Chinese authorities are using detentions in political indoctrination centers and data-driven surveillance to impose a digital police state in the region of Xinjiang and its Uighurs, a 10-million strong, Turkic-speaking Muslim minority Beijing fears could be influenced by extremism. Photo: Ng Han Guan (AP) A misconfigured online database has exposed new details of China’s tyrannical surveillance apparatus, which the country’s government has used to further suppress one of its most persecuted populations. In the past year, there’s been an uptick of reporting on China’s oppression of the Uyghurs. In August, for instance, Business Insider detailed how the mostly Muslim minority group, largely confined to China’s Xinjiang region, came to occupy “one of the most intrusive police states in the world.” That same month, a story in the Atlantic described how a million Turkic Muslims in China are being detained in so-called interment camps; forced, on top of being tortured and killed, to renounce the very faith that underpins their social identity—to adopt in its place a philosophy more consistent with that of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Here we see, at gunpoint, the involuntary “re-education” of entire communities and the manual obliteration of a culture through an apartheid predicated on extreme religious prejudice. Nothing could be worse. Behind all of this is a grotesque technological achievement whereby billions of dollars have been poured into the intensive monitoring of a people who, by the sheer mathematics of it all, could pose no real extremist threat to the security of the Red Giant. There’s no question that China has unleashed a surveillance apparatus unprecedented in its scale to collect even the most granular details about the daily lives of its citizens. New examples of that seem to arrive each day. This week, one security researcher reportedly found himself peering through the looking glass after stumbling upon a massive database reportedly controlled by a Chinese firm called SenseNets, which had inadvertently left its shades undrawn. ZDNet reported Thursday that data-breach hunter Victor Gevers, whose work has largely involved unearthing publicly accessible but otherwise confidential databases, discovered what was described as “highly detailed and highly sensitive information” on the residents of Xinjiang. Among the descriptors—names, ID card numbers, addresses, dates of birth, employers—was a steady stream of GPS coordinates being input at a rapid pace. Here’s a description of the find offered by ZDNet security reporter Catalin Cimpanu: For each user, there was also a list of GPS coordinates, locations where that user had been seen. The database also contained a list of “trackers” and associated GPS coordinates. Based on the company’s website, these trackers appear to be the locations of public cameras from where video had been captured and was being analyzed. Some of the descriptive names associated with the “trackers” contained terms such as “mosque,” “hotel,” “police station,” “internet cafe,” “restaurant,” and other places where public cameras would normally be found. According to Cimpanu, the database wasn’t just a forgotten relic of some retired census project. Instead, Gevers disclosed that, within a 24-hour period, the database had added some 6.7 million GPS coordinates, the telltale signs of an active surveillance operation. The most benign daily activities of the Uyghurs are being intently monitored as if through some celestial microscope. Reacting as he would in any other case, carrying a responsibility to warn companies when they’re inadvertently disclosing personally identifiable information, Gevers contacted SenseNets about the issue. According to ZDNet, the database was restricted shortly thereafter, blocked from being accessed from non-Chinese IPs. Gevers, Cimpanu wrote, “now regrets helping the company secure its oppression tool.” Surveillance in Xinjiang has reached levels exceeding even the wildest fever-dreams of English philosopher Jeremy Bentham, architect of the all-seeing Panopticon. There, the sky there is pockmarked by flocks of Dickian-esque robotic birds designed to evade detection by radar and human eye; a distorted reflection of nature turned deliberately menacing through mechanization. The reality in China, a place where even public bathrooms are being designed by government decree to keep track of every citizen’s movements, is more harrowing than any dystopia our imaginations can conjure.That’s because it’s real; it’s happening, not in some distant future, but right now; and every forecast today says it will only continue to worsen.

The FBI is dismantling a special unit that investigates international war crimes and hunts down war criminals – including suspected torturers and perpetrators of genocide, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting has learned. The unit, which was created a decade ago and has its roots in federal efforts to hunt Nazis living in the United States after World War II, has had a hand in many high-profile prosecutions. Most recently, its investigators helped take down the Liberian warlord Thomas Woewiju, whom agents found living a quiet life in Philadelphia. At trial, witnesses said Woewiju’s men herded civilians through checkpoints decorated with severed heads and strings of human intestines. He was convicted of perjury in July. Now, human rights advocates worry that criminals like Woewiju could evade justice. “These are difficult cases to prove because they need rock-solid investigations,” said Beth Van Schaack, a law professor at Stanford University who was deputy ambassador-at-large for war crimes issues in the Obama administration. Scrapping the FBI unit “is inevitably going to jeopardize prosecutions,” she said. In a statement, the FBI confirmed the shuttering of the war crimes unit but argued its dissolution “in no way reflects a reduced commitment by the FBI” to enforce human rights law. The agents previously dedicated to human rights work will continue that work as members of the FBI’s civil rights program, the agency said. But the move could run afoul of Congress, which mandated the unit’s establishment and funds its work every year as part of the FBI’s budget. Sources tell Reveal that most of the agents previously dedicated to human rights likely will now be assigned to other jobs and worry that perpetrators of torture and genocide will be free to act with impunity. In addition to finding international war criminals living in the U.S., the FBI’s human rights unit also has investigated and apprehended perpetrators of war crimes against Americans abroad, along with Americans who commit war crimes themselves – such as military contractors accused of killing civilians in Iraq and Afghanistan or U.S. citizens who fight alongside the Islamic State. All those efforts now could fall through the cracks. Human rights advocates, who have become increasingly concerned with President Donald