The designation of the Russian Imperial Movement reflects growing concerns among U.S. officials about violent white supremacists with transnational links. Members of the Russian Imperial Movement at training base in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 2015. Credit...Olga Maltseva/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is expected to announce on Monday that it is designating an ultranationalist group based in Russia as a terrorist organization, according to officials. It is the first time the government will apply the label to a white supremacist group. While the label of specially designated global terrorist has been frequently used for Islamist extremists, there have been growing concerns among U.S. officials about violent white supremacists with transnational links over the past five years. In 2018, the White House added that threat to the government’s National Strategy for Counterterrorism. “These designations are unprecedented,” said Ambassador Nathan A. Sales, the State Department’s counterterrorism coordinator. “This is the first time the United States has ever designated white supremacists as terrorists, and this illustrates how seriously this administration takes the white supremacist terrorist threat. We are doing things no previous administration has done to counter this threat.” The State Department’s designation for the organization, the Russian Imperial Movement, sets up the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control to block any American property or assets belonging to the group. It will also bar Americans from financial dealings with the organization and make it easier to ban its members from traveling to the United States. The United States is also designating three of the group’s leaders — Stanislav Anatolyevich Vorobyev, Denis Valliullovich Gariev and Nikolay Nikolayevich Trushchalov — as individual terrorists who will face similar sanctions, the officials said. The authority for either the Treasury Department or the State Department to deem a group or an individual a specially designated global terrorist traces back to an executive order issued by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. President Trump in September signed an executive order expanding that authority to cover groups that provide training for terrorists even if the groups are not directly linked to any attack. The system parallels in some ways but is different from when the government designates a group as a foreign terrorist organization, which has separate criteria and applies only to groups rather than individuals. Ambassador Nathan A. Sales said the United States government was continuing to look for other white supremacist groups or individuals who met the criteria for sanctions. Credit...Yara Nardi/Reuters The move could cut against criticism that the Trump administration has played down the threat of white nationalist violence for political reasons, based on the so-called alt-right’s support for Mr. Trump and his statement in 2017 that there were “very fine people on both sides” of a deadly white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va. The Russian Imperial Movement is not considered to be sponsored by the Russian government, officials said, although President Vladimir V. Putin has tolerated its activities and it has helped advance the Russian government’s external goals by recruiting Russian fighters to aid pro-Russia separatists in eastern Ukraine. The group has also helped support neo-Nazi organizations in Scandinavia, which dovetails with the Russian government’s broader pattern of trying to stoke internal divisions, including along racial lines, and sow chaos in Western democracies. In 2017, the Russian Imperial Movement came up at a trial in Sweden of three men who were accused of plotting bomb attacks targeting asylum seekers. Prosecutors said two of the defendants had traveled to St. Petersburg, Russia, to attend 11 days of paramilitary training at a camp operated by the group, fueling their radicalization. Mr. Sales said the group operated two facilities in St. Petersburg that offered paramilitary training to neo-Nazis and white supremacists. He said the United States had assessed that the camps were “likely being used for woodland and urban assault, tactical weapons and hand-to-hand combat training.” Mary McCord, a former head of the Justice Department’s National Security Division, said that until now, the counterterrorism sanctions system had overwhelmingly been used against Islamist extremist groups. She called its expansion to a white supremacist group significant. “It is important,” she said. “Far-right extremist causes, in particular white supremacy and white nationalism, have become more international. It is appropriate for the State Department to have been scrutinizing whether there are organizations that meet the criteria for that designation because with it, the organization becomes poison in terms of doing business with it or providing funds, goods or services to it.” The move is also another example of the Trump administration expanding its use of the power Congress granted to the executive branch to impose sanctions on groups by designating them foreign terrorist organizations. Last year, under a separate authority, the United States designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, an arm of the Iranian military, as a foreign terrorist group — the first time it gave that label to a nation-state entity. Concerns have been escalating for several years that there is a growing transnational white supremacist or alt-right movement, as illustrated by the 2019 mass shootings at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, by an Australian man who streamed the killings of 51 people on Facebook Live. Against that backdrop, national security officials are said to have been searching for a neo-Nazi-style group that the U.S. government could designate as a foreign terrorist organization. One challenge to finding an appropriate candidate was that designating a group with significant American ties would also raise major First Amendment issues, officials said. Although a Russian Imperial Movement member has visited the United States, the organization does not appear to have domestic members. It is not clear if the group has provided training to U.S.-based neo-Nazis. Fighting domestic terrorism, including violent white nationalists, has become a priority for the F.B.I. Federal and local authorities have made a wave of arrests in recent months, targeting members of two neo-Nazi groups called Atomwaffen Division and The Base. The F.B.I. has been investigating whether the leader of The Base, who lives in St. Petersburg, has any ties to the Russian government’s security or intelligence services, former law enforcement officials said. Mr. Sales said they were continuing to look for other white supremacist groups or individuals who met the criteria for sanctions, but declined to comment on any specifics. The designation of the Russian Imperial Movement would make it easier for the F.B.I. to open sanctions-evasion investigations into Americans who appear to have ties to the group, just as it can with Islamist groups like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State or Hezbollah. The Trump administration is preparing to unveil the move under the banner of combating “racially or ethnically motivated terrorism.” The F.B.I. refers to such groups as racially motivated violent extremists, which have committed the “most lethal incidents among domestic terrorists in recent years,” the F.B.I. said last year in congressional testimony. Charlie Savage is a Washington-based national security and legal policy correspondent. A recipient of the Pulitzer Prize, he previously worked at The Boston Globe and The Miami Herald. His most recent book is “Power Wars: The Relentless Rise of Presidential Authority and Secrecy.” @charlie_savage • Facebook Adam Goldman reports on the F.B.I. from Washington and is a two-time Pulitzer Prize winner. @adamgoldmanNYT Eric Schmitt is a senior writer who has traveled the world covering terrorism and national security. He was also the Pentagon correspondent. A member of the Times staff since 1983, he has shared three Pulitzer Prizes. @EricSchmittNYT A version of this article appears in print on April 6, 2020, Section A, Page 24 of the New York edition with the headline: U.S. Prepares to Sanction Russian Nationalist Group as a Terrorist Organization. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

Kafr Nabl Surgical Hospital in Syria has been repeatedly hit during the war, leading it to move underground. On May 5, Russian airstrikes caused further damage. Credit...Omar Haj Kadour/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images A United Nations investigation into attacks on humanitarian sites in Syria concluded in a report released on Monday that the Syrian government or its allies had committed most of them — but failed to name Russia, the most important of those allies, as a perpetrator. The board of inquiry looked into just six of the hundreds of attacks on sites like hospitals and schools committed during the Syrian civil war. In a summary of its work, the board refrained from specifically blaming Russia, despite strong evidence, previously published by The New York Times, that a Russian warplane had carried out one of the six — the bombing of a school. The inquiry stated only that “the Government of Syria and/or its allies had carried out the airstrike.” “This is a deliberately mealy-mouthed report,” said Richard Gowan, U.N. director at the International Crisis Group. “On a charitable reading, this summary contains enough oblique and tentative statements confirming the Syrian government and Russians’ responsibility,” he said. “On a less charitable reading, this is an effort to minimize offending Moscow that reflects the fact that U.N. officials believe that continued cooperation with Russia is key to the future of humanitarian operations in Syria.” Human rights and advocacy groups had criticized the board of inquiry’s limited scope after its establishment by Secretary-General António Guterres in August, saying it ignored hundreds of other attacks on hospitals, clinics and medical personnel committed by the government of President Bashar al-Assad and his Russian ally. Physicians for Human Rights, an advocacy group that tracks attacks on medical workers in Syria, has documented at least 595 such attacks since the civil war began in 2011. Of those, 282 have occurred since Russia intervened in September 2015 in support of Mr. Assad. At least 923 medical workers have been killed since 2011. The Syrian government or its allies, primarily Russia, committed 536 of the 595 attacks, according to the group’s statistics. “The U.N. Secretary-General’s extremely limited investigation was doomed from the beginning,” said Susannah Sirkin, the director of policy at the Physicians for Human Rights. “It failed to account for the overwhelming evidence that the Syrian and Russian governments have executed a consistent and brutal strategy of bombing hospitals, schools and civilian sites.” But Mr. Guterres gave the inquiry a mandate only to look into attacks on humanitarian targets that had been supported by the United Nations or included in its “deconfliction” system, through which organizations could register their sites in the hope of protecting them from attack. The inquiry looked at seven specific strikes carried out from April to July 2019 in opposition-held territory in northwestern Syria: on a school, a refugee camp, a children’s services center, three hospitals and a medical clinic. The board dropped one of the hospitals from its review, concluding that it did not match Mr. Guterres’s criteria. It also determined that among the six attacks it had investigated, the Syrian government or its allies had committed all but the one against the refugee camp, which the board said was