The wheels of international justice turn slowly, but have begun to move. Nearly 18 months after Myanmar's military launched its first bloody crackdown on Rohingya Muslims in northern Rakhine State, the growing stream of compelling evidence highlights the need to establish accountability for serious crimes, including ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide. As evidence mounts, so does the call to bring those responsible to book. While there is a long and difficult path to indictments, the gate has opened slightly. On April 9. the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court at The Hague took an important step. She requested the court to rule whether it may exercise jurisdiction over the alleged deportation of Rohingya people from Myanmar, which is not a party to the ICC's statute, to Bangladesh, which is a party. Based on preliminary investigations, the prosecutor argued that the ICC does have jurisdiction. For months, senior United Nations officials have been calling for criminal accountability in Myanmar. On March 13, Adama Dieng, U.N. Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, said that "international crimes have been committed in Myanmar. Rohingya Muslims have been killed, raped, tortured, burnt alive and humiliated, solely because of who they are." Dieng made the comments in Bangladesh where overcrowded camps now house more than 750,000 mainly stateless Rohingya Muslims who have fled Myanmar since late 2016. Just days before, the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said he believed that the crimes committed in Rakhine State might be "acts of genocide." Myanmar's civilian government, led by Aung San Suu Kyi, has said the crackdown was a legitimate response to low-level attacks on security posts by the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, a Muslim militant group. It has defended its actions by claiming that it is fighting "transnational terrorism." U.N. investigators, human rights groups and humanitarian agencies, such as Medecins sans Frontieres, say that Myanmar's military campaign targeted tens of thousands of civilians, including women and children. MSF, which had extensive aid operations in Rakhine State, recently estimated that the mainly civilian death toll amounted to at least 6,700. The Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Myanmar, set up by the U.N. in 2017, plays a central role in international efforts to establish accountability. It will issue its report before the end of 2018. The accusations are damning, particularly in the face of blanket denials by Myanmar, which flatly rejects allegations of wrongdoing and refuses to cooperate with the U.N. On March 19, Myanmar's military commander-in-chief, Senior Gen. Min Aung Hlaing made one of his clearest condemnations of the Rohingya, whom he referred to as "Bengalis." He stated that "Bengalis do not have any characteristics or culture in common with the ethnicities of Myanmar. The tensions were fueled because the Bengalis demanded citizenship." The statement drew a strong reaction from U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who urged "all leaders in Myanmar to take a unified stance against incitement to hatred." Northern Rakhine State has largely remained off-limits for relief agencies and journalists. Information about what happens there is sketchy. The government has embarked on large-scale reconstruction operations, which include bulldozing the remnants of at least 55 Rohingya villages, but has refused to divulge details of its plans. International pressure on Myanmar is rising, but so is Naypyitaw's hostility to demands for accountability. The U.S. and EU, have arms embargoes in place but Myanmar's major suppliers of military equipment, including Russia, China and Israel, have not stopped arms shipments. The ICC prosecutor has taken an important first step but concerned countries need to do much more to drive home the message of accountability. First, it is never too late for Myanmar to recover some of the international goodwill it enjoyed in better times if it shows willingness to cooperate. Myanmar should acknowledge the vastly disproportional extent of the violence it has unleashed against the Rohingya in response to attacks by militants. Second, Myanmar should collaborate with the U.N. to show it is serious about accepting back Rohingya refugees who want to return voluntarily, while ensuring their dignity and security. Third, Myanmar should cooperate with the U.N. Fact-Finding Mission and grant it access. If it is true, as Suu Kyi claims, that the allegations of violence are vastly exaggerated, it is in Myanmar's interest to welcome a truly independent investigation. Fourth, more pressure on Myanmar is needed, especially from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and other Asian countries. The Rakhine conflict has caused cross-border problems for decades. Myanmar has invoked sovereignty to deny the consequences of its actions. This particularly affects Bangladesh where the economic, social and environmental impact of the massive refugee influx in border areas is high, as is the risk of destabilization and radicalization among young Rohingya. Fifth, more governments should issue targeted sanctions against those thought to bear the most responsibility. Evidence clearly points to the armed forces. Only the U.S. and Canada have so far issued sanctions targeting Major-Gen. Maung Maung Soe, who oversaw operations in Rakhine State. As new evidence accumulates, other countries should follow this course, including EU members, who have been deliberating the issue for months. Sixth, as the judges of the ICC deal with the prosecutor's request, there is still time for the U.N. Security Council to refer the Myanmar case to the court. This would be the preferred route but is unlikely given that China and Russia have consistently protected Myanmar against decisive U.N. action. Some observers think that the quest for justice is illusory, not least because Myanmar is mired in a trap of its own making. At home, the government's denials have gone down well in an overwhelmingly Buddhist country that has consistently denied citizenship to the Rohingya. Support for the once widely vilified military has soared on the back of its campaign against this stateless minority, and Suu Kyi remains popular. A government admission of accountability could hurt its popularity ahead of elections in 2020. International criminal justice tends to be slow. But there are cases of efforts once considered "illusory" resulting in trials. In 1993 when the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia was established, few believed that suspects like Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, the Bosnian Serb leaders, would ever have to account for themselves. They ended up being tried in The Hague. This shows that it pays to prepare for the day when criminal proceedings are possible. Given Myanmar's brutal repression and expulsion of the Rohingya those who believe in justice must act now. (c) 2018 Nikkei Asian Review https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/Myanmar-time-for-a-legal-reckoning2

People look at portraits of S-21 inmates at the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh in 2014. Eli Meixler A woman with short-cropped hair stares directly into the camera, her head cocked slightly to the side. On her lap is a sleeping infant just barely in the frame. The woman was the wife of a Khmer Rouge officer who fell out of favour, and one of thousands of prisoners at S-21 whose photograph was taken on arrival at the infamous torture centre. Shortly afterwards, her baby was taken from her and killed. The portrait is among dozens of S-21 photographs for sale by at least two international stock-image companies. For $199.99 a business can purchase this image of the mother and her baby from UK-based photo site Alamy for use in a “marketing package”. The webpage notes that no model release form was signed by the subject of the image. Alamy is not alone – at least one other company, US-based Sprague Photo Stock, is also selling S-21 prisoner intake portraits on its website. Regional magazine Mekong Review first called attention to the sale of the portraits on Tuesday, and in several tweets called into question the practice of selling the images for commercial use on legal and moral grounds. “These portraits were taken by Khmer Rouge cadres, before they tortured and killed these people. This is wrong,” they wrote on Twitter. The photos being sold on both stock-image sites appear to have come from photographers who took them while inside the museum where the images are displayed. The museum forbids visitors from capturing any pictures while inside the former prison, and it is unclear if the photographers were visiting with press permissions. The director of the Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum, Chhay Visoth, said he was not previously aware that these photographs were being sold online. “Selling or using the victim’s pictures for commercial purposes is legally and morally unacceptable because they were already victimised in that regime, and they should not be victimised again by such selfish purposes,” Visoth said. Youk Chhang, the director of the Documentation Center of Cambodia, and a Khmer Rouge survivor himself, said in a message to The Post that the sale of the photographs “is very perplexing”. “It is a memory of the nation and should be properly used with respect.” Youk noted that these photographs have been copied and disseminated widely for educational purposes, in part to keep the memory of victims alive. “Documents and photographs of the regime have been duplicated and flooded across the globe because we as the victims want to tell the world of the millions of Cambodians who have perished brutally under the Khmer Rouge. And we want justice for both those who have passed away and those who have survived the regime,” he said. Nonetheless, who uses the photos, and for what purpose, is a major concern. As an example of proper use, Youk cited his own organisation’s archive of S-21 prisoner photographs, created with permission. Neither Alamy nor Sprague responded to requests for comment, though the former appeared to be in the process of removing the photographs from its site on Friday. One of the photographers that Alamy credits for the S-21 prisoner portraits, John Lander, said via email that he would take the image down as it “shows peoples’ faces – which I can well imagine are sensitive to some people”. A screenshot from the Alamy website featuring S-21 prisoner portraits. This isn’t the first time the question of ownership of these harrowing photographs has been raised. The original photographer who took many of the portraits, a former low-ranking Khmer Rouge cadre, is still alive and contends the rights should be his. Nhem En, now 58, worked as a photographer for three years at S-21, and it was his job to capture images of the prison’s detainees. “I took those pictures so the copyright should belong to me, but copyright just does not matter in Cambodia,” he said. “My pictures are used by media all over the world, but no one give me credit for that. Foreigners may not know about me, but the government should do something about it.” According a 2001 sub-decree, the Cambodian government has legal control over the images to protect them from exactly this sort of misuse. The sub-decree extends to historical documents – maps, blueprints and photos, for example – that it describes as “priceless assets of the country for generations”. Museum Director Visoth cited this ownership arrangement in an email to The Post, saying that to publish the images a person “must submit a request to MoC [Ministry of Culture], informing them how they will be used and agreeing not to give them to anyone without permission”. In that instance, the credit for the photograph would go to the museum. When reached for comment, Culture Ministry spokesman Thai Norak Satya called the issue “a very small matter” and did not appear to know for sure which entity retains legal control, by way of copyright, of the S-21 images. Visoth said he would study further what might be done to address the situation. “No matter what,” he said, “we will show the willingness for negotiation and ask the sellers to stop doing that.” “If they won’t,” he said, “we will monitor our capacity for legal enforcement.” Mekong Review founding editor and publisher Minh Bui Jones said it was clear the agencies are “treading on thin ice, both legally and ethically”, and questioned if the images would be up for sale if they depicted victims from a Western country. “If anyone owns them, it’s the people of Cambodia. If those companies had sought and were given permission by the Cambodian government to sell them, then they’re legally clear,” he said. “But if they haven’t, then they’re simply thieves, or grave robbers. You can’t sink any lower than this.” Additional reporting by Rinith Taing (c) 2018 The Phnom Penh Post https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national-post-depth/stock-photo-agencies-cash-khmer-rouge-tragedy

