May 24, 2018—How do you organise a successful genocide – in Turkish Armenia a century ago, in Nazi-occupied Europe in the 1940s, or in the Middle East today? A remarkable and newly-published investigation by a young Harvard scholar – focusing on the slaughter of Armenians in a single Turkish Ottoman city 103 years ago – suggests the answer is simple: a genocidal government must have the local support of every branch of respectable society: tax officials, judges, magistrates, junior police officers, clergymen, lawyers, bankers and, most painfully, the neighbours of the victims. Umit Kurt’s detailed paper on the slaughter of the Armenians of Antep in southern Turkey in 1915, which appears in the latest edition of the Journal of Genocide Research, concentrates on the dispossession, rape and murder of just 20,000 of the one and a half million Armenian Christians slaughtered by the Ottoman Turks in the first holocaust of the 20th century. It not only details the series of carefully prepared deportations from Antep and the pathetic hopes of those who were temporarily spared – a story tragically familiar to so many stories of the Jewish ghettoes of eastern Europe – but lists the property and possessions which the city authorities and peasants sought to loot from those they sent to their deaths. The local perpetrators thus seized farms, pistachio groves, orchards, vineyards, coffee houses, shops, watermills, church property, schools and a library. Officially this was called “expropriation” or “confiscation”, but as Umit Kurt points out, “huge numbers of people were bound together in a circle of profit that was at the same time a circle of complicity”. The author, born in modern-day Gaziantep – the original Antep – is of Kurdish-Arab origin, and his spare, dry prose makes his 21-page thesis all the more frightening. He draws no parallels between the Armenian Holocaust – a phrase the Israelis themselves use of the Armenians – and the Jewish Holocaust nor the current genocidal outrages in the modern Middle East. But no one can read Umit Kurt’s words without being reminded of the armies of ghosts who haunt later history; the collaborators of Nazi-occupied France, of the Polish collaborators of the Nazis in Warsaw and Krakow and of the tens of thousands of Sunni Muslim civilians who allowed Isis to enslave Yazidi women and destroy the Christians of Ninevah. These victims, too, found themselves dispossessed by their neighbours, their homes looted and their property sold off by the officials who should have protected them as they faced their own extermination. One of the most powerful of Kurt’s arguments is that a central government cannot succeed in exterminating a minority of its people without the support of their fellow citizens: the Ottomans needed the Muslims of Antep to carry out the deportation orders in 1915 – rewarded with the property of those they were helping to liquidate – just as the local people needed the central authority to legitimise what we would today call war crimes. Umit Kurt is one of the few academics to recognise the growing economic power of the Ottoman Armenians in the decades before the genocide; “the Muslim community’s envy and resentment,” he writes, “played a central role in the hate-mongering atmosphere”. So, too, did repeated Ottoman claims that the Armenians were helping Turkey’s Allied enemies – the same “stab in the back” betrayal routine which Hitler used to rally the Nazis against communists and Jews in the Weimar Republic. In the Middle East today, it is the “infidels” – the “Crusader” (i.e. pro-Western) Christians -- who have been fleeing for their lives for supposedly betraying Islam. You would have to have the proverbial heart of stone not to be moved by the story of the Antep Armenians in the spring of 1915. Although initially harassed by the murderous Ottoman “Special Organisation” – Teskilat-i Mahsusa, the nearest equivalent to the Nazi Einsatzgruppen of the 1940s – and subject to temporary arrest, the Armenians of Antep were, at first, left alone. But they saw Armenian transports from other towns passing through Antep, the first containing 300 women and children, “injured, their wounds infected and their clothes in tatters”. For two more months, deportation convoys moved through the town and into a wilderness of suffering. “Armenian girls and boys had been kidnapped; women’s belongings and money had been plundered; they had been raped publicly with the active complicity of gendarmeries and government officials.” Like the Jews of Europe who were initially left untouched by the genocide of their co-religionists, the Antep Armenians could not believe their possible fate. “In spite of everything that was happening around us…” one eyewitness wrote, “the number of those who buried their heads in the sand like an ostrich was not small. These people convinced themselves that they were happy, and they were trying to deceive themselves into believing that a similar deportation was not possible for Aintab [sic] and that nothing bad would happen to them.” Like brave Polish families and the few Oskar Schindlers of Nazi Germany, a few courageous Turks opposed the Armenian genocide. Celal Bey, the governor of Aleppo – 61 miles from Antep – refused to deport Armenians. But he was dismissed. And the Christian Armenians of Antep were doomed. On 30 July, 50 Armenian families were ordered to leave in 24 hours. First, only Orthodox Christians were sent away, leaving all their valuables behind. A survivor recalls that “our neighbours, the Turks, were singing from their homes, we could hear them…‘The dog is on its way’…” A week later, another fifty families were deported, only to be attacked by militia bandits led by the manager of the local Agricultural Bank. Inside Antep, women were raped and sent to local “harems”. A local village head (“mukhtar”) threw six Armenian children from a mountain to their deaths. The convoys grew larger – 1,500 Armenians from Antep on 13 August, for example – and sent, by train or on foot, to Aleppo and Deir ez-Zour. Then came the turn of Catholic Armenians. A pitiful account survives of a thanksgiving service held by Protestants – the only Armenians to escape liquidation so far – in which one of their leaders miserably pleaded