A municipal office in Mumbai is filled with racks of musty electoral rolls going back decades. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post) MUMBAI — Inside a musty municipal office, Farah Sheikh pored through hundreds of pages of tattered 60-year-old documents searching for evidence of her family’s roots in India. India is the only country Sheikh has ever known: She was born and raised here, as were her parents, grandparents and great-grandparents. But she worries that one day soon, she will be asked to prove it. Ever since Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government passed a controversial citizenship law in December, many Indian Muslims have been in a state of heightened alert. The law has fueled anxiety that the government’s next step will be to conduct a long-promised nationwide citizenship test, which Muslims see as an excuse to target their status in India. Now Muslims across the country are racing to collect property deeds, land records, graduation documents, voter records, and birth and death certificates in case the government asks for them — not an easy task in a country where many records are poorly maintained and not digitized. On a recent afternoon, Sheikh and her sister were among more than two dozen people in a normally sleepy office in Mumbai sifting through voter rolls going back decades. Some squatted on the floor, others hunched over the papers using phones to illuminate their search. Mumbai has a higher proportion of Muslims than the national average and more-organized efforts toward procuring papers. “My entire family is very worried,” said Sheikh, a 32-year-old human resources manager who was on her fourth visit to the office. “We don’t know what the future holds.” The new citizenship law creates an expedited path to Indian nationality for migrants of six religions, excluding Islam, the faith practiced by 200 million of India’s more than 1.3 billion people. Critics say the measure is discriminatory and antithetical to India’s secular constitution. Hundreds of thousands of people of all faiths have joined protests in recent weeks, prompting a violent crackdown by authorities. Just days before President Trump was set to arrive in India, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Thursday called the citizenship act a “significant downward turn in religious freedom in India.” Trump and U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have not directly commented on the act or the protests. In a briefing for reporters Friday, a senior Trump administration official was asked whether the president would raise with Modi the issue of India’s national register of citizens and the purported discrimination against Muslim immigrants. “President Trump will talk about our shared traditions of democracy and religious freedom in his public remarks and certainly in private,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the president’s itinerary. “He will raise these issues, particularly the religious freedom issue, which is extremely important to this administration.” Home Minister Amit Shah, Modi’s second-in-command, has repeatedly asserted that the citizenship law would be followed by a national citizen register to weed out “infiltrators.” Seeming to contradict Shah’s remarks, a government minister recently told Parliament that the government had not made a decision about carrying out the exercise, known as the National Register of Citizens. A similar exercise carried out in the northeastern state of Assam last year left 1.9 million people, Hindus and Muslims, at risk of becoming stateless and being sent to detention centers. In Assam, getting on the list of citizens required more than providing an Indian passport, driver’s license or voter identity card. People were asked for proof of residency dating back decades and documents proving links to their ancestors. Some failed to make the list because of spelling errors, name changes or mistaken identities. If such an exercise were carried out nationwide, its impact would be “catastrophic,” said Gilles Verniers, a political scientist at Ashoka University near New Delhi. Under the guise of rooting out undocumented immigrants, a citizenship registry “creates an entire category of doubtful citizens and puts the onus on them to prove they are citizens.” The talk of detention centers for those excluded in Assam has scared Sheikh. She says the past month has been a blur: She took time off work to visit government offices during the day, then spent nights trawling through thousands of pages of digitized records to look for her ancestors’ names in past voter lists. She found the names of her father and grandparents in the voter rolls for most national elections, but the relevant pages for 1972 were missing. “I don’t even know which documents are going to be asked for,” Sheikh said, but “we have to be ready for everything.” Salim Khan, an agent in Mumbai who helps people retrieve government documents, said he has been deluged with phone calls since December. He said he now receives nearly 60 calls every day from people seeking to find paperwork. The callers routinely break down in tears. Last month, in a viral video, a Muslim taxi driver in Mumbai wept as he worried about the fate of his family under the registry proposed by Shah, igniting a debate over the widespread fear it has created. Document agent Salim Khan, facing camera, is shown outside a municipal office in Mumbai. He helps people to obtain various government documents in a system in which many records are not digitized. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post) Modi has defended the citizenship law and in December said there was no discussion underway surrounding a citizen register. Shah told the Parliament that Indian Muslims have nothing to fear from such an exercise. But trust in the government has dwindled among Muslims such as Sheikh. Modi’s first term, which began in 2014, was marked by multiple mob lynchings of Muslim men under the guise of protecting cows, which are sacred to many Hindus. Since returning to power in May, Modi revoked the autonomy of majority-Muslim Jammu and Kashmir and received a green light from the nation’s top court to build a temple at the site of a 16th-century mosque illegally demolished in 1992 by a Hindu mob. This month, Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party ran a polarizing campaign during a local election in Delhi, where party leaders vilified Muslims protesting the citizenship law and sought to associate them with India’s rival Pakistan. In Madanpura, a congested neighborhood in the old part of Mumbai, hundreds have attended workshops run by 70-year-old Pervaiz Ansari on the need for correct, up-to-date documents. “The most common problem is different spellings across documents,” he said. “Mohammad, a very common Muslim name, can be spelled in different ways.” City officials in Mumbai confirm a sharp increase in applications for birth and death certificates since the passage of the law. Padmaja Keskar, the head of the city’s health department, said that in neighborhoods with large numbers of Muslims, applications jumped by as much as 150 percent in January compared with December. The city government has provided additional staff in such areas to handle the high volume of requests. Pervaiz Ansari, a social activist in Madanpura, Mumbai, has been conducting workshops to raise awareness among Muslims about getting their documents in order. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post) The rush for documents is not limited to Mumbai. In Uttar Pradesh, an advisory listed 22 documents people should keep ready, and in Karnataka, mosques are collecting documents for families. But record-keeping in India’s infamously Kafkaesque bureaucracy is patchy at best and often riddled with errors. A nationwide government survey conducted in 2016 suggests that only 62 percent of Indian children under the age of 5 had been issued birth certificates — the number was lower among poorer households. And a study of India’s nationwide identification program in 2018 found that 8.8 percent of registered users reported errors on their cards. Shailesh Gandhi, a right-to-information activist who is Hindu, tweeted that city officials issued him a document saying they were unable to find any record of his birth. Zainul Abdeen Ansari, 74, recently applied for a minor correction in his name printed on his birth certificate. “My name was corrected, but they made an error in my father’s name,” he said. “Now I have to do it all over again.” Zainul Abdeen Ansari, 74, waits at a government office in Mumbai. When he applied to correct a spelling error in his name, the office introduced an error into his father’s name. (Niha Masih/The Washington Post) For Sheikh, looking for paperwork has become a part-time job, and members of her extended family have begun asking her for help. Her next stop could be 750 miles away, in the southern state where their father was born, in search of a birth certificate from 1948. Slater reported from New Delhi. Kunal Purohit contributed to this report. India’s Muslims and activists face mass arrests, beatings amid unrest over citizenship law In a corner of India, 2 million risk becoming stateless after release of final citizenship list India’s first-time protesters: Mothers and grandmothers stage weeks-long sit-in against citizenship law Copyright 2020 The Washington Post

