Islamist rebels allied to Turkey accused of destroying temples of those following the non-Islamic sect Shekh Qamber and his wife Adula Mahmoud Safar, Kurdish Yazidis facing persecution in Afrin Supplied The Yazidis, who were recently the target of massacre, rape and sex slavery by Isis, are now facing forcible conversion to Islam under the threat of death from Turkish-backed forces which captured the Kurdish enclave of Afrin on 18 March. Islamist rebel fighters, who are allied to Turkey and have occupied Yazidi villages in the area, have destroyed the temples and places of worship the Kurdish-speaking non-Islamic sect according to local people. Shekh Qamber, a 63-year-old Syrian Kurdish Yazidi farmer who fled his town of Qastel Jindo in Afrin, described in an exclusive interview with The Independent what happened to Yazidis who refused to leave their homes. He said that some were forcibly brought to a mosque by Islamists to be converted, while others, including a 70-year-old man he knew, were being lured there by offers of food and medical attention. Even the place names of Yazidi villages are being changed. Mr Qamber recounted a conversation he had with an Islamist militant who had arrested and questioned him near the town of Azaz when he was trying to escape. He was asked by his interrogator where he was from and he replied that he was from Qastel Jindo. The Islamist, whose groups often describe themselves as belonging to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), said: “it’s no more Qastel Jindo. It’s al-Quds now. We will give it the name of Palestine’s capital. These areas were occupied by the infidels and now it is [going] back to their original owners and original names ... We came here to regain our lands and behead you.” Mr Qamder says that the majority of the people in villages around Qastel Jindo, which fell early during the Turkish invasion that began on 20 January, are Yazidis. He says that some villagers fled, but others risked staying because they did not want to lose their houses and lands. These who remained were later “taken to the mosque and given lessons in Islamic prayer”. In addition, there were “there were temples and Yazidi worship houses, but all have been blown up and destroyed by the militants after they entered the village”. The Yazidi religion is a mixture of beliefs drawn from Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Mr Qamber said he had spoken to people from the Yazidi villages of Burj Abdalo, Basufane, Faqira, and Tirende and they all said “the militants are teaching the Yazidis the Islamic prayer”. Mr Qander puts part of the blame for what is happening on his own people who returned to their homes after the initial advance of Turkish army and its Arab auxiliaries. He says that they ought to have known better, going by the terrible fate of the Yazidis in Sinjar [Shingal in Kurdish] in northern Iraq in August 2014 when it was overrun by Isis. He asks: “Why don’t they learn from the experiences of Shingal where the Yazidi women were taken as sex slaves and our dignity and honour taken?” Asked about the present concerns of the Yazidis, many of whom are in refugee camps in northern Syria and Iraq, Mr Qamber said that after the defeat of Isis as a territorial entity they “expected that the Turks will attack us, either directly as they did before in Turkey in the 1970s, or indirectly using their allied Islamist Jihadi groups, like Daesh [Isis] or other groups like the so-called Free Syrian Army”. Only a limited amount information has been coming out about conditions in Afrin since it was finally captured by the Turkish army and its Arab allies on 18 March. The UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in its latest report on the Afrin crisis on 16 April says that 137,000 individuals have been displaced from Afrin, while 150,000 remain there, of whom 50,000 are in Afrin City and 100,000 in the countryside. It says that the movement of people is heavily restricted and many who want to return to their homes are not being allowed to pass through checkpoints, which, though it does not identify who is in charge of them, must mean the Turkish military or their Arab auxiliaries inside Afrin, since they are the only authority there. Reports by the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), widely seen as neutral or pro-opposition, citing multiple sources in Afrin confirm Mr Qamber’s account of sectarian and ethnic cleansing by the Turkish army and its Arab allies. It says that it has reliable information that ‘the resettlement of the displaced people of Eastern Ghouta in the Afrin area is still continuing.’ It says that Abdul Nasser Shamir, the military commander of Faylaq al-Rahman, one of the most important armed groups previously fighting the Syrian government in Eastern Ghouta, has been settled along with his top commanders in a town in Afrin. Other displaced people from Eastern Ghouta are being moved into houses from which their Kurdish inhabitants have fled and are not being allowed to return according to SOHR. It says that refugees from Eastern Ghouta object to what is happening , saying they do not want to settle in Afrin, “where the Turkish forces provide them with houses owned by people displaced from Afrin”. The Eastern Ghouta refugees say they resent being the instrument of “an organised demographic change” at the behest of Turkey which would, in effect, replace Kurds with Arabs in Afrin. They say they reject this plan, just as they reject any demographic change orchestrated by the Syrian government and Russia in their own home region of Eastern Ghouta, where shelling killed about 1,800 civilians and injured some 6,000. The SOHR notes that the ethnic cleansing by Turkey of Afrin is being carried out “amid a media blackout” and and is being ignored internationally. The Yazidi Kurds fear that the slaughter and enslavement they endured at the hands of Isis in Sinjar in 2014 might happen again. Mr Qamber is living safely with his wife Adula Mahmoud Safar to the east of Qamishli, the de facto capital of Rojava as the Kurds call their territory in north east Syria. But he is pessimistic about the future, expecting Turkey to invade the rest of Rojava. He says that many Turkish officials say that “if the Kurds live in a tent in Africa, that tent should be destroyed”. He adds that because the Turks and their Arab allies see the Yazidis as both infidels and Kurds, they are the doubly jeopardised and will be the biggest losers in any future war waged by Turkey against the Kurds. (c) 2018 The Independent https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/syria-yazidis-isis-islam-conversion-afrin-persecution-kurdish-a8310696.html