with his people to do nothing which might annoy the Turkish authorities. “Let no one take into his home a child or anyone else who has been told to go, whether they be of those passing through the city as refugees or from among our own friends and relatives in the town.” No good Samaritans there. But of course, the Protestants, too, were deported. Of 600 Protestant families, almost 200 had been annihilated at Deir ez-Zour by January 1916. The local Antep police chief was promoted for his enthusiasm. In the so-called “deportation committees” who decided the Armenians’ fate could be found Antep’s local member of parliament and his brother, a variety of local officials, the president of the municipality, two officials in the finance department, two judges, a magistrate, the first secretary of Antep’s court, a former mufti, two imams, two ulema, two village sheiks, the secretary of a religious charity, a doctor, a lawyer and the director of an orphanage. “No member of these local worthies,” writes Umit Kurt, “did anything to protest the deportations, hide the vulnerable, or stop the convoys.” Of Antep’s 32,000 Armenians, 20,000 perished in the genocide. But truly the ghosts survive. By chance this week, I was finishing Martin Winstone’s shocking history of Nazi rule in the occupied “general government” of Poland, “The Dark Heart of Hitler’s Europe”, and discovered that the Jews – and Poles – of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin often went through exactly the same process of false hope, collaboration and annihilation as the Armenians of Antep. While most Poles behaved with courage, dignity and heroism, a minority of gentiles – and this is why the current government of Poland is threatening to punish anyone who talks of Polish collaboration with the Nazis – “participated directly in the murder process”, according to Winstone. They included the Polish “blue” police – ordinary cops in their usual blue uniforms – but also local peasants in the Lublin area, many of whom robbed their victims before beating them to death. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fugitive Jews fell victim to perpetrators “who were village heads, members of the village guards formed during the occupation, or blue policemen acting unofficially”. When 50 Jews were discovered hiding in Szczebrzeszyn, a “crowd looked on”. A powerful factor in the murder and denunciation of Jews, the author concludes, was “a lust for Jewish property”. And today, in the Middle East, we know all too well this familiar pattern of local villainy turned against neighbours, Christian girls in Ninevah seized by Islamists, Yazidi families torn apart and their homes looted by local Sunni militias. When Isis fled the town of Hafter, east of Aleppo, I found the documents of the local Isis courts; they proved that Syrian civilians had betrayed their cousins to the Egyptian judges of the Islamist courts, that neighbours had sought financial reward by denouncing those who had lived beside them for decades. In Bosnia in the 1990s, as we know, Serb neighbours slaughtered their Muslim compatriots, raped their women and seized their homes. No, this is not something new – but it is something we too often forget. When my own father was asked by the British government in 1940 to name those in Maidstone, Kent, who might collaborate with the Nazis after an invasion, he put one of his best friends, a local businessman, on his list of those who would assist the Germans. Ethnic cleansing, genocide, mass sectarian atrocities might be directed from Constantinople, Berlin, Belgrade or Mosul. But war criminals need their people to complete their projects or – to use an old German expression – “to help to give the wheel a push”. © 2018 | The Independent

April 26, 2018—Eighteen people, including two priests, were killed in an attack on a church in Makurdi, the capital of Benue State, on Tuesday. The killings were blamed on herdsmen and in retaliation 11 ethnic Hausa were killed and two mosques were attacked. Nigeria's upper and lower houses of parliament have now called for President Muhammadu Buhari to appear before them over the continuing clashes between herdsmen and farmers and explain what the government has been doing to stop the violence. The lawmakers also called for the replacement of Nigeria's security chiefs. Yakubu Dogara, speaker of the lower house of parliament, tweeted that the parliamentarians could not look on as citizens were being killed. An ECOWAS summit in Nigeria's capital Abuja on Thursday brought West African leaders together to address the issue. "We are aware of the recent escalation of the conflicts between herders and farmers, but there is no doubt that such conflicts are a common phenomenon in most parts of Africa," said Nigerian Interior Minister Abdulrahman Dambazau as he addressed the summit. ECOWAS members acknowledged that the problem was regional as nomadic groups often cross regional borders. They said there was a need for greater investment in livestock management, the livelihood of the herders, and that they had drafted a common agricultural policy. Around 400 people have died in the clashes since the start of the year, according to a report by the US-based Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED). But the conflict is not new. According to the International Crisis Group, 2,500 people died in 2016. Around 175,000 have fled their homes and live as displaced persons within the country. Government critics say that Buhari and his administration have not done enough address the issue. Perpetrators go unpunished Nomadic cattle breeders need water and grass for their livestock so they send them to graze on local farmland. But that angers farmers who are using the land, and the scarce resources at their disposal, to grow crops. In recent months, a growing number of herdsmen and farmers have taken up arms and formed militias and the conflict has spread. "People are taking the law into their own hands," says Osai Ojigho, director for Amnesty International in Nigeria. The conflict tension has spread to as many as 17 states in Nigeria, but Benue is the state that is most affected. "Over time, populations have expanded around the areas where the nomadic communities have often moved