Although the event was geared towards Rwandan youth born after the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi, it attracted a mixed crowd of young and old, both local and foreigners. Dubbed 100 Days, 100 Questions, the event involved a panel discussion and dialogue on the subject of the Genocide. It was spiced up by entertainment which came by way of inanga music from Deo Munyakazi, poetry from Eric 1Key, and some rhymes from Mike Kayihura. The event took place Friday night at the Kigali Genocide Memorial in Gisozi. According to One Time, the youth organization that organized the forum, 100 Days, 100 Questions sought to furnish Rwandan youth with answers to some of their lingering questions about the events of 1994 and their after math in the post-Genocide dispensation. A four-member panel was at hand to handle the different questions from the audience. These were; historian, author and former senator Antoine Mugesera, Uwera Beatrice, vice president of the Association of Graduate Genocide Survivors (GAERG), Francoise Murekatete, a psychologist with AVEGA-Agahozo (an association of Genocide widows) and Marc Gwamaka, the founder of Peace and Love Proclaimers (PLP) organization. Friday James, a news presenter on Rwanda Broadcasting Agency hosted the event. The questions and panel discussions addressed four main topics; the history of Rwanda, the day-to-day life of the generation born after the Genocide, the effects of trauma on citizens and the development of the country, while the fourth topic, titled The Process, panelists discussed policies adopted by the government after the Genocide. The audience was reminded about the factors that led to the Genocide, the actual events of 1994, and the aftermath, 24 years later, including the plight of survivors, orphans, widows, and those with trauma. The youth were reminded of their duty in making sure that the history does not repeat itself. While discussing the topic of children born after the Genocide, Uwera Beatrice explained that that generation includes children born of victims, those born of perpetrators, and others born out of rape. She explained how the children can all live together despite their traumatic past. Mugesera weighed in on the huge toll trauma had taken on the country’s development trajectory. He reminded the gathering that although it is 24 years since the Genocide, there are still victims who have never moved on and still live in a traumatic state of mind. The event was the first of its kind, but attracted a decent audience. Organizers revealed that they plan to make it an annual calendar event. “Although I was born four years after the genocide, this is my time and opportunity to know what really happened and also to remember those who died or were affected,” revealed Clarisse Gift Umuhire, who attended the event. “One Time (organizers) believes that the best change starts from within, that is why it started with the youth, the future leaders,” said Darius Kalisa, the founder and acting manager of One Time. (c) 2018 The New Times http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/100-days-100-questions-youth-hold-dialogue-genocide-against-tutsi

The UN investigates. The Holocaust museum has even rescinded a prize it once gave to Aung San Suu Kyi. Yet, we still risk letting this unfathomable repeat of history go unchecked. Last week, the Pulitzer committee shone its spotlight on The Reuters photography staff for images of violence against the Rohingya as they fled Myanmar. Perhaps this will now ignite more vigorous response. Perhaps the pleading in the past week by the Rohingya Muslim minority lawyer Razia Sultana for the United Nations Security Council to refer Myanmar to the International Criminal Court for “horrific crimes” against the Rohingya may finally spark some outrage. Perhaps the refutation by both the U.N. and Bangladesh of Myanmar's claim of safely repatriating Rohingya refugees may arouse new awareness. Perhaps the imprisonment for the past four months of Reuters journalists for reporting on the killings of Rohingya Muslim men can instigate action. Perhaps the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s recent rescinding of its 2012 Elie Wiesel Award to Myanmar’s Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, once a human-rights hero in the West with few equals, for her failure to speak out against the ongoing Rohingya genocide may spur some wider response. Or perhaps we will stay silent and unmoved by all of these recent reminders of the urgency to witness the inhumanity today being visited upon the Rohingya people. Perhaps we have learned nothing from history’s enduring lessons of violence connecting all peoples. We may be doomed to forget these atrocities as well as those of the past. A recent study shows that 22 percent of American millennials surveyed had not heard of the Holocaust, and 66 percent could not identify what Auschwitz is. This legacy of Jewish memory-- long and filled with pain culminating in the worst genocide in history -- concerns Muslims today, as Muslims find themselves facing genocide in Myanmar. Relief web, a leading humanitarian information resource began gathering testimony of Rohingya refugees between September and October of 2017. A total of 1,360 published testimonies from Rohingya people displaced in Cox Bazaar, Bangladesh confirm an almost universal experience (92 percent) of systemized state-sanctioned violence against them, augmented by civilian vigilante groups. The stories are of a systemic campaign of sexual violence against women and girls and multiple reports of the murder of infants and children by burning or drowning, indicating an intent to eradicate future generations of the Rohingya. The United Nations, concerned that genocide is underway, formally launched efforts to document Myanmar’s human rights violations in May of last year. The Rohingya people are long recognized to be among the most persecuted minorities in the world today. Under Myanmar’s Citizenship Law enacted in 1982, Rohingya people are denied all three tiers of citizenship because they are deemed “non-indigenous” and not of the 135 national races that Myanmar recognizes. Naturalization, while technically available to them, is in effect inaccessible because they are required to prove ancestral heritage in the Rakhine state prior to 1948. That is simply unattainable for most Rohingya people. Defining them therefore as illegal Bangladeshi immigrants, Myanmar by law renders these people, native born to Myanmar, as stateless. Even when they do have citizenship, they continue to be denied basic rights. Following her investigative visit last summer to assess the situation in Bangladeshi refugee camps, U.N. Special Rapporteur Yanghee Lee announced the Rohingya people had been subject to state-sanctioned arbitrary arrests, torture, murder of men, women, children and infants, sexual violence and rape, enforced property seizures, torching of villages, enforced disappearances. forcible displacement and relocation and land grabbing. All of this is at the hands of the Myanmar security forces and authorities. The U.N. also added that Myanmar’s decision to deny the U.N. all access to the country “can only be viewed as a strong indication that there must be something terribly awful happening in Rakhine, as well as in the rest of the country.” Lee underlined that these treatments bear the “hallmarks of genocide,” and “amount to a crime against humanity.” It is an unfathomable repeat of history. Some in the Muslim world have taken leadership on this issue by providing shelter to over 1 million fleeing Rohingya people in Bangladesh as Indonesia attempts to raise international awareness. For every Muslim around the world, bearing witness to their suffering is a matter not only of participating in lifesaving intervention, but also an opportunity to finally come to grips of their denial of the history of Jewish genocide during the Holocaust. As inconceivable as it seems, millions of Muslims remain woefully ignorant of the Holocaust. A 2006 Pew study confirms anti-Jewish sentiment remains overwhelmingly centered in predominantly Muslim majority countries. Holocaust denial has a marked presence in the Muslim majority world, where more than 51 percent of Muslims surveyed said they believe the scale of Jews murdered in the Holocaust is greatly exaggerated. In the Middle East North African region, this rises to 63 percent. The persecution of Jews has filled collective memory over millennia. This is the same peril the Rohingya people are finding themselves in today and efforts to bear witness are finally underway. More than seven decades after the end of the Holocaust, The University of Southern California Shoah Foundation’s Executive Director Stephen Smith recently traveled in a skeleton team to record and lend voice to Rohingya Muslim survivors of genocide. In the 25 years since its inception, the Shoah Foundation’s Institute of Visual History has become the keeper of the world’s largest archive of audiovisual testimonies of 55,000 survivors and witnesses to genocide. There is great power in bearing witness, which is why perpetrators, whether German Nazis or Myanmar authorities, seek to conceal their acts at all costs. Truth moves humanity and effects change. Bearing witness halts genocide. It is this power of witnessing that holds value for all Muslims, Jews and all peoples around the world. Events without witnesses – as the Myanmar authorities wish the Rohingya persecution to be—are sinister in their evocation of the ultimate event without witness, the Holocaust. Central to the savagery of mankind’s worst genocide was contemporary humanity’s refusal to witness. As history repeats, silence is not an acceptable response. (c) 2018 The Daily Beast https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-rohingya-crisis-is-becoming-islams-genocide-what-are-we-doing-about-it

Evidence for Hope: Making Human Rights Work in the 21st Century By Kathryn Sikkink Princeton University Press, 2017, 336pp. Damir Sagolj / Reuters Inmates at a jail in the Philippines, November 2016. Does fighting for human rights actually make a difference? Scholars, policymakers, lawyers, and activists have asked that question ever since the contemporary human rights movement emerged after World War II. At any given moment, headlines supply plenty of reasons for skepticism. Today, the news is full of reports of Rohingya refugees fleeing a campaign of murder, rape, and dispossession in Myanmar; drug users dealing with brutal, state-sponsored vigilantism in the Philippines; and immigrants and minorities facing the wrath of extreme right-wing and populist movements in European countries and the United States. It is easy to succumb to a sense of despair about the laws and institutions designed to protect human rights. In 1968, the legal scholar Louis Henkin wrote that “almost all nations observe almost all principles of international law and almost all of their obligations almost all of the time.” Subsequent empirical studies, primarily in the fields of international trade and international environmental law, have confirmed Henkin’s qualified optimism. But in the field of international human rights, empirical studies have sometimes led to more pessimistic conclusions. In a 2002 article in The Yale Law Journal, for instance, the legal scholar Oona Hathaway concluded that “although the practices of countries that have ratified human rights treaties are generally better than those of countries that have not, noncompliance with treaty obligations appears common.” Hathaway and others who have analyzed international human rights regimes have generally focused on the efficacy of specific laws, institutions, or methodologies: for example, the number of human rights treaties that a given country has ratified, the existence of domestic legislation that reflects international norms, or the presence of national human rights institutions. But few have stepped back and considered the overall impact of the broader international human rights movement. In her new book, Evidence for Hope, the political scientist Kathryn Sikkink fills that gap—and the news, she reports, is better than one might fear. Drawing on decades of research into transnational civil society networks and international institutions, Sikkink counters skeptics from the left and the right who have argued that the persistence of grave human rights violations throughout the world is evidence that the international movement has failed and should be abandoned altogether. On the contrary, she concludes, the struggle for human rights has indeed made a difference: “Overall there is less violence and fewer human