With the Rohingya repatriation nowhere in sight, their leaders say they feel ignored both by the international community and the Bangladesh government in the process of making decisions about their fate. Community leaders in refugee camps and those living abroad are raising their voice about the matter recently, urging all the parties to ensure their representation in the negotiation process about repatriation. The issue was also highlighted in a letter to Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina by the Ara-kan Rohingya Society for Peace and Human Rights (ARSPH), a Rohingya organisa-tion based in Kutupalong camp. The letter was emailed to her office on June 18. The organisation also handed over a copy of the letter to Mohammad Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s Refugee, Relief and Reha-bilitation Commissioner. “Rohingya communities receive many confusing messages and information about their repatriation. Often, some international agencies say that we will not go back to Myanmar. This is totally wrong,” said Mohibullah, chairman of ARSPH. His statement echoes what Hasina said on June 9. She said international agencies that came to Bangladesh to offer voluntary services did not want the displaced Roh-ingyas to go back to their homeland. Mohibullah said the international community did not care about what the Rohingyas wanted. “They are not really listening to us,” he said yesterday, on the eve of the World Refugee Day. The day is being observed today when some 1.1 million Rohingyas, including the 741,000 who fled military crackdowns in Myanmar’s Rakhine state since August 2017, live in squalid camps of Cox’s Bazar and their repatriation is still uncertain as Myanmar has yet not created conditions for their safe return. The situation has worsened as clashes between Myanmar military and Arakan Army, an ethnic Buddhist rebel group, have escalated since early this year. Bangladesh signed a repatriation deal with Myanmar in November 2017. Myanmar also signed a tripartite agreement on the repatriation with the UNDP and the UNHCR in June last year and extended it this year. But many Rohingyas say Rakhine is not safe yet and that there is no guarantee of citizenship and freedom of movement there. Last year, UN investigators demanded top military commanders in Myanmar be investigated and prosecuted for the “gravest” crimes against civilians under international law, including genocide, but the UN Security Council has yet to refer Myanmar’s case to the International Criminal Court mainly because of opposition from China and Russia. Though the living conditions in the camps in Ukhia and Teknaf have improved a lot compared with that in 2017, a lack of secondary education and unemployment among Rohingya youths are disturbing them, Rohingya activists said. Mohibullah said Rohingyas were concerned that the international community was not focused enough on what Rohingya refugees want. They are concerned more about humanitarian assistance, rather than repatriation. He added that before signing the deal with Myanmar, the UNDP and the UNHCR did not speak with any of the Rohingyas. Also, there was no representation of the Rohingyas in the deal signed between Bangladesh and Myanmar in November 2017. “Even our ethnic name Rohingya is not mentioned in the deal signed by Myanmar, the UNHCR and the UNDP. The Asean team that recently prepared an assessment report on the situation in Rakhine also did not use the term Rohingya. The Asean has not consulted any of the Rohingyas either. This is very painful,” Mohibullah said. He said there were big challenges on the road to return home, but all those could be overcome with coordination and collaboration of the Rohingya people. Rohingya representatives can help here by participating in the planning and decision-making process, and it would help improve communication between Rohingyas and all other parties, he added. In its letter to the PM, the ARSPH requested her to give them the opportunity to work with the Bangladesh government to help the Rohingya return home. “We would like to be able to discuss with your office about how we can work more effectively together to ensure repatriation of the Rohingyas in safe, sustainable and dig-nified way,” it said. Nay San Lwin, campaign coordinator for Free Rohingya Coalition, a global network of Rohingya activists, said there was a big Rohingya diaspora in different countries, but the UN has not consulted any of them while working on repatriation and other issues. “We suffered genocide. Now they [international community] are deciding our future without our consent,” he told The Daily Star from Germany yesterday. There are some 130,000 Rohingyas living in camps in Rakhine. They should be issued citizenship and settled in their original homes before repatriating the Rohingyas from Bangladesh, he said. Lwin said foreign dignitaries go to the camps and talk to them, but they are nowhere in the scene during negotiations with Myanmar. “We feel completely ignored. It seems the international community wants to please Myanmar,” he added. Abul Kalam, Bangladesh’s Refugee, Relief and Rehabilitation Commissioner, said Bangladesh government tried to incorporate opinions of the Rohingya communities before making any decision. “We will try to do it more,” he added. In an email message, UNHCR’s Bangladesh Representative Steven Corliss said the UNHCR and its partners were working across the Rohingya settlements in Cox’s Ba-zar, and they spoke with many refugees every day. “The majority of refugees tell us that they want to go home, when voluntary, safe, dignified and sustainable repatriation is possible. We share this goal and are working toward this objective, along with the government of Bangladesh,” he said. Only the Myanmar government can make the changes needed to give them the confidence to return, he noted. “The UNHCR will continue to work to preserve the right of Rohingya refugees to return and, in this connection, to try and improve the conditions in Rakhine State. We will also continue to discuss with the Rohingya community in Bangladesh their views and aspirations for the future, and provide assistance and protection to them until solutions can be found,” he said. © June 2019 The Daily Star. All Rights Reserved.

Map of North Sinai showing the three main Sinai detention centers: Al-Azoly military prison (inside Al-Galaa Military Base at Ismailia on the Suez Canal), Battalion 101 in al Arish, and al-Zohor camp in Sheikh Zuwayed. May copyright HRW 2019, road data OSM 2019. © 2019 Human Rights Watch (Beirut) – Egyptian military and police forces in the Sinai Peninsula are committing serious and widespread abuses against civilians, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Some of these abuses, part of an ongoing campaign against members of the local ISIS affiliate, the Sinai Province group, amount to war crimes. The 134-page report, “‘If You Are Afraid for Your Lives, Leave Sinai!’: Egyptian Security Forces and ISIS-Affiliate Abuses in North Sinai,” provides a detailed look into an underreported conflict that has killed and wounded thousands of people – including civilians, militants, and members of the security forces – since fighting escalated in 2013. Human Rights Watch’s two-year investigation documented crimes including mass arbitrary arrests, enforced disappearances, torture, extrajudicial killings, and possibly unlawful air and ground attacks against civilians. While Egyptian military and police forces were responsible for the majority of abuses documented in the report, extremist militants have also committed horrific crimes, including kidnapping and torturing scores of residents, killing some, and extrajudicially executing detained security force members. “Instead of protecting Sinai residents in their fight against militants, the Egyptian security forces have shown utter contempt to residents’ lives, turning their daily life into a nonstop nightmare of abuses,” said Michael Page, deputy Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “This horrific treatment of Sinai residents should be another wake-up call to countries like the US and France that heedlessly endorse Egypt’s counterterrorism efforts.” Human Rights Watch interviewed 54 North Sinai residents between 2016 and 2018 for the report, as well as activists, journalists, and other witnesses, including two former army officers, a soldier, a former official who worked in North Sinai, and a former United States national security official who worked on Egypt issues. Human Rights Watch also reviewed scores of official statements, social media posts, media reports, and dozens of satellite images to identify home demolitions and secret military detention facilities. The military has effectively banned independent reporting from North Sinai and has prosecuted and imprisoned several journalists who covered events there. Human Rights Watch found that hostilities in North Sinai, with sustained fighting between organized forces, have risen to the level of a non-international armed conflict, and that warring sides have violated international laws of war as well as local and international human rights laws. The targeting and abuse of civilians, as well as the failure to distinguish civilians from combatants by both sides, has obliterated civilians’ basic rights and destroyed meaningful space for peaceful political mobilization or opposition. The abuses have also contributed to the escalating militarization of the conflict and the displacement of residents. “Why all of this? Should we carry weapons and work with the militants or work with the army or live like victims? Everyone is preying on us,” a resident told Human Rights Watch, describing how the army punished him and destroyed his house after ISIS (also known as Islamic State) militants kidnapped and tortured him. From January 2014 until June 2018, 3,076 alleged militants and 1,226 military and police personnel were killed in the fighting, according to government statements and media reports. Egyptian authorities have not released civilian casualty figures or publicly acknowledged wrongdoing. Human Rights Watch found that Egyptian authorities frequently counted civilians among the alleged militants killed and that hundreds of civilians have been killed or injured. Based on military statements and Egyptian media reports, Human Rights Watch concluded that military and police forces in North Sinai arrested more than 12,000 residents from July 2013 until December 2018. The military and the police have officially acknowledged over 7,300 arrests, but rarely released names or charges. Human Rights Watch found that many of those people were arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared, and that some were extrajudicially killed. Thousands of people have probably left the governorate in recent years, either to escape the conflict or after being forcibly evicted by the military. North Sinai is a sparsely populated governorate with fewer than 500,000 inhabitants that borders Israel and the Gaza Strip. Armed groups have long existed in North Sinai, but attacks against government installations, military forces, and Israeli troops began to rise after the 2011 uprising that led to the resignation of the longtime President Hosni Mubarak. Violence escalated dramatically after July 2013, when the Egyptian military forced former President Mohamed Morsy out of office and arrested him. A local militant group, Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis, pledged allegiance to ISIS in late 2014, changing its name to Wilayat Sina’ (Sinai Province). In response, the army has deployed over 40,000 troops, including naval, air, and infantry units. Egypt has coordinated these deployments with Israel and has apparently allowed Israel to conduct airstrikes inside Sinai on militants’ targets, media reports said. In this report, Human Rights Watch documented at least 50 arbitrary arrests, including 39 people who were probably forcibly disappeared by the military or police. Fourteen of them remain disappeared more than three years later. The army held detainees in isolation and in abysmal conditions, far removed from any judicial oversight. The military and police have detained children as young as 12 alongside adults but have usually detained women separately. At any given time in the past several years, Human Rights Watch found, the army may have been holding up to 1,000 detainees in secret in al-Galaa Military Base, one of three main military detention sites detailed in the report. Former detainees said conditions in military and police detention included lack of adequate food, water, and medical care, and small, overcrowded cells. Soldiers and officers tortured many detainees, including with beatings and electric shocks. Human Rights Watch documented three deaths in custody. The military and police killed some of those secretly detained in the desert without trials, later claiming they had been killed in shootouts. Human Rights Watch documented 14 such cases and previously documented six others. The Egyptian army has recruited North Sinai residents into militias that have played a substantial role in abuses, Human Rights Watch found. These unofficial irregular militias have helped the military – which lacked significant experience in North Sinai prior to the conflict – by providing intelligence and carrying out missions on the military’s behalf. Militia members use their de-facto powers to arbitrarily arrest residents and settle scores and personal disputes. They have also participated in torture and extrajudicial killings. Sinai Province, the local ISIS affiliate, has taken root in a small northeastern corner of North Sinai on the Gaza-Israeli border and maintains a presence there, even after six years of sustained fighting. Its militants have committed horrific crimes, interviewees said, including kidnapping scores of residents and members of the military or police and extrajudicially killing some of them. Sinai Province’s indiscriminate attacks, such as using improvised explosive devices in populated areas, have killed hundreds of civilians and led to the forced displacement of residents. The group has also deliberately attacked civilians. Sinai Province members were probably responsible for a November 2017 attack on the al-Rawda Mosque in North Sinai that killed at least 311 people, including children, the deadliest known attack by a non-state armed group in Egypt’s modern history. In parts of Rafah and Sheikh Zuwayed, two towns in North Sinai, the group established its own Sharia (Islamic law) courts that oversaw unfair “trials,” set up checkpoints, and enforced certain Islamic rules. The United Nations Human Rights Council and the African Commission for Human and Peoples’ Rights should open independent commissions of inquiry into the abuses in Sinai, given the failure of Egyptian authorities to do so. Egypt’s international partners should immediately halt all security and military assistance until Egypt ends its abuses. War crimes, under international law, can be prosecuted without any time limit, and many states, under the principle of universal jurisdiction, allow individuals to be arrested and prosecuted in their countries for war crimes committed anywhere in the world. “North Sinai’s ISIS affiliate deserves the global condemnation it has received and full accountability for its heinous abuses, but the army’s campaign, marred with equally serious violations, including war crimes, should also be roundly criticized rather than praised,” Page said. “Egypt’s closest allies should halt their support for an abusive military campaign that has left thousands of civilian victims in its wake.” © May 2019 Human Rights Watch