their cattle across the country. And this goes beyond Nigeria, across the entire Sahel and West African region," says Ojigho. The biggest problem, says human rights activist Sarli Sardou Nana, is that the perpetrators are not punished. "If nobody is being arrested, if nobody is being persecuted, then what people think is: I have to defend myself," he told DW. Land, ethnicity, religion and politics The state of Benue lies in central Nigeria. It's a place where the predominantly Muslim north and the Christian south meet. The recent attack on the church was, however, different to previous ones, which tend to escalate around land issues. "The pattern of Tuesday's attack was different from prior attacks," Cheta Nwanze of SBM Intelligence told news agency AFP. "So, to my mind at least, someone is taking advantage of the problem." The conflict has changed, Nana agrees. "This conflict was initially a conflict over natural resources between farmers and herders, so people were competing over land. But gradually it was politicized and there are also religious manipulations that have been brought into the conflict. There are also criminal elements that have been involved. So there are hired killers for example," he said. With his NGO Stop Genocide Action Group, Nana is trying to address some of these issues. "When you kill a three-day-old child, that child is neither a farmer or a herder. You're killing the child because of their ethnic or religious background. That is genocide," he said. Earlier this week Laolu Akande, a media assistant to Nigeria's Vice President Yemi Osinbajo, wrote on Twitter that he believed that whoever was behind the conflict was apparently trying to stir up a religious conflict. Can 'cattle colonies' help? Speaking to DW, Benue State's governor, Samuel Ortom agreed that the central government has to do more. "The federal government has the prerogative of enforcing the laws of the land. I don't have state police. I don't have a state army, I don't have the navy and airforce and all that," the governor said. President Buhari, on the other hand, has said that his government is doing everything in its power to maintain peace and security. Last year the state of Benue passed a law banning pastoralists from moving around on its territory. But the attacks and retaliatory attacks are have not stopped. One suggestion that often comes up is the concept of "cattle colonies" or designated grazing areas for pastoralists. That would mean that they could no longer continue their nomadic way of life. Ortom, however, does not believe that this can work: "Where will you get the land?" he asks. "In the 1950s, when cattle routes were designated and grazing areas were carved, the total population of Nigeria was less than 40 million people. Today we are approximated to be over 200 million." Auwal Ibrahim Musa from Transparency International in Nigeria thinks that the cattle colonies can't be implemented on a large scale. "The only solution is that people talk to each other," he says. The reason these conflicts have escalated is, on the one hand, a lack of leadership from the side of the government and also the rising poverty and unemployment in the area. "Young people from both sides are victims of the state. They have no jobs, they have no proper orientation or understanding on how to live amicably or in harmony with one another," Musa says. Nigeria is not the only country affected by such communal tensions. Similar clashes have occurred have cropped up in Mali, Ghana and Niger. Adrian Kriesch, Jane Nyingi, Uwaisu Idris and Stefan Ehlert contributed to this report. (C) 2018 Deutsche Welle http://www.dw.com/en/nigerias-communal-violence-its-about-more-than-land/a-43550443

April 26, 2018—Thousands of villagers around east Zimbabwe’s Marange diamond fields took to the streets on Monday to protest the looting of diamond revenue and were met by armed soldiers and police who fired tear gas canisters to disperse the demonstrators, according to witnesses interviewed by Human Rights Watch. The police argued that the protest had not been authorized under the repressive Public Order Security Act (POSA) which severely limits freedom of association, public debate, and criticism of the government. Human Rights Watch has documented how Zimbabwe’s armed forces have coerced children and adults into carrying out forced labor, and tortured and harassed local villagers when they seized control of the diamond fields. Armed forces personnel also killed more than 200 people in Chiadzwa, a previously peaceful but impoverished part of Marange, in late October 2008. In March 2016, former president Robert Mugabe, while providing no evidence, told the state broadcaster that diamonds worth more than US$15 billion had been looted in Marange. No one has been held to account for the alleged looting. After years of alleged diamond revenue looting by state-owned companies, with no benefits to the local communities, the villagers’ protest is an indication that patience is wearing thin. According to the Centre for Natural Resource Governance, which works closely with Marange community activists, representatives of the Marange communities petitioned the Parliament of Zimbabwe in March to “ensure diamond mining contributes to development of the health, educational and road infrastructure of the Marange community, especially areas affected by diamond mining.” The Zimbabwe authorities have failed to ensure greater revenue transparency from diamond mining. Mechanisms for regulating diamond mining are needed to ensure the rights of local communities to information, and to protect them from forced evictions and from negative health and environmental impacts of mining. The government’s heavy-handed response to the situation in Marange is counterproductive and likely to fuel violence. Authorities should investigate the violence, hold those responsible for any abuses to account, and open channels for genuine and constructive dialogue to address the communities’ concerns. The global rough diamond industry regulatory body, the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme, should also ensure it is adequately equipped to investigate allegations of serious human rights abuses and the looting of Marange diamonds.