rights violations in the world than there were in the past.” Sikkink contends that skeptics have relied on the wrong metrics to measure progress and have failed to see shifts in the human rights movement that have made it more durable. She is even relatively bullish about the prospects for continued progress in the Trump era. In this way, she distinguishes herself from the many activists and scholars who fear that the populist nationalism that helped put Donald Trump in the White House could reverse hard-fought human rights gains of the past few decades, both in the United States and abroad. Bernadett Szabo / Reuters Syrian migrants cross from Serbia into Hungary, August 2015. HIDDEN PROGRESS Among Sikkink’s aims is to defend the institutions and movements that have supported the concept of human rights, which together are often described as “the human rights regime.” Sikkink takes issue with scholars and activists who fault the human rights regime for failing to produce a “maximum ideal of justice” but who do not offer alternative approaches that are “within the realm of the possible.” The human rights movement should be praised, she contends, for “widening the limits of the possible,” thereby changing what is probable. In an earlier book, The Justice Cascade, Sikkink showed how that process can work by tracking how the idea of individual accountability for human rights violations gained a foothold and led to an increase in criminal prosecutions for such wrongdoing. In her new work, she traces the diverse origins of the modern human rights movement and the pivotal contributions of people and organizations from the developing world, especially Latin America. For instance, she describes the successful efforts of Latin American jurists and diplomats to include seven references to human rights in the 1945 UN Charter, including one that describes the promotion of human rights as one of the basic purposes of the organization, in spite of resistance from the great powers. This history, she contends, contradicts common critiques of human rights law as a tool of Western imperialism. Sikkink’s main goal, however, is to identify and quantify the improvements that she argues have come about as a result of the human rights regime: a decline in genocide and “politicide” (which Sikkink defines as politically motivated murder by a government), fewer international and civil wars, a reduction in battle deaths and civilians killed in war, less frequent use of the death penalty, and dramatic gains in women’s rights. Some of her arguments are more convincing than others. In one of the book’s most compelling passages, she charts the undeniable correlation between the campaign that Amnesty International launched against the death penalty in the late 1970s and the global trend toward the abolition of capital punishment. In 1977, only 16 countries had abolished the death penalty; today, that number has increased to 140—nearly two-thirds of the countries in the world. However, she does not explicitly connect the dots between Amnesty International’s campaign and the abolitionist trend, leaving the reader wondering whether the move away from capital punishment may have stemmed from other sources—for instance, the effect of DNA science in exposing wrongful convictions. Sikkink’s attribution of worldwide declines in genocide, politicide, and other acts of violence to the human rights regime at times feels even more forced. Although she acknowledges that “explanations for improvements in core human rights issues like genocide are complex,” she suggests that human rights ideologies and criminal prosecutions—rather than, say, improvements in medicine or more targeted weaponry—best explain the worldwide decline in war crimes. More plausibly, she cites research that suggests “that the rise in improved military medicine is in itself an aspect of the humanitarian ideals that some authors argue have contributed to the decline in war.” Indeed, states have arguably developed more targeted weapons in order to avoid civilian casualties—a concern that derives, in part, from the rise of the human rights movement. Part of what distinguishes Evidence for Hope is Sikkink’s thoughtful examination of the role that data and quantitative research play in debates about progress on human rights. In the information age, people know and care more than ever before about human rights—but, she contends, that does not necessarily lead to a better understanding of the state of freedom in the world. Activists, by disseminating information about human rights abuses, often inadvertently create the impression that things are getting worse. Owing to the greater availability of information, it is easier than ever to conclude that the world faces graver human rights problems today than in the past. But the fact that people can now see more easily when, where, and how human rights have been violated does not mean there is more suffering today, Sikkink contends. Drawing from political psychology, she also argues that certain cognitive biases make humans prone to pay more attention to negative than positive information. Activists capitalize on that tendency—understandably, Sikkink concedes—by “naming and shaming” bad actors far more frequently than they praise governments or highlight progress. “Perhaps,” she suggests, “human rights activists should rely less on information politics, less on so-called ‘naming and shaming,’ and more on what we might call ‘effectiveness politics’—identifying techniques and campaigns that have been effective at improving human rights.” In other words, organizations might have a greater impact by putting together a letter-writing campaign, staging a concert, or piggybacking on existing legislative initiatives, rather than releasing yet another report or press release. Baz Ratner / Reuters A Palestinian protestor in Jerusalem, July 2014. THE BOOMERANG EFFECT Another mark of progress on human rights is the way in which the movement has expanded beyond its traditional boundaries to address a growing number of abusive and criminal behaviors that infringe on basic liberties and freedoms. Take domestic violence, a seemingly intractable problem that, until relatively recently, few recognized as a human rights issue. That has changed in the past decade as activists and lawyers, including me, have used human rights advocacy to improve how law enforcement authorities respond to domestic violence. My principal avenue for doing this work has been through representing a Colorado woman named Jessica Lenahan (formerly Gonzales), whose tragic story has become a landmark human rights case. In 1999, Lenahan’s three young daughters were abducted by her abusive estranged husband (and the girls’ father), Simon Gonzales, in violation of the terms of a judicial restraining order that severely limited his access to them. Although Lenahan repeatedly called the police, telling them she feared for her daughters’ safety and at one point identifying their location, the police ignored her. The dispatcher who took her call even chided her for being “a little ridiculous,” a sentiment subsequently echoed by the town’s police chief in an interview with 60 Minutes. Nearly ten hours after the abduction, Gonzales, armed with a semiautomatic handgun, drove his truck to the police department and opened fire. The police shot him dead and subsequently discovered the deceased bodies of the three girls inside his truck. But local authorities did not conduct a proper investigation into the children’s deaths, resulting in uncertainty about when, where, and how they died. Lenahan filed a lawsuit against the town of Castle Rock, Colorado, in federal court, claiming that the police violated her constitutional due process rights when they failed to meaningfully respond to her calls for help. The case eventually landed at the Supreme Court, which ruled in 2005 that she had no constitutional right to have her restraining order enforced by the police. Having exhausted her domestic remedies, Lenahan filed a petition later that year with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), an organ of the Organization of American States. She alleged that the United States, whose criminal justice system had failed to protect her and her daughters from acts of domestic violence, had violated her human rights under the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man, which is a source of international obligations for the 35 members of the OAS (including the United States). Lenahan’s was the first international human rights case brought by a victim of domestic violence against the United States. In many respects, the Lenahan story fits what Sikkink, in Activists Beyond Borders (an earlier book she co-wrote with Margaret Keck), dubbed “the boomerang effect” of human rights advocacy, which holds that when civil society groups and activists fail to persuade their government to take action or change its policy, they often find international allies who can exert external pressure and contribute to at least a partial victory. In Jessica Lenahan (Gonzales) v. United States of America, the IACHR found that the local authorities were “not duly organized, coordinated, and ready to protect these victims from domestic violence by adequately and effectively implementing the restraining order,” which the commission declared was a violation of the American Declaration of the Rights and Duties of Man. The commission went on to recommend that the United States investigate the systemic failures that took place, adopt legislation at the federal and state level to protect women and children from imminent acts of violence, and continue to adopt public policies aimed at shattering stereotypes of domestic violence victims. Skeptics have relied on the wrong metrics to measure progress and have failed to see shifts in the human rights movement that have made it more durable. In the years since, the Lenahan case has been cited in international and domestic case law and legislation throughout the world. And although the U.S. government, which has not ratified most major international human rights treaties, officially rejected the IACHR’s decision on technical and jurisdictional grounds, the decision has had an undeniable effect on U.S. federal policy and law enforcement. Beginning in 2011, the U.S. Department of Justice began stepping up its investigations into discriminatory law enforcement responses to domestic violence and sexual assault in several cities—the exact type of government action that the IACHR had called for—without ever explicitly connecting this work with the Lenahan case. Then, in 2015, U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch released official guidance to law enforcement agencies on how to prevent gender bias in their response to such crimes—a step originally proposed by advocates who supported Lenahan’s lawsuit. A year later, the Department of Justice established a nearly $10 million grant program to implement the guidance nationwide. The boomerang that Lenahan had tossed had returned to the United States, even if the government did not explicitly acknowledge it. HOPE SPRINGS ETERNAL For the most part, Sikkink does not sugarcoat the challenges facing the human rights movement. Trump’s nativist agenda, hateful rhetoric, and professed enthusiasm for torture techniques “a hell of a lot worse than waterboarding” have rightly alarmed U.S. human rights advocates, provoking fears of backsliding at home and emboldening bad actors around the world. Last December, the UN’s top human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, who had expressed concerns about the Trump administration and other potential sources of harm to the human rights regime, announced his unusual decision to not seek a second term, saying it “might involve bending a knee in supplication.” But Sikkink remains optimistic. She argues that the fight for human rights has taken on a new dimension as developing countries have joined the fray in ways that do not depend on Washington. “Human rights work in the coming years of the twenty-first century may look very much like the Cold War period,” she writes, when “the major powers were mainly in opposition to the international protection of human rights and where momentum and progress depended on the actions of smaller countries, with support from emerging NGOs and civil society.” But she also notes an important distinction between the two time periods: today, “these small countries and activists have far more institutional resources at their disposal—the human rights law, institutions, and movements that earlier activists created in the mid- to late twentieth century.” Everyone should hope that Sikkink is right. Human rights organizations based in the developing world have evolved significantly over the past few decades, and Sikkink cites a study showing that they are increasingly trusted by citizens and are not perceived as the “handmaidens” of powerful donor countries. Such groups could become highly effective in mobilizing support for human rights in an era of populist nationalism and rising authoritarianism. But they and their counterparts in the developed world will need to craft customized solutions that do not rely solely on established practices. The kind of “boomerang” that has worked in the past may not always be the right tool—especially if powerful figures in Washington are not interested in listening to world opinion. (c) 2018 Foreign Affairs https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/review-essay/2018-04-16/long-arc-human-rights