Trump’s embrace of ruthless autocrats such as Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, worry that the move could be political. “We worry when we see something go from a tweet that is very hostile to a policy that is very hostile,” said Dixon Osburn, executive director of the Center for Justice and Accountability, a legal nonprofit that brings human rights cases in civil court. One of the center’s recent legal victories highlights the work the FBI unit needs to be doing, Osburn said. In February 2012, American journalist Marie Colvin was killed in an artillery assault on a media center in Homs, Syria. The center sued, and two weeks ago, U.S. District Court Judge Amy Berman Jackson ruled that “the defendant, the Syrian Arab Republic, engaged in an act of extrajudicial killing of a United States national by planning and executing an attack on the Baba Amr Media Center, and is liable to plaintiffs for the resulting injuries.” “A targeted murder of an American citizen, whose courageous work was not only important, but vital to our understanding of warzones and of wars generally, is outrageous,” Jackson wrote, “and therefore a punitive damages award that multiples the impact on the responsible state is warranted.” She ordered the Syrian government to pay the Colvin family’s funeral expenses and more than $300 million in compensatory and punitive damages. With the civil verdict in hand, Osburn said the government should be aggressively pursuing a criminal case against the Syrian officials responsible for her killing. “You have the determination that an American was murdered by senior leaders of a foreign government,” he said. “This is the sort of case where the FBI could invest some resources, the sort of case you could lose if you don’t invest in.” But with the shuttering of the FBI’s human rights unit, that seems less likely, especially with frequent tweets from the president that seem to glorify human rights violations. “When the Twitterverse starts ruling the budgets, that’s when we get concerned,” Osburn said. Correction, Feb. 15, 2019: A previous version of this story misspelled the name of the Center for Justice and Accountability’s executive director. It is Dixon Osburn. Aaron Glantz can be reached at aglantz@revealnews.org. Follow him on Twitter:@Aaron_Glantz. Copyright 2019 RevealNews.org

More horrifying attacks on women are still unfolding in Darfur. On Friday, February 8, six women were violently raped by government forces in North Darfur. During the rape, Kaltouma Yousef (19-years-old) was stabbed in the head with a knife, Fatima Haroun’s (40-years-old) head was seriously wounded, Hawaya Omar (40-years-old) suffered spinal injuries, and Hawa Saleh’s (29) legs were repeatedly wounded and her kidneys bruised. Sadly, this is not an isolated incident, but a part of al-Bashir’s well-orchestrated trend of al- Bashir’s brutal attacks against the genocide victims in Darfur, most of which go undocumented. Now is the time to advocate for and stand with the Sudanese people against Omar al-Bashir’s regime who is responsible for killing more than half a million men, women and children in Darfur. The regime currently continues the genocide of its own people across Sudan, where 50 people were killed in the last few weeks. This week’s attack on these women demonstrates that the current protests in Sudan are deeply rooted in the longstanding injustices that have been perpetrated by al-Bashir forces for almost two decades in Darfur and other marginalized regions of Sudan. There will not be peace, protection or justice for women in Sudan as long as al-Bashir is controlling the country. The protesters’ demands are legitimate and just. We, therefore, urge you to stand with the people of Sudan. Please speak up and ask your representative to publicly condemn these attacks on women and support protesters’ demand for change in Sudan. Given the long-standing history of genocide and crimes against humanity committed by the Omar al-Bashir regime, we call-upon you to ask your policymakers to press the government of Sudan to respect and adhere to the aspirations and demands of the Sudanese people, and to end attacks on women and innocent civilians. This issue must be met with intervention, respect for human decency, and at the minimum, humility by the international community. Please stand in solidarity with these women and add your voice to our Stand With Sudan campaign. With gratitude, Founder of DWAG, Niemat Ahmadi Darfur Women Action Group

12 February 2019 | Briefs & Advocacy: 2019, Top News | Author: ereeves | 1033 words image: Oxfam "Sudan: A genuine, peaceful people’s revolution in the making" Suliman Baldo and Lutz Oette in African Arguments (February 12, 2019) https://africanarguments.org/2019/02/12/sudan-revolution-genuine-peaceful-peoples/ "It’s a question of how and when President al-Bashir’s reign ends, not if." Sudan has been gripped by daily popular protests for the last month. The Western media has largely ignored these developments. Where it is the subject of brief articles, the uprising has been portrayed as spontaneous bread protests, which confuses their spark and circumstances with their causes. Accompanied by a focus on the brutal repression of the demonstrations, the coverage conveys images of suffering and powerlessness: in short, more of the same in a distant authoritarian state. [emphases in bold has been added--ER] The media neglect, besides the telling contrast to the Darfur coverage in the mid-2000s, is an unfortunate omission that feeds into complacency and misperceptions. It is an abdication of the critical role of the fourth estate. It also mirrors the woefully inadequate responses by policymakers. Both fail to recognise the protests as a popular, peaceful, genuine grassroots uprising – a people’s revolution in the making. The seeds of the uprising This uprising didn’t come out of nowhere. Since South Sudan’s secession in 2011, the survival of President Omar al-Bashir’s regime has been under threat. The loss of three-quarters of Sudan’s oil revenues led to severe economic crisis. At the same time, the regime has spent an estimated 70-80% of its revenues on security and the military. This includes the pursuit of newly-erupted conflicts in the Nuba Mountains and Blue Nile states. Corruption is also rampant in Sudan, earning those close to the regime billions of dollars while the majority of the population is becoming more and more impoverished. Foreign assistance, such as from the Qatari, Saudi and Emirati governments, has given the regime only limited breathing space. In September 2013, mass anti-government protests against fuel subsidy cuts were brutally repressed. As many as 185 protesters were killed with impunity. The movement learned its lesson and began to develop long-term strategies. In the face of years of oppression coupled with lack of opportunities, the youth became the driving force, building organisational capacity, working in the communities, and