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

To Permanent Representatives of Member and Observer States of the United Nations Human Rights Council Excellencies, Ahead of the 41st regular session of the UN Human Rights Council (“the Council”), which will take place from 24 June-12 July 2019, we write to call on your delegation to deliver statements, both jointly and individually, and to engage in bilateral démarches to address the ongoing deterioration of the human rights situation in the United Republic of Tanzania. Since a group of 30 civil society organizations (CSOs) first addressed a letter on Tanzania to Council Members and Observers, in August 2018, the space for human rights defenders (HRDs), civil society, journalists, bloggers, the media, LGBTI persons, and opposition and dissenting voices has continued to shrink. While we do not believe that at this point, the situation calls for a resolution, warning signs of a mounting human rights crisis exist. In recent months, draconian legislation enacted since 2015 and legal and extra-judicial methods used to harass HRDs, threaten independent journalism, and restrict freedoms of opinion and expression, peaceful assembly and association have been supplemented with measures that result in further closing the civic and democratic space in the country. Recent legislative, policy and practical developments have led to increased international and regional attention on Tanzania. The surge in the number, and strengthening of the wording, of statements delivered by the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights indicate that global concern is growing over the situation in the country, which for decades demonstrated a commitment to improving the human rights of all people, both nationally and within East Africa. On 2 November 2018, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet raised the alarm on the fact that “lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people [have] been subjected to growing violence, harassment and discrimination over the past two years.” She expressed concern over these steps, warning that they “could turn into a witch-hunt and could be interpreted as a license to carry out violence, intimidation, bullying, harassment and discrimination against those perceived to be LGBT.” On 4 February 2019, during an informal conversation Ms. Bachelet held with the Council President and Members, Ms. Bachelet raised concern about amendments to the Political Parties Act, stating: “Legislation passed by Tanzania’s Parliament last month sets up significant obstacles to the registration of political parties, and restricts them from carrying out basic activities like holding rallies and taking public stands on issues. This will clearly hamper prospects for free and fair elections in 2020.” Ms. Bachelet asked Council Members to “engage Tanzania bilaterally on its rights situation” and urged the country to “accept visits of the Special Rapporteurs to advise on measures to protect public freedoms and other human rights concerns,” citing legislative curbs on freedom of opinion and expression, attacks on several prominent civil society members and opposition figures, restrictions on women’s access to health, and an overall “climate [that] denies Tanzanians their rights.” Since then, despite assurances provided by then Tanzanian Minister for Constitutional and Legal Affairs (now Foreign Minister), H.E. Mr. Palamagamba Kabudi, during the Council’s High-Level Segment, the situation has continued to deteriorate. Further signs of serious backsliding include the NGOs Coordination Board’s decision, on 17 April 2019, to de-register six CSOs. As reported by Watetezi TV, the revocation is based on the claims that the organizations had purportedly violated national values, principles and regulations of NGOs and operated against their own constitutions. They include the Community Health Education Services and Advocacy (CHESA), Kazi Busara na Hekima (KBH Sisters), AHA Development Organization Tanzania, Pathfinder Green City, Hope and Others, and HAMASA Poverty Reduction (HAPORE). On 25 April 2019, Dr. Wairagala Wakabi, the Executive Director of the Uganda-based Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA), was detained, upon arrival, at Dar es Salaam Julius Nyerere International Airport. After hours of interrogation, Dr. Wakabi was deported back to Uganda as a “prohibited immigrant.” Lawyers reported that the authorities denied him entry into Tanzania on vague grounds of “national interest.” CIPESA’s work in Tanzania and across Africa, advocates for human rights online. Earlier, on 27 February 2019, the Information Services Department, which oversees newspaper licenses, temporarily suspended the publication license of The Citizen newspaper, on accusations that it had published reports that were “false,” “misleading,” and “seditious.” The suspension order cited, inter alia, a 22 July 2018 article on a statement by US Senator Bob Menendez, which pointed to the erosion of democracy in Tanzania. Tanzanian authorities alleged the article contained “falsehoods” and had “seditious intent” as defined in Article 52 of Tanzania's Media Services Act. Meanwhile, the fate or whereabouts of journalist Azory Gwanda, who disappeared in November 2017, remain unknown, which highlights the Government's failure to launch effective and credible investigations into his disappearance, as well as the need for the establishment of protection mechanisms for journalists and HRDs in Tanzania. The only recent, noticeable positive development is the 28 March 2019 judgment by the East African Court, which ruled that Sections 7(3)(a), (b), (f), (g), (h), (i) and (j); 19, 20 and 21; 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 and 40; and 58 and 59 of the abovementioned Media Services Act violate the Treaty for the Establishment of the East African Community. The Court directed the Tanzanian Government to take such measures as necessary to bring the Media Services Act into compliance with the Treaty. This judgment offers a ray of hope in regional and international mechanisms as avenues for ensuring respect for human rights in Tanzania. Building on these steps, we call on your delegation to make use, at the Council’s 41st session, of the following agenda items to raise concern over Tanzania, both jointly and in your national capacity: General debate (GD) under item 2, following the High Commissioner’s update; GD under item 3, in relation to the report of the High Commissioner on the work of OHCHR in the implementation and enhancement of international cooperation in the field of human rights and in relation to cooperation with special procedures; GD under item 4; GD under item 10; and Interactive dialogues (IDs) with: The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of the right to freedom of opinion and expression, The Special Rapporteur on the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, and The Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. Specifically, your delegation could encourage the Tanzanian Government to set a date for special procedure visits, starting with the visit of the Special Rapporteur on peaceful assembly and association, whose visit request has been agreed in principle in 2018 and in line with the statements delivered by the Tanzanian delegation at the Council’s 39th session. Additionally, bilateral engagement in multilateral fora such as the Council and at the embassy level, in Tanzania, should be used to raise relevant issues with the Government. The options outlined in the present letter fit in a form of preventative engagement the Council has been seeking to promote as it works towards operationalizing its “prevention mandate.” The 41st session should be leveraged to help prevent a further deterioration of the human rights situation in Tanzania. We thank you for your attention to these pressing issues and stand ready to provide your delegation with further information. Sincerely, 1. AfricanDefenders (the Pan-African Human Rights Defenders Network) 2. African Freedom of Expression Exchange (AFEX) 3. Amnesty International 4. ARTICLE 19 5. Asian Forum for Human Rights and Development (FORUM-ASIA) 6. Association for Human Rights in Ethiopia (AHRE) – Ethiopia 7. Association for Progressive Communications (APC) 8. Center for Civil Liberties – Ukraine 9. Central Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (Réseau des Défenseurs des Droits Humains en Afrique Centrale – REDHAC) 10. The Centre for Peace and Advocacy (CPA) – South Sudan 11. CIVICUS 12. Civil Rights Defenders 13. Collaboration on International ICT Policy for East and Southern Africa (CIPESA) 14. Committee to Protect Journalists 15. Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative 16. DefendDefenders (the East and Horn of Africa Human Rights Defenders Project) 17. Geneva for Human Rights / Genève pour les Droits de l’Homme 18. Human Rights Defenders Network – Sierra Leone 19. Human Rights Watch 20. International Commission of Jurists 21. International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH) 22. International Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Trans and Intersex Association (ILGA) 23. International Service for Human Rights 24. The International Youth for Africa (IYA) – South Sudan 25. JASS (Just Associates) 26. Legal and Human Rights Centre (LHRC) 27. Ligue burundaise des droits de l’homme ITEKA – Burundi 28. MARUAH – Singapore 29. The Network of South Sudan Civil Society Organizations in Uganda (NoSSCOU) 30. The Nile Centre for Human Rights (NCHR – South Sudan) 31. Odhikar – Bangladesh 32. The ONE Campaign 33. Southern Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (SAHRDN) 34. Reporters Without Borders 35. Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights 36. Tanzania Human Rights Defenders Coalition (THRDC) 37. West Africa Human Rights Defenders Network (ROADDH/WAHRDN) 38. World Organisation Against Torture (OMCT) © 2019 Human Rights Watch