probably carried out by opposition forces. “The charges in this report could not be more serious. And the incidents the report studied are the tip of the iceberg,” said David Miliband, president of the International Rescue Committee. The Times has previously reported that Russian warplanes bombed a string of hospitals in northwestern Syria over one 12-hour period in May 2019 and then returned to bomb one of those hospitals again in November. The hospital that was bombed twice, in the town of Kafr Nabl, was one of the sites under investigation by the board of inquiry. But instead of looking into the two Russian attacks, it focused instead on a separate attack on the same hospital, carried out by the Syrian government in July. Before the inquiry’s publication of the report, Russia pressed Mr. Guterres not to release its conclusions, diplomats have said. Russia has vetoed 14 Security Council resolutions calling for action on Syria since 2011. In December, it blocked a resolution on cross-border aid deliveries from Turkey and Iraq to millions of Syrian civilians. Louis Charbonneau, the United Nations director at Human Rights Watch, said the refusal to explicitly name Russia was “deeply disappointing.” He added that the widespread attacks on humanitarian facilities and hospitals in northwestern Syria had, in addition to causing direct suffering, led to “a tragic and criminal reduction” in the area’s ability to deal with the likely spread of coronavirus. The Russian and Syrian missions to the United Nations did not comment on the report. The report also addressed some flaws in the deconfliction system, which relief groups had harshly criticized for failing to prevent attacks on hospitals and being marred by factual errors. The system, run by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, was meant to share the coordinates of protected facilities among the warring parties, including Russia. The report found that until September the United Nations did not have procedures for verifying, storing and updating those coordinates, and that confusion over exactly what the system would do to protect humanitarian sites had led to mistrust. Mr. Miliband called on the United Nations to develop “accountability mechanisms to deter further attacks and bring justice for those who have already suffered.” But Mr. Gowan said he doubted that the report would do anything to deter Russia. “It may reassure Syrian and Russian officers that they are unlikely to face any real accountability in future,” he said. Evan Hill is a journalist on the Visual Investigations team, which combines traditional reporting with advanced digital forensics. @evanchill A version of this article appears in print on April 7, 2020, Section A, Page 19 of the New York edition with the headline: U.N. Inquiry Accuses Syria of Civilian Strikes, but Omits Russia’s Role. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

Modi Denies India Is Targeting Muslims. We Found a Different Reality. How can someone who’s lived for years as a citizen of India, suddenly be declared illegal? Whistle-blowers told us how Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s party is making Muslims stateless. Click on photo or caption to view NY Times video. JORHAT, India — For nearly two years, Mamoni Rajkumari, a lawyer, spent her days deciding who was an Indian citizen and who was not, as part of a tribunal reviewing suspected foreigners in the state of Assam. Then, she says, she was dismissed for not declaring enough Muslims to be noncitizens. “I was punished,’’ she said. Ms. Rajkumari, 54, has found herself on the front line of India’s citizenship wars. In addition to the tribunals, which Assam has operated for decades, the state has also recently completed a broader, separate review of every resident’s paperwork to determine if they were citizens. That review found that nearly two million of Assam’s 33 million residents, many of them desperately poor, were possibly foreigners. Now this group — which is disproportionately Muslim — is potentially stateless. What’s happening in Assam is a preview of what may be coming to India as a whole as Prime Minister Narendra Modi tries to pull the country away from its foundation as a secular, multicultural nation and turn it into a more overtly Hindu state. The New York Times interviewed one current and five former members of the Assam tribunals that review suspected foreigners. The five former members said they had felt pressured by the government to declare Muslims to be noncitizens. Three of them, including Ms. Rajkumari, said they were fired because they did not do so. State and central government officials declined to comment. Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party has its roots in a Hindu nationalist worldview, and during last year’s national elections, party leaders vowed to apply the same type of citizenship checks used in Assam to the rest of India. Mr. Modi has recently denied he has any such plans. Like Assam, India is majority Hindu, with a large Muslim minority. In December, India’s national government passed a sweeping new immigration law that gives a fast track to citizenship for undocumented migrants from nearby countries as long as they are Hindu or one of five other religions. Muslims are excluded. The upshot is that any Hindus left off Assam’s citizenship lists after its broad review, or declared by tribunals to be foreigners, will likely be affirmed as citizens because of the new immigration law. Muslims may not. “Increasingly, it is looking like Muslims are becoming a target,” said Binod Khadria, an expert on migration who is a former professor at the Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi. “It’s a charged situation.” A protest against the new national citizenship law in Guwahati, Assam, in December. Credit...Ahmer Khan for The New York Times Even before the citizenship review, an indigenous rights movement in Assam, in northeast India on the border of Bangladesh, had been agitating for the government to expel foreigners. The police — sometimes acting on reports from private citizens — had referred more than 433,000 residents as “suspected foreigners,” according to parliamentary documents, and sent them to tribunals like the one Ms. Rajkumari sat on to produce documents or witnesses to prove they are truly Indian. Now, the citizenship review has produced 1.9 million new “suspected foreigners.” So Assam is adding more foreigner tribunals to adjudicate their cases. The whole tribunal process has troubled Ms. Rajkumari and some others who have served as tribunal members, generally hearing cases on their own. Many poor Indians lack the required paperwork to prove citizenship, like parents’ voting records and land ownership documents that have been certified by authorities as authentic. What’s more, the choice of who is labeled a suspected foreigner seems to have a religious bias to it, with a much higher percentage of Muslims sent to the tribunals than Hindus, according to Ms. Rajkumari and the tribunal members interviewed. Some of those current and former tribunal members spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared reprisals from the government. Although the tribunals are not technically courts, they function as if they were. If they find that someone cannot prove his or her citizenship, that person can be sent to detention, often within a jail. A government official in Kharupetia, in the Indian state of Assam, collected documents from people hoping to be included on an official list of Indian citizens last year.Credit...Saumya Khandelwal for The New York Times Kartik Roy, a lawyer and another former tribunal member, said “most of the references’’ that police officers made to his tribunal to investigate suspected foreigners “were against Muslims.” He said the pressure was clear: “You have to declare ‘foreigners’ means you have to declare the Muslims,” he said. Ms. Rajkumari agreed, saying state officials “think Muslims are foreigners.” Some of the tribunal members interviewed said they felt pressure in general to find more “foreigners,” with a monthly requirement to report how many cases they had heard and of those, how many people had been declared foreigners. Two other former members said officials in Assam’s Home and Political Department, which from 2016 has been controlled by Mr. Modi’s political party, had complained that they were not declaring enough people noncitizens. The former tribunal members said the complaints relayed to them were a form of indirect but heavy pressure. Tribunal members who declared more people foreigners had their performance rated as “good,” which increased their chances of keeping their jobs, according to court documents viewed by The Times. The performance of those who didn’t declare enough people foreigners was marked as “not satisfactory.” Mamoni Rajkumari was part of a tribunal reviewing suspected foreigners in the state of Assam.Credit...Karan Deep Singh/The New York Times Tribunal members in the state of Assam say they felt pressured to declare Muslims noncitizens as the government seeks to expel illegal migrants. Some politicians have vowed to take the process nationwide. Both Ms. Rajkumari’s and Mr. Roy’s names appeared on that review list with a note against their names, saying they “may be terminated.” That is exactly what happened. The terms of Ms. Rajkumari and Mr. Roy were not renewed in 2017. They both said that because the bulk of people in front of the tribunals were Muslims, the expectation was that they would declare Muslims as foreigners, paving the way to deport them, incarcerate them or take away fundamental rights. The director general of police in Assam and other state officials declined to comment. Mr. Modi and top officials in his party have denied targeting Muslims in the Assam citizenship check, saying it was meant purely to identify illegal migrants. Relatives grieving Ishwar Nayak, who was shot by the police in Guwahati in December while protesting the new citizenship law.Credit...Ahmer Khan for The New York Times The Home Ministry in New Delhi, which ultimately oversees citizenship and residency rules in India, also declined to comment, citing the demands of the coronavirus crisis. Most of the migrants in Assam came from Bangladesh, at one time or another. Many have lived in Assam for generations, the descendants of economic migrants from decades ago. And many are illiterate and poor, often with no idea how to read the papers vital to proving a citizenship claim, and keeping them out of jail. Bangladesh, a predominantly Muslim country, and one of the poorest and most densely populated nations in the world, has expressed zero enthusiasm in taking migrants back. The passage of the national citizenship law sparked protests in Assam and across the country, and they continued to flare up until Mr. Modi imposed a coronavirus lockdown across India in late March. Dozens of people in Assam whose citizenship has been questioned have killed themselves, according to Indian media reports. Countless others fear being expelled from India or thrown in jail. Mr. Modi’s government doesn’t seem to be devising any plans to deport millions of people. But it is expanding its capacity to incarcerate foreigners; an enormous detention facility is under construction in the Goalpara district of Assam, where up to 3,000 people are likely to be held. The compound, set to open in a few months, has thick, high walls on the periphery, watchtowers in every corner, separate sections for men and women, and an infirmary. An under-construction detention center for people not included in Assam’s citizens register, in the village of Kadamtola Gopalpur.Credit...Biju Boro/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images In July 2017, Ms. Rajkumari, Mr. Roy and 12 other former tribunal members sued the government for wrongful dismissal, disputing the government’s rating of their work. They lost the case. Ms. Rajkumari, who continues to practice law, said that what the government pressured her to do was wrong. A few weeks before she was fired, she recalled, she visited her mother. “Ma, how will I accomplish this task?” Ms. Rajkumari remembered asking her, tears streaming down her face. “Because it is very illegal.” Anupam Chakravartty contributed reporting from Guwahati, India. Karan Deep Singh is a reporter based in New Delhi, India. He covers business and technology in South Asia and contributes to The Times’s visual journalism from the region. @Karan_Singhs Suhasini Raj has worked for over a decade as an investigative journalist with Indian and international news outlets. Based in the New Delhi bureau, she joined The Times in 2014. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