Ex-foreign secretary warns of monsoon threat and calls for issue to be raised at G7 talks Rohingya refugees prepare for the monsoon in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. Photograph: Richard Tsong-Taatarii/Zuma Wire/Rex/Shutterstock David Miliband has called on the international community to step up its support of Rohingya refugees in southern Bangladesh before the monsoon. During a visit to the refugee camps, the former UK foreign secretary said the issue must be discussed at the G7 meeting in Quebec, Canada this week, saying there was “real fear” among the refugees about the rainy season Miliband, the chief executive of the International Rescue Committee, said the positioning of the refugee camp would have serious implications during the monsoon. “The first thing that strikes me is the sheer scale,” Miliband said. “Some 600,000 people in a camp, albeit one with subdivisions in it, is twice the size of the world’s largest refugee camp. The scale is huge. Secondly, I’ve never seen a refugee camp built on such uncertain territory.” Humanitarian agencies are rushing to improve structures and roads in the hilly campsite. Massive deforestation occurred in the area as the refugees created shelters after fleeing from Myanmar during the crisis last summer, leading to a serious risk of floods and landslides in the camps. “Until last year, this was a forest, dominated by elephants,” Miliband said. “It’s undulating terrain with soft soil and although it was dry yesterday, it immediately became obvious about the dangers in a monsoon situation.” According to the UN, one in three health centres at the site could be at risk. There are also concerns that tracks through the camp could become impassible, which would lead to difficulties in distributing food. The refugees’ tents are built out of bamboo and tarpaulins, making them highly vulnerable in storms. “There was real fear,” Miliband said. “Fear for relatives stuck in Myanmar, but also fear about the consequences of mudslides and landslides, never mind cyclones.” Miliband praised the Bangladeshi government for allowing hundreds of thousands of refugees to cross its border last year, fleeing alleged war crimes in north Myanmar. He said it was also important to support host communities who had been significantly affected by the influx of refugees. Miliband told the Guardian: “The [local population] have seen inflation. They have seen the loss of their forestry. One person was talking to me about snakes that have come from the forest and are now a menace. “So, I think it’s important for the G7 meeting to recognise that if it is going to address the refugee issue, it also has to address the host population issue too. “The international sector needs to step up. The arrival of Sheikh Hasina, the [Bangladesh] prime minister, at the G7 meeting in Canada this week means that no one has any excuse for not recognising the scale of the crisis and stepping up to address it.” (c) 2018 The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/05/david-miliband-world-must-step-up-support-rohingya-refugees-monsoon-bangladesh

If the U.N. withdraws peacekeepers from a long-contested oil-rich enclave, it's likely to spark further fighting in an already unstable region. An Ethiopian U.N. peacekeeper patrols the Amiet Market in Abyei. The market has become the largest trading hub in the region and a symbol of peace between the Misseriya nomads from Sudan and the Ngok Dinka from South Sudan. Local leaders use the market to resolve issues of conflict and are working together to bring stability to the area, which has been contested for more than ten years. (Sam Mednick) ABYEI, Sudan/South Sudan — Landlocked and lawless, the region of Abyei straddles Sudan and war-torn South Sudan’s borders, yet the arid expanse belongs to neither country. When the two countries signed a comprehensive peace agreement in 2005, which led to South Sudan’s independence, they couldn’t agree on boundary lines. As a result, Abyei’s status remains unresolved to this day. The oil-rich Abyei box, as it’s called, is shared by the Misseriya Arab nomads from the north and the Ngok Dinka, a South Sudanese cattle-herding tribe. After fighting erupted in 2011, Sudan and South Sudan agreed to allow a neutral peacekeeping mission to foster security until a political solution was reached. Seven years later, political stalemate in the contested region is threatening to destabilize an already fragile region. With no government, judicial system, or police force, Abyei’s 165,000 Sudanese and South Sudanese inhabitants depend on thousands of Ethiopian peacekeepers, part of the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei, to maintain stability. But their mission may be winding down. In May, the U.N. Security Council agreed to extend the peacekeeping mission’s mandate in the disputed area while scaling back troops. Unless both South Sudan’s and Sudan’s governments show “measurable progress” on border demarcation, the U.N. says the peacekeeping mandate won’t be renewed after the six-month extension, which expires in October. The mandate also states that without progress, the number of authorized troops in Abyei will decrease to 3,959 in October from 4,500. Further reductions or an end to the peacekeeping mission could have dire consequences not only for Abyei but for South Sudan’s crippling five-year civil war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and displaced millions. “If you trigger further instabilities in Abyei box, it can have a domino effect for what’s happening in South Sudan … making it more chaotic,” said Stefano Ellero of the European Union development team. If the U.N. troops pull out, it would have a “deadly” effect on the present situation, turning Abyei into a “no man’s land where anybody can come in and do whatever he wants,” Ellero said. What was meant to be an interim six-month mission is now well into its seventh year and has transformed the U.N. into the area’s de facto government. Some peacekeepers say they’re concerned that the absence of political progress has created a vacuum, threatening law and order and the area’s overall growth. Two conflicts in 2008 and 2011 have reduced most of Abyei to rubble. Derelict buildings line Abyei town’s sparse dirt roads. Hospitals have scant supplies, and schools lack desks, chairs, and often teachers. When Sudan last bombed the town seven years ago, most of the population fled to the south, closer to South Sudan’s border where they felt safer, leaving the bustling town of Abyei a shell of what it once was. In recent years, some people have started returning to the center in an attempt to rebuild their lives. While progress has stalled at the political level, the two sides have stopped waiting for their governments to reach a solution and begun reconciling. “Our communities have accepted to live together here,” said Akonon Ajuanja, a Ngok Dinka chief in Abyei. “We have no problem with the Misseriya. Our problem is with the Sudanese government.” Doelbit Ali, a