Late last year, when news broke that Myanmar’s military had been systematically killing members of the country’s Muslim Rohingya minority, much of the world was shocked. In recent years, Myanmar (also known as Burma) had been mostly a good news story. After decades of brutal dominance by the military, the country had seen the main opposition party, the National League for Democracy, score an all-too-rare democratic triumph, winning the 2015 national elections in a landslide. The NLD’s leader, Aung San Suu Kyi, an internationally celebrated dissident who had received the 1991 Nobel Peace Prize for her efforts to democratize Myanmar, became Myanmar’s de facto head of state. Many analysts and officials concluded that the county was finally on the path to democratic rule. Support poured in from Western democracies, including the United States. Myanmar had long been isolated, relying almost exclusively on China, which was content to turn a blind eye to human rights abuses. Now, many hoped, Suu Kyi would lead the country into the Western-backed international order. But such hopes overlooked a fundamental reality, one that was brought into stark relief by the slaughter of the Rohingya: Myanmar’s generals continue to control much of the country’s political and economic life. Suu Kyi must strike a delicate balance, advancing democratic rule without stepping on the generals’ toes. Her government has no power over the army and can do little to end the military’s brutal campaign against the Rohingya—which, in any event, enjoys massive popular support. Yet Suu Kyi has taken the bad hand she was dealt and made it worse. She has adopted an autocratic style. She has failed to make progress in the areas where she does have influence. And she has alienated erstwhile allies in the West. CITIZENS OF NOWHERE Myanmar, which has a population of 54 million, officially recognizes 135 ethnic groups—but not the Rohingya. In fact, Myanmar authorities, including Suu Kyi, refuse to even use the term “Rohingya.” But the Rohingya are indisputably a distinct group with a long history in Myanmar. They are the descendants of people whom British colonial authorities, searching for cheap labor, encouraged to emigrate from eastern Bengal (contemporary Bangladesh) to the sparsely populated western regions of Burma in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Today, there are around 2.5 million Rohingya, who constitute the world’s largest stateless population. But fewer than half a million currently reside in Myanmar; the rest have fled decades of official repression and exclusion, often crossing the border into Bangladesh, where they inhabit sprawling, squalid refugee camps. Those who have remained in Myanmar are a subset of the country’s Muslim community. The majority of Myanmar’s Muslims live in urban areas, speak Burmese, have Burmese names, and are Myanmar citizens. The Rohingya are different: most speak a dialect of Bengali, have traditionally Muslim names, and have never received citizenship. The Rohingya in both Bangladesh and Myanmar have led unusually difficult lives even by the region’s humble standards, marked by poverty, the absence of legal status, and multifaceted discrimination. Owing to their lack of resources and extreme vulnerability, the Rohingya have largely failed in their attempts at political mobilization, which have generated further resentment against them. For instance, the 1950–54 Rohingya resistance movement, which demanded citizenship and an end to discriminatory policies, was eventually crushed by the army. Perhaps not surprisingly, a militant Rohingya faction also emerged: the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army, which formed in 2013. Most of the ARSA’s leaders are from Bangladesh or Pakistan, and some of them have received training from jihadist veterans of the wars in Afghanistan. (The group’s chief leader was born in Pakistan and later became an imam in Saudi Arabia.) ARSA likely has fewer than 600 active members. But Myanmar officials consider it a dangerous organization. In the early morning hours of August 25, 2017, for example, about 150 ARSA militants staged coordinated attacks on police posts and an army base in Rakhine State. The confrontation ended with the deaths of 77 ARSA fighters and 12 police officers and touched off a crackdown by Myanmar’s army, which burned down scores of Rohingya villages, murdered dozens of civilians, and launched a campaign of rape against Rohingya women and girls, according to Human Rights Watch. The UN labeled the operation ethnic cleansing, and others, including French President Emmanuel Macron and eight Nobel Peace Prize laureates, have described it as an act of genocide. By the end of 2017, 650,000 Rohingya had fled to neighboring Bangladesh, joining approximately 200,000 more who had escaped earlier waves of discrimination and violence in recent years. The large-scale forced migration seemed to have stopped by the end of last year. And last November, bowing to international pressure, Myanmar signed a Chinese-brokered agreement with Bangladesh for the tentative repatriation of the refugees to newly constructed villages. The fulfillment of this plan is at best questionable, however: it calls for Myanmar authorities to verify that each refugee did, in fact, reside in Myanmar before he or she can return. But most Rohingya have no documents to prove their prior residency. More important, few of them wish to return to a country that has persecuted them for generations. Asad Ali, a 60-year-old Rohingya refugee, keeps his 23-year-old mentally ill son Foyas Noor on a chain as they beg for food and money at a market at Kutupalong camp in Bangladesh, January 2018. (Tyrone Siu / REUTERS) DAUGHTER OF THE REVOLUTION Myanmar’s government, and especially its army, known as the Tatmadaw, has earned worldwide condemnation for the campaign against the Rohingya. Last September, the UN’s top human rights official, Zeid Ra’ad al-Hussein, denounced the army’s “brutal security operation” as a “textbook case of ethnic cleansing.” Critics singled out Suu Kyi for at best inaction and at worst providing political cover for the army’s atrocities. Regardless of how one interpreted her motives, it was hard to square her actions with her status as a human rights icon. Suu Kyi is the daughter of Aung San, the revered Burmese revolutionary who shepherded his country to independence from the United Kingdom in the 1940s. In the 1990s, “the Lady,” as she is referred to in Myanmar, led the NLD to victory in national elections. But the military nullified the results and placed her under house arrest for 15 of the next 21 years, before releasing her in 2010 as a gesture meant to highlight the government’s nascent liberalization program. The disappointment in her lack of action to stop the bloodshed—or, worse, her complicity in it—has been profound. Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, one of numerous Nobel Peace Prize laureates who have expressed their disillusionment, lamented the silence of his “dearly beloved sister” and said that it was “incongruous for a symbol of righteousness to lead such a country.” But Suu Kyi’s response should not have come as a great surprise. She has a long record of downplaying the Rohingya’s plight. In March 2017, Suu Kyi’s office dismissed detailed descriptions of Rohingya women suffering sexual violence at the hands of Myanmar’s armed forces as “fake rape.” Once a defender of press freedom, Suu Kyi has remained mum about the case of two Reuters journalists who were arrested by the military last December after investigating the military’s involvement in the killing of ten Rohingya civilians. Suu Kyi’s government did create a commission, headed by former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, to study the Rohingya issue, and has promised to implement its recommendations. But last January, Bill Richardson, a former U.S. ambassador to the UN and a longtime Suu Kyi supporter, quit a separate ten-member international advisory board on the Rohingya crisis that the Myanmar government had set up, calling it “a whitewash” and “a cheerleading squad for the government.” As for Suu Kyi, Richardson said, “I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown moral leadership on the [Rohingya] issue.” Suu Kyi deserves a great deal of criticism. But in faulting her for not publicly confronting the military, let alone restraining the generals, some critics have ignored two fundamental realities of contemporary Myanmar. First is the intensity of anti-Rohingya sentiment in the country. Hatred of the Rohingya is widespread and deep-seated, stirred up by influential extremist Buddhist monks who are the military’s political allies and who have incited violence against Rohingya. The ugly truth is that the vast majority of Burmese, including most of the NLD’s supporters, approve of the anti-Rohingya campaign. Making pro-Rohingya statements and gestures would be tantamount to political suicide for Suu Kyi and her government and would only strengthen the army’s public support. Second, the civilian-led government has no control over the armed forces nor any means of reining them in. Even if Suu Kyi wanted to limit the military’s campaign against the Rohingya, it would be almost impossible to do so. Myanmar’s constitution, crafted by the military in 2008, ensures that the military remains far and away the country’s strongest political institution. Amending the constitution requires more than 75 percent of the votes in the legislature—and 25 percent of parliamentary seats are set aside for armed forces personnel, which ensures that no changes can be made without the military’s cooperation. In addition, the constitution reserves three key ministries for the armed forces: Defense, Border Affairs, and Home Affairs. The last of these oversees the General Administration Department, the administrative heart of the state, which is responsible for the day-to-day running of every regional and state-level government and the management of thousands of districts and townships. The constitution further safeguards the army’s interests by allowing its commander in chief to name six of the 11 members of the National Defense and Security Council, a top executive body. The army also sets its own budget and spends it without any civilian oversight: in 2017, the budget amounted to $2.14 billion, representing 13.9 percent of government expenditures—around three percent of the national GDP and more than the combined total allotted to long-neglected health care and education. Perhaps just as consequential as the military’s political dominance is its economic clout. By some estimates, active and retired military officers and their associates control over 80 percent of the economy. Drafting the constitution and then holding a referendum to gain the public’s endorsement represented two important steps in the military’s long-term plan to manage and control a cautious move toward a “disciplined democracy,” in its words, and to transfer responsibilities over day-to-day politics to a civilian government. Having shed the burden of governance, military elites focused on their own interests: modernizing the army and tending to their business empires. They gave up little that was dear to them, and the changes they have permitted remain easily reversible. No further democratization will occur unless the generals relinquish their constitutionally granted privileges. IRON LADY Suu Kyi has been unable to alter this basic dynamic. Following the 2015 elections, she failed to persuade the military brass to amend the constitution by removing its prohibition against anyone who has family members who hold foreign passports from serving as president. This clause directly targets Suu Kyi, whose late husband, Michael Aris, was British and whose two children are British citizens. In March 2016, the NLD-controlled legislature elected a confidant of Suu Kyi’s, Htin Kyaw, as president; he has served a mostly ceremonial role. Suu Kyi created and took the position of “state counselor,” giving herself a role akin to that of a prime minister—a fully defensible workaround to the military’s move to block her from becoming president. Less justifiable are the autocratic inclinations