documenting abuses. Women also played a leading role, including through the No To Women Oppression campaign. They are fighting back against years of restrictions, humiliation and abuse in their daily lives and at the hands of the Islamist regime. Against this background, the outbreak of protests in the northern town of Atbara on 19 December 2018 did not come as a surprise. They were quickly followed by other well-organised and growing mobilisations. They brought together the youth movement, workers and professionals associations, and political opposition parties. They feed on popular culture, songs, reports and debates on social media. The Sudanese regime has resorted to its customary crackdown. Reports of excessive force, killings of protesters by snipers reportedly trained by Russian security personnel, arbitrary arrests, detention and torture abound. These attacks have not deterred the protests but fuelled them further. As the protesters name and shame individual perpetrators and draw public opinion on their side, the regime is looking increasingly isolated. How and when, not if Whatever happens next, most observers agree that President al-Bashir’s 30-year rule is coming to its end. It is only a question of how and how quickly. Sadly, many international policymakers believe al-Bashir will weather the storm and that his regime will continue to serve their respective strategic interests in Sudan. The lack of media attention reinforces this and will let these governments off the hook of having to deal with those protesting for peaceful and positive changes. The worst-case scenario is an escalation of violence, which protesters are seeking to avoid by all means, insisting that it is a peaceful movement. A transitional government is another scenario much talked about, raising the major question, and challenge, of the role to be played by anyone associated with the current regime. There are historical precedents for successful uprisings in Sudan in 1964 and 1985. As the spirit of democratic change quickly gave way to a return to authoritarian rule on both occasions, many analysts stress that lessons of past failures need to be heeded. Addressing the many problems in the country is paramount. High on the agenda must be: respect for political, religious and cultural diversity; sustainable and equitable development; and rooting out corruption. Other priorities include rebuilding of the rule of law; respect for human rights; and justice for past wrongs. Any transition will be a critical moment in Sudan’s history, with undoubted symbolic and potentially real impact in neighbouring countries such as Egypt and South Sudan. Western policy in tatters Western states’ policies of normalising relations with al-Bashir – built on a rationale of “better the devil you know” – are in tatters. Their assumption that Sudan’s current rulers ensure stability, a belief cultivated by the regime, has been exposed as the fallacy it always was. Their self-interest – be it US counter-terrorism intelligence-sharing, UK business interests or EU control of migration – is barely masked by the customary calls on the regime to prevent escalation and to show respect for human rights. For the EU, whitewashing the regime’s criminal militias is actually creating more migration from Sudan accompanied by gross human rights abuses. US interests in counterterrorism are legitimate, yet it is partnering with a regime that maintains close ties with radical Islamist groups that justify violent extremism in their propaganda as evidenced by the US’ own travel advisory on Sudan. It is incontrovertible that the regime has no democratic legitimacy. It is high time to listen to the people of the Sudan, not those who have denied them political freedom over the last three decades. -- Eric Reeves, Member of the Genocide Prevention Advisory Network www.sudanreeves.org Twitter@SudanReeves About Eric Reeves: http://sudanreeves.org/about-eric-reeves Philanthropy: https://wp.me/p45rOG-1Ze

A bipartisan group of U.S. senators have introduced Senate Resolution 34. This resolution puts pressure on the Trump Administration to declare that Burma is committing genocide and to impose sanctions on Burma's military, including the army chief General Min Aung Hlaing. Ask your U.S. senators to support and co-sponsor Senate Resolution 34 today. Senate Resolution 34 condemns Myanmar's genocide and crimes against humanity, not just against the Rohingya but other ethnic minorities. The resolution: Urges the U.S. Secretary of State to make a determination whether the actions by the Burmese military constitute crimes against humanity or genocide. Urges the U.S. Administration to impose targeted sanctions on Burmese military officials, including the army chief General Min Aung Hlaing. Calls on the Burmese government to allow full access to Rakhine State and full participation of UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency. Calls for ensuring that any refugees' return to Burma is voluntary, safe, dignified, and meet international refugee and human rights standards, and that the voices of the refugees are represented. Calls for Rohingya refugees to be able to return to their places of origin, or other locations as desired. Calls on the Burmese government to ensure full implementation of the recommendations of the Advisory Commission on Rakhine State, which includes providing equal access to full restoration or granting of full citizenship for the Rohingya population. Calls on the United States Government to continue to be a top donor nation for humanitarian aid in Burma and Bangladesh. Ask your U.S. senators to support and co-sponsor Senate Resolution 34 today. As a voter in the district, your voice is heard by your Members of Congress. Often, all it takes for your U.S. senator to co-sponsor a bill is a phone call from you and five other voters. When Congressional staffers tell me that "we're hearing from our district about the Rohingya," I know that we will likely gain that member's support. I'm telling you this to ask you to take the next powerful step and pick up your phone. One or both of your senators may have already co-sponsored Senate Resolution 34.If so, please use the number below to call that senator's office and simply thank them for co-sponsoring the bill. Click here for a list of the current co-sponsors of Senate Resolution 34. Call the Congressional Switchboard at (202) 224-3121 and ask to be connected to your representative's and senators' offices. Or simply search the web for the phone number of their office in Washington, DC. When you reach your senator's office, ask to be connected to the staffer responsible for foreign policy. (Before being connected, ask for the spelling of the staffer's name and their email address.) Simply tell the staffer - in person or on their voicemail - to support and co-sponsor Senate Resolution 34 calling for U.S. sanctions on Burma to end the genocide of the Rohingya. Leave your name, number, and city of residence to indicate that you live in the senator's state. Follow up with an email to the staffer. (The staffer's email will follow this format: "[first name]_[last name]@[senator's last name].senate.gov".) Email Simon Billenness at International Campaign for the Rohingya at simon.billenness@rohingyacampaign.org and report back on how your calls went. Let us have the names and emails of the staffers. And, finally, if this is the level of activism that you'd like to continue, contact me. I'm looking for a few good folks in every state willing to work together to form a local chapter of the International Campaign for the Rohingya. If that's you, let's talk! When the world says "Never Again" after an incidence of genocide, we have to mean it. Let’s make this a habit of calling Congress every week until they do the job of putting effective pressure on Burma. Thank you, Simon Billenness, Executive Director, The International Campaign for the Rohingya