Fear of the known – killer herdsmen – dissuaded taxi drivers in Makurdi, the Benue State capital, from taking the ICIR reporter to Guma and Logo, the two local government areas in the state that have become the epicentre of repeated hate crimes since the beginning of the year. It was until the next day that a car was arranged for the journey. From Makurdi to Agasha on the sandy bush road and crossing the River Benue on the ferry to Tse-Ikyo and getting to Tse-Ginde, there were neither soldiers nor police in a journey of about three hours. Desolate farming villages laid across in Guma and Logo but those who deserted their communities face another horror in camps – deaths, rape, malnutrition and other indignities – reports CHIKEZIE OMEJE, who visited all the eight recognised camps in the state. On the first night of 2018, people in Tseghem village in Guma were awoken by sporadic gunshots in Timota, another village about two kilometres away. Williams Jime, 34, and other villagers gathered their families and fled. Some men stayed. His 28-year-old brother Pever Kwaghando was among the villagers who did not run away. When the attackers approached the village by motorcycles and the courageous men realised they were Fulani militants, they began to run to different directions. “My brother was the only one killed in our village,” Jime told the ICIR at Tse-Ginde Primary School in Guma where he has been sheltered along with his wife and two children since the attack. The primary school accommodates 20,928 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) forced out of their villages by the lingering crisis between Fulani herdsmen and Tiv farmers. The car being ferried across the River Benue in a journey to Tse-Ginde in Guma His brother’s corpse was not discovered until after three days. Shot from behind on the head, the corpse was already decomposing when his cousin discovered it. With their noses covered, they hurriedly dug a shallow grave and pushed the corpse inside it before the attackers whom they alleged had occupied their village could sight them. Jime’s brother was not among the 73 who were given a mass burial in Makurdi on January 11 after the attacks in several villages in Guma and Logo by the Fulani extremists. “There was nothing we could do than to bury the decaying corpse there in the bush,” Jime says, wiping away the tears that ran down his cheeks with the back of his palm. This was the second time that he was being displaced; his village was attacked and burned by herdsmen in 2014. Sewuese Mhile, a 15-year-old junior secondary school student, told the ICIR that her father and three uncles were killed in Timota by the herdsmen. She was cooking rice on firewood – with only groundnut oil and seasoning as an ingredient – while her mother sat on the pavement of the school with hundreds of others, monitoring her progress. Every family cooks their own foods, often given to them by the state’s emergency management agents, and usually involving rice and noodles without additional ingredients to cook them. IDPs at Tse-Ginde camp Since 2013, the Benue State government has documented more than 50 attacks against farmers by the pastoralists, with more than 1,600 people killed in those attacks. The frequent clashes made the state to pass a law banning open grazing of cattle in late last year. Rather than halt the attacks, the anti-open grazing law has sparked another wave of killings since January, the state enduring its worst-ever humanitarian crisis. More than 170,000 people have been registered in eight camps while an unknown number of affected people are taking shelter with relatives in safe communities in and outside the state. “Generally talking about statistics of IDPs in Benue State is very challenging,” Emmanuel Shior, Executive Director of the State Emergency Management Agency (SEMA), told the ICIR. The reason, he says, is that as the attacks continue, more people desert their villages, increasing the number of IDPs daily. The last figure the state registered three weeks earlier was 176,070 IDPs in the eight camps in Makurdi, Guma, and Logo. Desolate farming village in Guma. Several villages have been deserted for fear of attacks by herdsmen. Haruna Ubi, Benue State Chairman of Miyetti Allah, the association of Fulani cattle breeders, blamed the Tiv for the protracted violence and accused them of confiscating cows of Fulani herders. “When we sit and discuss reconciliation, a binding document must be signed between the Fulani and the Tiv so that they cannot attack them and collect their cows,” Ubi told the ICIR. “If they can stop killing the Fulani and collecting their cows, that is fine. Nobody wants war. We need peace also.” When Ubi was reminded that the state’s law bans open grazing, he claimed that the herders had relocated to Nasarawa State but the Benue State’s agents had been entering Nasarawa State to confiscate their cows. The ICIR did not see herdsmen or cattle in any of the deserted communities in Guma and Logo. Nevertheless, a day after the ICIR reporter visited communities in Guma, a village was attacked in the morning, with two killed and one injured. Bernard Ahmbe, 45, his wife and two children were one of the latest arrivals to Daudu camp after his village, Torkula, was attacked by the herdsmen two weeks earlier. He told the ICIR that he had been sleeping outside the camp. “We can’t go back,” he says. “The Fulani will kill us all.” Children make up at least 60 percent of IDPs in camps The two most affected local government areas – very large and sparsely populated by Tiv farmers living in round huts made of leaves – are particularly vulnerable because they share borders with Nasarawa and Taraba states that do not have laws banning open grazing. Only Ekiti and Benue states have passed anti-open grazing laws in the country. The invincibility of the borders between the states complicates the crisis. In Logo, one side of a dusty and bumpy road is Wukari in Taraba State, while the other side is Logo. Guma also borders Awe and Keana local government areas in Nasarawa State. Most communities in these border areas in the three states are Tiv – the biggest ethnic group in the Middle Belt – constituting about 3.5 percent of Nigerian population. The renewed crisis has assumed a darker ethnic dimension, as the Fulani herdsmen who left Benue in droves were alleged to have expressed their anger on these Tiv farming communities by burning their huts, destroying their crops and feeding their cows with the farmers’ yam seedlings. In retaliation, the Tiv have allegedly killed the herders and their cows. As the cycle of violence continues, the Tiv are suffering the heavier causalities. They have been forced out of their ancestral homes into overcrowded camps as the migratory herders attack their communities and disappear into the bushes. SURVIVED ATTACKS, NOW FACE DEATH IN CAMPS IDPs in Daudu camp walk about 20 minutes to get this unclean water from a stream because the camp’s borehole is not functioning. The death toll in the camps is rising and children are mostly affected. Six out of the eight camps in the state are primary schools with no provision to accommodate the number of IDPs. Usually, up to 300 people are put up in a classroom while others sleep in the field. At the NKST camp in Logo, Mercy Akaabo, a community health extension worker who is in charge of the camp clinic, records hundreds of cases of urinary tract infection, diarrhoea and malaria every day. The camp does not have water, so IDPs all go to a particular swampy area in the community where they get water from a contaminated stream. Two children have died of diarrhoea in this camp. In Ayiin camp in Logo where Gabriel Suswam, the former Governor of the state comes from, four children have died in the camp. One of the children had HIV, while others died of suspected cases of malaria and diarrhoea. The intervention of Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) in providing water storage tanks in the camp and filling them with safe drinking water has improved sanitation but open defecation is still rampant. Hannah Iorkaa gave birth to a set of twins on January 