkina Faso has fallen into chaos, with gunmen robbing, killing and threatening some of the poorest citizens in this landlocked West African nation, and causing 850,000 to flee their homes. Some of the gunmen are terrorists, loosely allied with the Islamic State or Al Qaeda. Some are bandits. Some are vigilantes. It is seldom spoken of, and the government denies it, but some are soldiers in Burkina Faso’s armed forces. In the name of ridding their country of Islamist extremists and bandits, government security forces are now killing about as many people as jihadists do, according to interviews with human rights campaigners and a security analyst. At least 2,000 people are thought to have been killed in Burkina Faso in the last 18 months, though such counts are woefully incomplete, partly because the government passed a law prohibiting journalists from reporting on anything that could “demoralize” defense forces. I went to Burkina Faso with a photographer in March and drove to the far north, where violence was still occurring, to reach refugee camps and vigilante outposts. I was looking for the victims of military abuses, seeking to document both recent attacks and those from as far back as 2018 — like the one on market day in Taouremba. Across the Sahel — a vast stretch of land just south of the Sahara — military violence against civilians has surged in recent months, according to new reports by international security and human rights groups. Soldiers in Mali and Niger, countries to Burkina Faso’s north, are also carrying out targeted killings, a recent United Nations report shows. Such abuses are strengthening the hand of militants who portray themselves as defenders of the people, enabling them to expand their influence even further across the Sahel, where French and American forces have been struggling for years to help African troops defeat the insurgents. The soldiers’ attacks have shocked the people of Burkina Faso, renowned throughout West Africa for their kindness and hospitality. When the country’s revered revolutionary leader Thomas Sankara abandoned its colonial name, Upper Volta, 35 years ago, he chose a new name to live up to. Burkina Faso, a country of 20 million people about the size of Colorado, means the Land of Upright Men, and many residents try to embody that spirit. A few years ago, which religion or ethnic group a person belonged to mattered little. It was even odd if someone asked. Mossis — Burkina Faso’s majority ethnic group — married Fulanis all the time. The last name Dicko — a Fulani name common in the north — wasn’t something that could get its bearer killed. In much of the country, that has changed. Just before the soldiers zipped out of Taouremba on motorbikes and in pickups bearing their bound captives, in the October 2018 attack, the soldiers were heard accusing the Fulani villagers of wanting to chase all the Mossi out of the region. “We’re going to kill all of you,” one resident said he heard a soldier say. Like all the victims of military abuses interviewed for this story, the resident asked for anonymity, terrified that the state would find him and exact revenge. Their accounts were confirmed in interviews with other villagers and human rights researchers. Although they only make up about 8 percent of the national population, the Fulani, traditionally nomadic herders, are in the majority in Burkina Faso’s northern region, the epicenter of the violence. The village of Taouremba lies in this area. The current government came to power after an uprising brought President Blaise Compaoré’s 27-year rule to an abrupt end in 2014. Led by Roch Kaboré, once prime minister under Mr. Compaoré, the government is dominated by the Mossi. Over the years, Fulanis have had little political power in Burkina Faso. Their communities have felt neglected by successive governments. When an Islamic preacher harnessed Fulani anger over a decade ago, railing against the government on local radio, a movement was born. It was called Ansaroul Islam, which means Defenders of Islam, but locals say social grievances were as important as religion. International terrorist groups trying to expand their influence from Mali into neighboring Burkina Faso found young Fulani men easy to recruit. Attacks by government forces on villages like Taouremba have eroded any loyalty left. “I always respected the government — I was even proud of it,” said a herdsman and subsistence farmer from Taouremba. “But now I hate hearing that word.” He said he escaped the soldiers by lying down and hiding in a millet field, but when they had gone, he had to go find his friends’ bodies. He agreed to be interviewed only at night. “The government is traumatizing people,” he said. “It’s what pushes people to sign up to the armed groups.” He and other villagers said they had no idea why they were attacked. But they knew very well who was responsible: soldiers. That day, people near a military base 20 miles away saw the military’s distinctive gray pickups leave in a convoy in the direction of Taouremba. They telephoned their friends there to warn them. Militants could never have moved in broad daylight like that. “They’re driving in huge convoys in the middle of areas where there is a discernible presence of security forces,” said Corinne Dufka, West Africa director for Human Rights Watch. “The jihadists just can’t do that.” Retaliation is often the military’s motive, researchers said. Insurgents have killed and mutilated soldiers in recent months — so their comrades lash out at villages suspected of harboring or supporting jihadists. But there is no proof that the villagers they kill are collaborators. They get no trials — just summary executions. Several witnesses described seeing bodies surrounding the northern city of Djibo, where reports in April said security forces killed 31 people. Confusion often seems to work in the perpetrators’ favor. Jihadists often exchange their short pants for army combat uniforms. Soldiers sometimes put on turbans and sandals for attacks, their victims said. That way, they fall into the category of what the government, the press and even victims call “unidentified gunmen.” “If they were in prison, we’d have to feed them and give them water, and their friends might come and attack the prison,” he said, reading glasses tucked into his shirt. In his office in the capital, Simon Compaoré, the