Civilians denied access to aid by the country's warring parties, according to a new UN Human Rights Commission report. South Sudan officials diverted millions of dollars of state funds that are badly needed by civilians as the country staggers away from civil war, a United Nations commission said on Thursday. The commission also accused rival fighters of "deliberately starving" people for strategic gain. "Today in South Sudan, civilians are deliberately starved, systematically surveilled and silenced, arbitrarily arrested and detained and denied meaningful access to justice," the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan said in a report. The bleak report comes two days before a crucial deadline for the nation's rival leaders to join forces in a coalition government. That deadline has been extended twice in the past year, much to the impatience of the United States and others, but a key agreement appears to have been reached in recent days on the number of states under the new government. Throughout South Sudan's five-year civil war and since the latest peace deal was signed in September 2018, various watchdog groups have accused government officials of profiting from the conflict and siphoning off massive amounts of money meant for the benefit of the country and its 12.5 million people. "Corruption has made several officials extremely wealthy at the expense of millions of starving civilians," the report said. "Corruption has been so lucrative that it has infected every sector of the economy and every state institution." The graft has been carried out while the civil war, which erupted two years after independence from Sudan in 2011, killed nearly 400,000 people and sent more than two million fleeing the country. The three-member commission said it has grounds to believe there had been a "steady diversion" of millions of dollars of revenue not linked to South Sudan's oil sector into the National Revenue Authority. The authority by law is meant to retain only two percent of revenue collected, with the rest going to the government's consolidated account, but the new report claims it has credible evidence that in September the authority kept 56 percent of non-oil revenue. In October and November, the authority retained almost 80 percent, the report added. There was no immediate comment from South Sudan’s government. The UN commission said such looting occurred as roughly half of South Sudan’s people, or six million civilians, were going hungry. Source: Al Jazeera and News Agencies

In December 2019, news began to filter out of Nigeria that a Daesh affiliated terror group has been responsible for the brutal murder of several Christians. The new wave of killings does not come as a surprise. Nigeria has been haunted by such acts of violence against Christians for many years. The spike in atrocities perpetrated by a Daesh affiliated group, Islamic State in West Africa, adds to the terror unleashed by Boko Haram, a terror group that pledged allegiance to Daesh in the past, and massacres of Christians by Fulani militias. This should also not come as a surprise. The growing impunity in Nigeria is an open invitation for such atrocities to continue. This impunity must be addressed as a matter of urgency. Names of the abducted and still enslaved schoolgirls are displayed on their desks. AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Because Nigeria ratified the Rome Statute, the International Criminal Court (the ICC) has territorial jurisdiction in Nigeria to investigate alleged international crimes such as genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. On November 18, 2010, the Prosecutor of the ICC opened a preliminary examination of the situation in Nigeria. This followed several communications received by the Office of the Prosecutor (the OTP) to the ICC in as early as 2005. However, today, almost ten years later, this preliminary examination has not yet been finalized. Without its conclusion, a formal investigation cannot be opened. The preliminary examination has focused on the crimes committed in the regions of central and northern Nigeria and the Niger Delta, and the crimes committed by Boko Haram across Nigeria. It has examined political and sectarian violence since approximately 1999, including clashes between Berom groups and Hausa-Fulani, Gamai and Jarawa, and between Hausa-Fulani Muslims and Igbo. Having identified multiple issues which require scrutiny, in its 2015 report on the progress of the preliminary examination, the OTP identified six potential cases of Boko Haram committing crimes against humanity and two cases of such crimes being committed by the Nigerian security forces. The OTP confirmed that there is a reasonable basis to believe that since 2009, Boko Haram has been committing crimes against humanity in Nigeria. These include (i) murder pursuant to article 7(1)(a), and (ii) persecution pursuant to article 7(1)(h) of the Statute; and war crimes including “murder pursuant to article 8(2)(c)(i); cruel treatment pursuant to article 8(2)(c)(i) and outrages upon personal dignity pursuant to article 8(2)(c)(ii); intentionally directing attacks against the civilian population or against individual civilians pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(i); intentionally directing attacks against buildings dedicated to education and to places of worship and similar institutions pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(iv); pillaging a town or place pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(v); rape, sexual slavery and sexual violence pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vi); conscripting and enlisting children under the age of fifteen years into armed groups and using them to participate actively in hostilities pursuant to article 8(2)(e)(vii) of the Statute.” Over the years, the OTP continued to expand its focus. In its 2018 report, the OTP confirmed that it has been considering the “attacks allegedly carried out by Fulani herders and Christian settlers in the context of the violence in Nigeria’s North Central and North East geographical zones.” It goes on to state that “this violence, which has been observed by the [OTP] since 2016, is often referred to as a conflict between Fulani herders and Christian farmers, stemming from limited access to water, land and other resources.” The ICC has yet to confirm whether the acts fall within its jurisdiction. The very long time taken to deliberate the situation in Nigeria is discouraging and does not give hope that the ICC can secure justice for the victims. What is even more concerning is that the continuing impunity will encourage further crime. This new wave of atrocities perpetrated by the Daesh affiliated terror group is evidence that the situation will only deteriorate. What is also concerning is that the issue of violence based on religion or belief in Nigeria is greatly neglected. For example, Boko Haram has largely targeted Christians in Northern Nigeria, targeting that amounts to persecution as a crime against humanity. Boko Haram has been abducting women and girls, and forcing Christian women and girls to convert and marry. Among the abducted women and girls, Leah Sharibu, a 16-year-old Nigerian girl, one of the 110 schoolgirls abducted by Boko Haram members from their school in Dapchi in February 2018, continues to be enslaved despite the fact that all of the other girls have now been released. According to one of the other girls, Leah declined to renounce her Christian faith and this is the very reason Boko Haram continues to enslave her. Similarly, the atrocities perpetrated by the Fulani militia show clear signs of targeting Christians, including the destruction of churches, the seizure of land and properties belonging to Christian farmers. Reports have also emerged of the Fulani militia kidnapping ‘Christian schoolgirls to marry them to Muslim men.’ In its 2015 report, Open Doors lists detailed examples of such targeted attacks. The report rebuts the argument that the clashes were caused by environmental degradation and result from migration. The report presents a more comprehensive picture incorporating some elements of religious persecution. Indeed, the conflict is extremely complex. However, the religious element of the atrocities cannot be swept under the carpet. To ensure justice for the victims, it is essential that the OTP's preliminary examination proceeds quickly to a formal investigation. Furthermore, justice must be achieved for all the victims of the atrocities in Nigeria. Justice will not be achieved if the victims in the Middle Belt continue to be neglected and forgotten in this process. Furthermore, as the Daesh affiliate group unleashes terror, it is paramount to ensure that their atrocities are included in any investigations and prosecutions. The vicious circle of crime and impunity must be broken. Ewelina U. Ochab is a legal researcher and human rights advocate, and author of the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East.” Ochab works on the topic of persecution of minorities around the world, with main projects including Daesh genocide in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram atrocities in West Africa, and the situation of religious minorities in South Asia. Ochab has written over 30 UN reports (including Universal Periodic Review reports) and has made oral and written submissions at the Human Rights Council sessions and the UN Forum on Minority Issues. Ochab is currently working on her PhD in international law, human rights and medical ethics. Ochab authored the initiative and proposal to establish the UN International Day Commemorating Victims and Survivors of Religious Persecution. The initiative has led to the establishment of the UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on August 22. Follow @EwelinaUO Copyright 2020 Forbes Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Khalifa Hifter, the military ruler of eastern Libya, is trying to take over the entire country. To see what that would look like, we paid a rare visit to the part he already controls. A billboard depicting Khalifa Hifter, the 76-year-old military commander known in Benghazi as “the Marshal.”Credit...Ivor Prickett By David D. Kirkpatrick Photographs by Ivor Prickett BENGHAZI, Libya — The field marshal stares from billboards into the wreckage of the Libyan city of Benghazi. His uniform is festooned with epaulets and honors, even as the civil war he is waging has stalled into a bloody stalemate. His plainclothes security agents loiter and listen in cafes and hotel lobbies. He has handed control of the mosques to extremist preachers. And he has showered patronage on a tribal death squad called the Avengers of Blood, blamed for a long string of disappearances and killings of his political opponents. “We are living in a prison,” said Ahmed Sharkasi, a liberal activist from Benghazi who fled to Tunis because of threats on his life. Khalifa Hifter, the 76-year-old commander known in his dominion as “the marshal,” is the military ruler of eastern Libya. He has been fighting for nearly six years to take control of the country, and he has been waging an assault on the capital, Tripoli, for the last 10 months. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others have lined up behind him, and Russia has sent mercenaries. The largely powerless United Nations-sponsored government in Tripoli is defended mainly by regional militias and, recently, Turkey, which has flown in hundreds of paid Syrian fighters. Mr. Hifter has cut off Libya’s oil production for the past month to try to deprive the Tripoli government of revenue. This week he began shelling its civilian port, killing three people, narrowly missing a ship loaded with liquefied natural gas and derailing United Nations-sponsored cease-fire talks. Mr. Hifter has promised to build a stable, democratic and secular Libya, but he has largely shut Western journalists out of his territory. A rare visit there by a New York Times correspondent and photographer revealed an unwieldy authoritarianism that in many ways is both more puritanical and more lawless than Libya was under its last dictator, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. Cadets in Mr. Hifter’s militia, the Libyan Arab Armed Forces, trained at a military academy in eastern Libya. In Mr. Hifter’s Benghazi stronghold, we found a half-ruined city beset by corruption, where security agents trailed foreign journalists, residents cowered in fear of arbitrary arrest, and pro-government militias answered to no one. A few families have returned to the ruins of their former apartments in the center of Benghazi, which was heavily damaged by fighting. Residents complain of corruption and self-enrichment by tribal militia leaders and former Qaddafi officers. There are reports of unexplained bombings, abductions and detentions without trial. Islamist extremists have taken over the mosques and may be infiltrating the police force. “Everyone is afraid, even afraid of their fellow citizens,” one Benghazi resident said, speaking on condition of anonymity for his safety. Jonathan Winer, a special envoy to Libya under President Obama, described a brutal system. “If you are with Hifter then you are under his umbrella and you can do whatever you want,” he said. “If you aren’t, you are an enemy and you may be jailed, killed or exiled.” The United Nations Secretary General warned last month of “a deterioration of law and order” in eastern Libya, “including numerous cases of crimes and intimidation,” reportedly by groups affiliated with Mr. Hifter’s forces. Aging and distracted, Mr. Hifter is seldom seen in Benghazi. He presides from his mountain home an hour’s drive to the West. He holds salons with tribal elders and depends on family as his closest advisers. Two of his sons are among his top military commanders, as well as his caretakers. “They make sure he is well fed,” said Faraj Najem, a director of a government-run research center who is close to Mr. Hifter. “They make sure he takes his medicine. They provide him with security when they are around him.” A Destroyed City. A Fearsome Ruler. The historic center of Benghazi is still in ruins after years of conflict. The center of Benghazi is little different today than it was in 2017, when Mr. Hifter seized it after a four-year campaign of shelling and bombing. Neighborhoods on the periphery now bustle with newly opened stores and cafes. But the streets of the city center are crumbling ruins. A few desperate residents have begun returning with their families to squat in the wreckage of their former apartments. Their crude light fixtures cast an eerie, nighttime glow on the desolate alleys. Libya is rich with oil, but it is a volatile prize. It has been in turmoil since an Arab Spring revolt and NATO’s intervention toppled Colonel el-Qaddafi nine years ago. Its deserts shelter Islamist militants, and its Mediterranean coastline teems with migrants. Mr. Hifter had served as an officer in Colonel el-Qaddafi’s army, but later fled to the United States where he lived for decades as a C.I.A. client before returning to Libya during the uprising in 2011. He began his drive for power by promising to save Benghazi. In 2014, when Islamist militias were terrorizing the city, he vowed to declare military rule and rid the country of Islamists. Armed by foreign sponsors, he started by recruiting fighters from local tribes and welcoming the help of former Qaddafi officers and officials. Then he won the support of Saudi-style Islamist fighters — known as Salafists — who saw a common enemy in the rival schools of Islamists that Mr. Hifter was battling. He has never acknowledged any contradiction between his avowed hostility to political Islam and his brigades of Salafists. The deals he struck with tribal militias, Salafists and former Qaddafi henchmen in Benghazi now threaten to run roughshod over his promises of secular law and order. Many Benghazi residents celebrate Mr. Hifter for restoring security to the streets, an attitude reinforced in his official media. Images of Mr. Hifter’s face are ubiquitous. A pro-Hifter satellite television network broadcasts his propaganda and sometimes Salafist sermons. Weekly street demonstrations, organized by the government’s Office of Supporting Decisions, recall Qaddafi-era displays of forced enthusiasm. A rally in support of Mr. Hifter’s militia was reminiscent of Qaddafi-era displays of forced enthusiasm. Libya Alhadath TV, a government satellite channel, broadcasts pro-Hifter propaganda and Salafist sermons. On one recent Friday, about two dozen adults and an equal number of children marched for about 150 yards while holding photographs of Mr. Hifter. Then everyone settled listlessly into plastic chairs and chanted profanities about the president of Turkey. During an interview, a spokesman for Mr. Hifter required a visiting journalist to watch a video of more than a dozen gruesome beheadings. “Some of the terrorists are now in Tripoli and hiding in the militias there,” the spokesman, Col. Ahmed Mismari, said. “That is why we decided to go to Tripoli.” Access to Benghazi by foreign journalists or rights goups is severely restricted. Residents must obtain official permission to travel abroad, sometimes requiring interrogation by security agents. Some are forced to submit reports about who they met outside Libya — or, sometimes, on friends and neighbors at home. Return of the Qaddafi Machine Mr. Hifter leans heavily on members of the old Qaddafi machine, and a surge of former Qaddafi loyalists have rushed back from Egypt and elsewhere over the previous 10 months. With Mr. Hifter focused on Tripoli, the most powerful figure in the day-to-day governance is widely considered to be Aoun Ferjani, a former senior officer in the Qaddafi intelligence service who is now in charge of the internal security agencies. “Don’t even mention his name,” one former official in Mr. Hifter’s government said, looking anxiously over his shoulder. “He is the boss. He is the most dangerous.” Opposition views are not welcome. Mr. Sharkasi, the activist now living in Tunis, was