The executive order acknowledged state-sponsored violence and discrimination against Native peoples as part of "California's dark history." Enslavement. Exploitation. Discrimination. Violence. Forced removal. Genocide. Despite inhabiting California for thousands of years, Native Americans faced all of this and more at the hands of California’s white settlers and the state’s government itself. Now, California governor Gavin Newsom has made a first-of-its-kind apology to the state’s Native peoples. “It’s called a genocide. That’s what it was. A genocide. [There’s] no other way to describe it and that’s the way it needs to be described in the history books,” Newsom said at a blessing ceremony for a Native American heritage center. “And so I’m here to say the following: I’m sorry on behalf of the state of California.” Up to 16,000 Native Californians died in the genocide, which took place from the 1840s through the 1870s. Most of the deaths occurred during hundreds of massacres during which state and local militias encircled and murdered Native peoples. The genocide was facilitated by discriminatory California laws and the outright support of state officials and Federal authorities who condoned and supported the attacks. READ MORE: California's Little-Known Genocide The apology comes in the wake of centuries of mistreatment of Native Californians. Before white settlement, at least 80 languages were spoken by a variety of Native peoples in what is now California. Animosity toward Native Californians predates the state; during California’s tenure as a Mexican province from 1804 to 1848, Spanish missionaries seized Native lands and pressured them into living in and laboring for missions. Epidemics wiped out tens of thousands. Once California was handed over to the United States at the end of the Mexican American War, things became even worse for the new state’s Native population. The man who discovered gold at Sutter’s Mill was led to the precious metal by Native people under the control of John Sutter. But despite making the Gold Rush possible, the state’s Native peoples were enslaved, displaced and discriminated against. Indeed, the very foundation of the state was built on a foundation of hatred against Native Americans. At his second State of the State Address, the state’s first governor, Peter Hardenman Burnett, referred to “the Indian foe” and called Native people robbers and savages. “That a war of extermination will continue to be waged between the races until the Indian race becomes extinct must be expected,” he said. READ MORE: When Native Americans Were Slaughtered in the Name of ‘Civilization’ Burnett was not the only new Californian who viewed Native Americans with suspicion and enmity. The state’s first legislative session gave white settlers the ability to take custody of Native children, arrest Native peoples at will and enslave them for petty “crimes.” Bolstered by bounties and weapons provided by the U.S. Army, state and local militias began massacring Native Americans outright. About 16,000 Native Californians died in the genocide. Meanwhile, the state’s Native population, which had already fallen dramatically during Spanish colonization, dwindled to just 30,000 from around 150,000 before statehood. Discrimination persisted long past state-sponsored genocide. Tens of thousands of other Native Californians were affected by discriminatory laws and policies. Native Californian children were forced to assimilate into white culture and attend “Indian assimilation schools” like the Sherman Indian School in Riverside, CA. There, they were forbidden to speak their languages or take part in tribal ceremonies. And though Native peoples resisted discrimination and fought for civil rights, federal recognition and the right to have gaming operations on their reservations through the 21st century, poverty, health disparities and limited opportunities were, and still are, common. Today, California has the most people with Native American heritage in the nation; 109 federally recognized tribes call the state home, and another 78 tribes are petitioning for recognition. Despite the state’s legacy of discrimination and hatred, “California Native Americans resisted, survived and carried on cultural and linguistic traditions defying all odds,” the governor’s office notes in a press release. Newsom is not the first official to apologize for a government’s mistreatment of Native Americans. In 2009, the United States apologized to Native peoples for “violence, maltreatment, and neglect.” But the apology did not include an admission of liability, and then-President Barack Obama did not publicly acknowledge it. The executive order includes similar language to the United States’ apology. But it goes one step further: Newsom also established a “truth and healing council” to provide Native perspectives on the historical record. The council will include tribal representatives and others and issue a report on the historical relationships between Native Californians and the state of California. © June 2019 HISTORY. All Rights Reserved.

Secretary General, his aides should be held accountable for failure to address Myanmar's persecution of ethnic minority, says Rohingya group DHAKA, Bangladesh A Rohingya advocacy group on Tuesday called on UN chief and his senior aide to resign over the global body’s “systemic failure” in addressing genocide against the Rohingya under their leadership. In a statement, Free Rohingya Coalition (FRC) criticized UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres and former UN Resident Coordinator in Myanmar Renata Lok-Dessallien for failing to safeguard thousands of Rohingya in Myanmar. The advocacy group blasted Guterres and Lok-Dessallien over a report released in May. The 36-page official report titled “A brief and independent inquiry into the involvement of the United Nations in Myanmar from 2010 to 2018” and prepared by former Guatemalan Foreign Minister and UN diplomat Gert Rosenthal acknowledges the UN’s "systemic failures". About the controversial role of Lok-Dessallien while working in Myanmar, the statement said: “[She] reportedly suppressed an internal report of the alarming failings of the UN in Myanmar in taking the egregious rights violations amounting to crimes against humanity, specifically against the persecuted Rohingya ethnic minority.” After such a gross violation of the norms and rules of an international organization like the UN, Lok-Dessallien was not held responsible due to lack of proper role of the UN chief, the statement asserted. The group accused Guterres of rewarding Lok-Dessallien with a larger portfolio as the chief UN official in India, instead of holding his aides accountable for their failures. About the UN's alleged failure in Myanmar, the report said: “It must also be said that the United Nations’ collective membership, represented by the Security Council, bears part of that responsibility, by not providing enough support to the Secretariat when such backing was and continues to be essential.” The report also put blame on UN member states as they "collectively also bear part of the responsibility" for the body's failure in addressing incidents in Rakhine State. “If there is one single action that might have altered the course of events in Myanmar, it would have been the timely and impartial presence in Rakhine State of some type of United Nations observatory that would offer a measure of confidence to the oppressed minorities," read the report. The FRC added: “The coalition therefore holds that in order for impunity to end within Myanmar and within the international protection system, Secretary General and his managerial deputies should be held accountable for the failures that have thus far emboldened Myanmar’s ongoing genocidal persecution of Rohingya ethnic minority in Rakhine State.” Exiled dissident from Myanmar and human rights activist Maung Zarni told Anadolu Agency that after publishing the UN report, Guterres and Dessallien have no moral, intellectual and legal rights to hold any position in the UN. “Staying at the driving position they [Guterres and Dessallien] moved the organization [the UN] to wrong direction violating existing rules and regulations,” Zarni added. According to Amnesty International, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, have fled Myanmar and crossed to Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the minority Muslim community in August 2017. Since Aug. 25, 2017, nearly 24,000 Rohingya Muslims have been killed by Myanmar’s state forces, according to a report by the Ontario International Development Agency (OIDA). More than 34,000 Rohingya were also thrown into fires, while over 114,000 others were beaten, said the report, titled "Forced Migration of Rohingya: The Untold Experience". Some 18,000 Rohingya women and girls were raped by Myanmar’s army and police and over 115,000 Rohingya homes were burned down and 113,000 others vandalized, it added. © 2019 Anadolu Agency

The wire pictures from Budapest of a smiling Nobel Peace Laureate and Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi shaking hands with Viktor Orban, Hungary’s president, strikes fear down my spine. That is, fear for my Muslim friends back home in Mandalay in particular and Myanmar’s Muslims in general, including the systematically persecuted Rohingya. The two reportedly exchanged their unconcealed fear and loathing of Muslims and migrants. In Suu Kyi’s Myanmar the military has very successfully misframed the country’s Rohingya people as illegal Bengali migrants from across the borders in Muslim Bangladesh. Myanmar’s icon of democratic transition has become the killers’ echo-chamber wittingly. In my 30 years of political activism and scholarship about my country’s affairs, I have learned to read well the deeply racialised Burmese society, politicized Buddhist Order and the ultra-nationalist Tatmadaw or the military. And I had for years supported the woman the country’s Buddhist majority call, with undying affection, Mother Suu, and have very closely studied her words, deeds and even facial expressions over these last three decades. I can tell that the pictures from Budapest weren’t simply about Myanmar state counsellor performing in accord with the diplomatic protocol of being polite to the host and looking pleasant for the camera. It was more like a meeting of two racist, xenophobic minds, which are typically indifferent to either the warnings of the Fascist histories of the two respective countries during the World War II, or the ugly facts on ground including the countries’ Islamophobic policies. In a report by the Council of Europe's commissioner for human rights, Orban’s administration has been accused of spreading "xenophobic attitudes, fear and hatred" while Orban himself is emerging as a pivotal figure among European and North American far-right leaders and demagogues, from Trump’s former right hand Steve Bannon to former U.K. Independence Party leader Nigel Farage. In the case of Myanmar, the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission officially accuses her civilian leadership of being involved in the ongoing genocide against Muslim Rohingya. According to the Orban government’s statement following their meeting, Suu Kyi and Orban “highlighted” “migration” and “the issue of co-existence with continuously growing Muslim populations” as the two “greatest challenges” to “South-East Asia and Europe”. This is not the first-time when Myanmar's state counsellor shared the limelight with a far-right leader and echoed unconcealed racist views about Muslims. In September 2017, Suu Kyi shared the press podium with India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the Hindu fundamentalist, from where both leaders openly misframed Myanmar’s mass persecution of Rohingya as a state’s legitimate response to “terror” -- that is, “Muslim terror”. In her words: “I would like to thank India for taking a strong stand on the terror threat that Myanmar faced recently." I have noticed how the Burmese leader -- whom I supported so actively for my first 15 years of international activism in the diaspora in the United States -- keeps on shifting her justifications for the anti-Muslim racism which has infested Myanmar’s public opinions, government policies -- and her own views. As early as October 2013, on Britain’s domestic flagship BBC Four -- Suu Kyi framed her own views of Muslims as a general Burmese popular perception. Suu Kyi, then the country’s iconic opposition leader, said to the British interview host Mishal Husain, a British Muslim: “I think you will accept that there is a perception that the global Muslim power is very great. Certainly, this is a perception in many parts of the world -- and in our country too.” Six years since her shocking interview, Myanmar’s Suu Kyi, now in power as state counsellor and foreign minister, has come out of her closet of Islamophobia, making a common cause with one of Europe’s certifiably far-right national leaders. Her concerns about the growing immigration and the problem of the ever-growing Muslim population at home in Myanmar are not supported by facts. In 2012, the then serving Minister of Immigration and former chief of police Brig. Khin Yi put the Rohingya population at about 1.33 million, a conservative estimate, subsequent to the two bouts of organized violence against Muslims in Rakhine state. Similarly, his boss ex-General and President Thein Sein also told the Voice of America Burmese Language Service in July the same year that “we discovered that the great majority of 'Bengali' [i.e. official racist reference to Rohingya] were born in our country after our independence.” These facts make it impossible to frame Rohingya as “immigrants” from the neighboring Bangladesh. Myanmar’s pervasive, grinding poverty -- contrary to the misleading GDP statistics and mildly positive economic forecasts -- and decades of political repression by the country’s security forces, Myanmar’s brain-drain and the out-migration of Burmese continue unabated. Today estimated 4-5 million Burmese of all ethnic and religious backgrounds, that is, at the ratio of 1 in 10 persons, have left the country as largely migrant laborers to South East Asia’s middle-income countries such as Thailand, Malaysia and, to a lesser extent, Singapore. After Syria, Myanmar is the world’s largest producer of refugees, the great majority of whom are Muslims. Besides, Myanmar’s Muslim population of which the Rohingya are numerically the largest group -- out of a total of 16 groups -- is not growing. It is quite the opposite. Seven years on, only about 0.33 million Rohingya remain in their country of origin -- with 120,000 of them in the barbed-wired internally displaced camps from where they are not allowed to leave. According to the UN fact-finding mission, Myanmar obliterated roughly 400 Rohingya villages during the Burmese military’s “security clearance operations” of 