A home where elderly Christian people were burnt to death by Fulani militants. Credit: Lawrence Zongo/Zenger ANCHA, Nigeria—Armed hordes of Muslim militants rampaged through villages in central Nigeria this week, killing unarmed farmers and burning people alive in their houses. In a nation of 204 million people where COVID-19 has killed only two, it’s mass murder that is tearing society apart. “More than 200 Fulani herdsmen came to my community to kill us yesterday,” said Monday Bato, a farmer in the village of Ancha, home to 1,800. “They all had military guns, AK-47. They were speaking Hausa and Fulani language as they burned my house and 16 other houses, including all [the] harvested grains and vegetables,” Bato told Zenger News on Thursday. The butchering swarm attacked Ancha before midnight on Tuesday, Bato said, killing a pregnant woman and two other villagers and leaving three severely wounded. Community watchmen called the nearest police division in Bassa, 1 hour and 40 minutes away by car. No one answered. “I tried calling the security, but their number was not going that night,” said David Chinge, who serves as secretary to the king of the region’s Irigwe Chiefdom. Nigeria’s Fula ethnicity comprises 15.4 million people, nearly all of them Muslims. President Muhammadu Buhari is among them. Their numbers are spread across at least 18 African nations. As Ancha residents buried their dead Wednesday afternoon, Fulani bandits raided another village just a mile away. Three hundred swarmed into Hukke, torching a house that sheltered seven senior citizens who couldn’t walk. All of them were burned alive, according to Christ Gado, a Hukke resident. “We had 23 houses set ablaze,” he said. The victims of a Fulani attack in Ancha, Nigeria were laid to rest on March 31, 2020. (Lawrence Zongo/Zenger) The aftermath the following morning was grim: Men carried charred remains to shared graves while women wailed. The Hukke victims ranged in age from 67 to 90: Mary Alhassa, Jummai Geye, Madah Imeh, Gado Muntu, Izinpa Muntu, Rigwe Muntu and Gado Ngulu. On Wednesday night was the nearby town of Nkiendoro, home to 750 people. The militants’ arson fires consumed two houses and their stored food, neighborhood watchman Sunday Josiah told Zenger. “I called the divisional police officer that night,” Josiah said, but impassable roads meant “they could not come until the following day.” Rev. Ayuba Umaru, pastor of the Evangelical Church Winning All in Miango, told Zenger News on March 31, 2020 that “COVID-19 is a disease from China that killed a lot of people, but what we know in our community [is] that the Fulani terrorists are killing us.” (Lawrence Zongo/Zenger) A pastor encouraged his flock Wednesday during a burial for the three Ancha victims to “leave everything to God in prayer and trust in God alone.” The Rev. Ayuba Umaru, pastor of the Evangelical Church Winning All in Miango, also called on his nation’s leaders to protect Christians’ lives. “We are Christians. We should be calm and seek the face of God,” he said. “Jesus Christ was also persecuted. At this time we should be more close to Christ.” “Nigeria[’s] government has never come out to say that Fulani are killing people,” Ayuba told Zenger, referring to the Muslim herdsmen. “They don’t want to accept that fact, but we from the village know that Fulani are killing us.” “COVID-19 is a disease from China that killed a lot of people, but what we know in our community [is] that the Fulani terrorists are killing us,” he said. “The Nigeria government should take action on killings by Fulani, just like the action they are taking to stop COVID-19.” The police commissioner of Plateau State, a sprawling territory of more than 4 million, on Thursday visited Hukke, the second town targeted for slaughter. Isaac Akinmoyede arrived in his protective mask, careful not to risk a coronavirus infection. “Anybody with useful information regarding the killings should report to the police, and they will ensure justice,” he said, discouraging vigilantism. As a group of mourners left Hukke, the deputy chairman of the region’s Bassa Local Governance Area was driving the other way in a chauffeured Jeep. The official, Adamu Gweni, had missed the burials by more than three hours. He rolled down his window and offered the local equivalent of $8 to a relative of one victim. With villagers grumbling about hospital bills for the survivors and a lack of aid for the suddenly homeless, Gweni’s driver sped off in his pepper-red vehicle. Human rights observers and African NGOs are documenting a rising tide of deaths. “More people are dying from terrorist violence in Nigeria than from COVID-19,” said Kyle Abts, director of the International Committee on Nigeria. “Ten people were killed by Fulani militants in one local government area compared to two who died from Covid-19 in the entire nation of Nigeria. Government troops have done little, if anything, to prevent the violence,” Abts told Zenger. “Local vigilantes are without bullets to protect themselves, injured citizens are hospitalized without the means to pay their bills, and the governor is silent.” Copyright 2020 Z News Service, Inc.

Rohingya refugees in market area of Kutupalong Refugee Camp, Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (Suzauddin Rubel/AFP via Getty Images) The coronavirus has unleashed so many problems around the world that it’s almost impossible to keep track of them all. Even so, it’s worth taking a moment to consider the situation facing one of the planet’s most vulnerable groups. They’ve been persecuted, maligned and terrorized — and now they’re preparing to confront the virus with minimal protection. In the summer and fall of 2017, the Myanmar military launched a campaign of terror against the ethnic group known as the Rohingya, driving some 700,000 of them across the border into neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar’s predominantly Buddhist ruling elite has long discriminated against the Muslim Rohingya, treating them as a nefarious alien presence in the country’s midst even though most have lived there for generations. Periodic waves of persecution had already sent many Rohingya fleeing across the border in the decades before the 2017 atrocities began. Today, 850,000 Rohingya are living in conditions of unimaginable hardship in refugee camps in Bangladesh. Crammed together in tiny makeshift shelters made of bamboo and plastic, many of the refugees already suffer from poor nutrition, compromised immune systems and lung illnesses. Last week, testing revealed a person infected with the coronavirus in the town of Cox’s Bazaar, just a few miles from the camps. Humanitarian groups are sounding the alarm. The International Rescue Committee, a charitable group, has just released a study warning that any covid-19 infections in refugee camps around the world, and particularly those inhabited by the Rohingya, would almost certainly spread far faster than on the notorious Diamond Princess cruise ship. The discovery of that first covid-19 case near the camps prompted the authorities in Bangladesh — itself one of the most impoverished countries in the world, making it poorly equipped to deal with any outbreaks — to order a “lockdown” in the camps on March 25. Yet the term feels like a mockery in such cramped conditions. Extended families, usually 10 to 15 people, live together in huts where there’s just enough room for everyone to lie down. Multiple households share water sources and latrines. The inhabitants have to line up for food and medical treatment, thus increasing their exposure to disease. Thomas Lee, a physician at UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles and the founder of Community Partners International, one of the aid groups helping to maintain health care for the refugees, explains that “flattening the curve” — managing the number of infected patients applying for treatment — will be a far greater challenge in an environment where there already aren’t enough resources to go around. “There are just a few hundred hospital beds with a population of nearly a million people,” he says, adding that many residents already suffer from pneumonia and other respiratory ailments, heightening their vulnerability to the coronavirus. To make matters worse, the Bangladesh authorities decided back in September to shut down mobile Internet access to the camps, effectively cutting off the refugees from desperately needed health information, one of the most important tools in combating pandemics. “Various different Rohingya civil society groups have been working hard on spreading awareness,” says Yasmin Ullah of the Rohingya Human Rights Network, who visited the camps at the end of February. “But you have to pick community members who can spread the information — and that requires a meeting. You have to go door to door.” That’s not exactly conducive to social distancing. Tun Khin, of the Burmese Rohingya Organization UK, told me that he and other activists understand perfectly well that Bangladesh will have to prioritize its own citizens with its limited resources: “But at least they could lift all the restrictions and bureaucracy that stop international and domestic agencies doing what they can to prepare for when the virus hits the camps.” Lifting the Internet blackout in the camps is one of the first things the government could do. It’s not like the Rohingya haven’t suffered enough already. The refugees, almost all of whom lost friends and family during the horrors of 2017, live with lingering trauma. According to United Nations investigators, Rohingya women suffered widespread sexual violence at the hands of the soldiers — and many still fear sexual abuse in the refugee camps, where there is little semblance of law and order. Now they have to face a new and unseen enemy. Ullah worries that matters might be even worse for the some 600,00 Rohingya who stayed back home in Myanmar. There’s little scrutiny from the international community there, since the government tightly controls access to the region. “It’s very scary there,” says Ullah. “It’s closed down, closed off from the rest of the world.” Small wonder that the Rohingya feel exposed to the havoc now likely to be unleashed upon them by the coronavirus. “First, the international community did nothing to prevent genocide against us,” says Tun Khin. “Then they did not provide enough aid for the million-plus refugees forced to flee genocide. Now they once again do nothing as Rohingya refugees face a virus that could kill as many of us as the Burma military have." Christian Caryl is an editor with The Post's Opinions section. Copyright 2020 The Washington Post Read more: Maung Zarni: Why Myanmar’s genocide denial will come back to haunt it Christian Caryl: The Rohingya finally got their day in court. For most of them it was a first. The Post’s View: For Myanmar, too much impunity and too little accountability Yasmin Ullah: Why Myanmar’s persecuted ethnic groups must stand united against the military Paul Donowitz: The world should hit Myanmar’s military where it hurts — in the wallet The Post’s View: The Rohingya are a people of nowhere. They shouldn’t be abandoned.