Over 750,000 Rohingya refugees have crossed the border into Bangladesh since 2017, according to the UN [Jayanta Dey/Reuters] Bangladesh's Foreign Minister AK Abdul Momen has called on Russia, China and India to help the country tackle the Rohingya refugee crisis. In an interview with Anadolu news agency on Sunday, Momen said his government has proposed to establish a safe zone in Rakhine state in Myanmarfrom where the refugees fled state persecution in late 2017. "If a safe zone is created under the vigilance of China, Russia and India along with the ASEAN states, Rohingya people will be encouraged to return to their own land," he said. ASEAN stands for Association of Southeast Asian Nations, a regional bloc of 10 countries in Asia. Momen added that guaranteeing the refugees who return Myanmar's citizenship will be a precondition of the proposal, which he said has been appreciated by India. He hoped other countries would follow suit. Since August 2017, more than 750,000 Rohingya refugees, mostly women and children, have fled Myanmar and crossed into Bangladesh after Myanmar forces launched a crackdown on the Muslim-majority Rohingya community. The United Nations has also documented mass gang rapes, killings - including of infants and young children - brutal beatings and disappearances committed by Myanmar state forces. Myanmar authorities treat Rohingya as unlawful citizens or illegal Bengalis based on a controversial 1982 Citizenship Law. Bangladesh and Myanmar signed a repatriation deal in November 2017 with a two-year timeframe to return the Rohingya refugees to Myanmar. The repatriation has been postponed due to global concerns about the safety of Rohingya in their home country. Momen said the main goal is to "repatriate them to their country of origin with due dignity and safety", asking help from international actors. "There are 1.2 million Rohingya now staying in Bangladesh. Although we are not a rich country, we are one of the most densely populated countries in the world," Momen said, praising Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina for her "benevolence" in giving the refuge. He offered to send some refugees to friendly countries of Myanmar so that the living conditions of the refugees improve and together these states can put pressure on Myanmar to take back the refugees. Genocide The top diplomat termed Bangladesh's policy on Rohingya "a role model for humanity", calling their persecution "the biggest genocide since World War II". At least 43,000 Rohingya are missing and presumed dead, according to a March 2018 report (PDF) by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Parliamentarians for Human Rights. A UN fact-finding mission last year said Myanmar military's campaign, which refugees say included mass killings and rape, was orchestrated with a "genocidal intent". Last month, Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, said the military chief should be prosecuted for "genocide". Other genocides since WWII include the one in Bosnia's Srebrenica, which killed over 8,000 in 1995, and the Rwandan genocide, which killed between 500,000 and a million people in 1994. 'Foe to none' Momen said the influx of Rohingya refugees was triggered by Myanmar's policy and that the country should be held accountable. "Now, the question is how long we give them temporary shelter. They must go back to their country of birth. The problem has been created by our friendly country Myanmar, and they should resolve it." He warned that Rohingya refugees living in squalid makeshift settlements in the southern part of the country are at a risk of radicalisation. "If it lingers for a long period, our fear is that there could be a rise of radicalism, instability and uncertainty. This may cause difficulties not only for Myanmar and Bangladesh, but also for the whole region." Momen, however, assured that the Bangladesh government is dealing with the crisis with utmost sincerity and watchfulness, resulting in no report of radical activity until now.In reply to a question about the foreign policy of Bangladesh, the minister said: "The essence of our foreign policy is friendship to all and foe to none. We have no enemies." © 2019 Al Jazeera Media Network

The vast numbers drowning invisibly in the Mediterranean have evoked little European sympathy. Redefining this tragedy as the migrants genocide might bring a shock. In 40 years from now what we define as the ‘migration crisis’ in Europe will be reported in history books as the migrants genocide. The migrants genocide of the early XXI century unveils the banality of democracy and its supposed norms, principles, values and institutions. The violence committed by non-democratic regimes could be explained by their intrinsic oppression. In periods of huge instability, tyranny and violence, during which people claimed they were following laws and orders in perpetrating crimes against humanity, one would not excuse a genocide but rather contextualise it. The banality of evil in tyranny was however nothing compared to the banality of evil which democratic regimes allowed during the migrants genocide. The migrants genocide is a case study because, unlike most other instances, Europeans were not obliged to participate in that crime, as they represented the richest and most privileged people in the world—politically, socially and economically. Europeans weighed the price of becoming active citizens vis-à-vis the benefits of being passive consumers and they opted for the latter. Why did European governments perpetrate the migrants genocide? What kind of instruments did European democracies lack during the migrants genocide which they could have used to stop the sirens of hatred and violence? And, finally, how was it that even those Europeans who were not supporting their governments’ policies did not stop the genocide from occurring? Rich continent European governments claimed they could not allow the migrants to enter their borders as there were not enough resources to take care of them. Data reported