Misseriya nomad, said: “Each person says this land is theirs, but we don’t want to get involved with the politics.” Although he believes Abyei belongs to Sudan, he says he likes the Dinka and wants the politicians to “stay away.” Since signing a grassroots peace agreement in 2016, leaders from the north and the south have established a peace committee, meeting once a week to address issues such as violence, theft, and cattle raiding. They’ve also created the Amiet market, which has become a source of livelihood for both groups and is situated between where the Misseriya graze with their cattle and where the Ngok Dinka live. “Even though there is a stalemate regarding the political situation, it’s very important that these people at the grassroots level live in harmony,” said Victor Onenchan, the head of office in Abyei for the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization, which has been funding and facilitating the peace committee since 2017. Despite progress at the local level, humanitarian organizations and residents say Abyei’s situation is fragile with both the Dinka and Misseriya blaming the other side for sending in armed men in attempts to destabilize the area. “Sudan doesn’t want the Dinka to settle here. It’s their goal to kill and rape people,” said an Abyei resident who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of his safety. Since Sudan controls the oil fields in the north of the box, he says its government sends soldiers to disrupt the peace so that the area won’t be overrun by South Sudanese, who have been spreading out, although not near the oil fields. It appears that Sudan’s government doesn’t want too many South Sudanese near Abyei, lest they get too comfortable or stake a claim to the area. TThis month, a 19-year-old Dinka woman, Nyawach Yel, was beaten and almost raped by two Misseriya men from Sudan while walking from Abyei town to visit her mother in a village four hours away. “They called me over and said this is the place we rape women,” she said. Sitting on a bed in the yard outside her small hut in Abyei town, Yel’s voice is barely audible as she clasps her hands and looks at the floor. “I thought they were going to kill me.” Yel escaped her attackers but says the harassment outside Abyei town, where there are often fewer U.N. peacekeepers, is rife. She says the Sudanese are trying to provoke the South Sudanese to retaliate so that they can burn their houses to the ground and chase them out of the area. The Sudanese deny the allegations. “Crimes are happening because of the lack of government on both sides,” said Jama el-Sadiq, the chairperson for the peace committee on the Sudanese side. He says the government in Khartoum has assured him that it wants peace. Luka Biong Deng, a professor at the Africa Center for Strategic Studies at the U.S. National Defense University, warns that without the U.N., Sudan will use the opportunity to gain control, which could provoke a reaction from the south. The U.N., together with the United States, might be able to push both governments to reach a solution, Deng says, while gradually reducing U.N. forces in Abyei and increasing funding for other development projects. While the U.N. says it will continue to play a role in urging both parties to move closer to finalizing Abyei’s status, it’s “ultimately dependent on the will of Sudan and South Sudan to resolve this outstanding issue,” said a U.N. Security Council diplomat who wasn’t authorized to speak on the record. Previous attempts by both countries to find solutions have failed. In 2013, South Sudan held a unilateral referendum in which residents voted almost unanimously in favor of Abyei joining the south, but it wasn’t recognized by Sudan’s or South Sudan’s government or by the international community. Sudan is pushing for a joint administration between the two sides; however, South Sudan’s government wants to hold another referendum. If the two governments continue to fail to resolve the conflict, the international community — and the local one — will have no choice but to take on the hard work of reconciliation and coexistence themselves. South Sudan’s government has admitted as much. Unless the U.N. and other countries take control of the process, it will never be resolved, says Deng Arop Kuol, South Sudanese President Salva Kiir’s spokesman for Abyei: “The two presidents have reached a point where they can’t solve this.”

Turkish soldiers patrol in Kurdistan Region's Avashin area, Duhok province last month. Photo: Ozkan Bilgin/Anadolu Agency ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Turkey has doubled its military presence in the Kurdistan Region to “eliminate terror,” the prime minister said on Sunday. “We have doubled our presence in northern Iraq. We have exactly 11 bases. Our aim is to eliminate terror before it infiltrates our soil and to secure our border,” Binali Yildirim said during a meal to break the Ramadan fast with journalists. Turkish forces have pushed 27 kilometres into Kurdistan in their operation against the PKK, named a terror organization by Turkey, the US, and Europe. Ankara has stepped up its offensive against the PKK since the conflict resumed in 2015 after peace talks failed. Kurdish towns and cities in Turkey’s southeast were put under military curfews as the conflict was taken into urban areas for the first time. At least 3,492 people have been killed within Turkey since July 20, 2015, including 440 confirmed civilians, according to figures from the International Crisis Group. Turkey has also taken its conflict with the PKK across borders in Iraq and Syria. Euphrates Shield and Olive Branch were two operations in northern Syria. The purpose of Euphrates Shield in 2016 was to remove ISIS threats from the borders with Turkey and prevent Kurds from expanding control west of the Euphrates River. Olive Branch, earlier this year, was an operation against Kurdish forces in Afrin who Ankara considers as branches of the PKK, a charge the Kurds deny. Yildirim claimed that in Syria they have “cleared a 250-kilometre range in Afrin and Euphrates Shield region, meaning west of Euphrates, from terror.” Turkey has now turned its sights to focus on lands on the other side of the river, extending all the way to Iran. “We still have issues to the east of the Euphrates, which ranges throughout Iraq-Iran borders. This means that we still have issues with a 1,000-kilometre range there.” Turkey’s goal in its current operation in the Kurdistan Region is the PKK headquarters in the Qandil Mountains. A group of lawmakers have called for the Kurdistan Region parliament to convene a special session to address the issue of Turkish troops on their soil. (c) 2018 Rudaw http://www.rudaw.net/english/kurdistan/040620182