Ravish Kumar, managing editor of NDTV's Hindi news channel, anchoring an evening newscast at the studio’s headquarters in New Delhi in February. Credit.. Saumya Khandelwal. Photographs by Saumya Khandelwal. NEW DELHI — The Media One anchorman Vinesh Kunhiraman went on air as usual on March 6, ready to tell the station’s five million viewers in India’s Kerala State about the death anniversary of a beloved comedian and the latest news on the coronavirus pandemic. Just a few minutes into the broadcast, he saw the managing editor rush to the studio floor, gesturing wildly. “I realized something was not right,” Mr. Kunhiraman recalled. The station’s uplink suddenly went dead. Mr. Kunhiraman’s image dissolved into a blue screen. A bland message told viewers there was no signal. “We regret the inconvenience,” it said. But this was no technical difficulty. The station had been cut off by an order from India’s Ministry of Information and Broadcasting. The government decided to block the channel for 48 hours because it had covered February’s biggest news story — the mob attacks on Muslims in New Delhi that flared into broader unrest — in a way that seemed “critical toward Delhi Police and R.S.S.,” the order said. The R.S.S. is a Hindu-nationalist social movement with close ties to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Bharatiya Janata Party. “It was shocking the central government took such a decision,” said R. Subhash, an editor at Media One. “It was an attack on the freedom of the press.” India’s free press has played a crucial role in protecting this country’s democracy since its independence from Britain in 1947. But journalists here now feel under attack. Since Mr. Modi came to power in 2014, they say, his government has tried to control the country’s news media, especially the airwaves, like no other prime minister in decades. Mr. Modi has shrewdly cultivated the media to build a cult of personality that portrays him as the nation’s selfless savior. At the same time, senior government officials have pressed news outlets — berating editors, cutting off advertising, ordering tax investigations — to ignore the uglier side of his party’s campaign to transform India from a tolerant, religiously diverse country into an assertively Hindu one. News media covering antigovernment protests in New Delhi in February. Right before he announced the world’s largest coronavirus lockdown, on 1.3 billion people, Mr. Modi met with top news executives and urged them to publish “inspiring and positive stories” about the government’s efforts. Then, after the lockdown stranded half a million migrant workers, with some dying along the highways, his lawyers persuaded the Supreme Court this week to order all media to “publish the official version” of coronavirus developments, although outlets are still allowed to carry independent reporting. An association of leading broadcasters was quick to praise the court decision, which many intellectuals said was yet another attack on India’s constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech. Through an aide, India’s information and broadcasting minister, Prakash Javadekar, initially agreed to discuss the government’s media policies. But in the two weeks since then, Mr. Javadekar has declined to answer any questions, including a written list emailed to him. His aide cited the demands of the coronavirus crisis. India’s media universe is vast, perhaps the biggest in the world: More than 17,000 newspapers, 100,000 magazines, 178 television news channels and countless websites in dozens of languages. Thousands of Facebook pages call themselves news publishers, and YouTube is filled with local bulletins on everything from real estate trends to police raids. But Mr. Modi’s ministers have leaned on business leaders to cut off support to independent media, slowly strangling their operations. His government has pressured media owners to fire journalists who have criticized the prime minister and told them to stop running features like hate-crime trackers that have embarrassed Mr. Modi’s party. Mr. Modi is backed up by an army of online allies who discredit and harass independent journalists; female journalists, in particular, have been besieged with abuse and rape threats. And the police say Hindu nationalists were behind the 2017 murder of Gauri Lankesh, a female newspaper editor hailed as one of India’s most crusading journalists. Like other populist leaders, Mr. Modi and his ministers bristle at any public criticism, whether from business executives, foreign leaders, or even schoolchildren. And for the most part, Indian news outlets have knuckled under, concluding that since much of the public supports the prime minister, they should, too. Even skeptical journalists censor themselves, afraid to be branded anti-national by a government that equates patriotism with support for Mr. Modi. His government has also imposed the strictest restrictions on foreign journalists in decades, suddenly and without explanation. Visas have been tightened, and foreign journalists have been banned from hotbeds of unrest such as northeast India and Jammu and Kashmir, a Muslim-majority area that was stripped of its statehood in August and put under a severe crackdown. India’s media landscape is vast. Satellite TV subscriptions are cheap, and Indians can tune in to 178 television news channels. The Kashmir story was seismic, but many Indian journalists, looking back on it, feel that they toed the government line and overlooked grave human rights abuses. “We didn’t do justice to the big story,’’ said Rajdeep Sardesai, one of the country’s leading news anchors. “We should have gone out there and reported the situation from the ground aggressively and independently.’’ There were security restrictions on where Indian reporters could go, Mr. Sardesai said, but he admitted it was more than that. “A large section of the Indian media,” he said, “has become a lap dog, not a watchdog.” The business model in India doesn’t help. Well before Mr. Modi first became prime minister in 2014, newspapers and television stations have relied on government advertising, allowing politicians to reward friendly outlets and punish critics. And media owners often run other businesses for which they need the government’s favor, making them reluctant to take on those in power. With the coronavirus pandemic dampening advertising and restricting newspaper circulation, news organizations are now sliding into crisis. One of the most independent, The Indian Express, just decided to cut salaries. Even as Mr. Modi constantly touts India as the world’s largest democracy, its ranking on the Reporters Without Borders press freedom index is 140 out of 180. “In the past six years, the Indian media has deteriorated,” said Shakuntala Banaji, a media professor at the London School of Economics. “There is no semblance of truth or responsibility left in the vast majority of media reports.” Sukirti Dwivedi, a correspondent with NDTV, reporting from the areas hit by religious violence in New Delhi in February. Pressuring the advertisers The apologetic calls from advertisers have become so common that NDTV executives are no longer surprised. One corporate boss begged the station to take his company’s logo off the screen, saying the government was squeezing him too hard. Another executive broke down in tears as he canceled a large advertising contract. No TV channel has come under more pressure from Mr. Modi’s government than NDTV, an influential network that airs in English and Hindi. Mr. Modi’s grudge goes back to 2002, when he was chief minister of Gujarat State, and NDTV journalists reported that his government stood by while hundreds of Muslims were massacred in religiously driven violence. When Mr. Modi became prime minister, his administration began a full-scale assault on NDTV. The government accused it of laundering money through a deal with NBC, the American TV network. The accusations have dragged on for years, and NDTV denies any wrongdoing. “The thing in India is, you can file a case, and win it 10 years later,” said Prannoy Roy, one of NDTV’s founders. “The process is the punishment.” The effort to brand NDTV as unpatriotic has been devastatingly effective. In one November 2016 email, the luxury automaker Daimler told NDTV that it would not proceed with a marketing campaign because “there are people associated with the channel that are linked to anti-India stuff, by the public at large.” A Daimler spokeswoman said Friday that the email did not reflect the company’s views and that the campaign had been rejected for economic reasons. As money dried up, the station laid off hundreds of journalists. NDTV now gets much of its advertising from state governments, many of which are controlled by opposition parties. Bharatiya Janata Party supporters celebrating in New Delhi with a cutout of Prime Minister Narendra Modi last May as he cruised to an election victory. ‘Stay firmly with the national government’ Many within India’s news firmament have embraced Mr. Modi, sensing how much the popular mood has swung away from India’s founding secularism and toward Mr. Modi’s brand of strident Hindu nationalism. Right-wing TV anchors, led by Arnab Goswami of Republic TV, compete to outdo one another as the loudest Modi supporters. As the government announced the crackdown in Kashmir, M.K. Anand, the managing director of Times Network, sent his editors a directive. “We are India’s leading news broadcasters,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message, seen by The New York Times. “It is important that we stay firmly with the national government at this juncture instead of focusing on finding faults.” The Modi government has been particularly concerned about broadcast media, which reach into every corner of the country. It has approved very few new TV channels, and even Bloomberg, the American media giant, has been unable to get a license, despite investing millions of dollars with its Indian partner. In this environment, sharp criticism of Mr. Modi can end careers. After a host at the Hindi news channel ABP questioned the results of one of the prime minister’s initiatives to help poor farmers, the satellite transmission of the show was interrupted every time it was broadcast, said several people who worked at the station. The channel’s owners pressured the host, Punya Prasun Bajpai, to resign, and as soon as he left, the transmission interruptions stopped, the former employees said. And after another ABP anchor, Abhisar Sharma, criticized Mr. Modi on live television about public safety, he was pulled off the air the same day. He, too, said he was pressured to quit. Mr. Sharma then took to YouTube to broadcast his commentary, but pro-Modi trolls followed him into cyberspace. Every time he uploaded a video — and some drew millions of views — YouTube would receive thousands of complaints that he had made inappropriate remarks, Mr. Sharma said. The site’s algorithm then blocked