13, the day she arrived Gbagimba camp. Her first daughter assists her with babysitting. She does not know the whereabouts of her husband and three other children, and she has not seen them since she was delivered of the twins. Simon Otuba from Tombo-Shagbao village in Logo told the ICIR that he shared a classroom with a teenage girl who would go on to “die mysteriously”. But this was not the only so-called mysterious death that the IDPs had witnessed in the camp. At Gbagimba camp in Guma, where Samuel Ortom the governor comes from, a young bride scared off the IDPs before she later died in the hospital. Nadoo Asaamoga, the 18-year-old from Iorhom village, was married on December 30 but she and her husband started running from the attacks on December 31. Two days after standing under the sun to register for the Red Cross’ relief materials, Asaamoga started complaining that her body was on fire. She was asked to bathe to cool down her body temperature but she slumped in the bathroom. “She was screaming and we asked her whether she was ‘Adzov’ but she said no,” James Terkura, Coordinator of Gbagimba told the ICIR. In Tiv, ‘Adzov’ is the same as Ogbanje in Igbo or Abiku in Yoruba, an evil spirit that is widely believed to have the power to torment its host. “She was repeatedly screaming and saying ‘snakes are coming. Snakes want to bite her,’” Terkura says. The bride was given malaria drugs in the camp clinic, which she vomited. An injection was administered and her pains subsided. Later in the middle of the night, she vomited black substance. Her eyes became blank; she was opening her mouth and closing it. That was when she was taken to a nearby general hospital where she died within an hour. Three other children and one older woman have also died in Gbajimba camp. Cecelia Ojabo, Benue State Commissioner for Health and Human Services, told the ICIR that the level of infections does not suggest that there has been an outbreak of diseases. “If there is one case of diarrhoea and vomiting, it is not an outbreak,” Ojabo says. “To be an outbreak, it has to be a significant number of cases.” So far the state government has provided ambulance in each of the camps for emergency referrals. But the risk of death is still very high in the overcrowded camps lacking access to safe drinking water and bedevilled by open defecation and generally poor sanitation. RAPE IN CAMP IDPs in Gbagimba camp Apart from the Gbagimba and Makurdi camps, all other camps have no fence around the perimeter. Lapses in security have exposed the women to the danger of rape and sexual harassment. Ayiin camp, which is the biggest camp with over 35,000 IDPs, has been particularly notorious in rape cases. A rapist pretended to be one of the IDPs and followed a teenager to one of the classes where he lay down beside her. In the camps, everyone sleeps where there is a space with no segregation of men and women, as well as children. The rapist waited until late at night when hundreds of people in the classroom seemed to have fallen asleep. He used one hand to cover the girl’s mouth and used the other to grope her private part. The girl’s mother, who was also lying beside her, was alert to grab the rapist’s hand and shouted. When the rapist was interrogated on why he attempted to rape a girl in such crowded space, he said he felt the girl would start enjoying it after a while. He was eventually given 20 strokes of cane and set free by community stakeholders. When two women from the camp went into the bush to fetch firewood to cook, they were sexually molested. The camp coordinators could not prove whether the women were assaulted by the herdsmen or the locals. The rape cases have not just been about outsiders; at least seven attempted rape cases have been perpetuated by the IDPs. The culprits were decamped. “The hosted community stakeholders and committee in the camp decided to handle the cases,” Johnson Labe, a member of Benue NGO Network (BENGONET) who works in the camp told the ICIR. Camp coordinators, he says, have decided henceforth to report any new case of rape to the police and ministry of women affairs. Rape has not been reported in other camps but, Emmanuella Ingoroko, a midwife at Daudu camp, believes that such cases might have been happening but the IDPs chose not to report them. “The people understand one another,” Ingoroko says. “They commit it but they understand one another so they will resolve any case among themselves.” RISK OF NATIONWIDE VIOLENCE IDPs at Daudu camp play draft game in the sand The north-central part of the country, also known as Middle Belt, has been the hardest hit in the clashes between farmers and cattle herders. This year alone, hundreds of people have been killed and houses destroyed in Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa, Plateau and Taraba state. On February 20, the Nigerian Army launched operation ‘Ayem Akpatuma’ or ‘Cat Race’ in Tiv to halt the violence, yet attacks in the farming communities by the herdsmen have continued. Theophilus Danjuma, Nigeria-Biafra Civil War veteran, former Chief of Army Staff and former Minister of Defence accused the army of bias in curtailing the violence. “Every one of us must rise up,” he said recently. “The armed forces are not neutral. They collude. They collude. They collude with the armed bandits that kill people, kill Nigerians. They facilitate their movement, they cover them. “If you are depending on the armed forces to stop the killings, you will all die one by one. The ethnic cleansing must stop in Taraba State, must stop in all the states of Nigeria. Otherwise, Somalia will be a child’s play. I ask every one of you to be alert and defend your country, defend your territory, defend your state. You have nowhere else to go.” The clashes between farmers and herdsmen have claimed thousands of lives across the country, particularly in the Middle Belt. According to the Global Terrorism Index, Fulani herdsmen were responsible for more deaths than Boko Haram in 2016. The Fulani militants were named the fourth deadliest terrorist group in the world in 2014 and the Global Terrorism Index shows that the Fulani extremists have killed over 2,500 people in Nigeria between 2012 and 2016. A knee-jerk reaction by the Federal Government has given rise to speculation of a sinister plan by the Fulani pastorialists to dispossess inhabitants of their ancestral farmlands. Mansur Dan-Ali, Minister of Defense, blamed farmers and anti-open grazing law for the crisis. “Since the nation’s Independence, we know there used to be a route followed by the cattle-rearers because they are all over the nation,” he said. “You go to Bayelsa, Ogun, you will see them. If those routes are blocked, what do you expect will happen? These people are Nigerians. It is just like one going to block shoreline, does that make sense to you?” The cattle route, if it existed as the defence minister described, is certainly no longer visible in the states where clashes between farmers and herders have been frequently occurring. Or rather, the herders have not been adhering to the route. The herdsmen are certainly everywhere – in cities and villages – grazing their cattle indiscriminately and sometimes destroying farms. The Federal Government has over the years budgeted for the creation of grazing reserves but there is no evidence of these grazing areas in most of the states, suggesting that the money has either been mismanaged or was never released. The victims of clashes between farmers and herders over grazing rights, who are mostly peasants in remote communities, may not understand the politics of their fate but they feel abandoned and neglected by the Federal Government. In Benue, the neglect is not just about the failure of the government to protect them and their property but also that the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) has only sent paltry relief materials to the burgeoning displaced persons in the state once. (c) 2018 International Centre for Investigative Reporting https://www.icirnigeria.org/investigation-survivors-of-herdsmen-attacks-tormented-by-deaths-rape-at-benue-idp-camps/