forced to flee Benghazi after he posted an online video urging peace talks and circulated the hashtag “War is not the solution.” Other critics have been detained or suspended from jobs at government-run companies. Last July, a British-educated politician, Seham Sergiwa, 57, publicly questioned Mr. Hifter’s assault on Tripoli. A group of armed men abducted her that night. They spray-painted a warning against criticizing the army on the wall of her house. Her relatives outside Libya said the power was cut before the attack and the police had ignored calls for help. Most family members now believe she is dead. But the Benghazi authorities have told her husband that they believe she is alive and advised him to keep quiet. “All the evidence points to Hifter,” said her brother, Adam Sergiwa, a doctor living in Indiana. “We know that. Everybody knows that. He wanted to teach a lesson.” A spokesman for Mr. Hifter called the killing an act of terrorism and said that his military had nothing to do with it. Another former Qaddafi associate now working with Mr. Hifter is the former Air Force Gen. Muhammad el-Madani el-Fakri. Mr. Hifter authorized General el-Madani el-Fakri to create a for-profit investment arm for Mr. Hifter’s military. He seized prime real estate, imposed a $500 entry fee for foreign workers, and claimed a lucrative monopoly on the sale of scrap metal. But he also used his position to press for a personal stake in private ventures, according to Western diplomats and Benghazi businessmen. Mr. Najem, of the government-funded research center, insisted that the general had been sidelined because of abuses, but Mr. el-Madani el-Fakri served as Mr. Hifter’s representative at recent United Nations cease-fire talks. Rise of the Salafis The modest mosque in the Benghazi neighborhood of El Leithi was once a hub for leaders of Ansar al Shariah, the jihadists who carried out the 2012 attack that killed the American ambassador J. Christopher Stevens. These days, noon prayers are often led by Ali el-Omani, a 23-year-old Salafist with a bearded baby face. Like other extremists, the Salafists backing Mr. Hifter oppose liberal ways like electoral democracy or the mixing of the sexes. Unlike their jihadist cousins, though, these Salafists preach absolute obedience to an earthly ruler, in this case Mr. Hifter. “For sure the army supports us,” said Mr. Omani, insisting that the Salafis had restored “the true teaching of the Quran.” Benghazi liberals complain that the Salafis are scarcely an improvement. “The Salafis want to ‘purify’ Libya just like Ansar al Sharia tried to,” said Fathi Baja, a political scientist and former Libyan ambassador to Canada. A Benghazi mosque that was once a hub for the jihadists of Ansar al Shariah is now run by Salafists. The Salafists now boast of their control of Benghazi’s mosques and religious broadcasting. Salafist brigades under Mr. Hifter have demolished shrines and lodges belonging to Sufis, practitioners of a Muslim mysticism that ultraconservatives consider heresy, including another one leveled last month in the city of Surt. Salafist fighters shut down a celebration of Earth Day, also deemed heretical. And a general close to the Salafists tried to ban women from traveling without a male guardian, an order later rescinded after an outcry. Some of Mr. Hifter’s supporters argue that he is using the Salafists in a temporary alliance of necessity and keeping them in check. They point to a locally notorious episode in 2018 when police officers raided a meet-up of female Twitter users at a Benghazi cafe. A top security official apologized and Mr. Hifter reassigned the Salafi police commander who had been in charge. But Lt. Col. Naji Hamad, a Qaddafi-era veteran who now runs the Benghazi police academy, said the operation was legitimate. The meet-up violated “public decency,” he said. A Fragile Future Although no longer a battleground, Benghazi is hardly free of violence. A car bomb in August killed three U.N. staff members and two others. The United Nations pulled its diplomats from the city. U.N. reports warn of frequent kidnappings, forced disappearances and assassinations by unknown assailants. In the second half of last year, that included the killing of a bank employee, the kidnapping of a prominent lawyer and the abduction of the official in charge of policing corruption. Two Sudanese women were tortured and killed on suspicion of practicing witchcraft. In October, a mass grave was uncovered in the Benghazi neighborhood of Hawarri. Responsibility for the violence is impossible to determine, but many Benghazi residents point to tribal militias that fought with Mr. Hifter. One of the biggest sources of fighters was the Awaqir tribe. Members of the tribe now boast of their impunity, and some have claimed prime jobs in government-owned companies or even the local university. “The Awaqir are the big beneficiaries,” said Mr. Najem, the director of the research center. “They claim that they have paid a dear price — too many martyrs — and they want the rewards.” Students attended class in parts of the heavily damaged university in Benghazi. Awaqirs formed the Avengers of Blood in 2013 to seek revenge after a deadly clash with an Islamist-leaning militia. The Avengers became known as enforcers for Mr. Hifter, widely blamed for disappearances and killings. A spokesman for Mr. Hifter said the Avengers were unarmed civilians who collected information about “terrorists.” But during the abduction of Ms. Sergiwa, her attackers scrawled the name of the Avengers of Blood on the wall. A prominent Awaqir militia leader often linked to the Avengers declined to comment. The militia leader, Ezzedine el-Waqwaq, said he was busy with civilian matters. In the construction industry before 2013, he was appointed to the potentially lucrative role of director of the Benghazi airport after Mr. Hifter captured the city. Now Mr. el-Waqwaq has an even better job: director of a popular Benghazi soccer team, Al Nasr. Carrying the body of a 22-year-old man who died in the bombing of a military academy by a Libyan militia led by Khalifa Hifter.Credit...Ivor Prickett for The New York Times David D. Kirkpatrick is an international correspondent based in the London bureau. He was previously the Cairo bureau chief, a Washington correspondent and a national correspondent based in New York. @ddknyt A version of this article appears in print on Feb. 20, 2020, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Police State With Islamist Twist: Inside the Libya of ‘the Marshal’ Copyright 2020 The New York Times Company

Small groups of protesters gather in central Cairo shouting anti-government slogans in Cairo, Egypt September 21, 2019. © 2019 Reuters/Mohamed Abd El Ghany (Beirut) – Egyptian activists and ordinary people alike demonstrated resistance to brutal government repression during 2019, Human Rights Watch said today in its World Report 2020. Street protests in September challenged the near-absolute ban on freedom of assembly. Rights organizations and independent journalists continued to work despite the detention and prosecution of peaceful critics, as authorities equated all forms of opposition and criticism with terrorism. “President al-Sisi tightened his grip on power during 2019, but the year was also marked by courageous acts of resilience by Egyptians who aspire to freedom and the rule of law,” said Joe Stork, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. In the 652-page World Report 2020, its 30th edition, Human Rights Watch reviews human rights practices in nearly 100 countries. In his introductory essay, Executive Director Kenneth Roth says that the Chinese government, which depends on repression to stay in power, is carrying out the most intense attack on the global human rights system in decades. He finds that Beijing’s actions both encourage and gain support from autocratic populists around the globe, while Chinese authorities use their economic clout to deter criticism from other governments. It is urgent to resist this assault, which threatens decades of progress on human rights and our future. The government orchestrated passage of constitutional amendments that entrench repression in an unfair referendum in April. The amendments, which allow President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi to rule until 2030, further undermine the judiciary’s independence and enhance the military’s power to intervene in politics and the public sphere. After the September protests erupted, the authorities arrested over 4,400 people in one of the biggest mass arrest campaigns since 2013. The arrests included protesters, university professors, politicians, lawyers, and passers-by. The protests erupted in response to videos about army and government corruption that went viral. Authorities earlier in the summer arrested scores of people, including secular and leftist figures, and accused them of joining a “terrorist” group in the “Hope Coalition” case for planning a new political coalition. Police and the National Security Agency routinely carried out enforced disappearances and torture, while the government held tens of thousands of prisoners arrested