president of the ruling party, a former secretary of state and mayor of Ouagadougou, said, “I don’t want to hear these people telling me human rights, human rights.” He denied that the military and allied vigilantes were targeting the Fulani, and carrying out what activists have called “political extermination.” “It’s not true. Unfortunately, we have compatriots that are playing a very dangerous game, who make the population believe that the government is against the Fulani,” he said. Some people left Taouremba after the 2018 attack. Others stayed, thinking the soldiers must be satisfied, as all the people whose names they had called had been killed. But in May 2019, soldiers arrived again. This time, they took 33 men. The villagers said they found only 28 of their bodies. Taouremba’s marketplace now sits empty. Nobody lives in its houses. The millet field that the man with the embroidered cap hid in is fallow. Its surviving residents are scattered around the country, in camps or other people’s homes. Some women have walked back a few times, to see what’s left. Only women can take this risk, since they are not usually targeted. Terrified people pour out of the countryside seeking safety. Not many make it to the capital, Ouagadougou, where life continues as if the country weren’t facing its largest displacement crisis ever. The government doesn’t want the newly homeless descending on Ouagadougou. Maintaining the Ouagadougou bubble is a political strategy by the ruling party to avoid alienating voters ahead of November’s election, analysts say. If they walk far enough, displaced people can get to the old Burkina Faso, that country of hospitality and integration. In much of the south, it still exists. Communities hold meetings to discuss how to care for their countrymen fleeing from the north. Village leaders give new arrivals food and farming land. But some of the displaced have been through too many attacks to fathom starting again, including survivors of the Taouremba killings. “I don’t want to belong to this country anymore,” said one man, mourning the friends he had lost. © New York Times (2020)

Attacks targeted towns of Wanlaweyn and Bacadweyn on Saturday and Sunday. At least seven people have died in two separate bomb attacks in Somalia in the last 24 hours, police and military officers said on Sunday. In the first incident, two bombs planted in front of the home of a military official in the town of Wanlaweyn, 90km (56 miles) northwest of the capital Mogadishu, exploded late on Saturday, killing four people, including soldiers and civilians. No group has claimed responsibility. Such attacks are common in Somalia, where armed group al-Shabab has been waging a 12-year campaign to topple the central government. "First we heard a blast at the house. Guards and residents came to find out what caused the blast and then a second blast went off," Mohamed Nur, a police officer, told Reuters news agency from Wanlaweyn on Sunday. In the second incident, three fighters in a car carried out a suicide bomb attack at a military checkpoint in Bacadweyn town in central Somalia's Galmudug state on Sunday. Soldiers shot at the vehicle after orders to stop were ignored. Three soldiers died, and two others were wounded, according to Major Abdullahi Ahmed, a military officer in the nearby town of Galkayo. "We are horrified this morning to witness a suicide car bomb. Government forces are a target, but such attacks will not spare civilians," Hassan Nur, a resident of Bacadweyn, told Reuters. Source: Reuters News Agency / Al Jazeera

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress By Brad Bennett Southern Poverty Law Center O.W. Gurley, a wealthy Black entrepreneur from Arkansas, moved to racially segregated Tulsa, Oklahoma, in 1906 and bought 40 acres of land. On it, he built three, two-story buildings and five homes for Black people who were not allowed to live on the white side of town. Soon, word spread across the country about opportunities for Black people in the segregated section of Tulsa, which Gurley named “Greenwood” after a town in Mississippi. Other prominent Black businesspeople followed suit. J.B. Stradford, who was born into slavery in Kentucky but later became a lawyer and activist, built a 55-room luxury hotel in Greenwood – the largest Black-owned property of its kind in the country at the time. A.J. Smitherman founded the Black-owned Tulsa Star, informing Black people about their legal rights, along with news about court rulings and legislation that could help or harm them. Eventually, Greenwood Avenue was lined with luxury shops, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, jewelry and clothing stores, movie theaters, barbershops and salons. The district, which ultimately came to be known as the “Black Wall Street,” also had a library, pool halls and nightclubs as well as offices for doctors, lawyers and dentists. Black Wall Street was lined with luxury shops, restaurants, grocery stores, hotels, jewelry and clothing stores, movie theaters, barbershops and salons. Working-class Black people were not excluded. Janitors, dishwashers, porters and domestic workers spent the money they made in other parts of Tulsa in the neighborhood. Photo courtesy Greenwood Cultural Center Working-class Black people were not excluded. Janitors, dishwashers, porters and domestic workers spent the money they made in other parts of town in Greenwood. “It is said within Greenwood every dollar would change hands 19 times before it left the community,” Michelle Place, executive director of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, told History.com. But 99 years ago, in one of the worst massacres in American history, all of Greenwood came crumbling down. From May 31 to June 1, 1921, a white mob killed hundreds of Black people, burned down what was then the most affluent Black community in America and left thousands of people homeless. The news that a Trump political rally had been scheduled in Tulsa on June 19, Juneteenth, was a grim reminder of the Tulsa massacre. After widespread outrage, the rally was rescheduled for the next day. The Tulsa massacre was sparked by the false accusation that a Black man had sexually assaulted a white woman. Such allegations are a recurring theme in the mass lynchings of Black people throughout American history, including the Emanuel Nine massacre in