On April 17, Serzh Sargsyan was elected Armenia’s prime minister in a parliament session under siege. Armored police officers stood within a few hundred feet of the National Assembly as throngs of protesters headed toward the building, demanding Sargsyan step down. The ruling Republican Party of Armenia (RPA), together with its coalition partner the Armenian Revolutionary Federation (ARF), confirmed Sargsyan with a 77-17 vote. In 2015, nearing the end of his second presidential term, Sargsyan presided over a contentious constitutional referendum that changed the country’s governing system from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary one. The referendum reduced the presidency to a ceremonial role and increased the prime minister’s powers. At the time, critics viewed the constitutional changes as an attempt by Sargsyan to consolidate power indefinitely, despite his protestations. But the critics were right. Any lingering doubts vanished when, on April 2, the government formally privatized the state-owned presidential residence. The house that presidents have and would have continued to occupy will now belong to him and his family in perpetuity — inside the same compound in which, by law, live the country’s top leadership. The “Reject Serzh” protests that have captivated Yerevan for six days represent the public’s repudiation of a power grab similar to that achieved by Russia’s Vladimir Putin. A momentous movement The “Reject Serzh” movement is a defining moment in Armenia’s post-independence history. In 2008, Sargsyan became president amid violent protests that left 10 people dead. A decade later, he is assuming the premiership from inside a barbed wire-enclosed National Assembly building. While the current demonstrations convey dissatisfaction with the political process, similar to prior protests, they are notable in scale and sophistication. For parliament member Nikol Pashinyan, head of Armenia’s Civil Contract Party, the “Reject Serzh” movement began hundreds of kilometers outside the capital. The 42-year-old opposition leader completed a walking journey from the city of Gyumri to Yerevan, a symbol of protest that culminated with mass demonstrations. Since arriving in Yerevan on April 13, Pashinyan has guided people through days of civil disobedience. Peaceful protesters have used benches, trash bins, and their bodies, to shut down the city center. University students have shown a unified front, organizing their own rallies and street closures, and encouraging peers to join them. Most notably, Pashinyan has relied on crowdsourcing and grassroots organizing to bring scale and breadth to the movement. His tactics include directives — “Tomorrow, let’s encircle government buildings,” or “We must close access to the city’s center,” — and thousands have implemented his calls to action. The size, atmosphere, and age diversity of the demonstrations send a dual message: for authorities, that it would be difficult to exercise authoritarian rule; and for citizens, that they are not as weak and despairing as they are thoughtful and united. Opposition calls on diaspora support Despite the magnitude of the demonstrations, coverage in diaspora media outlets has been noticeably lacking. While active in Armenia’s foreign policy strategies, major diaspora institutions remain visibly distanced from the country’s domestic realities. In September 2016, notable diasporan figures, including lead singer of System of a Down Serj Tankian, Canadian-Armenian actor Arsinée Khanjian, and director Atom Egoyan launched the “Justice Within Armenia” initiative to highlight Armenia’s internal challenges. But “Justice Within Armenia” is an exception to the norm. During other periods of political upheaval, including the 2017 parliamentary elections and the 2015 constitutional referendum, the majority of diasporans and diaspora institutions remained disconnected from local activists and organizations. Diasporans who wish to meaningfully connect with the Republic of Armenia must make an effort to understand local priorities and needs. This can be through following and supporting independent journalism and civil society initiatives. Until the diaspora’s objectives for Armenia align with Armenia’s local concerns, Armenians in Armenia and those in the diaspora will not establish a mutually beneficial relationship. The Armenian people could not change the vote of the National Assembly but they are in charge of the streets, the city, and the country. Activists continue to increase in numbers and are more creative and resolute than ever. Despite enduring poverty, territorial disputes and declining freedoms, the last few days have shown that citizens will not sit idle as the nation slides toward authoritarianism. (c) 2018 CivilNet https://www.civilnet.am/news/2018/04/18/Same-Streets-Same-Demands-But-Something-s-Different/334119#.WtecXh4r-2k.facebook

The new United Nations envoy for war-torn Yemen called Tuesday for all parties to the conflict to abandon preconditions and begin negotiations, and said he would offer a new framework for talks within the next two months. “A negotiated political settlement through inclusive intra-Yemeni dialogue is the only way to end the Yemeni conflict and address the ongoing humanitarian crisis,” Martin Griffiths, the Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, told the Security Council today. “Peace becomes possible when we see the good in our foes, even though we can see clearly the cruelties of war,” he added. In his first briefing to the Security Council since assuming his responsibilities in March, Mr. Griffiths informed its members that he plans to develop principles for peace negotiations within the next two months. The promised drive for a settlement comes as living conditions in Yemen become increasingly desperate, in what now the world’s worst humanitarian crisis. Speaking alongside the Mr. Griffiths, the UN Emergency Relief Coordinator, Mark Lowcock, said: “More than 22 million people urgently require some form of humanitarian help, including 8.4 million people who struggle to find their next meal.” While he said it was his perception that the warring sides in Yemen desire peace, Mr. Griffiths drew attention to the increased number of ballistic missiles launched towards Saudi Arabia, intensified military operations in north-west Yemen, and airstrikes in the capital of Sana’a and other cities that are causing civilian deaths and diminishing hopes for peace. Conflict is ongoing there between an international coalition of forces supporting President Abdrabbuh Mansur Hadi on the one side, and Houthi militias and allied units of the armed forces on the other. “The people of Yemen are in desperate need of