GAZIANTEP, Turkey — Syrian security officers hung Muhannad Ghabbash from his wrists for hours, beat him bloody, shocked him with electricity and stuck a gun in his mouth. Mr. Ghabbash, a law student from Aleppo, repeatedly confessed his actual offense: organizing peaceful antigovernment protests. But the torture continued for 12 days, until he wrote a fictional confession to planning a bombing. That, he said, was just the beginning. He was flown to a crammed prison at Mezze air base in Damascus, the Syrian capital, where he said guards hung him and other detainees from a fence naked, spraying them with water on cold nights. To entertain colleagues over dinner, he and other survivors said, an officer calling himself Hitler forced prisoners to act the roles of dogs, donkeys and cats, beating those who failed to bark or bray correctly. In a military hospital, he said, he watched a nurse bash the face of an amputee who begged for painkillers. In yet another prison, he counted 19 cellmates who died from disease, torture and neglect in a single month. “I was among the lucky,” said Mr. Ghabbash, 31, who survived 19 months in detention until a judge was bribed to free him. Muhannad Ghabbash, left, with his colleagues at an organization for refugees in Turkey, survived 19 months in Syrian detention. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times As Syria’s president, Bashar al-Assad, closes in on victory over an eight-year revolt, a secret, industrial-scale system of arbitrary arrests and torture prisons has been pivotal to his success. While the Syrian military, backed by Russia and Iran, fought armed rebels for territory, the government waged a ruthless war on civilians, throwing hundreds of thousands into filthy dungeons where thousands were tortured and killed. Nearly 128,000 have never emerged, and are presumed to be either dead or still in custody, according to the Syrian Network for Human Rights, an independent monitoring group that keeps the most rigorous tally. Nearly 14,000 were “killed under torture.” Many prisoners die from conditions so dire that a United Nations investigation labeled the process “extermination.” Now, even as the war winds down, the world’s attention fades and countries start to normalize relations with Syria, the pace of new arrests, torture and execution is increasing. The numbers peaked in the conflict’s bloodiest early years, but last year the Syrian Network recorded 5,607 new arrests that it classifies as arbitrary— more than 100 per week and nearly 25 percent more than the year before. Detainees have recently smuggled out warnings that hundreds are being sent to an execution site, Saydnaya Prison, and newly released prisoners report that killings there are accelerating. A satellite image of the military-run Saydnaya Prison, where the Syrian government has executed thousands of prisoners. Credit Amnesty International, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images Kidnappings and killings by the Islamic State captured more attention in the West, but the Syrian prison system has vacuumed up many more times the number of people detained by ISIS in Syria. Government detention accounts for around 90 percent of the disappearances tallied by the Syrian Network. The Syrian government has denied the existence of systematic abuse. However, newly discovered government memos show that Syrian officials who report directly to Mr. al-Assad ordered mass detentions and knew of atrocities. War crimes investigators with the nonprofit Commission for International Justice and Accountability have found government memos ordering crackdowns and discussing deaths in detention. The memos were signed by top security officials, including members of the Central Crisis Management Committee, which reports directly to Mr. al-Assad. A military intelligence memo acknowledges deaths from torture and filthy conditions. Other memos report deaths of detainees, some later identified among photos of thousands of prisoner corpses smuggled out by a military police defector. Two memos authorize “harsh” treatment of specific detainees. A memo from the head of military intelligence, Rafiq Shehadeh, suggests that officials feared future prosecution: It orders officers to report all deaths to him and take steps to ensure “judicial immunity” for security officials. In an interview in his office in an Ottoman palace in Damascus in 2016, Mr. al-Assad cast doubt on the truthfulness of survivors and the families of the missing. Asked about specific cases, he said, “Are you talking allegations or concrete?” and suggested that relatives had lied when they said they saw security officers haul away loved ones. Any abuses, he said, were isolated mistakes unavoidable in a war. “It happened here, all over the world, anywhere,” he has said. “But it’s not a policy.” Over seven years, The New York Times has interviewed dozens of survivors and relatives of dead and missing detainees, reviewed government documents detailing prison deaths and crackdowns on dissent, and examined hundreds of pages of witness testimony in human rights reports and court filings. The survivors’ accounts reported here align with accounts from other prisoners held in the same jails, and are supported by the government memos and by photos smuggled out of Syrian prisons. The prison system was integral to Mr. al-Assad’s war effort, crushing the civil protest movement and driving the opposition into an armed conflict it could not win. In recent months, Syria’s government has tacitly acknowledged that hundreds of people have died in detention. Under pressure from Moscow, Damascus has confirmed the deaths of at least several hundred people in custody by issuing death certificates or listing them as dead in family registration files. The Syrian Network’s founder, Fadel Abdul Ghany, said the move sent citizens a clear message: “We won, we did this, and no one will punish us.” There is little hope for holding top officials accountable anytime soon. But there is a growing movement to seek justice through European courts. French and German prosecutors have arrested three former security officials and issued international arrest warrants for Syria’s national security chief, Ali Mamlouk; its Air Force Intelligence director, Jamil Hassan; and others for torture and deaths in prison of citizens or residents of those countries. Yet Mr. al-Assad and his lieutenants remain in power, safe from arrest, protected by Russia with its military might and its veto in the United Nations Security Council. At the same time, Arab states are restoring relations with Damascus and European countries are considering following suit. President Trump’s planned pullout of most of the 2,000 American troops in eastern Syria reduces already-minimal American leverage in the conflict, now in its ninth year. That impunity is not just a domestic Syrian problem. Without security reforms, the five million Syrian refugees in the Middle East and Europe are unlikely to return home to risk arbitrary arrest. And in an age of emboldened authoritarianism from the European far right to Saudi Arabia, Mr. al-Assad has demonstrated that maximum violence against civilian dissent can be a winning strategy. “This will not stay in Syria,” Mazen Darwish, a Syrian human rights lawyer, said in Berlin, where he has assisted prosecutors. “People forget what is dictatorship, because we have 70 years of peace after World War II. But human rights is not in the DNA of states or politicians.” “Justice is not a Syrian luxury,” he said. “It’s the world’s problem.” Mazen Darwish, a Syrian human rights lawyer, with his wife, Yara Bader, in Berlin. Both were imprisoned in Syria. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times An expanding gulag The Syrian detention system is a supersized version of the one built by Mr. al-Assad’s father, President Hafez al-Assad. In 1982, he crushed an armed Muslim Brotherhood uprising in Hama, leveling much of the city and arresting tens of thousands of people: Islamists, leftist dissidents and random Syrians. Over two decades, around 17,000 detainees disappeared into a system with a torture repertoire that borrowed from French colonialists, regional dictators and even Nazis: Its security advisers included Adolf Eichmann’s fugitive aide Alois Brunner. When Bashar al-Assad succeeded his father in 2000, he kept the detention system in place. The Syrian detention system under President Bashar al-Assad, right, is a supersized version of the one built by his father, President Hafez al-Assad, left. Credit Marko Djurica/Reuters Each of Syria’s four intelligence agencies — military, political, air force and state security — has local branches across Syria. Most have their own jails. CIJA has documented hundreds of them. It was the detention and torture of several teenagers in March 2011, for scrawling graffiti critical of Mr. al-Assad, that pushed Syrians to join the uprisings then sweeping Arab countries. Demonstrations protesting their treatment spread from their hometown, Dara’a, leading to more arrests, which galvanized more protests. A flood of detainees from all over Syria joined the existing dissidents at Saydnaya Prison. The new detainees ranged “from the garbageman to the peasant to the engineer to the doctor, all classes of Syrians,” said Riyad Avlar, a Turkish citizen who was held for 20 years after being arrested in 1996, as a 19-year-old student, for interviewing Syrians about a prison massacre. Riyad Avlar, a Turkish citizen, was imprisoned in Syria for 20 years after being arrested as a 19-year-old student for interviewing Syrians about a prison massacre. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times A photo of Mr. Avlar, saved on his phone, showing him at age 18. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times Torture increased, he said; the newcomers were sexually assaulted, beaten on the genitals, and forced to beat or even kill one another. No one knows exactly how many Syrians have passed through the system since; rights groups estimate hundreds of thousands to a million. Damascus does not release prison data. By all accounts, the system overflowed. Some political detainees landed in regular prisons. Security forces and pro-government militias created uncounted makeshift dungeons at schools, stadiums, offices, military bases and checkpoints. The Syrian Network’s tally of 127,916 people currently caught in the system is probably an undercount. The number, a count of arrests reported by detainees’ families and other witnesses, does not include people later released or confirmed dead. Because of government secrecy, no one knows how many have died in custody, but thousands of deaths were recorded in memos and photographs. A former Syrian military police officer, known as Caesar, in blue hooded jacket, at a 2014 congressional briefing in Washington.CreditAlex Wong/Getty Images A former military police officer, known only as Caesar to protect his safety, had the job of photographing corpses. He fled Syria with pictures of at least 6,700 corpses, bone-thin and battered, which shocked the world when they emerged in 2014. But he also photographed memos on his boss’s desk reporting deaths to superiors. Like the death certificates issued recently, the memos list the cause of death as “cardiac arrest.” One memo identifies a detainee who also appears in one of Caesar’s photos; his eye is gouged out. The prisons seem to have been hit with an uncanny epidemic of heart disease, said Mr. Darwish, the human rights lawyer. “Of course, when they die, their heart stops,” he said. A tour of torture Mr. Ghabbash, the protest organizer from Aleppo, survived torture at at least 12 facilities, making him, he says, “a tour guide” to the system. His odyssey began in 2011, when he was 22. The oldest son of a government building contractor, he was inspired by peaceful protests in the Damascus suburb of Darayya to organize demonstrations in Aleppo. Mr. Ghabbash survived torture in at least 12 facilities. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times He was arrested in June 2011, and released after pledging to stop protesting. “I didn’t stop,” he recalled with a grin. In August, he was arrested again — the same week that, a memo from CIJA shows, Mr. al-Assad’s top officials ordered a tougher crackdown, criticizing provincial authorities’ “laxness” and calling for more arrests of “those who are inciting people to demonstrate.” Mr. Ghabbash was hung up, beaten and whipped in a string of military and general intelligence facilities, he said. His captors eventually let him go with a stern recommendation given to many similar youths: Leave the country. Even as they released Saydnaya Prison’s most radical long-term prisoners, Islamists who would later lead rebel groups, they aimed to get rid of civilian opposition. Both moves, critics say, appear to have been part of a strategy to shift the uprising to the battlefield, where Mr. al-Assad and his allies enjoyed a military advantage. He was arrested in June 2011, and released after pledging to stop protesting. “I didn’t stop,” he recalled with a grin. In August, he was arrested again — the same week that, a memo from CIJA shows, Mr. al-Assad’s top officials ordered a tougher crackdown, criticizing provincial authorities’ “laxness” and calling for more arrests of “those who are inciting people to demonstrate.” Mr. Ghabbash was hung up, beaten and whipped in a string of military and general intelligence facilities, he said. His captors eventually let him go with a stern recommendation given to many similar youths: Leave the country. Even as they released Saydnaya Prison’s most radical long-term prisoners, Islamists who would later lead rebel groups, they aimed to get rid of civilian opposition. Both moves, critics say, appear to have been part of a strategy to shift the uprising to the battlefield, where Mr. al-Assad and his allies enjoyed a military advantage. Syrian prisoners sign release papers at the Damascus Police Command headquarters in 2012. Credit Bassem Tellawi/Associated Press “Between me and my conscience, I don’t want to confess something I haven’t done,” Mr. Ghabbash recalled. “Five people asking questions at once. You’re cold, you’re thirsty, lips full of blood, you can’t focus. Everybody is screaming, hitting.” He saved toenails they pulled out, and strips of skin that peeled from his beaten soles. He put them in his pocket, dreaming of showing a judge. But then one day they took his pants. On the 12th day he wrote a confession. “Make it convincing,” a Capt. Maher told him. “There is someone who drove you. Imagine how he looks. Tall, short, fat?” Mr. Ghabbash settled on a silver car and “a tall guy, with glasses and light hair.” “I started to feel my talent in writing,” he said. Surreal punishment In March 2012, Mr. Ghabbash was flown to Mezze military air base, named for a well-off Damascus neighborhood nearby. By then, he and numerous survivors said, there was an industrial-scale transportation system among prisons. Detainees were tortured on each leg of their journeys, in helicopters, buses, cargo planes. Some recalled riding for hours in trucks normally used for animal carcasses, hanging by one arm, chained to meat hooks. Mr. Ghabbash’s new cell was typical: 12 feet long, 9 feet wide, usually packed so tightly that prisoners had to sleep in shifts. Outside the cell, a man was blindfolded and handcuffed in the corridor. It was Mr. Darwish, the human rights lawyer. He had been singled out for lecturing a judge on Syrian laws guaranteeing fair trials. He later ticked off his punishment: “Naked, no water, no sleep, forced to drink my pee.” Prison torture grew more brutal and baroque as rebels outside made advances and government warplanes bombed restive neighborhoods. Survivors describe sadistic treatment, rape, summary executions or detainees left to die of untreated wounds and illnesses. Mr. Ghabbash soon got his own special punishment. He was interrogated by a man calling himself Suhail Hassan — possibly Suhail Hassan Zamam, who headed Air Force prisons, according to a leaked government database — who asked how Mr. Ghabbash would solve the conflict. “Real elections,” he recalled replying. “The people just wanted some reforms, but you used force. The problem is either we have to be with you or you kill us.” That won him a month of extra torture, the most bizarre in his ordeal. A guard who called himself Hitler would organize sadistic dinner entertainment for his colleagues. He brought arak and water pipes, Mr. Ghabbash said, “to prepare the ambience.” He made some prisoners kneel, becoming tables or chairs. Others played animals. “Hitler” reinforced stage directions with beatings. “The dog has to bark, the cat meow, the rooster crow,” Mr. Ghabbash said. “Hitler tries to tame them. When he pets one dog, the other dog should act jealous.” The audience also included prisoners, in nearby cells or hanging blindfolded on nearby chain-link fences, who confirmed the account. Some guards made those hanging beg, “Master, I’m thirsty,” then sprayed them with hoses, Mr. Ghabbash said. After weeks or months, many prisoners got so-called trials lasting minutes with no defense lawyers. Mr. Ghabbash’s was typical. At a military “field court” in 2012, he heard a judge rattle off his conviction, “terrorism that destroyed public property,” and his sentence: death. “The whole trial was one and a half minutes,” he said. He expected to go to Saydnaya Prison, which by then was a mass execution center. Thousands have been hanged there after summary trials, according to an Amnesty International report. “Good, it’s finished,” he recalled thinking. But it was not. He would endure another year of daily beatings. Satellite images show the increase in mass graves at a cemetery near Damascus between 2010, left, and 2016, right. Amnesty International said that bodies of prisoners executed in Saydnaya Prison were buried there. Credit Amnesty International, via Agence France-Presse — Getty Images His last stint was in a makeshift prison deep underground near Damascus, a military bunker of the elite Fourth Division, a fief of Mr. al-Assad’s brother Maher. Survivors recall officers with the unit’s insignia visiting and seeing the conditions. But Air Force intelligence ran operations there after Mezze prison overflowed, according to survivors and CIJA’s files. There were no more interrogations. “Torture just for torture,” said Mr. Darwish, who was also transferred there. “For revenge, for killing, for breaking the people.” Survivors tell these stories with black humor, if only because others suffered worse. “O.K., I was beaten, I played a dog,” Mr. Ghabbash said. “But some people were killed or raped.” Rape and assault Women and girls have been raped and sexually assaulted in at least 20 intelligence branches, and men and boys in 15 of those, a United Nations human rights commission reported last year. Sexual assault is a double-barreled weapon in traditional Muslim communities, where survivors are often stigmatized. Relatives have killed female ex-detainees in so-called honor killings, sometimes merely on the assumption they have been raped, rights reports and survivors say. Mariam Khleif, a 32-year-old mother of five from Hama, was repeatedly raped during her detention. Ms. Khleif said she had aided injured protesters and delivered medical supplies to rebels, acts that the government labeled terrorism. Mariam Khleif, a mother of five, said she was repeatedly raped during a month in prison. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times In September 2012, she said, security officers dragged her from her house. At state security’s Branch 320 in Hama, she said, the investigation chief introduced himself as Colonel Suleiman. CIJA’s archives show that Ms. Khleif was detained and that a Col. Suleiman Juma headed the Hama branch. “He was eating pistachios,” she recalled later in her sparse apartment in Reyhanli, Turkey. “He spat the shells at us. He left no dirty word unused.” A three-foot-square basement cell held her and six other women. Guards hung her from walls and beat her, knocking out teeth. She saw them drag a prisoner complaining of hunger to a toilet and stuff his mouth with excrement, a method recalled by other survivors. “At midnight,” she said, “they would take the beautiful girls to Colonel Suleiman to rape. I remember Colonel Suleiman and his green eyes.” Ms. Khleif identified the colonel in photographs of a security officer’s funeral. Then she broke down. The colonel and friends — men in tracksuits — assaulted the women on a bed in a room adjoining his office, decorated with Mr. al-Assad’s photograph, she said. They splashed arak on the victims, a further insult to Muslims who abstained from alcohol. The women’s cell had no toilet. Blood from violent rapes stained the floor. One cellmate miscarried. By the time Ms. Khleif’s cousin made a deal to release her a month later, Ms. Khleif said, she had lost a third of her weight. She later fled to rebel territory as a medic. Another female survivor separately told CIJA’s investigators that she had been raped by Colonel Juma the same month in the same prison. The details closely tracked Ms. Khleif’s account. Even women who were not raped reported groping, sexual insults, threats of rape to extract confessions, and cavity “searches.” In one Damascus facility, several survivors said separately, the chief investigator reserved for himself the job of digitally penetrating them. They called him Sharshabeel, the Arabic name for the evil wizard in “The Smurfs.” One, who covers her head, said he stroked her hair and naked body during interrogation, details she kept from her family. Ms. Khleif’s family rejected her over what they considered her loss of honor and her politics, she said. Her pro-government brother texted death threats; her husband divorced her. For some conservative men, the conflict changed attitudes. Several survivors and male relatives say their families now honor sexual assault survivors as war wounded. Ms. Khleif hid nothing from her new husband, a former rebel. “You are a medal on my chest, you are the crown on my head,” she recalled him telling her. “He cooked for me, massaged my face with oil. He made me my old self.” Rampant infection, rotten food Torture aside, unhealthy detention conditions are so extreme and systemic that a United Nations report said they amounted to extermination, a crime against humanity. Many cells lack toilets, former prisoners said. Prisoners get seconds per day in latrines, they said; with rampant diarrhea and urinary infections, they relieve themselves in crowded cells. Most meals are a few bites of rotten, dirty food. Some prisoners die from sheer psychological collapse. Most medicine is withheld, injuries left untreated. Mounir Fakir is 39, but after his ordeal in Mezze, Saydnaya and elsewhere, he looks at least a decade older. A veteran dissident, he said he was arrested on his way to a meeting of the nonviolent opposition. Before-and-after photos show the toll: A hefty man, he was released so emaciated that his wife did not recognize him. Mounir Fakir, 39, said that cold was used as punishment in Saydnaya prison. For more than a month, he and his cellmates were forced to sleep naked in freezing temperatures. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times Mr. Fakir with his daughter at their home in Istanbul. Credit Laura Boushnak for The New York Times In Saydnaya, cold was the punishment for talking or “sleeping without permission,” Mr. Fakir recalled over steaming herbal tea in an Istanbul cafe. Once for more than a month, all of his cellmates’ blankets and clothes were confiscated; they slept naked in freezing temperatures. Sometimes, he said, they were denied water. They tried to wash themselves by scrubbing their skin with sand that ants unearthed from floor cracks. The day we met, Mr. Fakir was marking the anniversary of the death of a cellmate felled by an untreated tooth infection, his jaw swollen almost to the size of “another head.” Yet “treatment” can also be deadly. Torture and murder take place in hospitals where, on other wings, dignitaries visit wounded officers, said Mr. Fakir, other survivors and defectors. Mr. Fakir was taken twice to Military Hospital 601, a colonial-era building with high ceilings and views of Damascus. Up to six prisoners were chained naked to each bed. “Sometimes one dies and it becomes less,” he said. “Sometimes we want him to die, to take his clothes.” Once, he said, he watched staff withhold insulin from a diabetic — a 20-year-old waiter — until he died. Many nights, a man who doubled as a nurse and a guard and called himself Azrael — the angel of death — would take a patient behind a frosted-glass door. “We’d see the shadow of someone hitting, we’d hear the scream, then silence — suffocating silence,” Mr. Fakir said. “In the morning we’d see the body in the hallway to the bathroom. You would see bodies piled. We stepped on our comrades’ bodies, barefoot.”Mr. Ghabbash remembers “Azrael,” too. He was taken to the same hospital with an infection that left a deep scar on his leg. In the night, he heard an amputee groan for painkillers, and a man answer, “I’ll make you comfortable.” Pretending to sleep, Mr. Ghabbash squinted as the man raised a metal-tipped baton, declared, “I am Azrael,” and smashed the patient’s face to a bloody pulp. Mr. Ghabbash said he was forced to carry the corpse to a hallway bathroom. Two bodies were already inside. Mr. Fakir said fellow prisoners had told him of carrying bodies first to the toilet, then to a hospital parking area, a site where Caesar photographed corpses. “People didn’t believe me,” he said. “Then Caesar’s photos came out.” A survivor of another prison, Omar Alshogre, said he had been ordered to write numbers on corpses’ foreheads, as seen in Caesar’s photos. But as corpses piled up and decomposed, he said, he had to write on paper and shovel out bodies in pieces. Government memos obtained by CIJA show that the head of military intelligence, a member of the National Security Bureau that reports to Mr. al-Assad, knew of rising prison deaths. One memo, from December 2012, noted increases in detainees’ deaths and corpses piling up and decomposing in hospitals. It ordered officials to inform the agency’s head of how they had died and what they had confessed — preferably phrased to protect officials from liability under “any judicial authority in the future.” Another memo a year later showed that deaths were still rising. “It is imperative to attend to cleanliness and hygiene and detainees’ health,” it says, to “preserve lives and reduce deaths which have considerably risen lately.” The memo complained of a shortage of interrogators. Near the end of a long list of “errors,” including late paperwork, it added “beating and torture of detainees.” “It sounds like they are telling people to behave nicely,” said Nerma Jelajic, CIJA’s spokeswoman, “but we know the context.” CIJA’s documents show that officers were punished for offenses like “not following orders,” she said. Not one mentions anyone disciplined for torture. Names written in blood Detainees and defectors have risked their lives to tell their families, and the world, of their plight. In the Fourth Division dungeon, several detainees decided to smuggle out the names of every prisoner they could identify. “Even though we are three stories underground, still we can continue our work,” recalled one, Mansour Omari, who was arrested while working for a local human rights organization. Mansour Omari, who said he was imprisoned for human rights work, smuggled out a cloth scrap containing detainees’ names written in blood. Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times The message in blood reached Western capitals; the shirt scraps were displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. Credit Lexey Swall for The New York Times Another detainee, Nabil Shurbaji — a journalist who, by coincidence, was the first to inspire Mr. Ghabbash to activism in 2011 and later shared his cell in Mezze — tried to write on cloth scraps with tomato paste. Too faint. Mr. Shurbaji finally used the detainees’ own blood, from their malnourished gums, mixed with rust. A detained tailor sewed the scraps into Mr. Omari’s shirt. He smuggled them out. The message in blood reached Western capitals; the shirt scraps were displayed at the Holocaust Museum in Washington. But Mr. Shurbaji was still inside. “Fatigue spread on the pores of my face,” he wrote his fiancée during a brief respite in a prison that allowed letters. “I try to laugh but mixed with heartbreak, so I hold on to patience and to you.” Two years later, a released detainee reported that Mr. Shurbaji had been beaten to death. ‘Don’t forget us’ In Syria, Lebanon, Turkey, Jordan, Germany, France, Sweden and beyond, families and survivors push on. After he was freed in 2013, Mr. Ghabbash landed in Gaziantep, Turkey, where he runs women’s rights and aid programs for refugees in the last patch of rebel-held Syria. Ms. Khleif works at a refugee school and to empower other female survivors. Mr. Fakir, whose wife’s cooking has replenished his chubby cheeks, has joined a kind of alumni association for Saydnaya Prison survivors who help one another document their experiences, navigate trauma and find work. Mr. Darwish struggles with insomnia and claustrophobia, but continues his work for accountability. He recently testified about Mezze prison in a French court hearing in the case of a Syrian-French father and son who died there — a university student and a teacher at a French school in Damascus. That helped French prosecutors secure arrest warrants for Mr. Mamlouk, the top security official, Mr. Hassan, the air force intelligence chief, and the head of Mezze prison. Now, Mr. Mamlouk could be arrested if he travels to Europe. The threat of prosecution, Mr. Darwish said, is the only tool left to save detainees. “It gives you energy, but it’s a heavy responsibility,” he said. “This could save a soul. Some are my friends. When I was released they said, ‘Please don’t forget us.’” Last year, the United Nations General Assembly voted to create and finance a new body, the International Independent and Impartial Mechanism, to centralize preparation of war-crimes cases. But the body doesn’t have the muscle to enforce, charge or arrest. Syria’s war remains without a political solution. With peace talks stalled, Russia is urging the West to normalize and finance reconstruction anyway, deferring reforms. A Syrian briefed at high levels on the government’s war effort, not identified for his safety, said recently that there was no chance of reforms to make security agencies respect human rights. At most, he said, Russia might make the detention apparatus more efficient. The millions of relatives of missing detainees float in a social and psychological limbo. Without death certificates, presumed widows cannot remarry. Children cannot inherit. Fadwa Mahmoud, who now lives in Berlin, has not heard from her husband and son in six years.CreditAxel Schmidt/Reuters Fadwa Mahmoud, who now lives in Berlin, has no idea whether her husband, Abdelaziz al-Khair, is alive. Six years ago, Mr. al-Khair, a prominent dissident, flew to Damascus from abroad, with security guarantees, for talks between the government and the nonviolent opposition. Ms. Mahmoud’s son went to pick him up. They never made it out of the airport, which is controlled by air force intelligence. They have not been heard from since. “We don’t have the right to get depressed,” Ms. Mahmoud said, crocheting a blanket in her living room. “We have to keep going.” In the corner stood a pile of blankets: lavender, yellow, baby blue. It is still growing. She imagines her husband cold in prison. She is making them for him. Anne Barnard, the former Beirut bureau chief, is the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Reporting was contributed by Saad Alnassife and Carlotta Gall from Gaziantep, Turkey; Karam Shoumali from Berlin; and Mahmoud Bitar from Reyhanli, Turkey. © 2019 The New York Times Company

image: The New York Times Abrar of Yemen is starving. December 5, 2018 Open Letter To Members of The United States Congress From: Scholars and Activists from Across the Globe in the Fields of International Human Rights, Crimes Against Humanity, and Genocide Topic: The Humanitarian Disaster in Yemen UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres has deemed Yemen the world’s gravest humanitarian crisis, noting that some 22 million people are in dire need of food, water and medicine, as well as protection. The latter is due to a manmade famine. Concomitantly, six internationally renowned humanitarian organizations, all working in Yemen, believe that upwards of 11 million people now face imminent starvation if humanitarian aid does not reach them within the next one to two months. Eleven million. That is nearly as many people who perished in the Holocaust. Eleven times as many as were killed in the 1994 genocide in Rwanda. In October, the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child reported that at least 1,248 children have been killed since the start of the war. Save the Children reports that an average of 130 children are dying every single day from starvation and disease. To date, it is reported that approximately 85,000 children under five years old have starved to death since the outset of the war. While the United States Government has a responsibility for what is taking place in Yemen, it is far from alone. Yemeni Government troops and the Houthi rebels share the greatest responsibility. War in Yemen erupted in early 2015 when Houthi rebels (a Shia group) captured Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, after overthrowing the U.S.-backed government of President Abdu Rabbu Mansour Hadi. Saudi Arabia and Iran, which are fighting a proxy war in Yemen, are also greatly responsible for the atrocities and ongoing severe malnutrition to starvation that the Yemeni people are suffering. The Saudis support the former government with systematic aerial bombardment of civilian targets such as schools and hospitals, while Iran supports the Houthi rebels. The United Arab Emirates, Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Sudan, Kuwait and Bahrain also have blood on their hands as they back the Saudis in their anti-Shi’a coalition. ISIS and al Qaeda have also seized the opportunity to attack Shi’a mosques, bombing Sana'a and Aden. Millions of civilians are caught in the middle of this sectarian conflict, subjected to what reputable human rights groups describe as war crimes. Both the Obama and Trump administrations are implicated: they have supplied weapons and diplomatic cover for the Saudi-led military action in which non-combatants are paying an enormous price. Until very recently, the United States supported the Saudi aerial attacks by providing for mid-air refueling of Saudi planes. Those aerial attacks are said to be responsible for 35,000 civilian casualties. It appears that the Saudi warplanes have deliberately targeted civilians in their homes and schools, on their farms and buses, and in their businesses. They have targeted petrol stations, killing scores of people with each air strike. Not only have farms been bombed and prices for food in markets soared as a result of the war, but the Saudis, with the complicity of the United States, have virtually blocked food from entering all but one of the main ports in Yemen. They have also systematically prevented movement between the ports and cities, towns and villages, thus preventing aid from reaching those in dire need. Both sides in this genocidal civil war have murdered humanitarian aid personnel and erected barricades along the roads, where they extort bribes from ordinary citizens who have gone to buy food. As individuals who have worked to support international human rights throughout our adult lives, who have conducted research into crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide, we have also actively advocated for early prevention and early intervention to stop such crimes. We are doing so once again. In that regard, we respectfully