Charleston, South Carolina, where five years ago a white supremacist, acting on false information that Black men were raping white women in large numbers, killed nine Black people in a Bible study. ‘Speak out against injustice’ “From Emmett Till’s lynching to the Rosewood massacre to the slaughter of innocent Black people in Tulsa and countless other examples, white supremacists have long used the false accusations of white women against Black men as an excuse to destroy Black lives and bulldoze pillars of Black success,” said Tafeni English, director of the Civil Rights Memorial Center, in Montgomery, Alabama, which honors martyrs of the civil rights movement. “As the country now focuses its attention on the bloodshed in Tulsa nearly 100 years ago, it is in the midst of a new reckoning on racial injustice with the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Sean Reed, Yassin Mohamed, Ahmaud Arbery and Rayshard Brooks,” English said. “Americans must decide once and for all that Black lives truly do matter. We must take direct action to ensure that Black lives are protected. We must all educate ourselves and others about the historic and current oppression against Black Americans in this country, and we must use our collective voices to speak out against injustice whenever and wherever we see it.” According to news reports and historical accounts, this is how the Tulsa massacre unfolded: The success of Black Wall Street created jealousy and anger among some white people in the city, explained Mechelle Brown, director of programs at the Greenwood Cultural Center. Some white people in Tulsa may have said to themselves, “’How dare these negroes have a grand piano in their house, and I don’t have a piano in my house,’” Brown told CNN. The racial tension boiled over following an incident between a white teenager and a Black man. Sarah Page, 17, worked as an elevator operator and Dick Rowland, 19, who reportedly shined shoes in the building, frequently used that elevator. On the morning of May 30, 1921, the elevator doors closed. Inside, Page and Rowland were alone for a short time before there was a scream. When the doors opened, Rowland ran. Later, he was arrested. At first, Page said she was assaulted. But some historic accounts say Rowland tripped on his way out of the elevator, and that he grabbed Page’s arm in the process. She screamed, and someone else in the building contacted the authorities. Black Wall Street set aflame Page never pressed charges, but authorities did. By day’s end, rumors that Page had been raped were quickly spreading across the city. An inflammatory report in the May 31 edition of the white-owned Tulsa Tribune ignited a confrontation between Black and white armed mobs gathered around the courthouse. The group of armed Black people believed Rowland would be lynched without their protection. “A simple accident between a Black shoeshine worker and a white female elevator operator was intentionally misconstrued in a local paper as assault,” writer Caleb Gayle recently wrote for Slate. “White Tulsans took this as just cause to set Black Wall Street aflame.” Rowland’s charges, highly suspect from the beginning, were later dismissed. Nevertheless, the group of armed Black people believed at the time that his safety, their own safety and the safety of their community was in their hands. As the two opposing racially divided groups gathered at the courthouse and the clash worsened, the authorities did not calm or contain the situation. But the sheriff and his men had barricaded the top floor of the courthouse to protect Rowland. Shots were fired. The armed white group greatly outnumbered the armed Black group, which retreated to Greenwood. But early on the morning of June 1, 1921, white rioters entered Greenwood, looting and burning buildings. Early on the morning of June 1, 1921, white rioters entered the affluent Greenwood district – also known as the Black Wall Street – in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where they began looting, burning buildings and even bombing the community from private planes. After 24 hours, the violence ended, leaving 35 city blocks in charred ruins. Photo courtesy Greenwood Cultural Center The white mob stole, damaged or destroyed personal property that Black people – fleeing for their lives – had left behind in their homes and businesses. White people even bombed the community from private planes, and shot Black people down in the streets with machine guns. After the violence began, government officials deputized several white men as agents, and gave them guns and ammunition. These men did not stem the violence, and in many cases, added to it. The rioters deliberately burned or otherwise destroyed over 1,200 homes in Greenwood, as well as virtually every other structure – churches, schools, businesses, a hospital and library included. Although they were greatly outnumbered, Black people fought bravely to protect their homes and businesses, but to no avail. The governor declared martial law and National Guard troops were sent to Tulsa. Guardsmen helped firefighters douse the flames, but also arrested nearly all of Greenwood’s surviving Black residents, taking them to other parts of the city where they were confined in holding centers. After 24 hours, the violence ended, leaving 35 city blocks in charred ruins. More than 800 people were treated for injuries. The death toll initially came in at 36. However, historians believe an estimated 300 people may have died. Greenwood was completely destroyed. Photos of the massacre show lifeless Black bodies lying in the streets, a scene that was recreated in the first episode of HBO’s “Watchmen” series. In the wake of the destruction, white Tulsa officials rejected some outside assistance, but there were also white residents who offered aid to the city’s newly homeless Black population. To provide ongoing support, the American Red Cross remained in Tulsa for months following the massacre. Dick Rowland survived and at some point left town. Little is known about his life after that. Not in the history books The 1921 massacre went largely unacknowledged for decades. “Oklahoma schools did not talk about it. In fact, newspapers didn’t even print any information about the Tulsa Race Riot,” U.S. Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma told CNN affiliate KFOR. “It was completely ignored. It was one of those horrible events that everyone wanted to sweep under the rug and ignore.” But not everyone wanted to ignore it. Some have sought to preserve that awful history. Paul Gardullo, curator of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, spent several years collecting artifacts from the riot and its aftermath. “It was the frustration of poor whites not knowing what to do with a successful Black community, and in coalition with the city government were given permission to do what they did,” Gardullo told the Smithsonian Magazine. Before suffering ruin, Greenwood – or Black Wall Street – was the most affluent Black neighborhood in America. “It is said within Greenwood every dollar would change hands 19 times before it left the community,” Michelle Place, executive director of the Tulsa Historical Society and Museum, told History.com. Photo courtesy Greenwood Cultural Center Buck Colbert Franklin, a Greenwood lawyer and father of the famed Black historian John Hope Franklin, wrote a 10-page manuscript describing his eyewitness account of what happened on May 31, 1921. The manuscript is now part of the museum’s collection in Washington, D.C. Franklin wrote that he left his law office, locked the door, and descended to the foot of the steps after realizing that white people were bombing Greenwood from private planes, according to the magazine. “The side-walks were literally covered with burning turpentine balls,” he wrote. “I knew all too well where they came from, and I knew all too well why every burning building first caught from the top. “I paused and waited for an opportune time to escape,” he wrote. “‘Where oh where is our splendid fire department with its half dozen stations?’ I asked myself. ‘Is the city in conspiracy with the mob?’” ‘A country that never wanted us’ Franklin’s sentiments are echoed today in the cries of Black activists, who seek an end to the police brutality that they say is supported by cities, states and the federal government. The fact that the Tulsa anniversary nearly coincides with Juneteenth is also painfully relevant to many Black people in America. “Juneteenth has always been a difficult celebration for Black people on two dimensions,” Gayle wrote in his Slate article. “We celebrate that we are no longer enslaved in this country, while realizing that this country has been morally bankrupt for devaluing and enslaving us in the first place. “But in Tulsa on May 31 and June 1, on the way to celebrating freedom on June 19,” he wrote, “we also mourn every year a massacre that decimated lives and also decimated an important expression of living abundantly in a country that never wanted us.” Copyright 2020 Southern Poverty Law Center

“Forced disappearances” are playing a critical role in the Venezuelan government’s efforts to muzzle opponents and instill fear, according to a new report. A new report documents the Venezuelan government’s use of forced disappearances, a tactic reminiscent of right-wing dictatorships that Venezuela’s leftist leaders have long denounced.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times A crush of Venezuelan government agents entered the home brandishing guns but not a warrant, and took Ariana Granadillo away. Over the next week, they confined, beat, interrogated and nearly suffocated her, then let her go as abruptly as they had taken her in. While her sister searched for her for days, unable to pry any word from officials, her captors told Ms. Granadillo, then 21, that they were counterintelligence agents. She had “never, ever, ever, ever been involved in politics,” she said in an interview, but she soon learned that her ordeal was not unusual. Secret detentions, known under international law as “forced disappearances,” are playing a critical role in the Venezuelan government’s increasingly authoritarian efforts to control its population, discourage dissent and punish opponents, according to a new report by two human rights groups, provided exclusively to The New York Times. The report, made public on Friday, documents 200 such cases in 2018 and 524 last year, a jump it attributed to increased protests as Venezuela endured successive political and economic crises, and the government’s repressive responses. It was produced by Foro Penal, a Venezuelan group that meticulously tracks the cases, and Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, a nonprofit organization based in Washington, D.C. Investigators documented many kidnappings in which authorities arrived in unmarked cars, presented neither identification nor warrants, confiscated cellphones and computers, and said little as they cuffed and hooded people. More than 20 percent of the victims reported being tortured while held captive. Using international law as a guide, the groups defined forced disappearance as a detention lasting two days or more that, unlike an ordinary arrest, included state denial of any information about a person’s whereabouts. The report cited the Bolivarian National Intelligence Service, known by its Spanish acronym SEBIN, as one of the main security forces involved in the disappearances.Credit...Rayner Pena/Picture Alliance, via Getty Images The report adds to an already large body of evidence of human rights violations committed by President Nicolás Maduro and his allies, including widespread reports of torture and an assessment by the United Nations that Venezuelan security forces have committed thousands of extrajudicial killings. The government did not respond to a letter seeking comment. Forced disappearances are considered by international law to be a crime against humanity if they are proven to be systematic. The authors of the Venezuela report call the practice “one of the most serious and cruel violations of human rights” because it places victims “in a state of absolute helplessness.” The tactic is reminiscent of the right-wing Latin American dictatorships that Mr. Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, long opposed. Argentina and Chile were infamous for secretly detaining — and often murdering — people in the 1970s and 1980s. In Venezuela, the new analysis found, the average disappearance lasted just over five days, suggesting the government sought to instill fear while avoiding the scrutiny that might accompany large-scale, long-term detentions. The motives behind disappearances appeared to vary, according to interviews conducted by Foro Penal, including extraction of information, silencing dissidents or temporarily removing political opponents from the public sphere. Last year, 49 people disappeared following what the report called “protests due to failures in basic services,” like water or electricity. The Maduro government may also be using women like Ms. Granadillo as bargaining chips, sometimes seizing female loved ones in an attempt to terrorize male targets. The report adds to an already large body of evidence of human rights abuses by Mr. Maduro’s government, including widespread reports of torture and extrajudicial killings.Credit...Matias Delacroix/Associated Press Her only apparent offense, Ms. Granadillo said, was that her father’s second cousin was a colonel whom the government viewed as a political opponent. Ms. Granadillo, a medical student, was abducted for the first time in February 2018, when she was living at the colonel’s home outside Caracas, near the hospital where she was about to begin an internship. The agents who burst in demanded that she and a cousin go with them for questioning, loaded her into a white car, handcuffed her and “let us know that from that point they were the owners of our lives,” she said. They led her, blinded by a hood, into a building pulsing with loud music, pushed her into a bathroom and threatened her with a knife, questioning her about the colonel’s location. She and her cousin spent the night there, forced to relieve themselves in front of a captor. “At some points,” she said, “we could hear the screams of other people who were evidently being tortured.” The next day, agents forced her to sign a document “where we promised not to divulge all the abuse” and let her go. Two days later, she began her internship, determined to finish medical school. Ariana Granadillo, while a student in Venezuela.Credit...NC But three months later, the agents returned — this time in the morning, while she lay in bed. They loaded Ms. Granadillo and her parents into a plate-less taxi with darkened windows, tied their hands, pulled the hoods over their faces and took them to another house. After being interrogated and struck, she said, she spent the night in a cell below the stairs. The next day, agents gave her water and a bit of food and “stressed that no one even knew that we had been kidnapped,” she said. Then a female agent came close. “She looked me in the eyes and without a word took a bag from her fist and placed it over my face, covering it completely,” she said. “One of the men held my legs and my hands were tied behind my back.” Unable to breathe under the plastic, she recalled, “I became desperate so fast that in seconds I felt asphyxiated.” At times she could hear the agents beating and questioning her father. After a week, officials dropped Ms. Granadillo and her parents on a roadside in Caracas, the capital, she said. They eventually fled the country and now live in a small town in Colombia. Without her academic records, she has not been able to resume her medical training. Many of her friends in Venezuela have distanced themselves, fearful of government retaliation. She is 23 and forever changed, she said, scared of door knocks, constantly anxious, fighting a deep depression. She misses “the innocence I had before all this happened,” she said. “Because I discovered an evil in human beings that I did not know existed.” After being left on the side of the road in Caracas, Venezuela’s capital, Ms. Granadillo and her parents fled the country.Credit...Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times Mr. Maduro has come full circle from his student days as an activist denouncing human rights violations by Venezuela’s pro-American governments during the Cold War. When his mentor, Mr. Chávez, swept to power in 1999, the new left-wing government promised to do away with the abuses of the previous system and create an equal and democratic society. Instead, Mr. Chávez jailed opponents selectively to neutralize rivals and consolidate power. This targeted persecution gave way to systematic use of repression and fear, human rights advocates say, after Mr. Chávez died in 2013 and Mr. Maduro took power. And, according to the new report, forced disappearances became tools to weaken rivals like Gilber Caro, a charismatic opposition lawmaker. Security forces have jailed him three times since early 2017, despite his parliamentary immunity. Mr. Caro has been held for a total of nearly two years in jail, often in locations unknown to his family or lawyers, without being convicted of any crime. Gilber Caro in 2018.Credit...Reuters In the brief periods of freedom between disappearances, Mr. Caro told friends about the torture and abuse at the hands of security forces, and carried on with his social work and parliamentary duties. But people close to him say the torture, jail deprivations and pain of living under the constant threat of abduction have traumatized Mr. Caro. By last year he had become a quiet, introspective man who struggled to maintain a conversation at public events. He was last detained by special operations police in December. His whereabouts was unknown until a month later, when he was charged with terrorism in a closed court without a legal counsel. He remains in jail pending trial. The United Nations Working Group on Enforced or Involuntary Disappearances has asked the Venezuelan government to allow its members to visit and assess the country’s use of the practice. “We’re waiting,” said Bernard Duhaime, a member of the group, “for them to let us in.” Julie Turkewitz reported from Bogotá, Colombia, and Anatoly Kurmanaev from Caracas, Venezuela. Julie Turkewitz is the Andes bureau chief, covering Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru, Suriname and Guyana. Before moving to South America, she was a national correspondent covering the American West. @julieturkewitz A version of this article appears in print on June 20, 2020, Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: To Silence Critics, Venezuela Ramps Up Secret Detention Campaign Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