any advertising revenue he would have made. “You can’t escape them,” he said. Pawan Kumar Jaiswal, a part-time journalist who was persecuted for exposing a school lunch scandal, reporting from a village in northern India in February. Attacking the messenger Small-town journalists have come under government attack, as well. Last August, Pawan Kumar Jaiswal, a part-time journalist who also ran a tiny mobile phone accessories shop, broke a story revealing how poor children in a school near Varanasi, Mr. Modi’s parliamentary constituency, were being fed only flatbread and salt for lunch — a clear violation of government nutrition rules. After his short video went viral, a state education officer filed a criminal complaint against Mr. Jaiswal, accusing him of conspiracy, false evidence and cheating, a crime that can draw up to seven years in jail. His source at the school was promptly arrested. Fearing he was next, Mr. Jaiswal fled to New Delhi, where he hid for several weeks. “Sometimes I felt like committing suicide,’’ he said. Even though an investigation eventually vindicated his reporting and the police dropped the charges against him, Mr. Jaiswal continues to be stalked by people connected to the school, he said. He has reason to be afraid. Several Indian journalists have been killed in recent years, from a Kashmiri newspaper editor shot outside his office to a young journalist in Chhattisgarh found tied up in a forest. “This is the life of a local reporter,” Mr. Jaiswal said. The government of India has been particularly sensitive about news coverage of the violence against Muslims that permeated New Delhi. ‘Responsible Freedom’ The shutdown of Media One and another Kerala television station, Asianet News, in March was a new twist. Both stations broadcast in Malayalam, a local language spoken by less than 3 percent of Indians. And both channels had aired witness accounts that echoed what many other outlets aired during the violence in Delhi: that the police had done little to stop Hindu mobs as they rampaged against Muslims. But the broadcast ministry claimed that what these two stations reported “could enhance the communal disharmony across the country.” After many complaints about the shutdown, the broadcasting minister, Mr. Javadekar, reversed the orders the next morning. “Press freedom is absolutely essential in a democratic setup and that is the commitment of the Modi government,” Mr. Javadekar said at a news conference, implying that the orders had been issued without his consent. “But let me also say,” he concluded, “that everybody accepts that it has to be a responsible freedom.” NDTV has laid off hundreds of journalists after what executives say was government pressure on its advertisers. Sameer Yasir, Shalini Venugopal and Hari Kumar contributed reporting. Vindu Goel, a reporter based in Mumbai, India, covers the impact of technology on South Asia's economy and culture. He previously reported on technology and social media from San Francisco. He joined The Times from The San Jose Mercury News in 2008. @vindugoel • Facebook Jeffrey Gettleman is the South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi. He was the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for international reporting. @gettleman • Facebook A version of this article appears in print on April 3, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Media Dissent Fades as Modi Tightens Grip. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

Afghan police near site of ISIS attack on Sikh temple on March 25 . Photo: AFP/STR The most recent attack has been linked to ISIS extremists, but mainstream persecution is the norm. The terrorist attack that killed 27 Sikhs in a centuries-old gurdwara (Sikh temple) last week highlighted yet again the continued and systematic decimation of Sikhs and other religious minorities in Afghanistan. This most recent attack, for which Islamic State (ISIS) has claimed responsibility, represents yet another poignant chapter in a larger narrative of the persistent persecution of Sikhs in Afghanistan. Then the bomb attack on the mourners of those killed in the Sikh temple that followed was but another painful postscript to the brutal reality of the devastation that has been inflicted on Sikhs in that country. Once a thriving religious minority, the Sikh population in Afghanistan has over the last couple of decades declined significantly, with current estimates putting the number remaining at between 3,000 and 8,000. Indeed, so desperate has the situation become that there is little doubt that Afghan Sikhs will become little more than another historical footnote to the international community – one that has been conveniently and persistently ignored by governments and international organizations that purport to champion the cause of religious freedom and minority rights. While some international news outlets did report last week’s attacks, it’s quite telling that even with the understandable attention of the international community on the Covid-19 pandemic, the persistent persecution of Sikhs in countries like Afghanistan (and in neighboring Pakistan) in essence continues to be ignored by entities such as the United Nations. To be sure, decades of war and devastation have taken a toll on the persistence of minorities such as Sikhs and Hindus in Afghanistan, but there is no question that systematic targeting, harassment, intimidation, and violence perpetrated against these minorities has been routinely tolerated, reflecting how a discernible set of practices have been tacitly or otherwise ignored over an extended period in many parts of the country. While extreme violence of the kind undertaken by ISIS jihadists provides fodder for the narrative that it’s extremists who are the source of this persecution of minorities, it also conveniently enables this mainstream misinterpretation to persist unchallenged and unexamined. Of course, there is the school of thought that the violent attacks by extremists on Sikhs (and Hindus) are a way to exert pressure indirectly on any Indian government entanglement in Afghanistan as well as retaliate against the mistreatment of Muslims in Kashmir or elsewhere in India. But this convenient interpretation doesn’t adequately and meaningfully account for the society-wide practices of discrimination, intimidation, mistreatment, and targeting of Sikhs that persists as an embedded aspect of daily life in Afghanistan. According to one US government report, for example, “only a few places of worship remained open for Sikhs and Hindus, who said they continued to emigrate because of discrimination and the lack of employment opportunities. Hindu and Sikh groups also reported interference in their efforts to cremate the remains of their dead in accordance with their customs from individuals who lived near cremation sites.” Other forms of systematic and even state-sanctioned discrimination include the illegal appropriation of property owned by Sikhs. Frankly, it appears that the relative lack of international attention to situations like the systematic targeting of Sikhs and other religious minorities in Afghanistan and Pakistan reflects an apparent political indifference of the establishment international community. Despite repeated reports of attacks and systematic targeting of Sikhs, the UN, for example, continues to show – despite its predictable condemnation – what can only be described as a puzzling disregard for their plight. On cue, the UN Secretary General’s Office issued the following statement on the recent attack in Kabul: “The Secretary General condemns the attack today in Kabul on a Sikh-Hindu temple in which dozens of civilians were killed and injured. He expresses his deepest sympathies to the families of the victims and wishes a speedy recovery to those injured. “The Secretary General reiterates that attacks against civilians are unacceptable and those who carry out such crimes must be held accountable. “The United Nations stands in solidarity with the people and the government of Afghanistan and will continue supporting efforts to bring peace to their country.” The office of the Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief within the UN Human Rights Council, for example, is apparently charged with promoting, among other things, “the adoption of measures at the national, regional and international levels to ensure the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of religion or belief.” However, any close scrutiny of its efforts in this regard reveal a shocking neglect particularly with respect to the plight of Sikhs in Afghanistan or Pakistan. Indeed, the unambiguous, vivid, and steady stream of independent media and other reports of the destruction of gurdwaras, or attacks on Sikhs in Afghanistan and Pakistan seem to disappear – curiously and, arguably, conveniently – into the proverbial pile of insignificance. It seems reasonable to pose the rather obvious question: Under what circumstances exactly might the United Nations, for instance, find it suitable to make its presence and influence felt in such matters, if not in a devastating and oppressive scenario marked by persistent and unyielding persecution of Sikhs in Afghanistan or Pakistan? Amid the years of indifference to the plight of the Sikhs in Afghanistan, it now is increasingly evident, if it wasn’t already before the latest attack, that to continue living in the country is no longer tenable. This latest attack on Afghan Sikhs has underscored their systematic displacement through a wider, long-standing institutional and societal context marked by hostility toward them. When it comes to tackling the mistreatment of Sikhs in Afghanistan, it is clear the UN and the wider international community have failed spectacularly. Copyright 2020 Asia Times