2017 and slaughtered thousands of Muslims including infants, children, women, men and elderly people. The actual death-toll may never be known, but the number of Rohingya slaughtered is certainly far greater than those Bosniaks massacred at Srebrenica in July 1995, which was judicially declared an act of genocide. There is zero growth among Myanmar’s largest Muslim population within their own ancestral homeland of Rakhine. Quite the contrary, chronic waves of violent mass deportation via genocidal rape and slaughter and demolition and burning of Muslim villages since 1978 have more than halved the country’s largest pocket of Muslims – ethnically Rohingya – in Western Myanmar. The remaining Rohingya Muslim population in Buthidaung township are in apartheid-like conditions, stricken with pervasive and constant fear of being slaughtered in the next round of Myanmar’s state-directed mass atrocities -- like the ones the world watched on Facebook and Twitter in 2017 -- or killed in the current crossfires between the (Buddhist) Arakan Army and Myanmar government troops. Based on my first-hand professional experience of running numerous sessions on racism sensitivity and awareness to groups of Myanmar’s opinion-makers including nuns, monks, journalists and rights activists, I have learned one sordid thing: facts do not puncture racism or change racist minds. Suu Kyi is no exception. One typically hears the lame explanation that Suu Kyi has no control over the Burmese military, hence her studied silence regarding the latter’s misdeeds. Her crimes are no longer confined to her refusal to condemn her “father’s army”, or “the crime of omission” as the UN fact-finding mission’s 444-page report (released on 18 September 2018) states. Nor are they merely her widely repeated denials of Myanmar’s “ethnic cleaning” as she had done most infamously on BBC and Channel News Asia. As a matter of fact, Myanmar state counsellor is proving herself to be a wilful accomplice in the racially motivated atrocity crimes being committed by the armed forces which her father founded under Japan’s fascist patronage. Modern world history since Hitler’s mass-murderous days is full of populist regimes that come to power through ballot boxes, mobilizing a majoritarian racism of the electorates at the expenses of religious, ethnic, and racial minorities. Myanmar’s current transition under Suu Kyi’s leadership is not toward an inclusive, democratic society nor a liberal democracy; rather, it is toward a Buddhist nationalist, exclusionary political system where Muslims and other ethnic minorities are demonized and rendered without rights or state’s protection. In light of these developments, the United States and the European Union should seriously review their policies of ostensibly supporting ‘the fragile transition” with Suu Kyi as the only capable and popular midwife for a Burmese democracy. The Lady, or the West’s “Democracy Queen” – as UN Special Rapporteur on the human rights situation in Myanmar Yanghee Lee put it to UK’s Channel Four News in 2018 – has been actively engaged in the articulation, justification and propagation of a venomous worldview which qualifies as “far right”, instead of promoting and defending civil liberties, press freedom, human rights and minority protection of all peoples and communities of faith within Myanmar. Suu Kyi is Myanmar’s Marine Le Pen, not simply a pragmatic politician trying to juggle the demands, priorities and expectations placed on her leadership in a fragile transition. The sooner the world comes to terms with Suu Kyi’s metamorphosis the better for the Burmese activists who are engaged in community-level efforts to build an anti-racist, inclusive and democratic society. *The author is a coordinator of the Free Rohingya Coalition and co-author, with Natalie Brinham, of Essays on Myanmar Genocide. *Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu Agency. © 2019 Anadolu Agency

Humanitarian crisis: Rohingya refugees wait for food distribution organized by the Bangladesh army at the refugee camp of Balukhali near Gumdhum. (AFP/Dominique Faget) ____________________________________________________________________________________________________ As ASEAN prepares for its 34th Summit in Bangkok on June 20 to 23, the heads of member states must keep the Rohingya crisis at the top of their agenda. With the world’s largest refugee camp now sitting at the doorstep of ASEAN, the regional dimensions of the crisis can no longer be ignored. ASEAN’s demonstrated interest in finding solutions to this complex and protracted crisis is welcome. But instead of focusing on the repatriation of nearly 1 million Rohingya refugees from Bangladesh to Myanmar, ASEAN must work first to address the human rights crisis faced by hundreds of thousands of Rohingya still inside Myanmar. They must create safe conditions for refugees to return. It is also crucial that ASEAN works closely with UNHCR — the UN agency mandated to provide international protection to refugees and to facilitate their voluntary repatriation — in any efforts to support voluntary, safe and dignified repatriation. Refugees told Asia-Pacific Refugee Rights Network (APRRN)members that they cannot conceive of returning to Myanmar until they are assured equal rights there. “There must be rights for the Rohingya in Myanmar first before we go back. People in camps in Myanmar must go back home first,” said a Rohingya woman leader living in Katupalong camp in Bangladesh. Rohingya in Rakhine state are unable to live freely; they cannot travel beyond their immediate community, send children to proper schools, or get needed medical care. They are denied citizenship in a country where many of them have lived for generations. Refugees are watching very closely what’s going on in central Rakhine; 128,000 Rohingya and Kaman Muslims have spent seven years in internment camps after being forcibly relocated in 2012, unable to return home. ASEAN leaders must heed the words of Rohingya people. ASEAN’s talks with the government of Myanmar have focused almost exclusively on facilitating repatriation and the role of the ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management (AHA Center) in achieving this. At the end of March, the AHA Center completed a preliminary needs assessment of facilities in the two camps established by government of Myanmar to receive returning refugees in northern Rakhine State. ASEAN leaders will discuss the AHA Center’s report at their 34th Summit and plan for the next stage of engagement — a comprehensive needs assessment to prepare for repatriation. But Rohingya refugees in Bangladesh are terrified of returning to camps inside northern Rakhine. They fear that, as in central Rakhine, this will lead to their permanent internment and segregation with no return possible to their homes and villages. Making repatriation even less possible now is the ongoing active conflict between Myanmar military and Arakan Army in Rakhine. The conflict has displaced over 33,000 people displaced amid credible reports of indiscriminate violence against Rakhine communities, including extrajudicial killings and mass detention that may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. Rohingya communities caught in the middle and unable to move are particularly at risk. Humanitarian organisations face daily restrictions on their operations across Rakhine state, preventing life-saving assistance from reaching communities at risk. Due to the new conflict, access has deteriorated significantly since the beginning of the year. Instead of repatriating refugees under dire prevailing conditions, ASEAN member states should work with Myanmar to create a peaceful and inclusive Rakhine state with human rights for all communities. A blueprint for this already exists in the recommendations of the late-Kofi Annan’s Advisory Commission on Rakhine State report, published just one day before the violence that triggered the mass refugee outflow in August 2017. Commissioned and endorsed by the government of Myanmar, and recognized by ASEAN leaders and international community, The report provides practical recommendations to Myanmar on key issues such as citizenship, freedom of movement, equal access to health care and education and addressing underlying problems of poverty and insecurity. The government of Myanmar claims implementation of 81 of the 88 recommendations, but there is a need for an independent mechanism to measure progress against agreed benchmarks. ASEAN member states could assist Myanmar to establish such a mechanism and to implement the recommendations fully. Without accountability, refugees fear that the cycle of extreme violence and persecution they have suffered for decades will continue. ASEAN has recognized the Independent Commission of Enquiry (ICOE), established by the government of Myanmar to gather evidence and investigate crimes committed in Rakhine State. However, many actors, including the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission, have expressed serious reservations about ICOE’s ability to carry out a credible, inde pendent and impartial investigation leading to the prosecution of perpetrators and redress for the victims. The early release of seven Myanmar soldiers found guilty of carrying out a massacre of 10 Rohingya men in Rakhine, after serving less than a year of their 10-year sentence, is further evidence of lack of an independent, fair and credible judicial system in Myanmar. ASEAN should join international calls for Myanmar to be referred to an international accountability mechanism, such as the International Criminal Court or the International Court of Justice, for crimes in Rakhine. Most importantly, Rohingya themselves — in Bangladesh and Myanmar — must be at the center of any solution. Rohingya communities in Bangladesh and Myanmar tell APRRN members that they want to be consulted, included and involved in decision-making about their futures. Women, in particular, want their voices to be heard, “If you’re discussing our future, do it with us. Our demands should be included.” ASEAN leaders must work with Myanmar’s government to change conditions inside Rakhine for the better, bring perpetrators of atrocities to justice and establish citizenship for Rohingya communities with equal rights and freedoms. This is the only way to realize durable solutions for the nearly million displaced Rohingya people. It’s the only way to build a peaceful and prosperous future for everyone in Rakhine and prevent a protracted refugee and statelessness crisis that would undermine stability of the whole region. © 2019 The Jakarta Post

KYIV -- The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine has documented more than 500 cases of ill-treatment, incommunicado detention, and torture by both Ukrainian government forces and Russia-backed separatists since the conflict erupted in April 2014, the mission’s head said in Kyiv on June 13. “We believe, however, that this is the tip of the iceberg, as torture is a systemic issue in Ukraine that was exacerbated by the armed conflict,” Fiona Frazer told reporters at a press conference where she presented a new UN report. In many instances, Frazer said, “the alleged perpetrators are the state security services and the so-called ‘ministries of state security’ of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic and the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic.” In one case documented in the UN report, a foreign national said he had been detained and tortured by officers of the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in December. In March, after the man filed a complaint and Ukraine’s State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) launched a probe into the incident, the same SBU officers came to his apartment. “They asked him to come with them to Odesa, allegedly to sign some documents. In their car, the men put on masks, and seized his passport, wallet and phone,” the UN report said. “The individuals told him that he had to leave Ukraine. One of them showed the victim a live video stream of two armed men near his apartment where his wife and two children were, and told him they would enter his home if he did not agree to leave,” it continued. The SBU officers forced the man to make a statement on video saying he was leaving Ukraine voluntarily and that he had not been abused physically or psychologically, according to the report. At a border crossing between Ukraine and Moldova, one of the officers delivered a warning: “If you return to Ukraine, we will kill you. If you talk about what happened to you, remember that you have a family in Ukraine.” Frazer lamented the lack of progress in previously documented cases of torture at the hands of the SBU and stressed the urgent need to bring the perpetrators to justice. “We see no progress in the investigation of arbitrary and incommunicado detention that took place on the premises of the Kharkiv SBU from 2014 to 2016,” Frazer said. “But the Kharkiv SBU is only one of dozens of illegal places of detention, which flourished on both sides of the contact line during the early years of the conflict. “Another location, for example, is the Izoliatsiya detention facility in Donetsk,” she said. In Donetsk, the UN documented four cases this year of civilians detained by the security forces of Russia-backed separatists. In one, which occurred on February 26, a mother learned that her two sons had been transferred to a detention facility and charged with “espionage” following their disappearance in 2018. In another, on March 3, a man got into an argument with Donetsk security personnel when crossing a checkpoint and was beaten. “He fainted, and when he regained consciousness, he realized he had been handcuffed and thrown on the floor,” the UN report said. “He was then taken outside and left handcuffed to a fence for an hour. They then threatened to kill him. He was released after signing documents which he was not allowed to read.” Frazer said the UN mission is aware of at least 51 detention facilities on both sides of the front line where hundreds of people were subjected to arbitrary detention, torture, and ill-treatment. Updating the civilian death toll, Frazer said 3,332 civilians have been killed while more than 7,000 were injured as a result of five years of fighting. Around 13,000 people in all have died, according to the organization’s count. Frazer said there were 12 civilian deaths and 58 injuries recorded between January 1 and June 9. “These are the lowest figures for the entire conflict period,” Frazer said. Her report said the numbers “demonstrate that it is possible to progressively decrease civilian casualties to close to zero.” In recent weeks, however, there has been a sharp uptick in artillery shelling and gunfire, resulting in at least six Ukrainian servicemen being killed last week alone. The spike comes amid calls from President Volodymyr Zelenskiy to reboot stalled peace negotiations, including the so-called Minsk Trilateral Contact Group meetings and the Normandy Format talks. Zelenskiy will fly to France and Germany on June 17-18, respectively, where he is expected to meet with the country’s leaders to discuss the conflict, among other issues. © 2019 Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. All Rights Reserved.