The constitutions of Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) and each of the country’s two entities – the Federation of BiH (the Federation) and Republika Srpska (RS) – provide for freedom of religious thought and practice, prohibit religious discrimination, and allow registered religious organizations to operate freely. The Federation constitution declares religion to be “a vital national interest” of the constituent peoples, is stated in the US Department of State report. The RS constitution establishes the Serbian Orthodox Church (SOC) as “the Church of the Serb people and other people of Orthodox religion.” The BiH constitution reserves all positions in the Presidency and one of two houses of parliament and certain other government offices to members of the three major ethnic groups – predominantly SOC-member Serbs, predominantly Roman Catholic Croats, and predominantly Muslim Bosniaks. The human rights ministry issued new regulations allowing reporting of religious freedom abuses directly to the ministry, which is then charged with working with relevant authorities to correct the abuses. Religious groups in areas where they were a local minority reported continued government discrimination regarding denial of permits for construction or repair of religious properties, and in education, employment, and provision of social services. The Presidency again failed to approve an agreement that would provide religious accommodations to Muslim workers. In a report covering 2018, the Islamic Community (IC) said a school threatened to punish Muslim students if they did not make up classes missed during a religious holiday. The same report said the military served Muslim soldiers pork over a two-month period. The Interreligious Council (IRC), a nongovernmental organization (NGO) comprising representatives of the country’s four major religious communities, again reported authorities moved unacceptably slowly to investigate and prosecute religiously motivated crimes. In September Speaker of the Sarajevo Canton Assembly Dino Konakovic said in an interview he did not mind that a local elementary school continued to be named for a World War II-era Ustasha anti-Semite who glorified Hitler. The IRC registered 10 reported acts of vandalism against religious sites and one case of verbal abuse against an Orthodox priest during the year and said the actual number of incidents was likely much higher. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) reported receiving reports in 2018 of 17 incidents of bias against Muslims, 10 against Christians, and two against Jews. The one incident of violence reported by the OSCE mission in the country involved an assault and verbal insults against a Serb man during an Orthodox Christian holiday. Anti-Islamic incidents included shots being fired at a mosque, theft, and vandalism against mosques involving pig entrails, broken windows, or graffiti. In the two anti-Semitic incidents, vandals painted graffiti, including swastikas, on Jewish housing. The IRC continued to promote interfaith dialogue through conferences and projects with local governments. U.S. embassy representatives emphasized to government officials the need to promote respect for religious diversity and enforce equal treatment for religious minorities. In regular meetings with religious groups, embassy officials continued to urge these groups to improve interreligious dialogue to help develop a peaceful and stable society. The embassy continued to maintain regular contact with the IRC and to fund some of its interfaith activities. The U.S. government estimates the total population at 3.8 million (midyear 2019 estimate). According to the most recent census, conducted in 2013, Sunni Muslims constitute approximately 51 percent of the population, Serbian Orthodox Christians 31 percent, Roman Catholics 15 percent, and others, including Protestants and Jews, 3 percent. There is a strong correlation between ethnicity and religion: Bosnian Serbs affiliate primarily with the SOC, and Bosnian Croats with the Roman Catholic Church. Bosniaks are predominantly Muslim. The Jewish community estimates it has 1,000 members, with the majority living in Sarajevo. The majority of Serbian Orthodox live in the RS, and most Muslims and Catholics in the Federation. Protestant and most other small religious communities have their largest memberships in Sarajevo and Banja Luka. © 2020 — Sarajevo Times U.S. Department of State: 2019 Report on International Religious Freedom: Bosnia and Herzegovina​

Escalating inter-communal clashes in Central Equatoria, Jonglei, Lakes, Warrap and other parts of South Sudan are causing immense harm to civilians and risk hampering the delivery of humanitarian aid – all the more crucial given the current COVID-19 outbreak in the country. Although the fighting between the signatories of the peace agreement has significantly reduced as factions broadly respect the ceasefire, the scope and intensity of inter-communal violence has increased. Between January and May 2020, the UN Mission in South Sudan recorded 415 violent incidents between communities, up from 129 in 2018. At least 4 aid workers have lost their lives in the recent clashes. On 11 June, the High Representative released a statement on behalf of the European Union, expressing concern at the delays in the implementation of the peace agreement and the widespread violence in the country, which is also hindering COVID-19 response efforts and the delivery of humanitarian aid. The Troika (US, UK and Norway) issued a similar statement on 9 June. Source: ECHO

Click here to watch the full event discussion. This conversation explores challenges still left, both in BiH as well as the region around genocide denial and how to address the past as well as prevent future atrocities. The contributors will introduce their work and the ways in which they challenge genocide denial in their day-to-day but also examine societal implications. With Hikmet Karčić [Genocide Scholar based in Sarajevo], Jelena Đureinović [Memory activism program coordinator at the Humanitarian Law Center], Gregory Stanton [Chairman & Founding President of Genocide Watch]. Moderated by Dženeta Karabegović [Regional Coordinator for ŠTO TE NEMA 2020; Researcher and Lecturer, University of Salzburg]. Organized by ŠTO TE NEMA 2020 Project Team and hosted by The Post-Conflict Research Center (PCRC) who are working together to bring the ŠTO TE NEMA nomadic monument to the Srebrenica Memorial Center for its 15th annual iteration as part of event commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Srebrenica genocide.