People queue for food aid distribution delivered by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and world food program in the village of Makunzi Wali, Central African Republic, April 27, 2017. A senior official from the International Committee of the Red Cross warns hate speech promoted on social media in war-torn Central African Republic is inflaming divisions between the Muslim and Christian communities. Jessica Barry is just back from a six month stint as ICRC Coordinator in Central African Republic. She says the humanitarian situation there is at a critical low and the international community must pay attention to the desperation of the people caught in the never-ending cycle of poverty and violence. She says no place in the country is secure. She says outbreaks of fighting in urban areas, such as the capital, Bangui, and in Bambari, CAR’s commercial center, has forced whole communities to flee and has triggered unrest in other areas. “Despite the huge efforts to keep communities together, the efforts of all the religious leaders to talk among themselves, to try and talk with the different communities — when I see that this is not working and when I see that there is hate speech arriving and being promoted on social media… the whole country is fragile, and we have to ring the alarm bells,” she said. Barry tells VOA Muslim and Christian communities in Bambari want to live together, but are being driven apart by violence and revenge attacks that trigger other assaults. She says it is much harder to persuade people to live side-by-side again, then to keep them separated. “There are so many different factors that just then make people frustrated and people join together. And then, yes, the provocations on social media are certainly, I would say a factor. Of course, the network is not so extensive in Central African Republic. It is in main towns. In Bangui. But, then rumors spread, and people talk,” she said. The Red Cross official says efforts to achieve peace in the Central African Republic are made more difficult by the extreme poverty, poor health conditions and low education levels in the country. (c) 2018 Voice of America http://allafrica.com/stories/201806040259.html

AfD politician Alexander Gauland photographed during the 2017 election camapaign Credit: Daniel Karmann/dpa via AP One of the leaders of the nationalist Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has been accused of attempting to trivialise the Holocaust after he described the crimes of Hitler and the Nazis as “a speck of birds*** in 1,000 years of glorious German history”. Alexander Gauland was condemned by Holocaust survivors’ groups and voices from across the political spectrum in Germany on Sunday for the comments which he made at a meeting of the AfD’s youth wing, the Young Alternative. “Yes, we plead guilty to those 12 years,” Mr Gauland said of the Nazi era. “But we have a glorious history and one, my friends, that lasted a lot longer than those damned 12 years. “Hitler and the Nazis are just a speck of birds*** in over 1,000 years of glorious German history.” The International Auschwitz Committee, a Holocaust survivors’ organisation, described the comments as “undignified and unbearable”. “For Auschwitz survivors, Gauland's coolly calculated and inflammatory statements are just repulsive,” Christoph Heubner, the group’s executive vice-president said. "Fifty million dead in the Second World War, the Holocaust, the doctrine of ‘total war’: to call it all birds*** is a slap in the face for victims, and a relativisation of what was done in Germany’s name,” Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, the chairman of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrat party (CDU) said. “Anyone who supports the AfD has to consider what they’re really buying into behind the bourgeois mask.” There is reportedly anger even inside the AfD over Gauland’s remarks. “The problem is that the statement was no birds***. This sort of fiasco keeps the AfD a fringe party because it puts people off,” an unnamed party figure told Bild newspaper. The 77-year-old Mr Gauland is one of two joint AfD leaders. Bild quoted insiders as suggesting he is being overshadowed by the other leader, Alice Weidel, and may have made the remarks in a calculated attempt to boost his profile. It is not the first time he has courted controversy. Last year he made headlines when he said: “If Britain has the right to be proud of Churchill then we have the right to be proud of the proud of the achievements of German soldiers in two world wars." There was also public anger after it emerged the rarely used first verse of the German national anthem was sung at the AfD youth wing event. The verse, which begins Deutschland, Deutschland, über alles, or “Germany, Germany, above all” is considered taboo because it was adopted by the Nazis. (c) 2018 The Telegraph https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/06/03/afd-leader-accused-trivialising-holocaust/

Governments must teach students more as Shoah fades from living memory, agency says European students need to be taught about more than just the Holocaust, Unesco said (Photo: Getty Images) Openly antisemitic attitudes are no longer limited to extremist circles and are increasingly voiced in the mainstream, the United Nations’ cultural agency has warned. Unesco said that Jews in Europe were feeling under "renewed danger" and that while teaching people about the Holocaust is important, it is not an adequate substitute for education that aims to prevent antisemitism. “If anti-Semitism is exclusively addressed through Holocaust education, students might conclude that anti-Semitism is not an issue today or misconceive its contemporary forms,” the agency said in a report published on Monday. “It is appropriate and necessary to incorporate lessons about anti-Semitism into teaching about the Holocaust because it is fundamental to understanding the context in which discrimination, exclusion and, ultimately, the destruction of Jews in Europe took place.” The study – jointly produced with the OSCE, a security and democracy watchdog – calls on European governments to uses education to make young people more resilient to antisemitic ideas and ideologies. Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay (Photo: Getty Images) “It is alarming that, as survivors of the Holocaust pass on, Jewish communities in Europe feel in renewed danger from the threat of anti-Semitic attacks,” Unesco’s director-general Audrey Azoulay said. “Anti-Semitism is not the problem of Jewish communities alone, nor does it require the presence of a Jewish community to proliferate. It exists in religious, social and political forms and guises, on all sides of the political spectrum.” She added: “This is both an immediate security imperative and a long-term educational obligation.” The document contains a list of tropes that students should be taught to identify as antisemitic. They include blood libel claims, the perception that Jewish people are more loyal to Israel than to their home countries and conspiracies that Jews are plotting to take over the world for their own gain. “It is appropriate and necessary to incorporate lessons about anti-Semitism into teaching about the Holocaust because it is fundamental to understanding the context in which discrimination, exclusion and, ultimately, the destruction of Jews in Europe took place,” the report says. “Similarly, the study of anti-Semitism should include some attention to the Holocaust, as a nadir of anti-Semitism in history, through the state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million Jews by Nazi Germany and their collaborators.” (c) 2018 The JC https://www.thejc.com/news/world/holocaust-education-not-enough-to-tackle-antisemitism-unesco-warns-1.464975