Women mourn after ISIS attack on Sikh temple in Kabul Credit: BBC News KABUL — An Islamic State gunman stormed a temple used by Sikh and Hindu minorities in Kabul on Wednesday, killing 25 worshipers during an hours-long battle with Afghan security forces. More than six hours after the attack began, the Interior Ministry said the building had been cleared. Spokesman Tariq Aryan said eight were wounded in addition to the 25 killed. Afghan security forces rescued 80 others from the site, he said. The Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attack in a statement posted by the group’s media arm, according to SITE Intelligence Group, which tracks the online postings of Islamist militant organizations. Although Afghan President Ashraf Ghani declared that the Islamic State was defeated late last year, officials estimated Islamic State fighters scattered across the country number in the hundreds. The group’s supply and recruitment networks were also believed to be badly damaged, and for months last year the extremists were unable to carry out attacks in Kabul. The Taliban denied any involvement in the attack Wednesday. After signing a peace deal with the United States last month, the group has been under pressure to reduce violence and enter into talks with the Afghan government. But the Islamic State is allied with neither the government nor the Taliban and has continued its attacks. ISIS attack in Kabul leaves 32 dead, more than 80 wounded The lone gunman began firing on worshipers during a Wednesday morning ceremony at the temple in a congested part of the Afghan capital. Aryan, the Interior Ministry spokesman, said the shooting was the first such attack on a house of worship used by Sikh and Hindu minorities in Kabul. The sound of at least one blast was heard from the area during the attack, but it was unclear where it occurred and whether it was linked to the attack. Anarkali Honaryar, an Afghan Sikh lawmaker, told The Washington Post by phone that children were among the casualties and that it took security forces hours to secure the site because of the large number of civilians present. Several ambulances were seen rushing to the site and evacuating the wounded. U.S.-led coalition troops were also dispatched to the scene to support Afghan security forces. A coalition defense official said the response to Wednesday’s attack was “Afghan-led and Afghan-executed, with some advice and assistance from Resolute Support,” the U.S.-led military command in Kabul. The official added that the U.S.-led coalition “is committed to our ongoing support for Afghan security forces.” The official spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to release details of the incident for attribution. The United States set a timetable for the withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan in the peace deal signed with the Taliban in February. The absence of U.S. forces in Afghanistan is expected to put increased pressure on Afghan security forces. “The attack on the religious sites shows the extreme weakness of the enemy,” Ghani said in a statement. “Religious sites should not be vulnerable to attacks and violence.” The U.S. Embassy in Kabul condemned the attack in a tweet. The Islamic State also asserted responsibility for an attack this month that killed dozens of civilians gathered at a commemoration ceremony for a slain leader of the Hazara ethnic group, who are largely followers of the Shiite sect of Islam. Sikhs and Hindus, religious minorities in Afghanistan, have suffered immensely from persecution during the decades of war in the country. Many of them have left Afghanistan because of war and rising crime. Prominent Sikh leaders were also killed in an Islamic State suicide attack in 2018 in the eastern city of Jalalabad. Sharif Hassan in Kabul and Susannah George in London contributed to this report. More: U.S. vows to cut $1 billion in aid to Afghanistan as political crisis threatens peace deal Growing number of suicide attacks wreak havoc in eastern Afghanistan U.S. halts offensive military operations in Afghanistan as part of Taliban deal Copyright 2020 The Washington Post

A total of 21 villagers were killed and about two dozen injured when military jets opened fire on four majority Christian villages in Chin State, Myanmar (Burma) over the weekend. Eyewitness said twelve people were killed in the first attack on two villages in Paletwa Township by Myanmar Army planes on 14 March. A further eight people died the following day in an airstrike on two other villages. The attacks caused about 2,000 residents to flee to a nearby town. Traumatised and tearful Chin villagers flee their burning homes and make their way to safety by boat “We did not expect that the military’s fighter jet would shoot into our village,” said a survivor. “In one family, seven people were killed instantly and only two teenagers, aged 13 and 15, are left – both of them were injured. “Some houses were in flames when we left. Three houses were burning. Later we heard all the houses in our village are gone. Thankfully, my parents are safe, but our house was burnt and is gone.” An injured Christian youth receives emergency treatment in hospital, which struggled to cope with the number of wounded A local official said the hospital in a nearby town was struggling to cope with the number of injured. “We heard the hospital does not have enough medical supplies or doctors, and is in need of support,” he said in a Facebook post. The Chin ethnic minority group are predominantly Christian. From Barnabas Fund contacts and other sources

Darfur Women Action Group (DWAG) expresses a grave concern regarding an attack on Monday, March 9th, that has killed at least 12 people and wounded more than 17 people in South Darfur. We would like to repeat our urgent calls for the effective provision of security and well-being for Darfuri residents, as well as for the apprehension and prosecution of the individuals who have carried out such violent crimes. The security status of Darfur is a cornerstone in the peaceful transition and sustainable development of the entire nation of Sudan, and thus cannot be ignored. Justice for the victims of this most recent attack, likewise, cannot be foregone. Reports from the civilians on the ground and the local news source Radio Dabanga were able to ascertain the details of the attack on Dewana village in Beleil locality. Community leader Omda Nureldin Ishag testified that tensions were sparked by an initial dispute between a resident farmer and a herder. Others furthermore confirmed that the farmer acted in self-defense in stabbing the herder to death. Even though the farmer had surrendered himself to the police afterwards, other herders gathered and stormed the area in retaliation. They surrounded Dewana village and indiscriminately opened fire, killing and wounding innocent civilians as well as burning several homes to the ground. The final casualty total of 12 killed and more than 17 injured has yet to account for some missing individuals. This attack was neither random nor isolated. We must note the provoked recurrent nature by which herders, many of whom are Janjaweed militia members affiliated with the Rapid Support Forces, have been killing farmers in Darfur. DWAG’s December-January event report highlighted several instances – most notably in El Geneina and Kerending refugee camp in West Darfur – where similar patterns of violence have erupted with villagers and farmers coming under attack. It is additionally worth noting that the people who are coming under attack are from the same indigenous tribes – the Fur, Masalit, and Zaghawa – as those targeted for genocide by the former regime’s forces and proxy militias. The Interim Government of Sudan must therefore take proper steps in redress of the malicious farmer-herder dynamic, as well as take precautionary measures for the behalf of Darfuri residents who are just seeking to make their own livings in the face of longstanding crises. This is not to say that the local South Darfur government has not responded. Major General Hashim Mahmoud, the governor of South Darfur, has issued a tentative statement on the attack. Mahmoud claimed that government security forces have been deployed to Dewana village in order to contain the situation, and furthermore that a committee of inquiry has been formed to investigate the perpetrators and motivations behind such incident. These measures, albeit a step in the right direction, are too little too late. The bodies of victims have already been buried in Dewana and Nyala, the capital of South Darfur. The Interim Government of Sudan, and actors of local governance by extension, have been woefully inadequate in dealing with attacks such as the one in South Darfur. Major General Mahmoud’s words, despite being strong, only fall upon skeptical ears jaded by the government’s previous unfulfilled promises for action. The government must be willing to learn some lessons if they are actually serious in their calls. They must understand that reactive policies of protection cannot guarantee the security and well-being of Darfuri residents. Security forces must do more than merely arrive at the scene of the crime after the perpetrators have already fled. Rather, the Interim Government of Sudan (as well as the UN Security Council) must take proactive steps in protecting civilians if the is to be a lasting peace in Darfur. Herders, for instance, should not be allowed to carry automatic assault rifles with impunity. Deproliferation of arms and demilitarization campaigns ought to be continued, if not escalated, in these areas. Economic woes must be redressed so that resource conflicts are mitigated. Continuing to tolerate such persistent problems are irresponsible given the systematic tensions in the region already. In the event that the interim government is unwilling or unable to protect its people, the international community led by the UN Security Council must intervene to help the Darfuri people whom have been victimized for two whole decades. DWAG thus issues the following calls to action to demand protection, accountability, and an end to these heinous and recurrent acts of violence: 1.) The UNSC must prioritize civilian protection throughout the Darfur region as a whole, with a particular emphasis on the proactive apprehension of militant groups of herders and the de-escalation of tensions among the plurality of Darfuri residents. 2.) An internationally monitored investigation must be rendered in the aftermath of the Dewana village attack. This is crucial to reinforce South Darfur governor Mahmoud’s local committee of inquiry for investigation of the attack and subsequent pursuit of fleeing suspects. 3.) UNSC must aid Sudan in conducting the process of disarmament of Janjaweed/other militant groups and in withdrawing military forces from civilian inhabited areas. 4.) All actors must rally for criminal accountability and an end of impunity for the past and present crimes committed in Darfur and all across Sudan. The people of Darfur have suffered for far too long and today they must not continue to be victims. The interim government’s claim to legitimate authority must be judged solely on its ability to provide security, welfare, and justice to its people. We must hold such government accountable to its mandate and demand the calls to action above. The actions of the Interim Government of Sudan hold both the legacies of the Dewana attack victims and the futures of the survivors at stake. There is no peace without justice and no justice without accountability. About: Darfur Women Action Group: Women Action Group (DWAG) strives to empower and amplify the voices of women, the victims of genocide, and the historically excluded Sudanese. DWAG ultimately aim to enable them to fight for their rights, to achieve justice, and to equally participate in the transformation of their society. Niemat Ahmadi, President Norrie Kurtz, Board’s Chair For media contact: niemat@darfurwomenaction.org