Suu Kyi has demonstrated since taking office and the extraordinary degree to which she has centralized power in her own hands. In addition to serving as state counselor, she also heads the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and retains the presidency of the NLD. As party chief, she has personally chosen every member of the party’s Central Executive Committee—a violation of party rules. She is a micromanager who finds it difficult to delegate; most consequential decisions require her approval, which has led to bottlenecks. She sits on at least 16 governmental committees, all of which seldom produce concrete decisions. In November 2017, the government established a new ministry, dubbed the Office of the Union Government, just to help Suu Kyi cope with her workload. Suu Kyi has also decided to act as her own spokesperson, but she has done a poor job of communicating her administration’s policies. She prefers limited transparency: according to several NLD members of parliament with whom I have spoken, she has instructed them to not ask tough questions during parliamentary sessions and to avoid speaking to journalists. Her preference for personal loyalty over competence was illustrated by her appointment of several cabinet members with scant qualifications. Suu Kyi at an ASEAN and European Union summit in Manila, Philippines, November 2017. ( DONDI TAWATAO / REUTERS) Suu Kyi is in her early 70s yet has no apparent successor, and her party is dominated by other septuagenarians who enjoy her trust but lack the energy, imagination, andskills necessary to carry out the comprehensive renewal the country needs. Although Suu Kyi has been exceedingly critical of the constitution, she has used its antidemocratic provisions when they have suited her purposes. For instance, she appointed two NLD members as chief ministers in Rakhine and Shan States, both of which are home to large minority ethnic communities—even though in both places, a candidate from a local party that represents those groups had won the popular vote. The complex political situation in which Suu Kyi operates requires a leader with a firm hand and a clear sense of purpose. She remains very popular among ordinary Burmese, who admire her tenacity, respect her authority, and consider her the one indispensable leader. Her autocratic style and silence on the Rohingya crisis might be less troubling if her government had made significant progress on economic reform or on reconciliation with other ethnic minority groups. But it has not. WORDS AND DEEDS Although the NLD has been Myanmar’s main opposition group since 1988, it has never formulated a policy program beyond vague promises of democracy, the rule of law, and economic reform. One might argue that it did not need detailed proposals to succeed as an opposition party: it had an iconic leader, and it stood against the army. But even after two years in power, major questions remain about the government’s economic policies, positions on ethnic and religious issues, and plans for persuading the military to leave politics. Notwithstanding its limited room to maneuver, the government should have accomplished much more since taking office. Decades of military control of the economy have turned Myanmar into a desperately poor country. In 2017, its per capita GDP of $1,300 was the lowest in Southeast Asia, about half of that of Laos and one-fifth of Thailand’s. GDP grew by more than six percent in 2016 and 2017, but that was a slower rate of growth than the country enjoyed in the early years of the decade. Inflation has been nearing double digits, commodity prices have increased, and the job market’s expansion has been anemic. Millions of Burmese have been forced to find employment abroad, mostly in so-called 3D jobs: tasks that are dirty, dangerous, and demeaning. Reforming the economy should be the NLD government’s most critical task, but it waited until July 2016 to present its first major statement on the issue. The document turned out to be little more than a wish list, a general outline that identified neither policy instruments nor specific objectives to achieve within a given time frame. So far, the government’s main economic achievement has been the partial modernization of the legal framework governing investment. In January 2016, the legislature passed an arbitration law intended to boost investor confidence. Last year, it passed new rules on investment that are designed to simplify and harmonize existing regulations and that specify the privileges that will be granted to domestic and foreign investors. But the NLD has offered scant details on how the new rules will be implemented. The arrival of the NLD government had fueled hopes of increased foreign direct investment, but partly as a result of its lack of action, such investment has actually tapered off since 2015. Suu Kyi’s record on other pressing economic issues has been even less impressive. Agriculture represents 37 percent of Myanmar’s GDP and employs, directly or indirectly, about 70 percent of the country’s labor force. But farmers tend to be extremely poor, and farming profits are among the lowest in Asia. The government must find a way to provide farmers with what they most need to increase their earnings: high-quality seeds and fertilizers, improved water control and irrigation facilities, and access to affordable credit. Farmers also suffer from a lack of land rights. For several decades, the military expropriated hundreds of thousands of acres from helpless peasants, offering little or no compensation. In 2016, groups of farmers sent letters to the army’s commander in chief, Senior General Min Aung Hlaing, requesting the return of their land. The military’s response was to threaten the farmers and their lawyers with defamation lawsuits. Suu Kyi’s government has said that dealing with the landownership issue is a priority, but she has done little. The military regime also grossly neglected the country’s infrastructure. Roads, railways, and public transportation systems all lie in a pitiful state of disrepair. Even more serious is the shortage of electricity: only one-third of the population has access to it, and blackouts are frequent, even in Yangon’s luxury hotels. Economic growth will put even more pressure on the electricity supply, and shortages will likely get worse. These weaknesses affect every economic sector and scare off potential investors. But Suu Kyi’s government seems to have realized the importance of infrastructure only recently. A number of plans have been drawn up, and the government has held some summits on the issue. But on this, too, there has been little action to match the government’s rhetoric. A DOUBLE BIND Despite the lack of progress, relations between the civilian government and the military have settled into what Suu Kyi has described as a “normal” routine. The most charitable interpretation of Suu Kyi’s accommodation of the military is that she hopes that, over time, the generals will conclude that their interests would be best served by leaving politics. The army appears to be taking its time: Min Aung Hlaing has said that the Tatmadaw intends to reduce its presence in parliament, but he has refused to set a timetable. Part of the problem is that the military has two conflicting goals. The generals want to transform the army—which is plagued by obsolete equipment, archaic training methods, and poor morale—into a professional force comparable to its counterparts in other countries in the region. In order to do that, the military needs help from more developed, powerful countries—help that, in the case of Western governments, is conditioned on the military leaving politics. But Western governments also insist that the government must do more to resolve its many conflicts with ethnic minority groups. In September 2017, the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence announced that it would suspend educational courses it provided for the Tatmadaw, citing ongoing violence and human rights abuses. Similarly, the following month, the Trump administration announced the withdrawal of U.S. military assistance from officers and units participating in the operations in Rakhine State and rescinded invitations to senior members of Myanmar’s security forces to U.S.-sponsored events. Then, in November, a bipartisan group of U.S. representatives introduced the Burma Act of 2017, which, among other things, would reinstate sanctions against the Tatmadaw that were lifted the year before to reward the country for its putative progress and to incentivize more steps in the direction of democracy. That legislation has yet to be put to a vote. In December, however, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution condemning “the ethnic cleansing of the Rohingya,” and the Trump administration imposed new sanctions on Major General Maung Maung Soe, who has overseen the brutal campaign against the Rohingya. But the military’s troubling treatment of minorities extends far beyond the Rohingya. Several ethnic communities have been at war with the government for long periods—in some cases, ever since Burma proclaimed its independence in 1948. Together, these conflicts form something like a low-level, multifaceted civil war. Some ethnic groups bear long-held grudges against others, sometimes related to overlapping land claims. Individual ethnic communities themselves are often divided by sectarian differences. Aside from causing thousands of deaths and displacing millions, ethnic violence has prevented the consolidation of central authority over the country, as well as the formation of a shared national identity. For decades, the military has prolonged ethnic conflicts in a bid to justify its continued rule. The fighting has also given cover to generals who profit from the drug trade (Myanmar is a major source of opium) and from the illegal export of gems, gold, and timber. But in recent years, the Tatmadaw has appeared more determined to end the civil war. In October 2015, prior to Suu Kyi’s electoral victory, eight ethnic armed organizations and the government signed the National Ceasefire Agreement, brokered by the military, although some of the largest and most influential ethnic groups stayed away. Compared with Beijing, Washington today has little sway over Myanmar. During her campaign, Suu Kyi repeatedly identified achieving ethnic peace as her number one priority. After the realization of that objective, she was to pursue the creation of a federal system of the sort first promised by her father in the 1940s. There is no agreement on what precise shape that system would take, except that it would grant more autonomy to ethnic groups but stop short of giving them the right to secede. Suu Kyi’s promise to pursue ethnic peace was a tactical mistake, however, since she has little influence over how the military wages its wars against ethnic armed organizations, and the idea of a federal system is anathema to the generals. Nevertheless, her administration organized conferences in August 2016 and May 2017 with the aim of persuading more ethnic armed organizations to sign the National Ceasefire Agreement; the talks brought together armed groups, the military, and the government. Predictably, the meetings achieved little besides providing a forum for grand speeches and gestures, and in the aftermath of the conferences, the fighting actually intensified in several regions. In February 2018, two additional rebel groups signed on to the cease-fire amid much fanfare. But the groups that represent four-fifths of all the ethnic armed personnel in the country remain as opposed to signing as ever. Meanwhile, the generals adamantly refuse to create a federal army that would represent the country’s ethnic groups and regions, which is one of the ethnic armed organizations’ key demands; the military falsely contends that the armed forces are already inclusive and fair. At the same time, the armed groups have refused to disavow secession—a position that the military insists they must take as part of any final agreement. Optimists believe that the ethnic armed organizations’ chief objective is to maximize their gains on the ground in preparation for eventual peace negotiations. In reality, their ultimate goal is the establishment of a federal system. Such a system represents a redline for the Tatmadaw: although military elites have adopted an increasingly pragmatic approach toward negotiation with the ethnic armed organizations, they continue to see federalism as the first step toward the country’s disintegration. The word “federalism” is no longer taboo in public discourse, as it had been for decades, but the top brass are unlikely to relax their long-standing opposition to a federal system anytime soon. BEIJING BECKONS In the face of Western opprobrium over Myanmar’s treatment of the Rohingya, there are signs that the military might abandon its