make the following recommendations: • The U.S. must withdraw all support for the Saudi Air Force, and the U.S. and all NATO countries must end all arms sales and military support to the Saudi monarchy. • The U.S. must demand an immediate ceasefire, enabling the unimpeded delivery of humanitarian supplies to all communities, with aid convoys protected by UN peacekeepers with a Chapter 7 mandate. • The U.S. Government must press the UN Security Council to continue its diplomatic effort to bring the Yemen war to an end. • If an immediate ceasefire is not honored, then the U.S. Government must press for protected distribution of humanitarian supplies, including a no fly-zone during the periods of the distribution of relief aid. A precedent along this line was the implementation of Operation Lifeline Sudan (OLS) during the Second Sudanese Civil War. (See “Operation Lifeline Sudan” in The Congressional Record.) These are short-term measures, but they are needed immediately. Given the urgency of this situation, we look forward to your prompt response. Most sincerely, Dr. Samuel Totten Professor Emeritus University of Arkansas, Fayetteville samstertotten@gmail.com 1-479-927-0318 Author, Genocide by Attrition: Nuba Mountains, Sudan, and editor of Dirty Hands and Vicious Deeds: The U.S. Government’s Complicity in Crimes against Humanity and Genocide Dr. John Roth Edward J. Sexton Professor Emeritus of Philosophy Claremont McKenna College Claremont, CA jroth@cmc.edu Author, The Failures of Ethics: Confronting the Holocaust, Genocide, and Other Mass Atrocities Dr. Taylor B. Seybolt Associate Professor Graduate School of Public and International Affairs Director, Ford Institute for Human Security University of Pittsburgh seybolt@pitt.edu Author, Humanitarian Military Intervention: The Conditions for Success and Failure Ms. Rebecca Tinsley Human Rights Activist Founder of Network for Africa London, England TinsleyRC@aol.com Author, When the Stars Fall to Earth Dr. Eyal Mayroz Department of Peace and Conflict Studies University of Sydney New South Wales, Australia eyal.mayroz@sydney.edu.au Author, Reluctant Interveners? America’s Failed Responses to Genocide, From Bosnia to Darfur The Baroness Cox House of Lords UK Parliament London, Great Britain COXC@parliament.uk Dr. Ervin Staub Professor Emeritus Founding Director, Doctoral Program in the Psychology of Peace and Violence University of Massachusetts at Amherst estaub@psych.umass.edu Author, The Roots of Evil: The Origins of Evil and Other Group Violence Dr. Edina Becirevic Associate Professor University of Sarajevo Sarajevo, Bosnia Herzegovina edina.becirevic@gmail.com Author, Genocide on the Drina River. Dr. Maureen S. Hiebert Associate Professor Department of Political Science Senior Research Fellow, Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies] University of Calgary Calgary, Alberta, Canada hiebertm@ucalgary.edu Author, Constructing Genocide and Mass Violence: Society, Crisis, Identity Dr. Ernesto Verdeja Associate Professor Department of Political Science and Peace Studies University of Notre Dame & Executive Director Institute for the Study of Genocide everdeja@nd.edu Dr. Deborah Mayersen Research Fellow University of Wollongong Wollongong, NSW, Australia mayersen@uow.edu.au Author, On the Path to Genocide: Armenia and Rwanda Reexamined. Dr. Eric Weitz Distinguished Professor of History City College and Graduate Center City University of New York (CUNY) eweitz@ccny.cuny.edu Author, A Century of Genocide Dr. Carla Barqueiro Visiting Assistant Professor Department of International Relations Goucher College Towson, Maryland Carla.Barqueiro@goucher.edu Author, Mobilizing the Will to Intervene: Leadership to Prevent Mass Atrocities Dr. Israel W. Charny Professor Emeritus and Founder of the Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide Department of Psychology Hebrew University Jerusalem, Israel iwc@netvision.net.il Editor, Encyclopedia of Genocide Dr. Debórah Dwork Founding Director Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies Clark University Massachusetts ddwork@clarku.edu Author, Holocaust: A History Dr. Robert Melson Professor Emeritus Department of Political Science Purdue University melson@purdue.edu Author, Revolution and Genocide: On the Origins of the Armenian Genocide and the Holocaust Dr. Victoria Sanford Professor & Chair Department of Anthropology Lehman College Director, Center for Human Rights & Peace Studies Doctoral Faculty, The Graduate Center City University of New York vdlsanford@gmail.com Dr. Roger Smith Professor Emeritus Department of Government College of William and Mary Williamsburg, VA theseus51@msn.com Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey Dr. Marsha Raticoff Grossnan Associate Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Richard Stockton University Galloway, New Jersey Elisa.forgey@stockton.edu Dr. Henry Theriault President, International Association of Genocide Scholars & Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs Worcester State University Worcester, MA htheriault@worcester.edu Co-author, The UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide: A Primer Dr. Hilary Earl Professor Department of History Nipissing University North Bay, Ontario, Canada hearl@nipissingu.ca Author, The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945-1958: Atrocity, Law, and History Dr. Colin Tatz Professor Emeritus Australia National University Canberra, Australia colintatz@gmail.com Author, With Intent to Destroy: Reflecting on Genocide Dr. Alex Alvarez Professor President’s Distinguished Teaching Fellow Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice Northern Arizona University Flagstaff, AZ Alex.alvarez@nau.edu Dr. Joseph Nevins Professor Department of Geography Vassar College Poughkeepsie, New York jonevins@vassar.edu Author, A Not So Distant Horror: Mass Violence in East Timor Dr. Alejandro Baer Associate Professor Department of Sociology Stephen C. Feinstein Chair in Holocaust and Genocide Studies University of Minnesota Minneapolis, MM abaer@umn.edu Co-author, Memory and Forgetting in the Post-Holocaust Era: The Ethics of Never Again. Tanya L. Domi Columbia University Adjunct Professor of International and Public Affairs The Harriman Institute New York, New York TD207@columbia.edu Dr. Gregory Stanton Founding President, Genocide Watch Founder, The Cambodian Genocide Project Professor of Genocide Studies George Mason University Arlington, VA president@genocidewatch.org Author, The Ten Stages of Genocide UNSC Res. 955, 978 (ICTR) Dr. Andrew Woolford Professor Department of Sociology and Criminology University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada Andew.Woolford@umanitoba.ca Dr. Herbert Hirsch Professor Department of Political Science Virginia Commonwealth University Richmond, VA Hirsch@vcu.edu Author, Genocide and the Politics of Memory Dr. Adam Muller Professor and Director Peace and Conflict Studies University of Manitoba Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada First Vice-President, International Association of Genocide Scholars Email: adam.muller@manitoba.ca Author, Fighting Words and Images: Representing Wars Across Disciplines Dr. Edward Kissi Professor Department of Political Science University of South Florida ekissi@usf.edu Author, Revolution and Genocide in Ethiopia and Cambodia Dr. Kai Thaler Assistant Professor of Global Studies University of California, Santa Barbara thaler@ucsb.edu Author, “Foreshadowing Future Slaughter: From the Indonesian Killings of 1965-66 to Genocide in East Timor” in Genocide Studies and Prevention. Dr. Kurt Mills Professor Department of International Relations and Human Rights University of Dundee Dundee, Scotland k.a.mills@dundee.ac.uk Author, International Responses to Mass Atrocities in Africa Dr. Paul Mojzes Professor Emeritus Department of Religious Studies Rosemont College Rosemont, Pennsylvania pmojzes@rosemont.edu Author, Genocide in the Balkans: Holocaust and Ethnic Cleansing in the Twentieth Century Dr. Rick Halperin Director SMU Human Right’s Program Southern Methodist University Dallas, Texas rhalperi@smu.edu Dr. Kimberley Ducey Associate Professor Department of Sociology The University of Winnipeg Manitoba, Canada Treaty 1 Territory Homeland of the Metis Nation Dr. Robert Skloot Professor Emeritus Department of Theatre Arts University of Wisconsin, Madison Author, If the Whole Body Dies: Raphael Lemkin and the Treaty Against Genocide Dr. Matthew Krain Professor Department of Political Science The College of Wooster Wooster, OH mkrain@wooster.edu Author, “State-Sponsored Mass Murder: The Onset and Severity of Genocide and Politics.” Journal of Conflict Resolution. Dr. Valentina Kuryliw Director of Education Holodomor Research and Education Consortium University of Alberta Author, Holodomor in Ukraine, The Genocidal Famine 1932-1933 Dr. Robert Hitchcock Professor Department of Anthropology University of New Mexico Albuquerque, NW Author, Genocides of Indigenous Peoples rkhitchcock@gmail.com Dr. John H. Weiss Associate Professor of History Cornell University jhw4@cornell.edu Dr. C. Louis “PJ” Perrinjaquet, MD, MPH Medical Director, Doctors to the World docpj7@comcast.net Author, "Medical Mission Work in the Nuba Mountains, Sudan, During Active Bombardment of Civilians” in Nuba Mountains People Under Siege: Accounts by Humanitarians in the Battle Zone Dr. Elun Gabriel Associate Professor Department of History St. Lawrence University Canton, New York egabriel@stlawu.edu Dr. Kevin Simpson Professor Department of Psychology John Brown University’ Siloam Springs, AR ksimpson@jbu.edu Dr. Fred P. Cocozellelli Department Chair and Associate Professor Department of Government and Politics St. John’s University Queens, New York cocozzef@stjohns.edu Author, War and Social Welfare: Reconstruction after Conflict. Dr. Jamie L. Wraight Director, The Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive The University of Michigan-Dearborn jwraight@umich.edu Dr. G. Jan Colijn Dean Emeritus Richard Stockton University Galloway, New Jersey jan.colijn@stockton.edu Dr. James Brown Professor Global Studies Chapman University Orange, California jbrown@chapman.edu Dr. Marcia Littell Emerita Holocaust & Genocide Studies Program Richard Stockton University Galloway, New Jersey drlittell@aol.com Dr. Bill Younglove Instructor California State University, Long Beach wyoungl@aol.com Dr. James R. (Dick) Bennett Professor Emeritus University of Arkansas, Fayetteville j.dick.bennett@gmail.com Author, Political Prisoners and Trials Dr. Linda Woolf Professor Psychology and Human Rights Webster University St. Louis, MO woolflm@webster.edu Dr. Betty A. Reardon Founding Director, Emerita International Institute on Peace Education Teachers College, Columbia University New York, New York Dr. Stephen Zunes Professor of Politics University of San Francisco zunes@usfca.edu Dr. Paul Slovic Professor Department of Psychology University of Oregon Eugene, Oregon pslovic@uorgeon.edu Author, Psychic Numbing and Genocide Dr. Michael Minch Professor Peace and Justice Studies Utah Valley University Orem, Utah mminch@uvu.edu Co-author, Living Ethics Dr. Armen T. Marsoobian Professor and Chairperson Department of Philosophy Southern Connecticut University New Haven, Connecticut Dr. Christopher Powell Associate Professor Department of Sociology Ryerson University Toronto, Ontario, Canada chris.powell@ryerson.ca Dr. Elihu Richter, MD Hebrew University Hebrew University Medical School Jerusalem, Israel elihudrichter@gmail.com