Bangladesh Foreign Minister Dr. Abdul Momen speaks during a meeting with diplomats in Dhaka on Wednesday. (Photo/Supplied) *Bangladesh has launched a campaign to put more effective international pressure on Myanmar to repatriate more than 1.1 million Rohingyas to their homeland. DHAKA: Bangladesh has accused Myanmar of launching a “misinformation campaign” over the repatriation of Rohingya refugees. The claim was made on Wednesday by Bangladeshi Minister of Foreign Affairs Dr. A.K. Abdul Momen following a high-level meeting in Dhaka to discuss the issue. During the Future of Asia conference held in Japan at the end of May, Myanmar claimed that Bangladesh was solely responsible for not starting the repatriation process of the Rohingya people. However, Momen hit back on Wednesday, telling reporters that Myanmar had recently presented a report on two “showcase villages” in Rakhine, which it said proved the situation in the state was now conducive for a return. But the minister said the study, produced through ASEAN, a regional body of Southeast Asian nations of which Myanmar was a member nation, could not be representative of all 800 villages in the state.More than 740,000 Rohingyas have fled to Bangladesh since Aug. 25, 2017, following a so-called “clearance operation” by the Myanmar army described by the UN as a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing” and “intent of genocide.” Bangladesh signed a bilateral instrument with Myanmar in the same year, which was supposed to have triggered the start of a two-year repatriation process in January 2018. A later agreed date of mid-November to begin the return was also missed. “Myanmar didn’t keep their promises. They were supposed to create a conducive environment in the Rakhine province. But they did nothing in this regard,” Momen said. Briefing ambassadors and high commissioners at the meeting in the Bangladeshi capital, Momen urged them to put more international pressure on Myanmar to create appropriate conditions for repatriation. He added that Rohingya issue would be the “topmost priority” during Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina’s visit to China next month. China, a close ally of Myanmar, had advocated that Bangladesh and Myanmar should solve the Rohingya crisis bilaterally and played a key role in the repatriation instrument between the countries. “China has also agreed with us that these Myanmar people should be taken back home. We hope that after the visit of the prime minister, the process (repatriation) will start,” Momen added. He noted that oppression was widespread in all communities in Rakhine.Bangladesh has launched a campaign to put more effective international pressure on Myanmar to repatriate more than 1.1 million Rohingyas to their homeland. On Sunday, Momen sent a letter to all 80 consul-generals of Bangladesh in different countries and those of foreign nations in Bangladesh, requesting they engage foreign governments and civil societies in helping to create a safe environment for Rohingyas in Myanmar and oversee the process of repatriating the refugees from Bangladesh. “The delay of repatriation of Rohingyas, who have been deprived of basic rights for decades, may threaten regional security and stability,” Momen wrote. Delowar Hossain, director-general Southeast Asia, of the Bangladesh Foreign Ministry, told Arab News: “We want more direct engagement in different international forums from our friends. This is one of the most important issues at this moment and we all want a solution at the soonest possible time.” Akramul Qader, former Bangladeshi ambassador to the US, told Arab News: “In every meeting, Myanmar promises that they will work soon for creating a conducive environment for the repatriation but in reality, there is not a single person who has repatriated so far.” He said that Bangladesh’s efforts to engage the world and civil societies of different countries was a very timely approach. Prof. Amena Mohsin of Dhaka University, an international relations expert, said China was the most important mover in helping to resolve the issue. “If China wants to be a regional power it should recognize the problems and unease of Bangladesh. Moreover, there are some ethical issues also which a superpower like China can’t ignore,” Mohsin told Arab News. Another former Bangladeshi ambassador to the US, Humayun Kabir said that Bangladesh had the support of the whole world in its efforts to resolve the Rohingya crisis, except for China, Russia and India. “The existing geopolitical situation of this region is actually working as a big obstacle in resolving the Rohingya crisis,” Kabir told Arab News. Although almost half of the year has passed, only 22 percent of the annual $920 million appeal for the Joint Response Plan (JRP) to the Rohingya humanitarian crisis has been met. This has created concern among aid agencies. According to the financial tracking system of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), only $202.3 million has been disbursed by the donor community. “We keep reminding the donor community that they need to fund the JRP and stand with Bangladesh. With the upcoming two-year anniversary of the 2017 influx this will become even more important as the JRP is only just over 20 percent funded,” said Stephen Pattison, communication officer for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees at Cox’s Bazar. “However, we will keep working here in this response, but funding shortages will, obviously, limit the scope of what we are able to do for the Rohingya refugees here,” he told Arab News. © 2019 Arab News

For the interactive map, please access HERE Minority Rights Group International is publishing this week the 2019 edition of our Peoples under Threat Map, based on an index using authoritative indicators to identify those countries around the world where minorities and indigenous peoples find themselves most at risk of genocide, mass killings or systematic violent repression. This year again, Syria heads the index, followed by Somalia, South Sudan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Major risers since last year include Nicaragua, India, Cameroon, Niger and Burkina Faso. You will find more information in the Briefing Paper attached, as well as in the online Map. This is the 14th year that the Peoples under Threat index has been released by MRG, joined now by the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights. Its goal is to raise awareness about situations where minorities are at particular risk, and to provide early warnings of potential mass atrocities. Contact: Carl Söderbergh Director of Policy and Communications Minority Rights Group International T: +44 (0)207 422 4227 M: +44 (0)7837 533 675 E: carl.soderbergh@mrgmail.org Peoples Under Threat 2019: The role of social media in exacerbating violence PRESS RELEASES 03 JUN 2019 The use of social media by repressive states and extremist groups is adding directly to the threats faced by some of the world’s most vulnerable populations and can exacerbate violence where atrocities have occurred or risk transpiring, according to new data analysis by Minority Rights Group International (MRG) and the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights. The analysis, known as the Peoples under Threat index, uses authoritative indicators to identify those countries around the world most at risk of genocide, mass killing or systematic violent repression. This year’s index draws attention to the numerous instances where social media is being used in an organized way to disseminate hate and incite killing. ‘Unequal access to modern technology by way of social media creates an accelerated process through which hate and xenophobia can spread,’ says Joshua Castellino, MRG’s Executive Director. ‘The immediacy of the medium facilitates opinion without need for context or nuance. The sensationalist nature of some of these communications, designed to shock and awe, inevitably aids their spread.’ Syria, where social media platforms are used actively by all sides in the war, heads this year’s Peoples under Threat index. The power of hashtags persists in Syria, where supporters of President Bashar al-Assad popularized a #SyriaHoax hashtag on Twitter to discredit the overwhelming evidence of horrific chemical attacks on civilian targets. Numerous videos uploaded to YouTube by many parties to the conflict have received hundreds of millions of views, leading the Syrian conflict to be dubbed the ‘social media war’. Somalia maintains its position behind Syria in the index. As it relates to social media, Al-Shabaab has been known to use Twitter and Facebook as propaganda and recruitment tools in an environment where mobile phone use has steadily risen in recent years. Afghanistan is among those states where threat levels have increased this year. The civilian death toll in Afghanistan reached an all-time annual high in 2018, with 3,804 killed and another 7,189 injured. Government-controlled territory also shrank to its lowest since the fall of the Taliban in 2001. To mitigate this discouraging picture, the Afghan Ministry of Defense publishes daily figures of Taliban fighters who are killed or captured to its Twitter feed. The Taliban, in turn, widely uses WhatsApp and Twitter to recruit, plan, fundraise and claim responsibility for its attacks. Myanmar is a stark example of the link between social media and the commission of atrocities. In this instance, dehumanizing language and outright incitement to mass murder was amplified via Facebook and Twitter, contributing to the widespread targeting of the Muslim Rohingya minority. Iraq remains vulnerable to outbreaks of violence, and during its most intense and violent repression of minority communities, ISIS used the Twitter hashtag #AllEyesOnISIS to publicise its atrocities. While the hashtag has recently lost much of its currency, its deliberate use demonstrates how social media has become an important conduit for spreading hate and fear. The threat level has also risen in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), as the country now holds more than 5 million displaced people within its borders and represents the largest displacement crisis on the African continent. Authorities in Kinshasa have engineered internet and social media bans to assist in denials of government mismanagement and insecurity. ’In country after country, social media platforms are now being used to spread hate, recruit the killers, and organize mass killing,’ said Mark Lattimer, Executive Director of the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights. ‘For years we have thought of social media as the friend of civil society, but it is now being used against them on an unprecedented scale.’ India is among the highest risers this year, moving up 16 places in the Peoples Under Threat Index in 2018. Violence has been escalating in Kashmir since 2016 when a separatist commander with a major social media following among Kashmiris was killed. With increased militarisation by the government, 2018 saw the highest death toll in the region in a decade, along with greater coooperation between several Islamist separatist groups. Meanwhile, across India, it is important to note that social media has played a significant role in advancing Hindu nationalism and intolerance towards minorities and perceived outsiders in the lead-up to the 2019 general elections. Members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), supporters and ‘bots’ ratcheted up the production of inflammatory, anti-Muslim messaging. The BJP’s president Amit Shah called Bangladeshi migrants ‘termites’, and the party’s Twitter account echoed his words. The BJP won the election returning Prime Minister Narendra Modi to power with a renewed mandate. However, in the few days since the BJP’s victory, Muslims have already been targeted by numerous hate attacks. Cameroon has also leapt up the index amid escalating political violence. Peaceful demonstrations in 2016 against decades of political and economic marginalization of the country’s Anglophone regions by the largely French-speaking government led to a separatist movement for an independent state. Facing prolonged internet shutdowns and scant international attention, protestors, and later separatists, have relied heavily on Twitter hashtags to mobilize. President Paul Biya, in power since 1982, even labelled social media used by separatists ‘a new form of terrorism’. Meanwhile, Boko Haram attacks persist in the far north, adding to the growing numbers of internally displaced and deepening the humanitarian crisis. ‘Regulating hate and false news is an imperative, with collective responsibility: of technology companies, states and politicians, but also of a responsible civil society and general population’, says Castellino. ‘Failures, as this report demonstrates, increase the threats that vulnerable communities face, which becomes ever more acute in a context of heightened competition for limited resources.’ Social media promises to increasingly influence how violence is perceived or responded to. Upheaval and conflict can no longer be dislocated from the use of social media by an array of actors. It is also important, however, to consider how these expansive communication tools can be equally used to mitigate hate and combat the spread of misinformation. This is the 14th year that the Peoples under Threat index has been released by MRG, joined now by the Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights. It is based on indicators from authoritative sources and continues to provide early warnings of potential mass atrocities. Notes to editors Visit MRG’s online map which visualizes data from Peoples under Threat. View the map by year or by country, and find links to reports, press releases and further information on the communities under threat. Download the full Peoples under Threat 2019 briefing. Minority Rights Group International (MRG) is the leading international human rights organization working to secure the rights of ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities and indigenous peoples. We work with more than 150 partners in over 50 countries. The Ceasefire Centre for Civilian Rights is an international initiative to develop civilian-led monitoring of violations of international humanitarian law or human rights; to secure accountability and reparation for those violations; and to develop the practice of civilian rights. Please follow us on social media or visit our websites for more information: Twitter: @MinorityRights Facebook: www.facebook.com/minorityrights Website: www.minorityrights.org / www.stories.minorityrights.org © 2019, Minority Rights Group