relatively recent quest to placate Western governments and instead return to a strategy of reliance on its traditional patron, China. China has always been Myanmar’s top trading partner and biggest investor, and for decades, Beijing was the main sponsor of Myanmar’s military junta. Suu Kyi’s first major trip abroad as state counselor, in August 2016, took her to Beijing. Her discussions there centered on business and trade issues, especially a few large infrastructure projects, such as a $7.2 billion deep-sea port in Rakhine State that China plans to build to give Chinese ships access to the Indian Ocean. Since then, the relationship between Myanmar and China has improved; in November 2017, Chinese President Xi Jinping described this moment in Chinese-Myanmar military relations as being the “best ever.” It helps that Chinese officials, unlike Western ones, do not admonish Suu Kyi and her government for their human rights violations. Obama wanted to reward Myanmar’s progress; in hindsight, that was likely a mistake. But the Chinese are pressing for progress on the civil war. Chinese leaders have endorsed negotiations between the Myanmar government and the country’s ethnic armed organizations, and Beijing facilitated the participation of some recalcitrant groups in the May 2017 conference. China has played a complex role in the civil war for decades, backing the government but also providing shelter, weapons, and training to some of the belligerent groups; such contacts have allowed China to extract natural resources (mostly illegally), such as jade, gold, and timber, from regions where militants operate. But it now seems that the Chinese want the violence to end because the rebels’ objectives have shifted from merely resisting government forces to improving their status within Myanmar, an aim that is more conducive to internal stability, and because the fighting has impeded economic development and trade. What’s more, the Chinese want to be seen as peacemakers in a region where they have long been regarded as a destabilizing presence. Compared with Beijing, Washington today has little sway over Myanmar. That is a recent development: the Obama administration, in one of its undisputed foreign policy successes, managed to convince the country to take steps toward democracy. The United States was a steadfast supporter of Suu Kyi for years before she took office, and both President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made historic visits to Yangon. When Suu Kyi visited Washington in September 2016, she asked Obama to lift most of the remaining U.S. sanctions on Myanmar in order to help her government grow the country’s economy. Obama obliged her; in hindsight, that was likely a mistake. Obama wanted to reward progress. But lifting the sanctions robbed Washington of precisely the kind of leverage it now needs. Indeed, democratic activists in Myanmar and elsewhere had hoped that the sanctions would stay in place until the antidemocratic features of the 2008 constitution were abolished. Pope Francis in Yangon, Myanmar, November 2017. (Max Rossi / REUTERS) Since the Rohingya crisis erupted last year, there have been few official interactions between the United States and Myanmar. Under the Trump administration, Myanmar has lost the special place it enjoyed on Washington’s foreign policy agenda during the Obama years. Then U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson made a five-hour visit to Myanmar in November 2017. In meetings with Suu Kyi and the army chief, Min Aung Hlaing, he raised concerns about ethnic violence. At a news conference, Tillerson said that there had been “crimes against humanity,” but he did not back the idea of new economic sanctions against Myanmar. Pope Francis visited the country a few days later and called for peace and mutual respect. But neither Tillerson nor the usually outspoken pope used the term “Rohingya” during his discussions with Myanmar officials or in his public statements, likely out of a fear that doing so would aggravate an already highly charged situation and, in the case of the pope, out of a fear that it could endanger Myanmar’s small and vulnerable Catholic community. Admittedly, the United States has few appealing policy options for stopping the ethnic cleansing. Restoring the sanctions or placing more new ones on the generals would likely just drive the military further into the welcoming arms of the Chinese, who are keen to fill the vacuum left by Washington’s flagging interest. Denunciations from Washington and other foreign capitals have failed to affect the government’s position on the Rohingya and have actually increased domestic support for the Tatmadaw, as evidenced by a number of major pro-military rallies held throughout Myanmar last fall. Still, there are ways for the United States to push for progress. For starters, it should suspend all military-to-military engagement with Myanmar and expand assistance to a number of sophisticated but underfunded nongovernmental organizations, such as Mosaic Myanmar, a civil society group that promotes tolerance between the majority Buddhist community and Christian and Muslim minorities. Furthermore, the United States should establish or sponsor programs in Myanmar focused on health care, educational opportunities, and cultural exchanges. In a country that tends to be at best cautious of foreigners’ intentions, the United States is generally held in high regard, according to Asian Barometer surveys of public opinion—a sharp contrast to the suspicious attitudes toward China and India that prevail throughout Myanmar. There are few societies where prudent U.S. democracy promotion could find more fertile ground or where it would be more gratefully accepted. Finally, in lieu of public expressions of indignation, Washington should communicate its displeasure privately—especially through politicians with long histories of supporting Suu Kyi and Myanmar’s democratization, such as Clinton and Republican Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. As for Suu Kyi, her reduced stature abroad might further reduce her already limited leverage with the generals. She is boxed in to a degree that many critics fail to appreciate. But she has made her own situation worse through poor management and a lack of focus on issues that are under her administration’s control: improving the economy, shoring up infrastructure, and revamping the health-care and educational systems. The government should adopt a personnel policy that emphasizes merit and accomplishment instead of personal loyalty to Suu Kyi. Instead of alienating ethnic minorities and their political parties and ignoring civil society organizations, Suu Kyi ought to open a meaningful dialogue with them with a view to forming a big-tent political and social coalition that might, in time, challenge the military’s political supremacy. Suu Kyi and her administration should reverse their attacks on media freedoms. And even though the government cannot control the military, it must stop denying and defending the Tatmadaw’s atrocities and start actively protecting those who have suffered so terribly from the army’s repression. Most important, Suu Kyi must shift gears quickly. International patience with her is almost extinguished. If she does not change course soon, she will lose what little goodwill remains. (c) 2018 Foreign Affairs https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/burma-myanmar/2018-04-16/where-myanmar-went-wrong

“They tried to kill the Penobscot part of us,’’ Dawn Neptune said. It didn’t work. BANGOR — She was a 4-year-old kid named Dawn Neptune, who lived not far from here in a place called Indian Island, a reservation of the Penobscot Nation, a cultural touchstone that shaped — still shapes — who she is. Her mother, then still a teenager, drank too much in those early days. It was an open family secret, part of an intergenerational trauma that, like her Penobscot heritage, was a critical and governing rhythm to her young life. And then Dawn Neptune was gone. A baby sitter took her and a younger brother to a grocery store a half-hour away from the reservation. And then abruptly drove away, a cruel abandonment that served as the little girl’s entry into life in foster care, where she promptly learned a hard lesson no kid should be forced to absorb: Forget about your mom. Forget about Indian Island. Forget about being Penobscot. And then one day she spoke briefly in her native tongue and suffered swift and ugly punishment she has never — can never — forget. “It made my foster mother rage,’’ Dawn Neptune Adams, now 43, told me the other day, sitting at her sun-dappled kitchen table here. “There was absolute rage in her eyes. All of a sudden, she was pulling me into the bathroom. “And she took my toothbrush out of the toothbrush holder and rubbed on the soap. Then she brushed my teeth with it — my teeth and my mouth. It was very painful. When she took the toothbrush out of my mouth, bristles that had been standing up were now sideways. I heard her bragging about it later. She said she washed it out of my mouth.’’ Much later, when she was allowed to rinse her mouth, the sink ran red with her blood. That type of punishment — and so much more — is an example of the “cultural genocide” that the Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare Truth & Reconciliation Commission would detail in 2015. That commission concluded that since the dawn of the 21st century, native children like Dawn Neptune were 5.1 times more likely to live in foster care than nonnative children — a practice that dates to the boarding schools of the late 1800s. A practice that perpetuated this monstrous mandate: “Kill the Indian, and save the man.’’ “Any time I heard my foster mother talking about Penobscot people, they were dirty,’’ Adams told me. “They were alcoholics. They were stupid. She really hated my birth mother. All the kids who were put into nonnative foster care were not allowed to practice their culture or were told to be ashamed of their culture. And that echoes through time.’’ It also echoes through a riveting new documentary film, “Dawnland,’’ which makes its East Coast premiere on April 28 at Independent Film Festival Boston at the Somerville Theatre. It’s an 86-minute journey of raw and recent history told through the eyes of those who have lived through it. Who have survived it. Who are determined to bear unstinting witness to it. For people like me, who grew up in an almost all-white small Worcester County town, it’s an uncomfortable cinematic history lesson, a window into a world whose legacy stretches into the late 1800s and even earlier than that, when misplaced benevolence of white men led to efforts to “Americanize’’ Native Americans. Boarding schools sought to systematically strip away tribal cultures. Native language was forbidden. Native names were banned. Long hair was cut. “Savages’’ were being “civilized.’’ “It was the white man’s burden to bring these ‘savages’ into the light and promote assimilation,’’ said N. Bruce Duthu, a professor in the Native American Studies program at Dartmouth College, and a coproducer of the documentary. “They saw the whole notion of living on communal lands and adhering to traditional ways as an albatross for people who needed to be liberated,’’ said Duthu, a member of the United Houma Nation of Louisiana. Dawn Neptune Adams at her housing complex in Bangor, Maine, earlier this month. The film’s coproducer and codirector is Adam Mazo, who lives now in Jamaica Plain with his wife and son, and who first learned of the Truth & Reconciliation Commission’s remarkable work through the speakers of his car’s radio. The NPR report riveted him. “I wasn’t taught that Native American children are still three times more likely to go into foster care than nonnative children,’’ Mazo said. “In the 1970s, Native American children in Maine were 17 times more likely to go into foster care than nonnative children.’’ The native welfare system’s policies can be traced, he said, to the federal boarding school program under which kids were shipped hundreds of miles from their families. “These kids were essentially kidnapped by the United States government and sent to these boarding schools,’’ he said. Mazo said the making of the documentary was transformative for him, a guy raised in Minnesota and who studied journalism in Florida before coming to Boston as a producer for WHDH-TV. “I have a completely different understanding of who I am as a Euro-American man,’’ he said. “I follow in the footsteps of colonists who did everything they could to extract things from native people, including murder and genocide. I had the great honor of being in the room for some of this testimony as it was being given to the Truth Commission.’’ That testimony is emotional, tear-provoking, and grist for introspection. White privilege is confronted directly. At one point, the camera documents a meeting at which Native Americans ask the whites present to retire to the basement. Turns out this reconciliation business is delicate and difficult-to-achieve terrain. “I think what we’re starting to realize now is that you don’t take 500 years of mistrust and wash it away with one commission,’’ Matthew Dunlap, Maine’s secretary of state and a commission member, tells the documentarians. “When you forbid people from speaking their language, you take their children away and put them in totally different cultural settings, what are you really doing?’’ Dunlap asks in the film. “What else do you call it beside cultural genocide?’’ That’s what Dawn Neptune Adams calls it, too. She agrees with the commission’s findings that genocide “continues to occur in a cultural form.” A protest sign, with the words "NO DAPL," hung on the wall of the home of Dawn Neptune Adams. She has fought against it since the time she was 18 and allowed to leave foster care and chart her own nonlinear course. She begins to softly cry as she recalls her first pow-wow, a large conference of Native Americans from the United States and Canada. “There was an elderly man in a circle of people dancing and he went like this to me,’’ she said, making a beckoning gesture. “And I couldn’t. I didn’t know how to dance. And I didn’t want anybody to see that. It was embarrassing. It’s still embarrassing.’’ Adams’s road to recover her culture, to recover herself, would not always be accompanied by soaring music of cinematic success. She was staggered by drug addiction. She learned to make jewelry in California. She was aimless, struggling to find her true north. Then she quit drugs. Got a college degree. At age 35, she became a single mom, surviving without child support. “They tried to kill the Penobscot part of us,’’ she said, recalling the days when she was beaten with a hair brush, or a fly swatter, or a spatula. It didn’t work. As we spoke, her 9-year-old daughter was napping upstairs. Her name is Wolipan. It’s a Penobscot name. It means “a beautiful dawn.’’ (c) 2018 The Boston Globe https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2018/04/19/reclaiming-culture-reclaiming-life/Zdk4BAOU1oipE7Li57GteL/story.html

The mayor of Gdansk, Pawel Adamowicz,center, addresses a rally he organized in protest against a recent gathering by far-right groups in this Baltic coast city, in Gdansk, Poland, on Saturday, April 21, 2018. A Holocaust survivor slammed Poland’s right-wing government for failing to condemn these groups. (Wojciech Strozyk/Associated Press) WARSAW, Poland — A Holocaust survivor told people at a counter-rally held Saturday in a Polish city where far-right groups marched a week earlier that Poland’s leaders tolerate organizations with Nazi-inspired ideologies. Some 1,500 people gathered in Gdansk, the cradle of Poland’s pro-democracy Solidarity movement in the 1980s, to protest the convention the far-right groups held in the city and to alert Poland’s government to the growing threat of fascism. Magdalena Wyszynska, 96, a Jewish survivor of the Lvov ghetto, told the crowd that the lack of reaction by Poland’s right-wing government could suggests its leaders are “more concerned for the widening of their electorate than for our security.” Gdansk Mayor Pawel Adamowicz, who organized the rally Saturday, said it was a “shame” that many Poles haven’t learned from history and don uniforms of nationalist and fascist organizations that sowed hatred before and during World War II. Hidden camera footage recently shown on Poland’s TVN24 showed neo-Nazis celebrating Adolf Hitler’s birthday in Nazi uniforms in southwestern Poland. There was no condemnation from the authorities. Wyszynska said Polish authorities are giving “silent consent” to groups such as All-Poland Youth and the National Radical Camp that promote ideas that should be banned. Last year, an annual Independence Day march the groups hold parallel to Poland’s official celebrations featured nationalist and racist slogans. Poland lost some 6 million citizens, half of them Jews, under Nazi German occupation during the war. (2018) The Associated Press https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/holocaust-survivor-warns-polish-leaders-over-nazi-groups/2018/04/21/9370e6ce-4580-11e8-b2dc-b0a403e4720a_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.3a5d29ede889

The Armenian genocide — commemorated Tuesday — has been largely expunged from the pages of history thanks to Turkish pressure and Western expediency. “Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?” asked Adolf Hitler nearly 25 years after Ottoman Turkey slaughtered the sons and daughters of Armenia. In an attempt to ethnically cleanse a people, the Turks initiated the 20th century’s first mass extermination — paving the way for the Fuhrer’s Final Solution. Indeed, the crumbling Ottoman Turkish empire’s butchery of 1.5 million Armenians between 1915 and 1917 presaged the Shoah. Meredith Z. Avakian-Hardaway, a descendant of Armenian genocide survivors, wrote in The Philadelphia Inquirer last year: “As many people surprisingly do not know, the Armenian Genocide was essentially the blueprint for the Jewish Holocaust — concentration camps, mass deportations, tattoos and more.” Nazi Germany’s grisly extermination of 6 million Jews, an atrocity that still haunts Germany, was humanity’s moral nadir. But the Armenian genocide (commemorated Tuesday as Armenian Genocide Remembrance Day) has been largely expunged from the pages of history thanks to Turkish pressure and Western expediency. Today, Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan — a theocratic authoritarian with megalomaniacal tendencies — continues the ugly Turkish tradition of denial, disavowal and, yes, deceit vis-à-vis the Armenian Genocide. According to Erdogan: “The Armenian issue is a useful blackmail opportunity against Turkey all around the world, and it is even starting to be used as a stick.” Ankara’s strongman also stated that “Our attitude on the Armenian issue is clear from the beginning. We will never accept the accusations of genocide.” All this comes from a self-anointed “sultan” who has eroded civil liberties, jailed opponents, curbed freedom of expression and branded women inferior beings. The West should not be fooled by Erdogan’s rapprochement with Israel. In fact, he regularly traffics in anti-Semitic rhetoric. According to Martin Hier, founder of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, Erdogan is “the Joseph Goebbels of our time.” As for Turkey’s solidarity with the U.S.-led coalition in the fight against ISIS, Erdogan entered the Syrian fray duplicitously. Indeed, the recent Turkish invasion of Syria’s Afrin District — in a bid to crush the Syrian Kurds — will likely expand eastward to the Iraqi border, risking a confrontation with the United States. According to Patrick Coburn in The Independent (March 7, 2018): “The Syrian Kurds believe they are facing an existential threat. They believe Turkey wants to eliminate not just the enclave of Afrin, but the 25 per cent of Syria that the Kurds have taken with US backing since 2015.” Secular Turks fear that in seeking absolute power and yearning for territorial expansion, Erdogan will repeat the geopolitical mistakes of the Ottoman Turks. In the Italo-Turkish War of 1911-12, the Ottoman Empire was defeated by the Kingdom of Italy. As a result, Libya — which comprised the former Turkish provinces of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica — became an Italian colony. And Ottoman Turkey began its ignominious downfall, culminating in the horror of the Armenian genocide. (c) 2018 Newsday https://www.newsday.com/opinion/commentary/the-horrors-of-genocide-1.18177247

Armenian Member of Turkish Parliament Garo Paylan representing the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) has submitted a draft law to the Turkish Grand National Assembly on “Recognition of Armenian Genocide”, “Removal of the Names of Genocide Perpetrators from Public Places” and “Amendment to Turkish Citizenship Law.” The bill says that”According to a census conducted in 1914, approximately two million Armenians lived in the Ottoman Empire. At the night of April 24, 1915, around 250 Armenian intellectuals, including MPs and writers were arrested in Istanbul.” “After these people were sent into exile in Ayas and Cankiri, the vast majority of them were killed. Among the ones sent into exile and killed were Dr. Nazaret Dagavaryan (MP of Ottoman Empire), Armen Doryan (poet and journalist), Shavarsh Krisyan (editor of the sports magazine Marmnamarz), Levon Larents (poet), Rupen Sevag (poet), Yenovk Sahen (theater artist), Siamanto [Atom Yarcanyan] (poet), Hagop Terziyan (pharmacist and writer), Taniel Varujan (poet), Krikor Yesayan (teacher and translator), Rupen Zartaryan (writer and poet), Diran Kelekyan (writer and Professor of Turkish language) and Krikor Zohrab (MP of Ottoman Empire and writer),” the draft reads. The bill notes that Ottoman Turkey tried to describe the genocide as a “natural war measure” and states that the denial has led to a lot of hate crimes against minorities throughout the history of the Turkish Republic. (c) 2018 Public Radio of Armenia http://www.armradio.am/en/2018/04/20/garo-paylan-submits-armenian-genocide-bill-to-turkish-parliament/

April 18, 2018 Co-Chairman Hultgren and members of the Commission, thank you for the invitation to testify today. Thousands of Eritreans, many of them young, flee Eritrea every month. This means Eritrea is losing a significant percentage of its population – by far the largest of any country not wracked by active conflict. UNHCR reported that at the end of 2016 there were 459,000 Eritreans who had claimed asylum worldwide in African states, in the Middle East, in Europe and here in the United States. Eritrea does not release population statistics, but estimations put that at more than 10% of Eritrea’s current population. Based on Human Rights Watch research, Eritreans’ most predominant impetus for flight is to escape what is known as “national service.” By a proclamation issued in 1995, all Eritreans are subject to 18 months of national service, including six months of military training. Eritrean law requires Eritreans leaving the country to hold an exit permit which the authorities only issue selectively, severely punishing those caught trying to leave without one, including with jail time. To be clear, limited terms of national conscription do not, in themselves, constitute human rights violations. But it is not limited in Eritrea. The Eritrean government disregards the proclamation’s time limits. Many conscripts are forced to serve indefinitely. Human Rights Watch has interviewed hundreds of Eritreans who were forced to serve a decade or more before they decided to flee -- in one recent case, a man had been in forced national service for over 17 years. While some fortunate conscripts are assigned to civil service jobs or as teachers, many are placed in military units assigned to work on “development” projects in agriculture and infrastructure. None have a choice about their assignments, the locations or length of their service. In the past few years, more and more unaccompanied children have fled Eritrea. When interviewed in Europe, they’ve explained they feared being forced into possibly indefinite military service. Many children told us they had observed what had happened to their fathers, older siblings, or other close relatives who had been conscripted and didn’t want to suffer the same fate. It’s not just the length of time that causes so many conscripts to flee. What happens to them during their years of service is also devastating. Pay during national service is below subsistence, although the Eritrean government has recently announced increases for some conscripts. The United Nations Commission of Inquiry in 2015 correctly called Eritrea’s national service a form of “enslavement.” During service, commanders subject conscripts to physical abuse, including torture. An 18-year-old boy, interviewed by Human Rights Watch summed up what many have told us: “We love our country, but when you finish Grade 12, you become a soldier for life. You cannot feed your family and you’re the property of the army. And I did not want that, so I was forced to flee.” The abuses in national service are long standing and well-documented, and recent interviews reveal that, sadly, nothing has changed in recent years. National service may be the leading cause of the Eritrean exodus but there are others of significance. Citizens cannot express their views or question government policies affecting them. There is no legislative representation, no independent press, no independent non-governmental organizations to which citizens can turn. The judiciary is tightly controlled by the government. President Isaias has refused to implement a constitution approved by