signs that this war will soon end,” Mr. Griffiths said. Mr. Griffiths assumed his responsibilities on 11 March, succeeding Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed who had served as the Special Envoy since April 2015. UN Photo/Manuel Elias Martin Griffith, Special Envoy of the Secretary-General for Yemen, briefs the Security Council meeting on the situation in that country. Efforts to provide humanitarian relief to millions of Yemenis has been severely hampered, Mr. Lowcock, the Organization’s aid chief, said, because of bureaucratic obstacles imposed by authorities as well as restrictions on imports and customs clearance, and long delays and searches at checkpoints. “Sana’a airport also remains closed to commercial traffic, preventing thousands of critically ill patients from travelling abroad to seek treatment unavailable in Yemen,” Mr. Lowcock said. Another Risk of Cholera Outbreak Mr. Lowcock, who is also the UN Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs, warned that another major outbreak of cholera looms, though aid workers are trying to take preventive measures and are pre-positioning supplies should it occur. “A successful response requires safe unimpeded and unhindered access across and into Yemen for humanitarian staff and humanitarian supplies,” he said, as well as predictable fuel imports to keep hospitals and water treatment plants running. Clip - Mark Lowcock at Security Council on 17 April 2018 AM (c) 2018 UN News https://news.un.org/en/story/2018/04/1007512

A German refugee support organization has developed apps for smartphones to help migrants living with psychological symptoms of stress. The online mobile therapy service is available in Farsi, English and Arabic. The organization Center Überleben has developed two separate online therapy apps, ALMHAR (Application for Mental Health Aid for Refugees) and SMILERS (Smartphone Mediated Intervention for Learning Emotional Regulation of Sadness). ALMHAR is designed for refugees who have had to flee from their homes and may be living in exile. It's available in Farsi, English and Arabic. The app explains the most common emotional problems experienced by refugees and offers basic support for dealing with them. It provides background information on twelve common problem areas and gives practical advice. The ALMHAR project was developed in response to the growing number of refugees from war and conflict zones. Researcher and app co-developer Dr Nadine Stammel says "there has been a higher demand especially for mental health resources in Arabic both from those affected and from professional colleagues." "With ALMHAR we ... offer exercises that can be done independently or incorporated into a course of therapy. Most of all, we want to provide support for self-help and, ideally, early intervention to stop the symptoms getting worse," Stammel says. However, the developers warn that the App is not a substitute for psychotherapy. They emphasize that people whose problems are severe or who have considered self-harm or suicide should go to a hospital and see a doctor or therapist. The ALMHAR App is intended to help people with PTSD SMILERS, which is available only to iPhone users at this point, is aimed at people with milder symptoms of depression. It is a self-help app that is specifically aimed at Arabic speakers. It can be used without the need for any direct contact with a therapist. The SMILERS app takes users through seven modules over the course of seven weeks. Most of the modules are picture stories, portraying, for example, the treatment of a fictional person. The app offers some short practical exercises as well as important information about depression and how to deal with it. What is so different about these apps? Over the past decade, a large number of online therapy programs have been developed. The SMILERS App grew out of a project called Ilajnafsy, which has offered Arabic speakers suffering from depression or trauma-related disorders access to internet-based psychological support since 2008. Maria Böttche, a leader of the Center Überleben research team, says the mobile App will open up the possibilities for receiving support to people who may need psychological help but don't have regular access to a computer. SMILERS can be downloaded from the iPhone app Store and ALMHAR from Google Play. The Center Überleben (Zentrum Überleben) provides free medical, psychological and social work-based support for people from war and conflict zones. (c) 2018 InfoMigrants http://www.infomigrants.net/en/post/8582/apps-for-refugees-suffering-psychological-trauma-and-depression

The first patient to endure James Marion Sims’s experimental surgery in 1845 was named Lucy. Lucy, an enslaved black woman in Alabama, remained on her hands and knees on top of a table for more than an hour as Sims sought to repair a hole between her bladder and vagina without giving her any anesthesia, which was not widely used then. Lucy quickly developed blood poisoning after Sims tried to fashion a catheter out of a piece of sponge, which Sims later admitted was “stupid” of him. “Lucy’s agony was extreme,” Sims wrote in his 1884 autobiography. “I thought that she was going to die.” But Lucy didn’t die. She, and at least six other enslaved women, endured four years of experimental surgeries before Sims finally perfected the procedure, seeking to cure what’s called a vesico-vaginal fistula. His success earned him the moniker “father of modern gynecology.” But as the years went by that success was overshadowed by the fact that he earned it on the backs of slaves. That’s the reason his statue in Central Park was removed Tuesday — 124 years after it was erected with great fanfare directly across from the New York Academy of Medicine. New York City’s Public Design Commission voted unanimously Monday to get rid of it. Crews arrived Tuesday morning with a forklift to take it from its pedestal as onlookers cheered, “Marion Sims is not our hero.” The bronze statue will be relocated to a Brooklyn cemetery, where Sims is buried. Bernadith Russell hugs a friend as the statue of James Marion Sims is removed from New York’s Central Park on April 17. (Mark Lennihan/AP) Sims’s statue is the first to come down in New York City in the aftermath of the Charlottesville white supremacist rally, which left one counterprotester dead. Amid ongoing nationwide protests of memorials commemorating the Confederacy and its leaders, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered a complete review of the city’s own inventory of monuments. The memorial celebrating Sims drew considerable protest and in August was vandalized with the word “RACIST” scrawled across it in red paint. The New York Academy of Medicine, which respected Sims and invited his lectures more than a century earlier, joined in the call for his statue’s removal. The academy did not even support the statue’s relocation. “While we are pleased with the recommendation to remove the statue from our East Harlem neighborhood, relocating to another public venue still recognizes the work of J. Marion Sims without acknowledging his egregious misuse of power in conducting surgical experiments on enslaved black women,” Judith A. Salerno, the academy’s president, said in a January statement, after the Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers announced its support for the statue’s relocation. Sims is best known for his invention