Travel request for panel members turned down by New Delhi as US Congress releases new report on religious freedom. Indian Foreign Minister Jaishankar said India would not accept foreign interference or judgement on matters related to its sovereignty [File: Evgenia Novozhenina/Reuters] India has turned down a travel request for members of a US government panel seeking to review its religious freedom, saying foreign agencies had no standing to assess the constitutional rights of citizens. The visa snub to the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF) on Wednesday came as the US Congress released its own religious freedom report while a top Trump administration official said he was "very concerned" about the South Asian country's situation. India's Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said the government firmly repudiated the surveys of the USCIRF, which had little knowledge of the rights of Indian citizens, describing it as biased and prejudiced. "We have also denied visas to USCIRF teams that have sought to visit India in connection with issues related to religious freedom," he told a legislator from Modi's governing party in a June 1 letter. The step was taken because the government saw no grounds for a foreign entity such as the USCIRF to pronounce on the state of Indian citizens' constitutionally protected rights, he said, adding that India would not accept any foreign interference or judgement on matters related to its sovereignty. Reuters news agency said it has reviewed a copy of the letter to Nishikant Dubey, an MP who had raised the issue of the panel's report in parliament. The US embassy in New Delhi referred all queries to the commission based in Washington, DC, which was not immediately available to respond. Since taking power in 2014, India's Hindu nationalist government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi has faced criticism for attacks on Muslims and other minorities. In its report in April, the USCIRF had called for the world's biggest democracy to be designated a "country of particular concern", along with China, Iran, Russia and Syria The panel had urged sanctions against officials in Modi's government after it excluded Muslims from the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) passed in December last year. "In 2019, religious freedom conditions in India experienced a drastic turn downward, with religious minorities under increasing assault," the report said. The USCIRF is a bipartisan US government advisory body that monitors religious freedom abroad and makes non-binding policy recommendations. New US Congress report Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Wednesday released a new 2019 International Religious Freedom Report in Washington, DC. The report, mandated by the US Congress, documents major instances of violations of religious freedom across the world. Referring to India, the report highlighted the revocation of Indian-administered Kashmir's autonomy by the Modi government in August, the passage of the CAA in December, and attacks by Hindu vigilante groups on Muslims and Dalits (community once referred to as "untouchables") over the cow, an animal considered sacred by Hindus. "Mob attacks by violent Hindu groups against minority communities, including Muslims, continued throughout the year amid rumours that victims had traded or killed cows for beef," said the report, adding that charges were often filed by the police against the victims of mob violence. Hours after the release, Samuel Brownback, ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom in the Trump administration, said the "trend lines [on religious freedom] have been troubling" in India, according to a report by the Press Trust of India on Wednesday. "We do remain very concerned about what's taking place in India. It's historically just been a very tolerant, respectful country of religions, of all religions," Brownback said during a phone call with journalists on Wednesday. "It really needs a lot more effort on this topic in India, and my concern is, too, that if those efforts are not put forward, you're going to see a growth in violence and increased difficulty within the society writ large." © 2020 Al Jazeera Media Network

A member of the Papuan Student Alliance (AMP) holds a Bintang Kejora (Morning Star) flag as he stands in front of dozens of police officers during a rally at the State Palace in Central Jakarta. (JP/Dhoni Setiawan) Human Rights Watch (HRW) has called on the Indonesian authorities to drop all charges and release seven Papuan activists and students accused of treason for their involvement in antiracism protests in Jayapura, Papua, in August 2019. HRW said in a statement on Thursday that the #BlackLivesMatter protests in the United States in recent years “have reverberated in Indonesia as Melanesian people, including ethnic Papuans and Moluccans, face racial discrimination from Indonesian authorities”. “Papuan and Moluccan opposition to Indonesian rule and oppressive Indonesian military and police actions has often been met with further abuses,” the statement said. “Prosecutors should release these Papuan activists, who have suffered enough by being jailed for months far from home for peaceful acts of free expression.” The HRW Asia director argued that the Indonesian police had created a revolving door by arresting Papuan activists for peaceful protests and this needed to stop. “Indonesian authorities should recognize that given the global attention to the Black Lives Matter movement, sending peaceful activists to prison will only bring more international attention to human rights