Mohamed Hamdan "Hemeti" Dagolo is the vice-president of Sudan's ruling military junta and, at present, probably the most powerful man in Sudan. He has the potential to shape the future of a broken country, but as the commander of one of Sudan's most prominent paramilitary forces, he leaves a trail of human rights abuse allegations from Darfur in his wake and has recently been accused of allowing those same forces to kill demonstrators in Khartoum. Hemeti has said that the use of force was necessary in Darfur in order to protect its civilians and an "independent investigation" will be launched into the military's use of violence in Khartoum. Any person who had "crossed boundaries" would be punished, he said. But he also defended the violence suppressing the protesters, explaining they had been infiltrated by rogue elements and drug dealers, and firm action was warranted. "We will not allow chaos and we will not go back on our convictions," he said. "There is no way back. We must impose the respect of the country by law." Hemeti and the Sudan uprising Hemeti was a close political ally of Sudan's former President Omar al-Bashir, but as protests against the former leader escalated in December, his loyalty soon wavered. When demonstrations in Khartoum began, Hemeti was the first high-ranking official to express his support, telling the government to "provide services and decent living to the people". Sudan's violent political crisis explained He said "the corrupt, whoever they are, should be referred to justice," the state-owned Sudanese News Agency reported on 25 December. Hemeti switched sides to force the president out of power on 11 April and was named vice-president of Sudan's Transitional Military Council (TMC) two days later. Why is he so powerful? Although the TMC's president is Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Hemeti is the one at the forefront of negotiations with Western diplomats. He is reportedly supported by the politicians who created the Janjaweed, the militia comprising of Arab groups who sowed fear into residents of the Darfur region of western Sudan during the conflict there. BBC Africa editor Fergal Keane calls Hemeti "the most likely leader of a counter-revolution" and an "outsider" in the military elite. Another factor behind Hemeti's power is his support from regional allies: Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Stability in Sudan is in their interest and they are very unlikely to impose sanctions on the TMC. However, Saudi Arabia has said it is concerned with developments in the region and urged the two sides to engage in dialogue. Is Sudan a new regional battleground? According to Al Jazeera, Hemeti went to meet Saudi Arabia's crown prince Mohamed Bin Salman earlier in May, promising to support the country against "all threats and attacks from Iran and Houthi militias" and to continue sending Sudanese troops to help the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen. It would be in the Saudi prince's interest to return the favour and maintain a strong relationship with Hemeti. Camel trader to warlord Hemeti grew up in a Chadian Arab clan, fleeing war to live in Darfur in the 1980s. War in Darfur broke out in 2003, when marginalised black African clansmen in the region formed a rebel movement against the government. The army fought back, joined by paramilitary forces including the infamous Janjaweed, who were accused of riding their camels and horses into villages, killing the men, raping the women and stealing whatever they could find. Since 2005, the International Criminal Court (ICC) has been investigating allegations of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity in Darfur. The case involves a range of Sudanese government officials, and both Janjaweed and rebel leaders. Darfur conflict: A bloody stalemate Hemeti's uncle is Juma Dongolo, a chief of one of the Arab groups which span the Chad-Sudan border. Hemeti himself dropped out of primary school to trade camels and also offered security to commercial convoys in Darfur during the conflict. He was a savvy businessman and soon became rich, reports BBC Monitoring. In 2003, as the Darfur rebellion began to gather momentum, Hemeti helped mobilise clansmen to fight alongside government forces. This earned him the support of President Bashir. He became leader of the Border Guards, a group of Darfur militias supporting the government. In 2013, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) was formed to help regular forces fight rebels in Darfur. A year later, the group was recognised by the government as a "regular force", but critics say it is merely a reincarnation of the Janjaweed. Human rights abuses Former President Bashir is wanted by the ICC for the alleged war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity committed in Darfur. Although he has not been named by the ICC, Human Rights Watch accuses Hemeti of overseeing civilian abuses including "torture, extrajudicial killings and mass rapes" in Darfur as well as in separate conflicts in the southern Blue Nile and Southern Kordofan states. Human Rights Watch said that during two counterinsurgency campaigns in Darfur in 2014 and 2015, the RSF "burned and looted homes, beat, raped and executed villagers," supported by the Sudanese army and Janjaweed militia. On 19 May 2014, Hemeti said that the RSF was protecting the people of Darfur. He warned that the RSF would "take a firm stance against anyone who tried to undermine the security and stability of citizens". Chants about Darfur have played an active role in the latest protests in Khartoum, with demonstrators shouting: "We are all Darfur!" and "Darfur is our home! Revolution! Revolution!" Despite witnessing Hemeti's alleged brutality in both Darfur and Khartoum, the unarmed protesters say they will not give up their fight. © 2019, BBC News

For President Richard Nixon’s national security advisors, the genocidal slaughter of more than 100,000 ethnic Hutus by Burundi’s ethnic Tutsi government in the early 1970s was a matter of little strategic concern to the United States. There is no evidence, according to a September 1972 White House memo to Nixon, that either of America’s great-power rivals, China or the Soviet Union, had played any role in the violence or sought to profit politically from it. The Burundian government meanwhile promised to guarantee the safety of some 150 Americans, mostly missionaries, in the country. “Our own interests in Burundi are microscopic (we buy some coffee),” according to the memo, which was attributed to Nixon’s National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, but bore the signature of his deputy, Alexander Haig. The violence occurred more than 20 years before the 1994 Rwandan genocide, where extremists aligned with the Hutu-dominated army killed more than 800,000 ethnic Tutsis, Twas, and moderate Hutus. In Burundi, it was the majority Hutu who endured the greatest loss of life at the hands of the minority Tutsi-dominated government. The killing began on April 29, 1972, when Hutu insurgents staged a revolt against the government, attacking Tutsis and seeking to seize the military garrison on the outskirts of Burundi’s capital, Bujumbura. The revolt failed, precipitating the mass slaughter of Hutus. “The Hutu rebels killed every Tutsi that they ran across during their initial rampage which triggered the Tutsi decision to exterminate all Hutus with any semblance of leadership, i.e., those who could read or write, or those who wore shoes,” according to the Kissinger memo. The U.S. response, according to the memo, was limited to urging African states to take up the matter with the Organization of African Unity and pressing the United Nations to set up a humanitarian presence in Burundi. For its part, the U.S. policy consisted of offering humanitarian aid on the condition that it be distributed to Burundians on both sides of the ethnic divide and assisting refugees who had fled the country. Kissinger’s memo reflected the view of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, which argued that the U.S. response should be largely limited to humanitarian aid and diplomatic outreach to African states, which had little interest in intervening. Nixon reacted angrily to Kissinger’s memo, scrawling a response in its margins that denounced the U.S. bureaucracy’s tepid response while revealing some of his own obsession with the ability of Catholics, Jews, and progressives in the U.S. government to grab the public’s attention. See the document here © 2019, THE SLATE GROUP

Report/Data Introduction This brief monograph attempts to give as comprehensive an overview as possible of violence during a period in which the international community has largely abandoned efforts to protect civilians, specifically the non-Arab/African[1] populations of Darfur. Although Arab groups have suffered from significant violence at various points over the sixteen years of the Darfur conflict, particularly inter-tribal violence in East Darfur—and continue to suffer from violence in some areas—the genocidal ambitions of the Khartoum regime’s counter-insurgency campaign against Darfuri rebel groups has been directed overwhelmingly at non-Arab/African tribal groups. For this reason, human rights and Sudanese democracy groups have long warned about the ominous consequences of a premature removal of what is primarily a protection force for civilians and humanitarians. Although the period broadly surveyed here includes all years subsequent to my 2012 archival history of Darfur and greater Sudan, the focus is on the years 2017 to the present. During this time there has been no report on Darfur from a major human rights organization. My own two monographs on violence during the years 2014 – 2015 provide what I think is a representative account of the period 2012 – 2015; moreover, these two documents comport extremely well with the two important reports from Human Rights Watch in 2015 and a major report on the military campaign against Jebel Marra released by Amnesty International in 2016 (these reports, as well as my monographs, appear in the accompanying Bibliography). The period January 2017 to the present is significant not only because of the extent of continuing genocidal violence directed against non-Arab/African civilians, but because it is the period during which the peacekeeping operation of the UN and African Union began the process of withdrawal—a withdrawal based on serious misrepresentation of the levels of continuing violence and civilian insecurity in Darfur, and the corresponding need for effective protection. The grim truth, tragically, is that UNAMID (UN/African Union Mission in Darfur)—an unprecedented “hybrid” mission—has been a grotesque failure, perhaps the most serious in UN peacekeeping history (for recent assessments of UNAMID performance, see here). Since its official deployment in January 2008—over eleven years ago—it has allowed itself to be thoroughly compromised in all ways by the Khartoum regime. Indeed, Khartoum’s militia forces have repeatedly attacked UNAMID contingents, sometimes in deadly fashion. These attacks have sometimes been confirmed by UN officials, although without holding the al-Bashir regime accountable. The “Status of Forces Agreement” negotiated by UNAMID (January 2008), allowing timely and unfettered access throughout Darfur, was a supreme