on seemingly political grounds in abysmal conditions. United Nations rights experts in October concluded that deliberately harsh prison conditions and inadequate medical care “may have directly led” to the death of former President Mohamed Morsy in June. Serious rights abuses, including war crimes, persisted in North Sinai predominantly by the army but also by ISIS-affiliated militants. The army demolished thousands of homes and buildings and forcibly evicted residents. Approximately 100,000, or one-fifth of North Sinai’s population, have been displaced by forced evictions or the war since 2014. In February alone, the authorities executed 15 prisoners following flawed trials in cases of a political nature. Military and civilian courts of appeal upheld at least 32 death sentences in 2019, raising the number of those on death row to 74, the majority charged with political violence. In August, al-Sisi approved a new nongovernmental organization law that keeps in place severe restrictions on the work of nongovernmental organizations. Egypt remains one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists, with roughly 30 journalists behind bars, mostly without trial. The authorities have blocked about 600 news, political, and human rights websites, including Human Rights Watch. In November, the authorities broke into the office of Mada Masr, one of the last independent news sources in the country, and detained staff members. During Egypt’s Universal Periodic Review at the Human Rights Council in November, scores of countries from across various regions criticized abuses in Egypt. “The United States continued to provide extensive military aid to Egypt while rarely offering public criticism of its human rights record. President Donald Trump reportedly praised al-Sisi as his “favorite dictator” during meetings in August,” said Stork. © Human Rights Watch Jan. 14, 2020

Omar al-Bashir of Sudan (CNN). Click on photo to view CNN video. A Cautious First Step – Sudan’s Agreement to Hand Bashir to the ICC Washington, DC- Darfur Women Action Group welcomes the Sudanese interim government’s announcement that they will hand over Omar al-Bashir and other wanted indictees to the International Criminal Court (ICC). The news broke yesterday from the Juba-South Sudan peace talks between the Sudanese interim government delegation and several armed opposition groups, many of whom are from Darfur. Mohamed Hassan al-Taishi, a member of Sudan’s sovereign council, was quoted stating that the interim government has agreed to turn over al-Bashir and three other wanted individuals to the Hague to face trial. “Justice cannot be achieved if we do not heal the wounds,” said al-Taishi on an interview with BBC radio. The extradition of these wanted individuals is the most important step toward a breakthrough in the road to stability and transformation of Sudan. However, an announcement alone cannot be the cause for celebration. One must stay vigilant until the extradition has actually been implemented and al-Bashir is physically standing trial at the Hague. It is worth noting that since taking on its role, the interim government of Sudan has demonstrated neither the political will nor a unified position toward justice for victims and accountability for perpetrators of crimes committed in Darfur. In September of 2019, when the Sudanese Minister of Justice stated that he fully intended to cooperate with the ICC, he was overruled by the head of the sovereign council General al-Burhan, a known close associate of al-Bashir. Sudanese Prime Minister Hamadouk’s contradictory position on the issue adds further reason for skepticism. While visiting New York during the UN General Assembly meetings, Hamadouk pleased many Sudanese by joining a diaspora-organized rally that chanted for freedom, peace, and justice near the UN. However, when he landed in France several hours later, he changed his tone and clearly stated that al-Bashir will not be extradited to the ICC in an interview with France24. Such track record of disorganized, if not disingenuous, statements leaves no room for trusting the interim government of Sudan. It is also important to re-emphasize the stakes of al-Bashir’s extradition. He, alongside the three other ICC indictees, stand accused of the world’s most heinous crimes – genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity. Regrettably, these individuals remained fugitive and continued to defy justice while millions of their victims were either killed or held hostage in Internally Displaced Person’s camps. Although he has been removed from power after thirty years of bloody rule, al-Bashir has yet to be tried for the aforementioned crimes. The people of Darfur cried for justice, peace, and protection, only to see their plight being ignored and their suffering being prolonged. It has been 11 years since the first arrest warrant for al-Bashir issued and 10 years since the second arrest warrant for the crime of genocide in particular was issued. It has been more than 17 years since millions of Darfuri people have been driven out of their homes. Niemat Ahmadi, the founding president of DWAG, states – “Accountability for the perpetrators of such crimes should not be used as a bargaining chip for achieving political gain. Today’s news is good news but it is not a good cause for celebration. The Sudanese government should have agreed to this long ago in their interim declarations and al-Bashir and the others should already be in The Hague by now.” Sudan cannot be transformed without proper accountability. It is imperative that the interim government acts now and hands over al-Bashir and other indicted criminals to the Hague. The interim government must understand that cooperating with the ICC is an important milestone in the beginning of healing and transformation of Sudan. Such action will only be effective if it is done sooner rather than later. We, therefore, strongly urge the interim government of Sudan to take swift and practical steps in transferring the criminals to face trial. We subsequently urge the ICC and ICC member states to take the interim government’s announcement seriously. We urge it to implement the long-pending arrest warrants and to pursue justice for the sake of the victims of the Darfur genocide. 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 hopes 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

Genocide Watch was the first international anti-genocide organization. Genocide Watch founded the first international coalition for the prevention of genocide, The Alliance Against Genocide. Genocide Watch is a non-partisan, non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) volunteer organization that pays no salaries and keeps its overhead very low. Genocide Watch has spent a total of $100,000 in 20 years, $5000 per year. Genocide Watch provides education to the public about how and why genocide develops, including early warning signs of threats of mass killing and reports on current genocidal situations. Our reports are posted on our websites, sent to the member organizations in the Alliance Against Genocide, and sent to Congress, the State Department, major newspapers, and to the UN’s Special Advisor to the Secretary General on the Prevention of Genocide. Genocide Watch interns maintain the most actively viewed website on genocide on the internet, at http://genocidewatch.com and we maintain two websites with Genocide Watch archives covering the years 1999 – 2016 at www.genocidewatch.net and www.genocidewatch.org. We use Facebook and Twitter to communicate with the thousands of people around the world who follow our work every day. The Alliance Against Genocide has grown to over seventy member organizations in 24 countries. Some of our members (The International Crisis Group, Minority Rights Group, International Alert, The Knights of Columbus, and Survival International) are much larger than Genocide Watch. We rely on the international network of the Alliance for accurate reporting and analysis of events around the world that are warning indicators of genocidal processes. Genocide Watch has never tried to build an organizational empire. Our purpose is to be a catalyst to encourage the organization of anti-genocide organizations around the world, and to coordinate a network of those organizations. ​ ​In 2018 – 2019 Genocide Watch maintained its widely used website www.genocidewatch.com on events in countries at risk of genocide. Much of this work is done by student interns and volunteers who are now located around the world. The website is used as a resource by teachers for classes on genocide in many secondary schools and universities, and it is also a means of communication with policy makers and scholars in the field of genocide studies. Genocide Watch spoke at meetings of the Working Group on Religious Pluralism at the Hudson Institute, led by Nina Shea. This group grew out of the Genocide Working Group that was founded in 2015 by Ms. Shea, Prof. Robert Destro, and Gregory Stanton to get the US Congress, State Department, and the European Parliament to recognize that ISIS was committing genocide in Iraq and Syria. In 2016, Congress passed a unanimous