Tell Chevron to stop doing business with governments engaged in genocide. Sign the petition: https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-chevron-no-business-with-genocide?clear_id=true&source=email-tell-chevron-end-business-with-genocidal-regime-in-burma-2 Corporations, such as Chevron, that choose to do business with the Burmese government are supporting a regime that is on the road to the genocide of the Rohingya people. Tell Chevron that history will not be kind to corporations complicit in such crimes against humanity. Shareholders of Chevron have filed a formal resolution for vote at the company's annual shareholder meeting that presses the company to adopt a policy of not doing business with governments engaged in genocide or crimes against humanity. Tell Chevron CEO and Chair Michael K. Wirth to adopt this policy and stop doing business with genocidal regimes. Pressure on Chevron works. After pressure from activist investors led by Azzad Asset Management, Chevron told the BBC that it would work for "a business environment that respects human rights". But we need to pressure Chevron to use its full power to help end the genocide of the Rohingya. Chevron is the largest U.S. corporate investor in Burma (Myanmar). In partnership with Total of France and the Burmese government-owned Myanma Oil and Gas Enterprise (MOGE), Chevron owns the Yadana gas field and pipeline that generates billions of dollars for the Burmese government. In March 2015, Chevron entered into an additional production sharing contract with MOGE to explore in the Rakhine Basin off the coast of Rakhine State. Rakhine state is home to the Rohingya people, an ethnic minority that has been subject to a government-sanctioned campaign of repression and violence. In August 2017, a new military crackdown caused an estimated 700,000 Rohingya, half of children, to flee to neighboring Bangladesh. In November 2017, Amnesty International issued a report detailing how Rohingya in Myanmar are subject to a "vicious system of state-sponsored, institutionalized discrimination that amounts to apartheid," meeting the international legal definition of a crime against humanity. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum has reported that the Rohingya are “at grave risk of additional mass atrocities and even genocide.” For more information: "Stakeholders press energy companies doing business with Myanmar to address Rohingya crisis," "Chevron says it will push for Myanmar human rights," BBC World Service, November 16, 2017 (c) 2018 International Campaign for the Rohingya https://actionnetwork.org/petitions/tell-chevron-no-business-with-genocide?clear_id=true&source=email-tell-chevron-end-business-with-genocidal-regime-in-burma-2

Speech by the ICRC President Peter Maurer at the Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore, 2 June 2018 Relocated families receiving aid in Cox's Bazar. CC BY-NC-ND / ICRC / Sheikh Mehedi Morshed I'm pleased to address you today and to bring a humanitarian perspective to this discussion with security experts from the countries most concerned by the crisis in Rakhine. Thank you to the IISS for allowing the ICRC to provide its observations on this platform – it is crucial that the humanitarian dimensions of this crisis are part of the security sector's discussion. From a humanitarian perspective, the situation in Rakhine features similar characteristics to what we have seen in other contexts: Mass displacements due to multiple extensions of violence (political - military, inter-community) and violations of international humanitarian law and international humanitarian rights law An increasingly long-term crisis, in which political solutions seem elusive and humanitarian organizations are assisting a large number of beneficiaries over a long time; and Short-term, emergency issues compounding more structural challenges (such as poverty, injustice, exclusion and lack of governance) and pushing countries and regions towards protracted conflict. Today, in both Cox's Bazar and in Rakhine, the ICRC and the broader humanitarian community is very much still in relief and emergency mode – providing life-saving assistance along well-established principles and practices. For instance, in Rakhine today we are doubling the distribution of food rations, so that we can help communities before the rainy season begins and many areas become inaccessible. Working with our partners, the Myanmar Red Cross and the International Federation of the Red Cross, we are also running mobile health clinics, and distributing emergency assistance kits. We are also working to reconnect thousands of people on both sides of the border separated in the crisis. We are focusing not only on mitigating the effects of violence, but our mandate also requires us to protect populations affected by war and violence through the law. In this perspective, we engage in a series of activities, which give us unique additional access and insight into the conflict dynamics. Such activities include: Visiting places of detention in Rakhine and elsewhere in Myanmar; Promoting International Humanitarian Law to Non-State Armed Groups and holding a dialogue on the Conduct of Hostilities with parties to the conflict; and Educating armed forces on health issues – protecting health care systems and personnel and on weapon wounded and war surgery. While it may sound obvious that we are delivering such services, nothing can be taken for granted in today's contexts: even basic humanitarian programs need trustful relationships with all actors and authorities. Humanitarian assistance must be delivered in a neutral and impartial way, taking into considerations the different tensions in the conflict environment. Failure to do so will further polarize the situation. In that sense, I am glad that our long-term engagement in Myanmar and Bangladesh, with our strict neutral, impartial and independent humanitarian approach plus our method of confidentially raising sensitive issues with the parties, is facilitating today's crisis response. While the emergency response continues, there must also be urgent progress – from humanitarians, development actors, and the authorities – on building sustainable solutions. In Rakhine, before the current crisis and continuing, we are contributing to sustainable health, economic and water activities, which are in line with the recommendations of the Kofi Annan led Rakhine Advisory Commission. We are keen to see these humanitarian recommendations politically embraced