of the vaginal speculum and for the surgical procedure for curing a vesico-vaginal fistula. Often caused by problems during childbirth, a hole develops between the bladder and the vagina, leading to uncontrollable urinating and ongoing discomfort and pain. For four years, from 1845 to 1849, Sims performed experimental surgeries on slaves he kept in a “little hospital of eight beds, for taking care of negro patients,” in his back yard in Montgomery, Ala., as he explained in his autobiography. On the issue of consent, Sims claimed in one case that a patient named Betsey “willingly consented” to one examination, but that was before his experiments began. At least one gynecologist who has defended Sims cited an article he wrote in 1855, in which he said his patients all gave consent. But in his autobiography, Sims described the arrangement this way: “I made this proposition to the owners of the negroes: If you will give me Anarcha and Betsey for experiment, I agree to perform no experiment or operation on either of them to endanger their lives, and will not charge a cent for keeping them, but you must pay their taxes and clothe them. I will keep them at my own expense.” He was so convinced that he had figured out a surgical panacea for the fistula that he invited “about a dozen” doctors to observe the first surgery he performed on Lucy in 1845. The doctors watched in anticipation as Sims prodded Lucy, only for the experiment to fail miserably. Nevertheless, the experiments continued, as Sims obsessively sought to perfect his procedure and his tools, including silver sutures used to stitch the hole between the bladder and vagina. Eventually, his assistants gave up on him. The enslaved women — “confident” that he could heal them, he wrote — began assisting him themselves. Some fellow doctors, aware of Sims’s repeated failures, wrote to him cautioning that perhaps he should stop the experiments. “I must tell you frankly that with your young and growing family it is unjust to them to continue in this way, and carry on this series of experiments,” Dr. Rush Jones, Sims’s brother-in-law, said in one letter. “You have no idea what it costs you to support a half-dozen n‑‑‑‑‑‑, now more than three years, and my advice to you is to resign the whole subject and give up.” But Sims didn’t. Not until after his 30th surgery on Anarcha, when his procedure finally worked. “Dr. Sims, ‘the father of gynaecology,’ was the first doctor to perfect a successful technique for the cure of vesico-vaginal fistula,” a social work professor at the University of Alabama wrote in one 1993 paper in the Journal of Medical Ethics, “yet despite his accolades, in his quest for fame and recognition, he manipulated the social institution of slavery to perform human experimentations, which by any standard is unacceptable.” When New York City erects Sims’s statue in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery, its new pedestal will be smaller, the New York Times reported. The Mayoral Advisory Commission on City Art, Monuments and Markers has pledged to include a plaque next to the statue that explains Sims’s “legacy of non-consensual medical experimentation on women of color broadly and Black women specifically that Sims has come to symbolize.” To “honor the sacrifice of the women whose bodies were used in the name of scientific advancement,” the plaque will also include the names of the women who endured Sims’s experiments: Lucy, Anarcha, Betsey. (c) 2018 The Washington Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/04/18/statue-of-father-of-gynecology-who-experimented-on-enslaved-women-removed-from-central-park/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.7058a18b8696

Five key suspects of the 1994 Genocide against the Tutsi currently on British soil have been placed under fresh investigations, UK Metropolitan Police has told The New Times. Eleven years ago, Rwanda issued indictments detailing the crimes the five men - all of whom held key leadership positions under the genocidal regime - allegedly committed during the Genocide but following several rounds of arrests and hearings the UK judiciary released the suspects, arguing they may not get fair trial if extradited to Rwanda. The suspects are Dr Vincent Bajinya, Célestin Ugirashebuja, Charles Munyaneza, Emmanuel Nteziryayo and Célestin Mutabaruka. Kigali protested their release saying it perpetuated impunity and denied justice to victims. The Rwandan government urged the UK to try the fugitives on its soil if it was uncomfortable with extraditing them to face trial in a country where they allegedly committed the crimes. But in a new twist, the UK Metropolitan Police says they were now assessing the indictments against the five men under their War Crimes Unit. In an email to The New Times, a Metropolitan Police spokesman said: "We can confirm that the Met's War Crimes Unit, within the Counter Terrorism Command, received a request from Rwandan authorities in January 2018 to investigate five individuals in the UK in relation to alleged genocide offences in Rwanda dating from around 1994. "Documentation relevant to this request has been passed to the War Crimes Unit, and the unit is currently assessing this material," the email reads in part. The development comes hot on the heels of a meeting between the new UK envoy to Rwanda, Joanne Lomas, and Rwanda's Justice minister and Attorney General Johnston Busingye. Shortly after the meeting last week, Lomas told the media that fresh investigations into the case were underway, adding that her country took the issue "very seriously". Observers have questioned the indifference of UK authorities on the indictments against the five men, with fresh criticism gathering momentum in the early days of the ongoing 24th commemoration of the Genocide against the Tutsi. More than a million people were killed during the Genocide. During a commemoration event in London last week, Rwanda's High Commissioner to the United Kingdom, Yamina Karitanyi, said Rwanda "will not tire" in using the law, and diplomacy, to fight genocide ideology and bringing (Genocide) suspects who are still at large to face trial." Rwanda has over the years received fugitives from different parts of the world, including from Europe and the Americas, as well as referrals from the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. This, Rwandan officials, say disqualifies claims that that the fugitives in the UK would not get fair trial once extradited to Rwanda. But the officials in Kigali have also said that any country that was not willing to hand such suspects to Rwanda should go ahead and hold them accountable for their crimes as provided for under the international law. Who are these suspects? The five fugitives residing in the UK include Bajinya, a medical doctor who at the time of the Genocide headed the then National Population Office (ONAPO). He is said to have been a coordinator of a militia in the capital Kigali, with several witness accounts alleging that he organised regular meetings in his home in the days preceding the Genocide where plans to kill the Tutsi were hatched. The other one is Celestin Mutabaruka, presently a Pentecostal preacher in the UK. Mutabaruka, who at the time of the Genocide was running Crête Zaïre-Nil (CZN), a forest management organisation in Musebeya, southern Rwanda, is accused of having led a gang of killers that murdered many people on