by media, governments, politicians were scary. Data were however misrepresented and manipulated. It’s easy to lie with statistics; they even wrote books about it. Europe was a rich continent at the time but the mainstream narrative argued that to preserve the wealth accumulated—after centuries of colonial rule, technological innovation, imperialism and globalisation—it was better to build walls rather than bridges. Yet the migrants genocide was also one of the reasons for the internal disintegration of the European Union (EU), since the union closed its eyes, its borders and its wallet, allowing the genocide to proceed smoothly. This was necessary, it was said, to preserve what was left of the idea of Europe … but, of course, this accelerated the dissolution of the EU. Huge fights took place among European governments to ascertain who should open their harbours and borders to allow boats with just 20, 30 or even 200 people to reach their shores. Billions of euro were given to dictators in the EU’s neighbourhood to keep migrants from entering. The EU at the time was still composed of 28 member countries, counting half a billion people and an average GDP per capita among the highest in the world. Globalisation and nationalism were used alternately to justify whatever was more convenient to justify. Europe was trying to recover after a terrible global financial and economic crisis, it was said. People were angry with their own governments, since the fairy tales they had been told in the previous three decades regarding the benefits of the neoliberal recipes were responsible for the worst global crisis since 1929. Inequality was rising in the world, so that the richest 1 per cent owned half of global wealth. Those in power could take responsibility for the failure of their recipes by making things more equal or they could find someone who could take the blame. European governments found a perfect scapegoat—migrants. Governments portrayed themselves as the knights who would defend the people from the assault of migrants, who would challenge their standard of living, jobs, families and identity (whatever that was). Otherwise pious Europeans could grab their axes and rise against those who were purported to be provoking the economic crisis which was putting them on their knees—while allowing a few to get richer and richer. Weak civil society However complex and ideal democratic systems might be, there is nothing in the institutional framework to prevent the sliding down into a non-democratic regime. What European democratic regimes lacked at the time of the migrants genocide was a European demos and strong civil societies able to resist manipulation—thereby falling into the nationalist trap, projecting their fear and anger on to the vulnerable (migrants) instead of the mighty (those in power). There were no Europeans in the EU in the early XXI century: there were only French, Dutch, Italians, Germans and so on. No protests obliged governments to repeal ‘security laws’ supposedly passed to protect the ‘national interest’. Except for a few actors—courageous reporters, mayors, NGOs—‘civil society’ at the time was silent, if not itself kindling the fire of hatred and violence which culminated in the migrants genocide. The silence is what needs to be explained. The question is not about those who actively supported and promoted the propaganda and the laws necessary to perpetrate the migrants genocide. Blaming the bad guys does not explain why the supposedly good ones followed suit. ‘Civil society’ in Europe—the élite, the middle-income stratum, the working class and the unemployed—had a common denominator: they were consumers, inside and outside, not citizens. Of course, consumers were divided between those at the top and those at the bottom of the pyramid but neither would defend existing fundamental rights. In the consumerist mentality, one worries about rights only for the benefits one is supposed to receive from them, not for the sake of defending the principle—that is a net cost. European consumers defended what they believed to be their own interests, with no collective idea or responsibility, as if such defensive micro-conceptions could preserve them from extinction. Consumerism and individualism produced lonely and powerless people who thought that, even if something bad was happening to someone else, they were still safe. On a macro-scale, this was the perfect recipe to eliminate the pressure which the public could have exercised. The migrants genocide is a by-product of an individualistic and mercantilist ideological culture. And yet, whatever the macro-explanation might be, the migrants genocide is also (y)our fault. About Irene Caratelli Irene Caratelli is associate professor of international relations and global politics at The American University of Rome, where she is chair of the social sciences division. Her areas of expertise are international relations, European studies and international political economy. She was formerly a research fellow at the International Affairs Institute in Rome, focusing on international trade policies. © Social Europe Publishing & Consulting GmbH 2019

A series of Columbia and Barnard faculty, genocide survivors, and scholars spoke out against the ongoing genocide of Rohingya people in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma) and criticized certain programs within the University for their collaboration with Myanmar’s government at an event held at Barnard this weekend. The event, the International Conference for the Protection and Accountability in Burma, was hosted in collaboration with Columbia’s Institute for Comparative Literature. Myanmar’s military’s ethnic cleansing campaign began in August 2017, when it started systematically raiding entire villages inhabited by the Rohingya, a Muslim ethnic minority in Myanmar. Over 10,000 of the Rohingya people were killed, and their refugee population has now grown to over 700,000. Most of the Rohingya people are now living in internally displaced person camps in Bangladesh. The United Nations has called for a tribunal to hold the military officers accountable for their human rights violations, an action supported by many activists and government officials at the conference. The conference was sponsored by a variety of international human rights advocacy organizations, including Genocide Watch, the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights at Rutgers University, and the Montreal Holocaust Museum. Myanmar’s president, Aung San Suu Kyi, came to speak at Columbia’s World Leaders Forum in 2012, advocating for democracy, but also professing her support for Myanmar’s government, which continues to be largely responsible for carrying out the ongoing genocide in Myanmar. The Institute for the Study of Human Rights collaborated with official government authorities in Myanmar to construct a human rights curriculum for Myanmar’s schools and is currently training junior faculty at universities