concerns in Papua," The statement comes as judges in a Balikpapan court in East Kalimantan are scheduled to issue verdicts in three separate trials of the seven activists this week. Last week, prosecutors at the Balikpapan district court demanded five to 17 years’ imprisonment for the defendants. Police arrested the seven defendants, namely Buchtar Tabuni, Agus Kossay, Stevanus Itlay, Ferry Gombo, Alexander Gobai, Irwanus Uropmabin and Hengki Hilapok, in Jayapura in September. In October, the authorities transferred them more than 3,000 kilometers away to be tried in Balikpapan for “security reasons.” The seven activists had been involved in massive antiracism protests in Jayapura that came in response to an incident where Papuan university students living in a dormitory in Surabaya, East Java, were subjected to physical and verbal attacks by security personnel and members of mass organizations, who accused the students of refusing to celebrate Indonesia’s 74th Independence Day. Security personnel reportedly banged on the dormitory’s door while shouting insults referring to the students as monkeys, pigs and dogs. The death of George Floyd, an African-American man who died while being arrested in the US, and the ensuing global outcry has sparked renewed public discourse about racism against Papuans in Indonesia. Genocide Watch note: When Indonesia became independent from the Netherlands, Papua was not included. The Dutch provided that Papua was to hold a referendum on its future. Instead Indonesia invaded Papua and the vote was never held. The Papua independence movement has ignited an ongoing conflict between the Indonesian Government and the Free Papua Movement. The Indonesian Government is accused of conducting a genocidal campaign against the Papuan people.

UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency is alarmed over escalating violence in the Sahel region which has seen hundreds of innocent civilians targeted in recent weeks, triggered more displacement and is seriously hindering humanitarian activities. Attacks by armed groups and ensuing counter-security operations have led to more people fleeing their homes for security and put even more pressure on stretched host communities, already facing immense hardship from dealing with those displaced, often relatives from previous violence. The latest attack on the Binedama village in central Mali’s volatile Mopti region, on June 5, killed 26 civilians. Armed groups also targeted a refugee hosting area at Intikane in western Niger and killed two refugee leaders and one leader from the local community on 31 May. This resulted in more than 10,000 people seeking shelter further inland around Telemces where UNHCR and partners have assisted in the rapid provision of some 1,180 temporary shelters. Nevertheless, living conditions there are “deplorable” with water and health major concerns. "The continuing attacks on civilians in the Sahel which have crippled life in the border towns and areas are unfathomable, incomprehensible. People are being displaced multiple times and are in desperate need of our help. We are doing the best we can to bring in assistance inspite of the challenging times" said Millicent Mutuli, UNHCR’s Regional Director for West and Central Africa, in reference to the COVID-19 pandemic and some of the limitations which arise from the response. Refugees finding themselves in the Liptako-Gourma, the border triangle where Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger converge, are seeking safety in areas that are also plagued by violence and poverty. Many have been displaced several times. In response, UNHCR has provided shelter assistance to over 25,000 families and aims to conclude the distribution of relief items to 16,500 families by the end June 2020. However, humanitarian activities are seriously hampered by escalating insecurity, the impact of COVID-19 and a lack of adequate resources. Since an initial outbreak in northern Mali in 2011, armed conflict has spread to central Mali, to Niger, to Burkina Faso. Now one of the fastest growing displacement crises in the world, millions have fled indiscriminate attacks by armed groups against civilians such as summary executions, the widespread use of rape against women, and attacks against state institutions, including schools and health facilities. In Burkina Faso in particular, the number of IDPs rose from 560,000 in early February to 848,000 at the end of April, representing 288,000 additional people in approximately three months. "The humanitarian situation is extremely dire in the central Sahel. Displaced families live in overcrowded sites, access to basic services is minimal and we are racing against time to scale up our response in the face of new needs growing faster than available resources," UNHCR’s Mutuli added. To highlight the immense needs in the region and continue the ongoing response to the deepening crisis, UNHCR will be launching its Sahel Crisis Appeal this Friday, 12 June. UNHCR staff working with partners and the authorities in the region are assisting desperate populations, but increased insecurity and COVID-19 measures mean our ability to reach all in need in the remote parts of Burkina Faso, Niger and Mali is extremely challenging. All three countries have weak social infrastructures, which means shelter, food, health and delivery of water to refugees and displaced people remains a priority. Many arrive without any belongings and welcomed by host communities – which despite their generous welcome are at a breaking point and need support to survive. © UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency 2020