More evidence has emerged that the Indian police took part in violence against Muslims or stood aside during fighting in the capital last month. Kaushar Ali, 49, who was beaten up by Delhi police officers on Feb. 24, was visited by his relatives at a hospital earlier this month. Photographs by Atul Loke NEW DELHI — Kaushar Ali, a house painter, was trying to get home when he ran into a battle. Hindu and Muslim mobs were hurling rocks at each other, blocking a street he needed to cross to get to his children. Mr. Ali, who is Muslim, said that he turned to some police officers for help. That was his mistake. The officers threw him onto the ground, he said, and cracked him on the head. They started beating him and several other Muslims. As the men lay bleeding, begging for mercy — one of them died two days later from internal injuries — the officers laughed, jabbed them with their sticks and made them sing the national anthem. That abuse, on Feb. 24, was captured on video. “The police were toying with us,” Mr. Ali said. He recalled them saying, “Even if we kill you, nothing will happen to us.” So far, they have been right. India has suffered its worst sectarian bloodshed in years, in what many here see as the inevitable result of Hindu extremism that has flourished under the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. His party has embraced a militant brand of Hindu nationalism and its leaders have openly vilified Indian Muslims. In recent months Mr. Modi has presided over a raft of policies widely seen as anti-Muslim, such as erasing the statehood of what had been India’s only Muslim-majority state, Jammu and Kashmir. Now, more evidence is emerging that the Delhi police, who are under the direct command of Mr. Modi’s government and have very few Muslim officers, concertedly moved against Muslims and at times actively helped the Hindu mobs that rampaged in New Delhi in late February, burning down Muslim homes and targeting Muslim families. Several videos showed police officers beating and throwing rocks at Muslim protesters and waving on Hindu mobs to join them. A police commander said that as the violence erupted — at that point mostly by Hindu mobs — officers in the affected areas were ordered to deposit their guns at the station houses. Several officers during the violence were later overheard by New York Times journalists yelling to one another that they had only sticks and that they needed guns to confront the growing mobs. Some researchers accuse the police force of deliberately putting too few officers on the streets, with inadequate firepower, as the violence morphed from clashes between rival protesters into targeted killings of Muslims. Two thirds of the more than 50 people who were killed and have been identified were Muslim. Human rights activists are calling it an organized massacre. Though India’s population is 14 percent Muslim and New Delhi’s is 13 percent, the total Muslim representation on the Delhi police force is less than 2 percent. Lawyers marched for peace in Delhi on Friday. Photograph by Atul Loke India’s policing culture has long been brutal, biased, anti-minority and almost colonial in character, a holdover from the days of British rule when the police had no illusions of serving the public but were used to suppress a restive population. But what seems to be different now, observers contend, is how profoundly India’s law enforcement machinery has been politicized by the Bharatiya Janata Party, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Hindu-nationalist governing bloc. Police officials, especially in states controlled by Mr. Modi’s party, have been highly selective in their targets, like a Muslim school principal in Karnataka who was jailed for more than two weeks on sedition charges after her students performed a play about a new immigration law that police officials said was critical of Mr. Modi. Some judges have also seemed to be caught up — or pushed out — by a Hindu-nationalist wave. A Delhi judge who expressed disbelief that the police had yet to investigate members of Mr. Modi’s party who have been widely accused of instigating the recent violence in Delhi was taken off the case and transferred to another state. And at the same time that the Supreme Court has made a string of rulings in the government’s favor, one of the judges, Arun Mishra, publicly praised Mr. Modi as a “visionary genius.” All of this is emboldening Hindu extremists on the street. The religiously mixed and extremely crowded neighborhoods in northeastern Delhi that were on fire in late February have cooled. But some Hindu politicians continue to lead so-called peace marches, trotting out casualties of the violence with their heads wrapped in white medical tape, trying to upend the narrative and make Hindus seem like the victims, which is stoking more anti-Muslim hatred. Some Muslims are leaving their neighborhoods, having lost all faith in the police. More than 1,000 have piled into a camp for internally displaced people that is rising on Delhi’s outskirts. A relief camp in New Mustafabad in northeastern Delhi, on Thursday. Photograph by Atul Loke Muslim leaders see the violence as a state-sanctioned campaign to teach them a lesson. After years of staying quiet as Hindu lynch mobs killed Muslims with impunity and Mr. Modi’s government chipped away at their political power, India’s Muslim population awoke in December and poured into the streets, along with many other Indians, to protest the new immigration law, which favors migrants belonging to every major religion in South Asia — except for Muslims. Mr. Modi’s government, Muslim leaders say, is now trying to drive the whole community back into silence. “There’s a method to this madness,” said Umar Khalid, a Muslim activist. “The government wants to bring the entire Muslim community to their knees, to beg for their lives and beg for their livelihoods.” “You can read it in their books," he said, referring to foundational texts by Hindu nationalists. “They believe India’s Muslims should live in perpetual fear.” Mr. Modi has said little since the bloodshed erupted, except for a few anodyne tweets urging peace. Delhi police officials deny an anti-Muslim bias and said they “acted swiftly to control law and order,” which both Muslims and Hindus in those neighborhoods have said was not true. The police responded “without favoring any person on religious lines or otherwise,” according to a written reply to questions, provided by M.S. Randhawa, a police spokesman. Police officials said that Mr. Ali and the other Muslim men were hurt by protesters and rescued by the police — though videos clearly show them being hit by police officers. Police officials also pointed out that one officer was killed and more than 80 injured; videos show a huge crowd of Muslim protesters attacking outnumbered officers. The violence in New Delhi fits a pattern, experts say, of chaos being allowed to rage for a few days — with minorities being killed — before the government brings it under control. Police patrolling in Mustafabad on Feb. 28. Photograph by Atul Loke In 1984, under the Congress party, which often bills itself as representing the interests of minorities, the police in New Delhi stood back for several days as mobs massacred 3,000 Sikhs. In 1993, again under a Congress government, riots swept Mumbai and hundreds of Muslims were killed. In 2002 in Gujarat, when Mr. Modi was the state’s chief minister, Hindu mobs massacred hundreds of Muslims. Mr. Modi was accused of complicity, though he was cleared by a court. Several retired Indian police commanders said that the rule in quelling communal violence was to deploy maximum force and make many arrests, neither of which happened in Delhi. Ajai Raj Sharma, a former commissioner, called the performance “unexplainable.” “It can’t be forgiven,” he said. When the violence started on Feb. 23 — as Hindu men gathered to forcibly eject a peaceful Muslim protest near their neighborhood — much of it became two-sided. By day’s end, both Muslims and Hindus had been attacked, and dozens had been shot, apparently with small-bore homemade guns. But by Feb. 25 the direction had changed. Hindu mobs fanned out and targeted Muslim families. Violence crackled in the air. Police officers watched as mobs of Hindus, their foreheads marked by saffron stripes, prowled the streets with baseball bats and rusty bars, looking for Muslims to kill. The sky was filled with smoke. Muslim homes, shops and mosques were burned down. When a reporter for The New York Times tried to speak to residents standing near police officers that day, a mob of men with darting eyes surrounded him and ripped the notebook out of his hands. When the reporter asked police officers for help, one said: “I can’t. These young men are very volatile.” The home ministry, which controls Delhi’s police force and is led by Amit Shah, one of the most combative Hindu nationalists in the B.J.P., has come under heavy criticism for the policing failures. Delhi police officials denied being instructed by the central government to go easy on the troublemakers. The home ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment. On Thursday, during a debate in parliament, Mr. Shah vowed to bring the culprits to justice, “regardless of their caste, religion or political affiliations.’’ He has defended the police and called the violence a conspiracy, saying investigators found links to the Islamic State. Many observers question how much, if at all, the Islamic State had anything to do with what unfolded. And then there’s the composition of the police. The Delhi force, numbering around 80,000, has fewer than 2,000 Muslim officers and just a handful of Muslim commanders, according to an analysis done in 2017 by the Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative. Delhi police officials did not deny this, and Muslim leaders said that police behavior was biased across India. “Indian police are extremely colonial and caste-ist,” said Shahid Siddiqui, a former member of Parliament. Police behavior, he said, is always “more violent and aggressive toward the weak.” India’s population is about 80 percent Hindu, and gangs of Hindus threatened Muslims in several Delhi neighborhoods to leave before the Hindu holiday Holi that was celebrated this week. One Muslim woman, who goes by the name Baby, opened her door a few days ago to find 50 men outside with a notebook in their hands, listing the addresses of Muslims. She packed up. She may be leaving soon. “O, Allah, why didn’t you make me a Hindu?” she said, her voice quavering. “Is it my fault that I was born a Muslim?” Friday prayer at a mosque in Mustafabad on Feb. 28. Photograph by Atul Loke Shalini Venugopal contributed reporting. Jeffrey Gettleman is the South Asia bureau chief, based in New Delhi. He was the winner of a Pulitzer Prize in 2012 for international reporting. @gettleman • Facebook Suhasini Raj has worked for over a decade as an investigative journalist with Indian and international news outlets. Based in the New Delhi bureau, she joined The Times in 2014. Hari Kumar is a reporter in the New Delhi bureau. He joined The Times in 1997. @HariNYT A version of this article appears in print on March 13, 2020, Section A, Page 14 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Even if We Kill You, Nothing Will Happen to Us’. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