in Myanmar to promote human rights education in Myanmar’s law schools. At the conference, Yanghee Lee, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar, confirmed many of the reports already released by the UN, including a classification of the current military of Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya people to be a “textbook example of ethnic cleansing.” Lee also confirmed that, as of Jan. 25, Myanmar’s military had raided multiple Rohingya Buddhist villages, which contradicts reports from news outlets in Myanmar that continue to claim that the Rohingya people are burning and destroying their own villages. Until Lee’s confirmation, it remained unconfirmed whether the violence was ongoing. Lee classified the repatriation of Rohingya to their homeland to be a global issue and clarified that the Rohingya people will not be able to return to Rakhine State, the state on the Western coast of Myanmar understood to be the homeland of the Rohingya, at any time in the near future. She also called for a complete rewriting of Myanmar’s constitution, stating that Myanmar cannot be called a democracy until its genocidal campaign against its ethnic minorities is stopped. Professor Elazar Barkan, a professor of international and public affairs and the director of the ISHR, gave Friday’s keynote address. In 2015, Barkan and other professors at the ISHR began working with a group of junior faculty at universities in Myanmar. Barkan admitted that the ISHR should have been more suspicious of Kyi when she came to speak at the World Leaders Forum. Dr. Maung Zarni, a Myanma human rights activist advocating for an end to the Rohyinghan genocide, interrupted Barkan’s speech to criticize the University’s work in Myanmar, referring to its collaboration with the government as an act of “neo-colonialist intervention.” “I take issue with now not being the time for accountability,” Zarni said. “You frame accountability in the language of ‘miracles.’ Every Rohingya I’ve known wants justice. You do not have the moral or intellectual authority to tell Rohingya what they want and how they should want it.” Barkan responded by emphasizing that political pressure and talk of accountability will not put an end to the genocide at this point. Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, a Columbia professor in the humanities and a founding member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society, gave Saturday’s keynote address. Spivak, who is known for her activism around issues of colonialism, was critical of the notion of Western organizations imposing education onto communities in Myanmar or in any refugee camps. “People in the world of corporate money use the phrase human rights, [but] don’t actually understand human rights,” Spivak said. “They give gifts like tyrants. ... Education is a fashionable fetish.” As the conference came to a close, an organizer declared that a group of individuals from the many organizations taking part in the conference will begin a grassroots boycott of Myanmar. In a statement to Spectator, a Columbia spokesperson clarified that this boycott has no affiliation with or impact on the University. The ISHR’s initiative working with Myanmar’s universities and hosting Myanma faculty will remain underway. “Not organizations but a network of individuals and networks are officially declaring a boycott of Burma, economically, politically, diplomatically, culturally, and educationally,” Zarni said. The decision to boycott Myanmar on the part of many organizations at the conference was not the first of its kind in a university setting. This divestment follows that of two other universities from Myanmar. The University of Virginia officially divested from Myanmar in 2001 and McGill University followed suit in 2002. Staff writer Marianna Najman-Franks can be contacted at marianna.najmanfranks@columbiaspectator.com. Follow Spectator on Twitter @ColumbiaSpec. Copyright Spectator Publishing Company. All rights reserved. 2875 Broadway, New York, NY 10025

THE STRANGE case of the Uighur musician and poet Abdurehim Heyit reveals a lot about China’s incarceration and attempt to brainwash 1 million or more minority Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang province. Mr. Heyit, a master of the two-stringed dutar, was reported by Turkey to have died in one of the camps China built for the Uighurs. Denying that he was dead, China released a video of Mr. Heyit saying he was in “good health,” but the video could not be verified as genuine, and the uncertainty over his fate raises anew the disturbing question of what is going on in the concentration camps that China has tried to hide from the world. China has sought for years to assimilate the Muslim Uighur population into the majority Han Chinese, partially by flooding Xinjiang province with migrants from elsewhere. But the effort to crush the population has picked up speed under President Xi Jinping, whose government set up an archipelago of bleak outposts for carrying out forced indoctrination, to eradicate the Uighur language, traditions and culture. At first, China denied these camps existed; then China admitted that they exist but claimed they are for “re-education” and vocational training. As eyewitnesses have verified, the real purpose is much darker, to coerce the detainees to give up their language and culture. Experts have said more than 1 million Uighurs are now detained, out of a population of more than 11 million. Dolkun Isa, president of the World Uighur Congress, told us there may be 2 million or more imprisoned, based on word leaking out to Uighur families and those who have been released. Other nations, fearful of Chinese bullying and eager to preserve economic ties, have been slow to condemn or even acknowledge this ongoing crime against humanity. But on Saturday, the government of Turkey, a large Muslim state with a significant Uighur population, denounced China’s practices as “violating the fundamental human rights” of the Uighur population in Xinjiang and called the concentration camps “a great shame for humanity.” Other governments also should speak out against this cultural genocide. Mr. Isa is among those Uighurs abroad who also have paid a terrible price. His communications with his family were cut off 22 months ago, and his mother died without a farewell. His two brothers disappeared into the black hole of detention; one of them is a professor, among the 338 Uighur intellectuals whose detention has been documented. (The true number is undoubtedly higher.) Mr. Isa told us of worrisome reports that Uighur detainees are now being moved out of Xinjiang to prisons elsewhere in China, clouding their fate even further. China must be held to account for crimes against the Uighur population. Worthy legislation is pending in Congress to address this, and the time has come for the rest of the world to demand admission to the camps, in search of a lost Uighur musician and more than 1 million others.