A Rohingya woman stands outside the UN Women’s Centre in the Balukhali refugee camp on 6 March 2018. Bangladesh has been hosting Rohingya refugees from Myanmar for nearly 30 years. Since August 2017, some 693,000 Rohingyas have made their way to Bangladesh in desperate conditions. UN Women/Allison Joyce By Payam Akhavan and John Packer Centre for International Policy Studies University of Ottawa, Canada May 1, 2019 Twenty-five years ago, as young UN human rights officers working together in Geneva, we witnessed how the world watched and did nothing as close to a million Rwandan Tutsis were exterminated. Brimming with idealism and faith in international law, we were shocked at this catastrophic failure of political will. Since then, world leaders have repeatedly expressed regret for their inaction and reflected on lessons learned. Yet this month, just as we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide, we now witness how the world watches and does nothing as Myanmar commits what a UN Fact-Finding Mission has called “genocide” against the Rohingya minority. The least we can do is to hold Myanmar accountable under international law. Canada, in particular, has promoted a rules-based international order and once-upon-a-time championed the doctrine of Responsibility to Protect civilians against mass atrocities. One simple, cost-effective, but far-reaching measure that Canada could take is to put Myanmar on trial for genocide before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague. The prosecution of perpetrators ordinarily comes before the International Criminal Court (ICC). The ICJ is only for disputes between governments. Myanmar, however, does not recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC. A September 2018 decision, which at least recognizes the ICC’s jurisdiction, held that, at best, the ICC could investigate the crime of deportation across an international boundary because of the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees into Bangladesh. This, however, excludes the crime of genocide and its exceptional gravity in international law. Furthermore, the ICC has serious resource constraints, is notoriously slow, and could not arrest any Myanmar officials. The ICJ, on the other hand, has jurisdiction over the crime of genocide, and Canada could immediately begin a case against Myanmar based on the available evidence. Canada and Myanmar are both signatories to the 1948 Genocide Convention, having ratified it in 1952 and 1956, respectively. Adopted in the wake of the Nuremberg judgment, criminalizing the archetypal collective destruction of human groups represented by the Holocaust, Article IX of the treaty confers jurisdiction on the ICJ to determine the responsibility of governments, including their failure to prevent or punish perpetrators of genocide. Such a case would provide a unique and important platform for victims and witnesses to testify about these shocking atrocities, and for the court to issue an authoritative judgment against Myanmar. At the very least, exposing the truth in this way would increase pressure on Myanmar and perhaps achieve some measure of deterrence against ongoing atrocities. In 2018, both the Canadian Senate and House of Commons adopted resolutions recognizing the Rohingya Genocide. In the coming days, both chambers will consider parallel motions calling on Canada to bring a genocide case against Myanmar before the ICJ. This is consistent with the recommendation of Prime Minister Trudeau’s Special Envoy, Bob Rae, to pursue accountability for the atrocities against the Rohingya. It is also consistent with a recent resolution of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) to take similar action among its 57 member states. This is a unique opportunity for Canada to exercise moral leadership on the global stage, to demonstrate its commitment to a rules-based international order, and to uphold universal respect for fundamental human rights. Since genocide is the most heinous crime imaginable, there should be no question about our moral duty as a nation to speak truth to power. Beyond our collective conscience, moreover, Canada is competing for a seat in the 2022 UN Security Council elections, and its principled leadership on this pressing issue would certainly help win favour with the 57 OIC members, which constitutes the largest voting bloc in the UN. There will always be political reasons not to do anything, to remain as bystanders rather than taking a risk to achieve justice. But what do we as Canadians want to remember when we commemorate the 25th anniversary of the Rohingya genocide? Can we enter the ranks of good Samaritans like Raoul Wallenberg, who helped rescue Jews during the Holocaust, or General Roméo Dallaire, who rescued Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994? Surely Canada can and should be on the right side of history. Payam Akhavan and John Packer are Professors of International Law at McGill University and the University of Ottawa respectively. They served as UN human rights officers in Geneva in 1993–1994.

CNN- United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has reminded China that its treatment of Uyghurs is still under close watch. Human rights must be respected even when fighting terrorism, he told Chinese authorities during a visit to last week's billion-dollar Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, according to a UN spokesman. China has cracked down on its population of Muslim Uyghurs, who are concentrated in the country's far western Xinjiang region. Last year, a US State Department official estimated that at least 800,000 and possibly up to two million people may have been detained in huge "re-education centers." In February, Turkey's Foreign Ministry spokesman Hami Aksoy said the people detained in the camps were subject to "torture and political brainwashing" and called the camps a "great shame for humanity." China has defended its use of what it calls vocational training centers, saying they are a necessary counterterror measure. During Guterres' trip to Beijing last week, he met with China's President Xi Jinping. Asked by reporters on Monday whether Guterres had raised the issue of Uyghurs during that conversation, UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric replied that the UN chief had "discussed all relevant issues with Chinese authorities." "He did just that, and that includes the situation in Xinjiang," he said. "Each community must feel that its identity is respected and that it fully belongs to the nation as a whole," Dujarric said, explaining Guterres' stance. When asked by a reporter whether Guterres was satisfied by the China's response, Dujarric was evasive. "It's not for me to speak on behalf of the Chinese authorities," he said. "This is part of a dialogue that the Secretary‑General has had with Chinese authorities in the past and that he will continue to have." Guterres left Beijing on Saturday after speaking at the Belt and Road Forum, a meeting about Xi's signature global infrastructure policy. In March, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet presented a report on human rights around the world to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, Switzerland, and raised the issue of "enforced disappearances and arbitrary detentions" in Xinjiang. Later that month, Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Le Yucheng spoke to the UN Human Rights Council and defended the country's policies in Xinjiang. "As the counterterrorism situation improves, the training programme will be gradually downsized, leading to its completion," he said, according to South China Morning Post. "Without our decisive measures, violent terrorist attacks would have escalated in Xinjiang and spread to other parts of China and the world." With reporting by Richard Roth. © 2019 Cable News Network. Turner Broadcasting System, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

(CNN)When anti-government protests erupted in Sudan at the end of last year, the response of President Omar al-Bashir came straight from the dictators' playbook -- a crackdown that led to scores of civilian deaths. At the same time, a more insidious strategy was being developed -- one that involved spreading misinformation on social media, blaming Israel for fomenting the unrest, and even carrying out public executions to make an example of "looters." The author of this strategy was not the Sudanese government. According to documents seen by CNN, it was drawn up by a Russian company tied to an oligarch favored by the Kremlin: Yevgeny Prigozhin. Multiple government and military sources in Khartoum have confirmed to CNN that Bashir's government received the proposals and began to act on them, before Bashir was deposed in a coup earlier this month. One official of the former regime said Russian advisers monitored the protests and began devising a plan to counter them with what he called "minimal but acceptable loss of life." While the documents do not come from official Russian agencies, they were essentially a blueprint for protecting the Kremlin's interests in Sudan and keeping Bashir in power. The documents seen by CNN, which include letters and internal company communications, are among several thousand obtained and investigated by the London-based Dossier Center, run by exiled Russian businessman Mikhail Khodorkovsky. The Dossier Center receives data, documents and other information from a variety of sources, often anonymous, and shares them with journalists. Khodorkovsky ran afoul of President Vladimir Putin after alleging widespread corruption in Russia and spent several years in prison for alleged tax fraud -- which he has always denied. CNN has assessed the documents to be credible. They are also consistent with the accounts of witnesses who say Russian observers were seen at the recent protests in Sudan. Sudan has been Moscow's template for expanding its influence in Africa and around the globe: A hybrid of private and state interests that rewards both oligarchs and the Kremlin. It's a low-cost strategy that gives Moscow a foothold in strategic places, without the commitment of regular forces or major investment by the Russian government. Instead it uses companies that supply private contractors in return for commercial concessions. Indeed, the documents seen by CNN originate from a St. Petersburg-based company, M-Invest, which has an office in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. M-Invest lists as its core business the "extraction of ores and sands of precious metals." As CNN has previously reported, the company was granted concessions for a gold mine in Sudan. But its activities seem to have gone far beyond mining. What the Dossier Center's documents show President Bashir cultivated a close relationship with the Kremlin, visiting Moscow in 2017. Russia supplied modern Su-35 fighter jets in the same year. Put simply, Russia had placed a big bet on Bashir. As protests against the regime gathered steam, that bet was at risk. According to the documents reviewed by CNN, M-Invest drew up a plan to discredit and suppress those protests. One document from early January, reviewed by CNN, proposes spreading claims that protesters were attacking mosques and hospitals. It also suggested creating an image of demonstrators as "enemies of Islam and traditional values" by planting LGBT flags among them. And it proposed a social media campaign claiming that "Israel supports the protesters." The strategy also suggested the government "simulate a