Muyira Hill in Bisesero in mid May 1994, among other atrocities. The other three - Charles Munyaneza, Emmanual Nteziryayo and Celestin Ugirashebuja- were bourgmestres (mayors) for the communes (districts) of Kinyamakara, Mudasomwa and Kigoma, respectively, all in southern Rwanda. Munyaneza and Nteziryayo, whose communes fell under what was then Gikongoro prefecture, are accused of giving orders to exterminate over 50,000 Tutsi who had sought refugee at Murambi technical school during the Genocide. Ugirashebuja is accused of commanding Interahamwe militia to kill thousands of Tutsi in his commune, according to witness accounts. Eleven-year battle Rwanda first notified the UK government of the presence of these suspects on its soil back in 2007 when they issued indictments. An extradition battle ensued with Rwanda winning the first case in 2008 before the suspects appealed on the ground that they would not get fair hearing in Rwanda, with an appeals court ruling in their favour in 2009. Rwanda made a fresh extradition bid at Westminster Magistrates Court in 2013 following judicial reforms but again it lost on the basis that the cases were politically motivated and not genuine pursuit of justice for genocide crimes. These claims are "unfounded", Minister Busingye told journalists after his meeting with British High Commissioner Joanne Lomas in Kigali last week. "The reasons upon which the British judicial system has based on to say that these people will not receive fair trial are unfounded. "The British judicial system should interrogate this issue further because many countries across the world have extradited Genocide suspects to Rwanda and we have not had the fears expressed by the British justice system justified in any of those cases," Busingye said. Some of the countries that have extradited or deported fugitives to Rwanda include Canada, Germany, Norway, Denmark, the Netherlands and the United States. New push In January 2018, Prosecutor General Jean Bosco Mutangana and Jean Bosco Siboyintore, the Head of Genocide Suspects Tracking Unit at the National Public Prosecution Authority, travelled to London where they delivered a fresh request for the UK to prosecute the five Genocide suspects. "UK has two obligations; if you can't extradite them, prosecute them, in any case let them face justice because there is proof for their crimes," Siboyintore told The New Times yesterday. Asked if the UK authorities were doing enough to bring these suspects to justice, the Metropolitan Police spokesperson said "we have nothing more to add at this stage but can only confirm fresh investigations into these files". (c) 2018 The New Times http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/genocide-suspects-uk-face-fresh-investigation

Report reveals collective punishment of women and children for being related, however distantly, to men linked to IS or fleeing IS strongholds Women and children in camps across Iraq deprived of food, water and other essentials and prevented from returning home Women subjected to rape and sexual exploitation Iraqi women and children with perceived ties to the armed group calling itself the Islamic State (IS) are being denied humanitarian aid and prevented from returning to their homes, with an alarming number of women subjected to sexual violence, Amnesty International said in a new report published today. The Condemned: Women and Children Isolated, Trapped and Exploited in Iraq reveals widespread discrimination against women living in camps for internally displaced people (IDPs) by security forces, members of camp administrations and local authorities, who believe these women are affiliated to IS. Amnesty International established that sexual exploitation was occurring in each of the eight camps that Amnesty researchers visited. “The war against IS in Iraq may be over, but the suffering of Iraqis is far from over. Iraqi women and children with perceived ties to IS are being punished for crimes they did not commit,” said Lynn Maalouf, Middle East Research Director at Amnesty International. “Cast out of their communities, these families have nowhere and no one to turn to. They are trapped in camps, ostracized and denied food, water and other essentials. This humiliating collective punishment risks laying the foundation for future violence. It is no way to build the just and sustainable peace that Iraqis so desperately desire and need.” The report details the plight of thousands of female-headed families who have been left to fend for themselves in IDP camps after male family members were killed, or arbitrarily arrested and forcibly disappeared while fleeing IS-held areas in and around Mosul. In many cases, the men’s only “crime” was escaping an IS stronghold, having similar names to those on questionable “wanted lists” or working in non-combat roles with IS as cooks or drivers. Isolated and sexually exploited The research shows that women and children in IDP camps across Iraq are denied food and health care as a result of their perceived ties to IS. These families are also routinely blocked from obtaining identity cards and other documents needed to work and move freely. In at least one camp, families suspected of links to IS are forbidden to leave what has become a de facto detention centre. Desperate and isolated, the women are at heightened risk of sexual exploitation by security forces, armed guards and members of militias working in and near the camps. In each of the eight camps Amnesty International visited, women were being coerced and pressured into entering sexual relationships in exchange for desperately needed cash, humanitarian aid and protection from other men. These women are also at risk of rape. Four women told Amnesty International they had either witnessed rape directly or heard the screams of a woman in a nearby tent who was being raped by armed men, members of the camp administration or other camp residents. “Dana”, a 20-year-old woman, told Amnesty International she had survived several rape attempts and faced relentless pressure to have sex with a member of the security forces in her camp. “Because they consider me the same as an IS fighter, they will rape me and return me back. They want to show everyone what they can do to me – to take away my honour,” she said. “I can’t feel comfortable in my tent. I just want a door to lock and walls around me… Each night, I say to myself, ‘Tonight is the night I’m going to die’.” Many of the women that Amnesty interviewed in IDP camps expressed fear for their safety. “Women are being subjected to dehumanizing and discriminatory treatment by armed men operating in the camps for their alleged affiliation with IS. The very people who are supposed to be protecting them are turning into predators,” said Lynn Maalouf. “The Iraqi government must show it is serious about ending the violations against these women by holding all perpetrators to account and stopping all armed men from entering IDP camps.” Nowhere to turn In several areas, local and tribal authorities have issued orders that block the return of women and children with perceived ties to IS, leaving them trapped in the IDP camps. Those who have made it home have faced evictions, forced displacement, looting, threats and abuse, including sexual abuse and sexual harassment. In some instances, their houses have been marked “Daeshi” (the Arabic term for IS) and destroyed or they have had