resolution declaring that ISIS was committing genocide, and Secretary of State Kerry also made this declaration. The European Parliament passed a similar resolution. As a follow-up to that declaration, we supported a bill to provide substantial aid to groups displaced by ISIS in Iraq, which passed the Senate and House and was signed into law by the President. Funds allocated for that purpose are now being distributed to local NGO’s through USAID. Genocide Watch attended the Religious Freedom Roundtable convened by the US State Department in July 2018. Prof. Stanton spoke at a conference convened by the Dutch parliament in the Hague in July 2018 on how to prosecute members of ISIS for crimes against humanity and genocide. He has also advised a Yazidi prosecutor in Kurdistan who is gathering evidence for such prosecutions. Genocide Watch played a leading role in response to the genocide and forced displacement of the Rohingya Muslims of Myanmar that climaxed in August 2017. Over a million Rohingya refugees are now in Bangladesh, and another 120,000 are in Malaysia, 500,000 in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East. Prof. Stanton spoke at a roundtable on the crisis at the University of Ottawa School of Law in August 2018, as well as at an international conference at Columbia University in New York City in February 2019. Out of those conferences a working group was formed to approach governments that can take Myanmar to the International Court of Justice for violation of the Genocide Convention. The working group traveled to Malaysia in March 2019 at the invitation of the Foreign Minister of Malaysia and presented options for legal action. It has also contacted other groups and governments working on this project, including the governments of Gambia and Canada. Prof. Stanton has written an Application (legal brief) to be presented to the International Court of Justice by a nation willing to take the case. Besides the conferences above, Prof. Stanton spoke at other conferences, including at Georgetown University School of Law, Michigan State University School of Law, and the Trinity University School of Law. He also conducted classes for a number of secondary schools and colleges in the US. Prof. Stanton attended the biennial meetings of the International Association of Genocide Scholars in Phnom Penh, Cambodia in July 2019. Much of the conference centered around the Khmer Rouge genocide and the Khmer Rouge Tribunal, which Prof. Stanton was instrumental in founding. Genocide Watch will continue its work in 2019 and beyond. Respectfully submitted, Gregory H. Stanton Founding President

On December 10, 2019, the International Court of Justice (the ICJ), the principal judicial organ of the United Nations, begun a hearing in the case of the alleged genocidal atrocities in Myanmar. The hearing was focused on provisional measures only, as requested by the Gambia, including measures within the Burmese government’s power to “prevent all acts that amount to or contribute to the crime of genocide” and “not destroy or render inaccessible any evidence related to the events.” The case was initiated by The Gambia on November 11, 2019, a few days after The Gambia made the promise at the UN General Assembly. The Gambia’s application alleges that the Government of Myanmar has been complicit in atrocities committed against the Rohingya Muslims, including “killing, causing serious bodily and mental harm, inflicting conditions that are calculated to bring about physical destruction, imposing measures to prevent births, and forcible transfers, are genocidal in character because they are intended to destroy the Rohingya group in whole or in part” in violation of the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (Genocide Convention). Rohingya refugees watch ICJ proceedings at a restaurant in a refugee camp on December 12, 2019 in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. (Photo credit: Allison Joyce/Getty Images) With the ICJ listening to submissions from both sides, one issue became very clear, the Burmese government, including Aung San Suu Kyi, acting as Agent of Myanmar, despite facing severe accusations, still refuse to recognize the identity of the Rohingya Muslims. Aung San Suu Kyi, who made a statement before the ICJ on December 11, suggested that: “The situation in Rakhine is complex and not easy to fathom. But one thing surely touches all of us equally: the sufferings of the many innocent people whose lives were torn apart as a consequence of the armed conflicts of 2016 and 2017, in particular those who have had to flee their homes and are now living in camps in Cox’s Bazar.” While the intervention tries to project some compassion, it is noteworthy that throughout her entire intervention, Aung San Suu Kyi does not refer to the identity of those targeted, the Rohingyas, the Rohingya Muslims, an ethnic and religious minority group. She did not want to concede that a particular group was targeted. The fact that Aung San Suu Kyi refused to call the targeted group by its identity is not a matter of semantics only. It is a clear denial of their identity. Myanmar would not want to have an agent for the state clearly recognizing the identity of the Rohingya Muslims before the ICJ. This would not have been beneficial for the future proceedings before the ICJ. Indeed, after the provisional measures hearing, and after the ICJ makes a decision on the measures, the parties would need to meet again for a further hearing where the question of genocide would be explored. Genocide has a precise legal definition found at Article II of the Genocide Convention. The specific targeting of an ethnic or religious group for annihilation is the cornerstone of that definition. Aung San Suu Kyi intervention distracts from the ethno-religious identity of the group and is a calculated tactic to build a foundation for the proceedings that will follow. Let’s not be fooled by this. The denial of their identity in her intervention speaks volumes and reflects the denial of the Rohingya Muslims identity in Myanmar. Indeed, as Professor Gregory Stanton explains, the last stage of genocide is not the annihilation of the targeted groups but denial. Aung San Suu Kyi also emphasized that the recent work carried out by the Burmese government was aimed at assisting the affected communities. Efforts apparently include “striving to ensure that all communities enjoy the same fundamental rights”, “to expedite citizenship verification and application”, “all children born in Rakhine, regardless of religious background, are issued with birth certificates”, “arrangements have been made to enable more Muslim youth to attend classes at universities across Myanmar”, “scholarships will also be made available to students from all communities living in Rakhine”, “the Government has started a social cohesion model project in Maungdaw Township, to promote social harmony among all communities”, “interfaith fora have been encouraged”, “these are some of the steps taken to improve livelihoods, security, access to education and to health, citizenship, and social cohesion for all communities in Rakhine.” With these arguments she challenged the accusations that a genocide had occurred. She asked “how can there be an ongoing genocide or genocidal intent when these concrete steps are being taken in Rakhine?” However, it is noteworthy that Aung San Suu Kyi refers to very recent developments. This does not change the fact that the alleged atrocities of 2016 and 2017 amounted to genocide or were conducted with genocidal intent. It only means that the Burmese government has learned lesson, that they are now more careful. Furthermore, the wording she used is very weak, suggesting that these policies are not achieved. It is highly likely that they are not being pro-actively implemented. Aung San Suu Kyi made a case that the ICJ should leave Myanmar alone and that the issue of justice in Myanmar is for the Burmese domestic mechanisms. Of everything that Aung San Suu Kyi said in her intervention, one statement made me very fearful. In her closing remarks, Aung San Suu Kyi said that “We pray the [ICJ] to refrain from taking any action that might aggravate the ongoing armed conflict and peace and security in Rakhine.” It is clear that the provisional measures cannot aggravate the conflict. However, the warning is received. The worst may be yet to come. Ewelina U. Ochab is a legal researcher and human rights advocate, and author of the book “Never Again: Legal Responses to a Broken Promise in the Middle East.” Ochab works on the topic of persecution of minorities around the world, with main projects including Daesh genocide in Syria and Iraq, Boko Haram atrocities in West Africa, and the situation of religious minorities in South Asia. Ochab has written over 30 UN reports (including Universal Periodic Review reports) and has made oral and written submissions at the Human Rights Council sessions and the UN Forum on Minority Issues. Ochab is currently working on her PhD in international law, human rights and medical ethics. Ochab authored the initiative and proposal to establish the UN International Day Commemorating Victims and Survivors of Religious Persecution. The initiative has led to the establishment of the UN International Day Commemorating the Victims of Acts of Violence Based on Religion or Belief on August 22. Follow @EwelinaUO