referendum in 1997 that confers some citizens’ basic rights. Eritreans who criticize or question government policies during government-called community assemblies, or in more limited fora, have been punished without trial or means of appeal. Suspicion alone may be enough to lead to arrest; often a prisoner is not told what “crime” he or she has committed. Indefinite imprisonment is a usual punishment, sometimes accompanied by physical abuse. Imprisonment can be incommunicado; relatives are not told of the whereabouts of a prisoner, much less allowed to visit. Relatives of those that speak out are also punished. They are denied government ration cards to buy scarce but essential provisions. Eritreans are punished for having the “wrong” religious beliefs. Since 2002, the government has “recognized” only four religious groups: Sunni Islam and the Eritrean Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Evangelical (Lutheran) churches. At times, security personnel raid private homes where devotees of unrecognized religions meet for communal prayer. Arrests and imprisonment of attendees usually follow; so, sometimes, does physical abuse. Repudiation of his or her religion is typically the price of a prisoner’s release. Even adherents and leaders of the “recognized” religions are not necessarily immune from punishment. [as Father Thomas will already have explained to the Commission in detail.] But unfortunately, abuses do not stop when people leave Eritrea. Fleeing Eritreans are often victimized by their smugglers especially those trying to reach the Mediterranean Sea to get to Europe. Abuses are rampant in Sudan, Egypt and Libya en route and hundreds have died trying to cross the Mediterranean. Those who survived have told Human Rights Watch interviewers of horrific stories about the dangers they encountered during their journey but insisted it was worth their escape from oppression. One boy, interviewed in Italy after his three-month journey from Eritrea, told Human Rights Watch: “I fled my country [Eritrea] because of all the problems I had while I was in the army. I don’t want to be a soldier but they beat me and tortured me when I was caught trying to escape. When I finally got out I thought I would be free, but I was beaten and tortured even worse in Sudan and Libya by smugglers. Crossing the sea was terrifying, but I am so relieved to finally be here.” There are steps that the Eritrean government could take to stem migration, and importantly address the human rights crisis that has wracked the country. Eritrea could end indefinite national service and begin the process of demobilizing conscripts. It could penalize military commanders and security officers who authorize torture and other forms of severe physical punishment. It could unconditionally release political prisoners or bring anyone it considers an offender before a truly independent court of law. It could stop interference with all forms of peaceful religious expression. It could allow establishment of an independent press and non-governmental organizations. It could publicly affirm – and enforce – rights to freedom of expression, opinion, religion, association, and movement. Unfortunately, the Eritrean government has steadfastly refused to change. In the absence of willingness by the Eritrean government to end its abuses and bring abusers to justice, other countries should investigate and prosecute individuals suspected of committing serious crimes under the principle of universal jurisdiction and in accordance with their national laws. Countries concerned by human rights abuses of Eritreans, and their efforts at migrating should work to undercut the Eritrean government’s public excuses for repression and protect the Eritreans who have fled from being repatriated to suffer further abuse. With a new Secretary of State confirmation underway we expect to see some change at senior State Department levels [and this could mark the beginning of a new approach on Eritrea.] During Mike Pompeo’s confirmation hearing he said he was a “talent hawk.” If that is the case, we hope he will fill the position for Africa Assistant Secretary quickly and nominate someone who is well versed in issues and challenges related to the Horn of Africa – and not just counterterrorism or security related ones. In 2002 an international boundary commission was established to demarcate the border between Eritrea and Ethiopia. The United States was a guarantor of an armistice agreement ending a 1998-2000 border war that established the international commission. While both sides agreed to accept the findings of the international commission as binding, Ethiopia refused to accept the findings when the final decision was to award a key piece of territory to Eritrea. President Isaias uses the border issue – of “no peace, no war” – as the principal excuse for his repressive policies. While both sides have been firmly entrenched in their positions, there may be an opening for reconsideration as Ethiopia’s new prime minister Dr Abiy Ahmed recently expressed his desire to resolve disputes with Eritrea after, in his own words “years of misunderstandings.” The United States and other countries should urgently take steps to protect the Eritreans who have managed to flee the government’s oppression, should take into consideration the pattern of serious human rights abuses in Eritrea in examining asylum claims, and ensure that no one is returned to a threat of persecution or torture. Last September, the U.S Departments of Homeland Security and State announced an intent to repatriate about 700 Eritrean individuals. The government should take care to ensure that all of those individuals have a genuine opportunity to advance any claims for protection in light of human rights conditions in Eritrea, if they have not done so already. By shedding light on what’s happening to Eritreans in Eritrea and in countries of potential asylum, this Commission is performing a welcome and important public service. Thank you.

Meles Ghirmay remembers every moment leading up to his deportation from Israel. "I was hopeful and thinking that they would give me a visa," the Eritrean asylum seeker says softly over the phone from Kampala, Uganda. "On the spot, they told me I have to leave and I was given no option. Just sign and go," Ghirmay recalls. A week later, he was on a flight to Uganda. "I don't have any documents to be here," he says about his new home. "When I got here, I was escorted by an airport worker and my documents were taken. I don't know what they did with it." All assurances given by the Israeli government were false, he says. "They promised they would take care of me and it was nothing like that—I don't have any hope here." The Asylum Line Every morning at 8 o'clock, Israeli immigration officials in Tel Aviv are met by long lines of African migrants, mostly teenage and middle age men from Sudan and Eritrea waiting for word on their refugee claims in Israel. Ghirmay was one of the thousands who would religiously join the lines at 4 a.m. outside the embassy in Tel Aviv when his schedule as a store clerk permitted. While some asylum seekers spent countless hours online waiting to get assistance, many eventually gave up and resorted to sitting demoralized on sidewalks nearby gazing at the line. Ghirmay spent ten years living in Tel Aviv. He left Eritrea at age 21 to flee the brutal military regime there and its indefinite military conscription. He came to Israel thinking that it was aware of Eritrea's human rights abuses and would freely accept him. While waiting in line with his documents folded under his arm, food and water were the last thing on his mind. Going for food, he feared, would lose his position in the line. Often he would wait in line until eventually the doors to the embassy would close without warning. It was the norm he says. Asylum seekers would walk away, disappointed, only to repeat the process the following day. After countless days in line, it was finally his turn to request a visa. In the office he was surrounded by officers who peppered him with questions about his status and his purpose in Israel. They told him his claims were fabricated—that he wasn't in Israel because of persecution but for economic benefit. Ghirmay says that in the moment he was confused and nervous and didn't know what to do because the accusations weren't accurate. After an officer repeatedly told him in Hebrew that he must go, Ghirmay said he was given no chance to consider his options. He felt pressured and opted for the offer of $3,500 in cash and a one-way ticket to a place of uncertainty. He is one of an estimated 4,000 migrants who chose deportation to Kampala, Uganda, and Rwanda since 2013 with a $3,500 grant and promised "a life of happiness and employment." It has turned out to be anything but. In recent days, the Israeli government has been zigzagging on its decision to deport or imprison its unwanted residence. Recently Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu struck a plan with the U.N.'s High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) to relocate 16,000 migrants to western nations. After making the plan public, he scrapped it because right-wing politicians feared that thousands of migrants would still remain in Israel. At the top of the year, parliament issued an order that asylum seekers choose indefinite imprisonment or accept a $3,500 grant and a one-way ticket to Uganda or Rwanda. Both countries in the past have denied claims that they accepted a proposal from Israel to take in hundreds of Africans Israel wishes to deport. Just days after Israel canceled its plans with UNHCR, Uganda announced that it may take in 500 asylum seekers. Israel's deportation plans have sparked a backlash of ongoing protests and discussions. Rights groups have challenged the deportation order and brought it to Israel's Supreme court which issued a temporary injunction which allowed petitioners to fight against the plans. Groups like Hotline For Refugees and Eritrean Community Center are outspoken about the stance they take on this issue. "Once migrants opt for voluntary departure, their lives are in constant danger," Dror Sadot, the spokesperson for Hotline for Refugees and Migrants says. "They are exposed to arrest and so they need to take cover at all times and hide because it's like another asylum journey." The African Refugee Development Center estimates that there are approximately 40,000 Africans in Israel who considers themselves asylum seekers. Israel contends that they are economic migrants looking for opportunities. Only eight claims were approved between 2009 and 2016 according to Israel's Interior Ministry. Life as a Deportee It has been three months since Ghirmay has been living in Kampala. With no job and fear of possible arrest, he spends most of his time in his one-room flat he rents for 200 Ugandan Shillings per month. His daily activities are at times repetitive and nevertheless, predictable. He's up at 7a.m., buys breakfast then stays in bed throughout the day. He has become frugal with his spending and fears how rapidly his grant will finish. Sometimes, he goes to bed famished. "I don't know how to survive here and the government doesn't even know who I am or where I am staying," Ghirmay said. "I fled from my country to save my life but until today, I don't save my life. No work. No hope. No nothing." Making friends for Ghirmay is a challenge because of the language barrier. He said he misses his friends and family. He spends most of his alone time reminiscing about a flourishing job he once had as a clerk at a supermarket in Tel Aviv for two years. It came to a halt when his once kind and caring boss took notice of the "Infiltrator's Law," issued by the Knesset, Israel's parliament which paved the way for forceful deportation. "The good thing is that I saved my money from work and that's what I'm now using with the balance I received from the government," Ghirmay said. He implores migrants who are stuck in limbo to choose indefinite imprisonment instead. "Learn from my mistake, there's nothing here," Ghirmay said. "No one gives you food or job and the language is a challenge. People here are poor and they are also looking for help from me," he warned. Now, he worries about his family he left behind in Eritrea. They haven't spoken since he fled to avoid military conscription. "They don't know where I am and what I'm going through," he said. "They're still thinking I'm in Israel and it's not good for them to know because they will worry." Regardless of the status-quo, Ghirmay is planning his next move to Europe and is hopeful of finding happiness and safety. With little information of getting from Point A to Point B, he relies on word-of-mouth for help and guidance. "I hope to reach there, God knows," Ghirmay said followed by a sigh. "If I don't reach, that is life. If I reach, thanks to God." © 2018 Okay Africa