example of the al-Bashir’s regime’s bad faith. Such unfettered access was never the case, and indeed Khartoum has repeatedly, pointedly, and consequentially denied both protective and investigative missions by UNAMID for the entire term of its deployment. Even as it was in the midst of planning for withdrawing entirely from Darfur, UNAMID was impeded and restricted in its movement. One finds in the reporting record constant dispatches such as this: Sudan restricts UNAMID’s movement, says force commander | Sudan Tribune, May 9, 2018 (KHARTOUM) | UNAMID Force Commander, Leonard Muriuki Ngondi, Wednesday said the Sudanese government has often restricted the Mission’s freedom of movement… The force itself has become hopelessly demoralized, and is given a shabby “success” only in the form of egregious misrepresentations by UNAMID officials and the UN (particularly the Secretariat and Department of Peacekeeping Operations). [One reason that the reports of the UN Panel of Experts on Darfur figure so little in my assessment here is the failure of UNAMID to provide the access necessary for the Panel to do its reporting work. In the early years of the Panel—established by UN Security Council Resolution 1591 in March 2005—some very helpful reports emerged. But the Panel became increasingly politicized. With growing obstruction by the Khartoum regime and the Panel’s dependence on UNAMID for logistics and security clearances, its reports have devolved into largely meaningless accounts of the level and nature of violence in Darfur.] Moreover, as UNAMID has begun to withdraw from various bases in different areas of Darfur, these bases have been converted by the Khartoum regime for use by the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), in violation of commitments made by Khartoum (including the Status of Forces Agreement) and in violation as well of international law. Publicly UNAMID officials declare its bases are or have been converted to civilian uses, as stipulated in agreements with Khartoum. I have been informed, however—by a source with authoritative access to UNAMID officials and thinking—that UNAMID admits privately that all but one of the bases it has surrendered have been converted to use by the RSF. UNAMID itself has expressed concern about the transfers, but has not changed plans that result in augmentation of the RSF. There could be no grimmer conclusion to the work of UNAMID over the past eleven years.All this duplicity and acquiescence is of course well known to rebel groups on the ground and works in part to account for their suspicions of international mediation efforts. (Appendix A gives a timeline for UNAMID withdrawal by means of the consistently useful Sudan Tribune updates on decisions by the Mission leadership and the UN Security Council). REPRESENTING VIOLENCE IN DARFUR By “violence” in this monograph I mean not only actual physical assault, including rape, murder, and abduction, but actions by the various elements of the Sudan Armed Forces, militia forces (particularly the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF), and the various armed elements that have created an intolerable level of insecurity among a wide range of civilian populations, many of which have been either newly displaced, seen their lands violently expropriated, or experienced terrible agricultural losses, either by deliberate destruction (including cutting down or burning of mature fruit trees) or allowing livestock to graze on cultivated and fruitful lands. I should emphasize that a great deal has not been included, and this should be borne in mind when examining the final mapping of the data for violence on five separate maps: South Darfur, what is now “East Darfur,” West Darfur, what is now “Central Darfur,” and North Darfur. Important categories of reporting not represented in this mapping include: • Many reports of arrests—or of releases following arrests (arrests in which abuse or torture is a clear possibility have been included); • Executions, if “legally” carried out; • Civil society protests and strikes; • Self-serving “news” from UNAMID (which is typically disingenuous and/or incomplete); • Road accidents; • Fires—all too frequent in the camps—are not included unless there is some suggestion of arson (a notoriously difficult crime to prove, even with willing investigators). And it must be borne in mind that the very nature of IDP camps—with often flimsy shelters and dangerous cooking circumstances—makes them extremely vulnerable to fire, especially in the dry season; • Humanitarian issues, unless they are directly related to ongoing violence; • Non-violent criminal activity and law enforcement, including the ongoing campaign against cannabis trafficking and the many thefts reported in IDP camps, with the perpetrators from outside the camps; • Reports on the Khartoum regime’s “disarmament campaign,” unless these reports include violent consequences to confiscation of weapons. In general, it should be noted that the “disarmament campaign” disproportionately targeted non-Arab/African civilians, and has been an excuse for a great deal of the violence of the past two years and more. The use of the RSF for “disarmament” has ensured that this often undisciplined force has severely abused its powers; • Military developments outside Darfur, including violence in South Kordofan and Blue Nile, and military casualties in Yemen, most of them from Darfur (and a great many of them children): South Darfur receives bodies of 17 militiamen killed in Yemen | Sudan Tribune, November 11, 2018 (NYALA) | At least 20 fighters from the government militia Rapid Support Forces (RSF) have been killed and more than 100 wounded in the fierce fighting that has been going on for days in Yemen, a reliable source told (...) 21 Sudanese troops killed in Yemen: Military sources | Sudan Tribune, May 27, 2017 (KHARTOUM) | Sudanese military sources Saturday have dismissed media reports that 80 Sudanese troops have been killed in Yemen saying only 21 were killed, including 4 officers. Sudanese soldiers carry the coffin (…) Finally, it falls outside the scope of this report to chronicle in detail the brutal treatment of Darfuris seeking to escape the region via Libya. They have frequently been victims of terrible violence: kidnapped, tortured for ransom in torture centers, detained in no less violent official detention centers, and forced to work as slaves. They have also been forcibly recruited as fighters. In Niger many have been deported to Libya; many more have drowned in the Mediterranean. It is also the case that the Rapid Support Forces have been authoritatively shown to be trafficking in migrants, including Darfuris. Migrants smuggled by the RSF are often sold to Libyan traffickers. See on this topic: “Multilateral Damage: The Impact of EU Migration Policies on Central Saharan Routes,” Clingendael, September 2018 “Remote-Control Breakdown: Sudanese paramilitary forces and pro-government militias,” Small Arms Survey (Switzerland), April 2017 CONTEXT FOR THIS REPORT This monograph has been prepared with the extraordinary national uprising in Sudan as backdrop (beginning December 19, 2019). The ferociously determined and morally urgent demonstrations have focused on a single goal: removing the al-Bashir regime—and all vestiges of the “deep state” his regime created over thirty years—as a way of restoring peace, freedom, and justice, however imperfectly. The fate of Darfur is in many ways being determined even as I write these words; there is, nonetheless, much evidence that violence and insecurity remain at intolerable levels, despite the disingenuous, expedient, and often mendacious claims from the UN and African Union. I would again note in particular the continuing attacks of the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), essentially those under the command of Lt. General Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo, more commonly known as “Hemeti.” Hemeti, as I will refer to him, has assumed a position in the Transitional Military Council (TMC) now governing Sudan that makes him the equivalent of “Vice President”—second in command to his colleague in Darfur atrocities and the military activities of Sudan in Yemen, Abdel Fathah al-Burhan, head of the TMC. Attacks by the RSF on peaceful civilians continue in Darfur and South Kordofan, and there is no evidence that Hemeti is using his now immense (and growing) power to restrain these forces. Very recent reports (May 9, 2019) of violence against demonstrators have specifically pointed to the RSF as the responsible party. The Sudanese Doctors Central Committee estimates that at least 90 people have been killed violently by regime elements during the current uprising. Estimates of the number of RSF troops under Hemeti’s command in the greater Khartoum urban area reach to 15,000—an army unto itself (although formally incorporated into the Sudan Armed Forces, the commander of the RSF is not in the army’s regular chain of command). It is Hemeti’s RSF who have been responsible for most of the genocidal violence in Darfur since the Force was constituted in 2013. (See Jerome Tubiana, "The Man Who Terrorized Darfur Is Leading Sudan’s Supposed Transition," Foreign Policy, May 14, 2019.) European countries, the U.S., and many other important state actors in Africa, the Arab world, and Asia have allowed narrow national self-interest to define Sudan policies, policies that encouraged the al-Bashir regime to believe that even the most ruthless and brutal crackdown on demonstrators would not bring real, consequential international pressure. Some countries, especially Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Russia and China, have actively supported al-Bashir and now his successor regime, the Transitional Military Council. To my knowledge, not a single Arab or African country has uttered anything like a full condemnation of the savagery by the Khartoum junta’s security forces, savagery that rages across the country. Darfur has of course not been spared; but in addition to the violent repression of political protests, intolerable levels of violence and insecurity keep some 2.5 million Darfuri people trapped in camps for internally displaced persons and refugees in eastern Chad.[2] Despite their terrible conditions, the camps may soon suffer a grimmer fate: exactly a year ago, then-President al-Bashir promised that as a way of restoring Darfur, “the government would work to dismantle the IDPs camps.” This vast population—more than a third of Darfur’s pre-war population—has nowhere to go, despite grand promises by al-Bashir and other regime officials that “services” and “new villages” would be provided. The simply fact is that there are neither the economic means nor any meaningful commitments to address the massive needs of this vast population: in the main their villages and lands have been destroyed or seized by Arab forces or settlers. And yet still the determination to “dismantle” camps, especially those perceived as troublesomely “political,” is urged as regime policy: South Darfur governor reiterates threats to dismantle Kalma camp | Sudan Tribune, April 26, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The governor of South Darfur State Adam al-Faki Thursday repeated threats that his government is determined to dismantle Kalama camp for internally displaced persons (IDPs) and threatened to arrest the arrest the camp’s leaders who are accused of inciting the residents to reject returning to their areas of origin. Those who attempt to return to their homes are typically greeted with hostility and violence. They are celebrated by the UN and African Union for “returning,” but typically no mention is made of the countless failed attempts to return, resulting in people going back to the camps, or being killed. It is for these very reasons they stay in camps that are squalid, constantly at risk of violence, and desperately under-served; “dismantling” them—whatever “services” are promised—will create vast, deeply depressing slum suburbs of the major towns, although without employment opportunities, decent health care, or education. It is a shameful scandal that the world ignores this looming catastrophe in its efforts to negotiate “peace” in Darfur. In fact, the only peace that has come after sixteen years of war is the peace of the dead. The grimmest statistic for the Darfur genocide is the mortality total: by my calculations, some 600,000 people have died as a direct or indirect result of violence loosed by the al-Bashir regime, targeting non-Arab/African villages, populations, and camps. The last UN estimate of mortality occurred in April 2008, when the UN head of humanitarian operations at the time, John Holmes, offered a figure of 300,000—the figure still almost always cited by current news reports. Over eleven years, there has been no update from the UN, no promulgation of data bearing on mortality, and no inclination to undertake this terrible reckoning. (I have received no meaningful critique of the data or methodology