and implemented on the ground. The Annan Commission's recommendations are an especially noteworthy example of how humanitarian and political steps can – and should – go hand-in-hand. We acknowledge that political solutions are difficult, yet we also see that the current conditions of people living in the camps are untenable. We urge therefore that sustainable solutions are found to allow safe, dignified and voluntary returns as soon possible. Our current understanding of the situation is that the vast majority of displaced people are not yet ready to return. Confidence to return will require not only humanitarian and mitigating activities, but also effective political steps towards: Ensuring freedom of movement; Access to basic services; Freedom to undertake economic activity and access to markets in Rakhine; and Most importantly trust in security arrangements for returnees. We are still far away from reuniting such ramifications today at a large scale. And even if returns started today and followed the process and timeline laid out by Bangladesh and Myanmar, it would most likely take several years to complete. In the meantime, those living in camps in Bangladesh must be able to live in dignity and with basic services met. Families cannot live in dignity over years under makeshift tents tarpaulin exposed to the monsoon. Children cannot miss years of education. The sick, elderly cannot go without health care. No one can live with constant uncertainty, and without hope of a better life. We must focus both on pragmatic, immediate measures, especially in the face of the upcoming monsoons. And to press for sustainable solutions that mean a better life for people waiting in Bangladesh and for the return to their homes. Speaking today in the heart of Asia, I cannot but emphasize the important role that this region must play in creating a conducive atmosphere for a political solution for the Rakhine crisis which must address the underlying and long standing causes. There are displaced people and migrants from Myanmar spread through Asia, with many of your countries hosting people from Myanmar over decades. This audience and those on this panel in particular know well the geopolitical elements that could further complicate this crisis. With its religious, security, economic and political divides, with the alliances of interest which have been building around the Rakhine crisis, this has become one of the most internationalized and protracted conflict situations. Engagement of the region is critical to manage further globalization of the crisis. We all know that despair and hopelessness felt by people affected by violence, if left to fester, can have terrible long-term impact on individuals, communities and states. And we know that respect for International Humanitarian Law and the rule of law can contribute to better protection, and to mitigate against further despair and radicalization of populations affected by the crisis. Let me conclude by suggesting three parameters to consider in order to improve both the humanitarian and security situation: Uphold the dignity of those displaced to Bangladesh, and provide them the best chance of returning home with safety and dignity when conditions are right and in respect of the principle of non-refoulement; Support the Government of Myanmar in full and speedy implementation of the Rakhine Advisory Commission's recommendations. Spread across the five thematic areas of conflict prevention, humanitarian assistance, reconciliation, institution building and development, these recommendations contain the necessary ingredients to address the security and humanitarian crisis in Rakhine. Ensure that security operations are conducted with full respect of principles of IHL – do not target civilians, do not inflict unnecessary suffering, and adhere to the principle of military necessity and proportionality. Speech given by Mr Peter Maurer, President of the International Committee of the Red Cross. Panel discussion on Security and Humanitarian Crisis in Rakhine State, 2 June 2018, Shangri-La Dialogue, Singapore (c) 2018 The International Committee of the Red Cross https://www.icrc.org/en/document/rahkine-returns-safe

30 May 2018 PRESS RELEASE Protect the Rohingya calls for the end of the Rohingya genocide! Join the movement by wearing BLACK in solidarity on Wednesday, 13 June 2018 and remember to tweet your photos and messages of solidarity to us: @ProtectRohingya using the Hashtag: #Black4Rohingya The Rohingya have been described as the world’s most persecuted minority by the United Nations. They live in Arakan State, Myanmar where they have been denied citizenship, freedom of movement, access to education and health services. They have been subject inter alia to land confiscations, arbitrary arrests, forced sterilisation, extortion, torture, rape and collective punishment. Their citizenship was revoked by the state in 1982. Since 2012 the brutality against them has only been exacerbated by the state’s unwillingness to punish right-wing nationalists who spew hatred against them, address its apartheid policies and keep its security forces in check. Myanmar military clearance operations have forced more than 680 000 Rohingya to flee over the border to Bangladesh since August of 2017. Stories of murder, rape , arson attacks and extra-judicial killings by the military are the order of the day. With the monsoon season arriving in recent months the Rohingya’s situation has only worsened. The Myanmar government disputes the allegations, characterising the actions of its forces as anti-terrorism. It also claims that eyewitness accounts have been fabricated (while denying outside observers, including foreign journalists and even a United Nations observers, meaningful access to the region. The international community has failed to take any real action to stop the violence against the Rohingya and few countries are offering practical assistance and resettlement programs to Rohingya refugees. As South African’s having lived through a racist and brutal oppressive regime it is our duty to stand against apartheid wherever it exists. Burma should NOT be allowed to continue its genocide of the Rohingya population. We urge people of conscience the world over to join our campaign and spread the word about the 13th of June 2018. #Black4Rohingya is a Protect the Rohingya initiative, initially held on 5 July 2013 and was then moved to 13 June from 2014 onwards in order to commemorate those Rohingya who were massacred in Arakan State in the second week of June 2012. Twitter: @ProtectRohingya Instagram: @protecttherohingya Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/groups/308153155947556/ Contact: +2772 1786 102 Please note that interested organizations and individuals around the world are welcome to join the movement and may circulate their own press releases and posters as long as they include the hashtag: #Black4Rohingya in their campaign. (c) 2018 Free Rohingya Coalition https://freerohingyacoalition.org/en/?page_id=721