Biafran refugees flee federal Nigerian troops on a road near Ogbaku, Nigeria in this 1968 photo. Between one and three million people are estimated to have died. (AP Photo/Kurt Strumpf) During the massacre of Igbos in Nigeria between 1966 and 1970, one to three million people died. In the decades since, writers have worked to make sense of the immense human tragedy. These literary representations of the massacres use the Holocaust as an important point of reference. The war in Nigeria, with its associated mass atrocities, is arguably one of the first major moments in postcolonial Africa when accusations of genocide were made. Following military coups in Nigeria in 1966, the military and ethnic extremists systematically targeted and killed Igbos across the then Northern and Western regions of Nigeria. Massacres of Igbos and other Easterners across the country led to thousands of deaths and the displacement of millions. The massacres led the Eastern Region of Nigeria to declare its secession from Nigeria. The region was renamed the republic of Biafra. Nigeria invaded Biafra in July 1967, leading to a protracted war. The federal government used starvation tactics which led to upwards of three million civilian deaths in Biafra. Biafra officially surrendered to Nigeria in January 1970. After its genocidal war, the Nigerian government proceeded to engineer a culture of denial. To counter that propaganda, writers reflecting on that past have often framed the war as genocide. A common feature in the writings is the comparison of Igbo experiences of atrocities to Jewish ones during the Holocaust. The Holocaust as cultural icon of genocide During the Biafran War, U.S.-based Igbo poet, Onwuchekwa Jemie, compared the murder of Igbos in Nigeria to the Nazi German murder of Jews during the Second World War. His poem, “Requiem” (from his 1970 poetry collection, Biafra: Requiem for the Dead in War) reflects this: In “Requiem,” Jemie catalogues the systematic persecutions and murders of Igbo civilians, which he considers similar to the Nazis’ “final solution.” The lines “a final solution / that failed again” encapsulate the poet’s defiant view that Biafra will survive the genocidal onslaught from Nigeria. Global history scholar Lasse Heerten has explained in his work on Biafra, that such comparisons of Igbo suffering to the Nazi genocide of Jews reveal the growing awareness of the Holocaust in African conflict zones at the time. The comparison of Igbo suffering to the Holocaust offers a way for the writers to internationalize Igbo experience in Nigeria. In so doing, they are sharing a moral message about the universal condition of human cruelty. The cruel human condition Similarly, the 1971 poem “Vultures” by Chinua Achebe reflects on the troubling realization that humans possess simultaneously a capacity for human care and a vulture’s inhumane savagery. The poet imagines a Nigerian military commander as a vulture and compares him to the Commandant of the Nazis’ death camp at Belsen: Achebe’s reference to the Holocaust evokes the Nazi death camps as a site of savagery: “fumes of / human roast.” He seems to be alluding to Paul Celan’s 1948 poem, “Death Fugue,” which describes the cremation of Jewish victims in the Nazi camps as a “grave in the sky.” Reference to the Holocaust in Achebe’s poem provides a way to meditate on the ironic condition of human cruelty. Another writer who used the Holocaust as a metaphor for moralizing about the human condition is Nobel laureate Wole Soyinka, who was jailed for his attempts to mediate between Biafra and Nigeria. His 1972 prison memoir The Man Died expresses his frustration over the unending cycles of brutality and the pattern of genocidal murders taking place in Nigeria. Soyinka’s other books, plays and poems on the 1966-1970 crisis equally draw on the Holocaust as a way to comment on cruelty. ‘And the World Has Remained Silent’ Such comparison between Igbo suffering and the Holocaust intending to convey a moral message on human condition can be found in several other writings, including Flora Nwapa’s Never Again, Chris Abani’s Graceland (2004), Nnedi Okorafor’s fantasy novels, Who Fears Death (2010) and The Book of Phoenix(2015), and notably too in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s novel, Half of a Yellow Sun(2006). In Half of a Yellow Sun, there are several instances comparing the experiences of Igbos to those of Jews under the Nazis. For example, the title of the character Ugwu’s story, ‘The World Was Silent When We Died,’ echoes the original Yiddish title of Elie Wiesel’s Holocaust memoir, Un di Velt Hot Geshvign, (“And the World Has Remained Silent”). Universalize can also mean generalize I believe these literary analogies between Jewish and Igbo experiences have helped to make the atrocities public and known. However, these analogies can also overwhelm the particulars of the Nigerian context of the crisis. Because the political contexts of such historical mass atrocities being compared vary significantly, these comparisons may come at the cost of our understanding of genocide in African states. Both African and European historical contexts within which these atrocities occurred may become de-territorialized and depoliticized. In the meantime, local suppression of political questions of Igbo self-determination and justice in the war’s aftermath remain unaddressed. Copyright © 2010–2019, The Conversation US, Inc.