or conclusions in my analysis of August 2010 (updated 2012)—from the UN or any other source.) Rape of girls and women also continues throughout all regions of Darfur, and my monograph of 2016 makes clear that while we can only estimate, based on all evidence I cannot believe that the total figure for sexual assaults on non-Arab/African girls and women is not in the many tens of thousands. Unexploded Ordnance (UXO): There are continuous reports of people—primarily children—killed or badly injured by explosions of UXO. UNAMID has again failed badly in clearing the various regions of Darfur of these deadly objects, typically belonging to or fired by the SAF or RSF; It should be noted—in ways the UN and UNAMID never do—that the overwhelming majority of displaced persons and victims of violence have been non-Arab/African. Given the continuing rates of ethnically-targeted human destruction and suffering—and what the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide specifies as “Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part”—it is important to underscore that genocide continues in Darfur, if with deaths directly resulting from violence significantly reduced from the most violent periods of the conflict (2003 – 2006, 2012 – 2016). UNDERSTANDING THE REPORT DATA The data in this report comes mainly from Radio Dabanga, which continues to rely on an extraordinarily wide range of contacts on the ground in Darfur. Most dispatches concerning violent incidents have, in addition to dates, the locations of specific events, often names of victims, and detailed context for the violence. It is safe to say that without Radio Dabanga—given the appallingly inadequate reporting record of UNAMID—the al-Bashir regime would have succeeded in turning Darfur into a “black box” from which no information emanates. In addition to the reports from Radio Dabanga—all represented in the data spreadsheet and data mapping—I have relied on numerous dispatches from Sudan Tribune and African Centre for Justice and Peace Studies (ACPJS), other open sources (especially human rights groups), as well as reports from confidential sources I know to be fully reliable. Reports that have as their source rebel groups in Darfur are always indicated as such, but cannot be ignored simply because of sourcing concerns. Some information comes from confidential sources, unwilling to identify themselves publicly for security reasons. The data generated from these dispatches can hardly be considered definitive; indeed, it is likely that many fewer than half the violent incidents have been reported by any source—perhaps as little as 20 – 30 percent. But they are so numerous that creation of data spreadsheets and subsequent data mappings is distinctly possible, and this gives us an approximate view of the scale and concentration of violence. The data comport fully with human rights reporting by Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Small Arms Survey (see bibliography below). And this is the context in which we must judge the decision, accepted by all international actors of consequence, to withdraw UNAMID. What becomes clear looking at the data collected in this report is that Darfur has been recently, and remains, a dangerous, violent, and highly insecure environment for non-Arab/African Darfuris (for an overview of a single month of violence from late 2018, see HERE. [A full explanation of the data is appears below.] DARFUR, GENOCIDE, AND THE INTERNATIONAL COMMUNITY The UN Security Council, UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, the UN Secretary Generals, and the African Union Peace and Security Council have all given their blessing to the withdrawal of UNAMID, which however great its failings—and they are massive—provides at least the cover of international protection, primarily in the form of deterring even more brazen and larger violent attacks on civilians, especially those in IDP camps. East Darfur, South Darfur, and West Darfur are to see the complete withdrawal of UNAMID by June 2019—one month from now. All UNAMID forces are to be withdrawn from Darfur—including the still extremely violent regions of Central Darfur and North Darfur—by June 2020. This will mark the ignominious end to UNAMID’s terrible and shamefully profligate history. (Again, my detailed overview assessments of UNAMID’s relatively recent performance [2017 – 2018] can be found HERE.) UNAMID’s withdrawal thus confers a terrible distinction upon Darfur: it is site of the longest and most successful genocide in over a century. Because the international community gives no sign of pushing for a new body to provide civilian protection in Darfur, it seems appropriate to survey the circumstances in which the victims of genocidal violence are being abandoned, as reflected in the most recent data concerning violence in the region. What we can see from the collated data is the scale and frequency of violence in the relatively recent past—this as a way of understanding what will confront the non-Arab/African populations of Darfur as the last remnant of protection is withdrawn; and absent success of the current popular uprising, provision of “security” will fall entirely to the new Transitional Military Council, and in particular its “new Janjaweed,” the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), involved in a tremendous number of attacks on civilians in camps and rural areas. Various Arab militia forces continue their predations as well, and all too often the local police—even if they are disposed to help—are overwhelmed by the sheer military force of the RSF. UNAMID has never dared to confront either the Sudan Armed Forces or the Rapid Support Forces—or even investigate atrocity crimes without Khartoum’s explicit permission, which is typically denied. In this sense, withdrawal will not be as significant as it might have been had the Mission taken on its mandate. Withdrawal is most significant because it sends an incomprehensibly scandalous message to would-be génocidaires: “Genocide as a tool of domestic policy, including counter-insurgency efforts, can be successful.” There can be little else to say about the failure of UNAMID—and the international community’s failure to make of UNAMID an effective force for halting genocide. ______________ Footnotes: [1] I will use this combinatory phrase throughout as a means of skirting the controversy over nomenclature: while ethnicity is an enormously complex issue in Darfur, the fact remains that ethnic identity is highly significant and has become even more salient over the past fifteen years, particularly in ethnic self-identification. It is not accidental that the victims of militia and regular force attacks are overwhelmingly from the Fur, Massalit, Zaghawa, Berti, Bergid, Tama tribes. This is true whether we look at the vast population of internally displaced persons and refugees in eastern Chad, or those who have died directly or indirectly from Khartoum-sanctioned violence. [2] In 2017 the UN OCHA figure for Internally Displaced Persons was 2.7 million/; the UNHCR figure for Darfuri refugees in eastern Chad in October 2018 was 337,000. It is important to remember that the overwhelming majority of these people—displaced by violence and insecurity from their homes and lands—wish to return, but cannot because violence and insecurity remain at intolerable levels. UNDERSTANDING THE DATA The data underlying this report take three forms (all with separate links on my website): compilations of reports of violence from Darfur, the vast majority, as I have indicated, from the dispatches of Radio Dabanga, an extraordinary news organization in exile that has drawn from an extremely wide range of sources—in Darfur particularly, but Sudan generally as well. Having recently visited Radio Dabanga headquarters in Amsterdam, and followed the development of the news organization for more than a decade, I have complete confidence in its integrity. Dutch journalistic society has ensured that the same standards of integrity that obtain in other Western news organizations define Radio Dabanga. I should note that as a matter of journalistic practice, Radio Dabanga does not identify the ethnicity of victims of violence, as Arab or non-Arab, even when specifically, nominally referring to what are Arab or non-Arab-tribes (e.g., Rizeigat, Fur, Massalit). Nonetheless the likely ethnicity of victims is often readily identifiable with a high degree of certainty, especially in rural areas. Various words have clear implications in these dispatches, e.g., “farm,” “farmers,” “crops,” “herders,” “riding on camels,” “militiamen,” “men in uniform,” “displaced person(s),” “camps,” and many others. We may be almost certain that the ethnicity of a 13-year-old girl raped by armed herders riding on camels as she collects firewood is non-Arab—and depending on the location (e.g., Jebel Marra), certainty only grows. In the data spreadsheets that grow out of the vast assemblage of news dispatches going back to January 1, 2017, the column identifying “ethnicity of victim(s)” should be understood as representing inferences of the sort I suggest above. Frequently the ethnicity is unknown; less frequently the ethnicity is clearly Arab. Again, ethnicity in Darfur is a matter of great complexity; nomenclature is a matter of controversy. Moreover, “genocide” has become a term of debate with respect to Darfur, even as there can be no real doubt about the ethnically-targeted nature of destruction from the beginning of conflict in 2003. This targeting takes forms specifically identified in the 1948 UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crimes of Genocide: (a) Killing members of the group; (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. All of these, to a greater of lesser extent, have defined the acts committed by the regular forces of the Khartoum regime or its militia proxies, increasingly the Rapid Support Forces of Lt. General Hemeti, Vice Chair of the Military Council that now exercises executive power in Sudan. My other major source of current news in Darfur is Sudan Tribune, with a long history of reliable sources and a commitment to present conflict and violence in Darfur as accurately possible. The Tribune often offers longer, more comprehensive dispatches on military movements and developments. The broadest and in many ways most important perspective on violence in Darfur comes from the studies of Small Arms Survey (Geneva)—most notably: “Remote-Control Breakdown: Sudanese paramilitary forces and pro-government militias,” Small Arms Survey (Switzerland), April 2017 | http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/issue-briefs/HSBA-IB-27-Sudanese-paramilitary-forces.pdf BIBLIOGRAPHY • HUMAN RIGHTS PUBLICATIONS INFORMING THIS STUDY “Scorched Earth, Poisoned Air: Sudanese Government Forces Ravage Jebel Marra, Darfur,” Amnesty International, September 26, 2016 | https://www.amnestyusa.org/reports/scorched-earth-poisoned-air-sudanese-government-forces-ravage-jebel-marra-darfur “‘Men With No Mercy”: Rapid Support Forces Attacks Against Civilians in Darfur, Sudan,’ Human Rights Watch, September 9, 2015 | https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/09/09/men-no-mercy/rapid-support-forces-attacks-against-civilians-darfur-sudan “Mass Rape in North Darfur: Sudanese Army Attacks against Civilians in Tabit,” Human Rights Watch, February 11, 2015 | https://www.hrw.org/report/2015/02/11/mass-rape-north-darfur/sudanese-army-attacks-against-civilians-tabit “Remote-Control Breakdown: Sudanese paramilitary forces and pro-government militias,” Small Arms Survey (Switzerland), April 2017 | http://www.smallarmssurveysudan.org/fileadmin/docs/issue-briefs/HSBA-IB-27-Sudanese-paramilitary-forces.pdf “Multilateral Damage: The Impact of EU Migration Policies on Central Saharan Routes,” Clingendael, September 2018 | https://www.clingendael.org/pub/2018/multilateral-damage/ PRIMARY PUBLICATIONS BY ERIC REEVES, 2015 – 2019 Books: A Long Day’s Dying: Critical Moments in the Darfur Genocide (Key Publishing, 2007) (review commentary at http://www.sudanreeves.org/Article285.html) Compromising with Evil: An archival history of greater Sudan, 2007 – 2012 (October 2012 in eBook format, www.CompromisingWithEvil.org) (review commentary at http://sudanreeves.org/2013/08/30/compromising-with-evil-an-archival-history-of-sudan-2007-2012-commentary/) Monographs: “‘They Bombed Everything that Moved”: Aerial Military Attacks on Civilians and Humanitarians in Sudan, 1999 – 2011,” May 9, 2011 (last updated 2015) | (analysis and bibliography of sources, 80+ pages with accompanying Excel spreadsheet, at | https://wp.me/s45rOG-7566 “‘Changing the Demography”: Violent Expropriation and Destruction of Farmlands in Darfur, November 2014 – November 2015” | December 2015—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet covering all reported incidents of violence against farmers and farmland in Darfur, as well as a detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1P4 “Continuing Mass Rape of Girls in