their electricity, water and other services cut off. “Maha” described to Amnesty International the despair she felt at facing such discrimination. “Sometimes I ask myself: why didn’t I just die in an air strike? I attempted to commit suicide but I didn’t follow through. I put kerosene on myself, but before I lit it on fire, I thought of my son,” she said. “I feel I am at my end. I am in a prison here. I am completely alone – without my husband, my father – no one is with me anymore.” The situation for women like “Maha” is likely to get even worse as international funding for the humanitarian crisis in Iraq is projected to sharply decrease. In advance of Iraq’s parliamentary elections in May, displaced people are being urged to leave IDP camps as the government’s focus turns to closing and consolidating them. “The Iraqi authorities must ensure that families in IDP camps with perceived ties to IS are given equal access to humanitarian aid, health care and civil documents. These families must be allowed to return home without fear of intimidation, arrest or attacks,” Lynn Maalouf said. “The authorities must also immediately end the systematic and widespread practice of forcibly disappearing men and boys with perceived ties to IS that has left thousands of wives, mothers, daughters and sons in desperate situations. “To put an end to the poisonous cycle of marginalization and communal violence that has plagued Iraq for decades, the Iraqi government and international community must commit to upholding the rights of all Iraqis without discrimination. Without this, there can be no national reconciliation or lasting peace.” Background The report was based on interviews with 92 women in eight IDP camps in Ninewa and Salah al-Din governorates. Researchers also interviewed 30 local and international NGO workers, 11 members of camp administrations and nine current and former UN officials. See the report: Iraq: The condemned: Woman and children isolated, trapped and exploited in Iraq (c) 2018 Amnesty International https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2018/04/iraq-women-children-with-perceived-ties-to-is-denied-aid-sexually-exploited-trapped-in-camps/

Yemen has launched 119 ballistic missiles targeted at Saudi Arabia, said Saudi-led coalition spokesperson Turki Al-Maliki. Saudi-led spokesperson Turki Al-Maliki presents pictures of unmanned Iranian aircraft possessed by Houthi militias in Yemen. (AN photo: Essa Al-Doubisi) (c) 2018 Arab News

After spending two months in Riyadh, Daghr and a number of ministers returned to Yemen last week to run the country from the temporary capital. Earlier this year fierce battles erupted between separatists and forces loyal to the government, killing dozens. Yemen Prime Minister Ahmed bin Daghr a celebration marking the 26th anniversary of Yemen's reunification in the Southern port city of Aden on September 28th, 2016 (AFP) Yemen’s Prime Minister Ahmed Obeid bin Daghr said on Sunday his return to Aden was to bring an end to the instability in the de facto capital, Asharq Al-Awsat reported on Sunday. “There will be no more bloodshed or fighting because the government is back in Aden. We will exert all our efforts to stop the security situation from further deteriorating and to stop further assassination attempts on dozens of religious and military figures,” the PM said. After spending two months in Riyadh, Daghr and a number of ministers returned to Yemen last week to run the country from the temporary capital. Speaking at a gathering organized by the education ministry, the prime minister promised Yemenis that his government would work on restoring basic services to all areas in the city. Earlier this year fierce battles erupted between separatists and forces loyal to the government, killing dozens. Clashes escalated when fighters loyal to the Southern Transitional Council fought their way to the gates of the presidential palace in central Aden, forcing troops to abandon their positions. Tensions settled after a Saudi and UAE delegation was sent to Aden to restore peace in the city. (C) 2018 Arab News

Residents of Rwamagana District and surrounding communities on Sunday gathered in Gishali Sector to accord decent burial to 16 victims of Genocide against Tutsi. Fifteen of them were found in Lake Muhazi while one was found on the shores. April 15 and 16 are days that survivors from the area commemorate massacres that took place there in 1994. Here, over 10,000 Genocide victims were killed through drowning, while a similar number died on mainland. Emmanuel Nyemazi, a survivor, says many were killed and thrown into the water body, mostly by Interahamwe militiamen who were coming from across the lake in Murambi Commune. “Across the lake were Interahamwe roadblocks that worked in shifts to make sure no Tutsi escaped to the other side of the lake,” he said. Though he was shot and after survived multiple grenades attacks at the commune headquarters, Nyemazi and a few others managed to get to the lake, with Interahamwe militia in pursuit. He said that when they waded into the water, the Interahamwe called fellow militiamen from across the lake to wait for those running away and kill them before they can escape. As soon as they got to the shores, militiamen were waiting and they were immediately surrounded and the killing machine went into motion once again. Nyemazi recalls one particular killer, an agemate of his who told him at the shore, “I can’t kill you with my machete; we were once classmates, but get into water so I can see you dying”. He, however, managed to pull himself out of the water when the militiamen got distracted. Nyemazi has since lived with a bullet right next to his kidney and all medics have failed to extricate it. More than 14,000 still missing “More than 20,000 Tutsi were killed here at the former commune offices, most on their way to the lake, and in water. But only 6,000 have been given a decent burial,” said Marc Rushimisha, the Executive Secretary of Gishali Sector. This implies that more than 14,000 victims have never been accorded a decent burial. “Every year when we gather for commemoration events, we always raise this concern, we need those who have any information on the whereabouts of our people to come forth with it”. The Mayor of Rwamagana, Rajab Mbonyumuvunyi, said people know where bodies are but just do not come forth with the information, giving an example of a woman who knew the whereabouts of over 50 bodies but had for years remained silent because her husband refused her to speak. Rwamagana District has two lakes, Mugesera and Muhazi, and it has been decided that the district will be holding an even on on April 22 to specially commemorate Genocide victims who died in the lakes. (c) 2018 The New Times http://www.newtimes.co.rw/news/kwibuka24-genocide-victims-found-lake-muhazi-laid-rest

Riyadh, Apr.15 (BNA): King Salman Humanitarian Aid and Relief Centre (KSrelief) has distributed 1,651 food baskets in Hais District, Al-Hodeida Governorate, Yemen, to 9906 beneficiaries, as part of 22,273 food baskets dedicated to the governorate within the comprehensive humanitarian plan in Yemen. Each food basket weighs 74 kilogrammes. The distribution comes within the framework of projects being provided by Riyadh-based KSRelief to alleviate the sufferings of the Yemeni people due to the current humanitarian crisis. © AFP 2018 / Mohammed Huwais (c) 2018 ReliefWeb