Over the past few days thousands of desperate civilians have been fleeing a fresh outbreak of violence in South Sudan’s Equatoria state, seeking safety in neighbouring Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), many “suffering from trauma.” Some 5,000 people have settled in several villages along the border near the town of Ingbokolo in Ituri province in north-eastern DRC, the United Nations Refugee agency (UNHCR) said on Tuesday. “Most are women, children and the elderly” said UNHCR spokesperson Babar Baloch, explaining that they have been arriving by foot “exhausted, hungry and thirsty”. “Among them are people suffering malaria or other illnesses” he continued, noting that many of those traumatized have “witnessed violent incidents, including armed men reportedly murdering and raping civilians and looting villages”. According to reports, the violence has displaced another 8,000 people inside South Sudan, near the town of Yei. The clashes started on 19 January between the army and a rebel group known as the National Salvation Front, UNHCR says, blocking humanitarian access to affected areas. The conflict in South Sudan has created over 2.2 million refugees since 2013. Armed groups continue child release, but 19,000 remain: UNICEF Every child no longer with an armed group represents a childhood restored and a future regained – UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore Meanwhile, the UN Children’s Fund, UNICEF, reported that an armed group in South Sudan released 119 children on Tuesday in the south-west town of Yambio, who had been held captive by the militia group known as the South Sudan National Liberation Movement (SSLM), which signed a peace agreement with the Government in 2016. Of the newly-released, 48 were girls, with the youngest child being 10-years-old. More than 3,100 children being held by armed groups have now been freed. “Every child no longer with an armed group represents a childhood restored and a future regained,” said UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore. During the process, each child was registered and provided with a certificate stating they were no longer affiliated with the group. They then met social workers, health workers and education specialists, so their immediate needs could be assessed. UNICEF said that for each released child given help, one vulnerable child and their family from the host community receiving them, is also being supported to foster acceptance and promote a boost the chances of successful reintegration. “More and more children are being freed from armed groups and armed forces in South Sudan, and while this is an encouraging development, there is a long way to go before all of the more than 19,000 children still in their ranks are returned to their families,” asserted Ms. Fore. This year marks the 30th anniversary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which requires governments to meet the basic needs of children and to help them reach their full potential, according to the UNICEF chief. “Five months after the signing of a peace agreement, UNICEF calls on all parties to South Sudan’s conflict to recommit themselves to upholding these rights and to ensuring that children are never soldiers”, concluded Ms. Fore. COPYRIGHT © UNITED NATIONS

In 1994, an African nation’s long-simmering ethnic tensions boiled over, and more than 800,000 people were killed. Here’s how it happened It has been 25 years since more than 800,000 people were slaughtered in Rwanda during one of the worst genocides of modern history. The tiny, landlocked, central African country had been fraught with ethnic tensions for years, in part because the Belgians, who were the colonial rulers after the Second World War, favoured the minority Tutsis over the Hutu majority. Those resentments boiled over in 1959 when the Hutus rebelled, violence erupted and hundreds of thousands of Tutsis fled to safety across Rwanda’s borders. Belgium granted the country independence in 1962 and the Hutus took power. But hostilities did not end. The Tutsis reorganized and invaded in 1990, setting off a civil war that lasted for two years. Juvenal Habyarimana, a moderate Hutu who had been president since 1978, signed an agreement in 1993 that allowed for power to be shared between the Tutsis and the Hutus. But that just inflamed Hutu extremists. Roméo Dallaire, the Canadian lieutenant-general who was leading a United Nations observer force and peacekeeping mission known as UNAMIR, became alarmed when he heard rumours that a genocide was being planned. He alerted the UN in January 1994 but was told not to act. On April 6, 1994, a plane carrying Mr. Habyarimana and the president of neighbouring Burundi was shot down over the Rwandan capital of Kigali, killing all aboard. Some blamed the Hutu extremists. More recent information suggests it may have been the work of the Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), a Tutsi militia led by Paul Kagame, who has been the president since 1994. The downing of the plane launched a genocide. Hutus took to the radio and urged fellow Hutus to kill their Tutsi neighbours. Much of the carnage was committed with machetes, and hundreds of thousands of Tutsis, who are generally taller than Hutus, were literally chopped off at the knees or massacred in the most brutal fashion. Many moderate Hutus were also killed. At the peak of the slaughter, which lasted more than three months, more than 8,000 people were being murdered each day. Lt. Gen. Dallaire requested a reinforcement of 5,000 troops in April. The UN instead pulled out of Rwanda. Meanwhile, a civil war was being waged between the RPF and the Rwandan armed forces and others. By early July, the RPF gained control of most of the country. Afraid of reprisals from the Tutsis, more than two million Hutus fled for the borders. Many ended up in refugee camps in Zaire, which is now known as the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The exodus created another humanitarian crisis. It was into this situation of widespread death and mass migration that Canadian soldiers were dropped in July 1994 to start a new mission known as UNAMIR II. In pictures: Looking back at Rwanda’s horrors (Warning: Includes graphic content) "It was on a Goma street that I got my first close look at multiple deaths. The body count was over 80, mostly women and children. There they lay, trampled to death ... I remember thinking what a cruel twist of fate. Some of these people must have walked hundreds of kilometres to reach a safe haven, only to die like this, trampled to death by their own countrymen as the mortar fire fell." "That evening I transmitted a photograph back to The Globe and Mail. First it went to London, then to Washington, then to Canada, all in a matter of minutes. The photograph showed a young boy dying of starvation and thirst while lying only a matter of feet from hundreds of sacks of rice and grain. It took over a week for that food to arrive." "Human columns were still streaming through the border. To one side I saw what I thought was a rubbish heap. When my eyes focused through the acrid haze caused by dust and wood smoke, I realized what had happened. The mortar fire I had heard had landed in the midst of people walking through the night, and I could see bodies, dozens and dozens of bodies, maybe hundreds. I could describe what they looked like but I don't think you want to know what a little girl resembles after she has been hit by mortar fire." "It may sound strange, even callous, but as I sit here in emotional decompression, I cannot help but think of the dying faces that I focused my camera on, and wonder at the process that has been triggered in my conscience. Grace, at the end, is a universal desire. None of us wants to die an anonymous death. That is as far as I’ve got." © Copyright 2019 The Globe and Mail Inc. All rights reserved.