Darfur: The most heinous crime generates no international outrage” | January 2016 | Eric Reeves, author| Maya Baca, research and editing—includes framing analysis, extensive data spreadsheet for 2014 and 2015, as well as detailed mapping of these data onto three maps encompassing all of Darfur (monograph translated into Arabic) | http://wp.me/p45rOG-1QG Op/Ed publications: “Sudan could explode: Now is not the time for the U.S. to play nice with Khartoum," The Washington Post (“Global Opinions”), December 16, 2016 “The World’s Abandonment of Darfur,” The Washington Post, May 16, 2015 “Don’t Forget Darfur,” The New York Times, February 16, 2016 “A Better Restitution for Darfur,” The New York Times, July 15, 2015 Academic publications: “In the Absence of Will: Could genocide in Darfur have been halted or mitigated?” (chapter in Preventing Mass Atrocities: Policies and Practices, ed. Barbara Harff and Ted Robert Gurr | Routledge Studies in Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity, 2018 “Armed Conflict in Sudan (Blue Nile, Darfur and South Kordofan),” Armed Conflict Survey 2018 (Routledge, 2018); edited by The International Institute for Strategic Studies “Darfur: International Indifference has Created the Longest, Most Successful Genocide in Modern History,” (peer-reviewed) journal article for ABC-CLIO/Modern Genocide database (2018) On-Line publications: See | https://wp.me/p45rOG-2oA Individual web-posted analyses have been organized by year and chronological order at | http://sudanreeves.org/archive/ OTHER PUBLICATIONS Jonathan Loeb, “Time to Get Serious about Civilian Protection for Darfur,” Inter Press Service News Agency, December 20, 2016 | http://www.ipsnews.net/2016/12/time-to-get-serious-about-civilian-protection-for-darfur/ APPENDIX A – UNAMID deployment out of Darfur (dispatches in reverse chronological order: UNAMID completes closure of 11 sites in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, October 22, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has handed over the Sudanese government 11 team sites as part of phase 1 of the reconfiguration process. “We have closed 11 team sites across Darfur (...) UNAMID hands over three more team sites in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, October 17, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has handed over three team sites in South and West Darfur states to the Sudanese government. In a brief statement seen by Sudan Tribune on Tuesday, the (...) Sudan, UN, AU approve establishment of UNAMID base in Jebel Marra | Sudan Tribune, September 24, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Sunday said the tripartite coordination mechanism on the Mission has approved the establishment of a temporary operating base in Golo, Jebel Mara. The (...) UN official urges to authorise new UNAMID base in Darfur’s Jebel Marra | Sudan Tribune, July 22, 2017 (ZALINGEI) - The head of U.N. peacekeeping operations John Pierre Lacroix on Saturday paid a visit to Central Darfur State where he inspected the security situation and called to authorise the opening of a UNAMID base in (...) UNAMID renews commitment to help bring lasting peace in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, May 24, 2017 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has renewed commitment to exert every possible effort within its capabilities and mandate to assist the parties to the conflict to reach a lasting peace in (...) UNAMID is still waiting land for Jebel Marra base: UN chief | Sudan Tribune, January 6, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - In a recent report to the Security Council issued by the end of 2017, the UN chief said that Darfur hybrid peacekeeping mission has achieved progress in the implementation of phase one of the UNAMID (...) UN, AU propose closure of UNAMID sites in Darfur except for Jebel Marra | Sudan Tribune June 11, 2018 (WASHINGTON) - UN Peacekeeping Chief, Jean-Pierre Lacroix, Monday proposed to close all the UNMAID sites in Darfur region expect the greater Jebel Marra area and to increase peacebuilding and development. Security Council drastically cuts Darfur UNAMID ahead of full withdrawal | Sudan Tribune July 14, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The United Nations Security Council unanimously decided to extend for one year the mandate the African Union-United Nations Mission in Darfur (UNAMID) and also to reduce the number of its troops in line with (...) UNAMID to cut presence in Central Darfur in October: governor | Sudan Tribune, September 2, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - Governor of Central Darfur State Mohamed Ahmed Jad al-Sid said the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) would cut its presence in the state in October. The semi-official Sudan Media Center (...) UNAMID completes construction of new base in Jebel Marra | Sudan Tribune, September 12, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - An aerial photo published by the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Wednesday has shown completion of the Mission’s base in Golo, Jebel Marra area, Central Darfur State. Last year, the UN (...) UNAMID to withdraw from 4 sites in North Darfur | Sudan Tribune, September 15, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The government of North Darfur State said the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) would withdraw from a number of sites in the state according to the exit strategy agreed among the Sudanese (...) UNAMID to withdraw from two sites in West Darfur in November | Sudan Tribune, September 22, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) would hand over Morny and Mistry sites to West Darfur government next November, said West Darfur minister of urban planning Faisal Hassan Haroun The (...) UNAMID sites in South Darfur to be turned into university colleges: governor | Sudan Tribune, October 3, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - Governor of South Darfur State Adam al-Faki on Wednesday visited premises of the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) that would be handed over to his government at the end of the year as part of (...) UNAMID hands over two additional sites in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, October 11, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping operation known as UNAMID this week handed over two sites in North and South Darfur to the Sudanese authorities as part of its plan to finalize Mission’s reconfiguration process by (...) UNAMID hands over two policing centres in South Darfur | Sudan Tribune, October 16, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) on Tuesday said it handed over two policing centres at IDPs camps to the Sudanese government as part of the exit strategy. “On 14 October 2018 UNAMID (…) UNAMID hands over team site in East Darfur | Sudan Tribune, October 31, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) said it has withdrawn from a team site in East Darfur State. “On 30 October 2018, UNAMID officially handed over the Mission’s team site in Shaeria, East (…) UNAMID to fully withdraw from South Darfur in January: official | Sudan Tribune, November 5, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The Government of South Darfur said arrangements are underway to receive two sites from the hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) (…) UNAMID hands over 4 team sites in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, November 11, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) has handed over four sites to the Sudanese government as part of the Mission’s exit strategy from the region. The Mission on November 1st has withdrawn (...) UNAMID completes withdrawal from 10 sites in Darfur | Sudan Tribune, December 21, 2018 (KHARTOUM) - The hybrid peacekeeping mission in Darfur (UNAMID) Thursday said it has concluded the closure and handover of 10 team sites to the Sudanese government. In a press release on Thursday, the Mission (...) A DETAILED ACCOUNT OF THE DATA UNDERLYING THIS REPORT The data collected for the period January 2017 to April 2019 exists in three forms in the archive for this report: [1] compilations of dispatches and reports from this period for all five Darfur states; [2] data spreadsheets in which each violent event(s) is distilled into the tersest form: date of dispatch; date of event; location of event; nature of event; consequences of the violent event(s); perpetrators of violent event(s); ethnicity of victims of violence (if there is enough in a given dispatch to allow for an inference in this regard); the source, most often Radio Dabanga by virtue of its legion of reporting sources on the ground in Darfur; and finally [3] all data has been mapped quantitatively onto five maps of Darfur, one for each state. The events represented in the five data spreadsheets have grouped in units and then been “scaled” to a number from 1 – 25. In addition to simply tabulating the number of murders, rapes, and beatings, the scaling also reflects the amount of property damage (particularly to farms and crops), the threat to greater populations (e.g., denial of access to water), and other defining features of the violence. In short, every event is rendered quantitatively, if sometimes amalgamated with other events in the same area when there are an especially large number of events (e.g., Tawila locality, North Darfur, Gireida and Nyala, South Darfur, and particularly the extremely violent Nierteti area of Central Darur). Some events require even larger numbers (50+): these tend to be large violent displacements of non-Arab/African populations and inter-Arab fighting in East Darfur. However imperfect the method of quantification may be, it has been deployed consistently. This consistency is important when representing a total tabulation of violent events for various areas on the five discrete maps for the five Darfur states. On each map, overall violence is represented by circles of different sizes and colors; a key for understanding these circles is provided with each map. Because of visual constraints, even some cartographic uncertainty in the underlying dispatches, there is inevitably some approximation in the placement of the circles. Moreover, they are, as I’ve already noted, sometimes aggregations of data about violence in specific areas. But there can be little doubt about where violence has been concentrated for the past two years and more. Because the statistical record is only very partial, the “scaling” technique employed should be understood as giving only a geographically relative indication of where violence has been concentrated and to what extent. It does not and cannot comprehensively represent violence in Darfur; we simply do not have the data. Moreover, geographic representation cannot do full justice to the voluminous data of these five compendious spreadsheets. The most revealing way of assessing violence in Darfur, as represented in this report, would be to look at the spreadsheets with continual reference to detailed maps of Darfur (I have used a number of maps, but my primary source is the highly detailed five-part UN reference map collection of 2012 – 2013). There are more than 800 data entry points in the five spreadsheets altogether. Moreover, a great deal of the data in the spreadsheets (particularly fires in displaced persons camps) cannot be easily rendered visually as “violence”; but levels of destructiveness have been indicated in the spreadsheets. These concentrations of violence should be compared with the sequence of UNAMID withdrawals, past and future, indicated chronologically in Appendix A above. THE DATA West Darfur: Compilation of dispatches, reports: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qw Data spreadsheet: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2q7 Mapping of data: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2pZ Central Darfur: Compilation of dispatches, reports: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qx Data spreadsheet: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qp Mapping of data: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qr North Darfur: Compilation of dispatches, reports: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qJ Data spreadsheet: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qF Mapping of data: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qA South Darfur: Compilation of dispatches. reports: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qI Data spreadsheet: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qh Mapping of data: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qc East Darfur: Compilation of dispatches, reports: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2qu Data spreadsheet: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2pS Mapping of data: https://wp.me/p45rOG-2pW -- Eric Reeves, Sudan research, analysis, advocacy, asylum representation www.SudanReeves.org Twitter: @SudanReeves Philanthropy: https://wp.me/p45rOG-1Ze