Former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein condemns Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi as complicit in the atrocities committed upon the Rohingya Source: CNN https://edition.cnn.com/videos/world/2019/12/12/intv-amanpour-aung-san-suu-kyi-zeid-raad-al-hussein-rohingya.cnn

Nearly 100 Rohingya appeared in a Myanmar court Wednesday after being arrested for trying to flee persecution, their lawyer said, as leader Aung San Suu Kyi addressed the UN's top court to deny allegations of a genocidal campaign against the ethnic minority. One-by-one, the weary detainees stepped down from a police van at the courthouse in the western Myanmar city of Pathein. Their crime was to leave their home townships without permission from authorities. Rohingya in Rakhine state live under tight restrictions with little access to healthcare, education or livelihoods in conditions Amnesty International brands as "apartheid". For years Rohingya have taken to boats, trains and buses in attempts to get out, risking everything in the process. The 95 people, including 25 children, each paid several hundred dollars for a chance at a better life, lawyer Thazin Myat Myat Win told AFP. "Some even sold their labour in advance" to pay the broker fees, she added. Instead they likely face two years in prison for violating the immigration act. 'Apartheid' conditions They were arrested November 29 after travelling by boat from Rakhine to a southern beach where buses were waiting to take them to the commercial capital Yangon. Their court appearance came as former rights icon Suu Kyi denied "genocidal intent" in her defence of Myanmar's military operation against the Rohingya at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On Tuesday the Nobel Peace Prize laureate sat through gruesome testimony of the violence suffered by Rohingya in the bloody military crackdown in 2017 that forced some 740,000 to flee to Bangladesh. The Gambia, on behalf of dozens of Muslim countries, accuses Buddhist-majority Myanmar of genocide. The west African state is calling for provisional measures to halt the ongoing persecution suffered by Rohingya in Rakhine. Some 600,000 remain confined in Myanmar camps and villages, unable to leave without permission. Many have tried to escape over the years to Thailand or Malaysia, often paying extortionate fees to human traffickers for places on overcrowded, decrepit boats. 'We are helpless' The Rohingya in Pathein are the third group in recent months to be caught, arrested and put on trial in their attempt to flee Rakhine. To the outrage of rights groups, the children and teenagers have so far been sent to a detention centre while one five-year-old child was imprisoned with his mother and the rest of the group. All 52 people were sentenced to two years behind bars. "Myanmar authorities should urgently free Rohingya jailed for exercising their right to freedom of movement," said John Quinley from Fortify Rights. He cited the arrests as an example of continued efforts by the government to destroy the Rohingya. "The International Court of Justice should issue provisional measures to stop the ongoing persecution and violence." The Rohingya garner little sympathy within Myanmar, where many people buy the official line that the minority are illegal immigrants from Bangladesh, even though many trace their roots back generations. "We are helpless. We've been here eight years and have no jobs," one Rohingya man from Thetkalpyin camp told AFP by phone. "We hope she (Suu Kyi) will do her best to reveal the truth and solve our problems." Copyright 2019 France 24/AFP

Demonstrators protest the Citizenship Amendment Bill in New Delhi on Dec. 10. (Adnan Abidi/Reuters) NEW DELHI — Lawmakers in India on Wednesday passed a fundamental change to its citizenship law to include religion as a criterion for nationality for the first time, deepening concerns that a country founded on secular ideals is becoming a Hindu state that treats Muslims as second-class citizens. The new legislation creates a path to citizenship for migrants who belong to several South Asian religions but pointedly excludes Islam, the faith practiced by 200 million Indian citizens. The measure was approved by a majority of the upper house of India’s Parliament in a final vote late Wednesday. It is expected to be signed into law by India’s ceremonial president within days. The passage of the legislation marks the latest political victory for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a strident nationalist in the mold of other right-leaning populist politicians around the globe. Since winning a landslide reelection victory in May, Modi has moved swiftly to implement his party’s agenda of emphasizing Hindu primacy in India, a diverse democracy home to more than 1.3 billion people. Hindu nationalist ideologues view India’s history as a series of humiliations — centuries of rule by Muslim kings followed by British colonialism — that must be redressed. They despise the secularism embraced by India’s founders, who sought to create a country where all faiths were treated equally. And they accuse India’s previous leaders of pandering to religious minorities, especially Muslims, in search of votes. Now, in just months, Modi has achieved some of their top objectives. In August, he reversed seven decades of policy in Kashmir, stripping the Muslim-majority state of its autonomy and instituting a crackdown that endures to this day. Last month, India’s Supreme Court greenlighted the construction of a grand Hindu temple at the site of a 16th-century mosque illegally razed by Hindu extremists in 1992. The government has also engaged in increasingly harsh anti-migrant rhetoric. The country’s powerful interior minister has called migrants who entered the country illegally “termites” and pledged to expel them. Earlier this year, Indian authorities completed a byzantine process aimed at identifying migrants in the northeastern state of Assam. Nearly 2 million people were left off the final list of citizens, raising the risk that they could be rendered stateless or deported. The Citizenship Amendment Bill, which was passed by both houses of Parliament this week, is another priority. It is effectively an amnesty for all Hindus, Buddhists and Christians (as well as adherents of three smaller religions) who illegally entered the country before 2014 from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. The citizenship bill is “the first legal articulation that India is, you might say, a homeland for Hindus,” said Pratap Bhanu Mehta, one of India’s most prominent political scientists. Mehta believes the measure violates the Indian constitution, which guarantees equal rights before the law to all people within the country. To name specific religious communities in the law is “nothing else but sending a signal,” Mehta said. “The signal is that Muslims are not on the same footing” as others in India. Modi and his second-in-command, Home Affairs Minister Amit Shah, have said the measure is necessary to offer refuge to persecuted religious minorities. Proponents say India owes a moral responsibility to such communities who have faced severe hardship and even violence. But the legislation does not provide any relief to members of oppressed religious minorities — mostly Muslims — from other neighboring countries such as China and Myanmar. After the measure passed on Wednesday, Modi wrote that it was a “landmark day for India and our nation’s ethos of compassion and brotherhood.” He said the bill would “alleviate the suffering of many who faced persecution for years.” However, the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom on Monday described the legislation as a “dangerous turn” that “runs counter to India’s rich history of secular pluralism.” It called upon Congress and President Trump to consider sanctions against Shah if the measure became law. India rejected the criticism as “neither accurate nor warranted.” The heated debate in Parliament over the citizenship measure repeatedly raked up India’s original trauma, the partition of the subcontinent in 1947. While Pakistan was founded as a home for the region’s Muslims, India defined itself in opposition to the idea that religion was the basis of nationhood. The bill runs counter to India’s “foundational values,” Anand Sharma, a leader of the opposition Congress party, said in Parliament on Wednesday. “It hurts the soul of India.” For some in India, the citizenship legislation is a sign of the profound changes sweeping the country and a cause for deep sadness. Shah Alam Khan, 49, a doctor and columnist in Delhi, said his great-grandparents decided to stay in India at the time of partition, rather than leave for Pakistan as many Muslims did, because they believed in India’s pluralistic ethos. “They trusted the sky over their heads and the ground under their feet,” he wrote. “I am happy they aren’t alive to see this collapsing India.” The Modi