dialogue with the opposition and demonstrate the openness of the government" in order to "isolate leaders of the protest and gain time." M-Invest proposed ways to make the government look good -- through widely publicized "free distribution of bread, flour, grain, food." But most of its focus was on the protests. It recommended fabricating evidence "of arson by protesters against mosques, hospitals and nurseries, [and] stealing grain from the public store." It also suggested blaming the West for the protests and using "extensive media coverage of the interrogation of detainees, where they admit they arrived to organize civil war in Sudan." And it even proposed "public executions of looters and other spectacular events to distract the protest-minded audience." CNN made multiple efforts to reach M-Invest. Its phone number in St. Petersburg did not work. An Arabic speaker answered a call to its office in Khartoum but hung up. CNN visited the address but was told the space was leased to a Russian company called Mir Gold. Another company document recommends the arrest of protest leaders the day before demonstrations are due to take place -- and spreading disinformation by saying that protesters were being paid to take part. Also recommended: Show how "security forces detained a car with weapons, foreign currency, propaganda materials operated by foreign citizens." M-Invest also proposed building social media teams to attack the protest movement, "starting disputes with users and voicing alternative agenda...The optimal number of accounts working in parallel -- 40-50." In some ways the playbook is similar to that deployed by the Internet Research Agency, accused by US authorities of trying to disrupt the 2016 US election campaign. Prigozhin -- kown as "Putin's chef" for the catering contracts he held with the Kremlin -- was one of 13 Russians charged as part of the investigation into Russian election interference by US special counsel Robert Mueller. The US alleges that fictitious social media sites were set up to polarize voters with inflammatory and, in some cases, fake information. Prigozhin has denied any involvement in election meddling, and has denied any connection to the Internet Research Agency. Calls to his main company, Concord Management and Consulting, went unanswered. The documents reviewed by CNN do not indicate that official Russian security agencies were directly involved in trying to suppress the protests in Sudan. Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said at a press briefing in January: "We are informed that some employees of Russian private security firms, who have no relation to the Russian government authorities, are indeed working in Sudan. But their functions are limited to personnel training." Time starts to run out Sources in Khartoum have told CNN that Bashir's government did try to begin implementing some of M-Invest's plans. For example, it began detaining students from the Darfur region and accused them of trying to foment civil war -- one of the ploys recommended by M-Invest. The sources say Russian advisers from a private company were placed in several ministries and the National Intelligence Service. But it was too little, too late. In a letter to Bashir, drafted on March 17, Prigozhin complained that the Sudanese government's "inaction" had "provoked the intensification of the crisis." And he added, with unknowing prescience: "The lack of active steps by the new government to overcome the crisis is likely to lead to even more serious political consequences." Another letter from Prigozhin, dated April 6, praised the longtime Sudanese ruler as a "wise and far-sighted leader" but urged immediate economic reforms to solve the crisis. Five days later, Bashir was deposed. The military dimension Sudan, a resource-rich nation which has borders with seven other countries, has been shunned by the West. Its Red Sea coast was of particular interest to Moscow, because of recent moves by the United States and China to establish a military presence in the region. Moscow has been eyeing the development of a naval base at Port Sudan. Again, M-Invest was involved. In June 2018, it drafted a letter on behalf of Sudan's Military Industrial Corporation to push closer military links. It mentions a visit the previous month by the deputy commander of the Russian navy, Lt. Gen. Oleg Makarevich, which had discussed "the possibility of creating on the territory of the Republic of Sudan point of logistics ships of The Russian Navy." The letter is addressed to Gen. Valery Gerasimov, chief of the Russian armed forces. Gerasimov is credited with promoting the use of alternative measures to military force -- including political and economic levers as well as influencing public opinion through social media -- to destabilize adversaries. Yevgeny Prigozhin has been a pioneer and partner in Russia's hybrid strategy. Not only was the Internet Research Agency connected to his company Concord Management; he was also linked to a company, Evro Polis, which secured oil exploration rights in Syria. At the time, fighters of a company called Wagner, a private military contractor were also operating in Syria. As CNN has previously reported, Wagner is led by Dmitry Utkin, who is under US sanctions for assisting pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine. Utkin has long been close to Prigozhin's inner circle Prigozhin's sprawling business empire is difficult to unravel. But the mining concession on behalf of M-Invest in Sudan was signed by a director named Mikhail Potepkin. A man of the same name also co-owned a company called IT-Debugger with Anna Bogacheva, one of those named in Mueller's indictment of 13 Russians as working for the Internet Research Agency. Potepkin also identifies himself as a project manager for another company, Megaline, which is 50% owned by Prigozhin's holding company Concord, according to company records. In a note on Megaline's letterhead to Sudan's minerals ministry in 2017, he says that M-Invest "will enjoy all the necessary support of the Megaline Group." CNN was unable to contact Potepkin. M-Invest also signed a contract with the Russian Defense Ministry, seen by CNN, for the use of transport aircraft of the 223rd Flight. Between August 2018 and February 2019, two aircraft of the 223rd Flight made at least nine flights to Khartoum. One of those planes took Bashir on his controversial visit to Syria last December, the first by an Arab leader since the start of the Syrian uprising in 2011. Russia has also reinforced its presence in the neighboring Central African Republic, sending convoys of supplies across the border. Whether Sudan will remain central to Russian ambitions in Africa depends on the unfolding situation in Khartoum. Moscow will not give up easily. It has strong links with the Sudanese military, which is now in the driving seat -- even if Bashir, the man described by Prigozhin as a "wise and balanced politician," is now in a high-security prison. CNN's Nima Elbagir reported from Khartoum. Nathan Hodge, Mary Ilyushina and Yasir Abdullah contributed to this report

A toxic mix of nationalism and religious extremism is leading to a wave of political violence across Southeast Asia In 1998, when Thet Swe Win was in the ninth grade, he picked up a propaganda booklet at school in downtown Yangon. In it, he read that his race and religion were under threat. If Muslims were allowed to spread, the booklet claimed, it would not be long before Burmese Buddhists would vanish. “After I read that, I was anti-Muslim,” says Thet Swe Win. He boycotted Muslim-owned businesses. He stopped eating biryani, one of his favourite foods. He regularly beat up the smaller of the two Muslim boys in his class. “The book said we had to do something about it,” he explains. “One teacher asked me why and I said, don’t you know this book? Muslims are very bad and we have to do this back to them.” Meanwhile, 300 miles to the north in Rakhine State, 17-year-old Sujauddin Karimuddin was experiencing the increasingly militant fallout of this “hateful incitement”, as Thet Swe Win calls it. A member of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, Sujauddin first realised he was an outsider at age five, during enrollment on his first day of school in the small town of Kyauktaw. A teacher told him that his name was unacceptable; he should call himself the Burmese name Khin Maung Lay instead. It didn’t help. After the government intensified its persecution of Muslims in 1991, forcing 200,000 people across the border into Bangladesh, school life became increasingly difficult for Sujauddin. Despite being an A-grade student, he was forced out of classes by Buddhist classmates and told to ‘know his place’ when he complained. Physical attacks and insults like ‘cockroach’ and ‘rat’ were frequent. Muslims were referred to as ‘it’. The friend he’d often skip school to smoke cigarettes with told him coolly: “If I were king, in one day I would kill all you guys”. Initially protected from the worst abuses by the community standing of his father, a prosperous businessman, Sujauddin’s luck eventually wore thin. In the name of patriotic duty, he was repeatedly arrested by the army and subjected to forced labour. In 1995, his village was stormed by militants and his family’s farmland confiscated; they remained trapped for a year after resisting “relocation” to an unlivable jungle outpost. In 1998 Sujauddin left, alone, for Australia. Few of his fellow Rohingyas were as lucky. Following vicious riots in Rakhine State in 2012, more than 112,000 Rohingyas fled, most of them by boat. Those remaining were excluded from the country’s first democratic vote in 2015. Tensions mounted, and in October 2016, 300 men from an insurgent group calling themselves the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army (ARSA) killed nine Burmese border guards, triggering a military crackdown that escalated into a genocide. In less than a year, at least 10,000 Rohingyas were killed. A million more fled to Bangladesh. Ethnic violence on this scale is orchestrated by Myanmar’s brutal and politically unaccountable Tatmadaw army, which has dominated control of the country since it gained independence from Britain in 1948. The military is far from alone in driving the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, however. A small but influential cohort of the country’s revered, red-robed monks now lends vocal support to the violence, justified by highly contentious interpretations of Buddhist scripture. In reality, though, these justifications all boil down to the same fear espoused by Thet Swe Win’s propaganda booklet: that Buddhist culture is under siege and could be usurped by Islam and other minority groups. Again, this paranoia isn’t new, despite the fact that Buddhists enjoy overwhelming majorities (of 70%, 88% and 93% respectively) in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and Thailand. Militant Sinhalese Buddhists in Sri Lanka claim that the minority Hindu Tamil population is really just the vanguard of India’s 74-million-strong Tamil Nadu state, poised and ready to invade. In Myanmar, members of the broader, ultranationalist 969 movement insist that the country’s Muslims – who make up less than 4% of the population – are quietly plotting to take over the country. Notwithstanding, that the Islamic calendar still has 560 years to go, some even claim that the number 786, symbolic in Islam, is a secret code denoting a plot to take over the world in the 21st Century (7+8+6 = 21). Sujauddin vividly