Hundreds of thousands of people fleeing Syria’s war ended up in Idlib city. But with the front line just five miles away, the city may not be a refuge much longer. About 100 displaced families live in a temporary shelter in a soccer stadium in Idlib city. The city is likely to be the Syrian government’s next target. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times IDLIB, Syria — Before the war in Syria, Idlib city, with its tree-lined avenues and white-stone buildings, was known for its calm, provincial air. Today it overflows with families who fled the war in other parts of Syria, swelling the population to nearly a million people. Some shelter in bombed-out buildings. Those who can’t find shelter are camped in the soccer stadium, and more line up outside for food handouts. Residents are so used to the shelling that no one even flinches at the sound of an explosion. But for Syria’s last rebel-held city the worst is yet to come. To the north, nearly a million people are living along roadsides and in olive groves in what is already one of the worst humanitarian disasters of Syria’s brutal nine-year war. To the south and east, Syrian government forces backed by Russian warplanes are closing in, now just five miles away. When they reach Idlib city, its million residents are likely to flee, doubling the number of displaced people in the north. Dr. Hikmat al-Khatib, an orthopedic surgeon, urged his parents to move to a town to the north. But when it was bombed his mother decided to stay put. “Her words shocked me,” Dr. al-Khatib said. “The only choice is to wait for death.” I made a rare visit into Idlib with a photographer and interpreter on Wednesday, crossing the border from Turkey. We were accompanied by relief workers of a Syrian charity and members of a jihadist rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, which controls the province. We found 100 families camped in the stadium, which has been converted into an emergency shelter. The soccer stadium in Idlib has separate areas for displaced women and children. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Amina Sahloul was sitting on the floor around a stove in a large underground room for women and children. She had arrived hours earlier, after fleeing her village in the dead of night, clinging with her five grandchildren behind her son on a single motorcycle. “We came away because of the airstrikes,” she said. “They started dropping cluster bombs. It was like fire raining in the sky.” There has been no letup for the people of Idlib Province as the forces of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria, backed by Russian air power, have smashed their way forward, demolishing towns and villages in the south and east of the province with punishing airstrikes. A cease-fire declared Thursday by Turkey, which backs Syrian opposition forces, and Russia, which backs the Syrian government, seemed to be holding on Friday but few believe it will last. Mr. al-Assad has insisted he will continue his offensive to retake Idlib Province, and rebel groups have vowed to resist. At the soccer stadium, as word came across the radio that Russian planes were near, tension rose as people nervously scanned the skies. Earlier that day, when an artillery shell slammed into a nearby neighborhood, few people even looked up. The Syrian government fires rockets all the time. But when Russian planes begin a concerted assault, they use overwhelming force, laying down lines of repressive fire that force people to run for their lives with only minutes to get away. “Whenever I hear planes I start running like crazy, I lose my mind,” Hassan Yousufi said as he paced angrily around the men’s shelter in the stadium. “I lived beside the highway for 45 years. I memorized the Quran and was just biding my own life. My brother was killed. The Russians bombed us.” A family gathered what they could from their Idlib city apartment, which had been hit by an airstrike. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Outside of the stadium, life is on a war footing. The streets are busy with cars and motorcycles and women walk together in the main shopping street, but the city has only two hours of electricity a day and boys sell gasoline in plastic jerrycans on street corners. Idlib Province has been free from government control for the length of the war and today is largely controlled by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, the rebel group. But there were few armed fighters in sight in Idlib city, the provincial capital, on Wednesday. Police officers loyal to the opposition stand guard outside the governor’s office and the police station, which still bear the scars of fighting from the first days of the revolution. Billboards around the city bear glossy posters of uniformed rebel fighters, calling on people to join the fight. “It is your turn to heed the call,” reads one. “There is no honor without jihad,” urges another, beside a military checkpoint. Nearly a million people are living in tents or out in the open in the north of Idlib Province, near the Turkish border. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, or HTS, has been designated a terrorist group by the United Nations but recently allowed Western journalists into Idlib in cooperation with Turkey, which has wanted to build international pressure against Russia and Syria. On the front lines to the south and east, the rebels, by their own account, have taken a pounding. “In the last one-and-a-half months we had a collapse,” said Abu Ahmed Muhammad, an HTS spokesman. But he added that the Syrian government had lost many more soldiers than the opposition had, and had to bring in Iranian-backed fighters to retake the strategic town of Saraqib, which has changed hands several times in the last two weeks. Hours before Russia and Turkey agreed to the cease-fire, he warned that nothing would come of it. “Both sides will escalate,” he said. “We in the HTS factions will never accept to de-escalate because the Russians are on top and they may not agree to a peace settlement.” But most of the province’s three million people are civilians, and they are desperate for an end to the violence. They cling to the hope that Turkey’s growing deployment of troops into the province will stop the onslaught. “Anything that makes us feel secure or takes the regime away from us is a very good thing,” said Abdul Razzaq, the head of the emergency relief for the Syrian charity, Violet. His teams were still helping people flee villages on the front line and preparing in case of a mass evacuation of the city. “But Idlib city is huge and where to take them?” he said. An hour’s drive north of the city, blue and white tents pockmark the rocky hillsides and olive groves of the border area. Camps for thousands of displaced families sprouted up from the early days of the war and over the years have turned into settlements of concrete-block housing, built with foreign assistance. Hundreds of thousands more people have joined them in the last six weeks, pitching tents beside the roads and among the rocky limestone outcrops in a densely crowded strip along the Turkish border. Families are sheltering in mosques and schools, empty stores and factories. Even those are not safe. A woman who gave her name as Umm Abdul fled her village three months ago and took refuge with her family in an old brick factory outside the town of Maaret Misrin. On Monday, she was out picking herbs with two of her children when she heard a sound like birds and looked up to see two missiles tumbling out of the sky toward her. “I lay the kids on the ground and covered them with my body,” she said. “They say if you lie down you don’t get hit by shrapnel.” Umm Abdul and her children were out picking herbs on Monday when two missiles landed nearby. Her 18-month-old daughter was wounded, and is being treated at a hospital in Maaret Misrin. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times She was knocked unconscious and her 18-month-old daughter was wounded but all three survived. At an emergency shelter near the Turkish border, Alia Abras, 37, pushed forward to speak. “Do you know the meaning of displacement?” she asked. “You are like stray dogs.” Rescuers took two-and-a-half hours to dig her and her three children out of the rubble of their home in the town of Ariha a month ago, she said. It was the middle of the night but they were left on the street beside their ruined home because there were others still to be rescued. The whole neighborhood around the main hospital had been hit. “We spent two days sitting in the street,” she said until Violet’s rescue team found them and brought them to the shelter, which houses 45 families in a shopping center in the town of Sarmada. “I wish I had died under the ruins and my children with me,” she said. “We lost everything my husband and I spent our lives building up. We are at zero.” Muhammad and Hannah al-Mijan and their children share a tent with three other families pitched atop a sewer at Al Nasr camp. It was the only free space they could find. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times In a camp called Al Nasr, new arrivals have pitched tents just yards from the concrete wall topped with rolls of barbed wire that marks the Turkish border. Some are already building breeze-block houses on a hill facing Turkey. Four families were squeezed into one tent set up on top of the camp sewer. They had no other option, they said. Behind the tent, sewage drained down the hill into a fetid pool. “No one else would take it,” said Hannah al-Mijan, a farmworker and mother of seven. “We do not have money to build.” The family had been displaced twice and without work they had fallen into debt. “We are below zero,” she said. Her husband, Muhammad, shushed her, telling her not to shame them. This time they chose to live within 100 yards of the border wall. Were they not scared that this place would also be bombed? Ms. al-Mijan shook her head, and gestured at the hill opposite. “That’s Turkey,” she said. Al Nasr camp lies in the shadow of Turkey’s border wall. Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times Saad Alnassife contributed reporting from Idlib, Syria, and Hwaida Saad from Beirut. Carlotta Gall is the Istanbul bureau chief, covering Turkey. She previously covered the aftershocks of the Arab Spring from Tunisia, reported from the Balkans during the war in Kosovo and Serbia, and covered Afghanistan and Pakistan. @carlottagall • Facebook A version of this article appears in print on March 7, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Syrians Whose ‘Only Choice Is to Wait for Death’. Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company