government’s moves have intensified a sense of insecurity among India’s Muslim community, the second-largest in the world. Modi has long been a controversial figure among Muslims. In 2002, when he was chief minister of the state of Gujarat, he failed to stop the deadliest outbreak of communal violence in recent Indian history. More than 1,000 people, mostly Muslims, were killed over three days. A court-appointed panel absolved Modi of involvement in the riots. Now some Muslims worry that the current citizenship measure is only the first step of a larger project. Shah, Modi’s lieutenant, has repeatedly stated that the government intends to launch a nationwide registry in which all Indians will be required to prove their citizenship, patterned on the exercise recently carried out in Assam. The opaque and complex process was riddled with errors and forced residents to provide ancestral documents going back decades. Shah’s repeated references to migrants as “termites” and “infiltrators” who represent a security threat is coded language to refer to Muslims, critics say. Although Shah has said that Indian Muslims have nothing to fear, many worry theywould be the target of a nationwide citizenship registry. One of the effects of Modi’s new citizenship measure would be to help those left off the list of citizens in Assam — provided they are not Muslims. In September, Mohan Bhagwat, the leader of a powerful Hindu nationalist organization that is the ideological parent of the ruling party, reportedly assured politicians that “no Hindu” would be expelled from the country. “We have to distinguish between the infiltrators and genuine persecuted refugees,” said Sudhanshu Trivedi, a spokesman for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party. “This is the right time for India to assert its security concerns, because we are living with neighbors which are the biggest security threats in the entire world.” He said the three countries mentioned in the legislation — Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan — were “theocratic states.” As the citizenship legislation moved closer to a final vote, the furor around it grew. Hundreds of prominent scientists and scholars issued public letters to express their opposition. In India’s northeast, violent protests broke out against the measure. In some areas, local authorities requested help from the Indian army, shut down mobile Internet access and imposed curfews. States such as Assam have long witnessed tensions surrounding the arrival of Bengali-speaking migrants from neighboring Bangladesh, who locals fear will alter their culture and take away jobs. Now the citizenship measure will help some of those migrants to become citizens, provided that they settle outside of areas designated for indigenous people. “There is a lot of anger since we have already absorbed so many people,” said Madhurjya Baruah, 32, a lawyer in Guwahati, Assam’s largest city. “After making everyone in the state prove their citizenship, you are saying you will accept recent immigrants. Whatever religion they may be, we are not going to accept it.” Opponents of the new citizenship bill have vowed to challenge its constitutionality. But India’s Supreme Court has demonstrated that it is reluctant to rule in an expeditious manner on such challenges, particularly when they involve the policy priorities of the government. Copyright 2019 The Washington Post

In unprecedented move, former human rights icon defends Myanmar generals at ICJ over killings, rape and displacement. Aung San Suu Kyi has shocked critics by travelling to The Hague to head her country's delegation [Peter Dejong/The Associated Press] Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi has defended Myanmar's military against genocide allegations made at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) amid accusations of mass killings, rape and expulsion of the Rohingya Muslim minority. The Gambia, a small West African country, filed the case at the ICJ in The Hague, the United Nations' highest court, alleging it violated the 1948 Genocide Convention. "The Gambia has placed an incomplete and misleading picture of the factual situation in Rakhine state," Suu Kyi said at the UN's top court on Wednesday. "Surely under the circumstances, genocidal intent cannot be the only hypothesis. "Can there be genocidal intent on the part of the state that actively investigates, prosecutes and punishes soldiers and officers, who are accused of wrongdoing? Although the focus here is on members of the military, I can assure you that appropriate action will be taken on civilian offenders, in line with due process." She said the situation in Rakhine state was "complex" as she acknowledged the "suffering" of the Rohingya minority, many of whom have fled to safety in neighbouring Bangladesh. The Myanmar army may have used "disproportionate force", she said, but that did not prove it was trying to wipe out the minority group. She repeatedly termed a bloody crackdown in 2017 as an "internal conflict", saying Myanmar's military was responding to attacks by Rohingya "militants" and armed local groups, such as the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA). Once a human rights icon who fought against the powerful military for democracy, Suu Kyi has shocked critics and galvanised supporters at home by travelling to The Hague to head her country's delegation. "We [are] witnessing one of history's shocking moments: Suu Kyi denying and dismissing credible findings of genocide of Rohingyas by Myanmar," Maung Zarni, a UK-based scholar, activist and member of Myanmar's Buddhist majority who hails from a military family. "As a Burmese I am so ashamed and outraged at the same time by what I am about to hear - lies and deceptions." Suu Kyi listened impassively on Tuesday as lawyers for The Gambia detailed graphic testimony of suffering of Rohingya at the hands of Myanmar's security forces, including gang rape, torture and murder. "It was very important to see her have to sit inches away from people who were describing - in really painfully excruciating detail - all the horrible crimes of the Burmese military that happened on her watch," Brad Adams, of New York-based Human Rights Watch (HRW), told Al Jazeera. The ICJ judges are hearing the first phase of the case until Thursday: The Gambia's request for "provisional measures" - the equivalent of a restraining order - against Myanmar to protect the Rohingya population until the case is heard in full. The Gambia has argued that it is every country's duty under the 1948 Convention to prevent a genocide from taking place. It has political support from the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), as well as several Western nations including Canada and the Netherlands. More than 730,000 Rohingya fled Myanmar after the military crackdown in the country's western Rakhine state in August 2017. Most now live in crowded refugee camps in Bangladesh. Myanmar argues that the military's "clearance operations" in Rakhine were a justifiable response to acts of "terrorism" by rebels and says its soldiers acted appropriately. 'Hugely important' Although a UN fact-finding mission found "the gravest crimes under international law" were committed in Myanmar and called for genocide trials, no court has weighed the evidence. According to some analysts, the ICJ case represents a landmark. "The final judgement can take a long time [of up to five years], but for victims and their communities, it's an incredible moment," Antonia Mulvey, founder of Legal Action Worldwide and an expert on international human rights, told Al Jazeera. "This sends a very strong message to the Rohingya that the international community is watching and listening to them." Rohingya refugee camp in Cox's Bazar, Bangladesh. Credit: Al Jazeera Speaking from Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh, the site of the largest Rohingya refugee camp in the world, Al Jazeera's Stefanie Dekker said the trial was "hugely important" for the Rohingya. Dekker said people at the camp were aware of the trial and were trying to get news of it. "The internet had been cut for the last couple of months when a large protest took place at the two-year anniversary ... but today, for some reason, 3G is back on and people can access the news." US sanctions In another blow to the Myanmar government, the United States stiffened sanctions against the Southeast Asian nation's army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, and three other senior commanders on Tuesday over the killings. "The United States will not tolerate torture, kidnapping, sexual violence, murder or brutality against innocent civilians," Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement. The new sanctions, which coincided with the UN's International Human Rights Day, freeze any US assets held by those targeted and prohibits Americans from doing business with the named individuals. John Sifton, Asia advocacy director for HRW, called it a welcome but overdue step, saying "better late than never". "It is unfortunate the decision took so long. The crimes in question were incredibly serious," he said. Copyright 2019 Al Jazeera