recalls seeing posters “everywhere”, especially in immigration offices, warning that it would not be a natural disaster that wiped out Burmese Buddhists, but the Rohingya. In Myanmar, this militant Buddhism is spearheaded by ultranationalist monks like Ashin Wirathuof the Ma Ba Tha organisation and the rebel Democratic Karen Buddhist Army (DKBA), started by the late monk Thuzana in 1992. The phenomenon is far from limited to Myanmar: Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka have played a key role in stirring up Sinhalese nationalism and religious hatreds for decades, while in Thailand’s troubled deep south, “bad” monks have been known to take up arms in guerilla warfare between Buddhist and Muslim fighters. What’s more, some of these violence-supporting monks have begun forming international networks to support and learn from each other. “The Sri Lanka and Myanmar Buddhist monks have signed a memorandum of understanding,” says Burmese activist Ro Nay San Lwin. “They are working closely”. To many in the monkhood and outside it, such behaviour is deeply shocking. Buddhist monks are widely expected to eschew any form of political engagement, even in cases where this appears benign. “Militant Buddhists are those who are resorting to political violence to achieve their aims and who violate this founding principle of Buddhism that’s ahimsa, ‘do no harm’,” explains Peter Lehr, author of Militant Buddhismand lecturer in Terrorism and Political Violence at the University of St Andrew’s, and who also studied as a Buddhist monk in Thailand. Dr. Lehr relates how he saw this rift manifest between a pair of twin brothers, both monks, in the deep south of Thailand, where attacks on mosques and on Buddhist temples are commonplace. While one called upon the monks to assist in the fight against anti-Buddhist attacks, his twin brother insisted that temples can be rebuilt, and while the deaths of monks are always regrettable, it is for the monks to step back and allow karma to run its course. But monks who are critical of their colleagues for breaking their apolitical religious stance by encouraging violence are also reluctant to break it themselves to call for tolerance, integration or laws that protect ethnic minorities. As Dr. Lehr explains, most Buddhists disapprove of monks that speak out, making it extremely difficult for them to defend minorities or model the ethnic cohesion that is so badly needed in their communities. Thus the violent side tends to hold greater sway in the public sphere. Yet at times, peaceful political contributions by monks can be powerful. For Thet Swe Win, now a civil society activist who speaks out on behalf of minorities in Myanmar, the turning point came with the Saffron Revolution in 2007. Joining a protest in Yangon that was led by Buddhist monks, he was surprised to see the city’s Muslims donating generously to support the protesters, even giving their slippers to the barefoot monks. “I realised we are all just the same people, all being oppressed,” he says. “We live in the same areas but we don’t communicate. We’re isolated.” If mobilising the Buddhist population against ethnic minorities is intended to help autocrats divide and conquer, it seems to be working. In Myanmar, the social and religious rifts created by militant Buddhism continue to tear apart mixed communities, frustrating attempts to move the country forward and keeping power in the hands of the military, even as the nation struggles towards democratic rule. In Sri Lanka, violence led by Sinhalese Buddhist Nationalists in the historically peaceful Kandy province led to a state of emergency being declared in 2018, curtailing civil rights and endangering the lives of Muslims and Buddhists alike. Unchecked, these militant movements may eventually pose a risk to the governments that allow them to grow. After a year of playing down the ongoing genocide in Rakhine State, Aung San Suu Kyi’s National Democratic Party finally stepped in to outlaw Ma Ba Tha in July 2017, but the group is still going strong, largely thanks to the financial support of the army. At the same time, the Rohingya genocide has attracted the attention of ISIS, Al-Qaeda and Indonesia’s Islamic Defenders Front (FPI), all of which have called for their supporters to wage jihad in Rakhine state. In Thailand, Malay-Muslim insurgents have established links with ISIS supporters in Malaysia, which could potentially support the flow of ideology into Thailand as well as weapons into Malaysia. The Easter bombing campaign that swept across Sri Lanka on 21 April demonstrated either that homegrown terror groups are alarmingly well-organised or that they’re dealing with one that’s supported by a jihadist network such as ISIS or Al-Qaeda. As religious polarisation intensifies throughout Southeast Asia, the last thing a country like Myanmar or Sri Lanka needs is to turn a fabricated threat into a reality by pushing minorities towards groups keen to exploit them. By ignoring and even encouraging militant Buddhist movements, these leaders risk sparking ethnic conflicts that spread beyond their borders – and back again. © COPYRIGHT 2018 GLOBE MEDIA ASIA

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Twenty-five years ago this month, more than 800,000 Rwandans, mostly Tutsi, were slaughtered over the course of 100 days by members of the country's Hutu majority. Among those who lived through the terror is Clemantine Wamariya. Her memoir, The Girl Who Smiled Beads: A Story of War And What Comes After, recounts in wrenching detail her six-year trek in search of refuge from her country's killing fields. Co-authored with Elizabeth Weil, the book was published to acclaim in 2018 and is now out in paperback. The title comes from a favorite story that Wamariya heard from her childhood nanny about a girl who disappears leaving no trace except beads. In her prologue, she writes, "Often, still, my own life story feels fragmented, like beads unstrung." Wamariya was just six and her sister Claire, 14, when the fighting began in 1994. Their parents sent them to their grandmother's house, located closer to the border with Burundi, with the hope that they'd be safer there. After several days of sleepless nights filled with the noise of bombs exploding, there was an ominous knock on the door. Their grandmother told the sisters to run. Together, they traveled thousands of miles, often by night, usually by foot, sometimes by truck and once by boat on a route that took them to Burundi, Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo), Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique and South Africa before being granted asylum by the United States in 2000. Wamariya went on to graduate from Yale. Now 31, she is a human rights advocate and speaker based in San Francisco. We spoke to her about her experiences and about the 25th commemoration of the Rwandan genocide. The conversation has been edited for clarity and for length. Was it difficult to relive your story in your book? I have spent 15 years learning how to best share our experiences and I had to sacrifice every part of my privacy to share my story. You have said you don't like the word genocide. The word is clinical. It has been used to quantify the numbers of those killed. But it does not tell you about the [individual] people who were hurt or lost. It is just the entry point for talking about the horrors and what actually happened [in Rwanda] and elsewhere. I am more interested in expanding on how it feels, the emotional, personal side of the horror, the before, during and after. You also prefer not to be called a "refugee." What vocabulary should we use? I would prefer being called by my name or a person who sought refuge. The word refugee leads to stereotypes or expectations that don't allow us to see who someone is. During our travels, Claire and I learned to speak seven languages, but you could see the surprise in the faces of anyone who thinks that people seeking refuge [could not have such knowledge or] did not have a meaningful life before they fled. We need to see beyond the projections that we cast onto each other. In America, we all have stories about how we [or an ancestor] sought refuge. We clash when we forget that was the case or when [we] start to believe that one person's refuge story is better than or worse than another's. You wrote that you found a way to begin talking about those horrors after you read Elie Wiesel's Night, his memoir about the Nazi genocide of the Jews during the Holocaust. I read it when I was in eighth grade [in Chicago]. It awakened me to a shocking side of humanity. It offered me words to feel what I had thought was unspoken, and Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison gave me the freedom to speak. You later wrote about Elie Wiesel in a submission to the Oprah High School Essay Contest and said that maybe if Rwandans had read Night, they wouldn't have decided to kill one another. That essay also led to your appearance on Oprah, who arranged to fly your parents and siblings from Rwanda to her studio for a surprise on-air family reunion. Clementine's Ultimate Family Reunion We had not seen each other in 12 years. I felt gratitude and joy that I still have yet to find words to describe. But also anger that nothing could restore the time we had lost with each other. I have learned to forgive ... all that happened to separate us. Do your parents talk about the past? My parents live in a never-ending present, unable to talk about what happened to us. At first it was frustrating, but now I can understand that attitude. Your story is deeply intertwined with that of your older sister, Claire. Tell us about her. She is a heroine, like Xena the princess warrior, real and of our time. The map [of where the sisters traveled] is all Claire, her decisions about which place would be farther from wars and give us opportunity to live freely and to be seen for who we are and have a sense of agency and where we would have respect. For the past 10 years she has worked with many who have sought refuge in Chicago and with an organization called Women United for Immigrants and Refugees. You discuss the many difficulties of living in refugee camps in Burundi and elsewhere. How did you feel as a person? It is easy to get lost because all aspects of who you are, at least the things that used to make you a person, are stripped away. What are the important points for refugees to share? The person who has lived and survived in these conditions has to break the silence and talk not only of gratitude but the horror in these camps. In most, people have to walk at least hours to fetch water. Monthly food portions, if camps are lucky to receive any, are [often] maize.I invite everyone who is involved with refugee camps to have a meaningful conversation [with the refugees] they serve about what would make these places a place of refuge. What are your thoughts as you commemorate the 25th anniversary of the start of the Rwandan genocide? Every American and every person who wants to know what hate can do should look at what happened in Rwanda. If you want to know that peace is possible, you should also look at Rwanda now: [Rwandans] working together every day to create peace and to live beyond hate. I am very proud of Rwandans. Diane Cole writes for many publications, including The Wall Street Journal and The Jewish Week, and is book columnist for The Psychotherapy Networker. She is the author of the memoir After Great Pain: A New Life Emerges. Her website is dianejcole.com. © 2019 npr